coming up on this week's edition of "teen kids news" -- >> if you care more about what you wear than who you are take a look in your closet and stay tuned. coming up, i'll tell you about a special idaho program for some kids who are really cooking. >> i'll take you to cia headquarters to look at some real life spy gadgets. >> this drumline not only pumps up the crowd -- it changes lives. >> i'll tell you about all the great things you can get at comic con for free. >> the news you need to know -- next on teen kids news.

welcome to "teen kids news." i'm mwanzaa. >> and i'm jessica. let's take look at the stories that made headlines this week. senators had some tough questions for judge sonia sotomayor this week. she's president obama's nominee for supreme court. the senate judiciary committee grilled sotomayor on controversial issues and past court cases. it will then be up to the full senate to decide whether or not to appoint her to the highest court in the nation. if confirmed, sotomayor will be the first hispanic to wear the robes of a supreme court justice. president obama spent the midweek in the midwest. first stop was michigan. hard hit by all the layoffs in the auto industry, the wolverine state has the highest unemployment rate in the nation.

the president defended his plan to boost the economy. but he warns things may get worse before they get better. then it was on to st. louis, where mr. obama threw the first pitch at the all-star game. we hear the president throws a mean knuckle-ball! southwest airlines says its planes are safe. they grounded hundreds of aircraft after a football-sized hole in one of their jets forced an emergency landing.] after inspecting the planes, southwest announced there is "nothing unusual" in the rest of their fleet. "pottermania" is back. the sixth movie, "harry potter and the half-blood prince," hit theaters. even after nearly 10 years of harry potter movies, emma watson, who plays hermione, is still spellbound by all the fan loyalty. >> it doesn't seem to be going down or getting any less big which is incredible.

>> for "teen kids news," i'm new research shows girls are less physically active on playgrounds than boys. it seems the girls spend more time socializing. maybe it's time to stop talking >> thanks, lauren and maybe boys should work on their communication skills. teens spend billions of dollars a year to stay in style. but as felipe reports, all of this shopping can add up to a problem we can't afford. >> reporter: you want it, you need it, and all of the popular kids have it. let's be real. the brand you wear can get you noticed. but often what's popular is also pricey. so, what does wearing that brand name really say about you? >> it's just trying to show that your parents have money. >> reporter: studies show teens influence over $600 billion worth of purchases their parents make every year. that's more money than the budget for the united states military. carol weston is the author of the advice book "for teens only."

>> you're using someone else's money to send a message about money. it's just not a good way to go. it sounds cliche, it sounds cheesy but you got to find out what makes you happy besides stuff because otherwise you're always going to want a little bit more. >> reporter: that's because it seems like the people who have more have it all. like our favorite celebrities but here's the twist -- sometimes designers help celebrities look hot by giving them free fashions. >> designers give a lot of their clothes to celebrities for free because it's great publicity for them to have the star photographed wearing their clothes, whether it's on the red carpet but even more importantly in their everyday life just going on their errands looking like they just wear these designers all the time. it's a great publicity tool for them. >> reporter: tina donvito should know. as editor of "twist" magazine she publishes those photos. tina says you can be inspired by celebs without going overboard. for example, take a look at the little things they wear. >> you can wear a bracelet, a

belt, any kind of accessory is a great way to incorporate it into your own personal style without you know going crazy with a trend from head to toe. >> reporter: if we still haven't convinced you to bypass the brand names, here's what the experts suggest. save your money for one or two special accessories and use them to dress up your more down to earth basics. mwanzaa? >> thanks, felipe good advice. do we learn how to smile by watching others -- or is it something we're born knowing how to do? researchers came up with a clever way to figure that one out. they studied people who were born blind. their findings -- we all smile basically the same way. >> i could have told them that. coming up -- adding some spice to class. >> it's part of a special program to help kids achieve. >> and i'm going to keep smiling until we come back. see you in main.

amanda introduces us to some students who are taking classes that are really on the "cutting edge." >> reporter: each weekday morning, a yellow school bus

pulls up to this popular westchester, new york restaurant. inside is a group of teens who are part of a unique educational program. what's your favorite part? >> it's like, to stir up some spaghetti and making the sauce. >> reporter: these special ed students are developing some very special skills. they're training to become chefs. >> we did a review of job availability and labor and employment availability, and we knew that culinary arts was a field that had a shortage. we began to look at curriculum, developed curriculum, and began this collaborative and the mcmenamin new rochelle high school culinary arts program was born. ♪ >> reporter: these students are doing more than preparing meals. they're preparing recipes for life skills.

