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Twisters Reported Across Five States; President Bush Arrives in South Korea for APEC Conference; Teen's Secret Life

Aired November 16, 2005 - 09:02   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The sun is up, and now there are some new pictures coming in of the damage this morning after those tornadoes raked across five states. Thirty-five twisters were reported. We're live with the forecast, and we're watching where these dangerous storms go next.
Looking for an exit strategy in Iraq. Some careful wording from the Senate. But is the message loud and clear? Republicans are starting to get nervous as the war stretches on.

And President Bush arriving on the next leg of his Asia tour and issuing a challenge to China on this AMERICAN MORNING.

ANNOUNCER: From the CNN Broadcast Center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Miles O'Brien.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the morning to you. It's the calm before the storm here in New York City and much of the East Coast as that wild weather which went through the midsection is on its way here. Nothing to trifle with there. Thirty-five tornadoes, five states.

S. O'BRIEN: A mess in Illinois and Missouri, and Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky. They really got walloped. You can see some of the pictures.

This is Madisonville, Kentucky, on Tuesday. Amateur videotape shows you just how bad the storm was.

Obviously homes knocked down and trees knocked down, and there are power outages this morning. Gas leaks as well.

They have two people reported killed now, and the National Guard is on the scene. They're still trying to help in rescue and recovery, but things look pretty -- pretty grim devastation-wise. You can see there Paris, Texas -- Tennessee, rather, some of the devastation, too.

M. O'BRIEN: Let's go right to the weather center. Bonnie Schneider is there this morning.

Bonnie, I think a question on a lot of people's minds, is the recipe there for a repeat today?

BONNIE SCHNEIDER, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Actually, not quite the same situation, Miles. We have a slight risk for severe weather today. Remember, yesterday was considered a high risk. And that comes from the severe storm center.

Yesterday we had the perfect setup, the biggest contrast you could have with air masses with that cold, dry air from the north, the warm, moist air ahead of it to the south, and then low pressure right over it. Not quite the same scenario today, but certainly some strong thunderstorms expected for the northeast.

Here's a look back at what we experienced. Thirty-five reports of tornadoes. High wind, 100 reports. Hail reports, three-quarters of an inch in diameter or more. Thirty five of those. A total report of 170 really stretching over quite a big portion of the country.

As we look towards conditions where we had some of the worst weather, where the tornadoes touched down here, Clarksville, Tennessee, up towards Madisonville, Kentucky, at least we're seeing some better weather at the moment.

Temperatures are still chilly. That cold air filtering in with conditions right at 39 degrees. But at least skies are clear this morning. We're getting a couple clouds out there, but we should be seeing some better weather. Just the winds will pick up, and that's what's important to note for folks that will be out and kind of surveying the damage.

And Miles, incidentally, today is going to be a big day for the National Weather Service. They're going to go out to the sites where the tornadoes touched down and take a look at the damage, and they'll help to determine where we are on that Fujita scale as far as classifying each individual tornado in terms of intensity.

M. O'BRIEN: So they can actually tell how strong the winds are by the damage pattern?

SCHNEIDER: Exactly. The damage pattern and exactly what the damage was.

When you're talking about the roof being ripped off a poorly- constructed home, it could just be a strong tornado, or an F2. But in order to get to that severe status, which is an F3, we see roofs being ripped off of well-constructed homes. That's what we saw in Evansville, Indiana, just a couple weeks ago.

M. O'BRIEN: Bonnie Schneider. Back with you in just a little bit. Thank you very much.

Those tornadoes, once again, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. Let's zoom in on the radar and take you down to Clarksville, Tennessee, which is just south of the Kentucky state line.

Tornadoes passed through there about 4:30 in the afternoon. And Rick Sanchez passed through not too long after that to get an assessment for us.

Rick, what are you seeing in there? RICK SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I can tell you what some of those National Weather Service officials are going to be seeing today. What they're going to be seeing is a lot of situations like the one you see here behind me. And, you know, for them it's numbers. Whether it is an F2, F3 or F3 on the Fujita scale, for these people, Miles, it's their lives.

This is a home that you're looking at behind me. I guess should say, or what is left of a home. I mean, there's the bed, there's the refrigerator, there's part of what was their kitchen, there's what's left of the furniture.

I mean, this is -- this is someone's life. And what's interesting is, we were talking about this a little bit earlier. Because of the hills here in this part of Tennessee, there are so many mobile homes, and in some cases not just mobile homes. There's a house down the road over here that was also lifted off its foundation and it was not a mobile home.

