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Fallout from the Spill: Who's to Blame?; Oil Execs Looking at Plan B to Stop Leak; Memos Surface by Supreme Court Nominee; What Caused One-Day Stock Crash?; Mobile 3D (No Glasses Required); Uninhabitable Environment
Aired May 11, 2010 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: All right, everybody. I'm Ali Velshi. And I'm going the to be with you for the next two hours today and every weekday, taking every important topic that we cover and trying to take it a step further. I'm going to try to give you a level of detail that will help put your world into context, help you make decisions.
Let's get started right away. Here's what I've got "On the Rundown."
Oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and fingers are pointing. We're running out of options on sealing that massive spill. We're not running out of blame, though. Plenty of that to go around on Capitol Hill. We'll take you there and tell you who's blaming whom.
A legend finds herself in the news. Barbara Walters is about to undergo surgery. We'll take you through the procedure she's going to go through, step by step.
And I'm going to introduce you to a guy who's taking 3-D into another dimension. I'm not talking about movies or TV. You can now have 3-D technology no matter where you are. You don't need those funky glasses.
Let me get to our top story right now, though. The world is watching. That is what the head of BP America, stating the obvious to the first of two Senate panels in Washington, D.C.
Let me tell you a little bit about this. The spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the accident that called it -- that caused it started about three weeks ago on the Deepwater Horizon. You'll remember, that was a drilling rig. Deepwater Horizon was a drilling rig that was owned by Transocean, leased by BP for the oil. And the connection to the bottom of the sea floor was operated by Halliburton. That's the company that encased the well in concrete.
Now, the three executives of those companies are the guys who are testifying on Capitol Hill right now. On the left you can see Lamar McKay. He's the president and chairman of BP America. Steven Newman in the middle is president and chief executive officer of Transocean. That's the driller. And Tim Probert on the right is the president of Halliburton, which is the company that built the part that was right on the bottom of the well. Now, these three men simply -- they don't agree on the cause or who's at fault. They are singing from the same song sheet, though, on saying sorry, expressing regret in unison.
First of all, I wanted to play you a little bit of what Jeff Bingham, the senator who is the chairman of the energy and natural resources committee, had to say during this testimony. Listen to Jeff Bingaman.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JEFF BINGAMAN (D-NM), CHAIR, ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: I don't believe it's enough to just label this catastrophic failure as an unpredictable and unforeseeable occurrence. I don't believe it's adequate to simply chalk what happened up to a view that accidents do happen. If this is like other catastrophic failures of technological systems in modern history, whether it was the sinking of the Titanic, Three Mile Island, or the loss of the Challenger, we will likely discover that there was a cascade of failures and technical and human and regulatory errors.
LAMAR MCKAY, CHAIRMAN AND PRESIDENT, BP AMERICA: We intend to do everything in our power to bring this well under control, to mitigate the environmental impact of the spill, and to address economic claims in a responsible manner. No resource available to this company will be spared. I can assure you that we and the entire industry will learn from this terrible event and emerge from it stronger and safer.
STEVEN NEWMAN, PRESIDENT AND CEO, TRANSOCEAN LTD.: The last few weeks have been a time of great sadness and reflection for our company and for me personally. Nothing is more important to me and to Transocean than the safety of our crew members. And our hearts ache for the widows, parents, and children of the 11 crew members, including 9 Transocean employees, who died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: Now the secretary of the environment is going to be, as we speak, actually, getting involved in the agency that oversees rigs. Right now that's called the minerals and management service. Basically, they -- they regulate the drillers and the companies that do that. They issued the licenses to drill and collect the royalties from these companies.
But they're going to separate the responsibilities of that service into two. The first one, you can see the magnifying glass which basically signifies that that's going to be an enforcement arm, an investigation and enforcement arm, that's going to look into safety and -- and enforcement of that safety on offshore rigs.
And the second one is going to be what the minerals and the service already does. And that is that they're going to collect the money, issue the leases, collect the royalties.
Now, let's go to the gulf right now. We've made a commitment to stay on this story for you. And there are -- there are a few success stories. The first two birds to be rescued from the spill and cleaned up from the oil that they've had on them have been released back into the wild.
A Northern Gannett and a Brown Pelican were let go yesterday afternoon at the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge near Vero Beach, Florida.
Let's go to CNN's David Mattingly. He's in Venice, Louisiana, with a little bit of news of the plan that's going on at this point, the plan that BP has got to try.
Because they tried, David, to drop this concrete box over the hole to contain the oil flow and then have it siphoned up through a -- through a pipe to the surface. That didn't work.
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're still working on a variation of that system. That massive dome that they built to put in place actually filled up with crystals that clogged it up. So they set it aside.
