CNN news 2012-01-29 加文本

cnn news 2012-01-29

CARL AZUZ, HOST, cnn STUDENT NEWS: All right. Thanks for kicking off today`s program. We`re going to have more with Derrick Brooks later on today. We also want to mention Mountain View High in Mesa, Arizona. A student there got this week`s social media question right. I`m Carl Azuz. Let`s get to today`s headlines.

And then there were four. That`s how many candidates are left in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

AZUZ (voice-over): Texas Governor Rick Perry has dropped out of the race. When he first announced himself as a candidate last August, Governor Perry jumped way up in the polls. But Thursday morning he said, quote, "There is no viable path forward for me in this 2012 campaign.

As he backed out, Governor Perry endorsed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. He described him as someone who can transform the country. Speaker Gingrich said he was honored to have Perry`s support.

All of this came right before tomorrow`s South Carolina Republican primary. You can get the results from our website over the weekend, and we will talking about them on Monday.

Meantime, the results from the Iowa caucuses earlier this month might be changing. The initial outcome showed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, whom you see on the left here, with an eight-vote win over former Senator Rick Santorum on the right.

Now it looks like Santorum had 34 more votes than Romney.

AZUZ: The Arab League is putting together a report on what`s been happening in the Middle Eastern nation of Syria. Monitors from the group were on a fact-finding mission. They wanted to see if the Syrian government was following up on its agreement to end the violence that`s been going on in Syria for months.

AZUZ (voice-over): Military groups have cracked down on protesters who`ve been speaking out against their government. Reports say that thousands of people have been killed. Government officials said they would stop the fighting, but opposition groups say that hasn`t happened. The unrest is affecting Syria`s economy.

These car mechanics told a cnn reporter they`re not getting as much work. And even when they do, customers aren`t always able to pay. Some groups are doing better, though. With power outages across the country, generator stores are doing more business.

AZUZ: We`ve been following the wreck of the Costa Concordia all week. We`ve shown you how some rescue workers get on board the cruise ship.

AZUZ (voice-over): We haven`t seen it from this angle before, emergency personnel being lowered from a helicopter that`s hovering over the Italian ship. You can see the view he has as he`s making his way down to the Concordia.

Officials are actually considering when they might call off the search for survivors. As of Thursday afternoon, around 20 people were still missing.

AZUZ: The ship rolled over on its side after it crashed, so you might wonder how authorities can get the thing out of the water and what they might do with it. Christine Romans is here with some possibilities.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, cnn REPORTER: This thing is sitting on its side in 60 feet of water. It`s the size of a skyscraper, and there are all kinds of perils and damage inside. First thing that has to happen is naval architects, engineers, divers, computer modelers, salvage experts, they got to see how much damage is done, and if this ship is even seaworthy.

One theory is then to get it upright by something called par buckling. The ship`s starboard side is under about 60 feet of water. Workboats would have to pump air into this -- into this balloon, really, get this thing popped up and then you`d have other ships, barges and even cables attached to the land, which would help raise this thing.

So even just getting it upright, you can see how -- that just the technical skill involved in all this -- and they`ve got to make sure that the shifting weight doesn`t cause the vessel to roll. If they`re going to refloat, they need to repair the gaping holes and all of that, and it really is a long process. So here it is. They would get it upright.

And what`s interesting here, really, is that there are 17 different tanks full of oil. That`s really important. They`ve got to pump all that oil out, get this thing solid. And as they`re pumping it out, they`ve got to also be careful to pump out the seawater, replace it with air. That would allow the ship to rise.

And they`ve got to do that really carefully as well, because, guess what? This is in 30,000 square miles -- 30,000 square miles of marine mammal sanctuary. So any time this -- just getting this thing up, when you don`t even know what`s happening on the inside of it, is going to be quite difficult.

Now, the step of moving this up with the airbags and the barges pulling on the cables attached to it, the ship, it`s incredibly technical. This could take weeks and weeks.

Then the question in the end, you guys, once righted, they`ve got to decide if they`re going to tow this away, they`re going to scrap it, they`re going to try to repair it, $450 million. This thing was $450 million in 2006. They`ve got some really big questions longer term about what to do with this thing.