CNN 2011-04-22

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Bringing you today’s commercial-free headlines from around the globe, this is CNN Student News. Hi, everyone, I am Carl Azuz, getting things started on this Tuesday, April 19th.

We've been talking about some of the economic debates involving President Obama and Congress, federal budgets, deficits¹, the debts ceiling. Other groups have been paying attention to those debates ,too.And one group Standard & Poor’s says because those debates have so much uncertainty² associated with them. That is the reason why Standard and Poor’s lowered its outlook for America’s long-term debt.

Okay, what does that mean? Standard and Poor's, or S&P, is one of three main agencies that examine debt issues. It assigns ratings to governments or companies and investors³ use those ratings to help decide where they want to put their money.

The US has a AAA rating from S&P that’s the highest you can get and that didn't change. What S&P did change was its long-term rating, its outlook for America’s debt. That went from stable to negative.

Basically, the agency says it could be risk here to make long-term investments in the United States. And that could mean less money coming into the government.

The rating change did not go over well on Wall Street. US stock market taking a big deep right after the S&P announcement.

Next up, flame’s burning across the state of Texas. When it comes to wild fires, the situation can change fast. That’s what makes it difficult to report on them and more importantly difficult to fight them.

That’s what more than 1400 people are doing right now in Texas, trying to get these blazes under control but nearly three weeks of super dry weather have basically turned the ground into kindling⁴ ,and wind spreads the flames around.

Texas has 254 counties. All but two have been affected⁵ by these fires. There are a number of causes. Some of them are acts of nature, like lightening strikes ,but officials say most are acts of man,anything from stray sparks, from welding a fence, to burning debris⁶, to setting a campfire.