All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

A friend of mine told me about these guys in Florida who were working on a way to fill a need - using something that we routinely throw away in the United States.

I was curious to know more and looked into their organization "Clean the World."

Little Soaps Satisfy Big Demand in Haiti
I thought it would make for a good story for us because I've always wondered what happened to those little bars of hotel soap (they're thrown in the garbage) and secondly, I've always felt a little bit guilty about the whole thing.

More importantly, the story connects us to Haiti and is a good way to look into the much bigger issue of water and sanitation (and the lack thereof) in a country like Haiti.

The program seems to benefit a lot of folks from the hotel maids who collect the soap and feel like they're making a difference, to men from a local shelter who get jobs disinfecting the soap, to people in Haiti who cannot afford it.

Most of the soap is shipped by boat because it is a much cheaper mode of transport but we landed and met up with thousands of bars of soap that had been flown in. After we cleared customs, I got my first sense of just how valuable this commodity is in a place like Haiti...when the guys helping to load the soap into the trucks were "tipped" - not in cash - but with soap.

Check out the piece and see just how desperate folks are for something as simple as a tiny bar of soap, and how washing hands can save lives.

Katie Couric is on assignment. I'm Seth Doane.

Just a couple of weeks before Americans start lining up for the H1N1 vaccine, the government's giving its P-R machine a shot in the arm.

The CDC insists the vaccine is safe, but millions of Americans who are most at risk for the virus are reluctant to roll up their sleeves.

Here in New York today, health care workers protested a regulation that forces them to get shots or get fired. Some parents worry the vaccine hasn't been tested enough and say they won't let their kids be guinea pigs. As for pregnant women, they're usually told to be cautious about medication. Only one in seven of them typically get the regular flu shot.

Health officials are fighting more than just the flu. They are also battling fear of the unknown - concern that the vaccine might not turn out to be as safe as promised. The only remedy for that is more information.

I'm Seth Doane. CBS News.

Katie Couric is on assignment. I’m Seth Doane.

It's been four years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and parts of Mississippi - killing 16 hundred people and causing more than 40 billion dollars worth of damage.

Homes and lives were washed away and the nation watched in helpless horror as faces soaked in tears and flood waters pleaded for rescue.

Still today, 62-thousand homes and buildings remain uninhabitable and vacant, and 17-hundred families are living in temporary housing. Though the waters have receded, many residents have yet to land on solid ground.

But there is some good news to share.

New Orleans, as President Obama stated this weekend, is the fastest growing city in America. Nearly three quarters of its pre-Katrina population has returned, and the unemployment rate is about 2 points below the national average.

The voyage to recovery has been long and hard for the city known as the Big Easy, but there are signs of hope on horizon.

I'm Seth Doane, CBS News.

Tom Kotula and Jon Hauserman are rowing down the East Coast, building houses at 12 Habitat for Humanity sites along the way.

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A friend of mine heard Scott Harrison speak at an event in Los Angeles. She called me immediately afterwards to say that she’d met Scott and that he was well spoken and had an amazing story to tell.

As I looked into Scott’s story and his non-profit Charity:Water. I thought that it was a great story for CBS News and that it’d be fantastic to get to work along with producer Karen Raffensperger to tell.

Having lived in India while working for CNN and having spent quite a bit of time overseas in developing countries; the issue of fresh drinking water was one that resonated with me. Karen got excited about the story too as there are a number of innovative ways that Scott is using technology to track the water projects he builds and finds interesting ways to engage donors.

He raises money to cover the administrative costs of "Charity:Water" separately so that all of the funds can go directly to the water projects. Scott loves the grassroots effort seems to take particular pride in connecting with lots of donors who can give a modest amount (instead of engaging the multi-million dollar donors - though he made it clear he’d hardly turn those big-ticket donors away). Starting this fall, he plans to unveil a system that will let folks track even the smallest of donations.

