Return to Transcripts main page

CNN 10

CNN Student News

Aired June 17, 2002 - 04:00   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: We're off and running for this Monday. We get started with a survey of the Colorado wildfires. From out west to way up yonder, find out what tools you need in space. Later, Student Bureau gives us a very important history lesson on the Battle of the Bulge. Then gear up your gray matter as you try to guess "Where in the World" we end up.

And welcome to CNN STUDENT NEWS. I'm Michael McManus. Glad to have you with us on the first day of our new time, 4:00 a.m. Eastern, 1:00 a.m. Pacific.

Well, almost $7 million and counting, that's the cost so far of fighting the biggest wildfire in Colorado history. The Hayman fire, one of several major blazes in the state, has charred more than 100,000 acres and forced more than 5,000 people from their homes. It's now about 47 percent contained and a few people have been allowed back into their homes to retrieve their belongings.

Well, humans aren't the only ones feeling the effects of the fire. Coming up, CNN's Charles Molineaux looks at the efforts to help animals. But first, here's Jason Bellini with more on how evacuees are coping.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): By day the Red Cross shelter looks like a rec hall than a haven for displaced persons.

(on camera): Are you staying here in the shelter?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

BELLINI: You're staying here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

BELLINI: Sleeping here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. BELLINI: How does that feel, sleeping where you play basketball?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kind of boring, because I (UNINTELLIGIBLE) have to be at school for three months.

BELLINI (voice-over): The fire for some a serious nuisance. These girls aren't staying in the shelter. Friends are putting up their families during the evacuation, now approaching the one-week mark.

(on camera): What have you been doing?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This.

BELLINI (voice-over): An 80-year-old woman I meet lost her husband last year. Here is where she finds her friends.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We had 58 years together. We had lots and lots of fun. And since he's been gone, all this has been happening. So you got to hang in there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's rough on us. I'm 81.

BELLINI: Ed Johnson (ph) is pretty sure his house is safe. Living in a trailer in the school parking lot for now, he's not thrilled with this indefinite living arrangement.

(on camera): You think it's going to be all right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, if I can get home, it would be all right.

BELLINI (voice-over): If the home he and his wife have lived in for more than 30 years burns down, life will never return to normal for them.

(on camera): If the house burns down, what do you do, then?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What would I do?

BELLINI: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Probably move into an assisted living.

BELLINI (voice-over): 7:30 p.m., hundreds of evacuees begin to arrive in the hall for the nightly fire briefing.

Most are either staying in hotels or living for now with friends.

(on camera): It's 9:30 p.m. and at the end of the day, only a couple of people are actually sleeping here in the shelter, but authorities say the fire is far from being over. And many people I spoke with say they're running out of money for staying in hotels.

(voice-over): And that could mean more people will end up sleeping here, a shelter for those who have nowhere else to wait out the fire. Jason Bellini, CNN, Woodland Park, Colorado.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHARLES MOLINEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In the forest fire relief effort, Jar-Jar (ph) is donating for some talent for singing, dancing, mischief, and comic relief. Part of a menagerie of animals evacuated from the path of the Hayman Fire. The Jefferson County Fairgrounds are usually venues for horse shows, and rodeos. But today they're an emergency hideout for a Noah's Ark of -- yes -- goats, pigs, sheep, chickens, rabbits, ducks, llamas, ponies, burros, and hundreds of horses.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is like a zoo. Our little zoo down here.

MOLINEAUX: Mike Shanahan (ph) and the Jefferson County Horse Council have turned years of painful experience with forest fires and animals into a plan for sheltering them. The idea is to take a big load off animal owner's minds with the promise of free lodging and some tender loving care.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All these people that have animals -- they're attached to them -- and they just -- we were in a situation where, you know, they have to be moved, and it is stressful on everyone.

MOLINEAUX: Just ask Connie Hackathorn.

CONNIE HACKATHORN, OWNER: Getting the horses in, I had practiced loading the little puppies, and then when they smelled that smoke, they all decided -- we not going in that trailer, so we had a little battle. I got a concussion, and one of them got hurt. We got them all in and got them out of there.

MOLINEAUX: The Jefferson County Plan has become a guide in other counties effected by the Hayman fire, which are now dealing with their own waves of animal refugees.

(on camera): Jefferson County's got some 30 people ready and willing to work with the animals. There's been no shortage of volunteers. The calls started coming in as soon as word about the animal evacuees came in. It seems there is no shortage of animal lovers out there, who want to help.

SHANAHAN: I am surprised, the response I get them -- not just in Colorado, I've got people coming out that call from Nebraska and other states around the country.

