Current Events Wednesdays

Here you will find the Channel One News transcript from each Wednesday.  If you are ever absent for a current events assignment, you can read the news and complete your summaries and extension question for credit.

Here is the link to Channel One News Scripts

4/10/2013

Maggie: Today is Wednesday, April 10^th, officially the 100^th day of the year! So come on, let's kick off the next 265 together. I am Maggie Rulli and Channel One News starts right now!

We will look at how a standoff in Washington, D.C. is impacting schools around the country. But first, let's catch you up on those headlines, starting with a rescue effort now underway in Iran.

Shelby: Maggie, dozens of people were killed, and hundreds more hurt, in a powerful earthquake there.

Yesterday's deadly quake in southern Iran was centered about an hour's drive from the country's only nuclear power station. According to the Red Cross, two villages were torn apart by the magnitude 6.3 quake. But according to the company that built the nuclear plant, the reactor was not damaged. Neighboring countries have repeatedly raised concerns about the nuclear plant since it is built in a part of Iran prone to earthquakes.

Local authorities have called for helicopters to help with rescue attempts.

The quake could be felt across the Persian Gulf in Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and several aftershocks have been felt in the region. Many homes in southern Iran are made with mud brick, which breaks apart easily during a quake.

*****

Maggie: Closer to home, a surprise spring snowstorm is causing all sorts of travel problems in the Midwest.

Demetrius: In fact, in some areas near the Rockies, they could see nearly two feet of snow.

Yesterday was a snow day for two of Colorado's biggest school districts. And for students in and around Rapid City, South Dakota, among other places, as blizzard-like conditions with high winds and heavy snows began to move in.

Hundreds of flights at Denver International were also canceled by the wintry weather.

There have also been reports of several tornadoes. This twister was spotted over eastern Colorado. Forecasters say the problem is that cold air in the Rockies is slamming into a mass of warm, moist air coming from the south. The collision is spinning off severe weather all across the middle of the country.

On Monday, Denver was in the 70s. Yesterday, it was in the teens, a 60-degree temperature swing.

*****

Maggie: And last night, it was the ladies’ time to shine in college basketball.

Julian: Maggie, NCAA championship game was a Big East battle, the Louisville Cardinals taking on Connecticut's Huskies.

Announcer: Connecticut brings the title back to … in 2013!

Julian: Connecticut has now won its eighth national championship, tying Tennessee’s record for the most national titles in women’s college basketball history. No other school has more than two.

Yukon has never lost an NCAA final. And after Huskies freshman Breanna Stewart’s performance, expectations are high for the next several seasons as well.

Announcer: Got it! Three-pointer! She can’t miss!

Julian: Louisville was just the third school to send both its men's and women's teams to the title game in the same year. The Cardinals have now lost 13 straight games to the Huskies.

And women's basketball is big business. New Orleans officials say the Final Four generated $20 million in spending.

Maggie: Thanks, Julian. And way to go, ladies!

Up next, how government budget cuts are challenging schools and hitting one group of students especially hard.

*****

It has now been forty days since those automatic budget cuts known as the sequester began kicking in. This country's public schools are now facing nearly $2 billion in budget cuts. And as Jessica Kumari found out, schools near military bases are being hit even harder and quicker.

Tiffany Cook: That he loves me. And that's mostly what he could say. That he hoped he will be back.

Jessica: Tiffany Cook's father, Colonel Brian Cook, is on his way to Afghanistan. It is his fifth deployment overseas but it never gets easier for Tiffany.

Tiffany: I just worry about him. Just worrying that he might not come home.

Jessica: Tiffany is a sophomore at Silver Valley High School in Yermo, California near Fort Irwin National Training Center.

Counselor: How do you feel about this?

Tiffany: It's a scary feeling.

Jessica: With her dad away, Tiffany talks to her school counselor once a week. But her counselor may lose her job due to those budget cuts known as the sequester.

Tiffany: They're going to see all these kids that are going through so much, and they don't have anyone to talk to.

Jessica: The $85 billion of automatic cuts across every government agency went into effect a few weeks ago when Congress couldn't agree on a spending plan. And those cuts are hitting schools near military bases harder than other public schools. That is because most public schools depend on property taxes for funding. But the government can't tax certain properties, like land that is part of an Indian reservation, national park or a military base, so schools like Tiffany's that are located near a military base instead survive on something called Impact Aid.

