The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; November 26, 2007

I'm Gwen Eiffel today's news, Mid-East Peace Talks, the Republican candidates engage high school sports injuries, and Somalia in crisis, tonight on the news hour. Good evening, I'm Gwen Eiffel.

On the news hour tonight, the news of this Monday, then World Leaders gather in Maryland for a new Middle East Peace Conference, will they find common ground? The front runners square off and the scrambled Republican primary campaign. A science unit report on the growing number of high school athletes suffering concussions, and an update on the latest humanitarian crisis in Somalia. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lehrer is provided by. Every day, it seems, talk of oil, energy, the environment, where are the answers?

Right now, we're producing clean, renewable, geothermal energy, generating enough energy to power 7 million homes, imagine that, an oil company as part of the solution. This is the power of human energy. The new AT&T, Pacific Life, and the National Science Foundation, supporting education and research across all fields of science and engineering. And with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. And this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions

to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. Israeli and Palestinian leaders made their way to Washington today in advance of a US brokerage peace conference scheduled to begin in Annapolis, Maryland, tomorrow. Nearly 50 representatives from Middle Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia and Syria, will attend. Today, President Bush met separately with Israeli Prime Minister Omar and Palestinian President Abbas at the White House. A top Palestinian advisor said they are working on a joint statement to relaunch peace talks. He said it could be ready tomorrow. This will be the paper which will be agreed upon today and will present a kind of a breakthrough and will enable the conference tomorrow to declare success and to show to the world that the conference is really a launching process for the negotiations that will start after tomorrow.

The leader of the rival Palestinian faction Hamas dismissed the conference. He called President Abbas a traitor for dealing with Israel. Hamas seized power in Gaza last summer. It was not invited to Annapolis. We'll have more on this story right after the new summary. Former Prime Minister Nawash Sharif registered to run today in Pakistan's parliamentary elections. He returned to the country's Sunday from exile. Today, he went to a courthouse in Lohor and filed nomination papers as supporters packed the courtroom. But he said he would never work under President Musharraf who ousted him in a coup in 1999. Sharif also insisted on reinstating Supreme Court justices who were purged when Musharraf imposed emergency rule. There's no point in lifting the emergency.

There is no point in lifting the martial law itself. No purpose unless and until the judiciary as it stood on the 2nd of November, 2007 is the restored with dignity and honor. The Supreme Court was dismissed before it could rule on Musharraf's victory in last month's presidential vote. Today an army spokesman said Musharraf is likely to step down as army chief on Wednesday. One be sworn in again as president on Thursday and Washington the State Department praised that move, but it urged the emergency be lifted soon. President Bush signed an agreement with Iraq today to maintain a long-term U.S. troop presence there. That's an return for U.S. security guarantees. The two nations must still negotiate how many troops will stay and for how long. The agreement will replace the UN mandate governing outside forces in Iraq. Australia today faced their prospect of a new government and a pull-out from Iraq.

The Labor Party swept to power in Saturday's elections, ending nearly a dozen years of conservative rule. A key U.S. ally, Prime Minister John Howard, was ousted. Labor leader Kevin Rudd is set to become Prime Minister possibly by the weekend. Rudd has vowed to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq and to ratify the Kyoto Treaty on cutting greenhouse gases. Republican Senator Trenton lauded Mississippia now today he's retiring at the end of the year. Lot holds the party's number two position in the Senate as minority whip. He lost his majority leader job in 2002 after he appeared to endorse past policies of racial segregation. Today in Pascagoula, Mississippi, he said the time has come to do something else. I've been able to leave on a positive note hopefully, been able to spend more time with my family, been able to do some other things with my life, been able to open the door for

another younger person to have the experiences I've had. All of that seems to make sense to me right now and I feel good about it. Lot is the sixth Republican Senator to announce retirement this year. He leaves office only one year into his fourth term. Mississippi Governor Haley Barber also a Republican who will name an interim senator to serve until the 2008 elections. Vice President Cheney had an evaluation this evening for an irregular heartbeat. Mr. Cheney's had a history of heart problems and this latest one surfaced as he was being checked at his doctor's office today for a lingering cough. The vice president could be given a small electric shock to restore the heartbeat to normal. This year's American Nobel Prize winner is visited the White House today in a ceremony that drew more than the usual attention. The group included former vice president Gore, who battled Mr. Bush in the long Florida recount in 2000.

Mr. Gore shared the peace prize for his work on global warming. The two men also met privately before the ceremony. On Wall Street, stocks took another dive late in the day amid fears the credit crunch will hurt holiday spending. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 237 points to close at 12,743. The Nasdaq fell more than 55 points to close just under 25-41. That's it for the new summary tonight, now prospects for Middle East peace, a Republican campaign snapshot, treating concussions, and famine and fighting in Somalia. Now to the Middle East peace conference. Leaders and diplomats gather in Annapolis, Maryland, tomorrow to try to jumpstart the latest U.S. brokered Israeli Palestinian peace effort. Secretary of State Rice has said she hopes for an accord by the time the president leaves office, but many obstacles loom.

