CNN news 2013-01-30 加文本

cnn news 2013-01-30

The U.S Senate, the U.S Secretary of State and an attack on the U.S facility in Libya, put all that together and things can get intense, that's exactly what happened on Capitol Hill yesterday. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee helps make U.S foreign policy, how do U.S interacts with other countries. Yesterday that committee had a hearing on last year's terrorist attack in Benghazi Libya. The U.S ambassador and three other Americans were killed in the attack, some senators asked if the attack could have been prevented or if the response could have been better. At times, the mood of the hearing was angry.

"Again, again, we were misled that there was supposely protest, and then something spraying out of that, an assault spraying out of that. And that was easily ascertained that was not the fact. And the American people could have known that was within days, and they didn't know that."

"With all due respect, the fact is that we had four dead Americans. Was it because of protest? Was it because of guys out for a walk one night they decided they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make, it is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator."

The State Department is responsible for U.S officials and U.S facilities in other countries, like the one in Benghazi, Libya. Secretary of State Clinton has taken responsibility for how her department handle the attack, but at least one Senator said Secretary Clinton's answers during yesterday's hearing were unsatisfactory.

It's not the most famous ceiling in the world, we've nominate the Sistine Chapel for that, it is a high one though, 64 trillion dollars, that's U.S debt ceiling which is the limit on the amount of money the government can borrow. It's one of the checks in balances in the U.S government, before World War I, Congress had to give an approval each time the government borrowed money. That would have become really time consuming during the war when a lot of borrowing was going on to pay for it. So in 1970, Congress just set an overall limit and basically said don't go over that. It's never really stop the government from borrowing though, the reason, everytime we've gotten close to the limit, Congress has just voted to raise it. We're at that limit again now, but yesterday the House of Representatives voted to allow more borrowing at least until May. If that passes the Senate and the president signs it, you can expect the debate at the next deadline.

Today's shoutout goes out to Mr.Fletcher and the students at Williston Central School in Williston, Vermont. Good luck with that current events games.

Now who wrote the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner"?

Was it Benjamin Franklin, Francis Scott Key, Besty Ross or John Philip Sousa? You've got three seconds, go.

During the war of 1812, Francis Scott Key wrote the words that were become the America's National Anthem. That's your answer and that's your shout out.

Oh say, can you see controversy  If you watched Monday's presidential inauguration, you heard the Beyonce sing "The Star-Spangled Banner", but did you see her sing it live, you might have heard about this accusation already. Was Beyonce live or was she lip-synching? We're going to play an excerpt, a clip from that performance for you right now, check this out.

Beyonce: "And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air. Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there."

So, live or lip-syncing, the U.S Marine band which provided the accompanying music said it's not in a position to know for sure. The owner of the company that ran the audio board said I don't think it's a question that I should answer. And Beyonce's representatives aren't saying anything. It's not unheard of for singers to use recordings, every inauguration performer does a pre-recorded backup just in case. But the other singers at the inauguration sang live. So this is where the controversy and Beyonce's critics come in. If she did lip-synching, why did she do it and why won't she say so? Here's another question people are asking, does it really matter?

If you've got an opinion, we want to hear it, go to our blog, cnnstudentnews.com. Tell us what you think.