CNN news 2014-03-10 加文本

cnn news 2014-03-10

CARL AZUZ, cnn ANCHOR: You`re only a day away from Friday. You`re watching cnn STUDENT NEWS. You`re ten minutes away from getting up to speed on current events. We are starting in China today. Big meeting there. It`s the once a year gathering of the National People`s Congress. It includes thousands of delegates from all over the country. China is a communist state. The government controls the economy and other parts of society. So, the National People`s Congress is limited. It won`t be voting on any major laws. But this meeting is a chance for China to talk about its economic plans. And because it`s the world`s second largest economy, international economists are watching to see what China will do.

Other parts of the international community are watching Ukraine. A lot of talking about the crisis there yesterday. Meetings involving officials from the European Union, Ukraine, Russia, the U.S., but there wasn`t a lot of action. Some U.S. officials are still considering economic sanctions against Russian for its involvement in Ukraine. Russia`s threatening economic action of its own that could hurt trade in other parts of Europe.

You didn`t see it, you didn`t feel it. You might not have known it was there. But an asteroid zipped by us yesterday. Well, that`s relative. It was close by space standards, it wasn`t in terms of miles. But since there is a one in 10,000 chance of this same asteroid coming back near us, on March 4, 2046, Chad Myers is going to help us get to know it.

Chad.

CHAD MYERS, cnn METEOROLOGIST: Hey, Carl, an asteroid yesterday flew between the Earth and the Moon, or at least the orbit of the Moon. It`s about a quarter of a million miles between the Earth to the Moon. And this was slightly inside of it. 90 percent, all the way from here to here, or ten percent from here to here. So, it was still about 217,000 miles away as it flew on by the Earth.

Now, let`s think about the size of this. Because here`s the baseball diamond right here. Here`s actually the tournament field. If you take a ball of - a big rock and you put it right over the infield, that`s how big this asteroid was. Right over the infield of any baseball diamond. Now, you take that, you fly that in between the Earth and the Moon. And you have something going for it. Now, this is not one of the closer ones probably will have this year. But it certainly is 90 percent of the way between the Earth and the Moon, and it`s called DX-110. 110 because it`s actually the hundred and tenth asteroid that they have found so far this year.

Think about this, though: last year 21 asteroids flew closer to the Earth than this one, and the chance of this actually hitting the Earth was only one in about ten million.

Now, it was probably more of a big deal to the asteroid that the Earth got so close. Because if you`re standing on the asteroid and all of a sudden the Earth flies on by, you`re thinking yourself, wow, that was the size of an Earth, not the size of the baseball field. And a lot more danger to the asteroid right there than to the Earth as it flew on by. Carl.

AZUZ: Big changes are coming to the SAT exam: fewer students have been taking it. And the College Board, the group that administers the test, says it wants the SAT to be more connected to what`s being taught in high school. Changes take effect in two years. The top score you can get currently, 2400. It`s going back to 1600. Vocabulary words will be easier, essays will no longer be mandatory. And you won`t need to know as much about as many subjects. Critics say it will dumb down the test. It will be more closely aligned with common core curriculum, which supporters applaud for setting national education standards. The critics say it hurt students and goes against state`s rights to set their own standards.