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CNN Live At Daybreak

Journalist Killed; Fix in Space; Passengers Survive Toronto Plane Crash

Aired August 03, 2005 - 04:59   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: From the Time Warner Center in New York, this is DAYBREAK with Carol Costello and Chad Myers.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning to you.

We'll have more on the death of an American journalist in just a minute.

Also ahead, how did the Earth come into being? Was it created? And what should be taught in our schools? The debate rages on.

And remember baby panda -- oh, we were going -- there's the baby panda. We'll tell you the name and where the baby panda was born,

But first, "Now in the News."

The body of an American freelance journalist, Steven Vincent, was found in the southern city of Basra this morning. He had been shot several times. We'll take you live to Baghdad in just a minute.

Iran's new hard-line president has officially taken office this morning amid rising nuclear tensions. Iran says it plans to resume nuclear activities at a key plant as soon as today, refusing U.N. requests for a delay.

A raging wildfire threatening dozens of homes in central Washington State. People in about 70 homes are on alert that they might have to evacuate. The fire has grown to more than 1,000 acres.

To the forecast center and Chad.

Good morning.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning.

(WEATHER REPORT)

COSTELLO: All right. Thank you, Chad.

MYERS: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: You may have read his editorial in the Sunday "New York Times" about the challenges of training Iraqi security forces. Today, the author and freelance journalist Steven Vincent was found shot to death in Basra. Also, Marines are mourning the deaths of seven comrades in northwest Iraq. Aneesh Raman is in Baghdad this morning. He has more on both.

Good morning, Aneesh.

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, good morning to you.

We are now just slowly piecing together what happened to American journalist Steven Vincent. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad this morning saying that his body was found in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, adding only that his family had been notified. Western officials, though, going a little bit further, saying that he had died from multiple gunshot wounds, and that he had been abducted, along with his translator, sometime before.

Basra police in the south go even further. They say the abduction took place around 12:00 a.m. this morning, Wednesday morning local time, and that the body of Vincent, as well as the wounded translator, were found just some 10 minutes away from where they were abducted.

All of this, though, tragic news for journalists in Iraq to wake to, if not throughout the world. Vincent, of course, a well-known freelance journalist, as well as author. His latest book came out last year, called "In the Red Zone." It detailed his journey throughout post-Saddam Iraq.

When it came out, he did an interview with "FrontPage" magazine, and they pushed him, they asked him about being a journalist traveling in Iraq at a time of incredible insecurity and without his own bodyguards, completely on his own. Here's what he had to say to them.

He said, "I manage to say safe by slipping below the radar screen, so to speak, blending in with the Iraqi people. Nowadays, I'm afraid that even that incognito approach would prove impossible, with terrorists paying criminals to find and kidnap foreigners."

Chilling words now as we look at what happened.

This comes as a shock. We haven't seen a western journalist killed in quite some time. But also, the location of where this happened, Basra, the second city of Iraq, thought to be an oasis of security in a country riddled with violence.

All of this hard to digest, Carol, for the journalist community.

COSTELLO: Oh, sure. And, you know, I also want to read our viewers a quote in an op-ed piece that Steven Vincent wrote on July 31, 2005. This is out of "The New York Times."

He says, "... security sector reform is failing the very people it is intended to serve: average Iraqis who simply want to go about their lives. As has been widely reported of late, Basran politics (and everyday life) is increasingly coming under the control of Shiite religious groups..."

It's a disturbing quote, because, you know, a lot of our military leaders are talking about American troops possibly coming home. And they cannot come home unless the security situation is fixed. And by the sound of this, it doesn't sound like it's being fixed fast enough.

RAMAN: Exactly, Carol. And again, the location is critical.

