When Prince Charles arrives in New York on Tuesday, Nov. 1, to begin an eight-day visit, it will be his first official American tour in more than a decade.
Everyone knows what has happened in the interim. His troubled marriage to the late Princess Diana, his remarriage to Camilla Parker Bowles, and the youthful indiscretions of his two sons have been turned to a reality-based soap opera by the tabloid media. But most Americans know very little about who the Prince of Wales is and what he does as heir to the British throne.
Members of the royal family hardly ever grant interviews, the Queen has never given one, and you rarely see them talk. But last month, as his trip to the United States was being planned, Prince Charles granted 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft an audience, allowing us to follow him around and chat, not about his family, but about being Prince of Wales, a job and a life like no other.
"Most of us in our lives have to fill out applications listing our profession and occupation. You don't have to do that," Kroft said.
"No. Not always, but sometimes," Prince Charles replied.
"If you did, what would you put down?" Kroft asked.
"I would list it as worrying about this country and its inhabitants. That's my particular duty. And I find myself born into this particular position. I'm determined to make the most of it. And to do whatever I can to help. And I hope I leave things behind a little bit better than I found them," the prince said. "It's hard to say, but I think it is a profession, actually; doing what I'm doing. Because if you tried it for a bit, you might find out how difficult it is," he added, laughing.
He is somewhere between a brand and a public institution, a future head of state in waiting —and waiting. He is a symbol of continuity with no real power but tremendous influence that is tied to his position and wealth.
The money comes from a 14th century real estate empire called the Duchy of Cornwall, which was established to provide an income for the heir to the British throne.
Today it includes 135,000 acres of farmland, forests, waterfront property, London real estate, and even a cricket stadium. It produces $25 million a year in rents and other income that supports the prince, his wife and children and a staff of 130. The re are perks such as travel on the royal train. And $7 million from the government to help with official expenses.
On a recent trip to the Yorkshire Countryside to mark the 850th anniversary of the village of Richmond, the whole town turned out to greet Charles and Camilla, his new wife, longtime friend and former mistress, now the Duchess of Cornwall. They were recently voted the most popular couple in Britain, nosing out the Queen and Prince Philip and they seemed comfortable with each other and the crowds.
"There was clearly a bond between you and the people there. Explain that to me," asked Kroft.
"No idea," the prince replied with laugh.
"You have no idea?" Kroft asked.
"No, but I always enjoyed seeing all sorts of people all around the country. I do this over and over again, have done for 30-something years," the prince said.
He could pass the time playing polo or do nothing at all if he wanted, a path chosen by most of his predecessors, many of whom were lay-abouts and playboys. But Charles chose to invent a job where none existed. He made 29 major speeches last year, visited 14 countries, and runs the largest group of non-profit organizations in the country called "Prince's Charities." He raises more than $200 million a year for those 16 organizations, 14 of which he founded.
The largest charity is The Prince's Trust which, over 29 years, has helped to provide job training for more than a half a million young people.
"Do you think if you weren't doing this stuff, that it would get done?" Kroft asked. "If I wasn't doing it? No," the prince replied.
Asked if he felt as if he was making a difference, Prince Charles said, "I don't know. I try. I only hope that when I'm dead and gone, they might appreciate it a little bit more. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes that happens."
As he approaches his 57th birthday, he sometimes feels misunderstood and undervalued. He was educated at Cambridge, can fly jet planes and helicopters, is extremely knowledgeable about the arts, and has tried to carve out for himself a number of different careers — environmentalist, urban planner, real estate developer, and social critic —deeply committed to a vision of what Great Britain was and should be.
His vision is laid out in bricks and mortar in Poundbury, a village of 2,500 people,
which he created on his land near Dorchester in the south of England. All his ideas on architectural design, class structure, aesthetics and ecology are here. And what he sees as the future looks very much like the past: an 18th century village adapted for the 21st.
Prince Charles gave Kroft a tour of the village. "And that's a convenience store, which I'm very proud of, which everybody said wouldn't work. That's the pub, which again nobody wanted to touch. But now of course, the values are going up, and up and up."
Kroft remarked that the buildings looked as if they were built to last, lacking flimsy materials.
"Well, that's what I've been trying to encourage people to think about. … To break the conventional mold in the way we've been building and designing for the last, well, during the last century really, has all been part of a throw-away society," Prince Charles said.
