Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Fred Thompson Running for President; Chris Benoit's Brain Damaged; Young Girl Started at Penn State

Aired September 06, 2007 - 07:00   ET

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

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: -- his first official day on the campaign trail. He launched his campaign message on his Web site at 12:01 this morning and made the announcement last night on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show", here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRED THOMPSON, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: That's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.

JAY LENO: All right, all right.

THOMPSON: I'm running for president of the United States.

LENO: All right, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen!

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: Thompson joins the either other Republicans already in the race. People who have been in the race for a long time, they were all debating last night in New Hampshire. Let's get to two members of the best political team on television.

CNN's John King is in Des Moines, Iowa, where he is covering the nascent Fred Thompson campaign and Candy Crowley in Durham, New Hampshire.

John, let's start with you, did he get in too late or is this just, as so many pundits said, another example of you'll remember when Bill Clinton bought that house in Chappaqua and they said how will he ever afford it?

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well John, some say it's too late especially in a state like Iowa. We're told the caucus system it's a little bit quirky, it puts a premium on organization, but if you look at the polling and you talk to the analysts who have been through this before, they say it's not too late as long as he comes out of the block strong. He needs to raise money, he needs to prove he can organize.

If you look especially in the conservative base of the Republican Party, they're split among the candidates right now. They have questions about each of the candidates, on Rudy Giuliani it might be the social issues. On Mitt Romney it's his conversion to being anti- abortion genuine. John McCain's position on immigration angers conservative. So there is an opening for Fred Thompson to seize even at this late date. He just has to move very quickly now that he's officially in.

ROBERTS: Fred Thompson was not at the debate last night in New Hampshire but he certainly still was a presence. In fact the first question was about Fred Thompson. He got knocked around a little bit by the candidates last night.

Let's take a quick listen to what they said.

Well, unfortunately, we don't have that but let me ask you this question, Candy. Did he do himself a disservice by not going to New Hampshire? He said on "The Tonight Show" it's more difficult to get on "The Tonight Show" than it is to get into a debate. I'm wondering if people in New Hampshire, voters whom these Republicans will have to count on if they hope to become the nominee, might get a little miffed at such talk.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly within the debate, Thompson's opponents made reference to, well I wish he were here. I'd rather be in New Hampshire. As you know, New Hampshirites really believe they need to see their presidential candidates twice, maybe three times. Most of these men have been in this since January. They think there is no substitute for that face-to-face contact, both in Iowa and in New Hampshire, and there is some evidence that voters here in New Hampshire are a little bit miffed at this.

You'll remember in 1999, George Bush skipped a debate, a lot of people think that was sort of the beginning of the end for him in the New Hampshire primary, where he got beaten by 19 points by John McCain. So, there is some feeling that they were dissed here in New Hampshire. I imagine that Fred Thompson will come in here full force. Whether or not they forgive him, I guess we'll have to see, but there is some dissatisfaction that he didn't show up at the debate and in fact went out of his way to kind of counter-program the debate.

ROBERTS: All right, figuring that he probably would get a bigger audience on "The Tonight Show" than he would at the debate and more time as well.

John King, certainly a lot of name recognition when it comes to Fred Thompson. Take a look at this latest hotline poll. Rudy Giuliani leads 27 percent. Fred Thompson second with 17 percent, but you go to the state by state poll as it is starts to change. American Research Group in Iowa, Romney 27, Giuliani 17, Thompson way back at 13. Then in New Hampshire again American Research Group, Romney 27, Giuliani 23, McCain 12, Thompson 8.

John, when you look at these national numbers, do they really mean anything?

KING: The national numbers don't mean much right now. They are based on name recognition, maybe early momentum. If you go by how we pick a president, state by state by state, Mitt Romney to many is the Republican front-runner right now based on his success in the summer of building that lead in Iowa, building a bigger lead in New Hampshire. So Fred Thompson does have to prove himself, John, but yet he has to now turn that name recognition and the idea even among his supporters that he's some white knight coming in, he has to turn that into reality.

