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American Morning

Hot and Bothered; Israel Renews Air Assault on Southern Beirut; Violence Continues in Iraq

Aired August 03, 2006 - 08:59   ET

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


CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning. Welcome to the next hour of AMERICAN MORNING.
We do have a tropical storm that fell apart on this map and record highs on this map. We'll explain where those record highs go from here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUANITA CASTRO, FIDEL CASTRO'S SISTER: He's very sick, but he's not dead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. That's Fidel Castro's sister. She's got plenty to stay about her estranged brother. They still have a strong bond, believe it or not, even though she's been in exile for more than 40 years.

RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Also, a Doberman in the doghouse for eating the museum exhibit he was supposed to be guarding.

This on AMERICAN MORNING.

O'BRIEN: Good morning. Welcome back, everybody.

I'm Soledad O'Brien.

SANCHEZ: And I'm Rick Sanchez, sitting in for Miles O'Brien.

Good to be here.

O'BRIEN: Nice to have you. Thank you for helping us out all week. We appreciate it.

Let's talk about the heat, shall we? Hot enough for you?

SANCHEZ: Yes.

O'BRIEN: Don't you hate when people say that?

It is, though, another hot day from Maine to the Midwest. Record-high temperatures are expected the third straight day in places like Boston and Philadelphia. People, even animals doing whatever they can to keep cool during the dangerous heat wave.

Chad promises relief on the horizon. He is at the CNN Center for us with an update.

Hey, Chad.

MYERS: Good morning, guys.

(WEATHER REPORT)

MYERS: Back to you guys.

O'BRIEN: All right, Chad. Thanks.

MYERS: You're welcome.

O'BRIEN: Well, you know, life's got to go on despite the heat. We'll take a look this morning at how people are coping.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oppressive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Brutal is a good word. Yes, brutal. Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hot. It's really hot.

O'BRIEN (voice over): From the Mississippi on east, swelter is the name of the game. And people are doing their best to deal.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have to take a shower like three times a day.

O'BRIEN: The oppressive heat is taking its toll on commuters desperately trying to keep their cool above and below ground. One young woman passed out on a Boston subway train while an elderly passenger need a collective fanning from her fellow straphangers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stopped at every station with the doors open for about 10, 15 minutes each station. So they wonder why people are dropping. Open doors, 100 degrees, it is hot as hell in there.

O'BRIEN: At Boston's South Station, some passengers needed oxygen and a blood pressure check. And their final destination was a hospital emergency room. A commuter train out of Washington didn't make it much past Union Station before breaking down, leaving passengers stuck on the tracks with no AC.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We sat on that train for almost an hour and a half.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hot. You couldn't breathe. I mean, it was just dead air.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was hotter on the trains than it was outside.

O'BRIEN: Commuters stepping off buses in Newark may have been dripping wet, but they were happy to see people handing out bottles of ice cold water.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shut your air-conditioner off.

O'BRIEN: In New York, residents of a Harlem high-rise were hot and bothered about the building's elevators being shut down.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have asthma. I can't walk up 29 flights.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What are we supposed to do, sit out here all night with a baby and little kids? That's not right.

O'BRIEN: While forecasters say it will be another day of intense heat before the cavalry comes in, in the form of a cold front, there is still a record demand for power and for patience.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm burning up. It's ridiculously hot here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is my first day on a new job and I have to wear a new suit on the hottest day of the year. How's that?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Oh. You know, some people are working, and working hard on this hottest day of the year. But the work has to go on. High temperatures are straining the power grids. Thousands of people here in New York City and surrounding areas don't even have power.

That brings us right to Allan Chernoff. He is live on Manhattan's west side for us.

Got to work, right?

ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN SR. CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Soledad. You can see plenty of people working right behind me, and they certainly are feeling the intense heat.

Right now we're showing 93 degrees. That's probably -- probably because of the light we're using, our camera light, because it is a little higher than what Chad was just telling us. And I trust Chad before I would trust this thermometer. But certainly the misery index here in New York, it's got to be even higher, not only for the people walking the streets, but especially for the 16,000 customers who had no power last night in the New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey regions just around New York City.

In addition, of course, you've got the people working behind me just sweating it out. Heavy duty work in this type of weather, gosh, it is simply awful. And over here we've got a building going up, 33 stories high. You've got guys on that deck just frying in the sun.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Horrible. It's horrible. It's tough.

