CNN news 2012-05-07 加文本

cnn news 2012-05-07

CARL AZUZ, HOST, cnn STUDENT NEWS: First up, it`s being called the largest collection of high-level terrorist information that the U.S. government has ever gotten hold of. U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden when they raided his compound a year ago. They also took this huge collection of documents from computers, hard drives and storage devices that were there.

AZUZ (voice-over): Now some of those documents have been posted online. We don`t know how much of the material is being made public by the U.S. government. But we know that what is online offers some clues about what bin Laden was focused on.

The documents show that he wanted to see another major attack in the United States. He had big ideas for his Al Qaeda terrorist organization. But he was also worried that he couldn`t control the Al Qaeda affiliate groups around the world. In fact, he told some of those groups not to say that they were part of Al Qaeda.

AZUZ: A couple headlines for you now concerning the National Football League. First, more than 100 former players are suing the NFL over the issue of concussions, and they`re not the first ones to do it.

AZUZ (voice-over): The players involved in the lawsuit filed last week are joining more than 1,500 other players who`ve done the same thing. Their argument is that the NFL hid how dangerous concussions are and didn`t take enough steps to protect players from severe head injuries. The league says player safety is a priority. League officials also say that any claim about intentionally misleading players is false.

The other headline has to do with this man, former NFL great Junior Seau. He was found dead on Wednesday. Officials said it appeared that he died after shooting himself in the chest. Seau`s apparent suicide has raised questions about the condition of his brain. Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains why.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we don`t know for sure if Junior Seau has what a lot of people are talking about, CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and it`s tough to talk about, but the only way to really know for sure is to examine someone`s brain after someone has died.

That`s when they know for sure if, in fact, this dementia-like symptoms -- these dementia-like syndrome affected Junior Seau.

But there`s a lot of similarities between him and a player named Dave Duerson, you may remember last year. Dave Duerson also shot himself in the chest, as did Junior, and this is, again, an unusual thing to do. In Duerson`s case, he left a note saying he wanted his brain examined for evidence of CTE. That examination revealed that Duerson, in fact, did have chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

This dementia-like disease is characterized by people having memory problems, cognitive problems, depression, anger issues and you know, we`re seeing this more and more. In fact, I visited a lab in Boston, where they examined brains for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and the numbers are quite striking.

Eighteen out of 19 NFL players who had their brains examined there after their death showed evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, 18 out of 19. And the youngest brain overall where this was seen in a high school football player was 17 years old. So this process does seem to start quite early in life.