CNN Radio News Day: December 6, 2012

CNN Radio News Day is an evening news program providing an informative, thoughtful and creative look at the day's events. It's posted Monday through Friday at 4:30 pm ET.

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(CNN) – Welcome to CNN Radio News Day.

• With concern growing over the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria's civil war, diplomatic efforts are ramping-up.  U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Dublin Thursday for a conference, and used the occasion to meet with the U.N's Special envoy to Syria.  It's the latest attempt to find a way to end a conflict that's killed 40,000 people, and left 700,000 homeless.  Some have fled to Lebanon, but there they deal with conditions of little food, and now during winter, little heat.   One young Syrian woman tells CNN she's considering returning to the Syrian city she left:
  

  "It is now down to the fact that living under shelling is better than the life here.  It is cold, and we don't have the things we need."      

• Homicides are going down in most major cities.  But that's not the case in Chicago, where 470 people have been murdered this year, a jump of 38 percent.  Police say much of the violence is fueled by gangs and fights over drug-selling turf.  CNN Radio rides along with Jason Smith. He's a juvenile probation officer who works on the city's west side, some of the worst epicenters of drugs, gangs and violence:

"In Chicago there are wars.  So our kids are right there in the middle of it and experiencing it."

• It's perhaps the most celebrated individual award in all of sports.  And for a trophy that's been handed-out for 77 years, the announcement of the Heisman Trophy winner this Saturday night might mark a historic moment for the award.   A freshman player has never won.  This year, Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel is considered a slight favorite.  Heisman blogger Chris Huston says in the past, there's been bias by some Heisman voters in casting a ballot for a first-year player:

"...(voters are thinking) 'he has three more years.  I can vote for him another year...I don't have to vote for him this year.'  And by virtue of the fact that freshmen are in their first year playing, they don't have the same level of name recognition and sort of Q-rating that a lot of these juniors and seniors have."

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