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CNN Student News
Aired June 19, 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: A busy broadcast today as we start with a lawsuit against some banks. The reason, alleged loans to a nation supporting apartheid. We switch gears in "News Focus" as we zero in on video games and violent subject matter. Then cruising into summer, is a vacation in your plans? We take you on one today in "Perspectives." But wait, before we leave, don't forget to kick those tires and check the oil. The competition is on in a world where teens provide the tune ups.
It's Wednesday, June 19, and this is CNN STUDENT NEWS. I'm Michael McManus. Thank you for joining us today.
One of America's largest financial institutions comes under fire by victims of apartheid. Lawyers say they will file a class action lawsuit alleging City Bank and Swiss banking giants UBS and Credit Suisse helped South Africa's white dominated former regime with loans and other business despite a U.N. embargo.
South Africa endured the policy of apartheid for decades. Racial segregation and supremacy of whites stripped other races of all sorts of privileges, including the right to vote or live where they wanted. Things began to change in the 1990s with the drafting of a new constitution and plans for a democratic government. Nelson Mandela was elected president in 1994 during the nation's first free multiracial elections.
The lawsuit seeks billions of dollars for apartheid victims and it's being handled by the same lawyer who took on Swiss banks on behalf of Holocaust victims.
CNN's Charlayne Hunter-Gault talked to one family involved in this case.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They come here to remember the young heroes of South Africa's struggle against apartheid like 13-year-old Hector Peterson gunned down with dozen of his schoolmates by apartheid police while protesting the regime's edicts they be taught in Afrikaans, the language of the white minority.
Twenty-six years to the day, Hector Peterson's mother joined in the lawsuit against international banks which its victims are saying effectively help kill Hector Peterson and maim thousands like 38-year- old Abel Sathkge.
(on camera): So your legs, you can't use them at all?
ABEL SATHKGE, APARTHEID VICTIM: I cannot at all.
HUNTER-GAULT (voice-over): Sathkge tells us he had just gotten out of a taxi when he saw several men draw guns. He and many other bystanders were mowed down. He says the men were involved in conflict between rival political factions being stirred up in 1991 towards the end of apartheid and that those who shot him, he believes, were aided by the apartheid police. He was in hospitals for two years. He cannot work, barely surviving on a monthly disability pension amounting to about 60 U.S. dollars.
SATHKGE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we don't have sugar. Yesterday we never -- we didn't have bread.
HUNTER-GAULT: Like many victims of apartheid violence, Sathkge got only a small emergency grant of about $200 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the body set up to help redress the wrongs of the past. Now the TRC has closed down so Sathkge welcomes the lawsuit against the banks.
SATHKGE: They enriched themselves during that apartheid era so they ought to pay back. I want to restore my dignity.
HUNTER-GAULT: Lawyers here are working on expanding the list of 80 plaintiffs currently a part of the class action suit. They and others like the Khulumani Support Group, representing more than 32,000 victims, are confident of widespread support.
DUMA KHUMALO, KHULUMANI SUPPORT GROUP: My problems is I need to take law (ph), and people like that people that I (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
HUNTER-GAULT: The Swiss banks insist the claims have no legal basis.
(on camera): This monument was built to honor Hector Peterson and all the young people who died in the struggle for South Africa's freedom and democracy. But those who survived them say they need more than monuments.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, CNN, Soweto, South Africa.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCMANUS: The number of alcohol related traffic deaths has declined by 43 percent over the past 20 years. Yet more than 16,000 people die each year from drunk driving. Armed with a new report, the nation's top anti-drunk driving lobby is hitting the halls of Congress to renew their war on driving under the influence. Julie Vallese explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JULIE VALLESE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Friends don't let friends drive drunk, that's the message Mothers Against Drunk Driving brought to the nation more than 20 years ago. Concerned the country is preoccupied by the war on terror, MADD says the country can't abandon its war on drunk driving.
MILLIE WEBB, PRESIDENT, MADD: If the estimated 300 Americans who died last week and the 300 who that will likely die this week in alcohol related crashes suddenly and violently perished all at once, the national crisis that truly threatens us every day would be clear.
VALLESE: And just in case it's not, MADD has put together a report getting mad all over again. Eight recommendations to continue the fight.
WEBB: Now is the time for our nation's leaders from the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, as well as from business and civic sectors, to not just talk the talk but walk the walk.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You had anything to drink tonight?
