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Syrian Rebels Join Fight Against ISIS In Kobani; Kilauea Volcano Lava Inches Toward village of Pahoa; Marvel Announces Nine New Superhero Movies; Comic Sans Turns 20; Unmanned Rocket Bound Of International Space Station Explodes Just After Launch

Aired October 29, 2014 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KRISTIE LU STOUT, HOST: I'm Kristie Lu Stout in Hong Kong. And welcome to News Stream where news and technology meet.

Now the battle for Kobani rages on as Kurdish forces in Syria get reinforcements in their fight against ISIS.

An unmanned rocket headed for the international space station explodes moments after liftoff.

And, get ready to see more of these guys as Marvel announces nine new superhero movies.

The Kurdish defenders of the besieged border town of Kobani welcomed an influx of new ground troops. 200 Syrian rebels have joined their ranks.

Now there is heavy fighting as they enter the city at dawn, bringing with them mortars, heavy machine guns and other supplies.

Now we spoke to a rebel commander who says thousands more fighters are at the ready.

Meanwhile, two convoys have a Iraqi Peshmerga fighters are making their way to Kobani right now. Now let's get the very latest from our

reporter on the ground. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is at the Turkish-Syrian border, he joins us now.

And Nick, when the Peshmerga arrive in Kobani, what impact will they have? Will they tip the balance in the fight against ISIS there?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, he's seen the size of the convoy of Peshmerga, which has since the early hours of the

morning been making its way through Turkey. And it's thought to be under 100 kilometers away, so potentially an hour away from the key border town

near Kobani, where they will link up with some Peshmerga who were flown in last night. That's quite a substantial amount of hardware given the scale

of the fight for Kobani, not an enormous city in itself.

So, yes, it probably will have a substantial impact.

But this day began really with surprise, Kristie, people had anticipated those Peshmerga arriving first, instead Syrian rebels turned

up. Not quite the big numbers that some have talked about. I think some inside are talking about 50 having potentially arrived and maybe there

could be hundreds more on their way if required.

But it must have been a surprise to those inside, long awaiting the Iraqi-Kurdish Peshmerga to in fact find that perhaps the behest of Turkey

they were suddenly dealing with dozens of Syrian rebel fighters from the Free Syrian Army turning up, it seems some medium and light weapons.

As soon as they crossed in, we understand constant heavy clashes heard from dawn in the town behind me. And we've seen two substantial airstrikes

in the city.

It's clear, I think, since the quiet set in that maybe they are preparing for the Peshmerga to arrive in the hours ahead. We'll just have

to see how volatile that entry into the city is for a convoy, which many thought would go in discretely, but it's, I think so large they'd have to

take the obvious front door -- Kristie.

LU STOUT: Syrian rebel fighters are already there in Kobani as these Iraqi Peshmerga convoys are en route to the Syrian city through Turkey. So

why is Turkey allowing the Kurdish Peshmerga convoy to cross through its borders to gain access to Kobani.

WALSH: This is simply I think most analysts accept because Turkey felt it needed to do something to assist those fighting for Kobani. It

considers the Syrian Kurds to be allied to terrorists, Turkish Kurds here inside Turkey. And it considers the Iraqi Kurds to be more acceptable,

almost friendly.

So, they suggested the Peshmerga coming, the Peshmerga agreed that they should send some militants. The Syrian Kurds actually prefer to have

the heavy weapons rather than actually the manpower. And then a messy few days worth of back and forth and public bickering began.

But it was clear yesterday they were on their way. It was actually going to happen.

And then Turkey, of course, a few days ago threw in this Syrian rebel issue as well while they decided they'd like to see 1,300 Syrian rebels led

by commander Abdul Jabar al-Qaidi (ph), not a man, really, who has had much traction in the Syrian rebel movement in the past year or so, a bit of an

outsider, that he was going to lead this huge force.

Many Syrian rebels question where they come from. They're pretty busy tied up elsewhere fighting amongst themselves and amongst ISIS too.

