Good morning and welcome to Kid News sponsored today to give a special birthday shout out to Phoenix from Malvern, Pennsylvania.

Phoenix, you've grown up to be an amazing young lady and your mom, dad, sister Zoe, and hamster, Mr. Creampuff, love, and adore you.

We hope you have a fantastic day.

I'm Kim.

Today is Wednesday, March 15, 2023, also known as the Ides of March.

And we begin with a professor from the University of South Florida taking a record-setting plunge for science.

Joseph Dittori, who goes by the handle Dr. Deep Sea, is hoping to spend 100 days underwater to test the impact on the human body.

He won't be swimming around in scuba gear. Dr. Deep Sea will be living in a 100 square foot hotel that sits 30 feet below the surface in Key Largo, Florida.

It's called Jewels Undersea Lodge, and is the same underwater venue where the previous record of 73 days was set.

Air will be pumped in, which will create a pressure of about 1.6 times that of Earth's surface.

Dr. Deep Sea believes the added pressure might actually improve his health. We'll soon find out.

He'll be closely monitored and, until he resurfaces on June 9, the former Navy vet will be carrying out experiments and giving virtual lectures for his students.

TikTok users probably know all about the Willow Project, a controversial oil drilling site on the north slope of Alaska that would, according to The New York Times, sit in the country's largest single stretch of pristine land.

Environmentalists fear the impact on wildlife and the climate, and they've taken to TikTok with pleas to block it under the hashtag Stop Willow.

The state of Alaska, however, is all for it, because of the jobs it would create.

Now, it looks like Willow is moving forward. President Biden gave formal approval this week, while also blocking drilling elsewhere in the region.

So while some are happy, conservationists are not. The lawyer for one group said protecting one area of the Arctic so you can destroy another just doesn't make sense.

March madness is here. Tip off for the women is tonight. For men, it was last night. And for those who dutifully filled out those brackets, either by winging it or by using all that basketball know how, we have some interesting stats.

So far, no one's ever picked all the winners beyond the 49th game. Davidson professor Tim Chartier told CNN that the odds of getting every game winner correct stands at 1 in 9 quintillion,

which is a nine followed by 18 zeros. Put another way, the height of nine quintillion dollar bills stacked is equivalent to the distance from Earth to Pluto 60 times.

Professor Chartier also came up with this gem of a comparison. There's a stat out there that there's a one in 10,000 chance that you get injured by a toilet.

So there are better odds that a family of four all get hurt by the toilet than there is for picking a perfect bracket.

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