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CNN Live Today

Starvation in Plain Sight in Niger; Craigslist Blitz; The Voice of Harry Potter

Aired August 12, 2004 - 11:30   ET

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

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The United Nations is appealing for $4 million in emergency aid to help fight the famine in Niger. The crisis there is enormous. More than three million people are in danger of starving to death. Some aid is getting to the drought- stricken country, but it might not be reaching those who need it the most.
Our Africa correspondent Jeff Koinange reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Twenty-two-year-old Halima Moussa has walked several miles to this food distribution center in the country's south, pleading for just one thing: A little milk powder to feed her 3-week-old daughter Baratu (ph). She says she hasn't been able to produce any milk since her child was born and blames it on the ongoing famine that's killed thousands and threatens millions more.

"We are suffering so much," she says. "I have been feeding my daughter with goat's milk for three weeks and look at her now. She's sick." Little Baratu is already showing signs of severe malnutrition.

Niger officials, who are distributing locally-grown millet, tell Halima her infant can't qualify for any food aid until she's at least six months old. Those are the rules. And in a country where one in three are illiterate, few dare to question rules.

Still, Halima pleads her case. "What are we supposed to do," she asks? "Do they want my daughter to die?" But that's exactly what happened to one of Hauwa Abdou's 2-month-old triplets. Six days after they were born, their mother says, there simply wasn't enough milk to go around. One died leaving, Hasana (ph) and Hussaina (ph). They are now fighting for their lives against both a famine and bureaucracy.

"All we are asking for is a little milk. Please give us some milk to feed our children," she pleads. Because they're both walked from another village, neither one qualifies for food aid here. This food aid, they are told, is only for those from this village who can pay the much reduced price.

(on camera): Difficult to reach villages like this are the ones aid workers refer to as bearing the biggest brunt of the ongoing famine. Seven out of children that come to places like this seeking relief are said to be severely malnourished.

(voice-over): What we've seen all over Niger, it's usually men who end up getting the food, although it's the women who do most of the work around here. Many hungry villagers simply stand and watch as the lucky few pay for their rations of millet, the country's staple crop. The same millet is being given away for free by various aid organizations around the country. But the closest point is about 50 miles away, and few have either the energy or the strength to walk that far in a scorching African sun.

Halima's friends plead with the officials on her behalf. Her child is only three weeks old, they say, and she only has two other children. The mother of the twins, Hauwa, has four other children. Such is the complex and complicated nature of food distribution in an equally complex and complicated country. In Niger, everything boils down to family and community.

The elders finally hear the pleas. Halima can have her three scoops of millet, enough, she says, to last her entire family three days. There's no milk powder, they say. Halima says she's grateful she at least came away with something to take home to her starving family. With tiny Baratu strapped firmly in place, she loads her millet and starts her long trek back.

As for mother of twins Hauwa, she has to try her luck at the next village, some 12 miles away. She says she'll need to rest a while before she can gather enough strength to walk. This famine, she tells us, is turning what was once a country of hard-working and energetic people into a nation of beggars.

Jeff Koinange, CNN, in the village of Yanduba (ph) in southern Niger.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: And because this is such an important story, CNN is devoting major resources to it story. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper is reporting live from Niger. You can watch him on "ANDERSON COOPER 360" at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

You can also go to the CNN Web site for more information on aid organizations that are working to ease the suffering in Niger. Who to call, how to donate. It is all there on CNN.com.

Talking about your kids. Are they easily frustrated, fidgety in class? Are those the signs of ADHD or could it actually be something else? Could your child be gifted? We're going take a closer look at how some children are being misdiagnosed. That's just ahead in our "Daily Dose" of health news.

And Harry, Dumbledore, Dobie, do these names ring a bell? Well, I'll talk with the man who brings those characters to life.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Want to show you some pictures first, before we get to Wall Street, from New York and the United Nations. New ambassador -- U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, arriving. He'll be presenting his credentials to Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Of course, this made news yesterday when President Bush (INAUDIBLE) nomination of Ambassador Bolton and used what's called a recess appointment to make him the ambassador. So he gets to work there in New York.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

KAGAN: If you haven't heard, Craigslist is a popular and profitable Internet site. It's booming with surfers looking for everything from furniture, even love.