So a complex situation, but no doubt today we are seeing those reinforcements not in the order necessarily or scale expected, and

Peshmerga due to arrive on the road that probably passes down to the side of me here in the hours ahead -- Kristie.

LU STOUT: Fighting reinforcements coming into Kobani. But what about Turkey? I mean, what will it take for Turkey to get involved militarily

and to send ground forces of its own to Kobani?

WALSH: That seems in my opinion extraordinarily unlikely. While the Turkish do have a kind of game plan for what they would like to see happen

in Northern Syria -- remember they've been dealing with the spillover, sort of the fallout of the Syrian war for three years now. They'd like to see a

buffer zone, a no-fly zone put in perhaps into which they could push many of these Syrian refugees back effectively into Syrian territory.

At this stage, it seems a very far distant likelihood that they will actually put their own soldiers inside Kobani. Their troops have sat on

the hills, often actually more concerned with clearing spectators and media and in fact than inserting themselves into that particular fight.

This is perhaps why they chose the Peshmerga to be involved rather than necessarily feel pressure for their troops to be inserted into that

fight. And of course also well they started talking about the Syrian rebels.

These two forces when they arrive perhaps answering the question the U.S. keep asking we can bring in the air power. We can have the

airstrikes, but what are the ground forces that on the ground are going to push back physically the ISIS forces that we've hit with the air power --

Kristie.

LU STOUT: All right. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh reporting live from the Turkish-Syrian border. Thank you, Nick.

Now from the beginning of the siege, female fighters have been on the frontline in the battle against ISIS militants. Ivan Watson sat down with

some of the women who enlisted to hear more about their choice to defend Syria against the insurgents.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IVAN WATSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Don't be fooled by the pretty song, these women are part of a militia that is ISIS's most deadly

enemy in Syria -- Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units, or YPG.

They've fought ISIS on the ground in Syria for more than a year, only recently they started getting help from the U.S. in the form of airstrikes

and weapons drops, a surprising turn of events for this secular Marxist rooted movement, which includes many fighters who have long battled

America's NATO ally Turkey.

An important part of this Kurdish movement's ideology is founded on Gender Equality, that means female fighters fight and bleed on the front

lines and that stands in sharp contrast to ISIS which has been covering women up and hiding them from public life.

Addressing the crowd, a top Kurdish official who urges the fighters to protect their people from becoming slaves of ISIS. She is the co-president

of one of three Kurdish statelets in Northern Syria that have largely governed themselves for the least three years.

HADIYE YUSUF, CO-PERSIDENT OF JARIZA CANTON (through translator): Our dream is to build a democratic society that includes Arabs, Christians and

Kurds living together in unity.

WATSON: The Kurds called their region Rojova (ph), some of them clearly proud of their experiment in self-rule.

Life in the town of Derek (ph) looks relatively peaceful and secular, unlike other parts of Syria taken over by Islamist militias.

But the streets here feel empty, many of the town's Christian residents have fled and more keep leaving.

This is a sad day for your family. Why?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, because they will go out from our country.

WATSON: Peter Isa's (ph) tearful mother and sister wave goodbye from inside a 1954 Desoto. Their final destination: Germany.

The town's shrinking Christian flock can still walk peacefully through the streets to Sunday school, enjoying the protection of the Kurds.

But the Kurds are paying dearly. At this memorial ceremony, mothers and wives of dead fighters and this widow. She says ISIS killed her

husband last year and mutilated his body.

"If I didn't have these children, I myself would go and fight," she swears.

Her young son already wears the uniform of a future Kurdish fighter.

Ivan Watson, CNN, Rojova (ph) in nothern Syria.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LU STOUT: Now emergency crews in Sri Lanka are desperately searching for survivors of a major landslide. Sri Lanka's disaster management center

says at least six bodies have been recovered, but as many as 300 people are missing. It says 140 homes have been destroyed.