Vincent found an alarming and reported on a disturbing trend, a rise in fundamentalist Shia Islam in Basra. This is a city that has been long been held up as an example of what a secure Iraq will look like. But now, both with his death, with an IED explosion that killed two private security guards working for the British embassy just days ago, it looks like this city itself is seeing a trend towards fundamentalist Islam. And what that means in terms of implications for other cities that are currently deemed safe is really something that will have to be looked at now -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Tell us about the Marines who were killed and what more we know this morning about that, Aneesh.

RAMAN: Yes, more information coming about from Monday's incidents that left seven U.S. Marines dead in two separate combat operations north of the capital city. It is one of the deadliest single-day losses for U.S. military personnel in Iraq in quite some time.

We now know that six of the Marines were in a town called Haditha. They were on a foot patrol, and they were killed by small arms fire. A seventh in the town of Hit was killed after a suicide bomber detonated.

We now know also, Carol, that with these deaths, the total number of military personnel killed in Iraq since the start of war is now over 1,800 -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Aneesh Raman, reporting live from Baghdad this morning.

The deaths of those seven Marines marks a dark milestone. The number of American troops killed in Iraq now tops 1,800 -- 1,806, to be exact. Of those, more than 1,200 have died battling a persistent insurgency since President Bush declared an end to major combat in May of 2003.

Let's head into space now.

It's risky, it's delicate, and no one has tried it before. The Discovery crew has just moments ago begun a spacewalk. In just under three hours, Discovery astronaut Steve Robinson will make a crucial repair on the shuttle's belly.

Who's the man behind the mission? Well, Robinson showed his skill at an early age. As a young teen, he built a hang glider from a broken sprinkler. In 1979, he started at NASA as a research scientist.

Robinson became an astronaut in 1995. His first shuttle mission came two years later. Now that we know a little bit about the man, let's talk about the mission. For that, we turn to CNN Space Correspondent Miles O'Brien.

What are they doing now, Miles?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're about 15 minutes into the official beginning of this spacewalk. It could last about seven hours by the time all is said and done, Carol.

Live pictures now from space, 220 miles above us, zipping along at 17,500 miles an hour. But you can't tell that, of course, by looking at this helmet-mounted camera.

As they begin the process of pulling together all the tools for what lies ahead, the big moment will come about three hours or so into this spacewalk. So probably around 8:00 Eastern Time, give or take, when Steve Robinson will go after the protruding gap fillers, unprecedented repair effort on the space shuttle belly itself.

Let's go back in time a little bit and take you to the moment when this was discovered.

It came as shuttle commander Eileen Collins did a belly flop as the Discovery was on its way toward docking with the International Space Station last week. The space station crew had a couple of cameras, 400-millimeter, 800-millimeter lenses. Took a bunch of pictures of the tiles, kind of like tile paparazzi, and came up with two suspected problem sites.

It turns out that they were protruding gap fillers, little pieces of almost like reinforced cardboard between the tiles. Of course it isn't cardboard.

Take a look at what those pictures showed them. If you look up here in the top part of your screen, these two spots right there are the places in question. And there is concern that as the air flows over the super-heated plasma molecules, the wispy edges of our atmosphere flows over that, it could create a real problem for the shuttle.

We have an animation that sort of describes what's going on here. You're at the belly of the shuttle, there's your protruding gap filler right there. And what happens is, as the air stream goes over it, Carol, it kind of creates a blowtorch effect. It causes this turbulent air in this spot there, and makes hot spots which can be 10 percent warmer. And that can be a real problem.

Now, while the shuttle has a lot of extra heft in its design, NASA did not want to take a chance two-and-a-half years after the loss of Columbia because of the failure of its heat shield. So what do you do to get rid of these gap fillers? A couple of thoughts.

Number one, just go up and pull it out. That would be the first idea.

If that doesn't work so well, if it's kind of jammed in there too tight, the next option would be to use a hacksaw. They also have a set of forceps which they can use to pull on it as well.