But because there are hills, not just with these mobile homes, but with cars as well, when the wind picks it up and starts moving it, if it is on the downside of a hill it literally will start rolling down, just like this one did. It started -- in fact, here, let me show you the foundation.

This is the foundation for this home right here. Now, you could tell this is where it was. That's where it ended up, as you can see, another 30 yards or so down on the bottom of the hill.

Here's the tough part about all of this. There was a 12-year-old little girl that was inside that mobile home when this happened. She was in there when that thing started tumbling down to the bottom of the hill. And somehow she was able to get herself out.

So these are the stories that we're going to be hearing here today from people who got through this.

Let me show you something else which is interesting, because, you know, Miles, you've covered a lot of these as well. A lot of times with hurricanes and tornadoes, the injuries don't happen during the storm but after the storm. And oftentimes, they can happen with situations like this.

Can you get this shot, John?

Here we go. This is what was a live wire. We're told it's not live anymore. I'm not going to touch it to test it, by the way.

But they've gone and put these little markers right there. See that light going off, that little signal? That's a way of warning people to let them know that there are wires on the ground. There's a lot of them all over the place out here, and we'll be checking on that as well.

Miles, back over to you.

M. O'BRIEN: Rick, we don't want to see you get zapped again. Let's ask quickly about the 12-year-old girl. How is she?

SANCHEZ: We haven't been able to determine yet, although we've talked to some of the officials here who told us she was able to get out. We said, "Was she treated on the scene or was she sent to a hospital?" They said, "As far as we know, she was treated on the scene."

So miraculously she was able to get out, although we haven't been able to personally talk to her. This came from the fire chief here in this little town, which, by the way, is called Palmyra.

M. O'BRIEN: Rick Sanchez, thank you very much. We'll be back with you in just a little bit.

Let's shift gears and head overseas now.

President Bush arriving in South Korea just a little while ago this morning. It is the second stop on a four-nation Asian trip. We've been telling you about it.

Our senior Asia correspondent is Mike Chinoy. He joins us from Busan, South Korea.

Mike, give us an idea of some of the issues the president will be addressing while he's in South Korea.

MIKE CHINOY, CNN SR. ASIA CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Miles.

Well, he begins his official activities Thursday morning with a one-on-one summit with South Korea's president, Roh Moo-hyun. One of the big issues there will be the continuing crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons program and what to do about it. Also, the complicated state of the U.S.-South Korea security alliance which has faced all sorts of tensions in recent years.

Then he will be focusing on the APEC summit. The leaders of 21 Pacific nations and economies getting together for two days. A lot on their agenda: trade issues, terrorism, security. And one issue that the president touched upon in his speech he made in Japan just before coming over here, the threat of a bird flu pandemic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We now face a new and potentially more deadly threat from avian flu, which has infected bird populations across Asia and elsewhere. I'm glad to see that governments around the region are already taking steps to prevent avian flu from becoming a pandemic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHINOY: One of the issues that they'll be trying to sort out here is what kind of joint efforts all of these leaders and their governments can make to deal with avian flu. The seriousness of the threat underscored by some alarming news from China. The Chinese reporting their first three human cases of bird flu. That's very, very worrying.

And the Chinese authorities now saying that they plan to vaccinate the country's entire stock of livestock -- of poultry against avian flu. That's more than five billion ducks, chickens and geese -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Mike Chinoy in Busan. Thank you very much -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: An update now on a story we've been following all week, that double killing in Pennsylvania. We're learning more now about the relationship between the two teenagers in the middle of the story.

Allan Chernoff is live for us in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Allan, good morning.

ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN SR. CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad. And this is a tragic tale of teenage love gone terribly wrong.

Eighteen-year-old David Ludwig is in county prison after his appearance at Lancaster County Court behind me earlier yesterday. He is charged with murdering the parents of his 14-year-old girlfriend, Kara Borden, after an apparent dispute about the dating. And it appears the relationship was far more intimate than most friends and family had realized.

According to a police affidavit of an interview with a very close friend of Ludwig, that friend describes the relationship as "an ongoing, secret, intimate relationship of a sexual nature" The affidavit continues, "They often communicated flirtatious messages and exchanged inappropriate images of one another via various electronic media, to include their computer systems and cell phones."

A pretrial hearing has been set for next Wednesday. And if convicted, Ludwig could face life in prison -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Allan Chernoff with an update on that fascinating case.

