You`re only a day away from Friday. We`re happy to see you take 10 minutes for CNN STUDENT
NEWS. From the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia, I`m Carl Azuz.
Our first story takes us to the U.S. state of Michigan. The National Guard has been activated
there. A state of emergency has been declared.
It`s all related to the water supply in the city of Flint. About 100,000 people live there
and some of them have been exposed to increased levels of lead in their tap water.
This is serious. Lead poisoning can cause developmental and behavioral problems in children.
It can lead to lower IQ levels. It`s irreversible.
And what started out as a way to save money in the struggling city has put parts of the
population at risks.
A preliminary investigation did not blame the city council or the mayor of Flint, but
it put the blame at the state level, with Michigan`s Department of Environmental Quality.
This neighborhood says it all, 15 percent of homes in Flint, Michigan are boarded up.
There`s a 40 percent poverty rate, high unemployment, and it`s consistently at the top of the nation`s
list of most dangerous places.
This 33 square mile city doesn`t even have a grocery store. And now, they don`t have
clean drinking water. For 18 months, researchers believe the water flowing through taps across
Flint has been tainted with lead.
In an attempt to cut costs, city officials stopped getting pretreated water from the
city of Detroit in 2014, and instead began using water from the nearby Flint River. The
problem is that the Flint River is 19 times more corrosive than Lake Huron, Detroit`s
water source, according to researchers at Virginia Tech. And the city wasn`t treating
it according to federal law. Lead pipes began to corrode, leaking into the water.
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is a pedestrian at Flint`s Hurley Children`s Hospital.
It is a well-known potent neurotoxin. There`s tons of evidence on what lead does to a child.
After hearing her patients complain about water that looked and smelled and tasted funny,
she decided to investigate. Using publicly available data on lead levels in children
in Flint, she found that the percentage of lead in cases doubled, even tripled in some
places after the water switch.
Here`s how this happened: the corrosive Flint River water goes from the plant to the water
mains to the service lines to homes. In Flint, the water mains are made of iron, which turns
some of the water brown. And half of the service lines and pipes in Flint homes are made of
lead.
For at least a year, city and state officials denied anything was wrong. The former mayor,
Dayne Walling, publicly drank the water to make a statement. But a 2011 study had also
warned that the Flint River was corrosive and needed to be treated.
In late September, officials finally recognized what experts had been saying, the water in
Flint was toxic. By October, the city reverted back to using the Detroit water supply, but
the damage was done.
I do apologize for it with respect to our role in this issue.
The state`s director of environmental quality stepped down, and Walling lost a reelection
campaign that centered around the issue.
In retrospect, I regret all of it, all the way back to seeing the city move to a different
drinking water source.
You can`t put a dollar amount on the devastation to our community, our kids, and it was completely
avoidable.
The Government of Hong Kong Special Administration Region of China is taking a step toward clamping
down on its ivory trade. Buying and selling ivory is currently allowed there, said to
be the world`s largest market for ivory.
The valuable material comes from the tusks of elephants. It`s durable, attractive, easy
to carve. It`s been used to make everything from jewelry to figurines, to piano keys,
but it`s also led to the decimation of some elephant species by poachers, people who illegally
killed the animals for their ivory.
Wildlife conservationists are applauding an announcement by the Hong Kong City Government
that it will ban the legal trade of ivory in this island city. The international trade
of ivory was banned in 1989, and despite that, there are more than 400 licensed ivory traders
in Hong Kong.
The dealers insist they`re following the rules. They`re only buying and selling from a stockpile
of ivory from elephants that were killed before 1989. But the conservationist group Wild Aid
conducted a year-long investigation during which they alleged that some of these dealers
must be laundering ivory that was poached from Africa after 1989, ivory that may also
be smuggled in and outside of Hong Kong, against international law.
Now, the government of Hong Kong says it still needs to draw off legislation for this proposed
ban. Activists say every minute counts because at the current rate of poaching, the elephant,
the living mammal to walk the earth in the wild could be extinct within a generation.
Ivan Watson, CNN, Hong Kong.
Well, we always welcome international viewers to the show. And we look for your request
at CNNStudentNews.com.
Heard from Shape of Belgium on Wednesday`s transcript page. SHAPE American Middle School
is there. It`s great to see you.
From Seeley Lake in western Montana, hello to the Blackhawks. Seeley-Swan High School
is on the roll.
Wrapping things up in Mount Airy, North Carolina. Near the border with Virginia, the Bears are
watching from Mount Airy Middle School.
We`ve mentioned California schools six times so far this school year. We`ll be doing more.
It`s the most populous state, and football fans there are getting a new team to cheer
for. Well, not exactly new.
The Rams have been around since 1936. They started in Cleveland, Ohio, spent most of
their time in Los Angeles, California, and left that city in 1994 to play in St. Louis,
Missouri.
So, what`s happening with the team now is a sort of homecoming.
NFL football is returning to Los Angeles. One city`s victory is usually another city`s
loss.
L.A. Rams! L.A. Rams!
This year, the St. Louis Rams will now become the Los Angeles Rams. And if there were any
confusion over why the team left St. Louis, the NFL commissioner cleared that right off.
We felt that we needed to have the kind of stadium and kind of project that had the vision,
that had the facilities that would really bring a new kind of fan experience to the
NFL and to Los Angeles.
But that is not all. Two other NFL teams got golden opportunities.
This agreement also allows the Chargers to relocate to Los Angeles as well. If they do
not exercise that option, the Raiders would have the option also to move to Los Angeles,
or to move to Los Angeles with the Rams.
The San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders have been trying to get their respective cities
to pony up and pay for a new stadium with public money. But that hasn`t happened. If
one team opts for L.A., it will play in the same stadium as the Rams in Englewood, California.
L.A. Rams fans couldn`t be more thrilled to have their team back.
They never should have left. They belong to Los Angeles. And that`s why I get so upset
when I think about any other team coming here.
For St. Louis Rams fans, the new deal is a bitter loss.
C`est la vie. I don`t know. They will get another team. One that wants to be here, right?
I think that we`ve given them all we have. And if they don`t want it, then move on.
And they are moving on, relocating this year to Los Angeles. But they`ll be in a temporary
stadium. Their new stadium, the commissioner says, won`t be completed until 2019.
Sara Sidner, CNN, Los Angeles.
Get ready to break out the ice scraper, or just break the ice scraper. This used to be
a car. It was parked overnight near Lake Erie in Buffalo, New York, and a blast of arctic
air plus 47-mile-per-hour winds, plus water from the lake equals a car-cicle.
And there`s a sheet of ice all around it. So, it would be hard to drive even if you
could get it started. The owner says it`s probably damaged and that he`ll get rides
from his folks until it thaws.
Of course, he could always try to sell it, even though it`s an eerie sight. It`s been
thoroughly winterized, it`s got snow tires and ice clean grill, a snow roof, plenty of
spoilers, perfect seals, lots of fresh coolant and ice cold air-conditioning, but it`s going
to need some anti-freeze.
I`m Carl Azuz and that`s CNN STUDENT NEWS.