Now in about an hour, the World Health Organization will hold a briefing on the Ebola outbreak. The WHO will give a progress report on

efforts to fight the virus in West Africa, including new infection and death figures. Officials say burial practices in some West African

countries have contributed to the rapid spread of Ebola.

But as Linda Kincaid reports, caution is fast replacing tradition in Sierra Leone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LINDA KINCAID, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In the middle of a very grim epidemic, there is one bright spot, Sierra Leone's capital Freetown has

tripled the number of safe burials of Ebola victims in the past week.

Contact with the bodies of Ebola victims has been the leading cause of transmission in West Africa. According to the WHO, Ebola patients are most

infectious right after death because that's when the virus overtakes the body.

Yet the country's traditional burial practices require that family members wash the body of the deceased loved one and touch it, sometimes

even kiss it prior to burial.

Nearly 5,000 people have died of Ebola in West Africa, almost 1,300 of them in Sierra Leone. And officials estimate about 80 percent of

infections in the Freetown area were caused by touching the dead bodies of Ebola victims.

Many countries have stepped up the response to the outbreak, which includes educating people on ways to prevent the spread of the disease.

SAMANTHA POWER, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO UNITED NATIONS: If people can discipline themselves to follow those protocols and resist the temptation

to hug their loved ones and to treat them in the ways that Sierra Leoneans have been treating their loved ones for many, many generations, if they can

resist that, they can be part of the solution and can avoid infection.

KINCAID: The hope now is that this trend of education and prevention can be continued in neighboring countries Guinea and Liberia.

Linda Kincaid, CNN. (END VIDEOTAPE)

LU STOUT: Now the body of Zambian President Michael Sata will be transported back to Zambia some time next week. Now Michael Sata died in

London Tuesday evening at the age of 77. The cause of death has not been disclosed, but Mr. Sata had been ill for some time and was undergoing

medical treatment in the UK.

Now cabinet ministers in Zambia are now working to determine who should serve as the country's interim president until fresh elections are

called within the next few months.

Now coming up right here on News Stream. A supply rocket bound for the International Space Station explodes moments after liftoff. I'll take

a look at what caused the failure.

And a river of molten lava is advancing on a Hawaiian town, but its slow progress has given residents plenty of time to prepare for the worst.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LU STOUT: Welcome back.

Now an investigation is underway into the failure of a mission to resupply the International Space Station.

The unmanned rocket exploded just seconds after liftoff from a launchpad in Virginia Tuesday evening. There was a huge fireball and loud

booms along the coast, but no deaths or injuries were reported.

Now here's another view of the explosion from a pilot who was watching from a small plane. Now the weather was perfect at the time. You can see

the flames there in the distance and that fireball.

Now the rocket was carrying food and supplies to the International Space Station.

Now the crash site remains cordoned off. And the private contractor Orbital Science will lead an investigation to determine what went wrong.

Now CNN's Tom Foreman joins me now live from Washington with the latest. And Tom, the investigation will soon begin. What will the

officials be looking out for?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this investigation actually began seconds after this rocket exploded. They started studying all the

telemetry, all of the radio signals coming off of this rocket as it took off about its speed, it's temperature its height, everything that was

involved in this. And now as dawn has come to this area, investigators are spreading out through the marsh. They're looking for pieces of it,

anything they can find.

And considering that this was roughly three-quarters of a million pounds of thrust at work when it all came apart at the seams, some of those

pieces could be very far flung.

But they're going to try to pull it all back together, just like they would with an aircraft explosion and they'll try to put the pieces together

and come up with the source of the problem.

And I can tell you now, a lot of the focus is absolutely going to be on that first stage engine. It was supposed to burn for about four minutes

with a mix of liquid oxygen and rocket fuel. It burned for about six seconds before it came apart. And the engine itself has been questioned

many times before. It's an old Soviet design that has been repurposed for this and some other space companies have been very critical of the use of

these rocket engines before.

