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Organizations Struggle To Bring Aid, Evacuate People In Yemen; Rebel Groups Fight Over Yarmouk Camp In Syria; Interview With The Hundred Project Director; ISIS Influence Growing in Afghanistan; Taliban Release Biography of Mullah Omar. Aired 8-9a ET

Aired April 06, 2015 - 8:00   ET

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


[08:00:10] ANDREW STEVENS, HOST: I'm Andrew Stevens in Hong Kong. Welcome to News Stream where news and technology meet.

Houthi rebels continue to advance in Yemen's port city of Aden, but as the fighting continues, the humanitarian situation worsens.

A CNN exclusive: ISIS fighters in Afghanistan as the militant group's reach continues to grow.

And another setback for two of the Bali Nine as an Indonesian court throws out their appeal. They face execution for drug smuggling, but the legal

fight is not yet over.

And we begin with the crisis in Yemen. Aid groups say the humanitarian situation is deteriorating quickly.

Just a short while ago, the Red Cross said a plane is chartered to deliver medical supplies to Yemen's capital had been grounded in Djibouti.

The key port city of Aden has been especially hard hit. The French news agency AFP reports at least 50 people were killed there on Monday in fresh

clashes between Houthi rebels and government loyalists.

Well, for more on the situation in Yemen, we turn now to CNN's Ian Lee. He joins us from Cairo.

And let's just start with the humanitarian picture in Yemen. Ian, how bad is it getting there?

IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Andrew it is getting worse by the day.

We are almost at the two week mark. We have hundreds of people who have been killed, tens of thousand of people have fled their homes. The Red

Cross is saying that they need -- they need food, they need water, they need medical supplies, and they needed it yesterday.

Just to highlight how severe the humanitarian crisis is.

Now they have had Saudi Arabia had said that they were able to bring two planes in, planes full of supplies and planes full of aid workers. As

you've said, those supplies haven't been able to make it.

But they're saying really when you look at the casualties from the fighting from the air strike that these people don't have days, they have hours that

they need to enable to get the proper care that they just aren't able to get at this moment.

And there has been still very heavy fighting in the downtown area of the Port City of Aden, mortar shells, artillery. And despite this airstrikes

that have -- that were supposed to push back the Houthis from the city, that still doesn't seem to be the case.

Now, both sides have said that they're open for negotiations. The Houthis say that they want a neutral party to negotiate a sort of ceasefire and

Saudi Arabia, though, has said that what they want is a ceasefire or negotiations through the GCC, the Gulf cooperation council. Russia has

also called for a ceasefire.

But the one that we're watching closely, too, is from the Red Cross, this humanitarian ceasefire. They're asking for right now is a 24 ceasefire to

really help the innocent civilians in Yemen -- Andrew.

STEVENS: Absolutely. The Red Cross has a plane, but it's been grounded in Djibouti.

Ian, just coming back to that -- the likelihood of a ceasefire, is there a sense that both sides are going through the motions or have they reached a

stage where they are now both looking for a way out of this.

LEE: Well, it's really hard to tell what the political tactics behind each call is. The Houthis, though, are saying the first step to a ceasefire

they want to see is a cease to the airstrikes, which kind of shows that these airstrikes are hurting them. They have been going after their

command and control, their weapons, their ability to make war. And that has put a strain on them. But they said that before they go to any

negotiating table, they want those airstrikes to stop.

And for Saudi Arabia, though, they have said in the past that they want to destroy and degrade the Houthi rebel's ability to make war. And we've seen

them try to do that in their airstrikes.

The interesting thing to note, though, is there was a lot of talk when I was at the Arab summit for a potential ground invasion, and you really

haven't seen much talk about that right now, which shows that that may be not an option that they're really interested in pursuing, which could lead

to the fact that maybe they do want both parties would be more interested in having some sort of negotiated settlement, although for right now

looking at the demands for each party, that looks like it's a long ways off.

STEVENS: And every hour that goes by, the humanitarian situation gets worse.

Ian, thanks very much for that. Ian Lee joining us live from Cairo.

