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Tropical Storm Brewing in Gulf; BP Exec Rumored to Be Leaving; Financial Reform Overhauls Rules; High Tech Mirror Offers Applications
Aired July 21, 2010 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AL VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: As Fred says, I'm Ali Velshi, and I'll be with you for the next two hours today and every day.
Well, looking for my camera, but I'm in the room. I'll be with you, eventually. They'll point me to the right camera eventually. Let's go -- I'm over here. Stay with me, everybody. We've got a TV show to do over here. And I'm going to try and give you a level of detail into some of the things that we're covering that are going to help you make important decisions about how you travel, who you vote for, how you spend money, what you put out on the Internet.
Let's get started right away. Here's what I've got on the rundown for the next hour.
Boy, you know this story well by now. She resigned under pressure after the fallout from a video clip of a speech that she was doing and they accused her of racism against a white farmer. Now this former U.S. Department of Agriculture official might get her job back. But will she take it?
And, with the stroke of a pen, the president signs the most sweeping financial overhaul of Wall Street since the Great Depression. We'll break down what it means to you and your wallet.
And we're exploring a mystery, a mystery behind what is killing the penguins. They're washing ashore on Brazil's beaches.
But first, let me take you to the story that we've been following very closely. Shirley Sherrod. You probably know her name by now. She was a Georgia-based U.S. Department of Agriculture official who gave a speech a few months ago -- she'd given several like it -- in which she described events of a quarter century ago.
She said that she was approached in one case by a white farmer who was struggling, and that she didn't do everything she could have done to help him. Well, that was about three minutes of a forty-one minute speech that a conservative blogger posted on the Internet. What it left out was her explanation, her subsequent explanation that, in fact, she had learned from that. She had had a transformation of her views, and she was telling the crowd how she had learned to see beyond race.
Well, the people in charge of her job didn't look at the rest of the video. The Department of Agriculture forced her to resign, saying it was being pressured by the White House. But within the hour, we'll go to the White House, where we will hear from the White House press secretary, who is sure to get a whole lot of questions about who actually knew about this, who pressured whom and who told her to resign.
Now, the National Association that -- the NAACP had said initially they had condemned Shirley Sherrod. It was an NAACP event that she was speaking to when she made these comments. They have since reviewed the video. They've spoken to the farmer in question. They've spoken to Shirley Sherrod. And this is what they said. They said they were snookered, particularly by FOX. FOX had been very big on this story after the conservative blogger had put it up on the Internet.
We have a statement, as well, from the White House. Obviously, this is the kind of thing that's going to get a lot of attention over the course of the next hour. Let me read that to you now.
It says, "We're not sure whether the ultimate result of -- what will be, but it's clear that with new information through the full speech, a longer look" -- I'm sorry, I can't even -- "a longer look needed to be taken." The White House -- that's what the White House has said. The White House contacted the department last night about the case, and agreed based on new evidence, that it should be reviewed.
Once again, within the hour, we'll be going to the White House directly to hear what they've got to say about it. And our senior White House correspondent, Ed Henry, is there in the briefing room. And he will be there for it. He'll bring us an update as soon as we've got one on that.
We've also got some stuff developing in weather. Let's go to Chad Myers. He's standing by to tell us a little bit about what we can expect. What's happening, Chad?
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, there's a little tropical wave that tried to occur yesterday. It tried to pop up, and this morning, it's very unimpressive. We have a lot of shear through here.
You have to understand that shear is great for a severe thunderstorm. When a severe thunderstorm pops up, it wants to be sheared off with this anvil cloud that you see sometimes charge way out ahead of it. And that's good, because then some of the hail falls out and the storm gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Shear, wind, if you will, is bad in a hurricane. Hurricane wants to be all by itself. It is a loner, it is a cat, doesn't want to be touched. Don't pet me. It's just leave me alone and I'll get bigger.
Well, this thing is not getting bigger today, as you can see, even the convection we add is kind of gone. Some convection here north of -- right there is Haiti, right there is Dominican Republic, that's kind of gone. But there's still the potential as this thing tries to develop into some of these significant thunderstorm activity cells to try to spin. They can. Sometimes the shear can move away, and the cells can begin to move. So we have all of the...
VELSHI: And these are your projections, your potential lines...
MYERS: All the potential lines of weather as the lines of the control -- one and two and three. We don't care if it does that. That would be awesome. But this is called the clipper.
VELSHI: Right.
