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American Morning

Ariel Sharon Gravely Ill; Tragedy At Sago Mines; Minding Your Business; Cutting-Edge Gadgets

Aired January 05, 2006 - 07:30   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Into the way the federal government polices the coal mining industry. And at the root of it will be a look at what caused this mine accident specifically. There's tremendous lightening strikes in the area that have been documented right around the time of that explosion. Were there some safety violations at the mine which might have made matters worse? And, finally, how did that miss communication occur after this whole incident occurred? All that will be the focus on a lot of attention in the coming weeks and months.
Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Miles, thanks.

Another story we're following here, the grave illness of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has thrown the country potentially into political upheaval. A big election is set for March and the prime minister's new political party is right in the thick of it all. Joining us this morning is former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. He's also the chairman of an international fact finding committee on violence in the Middle East. And we've talked many times, really every time something happens in the Middle East that could affect the road map to peace, we are sitting on the couch and chatting.

First, let's talk about Ariel Sharon. His condition is reported to be very, very bad. If he dies or if he is significantly disabled, first, what happens to his party, the centrist party?

GEORGE MITCHELL, FORMER SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: Like many other things, unknown at the moment. Clearly it will be hurt. It's a party that was founded largely based on his personality. They've attracted some good and well-known people. No one of his stature exists really in the party or in Israel.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: His deputy has taken over. His name is Ehud Olmert and he's sort of in charge now essentially now.

MITCHELL: Yes.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Does he have sort of the force of personality where he could rise up and lead the party as successfully as Ariel Sharon has?

MITCHELL: I think he could. I know him. He's a former mayor of Jerusalem. He's an experienced, well-known political figure. Obviously, in recent years, operating under the shadow of Prime Minister Sharon, but that's a possibility. He will be a strong candidate. I think he'll be a very effective prime minister if he ever gets there. However, I think the most likely beneficiary is Prime Minister Sharon's rival, former Prime Minister Netanyahu.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Who leads the Likud party.

MITCHELL: Who stayed with Likud and is now running in the election. It's hard to know because so much is uncertain and people's reactions are immediate and personal. But once they settle down, probably Netanyahu will be a beneficiary of (INAUDIBLE) election.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Why do you think Likud an not the labor party? I'm mentioning basically the parties that sort of could -- would be in the mix of a big power grab.

MITCHELL: Yes, it's a time of great insecurity, anxiety, and uncertainty in the Middle East on both sides. You now have instability on the Israeli side. You have a high level of instability on the Palestinian side because of the gains being made by Hamas and the election, the difficulty of establishing law and order by the Palestinian authority, although President Abbas is obviously working very hard at that. And so I think people look for security first, strong leaders. What they perceive as strong leaders first.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: You're referencing all this upheaval essentially in the Palestinian territories. And some Palestinians that they've quoted in the various news reports have been celebrating his illness. You know, saying it's a gift from God essentially. And others have said, actually even though they don't particularly like Sharon, have said he's better to us alive than dead. Do you think that's true for the Palestinians?

MITCHELL: Well, of course, they tend to look more at Sharon's record in previous years as opposed to recent years. I spent a lot of time over there. I didn't meet many Israelis who ever thought highly of Arafat, nor did I ever meet many Palestinians what thought highly of Sharon. These are societies in conflict and therefore they tend not to favor the -- whatever -- whoever the leader is of the other side.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes, it's not a shocker that they're celebrating to a large degree. But is he -- are they worse off if everything stops sort of in the middle? Any gains made by the fema (ph) party?

