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American Morning

Deadly Derailment in Japan; Last Syrian Troops Withdraw From Lebanon

Aired April 25, 2005 - 09:30   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.


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Study being released this morning shows Americans 50 years old or older are relying more and more on Social Security to make ends meet. According to the AARP, the survey shows the need to strengthen the benefits for the aging, not risk them in private investment accounts. We know where that's coming from.
And former president Bill Clinton is at the United Nations this hour. He's set to keynote a roundtable, as the U.N. begins to work on how to respond more effectively to global disasters and emergencies of the future. Clinton had been named U.N. special envoy for tsunami recovery.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: So if this John Bolton deal doesn't work out, you slide Bill Clinton in there?

COSTELLO: Interesting.

HEMMER: Yes, look at you.

COSTELLO: I like juicy political stories, and that would be one.

HEMMER: Tempting. Thank you, Carol.

HEMMER: Let's go to Japan right now, where rescue workers there working well into the night, trying to free passengers still trapped after that deadly train derailment earlier today. The accident happened near Amagasaki. That's outside Osaka, about 250 miles from Tokyo. The train jumped the tracks, slammed into an apartment building. At least 50 are dead and that number is expected to go higher. More than 300 others are injured.

Atika Shubert is live from Tokyo there. What's the latest, Atika, this hour?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bill, we've actually just heard from firefighters on the scene that that death toll has risen slightly. Now 52 people have been killed, and again, that number could still rise, because, as you know, there are still passengers trapped inside. All in all, those numbers, unfortunately, make this Japan's worst train accident in more than 40 years.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHUBERT (voice-over): It happened at 9:20 a.m. Osaka time, just after the morning rush hour. The commuter train jumped the tracks and plowed into a nearby apartment building. Survivors scrambled to get out of the wreckage.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They slam on brakes. There was a cloud of dust, and then two crash sounds.

SHUBERT: The first car of the train slid into a parking area. The second car was jerked sideways and rammed against the building, wrapping the car around its corner. Rescue workers had to cut away portions of the train to free passengers.

Investigators are looking for the cause. One possibility, excessive speed. Railway officials say the train would have had to be moving at more than 133 kilometers per hour to derail. The train's exact speed is not known, but survivors say the train was traveling too fast.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The train was late, and I thought it was going faster than usual, and I was a bit worried, because the train had overrun the station. Then there was a big crashing sound.

SHUBERT: Investigators are also scrutinizing the automatic braking system, one of the oldest in Japan. Another possibility, officials say, is that something was on the tracks, obstructing the train's path and causing it to jump the tracks. There are no answers yet.

Bowing in deep apology, West Japan Rail, the company running the train, held several news conferences, expressing their condolences and promising to find out what happened.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SHUBERT: Now, rescue workers have set up flood lights to work well into the night. Earlier they had said that they had confirmed at least four people were still alive inside the wreckage. Now, however, we've just heard that only three can be confirmed to be alive and conscious. So as you can see, rescue workers are working against the clock to try and extract those survivors from the wreckage -- Bill?

HEMMER: Is there any question that they can reach them in time, Atika?

SHUBERT: They're certainly trying. They don't know the exact condition of some of those passengers, so it really depends on how badly they are injured. That's what they're really working against.

HEMMER: All right, Atika Shubert, reporting in Tokyo. 52 the number of dead now as a result of that train collision -- Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: In Lebanon, the last of some 14,000 Syrian troops are packing up and leaving the country. With the bulk of the army already across the border, a small number of troops remain in Lebanon. They're going to take part in a ceremony tomorrow, marking the end of a 29-year occupation. CNN's Brent Sadler has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Syrian forces withdraw from Lebanon, uprooted after three decades of a government- backed presence, officially to help secure stability, but their departure is ending what many Lebanese claim was a ruthless occupation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One day the Syrians will leave Lebanon.

SADLER: Journalist and newspaper publisher Gebran Tueni, says it was managed by Syrian intelligence agents, powerful overlords who recently evacuated their notorious Beirut headquarters in an abandoned hotel, widely known, explains Tueni, as the Beau Rivage (ph), with an underground prison.

