Quick Guide & Transcript: Week in Review, Legendary find in Rome

Adjust font size:

(CNN Student News) -- February 16, 2007

Quick Guide

Week in Review - Look back at the week's headlines, including a youngster's perfection on part of the SAT.

Teens & Drugs - Check out a new survey that offers some staggering numbers about teens and drug abuse.

A Fabled Find - Explore a discovery in Rome that has some archaeologists excited about its legendary possibilities.

Transcript

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DANIELLE ELIAS, CNN STUDENT NEWS ANCHOR: Hi, i'm Danielle Elias...And you've found an all-new edition of CNN Student News! Let it snow? No, let it stop is what many people in the north are thinking. We'll review what's buried their homes and roads this week. Just because they're prescribed by a doctor doesn't mean they're safe to use casually. More teenagers are turning to the medicine cabinet to get high. And historians know who ruled it, who raided it and who revered it. But as to who founded Rome... well, that's the stuff of legend.

First Up: Week in Review

ELIAS: Almost every college in the country accepts SAT scores in its admissions process. The math section of the SAT reasoning test can be pretty tough: It measures how well you know everything from algebra to functional notation. Sound intimidating? Well, you can bring a calculator. And you should shoot for the same score a fifth-grader recently got! Carl Azuz brings us that story and reviews our other headlines of the week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, IRANIAN PRESIDENT: Today we have gathered to confirm our rights and to instill hopelessness in our enemy.

CARL AZUZ, CNN STUDENT NEWS: It wasn't the major announcement that many officials expected... But Iran's president stepped before hundreds of thousands, to say his country wouldn't budge on its controversial nuclear program. Iran is expected to have broader nuclear capabilities in a matter of months. It's also being accused of contributing to the Iraq insurgency: The U.S. military now says it has proof that armor-piercing explosives used against U.S. troops came from Iran.

ROBERT GATES, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Iran is very much involved in providing either the technology or the weapons themselves.

AZUZ: What officials aren't sure about is whether Iran's top leadership -- its spiritual leader or president -- is behind a plan to send the weapons to Iraq. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies any involvement. But some U.S. officials in iraq recently suggested that Iran's leaders ordered the explosives sent to Iraq. This week, President Bush said he did not know if that was the case.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: My job is to protect our troops. And when we find devices that are in that country that are hurting our troops, we're going to do something about it, pure and simple.

AZUZ: A 10-year-old chess whiz outscored most of the nation's high school students on the math part of the SAT. Darryl Wu of Washington state took the test because his older brother was taking it. And he took home an 800 -- a perfect score -- on a part of the exam where the national average is 518!

DARRYL WU: The section didn't seem that hard really.

AZUZ: Wu's future plans include finishing the fifth grade.

AZUZ: It's no longer pretty to many Northerners. Following yet another winter storm this week, some folks found themselves literally snowed in, with drifts that topped their doorways.

MAN: This is the toughest one I can remember, snow-wise.

AZUZ: Tough indeed: Even Syracuse University, which hasn't closed for snow in 14 years, called off some classes this week. The storm has moved out to sea, but subfreezing temperatures continue to keep many folks, indoors. With your CNN Student News Week in Review, I'm Carl Azuz.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Shoutout

GEORGE RAMSAY, CNN STUDENT NEWS: Today's Shoutout goes out to Mr. Sickles' classes at Wordsworth Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania! Which of the following U.S. cities has the highest annual snowfall? You know what to do! Is it: A) Rochester, New York B) Denver, Colorado C) Helena, Montana D) St. Paul, Minnesota You've got three seconds--GO! Each year, Rochester, New York gets an average of 94 inches of snow, making it the snowiest large city in the country. That's your answer and that's your Shoutout!

Teens & Drugs

ELIAS: Prescription medicines are used to treat several ailments and conditions. But an increasing number of teenagers are using them to get high, and that can dangerously slow down breating, permanently damage the brain, or even cause death. Christine Romans spoke to some young people who got hooked on drugs -- the kind you'd find in your family's medicine cabinet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN REPORTER: Sara is sixteen years old, from Michigan. She says getting drugs was easy.

SARA, FORMER DRUG ADDICT: I can buy 'em just as fast as I can get pizza.

ROMANS: Mike is seventeen, from Long Island, New York and knows just where to get drugs at school.

MIKE, FORMER DRUG ADDICT: You can walk down the hallway and know whose involved.

ROMANS: Both started with marijuana and quickly moved onto prescription drugs. Both now being treated for drug addiction. Another 2.1 million kids just like them abused prescription drugs in 2005, the government says. And for younger teens, 12 to 13 years old, prescription medicines are now the most commonly abused drugs.

JOSEPH CALIFANO, CASA: Teen abuse of prescription drugs has tripled over the last ten years. Twice the rate of marijuana abuse...five times faster than cocaine, 60 times heroin.