You've got to drink a lot of water. You've got to stay cool. You've got to -- you've got to pace yourself. You've got to pace yourself, guys.

But these guys are trained and know what they are doing. They've been doing it a lot of years. You've got to pace yourself and take it as it comes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A little less than half the crew usually hold up. If they're working out, exposed to the sun all day, I can probably get them to hold up until, you know, noontime. Once they break for lunch, some of them just feel too exhausted to go back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHERNOFF: That's certainly understandable. In fact, a couple of construction workers from another site were sent to the hospital yesterday with heat exhaustion. That also happened to a few Con Ed utility workers yesterday. Fortunately, though, we have no reports of fatalities as a result of the heat in New York City -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Which is some good news at this point.

Hey, Allan, I want to bring Chad in, because you were doing -- you know, you were taking the temperature there on the street, which is a little bit higher than what Chad had been telling us.

So, Chad, he's not necessarily off, right?

MYERS: No, that's exactly right. That's an excellent thermometer you have there. And what you have seen there is an example of what's called urban heat island.

The sun comes in, it heats up that concrete, and it's warmer that what we have in Central Park, which is 84, which is where there's some grass around there, there's some lakes around. Roosevelt Reservoir there. You know, all those -- even the Onassis Reservoir.

That makes a difference on what you're feeling. And if you're working downtown in an urban area, your temperatures may be five degrees warmer than what they have at the airport, where they are taking that temperature.

So, Allan, that thermometer is exactly right. You can believe it.

CHERNOFF: Yes. Certainly, when you're standing between buildings, in fact, in Midtown on Sixth Avenue, the valley of skyscrapers there, boy, you can just feel the heat almost reflecting between the buildings.

MYERS: Oh, yes. Stay safe out there. And lots of water, bud.

O'BRIEN: Thanks, Allan.

And I'm not sure...

MYERS: He gets the short straw again today. O'BRIEN: Oh, man, didn't he? And I'm not sure if that's good news that his thermometer is right or bad news that the thermometer is right, right?

MYERS: Right.

O'BRIEN: All right, Rick.

SANCHEZ: News in the Middle East now.

Israel renewing its air assault on southern Beirut this morning. Fierce fighting also going on a little further south, closer to the border. That's where both sides are suffering losses.

Anthony Mills is joining us live from Beirut. He's been following the story.

Good morning again, Anthony.

ANTHONY MILLS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Rick.

A relative lull in bombardment of the capital, Beirut, one that lasted a few days, that lull, shattered last night with a series of loud explosions that reverberated across the capital. And there's been bombing elsewhere, as well, in the east of the country, in the Bekaa Valley, and also in the north, where a bridge was reportedly destroyed linking the capital to the Lebanese-Syrian border.

Here in Beirut, the bombardments targeted the Hezbollah stronghold of south Beirut, the southern suburbs. They have been hit over and over again in the course of this now more than three-week-old crisis and have sustained heavy damage.

Still not entirely clear, though, to what extent all this bombardment has damaged Hezbollah's leadership capacities and indeed ability to fire rockets still into Israel. With reports from Israeli Defense Forces this morning that 26 rockets were fired into Israel from south Lebanon and yesterday, of course a record number were fired from Lebanon into Israel, well over 200 -- Rick.

SANCHEZ: Thank you so much, Anthony, for bringing us up to date on that.

Soledad, over to you.

O'BRIEN: Let's turn to Iraq now. There's more violence to tell you about in Baghdad.

Police say a bomb went off in the central part of the city. It happened just about 90 minutes ago. Now 10 people are dead, more than 30 others are injured.

CNN's Harris Whitbeck is live from the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Harris, good morning.

HARRIS WHITBECK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.

The violence does continue here. At times it seems like it is never-ending, particularly for citizens of the Iraqi capital.

The latest bomb went off near the Al Rusafi Square (ph) in central Baghdad. That is a very, very busy shopping area, lots of open air stalls and small shops. A lot of people come in from the provinces to do their shopping for provisions. And the bomb went off right as a lot of those shopkeepers began to close their shops for the day, so there was a lot of activity going on.

The figures that we have show 10 people killed and 32 others wounded. Apparently, the bomb was strapped to a motorcycle when it went off.

