CNN news 2012-09-19 加文本

cnn news 2012-09-19

MARLEN ESPARZA, OLYMPIC BOXER: Hi, I`m Marlen Esparza, U.S. boxing Olympian, and we`re celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, and you`re watching cnn STUDENT NEWS.

CARL AZUZ, cnn ANCHOR: You sure are. Hi, everyone, I`m Carl Azuz. We`re going to have more from Marlen Esparza coming up, but we`re starting today with some global headlines.

First up, we`re heading to Afghanistan. The U.S.-led coalition is gradually transferring control to Afghan authorities, but the war is not over, and there are still tens of thousands of American forces there. On Sunday, four U.S. troops were killed by Afghan police. These attacks are sometimes called green on blue violence, when coalition troops are fired on by their supposed Afghan allies. Two other Americans were killed on Friday when a group of 15 insurgents raided this military base. Six jets were destroyed in that attack as well. 14 of the raiders were killed. The other was wounded and captured.

Next, we`re moving toward the Korean peninsula and Japan. Over in this part of the world, hurricanes are called typhoons, and the 16th one this year barreled through over the weekend. It`s called Typhoon Sanba. Forecasters said the storm was heading towards South Korea yesterday. It made landfall on the Japanese island of Okinawa Sunday morning. The storm`s eye was nearly half the length of the island, but there were no immediate reports of damage. Okinawa is built to handle powerful typhoons since it`s in an area where they happen so often.

Finally, we`re heading to the U.S. city of Chicago. The country`s third largest school district was not in class last week because the teachers union was on strike. Union officials and teacher representatives met to discuss the latest contract proposal. The teacher reps had the power to either stop the strike or to keep it going. The meeting was still under way as we were producing this show yesterday evening, but you can get the latest details at cnnstudentnews.com.

In 50 days, Americans will head to the polls to vote for president. The two main candidates represent the country`s two main political parties, but how did these groups get started? Tomorrow we`re going to take a look at the Democrats. Today, Tom Foreman explores the origins of the modern Republican Party.

TOM FOREMAN, cnn CORRESPONDENT: The modern Republican Party absolutely owes its origin to the fight over slavery. In the mid-1800s, in that tumultuous time right before the Civil War, many political activists were worried about slavery spreading into the Western territories, and they didn`t think the other parties would do much about it. The Democrats or the Whigs. So they said, let`s form our own party, and we`ll call it the Republicans, as a salute to former American leaders long ago who`d called themselves Republicans. In fact, at one point, almost every politician in this country called themselves a type of Republican, but that was the old Republicans. Now we`re talking about the new Republicans.

By 1861, they had their first president, Abraham Lincoln. Slavery soon fell, as we all know. The Whigs soon disbanded, and the Republicans began this long, steady march into power. Even back then, they talked about issues like immigration and religion and basic values and having a strong business climate. That`s why one newspaper back then that liked them said we will call this the Grand Old Party, the GOP. We still hear that to these days.

Their voting base was largely in rural areas and the West. That`s still partially true. And those people proved really adept at using the Electoral College system to produce presidents. Even sometimes when they couldn`t get the popular vote. Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, many more. They produced a lot of presidents, but then along comes World War I, and the party has these deep policy divisions over what to do. Herbert Hoover shows up, ushers in the Great Depression, and the Republicans go scurrying off into retreat. And that`s where they stay for quite some time. It`s 20 years until Dwight Eisenhower can finally get the White House back for them again.

However, since 1969, they`ve been pretty much back to their winning ways. During that period of time, Republicans have held the Oval Office almost twice as many years as the Democrats.