So their solution for this is to try a smaller dome. They're calling it a top hat. It's only about five feet tall, about four feet in diameter. So much, much smaller than that dome they were using before. But this dome, they're going to connect it to a hose. They're going to lower it down, all connected, all in one piece. And they think that this time they'll be able to avoid that problem with the crystals and start collecting a large percentage of the oil that is leaking.
They hope to have that in place by sometime late this week. So they're looking at maybe 80, 85 percent of the oil that's escaping right now.
They've got another plan in place to shut that flow of oil off entirely. That's about a week and a half to two weeks away. And that's called a top kill. And where they're going to put in solid material, liquid material, also called a junk shot. It's like golf balls and pieces of tire, where they're just going to clog the pipe up and stop this flow of oil entirely.
But again, that's about a week and a half to two weeks away. They're just trying to mitigate this right now to keep so much oil from going in the gulf every day.
VELSHI: David, where you are, is there some sense that there's oil in the water? Is there a stronger smell of oil? Are you in an area where you've seen oil wash ashore?
MATTINGLY: Well, we're in Venice. We are -- the closest geographical point, the closest town to where that disaster happened a couple weeks ago. Right now the closest we're seeing of the oil is actually the oil on the side of the boats that come back into port here.
But the oil is hitting some of the barrier islands, to the east side of the Mississippi River. They're now looking at it migrating west. And the concern is now that it's going to start hitting those barrier islands to the west of the Mississippi and start migrating into those estuaries and, again, ruining the fishing season for all fishermen here in Louisiana for this season and probably seasons to come.
VELSHI: And important to --
MATTINGLY: They don't know what kind of damage -- I'm sorry. Go ahead.
VELSHI: I was just going to say, it's important to say this is not just recreational fishing. That's a big deal and that brings in a lot of tourist money. But we're talking about fishermen who sustain on the fish they collect, the shrimp and the oysters.
MATTINGLY: When we talk about tourism, usually we talk about the beaches of the central Gulf Coast, the Florida coast. Here, it's fishing. This is the breeding grounds for that big bulk of fishing that we have here in the Gulf of Mexico.
The oil is hitting the areas that's already affected fishermen in Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana. And now in the western waters of Louisiana, they were hoping those would be spared, but now the oil seems to be moving in that direction.
So everyone just bracing, hoping it doesn't get worse than it already is. So they're looking at this new solution that BP has to at least slow down that flow of oil and perhaps be able to salvage some part of this fishing season.
VELSHI: All right. David, thanks very much. We understand we're going to be hearing from the governor of Louisiana with an update a little later on. We'll check in with you to see what he says.
David Mattingly in Venice, Louisiana.
MATTINGLY: All right. There hasn't been much of a paper trail when it comes to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. You probably heard this already. Now a 1997 memo has surfaced that could change all of that. It has to do with one of the biggest hot-button issues facing America right now.
And, if you think you're overtaxed and you can't get a break from the IRS, I've got something to tell you. You're probably not as overtaxed as you think. If I'm already making you mad, stay cool. I'm going to have more for you in my "X-Y-Z."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: A 1997 memo authored by Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. It could be on the table when she undergoes confirmation hearings in the Senate, especially since that memo specifically has to do with abortion. The Associated Press obtained the memo when Kagan advised then- President Clinton. The memo urges the president to support a ban on late-term abortions.
Let's show you a little bit about this right now. It says, in the memo from Elena Kagan and Bruce Reid to the president, "We recommend that you endorse the Daschle Amendment in order to sustain your credibility on HR 1122 and prevent Congress from overriding your veto." That was to do -- HR 1122 was about late-term abortions.
Now, yesterday when asked about that, the White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said, "Judges confront issues differently than staff attorneys for an administration."
Now, during an interview, this was another thing that came up. Elena Kagan was -- was talking about the nomination process for then- nominee Bork, and she was calling -- she said that that should be how it's done in the nomination process. It should be a model for how associate justices or justices to Supreme Court are nominated, where Bork was talking substantively about things that he would do as a Supreme Court justice. She called it an opportunity for senators to engage on controversial issues and to educate and that hearings shouldn't be focused on trivialities.
Gives you some sense of what her feeling as to how this should all go. But that's not necessarily how it's going to go. It's certainly up to the senators who have to confirm her after her nomination by President Obama.
Let's talk to somebody who is following this very, very closely. Gloria Borger is our senior political analyst, and she joins us now from Washington.
Gloria, we've all talked. Most Americans have heard that there is an absence of a written record because --
GLORIA BORGER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.
VELSHI: -- Elena Kagan wasn't a judge. And if you were a judge, there would be rulings and decisions.
BORGER: Sure.
VELSHI: And you'd have some sense of it. So now we have to parse everything we can possibly find, some of which was done in her role as a more politicized person in the administration.