For more on this, we turn to Dennis Ross, a former chief Middle East negotiator in the first Bush and Clinton administrations. His new book is called Statecraft and how to restore America's standing in the world. And Robert Malley, he was a special assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and also served on the National Security Council staff. He's now the Middle East program director at the International Crisis Group, which promotes conflict prevention and resolution. Welcome to you both. Dennis Ross, what is the purpose of this meeting and is there hope for it? Well, I think the purpose of the meeting is to launch a renewed process. For seven years we've had no peace process, now there's an effort to launch a peace process again. I think that's a welcome development. Now the question is, is there hope for it? It depends on what it is our measure is going to be. If the measure is to see negotiations resume, if the measure is to have a series of follow-on steps that will begin to change realities on the ground, if the measure is to get at least some agreements before the end of the administration, there could be hope for it.

If the measure is going to be, they're going to resolve the conflict by the end of 2008, then I would say they're bound to be disappointed. Robert Malley, this is different from the kinds of conferences we've seen before, falling for the sheer numbers of people attending. How significant is that? Well, at this point, as Dennis said, this conference is really about launching some of this going to come the day after in Appleys. It's about launching final status negotiations, implementation of phase one of the Israeli Palestinian roadmap, and the third process is our engagement with Israel. If that's the point of the conference, and not much is going to happen over there, I mean, we know it's going to happen. It's going to be a series of relatively bland speeches. So what really matters is a choreography and the pictures, and who's going to be there? Does that mean that the mere, as the State Department spokesman said today, that the mere attendance, the fact that people are even showing up, is its own victory? In a way, yes. It's not insignificant. I mean, to say the least, had they not been there, things would have been much worse. There would be very little to show for it. Arabs are coming, in particular Saudi Arabia will be there, Syria will be there. That is an achievement for the Bush administration.

It only goes so far as it goes. In other words, they show up for that one day. If nothing happens, the day after, we'll soon forget who was there. See, you just add one point on this. It is good that you have nearly 50 countries that are going to be there, because it's in a statement by the international community, they want to see something happen between Israelis and Palestinians. The paradox, of course, is the larger the number of countries, the more it becomes an event, the less it becomes a form for any serious talks, and the less it becomes even a basis for Arabs and Israelis to engage. It's easier for Arab participants to come, including the Saudis, when there's 50 countries there or nearly 50, because it begins to look like it's a UN meeting as opposed to a real peace process gathering. As a statement of support, good, as a basis in which to launch real negotiations, we'll have to see. Talk about who's there and who's not there, Syria is there, a deputy foreign minister who's there, Saudi Arabia is there, but Hamas is not there, and neither is Iran. How significant is that? Well, first on Syria, I think in a way the US could consider it to an achievement to have Syria there.

I think Syria feels quite vindicated today. For seven years, it was basically put in a cold. It was said that it would be marginalized and isolated unless it shifted its policies. As it turns out, not only are they there, they were courted until the very last minute. And I was one of them there, the Israelis, one of them there, the United States, one of them there. So they feel like after seven years, they were proven right, everything, everyone comes back to them. They send the deputy foreign minister, that's a message that they're in it, but not entirely in it. They're not sending the foreign minister, but they feel at this point of that, the center of things. Now, the exclusion of Iran and Hamas that was never in doubt. They were never even part of the list of potential invitees. I think the problem is the more the region is polarized, the more it's divided. The heart it's going to be to reach the kind of historic compromises that ultimately Israelis and Palestinians are going to have to reach. Let me ask you that question, Dennis Ross. It seems that if certain people who are actually the troublemakers, and for both of these leaders are not there, like say Hamas, both Israel and the Palestinian leader, both fear what Hamas could do, is there anything that can really be accomplished?

Well, there is something that can be accomplished. What can be accomplished is a demonstration that you actually could come up with a pathway that offers promise for the future. The theory, of course, is that you put President Mahmoud Abbas in a position where he can offer a pathway to achieving Palestinian national aspirations, and Hamas offers what? More the same, more suffering, more isolation. So here's the way to try to help the competition in a way that also perhaps can lead Hamas to adjust its own behavior. I think that's the logic of this. That will depend, of course, not just on offering speeches, that will depend upon changing realities in the ground so life begins to get better. It will depend upon having real negotiations that follow through. I would call for the kinds of working groups meeting on a regular schedule, having groups on each of the core issues, having leaders meet with them on a regular basis. I would call as well for having a kind of US-Israeli US-Palestinian set of working groups to implement the phase one obligations of the roadmap where every single obligation is interpreted differently by the two sides.

