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CNN Live Today

The Ailing U.S. Auto Industry; Divided Minds of Two Sisters

Aired November 22, 2005 - 10:30   ET

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

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We are just past the half hour. I'm Daryn Kagan. Here's a look at what's happening "Now in the News."
The Justice Department expected to announce an indictment next hour against Jose Padilla. Padilla has been in military custody for two years, but has not yet been charged. He's been accused with plotting with al Qaeda to set off a radioactive dirty bomb here in the U.S.

Panic buying of bottled water is going on in one Chinese city. They're scared of contaminated water. The water supply in Harbin City is being cut off for four days beginning today and there's been public concern over a petrochemical plant explosion near a river that supplies the city's water. Bottled water supplies are being shipped to the city of eight million from other areas.

Germany has its first woman chancellor. Lawmakers today approved Angel Merkel's nomination to succeed Gerhard Schroeder. She becomes the first former East German to lead the country. Mrs. Merkel's party was forced to form a grand coalition for Schroeder's party after tight elections in September.

And a White House tradition continues this afternoon. President Bush will pardon the national Thanksgiving turkey. It might surprise you where this year's turkey is going next. It's going to Disney Land. It will be part of the holiday display and remain at the park for the rest of its life. After today's event, the president and Mrs. Bush head to their Texas ranch for Thanksgiving.

Right now in Washington, Ford Motor Company's CEO and chairman Bill Ford is providing a glimpse of his company's struggles and more bad news on the U.S. auto industry. General Motors has announced plans to lay off some 30,000 workers and implement closures or cutbacks at as many as a dozen plants in North America.

Ford Motor Company pioneered the automaking industry, but its storied history provides no assurances for the future. Analysts say an announcement on its plant closings appears imminent as well. One big reason is Toyota. The Japanese company is poised to become the number one automaker in the U.S.

CNN's Ali Velshi is in New York with the closer look at the ailing American auto industry. Ali, good morning. But really not for a lot in the auto industry.

AL VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, not for a lot of people. It's good to see you, Daryn. You're absolutely right. Ford pioneered a lot of things in the auto industry. It was the first mass-marketed car. And in fact, GM started in 1908 and by 1931 had become the country's -- the world's biggest carmaker.

Now, this problem that we're facing right now with the American car makers goes back to the 1970s, when the Japanese cars found an entry into the U.S. because they were more affordable and they were more fuel efficient. You weren't buying Hondas and Toyotas because they were fabulous cars. You were buying them because it was a value proposition.

Well, what's happened is, over time, people who bought those cars, Honda and Toyota and other car markers got better at fit and finish and design. Meanwhile, the American carmakers took longer to get around to those things. They depended on their icons -- either the big vehicles or the sports cars -- and over time, they lost market share.

Now, starting about five years ago, they knew they needed to get it back, so they started the price wars. And then they started, you know, those low interest and no interest things. The idea was get people to keep buying North American cars so you could keep those assembly lines going and you could keep three ships going and you never ended up with too many cars at the end of year.

Well, the end result is they kept discounting cars so much that, while GM and Ford kept selling lots of cars, they weren't making money on those cars. They were making money on the high -- the big cars, the trucks and the SUV. But that was a bit of a gravy train. It still continues. We still sell more trucks in this country than cars. But, you know, that was in the days before gas was costing what it is today. At some point that changes and the Japanese cars tend to be the ones you turn to.

So I'll just show you a quick chart here to take a look over the last five years, ever since those price wars started. You can see that Ford and GM's share -- GM is the top line, Ford's the bottom line; and those are in millions of cars -- have started to decline.

Now take a look at when you add Toyota into that chart. That's Toyota on the bottom. It is slowly increasing. Now, that's just in numbers of cars sold in the U.S. By next year, maybe 2007, Toyota will surpass GM as the world's biggest automaker.

KAGAN: So that's not on supply, what they're supplying. At the end of day, they have to come up with something that the American people want to buy.

VELSHI: Right.

KAGAN: On the other side, they have the huge costs and pensions and healthcare and other labor issues, Ali.