MYERS: Which isn't very accurate. It is what's said, in the event that we take all the other hurricanes or tropical storms that developed over here over the years, climatology or the average, says it does this. Well, none of the computers are saying that. Saying we don't think that's going to happen.
And so I -- really, we don't get to show this on the air, because we never really get the time. And now I won't be able to find it.. There we go. Too many layers. There we go. This is what a computer model looks like.
VELSHI: OK.
MYERS: You can go online. You can go to Florida state, some other Web site. These are very, very easily defined on many of the "EDU" Web sites, educational Web sites. And so let's see -- right there it is. There it starts. And here's where the potential is. This is what this computer model believes.
VELSHI: OK.
MYERS: Well, you know sometimes it's garbage in had, garbage out. It depends on how good the forecaster was. It depends on how good the programmer was that put all this stuff in. Plus, nobody lives there.
VELSHI: Right.
MYERS: Nobody lives there. Nobody lives there. Nobody lives there. There are no weather balloons going up for us to really know all this.
VELSHI: So in that last one that you showed me with all the lines, there seems to be an increased probability of it going through areas in particular that have oil in them.
MYERS: Let's put it back.
VELSHI: What are we talking about in terms of the time lines?
MYERS: This one all the way out here, this one all the way out, this would be 96 hours right through here, so still about four days away from being anywhere in here.
VELSHI: And we still at the moment have -- there's virtually none of these are not going to cross through oil if it goes over here.
MYERS: Well, sure, they could. The oil is right there.
VELSHI: Yes.
MYERS: And so the good news, the great news is, if it would be here as a 40 mile-per-hour storm wide, because then all of a second, it would blow the oil off shore.
VELSHI: Right.
MYERS: You put the storm here, and then all of a sudden the oil gets blown on shore.
VELSHI: OK. So even with these probabilities, we've still got some good chances that it could miss the oil.
MYERS: Correct. And all of the newer -- and we think the newer models, as they get closer and closer to coming true, so four minutes away -- four days away, the closer you get. So tomorrow's map will be better than today's map.
VELSHI: Right.
MYERS: And the next one -- two days will be better -- the closer we get, the farther we get, the more news we get, the more the models are tending or trending to be farther off to the east.
VELSHI: All right. So with respect to the oil that cap is still holding.
MYERS: Yes.
VELSHI: Their tests are still going on. If a hurricane moves into here, they've got to -- they've got to be making preparations now. Right? They've got to have a few days lead to get people out who are still in the Gulf?
MYERS: Sure. And the cap thing is the best possible scenario that it's working. Because they're not pumping any oil out of it right now. If they were pumping, then all of a sudden they would have to shut the pumps off.
VELSHI: Right, right.
MYERS: And all the oil would just keep going. This -- the reason why they wanted to cap this thing -- this temporary cap -- they call it temporary cap...
VELSHI: Right.
MYERS: ... in the first place is in case a hurricane comes. So now we did it before the hurricane came. And so that the -- the best possible scenario is out there.
VELSHI: And a story that hasn't had a lot of good twists, this might be one of them. MYERS: Pressure is still rising on this, we're going through this as the hour goes on. The pressure is still rising, that's a good sign. We don't see any leaks, no oil is leaking from the ocean floor.
VELSHI: OK. And we'll be back with you for lots and lots of different parts of this, because we've got a lot of things going on, a lot of moving parts today, including, we've been talking about BP. The chief, Tony Hayward, there are reports in the "Times of London" that he might be getting ready to leave. We've got a full report, and as always, a denial.
We'll fill you in when I come back. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TONY HAYWARD, CEO, BP: I want my life back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: May 31 seems like forever ago. That was Tony Hayward saying, "I'd like my life back." Well, he may just get it. There are reports out right now from "The Times of London" that Tony Hayward might be nearing or might be on his way out the door at BP. Maybe sometime in the next couple of months.
Now, BP, a quote from a company insider in this article says that he is utterly damaged goods. However, BP has denied this report. The Houston-based company has told CNN, a spokesman told CNN, Mr. Hayward is not leaving. Of course, we didn't discuss time lines.
He has been the punching bag in this disaster, some say deservedly so. Some say it's just what you get for being the CEO of the company. Who's likely to replace him if this is true? Speculation is that it's the new public face of the clean-up, a gentleman named Robert Dudley, acquired by BP, much more familiar with the U.S. deep water drilling. He's been the one who has really been -- been handling the publicity and the remarks on behalf of BP of late. So that's the possibility.