BORGER: Yes. Well, let's take that -- that abortion, that late- term abortion memo. You know, Elena Kagan worked on the domestic policy staff, and they sent the president a memo saying, "This is what you need to do because this is essentially what you believe and what you've stated to be your political position. This is what's being proposed on the Hill." So she was giving advice as a staffer in much the same way that, you know, Justice John Roberts did when he was a staffer in an administration. And, you know, I have a sense this isn't going to be particularly controversial, because this is also the position that the current president, Barack Obama, takes on banning late-term abortions.
So, you know, I think that it's interesting, and we're going to be finding a lot of interesting things that she did --
VELSHI: Right.
BORGER: -- in the Clinton administration. But again, there's no paper trail. That's exactly, Ali, what they want.
VELSHI: It's kind of like the news business, right?
BORGER: Yes.
VELSHI: We take what information we have and hang onto it with dear life until we get a new piece of information.
Why then -- let's talk a little about this process.
BORGER: Yes.
VELSHI: Why, then, is not this not the process where Elena Kagan describes that senators should be able to engage justices?
BORGER: Right.
VELSHI: And in the event that she doesn't have a track record or a written record, wouldn't this be the place to ask her great questions and try to elicit some sort of answer from her?
BORGER: Yes. Right. One might argue that, particularly since she's written it. But I'll tell you, when she was being confirmed as solicitor general and some senators asked her precisely that question -- she had called confirmation hearings vapid and hollow right now. And they threw that back at her, as you would expect that they would.
She said, "Well, you know, that was written when I was a frustrated staffer, working in the Senate. I obviously don't feel that way now." You know, and you can be sure, Ali, that they're going to throw it back at her.
But this makes her, you know -- in some ways the left is really worried about her because they believe that she -- she's kind of a blank slate on this abortion issue, for example. They don't -- they didn't like Clinton's position on it. They don't like Clinton's -- her position on it. And, you know, the right is worried that she's going to be more liberal.
So now, after Judge Bork went through such trouble, stated exactly what he believed in, which was quite controversial, and he got rejected by the United States Senate, the new standard, post-Bork, has been to essentially keep your mouth shut --
VELSHI: Right. BORGER: -- and say that you believe in legal precedent and leave it at that.
VELSHI: But ultimately, if you were to judge from the -- the lack of information out there about Elena Kagan, you would say that she liked the Bork way of doing things. She liked the idea that that was the last great discussion that the Senate had with a judge.
BORGER: Sure.
VELSHI: And she'd like more of that?
BORGER: And you know, intellectually, everyone would agree with her, including probably people in the White House, because if you want to -- and American citizens. You'd like to be able to sit back and watch --
VELSHI: Sure.
BORGER: -- an intellectual discussion of the law. But if you want to get confirmed, you're going to cause yourself a lot of trouble --
VELSHI: Yes.
BORGER: -- if you talk too much. And so -- and you know, you have a good excuse.
VELSHI: We call it getting Borked. I guess Elena Kagan hopes that that never becomes a verb, right, getting Kaganed --
BORGER: Well --
VELSHI: -- by the Senate. Doesn't become a verb.
BORGER: Right. Exactly. And you have a good excuse, Ali, because you can say, you know, these are the kinds of cases that are going to come up before the court in the future. And, therefore, if I say anything about them, I won't be able to judge them. So I need to not say things about them now.
She doesn't have a big trial record. She's done some trials as solicitor general, but she's mainly been an academic with not too many writings. So lots of folks are going to go and look back at the Clinton record, and there will be about 5,000 pages, we're told, that we can -- we can read and sample (ph).
VELSHI: Give us something to talk about. Good to see you, Gloria. Thanks so much. Gloria Borger, our senior political analyst.
BORGER: Good to see you.
VELSHI: All right. Last week's fall in the -- I guess we call it free-fall in the stock market might have sent you scrambling for your 401(k). Now, you probably want to know what caused it and how we can keep it from happening again. We are getting closer -- closer to figuring it out. Although the answer may not be as satisfying as you would have hoped.
Christine Romans is following the money trail and she gives us some answers, straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Largely uneventful day on the Dow. Take a look at these numbers behind me. The Dow is up about 48 points to 10,835.
Let's go to Christine Romans. She's my co-host for "YOUR $$$$$." She's in New York.
Christine, we -- you and I share a love for food we probably shouldn't eat all the time. I'm a Papa John's guy most of the time for pizza, when I'm -- you know, when I have to order pizza. But I've been hearing all these ads about Domino's, and they say they've improved their cheese, their crust and their sauce. So last night I ordered some Domino's pizza. And it was actually pretty good. I think -- I think it has improved across the board, but they cut it like you would cut it if you were giving it out to a kindergarten class, like a grid, not like pizza slices.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Ooh.
