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Your World Today
Pyongyang Warns Japan of 'Strong Countermeasures'; French Bill on Ottoman Era Angers Turkey; Slain Russian Reporter's Last Story Printed; Frank Gehry Designs Winery Building
Aired October 12, 2006 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Mounting tensions across northeast Asia as North Korea threatens strong retaliation if Japan or anyone imposes more sanctions.
RALITSA VASSILEVA, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: A voice from the grave. A Russian journalist's last article is published. Many believe it may reveal a motive in her shocking murder.
CLANCY: Is it the beginning of the break-up of Iraq? The country's parliament approving a law allowing the creation of federal regions.
VASSILEVA: And it's no longer tres chic. France bans smoking in public places, and surprisingly the French aren't fuming.
Hello and welcome to our report broadcast around the world.
I'm Ralitsa Vassileva.
CLANCY: I'm Jim Clancy.
From Paris, to Pyongyang, across Russia and the Middle East, wherever you're watching, this is YOUR WORLD TODAY.
A lot of stories to cover this day.
On the North Korean front, tensions heating up with one neighbor but appear to be cooling off with another.
VASSILEVA: We'll have the latest reaction to Pyongyang's reported nuclear test.
CLANCY: In Russia, meantime, the killing of a leading journalist has not silenced her efforts to expose torture and abuse of power.
VASSILEVA: A newspaper publishes the final words of a fierce Kremlin critic.
CLANCY: And he's just won a Nobel Prize for literature not long after his own country put him on trial. We'll have a conversation with the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.
Now, first, while world leaders try to reach consensus on North Korea, Japan now set to take tough action all on its own. Pyongyang responding with a warning. Japan's ruling party approving new sanctions. The cabinet expected to finalize those sanctions Friday.
That is leading North Korea to threaten, in its words, strong countermeasures if the sanctions go through.
Meantime, China appears to be softening its stand on how the U.N. Security Council should handle Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Hugh Riminton has more on that story from Beijing.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HUGH RIMINTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This was the first detailed public response by China on what sanctions should be used against North Korea. And from the start it was not what Washington wanted to hear.
LIU JIANCHAO, CHINESE FOREIGN MIN. SPOKESMAN (through translator): I think punishment is not the purpose.
RIMINTON: Just two days ago China, stunned by the defiance of its neighbor, spoke of the need for punitive action. Now it says it's dedicated to friendly relations with North Korea, and the need for all parties to become, it says, is paramount. But North Korea's claim that U.S. pressure amounts to a declaration of war did earn this rebuke...
LIU (through translator): Under the current circumstances, North Korea should stop any action that can worsen the situation.
RIMINTON: China still refuses to discuss the specifics of what sanctions, if any, it would support. But it is strongly hinting its trump cards, the supply of food and the bulk of North Korea's oil, will not be touched. That, says China, is for the benefit of the people of North Korea, not its government. Beijing is also weary of any Security Council resolution passed under so-called Chapter 7 rules which would allow a blockade or even military action to enforce sanctions.
(on camera): Beijing even went so far as to urge Washington to join in direct talks with North Korea, saying such a move would help both sides narrow the differences. China knows as well as anyone that President Bush has expressly rejected that approach, saying bilateral talks in the past simply didn't work.
(voice over): These latest comments from Beijing presumably mirrored in private by the Chinese president's personal envoy to the United States, Tong Jao Xuen (ph), will bring comfort to Kim Jong-il and frustration elsewhere.
Hugh Riminton, CNN, Beijing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VASSILEVA: And now to the Demilitarized Zone on the border dividing North and South Korea. Actually, it's quite a misnomer. It's already the most heavily fortified buffer zone in the world, and now South Korea is strengthening its defense even more along that northern border.
Dan Rivers took a walk there and gives us a glimpse beyond the razor wire into the isolated north.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAN RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Commander Kim Yong Woo surveys the demilitarized buffer zone that separates North and South Korea with an expert eye. Suddenly, this fault line between communism and capitalism has the world's attention.
He gives me a tour of his section of the fence and reveals that the South Korean army has increased the number of soldiers patrolling and manning watchtowers by one third since the North claimed it had tested a nuclear device. He says, "Since the nuclear test, we are not detecting any movement of North Korean soldiers, but we are sure North Korea will have another test. We are preparing for this. We are heightening our defense posture to confront the north's aggression."
