CNN news 2012-01-20 加文本

cnn news 2012-01-20

First up today, a controversy involving pardons issued by the governor of Mississippi. A pardon released criminals from guilt. The president can grant pardons to federal criminals, and in many states, governors have that pardon power as well.

AZUZ (voice-over): Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour handed out nearly 200 pardons this week. Most of those people were already out of jail. Governor Barbour said the pardons were intended to help those people find jobs or to register to vote.

But some of the pardons went to convicted murderers. They`re supposed to contact prison officials every day, but four of them took off.

AZUZ: A state official said they may start a manhunt to track them down. The judge has issued a ruling, stopping the release of any other prisoners. He said some of the pardons, including the ones for the four murderers, didn`t meet certain requirements.

AZUZ (voice-over): There`s been a lot of debate around this story. What we`re asking on our blog is this: what factors should a president or governor take into account when considering giving someone a pardon? We`re interested in hearing your thoughts at cnnstudentnews.com.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is this legit? The Caribbean nation highlighted on this map is Jamaica.

Not true. This is Haiti, which takes up about one-third of the island of Hispaniola.

AZUZ: Well, yesterday, we talked about the devastation that Haiti suffered when a powerful earthquake hit the country in 2010. Two years later, things are getting better, but you`re going to see in this next report from Jonathan Mann that the recovery process is slow.

JONATHAN MANN, cnn REPORTER (voice-over): Haiti has been so poor for so long, it was hard to imagine things could get much worse. Then two years ago, the hard-to-imagine happened, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake killed an estimated 220,000 people, made 1.5 million more people homeless, and turned Port-au-Prince, the capital, into a sea of displaced families and crumbled cement.

Isolated cases of cholera turned into a national epidemic. Things were bad before. Suddenly, they were utterly broken. The best hope then was, in a phrase, that Haiti would build back better. Some things are better.

The international community has spent more than $2 billion, though it promised twice as much. It has helped move more than a million Haitians out of crowded, unsanitary camps. It`s built hundreds of kilometers of paved roads. Have a look at this stretch of street. On the left, the aftermath of the quake; on the right, a look three month ago.

THOMAS NYBO, PHOTOGRAPHER/FILMOGRAPHER: I`ve watched UNICEF build 193 new earthquake-resistant schools. They`ve helped 750,000 kids back to school. Now that doesn`t mean that there aren`t challenged that were made. They`re huge. But there is reason for optimism.

MANN (voice-over): But half a million people are still living under tents and tarpaulins, and Haiti is still a nation where most people don`t have running water, toilets, medical care or jobs. About three-quarters of the country`s workers are unemployed or underemployed. It is still Haiti. There has been no happy ending -- Jonathan Mann reporting.

AZUZ: Following up on a story we first reported on Monday, a cargo ship that ran aground near New Zealand had split in two. Officials were concerned that the thing could lead to a new oil spill.

AZUZ (voice-over): And that`s exactly what happened. The ship leaked around 300 tons of oil when it first crashed last October. Now it`s dumped nearly 10 more tons of oil into the water. Hundreds of containers have gone overboard; some debris from the ship washed up on a local beach earlier this week. And officials described the wreck as highly unstable.