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Your World Today

Global Jitters a Day After Stocks Tumble Around the World; Airbus to Cut 10,000 Jobs Over Next Four Years

Aired February 28, 2007 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Global jitters a day after stocks tumble around the world. All eyes are on the markets. And also on Airbus as it announces a shakeup.
HALA GORANI, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Theft of masterpieces. Two Picasso paintings worth more than $60 million disappear from a Paris apartment.

CLANCY: Tears of joy. An emotional reunion between a South Korea man and his son, a U.S. Olympian champion he lost touched with more than 25 years ago.

GORANI: And a song of welcome. Children from Darfur greet Angelina Jolie as she visits their camp in Chad. The Hollywood star, an activist, has a message of her own.

It is noon in New York, 6:00 p.m. in Paris.

Hello and welcome to our report broadcast around the globe.

I'm Hala Gorani.

CLANCY: I'm Jim Clancy.

From Chad, to South Korea, wherever you're watching, this is YOUR WORLD TODAY.

GORANI: It's the day after on Wall Street. One day after the largest one-day selloff in the stock market since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

CLANCY: And while the U.S. stocks are trying to recover, what about other financial markets all across the globe.

GORANI: Well, we've got a team of reporters covering not only the markets, but a major announcement from one of the world's largest plane makers, Airbus.

Valerie Morris is in New York. Charles Hodson will bring us up to date from London.

CLANCY: And Jim Boulden has details of the Airbus restructuring plan. Many jobs on the chopping block.

But first, let's go to Valerie Morris live in New York -- Valerie.

VALERIE MORRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Jim and Hala. We have a bit of a rally under way after stocks started the day a bit shaky in the first hour of trading.

Right now, the Dow industrials are up 37 points. That's a third of a percent. Stocks, of course, are attempting to bounce back from Tuesday's 400-point tumble.

Checking on the other averages, the Nasdaq composite is up about a quarter of a percent, and the S&P 500 is up more than a third of a percent, all on the comeback trail.

Now, one of the main factors driving the markets today -- in Washington, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is testifying before Congress. And in his prepared remarks, he did not make any mention of Tuesday's plunge. But in response to a question, he did calm some fears by reiterating his view on the economy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN BERNANKE, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: My view is that, taking all the new data into account, that there is really no material change in our expectations for the U.S. economy since I last reported to Congress a couple of weeks ago in the Humphrey-Hawkins hearings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLANCY: All right.

Valerie, what did Bernanke have to say in his prepared remarks?

MORRIS: Jim, he basically warned the House Budget Committee to take action on Social Security before the baby boomers retire, calling this period before they retire the calm before the storm. And Bernanke's appearance comes on the heels of comments from former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, who warned of a possible recession later this year.

We're also getting another look at the health of the battered U.S. housing market. New home sales plunged nearly 17 percent in January. That is far weaker than expected.

And investors are eyeing the latest report on the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. The economy grew at a revised 2.2 percent pace in the fourth quarter, which was weaker than expected.

Once again, the Dow Industrials are now up a third of a percent.

Hala, back to you.

GORANI: All right. Valerie Morris in New York.

Well, of course the stock market selloff didn't just affect Wall Street. In fact, it started in Asia. So the day after, how are other world markets doing?

Let's go to Charles Hodson in London.

It's not looking to good. And are there fears out there, Charles, really, that this is the being sustained downward trend?

CHARLES HODSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I certainly wouldn't want to see that -- say that, Hala. I wouldn't want to see it, either. I don't think it's necessarily what one should be concluding after what we've been seeing.

But let's have a look and just see what the European markets have been doing, because after the dramatic selloff that we saw on Tuesday, the markets here in Europe, the stock markets, have attempted to regain a bit of poise. But we had that weak data -- there's weak data out of the United States. So Europe's main indices finished the trading day at seven-week lows.

So we're basically back to where we are at the start of January.

London's FTSE 100 off by 1.8 percent. Xetra DAX off by 1.5 percent. Now, mining shares, by the way, in London weighed on that index. So that's probably why it's doing the worst here.

The one -- by the way, if you look at the DAX, there was just one in 30 of the indices of the 30 stocks in that indices was in the black.