Tony Hayward, we don't know whether or not he's leaving. But there is some speculation that it will be happening at some point in the near future.
Meanwhile, in Louisiana, there is a rally under way at the moment. It's a rally against the government moratorium on drilling. It's being held in Lafayette, Louisiana. It's an interesting situation for them, because so many of these people have been all right, particularly those who are shrimpers, oystermen, fishermen, in the Gulf of Mexico.
But many of them have now got work as part of the clean-you up from -- from BP. In addition to that, over the years, as shrimping and oystering has gone in and out of economic fashion, there have been many people employed in the oil industry. So while they're all very troubled by what's happened in the oil industry in Louisiana, the fact of the matter is, there are many, many people who want that to remain. They say that their livelihood is dependent on continued drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, this is a moratorium on what's called deep water drilling, drilling in more than 500 feet of water. There's a great deal of shallow water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. And, in fact, a new permit has been issued. It's the first shallow water drilling permit issued since this disaster. It was issued on Friday. A company called Apache got that permit, and it said it has started drilling a natural gas well off the coast of Texas.
This is, by the way, a company that is buying $7 billion worth of BP's assets in oil and gas fields. BP, obviously, has been working hard to -- to try and get some money in preparation for this maybe being a more costly disaster than they had expected, hoped or estimated it would be.
OK, we're going to take you back to Washington in a moment. History has been made in Washington as sweeping financial reforms clean up Wall Street, and hopefully your wallet. We've got the latest that you need to know about when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Today President Obama signed landmark financial reform into law. What does this mean for big banks. More importantly, what does it mean for you? Patricia Woo joins me from New York with a breakdown of what really is a remarkably complicated piece of legislation.
Patricia, you're going to make us all understand it.
PATRICIA WU, CNN CORRESPONDENT : Oh, absolutely, Ali. You know, President Obama called these consumer protections some of the strongest in history. We'll start with the credit score.
You will have access to your credit score for the first time. So if you get turned down for a loan or you get offered a crazy-high interest rate, there is no more mystery. You'll be able to see the credit score that your lender is working with for free.
There are also changes on the way for debit and credit cards. On the debit side, the Federal Reserve is charged with making sure that those swipe fees that banks charge retailers are fair and proportional. That could bring down the cost for the stores, and maybe they'll pass them on to you, the consumer.
On the credit card side, store owners can now set minimums on transactions up to $10. So you may not be able to charge that morning cup of coffee like I do every day. But there is good news, Ali. Stores don't have to be shy anymore about offering discounts for cash instead of credit. So that means you may be able to negotiate a better price if you pay with cash, Ali.
VELSHI: All right. Another big issue, obviously, the issue that got us into this financial crisis in the first place. Mortgages. What are the changes in mortgages?
WU: Well, yes. This legislation was clearly crafted with that in mind, Ali. Lenders are not allowed to make loans borrowers cannot repay. They've got to verify and document a borrower's income and savings. They also can't steer people into high-rate loans when they qualify for lower rates. And it limits the penalties for paying off your mortgage early -- Ali.
VELSHI: And finally, one of the big parts of this bill is this consumer protection agency. Tell us a bit about that.
WU: Absolutely. It's the signature piece of this law, and it will probably have the most impact on you and me, the consumers. The agency's goal is to make sure that financial products are easier to understand. And this agency is going to be making rules for years to come. So the best way to sum up the significance, it is the first time in a long time that someone has got a full-time job looking out for us, Ali.
VELSHI: All right. Well, that's good. And it is very complicated. Over your shoulder, you've got that page up on CNNmoney.com. There is some fantastic explanations on there, and I kind of urge so many of you out there to go out there and take a look at this, because Patricia has gone a great job of explaining some parts of this, but this is a massive, massive piece of legislation with many, many implications, and some say, Patricia, a few imperfections. Even the administration said it would liked to be stronger than it is, but they didn't get everything they wanted.
WU: They needed to compromise to get those votes to get it passed.
VELSHI: All right, Patricia. Great to see you. We'll talk to you again later on. Patricia Woo in New York.
All right. Be sure to watch "YOUR $$$$$" this weekend and every weekend, Saturdays at 1 p.m. Eastern and Sundays at 3 p.m. Eastern where we take these issues and break them down even further for you.
Top stories now.
