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CNN STUDENT NEWS
Aired March 04, 2002 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: You're watching CNN STUDENT NEWS seen in schools around the world because learning never stops and neither does the news.
MICHAEL MCMANUS, CO-HOST: It's a new week for CNN STUDENT NEWS. We start things off with a "Headline" from outer space.
SHELLEY WALCOTT, CO-HOST: Then in "Chronicle," we'll examine beauty extremes.
MCMANUS: Later, we'll talk with the lady behind this famous girl detective.
WALCOTT: And study 500 years of women's art in Russia.
MCMANUS: Welcome to CNN STUDENT NEWS. I'm Michael McManus.
WALCOTT: And I'm Shelley Walcott.
U.S. warplanes pound al Qaeda and Taliban targets in the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan. This weekend's fighting is being described as the largest offensive this year.
MCMANUS: There were reports of intense gun battles pitting U.S. and Afghan troops against al Qaeda forces. One American soldier was killed over the weekend in fighting near the town of Gardez.
CNN's Kathleen Koch looks at what the conflict says about the evolving nature of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The fiercest ground fighting this year, the Pentagon says U.S. warplanes have since Friday dropped more than 270 bombs on targets, including vehicles, troops, caves, and anti-aircraft artillery. AH-64 Apache helicopters have sustained damage from enemy fire in what the Pentagon calls intense heavy combat actions. The offensive comes in a rugged, mountainous region, the U.S. military has for months suspected was a haven for several hundred regrouping Taliban and al Qaeda forces. U.S. lawmakers share their concern.
SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: There's a good many there. They're heavily armed and they're trying to disrupt everything we're going to do. If we don't go after them now and destroy them now, it will get worse. We know the history of Afghanistan.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: We're in, in some ways a more difficult phase of the conflict in Afghanistan in the war on terror in Afghanistan than we've ever been in because of the failure to control the countryside, the warlords competing, the surrounding nations trying to regain or influence events.
KOCH: It's causing some to echo Afghan President Hamid Karzai's call this week to expand the International Peacekeeping Force beyond the capitol of Kabul.
MALEEHA LODHI, PAKISTANI AMBASSADOR TO U.S.: I think that's very important to insure that Afghanistan doesn't descend back into the violent chaos that we saw before, and that warlordism doesn't take root in Afghanistan.
KOCH: But U.S. military experts say that is easier said than done.
MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: The choice that you have is doing it through the Afghans themselves by training them and getting the cooperation of the power brokers in the various areas of Afghanistan or expanding largely the peacekeeping force itself, which can also become targets. It's not clear which is the way to go.
KOCH: Increasingly clear to some, the need for U.S. involvement, despite the risks.
SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (D-CT), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: A number of our most significant allies are not going to be part of peacekeeping in Afghanistan unless we are, and therefore I think we must be.
KOCH (on camera): Most agree the latest offensive is a stark reminder that, while well underway, the job of eliminating terrorists and the remnants of the Taliban from Afghanistan is far from over. Kathleen Koch, CNN, the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCMANUS: Even as the military campaign in Afghanistan continues, world leaders are looking to the nation's future. From training the Afghan military to aiding farmers, help has been constant.
Two reports now on how the global community is helping beginning with CNN's Brian Palmer.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN PALMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Riot control for beginners was one of the lessons taught on the first day of training for the new Afghan national army by the International Security Assistance Force or ISAF. Far and away, it was the most popular part of the curriculum. The more than 500 recruits were called from all parts of Afghanistan and all of the country's major ethnic groups. The interim administration selected the recruits. ISAF conducted its own security review.
After six weeks of intensive training, they will expected to grasp the rudiments of modern soldiering. The primary aim: instilling a measure of professionalism and cohesion in troops that range from experienced to fresh off the farm.
The skills? Marching, taught by an instructor from the Royal Scots Regiment of the British Army. Patrolling in an eight man squadron, the basic building block of an infantry, taught by officers from Turkey, which will take over command of ISAF in the coming weeks.
Thirty senior recruits learn map reading from a French officer. The "T" on the arm band stands for trainer. They will form the nucleus of an officer corps.
Afghanistan, a country that is still at war with itself in many places, desperately needs a military force loyal to the central government to hold it together, a force of men willing to take up arms against their countrymen if ordered to do so. One commander says he will do what he is ordered to do.