Now, this bombing follows another incident which has shocked a lot of people here in Baghdad. A bomb went off on a soccer field in a poor Shia Baghdad neighborhood yesterday. There were 12 people killed there. Among the killed, there were three children who were under the age of 15.

Now, this violence comes just on the heels of an announcement by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani that he hopes that Iraqi troops, Iraqi security forces will be in control of all 18 of Baghdad's provinces by the end of the year. That comment has been couched by some who say it might a bit too optimistic at this time -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Harris Whitbeck in Baghdad for us this morning.

Thanks, Harris.

Afghanistan also the scene of a deadly bombing. A suicide car bomber drove into a market in Kandahar province today, set off his explosives, killed at least 21 people, injured at least 13. Authorities say that some of the dead and injured are children.

Still to come this morning, the Iraqi president, as you heard just a moment ago, says he hopes that Iraqi forces are going to be in charge of their own security by the end of the year. Is that realistic? Ahead, we'll talk to the spokesman for the multinational forces in Iraq.

SANCHEZ: And then our series "Inside Autism," how one family deals with the daily struggles of raising an autistic child.

O'BRIEN: And later, an about-face by the secretary of defense. He's now going to do something he says he was too busy to do before.

That's ahead. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING.

Raising a child with autism can be an emotional burden for parents and families. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is joining us now from the CNN Center in Atlanta with part four of our special series this week, "Inside Autism."

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Rick, you're absolutely right. I mean, it's remarkable what the diagnosis of autism does, not only to a child, but to the entire family. Families describe it as being hit by a ton of bricks. Just about every facet of your life is changed.

Here is one family's struggle.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let's do your hair.

GUPTA (voice over): Getting a haircut can be traumatic for 4- year-old Sebastian Gomez (ph). You see, Sebastian is autistic, and until recently simply being touched could trigger a tantrum.

CHRISTINE FRY, PRINCETON CHILD DEVELOPMENT INST.: It's really a milestone to come from a child who would throw himself on the floor for a haircut.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Should we sing the "Itsy Bitsy Spider"?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (SINGING): The itsy bitsy spider...

GUPTA: Contrast Sebastian now to him singing the same song a year ago.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (SINGING): Up came the...

GUPTA: The exhaustion and frustration of a child you can't comfort or control is a pain families express in this video from "Autism Speaks."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everything I do is about autism.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I really have to give up my entire life.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your life slowly is beginning to disintegrate and you can't do anything to sort of keep it together.

GUPTA: For Maria and Alfredo Gomez (ph), living in a new house in Miami, Sebastian's autism diagnosis at 16 months led to another struggle: debt. They were shelling out thousands of dollars for private therapists with no insurance coverage.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I could give you a list of horrible things that could happen to us which would be covered by insurance, that would cover his occupational therapy, it would cover his speech therapy. If it's a developmental issue it's not covered.

GUPTA: Only eight states mandate health insurance coverage for autism. And with therapies costing around $70,000 a year, autism can break the bank.

Another complication, educational resources vary greatly from state to state.

DR. FRED VOLKMAR, YALE CHILD STUDY CENTER: It is a bit of a roll of the dice in terms of where you're at and what happens to be available.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (SINGING): ... T, U, V, W, X...

GUPTA: Like many families with autistic children, the Gomezes were forced to move to get better care. Then enrolled Sebastian (ph) at the Princeton Child Development Institute in New Jersey, where tuition is paid for by the state. Still, with Alfredo (ph) commuting from Miami, the distance tests the couples resolve and their marriage.

The reality, advocacy groups say the divorce rates in autism families is 80 percent.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's very difficult not to blame each other, not to resent things. The move, the changing our lives, the living in different states, it's a huge gamble. I will never forget the first time Sebastian (ph) just got up and gave me a kiss. I froze, because never did I expect such a thing ever to happen.

GUPTA: Small miracles, what the sacrifice and struggle of raising an autistic child is all about.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: It's remarkable, Rick. And many parents of autistic children also worry about what will happen to their children after they're gone. I mean, that's something that they have to think about long into the future, but it's a concern for them, as well -- Rick.

SANCHEZ: It's got to be so tough on the families. We all know, Sanjay, somebody who is going through something like this.