Whether or not that's a problem, we don't know, but the investigation will certainly have to look at that.

LU STOUT: Yeah, there will be a lot of focus of this investigation into the engine that was used here. No one was hurt in this accident.

This was an unmanned rocket. There in the United States is it raising concerns over the use in general of commercial carriers for essentially

taking astronauts into space?

FOREMAN: Well, that has been a concern from the beginning as the privatization of space has grown here.

Now, granted, NASA had its own accidents along the way. And space travel is inherently hazardous. People start thinking of it as being like

an airplane taking off. It's not at all. What's being done here in an engineering sense is an enormous challenge no matter whose going after it.

But, with the awarding of a contract earlier this year to Boeing and SpaceX, four manned spacecraft to go up there, yeah, there's going to be a

lot more discussion about that, about people saying is there enough of a check and balance system to make sure that safety is paramount?

I can tell you these private companies know that and they're watching their safety record very carefully. And that's why this even really

matters to them, even the companies that weren't involved, because they know it sends out a political shockwave as well among people who may say

maybe we shouldn't privatize. And maybe we shouldn't fly humans at all.

But that's a big blow to the U.S. space program any time something like this happens.

LU STOUT: All right, CNN's Tom Foreman reporting live from CNN Washington. Thank you very much indeed for that.

Now blazing lava from the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii could soon burn down dozens of homes in the town of Pahoa.

Now the red hot ooze is already overtaken a graveyard and claimed two residential properties.

Martin Savidge has the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This has been a slow-motion disaster. Officials have actually had months to prepare for it. But they

admit, now that it's here, it's a whole different emotional chapter.

(voice-over): The day residents have been fearing is finally here. The town of Pahoa is burning. A 2,000-degree river of molten lava that's been

approaching for months is now searing the town, and it's just the beginning. Overnight, the first official evacuation notices went out.

DARRYL OLIVERA, HAWAII COUNTY CIVIL DEFENSE CONTRACTOR: Face to face, knock on the door, by a public safety official.

SAVIDGE: The lava is moving at about 30 feet an hour. And at its current speed, it will cut the town's main street in less than two days.

In a helicopter, I could follow the trail of destruction from the slopes of the Kilauea volcano to the edge of town.

(on camera): There it is. That's the lava field, and most of the lava is moving underground. You can see how it transforms the landscape. It just

wipes out the vegetation.

(voice-over): On its way, the lava invaded a local cemetery, surrounding the white tombstones.

(on camera): There's nothing that can be done. In other words, if you're thinking why don't they divert it or why don't they try to dig a

channel to go around the town? Hawaii has tried all that in the past. It's never been effective.

(voice-over): On the ground, crews race to construct new roads around the lava, to keep an evacuation route open and businesses connected to the

nearby city of Hilo.

CHARLENE EWING, LOCAL BUSINESS OWNERS: Hopefully, we'll be able to always stay open. Hopefully, Pahoa will still be viable.

SAVIDGE: Even as the danger creeps ever closer, some residents say they will stay, if only to watch their homes burn.

OLIVERA: When the lava flow comes through their subdivision or through their area, there will be an opportunity for them to remain on site,

provided it's safe to do so. SAVIDGE (on camera): Later today, members of the Hawaii National

Guard are expected to show up, bolstering the security forces that are already here. They will patrol the streets, even as parts of the town burn.

Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LU STOUT: Wow, incredible video of the lava flow there. And that was Martin Savidge reporting.

Now it was a day of mourning in Canada.

Thousands gathered to pay respects to Corporal Nathan Cirillo who was gunned down last week. He was attacked while standing guard at the

national war monument in Ottawa. Security forces shot and killed the attacker and say he had ties to jihadists.

At the memorial service on Tuesday, Cirillo's commanding officer praised the slain soldier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. COLONEL LAWRENCE HATFIELD, ARGYLL AND SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS: He never took the hard knocks or (inaudible) personally, he just smiled and

soldiered on both in the regiment and in life -- loyal, tough, loving, true. His family knew it, his regiment knew it and now Canadians know it.