Everything in the village is constructed of native or recycled materials, "sustainable development," he calls it, that conserves the Earth's resources.
Single-family homes are mixed with small apartments so there are people of all income levels here living side by side in a community with shops and light industry. The narrow twisty roads discourage automobile traffic, and cars are parked out of sight in landscaped lots.
"The whole of the 20th century has always put the car at the center," the prince explained. "So by putting the pedestrian first, you create these livable places, I think, with more attraction, and interest and character. Livability."
He believes that the modern world with its cars and computers is slowly eroding our humanity, that we are losing touch with the world around us.
The British tabloids have made an industry out of his travails and love to portray him as an out-of-touch eccentric trying to stop progress, an Edwardian hippie with no real-life experience, who's never had to draw his own bath or take out the garbage. He's been constantly ridiculed for what have been called his "undergrad uate ramblings," including his innocent admission that he talks to his plants.
"Are you familiar with any of the plants here? Talking to any of them?" Kroft asked.
"Yeah, I know some of them. No, no, no," the prince said, laughing. "No, I do all the time. Not here."
"Y ou've gotten more mileage out of that, I think, than almost anything that's …" Kroft
said.
"Just shows you can't make a joke. … Without them taking it seriously. So, it's the same old story," the prince replied.
His image is carefully managed by a communications staff of nine that also handles his umbrella. They made it clear the Prince would not answer questions about his wives, past and present, his sons or the Queen. He mistrusts the media for past abuses, and worries that no one takes him seriously.
"What is the most difficult part of your job? I mean except for talking with people like me?" Kroft asked.
"Yes, exactly," the prince said, laughing. "Oh, dear. I think, that the most important thing is to be relevant. I mean, it isn't easy, as you can imagine. Because if you say anything, people will say, 'It's all right for you to say that.' It's very easy to just dismiss anything I say. I mean, it's difficult. But what I've tried to do is to put my money where my mouth is as much as I can, by actually creating like here, models on the ground. I mean, if people don't like it, I'll go away and do it."
"Y ou are in many ways a public advocate for the traditional. What are the great parts of Great Britain that are worth preserving, besides the monarchy?" Kroft asked.
"Well, there's an awful lot of things that are worth preserving," the prince said with a laugh. "The trouble, I think, in today's world is we abandon so many things unnecessarily, so often in the name of efficiency. If you make everything over-efficient, you suck out, it seems to me, every last drop of what, up to now, has been known as culture. We are not the technology. It should be our —you know, our slave, the technology. But it's rapidly becoming our master in many areas, I think."
Prince Charles says he is not trying to stop progress. "I'm just trying to say that we ought to redefine the way in which progress is seen. Is it progress to rush headlong into upsetting the whole balance of nature, which is what, I think, we're beginning to do?
"Y ou know, if you look at the latest figures on climate change and global warming, they're terrifying, terrifying."
As a member of the royal family, he is expected to avoid politically contentious issues. Y et he has openly opposed a number of government policies, including the development of genetically-modified crops. He's raised questions about stem cell research and is a strong advocate of alternative medicine. He has expressed those views in speeches, letters and meetings with government officials, some of whom consider him to be a royal nuisance.
"How do you deal with that? How do you walk that line?" Kroft asked.
"Well, years of practice, perhaps," the prince said.
"Does it get you in a spot of trouble from time to time from certain people?" Kroft asked.
"Oh, inevitably. But it seems to be part and parcel of the thing. I mean, if I wasn't, I think, doing these things, I'd be accused by people like you, doing nothing with my life," the prince replied, laughing.
Asked if anybody ever asks him to tone it down a bit, the prince said, "Oh yes, of course. But I think the proof is in the pudding. And I think, you know, all the things they try to tell me to tone down over the years, if you look now, though, you'll find they're fairly mainstream."
Twenty years ago when he announced that he was going to begin farming organically on his estate at Highgrove, no one knew what he was talking about and assumed it was another crackpot idea.
Today it's big business in Great Britain, and Prince Charles has a line of high-end organic products produced on his estate called Duchy Originals that includes everything from biscuits and jams to mineral water, sausage and turkeys.