What do parents say they need the most in terms of support to be able to get through this?

GUPTA: Well, you know, it's interesting. We have been doing a lot of homework on this over the past few weeks. You know, it comes down to money in so many ways, and that was part of the point of this last piece you just watched, money to try and help find a cure, money to make better diagnostic methods, but money to overcome the overall burden of autism on a family.

There's something called a Combating Autism Act. It's actually going to be voted on in the U.S. Senate this week. If passed, it should provide more money for many states. As I mentioned, just eight states have comprehensive sort of healthcare insurance coverage for autism. That could be -- that could be expanded widely if this act passed.

But it does come down to money in so many ways -- Rick.

O'BRIEN: Hey, Sanjay, let me ask you a question. My nephew, who is about 10, is autistic. And, you know, you see the stress on the family. It's just brutal. It is just brutal.

What are they -- what are they doing for the parents who really are financially stretched, as we saw, and just stretched time-wise, too?

GUPTA: You know, it's interesting, because I think so much, Soledad, has been focused, I think appropriately so, on the cure, on the diagnosis, and I think these issues, quite frankly, have been forgotten in terms of the overall toll on a family.

It's starting to change. And I do -- I do think this Combating Autism Act is a bit more comprehensive in terms of providing some moneys not only for the treatment of autism, but also to help offset some of the significant cost.

I mean, only eight states provide any sort of -- any sort of coverage at all. So you're paying thousands of dollars out of your own pocket for this. Hopefully that's going to improve sometime soon.

O'BRIEN: God, it's so brutal. I mean, it's just heartbreaking to see people who are waiting for their child to give their first hug or kiss ever. I mean, it's brutal. It's brutal.

SANCHEZ: Eighty percent divorce rate among parents who have autistic children.

GUPTA: It's brutal. Absolutely.

SANCHEZ: That number really says it all, doesn't it?

GUPTA: Absolutely.

SANCHEZ: Sanjay, we thank you for that report.

By the way, what do you have coming up on tap tomorrow for us?

GUPTA: Well, we're going to end the week with a little bit of hope, a little bit of optimism.

There are some things that are working out. We want to introduce you to one boy who's actually made some progress getting out of his world of autism. That's coming up tomorrow.

SANCHEZ: Thank you, sir.

GUPTA: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: And still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, the summer scorcher putting demand for power at an all-time high. We're going to take you inside the center of what is happening at the utility companies.

That's ahead.

SANCHEZ: Also, Cuban President Fidel Castro's exiled sister is talking to CNN about his condition. We'll tell you what she knows. Stay with us on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Just over an hour ago a bomb went off in a Baghdad shopping district. Ten people were killed. It comes at a time when the U.S. is trying a new strategy to get control of Baghdad, concentrating American forces in the city.

Major General William Caldwell is a spokesman for the multinational force in Iraq. He's live for us in Baghdad this morning.

Nice to see you, sir. Thank you for talking with us.

MAJ. GEN. WILLIAM CALDWELL, SPOKESMAN, MULTINATIONAL FORCE IN IRAQ: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: Thanks.

I think you have to say the violence -- the violence seems to be getting -- be getting worse. The civilian death toll for the past week is at least 300 people. U.S. officials are now estimating apparently that somewhere between 30 and 40 people are kidnapped every day in Iraq. And 6,000 Iraqis and insurgents estimated -- 6,000 Iraqi civilians, rather, killed in insurgent and sectarian violence in the months of May and June.

Those are disastrous numbers. Is this a civil war?

CALDWELL: No, it's not. And, in fact, the reason why you see the intense effort we're going to be making inside of Baghdad is because we realize that Baghdad is a must win. And therefore, we are moving the additional forces, the government of Iraq is, and U.S. coalition forces are, into the city so that we can help bring back greater control into the city to set the conditions for them to allow the Iraqi police and the national police to take back control of that city.

O'BRIEN: How come you say definitely not a civil war? What's your definition -- what would have to happen now in Baghdad? What would have to get worse, where it would finally be civil war?

CALDWELL: Well, there's 18 provinces in the country of Iraq. Any given day of the week, 14 of them absolutely have absolutely no incidents at all. So, 14 out of the 18 provinces see almost absolutely no incidents on a daily basis. Some see it only once every four or five days.

