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CNN Presents is an American documentary program on CNN weekends. The program used to be replaced with CNN Special Investigations Unit, which features the same documentary format, but differs from it in a number of ways and is shorter in length. The program was originally a regular weekly series that looks in-depth in the important news stories of the times. More recently, it became a "special event" documentary that airs every time a larger, more long-term special report went into making. Notably, the program has been a winner of a number of different awards, including the International Documentary Association Best Documentary Series award. Previous to his departure from CNN, Presents was hosted and narrated by Aaron Brown. While CNN Presents was broadcast on the network, a specialized CNN Presents logo was shown in the corner without the news ticker on the screen. CNN Presents has been revived since its presentation of God's Warriors by Christiane Amanpour in August 2007, and later with Planet in Peril, Black in America, and Latino in America, all of which have received follow-up documentaries later on. In July 2011, the format of CNN Presents changed to a series of three investigative reports aired together in a one hour documentary, instead of a documentary about a single topic.
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Episode 1 - The First 100 Days
Release Date: 2001-04-29The administration of President George W. Bush in substance and style.
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Episode 2 - A Dream Deferred
Release Date: 2001-05-06The HIV/AIDS epidemic has struck Africa with horrific force -- more 3.8 million people infected in 2000. Many of these people will die within a decade. CNN's Charlayne Hunter-Gault takes a look at the lives of six South Africans who illuminate the face of the HIV/AIDS pandemic sweeping the continent.
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Episode 3 - Terminal Count
Release Date: 2001-05-13CNN Space Correspondent Miles O'Brien takes a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to make the space shuttle fly.
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Episode 4 - Downsizing.com
Release Date: 2001-05-20In 1999, CNN took a look at some of the people of California's Silicon Valley participating in and benefiting from the roaring economic boom fueled by technology. Now, as companies lay off workers and entrepreneurs fold their businesses, CNN returns to see how some have fared.
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Episode 5 - Asylum in America
Release Date: 2001-05-27Thousands of people seek asylum in America each year, fleeing racial, religious, political or other types of persecution in countries around the world. For the first time, cameras were allowed to record the closed and confidential asylum proceedings inside the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
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Episode 6 - Exodus from Africa
Release Date: 2001-06-03African journalist Sorious Samura fled the violence in his country in search of a better life and later returned to document the violence there in the award-winning documentary "Cry Freetown." Samura has now turned his focus on the arduous trek that Africans are making and why they risk their lives for an uncertain future.
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Episode 7 - Proving Ground
Release Date: 2001-06-10The annual Sydney to Hobart yacht race is a great Australian tradition -- a days-long event across dangerous, often stormy seas -- that is nicknamed "Hell on High Water." But in 1998, no one anticipated the disaster that led to the deaths of six of the competing sailors.
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Episode 8 - Killing Pablo
Release Date: 2001-06-17CNN's Mike Boettcher takes a close look at the top-secret the United States played in the manhunt for the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
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Episode 9 - Northern Ireland: Dying for Peace
Release Date: 2001-06-24Three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland have left more than 3,000 people dead, pitted Catholic against Protestant and turned neighbor against neighbor. CNN's Nic Robertson examines the battle for peace with a look at the most controversial politician in the U.K.: IRA commander-turned-peacemaker Martin McGuinness.
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Episode 10 - America's Best: Artists and Entertainers
Release Date: 2001-07-01Admire them or envy them, there's something deeply fascinating about the small group of people who are simply the best at what they do. CNN and TIME have joined forces to examine America's best, focusing first on 21 artists and entertainers.
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Episode 11 - Gridlock
Release Date: 2001-07-08With U.S. air travel rife with delays and congestion, CNN's Leon Harris takes a look at how the air traffic system works and ways it can be improved.
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Episode 12 - Urban Combat
Release Date: 2001-07-22The U.S. Army believes the wars of the future are likely to be fought in cities. CNN Presents takes a look at soldiers in the 101st Airborne as they train for an urban battlefield.
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Episode 13 - America's Best: Science and Medicine
Release Date: 2001-08-12In the second installment of America's Best, CNN and TIME looked at the brilliant individuals, combining passion and obsession, who are still pushing the boundaries of of science and medicine, often by questioning or ignoring the conventional wisdom. CNN Presents profiled pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson, AIDS researcher Anthony Fauci, neurobiologist Patricia Goldman-Rakic, paleontologist Andrew Knoll and climatologist Lonnie Thompson.
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Episode 14 - Wasted
Release Date: 2001-08-19Most people who drink alcohol imbibe without a problem. But at least 8 million American adults meet the clinical definition of alcoholism and millions more abuse alcohol or occasionally engage in risky drinking, inflicting damage upon society and themselves.
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Episode 15 - Beneath the Veil
Release Date: 2001-08-26Since the Taliban took control of most of Afghanistan in 1996, the group has imposed its harsh version of Islamic law on the country. In "Beneath the Veil," journalist Saira Shah traveled to Afghanistan to see the effects of the Taliban's rule on her father's homeland.
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Episode 16 - America's Best: Society and Culture
Release Date: 2001-09-09A CNN-Time collaboration identifying the people who are simply the best in America.
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Episode 17 - The Struggle for Islam
Release Date: 2001-10-13With international attention focused on Osama bin Laden, an Islamic extremist who thinks he can rid the Muslim world of U.S. presence, most of the world, especially the West, is now asking how a religion can be used to justify acts of a terrorist?
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Episode 18 - Investigating Terror
Release Date: 2001-10-21How could the 19 suspected hijackers -- and whoever may have helped them -- hide in plain sight in the weeks and months before September 11, fooling everyone to such deadly effect? Investigators from the United States and throughout the world are now faced with that question and many more as they try to trace the trail of terrorism.
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Episode 19 - Somalia: Black Hawk Down
Release Date: 2001-10-27In the early 1990s, the United States became part of a multi-national military force that aimed to get humanitarian aid to Somalia. The ambitious humanitarian mission ended in bullets, missiles and death.
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Episode 20 - Air Insecurity
Release Date: 2001-11-03How safe are U.S. skies?
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Episode 21 - Dying to Tell the Story
Release Date: 2001-11-17A picture is worth a thousand words. Is it worth a single life?
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Episode 22 - Soldiers of God
Release Date: 2001-11-10Afganistan's battle against Soviet occupation.
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Episode 23 - Unholy War
Release Date: 2001-11-17Months before September 11, Saira Shah traveled to Afghanistan to record the impact of the Taliban's harsh rule for her documentary "Beneath the Veil." She recently returned to Afghanistan to see how the U.S. airstrikes are affecting the average Afghan.
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Episode 24 - Babies on the Brink
Release Date: 2001-11-22About one out of every nine babies in the United States is born prematurely. Cutting-edge technology is giving doctors the chance to save babies as tiny as 1 pound, but it comes with a price because as many as 80 to 90 percent suffer lasting disabilities.
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Episode 25 - Return to Freetown
Release Date: 2001-11-23In the award-winning "Cry Freetown," African journalist Sorious Samura documented the horrific suffering that a brutal civil war inflicted upon his homeland of Sierra Leone. He now revisits his country after a peace agreement called for RUF child soldiers to return to their homes and families.
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Episode 26 - Are We Ready?
Release Date: 2001-11-24Every American is now vividly aware of the threat of terrorism. As the U.S. government struggles to close the security gaps at airports, concerns are rising about a range of other potential dangers. How prepared are local, state and federal agencies to deal with the possibility of a large-scale biological or nuclear attack?