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CNN Student News
Aired March 07, 2002 - 04:30 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.
ANNOUNCER: You're watching "CNN STUDENT NEWS" seen in schools around the world because learning never stops and neither does the news.
MICHAEL MCMANUS, CO-HOST: Time for your March 7 edition of "CNN STUDENT NEWS". We top things off with an election headline out of Zimbabwe.
SHELLEY WALCOTT, CO-HOST: From elections to the Internet, we check out downloading freeloaders in cyberspace.
MCMANUS: Then we're off to outer space in our "Science Report."
WALCOTT: And finally, we get a physics lesson from Barbie.
Welcome to "CNN STUDENT NEWS". I'm Shelley Walcott.
MCMANUS: And I'm Michael McManus.
With just days to go before Zimbabwe's presidential elections, confusion and anger mount among voters and international leaders. The government has designated more than 4,500 polling stations, but it's uncertain where they'll be.
WALCOTT: It's also unclear who will be voting and whether there will be observers at the polls. Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe since its independence from Britain in 1980, has been criticized for his handling of the election. He raised eyebrows earlier this week after changing the election rules.
And as Jeff Koinange reports, that alone has raised the temperature of a campaign racked by violence.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They came from Matabala Land (ph) in southern Zimbabwe, farmers and businessmen, pensioners and housewives. They are all Zimbabwean by birth or by choice, but today they found, they are no longer wanted here. President Robert Mugabe says everyone who wants to vote in this weekend's historic elections must be a citizen of Zimbabwe, and anyone pledging allegiance to more than one country automatically becomes ineligible. Many here like 82-year-old Adi Joyce Lipsco, who came to the then Rhodesia from England in 1959, holds two passports but considers herself Zimbabwean first and anything else second.
ADI JOYCE LIPSCO: I'm Still British. I still have a British passport, but I am still in this country. I've no need to go anywhere other than here.
KOINANGE: And others, like 64-year-old Florence Frieda Mae Alport, who feels it's more about votes than citizenship.
FLORENCE FRIEDA MAE ALPORT: And I've sworn allegiance to this country twice, first as Rhodesia, then as Zimbabwe. And now I've been told that I have no citizenship. So I've come to sort that out so that I can vote. I'm destined to vote on Saturday.
KOINANGE: The same feelings are echoed among these newly disenfranchised people who suddenly find themselves aliens in their own country. Generations of Zimbabweans who now have no home to call their own.
(on camera): Whites make up less than 1 percent of Zimbabwe's 13 million people. That's hardly enough of a swing vote to tilt the election in either direction, but it's enough to frustrate an already fed up community, who've had their fair share of harassment and intimidation throughout the past 18 months.
(voice-over): But it's not just whites who are being targeted by this new law. Sophie Shieybu (ph) left Botswana in 1949 and considers herself and her five children as Zimbabwean as the next person. She too has been told she may have to return to her country of origin.
SOPHIE SHIEYBU: And I'm scared. I don't have anywhere to go from now. I'm so scared, and I don't know what is going on.
KOINANGE: And nothing, not even the presence of commonwealth observers, can make sense of this latest development.
GEN. ABUSALAMI ABUBAKAR, COMMONWEALTH OBSERVER MISSION: There are some people who are disenfranchised by the laws, and they went to court and they are now trying to find out really whether they're Botswanese. And that's why we're here, to see what is happening.
KOINANGE: We caught up with Tim Cherry, who's representing 300 angry and confused white Zimbabweans.
TIM CHERRY, ADVOCATOR: The voters have been brought to court two-and-a-half days before elections open. A massive number of voters, and it's almost impossible to have each case determined fairly and fully in the time available. And the disturbing feature of Mr. Zidi's (ph) evidence is that he has told the court that he has actually struck the people off the voter's roll.
KOINANGE: We tried to get someone from the government to comment, but they referred all our queries to Harare. They say they are only following orders from the top. In the meantime, the frustrations of a community are best summed up by 84-year-old Angela Forbes, who's lived in this country since 1926.
ANGELA FORBES: But I think it is because of the color of our skins. He just wants us all out. And they know that we can't take any money out with us. So if we go, we go as poor people. It'll be done, which is sad.
KOINANGE: Jeff Koinange, CNN, Bulawyo.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCMANUS: Political news from the Golden State tops our "Headlines" today. In the California gubernatorial primary race, a stunning upset by businessman Bill Simon. He was a virtual unknown when he first entered the race last year, but his conservative message won voters over. And yesterday, he defeated former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan in the Republican primary. Simon will now face California Governor Gray Davis this November.