MITCHELL: I think everyone is worse off because there has been very little momentum in the process until now. Much of it generated by Sharon himself and by President Abbas on the other side. And the problem is, that the more uncertainty, the greater the likelihood of instability, the more violence I think is likely to follow as people don't see a clear political path to their goals.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: What about the U.S. policy? Much of the policy has been based on these goals set by Ariel Sharon. MITCHELL: Well, Israel is a democracy, of course, and they have an established process of selecting the leadership. And the United States policy must be, of course, to respect that. While I think it will be a setback, particularly the president and Mr. Sharon have had a good relationship, I don't think the United States policy is based on any one person, particularly when dealing with democratic societies where we respect the right of the people of Israel to select their leaders in accordance with their laws.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Well, I guess we'll all watch and wait and really just see the fall out. MITCHELL: Yes.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Senator George Mitchell, nice to see you and check in with you, as always.

MITCHELL: Nice to see you again.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Thank you.

MITCHELL: Thank you.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Let's get right back out to Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN: Soledad, thank you very much.

Monday morning, 6:20 a.m. local time, or thereabouts, an explosion just rocked the area that I'm standing on right now, the Sago Mine number one. Shortly thereafter, some workers in that mine came out and reported that there were at least 13 miners trapped on the other side of the explosion. And not too long after that, became a frantic process to try to find out where they were and try to get help to them.

Among the people who were key in all that, was Mike Ross, who has a drilling company in this area, and was called right after the holiday, which, of course, complicated matters. We'll talk about that in a moment. To get a drill boring a hole down to the location as best they could determine where those 13 were.

Mike, what was it like? First of all, you normally spend time drilling wells for water or oil or so forth. You never had a job quite like this. What was that like?

MIKE ROSS, COORDINATED DRILLING EFFORT: It was quite a challenge for all of us. And we were all very concerned. And it was a matter of gathering up equipment from various companies and various friends in the oil and gas business that had experience in drilling such as this. And we were able to get the rigs assembled, get trucks and bulldozers and everything we need. And once they determined the point to drill into the mines, why we were able to do that. It took quite a while to do that because of the holidays, because of the bowl games and difficult to find personnel.

MILES O'BRIEN: Yes, coming off a holiday made it difficult to get rescue teams together, all those sorts of things made it difficult. But finding them was very difficult. You said you could probably have been ready to drill in about 10 or 11 hours after the incident. It wasn't until 21 hours after the explosion that you were actually to begin boring into the ground. That's a long time, but it was difficult for them to pinpoint the location, wasn't it?

ROSS: It was. The surveyors were having problems with the satellites on the GPS system and everything. It was very cloudy. There was lightening and a lot of bad conditions on the surface. And we were standing by. And then we had an original site that was done on the GPS by a local individual here and then we had to move it about 30 feet. So then we have to take the bulldozer and you have to cut another bench in order to set up the equipment and everything. So that all takes time and then putting everything together.

But then we were very accurate on going down 260 feet and hit the mines just where they anticipated. And once they -- fortunately, didn't hit much water on the way down. So there wasn't much water going into the mines or anything such as that.

Once we drilled into the mines, then we lowered the drill pipe down in the mine, we shut all the engines down and listened for sounds hoping to hear something. We didn't hear anything. So then we took a hammer and was beating on the side of the drill pipe to send out a signal. And we still received nothing back. So then we pulled the drill pipe out of the hole and they have a camera nearby, a gentlemen out of Bluefield, West Virginia, lowered the camera down there. And it's amazing how good a picture it had taken. But we saw no signs. I mean you could see equipment in the mines. No signs of any life.

MILES O'BRIEN: Kind of eerie, I suppose, to see it all intact and yet no . . .

ROSS: Everybody was hoping to see something and we had a large drill standing by that was capable of drilling a 36 inch hole. And after watching Quecreek a couple years ago up in Pennsylvania, we thought we might be in a similar situation.

MILES O'BRIEN: Of course, one of the things you determined at that time was that there was an awful lot of carbon monoxide in the air. Do you remember what people were saying when those air samples came back?

ROSS: Well the federal inspector was there. He was taking the air samples and everything and I think was running up two and three times above the level that's permissible or that you could live in. Running some 1200, 1300 parts per million. Oxygen was about 20 percent. The methane content was very low. I think it was like 0.4.

