NATISHA LANCE, CNN HOST: CNN Student News is kicking off a new school year. I`m Natisha Lance, filling in for Carl Azuz, who`ll be back tomorrow. And here`s what you can expect from us every day, 10 minutes, no commercials and top headlines from around the world.
Our first headline of the school year comes from the U.S. presidential campaign trail. Now we`ve know for a while that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is the Republican Party`s presumptive nominee. But now we know his running mate.
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LANCE (voice-over): On Saturday, Governor Romney announced U.S. Representative Paul Ryan as his pick for vice president. You may recognize Representative Ryan; he`s been in the headlines over the past few years because he`s the chairman of the House Budget Committee.
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LANCE: Now that we know that he`ll be the Republican V.P. nominee, we want to give you a little more information about Paul Ryan.
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LANCE (voice-over): He was born in Wisconsin, and that`s the state he represents in Congress. He was first elected to Congress when he was just 28 years old. Now he`s 42, serving his 7th term. Before he got into politics, Representative Ryan worked at a family construction company. And in college, he earned a degree in political science and economics.
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LANCE: Now analysts say the decision to choose Representative Ryan as a running mate shows that Governor Romney plans to focus his campaign on the economy and government spending. Over the weekend, the new vice president candidate talked about what he sees as the choices in this election.
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REP. PAUL RYAN (R), WIS.: We feel, as your fellow citizens, that we owe you a choice, a choice of two futures. We can either stay on the current path that we are on, a nation in debt, a nation in doubt, a nation in despair, a nation with high unemployment, where we`re giving our children a diminished future, or we can change this thing and get this country back on the right track.
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LANCE (voice-over): Our next headline takes us from the United States over to the Middle East and the recovery efforts after a natural disaster in Iran. Two powerful earthquakes, just 11 minutes apart, hit the northwestern part of the country on Saturday.
The first quake had a magnitude of 6.4; the second one, 6.3. Local news agencies reported that at least 250 people were killed by the quakes, more than 2,000 others injured. One Iranian official said more than 100 villages were damaged.
Rescue operations, just like the ones that you`re seeing right here, those were happening on Saturday. But those operations ended yesterday. Iran has suffered through multiple devastating earthquakes over the last 20 years or so.
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LANCE: In Oak Creek, Wisconsin, there was a two-day private funeral service this weekend. It was for the six people who were killed during an attack on the Sikh temple earlier this month.
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LANCE (voice-over): It all started during services on August 5th. The attacker killed himself after being shot by police. Investigators say they haven`t found any clues to explain the shooting. Now during a public memorial service last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called it, quote, "an act of terrorism, an act of hatred."
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LANCE: Sikhism is the world`s 5th most popular religion. It was founded more than 500 years ago in a region that`s now a part of India. Sikhs have sometimes been mistaken for Muslims, but those two are very separate religions. There are around 25 million Sikhs around the world. Around 700,000 of them live in the United States.
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LANCE: You can learn more about the Sikh temple shooting at our website. Go to cnnstudentnews.com, and also check out the Spotlight section.
And later on this week, we`ll have more in our show about the vice presidency and a huge drought across the U.S.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s that time. The first Shoutout of the school year.
Which country has won the most medals since the modern Olympics began? If you think you know it, then shout it out.
Is it Great Britain, Germany, Russia or the United States? You`ve got three seconds, go.
Since the Olympics started in 1896, the U.S. has won more than 1,000 more medals than any other country. That`s your answer and that`s your Shoutout.
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LANCE: That gap got a little wider over the past couple weeks in London. This year`s Olympics just wrapped up yesterday. The United States, as you see, won the most medals and the most golds. China, Russia, and Great Britain were next in line. Joyce Joseph has more on this year`s Game (sic) and she also recaps some of the other major headlines from the summer.
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JOYCE JOSEPH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Olympics, two full weeks of record-making history, including what was held in London. London was the first city in modern times to hold the Olympics three times. Some athletes even made history, like 16-year-old Gabby Douglass. She became the first black gymnast to win gold in the women`s individual all-around.
She won another gold as part of the U.S. women`s team all-around victory.
American swimmer Michael Phelps set a record four years ago -- you may remember that -- by winning eight gold medals in a single Olympics. This year in London, he added more hardware, with 22 lifetime medals, 18 of them gold. He`s now won more Olympic medals than anyone in history.
Back in 1983, she became the first woman to travel into space. Sally Ride passed away this summer after losing a long battle with cancer. In 2009, she talked about how visiting space gave her new perspective on Earth.
SALLY RIDE, ASTRONAUT: The view back at Earth, it`s an absolutely spectacular view, and it gave me a different appreciation for the planet.
JOSEPH: Last school year, we talked about a court cast involving President Obama`s health care reform law. The question was whether parts of that law were constitutional. In June, the Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 5-4 that most of the law is constitutional.
This has been a big political issue, so you can expect to hear a lot more about this, leading up to November`s presidential election.
Former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had been charged with sexually abusing young boys. And Penn State officials, including former head coach Joe Paterno, had been accused of not taking action to stop the abuse.
In June, Sandusky was found guilty of 45 criminal charges.
And in July, the NCAA hit Penn State and its football team with a huge punishment. It included a major fine, a four-year post-season ban for the team and wiping 14 seasons of wins off the record books.
On July 20th, in Aurora, Colorado, a gunman opened fire in a movie theater. Twelve people were killed, 58 others were wounded. The alleged gunman surrendered to police. He`s been charged with dozens of counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder.
The shooting was a tragedy, but there were also stories of heroism, people in the theater, who threw themselves on top of others to protect them. One of those, an Iraq war veteran, says he wants to go back to the theater for a very specific reason.
JOSH NOWLAN, U.S. ARMY, SHOOTING VICTIM: I want to go back to that theater. I want to go back into that auditorium. I want to look straight down in that same seat and I want to say, "I beat you." You did not take this life.
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LANCE: And that was the scene in New York`s Times Square back on August 6th. The people you see there --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re safe on Mars.
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LANCE: -- they are cheering for the people you see here. So the question is why is this room going nuts? Well, it`s because they just watched this.
OK, well, this is an animation. They actually got to see the real thing. It`s called Curiosity and it`s a new rover that just landed on Mars, almost exactly where NASA scientists expected it to land. After a 350 million mile journey, the Curiosity rover was less than two miles -- just two miles from its target landing.
Compared to past rovers, this thing is huge. It`s the size of a car. But it`s a bit more expensive. The Curiosity project cost $2.6 billion. It`ll spend the next two years helping scientists investigate whether Mars could ever have sustained life. NASA officials are pretty excited about it, as you just saw.
JOHN HOLDREN, WHITE HOUSE SCIENCE ADVISER: And if anybody has been harboring doubts about the status of U.S. leadership in space, well, there`s a 1-ton automobile-sized piece of American ingenuity, and it`s sitting on the surface of Mars right now.
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LANCE: And before we go, the Olympics weren`t the only competition that happened over the summer.
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LANCE (voice-over): There was also the National Texting Chairmanship. It might be impressive for people to prove that they can text blindfolded, but it`s not exactly that exciting to watch. In the final round, the winning contestant -- or contextant -- knocked out 149 characters in less than 40 seconds. No spelling or punctuation errors. And for his trouble, he won $50,000.
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LANCE: I don`t know about you guys, but I`m going to start practicing right now. In all fairness, this year`s champ won last year, too. And we just wanted to put his victory into the proper context. Still, this texting titan deserves a big thumbs-up. So congratulations. And we`re going to leave you with some more Olympic images as we go. For CNN Student News, I`m Natisha Lance. Have a good one.