The patrols are bigger and more alert. A once boring routine now has an edge.
(on camera): Despite Kim Jong-il's saber rattling, the message here from the southern Korean army is clear. They are highly trained and heavily armed, prepared to repel any aggressive incursion into their territory.
(voice over): Beyond the razor wire we manage to glimpse a slice of daily life inside the world's most secretive state. North Korean villages clearly visible, and even workers can just be made out tending the fields by hand.
A society cut off from the outside world. Probably largely oblivious to the current international crisis which is growing deeper each day.
Dan Rivers, CNN, on the border of North and South Korea.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY: A touchy subject and a severe blow to relations with France, that's how Turkey is describing a measure that was passed by French lawmakers.
VASSILEVA: The controversial bill tops our survey of stories making headlines around the world.
The measure makes it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered genocide in Turkey during and after World War I. The bill passed in the French lower house still has to be approved by the senate and also by French President Jacques Chirac to become law. But its passage is something outraged in Turkey. Ankara maintain there was no policy of extermination.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HORACE ENGDAHL, SWEDISH ACADEMY: The Nobel Prize in literature for 2006 is awarded to the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CLANCY: Talk about timing. That French bill comes on the day that Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for literature. Many of his works deal with the east-west divide. Last year a Turkish court dropped a criminal charge against Pamuk for saying Turkey was unwilling to talk about the Armenian genocide.
Now, we're going to be talking with the Nobel laureate a little bit later this hour.
VASSILEVA: At least six Palestinians were killed when Israeli troops entered a Gaza village, sparking off clashes. Israeli media reported four of those killed were suspected militants.
Hamas' armed wing responded by firing six makeshift rockets into Israel. No one was injured. Israel launched an offensive in Gaza nearly four months ago after one of its soldiers was abducted.
CLANCY: Now to Russia, where the murder of a high profile journalist has been provoking anger and fear. Many are asking whether her killer will ever be brought to justice.
Anna Politkovskaya's final unfinished article published on Thursday, and it shed some light on a possible motive here.
Senior International Correspondent Matthew Chance joins us now from Moscow.
So ironic that some of her work still being published. She still had more work to do. But what is it saying? And how are authorities reacting both in Moscow and in Chechnya?
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it does indeed seem that Anna Politkovskaya, who was definitely one of Russia's most outspoken critics of the Kremlin, does appear to be lashing out still even from the grave at the human rights abuses that she spent so many years of her life focusing on in her journalism.
As you say, her last unfinished article was published today in the newspaper, the Russian language newspaper where she works, "Novaya Gazeta," in Moscow. It was an article that accused the Kremlin-backed Chechen security forces of torturing suspected terrorists in Chechnya.
The article was accompanied by very graphic photographs taken from a video that was filmed at the time. One of the photograph shows a man lying in a pool of blood. Another is slumped over with what the article says is a knife sticking out of the area around his ear.
In her report, Anna Politkovskaya accused the Kremlin-backed Chechen police of torturing those individuals to death. Again, Jim, it's the kind of reporting for which Anna became renowned in Russia and elsewhere as well. It's also the kind of hard-hitting journalism that many of her colleagues believe finally led to her murder in that suspected contract killing at the weekend -- Jim. CLANCY: Now she also had evidence. She had a videotape apparently taken by two alleged torturers that showed a bloody young man. And the men are in an expletive-filled discourse. The two men are discussing just how tough it was to kill those two young men.
CHANCE: That's right. We've viewed that video now. It's very graphic, indeed, and it's frames, freeze frames from that video which was apparently recorded on a mobile phone or something like that, because it's very poor quality, which forms the basis of this report.
In fact, we've been seeing a number of videos filmed on mobile phones in Chechnya over the past several months which Anna Politkovskaya was using as the basis for some of her reporting, obviously accompanied by interviews over the telephone with people in Chechnya itself.
She hadn't been down to Chechnya for several months. It's very difficult for reporters like Anna Politkovskaya to get the appropriate accreditation and the right permission in Russia to get to that very sensitive breakaway Republic of Chechnya. And so she depended a lot on the -- on the video footage that could be gained by human rights workers that she was in contact with on the ground.
Again, much of her reporting implicated senior figures in this Kremlin-backed administration in Chechnya. And many fingers of suspicion today pointed at those senior fingers as being responsible for her death -- Jim.