VALLESE: And that means increasing enforcement, enacting primary seat belt laws, getting tough on repeat offenders, reducing underage drinking and increasing the tax on beer.
(on camera): Last year Congress lowered the legal blood alcohol limit from .10 to .08, legislation that's strongly supported. Now they're calling on Congress once again to turn their eight recommendations into law.
(voice-over): The group knows changing the law and changing attitudes is an uphill battle, but it's familiar territory and a war they're willing to fight.
In Washington, Julie Vallese reporting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCMANUS: Well if you like video games, then you remember at least no of the classics. "Pac Man," "Space Invaders" and my personal favorite, "Donkey Kong." Games have come a long way since those early favorites taking on darker, more mature themes and situations. Are you ready? Should you be?
Kristie Lu Stout has this report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Andrew is your typical 12-year-old kid. He loves playing hockey, football and the latest video games. ANDREW PETERSON, AGE 12: You play the game, and what you are -- a guy, and there's tons of violence like smashing into other cars and speeding and getting out of cars and ripping other people out of their cars and taking their cars and stuff like that.
STOUT: Lucky for Andrew his father has taken up the hobby too. But there's a point when even this cool dad must put his foot down to video game violence.
DAN PETERSON, FATHER: I think there is -- there's a threshold that will be reached. Certainly for me and for other individual parents when we'll say enough is enough.
STOUT: A Hong Kong company is testing that threshold. Gamecyber is putting the final touches on its next title, a PC game called "Young and Dangerous."
(on camera): The game is based on this, a popular comic book called "Teddy Boy" which glorifies Hong Kong's triad underworld. On page 56, a gangster stabs a rival in the ear with a letter opener.
(voice-over): Hong Kong police have voiced fears over the game since the aim is to climb the triad ranks by winning gang wars, a dose of hard-boiled realism that the creator says is essential.
WONG CHAK KIU, GENERAL MANAGER, GAMECYBER (through translator): You're playing a game, a game must involve violence. Without violence or fighting, there's nothing to play around in the game.
STOUT: Yet "Young and Dangerous" pales in comparison to other games that depict assault, murder, carjackings, even hooliganism. No one really knows if virtual violence begets real world violence. To be safe, the industry has a self-imposed rating system that in theory limits the gore to players who can handle it. Wong Chak Kiu will also seek a rating for the Asia release of his game in August.
But what difference does a rating make when young gamers have little alternative to the array of blood, guts and more guts?
A. PETERSON: Games are progressing and they're getting more and more violent, most of the games these days. Sooner or later there'll be a time when like it'll be hard to find a game which isn't totally violent.
STOUT: Even a kid can reach a saturation point and ditch a game for a go with the old fashioned joystick.
Kristie Lu Stout, CNN, Hong Kong.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCMANUS: From video games to the game of the moment, soccer. Around the globe it's World Cup mania. On the field, on TV and it's on the Web. It seems to be everywhere.
Tim Lister tells us more about the World Cup online. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TIM LISTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For the first time you don't need a ticket or a television to watch the World Cup. Football's governing body FIFA has invested heavily in promoting its World Cup Web site developed jointly with Internet portal Yahoo! It's in seven languages and carries results as well as profiles of the teams and of individual players. There's also a photo gallery and a segment recalling previous World Cups. The site is proving popular.
CHARLES-HENRY CONTAMINE, FIFA INTERNET CHIEF: During the 48 first games of the World Cup, we reached one billion page views which puts us way above the other sports Web sites.
LISTER: That compares with 350 million page views for the last Winter Olympics. One reason for their success, time zones.
TONYA ANTONUCCI, YAHOO! INTERNET SPOKESPERSON: With the games being played in Asia, you have fans in the Americas and in Europe either strapped to their desks or at home in the middle of the night when the matches are going on.
LISTER: Also for those at work or without a television, the play-by-play match cast is winning fans.
GERD SMEETS, OFFICE WORKER: Since for me, I want to watch the Belgian game but the Belgian game was not on because I'm in Seoul and the Japan game was broadcast on TV, so it's awesome to follow the game on TV -- not on TV, on a computer.
LISTER: And the true fanatic can access video highlights online with commentary in six languages at a price of $30 for the tournament. The World Cup has also driven more traffic to player's Web sites such as Brazil's Hornaldo (ph), although surprisingly DavidBeckham.com is still under construction.