VELSHI: It's very unsatisfying. So I've been living with this dissatisfaction.
ROMANS: You are a wedge man.
VELSHI: I'm a wedge guy. I'm definitely a wedge guy. And I didn't sleep well last night. Like I think it just threw off my whole mojo.
And I come in, thinking we're going to get at least some answers on the stock market crash, because as a business guy, I need some answers on this. And here I read the testimony of some of the people who were testifying.
ROMANS: Yes.
VELSHI: And they say that there is no single explanation for the events of Thursday afternoon, which is now coming up to 24 hours of me getting unsatisfying things. Can you do something for me?
ROMANS: Yes. Exactly.
I'll totally help you out here. And of course, we're not talking about testimony about the new ingredients of Domino's pizza.
VELSHI: No.
ROMANS: We're talking about the testimony of what happened with that flash crash, as they're calling it, last Thursday, when the Dow just collapsed 998 points.
Right now on 3 p.m. this afternoon on the Hill, there's going to be a hearing into what exactly happened, why the Dow and the stocks fell apart like this. And there are some things we do know. We know that it's becoming less and less likely that there's this so-called fat finger thing or -- or some kind of --
VELSHI: Yes. Somebody accidentally entered the wrong -- entered billions as opposed to millions?
ROMANS: It's looking more like you have different rules at different places where stocks trade. There's a New York Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ, and there's some 40 other electronic venues where stocks trade. And it's looking more and more like this, Ali.
It's looking more like things slowed down a little bit at the New York Stock Exchange. The stock exchange says when things get really volatile and crazy -- remember, stocks fell 500 points because of the Greece unrest -- when things get crazy, they can take things off autopilot, as they put it --
VELSHI: Right.
ROMANS: -- and allow humans, the pilots to get back to --
VELSHI: And they call it a -- they call it a circuit breaker, which is actually not a bad description, because if there's too much power --
ROMANS: Sure.
VELSHI: -- surging through your electrical system, your circuit breaker will pop and stop it from happening. They call it a circuit breaker. But first -- unlike the circuit breaker it first slows trading down, and then if it gets really bad, stops it.
ROMANS: But it didn't slow trading down anyplace else. And so all of those big computer models, you know, all those big computer models kept trading.
VELSHI: Yes.
ROMANS: And suddenly, you had stocks traded slowly one place, traded more quickly someplace else. Flash trading are these, you know, computers with billions of dollars of money at their fingertips --
VELSHI: Right.
ROMANS: -- where computers are making decisions because of differences in prices --
VELSHI: Right.
ROMANS: -- and piling on. So a lot of people think that somewhere along the way maybe there was a big futures trading order that might have triggered some other trading that might have triggered some of these underlying stocks to get a little volatile. The stock exchange stepped in and had a slow market trading condition. But nobody else did. And then suddenly, all hell broke loose.
VELSHI: So what do we do to solve this? Do all of those 40-some exchanges -- I guess this is stuff for people to understand, because 15 years ago, if you wanted to buy a stock of Procter & Gamble, that traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and two guys made a deal about how much it was going to sell for. That's just not the world now.
ROMANS: The buyer and seller. Well, over -- over the past few years, you've had big, big push from a lot of the financial institutions, too, that they want to be able to trade things on computers, because it's faster and cheaper. And they say fast and cheap is the way you should trade stocks.
The stock exchange has a hybrid model, the New York Stock Exchange. They are an electronic exchange, essentially, but they can step in and have actual humans. They say human intelligence when you need to get rational again with the artificial intelligence. And so they have this hybrid model.
That hybrid model was working with all these computers, and we still -- I mean, I'll be honest with you. They say the NASDAQ CEO in his testimony today -- you saw it, too -- he says there's no smoking gun to say why stocks were down 998 points.
VELSHI: That kind of worries me. I think sometimes a smoking gun is easier, Christine, because you know what to solve or you know who to throw in jail or who to fire. This is -- this just could be man versus technology.
ROMANS: I think it's man versus machine. I think we're going to find out that this is the unintended consequences of so much trading being electronic but also having the human interaction in there, as well.
So at some point on Thursday you had -- you had stocks collapsing 100 percent of their value. It was the humans who looked and said, "This is impossible."
VELSHI: Yes.
ROMANS: "This is irrational and impossible." And then the stock market came up 630 points.
VELSHI: Well, if we're not going to get an answer to this --
ROMANS: It could happen again.
VELSHI: If they're not going to get an answer to this, then I am going to get myself some pizza tonight in the shape of a wedge.
ROMANS: Ali, if you ask them, maybe they can cut it for you especially the way you like it.
VELSHI: That's actually -- that might happen.
ROMANS: Just ask when you call. VELSHI: I will do that. Christine, thank you so much. You always make my intellectual and eating life a little better.