In Paris, the CAC more than 1.25 percent. Shares in the world's mining giant (INAUDIBLE) I should say, not mining, but steel-making giant, (INAUDIBLE), feeling the brunt of the global rout. And in Zurich, the SMI closed in the red for the third day in a row. But this time, not the worst off.

Now, let's have a look at China, where it all began. And investors there actually piled back into the stock market in Wednesday's session, with share prices regaining some of the ground lost a day earlier.

Shanghai's composite index suffered its biggest drop in 10 years on Tuesday, wiping $140 billion off the value of Chinese stocks. But that was Tuesday.

Today, being Wednesday, and shares ended trading almost 4 percent higher. So quite a bounce there.

Jitters, however, still evident across Asia. In Tokyo, the Nikkei ended almost 3 percent lower. Hong Kong's Hang Seng ended down 2.5 percent. Similar losses in South Korea and Australia. The Singapore Straits Times was off by almost 4 percent. As you can see, 3.75 percent.

Back to you, Jim.

CLANCY: All right. Charles Hodson reporting for us there live in London.

Now, there was a lot going on in world markets during Tuesday's stock slide. One thing that terrified a lot of investors turned out to be a mistake. And it came from a computer in New York.

Jonathan Mann joins us now with a little bit of insight on that. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN MANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Tuesday's Dow Jones numbers were amazing, but the numbers don't just tell the story. For a brief, dizzy moment, the Dow Jones numbers became the story.

Remember now, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is an average. It tracks shares in 30 companies and uses their average prices as a measure of how all of Wall Street is moving. It almost always entirely accurate.

Almost always.

Tuesday, the Dow began the day at 9:30 a.m. around 12,600, and dropped right away because of everything you've already heard about in China. It was down 130 points in just the first 15 minutes.

It spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon sliding some more. By lunchtime, it was down 200 points.

Then, in the afternoon, the average went awry. Stocks kept dropping. But the Dow Jones Industrials Average wasn't going down as much.

The computer that keeps track of stocks had some kind of glitch and couldn't keep up with the trading, a record four billion shares. Just before 3:00 p.m., the people at Dow Jones did something. They switched over to a backup computer system.

That one immediately corrected the mistake and got the Dow Jones Industrials right. But suddenly, the market, as measured by Dow, was down 546 points. All the traders and investors watching the Big Board suddenly lost their lunch and were left guessing what was happening. Was it a computer glitch or a real market crash?

ALLEN WASTLER, MANAGING EDITOR, CNNMONEY.COM: Everybody looks at the Dow number. We all see it on monitors and throughout the day. It's a calming thing. We look, and there the market is.

And all of a sudden, you see that bang, that 200-point drop. Oh, my.

So it's very weird. It's very unusual. And it added a lot of drama to the day.

I spoke to one trader this morning. And he was like -- there was like -- he said that there was this sudden gulp, that you could feel everybody go -- and then this mad scramble.

MANN: Investors recovered their composure long enough to (INAUDIBLE) back. The Dow ended the day around 416 points down. The biggest one- day drop, though, in almost four years. And they are still trying to figure out exactly what happened.

Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GORANI: All right. Jonathan Mann there with our "Insight" segment.

And, of course, jitters around the world because so many people -- not just in the U.S. -- in Europe, in Asia, have their retirement funds in stocks, invest in stocks in order to try to make additional money. And everybody's interested in money, of course.

We want to know what you're doing with it.

CLANCY: That's right. Specifically, have the events of the past two days caused you to change the way you invest?

Give us your thoughts. Send us an e-mail. Our address, yourviews@cnn.com.

GORANI: We'll read a few of those a little bit later in the program.

Well, the widely expected announcement of layoffs at the world's leading aircraft maker, Airbus, came a few hours ago.

Jim Boulden joins us from Filton, England, site of one of the company's plants, with more on how the news is being received there.

Ten thousand jobs lost, Jim. What is the expectation and how is it being greeted by workers there in Filton?

JIM BOULDEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Well, Hala, workers aren't too happy about this, of course. And the workers especially in France and German have been very upset. But they knew this was coming. No surprise. This had been on the books for weeks, if not months.