GEBRAN TUENI, PUBLSHER, AN-NAHAR: When you used to mention the name Beau Rivage (ph) to somebody in Lebanon, it was terror, it was fear. The Syrians used from here to run Lebanon, to impose the reign of terror on Lebanese. It was a puzzle for to you come through this road. The prison is in this building exactly.

And having the cells...

SADLER: It was basement level. Iron gates with bars were ripped out, he says, when the Syrians left.

TUENI: We know that the Syrians would exert pressure on people and I'm sure these (INAUDIBLE) have witnessed a lot of Lebanese, different Lebanese, different kinds of persons, people shouting, people screaming, people trying to dream their way out.

SADLER: Claims supported by Hussein Badran and his wife, Rayya. Incredibly, they lived eight floors above the cellblock and during a nerve-wracking life, they say, unwilling to abandon their home. Silent witnesses, until now.

HUSSEIN BADRAN, LIVED ABOVE PRISON: It was hard. In one word, it was horror.

RAYYA BADRAN, LIVED ABOVE PRISON: I used to see the people they brought, you know, blindfold.

SADLER (on camera): But you couldn't do anything about it.

H. BADRAN: Absolutely. What can we do? The whole country cannot do anything about it.

SADLER (voice-over): Across the street, Insaf (ph) and Ishmael Sayad (ph) are thrilled at the first sight of their building, taken over by the Syrians long ago. Insaf (ph) falls to the ground in prayer, thankful to be back; his wife, overjoyed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Home here.

SADLER: Syria's opponents are many here. So, too, are its influential allies. But the opposition, gearing up for elections expected soon, is ready, says this commentator, to turn a decisive page in history.

TUENI: We should now dream about the new Lebanon. We should now have a vision about the new Lebanon. Christians and Muslims were here on the 14th of March, more than one million, first time the history of Lebanon, coming out to say very loudly, enough is enough.

SADLER: And that time seems to be now.

Brent Sadler, CNN, Beirut.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: It's a remarkable story.

Well, today, Pope Benedict XVI makes his first visit outside the Vatican as pontiff, to pray at the tomb of St. Paul. The pope was inaugurated on Sunday during a solemn outdoor mass. Standing atop the steps to St. Peter's, he donned the mantle, symbolizing the pontiff's role as shepherd of the Catholic Church. And then afterward, a tour in the pope-mobile. As many as 40,000 people packed St. Peter's Square for the ceremony, many of them from the pope's native Germany.

HEMMER: Back in this country now. Spring disappeared for people in at least seven states over the weekend. A rare spring snowstorm barreled through Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, covering everything in white there. As much as a foot of snow fell in southeastern Michigan. More than that in Detroit's northern suburbs. The Cleveland area got about 14 inches and all the way down around the North Carolina border with Tennessee, about six inches of snow fell there. Also along with that storm, heavy winds and temperatures, some 25 degrees below normal. Thousands left without power, too. Late in the season like that.

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, years after one of the most notorious crimes in New York, one young man fights to save his reputation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even though I was exonerated, there's still a lot of folks that believe that I was guilty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Wrongly convicted of raping a Central Park jogger in 1989, Yousef Saolaam battles to clear his name. His story's up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Wrongly convicted of raping a Central Park jogger in 1989, Yousef Saolaam battles to clear his name. His story is up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) O'BRIEN: He was convicted of one of America's most awful crimes, the rape of a jogger in Central Park. But then new evidence set Yousef Saolaam free.

Maria Hinojosa takes a look at a man's fight to try to regain a reputation lost.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Yousef Saolaam has a radiant smile. 31-years old with three small children, these days Central Park is just a place to take his kids.

YOUSEF SAOLAAM, SUING FOR DAMAGES: That's about all you can go.

HINOJOSA: A gentle man, Yousef speaks in a soft voice, counseling college students on what justice means to young black men.

SAOLAAM: What kept me was continuously just believing that one day I'm going to be free from this.

