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CNN Newsroom

NEWSROOM for July 5, 2001

Aired July 05, 2001 - 04:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: Seen in classrooms the world over, this is CNN NEWSROOM.

RUDI BAKHTIAR, CO-HOST: It's Thursday, July 5. From the CNN Center in Atlanta, hello and welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. Glad to have you with us today.

Here's a quick look at what's coming up.

In today's "Top Story," the United States of America celebrates 225 years of independence. Then, "Science Desk" moves to a different beat as it merges two modes of transportation. Next, we'll check up on a Crazy Horse monument in the making in "Worldview." And finally in "Chronicle," preserving a disappearing legacy using cloning.

The United States turned 225 years old and Americans everywhere celebrate. Fireworks, barbecues and family gatherings helped many people mark the Fourth of July. President Bush spent the holiday in the place where it all began: Philadelphia -- that's where calls for freedom began in earnest.

Major Garrett takes us there and explains how Mr. Bush's holiday activities set him apart from former presidents.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MAJOR GARRETT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): White House aides never tire of describing President Bush as a different kind of Republican. Viewed through the prism of the Fourth of July, they may have a point. The setting, a block party in gritty north Philadelphia, where Mr. Bush tried reaching out to the GOP's most estranged constituency -- black voters.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Happy Fourth of July.

GARRETT: The president plunged into the serenading choir, added his touch to an urban street scene, quarterbacked a street football game and judged a slam-dunk contest. All this under the watchful and approving eye of Philadelphia's Democratic Mayor John Street.

This is hardly the way recent Republican presidents have marked the Fourth. The elder Bush spent his first two Fourths at the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. President Reagan attended public Independence Day celebrations only three times in eight years as president. But Mr. Bush is also a different kind of president, at least this week -- a looser, less podium-bound president One who sheds the Oval Office and its coat-and-tie requirements to mingle with tourists at the Jefferson Memorial...

BUSH: The true greatness of America is the people.

GARRETT: ... one who greets a newborn baby born to a member of the White House staff, and visits Philadelphia, all designed to combat the perception appearing in polls of late, that Mr. Bush is removed from the public and its daily concerns.

There was policy, too, another push for Mr. Bush's faith-based initiative.

BUSH: Those who hold positions of power should not be wary or hostile towards faith-based charities or other community groups which perform important and good works. We should welcome their conviction and contribution, in all its diversity.

GARRETT (on camera): Political imagery is dicey business. At first White House advisers wanted to make sure Mr. Bush looked disciplined, decisive, presidential. Now they want to move a bit closer to friendlier, more approachable image the country came to know during the campaign.

Major Garrett, CNN, Philadelphia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BAKHTIAR: The Continental Congress severed ties with Britain in 1776 when it adopted the Declaration of Independence. Through the decades, the famous document has served as a reminder of American values and success and as an inspiration to several generations. It also helps us understand why colonists wanted to break with Britain all those years ago.

Bruce Morton reports on the true meaning of the Declaration of Independence and how it affects us today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If you were British, and they all were, of course, until they signed it, it was a call to treason and dangerously radical besides. Governments, it said, derive their powers from the consent of the governed, which would certainly have shocked George III who thought he did the important consenting. And if a government got out of line, the document went on, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government. Wow!

If the Gallup people asked Americans this week if they believe in the right to overthrow their government, how do you think they'd answer? Or the people of China or Chechnya? Well, you'd know how they'd answer, don't you? That was a time of independent states, of course, and in some parts of the world that's still the trend. The Soviet Union is now many countries, so is what used to be Yugoslavia.

(on camera): And in Western Europe, the trend is away from nationalism toward interdependence, one currency, the euro, plans for a military force, the European Reaction Force. The world is more interdependent then it used to be simply because a number of countries now have nuclear weapons. And the two with the most such weapons, the United States and Russia, could, if they wished, blow up the planet, an act of destruction we used to think only gods could manage.