Prince Charles says the business has been quite successful. "And that has grown and now turns over ?40 million ($71 million) a year. And I'm able to give away over a million pounds each year to my charitable ventures."
When he arrives in New Y ork on Nov. 1 as Great Britain's most popular ambassador, he will be selling a political, commercial and diplomatic agenda prepared by the Foreign Office.
He will also be introducing the American public to his new wife, who will be making her first official overseas trip and donned a diamond tiara for the first time last week. She is not giving interviews right now, and may never.
She is said to be interested in supporting, not overshadowing, her husband, and has no interest in establishing her own public identity.
Why has it been 20 years since his last official visit to the United States?
"Y ou don't want to see me all the time. Y ou get bored," the prince said, laughing.
"Is there anything you're looking forward to doing there, anything you're looking
forward to taking the Duchess and showing, anything that you remember from your last visit? Are you going to get a favorite coffee or a meal?" Kroft asked.
"I shouldn't think so, no," the prince said, laughing. "I mean, the problem is that it's quite a long time. … These official visits are quite difficult to escape, you know, to go to places. Be nice to do it privately. But I have to wait for other occasions."
Kroft asked Prince Charles if he ever gets to do anything privately.
"Yes. But it's not so easy nowadays. I can't. I'd love to. But I'm, unfortunately, I seem to be, you know, people seem to know about it or invent it," the prince said.
Some viewers may be wondering if Prince Charles is happy. We were specifically discouraged from asking that simple question with the admonition that there is nothing well-mannered English men and women loathe more than discussing their feelings. But Kroft saved his last question to politely pursue the personal and was deftly deflected with the royal chill.
"It seems like you have reached a certain point in your life where your children are grown, you've remarried. Y our mother is approaching a significant birthday. It seems like your life is very stable and you seem very content in your job and your work," Kroft said.
"Well, if you think that that's what it all appears, I am thrilled and delighted," Prince Charles said with a laugh. "And we'll see what, you know, the American people make of it when we come."
Not Your Average Teen Lots of teenage girls dream of becoming rich and famous. But it's not a fantasy for Michelle Wie. Just before her 16th birthday last fall, she became the highest-paid woman golfer in history simply by turning professional and lending her name to commercial endorsements that will pay her between $10 million and $12 million a year, most of which will go into a trust fund until she becomes an adult. Wie has been a celebrity since she was 13, when people began predicting she would become the Tiger Woods of women' sgolf. But, as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, that has never been enough for Wie. She wants to become the first woman ever to successfully compete with men in a professional sport. She has tried a couple of times on the PGA Tour without embarrassing herself. As you will see, she has changed a lot since we first talked to her way back in 2004, when she was 14. At the time, Wie told Kroft her ultimate goal was to play in the Masters. "I think it'd be pretty neat walking down the Masters fairways," she said. It was a neat dream for a 14-year-old kid. Nothing has happened in the last two years to change Wie's mind or shake her confidence. She is stronger now, more mature and glamorous. She has already demonstrated that she can play herself into the middle of the pack against the best men on the PGA Tour and has come within a shot of winning her first two starts on the LPGA Tour this year as a part-time professional. The day before 60 Minutes interviewed her at the Fields Open in Honolulu, she shot a final round of 66, coming from six strokes off the lead to just miss a playoff. "You won your first check yesterday," Kroft says. "Uh-huh," Wie says. "It was, it was really cool. I mean, I was like looking at how much I won. I was like 'Oh my God.' " Wie says she won around $72,000. Asked whether she gets to keep that money, Wie said she didn't know. "I'm trying to negotiate with my dad how much I can spend of that, and stuff like that. We're still working it out. But, you know, I'm definitely gonna go shopping today," she says, laughing. Half of her life is spent in the adult world, competing with men and women twice her age for paychecks they may need to make expenses and dealing with the media, sponsors and marketing executives. The rest of the time she is a junior at Punahou High School in Honolulu, where she is an A student and claims to lead the life of a typical 16-year-old.