ABDUL MANNAN, MAJ., AFGHAN ARMY: Should we receive orders from our superiors, we are ready to disarm by force those who do not obey the central government.
PALMER: But some of his men say they would be reluctant to fire on their fellow Afghans. That reluctance could cripple the effectiveness of a central government. American forces will train the next group of soldiers. No definite date for when that will begin.
COL. MIKE WEIMER, OFFICE OF MILITARY COOPERATION: We don't have a good time table, because that's still being discussed. I think it will happen as soon as the resources can come together, as soon as the interim authority in the Afghan government can produce the soldiers that are representative from their nation.
PALMER (on camera): After their six-week training session is over, it's up to the Afghan government to decide what to do with these partially trained troops. One idea discussed so far, according to ISAF and the Americans, is to keep them here in Kabul as part of a presidential or ministerial guard or protective force.
Brian Palmer, CNN, Kabul.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Captain Curtis Anderson's training with the Special Forces is being tested to the full.
Here, negotiating a deal for U.S. tax dollars he is spending on aid projects. Out of unit form, but still in the army, Anderson is on the cutting edge of a new U.S. government initiative. CAPTAIN CURTIS ANDERSON: It's the first time that we've actually deployed a coalition, joint civil and military operations task force into country and worked as quickly as we have after a conflict.
ROBERTSON: So quickly, Anderson gets additional security from troops loyal to the Afghan government, but it is speed on projects such as this irrigation canal clearing, that is the focus of the U.S. assistance.
HAJI AGA MOHAMMAD SEDDIDI (through translator): Sometimes it takes the U.N. three months to consider a project before they'll implement it. Sometimes people (inaudible) that the might receive this help.
ROBERTSON: Fifteen thousand people will benefit when this irrigation canal is cleared in the next few days, just in time for crop planting. It is typical that the quick results projects Anderson says he is charged with implementing.
ANDERSON: To coordinate with both the Afghan government and the U.N. agencies, along with the international organizations, and the non-governmental organizations, to help with the emergency relief efforts here in Afghanistan.
ROBERTSON: The 500 Afghan workers on this project are paid about a dollar day by the U.S. government, and at the rate of half a mile a day, have cleared 10 miles, with one and a half to go. The whole project is expected to cost $17,000.
ABDUL LATIF (through translator): This is very important, because people's lives depend on this project. If there is no water, people will starve. We appreciate the Americans assistance.
ROBERTSON: Anderson and his civil military team, some of whom we didn't video for security reasons, are working on other projects, including equipping a girl's school, buying cloth for the hospital.
ROBERTSON (on camera): When this canal clearing project is completed, local officials say they would like the Americans to help with another 150 miles of silted waterways. And while the civil military teams say they are not here to win hearts and minds only help, they appear for now at least to be achieving positive results on both accounts.
Nic Robertson, CNN, Zindejahn (ph), Afghanistan.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALCOTT: The Hubble Space Telescope is now securely attached to the Space Shuttle Columbia. Astronauts used the shuttle Columbia's robotic arm to pluck the Hubble Space Telescope from its orbit Sunday. The mission was approved by NASA managers Saturday, despite a blockage in one of the spacecraft's two cooling systems.
CNN's Miles O'Brien brings us a closer look at Columbia's crew and their multimillion-dollar mission. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And lift off of Space Shuttle Columbia, to broaden our view of the universe through the Hubble space telescope.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Forty-six hours after they left the launch pad, the Columbia seven reached their destination, the Hubble space telescope. Astronaut and astronomer John Grunsfeld, the only return visitor to the space telescope on this mission, said it was like seeing an old friend.
His crew mate, Nancy Currie, then set about shaking hands with the observatory. Hubble, meet Columbia. Columbia, Hubble. The rendezvous and grapple with the shuttle's robot arm appeared to go without a hitch.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Grapple confirmed.
O'BRIEN: Up until the hitch they hoped for, that is.
Currie then gingerly moved the scope to Columbia's aft payload bay, where she placed it on a giant lazy Susan to make it easier for the hard work that lies ahead.
Grunsfeld and fellow space walker Rick Linnehanen will be the first out of airlock gate for a five-day consecutive run of space walks around and in Hubble. The crew will install about $170 million worth of gear, replacing solar arrays, installing a new camera, fixing an old one, and removing Hubble's power control unit, leaving it powered down for the first time since launch. If it won't turn back on, Hubble will be nothing more than space junk.
