CNN Student News - October 18, 2016

CARL AZUZ, CNN STUDENT NEWS ANCHOR: Welcome to CNN STUDENT NEWS. It`s good to see you this Tuesday. I`m Carl Azuz, reporting from the CNN Center.

First story centers on a battle that`s begun in the Middle Eastern nation of Iraq. You`ve heard us talk a lot about the ISIS terrorist group. ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and that`s what they`ve been trying to create. 

But right now, ISIS is fighting to hold on to the Iraqi city of Mosul, which they took over in 2014. And if ISIS loses Mosul, it could signal the beginning of the end for ISIS in Iraq.

The battle started early Monday morning. Iraq`s military says it inflicted heavy losses of life and equipment on ISIS in an area southeast of the city. Iraqi troops are leading a coalition of other groups in trying to push ISIS out. Hundreds of U.S. troops are also involved, though the 

Pentagon says they`re not on the front line. And the forces that are can call in air support when they meet with tough resistance from the terrorist. 

One terrorism expert says the major challenge of this battle will be avoiding hurting Mosul`s civilians while overpowering ISIS`s defenses. 

They`ve had months to prepare for this. But international officials say there`s no doubt the fight is an important one.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The battle for Mosul is a really big deal, and here`s why.

SUBTITLE: Why Mosul matters.

WARD: Mosul is the second biggest city in Iraq and it`s the last remaining ISIS stronghold in the country. It`s also the place where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi first declared that he had established an Islamic caliphate or state.

Now, the last time the Iraqi army was in Mosul was back in 2014, ones were fleeing from ISIS fighters. This time, it`s hoping to reverse those losses.

Iraqi army forces won`t be the only ones on the battlefield, though. Kurdish, Peshmerga forces will be involved and the U.S. military will also be playing a supportive role.

But the battle won`t be easy. Officials estimate there are between three and five thousand ISIS fighters still inside the city and they have created an elaborate network of defenses. They fill moats with oil and set it alight, creating these thick black plumes of choking smoke. Houses are booby trapped, the streets are littered with IEDS. 

And then there`s the human toll. An estimated 1 million civilians are still leaving in the city of Mosul and the U.N. says that the exodus that could follow a battle might be one of the biggest manmade displacements in recent times.

Some commanders estimate it could take as much as three months to take the city, and then there`s the aftermath to deal with. But if the operation is successful, it will deal a major blow to ISIS.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AZUZ: Two Chinese astronauts went from earth to orbit yesterday, with the mission of spending 30 days in space. That would be the longest time in orbit by China`s astronauts, and they`ll be staying at the country`s Heavenly Palace 2, an orbiting laboratory that China launched in September.

President Xi Jinping says the mission will help build China as a space power. It`s one of only three countries to have sent crews to space. The other two are Russia and the U.S. 

China says its space program is peaceful, but the U.S. is concerned the Asian country could use it for military purposes. That`s one reason why Chinese astronauts aren`t allowed at the International Space Station. China`s building a station of its own, hoping to finish it by 2022, around the time when the International Space Station runs out of funding.

A report from the United Nations says America is in the midst of a heroin epidemic. The number of people abusing the drug is the highest in 20 years and along with that has come an increase in heroin-related deaths. This week, we`re examining the problem, the responses to it and the communities 
affected, like the one around Kirkwood High School in Missouri.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOLTON KALETA, KIRKWOOD HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: I describe Kirkwood as your perfect American dream. Nice houses, the best schools. What the dealers kind of look for are people who are more affluent from better off neighborhoods, that way they have the money to actually go and get it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The enemy is roaring like a lion. It comes to kill, steal and destroy and it`s in the form of heroin.

KALETA: I`m Kolton Kaleta and I started heroin when I was 15. I first tried heroin whenever I was in this room. It`s just constant and compulsive and it just takes over your will and your body.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): About 30,000 people live in Kirkwood, Missouri, a well-to-do suburb outside of St. Louis with a median family income of more than $77,000 a year. In this county, heroin deaths are nearly four times the national average.

KALETA: The people that used heroin in Kirkwood can be anywhere from the honor student to like your typical teenage stoner.

FEYERICK (on camera): Did you ever think that at the age of 15, you would be a full-blown heroin addict?