If you look at what he put up on the web last night after midnight, he looks the part. He's in a setting that looks like the oval office. He talks about how important it is for Republicans to unify if they want to hold the White House at a time George W. Bush is so unpopular. So he gets in with a message that says, if you want to win and keep the White House look at me.

But he's going to have to deliver it now, as Candy just said in retail politics, 101 politics. It is a very steep challenge. There are many skeptics but his campaign says they believe their timing is just right that conservative Republicans especially have seen enough of these other guys' and they want a new flavor in the race. We'll see.

ROBERTS: Well let's see if they're right. John King for us this morning in Des Moines, Iowa, Candy Crowley in Durham, New Hampshire, thanks both.

KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: A legendary voice has been silenced overnight. Luciano Pavarotti lost his long battle with pancreatic cancer. For more than five decades, the Italian tenor thrilled audiences with his astonishing voice. His larger than life personality. He's credited with almost single-handedly bringing opera to the masses and thought by many to be the best operatic tenor ever. Pavarotti died in his home in Modana, Italy surrounded by his family. He will lie in state tomorrow. The funeral set for Saturday. Luciano Pavarotti was 71-years-old.

Well, he's cheated death time and time again, and search teams are now hoping once again that multimillionaire adventurer Steve Fossett has one more left in him. This is a shot of the massive expanse in Nevada where they will be searching. The search teams will be looking for his plane. It's going to pick up again a little bit later this morning in the Nevada desert.

The 63-year-old thrill seeker disappeared after taking off in this area on Monday. Crews from three states have been searching the Sierra Nevada Mountains by air and land. It's an area about the size of Connecticut and they say that this area also is a region notorious for powerful wind gusts that can whip up without warning and they can toss an airplane especially a small one like a leaf.

Also deadly high water in some already saturated parts of north Texas. As much as eight inches of rain falling, triggering floods in the Dallas and Waco areas. Police say they found the body of a woman after floodwaters picked up her car and swept her away, one of the biggest dangers being in fast moving water in your car during this type of flooding. John?

ROBERTS: A fight between roommates at the University of Arizona has left one of them dead. It reportedly all started when one girl, 18-year-old Mia Henderson accused the other of stealing from her and filed a police report last week. Campus police say they responded to a 911 call yesterday. She died at the hospital. The roommate, 18- year-old Gallerica Harrison now under arrest and charged with first degree murder.

A setback in Senator Larry Craig's fight to hold on to his seat on Capitol Hill today. The Senate Ethics Committee is going ahead with its investigation of Craig. Craig has a legal team trying to reverse his guilty plea for disorderly conduct in an airport bathroom. They also tried to get the ethics committee investigation dismissed. If they are successful though in reversing his guilty plea Craig says he wants to serve out the rest of his term.

And former president Bill Clinton is showing compassion for Craig, despite the things that Craig said about him during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Here is what the former president said on "LARRY KING" last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think we ought to recognize that this is a very traumatic time for him and his family, and whatever happens or doesn't, most of his political career was behind him. So whatever your party, we should be hoping that he and his family can work through this in a way that leaves them as whole as possible.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: Craig is staying in Idaho, while the legal and ethics fights go on in Minnesota and in Washington -- Kiran?

CHETRY: This is what we were talking about earlier, the security breach at the APEC Summit in Australia. Police in Sydney now retooling the security around President Bush after a bunch of comedians got past thousands of police and high fences. 11 people ended up being arrested for setting up a fake motorcade and driving right through two checkpoints. The vehicles decorated with Canadian flags. That's why you said blame Canada, John.

The team tried to get inside of the restricted zone near the hotel where the president was staying. Security and the secret service finally realized that there was something wrong when an Osama bin Laden look alike got out of the back of one of the vehicles. The comedians are part of a show called "The Chasers War on Everything." The producers of the program were warned earlier this week not to try to perform any stunts during the meeting. Clearly they listened.

