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Live From...
Israelis Raid Refugee Camp; Financial Woes Revealed at NASA; Silver Ring Thing Promotes Teen Abstinence
Aired May 20, 2004 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DREW GRIFFIN, ANCHOR: At this hour, pointing fingers. Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi is blaming Ba'athists and the Coalition Provisional Authority for a raid on his compound.
Iraqi police and U.S. military take away computers and documents from that home. Officials say the raid part of a probe into suspected fraud in the government ministry.
The U.S. denying it killed members of a wedding party during a raid near Iraq's boarder with Syria. Iraqi witnesses say the raid hit a home, killing at least 20 guests. The video you see shows at least a dozen bodies being buried. A coalition spokesman says the raid targeted foreign fighters entering Iraq.
Rallying the Republicans. President Bush meets behind closed doors with GOP lawmakers. House and Senate Republicans say the president gave an upbeat assessment of the war in Iraq and his re- election campaign. They say the president got a standing ovation during that closed-door meeting.
And in the Mideast popular Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti is found guilty of murder and attempted murder. An Israeli court convicted him on four charges, including murder counts stemming from three deadly attacks. Barghouti is disputing the court's authority. He will be sentenced next month.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, ANCHOR: Up first, Middle East crisis. Israel's campaign in southern Gaza intensifies. Israeli forces battle machine gun and anti-missile fire as they pound on Palestinian neighborhoods.
Palestinian sources say at least eight people were killed today in Rafah.
Matthew Chance joins us via videophone from Gaza City -- Matthew.
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fredricka, thank you.
And despite international criticism of Israel's military action in the Gaza strip, that military action has been intensifying.
They seem to be stepping it up, if anything, with Israeli military officials telling us that more than 1,000 Israeli troops have now been deployed in and around the Rafah refugee camp, where this operation to find militant and weapons smugglers has been taking place. Those troops have been backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, and there have been fierce clashes against with Palestinian militants in heavily populated areas of that Rafah refugee camp.
Our sources telling us at least eight more Palestinians have been killed in the latest fighting. They're bringing to about 40 the number of Palestinians that have been killed in the three days of this operation, an operation which has become one of the most intensive and one of the most bloody in many years here in the Gaza strip.
WHITFIELD: Matthew chance in Gaza City. Thanks very much for that report via videophone.
GRIFFIN: He is already the $200 million man and new numbers are due out on the Bush and Kerry campaign war chests.
WHITFIELD: Also ahead, saying "I don't" to peer pressure. Getting teens and their parents on the same page.
GRIFFIN: And how is your child's blood pressure? It's not just a problem for adults anymore.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRIFFIN: Medical news. New guidelines suggest it's never too early to start screening for high blood pressure. The American Society of Hypertension says even kids as young as 3 should be tested.
CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us with the details on this.
Kind of shocking to me.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is. It's a little scary. Because when you think of high blood pressure, you usually think of adults. You don't think of children as having high blood pressure, but indeed they do. And that has spurred the National Institutes of Health to put out new guidelines.
They say that children should start having their blood pressure tested beginning at age 3. Pediatricians are already supposed to do this. It doesn't always happen.
And that lifestyle changes should be suggested if the child has high blood pressure, such as exercise and eating right. And drugs should be a last resort. And an echocardiogram should be considered to see if the child's heart is OK.
And what they've seen is that kids more and more are -- have high blood pressure and the reason for that is that more and more children are overweight, unfortunately. And this has increased over time.
Let's take a look. There was a study that looked at high blood pressure among kids in 1998 versus 2000. The group of kids in '98 compared to 2000. The systolic, which is the top number of blood pressure, went up 1.4 points, and the diastolic went up 3.3 points. Now those numbers sound little, but what happens is any little increase in blood pressure greatly increases the chances that that child will grow up also to have hypertension. Of course, hypertension linked to heart attacks and strokes and other diseases.
GRIFFIN: I can't remember my own children, taking them to the doctor, anyone ever taking their blood pressure. Do doctors know what the regulations are? Are they the same blood pressure as an adult?
COHEN: Well, one of the problems is that it's tricky measuring blood pressure in children. Not the actually measurement itself but figuring out what the numbers mean.