MILES O'BRIEN: So at that time you knew that there was definite trouble. That it was not going to be a Quecreek kind of scenario with that much carbon monoxide.

ROSS: That's correct. We didn't know how fast you'd empty the mines or, you know, dilute the air to where it was safe and you didn't know how to -- we just didn't know an awful lot of things.

MILES O'BRIEN: Final thought. You're the son of a coal miner, did it six months yourself. What's this like for this community?

ROSS: Well, it's certainly a terrible tragedy for the whole area and for the whole state. And this is very unusual in this area because we haven't had many disasters of this magnitude. This coal in here is primarynormus (ph), it's nongasi (ph) coal. Now you get further north in the state, you have a lot more gas in the coal than you do down here. And this coal, most of it's close to the surface. And as the years went by and everything, and the gas certainly (ph) has leaked off.

MILES O'BRIEN: Mike Ross, good work. A laymens (ph) effort, along with you and several contractors here.

ROSS: Yes, we had several contractors here. It was a joint effort. An awful lot of companies and a lot of people interested in not only helping the families, helping everybody.

MILES O'BRIEN: It's a drilling job I'm sure you won't forget any time soon.

ROSS: That's correct.

MILES O'BRIEN: Mike Ross, thank you very much.

ROSS: Thank you.

MILES O'BRIEN: Let's get some other headlines in now and we'll join in with Kelly Wallace in New York.

Kelly, good morning.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Miles.

And we are following breaking news out of Iraq this morning. The bloodiest day there since last month's parliamentary elections. Nearly 100 people killed this morning in two massive suicide attacks. The first bombing was about five hours ago in Karbala, a city south of Baghdad. The bomber walked into a shopping area between two Shia shrines. Hours later, a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest detonated near a police recruitment center near Ramadi. Dozens of people are wounded.

In central Afghanistan now, details coming into CNN about a suicide car bombing there. It reportedly happened during a visit by the U.S. ambassador. Officials say at least a dozen people were killed. There were no American casualties.

And a developing story out of Saudi Arabia. Emergency crews rushing to the center of Mecca where a small hotel has collapsed. Some 2.5 million Muslims are expected in the city ahead of the annual Hajj pilgrimage which begins on Sunday. Rescue workers say some people have been killed, but we don't have details on the number of casualties just yet.

This just in to CNN, a passenger train has derailed in Fredericksburgh, Virginia. That's about 50 miles south of Washington, D.C. Emergency crews are now checking on passengers. There were said to be foggy conditions while the train was moving. And we, of course, will bring you more details as soon as they become available.

The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to the transfer of accused enemy combatant Jose Padilla. The high court ordering Padilla to be moving from a navy brig in South Carolina to federal custody in Miami. A lower court had blocked earlier efforts by the Bush administration to transfer him. Padilla, an American citizen, faces criminal conspiracy charges.

And for people who want to see the devastation left behind by Hurricane Katrina, well, now there's a three-hour bus tour. For $35 per person, guides offering a look at the Superdome the levees and also the flooded ninth ward. Some are calling these tours morbid, by the bus companies say they're educational and a good way to renew tourism in the area.

Time to get another check of the forecast. And we're rolling out the big welcome back matt to Chad Myers.

Hi, Chad. Great to see you.

(WEATHER REPORT)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Andy is "Minding Your Business" just ahead.

What you got?

ANDY SERWER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Soledad, it was a bad year for U.S. automakers. But you'll never guess where GM has made some major headway, coming up on AMERICAN MORNING.

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SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: A new way to get news now. Look at these pictures. This is the Texas coach, Mack Brown, in a news conference after the big win last night. We've got something called CNN Pipeline. It goes way beyond written stories and video clip. What Pipeline offers is actually much closer to being right inside a news room. And anything else, you can get anywhere else. If you want to check it out, go right to cnn.com/pipeline if you want to check out what we're talking about.

