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American Morning

American And German Hostages In Iraq; Bias Against Boys In Massachusetts; Katrina's Wrath On Video; NASA's Mission

Aired January 27, 2006 - 07:30   ET

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


ANNOUNCER: You're watching AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Miles O'Brien.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And there they are, the AMERICAN MORNING pigeons. As usual, we have a staff out there training the pigeons, making sure they're there and they fly on cue. You see that?

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: No other morning show has the pigeons.

MILES O'BRIEN: Really? You know . . .

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: We have the pigeons.

MILES O'BRIEN: That is top-drawer directing there. Cue the pigeons, off they go.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes, we love those pigeons.

MILES O'BRIEN: Yes.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Let's get right to some of our top stories. Lots to talk about this morning. Carol's got a look at a filibuster threatened this morning.

Carol, good morning.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, you knew it was coming.

Good morning everyone.

Senate Democrats with a big decision on their hands, whether to filibuster Supreme Court Nominee Samuel Alito. Senator John Kerry is spoiling for a fight. He's pushing his colleagues to go for it and filibuster Alito. Alito's confirmation vote is scheduled for Tuesday. None of the 55 Republicans have come out against him and three Democrats support him. So with 60 votes need to end a filibuster, Kerry's gamble is a long shot.

A new development to tell you about in the case of Haleigh Poutre. She's the 11-year-old who was hospitalized for nearly four months in a coma. Haleigh was nearly taken off life support but then she began breathing on her own. And now, get this, she's beginning rehabilitation. Haleigh was moved last night to a children's facility near Boston. There are reports she's moving her eyes and even picking up a stuffed animal. Used to be in the headlines a lot, so what's happening with Kenneth Starr? Well, the former Whitewater independent counsel is stepping in on a controversial issue in California. He's helping to draft a petition for clemency for death row inmate Michael Morales. Morales is due to be executed next month for murdering a 17-year-old girl. He says the lethal injection could cause him extreme pain amounting to cruel and unusual punishment.

And the first African-American to win an Academy Awarded is being honored with her own stamp. Hattie McDaniel is credited with about 90 roles, but she may have appeared in hundreds of films. Most notably, of course, "Gone With The Wind" in which she played Scarlett O'Hara's maid. She once said, I'd rather play a maid than be one. The stamp is due out today.

A lot of controversy about her, you know, role in the history of the cinema. In fact, I think she played a maid in more than 100 films. A lot of people . . .

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Unfortunately not a lot of other options. I mean that was it or nothing, right?

COSTELLO: Well, as she said, she would rather play a maid than be one.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Wow. Good for her. That's a nice honor for her.

Thank you, Carol.

No word from kidnappers who have held hostage American journalist Jill Carroll in Iraq. Let's get right to CNN's Aneesh Raman. He's following the story from Baghdad this morning.

Aneesh, good morning to you.

It had been a week since the abductors threatened was the deadline. Anything we know now?

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Soledad, good morning.

We know nothing more publicly at least since that deadline came and went as to the status of Jill Carroll. We do know, though, that behind the scenes a flurry of activity as U.S. and Iraqi officials try to secure her release. Given situations before, we can presume Iraqi officials are trying, if they have not already, to get in touch with those holding Jill Carroll. Also U.S. military officials will undoubtedly be trying to pinpoint exactly where she is based on intel in order to rescue her.

But publicly, again, nothing has been said. There was some hope yesterday after five Iraqi women were released. They were detainees, part of a mass release of some 420 detainees. Of course, the group holding Jill Carroll has demanded the release of all Iraqi prisoners. The justice ministry here says there are still four Iraqi women in custody but that they could be released sometime soon. Now both they and the U.S. military caution this release is unrelated to the demands of those holding Jill Carroll. Of course the hope though is that the effect might be the same.