With adults, it's relatively easy: 120/80 is always the number that people use as a benchmark. With children, it greatly depends on the child's weight, the child's height and the child's age.
So there is no one magic number that says this is too high or this is OK. So there are all these charts that doctors have to use. So there's no one number for parents to look for. It's a little complicated.
GRIFFIN: And if your child does have high blood pressure, what's the cure? What do they do?
COHEN: Well, there are several steps that you ought to take before you put your child on drugs. A lot of people think drugs are the answer. High blood pressure drugs can have some pretty serious side effects.
So first, think about getting your child active. That will help get their blood pressure down, help them to lose weight. Eating healthy, of course, also very important.
And in general, parents need to be involved in their health. It can be very difficult to get a child to lose weight, which is basically what you need to do to get a child to get their blood pressure down. But it's so important.
GRIFFIN: Certainly hard for adults.
COHEN: That's right. So you've got to figure it's got to be even harder for children.
GRIFFIN: Thank you.
COHEN: Thanks.
WHITFIELD: Another concern involving young people. The teen pregnancy rate in Britain has some parents so worried, they're turning to American teenagers for help. It is called the Silver Ring Thing, abstinence and jewelry, hand in hand.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: Houston, NASA's got an accounting problem. A former auditor says significant errors were made in financial statements for the space agency. Some mistakes were in the billions of dollars.
CNN's Lisa Sylvester reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LISA SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): NASA may be able to accomplish great feats in outer space, but financially it's out of orbit.
Among the findings by independent audit firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, $565 billion in accounting errors that stem from NASA's conversion to a new financial system; $2 billion in unaccounted funds and an insufficient audit trail.
GREGORY KUNZ, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE: If you think about an individual reconciling their checkbook to the monthly bank statement, they basically were not doing it during the last fiscal year.
EDWARD HUDGINS, CATO INSTITUTE: If this had happened in the private sector, heads would roll. The board of directors would have cleaned out management. The investors would have said, "No way are we going to put our money into this kind of an operation."
SYLESTER: This is not the first time NASA's finances have been called into question. The international space station is five times over budget.
The X-33, which was to replace the shuttle, cost taxpayers nearly $1 billion before being shelved.
In a hearing on Capitol Hill, NASA's chief financial officer defended the agency and promised to track the unaccounted money.
GWEN BROWN, NASA CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER: ... reconciling my checkbook for the last five years. And I will continue that until I'm able to get to a point where I am comfortable in knowing where each and every dime went.
SYLVESTER: But critics say NASA's culture, which was in part to blame for the Columbia disaster, is hindering the agency.
There are ten separate NASA centers, each with its own separate accounting department, with little oversight from headquarters.
Robert Walker, a member of the Moon to the Mars Commission, believes NASA's latest mission could be in jeopardy.
ROBERT WALKER, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: In order for NASA to sustain that kind of mission, it has to be credible and particularly its finances have to be credible. And what we see and hear is that at the present time, that credibility is lacking.
SYLVESTER (on camera) : Lawmakers are also criticizing NASA for buying a billion-dollar financial system that still cannot produce basic financial statements for Congress that's required by law. And the software used by the new accounting system is almost obsolete. It's no longer sold by the manufacturer, and tech support will no longer be available after 2012.
Lisa Sylvester, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRIFFIN: If you're in the market for a new house, we have some good news for minority homebuyers. Details when we check Wall Street.
WHITFIELD: With gas prices still going up and supplies tightening, is the world running out of oil? That's ahead.
GRIFFIN: And later, the fine line between genius and madness. What makes the difference inside your brain?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRIFFIN: Sure to be a topic on both of those shows, the candidates' campaign coffers. Today is the monthly deadline for President Bush and Senator John Kerry to report financial records to the Federal Election Commission.
So far, the president's campaign coffers runneth over. The president has raised more than $203 million for the re-election bid. Senator Kerry has raised about $110 million.
WHITFIEDL: News around the world now.
In London, major security concerns at the British House of Commons. Two men charged in a powder-tossing incident are due to appear in court next Wednesday.
Prime Minister Tony Blair was nearly hit with purple powder yesterday. It turns out to be a harmless substance, corn flour.