Every obligation is seen on each side as their obligation being minimal in the other side's maximum. But that's part of a complication. And the other part of this complication seems to be Mr. Malley is that we have three leaders, three main players in this are all coming from politically weak spots. And that's a mixed blessing. I mean, on the positive side, I think part of the momentum for this was precisely because everyone is desperate for something to happen. Mahmoud Abbas needed to prove, as Dennis said, that his way worked and Hamas didn't prime minister Omar after the disastrous war Lebanon needed to show that he was still relevant. And the Bush administration, President Bush, facing a relatively catastrophic outcome in almost every other ring in the Middle East, wanted to show some progress here. Of course, the flip side is, weak leaders are going to find it hard to make serious significant historic compromises, which does bring us back to that question of Hamas. I mean, I think it's true that President Abbas wants to show that his way works and Hamas doesn't. But could you imagine a leader making historic compromises implementing those compromises when not only is his country, his entity territory fractured the way that Gaza and the

West Bank are, but when the party that won the elections considers itself not represented in these negotiations and will do everything in its power to scuttle them? Let's talk about the U.S. role a little bit. The President has been virtually hands off in this, at least this part of the process for seven years. This is the first big push coming from the President and Secretary Rice in this way. Is that a significant thing? Could the U.S. hurt more than it helps, possibly? I don't think the U.S. can hurt more than it helps. I think, in fact, having been disengaged for seven years, we face a situation now where there is very great cynicism in the region. Not a whole lot of belief. And one of the things this process needs to do is reestablish a sense of possibility, reestablish a sense of belief again. You look at the polling on the Israeli and the Palestinian sides and their mirror images. Two-thirds of the Palestinians and Israelis say, okay, we support going there and more than two-thirds say, we doubt it will produce anything. That's not low expectations. That's cynicism. So you're going to have to show something can work. When you have no process for seven years

in life deteriorates, not a big surprise that you lose hope and you have cynicism. So having the U.S. involved, I think, gives you a chance. It was serious about the involvement. I think it can't just be an example of stagecraft, where you stage an event. It should be an example of stagecraft where you have objectives, you identify means, and you involve yourself in a way that helps the two sides begin to overcome differences simply because now there's an intensity to the effort. And one point that Rob made is quite right. The weakness of the leaders doesn't have to be an inhibition, but it will be an inhibition. If it looks like this is just going to be a platform for speeches. Let me ask you about a little bit more about how far the U.S. can go on this. The president has said two interesting things in the last few days. He put out a statement which he said, I remain personally committed to implementing my vision of two democratic states living side-by-side. Then today he came out and sat side-by-side with the leaders and he said he doesn't plan to impose his vision on that. How do those two things work? Well, I mean, that has been traditional U.S. policy. We don't impose, but we suggest and

we prod and sometimes we even pressure. I think the real question, ultimately, if the goal is to reach a final status agreement, which most of everyone says that's at least a theoretical goal. We know, and we should know it. If we didn't know it before, we should know it given what happened over the last two months, that Israelis and Palestinians on their own cannot reach a substantive breakthrough. They weren't even able to produce a document that was going to outline the contours of a final settlement. They're going to come up with something much vague or tomorrow. That tells us something about what they could do on their own, given their own political situations. Unless the U.S., with others, Europeans Arabs, at some point, will put its own ideas on the table to bridge the gaps. I think we could really, we know that they're not going to be able to do it, and we should forget about them reaching a final status agreement. What constitutes, finally, Dennis Ross, failure, success, and what are the consequences? Well, I think success will be seen not by what happens at Annapolis, because Annapolis is a forum for speeches, not for serious deal-making. But if there's a process that's

laid out afterwards, if we know who's going to negotiate with whom, at what level, how often, if there's a feedback cycle built in where the leaders are brought in and they're reporting in a sense back to us, if we're playing a role with both of them to create phase one implementation, but also we bring the Arabs into this, because the Arabs need to create a cover. They need to create a cover for Abu Mazim that gives him greater capacity to make decisions and make compromises. They need to create an argument for Omar. Omar, given his political weakness in Israel, can't on his own argue that Israel should make historic moves. But if he's able to point to historic changes in terms of the Arabs reaching out to Israel, and I would say getting the Arabs also to back the Palestinians with investment, then you suddenly change the context. That's the measure of success. Failure would be, this is an event, and there's no serious follow-through. I think the way the conference has now been defined, it's failure-proof, because you can't really fail that launching an event. It's also success-proof, because you can't really

have a breakthrough when you have a series of speeches, and from what I'm told, everyone is being instructed you could speak for 30 seconds, one minute, two minutes. This is not going to be historic speeches, perhaps the president has a little more time, but that's about it. What really matters is an apple is what happened beforehand, and what will happen after. An apple is in itself as a moment that people will remember because of the choreography, the images, maybe some words, but the real challenges start the day after, and that's when the administration will truly be put to the test. Robert Malley and Dennis Ross, thank you, bro. Thank you. Next, Rudy Giuliani, heating up New Hampshire, Ray Suarez, has our election 08 update. Just a few weeks ago, Rudy Giuliani's campaign was outlining a national strategy, targeting several large states, and almost dismissing the importance of New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary. But this weekend, the former

