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CNN Student News

Aired July 15, 2002 - 04:00   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.

SUSAN FRIEDMAN, CO-HOST: Welcome to the week. First things first, a look at the latest from the business world. The business of health is next on the agenda, find that in today's "Focus." Later, get a taste of what's bubbling up in "Perspectives." And catch the cool jazzy sounds of Student Bureau.

Welcome to CNN STUDENT NEWS. I'm Susan Friedman.

President Bush mounts an offensive against corporate greed and corruption. Amid a series of highly publicized business scandals in recent weeks, Mr. Bush is vowing to restore confidence in the nation's economy. Today in Birmingham, Alabama, he'll talk to folks about his strategy. Meanwhile, the man Mr. Bush appointed to head the Securities and Exchange Commission is busy defending his job performance. Despite intense criticism, Harvey Pitt says he won't step down.

Kelly Wallace reports from the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLY WALLACE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The embattled head of the Securities and Exchange Commission rebuffs calls to resign, charging he's the right man to protect American investors.

HARVEY PITT, SEC CHAIRMAN: I swore to uphold the law and defend their interests and that's what I'm going to do.

WALLACE: But after a wave of corporate scandals rattled the markets, some Democrats and a prominent Republican argue that Pitt, a former securities industry lawyer is the wrong man to turn investor confidence around.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: That confidence can only be restored by individuals whose records are completely untainted by any charge or allegation of conflict of interest.

WALLACE: Meantime, questions continue to dog the Bush administration about its ties to big business. Democrats say the president should tell the SEC to make public its file concerning his 1990 sale of Harken Energy stock when he sat on the company's board and just two months before the company announced a major loss. The SEC took no action against Mr. Bush. Pitt says as far as he's concerned, the matter is closed.

PITT: What I think is critical is to understand that the people, who want to raise a decade-old issue that was thoroughly investigated, are doing this for a political advantage.

WALLACE: Democrats also question whether the SEC under Pitt can pursue an impartial investigation of the accounting practices of oil services giant Halliburton and its former CEO Vice President Cheney. Pitt should stay out of any decision involving the vice president, says the House Democratic leader.

REP. DICK GEPHARDT (D-MO), MINORITY LEADER: Well, I think it would be best if he did recuse himself, and I think it because he was selected by a transition team that was headed by Dick Cheney.

Kelly Wallace, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRIEDMAN: From the White House to Wall Street, corporate responsibility has become a hot topic among investors, especially those near retirement. After another disastrous week on Wall Street, they're hoping for better days ahead.

CNN's Jeff Flock spent the day with an investment club for retired men to see how they're coping.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Joel Fisher?

JOEL FISHER: Here.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CHICAGO BUREAU CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Roll call, the Quibble and Nibble Investment Club at the North Shore Senior Center outside Chicago. Most of the members are here...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here.

FLOCK: ... but a lot of their money isn't anymore.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It went down two percent in the month of May.

FLOCK: Listen to the monthly report on their shrinking portfolio.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And seven percent in the last week-and-a- half.

FLOCK: But unlike people with years of work ahead and plenty of time to recoup, everyone in this room is retired.

(on camera): You don't have as much time to maybe get it back. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

FLOCK: How do you feel about that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You cannot earn back the losses that you have.

FLOCK (voice-over): Wayne Shonmaker's (ph) got his retirement savings out of stocks before the market tanked. Bill Ray (ph), age 71, got it out only two months ago.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fortunately, that was a very god time, although, you know, six months earlier would have been better.

FLOCK (on camera): Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But the last two months have really been hard.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Worst performers have been Tyco -- took a nose-dive.

FLOCK: The question now, what's the investment group to do. Their portfolio now worth just short of $300,000 is half what it once was.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's hard to find a good one.

FLOCK: Home Depot has been a good performer but there is a motion to sell half the group's 600 shares.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is there a specific reason that we're -- that we've identified that we should sell Home Depot?

FLOCK: Partly to take out profits, partly to consider shifting many some of their money into competitor, Lowe's.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's holding up much, much better than Home Depot. So I don't see why you couldn't diversify any...

FLOCK: They put it to a vote.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Five, six, seven, eight. It carries.

FLOCK: But when it comes to buying, there isn't much appetite.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think that makes any sense at all.