>> if food or cooking is an interest of theirs, they're recommended for the program by their teachers. sometimes students who appear the most challenged have multiple intelligence and gifts that we would have never uncovered. >> this is a great way to learn, while stirring up some fun! >> do you think you ever want to become a chef? >> this is my favorite thing to do. i love working here and i really do want to be a chef when i get older. >> he loves it. he loves it. i mean, when i'm in the kitchen, greg is over my shoulders, looking over my shoulder. he's gotten interested. "what are you doing?" asking questions. "what are you cooking?" it's just helped so much. there's limited language with him. but now he's beginning to develop his vocabulary of grating, cutting, chopping. it's just wonderful. >> all right class, we're going to start our primavera. depending on the students, their ranges may vary. some of their strengths may be in baking, some of their

strengths may be making recipes, some of their strengths may be cooking. but, absolutely, i think that they do have a career, there could be a career for them later on. >> if i smile too much, or am happy, i'm just so happy with this program. >> it's very important for teenagers to have a sense of belonging to something, and you know, to develop their identities. >> we love having them here. the staff that works with them loves working with them. i love seeing them every morning, and it's nice to see them, you know, growing with this, and moving along, and getting better with their culinary skills and their life skills too. >> bring them up and pour it directly onto the pasta like so. >> this is my first time working with the special needs kids, and it's been a privilege. >> what i see at home is a more confident child, and a happy child, and a child who is proud. >> reporter: in fact, it's easy to see that pride is a key ingredient in this kitchen. especially when these young chefs get to enjoy their morning's tasty handiwork.

>> would anybody like grated cheese? >> reporter: they come away with life skills that will stay with them forever, and they come away with employment and pre-employment skills that will lead to a more competitive life and they come away with probably the most important thing, a feeling of quality of life that i don't believe they would have gotten in any other experience. at mcmenamin's grill & chef works, i'm amanda for teen kids news. where do people read the most? a new survey shows the top cities are minneapolis and seattle. they're tied for first, followed by washington d.c., st. paul, san francisco, atlanta, denver, boston and st. louis. but as a nation, we're not reading nearly as much as other countries. in fact, the u.s. comes in a dismal 31st place. the biggest readers are in the republic of korea. >> i'll have sports when teen kids news continues - don't go

away!

unless you're made of stone, a drumline is going to move you. but in this case the story behind the beat is just as moving. tyler's here to tell us about it. tyler? >> reporter: mwanzza, this is more than just a marching band you'd see at a typical sports event. they're called the soul tigers. though you might also call them the life changers. >> teamwork, discipline! >> reporter: another day, another practice for the soul tigers of east new york. it's a drumline with a difference. >> it's a show band, with a touch of drumí5 the clarity and the precision of the drum corps. but also a show band. which means that we perform. we dance.

>> five, six, seven, eight, whoo! >> reporter: director kenyatte hughes grew up in this a neighborhood and he has a special relationship with these kids. he has been in a drumline and the united states marine corps. he knows being part of a team can be inspiring. >> i mean, improving, that's what's good. doing something positive in my life, instead of doing negative things doing positive things. >> reporter: for many of these kids, the soul tigers is what keeps them in school, and off the streets. that's one of the reasons kenyatte started the after school program with no audition necessary. >> the urban community doesn't have a lot of music programs if any, so for us to hold auditions would not make any sense. we teach everybody from scratch. >> reporter: they learn how to read music -- combine the music with the dance moves -- and get into shape so they are truly fit to do their best. >> the most difficult thing about the band for me was the exercise we put in, because i never used to exercise before, and when i came here i was like,