The Congressional Black Caucus says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack overreacted when he asked Shirley Sherrod to resign over a video posted on the Internet. They're backing her reinstatement. Vilsack says he's going to review the case.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced new sanctions against North Korea today. She's in South Korea for meetings. The new sanctions are aimed at illegal sales of cigarettes and liquor by some of North Korea's so-called elite. U.S. officials say those items helped fund the communist nation's nuclear program.
And last-minute Republican motions in the senate are delaying the expected vote on the bill that's intended to extend unemployment benefits to millions of Americans. Earlier this week, President Obama called on Congress to get the deal done to extend those benefits until November. Republicans are demanding that the costs of that bill, those expenses, are offset by cuts elsewhere.
Well, a mirror with multiple faces. We'll check out a new high- tech mirror that does more than just show your reflection.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Well, it's future of vanity, so to speak. Our Gary Tuchman takes a look at a mirror that can show you more than just your pretty face.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Magic mirror on the wall...
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A mirror that can multitask? Snow White's evil queen had one. And now the interactive mirror by Interference Inc.
ALPAY KASAL, CO-CREATOR, INTERACTIVE MIRROR: A new take on something that most people have in their home. We've added a little bit of magic to it.
TUCHMAN: One touch unlocks apps and widgets that transform the mirror into a gaming console, a design board, even a place to get the news while using the mirror to start your day.
SAM EWEN, CEO, INTERFERENCE INC.: I have the latest headlines from CNN. I also have the time, date and weather right there. There's really no reason that we couldn't link this to your schedule and iPhone and BlackBerry and computer and say, you know, pop up here is what I'm doing today.
TUCHMAN: Marketing executive Sam Ewen and technology expert Alpay Kasal, dreamed up the interactive mirror two years ago. From touch screen technology to augmented reality, the mirror recognizes an object in the real world, and reacts by displaying information tied to that object.
EWEN: And we have a sort of simple "hello world" animation here. But this could be almost anything. So you could be at a music store, and you're wearing a U-2 T-shirt, and we recognize that it's a U-2 logo and then suddenly, we pop up the latest video.
TUCHMAN: If you're wondering how to get one, a consumer version of the mirror is in the works. Its creators say it will cost in the hundreds.
Gary Tuchman, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VELSHI: OK. We've had these -- we've had a lot of animals on this show. We've had penguins. They're cute and they're funny. They do funny things on land and in the water.
Hundreds of dead penguins, though, are washing up on Brazil's beaches. What is killing them? We've got some answers to that mystery when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Welcome back. I'm Ali Velshi. We're at the half hour. Let me get you caught up on some of the headlines we're following here.
It is a done deal. President Obama has signed into law the most sweeping reform of the financial system since the Great Depression. Among the changes, it permanently raises the bank deposit limit from $100,000 to $250,000. It also creates a new consumer protection agency.
Just months after making the infamous statement, "I'd like my life back," BP chief Tony Hayward just might get his wish. The "The Times of London" reports that Hayward is expected to step down in late August or September. BP says there is no truth to that report, continuing a series of not quite sure what's going on issues with respect to this oil spill, which is in day 93 right now.
Hurricane hunters are waiting until tomorrow to check out a tropical disturbance in the Caribbean. Forecasters say the system became less organized overnight but could regain strength over the next two days. It's not expected to threaten the area of the Gulf oil disaster, except it kind of might, given what we just heard from Chad Myers a little while ago.
All right. Very fascinating story taking place in South America. Penguins. We've seen them. We've had them on this show before. There are a number of penguins who are doing their sort of normal migration. Let me show you a map where I can give you a sense of what they normally do.
They come in from the -- from the Antarctic. They migrate north through the Falcon Isles -- I guess the map is right behind me. You can see it there. You can see they come around the bottom, they migrate up through the Falcon Islands up through Argentina and to Brazil, but in the last ten days, about 500 dead penguins have been found on the beaches of Brazil.
Now CNN senior Latin American affairs editor Rafael Romo has recently returned from Brazil.
Rafael, good to see you again. You were down there a while back on a similar story.
RAFAEL ROMO,CNN SENIOR LATIN AMERICAN AFFAIRS EDITOR: Exactly.
VELSHI: So this isn't brand-new, but we've seen a whole lot. What's going on?
