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Space Walk to Fix Heating Problem on Space Station; Stock Market Dips after Fed Statement; Web Site Aids Disabled Gamers

Aired August 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: I'm Ali Velshi. Here's what I've got on the rundown.

It could turn out to be the most important space walk yet at the International Space Station. It's happening right now. We've got pictures. We've got a pioneering astronaut on hand to give us a play by play and tell you why this one really is important.

Plus, America's economy is ugly. Could be getting uglier. That is essentially what the Federal Reserve is saying right now. I'll tell you what it means to your job, your home and your wallet.

Also, the next time you see a fly in your house, don't swat it. That bug could hold the key to harnessing the power of the sun. At least that's what they're telling me. I'll tell you about that very shortly.

But first, let's get to that space walk and tell you exactly what is going on right now. Space walks happen all the time, and they don't always make the news. But last week, we heard about a faulty cooling module on the International Space Station. As you know, people live up there. Right now, there are six astronauts on the International Space Station, three Americans and three Russians. Now, it is in orbit.

Let's take a look at it right now. It's very pretty, actually. This module is basically -- it's a heat transfer module in the same way that you might have a heat pump at your house. It takes liquid ammonia. It removes the excessive heat from one side -- the part that's facing the sun, where temperatures can get up to 250 degrees, takes it to the other side, the dark side, where it could be negative 250 degrees. A 500-degree range on that space station, and this is the sophisticated cooling system that actually fixes it.

Now, they were supposed to take two space walks to fix this. They went out on Saturday, and that was a remarkably unsuccessful effort to do this. They had alarms on July 31st that said something needed to be fixed. It didn't work. So today was supposed to be the final fix. It's already under way.

But -- and well, let's talk to John Zarrella about it. It might actually be doing quite well. It started at 8 a.m. this morning, supposed to go on, John, for about another hour or so. What are we hearing about it? JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Doing really well today, Ali. They're actually ahead of the time line at this particular moment. They finished disconnecting all of the cables, the wiring, the data transfer lines. All of that has been taken off of this -- literally, the size of a refrigerator...

VELSHI: Right.

ZARRELLA: ... 800-pound box, Ali. And you can see there now, they're getting ready to grapple it and remove the old ammonia pump, so that they can then install the new one on that third space walk, which will come up on Sunday. So things going pretty well right now.

VELSHI: All right. Now, earlier today, we -- while you were monitoring this, you came across a conversation now. The reason I think this is important is that this is actually -- I mean, NASA, these are a bunch of cool cucumbers, right? They never really tell you anything is all that bad. This could be very serious for them, so I always wonder how these six people up there are feeling while they are out there on a mission that is going to have to solve the problem. What were they chatting about?

ZARRELLA: You know, they're all different. Some of them are all business. They don't really talk extraneously about other things, but periodically, they do have some interesting back and forth with ground control. Let's listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And in sequence, as planned, Tracy Caldwell Dyson now will open up a thermal cover called a booty over the quick disconnect. There's a quarter-inch quick disconnect on the -- at the interface of the S1-S3 cross segments of the International Space Station.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a second layer you can open up also.

TRACY CALDWELL DYSON, ASTRONAUT: Oscar, do you know what part of California we're going over?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The coastline, is what I heard.

DYSON: Oh, OK. Will you tell me, from the north or the south?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Southern. Southern part of California.

DYSON: All right. That's home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know for me, I just count it all as part of west Texas.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZARRELLA: That's Tracy Caldwell Dyson there, chitchatting with Oscar in mission control.

VELSHI: Yes.

ZARRELLA: Just as she -- they're flying over, nonchalant, flying over 220 miles up. I just find that fascinating, Ali.

VELSHI: All right, John. Stay with us. You're, of course, covering this very, very closely for us. I want you to come back and tell us a little more about this. You'll be joined by a pioneering astronaut who's actually been up there and can tell us what it feels like, and by the way, what the stakes are if this doesn't work as well as it looks like it's working at the moment.

John Zarrella in Miami.

All right. Federal investigators say they have not ruled anything out as they try and pinpoint the cause of that Alaskan plane crash that we covered so extensively yesterday. In it was killed former Alaska senator, Ted Stevens, and four other people.

We're also learning that the brutal terrain and bad weather made it difficult initially for responders to get to the scene. And what they find when -- what they found when they arrived is today's "Sound Effect." Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KRISTOPHER ABEL, ALASKAN AIR NATIONAL GUARD SENIOR AIRMAN: There was a scar on the hillside, where it impacted and skidded up the hill. That was probably about 75 yards long, and as we approached the aircraft, you could smell the fuel. The wings were swept back. The engine compartment of the plane had broken off, or buried itself into the ground. What else to say?

