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American Morning

North Korea Defiantly Planning More Missile Tests; No Budging on New Jersey's Budget

Aired July 06, 2006 - 08:00   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: North Korea defiantly planning more missile tests, even as the chief U.S. negotiator arrives in Asia.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Still no budging on New Jersey's budget. Eighty thousand state and casino workers now wondering when or if they'll go back to work.

O'BRIEN: The late Ken Lay -- what will his legacy be? Will he always be remembered as the embodiment of corporate greed?

COSTELLO: A new soft drink allegedly stolen. Coca-Cola's secrets offered to Pepsi for a very high price. But Pepsi says no. Now three people are charged.

O'BRIEN: And TV's top picks. Emmy nominations just a few moments away. We'll bring that moment to you live ahead on this AMERICAN MORNING.

Good morning to you.

I'm Miles O'Brien.

COSTELLO: And I'm Carol Costello in for Soledad.

O'BRIEN: The North Korean missile crisis factor at the United Nations this morning. At issue, will the rest of the world impose sanctions against the country?

North Korea already says it will retaliate if sanctioned.

But at the White House today, they're trying to dial back the rhetoric over North Korea's missile firings.

CNN's Suzanne Malveaux is there -- Suzanne.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, the White House is trying to downplay the significance of these missile launches, saying just yesterday that it did not rise to the presidential level. But, clearly, President Bush is involved now on the highest level of discussions, trying to convince North Korea to come back to the negotiating table for those six party talks.

It was late yesterday President Bush picked up the phone and called two very important allies, one of them South Korea's president, Roh Moo-hyun. The other one, of course, Japan's Prime Minister Koizumi. And what he did, senior administration officials say, is he thanked them for condemning North Korea's actions, but he also stressed the importance of a united front at the U.N. Security Council.

What we're seeing so far is the United States, as well as Britain and Japan, on board for tough, perhaps economic sanctions. But Russia and China balking at this. And the strategy of the White House is to lower the rhetoric, buy some time until it can get all allies together for a unified response against North Korea.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY SNOW, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: There are attempts to try to describe this almost in breathless World War III terms. This is not such a situation. This is a situation in which people are working with the regime in North Korea, trying to reason with a dictator to step back from provocative activities. That is the most important thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: And, Miles, what is important to the administration, of course, is to try to get everybody on board with those six party talks, as well as members, the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council.

Why?

The United States does not want this to be some sort of showdown between the United States and North Korea alone -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Suzanne Malveaux at the White House.

Thank you -- Carol.

COSTELLO: And while the United States, China and Russia are all trying to tone down the rhetoric saying it's not such a big thing, to South Korea it is a big deal, especially since North Korea says it plans to fire more missiles and insists that it has the perfect right to do so.

CNN's Sohn Jie-Ae live in Seoul, South Korea to tell us more -- hello, Jie-Ae.

SOHN JIE-AE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

North Korea today made its first announcement through its official KCNA, announcing that it had conducted missile tests. North Korea said that these military tests, the missile tests, were part of regular military exercises. It was very typically defiant in tone. North Korea said that anyone who talked about the rights and wrongs of such a missile test or tried to pressure North Korea would not be tolerated. And North Korea said if forced, they would take physical actions of another nature. No explanation of what that was. And North Korea said that as a sovereign nation it had every legal right to conduct missile tests. They described those missile tests as successful and said they had every right to conduct more -- Carol.

COSTELLO: So what do you suppose will happen?

Will North Korea go ahead and launch more missiles? What does South Korea expect to happen?

SOHN: Well, at this point, South Korea can be expecting all sorts of things. There were some reports South Korea's defense minister told the national assemblymen that there were unusual activities in North Korea's launch sites. There were some reports in South Korean newspapers that North Korea had told fishing boats to stay clear of the waters that the missiles had landed until the 11th of this month.

So we don't know what is going to happen, but South Korea is watching very closely -- Carol.

O'BRIEN: Sohn Jie-Ae reporting live for us from Seoul, South Korea this morning.

O'BRIEN: Happening in America this morning, in Maryland, dozens of children recovering from a school bus crash on Interstate 95 yesterday. At least four seriously injured. The bus returning from a field trip to Baltimore.

In Pennsylvania, a train derailment still keeping about 10 families out of their homes this morning. It could be two days before they can return. A freight train carrying some hazardous materials derailed last night in Derry Township. That's near Hershey Park. Park officials say they're not evacuating. One of the cars believed to be carrying chlorine.

