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Obama Announces Executive Order on Immigration; What Is Lake Effect Snow?; Creating Legal Base for Using Drones
Aired November 21, 2014 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CARL AZUZ, CNN ANCHOR: Fridays are awesome! I`m Carl Azuz for CNN STUDENT NEWS. Ten minutes of current events, zero minutes of commercials. A lot
to cover today starting with last night`s announcement of a controversial executive action. This is a policy set by the president without the
consent of Congress. It can be challenged in court, it can be changed by another president. The one that President Obama announced last night has
to do with immigration. There are more than 11 million people who live in the U.S. illegally. The president`s action would allow 5 million of them,
mostly the parents of children who were born in the U.S. to stay in the U.S. without the threat of being deported. The action allows them to stay
for three years as long as they pass background checks and pay any taxes they owe.
The action is limited, it cannot allow undocumented immigrants to stay permanently. It cannot provide a way for them to become U.S. citizens. It
cannot give them access to government benefits or healthcare programs. That would all require Congress.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Mass deportation would be both impossible and contrary to our character. What I`m
describing is accountability, a common sense middle ground approach. If you meet the criteria, you can come out of the shadows and get right with
the law. If you a criminal, you`ll be deported. If you plan to enter the U.S. illegally, your chances of getting caught and sent back just went up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: Republicans and Democrats agree that U.S. immigration policy needs to be changed. They don`t agree on how to do that. Republican and some
Democratic lawmakers have urged the president to go through Congress to make changes to immigration law. The White House says it`s because the
House of Representatives hadn`t acted on immigration that the president did.
Before the speech, House Speaker John Boehner said President Obama was going too far.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JOHN BOEHNER, (R) HOUSE SPEAKER: Instead of working together to fix our broken immigration system, the president says he`s acting on his own.
That`s just not how a democracy works. The president have said before that he`s not king and he`s not an emperor. But he`s sure acting like one. And
he`s doing another time when the American people want nothing more than for us to walk together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: White House officials say the president`s plan is similar to other actions ordered by other presidents including Republicans, but no executive
action has even involved these many people before.
Part of my role is to call the roles, so let`s roll our call of the roll call. Pawnee City Public School, it`s in Nebraska, the Indians are
watching today in Pawnee City. In the West Virginian capital, the Capital High School Cougars are online. Hello, to Charleston, West Virginia and
one state east of West Virginia, in Virginia, in Quantico Middle High School we`ve got the Warriors of Quantico.
A 38-year old resident of Buffalo, New York says she`s lived there her whole life and never seen anything like this: people have been trapped in
their houses, roofs have started to splinter and collapse, snow plows aren`t even running. Authorities are using dump trucks to haul snow away.
Buffalo gets an average of around 94 inches of snow per year, that`s almost 8 feet per year. The city could see that this week alone.
Since it`s hard for residents to get around, here`s a view from the air taken by a drone. Rescuers are having to walk around snowdrifts to get
people to hospitals. At least ten people have died in the storm.
Sunday`s NFL game near Buffalo was canceled, and even though it`s supposed to warm up and rain there this weekend, that could mean flooding.
What caused all of this?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Lake effect snow is one of the coolest things on the planet. I grew up in Buffalo, New York, and lake effect snow
is just a way of life. When the water is not frozen yet, so still on the fall, it can happen in the spring after the lake thaws, but typically it`s
in the fall. The water is warm, 45 degrees and the air is ten. And that difference when that air goes across the lake, the steam from the lake gets
up into the cloud cover, gets up into the clouds and enhance the snow, and it turns into a snow machine like you would see at a ski resort.
Lake effect snow can happen anywhere in the world, if there`s cold air coming over an unfrozen warm body of water. By the time that air hits land
whether it`s France or Buffalo, you can get heavy lake effect snow coming in from any direction as long as that wind is blowing across a lake or an
ocean.
Lake effect snow comes down very fast. Three to five inches per hour. When you are trying to shovel that much snow so quickly, you have to almost
keep going to keep up with it, but that`s the heart attack snow that we talk about: it`s heavy and you have to throw it over your shoulder to get
it over the top of the pile at snow that`s already there.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AZUZ: The media activists and police are keeping a close eye on Ferguson, Missouri. A grand jury`s decision could come today on whether to charge a
28-year old white police officer named Darren Wilson in the shooting death of an unarmed black 18-year old named Michael Brown. The incident on
August 9 spite racial tensions in Ferguson. Some witnesses say Brown was trying to surrender to the officer when he was shot. Police have said
Brown assaulted the officer before he was shot.
Many protesters want Officer Wilson charged with murder. If the grand jury doesn`t think there`s enough evidenced to do that, city officials are
concerned that protests would turn violent.
Missouri`s governor has declared a state of emergency as a precaution. The National Guard has been called in and police say they are prepared to both
protect lawful people and arrest criminals.
If you have a model airplane, you don`t need permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly it. As long as you are using it for
recreation. But let`s say you have a drone, and you want to use it for commercial or business reasons. That needs to go through the FAA
regardless of where you are or how high you fly it.
The laws, though, are still being written.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANNY CEVALLOS, ATTORNEY: Technology always outpaces the law, and the law will always struggle to catch up to technology. And when it comes to
drones, those little flying devices, while we are still waiting on regulations regarding commercial use. And we`d better hurry, because in
just a few years, these things are going to be buzzing around everywhere. That`s why as a lawyer, I`m getting into the drone law business.
Just think about the liability alone. What if your drone crashes into somebody on the street? What if your drone crashes into another drone?
And who should be allowed to even fly these drones? What if your driver`s license is suspended? Can we really trust you with a flying device, if we
can`t even trust you with a car?
Think about aviation law? How close should a drone be allowed to an airport? How about an office building? What if you own an airplane? Do
you really want a drone doing a flyby? And think about the law of trespassing. In the past, the question of whether or not someone could fly
a camera over your home was academic. Now, we build fences on the ground. How would we bill fences over our property? But perhaps the biggest change
will be in the area of criminal law.
As it is, police can only watch your home using technologies that are available to the general public. So, the high tech stuff is usually out.
But with drones, if everybody has them, how can you possibly argue that the police can`t use them?
At the end of the day, drones are going to be big business for everybody: lawyers and consumers and manufacturers. And really, it won`t cost all
that much. Just our sense of privacy.
The tallest rollercoaster in the world is Kingda Ka at a Six Flags in New Jersey. It reaches 456 feet into the sky. A new ride in Orlando, Florida
aims to beat that by almost 80 feet. It`s called the skyscraper. Set to open in 2017, it`s a tower that the cars drive up, then spiral down all
around it. Will it go upside down? Yes. Will it go fast? Yes. Will it take up a lot of space? Not really, unless you count it`s 535 foot tall
height. Well, someone say it`s for the birds. But if you are for acrobatic interactives overstatic, you will scrape up to the sky at the
height of scraper`s high. Would this rolling coasting roller coaster twisting tracking record boaster could exceed your need for speed, were
eagles there to fly. Acrofobics don`t apply. On track off the rails, that`s your Friday edition of CNN STUDENT NEWS.
END