New York City Mayor launched a statewide bus tour of the Granite State, appearing at town hall meetings in Laconia and Hampton, marching in Salums, Holiday Parade, and greeting potential voters all along the way. But what surprised many political watchers was the tone of Giuliani's New Hampshire Blitz. In speeches and interviews, he chose to level criticisms at only one of his Republican rivals, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who's leading in the New Hampshire polls on fighting crime, cutting taxes, and providing affordable health care. Giuliani charged Romney had failed as a governor, prompting Romney to issue a point-by-point rebuttal. Jonathan Martin of political.com was with Giuliani in New Hampshire this weekend and joins us now, as does Matt Bye, author of the book, The Argument, Billionaires, Bloggers, and The Battle to Remake Democratic Politics. He's also a contributing writer to the New York Times magazine, and recently wrote an extensive profile of Rudy Giuliani and Jonathan Martin. Until now, the Romney and Giuliani campaign seemed to be running

on different tracks. Giuliani with his win-big-state strategy, and Romney with his win-early strategy. They had a head-on collision this last week. Now, they sure did. I mean, Giuliani is making very obvious that he wants to not just play in New Hampshire, but really win there, too. And there's three ways to be kind of know that now. The first is he's going up there on TV. It's the first state where he's airing television ads, and it's right now at least the only state where he's got TV ads. I saw two of them in about a half an hour period on the Boston CBS affiliate in my hotel room on Saturday. Secondly, he's spending more time there when you do a bus tour over two days with numerous stops. He actually stayed over for a third day this morning, too. In the state where retail politics is sort of a demand of the voters there, that sends a pretty strong signal. And then lastly, the fact that he did use New Hampshire to launch some pretty tough attacks on Mitt Romney. All three of those signs point to him really wanting to get a victory in one of these early states, and thinking that New Hampshire

is probably the best place to actually do it. But Matt Baye, by taking that new tone, one previously reserved by Giuliani, only for Democratic candidates for president, does he open himself up for a critique that he hasn't had to withstand so far? Yeah, sure he does, but this is inevitable. I think this was coming no matter what, because these two guys are trying to stand on the same patch of ground. And to the extent that both of them hung around for long enough and were high up in the polls, there was going to be this kind of dog fight, I think, because you're talking about two guys whose stances on social conservative issues are not what the base of the party would like them to be. And so they've had to overcome that. Two guys from liberal states and Giuliani's case of city, and two guys who are really talking about competence and management and their ability to be sort of true to George W. Bush's principles, but to be better managers, to be hands-on technocrats. And it's impossible for two guys that big at the top of the field to stand in the exact same place to try to occupy what's very limited ground without trying to knock

each other down. And I think as we got closer and closer to the actual voting, I think that was inevitable. And plus, I think, Giuliani to recognize the fact that the prospect of Romney is sweeping in the early states, coming out of the gates, you know, three and now or four and now before Giuliani got to Florida, which is later in January, where he really hopes to do well, was a serious threat to his hopes. So Giuliani wanted to try and get a win somewhere in Hampshire makes the most sense. But doesn't the size of the field mean that each candidate, in effect, sets his own benchmarks for what success looks like? McCain has talked in effect, tried to make himself plausible by staying close in New Hampshire. Huckabee and Iowa, others Fred Thompson in South Carolina, everybody's saying, well, here's the place I have to do well. Here's the key difference. Giuliani and Romney both fancy themselves as national candidates who don't have to pick and choose which states they're going to play in or do well in. You know, they very much want to portray themselves as, you know, top tier national campaign

so we're going to run it as such. And so they don't want to pick and choose. And so Giuliani now very much wants to win New Hampshire. If that happens and if Huckabee can either beat or at least bloody Romney in Iowa, we're going to have a really hard thought contest here. Does these two men, Romney and Giuliani, making each other the issue, create an opening for men like John McCain or Mike Huckabee? Well, the Republican field has nothing but openings. I think what it's lacking is actually something is standing in the way, you know, because everything's very unsettled. I mean, look, I think Jonathan's right about this. These are the plans you talk about that is everybody setting their own benchmarks about how you win this thing. Those are plans of convenience. It's nice to think as Giuliani has and has said, you know, we're going to go and we're going to win California, Florida, you know, Super Tuesday states that he knows he can compete in and we don't have to win in Iowa and Hampshire. Maybe that's true. But all recent history tells us, as you were saying, that, you know, that's a very hard road that if you're going to lose the first couple contests and especially if one person

is in line to win them both, even if he's a favorite son in New Hampshire, which Romney effectively is, it's very, very hard to come off the mat and still convince people that you're a candidate of the moment. And so I think when Giuliani sees an opening in New Hampshire, or whatever polling they're doing, when they see the possibility to at least come very, very close or to beat Romney, it's an opportunity they have to take. Did other members of the Republican field assume that gravity was going to take care of Rudy Giuliani and now realize they actually have to fight him as a toe-to-toe as again? Right. I think a lot of folks in politics thought that certainly and that has not happened yet. It's almost December. He's still in a very, very strong place in national polls in some of these later, larger states. The inevitable fall has not been inevitable. Actually, he is still doing quite well. His challenge, though, is this, is that he cannot afford, he's showing that now, given the defense of the past weekend, he cannot afford to let Romney come out of the gauge strong and run the table. And he wants to get a win somewhere early. And obviously, he's looking to New Hampshire to do that. But the fact is, is that all