A Las Vegas police officer being questioned after shooting a driver to death on the 4th of July. The incident apparently started when the man refused a police request to turn down his car stereo. The driver took off, dragging a second police officer, crashing into a taxi.

"Survivor" winner Brian Heidik in a Georgia courtroom Wednesday. You may remember him from the 2002 season "Survivor Thailand." Heidik has been charged with battery and cruelty to animals for allegedly shooting a puppy with an arrow. The puppy survived. How could you do such a thing?

All right, check out this house -- completely leveled in Chesterfield, Massachusetts. Officials say it exploded, sending the chimney, front door and even part of the roof airborne. Luckily the homeowner was in the basement at the time. He survived and is in critical condition this morning. Investigators say a propane tank might have been the source of that explosion.

In New York, they're still assessing the damage from the flooding we told you about last week. Right now, the count is about 1,000 homes destroyed, but damage from seven counties hasn't even been tallied yet. A special task force is working to help those who lost their homes. Less than 5 percent of those people stricken by floods in New York had flood insurance.

COSTELLO: A tale of intrigue in the cola wars. Three people now charged with stealing secrets from Coca-Cola and then trying to sell them for more than a million bucks to Pepsi. Those three people scheduled to appear in court today. And it's an interesting tale.

CNN's Rusty Dornin live in front of the courthouse in Atlanta.

What do you expect to hear this morning?

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, you know, talking about it, it's been more than 100 years, since the 1890s, when both Coke and Pepsi have been battling it out. Neither one of them giving the other an inch in terms of their marketing strategies.

But this time, it turns out Pepsi was the one in the white hat and the one that sent Coke the letter that was soliciting sales of Coca-Cola secrets, highly confidential documents, and, also, even samples of a new product.

Coke called the FBI. The FBI put an undercover agent on it and began unfolding like some kind of blockbuster summer novel where a man calling himself Dirk, who was actually Ibrahim Dimson, in New York, was e-mailing and calling this undercover agent. They exchange $5,000 then $10,000 and a series of documents.

It culminates at the Atlanta Jackson-Hartsfield Airport, where this man ends up giving a load of documents to the undercover agent in an Armani bag. The agent hands him $30,000 in a Girl Scout cookie box in small bills. And, also, it involved one of the executive assistants to one of the high level Coca-Cola executives. They have video surveillance of her going through her files, throwing things in a bag and also throwing a small bottle of what they believe to be Coca-Cola's brand new and what was highly secret product at the time.

Now, after this came down, they did not arrest the suspects yet. They waited. And, again, Dirk offered to sell more secrets from Coca- Cola, but this time for $1.5 million.

Now, they claim that the formula was never stolen from the company. Coca-Cola did issue a memo telling its employees all about this and also thanking Pepsi for what they had done. And while it sounds like it's all great intrigue and nobody got hurt, the U.S. attorney's office says things like this are very serious.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID NAHMIAS, U.S. ATTORNEY, NORTHERN DISTRICT OF GEORGIA: Some of this information is as important to its holders, in this case the Coca-Cola Company, as classified information is to the government or other kinds of confidential information are to other people. This information, by definition in the statute, is worth a great deal of money independent of anything else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DORNIN: Pepsi-Cola also did issue a statement saying: "We only did what any responsible company would do. Competition can be fierce, but it also must be fair and legal."

Those three suspects were arrested in Atlanta yesterday. They will be appearing here in the federal courthouse today, charged with wire fraud and also obtaining and selling trade secrets. If convicted, that could earn them from 10 to 30 years in prison -- Carol.

COSTELLO: I have a whole new idea of the rivalry between Pepsi and Coke, friendly rivals. That all kind of spoils it.

DORNIN: That could be a good flogging, their next slogan.

COSTELLO: Friendly rivals.

Rusty Dornin, thanks so much, live in Atlanta this morning.

Let's head to Atlanta again.

Chad's at the CNN Center.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It's easy. We're -- just choose what's right down there.

COSTELLO: Yes.

MYERS: Good morning, Carol.

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: Up in space right now -- well, that's not space, that's Houston. But they're watching what's going on up in space right now. They're getting close to a very critical portion on this two week space shuttle mission, docking at the International Space Station.

And one of the things they did yesterday, actually, pretty much all they did yesterday, was spend time in a very laborious way checking the heat shield of the space shuttle to make sure it survived ascent in such a way that the crew can come home safely.

Take a look at some of the images. First of all, these are images of the big external fuel tank as it separated from the Space Shuttle Discovery. What you want to look for are little pieces of discoloration. That kind of thing is what they're looking for. And basically what they found was this area, which is a key area, that's where the foam came from that brought down Columbia three-and-a-half years ago. No problems there.