VELSHI: And that's what these lay-offs were all about. It was addressing the cost issue. Because a lot of people thought GM itself was in bankruptcy. Its major parts supplier is in bankruptcy. It's got these huge pension and healthcare liabilities, it's got labor problems. So GM took one step by trying to deal with the fact that they're not hopefully going out of bankruptcy until the end of the year, because that will affect a lot more workers. On the other side, they've got to be more innovative.

Now, if you look at Ford, Ford is taking out ads talking about that one of its brands that it owns, Volvo -- Volvo is known for safety and reliability. So Ford is actually mentioning Volvo by name. We're going to use Volvo's safety and reliability record in all of our cars. Ford says that they're going to have half of the cars as hybrid vehicles because they know gas a concern.

GM's going to have to innovate, but none of this happens overnight, Daryn. It took them a long time to lose their lead and it will -- it may take several years to get it back. They need to concentrate on innovation, design, quality, fit and finish and getting more fuel-efficient cars.

KAGAN: It's like trying to turn around a big semi.

VELSHI: It really is.

KAGAN: Not that easy. Ali, thank you. Good to see you.

Fascinating story just ahead. It involves two sisters born together. They're twins, but they ended up with two very different lives. One woman's dissent into mental illness and the other journey her twin took trying to save her. Their story, just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Many people gathering with family and friends this Thanksgiving weekend to celebrate. We offer now a story of twin sisters with a very special relationship.

CNN's Kyra Phillips shows us how love holds them together.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two beautiful babies, twins. Carolyn and Pamela. So alike that it's almost impossible to tell them apart.

As the twins began to walk and talk, the comparisons began.

CAROLYN SPIRO, SISTER: I was seen as the fragile, second twin. Pammy was seen as the strong, smart twin, who didn't have problems.

PHILLIPS: And yet it was Pamela, who everyone called Pammy, the strong, smart twin, whose life began to unravel when the girls were in the sixth grade. She remembers the day she first heard the voices -- November 22nd, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was killed.

PAMELA SPIRO WAGNER, SISTER: It was the first time I heard voices.

PHILLIPS: What did the voices say to you? WAGNER: They'd say things like kill him, kill her, kill him, kill her, kill him, kill her. Will you kill her? Will you kill her?

PHILLIPS: Did you tell anybody?

WAGNER: No, I didn't.

PHILLIPS: Carolyn, when did you realize...

SPIRO: That something was wrong?

PHILLIPS: ... that something was wrong.

SPIRO: Seventh grade. She didn't shower. She didn't know how to dress. She didn't do anything that all the other seventh grade kids seemed to know how to do.

PHILLIPS: Pammy struggled for years to ignore the voices. No one knew that she was suffering from schizophrenia, and she continued to excel in high school.

She was accepted to Brown University, as was her twin, Carolyn. But this is where the twins' lives took dramatically different paths.

Carolyn went on to graduate from Harvard Medical School and became a psychiatrist. She got married and had two children.

But right away, things were very different for Pammy. She overdosed on sleeping pills during her freshman year at Brown, and began cutting and burning herself.

WAGNER: All logic is suspended, and when they say, burn, baby, burn, then they start telling me that I have to kill myself, I have to do it.

PHILLIPS: Although Pamela graduated from Brown, she's never been able to keep a job or hold on to a romantic relationship. She has spent years in and out of hospitals, fighting the demons in her head.

WAGNER: I would say it's a waking nightmare. It's hell.

PHILLIPS: Are there any alternative therapies?

Last year, the voices ordered her to light herself on fire, suicide attempts. A body covered in cigarette burns.

SPIRO: I can't stop her. I can't -- I'm a psychiatrist. I'm her twin sister, and I can't stop her.

PHILLIPS: Carolyn couldn't stop Pammy's pain, but she could help her express it. And here's where the twins, whose lives had taken such opposite paths, began to come together again.

WAGNER: I wake in a psychiatric ward, on a bare mattress on a floor of an empty room.

PHILLIPS: The sisters began a memoir called "Divided Minds."

SPIRO: I want to dare her to kill herself.

PHILLIPS: The book is a gripping tale of the tragedy of mental illness. It chronicles the tested but unbreakable bond of two sisters.

Carolyn, you wrote in the book, "I can never really know the hell in which Pammy lives. When I hang up the phone, hell disappears, but she knows nothing else. Hell is her life. When I look back over the past decades, I weep for her."

