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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Iraqi Leaders Ask for 3 More Days to Agree on Constitution; Bush Insists War in Iraq Made Middle East Safer

Aired August 22, 2005 - 22:00   ET

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

AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again.
In Baghdad today, Iraq's leaders struggled with the words that will define their country's future. What will it be? Will it be the place we went to war to create? Will it be something else, not the murderous place of Saddam, but something far different from what Americans envisioned? Those are questions for Iraqis tonight. We get to them in a moment.

But first, the president in Salt Lake, defending a policy, rallying yet again to a cause, insisting the war has made the Middle East safer, even as the death toll rises and a senior Republican senator insists the region is more unstable. A difficult summer for the troops and the commander-in-chief.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): From the battlefields of Iraq, to the polls, to his own front door, it has been a grim summer for the president.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A policy of retreat and isolation will not bring us safety. The only way to defend our citizens where we live is to go after the terrorists where they live.

BROWN: But Americans who had long hoped for progress in Iraq have seen in this summer the opposite. In June, July, and not yet all of August, 201 American troops have been killed, nearly 40 more than a year ago, almost 100 more than the summer of '03.

The president's approval rating is at an all-time low. So is his support for handling the war.

And the antiwar voices are not just liberal groups camped out with Cindy Sheehan in Texas, but at least one senior Republican senator, who has always had questions about the war, but now compares it to a war he fought a generation ago.

SEN. CHUCK HAGEL (R), NEBRASKA: I don't think more troops are the answer now. We're past that stage now, because now we are locked into a bogged-down problem, not unsimilar, dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam.

BROWN: Even in friendly Salt Lake City today, there were signs of unrest. The mayor called for an antiwar demonstration, the biggest demonstration this state has ever seen, Rocky Anderson said. Not likely to happen in a state where the president carried 70 percent of the vote and used the VFW convention today to say the country needs to stay the course in Iraq to honor those, more than 1,850 now, who have died there.

BUSH: We owe them something. We will finish the task that they gave their lives for. We'll honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists and building strong allies in Afghanistan and Iraq that will help us win and fight, fight and win the war on terror.

BROWN: And the number of fallen troops keeps growing in this summer of setbacks in Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And today, it grew some more. Two American soldiers were killed, two others wounded in another IED attack, which brings the total U.S. death toll in Iraq to 1,867, another measure of the present.

Now, to the future, nothing simple or easy about it. In Baghdad today, Iraq's leaders working on the country's new constitution punted, in effect. Already a week behind schedule, they turned in an unfinished draft just minutes before the midnight deadline and said they would need three more days to work out the final agreement, three more days to resolve serious sticking points over what the draft says and what it doesn't say.

Here's CNN's Aneesh Raman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. HACHIM AL-HASANI, NATIONAL ASSEMBLY SPOKESMAN (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Today, we received a draft copy of the constitution.

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Well, they did and they didn't. Iraq leaders met the deadline, kept the government from dissolution, and resolved one key issue, the role of religion, wording makes Iraq essentially an Islamic republic.

AL-HASANI: What we agreed upon is that Islam would be a main source of legislation and also anything that contradicts the principles and provisions of Islam would not be accepted.

RAMAN: Wording that could put the country on a path towards an Iran-style government, where clerics decide what can and cannot be law. Most concerned are groups advocating women's rights.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are building a society in which everybody must feel that they are a part of it. Saying Islam is the primary source of legislation is going to be -- is going to exclude.

RAMAN: The drafters claim they will also include the tenets of democracy and human rights. Unresolved, how powerful will the central government be and what that means for the individual provinces of Iraq.

The Kurds are the main champions for federalism. They had everything but full independence in the north under Saddam, and it is nonnegotiable for them now.

The Shia are essentially split. Some, such as these followers of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr want a unified Iraq, a powerful central government, a government that they would undoubtedly control, given their majority. Other Shia recognize they need a federal government to make the country work, including their own region in the south.

DR. MOWAFFAK AL-RUBAIE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: Federal system is a part and parcel of our democracy. It's that you cannot separate democracy in Iraq from federal system.

RAMAN: But it is the Sunnis who could derail the process on this issue, threatening the hope for security in Iraq. They fear, having no power and with the majority of Iraq's oil in the Kurdish and Shia areas, no revenue.