KALETA: No, it`s not like you wake up one day and think that you`re going to be a heroin addict. It just slowly progresses from the small stuff.

FEYERICK: Do most of the people you know try heroin recreationally?

KALETA: It almost always starts recreationally. No one starts off thinking I`m going to do this every day. First, you don`t even like it and then I tried it again and from then, it`s just kind of down hill spiral.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Aly says, "I love you, dad." And I said, "I love you Aly." And then she went into her bedroom, close her door. She took a capsule of heroin and it was so powerful, she died instantly.

"Heroin is the first thing I think about when I wake up. It`s the last thing I think about when I sleep. I just care about getting high. I wish I had all the money in the world so I could buy all the heroin in the world."

FEYERICK: Do you know how deeply into heroin your daughter was?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I had no clue. I had no idea. And I discovered this after getting all her notes and all her journals and everything.

FEYERICK: So, this is the book you made for Aly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I did, because I figured someday I`m going to be dead, and at least she would have something of her childhood memories.

FEYERICK: And this became a book for you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And it became my book now, yes.

FEYERICK: When you look at this face, this is the face of dreams.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

FEYERICK: Of hope.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That`s right. She could have been a dancer. I mean, she was good in ballet. She did tap and jazz. I`ll never see her walk down the aisle. I`ll never see her get married. I`ll never have grandkids. I`ll never be, you know, a grandfather.

KALETA: I`d think about how I could have ended up like a lot of people in the area. 

FEYERICK (voice-over): Kolton`s wake-up call came in 2015, when one of his friends suddenly died of a suspected overdose. Both teens had struggled with heroin addiction. It was the second death at Kirkwood in just fourteen months.

KALETA: It tore me open inside. Since then, I`ve kind of turned it into motivation, to stay on the path I am.

FEYERICK: Kirkwood High School is aggressively dealing with the heroin problem. After Kolton`s friend died, more than 80 students reached out to get help for themselves, or people close to them. 

KALETA: I`ve been in recovery since October 20th, 2015.

SUBTITLE: Shortly after filming finished, another Kirkwood high student died of heroin overdoes. She graduated in May and was weeks away from starting college.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AZUZ: Powerful story there. 

Well, listen, we have something new for you, guys. We want you to sign up for our new daily email. It`s not only new, it`s improved and you`re going to love it. This thing is every bit as free as the show. 

It will only take you a moment to sign up at CNNStudentNews.com and it replaces our old daily email. So, if you`re still getting that, what you want to do, go to the website, scroll down a page and click this sign up for the daily email banner. In advance of each day`s show, you`ll get an email telling you what`s in it.

(MUSIC)

AZUZ: Yesterday, we introduced you to quintuplets making news at McDonald`s. Today, we`re showing you a champion-making news at Subway. 

What makes Melissa Callan a champion?

Well, every year, the company rewards the employee who could make the best foot-long sandwich. They`re scored on speed, accuracy and how the sandwich looks. And for her 48-second assembly time this year, Ms. Callan took home bragging rights and several thousand dollars.

So, suffice to say her super sonic sub sandwich assembly simply sunk the opposition. And similar to our puns, it was cheesy, unsubtle, quickly cooked up, full of baloney, delivered with plenty of ham from a place where there`s always something fresh afoot.

I`m Carl Azuz and we hope you`re hungry for more news tomorrow.

CNN Student News - October 17, 2016

CARL AZUZ, CNN STUDENT NEWS ANCHOR: This is CNN STUDENT NEWS, ten minutes of international current events for our international audience. I`m Carl Azuz. We`re glad you`re watching.

First up this Monday, the United Nations, the United States and the United Kingdom are all calling for an immediate ceasefire in Yemen. The conflict started last year in the Middle Eastern country, between Houthi rebels who drove out Yemen`s president last year, and the forces that support Yemen`s president. 

Other countries are involved, too. Iran supports the Houthi rebels. Saudi Arabia and some other nearby nations support the Yemeni government. 

Part of the reason why global tensions are heating up over Yemen, an American warship in the Red Sea has apparently been targeted several times from missiles that the U.S. says were launched from Houthi controlled parts of Yemen. They`ve all missed the USS Mason, but the ship responded last 
week by launching missiles of its own aimed at three Houthi radar sites. America believes these sites were used to target the USS Mason.