The other place they were very concerned about was this region right along here, where they removed about 30 pieces of foam, the so- called PAL ramp, which caused the foam to come off a year ago when Discovery flew. Apparently no problems there.

Let's move on to the next graphic. On the back side of the tank, there were some divots shown. You can see these things right here, these white areas right here. They're already boxed. But it's the back side of the tank. They don't get too worried about that kind of thing. We did see about six pieces come off about two minutes and 46 seconds after launch. Apparently that was so-called acreage foam, which means these big swathes. It happened so late in the game that they're not too worried about it.

Let's get -- let's move along to the next thing and we'll give us a sense of what we're talking about here. There is a protruding gap filler. You remember that from the last mission? There's a little kind of cardboard thickness piece between all those 24,000 tiles that cover the belly of the space shuttle. One of them is sticking out. The last time they had to do an emergency spacewalk to pull it out. They were afraid it would cause an extra bit of thermal heating behind it.

In this case, they say it's not a worry because of where it is.

And then there was a strange discoloration we need to tell you about. This is a very odd one. The engineers were scratching their head on this one. If we can move to the next graphic and show you what we're talking about here. It was a bit of a stumper, as we look at pictures there of the space shuttle launching. Ah, you remember this. Ooh, check out that poor bird up there. Did you see that?

Well, there was a section of the space shuttle -- I don't know if we have it. Oh, all right. Well, there was a sec -- there was an unusual discoloration on a section of it. And they were thinking about what could this be, what could this be. It turns out it was bird droppings, probably vulture droppings. So, clearly, the vultures trying to get even for that previous incident there where they lost one of their own, I guess, but also proving that vulture droppings can withstand the test of space.

In any case, a special edition of Miles Cam today on Pipeline, our docking version. We invite you to send your questions to us now, am@cnn.com. And whatever you want, space -- anything else, too. Space would be better since we're doing a lot of space today. And you'll see it on cnn.com/pipeline. We'll also have coverage of the docking on CNN, as well. We're going to have former Mission Commander Bill Readdy with us toward the end of the program to help us understand how you drive a shuttle, a little bit later.

Coming up, the legacy of former Enron chief Ken Lay. He died before serving any prison time or paying any fines.

Will justice still be served?

COSTELLO: Also ahead, Atlantic City casinos are closed thanks to New Jersey's budget crisis. And it's the little guy who's paying the biggest price. We'll meet one worker who's flat out of a job and a paycheck right now.

And we're less than 30 minutes away from the prime time Emmy nominations. We're going to have them for you live.

That's just ahead on this AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Slot machines are silent in Atlantic City. Casinos were forced to close on Wednesday because of a budget stalemate that shut down New Jersey's government for six days now.

Today, casino workers are taking their case to the governor and state lawmakers in Trenton.

Cindy Armstrong has worked for Harrah's in Atlantic City for 26 years.

She joins us live from Trenton.

Thank you for joining us this morning.

CINDY ARMSTRONG, CASINO WORKER: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: You're going to be part of this big rally today.

What do you expect to gain?

ARMSTRONG: We expect to gain some respect and get the casinos open and everybody back to work.

COSTELLO: Tell us how badly you've been affected by this.

ARMSTRONG: Excuse me?

COSTELLO: How badly have you been affected by this shut down?

ARMSTRONG: Financially?

COSTELLO: Um-hmm.

ARMSTRONG: Very badly. I depend on tips and I've been out of work two days and it really affects me with paying my bills and food on the table and every other person in Atlantic City that's out of work.

COSTELLO: How much do you get in tips?

ARMSTRONG: Well, between my tips and my salary -- and we also have our medical care -- it probably equals out to about $150 a day I'm losing, because I have to self-pay.

COSTELLO: You know, people seemed so shocked when state troopers came into the casinos yesterday and escorted customers out, and workers.

Tell me what that was like.

ARMSTRONG: I was not there when they escorted them out of the casino at 8:00 in the morning. But I went in around 2:00 in the afternoon and it was very frightening to look at an empty casino floor and a casino, because all the customers were checking out.

It's -- I've gone to work in the worst snowstorms and we've been open. And it was frightening. And I think the governor and everybody up here needs to really sit down and get this budget straightened out. It has not been an overnight thing. They knew that there was a budget crisis a long time ago. I don't understand what the hold up is on the taxpayers of New Jersey here.

COSTELLO: Well, there's some disagreement on how much a sales tax should be. And the governor says the balance has to be budget.

