CNN news 2014-05-26 加文本

cnn news 2014-05-26

CARL AZUZ, cnn ANCHOR: Hi, I`m Carl Azuz. Happy to deliver your Thursday edition of cnn STUDENT NEWS. Thanks for watching. There are 26 Veterans Affairs hospitals currently being investigated by the U.S. government. Accusations recently came to life that some veterans nationwide have had to wait too long for treatment. Last month sources told cnn that 40 veterans had died waiting at a V.A. hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. Yesterday, President Obama made his first public comments about this. He called the idea dishonorable and disgraceful.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Our veterans deserve to know the facts, their families deserve to know the facts. Once we know the facts, I assure you, if there`s misconduct, it will be punished.

AZUZ: But no one is being punished yet. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki still has his job and President Obama says he needs more time to review what`s happening at V.A. hospitals before punishing anyone.

Critics say that president`s not doing enough to hold people accountable and to start cleaning things up at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Next story takes us to Chad, a nation in central Africa. The White House announced yesterday that 80 U.S. troops are headed there. Chad is right next to Nigeria where more than 200 schoolgirls were recently kidnapped by a terrorist group last months. Officials think the girls might have been taken to Chad or neighboring Cameroon. The U.S. Armed Forces will be operating a drone aircraft in the region, gathering intelligence that`s hoped to lead to the girls rescue.

President Obama informed Congress of the deployment yesterday. U.S. war powers are divided between the government`s executive and legislative branches. So, president has to tell Congress whenever he sends troops potentially in a harm`s way.

Next up today, we are crossing land and see to get to Japan. There`s an eerie sort of ghost town in the northern part of the country. It`s a city named Fukushima. And its residents had to leave after an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. In addition to killing almost 16,000 people and destroying parts of the Japanese coast, the water damaged the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, and the danger that will linger for decades is of a kind you can`t see.

WILL RIPLEY, cnn CORRESPONDENT: Lifeless, decaying, desolate - Fukushima is virtually untouched since that awful day three years ago when people living here had just hours to take what they could and go.

Fields once full of crops now full of black bags with contaminated soil.

Right now we are on the bus heading towards Fukushima Daiichi. We just passed the police checkpoint, which stops anybody from coming in, and what we are seeing along this road are so many empty homes, empty businesses.

A senior scientist and his research team at Fukushima University just published a study claiming the power plants operator Tepco grossly underestimated the amount of radioactive poison, Caesium 137 released during the meltdown.

This material has already gone into the ocean, it`s already there. He`s especially worried about contaminated fish in a country where most meals come from the sea. His research team says caesium spewed into the air during the meltdown and later fell into the water contaminating the North Pacific Ocean and the Japanese mainland. Tepco says the company`s radiation estimates come from the best information they have, but a spokesperson admits nobody really knows for sure.

This is my first time going inside one of the most dangerous places on earth, wearing special suits to protect us from radiation, we pass through security, board the bus and go to the heart of the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Piece by piece workers are trying to safely take it apart.

Even under normal conditions this is slow ruling (ph) work. This is reactor four, this reactor is relatively intact. But reactors one, two and three melted down. There`s a lot of damage, a lot of contamination and the cleanup is expected to take decades.

Outside, buildings battered by the 50 foot wall of water during the 2011 tsunami. Inside, a reactor control room with walls turned into makeshift notepads when the plant lost power. Water level measurements from workers trying to prevent the meltdown.

The invisible danger from Fukushima is why these town will continue to seat empty for years, as crews try to contain the slow moving catastrophe that turned their homeland into this wasteland. Will Ripley, cnn, Fukushima, Japan.