Unit 1 Pirates of the Internet It’s no secret that online piracy has decimated the music industry as millions of people stopped buying CDs and started stealing their favorite songs by downloading them from the internet. Now the hign-tech thieves are coming after Hollywood. Illegal downloading of full-length feature films is a relatively new phenomenon, but it’s becoming easier and easier to do. The people running America’s movie studios know that if they don’t do something----and fast---they could be in the same boat as the record companies. Correspodent: “What’s really at stake for the movie industry with all this privacy?” Chernin: “Well, I think, you know, ultimately, our absolute features.” Peter Chernin runs 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest studios in Hollywood. He knows the pirates of the Internet are gaining on him. Correspont: “Do you know how many movies are being downloaded today, in one day, in the United States?” Chernin: “I think it’s probably in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.” Correspondent: “And it’s only going to grow.” Chernin: “It’s only going to grow. √Somebody can put a perfect digital copy up on the internet. A perfect digital copy, all right. And with the click of mouse, send out a million copies all over the world, in an instant.”
Book 2 Chapter 1 The Population Today we’re going to talk about population in the United States. According to the most recent government census, the population is 281,421,906 people. Now this represents an increase of almost 33 million people since the 1990 census. A population of over 281 million makes the United States the third most populous country in the whole world. As you probably know, the People’s Republic of China is the most populous country in the world. But do you know which is the second most populous? Well, if you thought India, you were right. The fourth, fifth, and sixth most populous countries are Indonesia, Brazil, and Pakistan. Now let’s get back to the United States. Let’s look at the total U. S. population figure of 281 million in three different ways. The first way is by race and origin; the second is by geographical distribution, or by where people live; and the third way is by the age and sex of the population. First of all, let’s take a look at the population by race and origin. The latest U. S. census reports that percent of the population is white, whereas percent is black. Three percent are of Asian origin, and 1 percent is Native American. percent of the population is a mixture of two or more races, and percent report themselves as “of some other race”. Let’s make sure your figures are right: OK, white, percent; black, percent; Asian, 3 percent; Native American, 1 percent; a mixture of two or more races, percent; and of some other race, percent. Hispanics, whose origins lie in Spanish-speaking countries, comprise whites, blacks, and Native Americans, so they are already included in the above figures. It is important to note that Hispanics make up percent of the present U.S. population, however. Finally, the census tells us that 31 million people in the United States were born in another country. Of the 31 million foreign born, the largest part, percent are from Mexico. The next largest group, from the Philippines, number percent. Another way of looking at the population is by geographical distribution. Do you have any idea which states are the five most populous in the United States? Well, I’ll help you out there. The five most populous states, with population figures, are California, with almost 34 million; New York, with 21 million; Texas, with 19 million; and Florida, with 16 million; and Illinois with million people. Did you get all those figures down? Well, if not, I’ll give you a chance later to check your figures. Well, then, let’s move on. All told, over half, or some 58 percent of the population, lives in
《英语高级视听说》 教学大纲 课程编码：3011104 课程性质：专业教育必修课 教学时数：96学时 学分数：6学分 开课学期：第五、六、七学期 授课单位：英语系视听说教研室 授课对象：英语专业本科学生 一、课程概述 1.性质与地位 英语高级视听说课程是为英语专业本科学生在专业学习提高阶段开设的专业教育必修课程。该课程以外语教学理论为指导，广泛应用多媒体教学，融课堂教学与自主学习为一体，以真实语境下的常速语料为基本教学材料，紧扣时代脉搏，是全面提升学生听说能力、使学生的目标语听力理解能力与口语产出能力满足高层次语言应用要求的重要课程。 2.基本理念 英语高级视听说课程以素质教育、创新教育思想为理论指导，以双主模式及Anderson的“听前－听时－听后”理论为理论支撑，着力发展学生的目标语高级实时应用能力。 课程在实施过程中，一方面坚持以人为本，关注学生的情感，另一方面注重营造自主学习的气氛，创造自主学习的条件和环境，培养学生的可持续自我发展能力。 本课程摒弃接受式、填鸭式的学习方式和教学方式，坚持以学生为中心，以方法为主导，强调启发式、引导式教学，同时利用该课程材料均以多媒体形式呈现于课堂、内容时效性强等独特优势，激发学生的学习兴趣与积极性，培养和增强学生探索知识的能力和欲望。 利用校园网、互联网等信息渠道，开展多媒体课堂教学与课后自主学习，着力提高教学效率与教学质量，同时努力提升听与说在认知学习中的地位，贯彻“听为学”、“说为学”的理念，使学生认识到视听是与阅读同等重要的语言输入途径，也是同样有效的认知途径。 3.设计思路
