HEAD OF WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME WARNS 125,000 CHILDREN IN YEMEN COULD DIE IF THE PROGRAM DOESN’T GET MORE MONEY, THIS SUNDAY ON “60 MINUTES”
Turned Away by the Saudi-led Coalition, “60 Minutes” Still Got Cameras in to Record Starvation, Which WFP Head Says Is Caused when Food Is Used as a Weapon
David Beasley, head of the U.N.’s World Food Programme, warns that 125,000 children are on the brink of starvation in Yemen and could die if his organization doesn’t get more funds in the next few months. 60 MINUTES managed to get cameras in to record some of the suffering children, despite the fact Scott Pelley and his team were prevented from entering Yemen by Saudi Arabia, which is supporting one side in the country’s deadly civil war. Pelley’s report will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Nov. 19 (7:30-8:30 PM, ET/7:00-8:00 PM PT) on the CBS Television Network.
“We’re on the brink of famine. If we don’t receive the monies that we need in the next few months, I would say 125,000 little girls and boys will die,” Beasley tells Pelley. “We’ve been able to avert famine, but we know three things that are happening. We know that people are dying. We know that people are wasting. And we know that children are stunting…they’re smaller, the brains are smaller, the body’s smaller because they’re not getting the food or the nutrition they need.”
Pelley and his team were ordered off a ship and then two planes headed to Yemen. The Saudis have heavily restricted reporters from the region; the country’s support of the government against the Houthi rebels includes bombing campaigns that have killed many civilians. The Saudis have also blockaded Yemen, preventing food as well as weapons from getting into the country. Beasley says holding up food is part of their strategy. “I don’t think there’s any question the Saudi-led coalition, along with the Houthis and all of those involved, are using food as a weapon.”
The civilians, especially the children, are suffering the most in what is a preventable, man-made crisis the Saudis would rather the world not focus on.
“I don’t understand why they won’t allow the world to see what’s taking place,” says Beasley. “Because I think if the world sees the tragedy of this human suffering…the world will step up and provide the support financially for innocent children to eat…it’s unnecessary conflict, strictly man-made.
60 MINUTES’ cameras were able record some of the emaciated children in a hospital in the city of Sana’a. Says Beasley, “It’s just desperation and death. It is as bad as it gets. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie this bad.”
THIS SUNDAY ON “60 MINUTES”: GO, JOHNNY, GO! CHUCK BERRY’S GUITAR ANTHEM IS HEADED FOR IMMORTALITY ON VOYAGER SPACE PROBES
NASA’s Voyagers 1 and 2 Are Still Beaming Back Messages from Billions of Miles Away
When Chuck Berry sang “Go, go Johnny go!” in 1958, could he have ever imagined how far his rock-and-roll hit would really go? “Johnny B. Goode” is now some 13 billion miles from Earth, travelling at 38,000 miles per hour aboard NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe. The guitar anthem shares space on a Golden Record alongside Mozart and Louis Armstrong, part of a cultural snapshot intended for any extraterrestrials who might someday find the spacecraft. Anderson Cooper reports on the Voyager space probes as they continue beaming back data 40 years after their launch. The story will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Nov. 19 (7:30-8:30 PM, ET/7:00-8:00 PM PT) on the CBS Television Network.
Why send “Johnny B. Goode” into space? Ann Druyan, the creative director of the team that astronomer Carl Sagan assembled to make the Golden Record in the 1970s, tells Cooper the music embodied the mission. “To me, ‘Johnny B. Goode,’ rock and roll, was the music of motion, of moving, getting to someplace you’ve never been before and the odds are against you,” says Druyan. “But you want to go. That was Voyager.”
The Voyagers were launched 40 years ago, and they’re still going – no man-made objects have ever travelled so long and so far while continuing to function. The twin crafts were launched separately in 1977, and their mission was only supposed to last four years. The images the Voyagers captured of Jupiter in 1979 were the sharpest scientists had ever seen. The probes have continued on, collecting data and images from the farthest planets in our solar system –Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – and their distinctive moons. The data gave scientists a new perspective on the workings and diversity of far-away worlds they had only seen through telescopes. The Voyagers are still beaming scientific data back to Earth.
Compared to today’s technology, Voyagers 1 and 2 are low-tech, says chief project scientist Ed Stone, who is 81 and still on the job. “Your smartphone has 240,000 times more memory than the Voyager spacecraft,” he tells Cooper. “And it is 10,000 times faster than the Voyager computers.” Nevertheless, the probes will outlast all of us and the planet Earth as we know it, Stone says. Even after the Voyagers’ nuclear power runs out in about 10 years, they will keep moving through the vacuum-like conditions of outer space with Chuck Berry’s hit onboard. Rock and roll may never die.
“Think of that. We have actually sent a message that will be in orbit in the Milky Way galaxy essentially forever, even after the sun and the Earth no longer exist in their current state,” says Stone.
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