HINOJOSA: He lectures state legislators about the high cost of mistakes made by the legal system.

SAOLAAM: I was 15 years old, just a boy when these events changed my life forever. Because I was the tallest and presumably the darkest skin of my co-defendants, people pointed at me and said things like, what we need to do is hang him.

HINOJOSA: And he runs an organization he co-founded called People United for Children, helping teens navigate the same criminal justice system he faced at 15.

SAOLAAM: Whether a person is innocent or guilty, there are things that they can do.

HINOJOSA: Yousef knows firsthand the frenzy of what a teen goes through in the criminal justice system. It was 1989 and New York was a city besieged by crime and divided by race. It was no surprise when the media seized on a story known as the attack on the Central Park jogger.

SAOLAAM: The trial hadn't even started and we were being judged, tried and convicted in the media.

HINOJOSA: A group of black teens had allegedly raped and beaten white jogger Trisha Miley (ph) in a rampage. The press called it wilding as in a popular rap song "Wild Things." Police arrested Yousef and four other young men who were quickly branded as animals, the Central Park five, the face of the urban crime nightmare. All the boys except Yousef made detailed videotaped confessions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is my first rape. I never did this before. This going to be my last time doing it. This is my first experience.

HINOJOSA: They were all convicted and sent to prison. Yousef was sentenced to five to 10 years.

SAOLAAM: Once you pay that first guilty, it's just like echoing guilty, guilty, guilty.

HINOJOSA: Then, 13 years later, another man confessed to being the real rapist of the central park jogger. Matias Reyes (ph), who was serving a life sentence for another rape and murder, said he had acted alone.

SAOLAAM: All we were saying was look, you have the wrong people. You really need to go back out there and continue to search, continued to look for the real perpetrator of the crime. The other women that he raped after the Central Park jogger would not have been raped had they been on their job.

HINOJOSA: Despite discrepancies in the videotaped confessions, no other suspect was ever pursued.

(on camera): Do you wish that that night you hadn't gone to the park?

SAOLAAM: In many ways, yes. They always say hindsight in 20/20, so had I been able to avoid the experiences of being put into prison, the experiences of seeing just madness, definitely I would have tried to avoid that at all costs.

For 13 years, my mom wore this shirt. For 13 years, the families struggled.

HINOJOSA (voice-over): Yousef went to jail a child and came out a man, his record erased, his name taken off the state sexual predator's list, but the scars remain.

SAOLAAM: No one has come forth and said, I'm sorry, oh, listen, we apologize for putting you through probably the worst time of your life. Even though I was exonerated, there's still a lot of folks that believe that I was guilty.

HINOJOSA: These days, Yousef is learning to use the media to his own benefit. He wants to create a TV show for urban teens. He prays for those kids as he once prayed for his own future and for the victim whose pain he recognizes.

SAOLAAM: My heart definitely goes out to her. We were victimized in this situation just like she was a victim in this situation. We did someone else's time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Yousef Saolaam is now suing the city and the district attorney for damages. There are some people in the police department who still maintain that he might be guilty. And that was Maria Hinojosa reporting.

Well, you may notice the different gas price this morning. Is it a sign of things to come? Andy is "Minding Your Business." That's up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: Welcome back, everyone.

Some relief for drivers heading into the summer. And is office e-mail worse than pot? Andy explains this.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: I've been researching this very carefully for years.

HEMMER: Did you write that?

SERWER: What?

HEMMER: Did you write that?

SERWER: No, I didn't write that. I don't write those things. But it was well written.

HEMMER: You're going to explain?

SERWER: Yes, I am going to explain. We've got a lot of stuff to explain this morning. Let's talk about stocks. First of all, market trading up this morning. You can see here Dow industrials up about 35 points. A lot of stuff going on. Gas prices falling. That is probably helping the mood on Wall Street this morning. The price of gas falling 4.5 cents to the $2.30 range over the past two weeks.

A big merger in the works in the oil patch. Valero buying Premcor to form the largest refinery in North America. Both of those stocks are moving.