It's really the top story that everybody is following online this morning, too, Allan. Thanks for the update.

Other stories making news. Let's get right to Carol Costello for that.

Good morning, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Soledad.

Good morning to all of you.

Police say they now know who the cell phone bandit is. They also say luck in that surveillance video led to her capture. Police say this woman is 19-year-old Candice Martinez. She's now in jail, held without bond. Her boyfriend also in jail. Police say he drove the getaway car.

Now, there are reports he once worked at Wachovia. Hence, maybe it's not so surprising the two allegedly held up four Wachovia banks in the D.C. area.

Who was she talking to? We don't know yet.

A sad marker in New Orleans. For the first time since Katrina hit two and a half months ago, the city has had its first murder. A neighbor of writer John Newland was found stabbed to death in her home. Newland himself was hurt but is expected to recover. The woman's identity, the victim, is not being released.

Police say the last recorded murder in the city was on August 27, two days before Katrina emptied the city.

The plot thickens in the CIA leak investigation. And this time the focus is on "Washington Post" editor Bob Woodward.

According to "The Post," Woodward says a senior White House official casually mentioned Valerie Plame's name in a conversation in June 2003. Now, if true, Woodward's testimony changing the timeline in the case, possibly making the unnamed official the leak and not Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who, as you know, was indicted earlier this month.

Ay, dios mio.

S. O'BRIEN: You go, girl.

COSTELLO: Latin superstar Juan Gabriel takes a painful tumble at his concert in Houston. Just minutes into the first number, Gabriel's foot became entangled in his microphone cord.

You'll see it in just a second -- oh! And then he falls. He fell right off the stage.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh my god.

COSTELLO: Six feet to the ground.

M. O'BRIEN: Ay caramba.

COSTELLO: You're right. He broke his wrist and he had a slight concussion.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes.

COSTELLO: He's doing OK. He's going to recover. But, oh, the poor guy.

S. O'BRIEN: Amazing he only broke his wrist.

M. O'BRIEN: Ooh, man. COSTELLO: I know. He hit his head, too, which is a bad thing.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, wow.

COSTELLO: But apparently he's going to be OK. But all the rest of his concerts in Houston are being canceled.

M. O'BRIEN: Ouch.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh man. Poor guy.

M. O'BRIEN: What is that, mala cabeza?

S. O'BRIEN: Si. Claro que si.

M. O'BRIEN: Oh, si.

S. O'BRIEN: And your "Ay, dios mio" was fabulous.

COSTELLO: Thank you.

The saddest thing for him is that this video is going to be replayed like endlessly throughout the day.

M. O'BRIEN: It could be good for the career. You never know.

S. O'BRIEN: And at least he wasn't -- I mean, you know, it's interesting to see, but you always hope that nobody is really badly injured.

COSTELLO: And he wasn't.

S. O'BRIEN: That's good. All right. Thanks, Carol.

COSTELLO: Sure.

M. O'BRIEN: Maybe he thought there was a mosh pit out there.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh. You, see. It's that. I feel sorry for the poor guy. Because then it's...

M. O'BRIEN: Como se dice mosh pit in Espanol?

S. O'BRIEN: They don't say mosh pit en Espanol.

M. O'BRIEN: OK.

Coming up, Bill Nye, The Science Guy, in the house. We'll ask him about all these late-season storms, climate change, global warming.

What do you think? What do you think?

S. O'BRIEN: I'm going with global warning.

M. O'BRIEN: Correct. That's correct, Monty. No, we don't know that yet scientifically. But we will -- we'll bat that around, among other issues always entertaining, always informative.

Stay with us for more AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: A bad rash of tornadoes. We've been talking about them all morning. Two are dead, 32 injured. Lots of damage in its wake.

Five states effected this go-round. And we've been seeing a series of tornadoes in the fall.

Now, we normally associate tornadoes with the spring. But the real key here is, when hot -- hot temperatures collide with cold temperatures -- and that, of course, happens in the spring -- fall is another time, it being a transitional season.

Bill Nye, The Science Guy, joins us from Los Angeles to further elucidate us on this whole phenomenon.

It is unusual, nonetheless, Bill, to see them in November. What do you think is going on?

BILL NYE, "THE SCIENCE GUY": Well, this is not evidence of climate change. But if climate change is responsible, this is what you'd expect. So...

M. O'BRIEN: Well, wait a minute. Help us out with that. Help us out with that.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, what I mean is, when there's more heat energy in the atmosphere, you would expect to have more severe storms.