CLANCY: Murdered, but not muzzled. A Russian journalist continues to see her work published from the grave.
Thank you very much, Matthew Chance.
VASSILEVA: Well, in the Indonesian island of Bali and in cities across Australia, memorials are being held today to mark a somber anniversary. It has been four years since the nightclub bombings that killed 202 people.
Dozens of survivors, friends and families of victims hugged, wept and prayed at simple commemorations. The dead and injured came from more than 20 countries. Eighty-eight Australians were among those killed.
Hundreds also gathered in Sydney and in Perth. An al Qaeda- linked group, Jamaa Islamiya, was blamed for those attacks. The main perpetrators of the crime are now on death row.
CLANCY: A controversial new law in Iraq. Some say it could make the sectarian violence even worse there.
VASSILEVA: That's right. Coming up, with another high-profile attack in Baghdad, fears that the only way to keep things together might be to split the country apart.
CLANCY: Meantime, in the U.S., fears that scandals, an unpopular war and low poll numbers will end the 12-year Republican majority in Congress.
VASSILEVA: And one Los Angeles architect brings his work to a 19th century Spanish town, taking it into the 21st century and beyond.
CLANCY: Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: Well, we see the Dow hit 12,000. Well, Valerie Morris joins us now from New York with the latest blue chip record.
(STOCK MARKET REPORT)
VASSILEVA: Well, the U.S. midterm elections just four weeks away.
CLANCY: And it's been said that in politics a month can be an eternity. But some are afraid that an eternity might not be long enough.
VASSILEVA: And we'll also show you a piece of our field equipment back from war and overhauled for a dramatic new look. You don't want to miss that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everybody. I'm Heidi Collins at the CNN Center in Atlanta.
More of YOUR WORLD TODAY in just a few minutes. But first, a check on stories making headlines in the United States.
A tense situation this hour at a middle school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Police say the school is now on lockdown after students outside for PE reported seeing a man with a knife. The S.W.A.T. team was called to the James Monroe Middle School. Local affiliates are reporting two other schools also on lockdown.
We are working to confirm these reports. And we will keep you updated on this developing story.
Meanwhile, a dramatic rescue just moments ago of a worker trapped in a trench. It happened in northeast Ohio, a little west of Cleveland. The man has been taken to the hospital.
We'll bring you more information on this story and his condition just as soon as it becomes available.
A would-be bomber confesses he planned to attack the New York Stock Exchange, also the World Bank and International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington, among other sites in the U.S. and U.K. British authorities say 32-year-old Dhiran Barot entered a guilty plea today two years after his arrest. A prosecutor says Barot planned to pack gas cylinders into limousines and set them off in underground parking garages. He also planned to detonate a dirty bomb. A tragic accident; now a search for answers. What caused the plane crash that killed New York Yankees' pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor? Here is what we know about the accident.
Investigators are now going over evidence and records, trying to figure out what went wrong. Lidle's plane slammed into a high rise condo on New York's Upper East Side.
Family, fans and teammates are mourning Lidle's death. The Yankees called the crash a terrible and shocking tragedy. Police say the flight instructor who was killed was Tyler Stanger.
The accident briefly raised fears of another terrorist attack. It is also raising questions about air space restrictions and the potential threat from small planes.
More questions at the heart of the Mark Foley e-mail scandal. Former congressional aide Kirk Fordham's testimony today before the House Ethics Committee could be key. Fordham says he warned top GOP congressional officials about Foley's inappropriate behavior with pages years ago. It should be noted, though, the House speaker's office has denied Fordham's account.
Straight now to Reynolds Wolf for an update with the weather.
(WEATHER REPORT)
COLLINS: The small plane crash in New York -- new details ahead in the "NEWSROOM" at the top of the hour. Kyra Phillips, Don Lemon will have more information on the flight instructor who was in the plane with Yankees' pitcher Cory Lidle.
Meanwhile YOUR WORLD TODAY continues after a quick break.
I'm Heidi Collins.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: Hello, and welcome back to YOUR WORLD TODAY. I'm Jim Clancy.
VASSILEVA: I'm Ralitsa Vassileva. Here are some the top stories we're following for you this hour.