this baggage that has been talked about ad nauseam has not yet at least weighed him down. The key question I think, guys, is this, is if and when there are paid ads, if there is a kid who goes negative on him, citing either his personal issues or some of his more liberal cultural leanings, then that's going to be the true test. At that point, does he then fall to his number of sink? Because right now, at least, many folks know about those issues and they're just not care anymore. Well, do you agree, first off, that those are the things that are going to trip him up? Or is there some risk embedded in the national security strategy, making yourself the national security candidate when your previous job was mayor of New York? Yeah, I think there are a couple other things. I mean, look, attacks only work, right? And politics, when they go at the thing you've put yourself out as. In other words, calling Giuliani a rotten guy in his personal life isn't going to hurt him. Because people aren't, people don't vote for Rudy Giuliani because they think he's a guy they want to leave their children with while they go to the supermarket. He's not a nice guy, per se. He's

the guy who's going to keep you safe at night while you're sleeping. And this is who he's held himself out as. What hurts him, I think, potentially is if people go after this stuff on Bernard Carrick and the association there with his former police commissioner and business partner who's now facing corruption charges. When people talk about the record on September 11th and talk about whether, in fact, he was a great manager, why are there questions he's never had to answer for? Because in those instances, you're going after the two things that are central to his persona as a candidate which are his integrity and his ability to lead and lead in a crisis. And those questions may not, some of the may not come up in a Republican primary because of the nature of a primary is different and that would be an awfully, you know, that would be an awfully tough hit to come out at him with. But should he be the nominee, that's going to dominate months of the campaign. Are any of the other members of the Republican field taking on those issues? Well, he has he the man who saved him? Well, was he the star ward of September 11th and so on? Well, the key difference right is this is that Romney, especially, is starting to raise some of those issues. He talked about Bernie Carrick yesterday in New Hampshire comparing

the ethical failings of Carrick and Giuliani's judgment on Carrick to the Clinton White House and some of their ethics that those are fighting for the GOP politics. The key difference though is this. Romney is not yet putting any TV behind his rhetoric. He's saying so on the stump, he's saying so to report and interviews, but he's not yet launching radio or television ads taking on Julie on these issues like Carrick. I think if he does that, it could be a very different ballgame. Well, Fred Thompson, met by may have started to nibble at it by suggesting that running New York is different from running the rest of the country. Is there some possibility? Is there some mileage in that tactic reminding Republican voters who have not historically had a tremendous affection or affinity for New York that this guy's not like you? In a normal year? Yes. I mean, theoretically, that would be a big problem for Rudy Giuliani. But when you look at the field, Romney's a Massachusetts, I mean, if there's anything worse than New York City for Republican voters, it's Massachusetts.

And then you look at how Giuliani's handled the social conservative issues, which I think is one of the most interesting and sort of under-discussed pictures of the year. His argument here, which has effectively been to say, look, we may not see eye-on on gay rights. We may not see eye-to-eye on abortion. We certainly don't. But you know what? The biggest cultural issue right now is what he calls his limo fascism. It's the onslaught of radical Islam that this is a religious and cultural issue. And that if that's the paramount issue, I'm your guy. That's the kind of argument where when he started I thought, well, that's not going to work. And I think it has to a larger side, because it's kept him, you know, if you look at his poll numbers, I think you'd have to conclude that argument's been more effective than a lot of people thought it would be. Matt By, Jonathan Martin, thank you both. Thank you. Tom, thanks, Ray. Go to our website for more on election 2008, including in-depth candidate interviews and notebooks from our reporters following the campaigns. Visit us at PBS.org. Now, diagnosing and treating high school athletes for concussions. Nuzara correspondent

Betty Ann Bowser has our science unit report. The gateway Gators in western Pennsylvania are having a rough season. Five of the team's players have been sidelined with concussions, including the goalie who was hit on this recent Saturday afternoon. Concerned coaches rushed to her side and helped her off the field. It was later determined she had a concussion. The Centers for Disease Control say the nation is having an epidemic of concussions, and the kids are a major part of that, suffering two million injuries each year. Concussion occurs when the brain is shaken violently inside the skull, causing chemical changes that can damage large areas of the brain. At the beginning of the season, Maura Radke was the Gators goalie, but for the past

two months, she's been on the sidelines with the concussion. Immediately after, I had headaches, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, but as times passed, it's just been left with memory problems. Like, someone will tell me something, and I completely won't remember having that event happen, or one morning, I couldn't remember what I had for breakfast. Those are some of the typical symptoms of concussion, but there are other more ominous signs. Personality changes, poor grades, insomnia. In some cases, the symptoms can be permanent, and in rare cases, can lead to death. Statistically, girls are more likely to get concussions than boys, but researchers don't know why. Radke had two previous concussions, and with each injury, her mom says she returned to play quickly. In her previous concussions, you know, we held her out until she was asymptomatic, which was about a week or so in center of fact.

But groundbreaking research here at the Sports Medicine Center at the University of Pittsburgh has shown its bad medicine to send athletes back to play too quickly after a concussion. You can't manage concussion with a cookbook. If you, the minute I hear a clinician say, you've had a concussion sit out one week, and you'll be fine as the minute I realize a clinician has no idea what they're talking about, frankly. And if you try to shove this injury into a little cubby hole, that's when you are going to make mistakes. After the third concussion, Mimi Radke took her daughter to see Mickey Collins. He's a neuropsychologist who specializes in concussions in kids. Collins immediately put her through impact, which stands for immediate post-concussion assessment and cognitive testing, a sophisticated computer program that measures function in all four lobes of the brain. It is the first diagnostic tool developed that can map out how a concussion has caused impairment.

