CNN news 2012-06-10 加文本

cnn news 2012-06-10

CARL AZUZ, HOST, cnn STUDENT NEWS: Thanks to Ms. Rogers` (ph) class for spelling out today`s introduction. I`m Carl Azuz. As we get going with 10 minutes of global headlines, we`re going to start things off today in Pakistan.

That is where a senior Al Qaeda leader was killed this week according to U.S. officials. Abu Yahya al-Libi was second in command in the Al Qaeda terrorist organization. He was captured back in 2002, but escaped three years later.

AZUZ (voice-over): On Monday, al-Libi was killed in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan. White House spokesman Jay Carney called al-Libi`s death a serious blow to Al Qaeda. Another U.S. official said, quote, "No one even comes close in terms of replacing the expertise Al Qaeda has just lost."

AZUZ: Wisconsin is one of 19 U.S. states that allows for an election to recall the governor, essentially to remove him from office. Only two governors have ever been recalled in the U.S., North Dakota Governor Lynn Frazier in 1921 and California Governor Gray Davis in 2003. Yesterday was the first time that a Wisconsin governor had ever faced a recall vote.

AZUZ (voice-over): Here you can see Republican Governor Scott Walker casting his ballot. The push for this recall election came from Governor Walker`s critics. They`re angry about some of the ways he`s tried to fix Wisconsin`s budget problems. Walker`s supporters have called him a hero for those same actions.

AZUZ: The results of the recall election came in after we produced this show on Tuesday evening, and you can check them out in the "Spotlight" section on our home page.

AZUZ (voice-over): From Wisconsin, we`re going to hop across the pond to London for the end of a celebration honoring the Queen of the United Kingdom. This flyover at the Queen`s home, Buckingham Palace, marked the end of four days of festivities. The country`s been celebrating Queen Elizabeth`s 60 years on the throne.

Other members of the royal family joined her for the final event of the Diamond Jubilee. The Queen offered thanks in a rare television appearance. She said, quote, "It has touched me deeply to see so many thousands of families, neighbors and friends celebrating together in such a happy atmosphere."

AZUZ: Well, if you want to put your forecasting fortitude to the test, you can go outside and guess the temperature. If there`s any wind, you could take a crack at how fast you think it`s going. It might sound kind of easy, but it gets a lot harder to accurately assess the weather when you`re in the middle of a hurricane. John Zarrella explains why some researchers in Gainesville, Florida, think it`s important to try.

JOHN ZARRELLA, cnn CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There I am in North Carolina, battling the wind and water last year during Hurricane Irene.

(Inaudible) you can feel the wind and the rain.

ZARRELLA (voice-over): Looks pretty bad, doesn`t it? The problem is, sometimes our perceptions of a storm`s strength are different from reality, and that can lead to injuries and death.

LESLIE CHAPMAN-HENDERSON, FLASH: What we`re actually doing here is we`re creating a little bit of constructive unease, and that unease is the thing that`s going to propel people to do something differently.

ZARRELLA (voice-over): The University of Florida and the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes have teamed up to try and understand how people perceive wind, rain and water.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you ready?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You`re sure?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don`t want to call this off?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. It`s your funeral.

ZARRELLA (voice-over): Standing on a wooden platform, university student volunteers are strapped into harnesses on top of a wooden platform. Then the giant turbines are turned on. They are blasted with six different wind speeds, up to 100-plus miles per hour. Sometimes they`re hit with wind and water. The participates hand-signal their wind guesstimates to a researcher.

CORINNE NOVELL, UNIVERSITY STUDENT VOLUNTEER: I think I -- the highest I estimated was like 85 miles per hour.

ZARRELLA: Right. You know how fast that really was?

NOVELL: How fast is it?

ZARRELLA: Sixty.

(LAUGHTER)

ZARRELLA (voice-over): Researchers are finding most people pretty accurate at the lower wind speeds, but like Corinne, most overestimate the higher speeds.

GREG WEBSTER, PROF. OF PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA: So it`s simply -- and part of matter of humans just not really having experience for these types of winds.

ZARRELLA (voice-over): Researchers say what`s clear so far is that people with prior tropical storm or hurricane experience are better estimators of wind speed. The problem is, most people have never been through one.