And speaking of that, check out this piece of space debris that tumbled near Columbia as she approached the Hubble. NASA says no avoidance maneuver was required, and engineers are not certain just what it was.
Miles O'Brien, CNN, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALCOTT: We turn now to South Africa. Angola's 27-year war is back in the headlines following the death of veteran rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. The major players are now debating the next step in the conflict. Waiting in the wings are the countless victims of the wars, many of them children.
Cynde Strand takes a look at the toll war is taking on the nation's youth.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CYNDE STRAND, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They are children like yours and mine, except they don't go to school, they go to war. They're arms and legs get blown off by land mines, they die from easily treated diseases and they are hungry. At this camp for displaced people in Kuito, Angola, children sing for the entertainment of some rare visitors, but they can't keep hungry eyes off a full plate of food. The only certainty in their lives, this food, right now.
(on camera): Children lucky to be born in an African country rich in oil and diamonds are instead cursed. Money from those natural resources that could be used to build roads, schools and hospitals is used instead to buy an endless supply of weapons.
(voice-over): But it isn't bullets that killed them, according to UNICEF, it's malnutrition and disease. In Angola, three out of five children under the age of 10 do not survive.
CAROL BELLAMY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNICEF: One of the biggest problems here is that there is not access to all children for services. Even as poor as services are, they can't be reached because they're behind fighting lines. They're sometimes used by the different fighting forces in a way as protection.
STRAND: Across the border in rebel-held territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a cease-fire in the presence of U.N. peace monitors has brought many families out of the forests. There they have been taking their chances by living on insects and roots rather than face the wrath of competing militias. At this emergency feeding center in Kalame (ph), most arrive naked and near death.
Hachama Muwamba's (ph) parents aren't alive to tell us her story. They didn't survive a life in hiding. Another child, a stranger, is looking after her.
In a recent mortality study by the International Rescue Committee, children younger than two are simply missing from the demographics, they haven't survived to be counted.
The hardest stories to hear come from the children with the hardest faces, children forced to fight. Deseriee Hockusamana (ph) was forced into the army at age 15. He deserted at 16, but he still stands at attention. For him it was fight or be beaten.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We have no specialists here and the child soldiers have a lot of problems. Children that have fought and killed are very violent and they tend to dominate and suppress the others.
STRAND: On his way home from school, Andre Monsambucko (ph) was kidnapped by soldiers and forced onto a plane. The 15-year-old says he and many other children were forced to cook, clean and carry.
They are children like yours and mine, except they don't go to school, they go to war.
Cynde Strand, CNN, Goma, The Democratic Republic of Congo.
(END VIDEOTAPE) MCMANUS: Up next, a story we call extreme beauty. Throughout history, people have done all kinds of things to fit a cultural notion of how they should look. It's no different today. You might follow the crowd when it comes to clothes, hairstyles or even body piercing, but some customs are, to say the least, extreme.
Our Jeanne Moos visits an exhibit to prove it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Long before liberals and breast implants, there were padded stockings for the guy whose calves were too skinny. A 16-inch iron corset for the lady who wasn't skinny enough, and adult shoes that are the size of a toddler's.
HAROLD KODA, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: The foot was reduced to a three-inch length by compressing the heel of the foot to the front pad of the foot.
MOOS: What we wear doesn't just cover us, it can reshape us.
HATTIE MCDANIEL, ACTRESS, "GONE WITH THE WIND": Just hold on. And suck in.
MOOS: From our waist to our walk.
KODA: Think about Marilyn Monroe in her high heel shoes. You know, her churning buttocks and just sort of tottering along.
MOOS: Churn she did in "SOME LIKE IT HOT."
(on camera): Did you guys see, this is a corset for a guy?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Oh.
MOOS (voice-over): Actually, a modern-day corset maker, know as Mr. Pearl, made it for himself, not unlike tribesmen who wear bark and rattan belts.
KODA: By cinching in the waist, I'll create the sense of a bigger chest line.
MOOS: Modern designers can change your silhouette with an inflatable dress, or Thierry Mugler threads that have more in common with tread.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It looks like you got run over by a car.
MOOS (on camera): Or, you know, if you had a flat, you could just take off your dress.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't see anybody wearing these things.
MOOS: Any of this stuff?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like another planet.
