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CNN Live Today

In Iraq, Apparent Suicide Bombing Kills at Least 22; 'CNN Security Watch'

Aired February 08, 2005 - 10:31   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.


RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: We have a breaking story that we're following for you right now. It's coming from South Florida. It's an area just west of Ft. Lauderdale. There's some tape that came in just a little while ago of a pilot. He realizes that part of his landing gear isn't working properly.
Let's go ahead and pick up the tape from when he makes contact with the tower.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, 258, Julia, Mike, it appears that your right gear is not all the way down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: At that point, the pilot realizes he's going to go ahead and make the landing, despite the fact that it is not going to come down. The problem here is that the plane might buckle, or at least that part of the landing gear might buckle when it lands, although pilots are quite adept at doing this, and they have in the past. Here you see the touchdown, and go, you see the landing gear literally buckles under the wing. Of course the danger at that point is the friction that's being caused by the plane as it's hitting the runway, but the plane slides over to the right.

This is North Perry Airport, interestingly enough, which is in Pembroke (ph) Pines. I say interestingly enough because they had had a history of problems there with planes. It's one of those airports that's built outside the city, but then suddenly the population grows and people build all their homes around the airport, and it's really been a bit of a problem for folks in that area.

The good news is that from all indications. In fact, if we stay with the shot long enough, see that the pilot and the crew actually exit the plane without injury, able to make a safe emergency landing there at North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines, Florida.

BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Here's a look at some of the other news we are following for you today as well. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is calling an agreement with Israel the beginning of a new era. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today agreed to stop all violence between the sides. The Israelis and the Palestinians also agreed to re-establish committees to deal with prisoner releases and other issues. Israel believes the cease-fire agreement is more legitimate than previous ones forged under the late Yasser Arafat.

First lady Laura Bush is speaking this hour about her initiative to help America's youth. Mrs. Bush is appearing at a Baltimore elementary school with Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich. Mrs. Bush's program especially targets boys, hoping to steer them away from sex, drugs and violence.

And the parade for the Super Bowl champion New England patriots kicks off in Boston. In fact, we want to give you a live look at it right now. The team will be carried on vehicles called ducks. Now they're converted World War II amphibious landing crafts. These are not pictures of it. These are pictures of the buses headed to the parade. But those ducks are crafts used during this parade. And the Patriots beat Philadelphia, as you recall Sunday night, to win their third Super Bowl in four years.

Now, this is the parade route. And as you can see, many people have gathered to congratulate those winners.

And the creator of Dolly the Sheep has been given a human cloning license. Creator Ian Wilmut wants to use the license for medical research in Britain. The therapeutic cloning does not result in a baby, but abortion foes still oppose it. That is because researchers must destroy human embryos to harvest those cells.

SANCHEZ: And there is more news out of Iraq on this morning. In fact, we're following a developing story now coming out of Baghdad. It is where once again an apparent suicide bombing has killed at least 22 people.

CNN senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is in the Iraqi capital. He's following this story for us.

Nic, over to you.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTL. CORRESPONDENT: Well, Rick, it appears it's another attack similar to the attack on Monday, targeting young police recruits in Iraq at a military base not far from here, at about 10:30 in the morning. A suicide bomber apparently entered a crowd of would-be police recruits waiting to get inside the base to sign up for the police. As the suicide bomber got right in amongst the crowd, he detonated his explosives.

The ministry of information inside Iraq has said that at least 22 people have been killed. They call it a crime. Politicians here have spoken out against it, saying that these are young Iraqi patriots signing up to do their national duty, and how could they be attacked. What is happening here is that politicians are really trying to isolate the insurgents, trying to point out to people that they're attacking the Iraqi people, that they're not necessarily just attacking U.S. troops here, and trying to drive a wedge between many of the Iraqis who perhaps have been sympathetic to the insurgents, now trying to point out to them that the insurgents are really all about killing Iraqis as well.

Also today an Iraqi politician narrowly escaped being killed when his convoy came under gunfire attack. His two sons, however, who were traveling with him were killed, along with one of his bodyguards, but a well known politician in Baghdad -- Rick.

SANCHEZ: Nic Robertson following things for us inside of Iraq. We certainly thank you.

Betty, over to you.

NGUYEN: Now to today's CNN Security Watch. One of the most useful weapons for any terrorist is not a bomb or a gun; it is paper, a falsified document that allows them into the country or helps them slip under the radar of law enforcement.

