Today's CNN 10 Transcript

---

COY WIRE, CNN 10 ANCHOR: What's up, everyone? I'm Coy Wire, this is CNN 10, and it is Your Word Wednesday. Today, you helped us write this show. So, listen up for your words as we travel from a history-making vote to history-making football to robots that are now running faster than humans.

Let's get to your news for August 26th. And on this day in history, 1920, American women officially gained the constitutional right to vote. The 19th Amendment was formally certified 106 years ago today. The amendment prohibits the federal government or any state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on sex. It capped more than 70 years of activism by the women's suffrage movement, led by figures like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. An estimated 26 million women became eligible to vote in that 1920 U.S. election.

But the amendment didn't make voting equal overnight. Poll taxes, discriminatory local laws, and other barriers continued preventing many women of color from exercising that right for decades.

Now to Iran, where ceasefire negotiations have gone awry. And amid the fallout from war, women are once again facing increased scrutiny over something deeply personal -- what they wear. Social media video delineates women being shamed on the streets, even more so if they don't have the mandated hijab, a headscarf associated with the religious tradition of covering the hair, ears, and neck.

Our Jomana Karadsheh has more on why the crackdown is intensifying now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translation): What you're doing is disgraceful. Even in Turkey you can't go out like this.

JOMANA KARADSHEH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This woman is being publicly shamed by another woman for showing her bare legs in Iran.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translation): How dare you come out looking like this?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translation): Enough!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translation): Don't let it happen again.

KARADSHEH (voice-over): Eventually, officers arrive and make her put on pants.

KARADSHEH: This scene is being played out in cities across the country. The focus seems to be turning back to how women are allowed to dress.

KARADSHEH (voice-over): At the height of the war, women without headscarves were even seen at pro-government gatherings. The regime seemed to have bigger priorities. But now, hardliners are pushing the hijab back on the agenda. Cafes, restaurants, and shops are being shut down for failing to enforce mandatory dress codes.

KARADSHEH: Hardline clerics are demanding tougher enforcement.

KARADSHEH (voice-over): This cleric, speaking directly to President Masoud Pezeshkian.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): To what extent do they have to take off their clothes for it to be a red line, so you say: "Ah, this must not be done anymore."

KARADSHEH: But there's a problem for the regime.

KARADSHEH (voice-over): Iranian women are not backing down.

Four years ago, the death of Mahsa Jina Amini, in custody after being detained by the so-called Morality Police, ignited the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

The uprising was brutally suppressed, but widespread acts of defiance survived. Today, women walk through Iranian cities without headscarves and ride motorcycles through Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan. As the war with the U.S. seems to stall, an old confrontation is bubbling up.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIRE: Tick, tick, tick, 10-second trivia.

Which of these traits is unique to the big cats that make up the genus panthera?

Retractable claws, roaring, night vision, or patterned coats?

If you said roaring, you were born to be heard. Like lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars, the only cats that can roar. And get this, the same bone that allows them to roar also prevents them from purring. And I'm not lying.

To Argentina now, where dozens of lions and tigers have just been rescued from an abandoned zoo, which had become a dangerous tourist attraction. The animals were removed from their overcrowded enclosures and are now being transferred to animal sanctuaries around the globe.

Our Isabel Rosales has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A chance at a new life. That's what these big cats now have after being moved to new sanctuaries across the world.

AMIR KHALIL, VETERINARIAN AND LEADER OF FOUR PAWS EMERGENCY MISSIONS: At first, we try also not to make radical change, but the quality of life will change. They will have hundreds of square meters. They will have proper food, proper medical care. They were forgotten for many years, and I think now it will be a new life for them.

ROSALES (voice-over): The lions and tigers were rescued from a former zoo near Buenos Aires, shut down by Argentine officials in 2020 over safety concerns. The zoo was known for letting visitors handle the animals. In 2025, global animal welfare organization Four Paws took on responsibility for the animals. Veterinarians brought in to treat the big cats said they found many injuries, like deformed paws from declawing, kidney disease and open wounds.

FRANK GORITZ, HEAD VETERINARIAN, LEIBNIZ INSTITUTE FOR ZOO AND WILDLIFE RESEARCH: So, we found various injuries on the skin, on the tail, on the ears. So, we have some broken canines, which is very common in big cats when they do this bar biting.

ROSALES (voice-over): Now, Four Paws sent 30 of them to sanctuaries in the U.S. and South Africa to start their new lives.