Every three minutes, a woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer. There is a new study that could explain why race plays such a huge factor in your chances of beating it.

According to a University of Michigan study, close to 40 percent of black women have a certain type of invasive tumor that can be resistant to treatment. That's compared to just 22 percent of white women. Doctors have known that black women are less likely than white women to develop breast cancer but are more likely to die from it. Before they had talked about perhaps lifestyle being one of the reasons why, they now say again it may be the type of tumor that the different races are more likely to get.

Well, Rob Marciano is at the CNN weather desk. John Roberts has more on that.

ROBERTS: Take a look at the screen here. We have this big red blob here just south of Bermuda, another red blob over here in the western part of Tampa and a whole bunch of little ones in the little part of the country. Rob Maricano here tracking all of the extreme weather. Who is getting hit today, Rob?

(WEATHER REPORT)

CHETRY: It is finally cooling down in parts of southern California this morning. The recent heat wave though has definitely taken its toll. 27 deaths now being blamed on the heat.

CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us right here today and he has more on this. Good to see you by the way. We're talking about this extreme heat and it seems that a lot of the people that ended up perishing were elderly or in some cases homeless who were not able to be around air conditioners for whatever reason.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, they're certainly more vulnerable. Although we did a little investigating into those exact numbers in Southern California. Ten out of the 16 people were over the age of 50, which means that six weren't and there's another problem that happens as well, especially in big cities, and that is that poverty is linked with these heat- related deaths as well.

It is expensive to run air conditioning, about eight bucks a day and a lot of people simply can't afford that. So the elderly are more vulnerable, the poor are more vulnerable as well and there's also a domino effect. Heat goes up, people turn on their air conditionings. It can take out the power grid, as hear as well, all of a sudden plunging a lot of people into darkness and into heat as well.

There's two problems I'll just say really quickly, heat stroke is sort of the biggest culprit here, that's the thing that actually kills people. There's all sorts of symptoms, you can see there specifically a body temperature above 103. But pay attention to the lower one, no sweating. That's what really distinguishes this from anything else. Once your body shuts down, once your body is unable to cool itself, it stops sweating and that's what really leads to death ultimately these other symptoms occur but the no sweating part is really a big red flag.

CHETRY: So if you see that starting to happen, can you reverse that rather quickly?

GUPTA: Yes, you can reverse it quickly with the obvious ways, get someone hydrated because they've lost their cooling mechanism which is actually the fluid in their bodies and get them into a cooler area.

A good rule of thumb incidentally is drink before you're thirsty and rest before you're tired and this goes to people who have to work outside, this goes to athletes, a lot of people don't pay attention to that, especially people who are younger. Luckily they can protect themselves a little bit better but they are also vulnerable.

CHETRY: Right, I mean some people have no choice, you have, let's say people that are trying to work to fix the electric grid or construction workers that are literally outside all day. And then there are the people it can be 100 degrees and you still see them jogging at noon.

GUPTA: Right, I know, so people don't pay attention to this sort of stuff and you can lose up to two gallons of liquid a day, just from sweating. So think about how much you have to be drinking to replace that. That's about four or five glasses an hour you should be drinking if you are one of those people who decides to jog at noon or if unfortunately you have to work outside to restore the power grids.

CHETRY: The other interesting thing, they say that you worry about adults but kids, are they more vulnerable?

GUPTA: They are for two reasons. One is that they adapt more slowly. Their body doesn't deal with the heat as quickly and the heat also affects them a little bit more. They don't sweat in the same way that actually cools the body as well as adults. We develop into that as human beings.

Also, you know you see the images of kids wearing all that gear, they're playing outside, again it sort of goes back to your point about people jogging at noon, it's the same problem, they have the same problem with all that stuff on their bodies and they also drink a lot of soda. I think most people know this, Kiran, although I don't know if they remember it but caffeinated drinks can be dehydrating. They are still a liquid but they can cause you to actually dehydrate yourself.

