CNN 2010-08-25

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AZUZ: And Iran is making a new type of military weapon. It's a long-range drone, an unmanned arial vehicle. They're pretty common in modern combat. The U.S. uses something called a Predator¹ drone. And American officials say the unmanned vehicles help cut down risk for troops because no one actually has to be on board piloting it. Iran started producing its drones back in February. The first ones were unveiled yesterday. Iranian officials say the drones have a range of about 620 miles and can carry different types of bombs and missiles to hit ground targets. They claim that the goal of the new vehicles is to prevent aggression² against their country. Meanwhile, Iran has started fueling a new nuclear energy plant. It says the plant will help make electricity. But other countries, including the United States, think Iran may try to make nuclear weapons.

Flood Economy

AZUZ: Moving east from Iran to Pakistan. We've told you about the severe flooding there. We're starting to see some of the aftermath of that flooding in terms of disease: skin diseases, respiratory infections, malaria³. The World Health Organization says nearly a million Pakistanis are suffering some kind of illness. The floods are making a massive impact on the country's economy as well, and Jonathan Mann has more on that.

JONATHAN MANN: More than half of Pakistan's people live off the land. Now, much of the land is covered by dirty water, and the people are reduced to misery⁴.

WENDY CHAMBERLIN, PRESIDENT, MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE; FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO PAKISTAN: It's hard to imagine a country that is least prepared or had the thinnest of margins⁵ to be able to absorb a shock of this type.

MANN: Under all of that water, there are homes, farms and factories, bridges, roads and irrigation canals. Five hundred thousand tons of stored wheat is now reported ruined. Add potentially two million bales of cotton. Food prices have been rising in markets around the country. Pakistan's long-standing electricity shortage is suddenly so much worse because power plants have been shut down or damaged as well. The county's high commissioner⁶ to Britain told the Reuters news agency that it might cost $15 billion to rebuild from the devastation⁷. And Pakistan -- already deeply in debt -- will have less money to spend, because its ability to earn with exports has been dramatically reduced.

CHAMBERLIN: What the floods have done is to virtually wipe out an infrastructure⁸, agricultural infrastructure that it depended upon for its wheat exports. And because about 60 percent of the population worked in the agricultural sector⁹, so the amount of investment that will need to go in just to bring Pakistan back up to a status quo, a status quo that was not sufficient, is going to cost billions and billions of dollars.