Christine likes to make my life better seven days a week, by the way, because we anchor a show together on the weekends, "YOUR $$$$$," Saturdays at 1 p.m. Eastern, Sundays at 3 p.m. Eastern.
All right. Let me give you a check of the top stories we're covering right now.
Oil executives are on Capitol Hill today for Senate hearings over the devastating spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP leased the oil rig that exploded and sunk last month. As it continues to leak hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil every day, BP and two other companies involved with the rig have basically been blaming one another. We'll keep you on top of that hearing and tell you what comes out of it.
Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden -- that's Vice President Joe Biden's son -- is in the hospital. The White House says he's alert and awake and communicating with his parents and his wife, who are with him. But it's not offering more details as to why he's in the hospital. We'll keep an eye on that for you, as well.
And President Obama has announced a new plan to fight drug abuse. The five-year strategy aims at reducing drug use by kids and the number of chronic users by as much as 15 percent. President Obama says it will make our country stronger and our people healthier and safer.
All right. Huge tornadoes rolling through parts of the plains, killing at least five people, injuring many more. Chad Myers on top of this. He told us about it yesterday, that we were expecting some more of these. We're going to see if the state is facing another round today, straight ahead.
Plus, we're going to show you some stunning pictures of it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: All right. Yesterday Chad told us about vicious weather in the southern plains, deadly tornadoes sweeping around Oklahoma.
By the way, caught on tape, storm chasers were our reporters. Often that's the case, because it's too dangerous for anyone else to be around. Take a look at this tornado which tore across Honeywell, Kansas, which is just north of -- I hope I'm saying that right -- just north of Oklahoma. Wow. Five people dead. Dozens of people injured.
Daylight broke across the region, and you could see the destruction as far as the eye could see. Those twisters churned across much of the metro area, ripped apart homes, tore down power lines, knocked out power to tens of thousands of people elsewhere.
Are we done with that or are we getting more?
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: We're done with it today.
VELSHI: OK.
MYERS: Some of it could come back tomorrow, but not in the same places.
And really, Wichita was under the gun as well. There is a tornado on the ground for a very long time southwest of Wichita. As soon as this thing gotten miles from Wichita, it fell apart.
We're watching it in the Weather Center saying what are we going to do? We go down to the sit room, the situation room, and say, look, if you're in Wichita, you need to take cover. Oklahoma City, you need to take cover because they're on the ground now. And then all of a sudden, that one fell apart. Great, the Oklahoma City tornado did not fall apart, and in fact some spots it got bigger.
And here is the latest track, the latest information. The storm that Honeywell storm actually came across from Oklahoma into Kansas up here and then a couple more on up here. One near Arkansas City, Kansas -- Arkansas City -- that was really a large tornado on the ground.
And then, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten tornadoes on the ground in Oklahoma just in that one night. And it was a night that we were watching. We watched it all night long. So did the iReporters.
You know what? We have some more video.
VELSHI: Let's look at this.
MYERS: The pictures say more than what we can say.
VELSHI: Wow!
MYERS: OK. We're watching this live from KWTV Channel 9 in Oklahoma City. This helicopter pilot said, man, it's getting gusty up here. All of a sudden his shooter, photographer in the back of the helicopter goes, tornado behind us, tornado behind us! And he turns around and sees that literally two miles behind him.
And there's no rain. This is a low precip, an LP tornado, that you could see for a long time because it's not wrapped in rain. And they actually almost crashed the helicopter. I'm not kidding. That is not something apropos. They literally, the helicopter went down, it shook. They had to auto rotate it, pull back on the stick, make the energy of the rotors keep the helicopter in the sky. And they're both a little shaken mentally from that.
VELSHI: No kidding.
MYERS: Too close.
VELSHI: But we're looking for a calmer day today.
MYERS: Absolutely.
VELSHI: All right, good. Chad, we'll stay on top of this and we'll be back in the next little while.
By the way, so much weather going on around the country really affecting people, if you want to know how you can make a difference and help people who are hurt by the weather, and this includes the devastating floods in Tennessee, go to CNN's impact your world page, CNN.com/impact. That's where we gather information and we connect people who want to help with people who already doing things. It's worth a visit.
All right, U.S. drones, they conducted missile strikes against the Taliban. We are going "Globe Trekking" to Karachi, Pakistan. Nic Robertson is live with us next to tell us what's going on and what the connection is to that bomb in Times Square that was found just over a week ago.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: All right, every day we're going to do a segment called "Globe Trekking" where we tell you what's going on elsewhere in the world. In today's case, it's got a lot to do with what goes on right here in the United States.