Also in London, a controversial new bank opens. The world's first embryonic stem cell bank will store and supply stem cell lines or strains of identical cells that can be used for research for the treatment of diseases, including diabetes, cancer and Parkinson's.
Stem cell research has sparked debate around the globe.
And it sounds like the movie plot of "The Thomas Crown Affair." French police are investigating the disappearance of a $3 million painting by Pablo Picasso. The oil on canvas was being restored at a warehouse in northwest Paris and was discovered missing Friday.
GRIFFIN: If you're a parent, you know how troubling it can be to talk to your child about sex and peer pressure. A program called the Silver Ring Thing is going to lend a hand.
WHITFIELD: Inside the creative mind: why some of the world's most creative people also battle mental illness. Doctors connect the dots. GRIFFIN: And quicker than you can say Frasier Crane, Kelsey Grammer is back.
All that and more as LIVE FROM continues this Thursday, May 20.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRIFFIN: A story about honesty paying off, especially for the man we're going to show you, Jose Oriano (ph).
He was cleaning out a bus last week when he found a wallet. Guess what? It belonged to Cincinnati Reds pitcher Danny Graves. Graves lost the wallet during a trip to the West Coast last week.
And inside it, as you can imagine from a major leaguer, $1,400 in cash and credit cards.
Oriano (ph) didn't think twice. He mailed it back to Graves, in return, asking for just an autographed picture, please. And Graves said he'll send him an autograph, money and much more.
WHITFIELD: Wow, money's always good. Especially if Mr. Oriano (ph) might be in the market for a new house. You think he'd give him that much money?
GRIFFIN: Nice segue. Very good. Buying a home is now within reach of more Americans.
WHITFIELD: And that's always good news. Rhonda Schaffler can fill us in with the rest -- Rhonda.
(STOCK REPORT)
WHITFIELD: Too much sex too soon, that's how a group of British mothers see it. Now they hope a Silver Ring Thing from America will help convince teens that chastity is a virtue.
CNN's Diana Muriel explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DIANA MURIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These days sex is everywhere you look. Powerful sexual images in almost every mall, magazine and movie. Worried parents say it's tough to protect their kids.
MARY MACALISTER, SILVER RING THING: I've noticed with my daughter the 11-year-old, that there is just this pervasive stuff going on whereby she, for example, would be buying some of these teenage magazines.
And, you know, I would then take a closer look at them and just find articles in there that would really bother me that I would think were really not appropriate for an 11-year-old.
MURIEL: This group of wealthy middle class mothers in London's stockbroker belt have had enough. They're introducing a campaign from the states called the Silver Ring Thing that will encourage 11- to 18- year-olds to pledge not to have sex.
ALISON HUNT, SILVER RING THING: If they do decide to take on the pledge, then they buy a ring and they also are given their Silver Ring Thing Bible.
And it costs 10 pounds for that. Everything is at cost. So it's not a lot of money to spend when you think it's a huge commitment of your life.
MURIEL: Reverend Denny Pattyn, a 52-year-old Pittsburgh pastor and founder of the Silver Ring Thing movement, is here in the U.K. to spread the word.
REV. DENNY PATTYN, SILVER RING THING: A decision of this magnitude, making an abstinence commitment until marriage, requires all the strength you can have.
But even greater than that is a conviction from within. A conviction of God living within them is probably the greatest source of strength that they have.
MURIEL: This emphasis on religion resonates with some kids. Eleven-year-old Bianca Bellafiore will be taking the pledge next month.
BIANCA BELLAFIORE, SILVER RING THING PLEDGE: Not all teenagers do this and believe that -- believe in the Lord. And by doing this, they're helping people also get more religious.
And they're helping them be healthier because -- and live longer in a way. Because this they do have sex before they're married something wrong could happen to them.
MURIEL: Out and about on a Friday night in central London, sex doesn't seem to be very far off these young people's minds. Few takers for the Silver Ring Thing here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People are more interested in, like, having some fun before they get married. And essentially, they're not about staying pure, as it were, until they were married. And that's what the girls do now (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In an age where marriage has questionable values in itself, it's a lot to ask that people hold that back.
MURIEL (on camera): This area of Soho, London's one-time red light district, will also be the location for one of the rallies the Silver Ring Thing organization is planning as part of its June campaign here in the U.K. The venue is a church.
