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CNN STUDENT NEWS for April 15, 2002

Aired April 15, 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.

SUSAN FRIEDMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Monday kicks off another week of CNN STUDENT NEWS.

We lead off unrest in the Middle East, the current crisis and the problems presented by the past.

MCMANUS: We also focus on food safety. Does terror threaten our food supply? Don't miss our special series.

FRIEDMAN: More health and fitness fodder in perspective as we check out new trends in exercise. Get wet or just sweat.

MICHAEL MCMANUS, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, a peek into the past. Visit a Southern church with a lifesaving secret. History and heritage served up in our culture report.

FRIEDMAN: Welcome to CNN STUDENT NEWS. I'm Susan Friedman.

MCMANUS: And I'm Michael McCanus.

Secretary of State Colin Powell argues his case for peace in the Middle East. The question now is what, if anything, that argument will yield.

FRIEDMAN: Powell met this weekend with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The secretary of state's trip to Mr. Arafat's bombed out compound has angered many Israelis.

CNN's Jerrold Kessel will have more on that coming up.

But first, we look forward to the next stops on Powell's cease- fire mission, Beirut and Damascus.

The secretary of state will meet with Lebanese leaders about cross border attacks. The U.S. is concerned that the crisis between Israelis and Palestinians could become a regional conflict.

And, as CNN's Major Garrett reports, those fears are bringing new terminology like containment into play. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MAJOR GARRETT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): While the world focuses on Powell's efforts to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian cease- fire, the first priority of the Bush White House is to prevent the conflict from spreading to neighboring Lebanon or Syria.

RICHARD ARMITAGE, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE: We're very concerned with that. That's why the United States has exerted tremendous pressure on Iran and Syria to refrain Hezbollah from these actions.

GARRETT: For two weeks, Hezbollah guerrillas backed by Iran and Syria have traded fire with Israeli forces. Powell will travel to Beirut and Damascus to meet with leaders of both countries to halt what the U.S. regards as dangerous and destabilizing provocation.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: an issue of accountability for the parties in the region. Secretary Powell is in the region to call to account all of the parties that have a role to play here, to play a responsible role.

GARRETT: Top aides say they hope Powell can contain the conflict even if he fails to negotiate an immediate cease-fire. And those talks are mired in the question of Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank and pushing Palestinians to act against terrorism.

Senior officials on Sunday noted some progress, but said Israelis and Palestinians still had much more to do.

RICE: This has been a decades old conflict and there's a reason for that. And that is that it requires hard steps to move forward.

GARRETT: Senior aides say containment is a modest and achievable goal, a prelude to more progress. But some in Congress want more.

SEN. CHUCK HAGEL (R), NEBRASKA: The time for nibbling around the edges is over. We are seeing an escalation of a magnitude that we've probably never seen with the kind of unprecedented violence.

GARRETT: But other analysts warn that bold moves could come back to haunt the Bush White House.

DAVID MAKOVSKY, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR MIDDLE EAST POLICY: I think the administration wisely says unless we know that a political process is going to be approved, we are not going to set the bar so high that we're setting ourselves up to fail.

GARRETT (on camera): The White House says progress in the Middle East is nothing if not incremental. And for now, senior advisers say, success is measured not by startling breakthroughs, but by making sure things aren't getting any worse.

Major Garrett, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE) JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's a picture most Israelis didn't want to see, the U.S. secretary of state sitting down with Yasser Arafat. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has called Colin Powell's decision a tragic mistake, fearing it might serve to rehabilitate the Palestinian leader as a peace partner. Still, one of his allies in the Knesset is hopeful the United States will come to its senses.

NATAN SHARANSKY, ISRAELI CABINET MINISTER: We here in this unique situation when terrorists are all over the world but the only place in the world where terrorists have the autonomy built by one man, Yasser Arafat, I don't think that in this situation America will follow Mr. Arafat.

KESSEL: Yasser Arafat used to be identified for many Israelis with the promise of peace. At the beginning, when peace was going well, over two thirds believed he was their partner. Support remains relatively high, over 50 percent, as the two sides, despite difficulties, continued working for a permanent end to their conflict. During the past 18 months of struggle, Arafat has been increasingly identified as not only not a partner, but as the enemy, a terrorist, with two thirds now saying in the latest Israeli poll they want him expelled from the region.