CHETRY: So your iced coffee doesn't count as much? Not that I have one.

GUPTA: Not as good a hydrating mechanism as just water or one of the sports drinks.

CHETRY: Yeah, it is interesting also you think if I'm in the pool or my kids are in the pool, even if it's the dead hot sun of noon it's OK because we're in the water. But you can still get yourself sick, right?

GUPTA: Absolutely you can get yourself sick and you can get yourself a lot of sun especially if you're not wearing your sun block and those all obviously can be problems as well.

CHETRY: All right, so be careful, especially if you're in some of these areas where they've had triple digits for 35 days.

GUPTA: You know the thing that always strikes me, we always do these heat-related stories and people die from this stuff. You don't realize that. People say it's just hot outside. You can die from it and it can be the young, it can be the elderly as well so pay attention.

CHETRY: If you've got some time, just check on your neighbor. It sometimes can make all the difference in the world.

GUPTA: Elderly neighbors worth checking on, absolutely.

CHETRY: Good to see you Sanjay, we'll see you in the next hour.

By the way, if you have a medical question, you can send it because Sanjay is here. He's going to do his mail bag in person today right here with us. Go to cnn.com/americanmorning. Go ahead and type in a question. Dr. Gupta will answer some of them coming up in the next hour of AMERICAN MORNING -- John?

ROBERTS: The New York taxi strike enters its second day. Your quick hits now. No word on just how successful the strike has been so far. It started yesterday and while there were fewer cabs on the streets, the slowdown wasn't all that obvious to most people. Cabbies are angry that they're being forced to put in credit card readers and also GPS devices in every cab.

A firm indicted in Boston's big dig tunnel death has pleaded not guilty. The owners of the company were charged with manslaughter after ceiling panels fell, weighing thousands of pounds from a tunnel onto a woman's car. The firm claims it is being used as a legal pawn to pressure larger companies into paying a multimillion-dollar settlement.

One down eight to go, cats on life support after firefighters pulled them from a burning basement. The incredible story and the pictures to go with it coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHETRY: We have some incredible pictures of a rescue to show you. This happened at a house fire in Washington D.C. They say all of the people were able to get out but there were animals, cats in particular that got trapped in the basement, the two Siamese cats. Crews did find them alive inside but in pretty bad shape and these days the fire department they don't just save the lives of people, they are equipped to do it with animals, too.

You see the firefighters and EMTs putting oxygen masks here around the little necks of the cats. There you see them again, they're getting oxygen through those masks, are specially designed for pets, it's pretty interesting.

Anyway, they were able to revive both of them, so some good work getting everybody out of the house safely and then of course finding the time to help the little felines. There is another one, a little Siamese. They are OK, I think they just had a little bit of trouble breathing. Three-year-old Nilah and two-year-old Joe, fully revived within 30 minutes and returned to their grateful owners.

ROBERTS: We were supposed to have Senator Joe Biden joining us live from Iraq at this time this morning but unfortunately the senator has been caught in a sandstorm and can't make the appointment just yet. We do hope to have him a little bit later on this morning but I've been caught in a sandstorm in Iraq before and those things can rage on for hours if not days. So we do hope to have him. We'll try our best.

In the meantime, our Ali Velshi here.

ALI VELSHI: A close second.

ROBERTS: A close second to Joe Biden from Iraq.

VELSHI: And I can talk for hours.

ROBERTS: And not only that, but you look great, too.

VELSHI: Thank you.

ROBERTS: We've been talking all summer and now as we head into fall, about these horrible, horrible delays for people who fly. And now the FAA might be doing something about it.

VELSHI: This has been the worst summer on record for air traffic control, for delays. When you look at all the problems involved in it, everybody owns a piece of this. The airports need to have more runways and more gates. The FAA needs a more efficient landing and takeoff system.