本课程教学以解放军外国语学院生长干部学历教育本科人才培养方案（英语）为依据，参照《高等学校英语专业英语教学大纲》（以下简称《大纲》）的要求实施。教学安排在3个学期内完成，第八学期举行3次有关英语区域变体的讲座，第五、六、七学期每学期32学时，第八学期6学时，总时数为102学时。 教学实施分为课堂教学与自主学习，教学内容分为音频和视频两部分：音频教材方面主要包括《英语专业三年级听力教程》、《英语中级听力》、《英语专业四年级听力教程》，以及带前方记者报道的最新VOA、BBC、NPR新闻等；视频教材包括《高级英语视听说教程》、《英语高级视听说》、片长10分钟左右的多主题短片，BBC/CNN 视频新闻以及部分精选的记录片、影视剧片段等。授课教师在教材既定的总体框架下，可根据学生的实际水平和国际国内形势的发展情况，灵活组合、添加部分最新音、视频材料用于课堂教学，以保证教学内容时时更新，反映最新形势。 英语区域变体讲座内容涉及澳大利亚英语、新西兰英语、南亚英语、东南亚英语的特点，重点解决学生在听辨这些英语变体时所遇到的苦难。 二、课程目标 1.总体目标 系统讲授听力理解过程中各环节所需的语言知识和理解判断要素；利用新闻、对话、讲座、电影等语料训练学生对声像信息的辨读能力；通过“视”、“听”、“说”的结合，综合多种训练手段，提高学生的听力理解和口头表达能力，加深其对英语国家政治、军事、经济、社会、文化等方面的认识和了解，全面提升真实语境下的实时语言运用能力，并使之具备较强的自主学习能力。 2.分类目标 （1） 通过本课程的学习，学生应具备独立解决辨音难点的能力，掌握运用字典等工具书逆向查词、独立解决疑难问题的能力。 （2） 通过本课程的学习，学生应掌握政治、军事、经济、科技、文化等方面的听力理解词汇及口语产出词汇，并最终达到《大纲》八级水平。 （3） 通过本课程的学习，学生应充分理解“听为学”、“说为学”的理念，并积极通过这两种渠道进行目标语认知。 （4） 通过本课程的学习，学生应充分理解自主学习的重要性，充分利用教师提供的自主学习资源或自主开发新资源，养成良好的自主学习习惯，开展有效的 自主学习。 （5） 通过视频材料的广泛使用，使学生有效掌握大量非语言性对象国知识。 （6） 通过讲座，使学生了解英语区域变体的语音、语法特点，并能够准确把握视、音频材料的大意及细节内容。 三、内容标准 1.授课内容 第五、六学期，教学内容主要为《英语专业三年级听力教程》、《英语中级听力》、《英语高级视听说》（上）中的材料，辅以带有前方记者报道的VOA、BBC、NPR新
Burning Rage This story originally aired on Nov. 13, 2005. When they first emerged in the mid-1990s, the environmental extremists calling themselves the "Earth Liberation Front" announced they were "the burning rage of a dying planet." Ever since, the ELF, along with its sister group, the Animal Liberation Front, has been burning everything from SUV dealerships to research labs to housing developments. In the last decade, these so-called "Eco-terrorists" have been responsible for more than $100 million in damages. And their tactics are beginning to escalate. Some splinter groups have set off homemade bombs and threatened to kill people. As correspondent Ed Bradley first reported last November, things have gotten so bad, the FBI now considers them the country's biggest domestic terrorist threat. 错误! The biggest act of eco-terrorism in U.S. history was a fire, deliberately set on the night of August 1, 2003, that destroyed a nearly-completed $23 million apartment complex just outside San Diego. The fire was set to protest urban sprawl. "It was the biggest fire I have ever responded to as a firefighter," remembers Jeff Carle, a division chief for the San Diego Fire Department. "That fire was not stoppable. At the stage that the fire was in when we arrived, there were problems in the adjacent occupied apartment complexes. Pine trees were starting to catch fire. Items on patios were starting to light up and catch fire. And we had to direct our activity towards saving life before we could do anything about the property." Hundreds were roused from their beds and evacuated. Luckily, nobody –including firefighters – was injured. By the time the fire burned itself out the next morning, all that remained was a 12-foot-long banner that read: "If you build it, we will burn it." Also on the banner was the acronym: E-L-F. When Carle saw the banner, he says he knew he had a problem. A problem, because he knew what ELF stood for: the Earth Liberation Front, the most radical fringe of the environmental movement. It's the same group that set nine simultaneous fires across the Vail Mountain ski resort in 1998 to protest its expansion, causing $12 million in damage. And it is the same group that has left SUV dealerships across America looking like scenes from Iraq's Sunni triangle, their way of protesting the gas-guzzling habits of American car buyers. The ELF is a spin-off of another group called the ALF, or Animal Liberation Front, whose masked members have been known to videotape themselves breaking into research labs, where they destroy years of painstaking work and free captive animals. In recent years,