"Punishment should not be the purpose." That's a quote from a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, talking about a potential response to North Korea's nuclear test. This may not sit well with officials in the United States, though. The U.S. currently has a draft resolution making the rounds at the United Nations that would impose sanctions against Pyongyang.
CLANCY: A murdered Russian journalist's final unfinished story published on Thursday. Anna Politkovskaya's article describing the torture of terror suspects by Kremlin-backed security forces in Chechnya. She was an outspoken critic of the Kremlin and many believe she was killed because of her work in journalism. Politkovskaya was gunned outside her apartment on Saturday. It appeared to be a contract killing.
VASSILEVA: France's lower house of parliament has approved a bill that would make it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered genocide in Turkey during and after World War I. It still has to be approved by the Senate and French President Jacques Chirac before becoming law.
Its passage is prompting outrage in Turkey. Ankara maintains there was no policy of extermination. And it's that genocide dispute, in part, that landed a noted Turkish novelist in hot water in the past.
Orhan Pamuk's lyrical prose and uncompromising politics evoke both criticism and acclaim. And this day, he has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pamuk is currently a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York and that's -- he joins us from New York.
Congratulations.
ORHAN PAMUK, TURKISH NOVELIST: Thank you very much.
VASSILEVA: So you basically explored a very interesting journey that your country has undertaken as a modern Muslim country that wants to be secular, that wants to join the west. It's on the crossroads between...
PAMUK: Turkey is already a secular country.
VASSILEVA: Yes, but this is what you talked about, this clash of cultures and these opposite forces tugging at the soul of your nation.
PAMUK: But on the other hand, I don't believe in clash of civilizations. But I believe that -- and my whole work is a testimony to the fact that civilizations come together. They combine to produce something new. Clash of civilizations is a fanciful idea, which is a bad idea. Turkish culture had seen that civilizations come together. They combine gracefully. And that is what my culture is about, what my books are about.
I -- I'm very honored and pleased and flattered by this prize. And I take this as first, as a personal thing that has a sort of recognition of my 33 years labor of writing fiction. And also, as a sort of recognition of Turkish language, Turkish culture and Turkey. And I'm very pleased about that.
VASSILEVA: Certainly, as you say, cultures come together and enrich each other and merge better for it. But, as we had seen in our modern world, they are clashing. They are clashing in Iraq. And also, just curious timing that the lower House of the French Parliament adopted a law today that says that it is illegal to deny the Armenian genocide, which once landed you in jail in your own country. When you said that Turkey did not...
PAMUK: Yes, that's over, and I don't want to underline it too much. And I want to see Turkey in future in Europe. Turkey will definitely join the European Union, and that will be both good not only for Turkey and Europe, but that will be a crucial point in world history. That if Turkey joins Europe, it will show -- that Europe and Turkey will show to the whole world that there are no clashes of civilizations, but cultures, religions, combine and get together.
VASSILEVA: But one culture, the Western culture, talks of freedom and speech and sees the fact that Turkey is not addressing this issue of the Armenian genocide and is putting people in jail for that. You, yourself -- that that is...
PAMUK: Yes, that -- the crucial issue is here, for me -- is to have a full democracy, full human rights. That -- freedom of speech in Turkey is -- will be full and satisfactory. These are my problems. But then, also, this is a day for celebration, for being happy, not for politics. At least today, for me. I'm very happy about the prize. And I take this prize as an honor bestowed upon my birth and Turkish culture and language.
VASSILEVA: And what are you going to do to celebrate?
PAMUK: Oh, I'm going to see friends. But not right now. I'm not celebrating anything. The only thing that I did that I call -- as soon as I received the news, I called my daughter, who was in a class, in school, in a class in Turkey. And I said, dear, we have this wonderful news. And she said and, oh, the teacher is coming. And she said, oh, congratulations. And then she said, teacher is coming. OK, give me the teacher, I said. No, no, no, she said and she hang up. But, of course, delighted. I will go to Stockholm with my daughter and I'm very happy about that.
VASSILEVA: Congratulations once again. Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
PAMUK: Thank you very much.
VASSILEVA: And that is one of the books that made him famous, "Snow," one of the great books that he wrote. And it was obvious that he didn't want to be -- to say that he has a political agenda. He is a man of literature. However, in Turkey, some -- even some novelists, colleagues of his, have said that this might be political. The fact that he got this, even though he's a great writer. They think the timing of it could have been political. But he wanted to stay away from that.