DR. SALEH MUTLAG, SUNNI NEGOTIATOR: This constitution does not only include -- does not include the -- it does not include other voices in Iraq. It will fail, not only by three provinces. It will fail all over Iraq. People will reject it.

RAMAN: The Sunni voice is a pivotal one in the new Iraq. A minority that ran the country under Saddam, they largely boycotted the January elections. And now, according to government officials, Sunnis make up a majority of Iraq's domestic insurgents. Isolating them could lead to even greater violence.

(on-screen): If the Sunnis reject the constitution in the national referendum this fall, the Iraqi government fails and this entire process starts over, inevitably extending the tours of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Aneesh Raman, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The great unknown, of course, is how it all plays out. Noah Feldman is a professor of law at New York University, a former senior constitutional advisor with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He's also the author of "What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building," and we talked with him earlier tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Looking at the constitution that, with some changes, is likely to go before the assembly and, ultimately, before the country, there's no question what we're going to have in the south of the country is a group of provinces, maybe one large group or some small groups, that are theocratic in nature?

NOAH FELDMAN, PROFESSOR OF LAW, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: They won't be legally theocratic, in the sense that clerics won't formally be in charge the way they are in Iran. The national constitution will still apply for most basic things, which means that equality of men and women will be guaranteed.

It means that it will be a democracy, but it'll be a democracy with a very strongly Islamic character. You can be sure that, at least to begin with, the political parties will be overwhelmingly the Islamic political parties that have been doing so well in Iraq.

And you can be pretty sure that, when it comes to family law, or the law of inheritance, they're going to implement a version of Shia Islamic that's going to be very close to the traditional form, not really updated, by reference to modern feminist or egalitarian principles.

BROWN: I don't want to be accused of saying anything terrific about Saddam, but women had a prominent place in Iraq society during his regime.

FELDMAN: I think women probably did better in Iraqi society before Saddam, actually. And those laws in Iraq that were more egalitarian, more equal for women, predated Saddam, but he left them in place.

So when it came to personal law, for example, when it came to marriage law and divorce law, it was a good deal more progressive than some of the more traditional Islamic legal forms.

That said, if you were a woman in Iraq under Saddam and you had any political opinions, you were in just as much trouble as you were if you were a man. So to the extent that women wanted to be in any way independent, they were just as vulnerable to the police state of Saddam as men were.

BROWN: Am I being too cynical here to say that what we're getting here is, in a sense, three nearly separate countries, the Kurds, who clearly are going to be autonomous, mostly, the Shias, who are clearly, it seems to me, going to be autonomous, and the Sunnis, who seem to be the big losers in all this?

FELDMAN: The Kurdish side is definitely correct. Kurdistan is going to be de facto autonomous, as it has been. When it comes to the south, it's a little tricky, because we don't really know what the public support for a separate Shia region really is.

And we know only that the politicians are talking a good game about it right now. So that remains to be seen. If there's not a lot of oil money to be gotten by becoming an independent region, we may see much less support for it than we're hearing right now.

When it comes to the center, though, that's the hardest part, because the center is mostly Sunni, but it also has a lot of Shia -- Baghdad has many, many Shias living in it -- and a lot of Kurds, as well. These populations are all mixed up with each other.

So it won't be so easy just to describe that central section as a Sunni section. It would actually be mixed and subject to a lot of controversy. And everyone who lives in it has an interest in making sure that some of the oil money comes to them, because they, of course, don't have any oil in the center of the country, as you know.

BROWN: Is what we're talking about, this constitution that was presented today, a, what we went to war for, and, b, likely to quell an insurgency?

FELDMAN: Many people in the Bush administration thought that in Iraq we would have a largely secular democracy. And that was false at the time, and now we've got the proof that it was false at the time and that it's still false.

If you allow elections in many Muslim countries today -- Iraq is one of them -- you will find that people vote will for people who describe themselves as Islamic democrats, and this is an extremely Islamic state. It's democratic, too, but make no mistake. It's truly Islamic.