Now to the newly liberated city of Tikrit where Iraqi forces have taken control from ISIS militants. CNN's Arwa Damon is inside an area known as

the presidential palace complex where they've discovered a mass grave. And she filed this report just a short while ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[08:05:35] ARWA DAMON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Three bodies have been recovered from this particular site so far and the teams are working

on a fourth that they just pulled out of the dirt and placed inside another of these bags.

The hands on this particular corpse were bound and we did see them on some of the others. This is very difficult work for the teams. And it's also

emotionally difficult as well.

Earlier, there was an impromptu ceremony held here to commemorate those who had been killed. Many people were in tears.

Now in this particular site they're saying so far -- and they've been working for about four or five hours now, they have found nine bodies.

This is a fairly large mound. They believe in this location they might end up finding about 20 or 30.

So far, they have pinpointed eight sites here inside the presidential compound in Tikrit scattered throughout this sprawling area.

Another two locations have been identified outside of the city on the way to camp Spiker. Now the vast majority of these casualties, and you see the

corpse, the remains being carried away there, but the vast majority of these casualties, if not all of them, are believed to have been the victims

of what is now known as the Camp Spiker massacre when ISIS fighters brutally, mercilessly murdered hundreds if not upwards of 1,500 recruits

when they first took over this area back in June. The families of the dead have desperately been waiting for answers about what happened to their

sons. Many of them had been pleading with the government to get this process quickly underway.

But even though it has begun, it is going to take a very long time to actually exhume all of these various bodies, and then DNA testing will be

underway as well.

What we are hearing from one survivor we spoke to earlier and from experts on the site is that ISIS divided them up into smaller groups and then

executed them at various different locations.

One survivor who is hear who we spoke to came back, because he said he wanted to look for his friends.

Arwa Damon, CNN, Tikrit, Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STEVENS: Now ISIS fighters may have lost control of Tikrit, but they are turning their attention to Afghanistan. Recruiters there are working on

building up a terror network across that country. And they're looking to pull from the ranks of the Taliban.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh looks at the effort to get ISIS off the ground in Afghanistan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Look closely at these men, itching for a fight in the valley south of Kabul, and you can just

make out a new seismic tremor in the war here.

The masks, the webbing, even the breathless clumsiness at altitude Afghanistan has seen before, but not this, the flag of the Islamic State,

ISIS.

These men are Afghans and wanted to show our cameraman their allegiance to ISIS, an act that could get them killed by ISIS rivals, the Taliban, the

big guns here.

"We established contacts," he says, "with ISIS through a friend who is in Helmand. He called us saying ISIS had come to Afghanistan. Let's join

them. We joined and pledged allegiance."

Our cameraman wasn't allowed to film the sat phones they say they used to talk to Iraq and Syria. They say they're religious students who watch back

catalog propaganda and at night go into villages to recruit.

"We don't recruit ordinary people," he says, "we only recruit people with a military background either in the government or in the Taliban. At the

moment, we have no leader, but talks are going on to choose one for us in Afghanistan."

ISIS are only just beginning here, but their timing is good. The Taliban are fractured, either fighting hard or thinking about talking peace, and

the young and the angry who have only known war here might fight ISIS's nihilism appealing. Even Washington has heard the threat that ISIS or

DAESH may pose in the vacuum ahead, slowing the U.S. troop withdrawal.

ASHRAF GHANI, AFGHAN PRESIDENT: It is critical that the world understand the terrible threat that the DAESH and its allied forces pose. From the

west, the DAESH is already sending advance guards to southern/western Afghanistan to test our vulnerabilities.

WALSH: Yet, whatever their strength in the swirling chaos of post-America Afghanistan, even these homemade flags betray a purpose and brutality ripe

for blooming.

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Kabul.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[08:10:07] STEVENS: You're watching News Stream. And still to come on this show, pledging allegiance to Mullah Omar, the Afghan Taliban release a

new biography on their reclusive leader.

And Kenya bombs al Shabaab camps in Somalia have last week's massacre at Garissa that left 147 people dead.

Also, two Bali Nine members slated for execution get a response to their latest appeals.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

STEVENS: Welcome back.

We've now seen a military response to al Shabaab's gruesome attack on a school in Kenya. Reports say the Kenyan air force has just bombed two al

Shabaab camps in Somalia. The cross border strikes follow last week's massacre that killed nearly 150 people at Garissa University College.

