it's great to have you watching this Tuesday.

We have a report coming up about two refugees

who attempted to swim to Europe.

They're among the hundreds of thousands seeking asylum,

a safe place to stay there,

after leaving unstable and war- torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Yesterday, European Union officials

held an emergency meeting in Brussels, Belgium.

They're trying to figure out how to slow down

the number of refugees and migrants coming in,

and how many of them each European country should accept.

International pressure has been on the US to do more to help.

Last week, President Obama announced

that America would accept about 10, 000 Syrian refugees over the next year,

but the United Nations says that isn't enough.

Meanwhile, the risks being taken by those

leaving their home countries are tremendous.

I am Hesham Modamani. I am 24 years old.

I am from Syria.

I met someone called Feras and he asked me are you going to Europe,

seeking asylum there?

He told me what do you think about going swimming from Turkey to Greece.

We searched on the GPS,

we found the coast and the Greece Island

and in the middle of the sea there is two Islands without people.

I was really scared because it was very dark,

very cold the water. I'm thinking that my last moment alive.

I gonna die now.

When we reach the first island in the middle of the sea,

it was just too small, filled with birds.

The second island, it was just like a wall.

It was like a rock.

We have no choice,

except continue swimming till we reach the Greek island.

Now I'm losing hope. It was very difficult.

All was hard. All was tough.

When I saw a ship that coming,

so I switch on the laser and they see us.

We were happy that we just made it.

Our source for the roll call,

the comments section of yesterday's transcript page

at CNNStudentNews. com.

The schools. Calkins Road Middle School, it's in Pittsford New York.

And it's where the Midnights are watching this Tuesday.

From Watertown, South Dakota it's the Panthers up next.

Hello to everyone at Great Plains Lutheran High School.

And from the South American nation of Colombia,

hello to all of our viewers at La Sierra International School.

It's in the city of Valledupar.

At a high school football game in San Antonio, Texas,

a fight broke out last Saturday.

Afterward, one player appeared to walk up to a referee and shove him.

He was immediately restrained by his teammates

and then kicked out of the game.

The player got caught up in the heat of the moment and responded badly.

But, this isn't the only time that this has happened recently.

A separate incident two weeks ago in Marble Falls, Texas,

could carry life- changing penalties.

This event is shameful to us.

John Jay sophomore Victor Rojas charged and tackled referee Robert Watts.

Then senior Michael Moreno piled on,

spearing Watt with his helmet.

The attack capped a brutal game,

and officials aimed much of their anger

at the coaches for not controlling their players.

There were multiple ejections.

There was punches thrown throughout parts of the game.

There was trash- talking, leg- hits,

that seems to me like a time bomb waiting to happen, and it did happen.

In the final seconds of the game,

after just giving up the lead,

Jay High School's opponent was running out the clock

when Watts was blindsided.

The hit may have been triggered by simmering anger

over what players considered bad calls by the refs.

But the players also alleged that Watts used racial slurs

against them at least twice during the game.

They say they told that to assistant coach Mack Breed.

The students allege that an assistant coach said

that guy needs to pay for cheating us, or words to that effect.

Breed, a former player at John Jay High School,

has been placed on administrative leave.

CNN tried to contact Breed for comment, but so far, he has not responding.

Watts' attorney says the players' allegations of racial slurs are not just false,

but a classic case of blame the victim.

He said that Watts suffered a heinous and brutal assault,

adding Watts is currently under medical care.

Local police are investigating whether the two players

should face criminal charges.

They've already been suspended from the team and school.

We will treat the incident as an assault on a school official.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, Dallas.

In the mid- 1840s, potato blight,

a disease that causes tubers to rot,

was catastrophic to the nation of Ireland.

In the 1970s, southern corn leaf blight rotted cobs

and decimated crops in parts of the US.

Plant diseases are as old as plants,

but in Fort Collins, Colorado,

there's a type of bank that holds billions of seeds

and it provides Americans some insurance

against the next blight on our food supply.

We know that there's going to be a pathogen coming,

a pest coming, something that's going to destroy the crops.

We've known that since the history of humanity.

The United States is probably the most efficient, effective,

agricultural producer in the world.

We eat very well, and a lot of that is

because we have the genetic resources

associated with combating the next scourge for the world.

The gene bank that we're in today is one of the largest,

if not the largest, gene bank in the world.

I would describe this as a library with genetic information

for every crop and animal that's important to agriculture.

We have, for example, over 800, 000 samples from various types

of livestock collected in the United States.

We have about 800, 000 accessions of seeds

and each one of those accessions is a bag with about 3, 000 seeds.

We're talking in the billions of seeds that are stored in this facility.

Most of the collection can go into what we call conventional storage.

They're freezers at minus 18 degrees centigrade.

And then there are materials that we don't know how to work with.

We are trying to take germ plasm,

that's the tiny little bit of material that you can grow a plant out of.

We have to excise the tiniest portion and store them cryogenically.

We have a large liquid nitrogen habit.

We go through about 30, 000 liters per year.

So we have liquid nitrogen on tap.

Our collections are meant to be used. Have a good weekend.

And that means that we will be taking in material

from various breeders throughout the country.

And we're also going to be distributing material.

And that differs a lot from other gene banks

that you see in the world that tend just to accumulate material.

If there were a disease outbreak and large numbers

of our livestock population were killed as a result of that,

breeders could come to this facility and use material

from here to help re- establish populations

that they lost during the disease epidemic.

What we want to be able to do with this collection

is to have a range of genetic diversity.

It's those little differences of why one crop performs well

and another crop doesn't.

There's always a pest, a pathogen, a drought.

Something that we have to improve crops for.

And when something bad happens you pull the volume off the shelf,

breed it, and you have protection.

Before we go, a cat whose owner says he's the best dog we've ever had.

Might be because Marley can sit and shake.

Might be because he likes riding in the car.

Might be because he takes walks on a leash.

But in the unlikely event you've seen this before,

you ain't seen this.

The 14- year- old feline likes the swings at the park.

He even lets kids push him.

When asked how he knows the cat likes this,

his owner responded, because he doesn't jump out.

Well, who doesn't like a playground every meow and then?

You can always find something to amews you

and with a cool cat that's cool with the whole cat and caboodle,

the play time pawsabilities are endless.

because we`re only a 10-meow-nite show.

Hope you cat-ch us again tomorrow.