You remember that car bomb found in Times Square last Saturday night, a week ago Saturday night? Well, let me take you around the world to Pakistan where a lot of people think this may be linked to. Pakistani Taliban, according to the U.S. government, were responsible for at least some part of get that bomb to us. So let's take a look at what happened here.
This is north Pakistan, Waziristan. Drone missiles struck Pakistani Taliban targets there. Fourteen militants, according to the government, were killed in one attack; 10 were killed in the second attack.
Now, what I want to show you is moving down, this is the northwest province of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. Let me take you a little lower over here to -- that's Karachi, the port city of Karachi, Pakistan. There, 18 million people live in Karachi. It's a massive, massive city and it is a bit of a hot spot for terrorism. A lot of people go through there, a lot of money goes through there.
And that is exactly where our senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is right now live. He's got the latest on this.
Nic, what have you got for us?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ali, we know that this missile strike, this drone strike was pretty big by anybody's standards. They were striking in the area north of Waziristan, which is where Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber went to meet Taliban leaders, Pakistan Taliban leaders.
This camp that was hit, five different drones used in an attack that lasts 10 to 15 minutes, 18 missiles fired and it was all timed as two vehicles arriving at several compounds used by the Taliban there. Fourteen Taliban killed, several others injured.
But when you look at this, this is big by standards of drone attacks. Five drones at the same time, an attack over the period of 10 or 15 minutes. You know that they're up there looking down, seeing what's happened with the first few missiles, waiting to see if there's any runaway targets that they need to engage and very likely engaging those as well.
So this is a big -- this has been carefully planned, carefully coordinated, Ali.
VELSHI: What do we think the connection is between the Times Square alleged bomber and these strikes in north Waziristan?
ROBERTSON: It's pretty hard to tell. We heard word back in the end of December last year when the suicide bomber Jordanian doctor walked into a U.S. CIA base in Afghanistan and killed seven CIA operatives, the word was on the streets in Jordan that not long after a Jordanian operative was taken out by strikes coming pretty quickly after.
Could it be the same thing here that some of the Times Square bomber's allies, Taliban members who may have trained him in north Waziristan, could he have given information away that led to them being targeted? The timeframe could work. It's been about a week, he's had intense questioning. But we don't have any of that reliably.
But what we do know -- what we do know is that these drones are follow people around for days at a time and they will wait for the best opportune moment when they get a number of targets coming together. They will wait, they will hover, they will wait until civilians are out of the way as much as possible and then they'll go in after the real target.
So this was big. So is there a connection there? We don't know for sure. Could there be? Quite possibly.
VELSHI: All right. Let me just take our viewers around the world again for a moment to -- well, all right. I can't really do that. I was going to take them over to Chile.
What's the connection to Chile now?
ROBERTSON: Pakistani 28-year-old interning at a hotel, studying tourism there in Chile turns up at the U.S. embassy this week wanting a visa to come to the United States. Guess what? He has explosive residue on his hands.
Now, according to the Chilean police, the embassy there, they have everything in place to make sure that nothing goes wrong. They deal, as they say, adequately and properly with people in this situation and that is apparently what happened. But before he could get in, he was detected with this explosive residue on his hand. We don't know if he had explosives with him, we don't know why he had that residue on his hand, but this is a young Pakistani man, 28 years old, explosive residue on his hand, trying to get a visa to come into the United States, had been in Chile since the beginning of the year -- Ali.
VELSHI: All right, Nic, thanks very much for staying on top of this for us. We'll be checking in with you again.
And by the way, brand new technology here, I'll still getting used to it. I was finally able to move the globe around, and that's what I would have done ,I would have shown you Chile and then taken you to Nic Robertson. But guess what. We get to do this every day, so I'll get it right.
Listen, one of the topics we've been talking about a lot -- let me use my fancy map to show it to you -- it's a oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. If you did not know the name BP a month ago, you do now. We are learning more about the company behind this Gulf Coast oil spill. What do those initials stand for? There's a lot of debate about it. It depends on who you ask.
We'll talk about it when we come back.
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VELSHI: Well, BP has been under the microscope because of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It seems that nothing about this oil spill and this oil giant behind it is escaping people's attention, particularly not its initials.
Jim Boulden found out from talking to people. He's in our London bureau now.
Jim, since this happened, BP has been a subject of conversation. It used to stand for British Petroleum and in some reports you still see it referred to as British Petroleum. The company isn't interested in it being called British Petroleum.
Give us the story on this.
JIM BOULDEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, I mean, it hasn't been called British Petroleum for a very long time actually. I mean, this is a company that goes back to 1910. And then at one point, you might remember, it was called BP Amoco. It has huge operations in the U.S., it likes to see itself, obviously, as a global company.
