CARL AZUZ, HOST, CNN STUDENT NEWS: You knew Fridays are awesome. Mondays aren`t so bad if you`re starting off your week with CNN Student News. I`m Carl Azuz. Let`s get started with some presidential politics.
The race for the Republican Party`s presidential nominee is getting a little tighter. So far, we`ve had three contests and three different winners.
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AZUZ (voice-over): Former Senator Rick Santorum is now the official winner of the Iowa caucuses, though initial results showed that he came in second. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney won New Hampshire`s primary. And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich won in South Carolina`s primary this past Saturday.
Those candidates, and U.S. Representative Ron Paul are competing for the nomination. Paul Steinhauser wraps up how things went in South Carolina over the weekend.
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FORMER REP. NEWT GINGRICH, R-GA., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you to everyone in South Carolina who decided to be with us in changing Washington.
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PAUL STEINHAUSER, CNN REPORTER (voice-over): Another comeback for Newt Gingrich. Down in the polls just a week ago, the former House Speaker stormed back to take South Carolina`s crucial Republican primary by double digits over Mitt Romney.
Gingrich praised the former Massachusetts governor, but he also got in a dig.
GINGRICH: We don`t have the kind of money that at least one of the candidates has. But we do have ideas, and we do have people, and we have proved here in South Carolina that people power with the right ideas beats big money. And with your help, we`re going to prove it again in Florida.
STEINHAUSER (voice-over): But with the expense of fight for Florida ahead, Gingrich put out an online plea for campaign cash.
For Romney, a setback.
FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY, R-MASS., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We`ve still got a long way to go and a lot of work to do. And tomorrow we`re going to move onto Florida.
STEINHAUSER (voice-over): And a little taste of what we`ll hear in Florida.
ROMNEY: President Obama has no experience running a business, and no experience running a state. Our party can`t be led to victory by someone who also has never run a business and never run a state.
STEINHAUSER (voice-over): Rick Santorum finished third. But the former senator from Pennsylvania vowed to keep going.
FORMER SEN. RICK SANTORUM, R-PA., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Let me assure you, we will go to Florida, and then we`re going to Arizona and (inaudible) --
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STEINHAUSER (voice-over): Ron Paul came in last, but the Texas congressman was still encouraged.
REP. RON PAUL, R-TEXAS, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It looks like tonight we will get four to five times more votes than we did four years ago.
STEINHAUSER: It appears this past week`s two debates really helped put Gingrich over the top. According to our exit polls, two-thirds said the debates were important to their vote. And half of those people went for Gingrich -- Paul Steinhauser, Columbia, South Carolina.
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AZUZ: You heard several of the candidates mention in that report that they`re moving on to Florida now. That state is home to the next context on the Republican primary calendar. It happens one week from tomorrow on January 31st.
U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords says she`s resigning from Congress in order to focus on her recovery from a shooting attack in early 2011.
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AZUZ (voice-over): This video from last fall shows Representative Giffords making one of her first visits back to Congress after that shooting.
Giffords says she isn`t ending her career in public service, but for now she wants to concentrate on her recovery.
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AZUZ: Joe Paterno, the long-time head football coach at Penn State University died on Sunday of lung cancer. Paterno had more wins than any coach in major college football history.
He was fired last fall after accusations that he didn`t react forcefully enough to allegations of a sexual abuse scandal involving a former assistant coach.
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AZUZ (voice-over): Many people paid tribute to Paterno after the news of his death. Some gathered or left flowers at the statue of the coach, as you see them doing here.
Penn State`s Board of Trustees described Paterno as a great man who made Penn State a greater university. The board said it`s considering ways to honor Paterno`s legacy.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: See if you can ID me. I`m a country that`s a major producer of oil. My population of 150 million makes me the most populated nation in Africa. My capital city is Abuja, but my largest city is my former capital, Lagos.
I`m Nigeria, and my president, you see here, is Goodluck Jonathan.
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AZUZ: President Goodluck Jonathan visited Nigeria`s second largest city yesterday. The message he brought was one of support.