CNN homeland security correspondent Jeanne Meserve takes us to a secret lab that tracks terror's paper trail.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The forensic detectives in this laboratory aren't studying flesh and blood, but papers and inks. They're investigating not murder and mayhem, but forgery and falsification, which terrorists could use to put the nation at risk.

The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Fraudulent Document Lab is one of a kind, and Jim Hesse runs the shots.

JIM HESSE, IMMIGRATIONS AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT FRAUDULENT DOCUMENT LAB: This is our document library.

MESERVE: Passports, visas, birth certificates, licenses, exit and entry stamps from almost every country in the world and some that will never appear in an atlas.

HESSE: This is a totally fantasy passport.

MESERVE (on camera): This country does not exist?

HESSE: Does not exist.

MESERVE (voice-over): In one year the state of Maryland can issue, for instance, 22 different forms of identification. The lab collects variations of all documents to keep in vault-like security.

HESSE: I think the -- it's over 120,000 documents in this room.

MESERVE: Take, for instance, these Greek passports. If you couldn't put them side by side, you might not realize one is authentic and one is not.

HESSE: And that's supposed to be the watermark, OK, so they've simulated the watermark.

MESERVE: When the human eye can't tell the difference, analysts like Jason Lee use a comparison microscope. JASON LEE, ANALYST: The question visa has a broken line pattern, more of a dashed line, whereas the genuine visa has a continuous line pattern.

MESERVE: Another piece of equipment uses ultraviolet light to expose changes to documents, in this case, a visa.

LEE: Those dark characters are what you actually see with the naked eye. What's unseen is that just behind these characters we have what appears to be a BO39.

MESERVE (on camera): Documents underpin security. You need a license or some other form of I.D., for instance, to get on a plane, a passport to get into the country. If documents are fake or have been altered in some way, security is compromised.

(voice-over) Jim Hesse is painfully, personally aware of the link between documents and security.

(on camera) Do you sometimes feel that the safety of your country is on your shoulders?

HESSE: Well, September 11, 2001, I was in the German embassy in New York City, and we were there talking about how to make visas more secure when the planes hit.

My biggest fear was that those people came in with fraudulent documents. But they didn't. And yes, it's -- it's a responsibility.

MESERVE: Why was it such a fear?

HESSE: Well, the buck stops here.

MESERVE (voice-over): During his 14 years as an immigration agent at New York's JFK Airport, Hesse seized fraudulent documents every day. Agents still on the front line can call up the lab's computer database or send images of question documents to Tim Devins (ph) for analysis.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can put the alien number in, and then it will bring up an image, the image that's supposed to be on the card.

MESERVE: In this case the photo on the card is a woman. The photo on file is a man, an obvious falsification.

Though computers can assist investigations, they have also been a boon to counterfeiters.

HESSE: Years ago you had to either have been a printer or a photographer or have skill in both to be a counterfeiter. Today you need a credit card and go to Best Buy or something and buy this equipment right of the shelf.

MESERVE: The resulting flood of fake documents forces the lab to use intelligence to focus its work. ASST. SECRETARY MICHAEL GARCIA, U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS: In terms of an airport or a feeder airport overseas that's causing us particular concern, is there a type of document we're getting some noise about that might be being used?

MESERVE: Almost as soon as new security features are incorporated into documents, counterfeiters find a way to mimic or circumvent them.

HESSE: It has holograms in the laminate, which one would think is a security feature that you would find in a genuine document.

MESERVE: Jim Hesse believes ultimately there is only one solution.

HESSE: But the real answer, honestly, and I know it sounds a little farfetched, would be to collect DNA at birth. They could safely control that.

MESERVE: For now, it is a matter of holograms, watermarks and this small lab doing what it can to keep documents and the country secure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NGUYEN: And you want to stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

SANCHEZ: 21 minutes after the hour right now. Good time to take a look at some of the other stories that are making news from coast to coast.

NGUYEN: Two men with ties to Hollywood are safe after a tense night on California's Mount Baldy. The son of Annie Potts and a screenwriter were hiking in dense fog when they got lost. Searchers looked for them all night. The hikers, though, found a trail in the morning and made it back safely.

SANCHEZ: Defrocked Catholic priest Paul Shanley facing life in prison when he gets sentenced. And that will happen next week, we're told. A suburban Boston jury yesterday convicted Shanley of raping and molesting a boy in the 1980s. The accuser is now 27. He testified that he had repressed memories of all these repeated attacks.

NGUYEN: A 27-year-old Tennessee teacher has been accused of having an ongoing sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy. Prosecutors say some of the sexual encounters took place at school and at the boy's home, where the teacher lived for a short time. Now if convicted on all accounts, the teacher faces a maximum of 100 years in prison.