But ever since this oil spill, Ali, people here have been wondering why we keep hearing the term "British" and "Petroleum" in the U.S. It's an interesting topic because here, of course, it's called BP. We've got BA, BT. You know, it's no different from 3M or AT&T in the U.S. But they seem to keep hearing the world "British" and they're wondering whether or not there may be some kind of -- you know, idea here that they should be the ones that are blamed completely for all of this when, of course, BP wants to say that, of course, they had other people working with them on this oil spill. So we did this blog about what BP stands for. Some people say it means "Big Polluter." You might remember they used to try to call themselves "Beyond Petroleum." I think that's a bit of a stretch now as well.
So a lot of controversy over British Petroleum -- Ali.
VELSHI: All right. So the idea is that -- what does the company say? They want to be called BP? They don't want any extension to that?
BOULDEN: Yes. They were called BP Amoco for a while after the merger taking over Amoco in 1998. Then they changed it back at the millennium for BP and they were using the branding of Beyond Petroleum trying to talk, of course, it's other things that it does.
VELSHI: Alternatives.
BOULDEN: As we know, of course, huge oil and gas company, and that's really what they are, of course.
VELSHI: All right, Jim, thank you for that. We're going to be knowing a lot about BP over the course of the next few weeks so it's useful to know a little bit about that background.
Jim Boulden for us in London.
Watching stuff in 3D has always required those goofy glasses that you have to put on. One company's vision is correcting that and making the media mobile. It's the big idea behind today's "Big 'I'". That's coming up straight ahead.
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VELSHI: OK, a few years ago there was the flat panel rage. Everyone had to trade in their big TV for a little skinny one. And then it became about high definition. There were resistors who said, I don't need it. But once you've seen it, you tend to become a convert even though it costs you more money.
And now it's all about 3D. And people ask me about, I think, I don't know how ubiquitous 3D is going to be. First of all, you need those goofy glasses and there's not all that much produced in 3D right now.
But a man I'm about to talk to is going to tell you about why this is going to be the big thing and what he's doing about it. This part of our "Big 'I'" segment and this is Christopher Yewdall, the executive director and CEO of a company called Dynamic Digital Depth.
Now, Christopher, you are here as part of a new segment that we do every day where we try and give our viewers some sense of a trend or a big idea that's going on that they can either profit from or make their life better by using.
You -- I would not have agreed with your premise. You say that 3D is going to be easy to get and that it's going to be ubiquitous. Tell me why.
CHRISTOPHER YEWDALL, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CEO, DYNAMIC DIGITAL DEPTH: Well, Ali, if you go to your electronics retailer right now, you will be able to buy 3D televisions from some of the major manufactures who are selling a lot of 2D televisions today. You can also buy 3D laptop computers and in certain countries around the world, you can also buy 3D mobiles. So this is becoming --
VELSHI: And that's the business you're in, right?
YEWDALL: -- a very ubiquitous experience.
VELSHI: You're in the mobile phone side of things?
YEWDALL: We're actually across all three platforms. We began with mobile phones back in 2007, and then we progressed into televisions and laptop computers within the last six months.
VELSHI: All right. So the issue here is that 3D products, for the moment, are expensive. They're early stage, so they're a bit expensive. I'm not sure how much content there is for them. And do I have to wear those glasses? I mean, if you can tell me that we can do this without the glasses then we can continue this conversation and I can buy into it.
YEWDALL: Well, the good news is we're going to continue the conversation. With mobile phones it's completely without the glasses. So it's a normal 2D screen and when you switch it into the 3D mode and start watching the 3D movies, 3D photos, it's 3D as you would get in the cinema but without wearing any 3D glasses.
VELSHI: All right, so what happens -- what has to happen to make this ubiquitous? To make this available to everybody at a reasonable price with enough content that it makes it worthwhile for me to get a 3D phone or a 3D laptop as my next purchase?
YEWDALL: Well, that's sort of the complex problems that we've solved. Obviously today, Hollywood is producing quite a few 3D movies. But if you took all those movies home on Blu-Ray disk and watched them, you'd probably have about a couple day's worth of entertainment. Clearly, everything being produced today in the large part is 2-dimensional and one of the key technologies that we've delivered to this market is the ability to automatically convert your normal 2-dimensional content to 3D as you're watching it on the phone, as you're watching it on the television or on your personal computer playing games.
VELSHI: Does that take more bandwidth than 2D on a laptop or a phone takes?
YEWDALL: The process is essentially based on 2D. It's also a very efficient image analysis process that takes a look at the content that's coming into the television, into the phone, and analyzes it and creates the 3D information in real time. So it's very quick. And if you can imagine working on a mobile phone, we have very, very compact software that works efficiently on the processes available on mobile phones today.