So they finally arrived at some changes for the northeast, specifically five states, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Pennsylvania. They're going to re-sort of do the air space around here to create more efficient landing and takeoff. They're going to use more altitude levels for landing and takeoff.

In that area that we're talking about, you have Newark airport, JFK, LaGuardia and Philadelphia airport, plus about 15 other small airports. 31,000 -- 31 million square miles -- sorry, 31,000 square miles, 29 million people live in this area that they're talking about. They're talking about a saving if they implement the system and when it's implemented it will be a few years of implementation of 12 million delay minutes.

I'm not quite sure why they express these in minutes, but because airplanes talk about minutes delay. They're talking about saving 12 million minutes. That's only one part of the pie, but it's a start.

CHETRY: I see two snags already, one, people aren't going to want these planes flying over their neighborhoods, you know when they talk about lower levels. And also security concerns, I mean especially in airports like Newark and ...

VELSHI: They actually claim fewer people will be affected by the noise. That's an interesting perspective. Again, you don't know enough about this to understand how that's supposed to help but they were concerned about noise. They feel they're going to address this but still it doesn't address the fact that we have only so many gates and so many runways at most of these airports. ROBERTS: We'll see if this works, because certainly we've heard of these planes before and nothing happened. Ali, thanks.

CHETRY: And some quick hits now. It turns out a chemical substance found at a United Nations office last month is merely an over the counter solvent. Officials initially said it was a potentially deadly chemical agent once used by Iraqis in attacks against the Kurds. The U.N. is investigating how it ended up there, mislabeled or not in the first place.

And retracing her final steps, the jury on the inquest into Princess Diana's death will visit the Paris tunnel where she died in that high speed wreck 10 years ago. The trip is expected to take place shortly after the inquest starts, that would be October 2nd.

Inside the brain of a killer, Dr. Sanjay Gupta with more on professional wrestler Chris Benoit.

Hi, Sanjay.

GUPTA: There's been a lot of speculation about Benoit and what caused him to act the way that he did in such a vicious and violent way. We have some amazing images for you of his actual brain. I'm going to explain to you what this means normal versus Chris Benoit's brain, lots of clues here, that's coming up after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Welcome back to the most news in the morning. Music with your mocha? Starbucks and Apple are teaming up to let customers download music wirelessly at Starbucks. You have to have one of the new iPods with WiFi attached to it. I imagine an iPhone would work as well. And right now you have to live in San Francisco. The service should be added to more stores starting next year.

And a historic lighthouse in Delaware Bay appears to have a new owner. The government was trying to unload the property in an online auction. The winning bid, $200,000. So you have a lighthouse, what do you do with it?

Al Gore is working on a new book, a sequel to his book about global warming "An Inconvenient Truth." The new one is going to be called "The Path to Survival." It's expected to continue where the previous book left off, suggesting some changes that could be made to help the environment.

CHETRY: Plenty of good seats available for one of Senator Sam Brownback's campaign speeches. Here's the picture. Just a handful of people showing up at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics to hear the Republican candidate speak, although they say to be fair, there were 11 other people on the right side of the room that you were not able to see. Hey, bright side? They got a lot of one on one time with their candidate.

ROBERTS: They thought it was standing room only. Look at the story coming up on our next half hour that you can't miss, we've heard of all these young kids going to college, so we had a 15-year-old the other day beat his sibling sisters by a year, they were 16. Now we got another one.

CHETRY: She's too young to vote, she's too young to drive a car, can't go to an R-rated movie but she is the youngest person ever admitted to the engineering program at Penn. Congratulations to her. We're going to meet 15-year-old Brittany Exline ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Oh, still dark this morning thanks to our folks at WFAA in Dallas, Texas, where it's 78 degrees and cloudy right now. Eight- nine degrees, thunderstorms, don't forget the northern part of Texas has just been inundated by wet weather in the last couple of days. Lots of flooding there, all over Texas. It's been an extraordinarily wet year as well, which is good because it helps out those drought- stricken farmers but I think there's just been a little bit too much water there for most people's tastes.