This is what the governor said yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JON CORZINE (D), NEW JERSEY: My hands are tied. This is exactly what is wrong with this entire debate. We can't simply make things up because we don't like the consequences of the laws we created.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: OK, so the governor says his hands are tied. This has to be done.

What do you say to that?

ARMSTRONG: I say maybe they should start making some cuts up here in Trenton and leave the little people alone, with all the tax increases that they have to do. I do understand that they wanted to raise the state tax. There should be some other options. And I also understand that Corzine was willing to compromise.

Now, the state assembly are -- it seems like they're tying his hands. They won't sit down and have legitimate compromises here.

COSTELLO: Governor Cor...

ARMSTRONG: Now, I have not been in...

COSTELLO: I was just going to say...

ARMSTRONG: Go ahead.

COSTELLO: ... Governor Corzine, who is a multi-millionaire himself, is going to finance his own ads to explain to the people of New Jersey exactly why this is taking place.

What exactly do you want to hear from him?

ARMSTRONG: I want to hear that I am going to go back to work tomorrow and that they can come to some agreement up here.

COSTELLO: Thank you very much for joining us this morning.

And, of course, we'll be following the rally later today.

Atlantic City casino worker Cindy Armstrong joining us this morning.

Thanks.

ARMSTRONG: Thank you.

COSTELLO: As you get older, you might pack on a few pounds or your hair might start to thin. But maybe it's not your age. Could it be your thyroid?

We'll explain in our series for people in their 30s and 40s and 50s.

And the prime time Emmy nominations coming up at the bottom of the hour.

Who will get the nods?

We'll have them for you live.

That's just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Today, President Bush turns 60. He'll be spending part of the day with CNN's Larry King.

The president and First Lady Laura Bush will be Larry's special guests tonight at 9:00 Eastern. And you have a chance to ask the president a question.

Just go right now to cnn.com/larryking and then tune in tonight to see if your question gets picked.

Twelve million Americans have some type of thyroid condition and they don't know it. According to the Thyroid Foundation of America, the chronic disease often goes undiagnosed until we're older.

This morning on our series for people in their 30s and 40s and 50s, Elizabeth Cohen tells us how the condition affects people as they age.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Working on Capitol Hill takes a lot of energy. So when lobbyist Susan Stout suddenly began to feel run-down and her hair began to fall out, she knew something was very wrong.

SUSAN STOUT, THYROID PATIENT: You can't sleep. Your fingernails come off on the bed. You have tremors so you're -- you have the shaky hands all the time.

COHEN: She was diagnosed with a thyroid condition. DR. PAUL LADENSON, JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL INSTITUTION: In thyroid diseases, the immune system has a blind spot and it turns against a person's own thyroid gland, either stimulating it to become overactive or damaging it so it can't make sufficient hormone.

COHEN: The thyroid is the gland located in front of the windpipe. It secretes hormones that regulate the body's metabolism. When something goes wrong with the thyroid, hormones become unbalanced, causing problems.

People can suffer from thyroid problems at any age. However, most patients, especially women, first develop thyroid problems in their 30s and 40s.

LADENSON: Women in their 30s, one out of every dozen will have some degree of thyroid under activity.

COHEN: Pregnancy can sometimes be to blame. Nearly one in 50 women are diagnosed with hypothyroidism during pregnancy and nearly twice as many have post-partum thyroid problems, which are usually temporary.

Symptoms of hypothyroidism, where the thyroid is under active, include weight gain, a slow heart rate, dry, itchy skin, and a low tolerance of cold temperatures.

Hyperthyroidism is too much thyroid hormone. Grave's Disease is a common form it takes. The president's parents, George and Barbara Bush, have it.

Symptoms include weight loss, rapid heartbeat and intolerance to heat.

According to the American Thyroid Association, a simple blood test called a TSH can determine whether you have a thyroid disorder.

LADENSON: Patients often ignore these symptoms or chalk them up to something else when, in fact, it could be a thyroid disease that could be diagnosed and treated.

COHEN: Susan, who is in her 50s, is being treated for Grave's Disease. Also, when you're in your 50s the chances of developing thyroid nodules increases. Most aren't cancerous, but some, like film critic Roger Ebert's, turn out to be malignant and must be treated immediately.

Most thyroid diseases can be treated with medication. However, if the condition persists, the thyroid may have to be surgically removed. And you can live without a thyroid as long as you take sync hormones regularly.

Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So get it checked out. You know, I'm becoming a little breathless. The prime time Emmy nominations just minutes away now, and there could be a few surprises this morning.

We'll have the nominations for you live, just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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