FLOCK: There is a motion to buy Johnson & Johnson, a 100 shares.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we should buy it.

FLOCK: But the club already owns Merck and Pfizer and they haven't done well.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think Johnson & Johnson is a fine company, but maybe the timing is poor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The medical end of this thing has taken it on the chin. It is down in the dumps. And if you're ever going to buy in a field, I think now is the time to buy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To buy 100 shares of Johnson & Johnson?

FLOCK: But when it comes to a vote...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four, five, six. Did not carry.

FLOCK: Whether it's 100 shares or a thousand, everyone knows the strategy is to buy low and sell high. But these days, no one knows what low really is.

I'm Jeff Flock, CNN, Northfield, Illinois.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRIEDMAN: We've been following the world AIDS conference in Barcelona, Spain over the past several days. The magnitude of AIDS in the world was the biggest news. Increased funding, awareness and education were all topics of discussion. But as the conference ended, it was two world leaders that challenged their counterparts to turn words into action.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two former presidents, one whose country has more people infected with HIV than anywhere else in the world, with very few on treatment.

NELSON MANDELA, FORMER SOUTH AFRICAN PRESIDENT: AIDS is killing more people than were killed by all the past wars in history and natural disasters put together. AIDS is a war against humanity.

GUPTA: And the other, whose country was able to turn its AIDS problem around with the help of expensive medicines.

BILL CLINTON, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The world is being consumed by a disease that is preventable, with drugs that turn a death sentence into a chronic illness and prevent mother-to-child transmission, with example after example of nations that have reversed the infection. How could we explain that to someone who had not lived through it?

GUPTA: At the closing ceremony for the international AIDS conference in Barcelona, they both brought one message to world leaders.

MANDELA: Is it acceptable that these dying parents have no hope of access to treatment? The simple answer is no.

GUPTA: In the United States and Western Europe, half a million people are receiving HIV treatment. Last year, 25,000 died from AIDS. Compare that now to Africa, where 30,000 are receiving treatment. And last year there were 2.2 million deaths.

Getting those life-saving medicines for prevention and treatment, as well as addressing the health care needs of developing countries, will take $10 billion every year, according to the United Nations. The current debate: who pays? Clinton says the burden is on the wealthy.

CLINTON: It means developing plans for care and prevention based on what is working in other countries. And then, when that is done, developing countries have to determine how much they can pay, and send the rest of us the bill for the difference.

GUPTA: In the post-9/11 world, another great concern of President Clinton is, as AIDS kills off the working populations of developing countries, it could create global security issues.

CLINTON: A hundred-million AIDS cases means more terror, more mercenaries, more war, destruction, and the failure of fragile democracies.

GUPTA: The messages have been heard before. The question is, will governments rise to the challenge? If not, the U.N. estimates 70 million people will die of AIDS in the next 20 years. And it will take entire economies and societies with it.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Barcelona, Spain.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRIEDMAN: Another epidemic of growing proportion in the U.S. is obesity. One in four Americans is obese and another one-third are overweight. Scary, considering that can cause heart disease, diabetes and a number of other conditions.

CNN's Elizabeth Cohen brings us a broad look at the problem from the causes to the resolutions.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: The struggle to stay fit is the decades old battle. Driven to find solutions, people have put their bodies through all sorts of strange contortions, trying one new fangled diet after another, most of which ends in failure because we're unable to do the simplest thing of all -- put down the fork.

(on-camera): Well, why can't we put down the fork? We posed that question to an array of experts and they said, "The answer is very simple. Just go ask a caveman." So we found these prehistoric people and indeed the answer became very clear. They never had to worry a single moment of their lives about getting fat. They never thought at all about dieting. In fact, when they found an animal, their instinct said, "Eat up the entire thing" because back then; there weren't restaurants on every corner. They never knew where their next meal was coming from. HILL: Our problem was -- in obesity; our problem was starving to death.

COHEN: We descended from cavemen. We have the same jeans, the same biological instincts.

HILL: All of our physiology is geared up to eat when food's available. That's work for most of our history. The problem is it's not working now.

COHEN: Biology gives us another kick in the pants when we try to diet. Our caveman jeans say, "Whoa, you might need that fat in case of a famine. Let's hold onto it."