The bottom line is that Airbus is doing pretty well against its rival, Boeing, at the moment. But because eof delays in the future plane, the new plane, the A380 super jumbo jet to come a few years from now, they saw -- Airbus saw that it was going to lose ground and is costing too much to make these airplanes.

So Airbus has come up with this radical reconstructing plan -- lay off 10,000 employees, close, reorganize several factories and plants around four countries -- that's Germany, France, here in the U.K., and Spain.

Now, a few hours ago, CEO Louis Gallois came out before the cameras and explained that these 10,000 job cuts will come over the next four years.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOUIS GALLOIS, CEO, AIRBUS: Half will be permanent employees of Airbus, half will be temporary or institute (ph) partners. We will do that with voluntary measures and early retirement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOULDEN: Now, Louis Gallois also said another way to compete against Boeing is to bring more of its partners into Airbus, to bring more of its customers and partners in. One of the ideas, including this plant here in the U.K., is to sell it to one of partners, sell it one of the investors, some of the engineering firms, et cetera, so that those employees can be shifted over to a partner and they can share the risks and they can share the rewards and share the costs of the next generation of aircraft -- Hala.

GORANI: And Jim, let me ask you this -- you have the two leading airplane makers. You have Boeing, on the one hand, Airbus on the other. But Airbus is at a huge disadvantage, because it has to price its airplanes in U.S. dollars, yet it has to pay for the manufacturing of those planes in the very expensive euro currency.

BOULDEN: Absolutely. Now, as you say, airplanes are sold to customers in dollars. That has been helping Boeing for the last several years because the dollar is very weak. So when Boeing sells a plane into Europe or into Asia, it makes more money. When Airbus sells a plane out of Europe, into Asia, into the U.S., it then loses more money because the euro is so strong.

And that is one of the problems Louis Gallois -- they said they can't do anything about that, so they're going to have to cut costs somewhere else -- Hala.

GORANI: All right. Ten thousand jobs lost there at Airbus.

Jim Boulden, in Filton, England.

Thanks very much -- Jim.

CLANCY: All right.

Well, Pablo Picasso produced some artwork that some people stood in galleries and turned their heads at. They weren't sure how to make it out. Well, police in Paris may not know much about art, but they are on the lookout for a pair of Picasso paintings stolen from the apartment of someone very close to the artist.

Jim Bittermann joins us now live from Paris with the story -- Jim.

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Jim.

Yes, apparently, the theft occurred on Monday night. Nobody's really saying much about this so far, but it was Pablo Picasso's granddaughter who had the two portraits in her apartment.

She had a portrait of her mother and another one of Picasso's lovers. It was called "A Portrait of Jacqueline." And the mother's portrait was called "Maya and the Doll."

Those two portraits -- worth perhaps 50 million euros, maybe more. No one really knows -- upwards of $66 million -- were stolen some time Monday night.

No sign of any break-in. Police are still investigating, and they're not talking about it a lot, but this is the kind of thing that we have seen here before in France. Sometimes these things are thefts for commission or thefts for ransom. Art dealers, in any case, say that these two painting are so well- known, that they'd be almost impossible to sell in any of the world markets -- Jim.

CLANCY: So, is there any theory among art lovers and experts about why someone would steal this -- that it could be a commission job by someone that wanted it for their private collection?

BITTERMANN: Or perhaps some kind of a ransom as well. We don't know what kind of things are going on right now between the police and the granddaughter. But, in fact, that's also a possibility, someone has taken these paintings and wants to hold them for ransom.

That kind of thing has happened before all across Europe. And, by the way, I mentioned that Picassos have been stolen here before. About 30 years ago, 118 Picassos were stolen, all in one go from a museum in the south of France.

So police are kind of familiar with this kind of art theft. And they have a regular network out there that can help them sometimes to solve the crime -- Jim.

CLANCY: Jim Bittermannn reporting to us there live from Paris.

Thank you, Jim.

Well, you look at that and -- I mean, obviously, those two paintings really stand out. But it's hard to tell who Pablo Picasso liked better among the women.

GORANI: All right. Well, he certainly lived a full life.

Coming up, a family reunion that defied the odds.