(voice-over): Two hundred twenty-five years ago, the Americans had to defeat a large British army which had just landed on Staten Island. But if they could beat the British, as they eventually did, they would be independent.

Now the United States and everybody else must worry about nuclear weapons and about other kinds of destruction that mock national borders. Chemical warfare, biological warfare: deaths carried on the wind.

Still, the United States did something rare, made a country out a collection of colonies and subsequent add-ons. Fifty states now and one country, though, only after a bloody civil war. So those old patriots had an idea, which has endured, not perfect, of course. All Americans are not created equal, though we are closer than we once were. The men who signed the declaration pledged to it their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor and we are all still in their debt.

Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BAKHTIAR: Checking some other stories making news: Three months after an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island, most of that U.S. Navy surveillance plane is back on U.S. soil. The disabled EP-3 was taken apart in China, its largest parts loaded on a Russian cargo plane that arrived in Hawaii yesterday. The parts will be taken to Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia where they'll be reassembled. The plane could have been repaired and flown back to the United States, but the Chinese government nixed the idea.

We told you earlier this week about a defiant Slobodan Milosevic representing himself before the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal. Well, according to one of his attorneys, it seems the former Yugoslav president will probably now accept legal counsel. The attorney told CNN it's going to be a very long trial and that it will take some legal expertise to navigate. This, just days after Milosevic called the tribunal an illegal organ and said he wouldn't need legal representation. Milosevic is accused of crimes against humanity for actions taken by the Yugoslav army in Kosovo.

Over the years, many Cubans have tried defecting to the United States in search of a better life. Last year, a Cuban doctor's defection in Zimbabwe captured world headlines. Now, after months of effort, he has finally been reunited with his children in Miami, but it wasn't the reunion he originally envisioned.

CNN's Susan Candiotti has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After a year's separation,

Dr. Leonel Cordova is reunited with his children, but the moment is bittersweet.

After his defection last year, Cordova got approval from the U.S. for his wife and children, still in Cuba, to join him in Florida.

DR. LEONEL CORDOVA, FATHER: I just want to give them the freedom that they have been deprived since they were born.

CANDIOTTI: But he did not yet have approval from Cuba. And then, tragedy struck.

The children's mother, seen here in a CNN interview last year, was killed last month in a motorcycle accident. The Cuban government, fearing comparisons with Elian Gonzalez, OK'd the children's departure within days.

CORDOVA: They are my life. They are my soul.

CANDIOTTI: Easterly Tuesday in Cuba, the children prepared to leave their homeland. Tears, as their relatives put them on a plane.

Then a reunion without his wife.

CORDOVA: When I saw my kids running to me, I was only giving thanks to God. It's going to be very difficult but we are going to deal with this. We will do better, if she were here now. They need her a lot, but I'm going to do my best.

CANDIOTTI: For now, that means being father and mother and breaking the news to 4-year-old Giselle that her mother is dead. He has no gratitude for Cuban President Fidel Castro for letting his children leave.

CORDOVA: I don't have anything to say, "thank you." It's my right only, and he did it because he was really pressed to do it.

CANDIOTTI: Dr. Cordova, who works at a Miami hospital, plans on returning to Cuba, one day. But only, as he puts it, when it is free.

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BAKHTIAR: Ever traveled on a monorail? Chances are if you've been to a theme park you have or if you've ever been to Japan, which has built more transit monorails than any other country. As many cities debate the consequences of increasing traffic, there are all kinds of possibilities but typically, the monorail has been overlooked. Why? Because like other modes of mass transit, it gets commuters to predetermined stops but not to individual destinations.

Now suppose you could blend the convenience of a car with the environmental and fuel efficient benefits of a monorail. Well, you're about to meet an individual who's done just that.

Rick Lockridge introduces us to an inventor who has a one-track mind when it comes to transportation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICK LOCKRIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You might want to remember where you first saw you this see-through electric car with triangular slot up the middle because if Copenhagen inventor Palle Jensen is right, vehicles like this one will save our overcrowded cities from the traffic that is choking them and lift commuters from their daily despair.