CHETRY: They got eight inches, some of in that area of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and now Henriette as it makes its way from Mexico, possibly into the mainland U.S. Could hit that area as well.

ROBERTS: Arizona and the western part of Texas could be in for some more rain.

Welcome back, it's Thursday, the sixth of September, I'm John Roberts, good morning to you.

CHETRY: And I'm Kiran Chetry, glad you're with us.

(NEWSBREAK)

CHETRY: We have some breaking news from overseas to tell you about right now. There's a new twist in the case of missing Madeleine McCann. She's the 4-year-old British girl who disappeared from her family's hotel room while vacationing in Portugal. Well, within the last few minutes, the British media in the last few minutes reporting that police and investigator will re-interview Madeline's parents. Her mother, Kate, will talk to detectives today, along with her lawyer, and Madeleine's father, Jerry, will be interviewed tomorrow. Madeleine vanished from her room while her parents were at a nearby restaurant back in May. Jerry and Kate McCann have launched a high- profile campaign for her safe return -- John.

ROBERTS: Well, two-and-a-half months after the death of professional wrestler Chris Benoit, doctors have released an autopsy with some pretty amazing results. They found damage in his 40-year- old brain the likes of which you would expect to see in the brain of an 85-year-old, possibly with Alzheimer's Disease.

CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here with more. These are pretty extraordinary findings for somebody at his age.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and it's something you don't get to see very often as well, because you don't often actually take someone's brain and do this kind of examination.

But you know, there was a lot of speculation, as you know, around his death, around the behavior before his death. And they actually -- what they decided to do is donate his brain to a university and take a look.

I want to show you the images, because I do think, even to the untrained eye, they tell a story here, John.

First of all, when you talk about the -- let's see here, when you talk about the normal brain over here, you actually see sort of normal borders here on those cells. That is what it should look like.

ROBERTS: These are brain cells.

GUPTA: These are normal brain cells. This is a normal brain over here. Over on Chris Benoit's brain, you can see the deposits here, these brown clumps. Those are deposits of protein that can interfere with the signal transmission back and forth between various lobes of the brain. And what the doctors says is they found these sorts of findings in just about every part of his brain, so all the lobes, the brain stem as well. It's called encephalopathy.

Is this somewhat analogous to plaques and tangles that people with Alzheimer's Disease develop?

GUPTA: Exactly. And remember, this is a 40-year-old guy, but when someone develops Alzheimer's they do get these tangles of various proteins sort of clumped together, and as a result it interferes with their ability to store memories, to form thoughts, to transmit signals back and forth to the brain.

Why did this develop in him? That's the large question here.

ROBERTS: One of the things that the original toxicology report found was that he had levels of testosterone 10 times the normal. Could a hormone overdose somehow be...

GUPTA: That would be one of the exact questions that we're trying to ask, the testosterone, other steroids as well. And the answer seems to be no, that doesn't seem to be the likely cause of causing these sorts of changes in the brain. Most likely it's repeated concussions, blows to the head, not necessarily knocking someone out, but just blows to the head over and over again. We know a lot about this, John.

We know, for example, that a second concussion is exponentially worse than a first concussion. So it's not a linear process. Add a third, fourth, fifth. He was quoted as having said, "I've had so many concussions I can't remember how many I've had." ROBERTS: Well, as we saw in some of the video that we were running, he was pretty aggressive in his wrestling tactics, diving off of ladders, a headbutter, whatever. Could this also be responsible also for violent behavior?

GUPTA: Well, I think the cause and effect sort of relationship is something we don't know. I'll take it even a step further than that. I say we may never know this possibly caused that sort of violent behavior.