One sign of the Israeli public's distaste for the Powell-Arafat meeting, the harsh language used by some in the media. One editorial calls the meeting "Powell's Suicide Mission," saying, "It looks as if Yasser Arafat isn't alone these days in wanting to be a martyr to his cause."

Ariel Sharon's tactics of seeking to isolate Yasser Arafat are broadly endorsed, even if it is at a cost.

EHUD YAVARI, ISRAELI ANALYST: Since the outbreak of this cycle of violence 18 months ago, it's Arafat's finger on the trigger of the Israeli gun. It's Chairman Arafat who decides what Israel does. That is, he is forcing Israel, including Prime Minister Sharon, to take actions which they are probably against the best Israeli interests. It was not our interests to reoccupy Palestinian cities. It may not be our best interest to expel Mr. Arafat from the territories. There may be a situation in which you don't have any other way.

KESSEL: Within Mr. Sharon's national unity government, what to do with Arafat is becoming strategically divisive. Israel needs to be realistic, argues Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the man who helped conclude the original Oslo peace deal.

SHIMON PERES, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER: We cannot force the Palestinians to change their leaders, but we have to press upon the Palestinians to change the authorities.

KESSEL: But if the argument for the United States of Arafat isn't going exactly his way for now, Ariel Sharon is still trying to keep the initiative in another respect. In practice, he's abandoned his long insistence that there should be no negotiating under fire. Now he's the one who's pressing for negotiating a cease-fire under fire, under his fire.

Jerrold Kessel, CNN, Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRIEDMAN: Throughout the conflict and during peace talks, much has been said about the Middle East borders created in 1967.

CNN's Gary Tuchman reports on that pivotal time in Mideast history marked by a short but defining war.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It only lasted six days in June of 1967 but its ramifications have loomed large every day since. Arab forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan massed on Israel's borders in preparation for an all out attack. Fearing Israel would be destroyed, the Jewish state attacked first, targeting Arab air fields, destroying the Egyptian air force on the Sinai Peninsula. The ground war began shortly after.

After the first day, the Egyptian military was largely routed. By the third day, Israel reached the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. By the fourth day Israel was in a position to head into Egypt's capital, Cairo, something it chose not to do.

PROF. KENNETH STEIN, EMORY UNIVERSITY: By the time you get to June 10 and June 11, the Israelis have lost about 600 or 700 people in fighting, the Arabs lost 20,000, 25,000.

TUCHMAN: The war had been fought on numerous fronts. The battle against Syria was the last battle of Israel's victorious Six Day War. The Jewish state had taken control of Syria's Golan Heights, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, and Jordan's West Bank, which included the entire city of Jerusalem.

STEIN: Israel felt because it had won this war that the phone was going to ring, that the Arabs were going to call and say OK, let's make peace. But no one called.

TUCHMAN: The land Israel occupied in 1967 soon became the basis for an entire diplomatic concept, land for peace, the philosophy at the heart of the Camp David and Oslo accords.

(on camera): But it still hasn't brought security to the Israelis, or a state to the Palestinians.

Gary Tuchman, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCMANUS: In this safety conscious world, the farmer is facing more challenges than ever before. Food protection has become a huge issue and it's affecting those who grow the food, the market that sells it and everyone in between.

We'll focus on this important issue all week. But now the question many are asking, how safe is our food?

I headed to the nation's capital and to the prairies of Georgia to find out.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCMANUS (voice-over): America's farms. Here, people share an intimate kinship with the fertile soil they work. This land on Nicholas Dongk's farm is his livelihood, providing the revenue to feed and clothe his young family and at the same time cultivate crops in a very different world.

NICHOLAS DONGK, FARMER: Sometimes I get school groups out her and, you know, they see a bean or something and they'll go oh, this is high growth, because they, the only beans they see are the ones coming out of the can.

MCMANUS: But Nicholas says that's slowly starting to change. After last September not only is there a new appreciation, but a new concern for food safety.

DONGK: I didn't know there was some crazy group out there and they wanted to do us harm. And that's one way of doing it, for sure, through, you know, what we eat.