He feels that one should give out of the excitement of trying to make a difference rather than the "guilt" that can go along with donating to a charity. Though after Karen and I spent some time with Scott we turned to each other and thought (aloud) "Well, what are WE doing with our lives"?

I hope you check out our story on the Evening News as it’s the tale of one guy who was on a very different life path until he saw a problem that he decided he wouldn’t ignore.

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Lucky assignment, right? My senior producer, Kim Godwin, called me to ask if I "might be free to go to the Cayman Islands" to follow the "Financial Family Tree" as it wound its way through the Caribbean. My response, clearly, did not require much thought: "yes".

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CBS News correspondent Seth Doane talks with 13-year-old Lewis Roman.

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My favorite part of this job is getting the chance to sit down and chat with someone I'd never normally meet. The microphone can sometimes act as a little passport into a stranger's life …

You talk with a lot of people in the course of a week or month in this line of work and sometimes someone sticks out from the rest. On this story it was 13-year-old Lewis Roman, whom I met in a shelter in Philadelphia. Lewis sleeps in one room with his mother, brothers, and sister while he goes to school and tries to have a normal teenage life. We were there to talk with Lewis about hunger and he tells his story in tonight's latest "Children of the Recession" piece on the CBS Evening News piece.

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This was one of those stories that evolved while we were shooting. Our assignment was to look at the psychological impact of the recession on young people for our network-wide series, "Children of the Recession.” As we conducted background research we chatted with psychologists who spoke to the idea that in the early stages of development any changes can be disruptive to young people. We decided to focus our piece on teenagers for whom "fitting in" is particularly important.

We set out to profile one teenage girl, Kristen Beltran, who lives in Montclair, Calif. When we visited her school, Montclair High School, we saw how schools are becoming the first line of defense for many students when their parents are no longer able to provide as much at home. Our story started to shifted focus a bit to reflect some of the stories we heard at Montclair High.

CBS Evening News Producer Karen Raffensperger had identified Kristen as a person to profile after she came across her blog entries. Kristen vented her frustrations about the impact of the recession on her own life. Her dad (a welder) is not working as much these days and that has strained the family's finances. At 15 years old, she'd love to get a job to help her parents pay some of their bills, but her parents will not let her because they want her to focus on schoolwork.


CBS Evening News Producer Karen Raffensperger had identified Kristen as a person to profile after she came across her blog entries. Kristen vented her frustrations about the impact of the recession on her own life. Her dad (a welder) is not working as much these days and that has strained the family's finances. At 15 years old, she'd love to get a job to help her parents pay some of their bills, but her parents will not let her because they want her to focus on schoolwork.



On the front stoop of their home, Kristen's dad admitted to me that tension is growing within the family. Kristen's mother Betty explained, as we sat around a table in the back yard, that it's "our job as parents to protect our children." For Betty and her husband "protecting the kids" means keeping some of the specifics about family finances between themselves. However, Kristen says that can be counter-productive as she's aware of what is going on and only feels more helpless.

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British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that Sen. Kennedy will receive an honorary knighthood, awarded by Queen Elizabeth to distinguished people who are not British citizens.

The senator joins other notable Yanks like Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg in the order.

Seth Doane fills in for Katie, who is on assignment

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Katie's on assignment. I'm Seth Doane.

It's the latest sign that there's a new sheriff in town. With the stroke of a pen, President Obama has turned back two more Bush Administration policies. One order makes the EPA reconsider whether states may implement tougher auto emissions standards. Environmental groups cheer the move. Automakers, though already skidding on economic black ice, worry how to pay for it.

Last week, Mr. Obama reversed policies on interrogation procedures, Guantanamo Bay, and funding for international groups that provide abortions.

The new president is moving fast on his campaign promises, but it comes with a price. His approval rating is now 68 percent. That's still high, but it's down from 74 percent before the inauguration.

As he makes these tough decisions, Mr. Obama won't please everyone. The honeymoon isn't over, but after all that talk of national unity just last week, the romance might be cooling just a bit.