M. O'BRIEN: OK.

NYE: So this would be consistent with that sort of model. It's way too early to tell. It's going to take decades.

M. O'BRIEN: So...

NYE: But if you like to worry about things...

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, we do.

NYE: ... if you are a risk-taking taxpayer and voter, this would be something to worry about.

M. O'BRIEN: In other words -- in other words, as the climate generally heats up, you have more potential energy to create big hurricanes and more frequent, perhaps more powerful, tornadoes, correct?

NYE: Yes. The thing is that tornadoes are pretty common.

There are a thousand of them a year or so. But boy, this year has been -- I mean, I'm the first to say it has been bad, and unexpectedly bad. And what it is, is when you get these pressure differentials -- you referred to potential energy, and I love potential energy. But this is actually heat energy.

M. O'BRIEN: You're kind of -- I always think of you as a kinetic kind of guy.

NYE: Yes, but I mean, so -- when you have more heat, you have a possibility for more swirls.

M. O'BRIEN: Right.

NYE: And so these swirls are -- compared with, for example, the state of Iowa, a tornado is a pretty small thing.

M. O'BRIEN: Right.

NYE: But it doesn't take a very big tornado to mess up human activity.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk about tornadoes. You said they're kind of a common thing. It just depends on where they are. Let's go to Mars for a moment.

NYE: Yes, good.

M. O'BRIEN: The truth is -- and we have some pictures that were gathered by either Spirit or Opportunity. I'm not sure which of the rovers gathered this.

Look at this kind of time lapse here. And I want you to watch these little flashes here as they come across here.

NYE: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: There you see them up there, boom, boom, boom.

NYE: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: That is a...

NYE: A dust devil.

M. O'BRIEN: Dust devil or dirt devil? What's better?

NYE: Well, I like dust devil on Mars.

M. O'BRIEN: OK. Let's go with dust devil. Dirt Devil I think is a vacuum cleaner. So let's go...

NYE: But this is an example, just to talk about the stuff that I like to talk about, this is an example of exploring another world. It may give us insight into what goes on here on Earth.

See, we understand the conditions that create tornadoes pretty well. But to actually predict when they're actually going to show up at a specific place is quite difficult. Because as I say, a tornado compared with the state of Tennessee, for example, is a very small phenomenon, the state of Tennessee being a big thing.

But if you -- we can understand the conditions really well, especially the vertical conditions, the horizontal, east to west, north to south things, you can monitor pretty well with things on the ground, instruments on the ground. But monitoring stuff above the ground is difficult.

But we could get better and better at it as we study atmospheres here on Earth and on Mars. It's serious, serious business.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, take a look -- this is one from the Mars global surveyor. Take a look at this.

Here, if you look left to right, there's the track. And there you see, you know, what -- I have no way of knowing how tall a twister that might be. Does that really help us understand what happened last night, five states in the middle of the U.S.?

NYE: Well, it may, because if you try -- if you can create computer models that are successful on Mars and on Earth, then you think that you understand these phenomena pretty well.

M. O'BRIEN: All right.

NYE: It's exciting, but of course this is really difficult business. And I remind everybody that -- sort of the surprising thing. The speeds of winds in hurricanes are substantially smaller than the common speeds in tornadoes.

M. O'BRIEN: Right.

NYE: Tornadoes will be 200, 300 miles an hour.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, and there's the storm surge and there's other things.

A final thought. We talked to a storm chaser earlier, a professional storm chaser.

NYE: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: He says he does it for science. You buy that?

NYE: He says...

M. O'BRIEN: He says it helps -- him chasing storms, getting videotape. is good for scientific understanding.

NYE: Absolutely.

M. O'BRIEN: You do believe that? OK.

NYE: Oh, sure.

M. O'BRIEN: OK.

NYE: Well, let me ask you this, which way do tornadoes spin?

M. O'BRIEN: Clockwise -- in our hemisphere?

NYE: Well, very, very rarely clockwise. They're usually counterclockwise.

M. O'BRIEN: Oh, there you go.

NYE: And so you -- you've got to think, well, why are they always counterclockwise? There's got to be a reason. So studying them should enhance our fundamental understanding.

M. O'BRIEN: And are they clockwise in the southern hemisphere?

NYE: They're somewhat rarer.

M. O'BRIEN: Oh.

NYE: So it's hard to say. You just don't have the conditions you have in North America and the Midwest -- very many places.

M. O'BRIEN: I always learn something. Once again, Bill Nye, The Science Guy.

NYE: Thank you. Good morning.