With respect to whether the Sunnis are actually going to step away from a civil war, that really turns on whether, in the next three days, the Shia and the Kurds can bring the new Sunni political leaders into this process so that Sunnis see this as their constitution, too. If they don't, then this constitution is not going to make things better, and, in fact, if the Sunnis are truly excluded, this may make things worse.

BROWN: Noah, it's good to see you. Have a good remaining summer up there in Maine. We always enjoy your time.

FELDMAN: Thanks for having me.

BROWN: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Noah Feldman, who, in the early days after the fall of Saddam, helped the government of Iraq get started.

In a moment, a chilling mayday that came too late.

But first, at about a quarter past the hour, time for some of the other headlines of the day. Sophia Choi is in Atlanta tonight for us with that.

Sophia, good evening.

SOPHIA CHOI, CNN HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: Hi there, Aaron. Good to see you.

We begin in Lebanon, where a bomb exploded in a Christian suburb north of Beirut, wounding at least five people. The blast went off near a hotel that caters to tourists. So far, no hotel guests are reported among those injured.

In Seattle, no explosion but an arrest. Federal agents apprehending Charles Whitaker. They say he threatened to blow up an office of the Department of Veterans Affairs because the agency denied his claim for benefits. Agents found explosives at Whitaker's home, along about booby traps and bomb-making manuals.

George and Jennifer Hyatte are back where they began, Kingston, Tennessee, where police say Ms. Hyatte fatally shot a prison guard and took off with her husband on a journey that ended in Columbus, Ohio. The two were extradited and booked today, then were taken separately to maximum security prisons where they will be held until their next day in court.

And finally, in Florida, a landing you are lucky to walk away from. A student pilot in Orlando coming up against a freak gust of wind just as he touched down. It lifted a wing of the Cessna and then tossed it clean over.

Would you believe, Aaron, the pilot escaped with barely a scratch?

BROWN: Well, I do believe, because you wouldn't have told me otherwise. Thank you. We'll see you in about a half an hour.

Much more ahead on the program tonight, starting with a single word: "Mayday."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN (voice-over): It came from the cockpit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If someone was still functioning just before the crash, that's truly amazing. That's an even bigger mystery.

BROWN: The man at the controls, and the mystery of Flight 522.

Also tonight, the end, finally, to a story that began one joyous summer night. Confronting Eric Rudolph and what Eric Rudolph did.

DR. SETH YELLIN, EMORY UNIVERSITY: It is a very life-giving tissue.

BROWN: Yes, it is. But there's also a "but." The cells with the power to heal come from a fetus.

And later, in a word, a word.

JOE EDLEY, FORMER CHAMPION: It's not cost effective to spend time keeping them in your memory. It's just enough to know that they're words.

BROWN: Is that with an "a" or an "e"? Oh, must be Scrabble, as in championship Scrabble. And this must be NEWSNIGHT.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: When an airliner goes down, an enormous job begins, a search for the broken pieces and missing moments that tell a story. Tonight, the story of the final moments of Helios Airways Flight 522, a story that is not yet complete, the job not done.

But tonight, for the first time, the story does include the words from the cockpit of somebody desperate for help.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Two calls of "Mayday, mayday, mayday," made by a man sounding weak and tired, were heard on the plane's black box, the second call coming just two seconds before the crash.

Twenty-five-year-old flight attendant Andreas Prodromou is believed to have made the mayday calls. He agreed to work the flight at the last moment, only because his flight attendant girlfriend was also working it. He had some pilot training and is thought to be the man sitting in the pilot seat wearing an oxygen mask by the F-16s shadowing the doomed Boeing 737.

Details of the mayday calls were part of the preliminary report on the crash released today, which cited problems with the plane's pressure system as a probable cause of the crash.

PROF. CHUCK EASTLAKE, AVIATION ENGINEER, EMBRY-RIDDLE UNIV.: Losing pressurization should not bring down the airplane. The crew are trained to deal with that effectively. For some reason, in this instance, they didn't. And that's quite a mystery. That's the main mystery to me.

BROWN: As families of the dead grieve, investigators continue to look for answers to the crash, which has become a mystery. Who was conscious, who was not, when the plane went down?

EASTLAKE: Yet another mystery is, why did the cabin attendant, who apparently made his way to the cockpit and attempted to constructively take control of the airplane, why did he not become incapacitated in the time span that the flight crew clearly was incapacitated?