Now bad news, though, crossing the tape just minutes ago. General Motors is recalling two-million vehicles, more bad news for the nation's largest automaker. We're just getting this in. One-and- a-half million pickup trucks and SUVs I think it has to do here with seatbelts in the passenger row, the second-row seats. More details on that probably throughout the day.

And then let's get to this multitasking and marijuana situation here. Maladies of the modern age. A study out of the University of London saying that multitasking, doing e-mail and talking on the phone at the same time, causes I.Q. loss higher -- worse than smoking marijuana. If you multitask at work all day long, your I.Q. drops by 10 points. Smoking marijuana makes your I.Q. drop by four points. So says the University of London. I'm not sure how they figured that out.

And finally, an increasing number of Americans, 2.5 million Americans, have blackberries, including some people on the couch here, I believe. And Doctors are saying they're seeing something called blackberry thumb.

HEMMER: Yes.

SERWER: Thumb injuries, thumb problems.

HEMMER: Had that for awhile.

SERWER: And the American Society of Hand Therapist reporting these problems.

HEMMER: That looks like a callous.

O'BRIEN; No, that's a burn actually.

SERWER: That's called blackberry thumb.

HEMMER: If you multitask, you'd think you're keeping your brain smarter, right?

O'BRIEN: No.

HEMMER: Why not?

SERWER: It's worse than smoking marijuana.

O'BRIEN: Because it's, like...

SERWER: How did they come up with this?

O'BRIEN: You can't keep it all in your head. My short-term memory is just shot. I can't remember anything.

SERWER: No, maybe if you got stoned and -- never mind. It's an idea.

O'BRIEN: Jack?

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: What happened to your thumb?

O'BRIEN: I know. I was being dramatic. Actually I just burned it on the coffee maker.

CAFFERTY: So it's not a blackberry...

O'BRIEN: No, it's not a blackberry, but it's a big old burn, huh?

CAFFERTY: Well, no, it's not a big, old burn. Suck it up.

SERWER: It's a little burn.

O'BRIEN: It's a little burn.

O'BRIEN: Thanks for your compassion. I appreciate it.

What's the Question of the Day?

CAFFERTY: The question -- that's my middle name, compassion. The question is this, what should be done with North Korea and Iran's nuclear weapons programs? Nothing is working with these two countries. They're just going right along and making their bombs and giggling.

Lois in Ohio writes, "How do we decide who can and can't have nuclear capability? The U.S., Russia, China, UK, Pakistan, India, France and Israel; 44 countries worldwide have reactors. How about everybody give them up?"

Gary in Tennessee writes, "The axis of this problem is on the desk of George Bush. His rhetoric, lack of diplomacy and gunslinger mentality have ensured countries on his hit list will continue to strengthen their defenses."

And Loran in Lubbock, Texas, "The U.N. Security Council should give both Iran and North Korea 72 hours to decide to give up nuclear weapon's development. If they don't accept, put up air, land and Naval blockades shutting down all trade and travel with both countries until they have their attitudes fully adjusted."

HEMMER: You can't travel in and out of North Korea right now.

SERWER: Well, sounds like General Curtis...

CAFFERTY: Means they're part way there, doesn't it?

O'BRIEN: The North Koreans are already starving, I mean, the people.

SERWER: Bomb them back to the stone age, or something like that.

O'BRIEN: The problem with a lot of the solutions...

CAFFERTY: North Korea is the stone age. I mean, they couldn't make a peanut butter sandwich if they got the whole population of the country together over there.

The real sad thing is the governments of these countries, you know, the populations are taught to believe this is how the world lives. People in North Korea think everybody is hungry and dirt poor, and you know, it's just obscene what these little tyrants gate way with.

HEMMER: What did we say at 7:25, we're going to solve this issue, right?

O'BRIEN: And we haven't quite.

SERWER: We've got a Naval blockade at 9:55. Well, we tried.

HEMMER: Coming up next hour on CNN, the latest for the search for those two toddlers in Georgia. The brother and sister have been missing since Saturday. Daryn has the latest on that search on "LIVE TODAY."