PALLE JENSEN, INVENTOR: Would it be possible to make a system in between cars and train, with advantages from the car world and advantages from the train world?

LOCKRIDGE: So he designed the RUF -- R-U-F. In Danish, it means "in a hurry." In English, it stands for rapid urban flexible. RUF cars and buses are just like any other battery-powered vehicles, except for that middle slot. That's what will enable them to ride the four-meter high monorail, where they will link up to form small trains.

Once off the monorail, RUF can take you all the way to your destination, and that is important because Jensen believes many people will never use mass transit until it's as convenient for them as their personal cars.

JENSEN: It takes into account the human nature. You don't want to be moved together with a lot of other people at a fixed timetable. You're more spontaneous. You suddenly have a need to be moved.

LOCKRIDGE: Every component of the RUF has been tested, and the project has a long list of corporate backers. But the one thing the RUF system doesn't have yet is a city willing to commit about a billion dollars to build it.

(on camera): The inventor says he dreams of installing the first RUF monorail right here in Copenhagen. But he says if a Mexico City or a Seattle comes up with money first, they will be the first to get one.

(voice-over): What's important, Jensen says, is that people embrace an entirely new way of getting around. One which combines the convenience of personal cars with the efficiencies of mass transit. It will be good for the environment, he says, and also good for the soul. JENSEN: Get to your work completely relaxed instead of coming stressed from the highway congestion.

LOCKRIDGE: How many commuters would agree that is reason enough to raise the RUF.

Rick Lockridge, CNN, Copenhagen.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BAKHTIAR: Researchers have announced a medical first: A totally implantable artificial heart has been placed in a dying patient. Doctors say the patient, a man in his mid to late 50s, is doing well and is breathing on his own, however, complications still may arise. The surgery was performed Monday at a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You're looking at the world's first totally implantable artificial heart. Called the AbioCor, it's designed to replace the human heart.

DR. MEHMET OZ, PRESBYTERIAN HOSPITAL AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: The major obstacles to all artificial devices, in particular the newer technologies, are making sure that patients have adequate quality of life. In fact, the device needs to be forgettable. You need to have it on and live your life and not worry about it.

GUPTA: The AbioCor weighs about two pounds, a battery-powered motor pumps blood through the body and an internal battery is continuously recharged by an external battery pack through an energy transfer device.

For most people, the artificial heart brings back images from the 1980s of Barney Clark, tethered to a machine for more than 100 days, slowly dying from repeated strokes and infections. This technology goes a long way towards reducing those risks.

DR. PATRICK MCCARTHY, THE CLEVELAND CLINIC: I think there's a danger that we might recreate some of the hype that was associated with Barney Clark. People heard about it, they thought this was a breakthrough and that 15 years from now everyone's going to have an artificial heart and that it is going to be safer. It's not that way.

GUPTA: The AbioCor, researchers say, the public should have realistic expectations.

OZ: The key message I would like to deliver to the public is have rational expectations. Don't treat a failure of the device as a failure of the technology.

GUPTA: Five heart patients will be implanted with the new AbioCor artificial heart. Their experience will determine if scientists have overcome the problems seen with the earlier devices or if it's back to the drawing board. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BAKHTIAR: In "Worldview" today, business and tourism take top billing. We head to the United States to check out a huge monument in the making. Have you ever heard of Chief Crazy Horse? We'll visit a memorial to the Indian leader. And we'll go to Europe where the deutsche mark, the franc, the lira and the drachma have all something in common. Find out why they're about to disappear.

TOM HAYNES, CO-HOST: A decade ago, member countries of the European Community, now the European Union, agreed they would eventually unite their economic and monetary systems. They signed a treaty, which would put into place a common unit of exchange called the euro. On January 1 next year, the euro will become a reality, replacing the national currencies in 12 of the European Union's 15 countries. For now, Britain, Denmark and Sweden will maintain their own monetary currency.