whoo! >> reporter: the kids also exercise their minds. it's a requirement to perform well in school to perform with the soul tigers. kenyatte makes a homework session part of every practice. >> sometimes they get into a program and they just come to the program and there's no direct contact with the kids or you know, when the program's over and everybody goes home. we don't do that here. >> reporter: the tigers also receive guidance from their band director and a drum corps expert and their administrator, mrs. gibbs, watches over them all. >> we know it's really about the kids, to keep the kids off the street and you can see the growth and the development in the kids. >> reporter: this help comes from the heart. mrs. gibbs is a volunteer and often kenyatte reaches into his own pockets. >> like for example we got the dancers. they got to get uniforms and the uniforms are like $200, $300 a piece. so i only had them bring in $90 and the rest i paid for.

it's like that sometimes. >> reporter: along with performances at athletic and charity events the band eagerly takes paying jobs to raise money for the basics. >> we get a lot of kids, but we lose a lot of kids because we don't have enough instruments. so, you know. one of the things i'm trying to work on is getting more instruments, more drums, more horns, so we can get more kids involved. >> reporter: fortunately the soul tigers are getting a lot of attention. in fact, they got to lead the famous macy's thanksgiving day parade. and the beat goes on. several of the oldest soul tigers recently graduated high school and went on to college. but they still come back when they can, to march with the band. i'm tyler, and that's sports for this week.

if you want to know what's going on in the world, you might pick up a newspaper or watch a show like this one. if the president wants to know what's going on in the world, he asks the central intelligence agency. lauren recently went to cia headquarters in virginia to do a little intelligence gathering of her own. >> the nature of our work is secret. we collect secret information by secret means. >> reporter: the roots of the cia go back to the second world war. >> the united states government created an organization called the oss for spying and gathering intelligence on our enemies. >> following world war ii, the president decided that we needed a peacetime intelligence agency after seeing how successful we had been during world war ii. >> reporter: and to display 60 years of history, the agency has its own museum. toni took me for a tour. >> our museum is here to inform, instruct, and inspire current and future generations of intelligence officers.

these are our well-dressed spies but you have to look closely because you never know how well-dressed we really are. now he seems to be holding an ordinary men's pipe. but it actually conceals a radio receiver that works on bone conduction. so out on a surveillance with a pipe on his mouth, he could pick up an audio signal that's transmitted up the pipe stem and then across the jawbone to the ear. it works on bone conduction. >> reporter: that's right, the spy can hear messages through his teeth. >> underneath his trench coat, he has what's called a body-worn camera. the lens actually shoots right through the button. and then his companion, dressed in her elegant gown, actually has a camera concealed in her purse and behind the brooch on her bodice. >> reporter: do agents really use things like ladies' compacts to communicate or is that just for the movies? >> well, take a look of what we have in this exhibit case here. you'll see a modified ladies' makeup compact.

but inside, in the mirror we've concealed what's called a brevity code. >> reporter: that's a code specially designed to communicate complex info with very few words. and codes aren't the only way spies could share information. >> this is our agent-issued microdot camera. it's a film technique of reducing a full page of text to an image that's one millimeter by one millimeter. >> reporter: that's smaller than a grain of rice. perfect for sneaking documents across dangerous borders. >> this was a camera that during the cold war, we would have issued to an asset, an agent. somebody who was giving us secret information through secret means. >> reporter: but that wasn't the most unusual camera we saw at the museum. >> take a look at this little camera right here. it weighs just 40 grams, the equivalent of these coins. >> reporter: it's designed to be worn by a very special secret agent, a trained pigeon who

could fly over enemy targets and bring back photos. >> and we hired a bird trainer who had trained birds for television. we found in working with pigeons that they're a challenge. >> reporter: some of the gadgets i saw were truly amazing. these dragonflies are actually flying robots, designed to eavesdrop on conversations. we think with nanotechnologies we'll be able to get those transmitters and receivers into devices the size of dust and then scatter them to do their job. >> reporter: the museum displayed more than technology. this exhibit shows the cia's role in the afghanistan war immediately after september 11, 2001. they worked with local tribal leaders to plan american airstrikes. >> and in just weeks, this partnership overthrew the taliban, killed or captured two thirds of the al-qaeda leadership, and denied a major terrorist organization its safe haven.