MOLINEAUX: Nancy Kanenwisher is one of them. She brought her horse, goats, and llama in from the high country and signed on as a volunteer herself when she saw, or rather smelled, that it was time to move.

NANCY KANENWISHER, OWNER: Smoke kind of makes your stomach turn, because you could lose your home. I knew that I could come down here, and there'd be a safe haven for all my animals.

MOLINEAUX: It is a haven which could be in for a lot of business.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCMANUS: And making "Headlines" now, a jury has found Arthur Andersen guilty of obstructing justice, a decision that could put the once mighty accounting firm out of business. A Securities and Exchange Commission rule does not allow any firm convicted of a felony to audit publicly traded companies. That has been the bulk of Andersen's business. And the company has already lost more than 300 clients. In addition, Andersen now faces a $500,000 fine and up to five years probation. The conviction is a victory for prosecutors investigating the sudden collapse of energy trader Enron.

Andersen audited Enron's books and prosecutors say Andersen employees destroyed documents that might have been relevant to the Fed's investigation of Enron. Andersen lawyers say it was simply routine housekeeping. In the end, though, it was up to the jury.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETER VILES, CNN FINANCIAL NEWS (voice-over): On the morning of its tenth day of deliberations, a federal jury in Houston finally convicted Arthur Andersen of obstruction of justice. The first major white-collar conviction of the Enron era.

ANDREW WEISSMAN, U.S. ATTORNEY: This case was really about a simple principle. Which is, when you expect the police, don't destroy evidence. And for Arthur Andersen, that police was the SEC. And they knew they were coming, and they destroyed evidence in advance of their getting there.

VILES: Its business crippled by the case, Andersen vowed to appeal and to fight any regulators who are likely to use the conviction to bar Andersen from auditing public companies.

RUSTY HARDIN, ARTHUR ANDERSEN: I can tell you -- our position as to whether Arthur Andersen committed a crime has not changed. They did not. Not a single person there did. And if an accountancy board wants to get into all that litigation, come on down. We'll be there. This company did not commit a crime.

VILES: A strange twist behind the jury's decision: the jury convicted not because Andersen shredded tons of Enron documents, not because fired Andersen partner David Duncan said he obstructed justice himself. The jury didn't believe him. Instead, it was a single smoking gun memo.

An e-mail showing how Andersen tried to get its story straight after its client, Enron, improperly described third-quarter losses as non-recurring. The jury focused on this e-mail. Andersen lawyer Nancy Temple urging Duncan and others to alter internal memos to "delete some language that might suggest we have concluded the Enron release is misleading." OSCAR CRINER, JURY FOREMAN: It's against the law to alter that document with the intent to impair the fact-finding ability of an official procedure.

VILES: In a case marked by contentious and often personal attacks, Saturday brought one final argument: who ruined Andersen? Was it the government or was it Andersen itself?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the history of the world of business, this will come out, in my judgment, as the largest act of corporate murder, ever.

SAM BUELL, ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY: We don't think it was the government's choice to enforce the laws here that caused problems for Arthur Andersen, it was Arthur Andersen's own failed audit work and their choice to violate the law by obstructing justice.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCMANUS: We focus on space today as the shuttle Endeavour prepares to head back to Earth. The shuttle will be returning with some very important cargo, the three-man International Space Station crew who have been in space for the past 194 days. When asked what he is looking forward to, astronaut Carl Walz replied hugging his wife and kids and eating pizza.

For now we take a closer look at working in space. One of the main jobs of any astronaut while in orbit is to take things apart and put them back together again. How does that work at 0G, not with your father's tools.

Miles O'Brien takes a look inside NASA's tool box.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: All right, it's time for a little bit of tool time with a space twist to it. And joining us to go over some of the equipment and tools and clothing used by space- walkers is Bob Curbeam, NASA astronaut, U.S. Naval commander, the three-time space walker outside the International Space Station Alpha.

Good to have you with me, Bob. Let's talk a little bit about what it's like to work in space. And I think we've got to bring up an important point: When you're out there in the EMU, the extravehicular mobility unit, which is what you and I would call a space suit, you're in the world's smallest spacecraft. And it is pressurized. And this gives a good demonstration. It's pressurized only to four pounds per square inch, which is a fraction, about a third of what we feel just here in this room, right now, which makes it a little bit easier. But nevertheless, you're working inside an inflated balloon.

What is that like?

BOB CURBEAM, NASA ASTRONAUT: You feel like you're the Michelin man. As you can imagine, you're fighting a little bit against the suit to make every moment. There are some things that are easier, because they have joints like this, but for the most part, any time you're moving your arms or your legs, you're fighting against the suit a little bit.