But the number one set of tools, according to Steve Robinson -- there you see the hacksaw routine right there -- the number one set of tools, well, he was born with those. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN ROBINSON, DISCOVERY ASTRONAUT: The main tools I plan to use are right here. I plan to reach out with my right hand and grab the little piece of material and pull it out from between the tiles on the belly of the orbiter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: All right. So this is a tile, this obviously has nothing to do with Discovery. They didn't leave without one. And this is the gap filler we're talking about. It's just like a thin piece of, you know, kind of cardboard, Carol.

And the gap filler just goes between the tiles. And it should be just as simple as that, as pulling it out.

But here's what's interesting. See how I've got all these dings here? I've been trying to be careful with it, and this thing just keeps breaking off on me. And that's the point.

It's very fragile stuff. And the truth of the matter is, NASA does not like it when a spacewalker in this inflated suit, which makes you 30 percent larger than your mass anyway, limited vision and all that stuff, gets anywhere near these fragile tiles. And...

MYERS: Hey, Miles?

O'BRIEN: Yes?

MYERS: Hey, it's Chad up in the weather center. You've been carrying that tile around with you now for a couple of days. How heavy is it?

O'BRIEN: Oh, it's really light. It's really light. It's surprisingly light.

You would pick it up and you go -- you can't believe. You'd think this would be like a brick or something.

MYERS: Yes.

O'BRIEN: But it's very light. It's ceramic. And it's basically a lot of sand and a little bit of glass in there.

You know, if -- I don't know if you can hear it. It's kind of...

MYERS: Oh, yes.

O'BRIEN: Yes. You hear that? It's kind of got that ceramic feel to it. It's -- you know, it's not unlike covering the space shuttle with pottery.

MYERS: Yes.

O'BRIEN: You know, it's just like Pottery Barn, you break it, you own it. So if Steve Robinson breaks it today, it's all his.

MYERS: His middle name's not Will, is it?

O'BRIEN: Say it again?

MYERS: His middle name's not William, like, danger, Stephen Will Robinson?

O'BRIEN: "Danger, Will Robinson." That would be too convenient, wouldn't it, for us? We could -- we could do that this morning.

MYERS: All right. Talk to you soon, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Yes.

COSTELLO: All right. Thanks to both of you.

can keep track of the shuttle mission by logging onto CNN.com. Our special "Return to flight" page has up-to-the-minute information with what the astronauts are doing and why. So log on and watch at CNN.com.

At first, authorities in Toronto, Canada, feared the worst. An Air France jetliner tries to land at Pearson Airport in a thunderstorm. The plane skids off the runway, plunges into a ravine, breaks apart, and bursts into flames.

But all of the more than 300 people on board survived this. No one even suffered a major injury. Passengers credit the quick- thinking flight crew with saving their lives.

CNN's Beth Nissen has more for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): How do you get 300 people out of a large, disabled airplane in under two minutes? Jennie Ziesenhenne just retired this week after 27 years as a flight attendant and instructor with Delta.

JENNIE ZIESENHENNE, FORMER FLIGHT ATTENDANT: You do not ever want this to happen. You always want to have your safe flights. You just really pray it never happens.

NISSEN: Flight attendants are trained for exactly what happened on board Air France Flight 358.

DUBOS: You can't imagine, people were screaming and panicking. And everyone was really stressed.

NISSEN: As soon as the plane came to a complete stop, flight attendants started giving passengers commands.

ZIESENHENNE: We are taught our command to be the same every single time. Release seat belts, get up, get out. Release seat belts, get up. Leave everything.

I believe that when panic starts, it's because people have not -- they don't know exactly where to go and what direction to take.

NISSEN: Flight attendants encourage people, urge people to move quickly and ask certain passengers to help along others who are slower, more unsteady, elderly, very young.

ZIESENHENNE: When people are boarding and they're sitting in your section, what you do is you start identifying who could help in an emergency. You also try to identify who would need help in an emergency.