>> people don't come to work at the cia for the limelight or for the prestige. they come here for the mission and often that mission is done >> reporter: at the cia headquarters, for teen kids news, i'm lauren. do you think golf is a quiet game? not if you have a certain club made of titanium. hearing experts say the sound of the club hitting the ball is like a gun going off. in fact, they warn it could cause hearing loss. so using the club often could give you two handicaps. one for your game -- the other, much more serious.

our word this week is u-n-s-a-v-o-r-y. it means something is disagreeable or downright offensive. unsavory. for example, it's never polite to tell an unsavory joke.

and i've got a vocabulary word for you -- "swag." it's the term given to things you get for free and at the san diego comic con, collecting swag is like an olympic sport. >> snap bracelet. want one? >> hi -- would you like one? >> it's free. >> here you go. just about anywhere you walk at the comic con, people are happy to give you free stuff. some literally throw the swag at you. >> we're giving out a free mouse pad. >> giving away fangs -- "lost boys" fangs on dvd. >> reporter: swag is a big thing at san diego comic con. pretty much every booth has got something free that you can take away from it. there's actually a table upstairs which is our free table it's a freebie table. people love to get postcards, pins, dvds, bags, all these sort of things that are swag from movies coming out, video games that are coming out. >> we're giving what would neil patrick harris do bracelets. >> it's smarties from eureka candy.

>> these are books about what upcoming monga titles and upcoming dark horse publications we have. >> reporter: the convention hall is crowded with people toting giant bags mostly filled with -- you guessed it -- swag. >> yeah, i got a whole bunch. i got this from the mattel section. this whole bag was free. >> i've gotten -- the new "star trek" posters just came out, i got two of the four. mini "g.i. joe" posters, "ironman." lots of autographs and lots of dvds for free. >> you get really cool buttons and pins and stuff like that. yeah. it's really exciting. >> have some free tattoos. they go great on cats. cats love tats. nngt, nine out of ten cats prefer tats. >> got like a bunch of bags, posters, books, a lot of stuff that they pretty much hand out. like water bottles mainly like a bunch of bags that they're handing out and a bunch of movie posters all from the brand new movies that are coming out. >> yesterday we gave away 12,000 bags in probably half an

hour to an hour. i don't know. today there's probably more and they're getting rid of all of them. >> i got some pins and just some stickers and stuff so it's pretty cool. >> i have free manga books. i don't read manga, it's just they're free. >> t-shirts and magazines. >> t-shirts, posters, magazines, poster cases, books and fliers. >> they're doing free paint faces for being zombies. it's really great and all the free stuff is good. >> so far i have gotten -- well, lots of stuff. like there's trading cards, postcards, mall zones. there's like everything. key chains, buttons. i've only bought key chains, the rest was free. >> definitely, that's like half the reason i come i love it here. they even give away masks and stuff you can use for next year. yeah, just tons of free gifts. >> they're great things to take home for free that you don't have to pay for and you kind of remember the convention by taking home as much stuff as you can.

>> reporter: and judging by all the stuff stuffed into those giant bags, people are going to have an awful lot of great memories of the san diego comic con. for "teen kids news," i'm sam. that's it for this week's "teen kids news." thanks for joining us. >> have a good one. do you like this top? that's so gay. really? yeah. it's totally gay. you know, you really shouldn't say that. say what? well, say that something is "gay" when you mean it's bad. it's insulting. what if every time something was bad, everybody said, "ugh. that's so girl wearing a skirt as a top."

oh. you are. ha ha. shut up. those are cute jeans, though.