ROMO: It's actually been happening since 1999. That's when Rio started seeing the first penguins, and it's a very surreal scene. People are at the beaches, beaches that everybody knows like Ipanema, Copacabana, and all of a sudden you see a penguin. These are penguins that come from Patagonia, from very, very cold kind of climate, and all of a sudden they appear there.
So we started asking questions and went to a zoo there in Rio, acting like a shelter for these penguins. And what they tell me is that for whatever reason -- it can be climate change, can be overfishing, can be pollution of the water -- the normal migration of the penguins gets disrupted around this time of the year, which in that part of the world, right now, it is the winter.
VELSHI: Right.
ROMO: And so they're normally migrating north.
VELSHI: Yes, for warmer weather.
ROMO: Looking for food.
VELSHI: Right.
ROMO: But for whatever reason, they get disoriented and are unable to come back, and they try and find land, the closest land they can, and it happens to be the Ipanema Beach. It happens to be Copacabana Beach in Brazil.
VELSHI: Why are they dying, then, if they find the land?
ROMO: Well, they're looking at three different possible options. One is global warming; another one is over fishing. They're going up the north, through the coast of Argentina and Brazil. And another possible cause is the pollution of the water. There are many oil platforms around that area that can be polluting the water. So any of those three causes could be to blame for that.
VELSHI: But you say it's been going on for a long time. Is it increasing now? Is that what the issue is?
ROMO: They had their peak in 2008. They had about 1,000 penguins that particular winter. And then it went down a little bit last year, and now based on the numbers that I've seen, it's increasing. And you were talking about 500...
VELSHI: Five hundred and ten days, right.
ROMO: That's a lot.
VELSHI: But what can they -- I mean, what can they do? Do they do autopsies on these penguins to see whether it's oil or whether it's a lack of food? Can they make those determinations?
ROMO: What they have seen at the Niteroi Zoo is that they're very hungry. They have nothing in their stomachs. It seems like they haven't been eating for days.
The other thing that they saw was that they were -- a few of them were completely covered in oil. And what that means is that that would cause them to get disoriented, at the same time cause them to lose their normal oil... VELSHI: Right.
ROMO: ... their bodily oil that protects them from hypothermia.
VELSHI: Right. Right.
ROMO: That's how they survive. And so they lose that, and they're unable to regulate their own temperature.
VELSHI: Wow. Interesting story. And of course, if it's an animal, it would be a necropsy that -- that was something that my producer just reminded me. It wouldn't be an autopsy. OK, fascinating story. So what we need to see is what happens in the next week or two. If these numbers continue, then we've top the peak in 2008. Nobody's got a solution for this yet.
ROMO: Not so far. But what they're doing is, they take the penguins to the shelter, they feed them, they treat them. And once they're good enough to go back, the Brazilian air force, they use one of their planes to take them back to Patagonia and some of them can survive. Three of the ones that we saw, they were just so used to humans that they were just going to remain in the zoo.
VELSHI: Wow. Very interesting. And they have this whole system of migration, going back and forth, and so I just hope that doesn't disorient them, putting them on a plane and putting them somewhere else. It's -- they're -- you know, I hope it doesn't get worse.
ROMO: I would actually like to call your attention to one interview that I had with a scientist who explained to us what's going on here. Let's take a listen.
VELSHI: OK.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARIA DE SOUZA, ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYST (through translator): Animals that swim in oil fields come here with petroleum on their bodies. They get contaminated, so you have to wash the animal to get rid of the pollution.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMO: So that's explaining the petroleum, the oil in their bodies.
VELSHI: Right.
ROMO: And it's a very slow and painful process to clean them up.
VELSHI: Yes.
ROMO: And like I said before, they lose their natural bodily oil...
VELSHI: Right. ROMO: ... which regulates their temperature, so...
VELSHI: Yes.
ROMO: ... it's a problem.
VELSHI: Their natural loft of their -- of their -- it goes down because -- when it's saturated with the oil.
ROMO: Exactly.
VELSHI: All right. Rafael, good to see you. Thank you, my friend. Good to see you again.
ROMO: Absolutely.
VELSHI: Rafael Romo, our senior Latin affairs editor.
All right, brutal punishments in Afghanistan, the Taliban sending a message to security forces there. It's all ahead in "Globe Trekker."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Time now to go "Globe Trekking." Things are heating up in Afghanistan, for those of you who didn't think it could heat up any more. It's been a particularly violent month for U.S. troops, one of the most violent since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001. Now an update. It's particularly violent for Afghan security forces, as well, the brutal murder of 12 members of Afghan security forces.