We're back in a moment here, on AMERICAN MORNING, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired April 25, 2005 - 09:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Study being released this morning shows Americans 50 years old or older are relying more and more on Social Security to make ends meet. According to the AARP, the survey shows the need to strengthen the benefits for the aging, not risk them in private investment accounts. We know where that's coming from.
And former president Bill Clinton is at the United Nations this hour. He's set to keynote a roundtable, as the U.N. begins to work on how to respond more effectively to global disasters and emergencies of the future. Clinton had been named U.N. special envoy for tsunami recovery.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: So if this John Bolton deal doesn't work out, you slide Bill Clinton in there?

COSTELLO: Interesting.

HEMMER: Yes, look at you.

COSTELLO: I like juicy political stories, and that would be one.

HEMMER: Tempting. Thank you, Carol.

HEMMER: Let's go to Japan right now, where rescue workers there working well into the night, trying to free passengers still trapped after that deadly train derailment earlier today. The accident happened near Amagasaki. That's outside Osaka, about 250 miles from Tokyo. The train jumped the tracks, slammed into an apartment building. At least 50 are dead and that number is expected to go higher. More than 300 others are injured.

Atika Shubert is live from Tokyo there. What's the latest, Atika, this hour?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bill, we've actually just heard from firefighters on the scene that that death toll has risen slightly. Now 52 people have been killed, and again, that number could still rise, because, as you know, there are still passengers trapped inside. All in all, those numbers, unfortunately, make this Japan's worst train accident in more than 40 years.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHUBERT (voice-over): It happened at 9:20 a.m. Osaka time, just after the morning rush hour. The commuter train jumped the tracks and plowed into a nearby apartment building. Survivors scrambled to get out of the wreckage.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They slam on brakes. There was a cloud of dust, and then two crash sounds.

SHUBERT: The first car of the train slid into a parking area. The second car was jerked sideways and rammed against the building, wrapping the car around its corner. Rescue workers had to cut away portions of the train to free passengers.

Investigators are looking for the cause. One possibility, excessive speed. Railway officials say the train would have had to be moving at more than 133 kilometers per hour to derail. The train's exact speed is not known, but survivors say the train was traveling too fast.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The train was late, and I thought it was going faster than usual, and I was a bit worried, because the train had overrun the station. Then there was a big crashing sound.

SHUBERT: Investigators are also scrutinizing the automatic braking system, one of the oldest in Japan. Another possibility, officials say, is that something was on the tracks, obstructing the train's path and causing it to jump the tracks. There are no answers yet.

Bowing in deep apology, West Japan Rail, the company running the train, held several news conferences, expressing their condolences and promising to find out what happened.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SHUBERT: Now, rescue workers have set up flood lights to work well into the night. Earlier they had said that they had confirmed at least four people were still alive inside the wreckage. Now, however, we've just heard that only three can be confirmed to be alive and conscious. So as you can see, rescue workers are working against the clock to try and extract those survivors from the wreckage -- Bill?

HEMMER: Is there any question that they can reach them in time, Atika?

SHUBERT: They're certainly trying. They don't know the exact condition of some of those passengers, so it really depends on how badly they are injured. That's what they're really working against.

HEMMER: All right, Atika Shubert, reporting in Tokyo. 52 the number of dead now as a result of that train collision -- Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: In Lebanon, the last of some 14,000 Syrian troops are packing up and leaving the country. With the bulk of the army already across the border, a small number of troops remain in Lebanon. They're going to take part in a ceremony tomorrow, marking the end of a 29-year occupation. CNN's Brent Sadler has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Syrian forces withdraw from Lebanon, uprooted after three decades of a government- backed presence, officially to help secure stability, but their departure is ending what many Lebanese claim was a ruthless occupation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One day the Syrians will leave Lebanon.

SADLER: Journalist and newspaper publisher Gebran Tueni, says it was managed by Syrian intelligence agents, powerful overlords who recently evacuated their notorious Beirut headquarters in an abandoned hotel, widely known, explains Tueni, as the Beau Rivage (ph), with an underground prison.

