NASA 屈服于老天的威力（视频）

CARL AZUZ, CNN STUDENT NEWS ANCHOR: A delayed departure for the space shuttle: We have that story and more for you today on CNN Student News! Hello. Hope you had a great weekend. Reporting from the CNN Center, I'm Carl Azuz.

First Up: Massive Blizzard

AZUZ: First up, call it a blizzard, call it a white-out, call it snow-pocalypse. It all means one thing: snow, and a ton of it. Winter storms pounded parts of the East Coast over the weekend, dumping massive amounts of snow over the area, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people. President Obama actually called it "snow-mageddon." More than 26 inches in Wilmington, Delaware. 30 inches in southern Pennsylvania. More than 32 inches at Washington D.C.'s Dulles International Airport -- that is almost three feet of snow; and it shattered the previous record. Dulles, along with the other two main airports in the Washington area, had to cancel all flights on Saturday. This storm left a lot of people trying to figure out just how to get around.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN ON STREET: Going to shop, right? Right around the corner. We just started to hike there.

UNIDENTIFIED NEWS 12 NEW JERSEY REPORTER: Leaving the car at home this time?

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yeah, it's probably much easier than having to dig out the car.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN ON STREET #1: The roads are all roughed up. But I didn't even make it halfway down my driveway. I got a rear-drive car; that didn't work out.

REPORTER: Yeah. So, how are you going to get home tonight?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: This truck right here.

REPORTER: A friend's vehicle?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Yeah, a friend's vehicle it is.

ROB PAYNE, SNOWPLOWED ROADS: You know, I've always loved the snow, this year, I think it's a little much. A little much. I think people are tired of it.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN ON STREET #2: It's wonderful. It's very quiet where it's not plowed. And you can hear trees breaking all over the place.

AZUZ: Guess it just depends on whom you ask. And now, in Washington, D.C., the heavy snowfall actually led to a massive fight. But this is the kind of fight you want to be part of: It was a giant snowball fight right in the middle of the nation's capital. Check this out, this is great.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is crazy. It's such a sense of community. Everybody who lives in D.C. and loves the city is out here today just having a good time; getting to enjoy it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE #1: It's mayhem. This is actually "snow-mageddon." Yeah, it's crazy, it's really fun.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It hurts, actually. They're like really icy today.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE #1: It's amazing that so many people, you know, showed up despite of the weather, but it's really nice and it is a good, you know, community atmosphere and it's great.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Are you having a good time?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE #2: Yeah! I'm having a great time; you guys should partake!

(END VIDEO)

California Mudslide

AZUZ: Alright, over to the other side of the country, some California residents are also digging out. But from a totally different kind of severe weather. We're talking about Mudslides, triggered by heavy rain over the weekend. More than 40 houses were damaged in one neighborhood. One resident said it looked like "Niagara Falls was coming down the street". And he was talking about the mud flowing downhill. This was strong enough to move a ten-ton boulder and it knocked over concrete barriers designed to divert water away from houses. Thankfully though, no reports of any injuries from the storms.

NASA Scrub

AZUZ: Scrubbed. That's the word NASA uses when it cancels a shuttle launch. And it had to use that word yesterday. The liftoff of the space shuttle Endeavour was scrubbed, at least temporarily. The vehicle and its six-person crew are looking to deliver a new component to the international space station. But when it came time to blast off early Sunday morning, clouds, specifically, a low cloud ceiling, forced NASA to call things off. That launch was supposed to happen at 4:39 a.m. The next chance for Endeavour to get off the ground was 4:14 a.m. today. You hear these times: 4:39 a.m., 4:14. Why are they so exact? It raises the question: Why does the shuttle have to take off at an exact, certain time? John Zarrella joins us now to explain the answer.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN MIAMI BUREAU CHIEF AND CORRESPONDENT: They literally have a 10-minute window every day in order to get up to the international space station, in order to catch up to it,rendezvous with it at 250 miles up in space. They've got to launch at a precise time every day. So, you know, we always kid them here when the weather looks good, and we say, "Well, why don't you just go now?" And you know, of course, they can't do that. And if they could have, tonight, they would have been able to get off the ground.

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I.D. Me

TOMEKA JONES, CNN STUDENT NEWS: See if you can I.D. Me! I'm a political movement that's made up of individual groups from around the United States. My name refers to a significant moment in U.S. history. I first gained attention in 2009 for protests against what my members saw as overspending by the U.S. government. I'm the Tea Party, and my name stands for "taxed enough already."