The response comes as Kenya identifies the main suspect and offers a reward for his capture. CNN's Christian Purefoy has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIAN PUREFOY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Kenyan authorities have named what they say is the mastermind behind the attack that killed 147

people in Garissa University. He's a man in charge of the militia along the long, porous border of Somalia and cross border attack into Kenya. But

here's what we know so far.

(voice-over): This morning, Kenya on heightened alert. Even Easter prayers, shaken.

The security checks outside churches. Kenyan forces on guard after the terrorist group al Shabaab threatened, quote, "another bloodbath," over the

weekend. Relatives, grieving, in complete anguish as Kenyan forces remain on the lookout for the al Shabaab militant behind the Garissa University

attack that killed nearly 150 people.

The government says Mohamed Mohamud, wanted for a bounty of more than $200,000, is the mastermind. Known by other aliases, the former religious

teacher is the regional al Shabaab commander in the Juba region of Somalia. According to a ministry document given to CNN, the al Qaeda linked militant

is in charge of external operations against Kenya.

Garissa sits on one of the longest religious fault lines in the world. A largely Christian sub-Saharan Africa to the south and a mostly Muslim

population to the north.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our forefathers bled and died for this nation and we will do everything to defend our way of life.

PUREFOY: Meanwhile, Kenyan's interior ministry identifying another attacker, this man, an apparent home-grown terrorist, Kenyan Abdirahim

Abdullahi. The 20 something son of a Kenyan government chief of Somali dissent. His father says his law graduate son has been missing since 2013,

last working for a bank. The ministry says he disappeared to Somalia last year.

I think it's important that when we talk about these people and use phrases such as "mastermind," they are really just using the most basic means as

possible to kill as many people as possible.

Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STEVENS: Christian Purefoy reporting there from Garissa.

Make sure you tune in to Amanpour at 1,800 London time, that's 2:00 a.m. here in Hong Kong.

Christiane will be sitting down with the Kenyan foreign minister to talk about how the country will cope with the threat of terrorism.

Well, the legal fight is not over for two Australians trying to avoid execution in Indonesian. That word comes after a court rejected their bid

to challenge the Indonesian president who had decided not to spare their lives.

Saima Mohsin is following the story for us and she joins us from Bangkok. And Saima, just explain now that this latest avenue -- they'd lost this

latest appeal, where do they go from here?

[08:15:32] SAIMA MOHSIN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, before the court opened its session today and we thought this was the last ditch

attempt. We thought that simply there was nowhere to turn to and this would be either them being able to appeal for against the decision to deny

them Clemency or face death by firing squad, but their lawyers have turned around and said they are not giving up.

Speaking to CNN shortly after the hearing, after those two verdicts for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were read out saying that the appeal had

been rejected, they told CNN in Jakarta that they planned to go to the constitutional court. And what they're going to ask for is a

constitutional review. They're going to try and question the obligations of the president as far as denying clemency is concerned. They want

clearer decisions being made on that.

And this is basically, if I put it in layman's terms, it's them saying, look, we don't believe the president really took a look at these cases in

enough detail. We want him to go back and look at these two individuals and not just deny clemency arbitrarily.

And let's not forget President Joko Widodo gave an exclusive interview to CNN's Christiane Amanpour saying that he will not compromise. He stands

firm. And that there will be no amnesty for drug dealers, because 50 people every single day die in Indonesia due to drugs -- Andrew.

STEVENS: Saima, there's no doubt surrounding the fact that they were guilty of heading up this drugs ring, bringing heroin from Indonesia into

Australia. So what is the defense hoping that they can say or they can show the president why he should be lenient, why he should offer clemency?

MOHSIN: Yeah, absolutely. You've hit the nail on the head. Everyone is saying, and people come up to me in the streets as well here sometimes and

say, look, they're guilty. They are convicted drug dealers. Why should they be given clemency? And why is there so much attention being drawn to

these two men? They're not the only people facing execution either, there are absolutely almost a dozen alongside them and many more still in jail,

too, in Indonesia.

So what the Australian government and their lawyers have repeatedly said is, look, look at these two young men. They were in their 20s when they

committed this offense. They've spent more than 10 years in prison. They were convicted in 2005, almost 10 years rather, and they are remarkable

examples of prison reform.