Now to the northern part of the state where a story of a congressman and his intern friend made even bigger headlines. Her name is Chandra Levy; his, Congressman Gary Condit. She went missing last spring and he was in the spotlight. There were more questions than answers and political experts said Condit's career was all but over. The congressman wanted to prove them wrong and ran for reelection.
But as Frank Buckley reports, the voters of California made their own decision.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Gary Condit emerged from his home as a loser in an election for the first time in 30 years of running for political office.
REP. GARY CONDIT (D), CALIFORNIA: Anyway I want to thank everybody in the 18th Congressional District for giving me this opportunity. It's been a great opportunity to be in public service and represent them in Washington, D.C., and I'll never forget it.
BUCKLEY: Few will forget the last months of Condit's time in Congress, the negative publicity resulting from the Chandra Levy case clearly affecting Democrat voters who turned in large numbers to a former Condit aide, State Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza who beat his former political mentor by a wide margin.
DENNIS CARDOZA: Let me thank Congressman Condit for 30 strong years of service and to the tradition to the people of our community and to our nation.
BUCKLEY: Condit didn't mention Cardoza in his brief statement, but Chad Condit couldn't hold back his contempt for his father's former protege. CHAD CONDIT: What a shameful individual, takes a tragedy of a missing young person and turns it into a run for Congress. Wow.
BUCKLEY: Condit trailed in the polls and in fund-raising, but he hoped three decades of public service...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
BUCKLEY: And a message to defy the media would help him win.
Some voters stood by him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a Condit supporter, and I'll probably always be a Condit supporter.
BUCKLEY: But observers say a lack of public contrition over the Levy matter did him in.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That district was looking for that, and he would have been fine.
BUCKLEY: Condit says he doesn't know what he would have done differently.
REP. GARY CONDIT (D), CALIFORNIA: Life deals you all kinds of situations, and it's not the situations, it's how you handle it, and I tried to be a gentleman. I tried to be dignified.
BUCKLEY: Congressman Condit says he will finish out his term, but about his life beyond Congress, he said just before the election, I haven't thought about doing anything else.
Frank Buckley, CNN, Modesto, California.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCMANUS: So, remember Napster, the online service that used to offer music for free? Well after a run through the courts, Napster itself got burned. It is now a subscription service, but piracy is still alive and well. Need proof? Last year, blank CDs outsold prerecorded ones. So when it comes piracy, it may just be a case of new technology threatening older ones.
Ann Kellan explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Go to any college campus and you'll find a lot of downloading going on, music, old TV shows, even movies like "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi."
The Internet is competing and threatening traditional outlets, like radio, recording studios and movie theaters.
The threat is aimed at the bottom line. For the first time since the 1980s, the record industry made less, a half billion dollars less, in 2001 than it did the previous year. Most of its losses blamed on what the industry calls -- quote -- "online pirates and CD burning."
And now thanks for faster Internet connections, the movie industry is starting to get a taste of online theft.
KELLAN (on camera): The Mask of Zorro," "American Pie." It's easy to find off the Internet?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes it is.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The popular ones.
KELLAN (voice-over): Some downloading is legal, a lot is not.
HILLARY ROSEN, CEO RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOC. OF AMERICA: Many people say we brought this problem on ourselves because our music wasn't technologically protected. Now we have to take those steps.
KELLAN: Steps like special CDs that block users from downloading the music onto their computers. Singer Charlie Pride, for example, released a protected CD. It earned him a lawsuit that has since been settled. Disgruntled consumers claim that protected CDs are inferior, and make it difficult to make copies for even personal use.
And some of those who make CD players and discs don't like it. Phillips, for example, will not incorporate blocking mechanisms into its discs. Let's face it, we're used to making copies of CDs or TV shows, which is allowed under what's called the "fair use doctrine." Would these blocking devices put an end to that?
MARK RASCH, PREDICTIVE SERVICES ATTORNEY: That's one of the issues, whether you can prohibit certain kinds of locks on the DVDs because that inhibits fair use.
KELLAN (on camera): To counter free services, record labels and radio stations are offering online subscription services like "Music Net," "Press Play" and "Full Audio." For a monthly fee, you can download a certain number of songs. Whether people buy in remains to be seen.
(voice-over): Moviemakers hope to avoid the chaos that unfolded in the music industry. If technology and bandwidth allow, companies like Columbia Tristar hope you'll be able to legally download a movie like "Black Hawk Down" off the Internet within a year.
BENJAMIN FEINGOLD, PRESIDENT COLUMBIA TRISTAR MOTION PICTURE GROUP: If there's consumer demand on the Internet for films to be downloaded, we want to meet that demand at the beginning.