CNN's Kristie Lu Stout takes us now to San Francisco.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is Craig. He's a simple guy with simple pleasures, like a stroll around the neighborhood. Ten years ago, Craig launched Craigslist to keep his pals up to date with what's happening in San Francisco. Today, 10 million people a month access his site. In terms of traffic, it's one of the Web's top 20 portals.

CRAIG NEWMARK, CRAIGSLIST FOUNDER: I think people like us because of the culture of trust we have, the culture of goodwill and people manage to get stuff done.

STOUT: Craigslist, like its founder, is unfussy and approachable, no registration, no pop-up ads, just a place to find a new job, a new apartment, even a new love interest. Craigslist doesn't charge users for ads, only employers for job listings. Annual revenue at the privately held company is said to be around $7 million to $10 million, prompting eBay to buy a 25 percent stake last year.

Craig remains the chairman of the company. He's also a customer- service representative, handling more than 600 e-mails a day. As for the CEO job, he's handed that over to Jim Buckmaster.

JIM BUCKSMASTER, CRAIGSLIST, CEO: The site is very simple and easy to use. It cuts cross all aspects of life. If you're a newcomer to a city, you can get basically everything that you need to create a new life is there on one site.

STOUT (on camera): The papers are feeling the pinch. Craigslist is so good at online ads, that it's been accused of destroying the classified ad revenue for local newspapers.

(voice-over): Digital media analysts Bob Cauthron says Craigslist is costing Bay Area papers $50 million to $60 million a year.

BIB CAUTHRON, DIGITAL MEDIA ANALYST: The great thing about it, which is fascinating, is that this group of, you know, fewer than 20 people have ended up taking away the most important business franchise for three newspaper organizations in the Bay Area alone that have gross revenues of close to a billion dollars and 6,000 employees. So digital media changes the economics of business altogether. STOUT: He adds the print industry can still compete by decoupling print from online efforts, and by focussing on customer service. Newspapers the world over may soon have to heed that advice.

Craigslist is going global. The site is launching in 19 countries, including India, South Africa and the U.K. Yet Craig insists he has no plans for world domination.

NEWMARK: We've observed over the years that when an organization grows, it grows more dysfunctional as it gets bigger. And no one's really figured out how to solve that. So staying small is really good.

STOUT: Craigslist has little interest in going public, nor does it want to expand from its quaint Victorian home base. Despite the millions of dollars in sales, the eBay investment, and, yes, and the media attention, Craig is holing fast to his guiding principle: keep it simple.

Kristie Lu Stout, CNN, San Francisco.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Now on to a story that you parents will want to pay attention to. If your child fidgets and has trouble paying attention in class, it might sound like Attention Deficit Disorder, but some psychologists are now saying gifted children are often misdiagnosed as having ADHD or other problems, because their behaviors can be the same.

James T. Webb is a psychologist and coauthor of the book "Misdiagnosis and Duel Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults." And he's joining me from Phoenix right now for our "Daily Dose" of health news.

Good morning.

JAMES T. WEBB, PSYCHOLOGIST: Good morning.

KAGAN: Just how prevalent is the this misdiagnosis problem, do you think?

WEBB: You know, actually we don't know how prevalent it is. We simply know it is very prevalent. As a matter of fact, it's a major tragedy, because we're at risk for losing our brightest minds, our nation's greatest resource, the upper three to five percent of the population, those children whom we call gifted, talented, and who the research indicates in regular classroom most often spend one-fourth to one-half of the regular classroom time waiting for others to catch up.

KAGAN: All right, now let's get some of the symptoms up here that -- or some of the characteristics, because I'm sure you caught the attention of some parents out there. You're saying if your child has a high activity level, a long or short attention span, intense reaction to noise, pain or frustration, curiosity, a vivid imagination, verbal proficiency or frustration, that might be labeled as a problem, but you're saying, hold on, you might have a special kid at home.