NISSEN: Crowd momentum keeps passengers moving quickly towards exits flight attendants have identified as safe, with doors that open away from flame and water.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were two or three stewardesses, and they were really pushing people and letting people jump as fast as possible. Very, very organized and they were just trying to get people out of the plane as soon as possible.

NISSEN: That, they did. Two hundred ninety-seven passengers and 12 crew members safely evacuated in what probably seemed to those people like the longest two minutes of their lives.

Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Coming up on DAYBREAK, the new war over science. It's called intelligent design. Is the universe so complicated that creation and evolution play a role? We'll explain the concept at 20 minutes past. And we want to hear what you think about this, especially in light of what the president said.

Plus, a brain-dead woman gives birth while on life support. Hear from her family as they embrace a new life and an imminent death. That's at 10 to the hour.

Plus...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's shocking how quickly things can change here, how in the blink of an eye a child can simply vanish.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Countless children starving to death in famine- stricken Niger. Anderson Cooper will bring you face to face with the horrors of this crisis.

But first, here's a look at what else is making news this Wednesday.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: International markets mixed this morning. Tokyo's Nikkei up more than 41 points. The London FTSE down 16. The German DAX is down 12.

Your news, money, weather and sports. It's 5:16 Eastern. Here's what's all new this morning.

Discovery astronauts have just started a crucial spacewalk this morning. In under three hours, one of them will be making a key repair on the shuttle's belly.

Insurgents have murdered an American freelance journalist in Iraq. Steven Vincent's body was found this morning in the southern city of Basra. He was shot multiple times after being abducted.

In money news, what's the best part of waking up? Lower prices in your cup. Procter & Gamble cutting the price of its Folgers Coffee by five percent. That's an average of 13 cents a can.

In culture, he writes the songs that make the whole world sing. And Barry Manilow will keep singing them at the Las Vegas Hilton all the way into 2007. The hotel-casino has added 150 shows to Manilow's current contract.

In sports, the Miami Heat has resigned the NBA's most dominant big man, a very big, big man. "The Miami Herald" says Shaquille O'Neal has signed on to a five-year contract worth a whopping -- oh, Chad, it's so much I can't even say it.

MYERS: Super Lotto?

COSTELLO: Super Lotto. One hundred million dollars.

MYERS: Holy cow. You know what? That must makes the price of seats go up. I guess that's all that does.

I hope you enjoy paying that $95 a seat for the rafter seats, guys.

(WEATHER REPORT)

COSTELLO: Thank you, Chad.

MYERS: All right.

COSTELLO: Still to come this morning on DAYBREAK, we walk with CNN's Anderson Cooper as he reports on the devastating famine in Niger. What's it like to see all of that sadness, all of that death? Is there any joy? We'll find out.

You're watching DAYBREAK for a Wednesday.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: I know you've heard about it. It's called intelligent design. You might say that's the Christian conservative view of not monkeying around. You know, as in the theory of evolution.

President Bush says public schools should teach intelligent design, alongside evolution. Bill Schneider tells us how many people and the scientific community view this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): The Scopes trial took place 80 years ago, but the debate over evolution continues to rage. This week, President Bush repeated a view he expressed in the 2000 presidential campaign.

Speaking to a group of reporters, the president said, "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas. The answer is yes."

Most Americans don't have a problem with that. A "Newsweek" poll taken last December asked people whether they favored teaching creation science in addition to evolution in the public schools. The answer, by better than 2-1, was yes. Results like that drive many scientists crazy. They say efforts to dress up the biblical story of creation as a science -- it's now called intelligent design -- are really attempts to inject religion or politics into education.

HENRY KELLY, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF SCIENTISTS: There are well established ways of making your argument, and these people are not using those methods.

SCHNEIDER: In March, the CNN-"USA Today"-Gallup poll asked Americans if they would be upset if the theory of evolution was taught in the public schools. No problem, 63 percent said. What about the theory of creationism, defined as the idea that human beings were created by God in their present form and did not evolve from other species of animals? No problem, 76 percent said.