Next story, the Iraqi air force dropped thousands of leaflets over the Iraqi city of Mosul this weekend. Their message: don`t panic but stay at home, seal up your windows and doors, and avoid the ISIS terrorists who control Mosul. The reason: forces lead by Iraq and supported by the U.S. were advancing toward the city. The background: ISIS took over Mosul in 2014. 

Today, it is ISIS`s last stronghold in Iraq. For more than 15 months, Iraqi forces have been getting ready for the battle to take Mosul back. 

But a CNN correspondent in Iraq says it`s likely to be a messy and prolong fight. In advance of it, witnesses said on Sunday that airstrikes destroyed one the main bridges leading to Mosul.

We`re headed to sea now, off the northeastern coast of Australia. There`s a system of coral reefs there that`s about half the size of the U.S. state of Texas. It`s the Great Barrier Reef, and scientists say it`s in trouble.

One symptom of the reefs` problems appears in coral bleaching. This happens when the coral are stressed out, when there are changes in light, nutrients or temperature that coral can get rid of their algae and turn white and it can take years for it to recover.

Australia has devoted $2 billion toward improving the reefs` health and there has been some progress but officials say the reefs recovery will have to speed up to become successful.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUBTITLE: Coral bleaching on the Grand Barrier Reef.

New video from WWF shows devastating coral bleaching in Australia`s Great Barrier Reef.

JUSTIN MARSHALL, MARINE BIOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND: I`ve been coming to Lizard Island coral reefs for about 30 years and over that time, we`ve looked at the color of the coral and see it go from a healthy brown to unhealthy white. The color here on Lizard Island is as unhealthy and white and bleached as I`ve ever seen it before.

What causes coral bleaching is when the ocean`s temperature stays warm for a very long period of time, and we have both global warming, which has affects that`s been lasted for years, and this year, an El Nino on top of that. So, it`s almost a double whammy for the coral. They`re getting hit from both sides. So, they`re bleaching very heavily.

SUBTITLE: Damage to coral reefs impacts fisheries, coastlines and economies that depend on eco-tourism.

MARSHALL: On Lizard Island right now, it looks like all of the reefs is affected by the coral bleaching. I`ve never seen it bleached this much or this heavily before. In fact, I haven`t seen one healthy coral in our entire trip.

SUBTITLE: The Great Barrier Reef is a 1,430 mile-long ecosystem made up of hundreds of islands with over 600 types of coral. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living thing on earth, and is visible from space.

MARSHALL: One of the things we don`t know is how well the reef is going to recover. I`d be surprised if 50 percent of the coral recovers. 

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AZUZ: "The Poisoning of America", that`s a title of CNN`s exploration into the U.S. heroin epidemic, a dramatic increase in abuse of the illegal and highly addictive drug that`s led to thousands of deaths. Throughout the week, we`re looking at who`s affected, what`s being done to address the 
problem and as you`ll see now, how heroin can get into the country.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There`s a battle along America`s southwest border. Every day, drug traffickers try to smuggle mass quantities of heroin and other hard narcotics into the U.S. anyway they can. From the air, on land and sea, and even underground, we look at law enforcement`s ongoing struggle to stop drugs from crossing our borders.

San Ysidro, California, is the busiest land port of entry in the nation. More than 2,400 pounds, well over a ton of heroin were seized in 2015, a 45 percent increased from the previous year.

(on camera): This is the U.S.-Mexico border. I take a couple of steps over these dots and I`m in Mexico. More than 60,000 cars pass through here every single day and each one of them has to be inspected for contraband.

SIDNEY AKI, PORT DIR., SAN YSIDRO/OTAY MESA PORT OF ENTRY: Of that, 12 to about 15 vehicles are identified as having narcotics within them. That`s a very small percentage. However, in these vehicles, there`s anywhere from 25 to 75 pounds of heroin. 

We`ve become somewhat of a de facto mechanic. We are actually pulling the car apart, doors and seats and gas tanks of a daily basis. Engine compartments as well. There`d be something to test indicating that it is cocaine.