It looks at one's ability to remember information. It looks at one's reaction time. It looks at one's ability to multitask or do two things at once. It looks at one's ability to really maintain attention and concentration. Mora was at the second percentile for her memory functions. That means that 98 out of 100 girls are do better than her. In subsequent testing, Radke improved. I was surprised I didn't get any headache today. I was happy about that because I was expecting it too. That's the first time? Yeah. That shows you so much how you're recovering. But she's still not well enough to return to the playing field. Neither is Samantha Webber, a member of the Women's Olympic Development Soccer team. She's been off the field and out of school for two months after being hit in the head by a soccer ball at a high school game. I've like really been tired and fatigue has been a really big thing. I'll take naps in the middle of the day. I took a nap today for about an hour.

Her first started playing soccer when she was four years old. Her room is plastered with pictures of female soccer players. Her old shoes and trophies are also on display. I play seven days a week for the past four and a half years, going on five years. So yeah, soccer really is my life. I love it. Everybody recovers at their own rate. When her mom took the talented teenager to see Collins partner, neuropsychologist Mark Lovell, what was anxious to get back into the game? But her test scores said no. When people are growing up, it's crucial that we protect their brains. There's a lot going on there developmentally. We want to make sure that we're promoting a safe return to play standard. So these kids are not going back in too soon and re-enduring themselves. Sam is still recovering from her injury. I'm still very optimistic that she's going to get back to normal. Unfortunately, these injuries can take a good long while to heal.

Lovell sees the computer program as a crucial diagnostic tool. 20 years ago, we essentially had no science with regard to concussion management. In fact, I don't think it's exaggerating to say that about 90% of what we know about concussion we've learned in the last five years. 1500 high schools around the country test their athletes with the program to get a baseline score. The NFL, which has been criticized for sending players with concussions back to play too soon, has adopted Lovell's program. Most colleges are now starting to use it. But in spite of its low cost, just a few hundred dollars, it is not in widespread use in either middle or high schools. They're going to go to shuffle past the puzzle, isn't he? He's to the 30 to the 30? David Puss-Lozny was lucky that the Hopewell Township High School he attends uses the test. When the star player had a concussion at a recent Friday night game, he was wearing a helmet.

No helmet currently on the market will fully prevent a concussion. Athletic trainer Donny short knew the 18-year-old was injured. A few days later, short sent him to Collins. When I saw David, he was reporting to be 100% symptom-free. The kid looks normal, okay? Looks better than normal, right? And, you know, are you having a headache? No. Are you dizzy when you stay in quickly? No. Are you tired? No. Are you having problems with school with your thinking? No. Are you sensitive to a lighter noise? No. No. And then we evaluated him on impact and his data was grossly impaired. So Collins' sideline, Puss-Lozny, for two weeks. When he scores return to normal, he was allowed to return to the field for the homecoming game. I understand now that if you do push or do push off, push through a concussion, you know, you can still have effects from it 20 years down the road, so it's not worth it. One of the reasons Puss-Lozny was managed correctly was because he had an athletic trainer,

schooled in how to recognize concussions. The majority of high schools today do not have them. There's a lot of kids going out there playing and they can end up running into serious issues where it would be a minor hit and they go down and they can end up staying down. It could become a life-threatening issue. They die? Yeah, they can die from it. Death comes from second-impact syndrome, which can take place if an athlete returns to play too early before the first concussion heals. It only happens to young people and the numbers are small between 8 and 15 are reported each year. Concern about the syndrome is why Collins sent Westminster College linebacker Eric Miller to an early retirement after his third concussion. What we're doing is we're preventing that possibility that he could have chronic long-term symptoms and I do think we're reaching a point with him where that's a possibility. At

this point, I want to make it very clear that Eric is going to do fine in life, but his vulnerability for recurrence trauma is too high for my liking. Miller still works with the football team as an assistant coach and he knows he has to be careful to avoid any type of head injury. I can't play intramural sports anymore. A simple pickup game. A bunch of buddies getting together back home and saying, hey, let's go out through the ball around, have fun. It's something I really can't do. Dr. Collins told me that it's basically like a grieving process, like losing a loved one, something you know a game you've loved for so long, able to play anymore. Neuropsychologist's level now is trying to take the science of concussions to a new level. He recently completed a study of 200 high school athletes who had concussions. He put them through a functional MRI, where subjects were asked to answer a series of questions while inside the machine. The MRI was used to detect abnormal brain

activity. Regular MRIs and CAT scans are unable to detect the severity of concussions. The lighter shade is greater activation in the frontal areas of the brain. We know that the frontal areas of the brain are involved in various aspects of memory, decision making, thinking, personality, and so there's an increase in cerebral blood flow in these areas. And that's what we see following even mild concussion. But we found that the group who had the highest level of activation in this area took twice as long to recover. Leveling Collins hope their research will one day be able to identify kids who are more susceptible to concussions and direct them to less threatening non-contact sports. Meanwhile, the two are doing workshops for doctors, athletic trainers, and coaches around the country,