KELLAN: In the meantime, they're loading up their DVDs with extra features and scenes, to entice people to choose to buy the discs rather than waste time downloading poor quality movies off the Internet.
Ann Kellan, CNN, Washington. (END VIDEOTAPE)
ONSCREEN: March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
WALCOTT: The crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd, opening day is just around the corner for Major League Baseball. Now that's welcome news for avid fans, including two major fans of the Baltimore Orioles.
This week, we've celebrated women's history with women artists, business leaders and athletes.
More female fans there today as John Zarrella introduces us to two women rooting for the O's in good times and in bad.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Mike.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi.
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Kathy Sachs and her daughter, Heather, are baseball fans in the purest sense of the word.
HEATHER SACHS, BALTIMORE ORIOLES FAN: Oh! That was a nice try. Don't hurt yourself.
ZARRELLA: Win or lose, and the Baltimore Orioles do quite a bit of losing these days, Kathy and Heather are in the stands, no complaints, no angry calls to sports talk radio.
H. SACHS: I love baseball. All right! Full season ticket holders, never miss a game, travel to other stadiums. You got have a hobby.
KATHY SACHS, BALTIMORE ORIOLES FAN: Every year, all 81 games.
H. SACHS: I'm not particularly a stathead. I'm not one of those people that -- Fred Smith batted .227 against one-armed right-handers in 1932.
ZARRELLA: For two weeks, every spring, their devotion brings them from Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale, most of the time spent under the sun at the stadium.
H. SACHS: Pardon the glow from my tan.
ZARRELLA: They know every Orioles player and coach and get a bit annoyed with people who don't.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Matt Riley?
H. SACHS: Mark Wiley, pitching coach. All right! Good job. Way to go, Jay! ZARRELLA (on camera): Are you responsible for getting your daughter all hyped up over baseball?
K. SACHS: We used to go to old Memorial Stadium, and now it's continued and now it is the both of us. My husband doesn't like sports.
ZARRELLA (voice-over): Mother and daughter are walking Orioles billboards, baseball caps covered in collectible pins honoring even unpopular players.
(on camera): Albert Belle. He must have been one of your favorites?
H. SACHS: He didn't like you guys, but he certainly loved us fans.
ZARRELLA (voice-over): For Heather and Kathy Sachs, this diamond is a girl's best friend.
John Zarrella, CNN, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Exploring our world, here now is "CNN STUDENT NEWS" "Perspectives."
MCMANUS: It's a strange but familiar kind of phrase for someone in combat to "fight like a man." In the Mid East, that phrase has taken on literal meaning as Israeli women gear up for military roles. With Israelis and Palestinians engaging in some of the bloodiest fighting in months, the role of women in the military has come under fresh fire.
CNN's Jerrold Kessel reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The face of actions which, away from the Palestinian intifada, has the Israeli army, Israeli society agonizing. Young Israeli women have always been drafted like their male counterparts. Israeli military command had thrown open virtually every combat rule to young women conscripts.
PRIVATE YAEL, ISRAELI ARMY: We are happy that we can prove ourselves that we are in the same quality like men even if we are women and we got the chance and maybe are not so strong but still there are things we can do.
KESSEL: Preparing for patrol, Private Yael settles in behind her machine gun. But while mixed units may please many Israelis, they're also creating alarm among religious and especially ultra-religious men soldiers.
Don't tear the nation's army apart, the slogan of a demonstration outside Israel's defense headquarters in Tel Aviv. Rabbi Elijezer Chenfield (ph) is a colonel in the army reserves.
"It hurts the quality of the army," he says. "Religious men can't serve in a combat unit alongside women." And he adds, "that will force religious men to leave the army and that will be very damaging because religious soldiers serve everywhere. They're very much on the front lines."
The protestors are not, they say, against women serving in non- combat jobs. But this teacher outlined the objections about mixed combat units in graphic terms.
HAIM SHAHAR, ISRAELI EDUCATOR (through translator): If our boys will have to serve with women in the base, in the same room, in the same tank, in the same shower, it'll be a sin. That sin will cancel out the blessing it is to serve in the army. They'll simply refuse to be drafted and the nation will be split.
KESSEL: The split, say counter-protesters, is caused by the ultra-religious who look, they contend, for excuses not to serve.
AVI PARTISKY (ph), ISRAELI MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT (ph): Equality between the sexes is something new. They want to live in a theocracy. Well theocracy never changes. It's always the same god and it is always the same people, but democracy does change. That's the beauty of it.