LEIBEL: You're exactly like David against the Goliath of evolution.

COHEN: Dr. Rudolph Leibel at the New York Obesity Research Center at Columbia University.

LEIBEL: The body chronically detects that you were at a lower body weight and tries to make adjustments that cause you to regain the weight.

COHEN: And that helps explain why 95 percent of people who lose weight gain it back again. And here's another reason it's hard for us to lose weight and keep it off -- life is so much easier for us than it was for cavemen.

HILL: You have to go out and kill the wildebeest and prepare it and you know, it was -- it required a lot of physical activity to get through the day.

COHEN (on-camera): But to get through my day requires almost no physical activity at all. I'm a sloth basically. Like most Americans, I go everywhere in my car. In fact, I can do most of my errands without even getting out.

OK, thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

COHEN: After I run my errands, I drive to work and then when I get to work, I could take the stairs of the escalator, but I have to admit, I usually take the escalator. And then when I get to my desk, what do I do, well, I just sit here hour after hour, sometimes all day long. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but sometimes when I want to talk to someone just two doors down, I e-mail then rather than get up.

(voice-over): And then on my way home from work, I stop for dinner.

(on-camera): Now, we have here a quarter pounder with cheese, large fries, large Coca-Cola and an ice cream for desert. And this food that you're looking at right here, that's as many calories as I'm supposed to have in an entire day and I'm having it in one meal. (voice-over): Look at all these modern conveniences that are keeping us lazy and fat, even a contraption that does the walking for you. Is it any wonder that obesity among American adults has nearly doubled since 1980?

HILL: The epidemic of obesity is a byproduct of our success as a society.

COHEN: In fact, modern society has gotten us to the point where even when we want to be active, we can't.

(on-camera): I'd love to walk to the stores near my house, but I can't because between my house and the stores, there's an eight-lane highway and the bridge over it has no sidewalks.

(voice-over): This isn't just a problem where I live in the suburb of Atlanta. Across the country in Denver, Professor James Hill, an obesity expert pointed out the same thing.

HILL: So one of the problems is in a lot of neighborhoods like this one, see, there aren't sidewalks and there's a little thing here beside the road, but would you let your kids walk to school here...

COHEN (on-camera): No! I feel like...

HILL: ... along really...

COHEN: ... I'm taking my life in my hands.

HILL: Two lanes of traffic.

COHEN (voice-over): So now that we've given you all this bad news, our biological tendency to eat, eat, eat, a society that helps keep us lazy, how in the world does anyone ever lose weight?

Successful weight loss in this country is so unusual that Professor Hill keeps a list of people who have managed to do it. We asked two of his success stories, Karen Brown and Robert Romaniello, to tell us how they do it. Considering that six in 10 Americans are overweight or obese, we figured they had some lessons to teach us. Karen Brown used to weigh 194 pounds.

BROWN: I would sit and eat a pound and a forth of Oreos, which is the entire package, and a gallon of chocolate milk in one sitting.

COHEN: Then six years ago, she slimmed down to 124 pounds and she's been there ever since.

ROBERT ROMANIELLO, SUCCESSFUL DIETER: There's enough for another half of me in here.

COHEN: Robert Romaniello used to weigh 218 pounds.

ROMANIELLO: I was a junk food junkie. I was a couch potato. I lived on tacos and at quick food places and did no exercises at all.

COHEN: Then five years ago, he lost 60 pounds.

HILL: What distinguishes the people in the registry is not necessarily how they lost the weight, but how they're maintaining it.

COHEN: There are 3,000 people like Robert and Karen in Professor Hill's group and they tend to have seven things in common, seven things they did to lose weight and keep it off.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRIEDMAN: Tomorrow we'll look at how Robert and Karen and many other people have managed to lose weight and keep it off. It's a struggle, but not a hopeless cause.

Also coming up later in today's show, a very popular beverage gets trendy. We'll tell you about something called bubble tea.

A wetland is an area of land full of moisture. It's usually home to wildlife. And as population sprawl continues, the preservation of these natural wonders grows even more important. The city of San Francisco is heeding advice from local environmentalists and is ready to write a $100 million check to prove it.

Rusty Dornin has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What is it? A question first-time air travelers often have flying into San Francisco when they spot the multi-colored mosaic of ponds at the tip of the bay. Since the days of the gold rush, salt has been harvested on 29,000 acres here.