WEBB: Absolutely. Absolutely. You might add to that list problems with peers, not getting along with age-mates, in the sense that they seem so very slow to you. These children who are so bright also are very intense, very sensitive in many ways. They're intensity is in areas that they like to do, not necessarily what you and I think they should be doing.

KAGAN: So you get a phone call as a parent from the school saying we have a problem with Johnny or Jane, we need to talk. We think your child has these problems. What's the first question that parents should ask?

WEBB: The first question that parents should ask is, is this a problem only part of the time, or is it in all the classes? Also the parents should think, is this behavior that we see also at home, at scouts, in church, on the playground, or is it something that's just in one location?

KAGAN: And then is it a matter of fighting to get your kid into activities and classes that are going to challenge them?

WEBB: Oh, absolutely. And parents really need to be more involved with schools. You know, unfortunately, Daryn, in the last 10 years or so, parents -- actually the last 20 years, parents have backed off of schools. We've come to trust the professionals as though they should know how best to teach our children. In fact, in the last five years, with the focus on No Child Left Behind and other things like that, we now focus on basic minimal levels of competence in our schools. We want all of our children to manage those basic tasks, but our brightest minds, our gifted children, are sitting there bored out of their gourds.

KAGAN: Ask a lot of question. I want to challenge you on this, though. Isn't it possible, though, that some parents are in total denial about their problem children? They might have some of these characteristics, really do have a problem, but they write it off as, oh, well my kid is just gifted, shouldn't have to be disciplined like the other kids at school?

WEBB: Oh, absolutely. I have seen parents like that. And parents need to take an honest look at themselves.

I do also want to say, though, parents, you're not going to be able to necessarily trust psychologists, pediatricians, psychiatrists, family practitioners yet, because these professionals don't receive training about characteristics of gifted children, which is what prompted us to write this book. There are six of us, five psychologists and one pediatrician who used to be with the Mayo Clinic, and writing the book on misdiagnosis and dual diagnoses of gifted children and adults, because there are other diagnoses beyond ADHD that are being given to these children, diagnoses like Asberger's (ph), or Oppositional Defiant Disorder or even Bipolar Disorder.

KAGAN: A lot of concerned parents out there. A lot more information in the book. James T. Webb, thank you. Sorry to cut you off. We have a live event we need to join. This is NASA. We are having I'm sure are a lot of gifted people there.

WEBB: Thank you very much.

KAGAN: Thank you.

WEBB: Thank you, Jim Webb.

This is what's going to happen tomorrow on the space walk as they try to figure out and fix the gap-fillers in the space walk tomorrow.

Let's listen in.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

DAVE WOLF, NASA: And they will simply go in -- we've already started this one -- and do a sawing motion. I forgot my safety glasses.

(LAUGHTER)

WOLF: You can see it's really very easy to do. It will go on through, and that leaves well under a quarter-inch specified remaining component, really more like an eighth of an inch. It should be very smooth.

This might be a good time to take one moment and describe a little bit of why we're doing this. If this were the front of the orbiter, which it really would be more at an angle, but -- and the high-Mach number airstream is normally smooth on the bottom of the orbiter, until we get lower in the atmosphere and it becomes turbulent. That smooth layer is an insulating effect essentially. It keeps the tiles from getting overheated. It limits that temperature. If it hits something like this, it's possible to stir up that air, get it into a mixing turbulent mode and that mixes in the hotter plasmas and raises the temperatures

KAGAN: A little show and tell. We've been listening to astronaut Dave Wolf showing us what the plan is tomorrow for the space walk to go on the outside of the Space Shuttle Discovery to fix these gap-fillers that they're concerned about. If they aren't fixed, what might happen upon re-entry.

By the way, that's supposed to take place starting about 4:00 a.m. tomorrow, Eastern, and that's when our coverage will begin live here on CNN. 4:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m., you'll see it right here on this show, but of course, many hours earlier, beginning at 4:15. Our Miles O'Brien covering that for us.

More news ahead after this. Right now, a quick break.