CLANCY: The son, an Olympic skier who grew up in the United States. The father, a South Korean man who had given up searching for the boy and thought he had been given up for adoption.

They come together finally 25 years later. We'll have the scene.

GORANI: And later, an in-depth look at the illicit diamond trade. We're going to speak to a Hollywood superstar, Leonardo DiCaprio, who starred in that movie, "Blood Diamond".

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GORANI: Welcome back. You're with CNN International and YOUR WORLD TODAY.

CLANCY: We're covering the news that the world wants to know and giving you some perspective that goes deeper into the stories of the day.

GORANI: Well, one of those stories come to us from South Korea. He grew up a world away from his biological father and brother.

CLANCY: And now a U.S. Olympic skier returning to his homeland, as he's done before, but this time to meet the family that he lost there when he was only 3 years of age.

GORANI: Sohn Jie-ae reports on this emotional reunion. And she's in Seoul, South Korea.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SOHN JIE-AE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The resemblance between father and son is uncanny, but apparently not good enough. More than 25 years ago, Kim Jae-su lost his 3-year-old son Pumtuk (ph) in a crowded South Korean market and was never able to find him again. Until now.

Through his tears, Kim keeps saying, "I'm sorry." His biological son, now named Toby Dawson, is a 29-year-old U.S. citizen and a U.S. Olympic skier.

TOBY DAWSON, OLYMPIC SKIER: (SPEAKING KOREAN) -- which I believe means I have been waiting a long time. And I told him that I was happy to be able to meet him and that -- that he was -- that he didn't need to cry, and to be strong, because this should be a happy day.

SOHN: From a South Korean orphanage, Dawson was adopted by a couple of ski instructors in Colorado. At the 2006 Turin Olympics, Dawson was the only American to win a medal in freestyle skiing, catching the eye of many in the country of his birth, South Korea.

Dozens came forth claiming to be his parents. But eventually DNA analysis would show Kim Jae-su to be his biological father. After the tearful reunion in Seoul, the father and son begin the process of getting to know each other again.

DAWSON: I guess I have always grown up with pretty long sideburns. And looking at him now, I can see where these sideburns have come from.

SOHN (on camera): At the press meeting with his biological father, Dawson talked about another issue that was close to his heart -- helping other Korean adopted children find answers as to why they were sent abroad and to prevent others from following the same path.

(voice over): Dawson says a foundation set up in his name will keep others like him from being caught between two different cultures and not knowing what their biological family looks like.

Sohn Jie-ae, CNN, Seoul.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GORANI: A great story.

Well, the figure here that we have is according to the 2000 U.S. census. Children of South Korean origin are actually the largest group of foreign adoptees living in the U.S.

They -- at 56,825. So...

CLANCY: And he said the hard thing for him always was to have parents that didn't look anything look like him. And then when he went to Korea, he didn't feel a part -- that he was a part of the South Korean society.

At the same time, not bad being a kid and getting adopted by a couple of ski instructors.

GORANI: And winning the Olympics.

CLANCY: That's right.

GORANI: A short break here on YOUR WORLD TODAY.

When we come back...

CLANCY: That's right. Although the U.S. presidential election still isn't until 2008, the fight for campaign money and media attention really under way in earnest.

GORANI: And later, they don't just want help. They want justice. Can a Goodwill ambassador makes a difference for the refugees from Darfur?

We'll have an update.

Stay with us.

(NEWSBREAK)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWSBREAK)

CLANCY: Well, back to our top story, which of course is sell-off on Wall Street Tuesday. Investors really used to the idea that what happens there on Wall Street will reverberate around the globe. But events in Shanghai on Tuesday showed that nowadays it can go the other way, too. One day on, local investors were doing their best to shrug off their losses.

John Vause reports from Beijing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After the plummet, the comeback. China's share markets gained almost half of what they lost the day before.

But still among small investors, unease. Like Mr. Lian, a retiree who's down about a thousand U.S. dollars. "I'm very nervous, he told me. "I don't know why there was such a sudden and sharp fall. It rarely happened before, and there's no official explanation yet." The Shanghai Sneeze, as it's now called, spread across the globe, sparking selloffs from Europe to New York, amid concerns that China's roaring economy may have started to slow.