MOOS (voice-over): That's why they call it "Xtreme Beauty, The Body Transformed." Now on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute. The galleries are organized into body parts.
For instance --
KODA: Hips and buttocks.
MOOS: Where you'll find a structure worn under an 18th century dress to give it a certain aristocratic width.
(on camera): But how do you get through the door?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, you probably have to (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
MOOS (voice-over): Maybe you thought "Playboy" invented the bunny outfit. Tell that to the African Mongo people who wore this belt and ball with nothing else. And these brass Burmese neck rings create the impression of a elongated neck.
KODA: The neck rings weigh down and then deform the collarbone so it's diverted to a 45-degree angle downward.
MOOS: And talk about elongated. The men in New Guinea make a public display of their privates.
KODA: I think what's fun is the fact that there's a fur tip. I think that's a nice touch.
MOOS (on camera): What's that all about? Fuzzy.
KODA: A warm cuddly thing, I don't know.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You'd have to hook this to your chest to be able to walk.
MOOS (voice-over): Speaking of walking, imagine walking in these. Lotus shoes worn by Chinese women who had their feet bound for several years when they were kids.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah, these are spooky.
MOOS: Foot-binding was banned after a thousand years of mangled feet. At the opposite end of the spectrum is this shoe with toes by Pierre Cardin. We thought modern platform shoes were bad until we saw these 16th century Chopins worn by aristocratic women in Venice.
KODA: Always with an attendant, because you needed someone to support you.
MOOS: The idea was to elevate the aristocrat above everyone else.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is that all part of what they walked on?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is that a man's shoe or...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The whole thing? Mama mia!
MOOS: We have a name for shoes like these: Stilts!
Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Exploring our world, here now is CNN STUDENT NEWS "Perspectives."
WALCOTT: March is Women's History Month. It's a time to celebrate the fairer sex and reflect on the contributions women have made to society. Women like Millie Benson whose alter ego has provided inspiration for generations of girls.
Brian Cabell explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): She's 96 and still working. Millie Benson is a one-day-a-week reporter and columnist for the "Toledo Blaze."
But it's not her news writing for which she's best known. It's her alter ego, Nancy Drew. Under the pen name Carolyn Keene, Millie Benson wrote 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew novels in the 1930s, '40s and '50s. Stories about a girl who assertive, curious and independent.
MILLIE BENSON, "NANCY DREW" AUTHOR: At that time Nancy Drew was a -- girls weren't like that. Girls were dependent. My characters took on more activity, more like a boy
CABELL: Not unlike Ms. Benson herself.
BENSON: I didn't follow the pattern that normally girls followed. I just was myself always. And what I wanted to be or do or think, I did, and nobody opposed me on it.
CABELL: She sold her first story, she figures, when she was a child growing up in Iowa, around 1915. Even though her father said story-telling would never pay. She graduated high school in three years and became a champion diver and swimmer. She was the first woman to claim a journalism masters degree at the University of Iowa. Later she got her pilot's license and flew solo all over the country. She journeyed alone to Central America. Yes, she was a real-life Nancy Drew, the character who's enchanted so many young female readers over the years.
DIANE HIRES, PHOTOGRAPHER-DREW ENTHUSIAST: It was adventure. It was exciting. It was -- she talked back sometimes to adults. She went in places -- she was fearless.
CABELL: Millie Benson insists Nancy Drew wasn't her best writing. She wrote more than a hundred other novels, but Nancy Drew, she concedes, will be her enduring legacy.
BENSON: I always felt I had a good book. But I never felt that it was a remarkable book or anything like that.
CABELL (on camera): Millie was hired by a syndicate to write the Nancy Drew novels. She was given a brief outline of each story along with some of the main characters, and then she took it from there. Her compensation -- $125 a book, no royalties. That's the way contracts were written. But she has no regrets.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's Katie's birthday on Friday and she was so excited.
CABELL: Autograph-seekers still show up, the fan mail still piles up. But failing eyesight and poor hearing are slowly taking their toll on her.
BENSON: There isn't an awful lot left in me anymore. But it's all I have to work with.
CABELL: And at 96, Millie still needs to be in the newsroom. She needs to pound out that column.
REBEKAH SCOTT, REPORTER, "TOLEDO BLADE": Well, if she quits, she will die. And I think she knows that this is why she lives.
CABELL: More than 80 years of putting words together, telling stories. And the job isn't done yet.