What I'm sort of surprised by after having thought about this quite a bit over the last day, is that he didn't have more symptoms before this. When you see these sort of changes in the brain that again resemble someone who has profound dementia, like Alzheimer's, like you mentioned; they often do have memory loss. They have difficulties forming thoughts. I never met him, I don't know him, and I don't know what the story was before this, these attacks and this behavior. Who knows. But...

ROBERTS: Well, you know, there were those rambling messages that he was sending out that weekend.

GUPTA: Yes, so that would be more like -- I would put that more together than the vicious, violent behavior. We don't hear about, you know, Alzheimer's patients often going into a rage like he exhibited. So what exactly that cause and effect, you know, to your question, I don't know that we know, and it may be impossible to really ever know.

But this is striking, John, the fact that this is a 40-year-old guy. This looks like an 85-year-old brain.

ROBERTS: Quite a mystery. Sanjay Gupta, thanks. We'll see you a little bit later on.

GUPTA: Thank you. All right, I'll be back.

And tonight on "LARRY KING LIVE," Chris Benoit's father sits down to talk with Larry about all of this. "LARRY KING" tonight, 9:00 Eastern, only here on CNN.

And if you have a medical question for Dr. Sanjay Gupta, send it to his mailbag at CNN.com/Americanmorning. Sanjay will answer your question in the next hour of AMERICAN MORNING.

CHETRY: Coming up, she's too young to vote, drive, can't even go to an R-rated movie, but she's certainly mature enough to head off to the Ivy Leagues. We're going to U Penn's youngest freshman, coming up.

And there is something new on the endangered list in Zimbabwe. It only affects bakers, though. A strange question, where is all the flour going? Our world update is next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT) (NEWSBREAK)

CHETRY: Well, she should still be in pre-calculus, but she is way ahead of the curve. We're going to meet a 15-year-old girl who is already in the Ivy Leagues, next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWSBREAK)

CHETRY: Well, our next guest is not only starting college at 15, she's the youngest African-American ever to enter an Ivy League School, and yesterday was her first day, Brittney Exline's first day of classes, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and she joins me this morning from there.

Hi, Brittney.

BRITTNEY EXLINE, 15-YEAR-OLD PENN FRESHMAN: Hi. Good morning.

CHETRY: Great to see you this morning. Do you think about the fact that you're making history when you're at college?

EXLINE: No. I just kind of look at it as back to school, even though this time around it's college, and I guess you have to get used to the new environment.

CHETRY: Speaking up, you grew up in Colorado Springs, very different from U Penn's campus, I've been there, right in the heart of the big city. Is it a bit of a culture shock for you?

EXLINE: No. I actually really wanted to go to a big city when I was applying to colleges, so I kind of looked forward to living in the city.

CHETRY: You know, I still remember my first day going to college being so nervous, am I going to fit in, am I going to find my way around the campus, and I had three years on you at the time. How are you handling this major, major life change at the age of 15?

EXLINE: You know, it's actually not a huge change for me. Like I did a summer program at Harvard, and it was pretty similar to this, except now this is extended and this is the real thing. So I'm adjusting pretty well so far.

CHETRY: Yes, you really sound like it. I mean, congratulations, and good for you.

When did your parents start to know, or you start to know that you really excelled academically?

EXLINE: Well, I don't remember, but my mom tells me, and my dad as well, they tell that, like, me I started reading at 2, and I did jigsaw puzzles when I was really young, and you know, they just kind picked up on that because it's kind of abnormal for a baby to do that.

CHETRY: Yes, I think so.

EXLINE: So I think they took that and decided to try and get me into something more advanced.

CHETRY: And so you're going to be 19 when you graduate. Do you ever wonder or worry maybe I'm missing out on a little bit of the fun of being young?

EXLINE: I don't really worry about it. I'm here right now. I just have to keep doing what I've been doing, and I've always been fine with, you know, being three years younger than my classmates. It's never been a problem for me.