BROWN: A week after the crash, that question and many others remains open.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Other news tonight, there are two kind of answers when you ask, "Whatever happened to so and so?" Good and bad. Tonight, when the question is, whatever happened to Olivia Newton-John, the answer, for now, at least, not so good.

Here's CNN's Sibila Vargas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIBILA VARGAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: "I Honestly Love You" was one of the multiple hits that Olivia Newton-John turned out in the 1970s, and it won her two Grammies. Fans loved her when she became Sandy in the 1978 movie "Grease." "Grease" became the top-grossing non-animated musical of all time.

Newton-John's career kept her in the spotlight over the years, but behind the scenes, she faced personal hurdles, including a 1992 diagnosis of breast cancer. Now the singer-actress is dealing with the heartbreak of a different sort.

Her boyfriend of nine years, Patrick McDermott, has been missing for almost two months. The 48-year-old TV cameraman told friends he was joining an overnight fishing excursion on this 80-foot boat, the Freedom, off the Los Angeles coast on June 30th.

The landing manager said the trip included nearly two dozen other fishermen and several crew members. There were conflicting reports about whether McDermott was seen returning with the boat, and he hasn't been heard from since the vessel docked the next day at San Pedro Harbor.

SCOTT EPPERSON, U.S. COAST GUARD PIO: The manifest show that he signed on to the boat. He was spotted eating -- at least eating on the boat, or in the galley on the boat, sometime during the trip. And they're still trying to determine through interviews if someone had seen him actually get off the boat.

VARGAS: When he didn't show up for a family function nearly a week later, McDermott's family reported him missing. On July 11th, they discovered his car in the marina parking lot. McDermott's backpack and personal belongings had been found on board the Freedom.

FRANK LIVERSEDGE, MANAGER, 22ND STREET: In 45 years down here, we've never lost a fisherman. We've lost divers who went down and drowned. I've had people jump over the side and swim to the shore at Catalina or something like this, but I've never heard of a passenger drowning down here, falling overboard.

VARGAS: The Coast Guard isn't offering a theory of McDermott's disappearance. For now, it's treating it as a missing persons case rather than a crime.

McDermott and Newton-John met on a TV commercial set in 1996. Newton-John released a statement calling his disappearance a heartbreaking experience and says she hopes for answers. The Coast Guard is asking the public for help.

Sibila Vargas, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Coming up on the program tonight, he created a reign of terror and then he disappeared, Eric Robert Rudolph. What did he say for himself in court today?

And a world away, it seems as if an entire country is burning, dozens of wildfires. We'll take you there. We'll take you everywhere. But we come from New York, and this is NEWSNIGHT. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: He was once a defiant terrorist, but not today. In a federal courtroom packed with his victims and their families, convicted serial bomber Eric Rudolph apologized for the bombing of the Olympic Centennial Park in Atlanta back in 1996. One person died in the attacks; more than 100 were wounded.

In a statement today, Mr. Rudolph said, "I accept full responsibility for the consequences. I would do anything to take that night back. And to those victims, I apologize."

The statement came during a hearing in which Mr. Rudolph was sentenced to a series of consecutive life sentences. He did not apologize for three other bombings he pled guilty to, attacks that targeted two abortion clinics and a gay nightclub.

Mr. Rudolph's decision to plead guilty spared him a possible death sentence. He said the Olympic Park bombing was an attempt to embarrass the U.S. government for allowing abortion on demand. Terrorists always have a reason. That was his.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): They came to Atlanta from all over the world to celebrate the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. The music was free and the crowd in good spirits in what was called Centennial Park in the heart of downtown Atlanta.

Robert and Nancy Ji (ph) were here from California, their video camera rolling to capture their Olympic moment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Folks were walking up to people they didn't know and just having a couple bits of conversation, and then moving on again and having a good time meeting different cultures.

FALLON STUBBS, MOTHER KILLED IN OLYMPIC PARK BOMBING: It was just a great place to be.

BROWN: Fallon Stubbs drove in from nearby Albany, Georgia, with her mother, Alice Hawthorne. It was a last-minute birthday present for Fallon, just 14-years-old.

STUBBS: Everybody was happy, and laughing, and moving, and dancing.