It has been 20 days, Soledad, since Jill Carroll was abducted here in Iraq. It has been 10 since we last saw her in that video that was released. And now, as we mentioned, a week since that deadline came and went. A period of undoubtedly agonizing silence for her family and for those in Iraq calling for her release. Last week we saw unprecedented support from virtually all segments of Iraqi society calling for the release of Jill Carroll.

Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Aneesh, there's been, at least in recent weeks, an uptick in the number of kidnapings of westerners. There were two today, two German engineers. What do we know about that kidnaping?

RAMAN: Yes, the two German engineers appeared on a video leased on Arabic language network al-Jazeera today. They were kidnaped on Tuesday in Baiji, which is north of the capital. They were engineers working as contractors. In that video, no demands were made by those holding these two German men hostage. Instead, the two men simply called on the German government to get in touch with the kidnappers. And there is early word that that may, in fact, be happening.

Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Aneesh Raman is in Baghdad for us this morning. Aneesh, thank you.

Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN: A high school student in Massachusetts is on a crusade for equality in the classroom. He claims the academic deck is stacked against boys in his school district and he's out to force the school system to reshuffle. Here is AMERICAN MORNING's Dan Lothian.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Seventeen-year-old Doug Anglin is a senior at Milton High School near Boston where the 1,000 plus student body is almost evenly split by gender. But Anglin claims the treatment is anything but equal.

DOUG ANGLIN, HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: I think the Milton High School system is designed to the disadvantage of males. The teachers assume that they're lazy and they have bad work habits.

LOTHIAN: He argues that makes it easier for girls to succeed academically. So the B student who plays soccer and baseball has filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education. But School Principal John Drottar says gender never impacts the way students are treated.

DR JOHN DROTTAR, HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: We don't discriminate. We want to have every student given the equal opportunity to be aa successful as they can be.

LOTHIAN: He admits that girls do outnumber boys on the honor roll and in advanced placement classes, but says that's part of a bigger issue educators nationwide are grappling with.

DROTTAR: It's part of, you know, many studies that will tell you and discuss and try to delineate where the differences are.

LOTHIAN: Studies show boys are increasingly falling behind girls and that they differ in their learning styles and behavior in the classroom. Harvard Medical Schools's Dr. William Pollack, author of this book on the subject, says differences need to be addressed in order for boys to catch up to girls.

DR. WILLIAM POLLACK, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: But we're not taking the data we have and acting on it and creating curricula, new reading environments, new learning environments that boys will run to.

LOTHIAN: Ask for Anglin's complaint, which was filed with the help of his attorney father, the Department of Education says it is still under evaluation to determine if it is appropriate for an investigation. Milton's principal says this controversy provides educators with a great opportunity.

DROTTAR: To recommit to helping everybody do the best they can.

LOTHIAN: Dan Lothian, CNN, Milton, Massachusetts.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: A remarkable look inside Hurricane Katrina to share with you. A shrimp boat captain and his crew witnessed Katrina's wrath first hand as the storm barreled right into Louisiana's coast. Not only did they ride out Katrina's 120 mile an hour winds, they managed to capture is all on videotape. CNN's Sean Callebs is live from New Orleans with their story this morning.

Sean, good morning.

SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.

Indeed, over the past five months, we've spent a great deal of time chronicling the damage after the hurricane. And rightfully so. And sometimes it's easy to forget just how punishing and how long that storm lasted. Well, take a look at these pictures. At the same time, they're both frightening and amazing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CALLEBS, (voice over): Never before seen pictures of Hurricane Katrina's fury. It's the way Kent Frelich and his crew of three saw it riding out the hurricane aboard a shrimp boat in Southeast Louisiana near the town of Empire. The full fury of Katrina hit in the wee hours, about the time the 39-year-old remembered he had a video camera on board. KENT FRELICH, BOAT CAPTAIN: And this is debris coming down the canal. It's kind of hard to see in the dark, but you can see big pieces of debris coming down the canal as the water is coming in.

CALLEBS: At this point, you knew people were losing their homes?

FRELICH: Oh, yes.