Superintendent Marc Jackson: Impact Aid is the government's way of saying they know we can't tax the base. The military has put Fort Irwin in the middle of our district, so you can't tax a federal property.

Jessica: To make up for the loss of property taxes, $1.2 billion is paid out every year to 1,400 school districts nationwide near military bases and Indian reservations. The sequester cut $60 million of that funding in addition to the cuts affecting every school in the country. It is a half-million-dollar hit for Superintendent Jackson's school district. He says he may need to cut bus transportation, teacher training and those school counselors.

Superintendent Jackson: You should have excellent schools for our military that has done so much for us. And to just cut them is just callous.

Jessica: Tiffany has much more on her mind than her school's budget.

Tiffany: I wish he was here. I just wish he didn't leave.

Jessica: Jessica Kumari, Channel One News.

Maggie: Thanks, Jess.

*****

Alright. You probably think slavery ended back in the 1800s, right? Well, there is a chance slaves were used to make what you are wearing right now. We explain, just ahead.

Now, if you are anything like me, you like stuff – a lot of stuff. But did you ever stop to think where all the stuff actually comes from? You might not like the answer. Scott Evans says there is an easy way to find out if you are a part of modern-day slavery.

Scott: Tell me how many pair of jeans do you own?

Alekssandra Lopez: Fifteen to twenty pairs of jeans.

Matthew: Two!

Scott: Two pair of jeans?

Matthew: Two pairs of jeans.

Brielle Jones: Five. I mostly wear leggings.

Scott: Now, what about, like, seafood?

Alekssandra: Obsessed with seafood. Love it!

Scott: Ok. So, how many pairs of sneakers would you say?

Consumer: Two.

Shadae: Only if it’s Jordan's.

Elias Zaldivar: Like, ten. Seriously.

Megan Zaldivar: More than these guys.

Scott: Sounds like your typical American teen, right? Teenage consumers spend just over $208 billion every year in the U.S. And a lot of that money is spent on products made using slave labor.

Shadae: You mean minimum wage?

Scott: No, no, no. I mean, like, slaves. Like, no wage.

According to the State Department, as many 27 million people are enslaved around the world. And human trafficking, when humans are bought and sold as slaves, happens in more than 160 countries, including the U.S.

Justin Dillon: We think here in the United States, slavery is a problem elsewhere in the world. We have over 200,000 people living in slave conditions here in the U.S.

Scott: Justin is the CEO of Made in a Free World, an organization trying to stop slave labor wherever it exists. And he got involved after his band went on tour through Eastern Europe.

Justin: I would start to meet kids that were being given these opportunities to come to the West, and upon just a little bit of investigation, we found out that they were about to be trafficked. My life somehow intersected into this issue in a way that I didn't realize. Opened my eyes up.

Scott: Justin and his team wanted to open up everyone's eyes, so they created SlaveryFootprint.org, a tool to analyze a person's impact on the world of forced labor.

Justin: We'd love to create the equivalent of carbon footprinting for the slavery movement, so hence Slavery Footprint.

Scott: From the food you eat, electronics you use, clothes you wear and even the things you use to get clean, the survey tallies them all and shows you how your lifestyle contributes to slavery.

Justin: So, we determined the amount of slavery in over 400 different consumer products. Since then we've done quite a few more. We can, literally, determine the likely number of forced laborers for any one product.

Scott: And the app allows you to send letters directly to companies and brands you like, to let them know you don't want them to use slave labor, and ask companies to prove it by starting to use the Made in a Free World tag.

Justin: Over a million people have taken the survey, and if the marketplace gets loud on this, we're going to see a lot of people's lives change because of it.

Scott: So, do you really think that slavery is something that we can end in our lifetime?

Justin: All of it? I'm not so sure about that. But can we end most of it? The one that’s all the way out there in the open? Absolutely.

Scott: Scott Evans, Channel One News.

Maggie: For more on modern-day slavery, make sure you check out our Fair Trade page over at ChannelOne.com.

Alright. That is going to do it for us today. I am Maggie Rulli, Go have an awesome day and we can't wait to see you tomorrow!