Good morning and welcome to Kid News, I'm Kim.

It's Wednesday, December 15, 2021, and we begin with an update on the teenage pilot attempting

to be the youngest woman to fly solo around the world.

Zara Rutherford just landed in Seoul, South Korea this week, the first stop in Asia during

her quest.

She'll stay there for a week before taking off for Taiwan on Monday.

The 19-year-old British Belgian started her journey in August from Western Belgium, and

her goal was to complete the nearly 32,000-mile trip by Christmas.

But it's now clear she won't achieve that.

Bad weather and visa issues grounded her in both Alaska and Russia for a month.

She now hopes to return to her home country and set the world record in mid-January.

Zara, who is the daughter of two pilots, plans to start university next year with the dream

of becoming an astronaut.

A new statewide mandate to wear masks indoors goes into effect today in California, as more

than 4,000 new COVID cases are being reported every day.

This rule will be an effect for at least a month.

Meanwhile, in New York, with more than 10,000 new cases a day, a similar indoor mask requirement

started on Monday.

Knowing these new mandates would not be welcome news for many, California's health and

human services secretary Mark Galley acknowledged that people are tired and hungry for normalcy.

Frankly, he said, I am too.

But officials in both states said the measure is meant to slow down the spread of the coronavirus,

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