But if you take Baghdad proper, where we've got about a fourth of the population in this nation located, that's where the incidents are occurring, and in the three provinces right around it. Eighty-one percent of every incident that we find every day in Iraq occurs in just four provinces, and so that's where the effort and the focus is being made by the government of Iraq. O'BRIEN: So you'd have to see violence across all the provinces before you'd be comfortable saying that there is sectarian violence that is actually civil war in Iraq? Is that what you're saying?

CALDWELL: None of us would disagree that there is sectarian violence right now taking place in Iraq. And therefore, that's the reason why we're taking a multi-pronged approach as we come back in and take a close look at the city, in coordination with the prime minister and his staff, as we work the lines of operations from not only military but also economic, political, and religious, and the governance piece.

One thing alone is not going to fix this situation. They have years and years of hatred and animosity. But it's extreme elements on two sides. It's not the majority of Iraqis.

When you're down inside the city and you talk to a normal Iraqi down there, he and she doesn't have anything against the other religious sect. It's these extreme elements that run around with death squads, illegal elements that are inflicting those casualties. And that's who we are going after.

O'BRIEN: All right. I understand your definition now.

Let me ask you about this guy named William Patey. He is the outgoing ambassador to Iraq for Great Britain, and he's written this memo. And he advised his country, in fact, that sectarian partition is the likely future in Iraq, not democracy that Great Britain and the United States have been pushing for.

Do you agree with his assessment?

CALDWELL: Well, I'm not sure that's an official document that we're all talking from. I understand there's been a leaked document that occurred...

O'BRIEN: Yes, the BBC...

CALDWELL: ... on the British side.

O'BRIEN: Right, the BBC obtained this memo.

CALDWELL: Yes. What I would tell you is, we see a lot of hope still here. We have not given up on the people of Iraq. They have not given up on themselves.

We see the government of Iraq intimately involved in figuring how we're going to settle the situation here in Baghdad. And, in fact, the level of violence in the last week has shown a steady decline as we start seeing additional military forces and the economic things starting to take place in the city. And we are hoping to see that trend continue, but we sure wouldn't want to leap to any conclusions yet, but rather just keep getting at it very deliberately with the plan that the prime minister has put in place that's going to evolve over the next couple -- six to eight weeks to be fully implemented.

O'BRIEN: This is what the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, said yesterday to parliament.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JALAL TALABANI, IRAQI PRESIDENT (through translator): And hopefully the Iraqi armed forces will -- at the end of the year will take over the security in all the Iraqi provinces, little by little, gradually. And hopefully we will be in a position -- in the first position to do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: He talks about the end of the year. He talks about being in a first position to do that. And I'm not trying to belabor the point, but what I don't understand is you hear this optimism, you hear a sort of timeline from him, and then the numbers and the violence honestly is just getting worse.

Those two things do not jive.

CALDWELL: Well, what I would tell you is that in the 14 provinces where we absolutely almost have no incidents every day, those are the ones that I think the president is referring to when President Talabani says we'll turn all those over by the end of the year. And they have a very aggressive program already in place where they have assumed control of one of the 18 provinces already. It is working well, and they have plans to continue assuming more between now and the December time frame.

But it's the four provinces right there in the middle of the country that are going to require the concerted effort. And again, I -- the president's obviously very optimistic, and I'm glad he is, and I'm glad he's encouraged. But we have realistic expectations in the city that are going to take some time to bring back the tranquility and the calmness and the security that the people need to see.

O'BRIEN: Major General William Caldwell.

Thank you, sir, for talking with us this morning. Sure appreciate it.

CALDWELL: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Let's take you to some live pictures of what's happening right now on Capitol Hill. You're looking at the Senate -- of the Hart Senate Office Building. And the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, has just arrived.

He's going to be making an opening statement this morning and take questions from senators. Of course, you know he -- he was -- at first declined to testify about the war in Iraq to this key Senate committee, and he was blasted by some senators. He claimed a busy schedule was keeping him away.

He has said, in fact, that there was a closed-door briefing for all senators that he would be doing. He said he was not reluctant to face the senators in public, but did he change his mind. And now you see the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, at the Hart Senate Office Building, getting ready for these hearings that are going to begin on Capitol Hill.

We've got to take a short break. We're going to monitor these hearings for you in just a few minutes.

We're back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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