CHETRY: You know, I mean, everything's looking good now, but you're going to be 19, you're going to graduate and you're going to be expected to get a job. You're going to have to have a job for the rest of your life. Are you ready for that?

EXLINE: Well, actually, I'm thinking about going to graduate school after that, and you know, I really don't know what I want to do in the future, so, like, I'm keeping my options open. I don't know if I'll have that job for the rest of my life, if I just go into a job out of college.

CHETRY: That's true. You're really smart. You can probably make all the big bucks in 10 or 15 years and then relax on an island somewhere. How are your classmates reacting. Do they even know that you're a little bit younger than they are?

EXLINE: Well, since it was on Yahoo! News and like MSNBC News online.

CHETRY: And CNN.com. You know it's been all over the place, all over CNN.

EXLINE: Yes, a lot of places. They recognize me from that, some of them, but when I first came here, like no one really knew, and until I told them.

CHETRY: Wow. Well, you're a lovely young woman, and we wish you the best of luck. Congratulations for your big history-making move. And I hope you have fun.

EXLINE: Thank you.

CHETRY: All right, Brittney, take it easy.

CHETRY: A lot of poise for 15, huh.

ROBERTS: You can tell why she got into college, very, very well- spoken.

(NEWSBREAK)

ROBERTS: And Coca-Cola says it wants to have every bottle it sells in the United States recycled or reused. The soda giant's new plan to meet to meet its goal. It's your business news, coming up on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWSBREAK)

ROBERTS: It's three minutes to the top of the hour. Ali Velshi here "Minding Your Business." Coca-Cola looking at trying to expand recycling. What is it they make those bottles out of again?

ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: PET, it's called -- polyethylene terethalyte (ph), plastic bottles. What we know as plastic bottles, and They sell billions of these. And you know, a lot of the companies sell water or Coke, they're being sort of criticized for the waste that goes into these. So coke has announced that it wants to make 100 percent of its bottles out of recycled or reused material. They didn't set a target date as to when they want to do that, but they're investing in a plant which is going to be the world's largest polyethylene recycling bottle-to-bottle plant. Basically the bottles come in and they can make the equivalent of two billion of these 20- ounce bottles. The plant's going to open next year in Spartanburg, South Carolina. It'll be up and running by 2009.

Coke is also investing more money in a Philadelphia-based company called Recycle Bank. Recycle Bank operates around the Northeast. You may know of it. It operates in cities where it gives incentives to consumers to recycle their goods, in the way of coupons or dollars that you build up to spend at various retailers. Recycle Bank is considering expanding to other parts of the country. Obviously in some parts of the country, municipalities run the recycling.

But the idea is two-fold. One is to try to get people to recycle polyethylene terethalyte bottles and not throw them away, and the other one is Coke wants to harness that and make new bottles out of it. And they do say that it's food grade; the recycled bottles are safe for consumption.

CHETRY: Then there's been all the debacle about plastic...

VELSHI: There's still this issue about not refilling bottles and using them, particularly the water bottles.

CHETRY: Right.

VELSHI: You're not supposed to refill that with water and use them, something about the polyethylene terethalyte.

ROBERTS: Well, it starts to break down after awhile.

VELSHI: Right. So but they can make them into new bottles.

ROBERTS: All right. Ali, thanks very much.

CHETRY: Well, here's a story coming up that you can't miss, cell phones in the hospital or the BlackBerrys. I remember being in labor for 17 hours and wanting to make a phone call or two. You know, you get bored after a while. ROBERTS: They said no you can't do it.

CHETRY: But why?

ROBERTS: Why do you have to turn off your cell phone when you into particularly in an ICU? You know, is it telemetry? Does it turn off packemakers? What does it do? You might be surprised.

CHETRY: Yes, they're saying that maybe there is some truth to why you've got to keep the cell phones off. Sanjay Gupta, he knows all about it. He's going to fill us in when we come right back.

ROBERTS: The next hour of AMERICAN MORNING starts right now.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.voxant.com