Rest in peace Corporal Cirillo. You're Argyll family will not forget.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LU STOUT: Cirillo leaves behind a 5-year-old son pictured here.

The prime minister says he hopes the boy would find comfort in knowing the entire country was looking up to his late father.

Now we're finally getting some new details about what was behind that six week hiatus of North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong un. Now South

Korea's Yonhap News Agency reports that Kim had a cyst removed from his right ankle.

Now his disappearance from public view created intense speculation over the reclusive state's internal power structure. And recent photos

show him at public events holding a cane.

Now you're watching News Stream. Still to come on the program, a bank heist in India that is like something out of a Bollywood blockbuster.

Stick around.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LU STOUT: Coming to you live from Hong Kong, you're back watching News Stream.

Truth is often stranger than fiction, but listen to this. Now robbers have cleaned out a bank in India and they're plan may have been inspired by

fiction. Mallika Kapur reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALLIKA KAPUR, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You've probably seen this kind of a heist in the movies, but this is no Bollywood set, this is

real life drama.

A gang of robbers dug a tunnel 100 feet long to break into a branch of Punjab National Bank in Harriyana (ph) north India. Officials say it looks

like a carefully planned operation. The tunnel originated in an empty house nearby. The culprits have been digging for a few days and apparently

knew exactly what they were doing. The tunnel opened right into the bank's vault. They broke open lockers and fled with cash, jewelry and other items

worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Local media says the robbery appears to be inspired by a similar scene in a Bollywood blockbuster (inaudible).

In the movie, the cops caught up with the robber who committed suicide.

In this real-life action story, the chase is still on.

Mallika Kapur, CNN, New Delhi.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LU STOUT: Quite the story.

You're watching News Stream. And still ahead, if you never thought a font type could be divisive, well think again. We'll look at comic sans as

it marks 20 years.

Also ahead, going viral: the U.S. band OK Go takes music video production to new heights. And we'll go behind the scenes with the videos

creative director in Tokyo.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LU STOUT: I'm Kristie Lu Stout in Hong Kong, you're watching News Stream. And these are your world headlines.

Now two convoys of Iraqi Peshmerga fighters are heading to the Syrian border town of Kobani right now to help in the fight against ISIS. Now

rebel fighters from Syria entered the city just a few hours ago with mortars and heavy machine guns. A rebel commander tells CNN that more

fighters can be sent if needed.

In Iraq, heavy fighting with ISIS has driven Iraqis from their homes near the city of Hit. After an appeal from Baghdad, U.S. forces air

dropped humanitarian aid for those who have been displaced.

Now Zambian President Michael Sata has died in London at age 77. We do not know what caused his death, but Mr. Sata arrived in the UK last week

for medical treatment. Reuters says that Vice President Guy Scott has been named interim president and that elections will be held within three

months.

Residents are fleeing the Hawaiian town of Pahoa as lava from the Kilauea volcano creeps closer to homes. Now the lava front has already

reached two residential properties and continues to advance on the town.

Many families left ahead of official evacuation notices for fear of being cutoff or engulfed in smoke.

Orbital Sciences will lead the investigation into the explosion of its unmanned rocket along the eastern coast of Virginia. The NASA contracted

rocket exploded Tuesday evening shortly after liftoff for the international space station. There was, as expected, a lot of damage, but no deaths or

injuries.

Now this month, it marks the 20th anniversary of a tech icon, of something you probably encounter every day, for some people something you

might despise every time you see it. I'm talking about comic sans, the infamous computer typeface that was created back in 1994 by a designer

Microsoft. And since then, it has found widespread use, usually in places where it shouldn't be used.

So, why does the font attract so much hate? And for that and more we're joined now by our regular tech contributor Nick Thompson. He's the

editor of the New Yorker.com.