TOM DAVIS, GEORGIA BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION: The park was a good place to work. We didn't have a whole lot of problems here.

BROWN: Tom Davis was a veteran agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, part of the security team in the park that night.

It was just minutes before 1:00 in the morning. On stage that night, the band, Jack Mack and the Heart Attack, took a break. Davis was making his final round of the evening, which meant walking by a sound tower used by NBC. That's when a private security guard named Richard Jewell stopped him and asked for help.

DAVIS: He told me that he was having some problems with some drunks throwing beer cans into the tower and asked me if I mind coming over and helping him, you know, straighten the situation out.

BROWN: As they walked around the front of the tower, the young men cleared out. But as they left, Jewell noticed something, a backpack under a bench in front of the tower. But they couldn't find the owner. So Davis radioed for a bomb assessment team. And a few minutes later, two men arrived.

DAVIS: I asked him, was there anything to it? They told me that they weren't sure, that they saw what appeared to be a pipe and some wires.

BROWN: Then, at 12:58 in the morning, this 911 call came to the Atlanta Police Department.

ERIC RUDOLPH, OLYMPIC PARK BOMBER: There is a bomb in Centennial Park. You have 30 minutes.

BROWN: But the 911 operator couldn't find Centennial Park in her computer.

OPERATOR: I just got this man called, talking about there's a bomb set to go off in 30 minutes at Centennial Park.

DISPATCHER: Oh, lord, child.

(LAUGHTER)

OK, wait a minute. Centennial Park. You put it in, and it won't go in?

OPERATOR: No.

BROWN: The warning never reached the park.

DAVIS: This time, I'm still thinking, there's really nothing to this bag, because, during the two, three weeks prior to this time, we dealt with a number of backpacks and suspicious packages. And, of course, every time they turned out to be nothing.

BROWN: By now, it was about 10 minutes past 1:00. Davis began to move people, some of them drunk, away from the backpack. That's the backpack and the bench from a picture taken by KNBC-TV and enhanced by the FBI.

DAVIS: We got all of them off the hill. There was probably 75 or 100 people.

BROWN: Fallon Stubbs and her mother stopped by this statue to take a couple of pictures. They posed about 100 feet from the hillside. Fallon didn't notice the commotion around the backpack nearby. As Fallon snapped the photo, Robert and Nancy Ji (ph) are off to the left, on the other side of the crowd. It's now about 1:20 in the morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't remember the sound and the light, so much as I remember the asphalt shaking.

STUBBS: I remember an explosion, probably going off around the tower. I remember seeing my mother turn, do a complete 360, which is probably going to be the most lasting memory out of all of that. I remember me falling.

It was all kind of mostly like a movie. It was like, "This can't be happening. I mean, what was that?" And then, you know, you get up and you see people scared and running. I saw my mother on the ground. I got up and I ran. Just like the statue, I was running to try to find her help, try to find her anybody.

BROWN: Fallon was injured, her arm and leg cut by shrapnel, one finger nearly severed.

STUBBS: What happened was, some people told me to lay down, get down, get down. And I was like, wait, my mother. And all I could remember was looking over. And I saw her, and I saw, like, 20 people around her, a lot of people, I guess, trying to resuscitate her. And they put me in an ambulance about 15, 10, 15 minutes later, and I was like, my mother, my mom, my mom, wait, wait. And that's about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go back right now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's go.

TOM DAVIS, OLYMPIC PARK BOMBING VICTIM: I really don't remember a whole lot about it, except for just the force of it pushed me, pushed me down.

BROWN: Tom Davis was just feet away when the bomb went off.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's move. Let's move. Let's go, folks.

BROWN: The KNBC cameraman was nearby and caught what happened next.

DAVIS: We just knew that we had people down everywhere in this area that were screaming and severely injured.

BROWN: Hours later, when he was off duty and getting undressed, Davis realized that he too had been hit by shrapnel.

DAVIS: It was my left rear pocket.

BROWN: His GBI credentials in his back pocket hat blocked the intact.

STUBBS: It was pieces of fragment. The lord was looking after us, is all I can say. BROWN: Robert and Nancy Gee realized they'd caught the explosion on tape. They tried to give their footage to police without success, then took it across the street to CNN.