FRANCIS LUN, FULBRIGHT SECURITIES GEN. MANAGER: China's economy is still growing. So there is fundamental support for the market. It's just that it's overbought and needs the correction.

VAUSE: There's no sign of China's boom ending anytime soon, and some analysts warn there's no relationship between the value of shares and the health of the economy.

RICHARD MCGREGOR, "FINANCIAL TIMES": People in global markets around the world will be using this as an indicator of something that's happening in the real economy is, to put it charitably, eccentric.

VAUSE: The last time China's stock lost so much was on the day paramountly that Deng Xiaoping died, 10 years ago. Back then, barely a glitch on world markets.

But Tuesday's sell-off underlines China's newfound influence in the global economy.

(on camera): The say when the United States sneezes the world gets a cold. But after This tumble on international markets, it could be that the world must keep a close eye on China's temperature as well.

John Vause, CNN, Beijing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(NEWSBREAK)

CLANCY: All right, turning now to the Middle East. Last summer Israel waged a war in Southern Lebanon. It was in an attempt really to crush Hezbollah and free two of its captured Israeli soldiers, and it accomplished neither one of those goals.

GORANI: Well, relatives of those Israeli soldiers have sought the support of the U.N. secretary-general to win the release of their loved ones.

CLANCY: Hezbollah making its own demands, though. They're presenting a major hurdle in the process.

Ben Wedeman has that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He stares out from his official Web site, where Samir Kuntar (ph), an Israeli prisoner since 1979, is depicted as a long-suffering Arab hero.

In Beirut, his brother, Assam (ph), leads the campaign for his release, a campaign that has powerful backers. At a rally last year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah addressed Kuntar (ph), vowing "God willing, we will meet very, very, very soon."

Hezbollah demands the release of Kuntar and three other Lebanese prisoners held by Israel, in exchange for two Israeli soldiers Hezbollah captured July 12th, 2006. The incident, which sparked the 34-day war last summer between Israel and Hezbollah. But who is this man?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Samir Kuntar is not just a regular prisoner. he's a murderer, a very brutal one.

WEDEMAN: In April 1979, Kuntar, then aged just 17, and three other members of the Lebanon-based Palestinian Liberation Front smashed into his Madar Haran's (ph) home in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya, grabbing her husband, Danny, and 4-year-old daughter, Inot (ph). Madar hid with her other daughter, 2-year-old Yael (ph), in a crawl space, where she accidentally smothered Yael her while trying to muffle her cries of fear.

Kuntar forced Danny and Inot by gunpoint to the nearby seashore, where he shot Danny in the back at close range, then smashed Inot's skull with the butt of his gun.

Madar declines to say whether Kuntar, now serving five life sentences, should be released in exchange for the Israeli soldiers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Other considerations should be made, shouldn't include my emotions, personal emotions. Samir Kuntar is not my own prisoner.

WEDEMAN: Ehud Goldvasser (ph) was one of the two soldiers captured by Hezbollah. His father, Shlomo (ph), is desperate to get him back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm considering any way to release my son, any way and any price. I'm talking as a father.

WEDEMAN: Madar Haran knows all too well what it means to grapple with difficult choices.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a second generation of the Holocaust. My mother lost all of her family in the Holocaust, and she want through experiences like this one.

WEDEMAN: A mother and a father contemplating their country's dilemma, to win the freedom of two soldiers by releasing the man an Israeli court found guilty of cold-blooded murder.

Ben Wedeman, CNN, Nahariya, northern Israel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GORANI: "Genocide is not a crime of passion; it is calculated offense." That's a quote. CLANCY: So say a first-hand observer to the Darfur crisis, UNHCR goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie echoing those sentiments during a visit to refugees from Darfur.

GORANI: Meanwhile another actor activist reflects on injustice on Africa's west coast.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEONARDO DICAPRIO, ACTOR: We in the western world don't really understand the way the rest of the world really lives, the majority of people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GORANI: We'll hear from Leonardo DiCaprio and others involved in the film "Blood Diamond" and a new documentary about Sierra Leone's diamond trade. A lot more ahead after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GORANI: Welcome back. You're with YOUR WORLD TODAY on CNN International.