FIFA has had less success in trying to sell tickets online. Thousands of fans have been unable to access FIFAtickets.com. One reason that fans for poor attendances at some matches.
GABRIEL CHANG, OFFICE WORKER: I probably tried over the course of two or three weeks probably about 20 to 30 times. I mean it's a simple thing to go there and click on the site to get it so it's not like it takes a long time, but it is frustrating.
LISTER: FIFA acknowledges the problem.
KEITH COOPER, FIFA SPOKESPERSON: So we expect everybody to get in a fair world what they paid for and they expect to get and we are sorry that that has happened. We cannot explain that spontaneously, but we will look into it and the lessons will be learned.
LISTER: In the meantime, you can still stand in line and enjoy the atmosphere.
Tim Lister, CNN, Seoul. (END VIDEOTAPE)
MCMANUS: From a sport loved around the world to one revered here at home. Are you a baseball fan? Then chances are you know what the Montreal Expos have in common with the Minnesota Twins.
John Zarrella reports on why the boys of summer could soon fall victim to year round economics.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Montreal Expos are an endangered species. By next season, there's a very good chance they will be extinct, "contracted" out of existence.
SCOTT STRICKLAND, EXPOS PITCHER: It's a bad situation. You've got to make the most of it. And what are you going to do, cry about it?
ZARRELLA: In this case, the bottom line, not the chalk line, is what counts. And the Expos are baseball's bleakest franchise. So major league baseball, complaining of a balance sheet in the red, plans to toss Montreal and at least one other financially poor- performing club, yet to be named.
The Minnesota Twins were on the top of that TBA hit list, which drew the sarcastic ire of Minnesota's governor during Congressional hearings on the state of the game.
GOV. JESSE VENTURA, MINNESOTA: I bet you we'll be taken off the list if we agree to build a new stadium. I bet, you know, magically, another team will appear on the list and be contracted, rather than Minnesota.
ZARRELLA: And just what is the state of the game? That depends on who you ask. If you ask baseball's commissioner...
BUD SELIG, COMMISSIONER, MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL: In spite of the fact that the game has probably never been more popular, we have some very significant problems.
ZARRELLA: According to ownership, only five teams, led by the Yankees, were in the black last year. And overall, baseball's 30 teams lost $518 million, despite revenues of $3.5 billion, almost triple the 1995 number.
ANDREW ZIMBALIST, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR: That's a 17 percent growth rate per year in revenue. That means demand is growing at 17 percent a year. And major league baseball is proposing to reduce supply. That makes no sense.
ZARRELLA: A lot of what's going on in baseball is confusing. The lame duck Expos no longer have an owner. The team is run by Major League Baseball, which bought the Expos from Jeffrey Loria, who in turn purchased the Florida Marlins from John Henry, who then went out and bought the Boston Red Sox. Got all that? As for the players, well, the collective bargaining agreement has expired.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ, TEXAS RANGERS: What I don't want to see happen is another work stoppage. I know the players don't want it, the owners don't want it. And I know the fans definitely don't want it.
ZARRELLA: But don't worry. Both sides promise the only strike you will see is the one called by an umpire.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Exploring our world, here now is CNN STUDENT NEWS "Perspectives."
MCMANUS: To Beijing where technology is catching up with people in life as well as in death. You may have gone to a cemetery to visit a grave site of a friend or relative who had died. That's a tradition familiar to most people. But in China, tradition is meeting technology in something called e-tombs.
Memorials live on in cyberspace as Jaime FlorCruz explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JAIME FLORCRUZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Incense burning, three deep bows in memory of the dead, ancient rituals that have survived the Chinese drive to modernization.
ZHANG JIABIN, GRAVE SWEEPER (through translator): We come here four times a year during holidays.
FLORCRUZ: On this annual grave sweeping festival, Zhang's family gather to sweep his wife's burial site, built two years ago, a cost of 3,000 U.S. dollars. A lot of money and hassle for some Chinese who are turning to cemeteries online like the Netor.com set up in Beijing two years ago and now serving 12,000 subscribers.
LIU YI, CEO, NETOR.COM (through translator): Traditional cemetery can hardly contain the biography of the dead. Internet offers a better way to commemorate them.
