CNN news 2011-02-06
Fridays are awesome! Just like the students and teachers at Ron Clark Academy, where I had the privilege of speaking yesterday. I'm Carl Azuz, bringing you 10 minutes of headlines, leaving out the commercials. Let's go ahead and get started.
The financial crisis -- the one that sent a shockwave through the U.S. economy and led to the Great Recession -- it could have been avoided. That's what the final report from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission says. This group was put together by Congress in 2009 to try to figure out the causes of the crisis. It held hearings, it interviewed hundreds of people, and released its findings yesterday. The main conclusion: the crisis was avoidable. Some political and financial leaders have argued that there was no way to see this crisis coming. But the commission says there were warning signs and those warnings were ignored or underestimated.
The report puts part of the blame on major corporations, saying they didn't run themselves properly or take into account the risks of some of their business plans. It also blames government policies under both President Bush and President Obama, and some of the actions taken by the Federal Reserve as well. These conclusions come from the majority of the commission. Three members wrote a dissenting, or opposing report, though. They say the majority report doesn't study the causes of the crisis, that it's just a list of things that went wrong. The dissenting report also argues that even if the government had gotten involved sooner, it might not have prevented the crisis because it was a global problem.
Some of you who live in Florida or California might wish you could see snow more often. Some of you live in Florida or California because you don't want to see snow more often, and we're guessing that a lot of people in the U.S. Northeast are sick of it. That region is dealing with yet another strong winter storm. Dangerous traffic conditions, canceled flights, closed schools. Sandra Endo reports on just how much snow is falling and just how bad everything has gotten.
Paralyzing roads and bringing bone-chilling winds, another winter storm has dumped more than a foot of snow in New York's Central Park.
When the snow stopped falling at about 4 a.m., the official reading in Central Park was 19 inches, breaking a record last set in 1925.
In Massachusetts, the weight of the snow caused a partial roof collapse at this garage.
There were about 15 people inside the structure when it collapsed. Most of them have made it out under their own power. Thank God everybody seems to be OK.
Officials say there was three feet of snow on top off the roof.
We've had a lot of snow and we're gonna get more. Buildings like this don't get shoveled off, and we are just at the mercy of the construction of the buildings that people are working in.
Airports across the Northeast are still trying to get back up to speed after hundreds of flights were cancelled. Airports were shut down for hours while crews worked to clear runways Thursday. And with schools closing in D.C., Maryland, Philadelphia, New York City and Boston, this storm pushed snow removal budgets over the limit. Reporting from Washington, I'm Sandra Endo for CNN Student News.