(voice-over) Whether such an openly religious approach will work in Britain is not clear. The government sex education advisors say preaching abstinence won't control teenage pregnancy or counter the rise in sexually transmitted diseases. GILL FRANCES, TEENAGE PREGNANCY UNIT: Anybody that either is parenting an adolescent or is working with young people knows that if you say no to them, they'll go and do it. So it doesn't actually quite make sense.
MURIEL: Yet, despite the skepticism, the Silver Ring Thing mothers have faith their message will get through.
Diana Muriel, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Well, welcome to the third hour of LIVE FROM. I'm Fredricka Whitfield.
GRIFFIN: And I'm Drew Griffin. Miles and Kyra are off today.
Let's check the headlines.
WHITFIELD: First up, Iraqi police and American military personnel raid the home and offices of Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi. Afterward, an angry Chalabi lashed out at the Coalition Provisional Authority and former Ba'athists he says control the Iraqi police forces.
Chalabi was a darling of the Pentagon before the war.
Well, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, two more photos have surfaced, each showing an American soldier at Abu Ghraib prison grinning over the body of a dead Iraqi man.
U.S. officials confirm the man died after questioning by CIA personnel in Iraq. The Defense Department and the CIA inspector general are investigating.
Burying the dead. Iraqis in the Associated Press video can be seen burying at least a dozen bodies, including small children. But it's not clear how they died. Iraqi witnesses say U.S. aircraft fired on a wedding party early Wednesday, killing more than 20 people.
Coalition military officials insist the raid near the Syrian border targeted foreign fighters.
International condemnation has not stopped Israel's military incursion into the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza.
Palestinian sources say at least eight Palestinians were killed today alone, including a local Hamas militant leader. Since Tuesday, they say 40 Palestinians have died and 107 have been wounded.
Israel says it's shutting down tunnels used to smuggle arms.
GRIFFIN: Plain talking president Harry Truman once noted if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.
Decades later and thousands of miles from Washington, Ahmed Chalabi might be musing on those words after being rousted and raided by his former friends in the U.S. military.
Today, Iraqi police raided Chalabi's home and offices today, ostensibly on a fraud investigation that doesn't involve Chalabi directly. That's not how he sees it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired May 20, 2004 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DREW GRIFFIN, ANCHOR: At this hour, pointing fingers. Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi is blaming Ba'athists and the Coalition Provisional Authority for a raid on his compound.
Iraqi police and U.S. military take away computers and documents from that home. Officials say the raid part of a probe into suspected fraud in the government ministry.
The U.S. denying it killed members of a wedding party during a raid near Iraq's boarder with Syria. Iraqi witnesses say the raid hit a home, killing at least 20 guests. The video you see shows at least a dozen bodies being buried. A coalition spokesman says the raid targeted foreign fighters entering Iraq.
Rallying the Republicans. President Bush meets behind closed doors with GOP lawmakers. House and Senate Republicans say the president gave an upbeat assessment of the war in Iraq and his re- election campaign. They say the president got a standing ovation during that closed-door meeting.
And in the Mideast popular Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti is found guilty of murder and attempted murder. An Israeli court convicted him on four charges, including murder counts stemming from three deadly attacks. Barghouti is disputing the court's authority. He will be sentenced next month.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, ANCHOR: Up first, Middle East crisis. Israel's campaign in southern Gaza intensifies. Israeli forces battle machine gun and anti-missile fire as they pound on Palestinian neighborhoods.
Palestinian sources say at least eight people were killed today in Rafah.
Matthew Chance joins us via videophone from Gaza City -- Matthew.
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fredricka, thank you.
And despite international criticism of Israel's military action in the Gaza strip, that military action has been intensifying.
They seem to be stepping it up, if anything, with Israeli military officials telling us that more than 1,000 Israeli troops have now been deployed in and around the Rafah refugee camp, where this operation to find militant and weapons smugglers has been taking place. Those troops have been backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, and there have been fierce clashes against with Palestinian militants in heavily populated areas of that Rafah refugee camp.
Our sources telling us at least eight more Palestinians have been killed in the latest fighting. They're bringing to about 40 the number of Palestinians that have been killed in the three days of this operation, an operation which has become one of the most intensive and one of the most bloody in many years here in the Gaza strip.