FLORCRUZ: Yang Tuan spent only $24 to open an e-tomb for her mother, a famous Beijing writer who died recently. It now features a biography, photos, essays and a message board. E-cemeteries will not replace traditional graveyards she says, but they offer a convenient alternative.
YANG TUAN, ONLINE GRAVE SWEEPER: With the online memorial, we can pay our respect and show our love anytime we wish.
FLORCRUZ: With a click of the mouse, relatives can light candles, burn incense and offer flowers and songs. They can also propagate the memory of their loved ones. In two months since Yang opened her mother's e-tomb, it has attracted more than 2,600 visitors. TUAN (through translator): Ninety percent of them are strangers. I was very touched by the words they left on the Web page in my mother's memory.
FLORCRUZ (on camera): The most important thing in life, a Chinese saying goes, is to get buried well. Now on the Internet, the buried may also be remembered well.
Jaime FlorCruz, CNN, Beijing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCMANUS: Summer is just days away and we've been getting ready all week checking out the season's hottest new films and the best beaches. Today, summer travel. Have you ever felt just like, I don't know, hitting the road? Well you're in good company. In the aftermath of last September's terrorist attacks, many Americans are buying or renting recreational vehicles.
Fred Katayama now on the RV craze.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FRED KATAYAMA, CNNfn CORRESPONDENT: Scared of the skies or tired of security hassles at airports many Americans are taking to the open road instead and they`re doing that in RVs. They`re rediscovering America and spending time with their families.
Dave Broadco (ph) just bought his first RV.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s a lot of consideration after 9/11, I think. A lot of people are still a little scared to fly.
KATAYAMA: Sales skyrocketed nearly 30 percent in the latest quarter at RV make Winnebago. Its order back log has doubled to 3,000 vehicles and it`s building a new plant.
BRUCE HERTZKE, CEO, WINNEBAGO INDUSTRIES: We`ve been working some overtime and we continue ... to supply our dealers with plenty of product. The retail of our products is up considerably.
KATAYAMA: Helping fuel sales: baby boomers.
JEFFREY TRVKA, SENIOR ANALYST, RAINIER RESEARCH: Thousands of baby boomers are approaching the peak RV buying years which are between 45 and 65 years old. And that probably won't peak for another eight to 10 years and then - so, we should see some good growth longer term.
KATAYAMA: The hot sellers bus size RVs like this $200,000 luxury home on wheels. Sales of big motor homes rose nearly 19 percent in February.
STEVE STEVENSON, SALES MANAGER, CEDAR RIDGE RV: Motor homes for instance we can't even get them any sooner than three months sometimes. We've had five on the lot and four have gone in the last three days.
KATAYAMA: And trailer sales grew almost 27 percent.
(on-camera): One of the latest innovations in RVs the sky deck. You just walk up this wooden staircase to the deck and you've expanded your living space by 50 percent.
(voice-over): Also hitting the sky: RV stocks. Some of the big manufacturers have more than doubled over the past year. The bump in the rose that could hurt sales is any decline in consumer confidence. But barring that not even rising gas prices or interest rates, analysts say, will stall sales of these land yachts.
Fred Katayama, CNN financial news, Branchville, New Jersey.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCMANUS: Well speaking of summer travel, let's talk cars. The other day the National Mall in Washington, D.C. looked like a parking lot, a parking lot full of broken down vehicles. The purpose, top teen auto techs in the country battling it out for prizes worth more than $8 million.
Here is Kathleen Koch.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They laid out their tools like surgeons preparing to operate. And they were off. Their patients, Ford Mustang convertibles, all with identical defects that the top 100 high school student mechanics in the country had to find and fix as fast as they could, a first for the Ford AAA Student Auto Skills Test twin competitors.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've been training for two hours a day so for a couple of weeks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ever since we found out what car we had, we've been training.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just go through the car and find something that you think they could bug or something that they could do to throw you off, I guess.
KOCH: And as has now become routine, there are female contestants, including Melissa Campbell of New Mexico.
MELISSA CAMPBELL, NEW MEXICO TEAM: Ever since I was little, I played with cars. And well it's not really a man's competition, it's a person's competition. And it's never really bothered me being outnumbered by any boys.
KOCH: Contestants could use the manuals. Team judges handed out repair parts. Some raced like the wind while others stalled. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well there's like nothing there.