GEBRAN TUENI, PUBLSHER, AN-NAHAR: When you used to mention the name Beau Rivage (ph) to somebody in Lebanon, it was terror, it was fear. The Syrians used from here to run Lebanon, to impose the reign of terror on Lebanese. It was a puzzle for to you come through this road. The prison is in this building exactly.

And having the cells...

SADLER: It was basement level. Iron gates with bars were ripped out, he says, when the Syrians left.

TUENI: We know that the Syrians would exert pressure on people and I'm sure these (INAUDIBLE) have witnessed a lot of Lebanese, different Lebanese, different kinds of persons, people shouting, people screaming, people trying to dream their way out.

SADLER: Claims supported by Hussein Badran and his wife, Rayya. Incredibly, they lived eight floors above the cellblock and during a nerve-wracking life, they say, unwilling to abandon their home. Silent witnesses, until now.

HUSSEIN BADRAN, LIVED ABOVE PRISON: It was hard. In one word, it was horror.

RAYYA BADRAN, LIVED ABOVE PRISON: I used to see the people they brought, you know, blindfold.

SADLER (on camera): But you couldn't do anything about it.

H. BADRAN: Absolutely. What can we do? The whole country cannot do anything about it.

SADLER (voice-over): Across the street, Insaf (ph) and Ishmael Sayad (ph) are thrilled at the first sight of their building, taken over by the Syrians long ago. Insaf (ph) falls to the ground in prayer, thankful to be back; his wife, overjoyed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Home here.

SADLER: Syria's opponents are many here. So, too, are its influential allies. But the opposition, gearing up for elections expected soon, is ready, says this commentator, to turn a decisive page in history.

TUENI: We should now dream about the new Lebanon. We should now have a vision about the new Lebanon. Christians and Muslims were here on the 14th of March, more than one million, first time the history of Lebanon, coming out to say very loudly, enough is enough.

SADLER: And that time seems to be now.

Brent Sadler, CNN, Beirut.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: It's a remarkable story.

Well, today, Pope Benedict XVI makes his first visit outside the Vatican as pontiff, to pray at the tomb of St. Paul. The pope was inaugurated on Sunday during a solemn outdoor mass. Standing atop the steps to St. Peter's, he donned the mantle, symbolizing the pontiff's role as shepherd of the Catholic Church. And then afterward, a tour in the pope-mobile. As many as 40,000 people packed St. Peter's Square for the ceremony, many of them from the pope's native Germany.

HEMMER: Back in this country now. Spring disappeared for people in at least seven states over the weekend. A rare spring snowstorm barreled through Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, covering everything in white there. As much as a foot of snow fell in southeastern Michigan. More than that in Detroit's northern suburbs. The Cleveland area got about 14 inches and all the way down around the North Carolina border with Tennessee, about six inches of snow fell there. Also along with that storm, heavy winds and temperatures, some 25 degrees below normal. Thousands left without power, too. Late in the season like that.

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, years after one of the most notorious crimes in New York, one young man fights to save his reputation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even though I was exonerated, there's still a lot of folks that believe that I was guilty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Wrongly convicted of raping a Central Park jogger in 1989, Yousef Saolaam battles to clear his name. His story's up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Wrongly convicted of raping a Central Park jogger in 1989, Yousef Saolaam battles to clear his name. His story is up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) O'BRIEN: He was convicted of one of America's most awful crimes, the rape of a jogger in Central Park. But then new evidence set Yousef Saolaam free.

Maria Hinojosa takes a look at a man's fight to try to regain a reputation lost.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARIA HINOJOSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Yousef Saolaam has a radiant smile. 31-years old with three small children, these days Central Park is just a place to take his kids.

YOUSEF SAOLAAM, SUING FOR DAMAGES: That's about all you can go.

HINOJOSA: A gentle man, Yousef speaks in a soft voice, counseling college students on what justice means to young black men.

SAOLAAM: What kept me was continuously just believing that one day I'm going to be free from this.

HINOJOSA: He lectures state legislators about the high cost of mistakes made by the legal system.

