Hi, this is Trei Dudley, the Boys and Girls Club National Youth of the Year, and you are watching CNN student news.

See if you fill in the blanket here, Colin Powell, then Condoleezza Rice, followed by Hillary Clinton. We're talking about former U.S Secretaries of State, and the next in line for that job is John Kerry. On Tuesday, the U.S Senate confirmed Kerry is the next Secretary of State, the vote was 94 to 3, here is little background on Mr.Kerry. He's been Senate Kerry for nearly 30 years, he was first elected to the U.S Senate in 1984. He wanted to be president Kerry, but he lost the 2004 election to George W.Bush. He was lieutenant Kerry when he served in the U.S Navy during the Vietnam War. Now he's going to be Secretary of State Kerry, if you think you might not know about that job. It goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson, the first Secretary of State. The person who has the title is fourth in line to the presidency, and most importantly, the Secretary of State is the country's top diplomat. That means he or she is responsible for representing the president's policies to other countries in the world.

Alright, our next story today, there has been a lot of talk about the issue of guns in America since last month's school shooting in Newtown Connecticut. That conversation continued yesterday on Capitol Hill, it included the Senators, it included the head of the National Rifle Association, and it included a former Congresswoman who herself was a victim of gun violence.

"Too many children are dying, too many children."

"Newtown and Tucson are terrible tragedies."

"It's time to throw an immediate, blanket of security around our children."

"Why is there a risk when responsible people fail to stand up for laws?"

"The death in Newtown should not be used to put forward every gun control major that's been floating around for years."

"Stand up for the laws, we'll keep guns out of their hands, of those who use them to commit murder."

"About a third of our schools right now have armed security already because it works."

"We must do something."

Alright, next today, I want you to pick your map of United States, starting in the upper midwest, so we're thinking Michigan and Illinois, and then move, go all the way down to the southeast to George and Alabama. That is how far a severe weather system stretched yesterday, about 1000 miles. In northern Georgia, it caused this, what you see in the middle of your screen there is a tornado, you can even see it moving a little bit. It crossed over I-75, a major highway, an emergency officer said in one area the storm flipped over around 100 cars. By the time the tornado was gone, this is what left behind. The officials described the damage as significant, a motel, a manufacturing plant, several other buildings, all of them damaged by the severe weather. And check this video from Tennessee, flooding caused by the storms, the winds knocked down trees and powerlines. The owner of this barn in Indiana thinks lightening caused it to catch on fire. There were tornados confirmed in Indiana and in Kentucky. If you go to the spotlight section on our homepage, that's cnn studentnews.com, you're going to find a video on tornados, it explains how they formed and where they are most likely to hit. We hope you'll check it out.