WHITFIELD: Matthew chance in Gaza City. Thanks very much for that report via videophone.
GRIFFIN: He is already the $200 million man and new numbers are due out on the Bush and Kerry campaign war chests.
WHITFIELD: Also ahead, saying "I don't" to peer pressure. Getting teens and their parents on the same page.
GRIFFIN: And how is your child's blood pressure? It's not just a problem for adults anymore.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRIFFIN: Medical news. New guidelines suggest it's never too early to start screening for high blood pressure. The American Society of Hypertension says even kids as young as 3 should be tested.
CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us with the details on this.
Kind of shocking to me.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is. It's a little scary. Because when you think of high blood pressure, you usually think of adults. You don't think of children as having high blood pressure, but indeed they do. And that has spurred the National Institutes of Health to put out new guidelines.
They say that children should start having their blood pressure tested beginning at age 3. Pediatricians are already supposed to do this. It doesn't always happen.
And that lifestyle changes should be suggested if the child has high blood pressure, such as exercise and eating right. And drugs should be a last resort. And an echocardiogram should be considered to see if the child's heart is OK.
And what they've seen is that kids more and more are -- have high blood pressure and the reason for that is that more and more children are overweight, unfortunately. And this has increased over time.
Let's take a look. There was a study that looked at high blood pressure among kids in 1998 versus 2000. The group of kids in '98 compared to 2000. The systolic, which is the top number of blood pressure, went up 1.4 points, and the diastolic went up 3.3 points. Now those numbers sound little, but what happens is any little increase in blood pressure greatly increases the chances that that child will grow up also to have hypertension. Of course, hypertension linked to heart attacks and strokes and other diseases.
GRIFFIN: I can't remember my own children, taking them to the doctor, anyone ever taking their blood pressure. Do doctors know what the regulations are? Are they the same blood pressure as an adult?
COHEN: Well, one of the problems is that it's tricky measuring blood pressure in children. Not the actually measurement itself but figuring out what the numbers mean.
With adults, it's relatively easy: 120/80 is always the number that people use as a benchmark. With children, it greatly depends on the child's weight, the child's height and the child's age.
So there is no one magic number that says this is too high or this is OK. So there are all these charts that doctors have to use. So there's no one number for parents to look for. It's a little complicated.
GRIFFIN: And if your child does have high blood pressure, what's the cure? What do they do?
COHEN: Well, there are several steps that you ought to take before you put your child on drugs. A lot of people think drugs are the answer. High blood pressure drugs can have some pretty serious side effects.
So first, think about getting your child active. That will help get their blood pressure down, help them to lose weight. Eating healthy, of course, also very important.
And in general, parents need to be involved in their health. It can be very difficult to get a child to lose weight, which is basically what you need to do to get a child to get their blood pressure down. But it's so important.
GRIFFIN: Certainly hard for adults.
COHEN: That's right. So you've got to figure it's got to be even harder for children.
GRIFFIN: Thank you.
COHEN: Thanks.
WHITFIELD: Another concern involving young people. The teen pregnancy rate in Britain has some parents so worried, they're turning to American teenagers for help. It is called the Silver Ring Thing, abstinence and jewelry, hand in hand.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: Houston, NASA's got an accounting problem. A former auditor says significant errors were made in financial statements for the space agency. Some mistakes were in the billions of dollars.
CNN's Lisa Sylvester reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LISA SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): NASA may be able to accomplish great feats in outer space, but financially it's out of orbit.
Among the findings by independent audit firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, $565 billion in accounting errors that stem from NASA's conversion to a new financial system; $2 billion in unaccounted funds and an insufficient audit trail.
GREGORY KUNZ, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE: If you think about an individual reconciling their checkbook to the monthly bank statement, they basically were not doing it during the last fiscal year.
EDWARD HUDGINS, CATO INSTITUTE: If this had happened in the private sector, heads would roll. The board of directors would have cleaned out management. The investors would have said, "No way are we going to put our money into this kind of an operation."
SYLESTER: This is not the first time NASA's finances have been called into question. The international space station is five times over budget.
The X-33, which was to replace the shuttle, cost taxpayers nearly $1 billion before being shelved.