Is that hard to listen to?

SPIRO: There have been times when I've thought about Pammy's life and thought about my life, and wondered how is this fair? I have had so much joy. I have had -- I have such an incredibly wonderful life. And she has all the suffering.

WAGNER: You know, I've never felt, one, envious of Linny, and I never felt like I deserved more. Not because I feel guilty or evil, but because I could have developed cancer at age 19 and died at age 20. So, there are fates that are worse.

PHILLIPS: The last time Pamela was in the hospital was nearly a year ago.

Finding the right treatment has been difficult. Out of desperation, Pamela even resorted to electroshock therapy. Finally, her doctors found a combination of medicines that help. Still, a visiting nurse keeps the pills in a lock box, so Pamela only takes what she needs.

WAGNER: To look at me, I'm doing a million times better than I was just a year ago.

PHILLIPS: The voices are still there, but they don't control her the way they did for so long.

WAGNER: Hurtful, harmful voices don't come right now.

PHILLIPS: Yet, even today, evidence of her illness remains in her own home. She put tinfoil up on her bedroom walls to block out radio waves that she says contaminate her brain.

WAGNER: And I think that the radio waves contaminated my brain.

PHILLIPS: As babies, they were mirror images of each other. As adults, they mourn the part of their lives together that has been lost.

SPIRO: She doesn't really understand what she means to me.

PHILLIPS: Can you imagine life without your sister, Pam?

WAGNER: No. SPIRO: No.

PHILLIPS: That's love.

WAGNER: Well, I -- I think it is love, I guess. I just don't know what it feels like.

SPIRO: How could I give up on her? I mean, she is part of me. But it's like -- it would be like stopping breathing myself.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: So, have you hit the stores yet for your holiday shopping? There is mixed news out today as U.S. consumers get ready to holiday shop. The National Retail Federation says that holiday spending will be up about 6 percent. But retail consultant FDI sees no such rosy picture. FDI is telling retailers to expect moderate increases of only 2.5 percent, blaming back-to-back years of soaring energy costs for consumers skittishness.

Big hopes are being pinned on the net for shoppers this holiday, but a software group warns one in four shoppers is still too afraid of security to trust using credit cards online. Alas, if I only had such a fear to be afraid of using my credit cards, online in or in the stores.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

KAGAN: I want to show you -- this is a live picture out of Tampa, Florida. It's the Debra Lafave case. You might not know her name, but you might know her story. This is the sex with student trial and apparently there's a plea deal that has been worked out. Lafave is accused of having sex with a 14-year-old student when she was a teacher at a Greco Middle School.

Since that case broke last summer, her attorney has insisted the only deal that she would accept would be one that did not include prison. Not clear at this time if that's what they worked out. But once again, a plea deal being worked out in the student sex case in Tampa, Florida.

And as we check the time around the country and around the world, it is 7:53 in Bellingham, Washington. That's where cold and fog are the best words to describe the weather there. It is 10:53 in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the town's 18-year-old mayor is beginning his first full day on the job. That story, plus Jacqui's coast-to- coast weather forecast, right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Take a look at this. It's a deadly police chase here in Georgia caught on videotape. The Camden County Sheriff's Department has released video of a deputy chasing this red pickup. It was on I- 95 last week. Witnesses say the driver, Charles Lamb (ph), was threatening other motorists. The chase ended with the deputy shooting and killing Lamb. As you can see, threatening officers there with his gun.

Also, he was barely old enough to vote for himself, but 18-year- old Michael Sessions is now the mayor of his city. The high school senior took the reigns of Hillsdale, Michigan, with the simple words: "I will." Hillsdale has a population of about 8,200 people. It's about 100 miles southwest of Detroit, Michigan.

(WEATHER REPORT)

KAGAN: Still ahead on CNN LIVE TODAY, as we have reporting, the Justice Department expected to announce an indictment against Jose Padilla. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will hold a press conference shortly. We will bring that to you live when that happens.

Plus, an 18-year-old boy allegedly kills his girlfriend's parents and flees to Indiana with her. Prosecutors are now saying she willingly left with him. So what's next for the 14-year-old? We'll have a live update on that story, as the second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY begins right now.

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