hoping to spread the message of their research. Again, there is more on our website. Doctors Lavelle and Collins will take your questions about concussions in an online forum. Finally, tonight, a return to Somalia, the East African Nation, once again, under siege by a combination of war, displacement, disease, and starvation. One year ago, Ethiopian troops occupied the capital Mogadishu in an effort to bolster the government and to root out alleged terrorists. That set off an insurgency by nationalist and Islamist groups. There have been human consequences. Jonathan Miller of Independent Television News tells that story, a caution to viewers, some of the pictures you will see are quite graphic. They still run for cover, but the

only place left to run is away, away from the hellhole that Mogadishu has become once again. And 600,000 now have fled. A third of them in the past two weeks alone. The bloodletting is relentless. It has been for weeks now. Probably hundreds dead, hundreds more wounded. No one really knows amid violent chaos and suffering so awful that finally it's forcing the world to take notice. Downtown or Somali cameraman happens across a spontaneous demonstration against the Ethiopian occupiers, blamed by residents for the milestone that's engulfed their city. The big ally, she says, to end this occupation. Among these people are masked, insurgent, and Islamist. Worse is to come, he warns, long-lived Somalia. But it doesn't come much worse than this, the UN says. This is the body of an Ethiopian soldier, one of several court-fined

surgeons and drank through the streets by a mob, and a scene reminiscent of 15 years ago, in the US, black hawks went down, and American bodies were dragged through the streets. The Americans pulled out, but Ethiopian troops are locked down in Somalia, bogged down, in a quagmire, Christian troops, in a Muslim land. This is the aftermath of the reprisal for the desecration of the dead Ethiopian soldiers, their biggest humiliation so far. Ethiopian tanks, shells, civilian homes, are housed to house huntings used as they searched for insurgents. Many civilians killed and wounded. The Ethiopian troops came in, all the men in the neighbourhood ran away and we left our doors. They were shooting all night until nine in the morning. You've seen all the bodies, the wounded, they didn't spare anyone. The injured led to death because no one could reach them. They've left us in this mess, to suffer, may God drive them out.

The reprisals triggered the latest exodus. Mogadishu residents fled in their tens of thousands. Our cameraman was trapped in this building, pinned down for two days and two nights, terrified, unable to move. Medina Hospital, the only functioning hospital in the capital, filled up with injured. Do used to gunshot wounds, shrapnel wounds here. More than 5,000 injured in Mogadishu so far this year, 110 casualties, though, in just one night. But then I was going to tell you how it's a long experience for this kind of situation, for eight years. And it is one of these days, difficult days, we have so far seen. Goya, once a sleepy fruit-growing town, 20 miles east of the capital, 200,000 people have now sought refuge here, half of them since the beginning of November.

Little hearts cluttering the landscape just like Darfur, but this is a humanitarian catastrophe that the UN now says is the worst in Africa. They call it the Forgotten Emergency. Telltale signs of a nation on the brink of famine. Our cameraman went back to find these two acutely malnourished children he'd filmed in October. They're no better, and now they've been joined by more. These children are very ill. The head of the UN in Somalia says most in here are likely to die. Few aid organisations are prepared to brave the lawlessness. There are unknown thousands unable to make it to makeshift emergency centres, Somalia's unreached and unseen. Malnutrition rates now nearing 20% among under 5s weigh over the UN's emergency threshold. There are dire warnings now that, as the insurgent said, things will indeed get worse. The UN's Secretary-General has publicly stated that a peacekeeping mission is neither

realistic nor viable. The harvests failed, violence prevents aid getting through, and as the bloodshed relentlessly escalates, Somalis fear they have been forsaken. Jeffrey Brown takes the story from there. And for a further look at what's going on in Somalia, I'm joined by Ahmed Somata, our professor of international studies at McAllister College in St. Paul, Minnesota, born in Somalia. He travels to the region regularly and most recently was there six months ago. And Stephen Morrison, director of the Africa program, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he's worked on East African issues for the State Department in Congress, he was last in the region a year ago. Professor Somata are starting with you, help us understand more about the fighting. How much power does the transitional government actually have at this point? Very little power and very little legitimacy on competence. In one way, well, in the sense that at the level of legitimacy, the transitional

federal government was primarily engineered by the Ethiopians in that long conversational conference in Nairobi, when they decided to come back into the country, they couldn't because nobody really wanted them. So it will take the Ethiopian occupation to actually land the transitional federal government inside Mogadishu. And then after that, they have to demonstrate any kind of a competence, even at the level of being just competent politicians, let alone statesmen, to pick up the country and move it in a different direction. So without the Ethiopian support and the occupation, the transitional federal government wouldn't last long. And Stephen Morrison, the insurgents, described this coalition as it exists now and how much power does it have? Well, this coalition had power for about six months up until the end of last year when they were displaced, when the Ethiopians came across. The Islamists were shattered and scattered and have regrouped

a couple of times. And you have a coalition of various warlords in combination with Islamists and surgeons who have been able to regroup. They've done intense battle with the Ethiopians in the spring, in the March April timeframe, and they were set back. They've regrouped again and engaged intensively in and around Mogadishu in October, in the latter part of October and up to today. They've begun engaging increasingly in political assassinations, use of IED, bomb bombs, and the like. And so they've been able to keep the Ethiopians off guard, they've been able to keep the TFG off guard, but they are a diffuse, fragmented, ununified movement, which is another problem in how you begin to engage them. They include some radical Islamists. They include some who are more opportunistic warlords and others who are probably prepared to engage in good faith if a political process can be brought forward somehow. They may be willing to enter that.