MCMANUS: Experts say the poisoning of crops is not likely. Government investigators found that the crops would probably die themselves or farm hands would be affected before any harvesting even took place.

ANN VENEMAN, U.S. SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE: We've looked at a number of threats, of vulnerabilities. Overall, you know, our food supply has always reacted very well to tampering. That's part of the mission of this department is we protect against threats to our agriculture and we continue to review all of our systems.

MCMANUS: But there is some room for caution after the food leaves the farm on the road between destinations.

DONGK: It's such a long distance and so many people get their hands on it that it's easy to, it would be an easy way to tamper with a food source.

MICHAEL DOYLE, CENTER FOR FOOD SAFETY: We do have to be concerned about transportation, but there are ways to manage that.

MCMANUS: Dr. Michael Doyle is the director at the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia.

DOYLE: If we properly process foods and properly secure products after the processing, the chances of contamination of products thereafter is very, very low.

MCMANUS: Still, markets like this one in Atlanta are taking no chances.

SCOTT ALLSHOUSE, WHOLE FOODS: We have established, again, strict quality standards and food safety practices in our businesses.

MCMANUS: Scott Allshouse is the director of operations for Whole Foods. His company hires a third party consultant to do unannounced checks in regards to food safety.

ALLSHOUSE: We constantly improve it and constantly address it to make sure that we can follow the process from the field or from the source the whole way to the customer's shelf.

MCMANUS (on camera): There is governmental protection already in place to guard against a terrorist attack on the food supply. But Nicholas has an idea of his own -- buy local.

DONGK: When you get your food from a small farm like mine, you know, you know the farmer. You know, obviously once you know him you trust him, you know, or her. Three or four little farms like this one could support the town of Covington, which is just a few miles down the road.

MCMANUS (voice-over): Nicholas, along with his farm hands, are a small battalion in a big army in the middle of a fight to keep your food safe from the farm all the way to market.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRIEDMAN: Today in "Chronicle," the blues. Throughout its history, this genre of music has provided a unique view into the African-American experience. It also offers a little escapism for people looking for some fun.

Our Shelley Walcott has a primer.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RAUL NEAL, BLUES MUSICIAN: It's the feeling you get because if I would have played the blues for the money, I'd have quit a long time ago. But it's a special feeling and it just makes you feel good to sing the blues.

MIKE REEVES, BLUES HISTORIAN: It's called blues, but it's also about the good times, too.

JOHN SINCLAIR, BLUES HISTORIAN: The blues are about things that happen to people and specific people, black people in conditions of extreme duress.

SHELLEY WALCOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The blues originated in a rural part of the American South called the Mississippi Delta, a bass flat world famous for its cotton fields. Mile to mile, acre to acre, the Delta has produced more blues musicians than any other part of the world, the vast majority of them African-American, descendants of slaves.

After Emancipation, many blacks were still tied to the cotton fields as sharecroppers, working from sunup to sundown for little or no pay, a life that inspired them to sing spirituals and compose gritty anthems about the helplessness of their lives.

JOHNNIE BILLINGTON, BLUES TEACHER: And everybody is trying to figure out what was it that kept those peoples alive. What kept people doing this? What kept them from jumping in the river of killing themselves? It was the music.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turn your light down low.

WALCOTT: Amateur and professional musicians helped spread the blues from the juke joints of the South to nightclubs in northern cities like Chicago to stages throughout the world. Along the way the music evolved from an acoustic foot stomping country style to a sweep electrified city sound.

New blues artists started to emerge. Names like Muddy Waters, Bessie Smith, Etta James and B.B. King became synonymous with the genre. And the blues spawned other forms of music, influencing everything from rock and roll to jazz to rhythm and blues.

Some people call the blues the soul of America and the music is experiencing a resurgence in popularity around the world. Modern artists have added to the variation of the sound but purists know that at its core, the blues has maintained one central theme -- it's about people wanting to be somewhere else but making the best of where they are.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRIEDMAN: A little later in the show, more on the blues from a place and a person you may not expect.

Exploring our world. Here now is CNN STUDENT NEWS PERSPECTIVES.