And Nick, thank you so much for joining, especially to talk about this topic. And first, in terms of design why is comic sans just so reviled?

NICK THOMPSON, NEW YORKER.COM: Well, it's an objectively bad font. It's not good for reading, right, the letters are straight. They aren't

balanced. They run off in different directions. If you look at the little lowercase E, for example, it's not on a line. It comes off at an angle.

If you look at the kerning, the spacing between the letters, it's quite bad. So the letters don't run together.

It's very hard to read. It looks like a child's handwriting. And so when it's used in formal documents or serious documents it takes the

attention away from the document and puts them onto this ridiculous font.

So that's why there's been such a large backlash against it.

LU STOUT: I love how you say it's objectively bad.

Now there's the design issue and there's also the misuse of comic sans. I mean, any worst offenders come to mind?

THOMPSON: Well, almost any use of comic sans besides sort of -- you know, it was designed to be a little popup box in a comic book. That's a

fine use. If you're making a poster for a (inaudible) class, that's a fine use.

Almost any other uses is a misuse. But the classic, the one that really struck me was Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers when

LeBron James left to go to the Miami Heat. And he had the absolute moral high ground there. LeBron James had acted appallingly. And he put out

this letter. And it seemed like this crazy ex-girlfriend letter written in comic sans. And you had this sense of this billionaire maniac typing late

at night in despair. It just took away all the credibility and power that he had at that moment to make a statement.

LU STOUT: Yeah, that typeface choice just seriously inappropriate there.

Now walk us through the origins of comic sans, because it dates back to October of 1994. Why was comic sans created to begin with?

THOMPSON: Well, it was created by an employee at Microsoft. And they had a program that involved some character speaking. And so they needed

text to appear in the little speech bubbles. And so he was looking in his office for inspiration and he had some comic books. Wierdly, you know, he

had Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns, which were very bleak and grim comic books. But he created this font. And then it was put into Windows

95.

So suddenly at the advent of word processing, when for the first time we all have the power to change the fonts and make our documents look

interesting, comic sans is one of the options. And so all -- us newly empowered billions of people with this power started to use comic sans left

and right. And it grew quite rapidly.

LU STOUT: You know, it's incredible, isn't it, because it was inspired by these dark and very landmark comic series, and yet it's become

this whimsical typeface that's so often misused that people love to hate it. I mean, is it basically a good typeface or mediocre typeface gone bad?

Or can we learn to appropriately use and love comic sans one day?

THOMPSON: Well, you know, Kristie, I've kind of complicated maybe controversial thoughts here on comic sans, which is that there is a wicked

backlash. There are groups devoted to destroying comic sans. There are people that go out there and burn comic sans letters.

My view, as I said before, that it's an objectively bad font. You know, I think there are lots of places where the internet should not be as

whimsical as the internet becomes. I think comic sans should not be used as much as it is, but I see it -- I don't really get riled up. I was

thinking about it and it kind of feels a little bit like criticizing comic sans feels a little bit like one of those aunts or somebody who says -- you

know, corrects your grammar when you're talking. And they're right. Maybe you should have used who instead of whom, but it's kind of OK.

So, I think it's an important thing to look at. It's a really important cultural part of the internet. And I think it'll live for awhile

longer and we'll all be all right.

LU STOUT: All right. Nick Thompson, wise words indeed. Thank you so much for joining us on this unique anniversary 20 years of comic sans.

Thank you, Nick. Take care.

Now, meanwhile, Google is taking on a very, very ambitious challenge, it's tackling cancer. Now the new project, it aims to create disease

detecting particles that can be swallowed in the form of a pill.

Now the particles would then look for abnormal cells and relay the findings to a wearable device.

The head of Google X's life sciences department explains how it works.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREW CONRAD, GOOGLE X: The idea is simple, you just swallow a pill with the nanoparticles and they're decorated with antibodies or molecules

that detect other molecules. The course through your body. And because the core of these particles are magnetic, you can call them somewhere. You

can -- if you look at your wrist right here, you'll see that there's these superficial veins. Just by putting a magnet there you can trap them. And

you can ask them what they saw.