KESSEL: The job of this mixed unit in the Negev desert is to patrol the border with Egypt. Though it's a peace border, a spot exercise is sometimes required on what to do in the event of a hostile incursion. Before this new unit came here, the task was filled by the army calling up reserve soldiers.
The intifada and Israel's idea of universal conscription both drive the army's top brass to welcome the extra source of fighting forces. But the challenge now is how to convince more ultra-religious men, who have the option of continuing religious studies rather than joining the army, to serve in combat roles when women do so.
Anxious about the mixed gender units, Israel's chief rabbis called in the Army Chief of Staff. General Shaul Mofaz was anxious to promise that the army will balance its mixed unit's policy with those religious concerns.
LT. GEN. SHAUL MOFAZ, CHIEF OF STAFF, ISRAELI ARMY (through translator): Because we have a common interest, we will solve the problem so that religious men can continue making a major contribution to our needs and to the security of Israel.
KESSEL: Back at base, it's time to check out times of guard duty. Stop, girls ahead, the friendly injunction ahead of the female barracks where there's no hiding the distinctly feminine quality of life inside those quarters.
The army's real problem, says one expert on military organizations, is that men have trouble competing against women, especially if they prove not just the equal of men but their betters.
MARTIN VAN CREFELD, MILITARY HISTORIAN: I think it's not the fault of women, I think it's the fault of men. For a man to fight against a woman and lose means that he loses. If a man fights against a woman and wins, he also loses. It's not that the women can't do it so much as the men cannot take it. And therefore, whenever women come into the military, and not only into the military in considerable numbers, men will simply leave.
KESSEL: Field commanders insist not only are the women soldiers not a handicap to their unit, positively the reverse.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The world has changed. We've become equal.
KESSEL: This is a paramilitary border police unit where women conscripts have been included in combat roles for some three years already. With the Palestinian intifada raging on, this is considered the front line, scrutinizing traffic through a checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Sergeant Libby Abramov has been in uniform for over a year. One of her colleagues was shot in the face during such a patrol along the West Bank-Israel border. The first women in combat to be seriously hurt. It doesn't deter her, Sergeant Abramov insists.
SERGEANT LIBBY ABRAMOV, ISRAELI ARMY: Israel is a small country, and if it will take only boys to the army, it will be a small manpower. And I think we give a lot, you understand. We're doing the same like they do.
KESSEL (on camera): Two-prong pressure which the army as a whole, society as a whole is seeking to grapple with, trying to resolve this new dilemma of who best to fight Israel's battles together.
Jerrold Kessel, CNN, Tel Aviv.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ONSCREEN: Cost of sending up a Space Shuttle is about $450-500 million.
MCMANUS: Well we have our eyes on the skies for today's "Science Report." First up, a risky mission for the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia. Wednesday, two astronauts successfully replaced a power unit on the Hubble Space Telescope.
The telescope had to be completely shut down, the first time since it went into orbit 12 years ago. The work on Hubble has been compared to a heart transplant. The seven-hour spacewalk to repair the $2 billion telescope was a nail bitter for NASA. And it was the third spacewalk in as many days for Columbia's crew.
One woman who can tell you all about the rush of a ride in space is Sally Ride. In 1983, she became the first U.S. woman in space. These days, Ride spends a lot of time visiting classrooms to tell young people about her space visits.
Janice McDonald reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JANICE MCDONALD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These days she can walk into a classroom of sixth graders and no one glances up. They've heard of her, they've studied her, but Sally Ride looks a bit different today then when she made that walk across the shuttle platform and into the history books in 1983, becoming the first female astronaut traveling aboard the space shuttle, the Challenger.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lift off of SDS7 and America's first woman astronaut, and the shuttle has cleared the tower.
MCDONALD: Though she has a Ph.D. in astrophysics, is an author and a college professor, these days she does a lot of this.
SALLY RIDE, FIRST FEMALE ASTRONAUT: You're now learning why asteroids can hit the Earth.
MCDONALD: And this.
RIDE: You joined the club, right?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
RIDE: Do you have your little bag, there's a picture of me in there. I can put your name on that. I've signed it.
MCDONALD: She has founded the Sally Ride Science Club, a club devoted to trying to get girls interested in careers in science and math.
RIDE: There you go.
MCDONALD: Science festivals like this one at the all female Agnes Scott College and sponsored by the Atlanta Girls School, help girls see that careers in science can be fun.
RIDE: Going up.
We think that there are a lot of girls who have the aptitude for careers as doctors, as oceanographers, as computer scientists, who are moving away from those careers before they really give themselves a chance to understand the opportunities and to explore the opportunities.