CLANCY: And just in case you didn't know, we are seen live in more than 200 countries all around the globe. Now at the same time a prosecutor in the Hague was handing over evidence against two Sudanese men charged with war crimes in Darfur, a goodwill ambassador and Hollywood star was visiting refugees in the conflict in neighboring Chad.

Angelina Jolie holding hands with some of the youngest residents of this camp just across the border from Darfur, Sudan. She listened to the refugees who she says want more than just a return home. They want justice. A goodwill ambassador for the U.N.'s High Commission of Refugees, Jolie wrote an opinion piece for the "Washington Post" underscoring the importance of the cases now before the international criminal court.

Wrote Jolie, "Accountability is a powerful force. It has the potentially to change behavior, to check aggression by those who are used to acting with impunity. When crimes against humanity are punished consistently and severely, the killers' calculus will change."

Now Jolie arrived at the camp during a blowing sand storm. It was really typical of the harsh conditions faced by 2.5 million people driven from their homes by the Darfur conflict.

GORANI: This weekend, CNN will air a new documentary by Sorious Samura. His first award-winning film gave us a very personal account of Sierra Leone's brutal civil war.

CLANCY: Now in his new work, "Blood on a Stone," Samura investigates the illicit diamond trade from Sierra Leone to the streets of New York. Our broadcast of the documentary will be accompanied by discussions with two Oscar nominated stars of the film "Blood Diamond," Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou.

GORANI: Well Sorious Samura spoke with DiCaprio about his work on that film.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SORIOUS SAMARA, FILMMAKER: You know, I know it was a very difficult time working because this was your first time in Africa and you were thrown at the tough end where you saw some of the pain that most of us went in Africa. You experienced it in the film and you saw a lot of poverty around you as well. What exactly did you take away from Africa? What would you want view viewers, people who see this film to take away from this film?

DICAPRIO: Well, you know, it was hard to play a character like this, it really was. We shot in Mozambique, which doubled for Sierra Leona. And were, you know, in an impoverished country where they just recently sort of had an economic resurgence. But for 30 years, they dealt with civil war there.

And I was playing a character that was a white man taking advantage of another African man surrounded by an African crew, and saying derogatory and insulting things to him and manipulating him for his own advantage. And there was you know, I suppose you can say some symbolism there. But it posed a lot of uncomfortable moments, certainly on set.

DJIMON HOUNSOU, ACTOR: What do you know of the family?

DICAPRIO: The relief agencies are useless. The hospitals are overwhelmed. There are other ways.

HOUNSOU: Liar.

DICAPRIO: Look at me. I know people, white people. Without me, you're just another black man in Africa. All right? We've got no time. What's it going to be?

HOUNSOU: How can I trust you?

DICAPRIO: All right, that diamond could be priceless. We split it and you get your family. What's it going to be, yes or no? Yes or no!

I think that certainly the crew and everyone that worked on the movie knew that this film had ultimately a great message and we needed to show the ugly side too. And I don't think anything in this film at all, certainly after seeing your documentary, I don't think anything in this film is at all exaggerated, you know what I mean? There is no depiction of violence. If anything, we held stuff back from what really occurred, and you know that. You were in it.

SAMARA: I totally agree.

DICAPRIO: But, ultimately, my -- what I was left with, we were there for many, many months, five, six months was quite honestly two things. It was how we in the western world don't really understand the way the rest of the world really lives, the majority of people.

And we live in a culture that is so economically blessed and it's almost like a fantasy world. And you see people that are going through, you know, real, real sincere problems like getting the bare essentials to live like water and food and a place to live.

And what I was left with was how amazing the African people were in a sense that their lust and their joy of life and living each day and every moment to its utter fullest was apparent on the streets. I mean, people in a place like Mozambique were literally dancing in the streets. It was beautiful.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GORANI: There you have Leonardo DiCaprio and Sorious Samara. Our broadcast also includes a roundtable in Los Angeles moderated by Jonathan Mann with the director Edward Zwick and Sorious himself.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: Do you put this behind you now? Is this an easy role to put behind you like the many other roles you've played?

HOUNSOU: No, I don't think so because I have yet to recover from this film. I am still recovering from this film. It was a very charged film emotionally and the physicality of it. The physicality was just overwhelming. It didn't occur to me before ...