SAOLAAM: I was 15 years old, just a boy when these events changed my life forever. Because I was the tallest and presumably the darkest skin of my co-defendants, people pointed at me and said things like, what we need to do is hang him.

HINOJOSA: And he runs an organization he co-founded called People United for Children, helping teens navigate the same criminal justice system he faced at 15.

SAOLAAM: Whether a person is innocent or guilty, there are things that they can do.

HINOJOSA: Yousef knows firsthand the frenzy of what a teen goes through in the criminal justice system. It was 1989 and New York was a city besieged by crime and divided by race. It was no surprise when the media seized on a story known as the attack on the Central Park jogger.

SAOLAAM: The trial hadn't even started and we were being judged, tried and convicted in the media.

HINOJOSA: A group of black teens had allegedly raped and beaten white jogger Trisha Miley (ph) in a rampage. The press called it wilding as in a popular rap song "Wild Things." Police arrested Yousef and four other young men who were quickly branded as animals, the Central Park five, the face of the urban crime nightmare. All the boys except Yousef made detailed videotaped confessions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is my first rape. I never did this before. This going to be my last time doing it. This is my first experience.

HINOJOSA: They were all convicted and sent to prison. Yousef was sentenced to five to 10 years.

SAOLAAM: Once you pay that first guilty, it's just like echoing guilty, guilty, guilty.

HINOJOSA: Then, 13 years later, another man confessed to being the real rapist of the central park jogger. Matias Reyes (ph), who was serving a life sentence for another rape and murder, said he had acted alone.

SAOLAAM: All we were saying was look, you have the wrong people. You really need to go back out there and continue to search, continued to look for the real perpetrator of the crime. The other women that he raped after the Central Park jogger would not have been raped had they been on their job.

HINOJOSA: Despite discrepancies in the videotaped confessions, no other suspect was ever pursued.

(on camera): Do you wish that that night you hadn't gone to the park?

SAOLAAM: In many ways, yes. They always say hindsight in 20/20, so had I been able to avoid the experiences of being put into prison, the experiences of seeing just madness, definitely I would have tried to avoid that at all costs.

For 13 years, my mom wore this shirt. For 13 years, the families struggled.

HINOJOSA (voice-over): Yousef went to jail a child and came out a man, his record erased, his name taken off the state sexual predator's list, but the scars remain.

SAOLAAM: No one has come forth and said, I'm sorry, oh, listen, we apologize for putting you through probably the worst time of your life. Even though I was exonerated, there's still a lot of folks that believe that I was guilty.

HINOJOSA: These days, Yousef is learning to use the media to his own benefit. He wants to create a TV show for urban teens. He prays for those kids as he once prayed for his own future and for the victim whose pain he recognizes.

SAOLAAM: My heart definitely goes out to her. We were victimized in this situation just like she was a victim in this situation. We did someone else's time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Yousef Saolaam is now suing the city and the district attorney for damages. There are some people in the police department who still maintain that he might be guilty. And that was Maria Hinojosa reporting.

Well, you may notice the different gas price this morning. Is it a sign of things to come? Andy is "Minding Your Business." That's up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: Welcome back, everyone.

Some relief for drivers heading into the summer. And is office e-mail worse than pot? Andy explains this.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: I've been researching this very carefully for years.

HEMMER: Did you write that?

SERWER: What?

HEMMER: Did you write that?

SERWER: No, I didn't write that. I don't write those things. But it was well written.

HEMMER: You're going to explain?

SERWER: Yes, I am going to explain. We've got a lot of stuff to explain this morning. Let's talk about stocks. First of all, market trading up this morning. You can see here Dow industrials up about 35 points. A lot of stuff going on. Gas prices falling. That is probably helping the mood on Wall Street this morning. The price of gas falling 4.5 cents to the $2.30 range over the past two weeks.

A big merger in the works in the oil patch. Valero buying Premcor to form the largest refinery in North America. Both of those stocks are moving.

