03/31/05 Everyone on board?; Oil-for-Food report

So is there a landmark water deal in Idaho or not? Bill Scott reports that the answer is "Yes". SCOTT: With an affirmative vote from the Nez Perce Tribal Council, the 193 million-dollar water rights agreement preserves Idaho's control over the water in the Snake River. In exchange for relinquishing most of its claims to Snake River water, among other things the tribe gets 80 million dollars, 50 thousand acre feet of Clearwater River water and 11 thousand acres of land. It took five years of negotiations to get this point but there were many in North Idaho who felt it would have been better to leave the case in court. Most southern Idaho irrigators and state legislators didn't want to take that risk. The Nez Perce had until today to adopt the deal, the final group to check off on the agreement. Last week, Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne signed three pieces of legislation that gave his state's approval of the deal. A United Nations Independent Inquiry Committee report states that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan did not properly confront his son's employment by a Swiss company that won a contract under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq. Under the Committee report, Annan is also criticized for failing to detect shortcomings in the U.N.'s internal bureaucracy that allowed problems in the oil-for-food program to continue until 2003. However, the report stopped short of calling for Annan's resignation, saying there was not enough evidence to show Annan knew about the contract bid made by his son's company. Now with today's "Food Forethought", here's Susan Allen. ALLEN: This three part series on child hood obesity ends the week on a more positive note. Apparently the efforts of Senator Harkin and others to regulate food companies' ability to market to children is resonating. At a food industry summit earlier this month, companies like Kraft Foods vowed to include more messages on exercise in their marketing and will work to limit advertising to children under the age of twelve. One executive from the ad agency that handles McDonalds and the Kellogg Co. said that there will be more campaigns that promote an active lifestyle along with messages that encourage balanced eating habits in the near future. Healthy spokespeople appear to be a trend as well and McDonalds will be using Olympic athletes to pitch their healthy menu items. Still industry professionals say that despite changes on their end, even new products like healthier cereals, until parents take responsibility for their children's diets by forgoing what is easier, for what is better, childhood obesity will remain an epidemic. I'm Susan Allen and this is Food Forethought.