Unit 4 Brain Man Almost 25 years ago, 60 Minutes introduced viewers to George Finn, whose talent was immortalized in the movie "Rain Man." George has a condition known as savant syndrome, a mysterious disorder of the brain where someone has a spectacular skill, even genius, in a mind that is otherwise extremely limited. Morley Safer met another savant, Daniel Tammet, who is called "Brain Man" in Britain. But unlike most savants, he has no obvious mental disability, and most important to scientists, he can describe his own thought process. He may very well be a scientific Rosetta stone, a key to understanding the brain. ________________________________________ Back in 1983, George Finn, blessed or obsessed with calendar calculation, could give you the day if you gave him the date. "What day of the week was August 13th, 1911?" Safer quizzed Finn. "A Sunday," Finn replied. "What day of the week was May 20th, 1921?" Safer asked. "Friday," Finn answered. George Finn is a savant. In more politically incorrect times he would have been called an "idiot savant" - a mentally handicapped or autistic person whose brain somehow possesses an island of brilliance. Asked if he knew how he does it, Finn told Safer, "I don't know, but it's just that, that's fantastic I can do that." If this all seems familiar, there?s a reason: five years after the 60 Minutes broadcast, Dustin Hoffman immortalized savants like George in the movie "Rain Man." Which brings us to that other savant we mentioned: Daniel Tammet. He is an Englishman, who is a 27-year-old math and memory wizard. "I was born November 8th, 1931," Safer remarks. "Uh-huh. That's a prime number. 1931. And you were born on a Sunday. And this year, your birthday will be on a Wednesday. And you'll be 75," Tammet tells Safer. It is estimated there are only 50 true savants living in the world today, and yet none are like Daniel. He is articulate, self-sufficient, blessed with all of the spectacular ability of a savant, but with very little of the disability. Take his math skill, for example.
Chapter 1 The Population I 2 populous 3 race 4 origin 5 geographical distPrelistening B 1 census ribution 6 made up of 7 comprises 8 relatively progressively 9 Metropolitan densely 10 decreased death rate 11 birth rate increasing 12 life expectancy D 1 a 18.5 mill b 80% c 1/2 d 13.4 mill e 2: 10 f 4% g 1990 h 40% i 3/4 j 33.1% 2 a 3 b 1 c 2 d 5 e 4 II First Listening ST1 population by race and origin ST2 geographical distribution ST3 age and sex III Postlistening A 1. People’s Republic of China, India 2. 281 mill
3. Hispanics(12.5%) 4. Texas 5. the South and the West 6. 20% 7. by more than 5 million 8. about 6 years 9. 2.2 years 10. a decreasing birth rate and an increasing life expectancy Chapter 2: Immigration: Past and Present PRELISTENING B. Vocabulary and Key Concepts immigrated natural disasters/ droughts/ famines persecution settlers/ colonists stages widespread unemployment scarcity expanding/ citizens failure decrease
Not Y our A verage Teen Lots of teenage girls dream of becoming rich and famous. But it's not a fantasy for Michelle Wie. Just before her 16th birthday last fall, she became the highest-paid woman golfer in history simply by turning professional and lending her name to commercial endorsements that will pay her between $10 million and $12 million a year, most of which will go into a trust fund until she becomes an adult. Wie has been a celebrity since she was 13, when people began predicting she would become the Tiger Woods of women’s golf. But, as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, that has never been enough for Wie. She wants to become the first woman ever to successfully compete with men in a professional sport. She has tried a couple of times on the PGA Tour without embarrassing herself. As you will see, she has changed a lot since we first talked to her way back in 2004, when she was 14. At the time, Wie told Kroft her ultimate goal was to play in the Masters. "I think it'd be pretty neat walking down the Masters fairways," she said. It was a neat dream for a 14-year-old kid. Nothing has happened in the last two years to change Wie's mind or shake her confidence. She is stronger now, more mature and glamorous. She has already demonstrated that she c an play herself into the middle of the pack against the best men on the PGA Tour and has come within a shot of winning her first two starts on the LPGA Tour this year as a part-time professional. The day before 60 Minutes interviewed her at the Fields Open in Honolulu, she shot a final round of 66, coming from six strokes off the lead to just