MANN: But not emotionality?

HOUNSOU: No, that too. That too. That too.

So yeah, I didn't - I'm still trying to recover.

MANN: How about you? This is your life's work, I guess.

EDWARD ZWICK, DIRECTOR: Oh, he's done so much more than this. What he's done in each of his documentaries is to go into a different world - I'm saying things that you wouldn't dare say about yourself, that whether it's about refugees, whether it's about AIDS in hospitals, I mean it's - you know, I can only imagine where he is going to go next and he probably already knows and won't tell us but he has had three different lifetimes since he made "Cry Freetown."

SAMARA: But what else, the film that - the documentary that we have no made which I am hoping that will add to the understanding that blood diamonds are not yet gone, it's blood on the stone. That's the one that I have traveled around Africa and even here in the U.S. to try and sell (ph) and prove (ph) and every day I do those things I realize that, like I said, I'm a lucky man, but also I realize that we have been given a chance because over the years Africans never get the tell their story.

And I think it's a chance that -- it comes with a lot of risks. There are areas where I have been to where I can't go back but certainly it's a small risk when I know that I am representing the voiceless millions in my continent. The innocent victims who will never get a chance to talk for themselves. Therefore I can't complain.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CLANCY: Sorious Samara of course lived that with his documentary right during the civil war. Diamonds are the fuel for all of the fighting, a lot of the fighting in the conflicts. People want not just the money, but they want the political power that it will buy and the control of the diamond mines. And the things that they did before his eyes, the eyes of the people in Sierra Leona, almost unspeakable. Cutting the hands, the arms of mothers and children and babies and young children. And they couldn't even get adults to do it. And so they had other children do it.

GORANI: Well you have the resource, which is diamonds, which means money, which means financing militias, guerrilla groups, armies, governments, you name it. Anyway, those documentaries are fascinating. All of Sorious Samara's work, and it will follow on the heels of that, as we mentioned there with the Leonardo DiCaprio interview, the acclaimed movie "Blood Diamond." And Sorious Samura served as a consultant on that film.

CLANCY: THat's right, he was a consultant on that.

Do you want to see some more of these discussions? Tune in for that and the documentary "Blood on the Stone" at the times that are shown here on your screen.

We're going to continue with YOUR WORLD TODAY after this short break. Don't go away.

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GORANI: Well, talk about your odd couples. A pair of month old Sumatran tiger twins have become inseparable playmates with a set of orangutans. The four who share a room in the nursery at an Indonesian zoo play, fight, tease each other and cuddle up for a nap when they're worn out. They were all abandoned by their mothers shortly after birth, but it's destined to be a short-lived friendship. Zoo keepers say they'll have to break up the play group eventually before the four grow up and their natural survival instincts kick in. Something tells me that orangutan is a bit more at risk there when he grows up.

CLANCY: Yes, especially at lunchtime.

GORANI: All right.

CLANCY: It's time to check our inbox. Our question of the day focused on the falling stock markets.

GORANI: All right, we've been asking you, have the events of the past two days, that stock market meltdown in China and even on Wall Street yesterday, has all of that caused you to reconsider the way you invest? CLANCY: Well Rick from Louisiana wrote this in: "This sell of yesterday hasn't affected my investing at all. I still stand 90 to 95 percent invested in stocks, the rest in cash waiting to buy more."

GORANI: Oh, risky.

Joe from New York says: "It seems only the wealthy and big business would react to sharp gains and losses."

Joe goes on to say: "The average person has little or no control over these large money maneuvers."

CLANCY: And Bruce and Judith in West Virginia wrote this: "For the systematic investor, a little panic is good. We get more bang for our buck and eventually the panic will pass and the market will rebound."

GORANI: All right. That's always a good long-term investment when you look at historically.

We'd like to hear more from you. E-mail your thoughts to your views, one word, at CNN.com. Include your name, where you're writing from. We'll continue to read a selection throughout the day.

CLANCY: All right, that is our report for this hour. I'm Jim Clancy.

GORANI: I'm Hala Gorani. Do stay tuned to CNN and CNN International, there's a lot more ahead.

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