O'BRIEN: All right. So with that in mind, everything we see here really is designed with the thought that you have that gloved hand, you can't feel as well and you're fighting against it.

Let's first of all, talk about the pistol-grip tool, which is the cordless drill, which is used on any number of applications.

This is really the workhorse, isn't it?

CURBEAM: Oh, yes, just like you would in your own home. We don't do any drilling with it, but we do tightening and loosening of bolts. You'd use this literally tens of times during your space walk, and you'll notice it has a paddle here because of the glove, and that's what causes -- what causes it to go. But the great thing about this, it will count turns for you, it will measure torque, it does all that work for you.

O'BRIEN: And it is important. Some of these bolts, you know, the torque is very precise. You want 14 1/2 turns on some bolts, and it's not 14 or 15, it's 14 1/2.

CURBEAM: Exactly. And the torque tolerances are just as tight.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk about how you keep track of tools and how you -- because it is very important as you're working there without the benefit of gravity, when you go to lay a tool down, it is going to float away and become a piece of space junk. How do you avoid that? And that is a big problem, isn't it?

CURBEAM: Oh, yes. I mean, it's very, very easy to lose track of your tools, so instead of having a work bench where we set things, we have fish stringers, and this fish stringer right here has a bunch of different hooks, and all of our tools, as you'll see on this table, has tether loops on them. So what we would do is we would hook this fish stringer onto the outside.

O'BRIEN: I'll hold it...

(CROSSTALK)

CURBEAM: ... of the station, and then we'd just clip our tools in. So we have all our tools that are ready. And if that doesn't work, we also have the mini work station, which is our tool belt, and we can hook tools into that as well.

O'BRIEN: And just briefly, this is the one they don't want to use. If they have a little problem with the PGT, that pistol-griped tool, and they have to rip a bolt off -- that's just an off-the-shelf crowbar, slightly more upscale than you might have in your garage or your basement.

This is the tool belt. It's really not a belt, of course, but it latches onto your lower abdomen right around your waste and gives you a lot of capability when you're in space. What can you attach to this? Just about anything, right?

CURBEAM: Just about anything that have a bayonet fitting. And bayonet fittings are fittings similar to this one right here. They would slide down into the receptacles here. So here's a trash bag, and you'll notice we have a little piece here that allows things in, but not out. And what you would do is if you were going to use this trash bag, you would take the bayonet fitting, put it down in there, slam it closed, and it is there for life now.

O'BRIEN: There for life, or so you hope. And you can carry a lot of your tools right there, so you would have them readily available, which is important. Then if you get into a tight spot and need to reach something, plain old forceps. Of course, one thing they do have is they have that tether hook because you want to be able to attach it at all times.

CURBEAM: Exactly. Everything has to be tethered. As one of our guys says, total tether consciousness is very, very important when you're doing a space walk.

O'BRIEN: Just briefly, what's the most difficult thing about doing this kind of work?

CURBEAM: I think it's probably the endurance, you know, going 7 1/2 hours in a very confined space and knowing that you have to do it right because nobody else can come out there and help you.

O'BRIEN: Bob Curbeam, NASA astronaut, commander in the U.S. Navy, we appreciate you joining us. And we look forward to your next mission to the International Space Station, which is coming up soon.

CURBEAM: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCMANUS: Last week we brought you the excitement of the World Cup. This week in "Chronicle," we're all about baseball. If you think reading about the game means turning to the sports pages, it's time to broaden your horizons. The game's history and heroes fill the pages of some of America's most popular books.

CNN's Jeff Greenfield looks at some of the sports and literature's finest players.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The rippling of a pennant under a blue sky, the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, the opening of a book?

(voice-over): As a matter of a fact, yes. It is remarkable how many American writers and thinkers have turned to baseball. Poets like Robert Frost who wrote "I never feel more at home in America than at a ball game." Carl Sander (ph) who dreamt of sliding to second, sliding to third and stealing home. Marianne Moore who wrote a celebration of the first and only Brooklyn Dodgers World Championship. It's drawn intellectuals like the late Bart Giamatti, Yale University president who left the halls of ivy to the ivy walls of Wrigley Field when he became Commissioner of Baseball, a game he once wrote that breaks your heart. It's strong writers like James Thurber, novelists like John Updike who wrote a classic account of Ted Williams' last game. Philip Roth's great American novel was all about baseball. They even made a movie out of Bernard Malamud's "The Natural." It starred Robert Redford and tacked on a Hollywood happy ending the book never had.