This is -- they should be held up as examples. They've learned from their mistakes. And we should say, OK, you have done your time in prison, you've

reformed. And just to explain in detail about that, Andrew Chan has become a chaplain inside Kurakasan Prison (ph) in Bali where they've been for

almost 10 years.

And Myuran Sukumaran did an arts degree and is now mentoring other inmates trying to teach them that there are alternatives to life rather than crime.

And as he himself put it in a recent interview, rather than a surefire way and quick way to (inaudible) crime, he's learned that there are other ways

and other paths to take. And that is the focus, and that is why the Australian government has tried to use a spotlight to put that focus on

them to try and effectively put pressure on the Indonesian government and President Joko Widodo hoping that he will grant them mercy as a team of

Islamic scholars as well also asked for -- Andrew.

STEVENS: All right, Saima, thank you very much for that. Saima Mohsin joining us live from Bangkok.

You're watching News Stream live from Hong Kong. We're going to take a short break. We'll be back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:23:02] STEVENS: Welcome back. You're watching News Stream live from Hong Kong.

We're going to return now to our top story, the growing war in Yemen and the growing humanitarian crisis that is a result of the clash between

Houthi rebels and government loyalists.

Well, our Nima Elbagir joins us now from Djibouti. And Nima has just returned from one of the very first aid flights that's been able to get

into Yemen. We join Nima now with the latest on that.

Just describe to us what you've seen over the past few hours, Nima.

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Andrew, this was an Indian evacuation flight that they're trying very, very hard to move as many

people as they can within this very tight window that the Saudi air force has given all of these humanitarian acts, or at least governments trying to

get their people out.

Four hours tops to get to Sanaa, get as many people as they can, and get out. And we really felt that clock ticking down, because as you come in to

Sanaa that sense of just dereliction, that sense of people hiding and fleeing really hits you flying down in. Many of those streets are empty.

We landed on the airport on the tarmac. And the tarmac was pretty much one of the only things in that airport that had been untouched. And you can

see it in these images that we've shot.

The parameter of that airport where the aircraft hangars were, where a lot of that military craft that the Yemeni government had used to be had been

entirely bombed out, Andrew, by the Saudi air force.

And speaking to those fleeing to safety on this Air India plane with us, they said during the day, during that window that the Saudi air force gives

them, that's the only time that people really have to exhale, to try and get their bearings, to try and get food for themselves and their families.

At night, they say, it is absolutely terrifying as the bombs rain down and the bullets are exchanged between those warring factions, Andrew.

STEVENS: How many people can be estimated who are trying to get out now? I take it these were foreign nationals trying to get out? Or was it

anybody who was there, Nima?

[08:25:10] ELBAGIR: It was really anybody who was there. Primarily, of course, it was Indian nationals because it had come through their embassy,

but we saw some Yemenis, we saw a lot of other foreign nationals yesterday on one of the ships that came in. They had about 186 foreign nationals.

If you can get to the airport, which at the moment is not guaranteed, or you can get to one of the ports on the outskirts of Sanaa, Hadei (ph),

there's some of these other ports north of Aden. Then either the ships or the craft -- the aircraft will carry you.

But that in an of itself is very hard. And then of course you're trying to come through the Houthi-held immigration. Some of these people are just

not being allowed out.

And in Aden, we understand, the port has changed hands so many times that the Indian ship that did manage to get close to port to bring some of these

people out, it took fire and they had to ferry people on boats out to it.

So far, they've evacuated 2,500 people just through these -- just through this Indian operation. But it's not enough and it's not over yet --

Andrew.

STEVENS: And the people you were speaking to describing that the fear for their lives in lawless Sanaa, the capital, Red Cross has been talking about

this growing humanitarian crisis, no power, no clean water, Nima, in many parts of the country now. What sort of sense did you get of the actual

humanitarian crisis, the ability just to survive now in the capital?

ELBAGIR: Well, when we spoke with Doctors Without Borders, and that was in Aden, so where the situation is actually tougher, even, than it is in

Sanaa, they said that their teams are having to sleep in the hospital, that a lot of their local staff are risking their lives, taking their lives in

their hands just to move between their homes and the hospital to continue to provide some skeleton of humanitarian service to the people caught

inside this, inside Yemen.

