CNN 2011-01-06

Hi, everyone! I’m Carl Azuz, and in this Tuesday edition of CNN Student News, we are bringing the world to your classroom with stories from North America, Asia, the Middle East; we’re beginning in Australia.

That is where the city of Rockhampton is completely cut off from the rest of the country. Emergency workers were trying to get food and supplies to the people there. But it is floods that have closed down every highway leading into the city. And get this: The regional airport was shut down on Sunday, and officials say it could be closed for weeks. Rockhampton is home to around 75,000 people, but thousands of them don’t have homes any more. Flood waters destroyed the houses. The flooding is also being blamed for several deaths. A CNN meteorologist predicted that the flooding will reach its highest point tomorrow, but it could be days before the conditions there get any better. Australia’s prime 2 minister toured the region 1 last week and said the floods will cost “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Next up, to Egypt, where that country’s president is urging his people to stand together “in the face of terrorism.” What he’s talking about is an attack on a Christian 3 church that happened on New Year’s Eve. At least 21 people were killed. Nearly 100 others were injured. Christians 4 make up less than 10 percent of Egypt’s population. And as Ben Wedeman explains, this attack is making what was already a tense situation even worse.

Distraught relatives search for victims of the New Year’s bombing. Christian-Muslim tensions 5 have been rising here in recent years. Members of the Coptic Christian minority, which makes up around ten percent of the population, have long complained of discrimination at the hands of the Muslim majority. Sameh Al-Khatib and his brothers were in their grocery store when they heard the blast 6. Moments later, he recalls 7, a mob 8 seemed to appear out of nowhere, rushing down the street, attacking and ransacking 9 Christian-owned stores and properties. He protected himself with an empty soft drink case.

Up the street, angry Christians chant “we want our rights” and then try to break through the police cordon 10 to reach the church. The church is now surrounded by security 11; hardly anybody is allowed near it. And that’s the problem, many of the people in this neighborhood say. That when the church really needed to be protected, there was no one there to do it. Now, the security forces have their hands full trying to keep the anger from turning into violence. Reinforcements have been trucked in from Cairo.