M. O'BRIEN: I appreciate it. Good to have you drop by -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: It's always nice to see Bill. That's great.

Coming up this morning, an alarming new study on some popular diet supplements. Could they cause heart problems? Our morning "House Call" is just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Anybody who's taking any kind of diet supplements should be listening carefully to the results of this new study. American consumers spend about $18 billion annually on dietary supplements. There are like 29,000 products on the market. But the label is not always accurate. In fact, sometimes they are way off.

Elizabeth Cohen is our medical correspondent. She's at the CNN Center with details of this new study this morning.

Hey, Elizabeth. Good morning.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi. Good morning, Soledad.

Soledad, sometimes when people go shopping for these supplements they think, oh, well, the Food and Drug Administration must be protecting me, they must check out these labels and make sure that they're correct. Well, we've got news for you. This is a largely unregulated industry, which means that they can sometimes claim things that aren't always completely what many people would consider to be true.

So this was a study done by a group called consumerlabs.com. They actually went out and brought some of these products, and what they found is that the ingredients listed on the label are not always there in the amounts that are stated. So let's take a look at what they found for three products that we have right here.

The first product is called Zantrex-3. And what they said about this one is that it had 1,200 milligrams of caffeine per -- what they found is that it had 1,200 milligrams of caffeine per day. And that is a lot more than what is listed on the label. And too much caffeine could be a potential for cardiovascular problems.

Now, the second product is called Trimspa. And what the study found -- and there you see it there -- is that it has 42 percent more chromium than what the label states. Too much chromium can be toxic to your liver. And doctors really don't know what chromium can do when you take it for months and months or years and years because they just haven't studied it.

And then a third product that they talked about, called Ripped Fuel, that it has synephrine and caffeine, both of which are stimulants, and that the caffeine is equivalent to 11 cans of cola. So you take one serving of this, you get 11 cans of cola. And also -- or one day of it, rather -- 11 cans of cola. And then also, too much of that, too much of those ingredients, can cause arrhythmia and high blood pressure problems.

Well, we called the makers of these products and we asked them for their responses. And here's what they had to say.

Take a look at this first one. This is from Zoller Laboratories, which makes Zantrex.

They said, "Each serving of Zantrex-3 has approximately the same caffeine content as a Starbucks' grande. But, of course, remember, you're taking more than one serving a day. So again, that's a lot of caffeine all in one day.

The second one is from the makers of Trimspa. They deny the allegations that Trimspa X32 contains 42 percent more chromium than stated on the labeling. They said that their batch "testing records conclusively demonstrate that the consumerlab.com report is categorically false."

And then the third one -- let's take a look -- or actually, sorry, that was the third one. So those are the three that we have there. And they said that that -- that basically they found that these Consumer Lab findings were false -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Let me ask you a question about some of the ingredients. Are there any ingredients that when you're going through a store would be a red flag, that people should watch for? Because you -- you know, if, in fact, the label is off or outright wrong, it could be a big problem. Maybe outside of the chromium that we saw in one.

COHEN: Right. Actually, what you really want to watch for is not just chromium, as you said, but any products that contain more than one ingredient. Because you're probably, according to the experts we talked to, better off if you're just dealing with one ingredient, because ingredients have their own reactions, and then sometimes they also mix and can form a separate reaction.

So those are definitely things that you want to -- that you want to look for.

Another thing that you want to look for is that some of these products will claim to have proprietary or secret formulas. That is definitely something that you want to think about.

And you want to also be on the lookout for stimulants. For example, guarana, cola nut, green tea. Those are all things that you want to be on the lookout for. Not saying that you shouldn't take them, but that those can sometimes have some health effects.

S. O'BRIEN: And I guess the takeaway is that, as a consumer, you are really ultimately responsible. You have to make those calls.

COHEN: You sure are. Again, the -- people think that the FDA is out there protecting them. Not in all cases. That's not true.

So here are some tips if you are going to go shopping for some of these supplements. Ask yourself, does it sound too good to be true? Are they promising too much, too much weight loss, too much muscle? Then it probably isn't true.

Think twice about chasing the latest headline. Just because your buddy just heard about it doesn't mean that it's true, doesn't mean it's good for you.

Also, contact the manufacturer for product specifics and ask doctors before taking your supplement. Tell your -- bring it in to your doctor. Show it to them, and say, "What do you think?"

S. O'BRIEN: Elizabeth Cohen reporting for us from CNN Center.

Thanks, Elizabeth.

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