Now, Cargill, the only producer of salt from seawater, will sell half to the state and federal government. The aim? Return it to marshland.

LORI JOHNSON, CARGILL SALT: It's a huge portion of the bay shoreline, and we're talking about restoration on the scale of something like the Everglades, but we're talking about it in the middle of seven million people.

DORNIN: A $100 million deal that environmentalists say is worth every penny.

DEBBIE DRAKE, ENVIRONMENTALIST: Basically, San Francisco Bay is a site of international significance. There are over a million shore birds who stop in San Francisco Bay as they travel along the Pacific flyway.

DORNIN: To make salt, salt water is moved from the bay through evaporation ponds over a five-year period, then close to harvest. It's so briny, it turns pink.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The color that you see is from a halyphitic bacteria, or salt-loving bacteria that lends the brine that pink coral color.

DORNIN (on camera): And no other wildlife, though, can live in here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right, it's too salty for any other wildlife.

DORNIN (voice-over): The salt is then scraped off the evaporated beds, and piled high for refinement.

JOHNSON: We think that we can produce almost as much salt as we're doing today on one-third of what we're operating on.

DORNIN: Wildlife now thrives on the less saline ponds, where there are plenty of fish and insects.

(on camera): Many of these salt ponds have been a source of food for birds and other wildlife for more than 150 years, which is why restoration won't be done overnight. It could take 10 to 20 years.

(voice-over): Time for the birds and other wildlife to adapt.

(on camera): So, are we going to see it looking much like this, probably?

DRAKE: Much more like this, and less like the open water. The salt ponds have, as you can see, less vegetation, and the tidal marsh is really more about more vegetation, mud flats.

DORNIN (voice-over): More vegetation means a better filtering system for tidal waters from San Francisco Bay.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, wait a minute. What do we have here?

DORNIN: It will also open up miles of trails, giving bird and other wildlife lovers a lot more places to flock.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Exploring our world, here new is CNN STUDENT NEWS "Perspectives."

FRIEDMAN: What's your beverage of choice? Are you a soda drinker, do you prefer smoothies or just an old fashioned cup of joe? Well, when it comes to warm drinks, tea often makes the list of favorites. Especially popular these days, a unique variety from Taiwan known as bubble tea.

We have more in this report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

EILEEN HSIEH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Giant cups, supersized straws, in Taiwan there are booths like these on nearly every street. They are the bubble teashops. Kind of like Starbucks in the United States, they have been a constant in Taiwanese culture for more than one decade. And many have given bubble tea this well deserved title, the national beverage of Taiwan.

The popularity of bubble tea is spreading to cities around the world, including many in the United States.

LANDON BROWN, TEASPACE OWNER: Well the most popular flavors worldwide are taro and coconuts, and then it just depends on who your clientele is. The American clientele generally prefer the fruitier flavors while the Asian clientele prefer the no (ph) tea flavors.

HSIEH: Bubble tea is simply tea with tapioca pearls.

BROWN: Tapioca come from the casaba root, so it's a starch. The starch is just like a flour. And then they bake it and it comes to us freeze-dried and then we boil it.

So I'm going to make a honeydew bubble tea.

HSIEH: A scoop of flavor powder with some tea and syrup, add ice, shake and there you have a glass of freshly made bubble tea served with a fat straw.

(on camera): At this teashop in Atlanta, you can choose from more than 100 flavors of bubble tea. From the traditional tea-based flavors like jasmine and ulon (ph) to fruity alternatives such as strawberry, green apple and taro.

(voice-over): The pearl-like starch balls may look like frog eggs to some; but to tapioca lovers, they are a treat from heaven.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've been trying -- I've been looking everywhere because I tasted it first when I was in San Francisco last year. And then -- I don't know, and then I was addicted while I was over there and then I couldn't find anywhere.

HSIEH: Many Americans are embracing this concept of adding chewables into beverages. And the bubble tea business has seen a tremendous growth.

BROWN: I have plans to open three more shops in the next year and a half.

HSIEH: A word of caution for the first time bubble tea drinkers, drink slowly, you may just get a mouthful of surprises on the very first sip.

