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Scotland`s Vote on Independence; Ebola Spreading Fast in West Africa; Heroine and Prescription Drugs Abuse in the U.S.; Maasai Saving Lions instead of Hunting

Aired September 12, 2014 - 04:00:00   ET


CARL AZUZ, CNN ANCHOR: Fridays are awesome. I`m Carl Azuz. Welcome to CNN STUDENT NEWS. First up, should Scotland be an independent country from

the United Kingdom? Scottish voters will decide next week in a simple yes/no vote. Scotland has been a division of the U.K. for 307 years. But

its independence movement said those days should be over, in part because it believes Scots, not the central U.K. government should be able to

determine Scotland`s future. Also, Scotland has a lot of oil. The independence movement says if it`s separated from the U.K., Scotland would

be one of the richest countries in the world. The U.K. says Scotland has only one tenth the oil that the independence movement thinks it has. And

Britain`s government has been begging Scotland to stay part of the union, which Britain calls one of the world`s most successful unions. There are a

lot of unanswered questions, how would this affect Scotland`s economy, what currency would it have, would it stay part of the European Union? All of

this will need answers if Scots choose independence. Polls indicate the vote will be very close.

In West Africa, this year`s outbreak of Ebola virus is merciless. That`s the world from the United Nations. Liberia has been hit the hardest. The

hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 1200 people there. Liberia`s finance minister says his country`s at war with an enemy it can`t see. The nation`s

health care system can`t handle it. Efforts to stop the virus from spreading aren`t working.


UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Here`s the way it`s supposed to work: for every Ebola patient healthcare workers are supposed to keep track of every single

person who`s had close contact with him. If one of these contacts gets sick, he`s supposed to be isolated. Then all of his contacts are followed

until there are no more sick patients. It`s called contact tracing, and it`s pretty simple, but it`s powerful, it helped put a stop to SARS and to

smallpox. But in many parts of West Africa, contact tracing is breaking down.

These slums are a big reason why. In many parts of West Africa, streets have no names, people have no addresses, there may not be maps. That means

some contacts never get found.

Here`s why that`s such a problem. A missed contacts can spread Ebola to other contacts and they`ll be missed, too. That`s why the CDC says even

one missed contact can keep the outbreak going.

By now in West Africa, there are entire chains of transmission that are invisible: the computer databases that keep track of all these cases and

contacts, often they are not in such great shape. One disease detective from the CDC working in Sierra Leone, she says the database there was in

shambles. The CDC has designed special software to keep track of these cases and these contacts and they are trying to implement it in West

Africa, but even that hasn`t gone smoothly. All of these is starting to add up, and it has the World Health Organization really concerned.


AZUZ: Just the facts. Heroin is a highly addictive drug. It`s legal for private use in most countries, including the U.S. The National Institute

on Drug Abuse estimates that about a quarter of those who try heroin once become addicts and become more likely to die from an overdose. Withdrawal

symptoms are intense and last for days. They include body aches, vomiting, insomnia and intestinal problems.

Now, despite that, heroin us is rising in America. The U.S. Attorney General calls overdose deaths from heroin and other painkillers an urgent

public health crisis. Communities and states from Virginia to Ohio to Louisiana are trying to fight a heroin epidemic. It`s not just that one

substance. It`s other opiates like it. And man-made drugs like codeine oxycodone, hydrocodone, stuff that`s commonly prescribed for pain relief,

these all have similarities to heroin, and they all show the danger of addiction.


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do these chemicals affect the brain? One big way is by exerting powerful pain relief to the rest of the body. Chemicals

flood the system and match on to millions of opiate receptors peppered throughout the body. Think of opiates in the receptors like puzzle pieces.

When they bind together, pain signals are dulled, or they go away altogether.

If the brain already has opiate receptors, doesn`t that mean it can naturally provide pain relief?

That`s right! Feel good chemicals like endorphins are natural opiates that dull pain and also give you a rush. The problem with manmade opiates that

mimic endorphins, take too many and they can overwhelm the system, give you too much of a rush. That can lead to dependence or abuse. Addiction

become an even bigger problem, because opiates also slow down breathing and heart rate. Mix them with other things that slow down your body, and

everything could grind to a halt.

In fact, every 19 minutes someone dies of an accidental prescription drug overdose, most of the time, involves an opiate. It`s now more common than

dying in a car crash. If you want to avoid that fate, don`t take more than you`re prescribed, don`t use other people`s prescriptions, never mix

opiates with alcohol. And maybe try other ways of alleviating your pain like over the counter pain relievers and good old fashion exercise.


AZUZ: When Dr. Leela Hazzah was a kid, her father told her that he used to hear lions roaring when he slept on the rooftop of their family home in

Egypt. She never heard it. When her father told her it was because lions have gone extinct in Egypt, Hazzah knew what she wanted to do with her



LEELA HAZZAH: 60 years ago there were probably half a million lions in Africa, today there is less than 30,000 lions in all of Africa. If we

don`t do something soon, there are going to be no lions left, maybe in ten, 15 years, who knows.

I spent a year living in the Maasai community to understand why people were killing lions. It brings a huge amount of prestige to the warrior and they

were killing lions in retaliation for livestock that were killed.

They started opening up and telling me stories. That`s when it clicked. If want to conserve wildlife we have to integrate communities.

Our organization hires Maasai warriors and it converts lion killers into lion guardians.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (speaking foreign language)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (speaking foreign language)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (speaking foreign language)

HAZZAH: When we first hire lion guardians they don`t know how to read or write. We provide all of that literacy training and the technical

training. They track lions so they can keep very accurate ecological data on lion movements.

The lion guardian model is founded on Maasai cultural values.

And it is just being tweaked a bit to the 21 century.

We never really even imagine that we could transform these lion killers to the point where they would risk their own lives to stop other people from

killing lions.

When I first moved here, I never heard lions roaring. But now, I hear lions roaring all the time.


AZUZ: There`s one place we go to to find "Roll Call" schools, our transcript page at cnnstudentnews.com. Three schools from yesterday`s

transcript. Moundsville Middle School in Moundsville West Virginia. Good to see the Trojans watching.

Heights High School in Wichita, Kansas, we`ve got some falcons on the wing. And Lowery Freshman Center in Allen, Texas, welcome to all of the Eagles in

the Lone Star State.

NBA star Jeremy Lin likes a good prank. His wax figure recently appeared at Madam Tussauds Museum in San Francisco. Except it wasn`t wax at all.

The 6`3`` point guard recently posed as a solid object, then when people approached, boo. It looked so lifelike that because it is. What`s cool is

that once these people got over the initial jolt, they got to hang out with Jeremy Lin. Assuming they didn`t make a fast break, they didn`t dunk out,

they weren`t total basket cases, and they were able to rebound afterward. The prank, and that`s a lot of it, tension, that`s kind of a field goal of

it, whether Lin`s victims like it or not. I`m Carl Azuz. That`s your Friday show. We all wish you a great weekend, of court.