VELSHI: We're showing you a picture on TV, a few renditions of how it can look. It's very hard to convey 3D on a 2D screen on TV, but you can get some impression of how these characters go beyond the borders of the phone or the laptop. Boy, if this can work and I don't have those goofy glasses, I'm into it and I'm glad we brought you on for our "The Big 'I'."
Christopher Yewdall is the CEO of Dynamic Digital Depth, live from London and here to prove me wrong and to tell me that 3D will be the next big thing on your cell phone and on your laptop computer. I'll be watching very closely.
Christopher, good to see you. Thank you for coming on my show.
YEWDALL: Thank you, Ali.
VELSHI: And we'll be bringing you big ideas on our "The Big 'I'" segment every day.
Hey, listen, here's a big idea. This is a worrisome big idea, whether or not you think humans caused climate change, the bottom line is there are some studies that show if the environment warms up by just a few degrees over the next 100 years or 200 years or 300 years, the earth could become inhabitable -- uninhabitable.
Let's talk about that when we come back.
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VELSHI: We've all heard a lot about global warming, but today I'm going to tell you something that you may not have heard before. The University of New South Wales in Australia and Purdue University here in Indiana have finished a new study. They say large parts of the world could become uninhabitable over the next three centuries.
Now, instead of looking at regular air temperatures, the way we talk about global warming, they focused on the wet bulb temperature, which measures what you feel when your wet skin is exposed to moving air. And their conclusion is that 95 degrees is the maximum wet bulb temperature that humans can sustain for more than six hours. And their study says that there are some places on earth that could start reaching those temperatures, 95 degrees, wet bulb temperature, in the next century.
Now, they say that if the world temperature keeps rising over the next three centuries -- I know it sounds like a lot, 300 years, but it's not inconceivable, I mean, you'll have great grandchildren around or something -- it could put half of the world's population into an uninhabitable environment. Now, that's the part on the screen that is shown in the lighter color, the -- looks like yellow to me. It's supposed to be white, but maybe it's white or yellow. That's the part that could become uninhabitable.
Matthew Huber is a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He's the co-author of the study and he joins me now by phone.
Professor, thanks for being with us.
MATTHEW HUBER, PROFESSOR OF EARTH SCIENCE, PURDUE UNIVERSITY (via telephone): Hi, good to be here.
VELSHI: First of all, which parts of the world and the United States are most in danger of being uninhabitable and how soon could that start to happen?
HUBER: Well, the parts of the parts of the world we're talking about are the eastern half of the United States, large parts of Brazil, many Mediterranean countries, Australia, most of India and large parts of China, large parts of Africa all end up being in these simulations to be so hot and so humid that it becomes difficult for mammals to survive.
VELSHI: And this will take place over time, so that's interesting. There's two ways to think about it. Humans, knowing that it's coming, could theoretically over time, over decades, move to places that are going to be inhabited. But what's the rest of the effect? You mentioned mammals. How does this change our world and landscape if it happens?
HUBER: That's one of the important parts of this study is that by looking at wet bulb temperature, which is a fundamental thermodynamic variable, we actually are focusing on something that applies really to all warm-blooded mammals.
So, we all have internal temperatures of around 98.6 and this thermal limit is really based on our internal body temperatures and our ability to lose heat to our environment. So, if the outside temperatures become so hot and so humid that we can't dissipate the heat that we generate internally through our metabolism, then we essentially develop a fever and die.
VELSHI: And we're not talking about a big development in temperature change. I mean, the thing that got my attention when I first saw information about the study is that we're talking about over 300 years 13 degrees Fahrenheit or something like that?
HUBER: Well, it varies depending on which parts of the world we're imaging covering in this incredibly hot, moist air. But we're talking about sometime in the next century or so, depending on the rates of global warming, which are difficult to know, parts of the world undergoing this transition to very difficult to inhabit conditions. And then in the coming century or century and a half, say from 100 years to 200 years into the future, more and more of the world being exposed to these conditions.
And one of the reasons why it's really hard to say when this would happen is that, you know, I don't have a crystal ball that tells me how people are going to behave and how our greenhouse gas emissions are going to change through time. So, it's -- it's a complex problem.
But what we tried to do was focus on the parts that were certain. So, if we follow a very large greenhouse gas emissions pathway -- and this is an "if", we can't say that, we don't know that, because I don't know that -- but if we do that, just how bad could it get?
VELSHI: All right. This is a good discussion, and thank you for participating in this great study. It just helps us understand.
And, you know, I want to remind our viewers, this isn't a position about global warming. It's an if the earth continues to get warmer, what the consequences could be for you and the rest of warm- blooded life on the planet.
Professor Matthew Huber is a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University, a co-author of this study that is definitely worth reading.
When we come back, Barbara Walters is having surgery this week. Not an uncommon surgery, but we want to tell you a bit more about it. Elizabeth Cohen is going to join me to run us through what she's going to go through.
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