CNN 2011-05-17

I'm Carl Azuz, and today on CNN Student News, we're gonna be talking about something that won't happen until November 6th... of 2012! But we start things off down in Louisiana.

Officials facing the threat of massive flooding there have opened several gates on the Morganza Spillway. A spillway is something that goes over or around a dam. It's a safety feature. When too much water builds up around the dam, the spillway's gates can be opened to let some of that water through.

This is what the Morganza Spillway looks like normally: gates closed, nothing coming through. But with floodwaters from the Mississippi River rushing in, engineers opened up some of the spillway's gates for the first time in nearly 40 years. That's what you see here: water barreling through the gate. The Morganza Spillway has 125 total gates. Officials plan to open up to one-fourth of those.

Opening the gates should divert floodwaters away from major cities, like Baton¹ Rouge² and New Orleans, Louisiana. But it will send water toward homes and farmland in other parts of the state. People who live there -- many of whom have had to evacuate³ their homes -- are preparing for devastation⁴.

It's worse than we thought. It's really worse than we thought. We thought maybe we might have water in our yard. Instead, this is going to come into our home. It's going to take everything we have got.

The next U.S. presidential election is more than 500 days away. Might sound like the distant future, but there's a lot that happens between now and then. And since that process is already underway, we're going to break some of it down for you today.

Ultimately, one candidate from each party will face off in the general election. That's on November 6th, 2012. Before that, candidates have to win their party's nomination⁵. That's what the primary elections help decide. There are lots of political parties out there. The Green Party, the Libertarian Party. We're going to look at the two biggest parties: the Democrats⁶ and Republicans.

On the Democratic side, President Obama is an incumbent⁷ candidate. He's running for re-election to the office he already holds. He announced his campaign last month.

The Republican side has a field of candidates. Some of them, like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, U.S. Representative Ron Paul, and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, have announced their plans to run for president. Others have formed what are called exploratory committees. They haven't officially announced their candidacy, but they're looking pretty seriously at the possibilities. Lot of steps to go through between now and election day. We'll take you through it as campaign season rolls along

1 baton   

n.乐队用指挥杖

参考例句：

• With the baton the conductor was beating time.乐队指挥用指挥棒打拍子。
• The conductor waved his baton,and the band started up.指挥挥动指挥棒，乐队开始演奏起来。

2 rouge   

n.胭脂，口红唇膏；v.(在…上)擦口红

参考例句：

• Women put rouge on their cheeks to make their faces pretty.女人往面颊上涂胭脂，使脸更漂亮。
• She didn't need any powder or lip rouge to make her pretty.她天生漂亮，不需要任何脂粉唇膏打扮自己。

3 evacuate   

v.遣送；搬空；抽出；排泄；大(小)便

参考例句：

• We must evacuate those soldiers at once!我们必须立即撤出这些士兵！
• They were planning to evacuate the seventy American officials still in the country.他们正计划转移仍滞留在该国的70名美国官员。

4 devastation   

n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤

参考例句：

• The bomb caused widespread devastation. 炸弹造成大面积破坏。
• There was devastation on every side. 到处都是破坏的创伤。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 nomination   

n.提名，任命，提名权

参考例句：

• John is favourite to get the nomination for club president.约翰最有希望被提名为俱乐部主席。
• Few people pronounced for his nomination.很少人表示赞成他的提名。

6 democrats   

n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Democrats held a pep rally on Capitol Hill yesterday. 民主党昨天在国会山召开了竞选誓师大会。
• The democrats organize a filibuster in the senate. 民主党党员组织了阻挠议事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 incumbent   

adj.成为责任的，有义务的；现任的，在职的

参考例句：

• He defeated the incumbent governor by a large plurality.他以压倒多数票击败了现任州长。
• It is incumbent upon you to warn them.你有责任警告他们。