MCMANUS: This week in Perspectives, we pinpoint fitness. We promise to keep you on track with the latest trends. For example, group indoor cycling is gaining momentum among exercise fanatics. In fact, many people say it's the biggest thing to hit the fitness scene since steporobics. And now there is an addition to what some believe is already a very challenging workout. Its intensity has gone underwater, literally.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta has that story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Two, one, go. Relax your shoulders.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hydro Ride, an underwater cycling class takes a ride on a stationary bike to another level.

KATHY CASTELLANO, CRUNCH FITNESS: The concept itself is take what we love, the ride, put it underwater, get it through all kinds of resistance, work against that resistance in the water, retrain the muscles differently. GUPTA: Participants at this Crunch Fitness in Atlanta are taught speed drills, lifts and arm work. And unlike most forms of exercise, this class offers aid to those with injuries.

CASTELLANO: I would recommend it for people even that are probably rehabbing from knee injuries, ankle injuries. But again, there's no counting on the joint. They wouldn't ride as aggressively as I probably teach the class to a group of trained athletes. They would ride a little slower, maybe a little less tension. But it would definitely benefit them and help retrain and help rehab.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now bring the leg up, body down.

GUPTA: But if riding a bike in cold water isn't for you, how about exercising in a super heated room? To some, it's called hot yoga. But its official name, Bikram yoga.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Open up the chest. Stretch.

GUPTA: This class is taking place in a 106 degree room. It's considered a very disciplined way to do yoga that will help you learn more about your body and your stamina.

CRISTINA REY, BIKRAM YOGA INSTRUCTOR: And the heat will help you stretch your body, will help you stretch your -- it's like a blacksmith. You try to restructure your body. In cold, you brace your body. It's like we, how do you call that, still? If you want to modify still you have to heat it up and then slowly you modify it. And with your body it happens the same.

GUPTA: And although Bikram may be considered a good form of group exercise, participants are really encouraged to listen to their own body.

REY: Common sense is something that will keep you safe in every situation almost. And one of the things that this yoga does is it makes you be responsible for that. We tell people, don't push too hard, move slowly.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCMANUS: During the time of slavery in the U.S., there was an organized system to help escaped slaves reach places of safety in the free North and in Canada. This system was called the Underground Railroad. It was a lot bigger than many people thought.

Our own Sieman Nather (ph) traveled to Savannah, Georgia to visit a church that harbored slaves and gave freedom to those who passed through its floorboards.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEENA MATTHEWS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Many who worship at First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia get their strength from their faith and what's below their feet.

DEACON HARRY JAMES, FIRST AFRICAN BAPTIST CHURCH: There is about four feet of space below this floor and that space was used as a hiding place for slaves.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a humbling experience.

MATTHEWS: Humbling for its history. Slaves and free blacks actually bought the land and materials for this church. They finished building it in 1859 and proud of their work, the West African slaves left their tribal signatures on the pews.

JAMES: They came here working late evening and night to erect this building after most of them had already worked from 12 to 16 hours for their slave owners.

MATTHEWS: What their slave owners didn't know is that the beneath these pine boards, secret escape crawl spaces were being built. These holes in the floor were used as ventilation disguised in the pattern of a diamond, a design that has meaning.

JAMES: It's actually a family symbol. Also, it means the four moments of the sun.

MATTHEWS: Since the spaces are now sealed off, we can't see below. But down the street at what is now The Pirate's House Restaurant there is evidence of another hiding space from the same time period. Both spaces are said to have connected to a tunnel that led to the Savannah River.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's very inspiring to know that children, mothers, fathers, kids and the prayers that they may have prayed underneath those buildings in the darkness just so that one day people like myself could come here and worship for free.

MATTHEWS (on camera): There's no documentation to say just how many slaves used these spaces to escape but most historians agree that the number was significant.

PROF. MODIBO KADAUE, SAVANNAH UNIVERSITY: When the slaves started running away, that undermined the productivity of plantations like this.

MATTHEWS (voice-over): Which, some historians say, fueled the Civil War.

KADAUE: The depreciation of labor brought really about the Civil -- brought on the Civil War because the plantation owners controlled the government.