Ninety-nine percent of all the travelers entering our ports of entry are legitimate families and good people. It`s that 1 percent that we`re looking for, the needle in the haystack.

FEYERICK (voice-over): Traveling along the thin sliver of land that separates the U.S. from Mexico, it`s easy to understand why America is such a big market for drug cartels. 

(on camera): It`s amazing how small the fence is when you think about it. 

(voice-over): The location is ideal.

JAMES NIELSEN, U.S. BORDER PATROL AGENT: So, you can see, they build their properties right up the fence line.

FEYERICK (on camera): They`re clearly watching what you are doing here on this side of the fence. 

NIELSEN: They do operate as a business. They`re going to pay people to set up in some of these houses and observe, get that counter-intelligence on what they`re doing. They might be able to use vernaculars and pick up an agent`s name off his name tag, identify how that agent typically works. 

Because there`s so much money involved, whatever we do here on our side of the border, they`re going to try and figure out a way to beat it. So, if we put up a 100-foot fence, they`re going to try and build 101-foot ladder or they`re going to put a tunnel that go underneath it.

FEYERICK (voice-over): Border agents here have discovered 58 underground tunnels, 22 of them in the last six years. They`re in an area of San Diego known as Tunnel Alley, which agents call a sweet spot for digging since the cool wet sandstone is easy to dig and keeps at shape. 

We`re in the Galvez Tunnel, now sealed at one end with concrete, started in the warehouse in Mexico. It is seven stories deep and more than two football fields long.

LANCE LENOIR, U.S. BORDER PATROL OPERATIONS OFFICER: So, you need a means of getting a lot of products through in a relatively short amount of time. The tunnel can do that secretly. Thirty-four tons I think is what we had about four years through one tunnel.

FEYERICK: Right.

LENOIR: It could be $60-plus million. It pales in comparison to cost and effort that goes into building the thing. 

It`s a perfect means to an end and the profit margin is huge. As long as there is demand for drugs on the north side and somebody willing to ship them on the south side, there`s always probably going to be tunnels.

HUNTER DAVIS, DIRECTOR, SAN DIEGO AIR AND MARINE BRANCH: We head south toward the border.

FEYERICK: Your guys here, the helicopter, they`re working, communicating with the boats usually?

DAVIS: Yes. So, that`s two of our marine boats. We work jointly a lot with other agencies, Coast Guard for instance. Their visibility with radar is pretty limited. So, have an air assets increases the range and target detections significantly.

FEYERICK: Are the cartel organizations being more aggressive in the way they tried to get drugs in?

DAVIS: Yes, absolutely. As we increase pressure, they`re willing to take greater and greater risk. It`s risky going 100 miles offshore in small 20 to 30-foot boat and transiting from in and out of Mexico to San Francisco. 

FEYERICK (voice-over): Former White House drug czar and now head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection says the solution is to target users and stop demand.

(on camera): You could snap your fingers what do you wish could happen.

GIL KERLIKOWSKE, U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION COMMISSIONER: So, I think it`s an understanding in this country that we`ll never, one, arrest our way out of a drug problem. It goes back to a much more holistic way of looking at this issue. We really have not devoted anywhere near enough time attention or money on prevention, on education. If we have less demand in this country, Mexico would have less of a problem.

FEYERICK: It`s actually a massive assault. They`re trying to get it in every possible way they can. 

KERLIKOWSKE: Yes, it`s a business. They`re going to do everything they can to make money and we`re going to do everything we can to stop them. 

But I would not be the person to tell you that drugs aren`t going to get into this country.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AZUZ: In the U.S. state of Michigan, there are five restaurant employees who have a lot in common. They all work at McDonald`s, they`re all 18 years old, they share the same car, they have the same birthday and they share the same parents.

The three guys and two girls are quintuplets. Their boss says they`re great workers and that if she needs a shift covered, she`s got a really good shot at it by just calling one house.

So, if someone is thinking about hiring siblings, those are five great reasons why you should. There`s no doubt they have a fraternal bound and as long as there`s no sibling rivalry, their five-part harmony shows how all the jobs in the restaurant are related.

You could say that having them on staff is quintessential.

I`m Carl Azuz. CNN STUDENT NEWS is serving more puns and news tomorrow.