CALLEBS: Others that night were (INAUDIBLE) near Frelich, including a small boat that he saw sink. He thought the two men on board had surely drowned until daylight.

FRELICH: This is when we realized they were alive. Right here. There -- that's them. They were on that boat and they made their way up to the top of the ice machine and that's where they spent the storm.

CALLEBS: Then, exhausted and covered in diesel fuel, the two slammed and crawled toward Frelich's boat.

FRELICH: These are the guys making their way back to the boat. They were on that ice machine. And he's -- this and debris. That's debris that's piled up against the boat.

CALLEBS: Both men survived. Later, a different rescue operation.

Is that a dog?

FRELICH: And this is -- that's a dog on top of my forklift.

CALLEBS: I don't want to know what happened to that dog.

FRELICH: Well, he made it.

CALLEBS: The dog is now called Empire.

About an hour later, calm from the eye of the storm gave way to strong westerly winds.

FRELICH: You can hear the ropes cracking actually in the background. See the waves coming in?

CALLEBS: But the crew knew they had weathered the storm.

FRELICH: We then had been through the worst and we knew we had it made at this point.

CALLEBS: Hours later, when the rain stopped, the crew couldn't believe the widespread devastation. At this point, they were running on adrenaline. Awake for nearly 40 hours. Frelich knew he had a great story, a videotape, but most importantly, he was still alive.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CALLEBS: And he says the toughest thing about riding out the storm, he simply lost communication with everybody. His family didn't know for four days if he was alive or dead and they . . .

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Well, we could sort of hear what he was saying, but I guess what Sean was just telling us, as his report, was that, you know, the hardest thing, and I think everybody in New Orleans sort of reiterated this, is that you're alone, you have no communication, and you have no idea in the destruction who among your friends have survived who has not. I mean it's a really -- we heard that from the sheriff's departments everywhere we went. We really heard it over and over again. It's a horrible, scary thing. Really remarkable pictures and a great report by Sean Callebs.

Thanks, Sean, if you can still hear me.

MILES O'BRIEN: Let's get a check on the weather now. Bonnie Schneider in the Weather Center with that.

Hello, Bonnie.

(WEATHER REPORT)

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

What you got for us?

ANDY SERWER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Soledad, the big question always is, are the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer in America? Some new numbers indicate that perhaps that is the case. Stay tuned to AMERICAN MORNING. We'll tell you all about it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Happy birthday Alan Cumming.

SERWER: Oh, yes, happy birthday, Alan.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: I love him.

MILES O'BRIEN: Who is . . .

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: We live in the same neighborhood.

MILES O'BRIEN: You do? You're in the hood?

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes, he's in my hood.

MILES O'BRIEN: A Chelsy (ph) kind of guy.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Well, I'm in his hood actually.

SERWER: (INAUDIBLE) Bridget Fonda live there? That's my question.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: No, she does not. Sorry to disappoint.

SERWER: Oh, well then. SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Lots of business news to get to. A little Stevie Wonder music thrown in, too.

Good morning.

SERWER: Yes, good morning, Soledad.

Mind the income gap. That is the word this morning. And we're looking at a new survey by a couple of groups here. The Economic Policy Institute, the Center on Budget, Policy and Priority showing that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. These are two liberal think tanks. What they did is looked at income levels by -- divided up by fifths. So the top fifth of Americans in each state versus the lowest fifth.

Let's look at some of the states where the gaps are the biggest. So the column in the middle there, obviously the first column is the state. The second column is, how much income did the top fifth earners in each state have on average? Arizona had the biggest gap between the top fifth and the lowest fifth. Fourteen times. So, in other words, there's a big schism in that state between the rich and the poor. And then Texas, New York, not surprisingly, New Jersey and Kentucky.

MILES O'BRIEN: Let me -- because on the chart there it says top five percent and bottom 20 percent.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Right.

MILES O'BRIEN: You mean top fifth or top 5 percent?

SERWER: It should be the top fifth or the top 20 percent.

MILES O'BRIEN: Got it. OK.