In a hearing on Capitol Hill, NASA's chief financial officer defended the agency and promised to track the unaccounted money.
GWEN BROWN, NASA CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER: ... reconciling my checkbook for the last five years. And I will continue that until I'm able to get to a point where I am comfortable in knowing where each and every dime went.
SYLVESTER: But critics say NASA's culture, which was in part to blame for the Columbia disaster, is hindering the agency.
There are ten separate NASA centers, each with its own separate accounting department, with little oversight from headquarters.
Robert Walker, a member of the Moon to the Mars Commission, believes NASA's latest mission could be in jeopardy.
ROBERT WALKER, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: In order for NASA to sustain that kind of mission, it has to be credible and particularly its finances have to be credible. And what we see and hear is that at the present time, that credibility is lacking.
SYLVESTER (on camera) : Lawmakers are also criticizing NASA for buying a billion-dollar financial system that still cannot produce basic financial statements for Congress that's required by law. And the software used by the new accounting system is almost obsolete. It's no longer sold by the manufacturer, and tech support will no longer be available after 2012.
Lisa Sylvester, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRIFFIN: If you're in the market for a new house, we have some good news for minority homebuyers. Details when we check Wall Street.
WHITFIELD: With gas prices still going up and supplies tightening, is the world running out of oil? That's ahead.
GRIFFIN: And later, the fine line between genius and madness. What makes the difference inside your brain?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRIFFIN: Sure to be a topic on both of those shows, the candidates' campaign coffers. Today is the monthly deadline for President Bush and Senator John Kerry to report financial records to the Federal Election Commission.
So far, the president's campaign coffers runneth over. The president has raised more than $203 million for the re-election bid. Senator Kerry has raised about $110 million.
WHITFIEDL: News around the world now.
In London, major security concerns at the British House of Commons. Two men charged in a powder-tossing incident are due to appear in court next Wednesday.
Prime Minister Tony Blair was nearly hit with purple powder yesterday. It turns out to be a harmless substance, corn flour.
Also in London, a controversial new bank opens. The world's first embryonic stem cell bank will store and supply stem cell lines or strains of identical cells that can be used for research for the treatment of diseases, including diabetes, cancer and Parkinson's.
Stem cell research has sparked debate around the globe.
And it sounds like the movie plot of "The Thomas Crown Affair." French police are investigating the disappearance of a $3 million painting by Pablo Picasso. The oil on canvas was being restored at a warehouse in northwest Paris and was discovered missing Friday.
GRIFFIN: If you're a parent, you know how troubling it can be to talk to your child about sex and peer pressure. A program called the Silver Ring Thing is going to lend a hand.
WHITFIELD: Inside the creative mind: why some of the world's most creative people also battle mental illness. Doctors connect the dots. GRIFFIN: And quicker than you can say Frasier Crane, Kelsey Grammer is back.
All that and more as LIVE FROM continues this Thursday, May 20.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRIFFIN: A story about honesty paying off, especially for the man we're going to show you, Jose Oriano (ph).
He was cleaning out a bus last week when he found a wallet. Guess what? It belonged to Cincinnati Reds pitcher Danny Graves. Graves lost the wallet during a trip to the West Coast last week.
And inside it, as you can imagine from a major leaguer, $1,400 in cash and credit cards.
Oriano (ph) didn't think twice. He mailed it back to Graves, in return, asking for just an autographed picture, please. And Graves said he'll send him an autograph, money and much more.
WHITFIELD: Wow, money's always good. Especially if Mr. Oriano (ph) might be in the market for a new house. You think he'd give him that much money?
GRIFFIN: Nice segue. Very good. Buying a home is now within reach of more Americans.
WHITFIELD: And that's always good news. Rhonda Schaffler can fill us in with the rest -- Rhonda.
(STOCK REPORT)
WHITFIELD: Too much sex too soon, that's how a group of British mothers see it. Now they hope a Silver Ring Thing from America will help convince teens that chastity is a virtue.
CNN's Diana Muriel explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DIANA MURIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These days sex is everywhere you look. Powerful sexual images in almost every mall, magazine and movie. Worried parents say it's tough to protect their kids.
MARY MACALISTER, SILVER RING THING: I've noticed with my daughter the 11-year-old, that there is just this pervasive stuff going on whereby she, for example, would be buying some of these teenage magazines.