It just sounds like we're not even hearing all of the reality of this situation, because in a lot of places the communication links have been

hit, it's very difficult to get definitive information on a lot of this -- on a lot of what's actually happening on the ground.

So, for many of those humanitarian actors, they don't even know how bad it yet is, Andrew.

STEVENS: Nima, thank you very much for that. Nima Elbagir has just returned from a humanitarian flight into the Yemen capital Sanaa to pick up

people fleeing the civil war there.

And Nima, thanks for that.

Still to come here on News Stream, a tug of war for power in Afghanistan. The Taliban trying to win back influence from ISIS in a self-published book

on the Taliban leader Mullah Omar. We'll be joined by Ivan Watson just after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:30:12] STEVENS: I'm Andrew Stevens in Hong Kong. Welcome back. You're watching News Stream. And these are your world headlines.

Reports say Kenya has launched a wave of airstrikes on al Shabaab camps in Somalia. Kenyan officials say the cross border raids are part of their

ongoing fight with al Shabaab and are not necessarily retaliation for last week's university massacre in Garissa that killed nearly 150 people.

The Red Cross says a plane it chartered to deliver medical supplies to Yemen's capital has been ground in Djibouti. Aid groups have been

struggling to deliver much needed supplies to Yemen during the ongoing conflict.

An Indonesian court has rejected an appeal by two Australians on death row. It says it has no authority to challenge the Indonesian president who

decided not to spare their lives. But the legal fight is not over yet. Lawyers say they will file a constitutional review on the president's

decision.

A television comedian now the latest person to interview Edward Snowden, the former U.S. security agency contractor living in Russia. HBO's John

Oliver flew to Moscow to question Snowden. He asked him about the leaks he made and why Americans should care about government surveillance.

Now thousands of Palestinians trapped inside a Syrian refugee camp are pleaded for help in evacuating. The UN says ISIS and al Nusra Front have

almost complete control over the Yarmouk Camp.

CNN's Kush Bushar has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KUSH BUSHAR (ph), CNN CORRESPONDENT: A war is being waged in a Palestinian refugee camp in the suburbs of Damascus. Residents have had little access

to food, water and aid.

The few times it has been allowed in during the war, residents have swarmed. Most still going without.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): As you see, brother, houses are ruined and destroyed. We are afraid to sleep in the upper floors. We, as

Palestinian refugees, are asking the PLO to find a solution for this situation here. We are tired of hunger and thirst. We do not have food or

medicine here.

BUSHAR (ph): Tens of thousands of refugees are trapped as militants battle for control of this neighborhood in the Syrian capital.

ISIS and other rebel groups now control almost all of the Yarmouk camp. Amateur video released by media outlets associated with ISIS purport to

show fighters in the nearly emptied out camp shooting guns and cheering in the streets Sunday.

Palestinian residents have called the refugee camp home since they first fled the Arab-Israeli war. At the start of the Syrian civil war, more than

150,000 refugees lived here. But relief workers say those numbers dwindled as an already vulnerable population camp under siege.

PIERRE KRAHENBUHL, UN RELIEF AND WORKS AGENCY: It has never been as grave and desperate as it is now in Yarmouk Camp. It is a place that has been

besieged for two years where about 18,000 people have been surviving on very minimal assistance for a long time.

BUSHAR (ph): Yarmouk has been a battleground since 2011, the start of the civil war. First, between Syrian troops and rebel groups, now there are

reports of kidnappings, beheadings and mass killings in the camp, says the Palestinian Liberation Organization. And amidst this, the humanitarian

crisis in the refugee camp grows.

Fighting has intensified in recent days. Video surfaces of smoke rising from the Yarmouk neighborhood after purported shelling by regime forces on

ISIS positions in the camp.

More than 2,000 people have fled in recent days, but thousands still remain trapped in the violence.

Kush Bushar (ph), CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STEVENS: Now, as ISIS finds a growing presence in Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban appear to be trying to counter its influence in the country. The

group has just published a biography on its supreme commander Mullah Omar.

Now senior international correspondent Ivan Watson joins us now from Hong Kong. And Ivan, you've been looking at this document and there does seem

to be a suggestion that it's now being released to counter the presence of ISIS in Afghanistan. Is that your take on it?