Let's go to Afghanistan, to Kabul, where Atia Abawi is there with the latest -- Atia.
ATIA ABAWI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, there, Ali. Well, six Afghan police officers were beheaded on Tuesday in the northern province of Baglan (ph). According to the Baglan governor, he said that eight police officers were at a police post when they came under attack by 200 to 300 insurgents, he said. He said that they were able to hold them off for about two hours. When they called for help to the central police headquarters of the province, help did not come. In the end, six of them were killed and 2 have gone missing, Ali -- Ali.
VELSHI: Atia, this is -- we've been talking about how this is becoming a much more violent time in Afghanistan. What's the talk in Afghanistan about how to deal with this? We just heard that Hamid Karzai said he wants control, security control over Afghanistan by 2014, right at a time when it doesn't seem like they're closer to having more control over security in their country.
ABAWI: That's a very good point, Ali. 2014, as we all know, is just four years away, and we're right now in 2010, which is the deadliest year in the war in Afghanistan since it began in 2001.
But it should be noted, Ali, that this year, this violence, these deaths that we're seeing -- it was grimly predicted last year. In the summer of 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, the then top NATO commander, himself said that with this new strategy, with this surge, as well as a new tactical directive that was aimed to protect civilian lives, that there would be more ISAF casualties at first, but as they started to gain momentum, then in the end, those casualties would go down.
And right now, there is optimism within the Afghan government, as well as the international community, as we saw yesterday in the Kabul conference, where President Karzai again reiterated his call for Afghan police forces and security forces to take over the combat role by the year 2014.
And the international community, although supporting him, are very cautious as to what to say if they actually will completely hand over their responsibility that we have seen in the last nearly nine years to the Afghan forces who, as has been proven on the ground, has not basically been fighting very much. It's the NATO forces that are taking the lead in the fight against the insurgency and the Taliban here in Afghanistan.
VELSHI: OK, Atia. And we saw Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing, well, reservation at Hamid Karzai's comments. Thanks, Atia.
Speaking of Hillary Clinton, let's go over to South Korea, where she's -- she's been jetting around the world. She's in South Korea right now. And she has announced new sanctions against North Korea. Now, those sanctions involve freezing some North Korean assets and targeting elites who engage in the illegal sale of cigarettes, liquor, exotic foods, things like that. Around 5,000 North Koreans are considered elite and they live more pampered lifestyles than the rest of the population does.
You can see in these pictures, Secretary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were in South Korea for meetings. And they got a glimpse into the very rare demilitarized zone. That's the zone between North and South Korea where fighting is not -- not conducted. It is a -- it is, as you can see, a demilitarized zone, and that's -- they got to tour that. We will hear more of that when they conclude their trip.
All right, finally, Blagojevich's big day. Ousted Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has talked our ears off for over -- over a year, promising explosive testimony at his corruption trial. Well, today he dropped another bombshell. I'll tell you about that when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: All right, let me give you a check of some of the top stories we're following here on CNN. The pressure tests on the well cap in the Gulf of Mexico are ongoing. BP says the cap is successfully keeping the oil from leaking out of the damaged well. The pressure underneath that reservoir is growing. That's a good sign. We are reminded, though, this is just a temporary fix. The relief wells are supposed to be the ultimate solution. We're expecting those in late July or August. They're under way.
More than 20 people were sent to the hospital after their United Airlines flight was bounced around by extreme turbulence. The Washington to Los Angeles flight had to land in Denver last night. No one was seriously injured, but there were a lot of bumps to the head.
And in crime and consequence, let me tell you a little bit about Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois. He's been quite a big talker since he was first found to have allegedly been perhaps dealing for the seat vacated -- the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama when he was elected president. Well, it's time for his trial and he was supposed to testify. Well, he dropped this bombshell just a couple of hours ago. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROD BLAGOJEVICH, FMR. ILLINOIS GOVERNOR: Thanks for being here. From the very beginning, when all of this happened, when the government came into our home and took me away from our kids and then ultimately from the people of Illinois, I said from the beginning I did nothing illegal.
I said from the very beginning that the government and all of us should hear the tapes, the tapes should be played, that the tapes, when they were heard, would prove my innocence. The government played some of the tapes. In the tapes that the government played, they proved, as I said all along, that I did nothing illegal. In fact, they proved that I sought the advice of my lawyers and my advisers. They proved that I was on the phone talking to them, brainstorming about ideas. Yes, they proved some of the ideas were stupid, but they also proved some of the ideas were good.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: All right. And the closing arguments now are set for Monday.