MARINA IVANOVA, VETERINARIAN, FOUR PAWS: When we started with the complete medical examination of all these animals here in Lujan Zoo. Based on this examination, we evaluated that there are several animals that need urgent attention, and they need to be moved to sanctuaries and places where this is possible to be ensured.

ROSALES (voice-over): This week, 15 of these tigers and lions were taken to Lionsrock Big Cat Sanctuary in South Africa, which is owned by FOUR Paws, while the other 15 were transferred to the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado.

KHALIL: I feel well when I reach to my destination with the animal, and when I see them, I feel, how is this valuable to save a life?

ROSALES (voice-over): Whether they're in Colorado or South Africa, FOUR Paws says these big cats will get to experience life as close to their natural habitat as possible, tailored to their specific needs, and that family groups and lifelong companions will remain together in their new sanctuary homes. But most importantly, they'll finally be able to get the care they need.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIRE: Now to an NFL moment that's bigger than football. History has been made. Shiyazh Pete has become the first member of the Navajo Nation to play in the NFL. The 6'9 Dallas Cowboys rookie offensive lineman took the field against the Arizona Cardinals in Glendale. Shiyazh was shocked to see thousands of Navajo Nation members in the stands. When he entered the game in the fourth quarter, helping Dallas score a touchdown, the crowd erupted.

His teammates stood to the side to let him have his moment. When asked what he saw, he said, hope and courage. Afterwards, he was celebrated in the locker room by his teammates and his coach.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But I saw something I've never seen before. 25 years in the NFL, an entire section cheering for one man.

SHIYAZH PETE, PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYER: This game, fate brought us here as strangers, but this game, this star, this team will make us brothers.

(APPLAUSE & CHEERING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WIRE: Chinese robots are now beating the apex of human athletic achievements at this year's World Humanoid Robot Games. It's the second-year China has hosted the competition as it aggressively invests in the robotics industry. But there is far more at stake here than seeing which droid will cross the finish line. Our Mike Valerio reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE VALERIO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Some astonishing and not so astonishing feats in one of the Olympic stadiums here in Beijing.

VALERIO (voice-over): A humanoid robot named Lightning ran the 100-meter race faster than Usain Bolt's world record. But you know these competitors, they don't need protein drinks, they need batteries. Here at the World Humanoid Robot Games, robo athletes are being tested like never before.

More than 2,000 robots from 16 countries are registered for this year's games. And we have kickboxing, football, table tennis. And some of these events are getting much harder.

The 400-meter race, for example, is now totally autonomous it's reading. These robots need to see the track, navigate it and cross the finish line without anybody guiding them by remote control.

And this is actually part of the point when a robot falls, gets confused, or manages to recover on its own, engineers get a real-world test of technology they ultimately working outside the arena.

China's made embodied A.I., which is essentially A.I. in a physical body, a national priority. And the government has backed research, training centers and real-world testing as so many Chinese universities and companies have raced to build better robot bodies and even smarter robot brains.

So, the real competition here isn't just robot versus robot, it's how quickly China can move these machines from spectacle to something a little bit more useful.

And judging by what we're seeing here, there are both some amazing achievements and a little bit more training to do.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIRE: Today's story, getting a 10 out of 10, a real-life example of teamwork that makes the dream work. In Japan, about 1000 people chosen by lottery were recruited to help move this 400-ton castle back to its original place. Their method, grit, muscle, and a bit of tug of war, the Hirosaki Castle was originally moved in 2015 so workers could repair the stone wall beneath it, which supported the structure.

This month's big move traveled a grand total of one meter, around three feet. But those biceps and triceps will be getting quite a few more reps while the repairs are done. It's expected to take the rest of the year to move this whimsical heavyweight back to its original footprint. That's a monumental move, literally.

All right, we have an extra special Your Word Wednesday today because our friends at the Stratton School in Maine sent us this vocabulary adventure book. First up, "delineate." Did you hear that word in the show? A verb that means to precisely describe, portray, or outline something in detail. I see you, Jasper. Kind of like that purple jacket.

We also worked in awry, an adjective or adverb that means not going according to plan. Emma, great word. Absolutely love it.

Finally, Autumn gave us one of my favorite words, whimsical, which means playful, imaginative, or fanciful in an unusual way. You all made us smarter today by delineating each of these words.

May your imaginations be full of whimsy and your plans never go awry. Stay curious, my friends. I'm Coy Wire, and we are CNN 10.

END

CNN 10's Weekly News Quiz

---