MATTHEWS: But the South lost that war and slaves were eventually freed. But that's just one chapter celebrated here.

GROVER THORNTON, CHURCH MEMBER: This church was the hub, if I may use that terminology, for the civil rights struggle. MATTHEWS: Pastor Ralph Marc Gilbert (ph), one of the fathers in the civil rights movement, came from this church, where members of the congregation found inspiration to fight discrimination.

PASTOR MARC GILBERT: This is a strong church. These people who were strong, who were able to carry on what -- a tradition that they were counting on us to do.

MATTHEWS: It's been about 40 years since the civil rights movement and more than a century since slavery and this church and its history still motivates young and old.

QUENTIN ODEM, CHURCH MEMBER: It shows me that we have a great deal of power, a lot more than I thought we did. It inspires me to push on and to let me know that there's nothing that can hold me back from what I want to do.

GLADYS COHEN, CHURCH MEMBER: The African symbols in this church are a part of our heritage, a part of our legacy left to our African brothers and sisters. It's a part of us being able to know where we come from so we'll know where we're going.

MATTHEWS: Geena Matthews (ph), CNN STUDENT NEWS, Savannah, Georgia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRIEDMAN: Earlier in the show we gave you a history of the blues from its roots to its resurgence. Up next, another view as we turn to a new generation. What do you get when you cross a young white kid with music created by blacks in the Mississippi Delta? Some soulful music from an unlikely source.

Our student bureau has this report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

J.C. DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A smoky Kansas City nightclub on a Friday night. It's certainly not where you'd want to find a teenager. But for 17-year-old Brody Buster, it's already been a familiar setting for half of his life. Roger Nabor owns the nationally known Grand Emporium, where Brody and his band play every Friday night. Nabor has been managing Brody for two years and watching him grow into a serious blues man.

ROGER NEIGHBOR: He is a, he's a veteran musician that inspires a very young pen, so to speak. I mean he's been on stage probably 500 times in his life already. He was born to be on stage.

DAVIS: Brody is set to release his third album and recently contributed to a compilation project to benefit the 9/11 relief efforts. He also released a similar album in 1999 dedicated to his Uncle John, a Kansas City firefighter who died on the job. The proceeds went to purchase specialized firefighting equipment. All of this is a long way from when Brody's mother gave her 7-year-old an old harmonica from her playing days. BRODY BUSTER: I picked up that harmonica, man, and I could play everything I heard on the radio the fourth day I got the thing. And I still don't know what I'm doing. I can't read a lick of music. I can do the same thing on the guitar and the drum.

DAVIS: Before long, Brody was making his way onto TV shows and on stage to some of music's biggest names.

NEIGHBOR: The first time I saw Brody play he was, I believe, eight years old. And it was at the Kansas Day Blues and Jazz Festival. He was on the youth stage. He was about four feet tall. You know, he struck me as a child who had been playing harmonica probably for maybe about a year. The second time I saw Brody, maybe it was a year later, and he was nine. I was walking out of the B.B. King Blues Club in Memphis on Saturday night at 1:00 a.m. and Brody was walking in with his briefcase and harmonicas.

DAVIS: He takes his education seriously, but Brody leaves no doubt that his future is in music. He plans on moving to California to finish high school and then he'll devote his full attention to playing the blues.

BUSTER: Man, without music I don't know what I'd do. I'd probably be crazy.

DAVIS: J.C. Davis (ph), CNN Student Bureau, Kansas City, Missouri.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCMANUS: That is our Where In the World today. Jerusalem, one of the many places we are following as we bring you the latest developments in the Middle East crisis.

FRIEDMAN: That's right. Stay with CNN for the latest and stay right here for part two of Michael's series on food safety.

MCMANUS: Certainly. And tomorrow we'll look at what the government is doing to protect people and what consumers are doing alongside what you can do to protect yourself.

FRIEDMAN: That's some news that we certainly can all use.

MCMANUS: Absolutely.

FRIEDMAN: So don't miss our continuing report. Stay right here on CNN STUDENT NEWS.

For now, I'm Susan Friedman.

MCMANUS: And I'm Michael McManus. Thanks for watching. See you right back here tomorrow.

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