CLANCY: He got the prize for building bridges. And that's probably why he will continue to be a success in Turkey and around the world.
VASSILEVA: Absolutely.
CLANCY: Well, we're going to go around the world. We're going to Spain, a sleepy little village where, for centuries, grapes were harvested from the vines.
VASSILEVA: And now the ancient art of winemaking there has been given a modern twist, should we say? Look at that. Coming up we will see how a world renowned architect has drastically altered the landscape. Stay with us. All in the name of wine.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VASSILEVA: Welcome back. Seen live in more than 200 countries across the globe, this is YOUR WORLD TODAY here on CNN International.
Let's turn to our top stories this hour. The heightened tensions in Asia. You don't usually get to hear the reasons behind North Korea's decisions. The isolated nation's leaders are reclusive, to say the very least. And for the most part, international journalists are not welcome in North Korea. But there are places in China and South Korea where you can at least take a peek into the country.
Jaime FlorCruz reports on the Chinese/North Korean border.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JAIME FLORCRUZ, CNN BEIJING BUREAU CHIEF (voice over): A glimpse into North Korea from across the water in China. Men fish along the riverbanks of Sinuju, a North Korean border town of some 350,000 people. Not far away, school children gingerly learn to roller skate. And over here, North Koreans are celebrating the marriage of two of their own.
Two days after North Korea announced it had conducted its first nuclear test, it seems life in Sinuju is carrying on as normal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Everything is normal for ordinary North Koreans. There isn't any tension.
FLORCRUZ: The contrast was the Chinese side couldn't be greater. Dandong is a city of 800,000 people, bustling with energy and entrepreneurship. Here, high-rise hotels and modern apartment houses tower overhead. And on the streets, Chinese eager to turn a profit.
Chinese tourists find time to look across the river and make the inevitable comparisons.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): It's just like China in 1970s.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): This side looks like Hong Kong. That side looks like China in the '70s.
FLORCRUZ: Others take a short boat ride.
(on camera): This is the Yalu River which divides China and North Korea. For less than three U.S. dollars, tourists can take a motorized tour and get a closer look at North Korea.
(voice over): And they see a very different place. Slogans like this wishing North Korea leader Kim Jong-il longevity keep up the remorseless beat of state propaganda. Sinuju's decrepit looks betray a sense of stagnation and isolation.
Smoke stacks tower over factories but only one or two spew smoke. A sign perhaps of the north's acute energy shortage. A ferris wheel sits along the bank, idle for years.
Panning across the Yalu River, the skylines of Sinuju and Dandong show just how much North Korea has lagged behind its close neighbor and ally. Despite talk of sanctions and North Korea's isolation, trains and trucks continue to ply both sides.
As night falls, Chinese border guards wade through convoys of vehicles, ferrying goods across the so-called China-Korea Friendship Bridge. The traffic continues into the night. The Chinese side of the bridge ablaze in neon and lasers. And on the other side, only a tiny flicker of light.
Jaime FlorCruz, CNN, Dandong, China.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY: Well, meantime, China softening its tone about how to deal with Pyongyang's apparent nuclear tests. For more on the threat of sanctions and the international response, I'm joined by Han Park. Pleased to welcome Mr. Park. He's a professor of political science at the University of Georgia.
Let me just begin by asking you, so many people saying we've to get North Korea back to the six-party talks. Some view those talks as having accomplished next to nothing over the past five years or more. What's your view about those talks? And what should really happen?
HAN PARK, ABC NEWS CONSULTANT: The six-party talks have exhausted its utility. When they agreed to the principals. After all they could have done in the multilateral setting, North Koreans are telling very consistently that they are not threatened by China, South Korea, Japan or Russia. The only entity they feel they are threatened by is the United States. But we have been rejecting the notion of direct talks.
As a result, unless we really somehow formally/informally engage ourselves in a direct talk, two-party talks with North Korea, nothing will move, and we have seen that enough, and more of the same things will produce nothing.
CLANCY: Well, Japan, to some extent, South Korea, they're all looking at it, and there are voices there in the South Korea that say, shut the border, shut your contacts. And you're going to have to overlook all of the suffering of his own people that he doesn't care about, because if you cave into him now, it's going to be an endless list of demands that has been seen. It's been proven in the past.