ROMANS: The government released new analysis of youth drug trends, concluding teens are abusing prescription drugs in record numbers and parents are unaware of the problem. A survey of 12th graders found marijuana, is still the drug of choice. But the fastest growth, was in drugs like Vicodin, amphetamines, cough medicine, sedatives and tranquilizers. Sara and Mike say they both started drugs long before their senior year.

SARA: I was 12 or 13.

ROMANS: John Walters, America's drug czar, was snowed in in Washington and spoke via broadband.

JOHN WALTERS, DIRECTOR, ONDCP: This is attractive to young people we found in study cause they think it's safer.

ROMANS: One third of all new abusers of prescription drugs in 2005, were 12-17 years old.

CALIFANO: Adults in this country, whether they be parents, teachers or the pharmaceutical companies, have to do a better job of keeping this stuff out of the hands of children.

ROMANS: Both Sara and Mike have been sober for a year. The study shows that girls are more likely to abuse prescription drugs, but both girls and boys say its easy to get them, at home, from their grandparents, in school, even online. Christine Romans, CNN New York.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Word to the Wise

GEORGE RAMSAY: A Word to the Wise... hyperbole (noun) obvious exaggeration; an overstatement (source: www.dictionary.com)

A Fabled Find

ELIAS: Hyperbole gives rise to legends. And in an ancient city that was once home to the world's most powerful civilization, legends abound. We bring you another story out of Italy this week. But this one isn't about prehistoric lovers or underground artifacts. Jennifer Eccleston takes you to a hollow place, filled with relics of imagination.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENNIFER ECCLESTON, CNN REPORTER: Deep beneath the honeycombed ruins that are Rome's Palatine Hill, a discovery that makes archaeologists and historians, alike, giddy.

MARINA PIRANOMONTE, ARCHAEOLOGIST MINISTRY OF CULTURAL HERITAGE: It is an emotion. It is a big emotion.

ECCLESTON: As is often the case here, one treasure begets another. Archaeologists were restoring this Roman Palace when they stumbled upon a vaulted cave. Even at this early stage, they knew they had something potentially special.

PIRANOMONTE: We thought we had found a grotto, a cave, but it was decorated.

ECCLESTON: Richly decorated, in fact with seashells and mosaics as seen here in the first ever photograph.

PIRANOMONTE: So we began to think about the possibility that it would be something more like the Lupercale because the place is perfect.

ECCLESTON: The fabled Lupercale: the cave where ancient Romans believed a wolf nursed the city's legendary founders Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of the god Mars who were abandoned on the banks of the Tiber River.

ENRICO BRUSCHINI, ART HISTORIAN: The she-wolf saw the babies and she suckled the babies and the babies were milked and they became men in a cave. Romulus and Remus are the names of course. Romulus decided to build a village on the top of the Palatine Hill, this wonderful location.

ECCLESTON: Hence, the eternal city was born, so the story goes.

BRUSCHINI: Legend or history, every time when there is a legend if we scratch we can find something real.

ECCLESTON: Historian Enrico Bruschini says the early days of the city of Rome are shrouded in mystery and quite often, hyperbole. And that's because there's little evidence remaining of what Rome was like over two and a half thousand years ago. Any discovery that would help fill in the blanks would be significant.

BRUSCHINI: If that is true. It is something really unique because this is the cradle of the history of Rome. The beginning.

PIRANOMONTE: It's a very important piece of the past and as you said but we have to be sure, we have to study

ECCLESTON: Is it just another cave? A jewel in Rome's enormous crown of antiquities or evidence of the site where fable becomes fact. Jennifer Eccleston, Rome.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Promo

ELIAS: There's a CNN Special coming up you won't want to miss. Lance Armstrong and Doctor Sanjay Gupta take you inside the harrowing world of cancer and look at the latest ways to prevent forms of the disease. For an overview, showtime, and free classroom materials, go to CNN.com/Education.

Before We Go

ELIAS: Before we go... Next time you flip a coin, it could be worth four times as much as a quarter. It was out with the old and in with the new yesterday, as dollar bills were handed over for freshly-minted dollar coins. They'll contain images of each U.S. president in the order they served. A new one will be released every three months. What remains to be seen, though, is whether people besides coin collectors will prefer the buck that jingles to the kind that folds.

Goodbye

ELIAS: We'll be off next Monday for President's Day, but don't forget to tune in tuesday for an all-new edition of CNN Student News! Meantime, more Headline News is on the way.

Tools:
Save |
Print |
E-mail |
Most Popular |

Next story in Education

Education

U.S. condemns 'inhuman brutality' in Syria

The U.N. Security Council on Sunday condemned the weekend massacre of more than 100 civilians in Syria, with members casting blame on government forces for ...