MCDONALD: Dr. Ride says she's focusing on upper elementary and middle school students, because that's generally when the girls start falling prey to peer pressure. Having grown up in a time when women in math and science careers were a rarity, she said she had no mentors to look up to.
RIDE: It just became very clear to me how important it was for young girls growing up to have role models and to have encouragement and to really get the feeling that there were lots of opportunities that were open to them, they just needed to recognize it.
If Mars happens to be here when the asteroid goes here, the asteroid will hit Mars.
MCDONALD: And having an astronaut personally talk to you about life in space doesn't hurt.
RIDE: I mean it's just -- it's fun. It's fun from launch to the time that you get weightless in orbit until the time that you can look down and view the Earth.
CLOE DAVIS, AGE 11: Whenever somebody comes and I get to meet them and they already do something or they're a professional in something that I like a lot, I think that kind of inspires me to want to do that.
REBECCA BUTLER, AGE 11: When I grow up I want to be a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, and so it just really helps me to understand about how it is and how it is living up in space.
ANNIE GIBBS, AGE 11: Just the fact that you know she was -- she -- a women went up in space and she was -- she likes science and you know, she was just really interested in what it was like and I think that I could do that too, someday, maybe, if I wanted to.
MCDONALD: That's just the attitude Dr. Ride and her club are trying to instill.
Janice McDonald, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCMANUS: Time now to head back over to the main anchor desk and Shelley with today's "Student Bureau Report."
Shelley, what are we talking about today?
WALCOTT: Well, Mike, today we're talking about Barbie. Did you know that about 173,000 Barbies are sold everyday?
MCMANUS: Oh my gosh.
WALCOTT: That's about two every second.
MCMANUS: That is a lot of dolls. And remind me again, why are we talking about dolls?
WALCOTT: Well, Mike, we're actually talking about science. Confused, well you won't be once you watch this "Student Bureau Report" about students learning physics from Barbie. Yes, Barbie.
For the explanation, we go to Lakeside High School in St. Petersburg, Florida.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) THOMAS VERMEER, CNN STUDENT BUREAU, (voice-over): Emily Milroy is learning many physics principles today, but she isn't reading them out of a textbook. Her and her classmates are doing a project they call Bungee Barbie.
(on camera): Everyone has been put into teams. Emily, Amanda, Spencer and Stephanie have all been working hard to get a Barbie and bungee cord ready for competition.
(voice-over): Lorie Gifford, the class instructor, explains the rules for this activity.
LORIE GIFFORD, CLASS INSTRUCTOR: This project is about using physics and math to design a Bungee Barbie apparatus that will allow the students to drop Barbie off a platform and -- with the goal of getting as close to the ground as possible without hitting.
EMILY MILROY, STUDENT: I think we'll do pretty good. We had good test trials. To get an A you have to get in the 30 centimeter range from the ground and for not Barbie to smash into the ground (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
VERMEER: The team carefully measures the length of the rubber band and prepares for the drop. After watching several other Barbies take the plunge, it's now their turn. Barbie gets very close to the ground, but the competition is harsh.
(APPLAUSE)
Some Barbies don't make it.
MILROY: She got in the extreme jump both times. We didn't make it to the finals, but Barbie did good. She didn't smash in half.
VERMEER: Win or lose, a good lesson is learned.
MILROY: I learned that it takes teamwork to pull off something like this, and that physics can be fun.
VERMEER: Thomas Vermeer, CNN Student Bureau, St. Petersburg, Florida.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALCOTT: That's a lot of fun.
And you won't want to miss tomorrow's Student Bureau segment. We'll feature another illustrious lady, Aaliyah. Find out how her star continues to shine.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ONSCREEN: "Where in the World?"
U.S. statehood: September 9, 1850 (31st state).
Lowest point: Death Valley.
State flower: Golden Poppy.
Can you name this state?
California, U.S.A.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCMANUS: OK, guys, we want to let you know what we've got going on on the Web. We have more on our lead story, Zimbabwe elections, including maps, a history of the African nation, check this out, plus a profile of the candidates.
WALCOTT: And it's Science Day so you'll want to head to the Science and Technology section where you'll find stories on language in space, beneficial bacteria, plus much, much more.
Mike, you've got a pretty nice science story coming up in a couple of weeks.
MCMANUS: I do. This thing's not only cool but it's really interesting. I head up to Washington, D.C. and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History to explore the wonderful world above. This is definitely going to be a fun one.
WALCOTT: Cool. Sounds like fun.
We'll see you tomorrow right here. Have a good day.
MCMANUS: Bye-bye.
WALCOTT: Bye-bye.
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