Most Democrats, self-described liberals and people with postgraduate degrees don't object to the teaching of creationism. Most Americans want to be open-minded, teach different theories. Scientists insist you refute a scientific theory with a better scientific theory, one that can be tested.

KELLY: Let's not pretend that this has anything to do with science.

SCHNEIDER: But it has a lot to do with politics. Many scientists feel that giving legitimacy to what they regard as a nonscientific theory has a cost.

KELLY: American students are tremendously disadvantaged if they don't understand the basic methods of scientific debate and research.

SCHNEIDER (on camera): Calling it the "theory of evolution" creates a problem. It's just a theory, most people say. But everything in science is a theory. Most scientists say intelligent design does not fit the definition of a scientific theory.

Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Like the theory of relativity. There's another example of that.

We want to remind you of the definition of intelligent design. "The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation."

Now, a lot of people say that intelligent design, or the intelligent designer, is God, or something out there, something spiritual.

MYERS: Right.

COSTELLO: So, we wanted to know what you thought about this, because those polls were quite interesting, weren't they?

MYERS: Sure. You know, I was -- I was a little bit surprised that the numbers were so high. And that's fine.

Should intelligent design be taught in schools? How about my theory that we all came down from spaceships?

DAYBREAK@CNN.com.

COSTELLO: Especially you. And Miles O'Brien, of course.

MYERS: I'm the space cadet, he's the space expert.

COSTELLO: Got you.

We want to hear from you this morning, DAYBREAK@CNN.com.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Anderson Cooper has been in Niger for several days now. You've seen him on DAYBREAK. The professional journalist covering the story of the devastating starvation that's going on there.

Well, now we have this, a "Reporter's Notebook," Anderson's personal experiences covering such a heart-wrenching story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "What's it like over there? What's it like?" That's the question I always get. But, really, I never know how to answer it.

It's like this. And like this. It's also like this.

It's terrible, it's tragic, it's wonderful, it's alive. Even in death, Africa pulses with life. There's no layer of fat to cushion the pain, the joy. Back home, it's just not the same.

You cross rivers, you get stuck. Nothing is easy. With money, of course, you can always get by. We sleep in a dingy hotel in Maradi, eating tuna and candy, working around the clock. No one complains, however. The work just feels right, and we all have it so easy.

The poverty, well, it's crushing, but people are resilient. I know it's a cliche, but this is a continent of heroes, of people who make do with nothing.

You get surrounded by kids. Half the population of Niger is under the age of 15. They're poor, they have nothing, but they are so quick to laugh.

Kids are supposed to go to school here, but you see a lot of them working the fields or selling stuff. Their families need the extra hands.

It's impossible to get used to seeing this kind of thing, this poverty, this malnutrition. I've seen it up close, but the truth is, I still can't imagine what it's like. Laying on a plastic mat, no sheets, no privacy, medicine only for the lucky. What can you do watching your child die in your arms?

Did you know when a child dies at night in this intensive care, they let his mother sleep by his side. I can't get that image out of my mind. Does she speak to her baby in the pitch black of night? The moment she wakes, does she think he's still alive?

When you've reported a lot of stories like this, there's a tendency to compare. Somalia was worse, they say. So is the Sudan. But there shouldn't be a sliding scale of sorrow. Children are dying. How many little lives lost is an acceptable toll?

Anderson Cooper, CNN, Maradi, Niger.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Relief agencies are asking for your help as they struggle to feed the people of Niger. And there are so many in need of help.

The aid group CARE says 800,000 children under the age of five are malnourished, 150,000 are showing signs of severe malnutrition. You can call these phone numbers to help through the U.N. World Food Program and Concern Worldwide. CARE says more than 4,000 communities are suffering from the food crisis.

If you can't write those numbers down fast enough, just e-mail us at DAYBREAK@CNN.com.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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