PARK: You have to see foreign policy as an extension of domestic politics. North Korea has domestic politics and politicking. Right now, it is the military that determines everything.
CLANCY: Well, come on, it is Kim Jong-Il that determines everything, isn't it?
PARK: Kim Jong-Il, yes, the head of the military. In the constitution, Kim Jong-Il is not head of the state, head of the military. And yes, Kim and military, the two are the same. But Kim had to go through a series of purges and eliminations of those older people whom he couldn't control completely. Now Kim Jong-Il is in firm control.
And the military, he wouldn't do anything the military commanders may not agree with. But the difference between his father and Kim Jong-Il is very clear -- his father did whatever he wanted; Kim Jong- Il does what he thinks the military will approve. So to military people, their mentality is a very, very tunnel vision and single- minded. They think they are being threatened by the United States. Their only deterrent is nuclear bombs. So yes, that's why they've done what they did.
CLANCY: Professor Park, clearly you see bilateral talks between Washington and Pyongyang as the solution, but so many others out there see that as encouraging a leader. This nuclear test will have accomplished exactly what he wanted. He will get his way. Japan doesn't seem willing to go along. Japan being threatened today. Which direction should the world take? Which direction does the region have to take?
PARK: We have to realize that why North Korea wants bilateral talks, although I don't agree with a lot of things, and I have to think in terms of their mentality and put myself in their shoes, and they want two-party talks not because they want something that six- party talks cannot confuse. In fact in the six party...
CLANCY: It's all image, isn't it? It's all feel good for them. It's status for Kim Jong-Il. He gets to talk to Washington.
PARK: Well, yes, certainly. They're really objecting to what they call the hostility. By granting direct talks, certainly we are accepting North Korea and Kim Jong-Il as legitimate negotiating partner, and that's what they want; that's what the Washington refuses to grant. So that's the key.
CLANCY: All right, that whole thing.
Professor Han Park, we value your perspective. A chance to see things from the other side there in a difficult relationship between North Korea, the region, and especially with Washington.
Well, this is a story that surprises me as much as just about any we we're reporting today. The days of cigarette-friendly France going up in smoke, really.
VASSILEVA: When we come back, we'll tell you what the French think about their government's ban on lighting up in public.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VASSILEVA: Welcome back. Architect Frank Gehry made a dramatic statement with his modern design of the Guggenheim Museum in Spain, and helped put Bilbao on tourists maps. Well, he may have thought his work in that country was done, but a visit to the village of El Ciego, not to mention a few glasses of fine wine convinced him to bring out the blueprints again. And Al Goodman shows us the result.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AL GOODMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When you are nearly a thousand years old like the Basque village of El Ciego, the past is ever present, and change is almost imperceptible. But wine has suddenly transformed all that, bringing a flashy, futuristic neighbor to a place whose lifeblood is winemaking.
FRANK GEHRY, ARCHITECT: I thought it as some kind of creature sort of floating over the vineyards.
GOODMAN: Architect Frank Gehry is back in Spain unveiling the first winery building he has ever designed.
GEHRY: It had to be something exciting. It had to be, because after all, wine is about joy and pleasure.
GOODMAN: Gehry was hesitant about taking the commission, but then the winery's owners took him into the cellars, and served him a bottle from 1929, the year he was born.
GEHRY: After a few glasses, I was -- I said, of course, I have to do this.
GOODMAN: Alejandro Aznar, chairman of the Marques de Riscal winery, took us to the same cellar.
(on camera): From every single year since 1862 there's at least a bottle here?
ALEJANDRO AZNAR, MARQUES DE RISCAL: There's more than a bottle. There's thousands of bottles.
GOODMAN: So you brought Frank Gehry down to the oldest part of the winery, so he would make the newest part of the winery?
AZNAR: That's it. We wanted to jump from the 19th century to the 21st century.
GOODMAN (voice-over): They won't make wine in his building. Instead, they'll drink it in the winery's new luxury hotel and restaurant under that colorful titanium roof.
GEHRY: I've always wanted to play with color. I thought a vineyard was an appropriate place to play with color.
GOODMAN: Just a few hillsides away, the grape harvest is concluding. Back-breaking work entangled in shapes and colors that surely inspired Gehry. These hands-on grape experts have heard about the new building.