Our Brussels bureau chief Patricia Kelly reports some are getting pretty excited over the arrival of the euro, so much so, they're making a song and dance about it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(SONG PLAYING)

PATRICIA KELLY, CNN BRUSSELS BUREAU CHIEF: Singer/songwriter John Macon (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to mark the advent of Europe's new currency.

Even though the currency is not yet in circulation, the shops are obliged to display two prices on every product: one in euro and the other in local money. Banks and businesses are using it in electronic transactions.

PEDRO SOLBES, EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER: The euro is already our currency since 1st of January, 1999, so what we are doing at the present moment is only introducing physical marks and coins with our currency and 12 members of state -- member states of the union use already.

KELLY: More than half the bank notes going into circulation on January 1 have already been printed. Within two months, the old currencies, franc, deutsche mark, lira and drachma among them, will disappear. The rate of exchange, old money for new, has already been fixed for every participating country.

(on camera): Here in the euro zone, we'll all be using calculators for at least the first few weeks, trying to work out what things cost in old money. Consumer organizations fear retailers will use the euro as an excuse to round prices up instead of down.

(voice-over): The head of Europe's Central Bank has called for public vigilance. WIM DUISENBERG, EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK CHIEF: We are aware of this danger. We have not been convinced that it would have a significant impact on the overall inflation figure, but we are on the alert and we do think that in this area the general public has a task as well to closely monitor any exercise of rounding.

KELLY: Some businesses, especially those dealing in luxury goods, are expected to do well during the next few months as consumers rush to spend old money they haven't paid taxes on. Estate agents, too, expect to see a booming business from buyers with black money they won't convert for fear of prosecution. But in the long term, Europe's economy is expected to flourish under the euro.

JOS PEETERS, VENTURE CAPITALIST: Life will become a lot easier. The currency risk will be gone within the European zone, one; but two, and more importantly, business plans, financial statements will be much more accessible and much more comparable. I think that will boost significantly European investment.

KELLY: A referendum in Denmark rejected the euro. The U.K. and Sweden are also cautiously holding out against it.

PEETERS: I think there's serious disadvantage. I mean their policymakers have the choice either to strangle their economy or to print euro notes or dollar notes, I think, so it's not good for these economies.

KELLY: In the rest of Europe, the euro is here to stay. There will be no going back say the policymakers.

(SONG PLAYING)

KELLY: If you didn't understand every word, maybe that's what Europe needs next: a single language.

Patricia Kelly, CNN, Brussels.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SHELLEY WALCOTT, CO-HOST: We head to the United States to pay a visit to South Dakota. Here we find the Black Hills and area that became known for gold mining back in the late 1800s. It's also a popular tourist destination and one new tourist attraction in the region is the Crazy Horse Memorial. More than 50 years in the making, the Crazy Horse Memorial is a massive mountainside sculpture.

The work-in-progress isn't far from another popular tourist attraction: Mount Rushmore. The two are about 20 kilometers apart. Unlike Mount Rushmore, however, which features the upper torsos of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, this new memorial features the head of the Sioux Indian chief Crazy Horse.

John Vause has more on the Crazy Horse Memorial project and the people behind it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Even incomplete, the Crazy Horse Memorial stands as the largest sculpture on the planet. A tribute in the black hills of South Dakota to the legendary Lakota Chief. In 1998 they finished the face. The year since had been spent on engineering plans and building access roads around the monument so work could begun on carving out the horse`s head.

CASIMIR ZIOLKOWSKI, FOREMAN: Each day that we go to work we`re one day closer to being done. And that`s the best I can offer.

VAUSE: A massive job. When finished the horse`s head will stand 22 stories tall. A five bedroom house could fit in each nostril. Korczak Ziolkowski started work on the sculpture alone, using a hammer, dynamite, and a bulldozer. Since his death in 1982 his widow Ruth has overseen the project. She`s been there almost everyday for the past 53 years.