SERWER: OK.

MILES O'BRIEN: Thank you.

SERWER: That's inaccurate.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: S0 the top 20 percent versus the bottom 20 percent?

SERWER: Right. Exactly.

MILES O'BRIEN: I understand.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Arizona has the biggest (INAUDIBLE).

SERWER: Arizona has the biggest because -- and you imagine a lot of retirees.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Right.

SERWER: Now this gap has been widening and the question is why is that over the past 20 years or so these groups say, tax cuts help the rich some suggest, globalization, layoffs hurting the bottom end of things. And, also, the minimum wage hasn't been raised. Again, this is a perspective by these groups but it will be interesting to see if the Republicans come up with numbers which suggest things other than that.

MILES O'BRIEN: Yes, I wonder if that will be an issue as the election season comes upon us there?

SERWER: Well, you think it would be. You think it would be hay that the Democrats could make.

MILES O'BRIEN: (INAUDIBLE) exploit that issue.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Right. A little thing.

SERWER: Yes.

MILES O'BRIEN: Listen, (INAUDIBLE) this one. This is a dilemma for you.

SERWER: OK.

MILES O'BRIEN: You might be worried about. One to add to your list. What happens when your young daughter comes to you, Andy Serwer, and says, dad, I want to take up boxing?

SERWER: No.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes.

MILES O'BRIEN: The first thing that would cross my mind, "Million Dollar Baby" and that terrible fate that befell that Hilary Swank character, right? Wouldn't you think?

SERWER: Yes.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: That was a movie.

MILES O'BRIEN: Well . . .

SERWER: What about Laila Ali?

MILES O'BRIEN: You don't care?

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: How about empowering your daughter (INAUDIBLE)?

SERWER: There are a lot of other ways to empower.

MILES O'BRIEN: So Sophia could put on the gloves and box away?

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes, I took boxing for a while. I loved it.

MILES O'BRIEN: You did? You did it? All right.

SERWER: Really? MILES O'BRIEN: Well, watch this then.

SERWER: All right. Well, then it's OK.

MILES O'BRIEN: "Anderson Cooper 360" tonight, Gary Tuchman takes a look at the world of little Soledads out there boxing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARY TUCHMAN: This is the silver gloves, a top tournament for boys and girls. Sinicia (ph), who lives in Los Angeles, is fighting Kasandra Mindoza (ph) of Colorado in a three-round bout for the championship. We'll show you who wins shortly. But, first, this question. Why would a parent let his or her child do this? After all, take a look at this girl's fight in the same tournament. This 11-year-old has a bloody nose.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you breathe OK? You having a little trouble breathing?

TUCHMAN: And the fight had to be stopped because of that trouble breathing. Sinicia trains with Joe Estrada (ph), who is also her father.

JOE ESTRADA: What I would say is that if your little girl was as good as mine is, you would do the same thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MILES O'BRIEN: Ba dah bing. Ba dah bing. All right, you can see the rest of this report on "Anderson Cooper 360" tonight 10:00 Eastern. That will be a good one. That's fun to watch. Gary Tuchman does a great job too.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Would you rather your girl go into - work out and go boxing than go to the mall and go shopping?

SERWER: Yes, pony tails and pink dresses. No. There's a lot of other ways to empower besides boxing. Come on, Soledad, there are other sports out there.

MILES O'BRIEN: Right. There's something in-between the mall and boxing.

SERWER: Right. There's physics class. There's all kinds of good things.

MILES O'BRIEN: Swimming, horseback riding.

SERWER: Yes.

MILES O'BRIEN: Anything.

All right. Coming up, tomorrow is a much more serious subject, the 20th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. NASA is at a crossroads at this time. Can the agency still reach for the stars on a shoestring budget?