Detroit, might be the home of Motown, singing the blues, though, this week and for good reason. Andy's "Minding Your Business."

Good morning.

SERWER: Oh, that was good.

Good morning, Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Thank you. I didn't write it. I can't take any credit. Thank you.

SERWER: Yes, maybe it will be on Pipeline. We'll have to check it out.

Not a good year for Detroit. Not a good month. Let's start off by looking at the monthly figures.

Not a surprise here because these guys, the automakers, the big three, Detroit did not do very well. Those are red arrows. That means they lost that much sales in December.

Now, for the year, GM down 4.3 percent, Ford down 5 percent, Chrysler actually up 5 percent. That's because of the baby Bentley and hot cars like that. The Chrysler 300.

Adding insult to injury though, Toyota up 17 percent. That's just an amazing run. Some good news for GM, though. First of all, Chevy unseated Ford as the number one brand in the United States. That's good. Still shrinking market share, though.

And even better news actually. GM became the largest selling foreign car in China, which is obviously a huge growth market unseating Volkswagen there.

Now Ford employees are bracing for bad news though because on January 23rd, the company's going to be announcing a restructuring. That always means layoffs in this business.

And let's move over to the markets. I'm kind of liking this year so far from a financial standpoint, Soledad. We're two for two.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Look at all those little green arrows.

SERWER: Green, green, green. We love that.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: We love.

SERWER: And you can see that we're continuing the rally from the day before. Some anticipation the Fed will be ending its interest rate hike campaign. Futures this morning are mixed.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: All right. Andy, thank you for the update.

SERWER: Thank you.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: We're going to tell you what kind of cool gadgets you can look forward to in the coming year. Daniel Sieberg is live in Vegas. He's attending the world's largest consumer electronics show.

Hey, Dan.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad. It's early here in Las Vegas right now, but in about five hours, about 140,000 people or so will fill the Las Vegas Convention Center here. And among the gadgets we'll be previewing for you, a robot that will clean your floors, a picture frame that can get photos from anywhere in the world, and a device that you can take with you to watch TV shows on your cell phone. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Some pretty cool gadgets and gizmos to show you. They're coming to us from Las Vegas. It is the world's largest consumer electronics show and it begins today. Daniel Sieberg is our man on the cutting edge today and every day really. He's live for us in Vegas.

Hey, Daniel. You mentioned this robot. I'm loving this. It's actually a robot that does something you need done.

SIEBERG: Yes, cleaning floors, which I think a lot of us could use a hand with. Many people might be familiar with the Roomba made by iRobot that will vacuum your floors. Well now the same company has come out with the device called the Scooba which washes your floors.

We have some video of Scooba in action. We're surrounded by carpet here, so decided we'd test it out. It works pretty well. If it runs into something, it will move on. Could bump your foot and sort of go around it. You put in the cleaning solution, you push go and of it goes. It actually will clean a bit of the floors and it will dry it as well.

We can show you the guts here back on the table. Inside is where you put some of the fluid and clean out some of the filters. And underneath I'll just show you some of the brushes on the bottom here. It's a pretty high-tech device.

And again, just on the top, you just push power and clean and it will go. Now for about a 200 square foot room, might take about 45 minutes. And every so often it might need a little help but it will do the job.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: What does it cost?

SIEBERG: The cost is $399. It is available now through the Web site for iRobot. And in wider availability through places like Target in February.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes, all right, that might be worth it.

All right. What else you got?