(on camera): But there's a bit of a mystery here, it's been 30, 40 years since baseball has truly been the national pastime. Football is now far more popular, basketball is catching up, so why has the literary and intellectual set remained fixated on this sport?

(voice-over): One big reason of course is history. Baseball has been around for a century and a quarter. And for the first hundred years or so, it was the only really important sport. But that's not the only reason says Mike Lupica, one of the best known sports writers in America who's also authored half a dozen novels.

MIKE LUPICA, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: What matters about baseball is a hundred times a game on both teams it's the pitcher against the batter. I mean the best confrontation for me in sports is still that, just that, and we get it 200 times every game.

GREENFIELD: Now to be honest, there is a downside to this intellectual celebration, sometimes the men and women of the mind can get a bit carried away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Young America gets its knowledge of the past...

GREENFIELD: Investing every ground ball with cosmic significance.

LUPICA: I mean how much of the Ken Bern's thing just made you want to stick -- you know the pencil that you're using to score the game, you want to stick it in your ear when you hear one of those guys go on and on and on and on about stuff that doesn't matter about baseball.

GREENFIELD (on camera): Maybe it's as simple as this, when writers go to work they begin to tap deep into their store of memories and for many of us, a place like this is the place where some of those richest and deepest memories were born.

(voice-over): But just remember, when novelist Thomas Wolf (ph) wrote "you can't go home again," he wasn't writing about this home.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN at Yankee Stadium.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCMANUS: And coming up tomorrow, the value of Little League to teams whose field of dreams was disrupted by the terrorist attacks. That story coming up tomorrow.

And don't forget to head to our Web site for a look at "News For You." Godzilla can crush buildings but can he survive as an art form? That story and many more are at CNNSTUDENTNEWS.com.

ANNOUNCER: Exploring our world, here now is CNN STUDENT NEWS "Perspectives."

MCMANUS: Father's Day is just one day behind us. Happy belated Father's Day, dad, and we're still focused on families now where television comedies have been exploring family relationships for decades. From "Leave it to Beaver" in the '50s, Archie Bunker in the '70s to the present day "Simpsons," comedies have helped millions understand each other through laughter.

In China, this sort of real life situational entertainment is just beginning to hit its stride.

Jaime FlorCruz with a look now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAIME FLORCRUZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Chinese humor uncanned, collective laugher prompted by Ying Da, actor and master of comedy.

YING DA: That's what we really need. That's what should be called entertainment.

FLORCRUZ: Ying Da produces sitcoms, a concept he picked up while studying theatrical directing in the U.S. Ying's sitcoms offer comic relief with a bit of moral uplift. His most successful TV series, "I Love My Home," chronicles the misadventures of a Beijing family coping with rapid social changes. It focuses on Depatsiar (ph), a retired official and his relationships with his children and grandchild.

DA: Chinese comedies never used to be that funny. They -- I mean Chinese art is never solved in a -- in a play or in a sitcom or in a comedy to make fun of a character like that. I mean old cadre (ph).

FLORCRUZ: Ying's artistic genes run in the blood. He is son of Ying Ruocheng, one of China's best known actors who gained fame overseas in Western movies like "The Last Emperor." His most memorable triumph was when he played the lead role of Willy Loman and co-directed the Chinese production of "Death of a Salesman." It played to capacity crowds apparently moved by the story of fractured family relationships and shattered dreams.

YING RUOCHENG: Not the kind of message you could see transparently, but the Chinese certainly would understand a kind of father and son relationship, the willingness of the father to sacrifice everything for his son.

FLORCRUZ: Ying approves his son's efforts to capture and dispense humor. RUOCHENG: The Chinese have suffered so much, they deserve some laughs. The Chinese have been led to believe for thousands of years that bitter medicine is good for you, which is not true. I admire the people, the doctors who are thinking of ways to make people suffer less, not more.

FLORCRUZ: The younger Ying is offering sugar coated medicine, blazing his career under the shadow of his famous father.

DA: It's still hard, but I got used to it and I'm growing, I'm growing. I mean my shadow is pretty big now.

FLORCRUZ: For years he had been known as...

YING: The son of (UNINTELLIGIBLE), yes, yes. But now, audiences start to call him the father of Ying Da.

FLORCRUZ (on camera): By injecting wit and humor into plays, movies and sitcoms, the Ying's have been helping Chinese audiences laugh away their misadventures and misfortunes. It's a self-cure therapy that the Ying's are happy to dispense.