IVAN WATSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, we've spoken to one former member of the Taliban. And he's made it clear he thinks this

is to dispel rumors that Mullah Omar has died, that one of the main messages here is to argue that Mullah Omar is still, in fact, the leader of

the Taliban.

And some of this is coming from the fact that Mullah Omar, who was notoriously camera shy even when the Taliban was ruling Afghanistan --

there were only believed to be a couple of photos of him in existence since the Taliban was kicked out of Kabul by the U.S. bombing campaign in 2001,

he really has not really been seen or heard. There have been written statement purportedly made by him, distributed by the Taliban, but he

hasn't really been seen or heard. And that's where a lot of this speculation, the rumor mongering that he may not be alive anymore has come

from.

So, this biography not only claims that he's still in charge, but it also describes his daily routine, how he gets up and prays in the morning, how

he studies the Koran and then begins giving orders to Taliban commanders and officials and different commissions.

It describes that Mullah Omar's preferred weapons of choice was the rocket- propelled grenade during more than a decade of fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during which he was wounded a number of times

during which he was blinded in his right eye.

And then when it does come to the question of ISIS, well, part of this might be to counter the fact that the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

has declared himself the caliph, the leader of the world's Muslims and it's very important to note that in this biography, the writers here stress the

fact that in 1996 Mullah Omar was declared to be the leader of the faithful by a gathering of Afghans in Afghanistan.

So trying to underscore his religious credentials at a time when that leadership appears to be challenged elsewhere in the Muslim world --

Andrew.

[08:36:56] STEVENS: Ivan, thank you very much for that. Ivan Watson with the latest on the new biography of Mullah Omar.

Still ahead here on the show, one man has collected a rare set of images that aims to rebrand the word entrepreneur. After the break, we'll talk to

him about his vision behind the other 100 entrepreneurs. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

STEVENS: Welcome back.

Chandran Nair says he wants to tell the story of the ordinary business owner through a portfolio series called The Other Hundred Entrepreneurs.

It features 100 unique stories about enterprising business founders from 95 countries.

He found some pretty interesting people with some very innovative ideas.

Now Kristie Lu Stout spoke to him about his project.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHANDRAN NAIR, PROJECT DIRECTOR, THE OTHER HUNDRED: 95 percent of the world's entrepreneurs are not tech giants or run tech companies, never met

an investment and haven't been to a business school.

Haiti was struck by a catastrophic earthquake and we like this story because it's about a woman entrepreneur and engineer who realized that a

great amount of the destruction was caused by the fact that people didn't have access to good building material.

Quite often, we tend to emphasize entrepreneurs as men and this is a woman and an engineer who created a very interesting company. So we thought we'd

focus and showcase that.

This has become one of the most popular images from the book that we've had as the website has gone live. And this is about a guy who loves books. He

buys secondhand books. He doesn't have a shop. And he essentially sits by busy road junctions, et cetera, against traffic and he has a pile of

secondhand books which he then sells.

South Africa is seen in a place where the underclass black population are uneducated. One of the overarching sort of goals of the book is to

confront stereotypes.

This is a great way to expose people to what Iran is. The farmer who essentially felt that the nomadic communitiest hat passed through his land

were essentially bringing cattle, sheep, et cetera that would create quite a bit of damage to his cropland. But he also found that there was -- it

took them a lot of time to cross the river, so he put up a rather simple pulley system to help them get across and charge them a bit of money to do

that.

I think this is a really interesting example of being creative. And the entrepreneurship exists in the most remote parts of the world and people

think of very interesting ideas.

Part of the book's message is that we should see beyond the headlines sometimes in countries. Today Russia is in the headlines for all the

reasons of geopolitics and tensions. And it's quite often we need to be reminded that these countries are extremely large. And there are people

bringing very many things.

I like this particular one, because here is a person with a technical background who is dipping into the reservoir of knowledge in that country

and building kind of toys, but they are not simply computer toys, but real practical things with mechanical parts and rather beautiful and sort of

reflect on a different time and era.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[08:42:11] STEVENS: And another key tenet of the project: combining great photos with great stories. Nair said that a requirement of the book was

that every submission had to be accompanied by a narrative if the person pictured.

And that's News Stream. Thanks for joining us.

END