SANCHEZ: And in New Jersey, rescue workers freed a trapped 90- year-old woman. The woman fell into a cesspool in her backyard when the cover suddenly broke, and was then pinned when the lid fell on top of her. A mailman heard her cries for help. The woman is being treated now at a hospital. She is, we're told, expected to recover.

NGUYEN: Well, are you struggling to pay bills on time? Fighting to overcome debt? You're not alone.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, how some nations are also dealing with debt.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Welcome back. I'm Rick Sanchez along with Betty Nguyen.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

NGUYEN: Well, anyone who's ever struggled to pay bills knows how stifling debt can be for a family, or business, even many countries. Third world nations are smothered under great debt and there's a growing push for that debt to be canceled.

The problem and its potential cost to all of us is spelled out in the book "IOU: The Debt Threat and Why We Must Diffuse It." Author Noreena Hertz is one of the world's leading experts on economic globalization, and she joins us now from New York. Thanks for being with us today.

NOREENA HERTZ, AUTHOR, "THE DEBT THREAT": Thanks, Betty, for having me on.

NGUYEN: Absolutely. Let's talk about the title of your book first off. What is this debt threat? What's the threat there?

HERTZ: Poverty, environmental degradation, despair, anger and even terrorism are all consequences of the world's poorest countries having to prioritize repaying debts to the world's richest over everything else. I mean, just think, Betty, $30 million is being spent every day by Sub-Saharan Africa, a region where 26 million people are HIV/AIDS infected, on repaying debts. Just think how many doctors and nurses and school books and teachers that money could otherwise be used for.

NGUYEN: And what about the connection between debt and terrorism?

HERTZ: It's all too easy to join those dots, because when a country has no money to invest in infrastructure, in schools, in health care, what we're seeing in the developing world are extremist organizations coming in and doing so in their stead, and in the process, getting huge grassroots support.

In Afghanistan, we see terrorist training camps run by extremist organizations but they're also drilling wells, setting up bakeries. In Pakistan, we see 6,000 extremist religious schools because parents don't have other schools to send their kids to because the state is repaying its debt.

NGUYEN: The numbers are just astonishing there. I think -- especially here in the U.S., a lot of Americans are thinking about their own debt, the U.S. debt. And the U.S. carries an enormous amount of debt. How does that trickle down? How does that affect the rest of the world?

HERTZ: Well, in the U.S., even though you are carrying huge amounts of debt and may face a future debt crisis of your own, at the moment there is stuff to show for it. People have got VCRs, they've got houses, they've got cars, they've got DVD players, they've got new sneakers. In the world's poorest countries, the people have nothing to show for this debt, because the monies were lent to the most corrupt and tyrannical regimes we've ever thought of -- Saddam Hussein, Mobutu of Zaire, Abachra (ph) from Nigeria, Marcus of the Philippines.

NGUYEN: OK, but if that money was meant to corrupt regimes why should that debt be canceled?

HERTZ: Because the people living in the countries today, they never signed up to those regimes. They didn't want some tyrannical dictator ruling over them, and they never saw the benefits. Is it just that those people have to carry the loans lent to these terrible regimes? of course not. These countries need money in order to provide health care, education and shelter to their people, and they don't need to have to repay debts racked up by illegitimate regimes long since dawn.

NGUYEN: All right, Noreena Hertz, author of "The Debt Threat," we appreciate your insight today. Thank you.

HERTZ: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, we're going to be taking you to a -- well, it's a sleepy town, according to many. It is in Madisonville, Louisiana. It's where we're being told on this day that folks are wide awake. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Lights, cameras, costumes. Today in New Orleans, men and women costumed in next to nothing or elaborate garb will bare their body parts. I'm sorry, I didn't want to say this in front of you, Betty, for beats and baubles.

NGUYEN: Well Mardi Gras is also called Fat Tuesday. It is one of the city's biggest tourist attractions for many reasons, including those beads and what they had to do to get them. Eleven parades will roll through New Orleans from sun up to -- or at least after sun down. The carnival season ends at midnight.

SANCHEZ: So you know about that.

NGUYEN: Been there, done that, don't ever want to go again, Jacqui.

SANCHEZ: That's some admission. By the way, Jacqui, before we go over to you, we should let our viewers know, just on a programming note that we might be getting into two stories that are developing as we speak. Condoleezza Rice is over in Europe. She's going to be talking in Paris. And also we might be dipping into the first lady as well. So with that said...