MIGUEL LOZANO, GRAPE PICKER (through translator): Wine has color. Grapes have color. I think his building fits in nicely with all of this.
JOAQUIN DUAL, GRAPE PICKER (through translator): The building is in the proper location, because it's about wine.
GOODMAN: In the old village, the new addition is still sinking in.
"They built a mushroom in town," says this retired grape picker. "It should have gone somewhere else."
But this woman just opened the town's first wine bar, and is betting that tourists will flock here.
CRISTINA SANGRONIZ, WINE BAR OWNER: I think that it's going to be very good for the village.
GOODMAN: Perhaps, like Gehry's Guggenheim Museum was for Bilbao, just to the north. Gehry is conscious of his new design's surroundings.
GEHRY: It's like a little sketch in the vineyard. I don't think it's overpowering.
GOODMAN: Even if it has taken this ancient village's breath away.
Al Goodman, CNN, El Ciego, Spain.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VASSILEVA: Certainly shining the spotlight on that little village.
CLANCY: It certainly is beautiful work too.
VASSILEVA: Well, both man and machinery returning from war inevitably have some wear and tear. And one of the vehicles that carried CNN journalists in Iraq during the war was no exception.
CLANCY: But with a little tender loving care, not to mention a new paint job and this war vet, as we like to call Warrior One, is back to new and even better.
VASSILEVA: Absolutely. The warrior one was unveiled outside CNN's Atlanta headquarters. It now has a state-of-the-art DVD and sound system.
CLANCY: Something like 1,000 watts per channel. I'm not going to get to use that much.
VASSILEVA: Yes, images of members of the media and the military have been painted on the outside of the vehicle. The makeover is courtesy of The Learning Channel's "Overhaulin'" show. The Hummer will now tour military bases and then be auctioned off for charity.
CLANCY: And it was a wreck when they started. I can tell you.
VASSILEVA: And now, we turn from the prospects of high emissions to a story about lower emissions. CLANCY: I think we could actually say it was a story about no emissions at all. Thirty percent of French adults smoke. Seems like a lot more when you visit Paris.
VASSILEVA: Oh, absolutely.
CLANCY: You know, alarmingly, 10 percent of all deaths in France due to smoking.
VASSILEVA: Yes, and a new law hopes to change that.
Jim Bittermann has our story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIM BITTERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): True, Paris has a bus stop, an alley, and even an entire street honoring the diplomat who introduced tobacco to the nation and gave his name to nicotine.
True, every national icon here from Balmano (ph) to Bardot sooner or later seems to end up blowing smoke. True, from this old photo of Jacques Chirac on his official Web site, you might think the president came from Marlboro Country, not France.
But it is also true that the French are trying to kick the habit. Just ask the sponsor of a new law aimed at just that.
YVES BUR, DEP. PRES., FRENCH NATL. ASSEMBLY: Smoking is a danger for the health of the people and so it is necessary to fight the smoke.
BITTERMANN: To show their grit, French lawmakers will close down their own private smoke shop just off the floor of the National Assembly. But not all legislators are ready to go cold turkey. Take Andre Santini. He's the president for life of the 150 member French Parliament cigar-smoking club.
ANDRE SANTINI, PARLIAMENT CIGAR SMOKING CLUB (through translator): Of course we will have to find ways to limit smoking. We cannot stop freedom so brutally. Next thing you know they will ban alcohol.
BITTERMANN: The new law isn't really that brutal, especially compared to restrictions in other European countries.
(on camera): Maybe it's the upcoming elections or perhaps memories of the student demonstrations last spring, but the government is moving forward very cautiously. To avoid a parliamentary debate, it plans to introduce the new limits by decree, first forbidding smoking in public places next year, and then waiting until 2008 to eliminate smoking in bars and cafes.
(voice-over): But maybe the public mood is also changing. Polls say between 70 percent and 80 percent of the French, including those who smoke, are in favor of some or all of the restrictions. The Cupal (ph) Restaurant, one of the largest in Paris, raised its ceiling 80 years ago to encourage smokers. Now it limits smoking to the bar area. The manager believe it has been good for business.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For the three months, July, August and September, we have not any problems.
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CLANCY: Mark my words. If the French can quit, so can the rest of us. I'm Jim Clancy.
VASSILEVA: I totally agree. I'm Ralitsa Vassileva. This is CNN.
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