Eileen Hsieh, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRIEDMAN: America is full of culture. In times of peace and in war, the U.S. has relied on people of different ethnic backgrounds. During World War II, the secret language of the Navajo Americans provided one of the most unusual advantages to the United States military.

In a new film, director John Woo tells the story of the windtalkers. Anna Hoven has a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNA HOVEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "Windtalkers" is based on the true story of how Navajo Americans using their native language helped win World War II.

JOHN WOO, DIRECTOR: This is an incredible story. And also it's so nice for me to learn from this part of history and also make me learn the true spirit of America.

HOVEN: Woo, known for his action films, took a slightly different approach in this film.

WOO: Most of the action sequence pretty much like a documentary, you know try to get a few of the booms, the life and death, you know that kind of feeling.

HOVEN: Actors on the film felt the danger.

CHRISTIAN SLATER, ACTOR: He yelled action and the bombs started going off and the tanks started rolling and all these, you know, 3,000 extras started running and you know we were charging. It was -- it was -- it was very scary. I mean I was -- I was -- I definitely felt that it added to the realism.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In code, Private Whitehorse (ph).

PRIVATE WHITEHORSE: Be-Al-Doh Tso-Lani (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very good.

HOVEN: Roger Willie makes his acting debut in the film, and he remembers how important the legend of the windtalkers is to the Navajo.

ROGER WILLIE, ACTOR: I remember growing up with it, knowing that my mom and dad always reiterating to us the importance of speaking, learning how to speak our language by saying this is (SPEAKING NAVAJO LANGUAGE), which translates to it is sad that our language was used to win a war.

HOVEN: While "Windtalkers" is a war film, Woo hopes moviegoers will take away more from the film.

WOO: War is no good for anyone, only friendship is forever and that is what I try to get from the film.

I'm Anna Hoven.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRIEDMAN: Well from movies to music, our look at cultural heritage continues. Jazz bands are gaining popularity in high schools across the nation. Icons like Duke Ellington, J.J. Johnson and Ray Charles are inspiring many students to explore this expressive form of music.

Our Student Bureau has details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LEONISSIE BOSHIAN (ph), STUDENT BUREAU (voice-over): Fast Beat (ph) is ironically bringing appreciation to an older form of music, jazz. Considering the accomplishments of jazz artists like Ray Charles, it's easy to see why most people view jazz as an art form for more mature listeners. But a growing trend is developing among teens who not only listen to jazz but who now also want to play it.

Sean Michael, who has played for three years in the Redan (ph) High School Silver Image Jazz Band, says jazz is becoming more popular because it gives young people an outlet for expression.

SEAN MICHAEL, AGE 16: Jazz is a great way to express yourself through your music and through writing music or even playing it and through your solo.

BOSHIAN (ph): Jazz also helps young people understand themselves.

MICHAEL: By playing jazz you have to understand yourself more.

GREGORY FRIERSON, AGE 16: And you have to know how to express yourself when you're feeling a certain way. If you're feeling sad, then you can express that through your horn. Or if you feel exciting, you can express that through your horn as well.

BOSHIAN (ph): As young people get involved in jazz, it makes a positive effect in your lives, according to teen musician Michele Sharp, the only female in her jazz band.

MICHELE SHARP, AGE 16: I get to see a lot of young people exposed to the jazz and how it changes their lives, because if some people weren't in the jazz band, they would have nothing else. Their focus is not on things outside of school. They can focus some on the music and it helps to clear up other events in their life.

BOSHIAN (ph): Jazz helps the students to learn about themselves. It also provides opportunities for them to learn about the past.

MICHAEL: It gives you a background on history, a lot of things that happened during the jazz era.

BOSHIAN (ph): World War I and the Great Depression are good examples of historical events that shaped the development of jazz between the '20s and the '40s, a period well known as the Jazz Era.

According to Gregory Frierson, a 16-year-old musician, when it comes to jazz, age doesn't matter.

FRIERSON: It doesn't really sound old or new. Jazz is really timeless.

Leonissie Boshian (ph), CNN Student Bureau, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

"Where in the World" this country's civil war lasted from 1936- 1939, has a mixed capitalist economy, subject to periodic droughts? Can you name this country? Spain.

FRIEDMAN: I hope we got your week off to a great start. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

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