(WEATHER REPORT)

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Aired February 8, 2005 - 10:31   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: We have a breaking story that we're following for you right now. It's coming from South Florida. It's an area just west of Ft. Lauderdale. There's some tape that came in just a little while ago of a pilot. He realizes that part of his landing gear isn't working properly.
Let's go ahead and pick up the tape from when he makes contact with the tower.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, 258, Julia, Mike, it appears that your right gear is not all the way down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: At that point, the pilot realizes he's going to go ahead and make the landing, despite the fact that it is not going to come down. The problem here is that the plane might buckle, or at least that part of the landing gear might buckle when it lands, although pilots are quite adept at doing this, and they have in the past. Here you see the touchdown, and go, you see the landing gear literally buckles under the wing. Of course the danger at that point is the friction that's being caused by the plane as it's hitting the runway, but the plane slides over to the right.

This is North Perry Airport, interestingly enough, which is in Pembroke (ph) Pines. I say interestingly enough because they had had a history of problems there with planes. It's one of those airports that's built outside the city, but then suddenly the population grows and people build all their homes around the airport, and it's really been a bit of a problem for folks in that area.

The good news is that from all indications. In fact, if we stay with the shot long enough, see that the pilot and the crew actually exit the plane without injury, able to make a safe emergency landing there at North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines, Florida.

BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Here's a look at some of the other news we are following for you today as well. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is calling an agreement with Israel the beginning of a new era. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today agreed to stop all violence between the sides. The Israelis and the Palestinians also agreed to re-establish committees to deal with prisoner releases and other issues. Israel believes the cease-fire agreement is more legitimate than previous ones forged under the late Yasser Arafat.

First lady Laura Bush is speaking this hour about her initiative to help America's youth. Mrs. Bush is appearing at a Baltimore elementary school with Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich. Mrs. Bush's program especially targets boys, hoping to steer them away from sex, drugs and violence.

And the parade for the Super Bowl champion New England patriots kicks off in Boston. In fact, we want to give you a live look at it right now. The team will be carried on vehicles called ducks. Now they're converted World War II amphibious landing crafts. These are not pictures of it. These are pictures of the buses headed to the parade. But those ducks are crafts used during this parade. And the Patriots beat Philadelphia, as you recall Sunday night, to win their third Super Bowl in four years.

Now, this is the parade route. And as you can see, many people have gathered to congratulate those winners.

And the creator of Dolly the Sheep has been given a human cloning license. Creator Ian Wilmut wants to use the license for medical research in Britain. The therapeutic cloning does not result in a baby, but abortion foes still oppose it. That is because researchers must destroy human embryos to harvest those cells.

SANCHEZ: And there is more news out of Iraq on this morning. In fact, we're following a developing story now coming out of Baghdad. It is where once again an apparent suicide bombing has killed at least 22 people.

CNN senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is in the Iraqi capital. He's following this story for us.

Nic, over to you.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTL. CORRESPONDENT: Well, Rick, it appears it's another attack similar to the attack on Monday, targeting young police recruits in Iraq at a military base not far from here, at about 10:30 in the morning. A suicide bomber apparently entered a crowd of would-be police recruits waiting to get inside the base to sign up for the police. As the suicide bomber got right in amongst the crowd, he detonated his explosives.

The ministry of information inside Iraq has said that at least 22 people have been killed. They call it a crime. Politicians here have spoken out against it, saying that these are young Iraqi patriots signing up to do their national duty, and how could they be attacked. What is happening here is that politicians are really trying to isolate the insurgents, trying to point out to people that they're attacking the Iraqi people, that they're not necessarily just attacking U.S. troops here, and trying to drive a wedge between many of the Iraqis who perhaps have been sympathetic to the insurgents, now trying to point out to them that the insurgents are really all about killing Iraqis as well.

Also today an Iraqi politician narrowly escaped being killed when his convoy came under gunfire attack. His two sons, however, who were traveling with him were killed, along with one of his bodyguards, but a well known politician in Baghdad -- Rick.

SANCHEZ: Nic Robertson following things for us inside of Iraq. We certainly thank you.

Betty, over to you.

NGUYEN: Now to today's CNN Security Watch. One of the most useful weapons for any terrorist is not a bomb or a gun; it is paper, a falsified document that allows them into the country or helps them slip under the radar of law enforcement.

CNN homeland security correspondent Jeanne Meserve takes us to a secret lab that tracks terror's paper trail.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The forensic detectives in this laboratory aren't studying flesh and blood, but papers and inks. They're investigating not murder and mayhem, but forgery and falsification, which terrorists could use to put the nation at risk.