Brian Cabell, CNN, Toledo, Ohio.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
March 4, 1962 (ph), Author Ernest Hemingway completes "The Old Man and the Sea."
MCMANUS: More on women's history as we turn to our "Culture Report." Our destination: Russia, a land renowned for its ballet, literature and music. Now art is taking center stage in an exhibit at one of Russia's most famous museums. It's an exhibit that portrays a 500-year history of Russian women and the arts.
Jill Dougherty has our report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nina Divova, exhibit coordinator for Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery, is a whirlwind of concentrated energy. Five hundred pieces of art to be placed, hung and labeled, the first ever major show of Russian women's art spanning five centuries.
The idea was born more than five years ago with women artists and women art curators like Nadezhda Yurassovskaya.
NADEZHDA, YURASSOVSKAYA, EXHIBIT COORDINATOR (through translator): It's a women's view of a women's world in Russia with our troubled history, and it shows how the talent of Russian women artists came through so powerfully in the midst of the most difficult circumstances.
DOUGHERTY (on camera): The women who put together this exhibit encountered a lot of opposition, both men and women said why do you need an exhibit like this? What is it about? Their answer: it's about art, it's about life, it's about ourselves.
(voice-over): The exhibit begins in the 15th century with funeral shrouds sewn in silk, gold and silver thread. Women's work by nameless artists created in monastic workshops by women who were not allowed to paint icons. Three hundred years later, Russian noble women were creating outstanding works of art like this painting by the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna. But it took another century before women could be considered professional artists. Some faced personal tragedy. Maria Bashkirtseva died of tuberculosis at age 24 but left this masterpiece of emotion.
In the 20th century, Russian women artists faced Bolshevik censorship. But the avant-garde, the so-called amazons like Nubof Paboba (ph), broke every rule in the book. Five hundred years of women's art include sculpture and even furniture.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): We want them to see the breadth of Russian women's art. It was not only equal to men's art but actually defined world art in the 20th century.
DOUGHERTY: Women's art, art by women, a glance in the mirror of Russian history.
Jill Dougherty, CNN, Moscow.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALCOTT: As we continue our look at female achievers, we turn to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Its undergraduate school was integrated in 1954. Now those first black students were male, and it would be another 13 years before black women enrolled. Edith Hubbard was one of those pioneering women.
Hubbard sat down with CNN Student Bureau to talk about her experiences.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Edith Hubbard doesn't have to imagine the hardship of discrimination, she lived it. When she graduated in 1966 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she could only think one thing.
EDITH HUBBARD, UNC CLASS OF 1966: Thank God it's over. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hubbard was one of the first black female students at UNC and came along during a time when integration was part of a turbulent American society in schools throughout the south.
HUBBARD: Racism wasn't nearly as subtle as it is now. People were not shy about letting you know how they felt.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hubbard still thinks she was accepted to Carolina in part because the black and white photo she sent didn't quite make things black and white.
HUBBARD: Black and white pictures can be kind of deceiving, and I don't know that whoever was in the process of doing the selection fully understood all or took note of the fact that I was black.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hubbard's experience as one of very few black students was tough, but she does have some pleasant memories. But there were more painful memories than pleasant ones. So many that Hubbard couldn't even bring herself to shake the governor's hand at graduation.
HUBBARD: I was really struck by the puzzlement on his face because I don't think he understood the pain that I was experiencing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But times change, Hubbard works on campus as Associate Director of Research Services. And she hopes young people like her grandchildren can learn from her experience and never give up.
HUBBARD: It was just one voice, but it was a big loud voice and it was a consistent voice. I just would not go away. And to this day, I won't go away.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She hopes with a little encouragement, the grandkids will consider her alma matter too.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you coming to Carolina?
HUBBARD: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, yes, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
HUBBARD: Carolina has changed and it's a good place to be a part of.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bridget Williams (ph), CNN Student Bureau, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
"Where in the World" gained independence from Portugal in 1975, civil war for the past 27 years, currency Kwanza? Can you name this country? Angola.
MCMANUS: Well it looks like we've run out of time but, Shelley, not out of material. We are on the Web 24 hours a day.
WALCOTT: That's right, so log on and check us out at CNNstudentnews.com. We'll see you in cyberspace and right back here tomorrow.
Bye-bye.
MCMANUS: Have a great day.
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