KAGAN: Pictures we're just getting from the United Nations. That is the new U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, meeting with Kofi Annan as he presents his credentials. And so we go from the world of the United Nations to the world of Hogwarts. Children, maybe even a few grown-ups the world over, know the voice. Make that voices. A British-born actor narrating all six "Harry Potter" books for tape and CD. And we have the voice with us.

Jim Dale becomes Harry, Dumbledore, Dobie, dozens of other Hogwart inhabitants. And he joins me and his voice joins me, right here in Atlanta. What a pleasure.

JIM DALE, "HARRY POTTER" NARRATOR: Nice to be here with you.

KAGAN: Don't want to use too much of the voice. What a cool gig for you.

DALE: Well, it is. It's absolutely marvelous. When I first read the book, I realized that we had something very, very special in the way of an ongoing children's story that would become hopefully as popular as Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland. And I'm sure it will be.

KAGAN: This is your first audio book, in terms of the series being your first.

DALE: That's right. No, I never did an audio book until this. I've spent all these years in show business as an actor and various other things, but never, never, never, attempting an audio book. But in the case of this, "Harry Potter," it's great fun to invent all this.

KAGAN: And how do you do that? How do you come up with the voices?

DALE: With difficulty, Daryn, with difficulty. There are so many voices. You start to think, where can I find the next one? And then you have to think back to the old radio days where the comedians' voices on the radio were very, very special. So I just those voices and certain other characters' voices as a springboard towards the character in the book.

KAGAN: How much free range do you get? Do you get to say this is Harry's voice?

DALE: Yes.

KAGAN: Or do you have to run it by, let's say, J.K. Rowling?

DALE: No. J.K. said -- she said, I trust what you're doing. So it's up to you. And so she's been quite happy with everything I've come up with. I just try to use the voice that describes the character.

KAGAN: Well, share some of the voices with us. Your Harry voice.

DALE: Well, Harry is just Jim Dale. I decided I didn't want a different voice. So this is Harry. That's the way he speaks.

KAGAN: Professor Dumbledore.

DALE: Professor Dumbledore speaks like this. This is a voice very similar to the one of John Houseman, who pronounced every word in the sentence that was important. That sort of springboard to him. Professor McGonagall, she was a Scottish aunt of mine, dear. She used to talk like this when she came to visit me in New York, so I used her voice. I never told her, or she would have been muggled to death, probably.

KAGAN: Yes, but this is a big job for a mere muggle.

DALE: It is, isn't it?

KAGAN: For you...

DALE: And those are the voices, you know. You use them of friends, or just sort of invent them out of mid-air? How do you find a voice for a spider? How do you find a voice for a snake?

KAGAN: You go to your inner spider.

DALE: Go to your inner spider. Yes, exactly.

KAGAN: You've done the six books. Just recently having done the sixth.

DALE: Yes.

KAGAN: Only one more to go. Is there a certain sadness that soon you'll be saying good-bye to Harry and the Hogwarts family?

DALE: Well, it's a bit -- what's going to be nice is having all seven books there, you know, that you can just leave to your grandchildren. And that will be nice.

KAGAN: A wonderful legacy.

DALE: Yes, absolutely.

KAGAN: Very good. Well, congratulations on the series. What do you think of the latest book? Your favorite?

DALE: The latest book, I think, is one of the best. It really is one of the best. And lucky thing I knew it two months ago.

KAGAN: I know.

DALE: And I was the only one in America -- and I really had children begging me to tell them who died.

KAGAN: Stayed secret. The good part was you got to see it first, the bad part, you weren't allowed to tell anybody.

DALE: That's true.

KAGAN: But, now, everyone gets to listen to the voice of Jim Dale, the voice of Harry Potter. Thank you.

DALE: Thank you. Nice to talk to you.

KAGAN: Good luck with number seven...

DALE: Thank you very much.

KAGAN: ... when it comes around in a couple of years.

DALE: Thanks a lot.

KAGAN: And that's going to do it for us. I'm Daryn Kagan. International news is coming up. You're going to want to stay tuned for "YOUR WORLD TODAY." Jim Clancy and Zain Verjee will be with you right after a quick break and I'll see you right here tomorrow morning.

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