Students: We're Ms. Floss' homeroom from Maryvale Middle School in Cheektowaga, New York, and Channel One News starts right now!
Keith: Thanks to Maryvale Middle School for kicking us off today. You guys did an awesome job.
I am Keith Kocinski, and first up today, segregation in schools: something you probably think only exists in your history books as part of 1950s America. But 62 years later, one Mississippi school district is still divided by color. Now one federal judge is looking to change that, ordering the district to make a big move. Arielle Hixson has the story.
Arielle: Cleveland, Mississippi, is literally a town divided — by old railroad tracks. Most white students live on the West Side, while many African-American students call the East Side home. Deshambra Fields and her brother Quoindedrick attend East Side High School, where the student body is 100 percent black.
Quoindedrick Fields: It's this side of the highway versus that side of the highway. And it's just — it's been a rival for a long time.
Arielle: Segregation, or separating people by race, is illegal, but experts say because of things like where people live and how much money their parents make, it is still happening in the U.S. And it is a problem because minority schools tend to have fewer resources and perform worse.
So now in Mississippi, a federal judge last week approved a plan to desegregate the schools; East Side High School would be merged with Cleveland High School, where
45 percent of the students are white, and 47 [percent] are black. A nearly all-black middle school would also be combined with a racially mixed one. Less than a third of students at the new school will be white, in an area where nearly half the residents are.
Dorothy Silas:I want to see my grandkids be benefit from this here, so we need this. This needs to happen, and it finally happened.
Arielle: But some experts say the new plan could cause white families to move out of the public school system. They claim that when people are forced to attend different schools, it can backfire, and the schools have a problem maintaining diversity.
Treyzar Eatmon: Bad idea because you're trying to force kids to go to schools they don't want to go to.
Deaudriana Jones: Are the kids going to agree with it? Because they also do have a say if they want to go to school, if they want to mingle with these people or those people.
Arielle: But many say it is an overdue change.
Vanita Gupta: This is not a country that in 2016 wants to be perceived as having deeply segregated communities anymore.
Arielle: Vanita Gupta heads the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, which formed the desegregation plan.
Gupta: Children deserve to be educated in the kinds of environments that we as adults face, which are mixed race, mixed religion.
Arielle: Even though Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court case that banned segregation, has been the law of the land since 1954, the Justice Department still has 177 open desegregation cases.Almost half are just in two states, Alabama and Mississippi.
Both states have a painful history with desegregation. A deadly riot broke out in 1962 when James Meredith tried to become the first black student enrolled at the University of Mississippi.
Today Margaret Swartzfager's kids go to Cleveland High. Edward Duvall's go to East Side High.
Margaret Swartzfager: If the parents would step aside and let the kids feel their way through it, the kids are going to deal with it a lot better than the parents will.
Edward Duvall: These kids, whether you're black or white, are going to be our leaders for tomorrow, and we need to invest in them. It can work if we want it to.
Arielle: Arielle Hixson, Channel One News.
Keith: Thanks, Arielle. The Mississippi school district says it is strongly considering appealing the judge's order to desegregate its schools.
Okay, next up, 80 percent of the food you eat is genetically modified — but is it safe? We take a bite and find out.
Keith: All right, time to take a look at some of the other top stories, and I am sure you have heard the debate: Is GMO safe? Well, a big new report says that genetically modified crops are just as safe.
GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, are plants that have been mixed with the DNA of different species. The most common are corn and soybeans that have been genetically modified to resist chemicals used to kill weeds or keep bugs away. Over the years the arguments for and against GMOs have become a very heated topic.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, one of the most prestigious scientific groups, spent the past two years examining over 900 studies and found no evidence that GMOs were less safe than other foods.
Dr. David Agus: There was no difference at all.
Keith: But the report also found that when farms switched from regular crops to the GMO kinds, they didn't produce more crops, which is one of the main selling points of GMO — it is supposed to help produce more food.
Next up, it became a global hashtag — BringBackOurGirls — after 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Islamic militants in the country of Nigeria more than two years ago. Now police say one of them has been found. One of these 219 Nigerian school girls escaped her captors, making it home safely. Her name is Amina Ali Nkeki, and her return set Twitter on fire with messages of thanks.
Nigerian soldiers reportedly found the student wandering in the SambisaForest, near the Cameroon border. She is the first girl to be free since the militant group Boko Haram abducted the students from their boarding school more than two years ago as they were studying for their finals.
Their disappearance sparked global outrage; even first lady Michelle Obama used the #BringBackOurGirls. Activists say the rescued girl told police most of the schoolgirls are still being held under heavy guard in a forest in northeast Nigeria.
All right, coming up, one young lady has the major keys to success.
Keith: Okay, the month of May marks Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, celebrating Asians and Pacific Islanders and their positive impact on our country. Today we feature one young Asian-American entrepreneur who has opened up opportunities to millions of young women across the globe. Azia Celestino sat down with this major mogul.
Azia: Tiffany Pham is the founder of Mogul, an online platform for women around the world.
Tiffany Pham: A platform that enables women to connect and share information and access knowledge from each other.
Azia: Mogul members can write articles or upload videos on just about any subject.
Pham: Fashion, world affairs, but also culture too, and humorous pieces. I see a lot of the younger members posting a lot about growth, for sure — that’s definitely one of the biggest topics on the platform, growth around career, entrepreneurship, internships.
Azia: And the stories reach girls in every country across the globe.
Pham: Girls around the world going through the same obstacles and overcoming them in different ways. A young girl from Pakistan wrote that there, a girl's life is all about marriage, but thanks to Mogul, it helps her to realize that she can be more than what others say.
Azia: The inspiration for Mogul started with Tiffany's grandmother. She was a businesswoman who owned newspapers in countries where it is tough to speak out against the government.
Pham: She ran resorts, restaurants, newspapers — especially the newspapers were her true love, whereby she ran these newspapers across Asia, fought against propaganda, democratized media within Asia through those efforts. I grew up wanting to follow in her footsteps.
Azia: Tiffany wanted to keep that mission alive.
Pham: I just didn't actually know how it would one day happen, but I had this concept, idea, down since I was 14, even down to the color palette that you see on Mogul today.
Azia: Wow, that is incredible!
Mogul encourages empowerment with a marketplace for members to sell their products and a career section to browse jobs.
Pham: So we're creating this economic opportunity on the platform for young women around the world.
Azia: The company even teamed up with experts and educators to create Mogul mentorship and courses.
Pham: We started to realize that they're actually interested in learning more about those very same topics they're posting about. We created course curriculum that's available on the Mogul platform.
Azia: For each course that is purchased, Mogul distributes courses to communities in need.
Pham: We provide it for free internationally to the 62 million girls around the world who don't have access to an education otherwise.
Azia: Today Mogul is an international tool that reaches over 18 million women a week.
And while Tiffany has been recognized for her work, she says that being an Asian and female entrepreneur pushed her to reach her goals.
Pham: So I knew that as an entrepreneur of minority descent that I may face a lot of challenges in getting funding, building traction amongst partners, press. So I thought the one way in which I could overcome this might be to teach myself how to code initially, build the platform myself and showcase to the world that this was needed by young women around the world.
Azia: Tiffany also credits Mogul's success to her passion for learning and hopes to keep inspiring young people.
Pham: One of the key traits for being a successful entrepreneur definitely is to be a learner. Be kind, be authentic and be generous.
Azia: Azia Celestino, Channel One News.
Keith: Thanks, Azia. And to check out five other inspiring young female entrepreneurs, head over to ChannelOne.com.
All right, that is going to do it for us. We will see you right back here tomorrow.
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