The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Fraudulent Document Lab is one of a kind, and Jim Hesse runs the shots.

JIM HESSE, IMMIGRATIONS AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT FRAUDULENT DOCUMENT LAB: This is our document library.

MESERVE: Passports, visas, birth certificates, licenses, exit and entry stamps from almost every country in the world and some that will never appear in an atlas.

HESSE: This is a totally fantasy passport.

MESERVE (on camera): This country does not exist?

HESSE: Does not exist.

MESERVE (voice-over): In one year the state of Maryland can issue, for instance, 22 different forms of identification. The lab collects variations of all documents to keep in vault-like security.

HESSE: I think the -- it's over 120,000 documents in this room.

MESERVE: Take, for instance, these Greek passports. If you couldn't put them side by side, you might not realize one is authentic and one is not.

HESSE: And that's supposed to be the watermark, OK, so they've simulated the watermark.

MESERVE: When the human eye can't tell the difference, analysts like Jason Lee use a comparison microscope. JASON LEE, ANALYST: The question visa has a broken line pattern, more of a dashed line, whereas the genuine visa has a continuous line pattern.

MESERVE: Another piece of equipment uses ultraviolet light to expose changes to documents, in this case, a visa.

LEE: Those dark characters are what you actually see with the naked eye. What's unseen is that just behind these characters we have what appears to be a BO39.

MESERVE (on camera): Documents underpin security. You need a license or some other form of I.D., for instance, to get on a plane, a passport to get into the country. If documents are fake or have been altered in some way, security is compromised.

(voice-over) Jim Hesse is painfully, personally aware of the link between documents and security.

(on camera) Do you sometimes feel that the safety of your country is on your shoulders?

HESSE: Well, September 11, 2001, I was in the German embassy in New York City, and we were there talking about how to make visas more secure when the planes hit.

My biggest fear was that those people came in with fraudulent documents. But they didn't. And yes, it's -- it's a responsibility.

MESERVE: Why was it such a fear?

HESSE: Well, the buck stops here.

MESERVE (voice-over): During his 14 years as an immigration agent at New York's JFK Airport, Hesse seized fraudulent documents every day. Agents still on the front line can call up the lab's computer database or send images of question documents to Tim Devins (ph) for analysis.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can put the alien number in, and then it will bring up an image, the image that's supposed to be on the card.

MESERVE: In this case the photo on the card is a woman. The photo on file is a man, an obvious falsification.

Though computers can assist investigations, they have also been a boon to counterfeiters.

HESSE: Years ago you had to either have been a printer or a photographer or have skill in both to be a counterfeiter. Today you need a credit card and go to Best Buy or something and buy this equipment right of the shelf.

MESERVE: The resulting flood of fake documents forces the lab to use intelligence to focus its work. ASST. SECRETARY MICHAEL GARCIA, U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS: In terms of an airport or a feeder airport overseas that's causing us particular concern, is there a type of document we're getting some noise about that might be being used?

MESERVE: Almost as soon as new security features are incorporated into documents, counterfeiters find a way to mimic or circumvent them.

HESSE: It has holograms in the laminate, which one would think is a security feature that you would find in a genuine document.

MESERVE: Jim Hesse believes ultimately there is only one solution.

HESSE: But the real answer, honestly, and I know it sounds a little farfetched, would be to collect DNA at birth. They could safely control that.

MESERVE: For now, it is a matter of holograms, watermarks and this small lab doing what it can to keep documents and the country secure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NGUYEN: And you want to stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

SANCHEZ: 21 minutes after the hour right now. Good time to take a look at some of the other stories that are making news from coast to coast.

NGUYEN: Two men with ties to Hollywood are safe after a tense night on California's Mount Baldy. The son of Annie Potts and a screenwriter were hiking in dense fog when they got lost. Searchers looked for them all night. The hikers, though, found a trail in the morning and made it back safely.

SANCHEZ: Defrocked Catholic priest Paul Shanley facing life in prison when he gets sentenced. And that will happen next week, we're told. A suburban Boston jury yesterday convicted Shanley of raping and molesting a boy in the 1980s. The accuser is now 27. He testified that he had repressed memories of all these repeated attacks.

NGUYEN: A 27-year-old Tennessee teacher has been accused of having an ongoing sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy. Prosecutors say some of the sexual encounters took place at school and at the boy's home, where the teacher lived for a short time. Now if convicted on all accounts, the teacher faces a maximum of 100 years in prison.