RUTH ZIOLKOWSKI, WIFE OF KORCZAK ZIOLKOWSKI: Just like watching a child grow. If you live with that child, you don`t see a difference unless you look at pictures. And the same is true with the mountain.

VAUSE: No completion dates has been set. The trustees of Crazy Horse refuse to even take a guess. In many ways they say, that`s the attraction, to see this monument developed not just over years, but decades.

A million people last year, almost 80 percent are expected to come back at some time.

UNKNOWN: It`s fabulous, absolutely fabulous.

VAUSE: Raph Cournoyer has made four trips to Crazy Horse. His first was almost 30 years ago.

RAPH COURNOYER: Now it looks really good. And now I can see the future.

VAUSE: Throughout the years Korczak, as he like to be called, refused government funding. The main source of revenue now comes from an $8 admission fee. Before he died, Korczak suggested he wouldn't approve.

KORCZAK ZIOLKOWSKI: I didn't come out to build a tourist gimmick and I resent that when people say it to me because I have no idea that I was going to have to deal with terrorist or anything like that. I was naive.

VAUSE: Crazy Horse was commissioned by chief Henry Standing Bear as a tribute to Native Americans. Just like Mount Rushmore, about 30 kilometers away, celebrates America.

Still, as they chip away at that mountain, it`s always that question: How long before this will look like this? Korczak had an answer for those without his patience.

K. ZIOLKOWSKI: Maybe it will take 100 years. What difference does it make? Isn't time relative? One minute, one hour, one year.

VAUSE: John Vause, CNN, at the Crazy Horse Memorial, South Dakota.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BAKHTIAR: George Washington's roles as Army general and American president are pretty well known, but he was also a diligent planter who oversaw five separate farms on his Mount Vernon estate.

As CNN's Patty Davis reports, most of the trees Washington planted are now gone, but work is underway to preserve and restore Mount Vernon's forests.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PATTY DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An all-American Fourth of July at George Washington's home, Mount Vernon: re- enactments, patriotic music honoring Washington's legacy. But part of that legacy is disappearing.

DEAN NORTON, DIRECTOR, MOUNT VERNON HORTICULTURE: What's disappearing right now are woods.

DAVIS: Only 13 of George Washington's original trees still stand at Mount Vernon, including holly, white ash, mulberry, and this tulip poplar.

An effort is under way to clone the 13 trees, led by David and Jared Milarch, who own a nursery in Michigan.

JARED MILARCH, CHAMPION TREE PROJECT: When this bud is taken from the parent, it is exactly -- it has all the DNA that parent tree has. It's then put into parent root stock. When it heals and begins to grow, this is still the same genetic makeup as the parent tree.

DAVIS: When one of the 13 original trees dies, its clone will be put directly in its place.

DAVID MILARCH, CHAMPION TREE PROJECT: Is this the right thing to do?

J. MILARCH: We need to preserve this link to the past. And the only living things that have witnessed some of the events that happened in George Washington's life are actually these trees.

DAVIS: He was a gentleman farmer, known for his symmetrical gardening.

(on camera): President Washington retired to Mount Vernon after he left office. He told his friends, if they wanted to visit him, it would have to be under his own vine and fig trees, meaning the peace and tranquility of his grounds.

(voice-over): To fill out 200 acres of forest, Mount Vernon and the National Tree Trust will also plant clones of a thousand champion trees: the largest and oldest of their breeds from around the country, the same types Washington grew here.

NORTON: My effort at Mount Vernon is that if George Washington returned tomorrow, he could walk these gardens, he could walk those garden paths and not feel as if he had ever left.

DAVIS: More than 200 years after his death, visitors walk Washington's garden paths and now, will continue to share his living legacy for generations to come.

Patty Davis, CNN, Mount Vernon, Virginia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BAKHTIAR: All of us here at CNN hope you and your family had a great holiday. We leave with some of the sites and sounds of the nation's 225th birthday. We'll see you tomorrow.

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