The analogy in medicine is like imagine you want to explore Parisian culture and you do it by flying a helicopter over Paris once a year, that's

what doctors do now. And what we're hoping to do is these little particles go out and mingle with the people. We call them back to one place and we

ask them, hey, what'd you see? Did you find cancer? Did you see something that looks like a fragile plaque for a heart attack? Did you see too much

sodium?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LU STOUT: Quite a vision there from the head of life sciences at Google X.

You're watching News Stream. Still to come in the program, for all you moviegoers out there, Marvel unveils a long list of new superhero

films. We've got the details after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LU STOUT: Welcome back.

Now the U.S. rock group OK Go has fans thrilled with their latest music video to go viral. Now the video, is now clocking in at over 4.5

million views and counting on YouTube. And it was shot in Japan with a drone camera. Will Ripley looks at just how they pulled it off.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILL RIPLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Would you believe a nondescript Tokyo building is home to the creative mind one of the hottest viral music videos

around? And we're going to get a look inside his studio.

This is Japanese director Morihiro Harano. He's friends with the American group OK Go, those are the guys who've used treadmills, dominoes,

and other optical illusions in their other videos, but in this new one, which they shot right here in Japan, they used drones and they use these

new Segway-like Honda vehicles called UNI-CUBs. Take a look.

This video already has millions of views and the number keeps rising. And would you believe, it's essentially one continuous shot. They did 44

takes. They completed the whole routine 11 times and out of those 11, they found 3 takes that they thought were OK and the one that you see on YouTube

is what they consider their best take.

The filming took place over four days. It was actually raining a lot of the time so that extended the time period of shooting, this is after

they rehearsed for a full month.

The final take, we're told, happened around 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening. And you see 2,400 people doing a really cool flip card type

maneuver as the drone keeps rising. The director actually says this is his favorite part. Here's why.

"The end is my favorite," he says, "because the drone flies up 700 meters, about a half a mile, and the music stops. You see that huge crowd."

He says, "this is my first music video and I wanted to try something new."

They used a multi-copter camera to get those incredible aerials and they shot everything at half speed, everyone was moving in slow motion. And

then they sped it up in the final editing process to get that incredible effect.

One of the world's hottest viral music videos made right here in Japan.

Will Ripley, CNN, Tokyo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LU STOUT: Now the director tells us that the full behind the scenes video will be released on YouTube on Thursday.

Now there is a flood of superheroes coming to the cinemas over the next few years after Marvel announced nine new movies on Tuesday. And the

films include a mix between sequels like two new Avengers films and characters not seen in the Marvel cinematic universe before like Doctor

Strange.

Now two of the newcomers are worth highlighting.

Now Black Panther was the first black superhero in mainstream comics. And he'll be one of the first to get his own film in 2017. Now Black

Panther is the leader of a secretive African nation and a fearsome fighter.

Now the year after that, we'll see Marvel's first film staring a female superhero. Now Carol Danvers (ph), better known as Captain Marvel.

And she is part of the cosmic side of the Marvel Universe, much like the successful Guardians of the Galaxy.

So, in all, that's nine new films for Marvel. Coming up to 2019. And that doesn't include films previously announced, the second Avengers film

or Ant Man. It also doesn't include the 10 new films by rival D.C. Comics, or Sony's Spider-Man movies, or Fox's X-Men and Fantastic Four films, or

even the Lego Batman movie.

Now this chart from the Comics Alliance, it attempts to show just how many are on the way.

Now there are 33 superhero movies with release dates between now and 2020. So, if you are a superhero fan, you can look forward to plenty of

trips to the cinema in the years ahead.

And that is News Stream. I'm Kristie Lu Stout. But don't go anywhere, World Sport with Christina MacFarlane is up next.

END