All right. Now, how about if you could power your car with trash? Sounds like a "Back to the Future" movie, but we're actually not too far away from that reality. I'll tell you about it when we come back.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Marty! You've got to come back with me!
MICHAEL J. FOX, "BACK TO THE FUTURE": Where?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Back to the future!
FOX: What are you doing, Doc?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need fuel. Go ahead! Quick! Get in the car! (END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: Who didn't love that, that whole idea of putting trash into the back of your car and powering it? Every day, we bring you a "Big I," a big idea that could help change our own future.
Now, let's talk about trash for a second. What do we do with our garbage? I was actually surprised to learn about 55 percent of it goes to landfills. I actually would have thought it was more than that. Almost a third gets recycled. Congratulations to all of us. We're not doing that bad a job. And we burn 14 percent of our trash.
Now, let's take that landfill part, the 55 percent. What goes into the landfills? Well, about almost a quarter, 22 percent, is paper, 18 percent is food, 70 percent are plastics, 16 percent glass and metal, then wood and yard trimmings and other things.
But you notice some of those things, like yard trimmings, like wood, like food, these are biodegradable. These are things that you can actually -- it's organic waste. You can actually do something with organic waste -- 55 percent of the 55 percent that goes into landfills. So half of what we put into landfills right now can actually be reused. It's organic. We can do other things with it.
And it can be used to make fuel, Ethanol in particular. For more, let's talk about this. I'm joined now by Arnold Klann. He's the CEO of a company called BlueFire Ethanol, and they actually want to take stuff that is headed for the landfill that can be made into ethanol, and put it into cars, sort of just like "Back to the Future," just like that little clip we saw.
Arnold, thanks very much for joining us. Tell us about your company.
ARNOLD KLANN, CEO BLUEFIRE ETHANOL: Well, I'm glad to be on the show today. We have a technology that we've pioneered that's been in existence now, really, for about 20 years, where we can take that which society values the least, our trash, and we can take that material that's buried into the ground, separate it into its constituent components, primarily of sugars and of lignens (ph), which makes up most of the organic components, and then by taking those sugars, we ferment those through very conventional processes into the ethanol that goes into our transpiration fuel.
So the lignen matter that's left over, we burn in our boilers to supply our steam and our electricity needs of the plants. So again, by co-locating our plants within the landfill model, we are capable of taking that material, instead of going into burial, into fuel -- into the fuel mix.
VELSHI: All right. The system you said has been around for a while. What has made this viable now?
KLANN: Really, it's the fact the market has come to utilize the ethanol. Twenty years ago, ethanol was a nascaent (ph) chemical to go into the transportation mix. While there was a market there, since this was new technology, financing mechanisms really didn't exist to finance first-of-a-kind technologies such as these. But with societal changes -- of course, we're looking at the greenhouse gases (INAUDIBLE) -- we are now able to develop a situation within the government constraints of the grant programs, loan guarantees and the necessity for energy security for the country to really finance these types of things.
VELSHI: All right. So in terms of ethanol and successes in ethanol, we've seen it in Brazil, where they use some of the -- the cane, the sugar cane. We do it here in the United States with corn, and that's been somewhat controversial. How does this idea of taking trash and making it into fuel compare with other alternatives that we're looking at right now?
KLANN: Well, right now, it's the most efficient, I believe, because, again, if you look at corn, you look at what's going on in Brazil right now, their fundamentally taking a food product, sugars in the case of Brazil, and transferring that into a chemical that would ultimately go into our gasoline mix. In our case, we're taking what society, again, throws away.
And by way of reference, to give you an example, out of a ton of trash that we're intercepting from landfills, we can produce approximately 70 gallons of ethanol. If we look at the same production model from corn, we produce about 95 gallons per ton of the corn. So we have very close to the same energy balance that you would get from corn as we do with the trash. So we're throwing away a huge amount of energy.
VELSHI: Does the quality of the garbage have any impact on your production?
KLANN: Not really. That's the beauty of our technology. We have one of the only technologies that is really agnostic as to how the feed stock comes in. As long as it's organic and has long as it's been grown photosynthetically, we can extract the sugars from that material, we can process those sugars into the ethanol. And that's the key to our technology.