He said, quote, "A terrorist attack on one person is an attack on all of us." He was talking about violence in the city of Kano over the weekend.
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AZUZ (voice-over): Bomb blasts hit eight government sites. At least 157 people were killed. About 50 other people were wounded.
Authorities said at one police station, the attackers went inside, let the prisoners out, and then bombed the station.
An Islamist group called Boko Haram said it`s responsible for the attacks in Kano. The group`s been blamed for an increase in violence in recent months.
Its usual targets include police stations and churches.
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AZUZ: The U.S. Congress could be backing away from a pair of controversial bills. We told you about SOPA and PIPA last week.
They`re aimed at stopping online piracy, but critics argued that the bills could turn into censorship.
AZUZ (voice-over): Protests like these made that opinion clear. So did an online protest when some sites went dark last week.
The bills started to lose some of their support in Congress and now both the Senate and the House of Representatives have postponed votes on SOPA and PIPA.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Today`s Shoutout goes out to Ms. Miller`s and Ms. McKay`s language arts classes. You know what to do. Is it cycling, running or swimming? You`ve got three seconds, go.
The distances can vary from race to race, but a standard triathlon starts with swimming, followed by cycling and then running. That`s your answer, and that`s your Shoutout.
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AZUZ: And triathlons are tough. They start when you jump in the water. They don`t stop until you cross the finish line on foot. The athletes who compete in these things push through pain and exhaustion in a race against the clock.
Scout Bassett competes at the world championship level, and as Dr. Sanjay Gupta shows us, she has plenty of experience persevering through challenges.
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DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL DIRECTOR (voice-over): On a hot Los Angeles day, you`ll find Scout Bassett outside on the roof of her apartment, logging miles on her bike.
She`s a dedicated multisport athlete, but take a closer look. Scout has run marathons and raced triathlons, all with one leg
SCOUT BASSETT, TRIATHLETE: This has been very good to me. It`s done a lot of long miles.
GUPTA(voice-over): Scout lost her leg when she was just a baby. It was the beginning of a difficult childhood.
BASSETT: I was burned in a fire in China And when I turned one year old,
I was placed on the streets in front of the government orphanage.
When I came here to the U.S., I was seven years old and weighed 22 pounds.
GUPTA(voice-over): Scout had never left her orphanage before being adopted. Overnight, she found herself with a new family, in a new country, surrounded by strangers, and unable to speak any English.
BASSETT: Everybody`s just looking at you, wanting to know what`s going on, who you are, where you come from. And I mean, I was like, I`m not even sure what`s happening to me. How am I supposed to explain that to you?
GUPTA(voice-over): Exercise became a refuge. She saw other parathletes race a triathlon with the Challenged Athletes Foundation.
BASSETT: Being able to see that was something that changed my life forever, seeing what was possible out there.
GUPTA (voice-over): She started to race triathlons herself, swimming without any artificial leg because it would weigh her down. Switching into a leg with a foot, made into a bike cleat, and then switching again to an artificial running leg for the end of the race.
Race by race, training day by training day, I started to gain this confidence that I really had lacked for much of my life, and became just this person who really believed in myself for the first time.
GUPTA (voice-over): And she has no plans of slowing down.
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AZUZ: Nor should she. That was fantastic stuff.
Before we go today, ever wonder how a bear spends its day?
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AZUZ (voice-over): Wonder no more . What you`re seeing is a day in the life of an Alaskan brown bear. It`s a bear`s eye view -- or a bear`s neck view. Scientists put collars with little video cameras on some of the animals to study how they`d been impacted by hunters.
We just hope the bear didn`t accidentally show them anything it didn`t want them to see,
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AZUZ: -- because that would be really "em-bear-assing" It looks like the animal mostly just walked around in the woods.
So we hope you weren`t looking for something like a "grizzly" scene there. Maybe they just shouldn`t research brown bears. The neck-mounted video from other species as well could be just as "collarful." Yes. The "pun-ishment" continues.
That`s going to wrap things up for us on this Monday. For CNN Student News, I`m Carl Azuz. We`ll see you tomorrow.