ROBERT GEE, WITNESS: For about a second, I assumed it was part of the pyrotechnic effects of the band.

BROWN: Fallon Stubbs wound up in a local hospital room. After an operation, she wakes up, her hospital bed surrounded by family, everyone except her mother.

STUBBS: And everybody was looking at me, like, you know, you're the last one to know. So, you know, you could tell that something wasn't right.

BROWN: That's when she learned her mother was dead. More than 100 others, including Fallon, were injured. But no one could tell her who the bomber was.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The bomber was Eric Rudolph and he'll spend the rest of his life in prison.

Straight ahead tonight, they can heal some terrible injuries, bio-bandages. But does the healing coming at too high a cost?

And later, the growing fallout from police in the war on terror who shoot to kill, law enforcement officials from Brazil now overseeing the investigation in London.

We take a break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A couple of fascinating medical notes tonight. Researchers at Harvard say they've worked out a way of turning adult cells back into embryonic stem cells. They still needed stem cells from human embryos to do it, but the hope is that, one day, they may not, getting around a big moral objection to stem cell therapy. That's one potential breakthrough today. Now the other, it also holds great promise. It will not, however, settle any debates.

Here's CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A firefighter burned during rescue, a hand singed on a hot stove. A burn can be painful and disfiguring, even life-altering. And so can burn treatment, sometimes involving multiple painful skin grafts. But Swiss researchers say they have found that treating burns with fetal tissue can heal burns more quickly and completely and less painfully.

The experimental treatment is sure to be controversial in the U.S. and other countries, because it uses tissue from aborted fetuses. The scientists use panels of artificial fetal skin, all grown from a single stamp-sized sample from an aborted 14-week-old fetus taken three years ago. They laid these bio-bandages on top of severe burns on eight children. They thought the cells would act like a skin graft, leaving scars.

But to their surprise, the panels were far more effective, stimulating the growth of new cells. The eight children grew new skin with reduced scarring, more natural and supple feeling than grafted skin.

DR. SETH YELLIN, EMORY UNIVERSITY: It is revolutionary and it can be done without anesthesia.

GUPTA: Scientists believe the bio-bandages work so dramatically because fetuses pose unique proteins that let them heal even large incisions without scars.

YELLIN: Fetal tissue has to be understood in a context of what it can offer the medical community and what it can offer humanity. It is a very life-giving tissue. It has the ability to become many different types of tissue. It has the ability to generate all of the hormones and all of the growth factors that are needed in the right amounts, timed in the right way, the way nature intended, to promote normal wound healing.

GUPTA: From healing skin to developing the life-saving rubella and varicella vaccines to children, to experimental treatments for Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injuries, fetal tissue cells are harvested from fetuses that have already been aborted, often for medical reasons.

ALTA CHARO, BIOETHICIST: There ought not be a major ethical concern about using fetal tissue. It's quite akin to using tissue from any cadaver. Even if one views the act of abortion as a form of murder, there would be little objection to using organs from murder victims in order to save people's lives.

GUPTA: However, some in America believe any use of fetal tissue is wrong because it might promote abortion.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fetal tissue transplantation from an induced abortion may encourage and foster a greater incidence of abortion in the United States.

GUPTA: At present, there are no federal laws prohibiting the use of fetal cells for research, but the laws governing fetal cells do vary from state to state. Still, the potential uses are great.

YELLIN: I can quickly imagine its use in the treatment of chronic wounds, diabetic ulcers, bed sores, sacral sores from being chronically bedridden. It is a very interesting technology, but there's a lot more work that needs to be done.

GUPTA: But, also, a lot more promise for burn victims. Much larger studies are planned on adults and children.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come tonight, a new twist in the battle over same-sex parenting.

And later, high-stakes Scrabble. And, no, you can't buy a vowel.

A break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In a moment, what some people will do for a bingo with two X's and a Z.

But, first, at about a quarter to the hour, time to check back with Sophia Choi in Atlanta with some of the other news of the day.

Ms. Choi.

CHOI: Hi there, Aaron.

We begin this time in California with a ruling from the state Supreme Court on same-sex parenting, the court deciding that lesbians who conceive children while they are a couple must be treated as parents, even if they're not registered as a couple. This grants them, in effect, the same rights in this regard as heterosexual parents. It's believed to be the first decision of its kind in the country.