Jaime FlorCruz, CNN, Beijing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCMANUS: Summer is just around the corner and it's a season usually associated with barbecues, beaches and blockbuster. It looks like there's a little something for everyone on the big screen this summer and the movie studios have an especially rich lineup for the ladies.

Paul Clinton has more on entertainment for empowerment.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL CLINTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Explosions, actions, alien beings, that's the stuff of summer movies aimed at one core group.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The male audience is the target audience for movies. It's the audience that shows up, opens the movie, the key thing.

CLINTON: But floating in this sea of testosterone are a few movies with women in mind.

CALLIE KHOURI: I think that there are plenty of people that are dying to have a movie like this to go to in the summer.

CLINTON: Mary Steenburgen who has her own movie, "Sunshine State" out soon, agrees.

MARY STEENBURGEN: I don't want to go to just watch big huge summer movies that everybody predicts is going to be the big huge summer movie and that are all the sort of blow them up movies or whatever you want to call them. I think there are a lot of other people out there too that want an alternative.

CLINTON: Among the alternative, "Blue Crush" about girls on surfboards. It's from Oscar winning producer Brian Grazer.

BRIAN GRAZER, PRODUCER: It does identify a subculture and it does put women in the foreground of that male dominated subculture in a highly credible way, and that's empowering and exciting to me.

CLINTON: Empowerment is a theme running through several of the summer's women-drive films like "Enough."

JENNIFER LOPEZ, ACTRESS: The message is very clear. No matter what type of situation you're in, you have the power within yourself to change it or to get out of it.

CLINTON (on camera): Films with female appeal come out to counter programming, but it's hard to get noticed in the shadows of all the big budgeted movies aimed at men.

ANE THOMPSON: It's very difficult to get a word in edgewise against the big behemoths that are going to dominate the opening weekends. So word of mouth is your only asset finally.

CLINTON (voice over): Grazer feels word of mouth might not be enough.

GRAZER: If I were making a movie that was really just character driven and women were the leads, I would stay out of the summer.

CLINTON: The director of "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" disagrees.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think that that's just underestimating the audience to think that. I certainly think that the female audience that they're under estimated, undervalued and certainly underrepresented in the marketplace for a very, very long time.

CLINTON: In the midst of all the male oriented fare, Corey (ph) still feels optimistic about her film.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have nothing but confidence that we're going to be fine out there this summer.

CLINTON: Paul Clinton, CNN Entertainment News, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCMANUS: From the empowerment of women to empowerment and equality for all races. We take a look back now to the largest land battle of World War II in which the United States participated. Our Student Bureau looks at the connection between the Battle of the Bulge and military desegregation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIR BLACK, CNN STUDENT BUREAU (voice-over): In the months after D-Day, allied forces advanced through France and supply lines driven mostly by African-American soldiers who were segregated from the front line combat units. But in December 1944, German troops counterattacked in what is known as the Battle of the Bulge. The allied commander General Dwight Eisenhower decided it was finally time to end the Army's tradition of racial segregation.

STEPHEN E. AMBROSE, HISTORIAN: When Eisenhower was out of reinforcements and he was under terrific attack at the Battle of the Bulge from the Germans, and he put out an order to all of these black truck drivers and these black skibidors (ph), and the black troops serving as MPs or whatever else they were doing, saying, You guys want to volunteer to come into the infantry and fight for your country? I'll put you into existing units. You'll have leaders that are experienced, you're going to get the very best in weapons and we're going to put you right up on the front line.

BLACK: Eisenhower's call to arms was quickly answered by the African-American troops.

AMBROSE: More than 5,000 like that volunteered and they went into the Battle of the Bulge and they did terrific. And thereafter, every company commander in the U.S. Army, give me more of those African-Americans, send them over to me, I want them.

BLACK: The said integration of the American military was not a simple thing since it ran counter to prevailing social edifices.

AMBROSE: The white troops were just as prejudice as could be, and they didn't want anything to do with any African-American troops. And it's also true that the African-Americans, for the most part, didn't want anything to do with any whites.

BLACK: But the bravery and skill of the African-American soldiers who fought at the Battle of the Bulge led President Truman to officially end segregation in the U.S. military in 1948.

AMBROSE: So if the U.S. Army which once was the most segregated in the world became the most integrated, became an Army which was colorblind, became an Army where you got ahead on the basis of what you do.

BLACK: Sir Black, CNN Student Bureau, Houston, Texas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCMANUS: And that just about does it for CNNSN for Monday. See you back here tomorrow at this brand new time slot of 4:00 a.m. Eastern, 1:00 a.m. Pacific.

Until then, au revoir.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 1-800-CNN-NEWS OR USEOUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCAATED AT www.fdch.com