miss a playoff. "Y ou won your first check yesterday," Kroft says. "Uh-huh," Wie says. "It was, it was really cool. I mean, I was like looking at how much I won. I was like 'Oh my God.' " Wie says she won around $72,000. Asked whether she gets to keep that money, Wie said she didn't know. "I'm trying to negotiate with my dad how much I can spend of that, and stuff like that. We're still working it out. But, you know, I'm definitely gonna go shopping today," she says, laughing. Half of her life is spent in the adult world, competing with men and women twice her age for paychecks they may need to make expenses and dealing with the media, sponsors and marketing executives. The rest of the time she is a junior at Punahou High School in Honolulu, where she is
1 Unit8 Chasing The Flu If this year of tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes has taught us anything, it's that worst case scenarios do sometimes happen. Now with winter upon us, the latest thing to worry about is the avian flu -- a particularly deadly bird virus that is ravaging the poultry industry in Asia, and has, on rare occasions, infected humans, killing half of its victims. Fewer than 100 people have died worldwide, yet the World Health Organization calls it the most serious health threat facing the planet, greater than AIDS or tuberculosis. Because humans have no immunity to the virus, and there are no proven drugs or vaccines to stop it, it has the potential to cause an influenza pandemic similar to the one that killed 50 million people in 1918. It may no t happen, but billions of dollars are being spent to sequence its genes, track its movement, and sl ow its progress in what many people believe could be a race against time. 60 Minutes set out for Europe and Asia chasing the flu. Correspondent Steve Kroft reports. It's called the H5N1 virus, a primitive piece of genetic material so small it can barely be seen unde r the most powerful microscopes. Like all flu viruses, it is constantly evolving and every day scient ists record the latest changes as it moves silently around the globe in the bellies of birds. The virus has infected the waterfowl now migrating the flyways over Southeast Asia. This is the fr ont line in the battle against avian flu, where the most cases have been identified and the most p eople have died. Ducks and geese have passed it along to domestic poultry, and humans have gotten it from sick bi rds. So far, the virus can't pass easily from human to human, but a single deadly mutation could c hange that and trigger the deaths of tens of millions of people. "Time is the essence," says Dr. Margaret Chan, the World Health Organization's chief of Pandemic Influenza in Geneva. She calls it a warning signal from nature. "For the first time in history we are seeing a pandemic unfolding in front of our eyes," says Dr. Ch an. No one has more experience with H5N1 than Dr. Chan. She was director of health in Hong Ko ng when the first outbreak occurred there in 1997. This is a virus that affects mostly birds and has killed fewer than 100 people. Why does Dr. Chan s ee it as such a serious health threat? "We are seeing very worrying signs, the geographical spread of this virus, and it has extended bey ond the usual sort of poultry sector. It is infecting cats. It's causing death in tigers, and so on and s o forth. Now we are getting all these signals, and we are tracking the changes of the virus," she ex plains. "If you look at the disease it causes in human being, [it] is very severe, with a very high fat ality rate. More than about half of the people infected die. We have not seen anything quite like i t," says Dr. Chan. "And also, this virus causes unprecedented spread in the animal sector. And we have never seen this in the entire history of mankind." The best minds in health, science and veterinary medicine have been mobilized to try and stop th e bird flu before it can become highly contagious in humans. Nearly 200 million chickens exposed to the virus have already been destroyed, yet, in the last few months the H5N1 virus has spread from Asia into Europe. Every morning at the World Health Organization's Strategic Health Operations Center, scientists a nd public health officials gather to go over the latest information and monitor every suspected hu