London next. A pair of top law enforcement officials from Brazil arriving to oversee the investigation into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes. Mr. Menezes, you might remember, was the electrician police mistook for a terrorist and shot to death on the London underground, one of the officials saying he was here to see how the investigation was going. When asked if he suspected a cover-up, he said, the answer is no.

Firefighters having a tough go of it north of Lisbon, Portugal. Wildfires and wind to blame here. So far, the flames from this fire have destroyed at least 10 homes and threatened a city of 100,000 people. It's not the only fire either. Another two dozen are burning across Portugal, which is suffering from its worst drought in years.

A judge in Los Angeles made it official, signing off today on Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's divorce. They were married nearly five years ago. Many people remember when they were when the engagement was announced. But it's now over, the paper citing irreconcilable differences. The decree becomes final in October.

Now, maybe if they spent more time dancing the tango. It couldn't hurt, anyway, huh? They might have even made the finals. You're looking at the World Tango Championships in Buenos Aires. Nearly 400 couples took part, but only one couple won. He's 19. She's just 18 and already hot to trot -- Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Thank you.

You know, I feel so out of it. I have no idea where I was when they were engaged.

Brent Shines (ph), mean anything to you? How about nib the ness (ph)? If it does, you're probably watching tonight from Reno, Nevada, where the National Scrabble Championship is going on, hundreds of slightly obsessed individuals building every word from any combination of letters they can. Never mind what the words actually mean. A poet would hate it. But our viewers loved it when we aired this story from the championships last year, reason enough to air it again, Scrabble.

Here's NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Initially, it looks like the Scrabble you played as a kid, but look more closely.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You may begin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One more.

NISSEN: This is competitive tournament Scrabble.

JOHN WILLIAMS, NATIONAL SCRABBLE ASSOCIATION: There are over 850 Scrabble experts here from 40 states and five or six different countries. The age range here is from 12 years old to, I think, 93 years old. Scrabble is everywhere and we're thrilled to be on the forefront.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shhhh.

NISSEN: Well, quietly thrilled. It takes intense concentration to make the highest scoring words using randomly drawn sets of seven tiles and place those words strategically on the board before time runs out, concentration and often obsessive preparation.

WILLIAMS: To be a top-level tournament Scrabble player, one really needs to spend about four or five hours a day on the game, studying word lists, practicing against a computer, doing exercises.

NISSEN: Players memorize lists of words, say all three- and four-letter words using the letter Z, words using the letter Q that don't need a U, and, of course, all permissible two-letter words.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A-A, A-B, A-D, A-E, A-G.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A-R, A-S, A-T.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: B-A, B-O, B-I, B-E.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: M-M, H-M.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: H-M.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: S-H.

WILLIAMS: There are 97 two-letter words, which every Scrabble tournament player knows by heart.

NISSEN: And needs to know to make parallel words like this one. H-I-D is a legal word. And so are S-I and O-D. Parallel plays help rack up the points. So do bingos.

ANDRE ORNISH, COMPETITOR: A bingo is when you play all seven of your tiles. Then you get a 50-point bonus.

NISSEN: To help make bingos, most competitive players arrange their tiles in alphabetical order into alphagrams. Many have spent hours, years memorizing all the words that can be made from those letter combinations.

WILLIAMS: I go down the street and I see a sign that says, Marines, I look at it and I see remains, seminar. Everybody here pretty much can look at a group of letters and tell you what words are in there.

NISSEN: Those words can be obscure. In this game between defending national champion Joel Sherman and Joe Edley, words including cade, firth, cowry. What do those words mean? To tournament players, the meanings are meaningless.

JOE EDLEY, FORMER CHAMPION: It's not cost-effective to spend time keeping them in your memory. It's just enough to know that they're words.

NISSEN: Even players who know all the words -- and there are some who have memorized the entire official Scrabble players dictionary -- have to contend with the luck of the draw, theirs and their opponents.

TREY WRIGHT, TOURNAMENT LEADER: Anything could happen. This is Scrabble. Any of my opponents can beat me if they draw the right tiles.

