CNN news 2013-01-31 加文本

cnn news 2013-01-31

"We're eliminating the direct ground combat exclusion rule for women."

"Let's just open it up, make it based on performance if the women can't meet the standards. Then they don't get to graduate from the program to do the mission."

"To have women serving in infantry though, could impair the mission essential task those units and that's been prove in study after study."
"When I first got back from Iraq, I had people asked me if I was allowed to carry a gun because I'm just a girl."

"We're moving forward with the plan to eliminate all unnecessary gender based barriers to service."

"I'm mean it's nature, you know, upper body strength and physical movements and speed and endurance and so force."

Here is the short version, the U.S military is changing its policy to let women serve in combat units. And this is not going to happen immediately, those jobs will open up overtime, and some military units can't request an exemption, although officials say they'll have to explain why.

You might think, wait a minute, don't women already serve on the front lines. The answer of that is yes. In Iraq and Afghanistan, female soldiers ended up in firefights, they were serving in frontline units. But they weren't officially serving in combat units, that's what we're talking about here. Still, that fact hasn't stopped some women in the past from fighting. Back in the American revolution and the civil war, some women disguised themselves as men, so they could fight on the battlefield. Now obviously, opinions on this are split, and one of the big things that critics are pointing at is the ability for women and men to meet the same physical training standards.

"We're going to see as we've already seen with the expansion of roles of women, steady downward pressure on military qualification, reductions, then strength, endurance requirements, in order to get numbers up."

"Well, it is certainly true that not all women can do all of the requirements. Neither can all men, the important thing here is to make sure that right people are in the right jobs, and anybody who has the qualifications can serve in whatever position they are best suited for."

When you look through some of the comments on cnn.com, you can see just how divided people are on this. For example, one commenters said, quote, "Warfare is not a gender neutral playing field, this is going to get a lot of people killed." Someone on the other side said this is good, everyone should be able to fight for their country, no matter the gender.

If you live in the midwestern or northeastern U.S, we don't have to tell you how cold it is. For the rest of you, yeah, it's freezing. On top of New Hampshire's Mount Washington, the temperature, 22 below zero, the wind chill, minus 85. The winter weather is causing some crazy events out there. Chicago firefighters were hosing down a burning warehouse. Now if look at these pictures, you're going to see what looks like an ice palace, the water from the hoses ended up encasing the place in inches of ice.

Check out this i-report from Minnesota, you've heard about frying an egg on the sidewalk to prove how hot it is. This pretty much the exact opposite.

"Just to prove how cold it is outside, even here in the backyard, we're a little shielded from some of the elements, but we did a couple of things, we brought a damp T-shirts outside. And it took less than 5 minutes for it to be come this rigid. That's one example just how quickly things can freeze out here. We also put dropped the hot tea pot in a little cup of water. It won't come out now, it is frozen in there, solid, less than 90 minutes that one took, we set that in 90 minutes ago. "