And, you know, I would then take a closer look at them and just find articles in there that would really bother me that I would think were really not appropriate for an 11-year-old.
MURIEL: This group of wealthy middle class mothers in London's stockbroker belt have had enough. They're introducing a campaign from the states called the Silver Ring Thing that will encourage 11- to 18- year-olds to pledge not to have sex.
ALISON HUNT, SILVER RING THING: If they do decide to take on the pledge, then they buy a ring and they also are given their Silver Ring Thing Bible.
And it costs 10 pounds for that. Everything is at cost. So it's not a lot of money to spend when you think it's a huge commitment of your life.
MURIEL: Reverend Denny Pattyn, a 52-year-old Pittsburgh pastor and founder of the Silver Ring Thing movement, is here in the U.K. to spread the word.
REV. DENNY PATTYN, SILVER RING THING: A decision of this magnitude, making an abstinence commitment until marriage, requires all the strength you can have.
But even greater than that is a conviction from within. A conviction of God living within them is probably the greatest source of strength that they have.
MURIEL: This emphasis on religion resonates with some kids. Eleven-year-old Bianca Bellafiore will be taking the pledge next month.
BIANCA BELLAFIORE, SILVER RING THING PLEDGE: Not all teenagers do this and believe that -- believe in the Lord. And by doing this, they're helping people also get more religious.
And they're helping them be healthier because -- and live longer in a way. Because this they do have sex before they're married something wrong could happen to them.
MURIEL: Out and about on a Friday night in central London, sex doesn't seem to be very far off these young people's minds. Few takers for the Silver Ring Thing here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People are more interested in, like, having some fun before they get married. And essentially, they're not about staying pure, as it were, until they were married. And that's what the girls do now (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In an age where marriage has questionable values in itself, it's a lot to ask that people hold that back.
MURIEL (on camera): This area of Soho, London's one-time red light district, will also be the location for one of the rallies the Silver Ring Thing organization is planning as part of its June campaign here in the U.K. The venue is a church.
(voice-over) Whether such an openly religious approach will work in Britain is not clear. The government sex education advisors say preaching abstinence won't control teenage pregnancy or counter the rise in sexually transmitted diseases. GILL FRANCES, TEENAGE PREGNANCY UNIT: Anybody that either is parenting an adolescent or is working with young people knows that if you say no to them, they'll go and do it. So it doesn't actually quite make sense.
MURIEL: Yet, despite the skepticism, the Silver Ring Thing mothers have faith their message will get through.
Diana Muriel, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Well, welcome to the third hour of LIVE FROM. I'm Fredricka Whitfield.
GRIFFIN: And I'm Drew Griffin. Miles and Kyra are off today.
Let's check the headlines.
WHITFIELD: First up, Iraqi police and American military personnel raid the home and offices of Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi. Afterward, an angry Chalabi lashed out at the Coalition Provisional Authority and former Ba'athists he says control the Iraqi police forces.
Chalabi was a darling of the Pentagon before the war.
Well, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, two more photos have surfaced, each showing an American soldier at Abu Ghraib prison grinning over the body of a dead Iraqi man.
U.S. officials confirm the man died after questioning by CIA personnel in Iraq. The Defense Department and the CIA inspector general are investigating.
Burying the dead. Iraqis in the Associated Press video can be seen burying at least a dozen bodies, including small children. But it's not clear how they died. Iraqi witnesses say U.S. aircraft fired on a wedding party early Wednesday, killing more than 20 people.
Coalition military officials insist the raid near the Syrian border targeted foreign fighters.
International condemnation has not stopped Israel's military incursion into the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza.
Palestinian sources say at least eight Palestinians were killed today alone, including a local Hamas militant leader. Since Tuesday, they say 40 Palestinians have died and 107 have been wounded.
Israel says it's shutting down tunnels used to smuggle arms.
GRIFFIN: Plain talking president Harry Truman once noted if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.
Decades later and thousands of miles from Washington, Ahmed Chalabi might be musing on those words after being rousted and raided by his former friends in the U.S. military.
Today, Iraqi police raided Chalabi's home and offices today, ostensibly on a fraud investigation that doesn't involve Chalabi directly. That's not how he sees it.
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