Preview -- World News Tonight 06/08/01

N E W   Y O R K, June 8 -- — Good Afternoon.

Every morning one of our staff writers is tasked with getting in here earlier than the rest of us and cobbling together a morning summary of the news — a digest that helps us start a discussion about what we might put on the broadcast.

And this morning, there was this:

"The energy crisis seems to be waning. Electricity prices have been dropping in California ... the state expects to be blackout-free in two years. And gasoline prices are dropping because production rose ...."

So what exactly is going on here? How many times has the Bush administration told the public that there is in fact an "energy crisis"? How many times has the governor of California spoken of the need to cap artificially the price of electricity? And how many times have we in the media (not so often this broadcast, but we are not innocent) reported the existence of such a "crisis"?

We'll take this up tonight. What the nation does and does not need to worry about — and what the latest news may mean for President Bush's energy plan.

Japan is dealing with a national trauma tonight. It was the middle of the morning recess at an Osaka elementary school when a man walked in, brandished a knife, and began using it. Within minutes eight children were dead and more than two dozen others hurt — in a country that, as correspondent Mark Litke reports, has long prided itself as a particularly safe place to raise children.

Elsewhere around the world today, Iranians vote, Great Britain tallies yesterday's Labor Party landslide, and a court in Belgium sends down a landmark war crimes decision. Two nuns will go to prison for crimes against humanity.

Now that Timothy McVeigh's last appeals have been exhausted, we take a Closer Look at American attitudes toward the death penalty. Those attitudes have changed somewhat recently, because of things as disparate as DNA testing and FBI missteps. Our reporter on this is Dan Harris.

Then we go back overseas — for the dollar-driven bonanza. The dollar hit a 15-year high against the British pound today — and generally the U.S. currency will now buy more overseas than it has in a long time. Which is why Americans are traveling in record numbers to Europe and other destinations across the Atlantic. ABC's Richard Gizbert has been talking to some of these tourists. Says one: "A drink before dinner and wine with dinner for two people, for $50. Which is a lot better than we do at home."