Tea Party

AZUZ: Members of those Tea Party groups around the U.S. came together in Nashville, Tennessee this weekend for the movement's first national convention. Organizers said the goal was to bring Tea Party leaders together. They offered workshops and seminars on things like how to run a voter registration drive or how technology can be part of the largely conservative movement. But they also heard from speakers, including former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. She's gotten a lot of support from the Tea Party. In her speech at the convention on Saturday night, Palin had some harsh criticism for President Obama and how he's handled some major issues since he took office.

SARAH PALIN, (R) FORMER VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They need to get government out of the way. If they would do this, if they would do this, our economy, it would roar back to life. And for instance on health care, we need bipartisan solutions to help families, not increase taxes.

DNC Meeting

AZUZ: Of course, President Obama doesn't necessarily agree with the former Alaska governor. In a speech to the Democratic National Committee on Saturday, he defended how his party has tackled economic issues, and he urged party members to stay focused on the challenges facing the country. The president said he still wants to try to reform the country's health care system. And he talked about some of the positive changes in the U.S. economy. For example, the country's unemployment rate, which dropped from 10 percent to 9.7 percent last month. But President Obama did acknowledge that unemployment is still high and it's just one of the reasons why some Americans are feeling frustrated.

U.S. PRESIDNT BARACK OBAMA: When unemployment is 9.7 percent, when we are still digging ourselves out of an extraordinary recession, people are going to be frustrated. And they're going to be looking to the party in power to try to fix it. When you've got another party that says we don't want to do anything about it, of course people are going to be frustrated.

Promo

AZUZ: February is Black History Month, a time to explore and celebrate the culture and achievements of African-Americans. And to help you do that, check out the Spotlight section. This shows our home page, . We're getting ready to click on Black History Month: Discussion and Activities. These are designed to help you discuss issues with students in the classroom. There's going to be more coverage on Black History Month coming up later this week on CNN Student News, including part of an interview I did earlier this month. So stay tuned; we're looking forward to bringing you the coverage you're looking forward to getting.

Texting Software

AZUZ: Texting while driving. You've heard how dangerous this can be. A lot of you have talked about it on our blog at . There's a company that's working on a new technology that could stop someone from texting behind the wheel, whether you like it or not. Brady Smith of affiliate KWWL dials up the details.

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BRADY SMITH, KWWL REPORTER, IOWA: It's called "attention validation" software. Developed by the engineering firm PM&L in Rochester, New York, it detects vehicle movement. Once a text message is received, the software requires the cell phone's user to press a series of random buttons. If the user fails, texting is locked until the vehicle is at rest for at least three minutes. It's part of a nationwide effort to find new solutions to distracted driving, according to Dr. Tim Brown.

TIM BROWN, RESEARCHER, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA: There's newer technology that's coming out. And ...And ... Voice recognition is becoming more prominent.

SMITH: He's a researcher at the University of Iowa's National Advanced Driving Simulator, which is well-equipped to test different anti-texting programs.

BROWN: When you're texting, your odds of being in a crash are 23 times when you're just driving normally. We've got a large, full-motion simulator here. We've got a static simulator, we've also got some smaller portable simulators that we use. And so we've gotten a fair amount of interest from a number of different companies.

SMITH: According to PM&L, they're working on testing their attention validation software with the U of I. They hope testing will reveal not only the effectiveness, but the safety of their program.

CRAIG LAMB, PM&L ENGINEER: If it's found that it is, you know, whatever compounded by whatever variable, we will make adjustments to make sure that we are not causing more distraction.

SMITH: Brown says the simulator will be busy with research projects over the next six months, as the texting and driving epidemic has the full attention of lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEO)

Before We Go

AZUZ: Before we go, your mama told you not to play with your food! But maybe she'd be willing to make an exception in this case. Especially once she heard the thing. Listen to this: Yes, it is a carrot clarinet. It is made out of a carrot -- the kind of thing you can get keyed up about. You band members know what we're talking about. We don't want to sound like a mouthpiece for this guy, but this does look and sound pretty cool.

Goodbye

AZUZ: And it's certainly a way to pad your resume. And it helps us close out today's show on a high note. For CNN Student News, I'm Carl Azuz.