KOCH: Finally, cars headed across the finish line to the judges.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pull the headlights on. All right. Turn signal. And step on the brake. Let's pop the trunk open and look at the trim there real quick.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The top won't go back up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So it won't go back up. OK, so we'll just mark that down as a...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... workmanship.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right (ph).
KOCH: Melissa's team was stumped by the convertible top.
CAMPBELL: It sounded like the motor was cranking but it ended up there was a bad relay in the back behind the seat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, the national champions are from Ohio.
(CROWD CHEERS)
KOCH: Wayland Tilley (ph) and Matthew Snodgrass (ph) credit their instructor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We tried to do the same thing and we practiced and listened to him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Keep my fingers crossed and we made it.
KOCH (on camera): The competition is also designed to draw attention to a shortage in auto technicians. Students who enter the field can earn up to six figure salaries.
(voice-over): That's because computer expertise is now needed, not just to win such competitions, but to fix the cars of the 21st century.
JIM EOEN, JUDGE: It's a shift from brawn to brands, if you'd like to say. A shift from the real mechanical, physical moving of parts to brains, what it takes to really figure out what's causing the problem.
KOCH: Kathleen Koch, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE) MCMANUS: Today is Juneteenth, the oldest known celebration of the ending of slavery. June 19 first became known as the African- American Emancipation Day back in 1865. Today we look at the past and the present of Birmingham, once a city torn apart by segregation. How have things changed since the Civil Rights era?
CNN's Student Bureau takes a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ADRIANNA LEWIS, CNN STUDENT BUREAU (voice-over): Birmingham is a leading southern center, but in the mid-1950s through the early '60s, it was a cradle of segregation, demonstrations and rallies. Civil rights leaders chose it to fight some of their toughest battles. Much has changed since then.
(on camera): The Birmingham, Alabama of today has integrated neighborhoods and many non-segregated churches. But has Dr. Martin Luther King's dream of equality truly become a reality in this city?
(voice-over): Civil Rights Institute volunteer James Armstrong says yes, the dream is a reality but one that needs more nurturing. Armstrong fought alongside Dr. King in Alabama's Civil Rights Movement.
JAMES ARMSTRONG, CIVIL RIGHTS INSTITUTE: Been a pleasure to me to be in the struggle and went through the suffering integrating lunch counters. I went to jail three times by the lunch counters in Birmingham. If I had to do it all over again, I'd do it again because I know what it meant to Birmingham and to me to see Birmingham as a to my -- in my idea of a first class city.
LEWIS: Hoover High School is part of Birmingham's Metropolitan area. It is a place where students of all different races have equal educational opportunities. Assistant principal Martin Nalls is the first African-American administrator at Hoover High School. He says he can be a role model to the minority students.
MARTIN NALLS, ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL: As I was growing up, I really didn't see any African-American males in education. And that was part of my motivation of going into education.
LEWIS: English teacher Amy Everson is also a role model. She has been leading class discussions on racism and prejudice, themes present in Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird."
AMY EVERSON, TEACHER: I'd like my students to understand the history of the south, what perpetuated all the problems, where the south started and apply that to today's problems that still exist. And I think that only with that knowledge can we stop perpetuating the problem.
LEWIS: However, the problems of segregation can still be seen by sophomore student Patrick Tatum.
PATRICK TATUM, STUDENT: Even though there's integration with the schools, there are still groups of people who segregate themselves.
LEWIS: Nonetheless, Ashley Guinn says that there is still harmony among the students of Hoover High.
ASHLEY GUINN, STUDENT: We have such a diverse school and it's not just African-Americans and Caucasians, we have Indians and Arabians and Chinese and we all get along so well.
LEWIS: Not only has the school system of Alabama changed in terms of race relations from 1963 to 2002, but the government of Birmingham as well. In 1979, Birmingham elected its first African- American mayor Dr. Richard Arrington (ph). Today, Birmingham has a second African-American mayor, Dr. Bernard Kincaid. Now the majority of the city council is African-American.
(on camera): If what is happening today in Birmingham is representative of what is happening in other cities across the country, then it appears that the civil rights goals of desegregation is truly becoming a reality.
This is Adrianna Lewis, CNN Student Bureau, Birmingham.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCMANUS: Our "Where in the World" there, Alabama.
Well our 30 minutes are up. We'll see you tomorrow.
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