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And how about this? It was almost painful. This. Oprah. Oprah confronting James Frey yesterday. Wow. She was so furious. Did he lie more than we even knew about? We're going to talk again to the guys at smokinggun.com. They're the ones who really kind of laid out all the fabrications. That's ahead. Stay with us everybody.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was in my kitchen and all my children were little then and I was pregnant with my third child and I just happened to turn the TV on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was in college at the time in my apartment in Provo, Utah, watching it live on TV.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MILES O'BRIEN: So where were you 20 years ago tomorrow? The day the Challenger exploded killing seven and forever changing our perception of the U.S. space program. Tomorrow at the Kennedy Space Center, the Challenger families will gather again to mark another year without those they loved and lost on that day.

And as they reflect, the space agency is facing a whole new set of challenges with a new man in charge.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three, two, one, and liftoff of space shuttle Discovery.

MILES O'BRIEN, (voice over): The man who signs on the dotted line before astronauts rocket to space doesn't do feelings. As a matter of fact, Mike Griffin is fond of comparing himself to Spock.

MICHAEL GRIFFIN, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: We're trying to phase in new equipment, phase out old equipment and bring in existing program to a stage of orderly completion. That's a juggling act. I'm the juggler, I guess.

MILES O'BRIEN: He is an engineer with six advanced degrees on his fourth stint at NASA. He took the controls at a crucial crossroads. The 25-year-old space shuttle program on the ropes after the loss of Columbia, limping its way toward retirement in 2010.

Is that set in stone?

GRIFFIN: Set in stone.

MILES O'BRIEN: No wiggle room there?

GRIFFIN: None. MILES O'BRIEN: President Bush set the deadline two years ago. The same time he announced some ambitious new goals for NASA.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today I announce a new plan to explore space and extend a human presence across our solar system.

MILES O'BRIEN: But on a shoestring. The White House promised small budget increases and insisted NASA finish its portion of the International Space Station while developing a new generation of vehicles to reach the moon and Mars. Expendable rockets, a capsule command module and a separate lunar lander. Sound familiar? Griffin calls it Apollo on steroids.

GRIFFIN: Some have characterized the architects as rather boring. I actually take that as a compliment because that means it consists mostly of things we've seen before, which reduces the cost.

MILES O'BRIEN: The response from many space enthusiasts, a yawn.

BURT RUTAN, AIRCRAFT DESIGNER: Going back to the moon with the same technology, the same designs, the same methods, I don't see that as the most important thing to do right now.

MILES O'BRIEN: Burt Rutan knows a little something about breakthroughs. In 2004, his spaceship one became the first piloted civilian craft to cross the threshold of space briefly. He is now working on a larger craft that might one day carry tourists and he has even bigger plan to build an orbiter.

RUTAN: NASA ought to be looking at breakthroughs rather than just using things that we know will work that are identical essentially to Apollo.

MILES O'BRIEN: Is that a recognition that the shuttle, in some sense, was a dead-end?

GRIFFIN: Well, the shuttle is not a dead-end.

MILES O'BRIEN: But it didn't take NASA very far either.

GRIFFIN: The purpose of the American space program should be a higher, longer, farther-reaching purpose in order to justify the expense and shuttling to and from low earth orbit or to and from the space station does not qualify.

MILES O'BRIEN: So even as NASA aims higher, it must stay focused on flying the temperamental shuttle safely, perhaps 18 flights, completing the Space Station, perhaps fixing the Hubble Space Telescope and keeping the work force intact.

You may have too many balls in the air.

GRIFFIN: I think not. Those are the balls in the air that are required. We have to be able to do that. We have to learn how to fix the airplane in flight, if you will. (END VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN: Now, as for the next space shuttle flight, they're still working out a few problems with that external fuel tank and that falling foam we've told you so much about. The administrator says they're still hoping to launch at the end of May. If that doesn't happen, it may be July.

Coming up, we'll talk to one of my favorite people. The widow of Challenger Commander Dick Scobee. We'll ask her about life after the Challenger disaster. She's an inspiring woman. And we'll talk about the living legacy of that crew that's to inspire a new generation of explorers. Stay with us for more AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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