Now bad news, though, crossing the tape just minutes ago. General Motors is recalling two-million vehicles, more bad news for the nation's largest automaker. We're just getting this in. One-and- a-half million pickup trucks and SUVs I think it has to do here with seatbelts in the passenger row, the second-row seats. More details on that probably throughout the day.

And then let's get to this multitasking and marijuana situation here. Maladies of the modern age. A study out of the University of London saying that multitasking, doing e-mail and talking on the phone at the same time, causes I.Q. loss higher -- worse than smoking marijuana. If you multitask at work all day long, your I.Q. drops by 10 points. Smoking marijuana makes your I.Q. drop by four points. So says the University of London. I'm not sure how they figured that out.

And finally, an increasing number of Americans, 2.5 million Americans, have blackberries, including some people on the couch here, I believe. And Doctors are saying they're seeing something called blackberry thumb.

HEMMER: Yes.

SERWER: Thumb injuries, thumb problems.

HEMMER: Had that for awhile.

SERWER: And the American Society of Hand Therapist reporting these problems.

HEMMER: That looks like a callous.

O'BRIEN; No, that's a burn actually.

SERWER: That's called blackberry thumb.

HEMMER: If you multitask, you'd think you're keeping your brain smarter, right?

O'BRIEN: No.

HEMMER: Why not?

SERWER: It's worse than smoking marijuana.

O'BRIEN: Because it's, like...

SERWER: How did they come up with this?

O'BRIEN: You can't keep it all in your head. My short-term memory is just shot. I can't remember anything.

SERWER: No, maybe if you got stoned and -- never mind. It's an idea.

O'BRIEN: Jack?

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: What happened to your thumb?

O'BRIEN: I know. I was being dramatic. Actually I just burned it on the coffee maker.

CAFFERTY: So it's not a blackberry...

O'BRIEN: No, it's not a blackberry, but it's a big old burn, huh?

CAFFERTY: Well, no, it's not a big, old burn. Suck it up.

SERWER: It's a little burn.

O'BRIEN: It's a little burn.

O'BRIEN: Thanks for your compassion. I appreciate it.

What's the Question of the Day?

CAFFERTY: The question -- that's my middle name, compassion. The question is this, what should be done with North Korea and Iran's nuclear weapons programs? Nothing is working with these two countries. They're just going right along and making their bombs and giggling.

Lois in Ohio writes, "How do we decide who can and can't have nuclear capability? The U.S., Russia, China, UK, Pakistan, India, France and Israel; 44 countries worldwide have reactors. How about everybody give them up?"

Gary in Tennessee writes, "The axis of this problem is on the desk of George Bush. His rhetoric, lack of diplomacy and gunslinger mentality have ensured countries on his hit list will continue to strengthen their defenses."

And Loran in Lubbock, Texas, "The U.N. Security Council should give both Iran and North Korea 72 hours to decide to give up nuclear weapon's development. If they don't accept, put up air, land and Naval blockades shutting down all trade and travel with both countries until they have their attitudes fully adjusted."

HEMMER: You can't travel in and out of North Korea right now.

SERWER: Well, sounds like General Curtis...

CAFFERTY: Means they're part way there, doesn't it?

O'BRIEN: The North Koreans are already starving, I mean, the people.

SERWER: Bomb them back to the stone age, or something like that.

O'BRIEN: The problem with a lot of the solutions...

CAFFERTY: North Korea is the stone age. I mean, they couldn't make a peanut butter sandwich if they got the whole population of the country together over there.

The real sad thing is the governments of these countries, you know, the populations are taught to believe this is how the world lives. People in North Korea think everybody is hungry and dirt poor, and you know, it's just obscene what these little tyrants gate way with.

HEMMER: What did we say at 7:25, we're going to solve this issue, right?

O'BRIEN: And we haven't quite.

SERWER: We've got a Naval blockade at 9:55. Well, we tried.

HEMMER: Coming up next hour on CNN, the latest for the search for those two toddlers in Georgia. The brother and sister have been missing since Saturday. Daryn has the latest on that search on "LIVE TODAY."

We're back in a moment here, on AMERICAN MORNING, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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