SANCHEZ: And in New Jersey, rescue workers freed a trapped 90- year-old woman. The woman fell into a cesspool in her backyard when the cover suddenly broke, and was then pinned when the lid fell on top of her. A mailman heard her cries for help. The woman is being treated now at a hospital. She is, we're told, expected to recover.

NGUYEN: Well, are you struggling to pay bills on time? Fighting to overcome debt? You're not alone.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, how some nations are also dealing with debt.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Welcome back. I'm Rick Sanchez along with Betty Nguyen.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

NGUYEN: Well, anyone who's ever struggled to pay bills knows how stifling debt can be for a family, or business, even many countries. Third world nations are smothered under great debt and there's a growing push for that debt to be canceled.

The problem and its potential cost to all of us is spelled out in the book "IOU: The Debt Threat and Why We Must Diffuse It." Author Noreena Hertz is one of the world's leading experts on economic globalization, and she joins us now from New York. Thanks for being with us today.

NOREENA HERTZ, AUTHOR, "THE DEBT THREAT": Thanks, Betty, for having me on.

NGUYEN: Absolutely. Let's talk about the title of your book first off. What is this debt threat? What's the threat there?

HERTZ: Poverty, environmental degradation, despair, anger and even terrorism are all consequences of the world's poorest countries having to prioritize repaying debts to the world's richest over everything else. I mean, just think, Betty, $30 million is being spent every day by Sub-Saharan Africa, a region where 26 million people are HIV/AIDS infected, on repaying debts. Just think how many doctors and nurses and school books and teachers that money could otherwise be used for.

NGUYEN: And what about the connection between debt and terrorism?

HERTZ: It's all too easy to join those dots, because when a country has no money to invest in infrastructure, in schools, in health care, what we're seeing in the developing world are extremist organizations coming in and doing so in their stead, and in the process, getting huge grassroots support.

In Afghanistan, we see terrorist training camps run by extremist organizations but they're also drilling wells, setting up bakeries. In Pakistan, we see 6,000 extremist religious schools because parents don't have other schools to send their kids to because the state is repaying its debt.

NGUYEN: The numbers are just astonishing there. I think -- especially here in the U.S., a lot of Americans are thinking about their own debt, the U.S. debt. And the U.S. carries an enormous amount of debt. How does that trickle down? How does that affect the rest of the world?

HERTZ: Well, in the U.S., even though you are carrying huge amounts of debt and may face a future debt crisis of your own, at the moment there is stuff to show for it. People have got VCRs, they've got houses, they've got cars, they've got DVD players, they've got new sneakers. In the world's poorest countries, the people have nothing to show for this debt, because the monies were lent to the most corrupt and tyrannical regimes we've ever thought of -- Saddam Hussein, Mobutu of Zaire, Abachra (ph) from Nigeria, Marcus of the Philippines.

NGUYEN: OK, but if that money was meant to corrupt regimes why should that debt be canceled?

HERTZ: Because the people living in the countries today, they never signed up to those regimes. They didn't want some tyrannical dictator ruling over them, and they never saw the benefits. Is it just that those people have to carry the loans lent to these terrible regimes? of course not. These countries need money in order to provide health care, education and shelter to their people, and they don't need to have to repay debts racked up by illegitimate regimes long since dawn.

NGUYEN: All right, Noreena Hertz, author of "The Debt Threat," we appreciate your insight today. Thank you.

HERTZ: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, we're going to be taking you to a -- well, it's a sleepy town, according to many. It is in Madisonville, Louisiana. It's where we're being told on this day that folks are wide awake. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Lights, cameras, costumes. Today in New Orleans, men and women costumed in next to nothing or elaborate garb will bare their body parts. I'm sorry, I didn't want to say this in front of you, Betty, for beats and baubles.

NGUYEN: Well Mardi Gras is also called Fat Tuesday. It is one of the city's biggest tourist attractions for many reasons, including those beads and what they had to do to get them. Eleven parades will roll through New Orleans from sun up to -- or at least after sun down. The carnival season ends at midnight.

SANCHEZ: So you know about that.

NGUYEN: Been there, done that, don't ever want to go again, Jacqui.

SANCHEZ: That's some admission. By the way, Jacqui, before we go over to you, we should let our viewers know, just on a programming note that we might be getting into two stories that are developing as we speak. Condoleezza Rice is over in Europe. She's going to be talking in Paris. And also we might be dipping into the first lady as well. So with that said...

(WEATHER REPORT)

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