NISSEN: Players use ritual and talismans, so the tile gods will be kind, not give them a U with no Q, let them draw a blank -- tile, that is.

WILLIAMS: People have their lucky tile bags, their lucky rack, their lucky shirt.

NISSEN: Tournament players are not in it for the money. Top cash prize at thing nationals is $25,000, plus a very nice silver bowl. What draws them is something else, which even amateurs can experience.

WILLIAMS: If you haven't played Scrabble in a while, sit down. It doesn't matter if you play the word cat or you play the word quixotic. You'll remember how much fun it is to get a bunch of letters and randomly throw them around and then find a word and score.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four, five, six, 61.

NISSEN: Word up.

Beth Nissen, CNN.

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BROWN: When we come back, same story, two opposite headlines. How can that be? Morning papers after the break.

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(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, it's time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world. There is no theme, OK? None. This is work today.

Over here, the "Times of London." "Rock of Ages. Stones Are Back on the Road." Mick Jagger is -- how old do you think he is? Sixty-two years old. Anyway, the Stones are doing 35 gigs in 18 months. Gigs, that's a music term. And so, he'll be 63 by the time the tour is over at least. And they got pretty good reviews. They opened in Boston yesterday.

"The Daily Telegraph," an Australian paper. "From the Catwalk to a Bali Jail Cell." Yet another attractive Australian woman busted in Indonesia for carrying drugs, which means we will be doing this story about four dozen times in the days ahead. So remember the name Michelle Leslie. If you're an attractive Australian woman, do not bring drugs into Indonesia. They will get you. You will be on television.

"The Washington Times." OK, "Iraqis Finish, Draft Constitution," very straightforward headline that, isn't it?

"The Chattanooga Times Free Press." "Iraqis Fail to Complete Constitution." Now, if you read multiple newspapers, this is pretty confusing. "The International Herald Tribune." "Few Issues Remain For Iraqi Charter. They Include Federalism, Officials Say, But Sunnis Reject the Draft Process."

Now you're really confused. This is the saddest story I have seen today and maybe longer. Debt -- "This is the Cincinnati Enquirer." "Debt Cited in Slaying of Two Women Prosecutors. Retiree Says He Couldn't Pay Medical Bills," so he shot his wife and her sister. Isn't that horrible? Man.

The weather in Chicago, if you're going to be in Chicago, or even if you're not...

(CHIMES)

BROWN: Thank you. "Bottle it." Only 72 tomorrow.

Picture of the day is a wet one when we come back.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Heidi, do you think you'll give the names in the black book?

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): In the 1990s, Heidi Fleiss was one of Hollywood's most notorious characters. The then 20- something daughter of a wealthy pediatrician used her family's connections to attract and service rich and famous clients as the Hollywood madam.

Her arrest and trial became headline news. But she never did reveal the contents of her black book, and was sentenced to three years in prison for procuring prostitution and selling cocaine.

When Fleiss was released from prison, she started capitalizing on her notoriety legally. Fleiss has a line of clothing called Heidiwear and owns a West Hollywood boutique called the Little Shop of Sex.

She also invested in her looks, undergoing plastic surgery.

HEIDI FLEISS: I had the party, did the party, threw the party, was the party, I'm partied out. And I live every day to its fullest. And there's lessons that I've learned.

ZAHN: Fleiss wrote a book about her experiences called Pandering. She's also opening a legal brothel in Nevada.

On the personal side, she recently faced off in court against former boyfriend and actor Tom Sizemore, accusing him of abuse.

The Hollywood madam turns 40 this year and would like to be remembered for one thing.

FLEISS: That I took the oldest profession on Earth and did it better than anyone on Earth. That's it, and that's all. Alexander the Great conquered the world at 32. I did it at 22.

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BROWN: OK, well, you've got to be known for something.

Here's your picture of the day. It comes today from Switzerland. Go ahead. Show it to them. They can't tell. We showed you all those bad fires in Portugal. They have been flooding in Switzerland. What I can't figure out is, when the guy was driving, did he think it wasn't deep? He thought, oh, it won't be a problem. This car will go right through.

Anyway, they have had terrible floods in Switzerland. That's your picture of the day. Hey, it's the middle of August. That's the way it goes sometimes.

Good to have you with us tonight. We are all back here tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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