VELSHI: Now, part of it is that you're -- you've got two plants that are set up right next to landfills here in the United States.
KLANN: That's correct. Our first project is located in Lancaster, California. That project has all its permits. We're ready to go into construction on that facility once we close financing. Our second project is located in Fulton, Mississippi. In this case, it's not adjacent to a landfill, but rather a chipping mill, and will be utilizing wood waste/other materials that come out of the forestry activities, as well as some agricultural residues, to process that into ethanol to go into the Mississippi and the Southeast marketplace.
VELSHI: What's the potential downsides here? What are some of the hurdles that you have to confront?
KLANN: Well, the biggest hurdle right now, and it has been the consistent hurdle, and that is financing for these first-of-a-kind type of technologies. Again, as I mentioned, the Obama administration has fully supported putting in loan guarantees, grants to make sure these types of technologies do get into the marketplace to meet our energy needs here in the United States, as well as having a technology for export. That has been by far the biggest barrier to entry to getting these projects in place.
And of course, the financing is related to, Is there a product demand? And so with the renewal fuel standard passed back in 2009 and then the renewal in 2009 (INAUDIBLE) and now in 2010, this gives us the mandated marketplace so that the investors, particularly the capital markets, will make those investments in our type of technologies to finance these types of plans. And so the goal of the administration to have 16 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol into the marketplace by 2022 can be met with now the mechanisms that are put in place.
VELSHI: Arnold, thanks very much for joining us. Exciting technology. I hope it continues to work. Arnold Klann is the CEO of BlueFire Ethanol, joining me live from Los Angeles -- turning garbage into fuel. For more information on BlueFire ethanol, head to their Web site, Bluefireethanol.com.
The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is leaving hundreds if not thousands of animals coated in oil. But after the animals are cleaned off, they're still having problems. Coming up next, we're going to take you on a behind-the-scenes tour of a sea turtle rehab facility in Orlando, Florida.
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VELSHI: All right, it's day 93 of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Let me bring you up to speed with a number of things that are going on. First one concerns the CEO of BP, Tony Hayward, a name you've probably come to know, a face you probably recognize. "The Times of London," a publication in England, obviously, is reporting that insiders at BP are saying that Tony Hayward is on his way out, could be out sometime in the next eight or ten weeks.
BP has said that that is not true. BP here in the United States has told CNN that report is untrue. The report does quote insiders saying that Tony Hayward has been something of a lightning rod for negative press.
BP also says that the cap on the well in the Gulf of Mexico continues to keep the oil inside. The pressure is growing. That is a good thing. Hard to know whether that's a good or a bad thing. They want the pressure to grow. If the pressure doesn't increase or it starts to decrease, it suggests that oil is leaving that reservoir from somewhere else. It continues to rise.
The pressure testing has been extended each day by 24 hours. It was once again extended on Tuesday. We're yet to hear whether it will be extended again. Again, this is theoretically a temporary solution until those wells, the relief wells have been dug. That is thought to be the more permanent solution. But as Chad said earlier, there's some weather heading into the Gulf of Mexico, and it would be good if this cap actually worked so that they don't have to let oil back out into the Gulf of Mexico.
You can see there, those are the relief wells that are being drilled. They are expected to be done sometime later this month or in very early August. The new cap has stopped the flow of oil. There's a new program that they want to use to try and block this thing. Remember the old "top kill" system, where they were going to throw junk into this thing and try and plug it? Well, there's something called "static kill." It's similar. It's probably easier to do now that the oil has stopped flowing. They might start that in the next 48 hours or so.
All right, well, this oil disaster isn't going anywhere. Another big part of the story, of course, is the animals, the wildlife that's being devastated by the oil. We have covered oiled animals all across the Gulf Coast. The majority of the time, these animals have ingested the oil. The vapors have caused breathing problems, eating and surviving. We can't let these stories fall off the radar. They're going to continue long after that well is capped.
Let's talk about sea turtles, in particular. So far this year, 471 sea turtles have died in the Gulf of Mexico. As you can see there, 43 have been taken to rehab, 11 have been released -- have been treated and released.
Now, what happens in the long haul to these animals that are devastated by oil? SeaWorld Orlando has given us exclusive behind- the-scenes look at the long-term care of endangered sea turtles. Last night, they received 19 sea turtles that were rescued from the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. They were given initial treatment at Gulf World Marine Park in Panama City, Florida. Then they were transported to SeaWorld Orlando for long-term care.