Well, before we go into that, Professor Cemetery, tell us more about the rise and the number of displaced people. Now, is this directly related to the Civil War and the fighting? Well, yes. But, Jeff, before we just get to that, it's important to note that the Somali people are not always like this. Yes, they live in a fallen time now, particularly in the last 30 or so years. But at one time, Somali, I was the most democratic country in Africa between 1960 and 1969. So, I think your audience needs to note that, and then the question would be asked, well, what happened? But in terms of the enormous devastation that has taken place in Mogadishu, there is no question that nearly a million people now are displaced internally and are scattered around the greater term of the show area into Africa and that region. And this is directly as a consequence of the resistance to the Ethiopian occupation and the incompetence and the illegitimacy of the transitional

federal government. Let me stay with you, as we heard in that piece, the UN Secretary General has basically said it's unrealistic for any UN action right now, or it sounds like in the near future. What options are there for the international community or what barriers are in place? Well, I think from my perspective, and I've been studying this problem for the past 25 years, there are at least five things that the international community can do and do it rather quickly. One of them, of course, and immediately is to make sure that there is access to these thousands and hundreds of thousands, maybe a million people who are now displaced, and the ones behind them which are being pushed by the rise of starvation and hunger. So, that's one. And then the second thing really is the quick taking out of the Ethiopian troops that they have to move out of Somalia and they have to be replaced by an international African group that is going to be neutral in the conversation and the dispensation that has to take place.

Thirdly, I think the international community would need to understand that the transitional federal government is a creation of the Ethiopian government and therefore there will have to be a new conversation, a new dispensation, inclusive political conversation that will guide the country towards the 2009 new legitimate authority and government. And then finally, I think the international community would have to understand that the rebuilding of Somalia is going to take a marshal plan like investment. Some of us scholars have estimated anywhere between a billion to a billion and a half a year for at least five to six years, which would be in the hands of the international system and not some Somali government. Particularly, if the act is going to be dominated by the politics of war, lawism and tribalistic politics. That can be done, I think we might be able to get somewhere with Somali people. Stephen Morrison, start at the top of that list, which is a humanitarian crisis. Is it even possible at this point to get food to these people given the security problems? I think that if there is a concentrated focus on expanding humanitarian

space and getting some some type of truth between the warring parties, you could expand your access. There are about one and a half million people in need of assistance. The gap of people that are not being reached, it's probably in the five to seven, eight hundred thousand of that that are not being reached. But aid is flowing into the areas outside of Mogadishu. The border areas in Kenya might be renegotiated open access. Some of the port access, there are different points at which assistance can be moved forward if there is a concentrated push in that direction. So that's one point. And how important do you think it is to lessen or to end the Ethiopian role here? One has to be very realistic about what can be accomplished in the near-to-medium term here. The Ethiopians are in there for strategic reasons. They're in a quagmire. It's going to be very difficult for them to withdraw in a comprehensive and quick fashion. I think I agree with

Ahmed, it's very important that we begin to find a way to get them to disengage in return for political compromise coming from various directions. I think there needs to be a political strategy that takes advantage of the appointment of a new prime minister and gets some initiatives underway that shall compromise, bring new folks from outside of the transitional federal government into cabinet positions. I think they need to be tested deliberately. I think the opposition, the external opposition, which is very divided and fragmented, needs to be tested as well. And let me ask you briefly, is there a U.S. role at this point? The U.S. supported Ethiopia's intervention? What is the U.S. looking at now? Well, I think the U.S. has a very important role in this. On the humanitarian side, the U.S. is putting about $90 million a year into Somalia, about half of the current flow. It's not meeting all of the needs by any means, but the U.S. has been consistently generous and has a lot of leadership to play in

through Nairobi and elsewhere in expanding the access. On the political level, the Assistant Secretary delivered a recent interview in which she put pressure on all parties to begin to respect civilian rights and to move towards compromise and put pressure on the Ethiopians and the transitional federal government to show much greater restraint in the way they're going about doing their business on the battlefield. The U.S. could step up its political engagement directly and through the Security Council. All right, we have to leave it there. Stephen Morrison and Ahmed Samatar. Thank you both very much. Again, the major developments of the day. President Bush met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in advance of a U.S. brokered peace conference. It begins tomorrow in Annapolis, Maryland. And Republican Senator Trent, a lot of Mississippi announced he's retiring at the end of the year. He said the time has come to do something else. We'll see you online and again here,

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