SIEBERG: Yes. All right, we've got some digital camera stuff for people. One of the cameras that's being talked about here at the show is from Kodak. This one is interesting because it offers an ultrawide angle lens. So typically when you've got a digital camera you can zoom in and out and but you don't get this really wide picture, which I think you can get an example of here. And we have some photos that Kodak gave us we can show you. If you took a picture of yourself with sort of a typical digital camera, this is what you would get. If you use the Kodak ultrawide angle, you can get a much wider view of the same shot. It also takes panoramic pictures, so you can stitch them together. It goes for $399 and it's going to be coming out, I believe, this month. Now to go with the digital camera theme, we have this picture frame from Ceiva. And if you can see, the pictures are scrolling through there. The whole idea is, you might give this to the grandparents. They plug it in, use a phone connection. You can see it on the back here. A little bit of setup online. And then you can send pictures to this, up to 30 pictures, from anywhere in the world. And every morning your grandparents wake up and they can see new pictures scrolling through of the kids. So it's pretty simple. It goes for about $100.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Wow, I think that's great for $100. And it's pretty easy to use because, you know, if you're sending it to your grandparents - like they may not be so high tech.

SIEBERG: Right. Exactly. It's pretty easy to use.

Now something you see everywhere these days, Soledad, are those little ear bud earpieces people use for their cell phones. Well, this one's from Nokia and this is one I'm afraid I'm going to drop and lose. This would go in your ear, just like any other ear bud, cell phone piece. It's Bluetooth. It's said to be one of, if not the smallest in the world. So you would just have to keep track of it. It's going to go for about $140. It's coming out, I believe, the first of April.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: With it being small, how's the quality though?

SIEBERG: The quality we can't test, as a matter of fact, because this is a prototype. So we're just going to have to wait and see. It will work with all cell phones, though, not just Nokia.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: OK. Good. What else you got?

SIEBERG: We have a device here for every amateur astronomer out there. This is called the Skyscout from Celestron. You point it anywhere in the sky. You can be inside or outside. And you can see here, you look through the lens. You can point it up anywhere you want.

There's a button here that says target. When you push that, it will tell you what you're looking at. Now in this case, it tells me that I'm looking at part of the Hercules constellation. This is about 1500 light years away. So a bit tough to see with the naked eye. But you can also look at what the events are of the night. So you can -- it will guide you to where Mars is, for example, in the sky. There are little arrows that tell you where to look.

It gives you a little bit of history, why the stars are named what they are. It's a pretty amazing device. It uses GPS to know where you are it calculates the earth's gravitational field as well. So amazing technology packed in there.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: I love that. What a great gift for kids. Is it expensive though?

SIEBERG: Yes, it's pretty cool. It's $399. So it's not exactly cheap. It's going to come out the end of this quarter.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: All right. Last year you talked about the device that could let -- you watch TV on your cell phone. Tell me about that.

SIEBERG: Yes, this is some pretty amazing stuff. The basics of it does not look that interesting. It just looks like kind of a big silver brick. It's from a company called Sling Media (ph). On the back are a bunch of inputs which you need to plug into your television. And if you've got Tivo or a digital video recorder, you're recording your favorite shows, right now this is out and you can use it to watch the shows on your laptop.

Now if you want to watch the shows on your cell phone, that's what they're announcing here at the show. So we've got a demonstration of what the technology looks like. This is "Hoop Dreams." This is connected to the digital video recorder, the Tivo, of a gentleman from the Sling Media company. We are watching his shows from his home back in San Francisco right now here on this device. It goes -- the pricing for this, we're not sure yet. And you'll be able to watch pretty much anything you've got at home on the go.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Oh, pretty cool stuff.

SIEBERG: Yes.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And we should mention again, the show begins today. Daniel Sieberg had a very cool update for us. A little preview. Thanks, Daniel.

SIEBERG: You bet.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Let's get right back to Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN: Boy, there's a lot of gadgets I'd like to get there, Soledad. Thank you very much, Daniel, for that.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: I knew you were going to say that, Miles. I knew it.

MILES O'BRIEN: Thank you very much for that update.

We are here at, of course, Sago Mine number one again and last night was again an emotional night. About a half mile down the road, folks gathering at that Baptist church where, of course, about 24 hours earlier that wild roller coaster ride of emotion, having found out their loved ones were dead after the false hope. We'll talk to the son and daughter of the first person killed at this mine on Monday morning after a break. Stay with us.

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