JONATHAN DAVIS, ALASKA AIR NATIONAL GUARD SENIOR AIRMAN: The fuselage itself was surprisingly intact, and that's where all but one of the survivors and everybody else were located.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what was it like inside the aircraft? How would you describe that scene?

DAVIS: Well, it's a jumbled mess, and it's wet and, as I said, fuel smell. The volunteers who have gotten there, spent the night there, were frazzled. They were dirty and wet and tired themselves. They had been treating these guys overnight. But as I said, it was relatively intact, and they were able to ride out the weather there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: Relatively intact inside the fuselage. Four passengers did survive the crash with injuries, including former NASA chief Sean O'Keefe. Now, he's believed -- it is believed, however, that the youngest survivor, who is 13 years old, was not in the fuselage and was able to get out of the plane, and he spent the night under the wing.

All right, straight ahead, more on that crucial repair that's going on right now at the International Space Station. Without it, that station could hit 250 degrees. After the break, we're headed back into orbit with somebody who's been there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Let's go back into space for a moment -- well, first we'll start on earth, and then we'll talk about space. We've got John Zarrella with us in Miami. We've got Dr. Mae Jemison joining us on the phone. She is a pioneering astronaut, first African-American woman astronaut here in the United States. She's been in space. Dr. Jemison, are you with us?

DR. MAE JEMISON, FORMER ASTRONAUT (via phone): Yes, I am.

VELSHI: Have you been out on a space walk?

JEMISON: I have not done a space walk. We actually -- all mission specialists trained for space walks, but I did not do a space walk. So I'm going to try to help as much as I can to talk about preparation and all the things that go along with it.

VELSHI: OK. So tell me what that is. I mean, I would imagine that the comparable thing that we can think of in terms of risk and being up there is somebody making a fix to a window on a very tall building or something like that. How is it different? What are the things -- what are forces working on your body and what are the things you have to worry about?

JEMISON: I wouldn't actually make that comparison. The reason why I wouldn't make that comparison is because you might have the opportunity to get some extra equipment from somewhere.

VELSHI: Ah.

JEMISON: This is a case where the environment is very hostile. And you have to have planned ahead, years before.

So, for example, what you're seeing right now are a real team effort, where individuals on the ground had planned years ahead that you would have spare parts to change out. You're also looking at the fact that people have trained for all kinds of things, so the EVA crew members -- those are the ones out doing the space walk -- have to coordinate with the ground, here on earth, as well as coordinating with engineers inside who are moving robotic arms and doing the camera work for different ways. So the coordination is much more complex than that.

VELSHI: Well, and here's the -- here's the tricky part of that. It's all planned. They've got those replacement modules on the space center. But here's the thing. They went out on Saturday, and something didn't budge the way it was supposed to. So I was joking yesterday that it's almost -- you've got to be -- with all that training, these space walkers, John, have got to be a bit like MacGyver when they're -- when they're up there.

JEMISON: Well, this is not just like MacGyver, but actually, you have to be very versatile.

And I think something else that's very interesting about this is that this was an unexpected repair...

VELSHI: Yes.

JEMISON: ... as it's going along, and the procedures were set up and tested on the ground, just all of this has happened since July 1.

VELSHI: Right.

JEMISON: So there have been crews -- there are crews down in the neutral buoyancy facility at Johnson who are doing the exact same thing that the astronauts up in space are doing.

ZARRELLA: Yes, I was going to say, Mae -- this is John Zarrella -- that I was talking to Katie Coleman, who's going to be flying in a couple of months, up to the space station for her six months, and she was in the neutral buoyancy lab last week, running through, before they did the first space walk, the procedures, you know, that they are doing up there now to make sure that all that works before they actually do it in space, right?

JEMISON: Absolutely. So the coordination that you have here is, you know, years ago people had to say, well, what happens if the coolant pump fails.

VELSHI: Right.

JEMISON: So let's carry some extra coolant pumps up. Let's get you familiar with what's going on. So all the astronauts are going to be up there as engineers, and EVA crewmen, they train for that.

But then when something actually happens, and you have to actually set up a new scenario, because it wasn't exactly like you thought it would be. It's not a standard, you know, change-out.

VELSHI: John, let's just explain to our viewers why this is a bigger deal than it might seem. Because space walks happen a fair amount. The issue here, of course, is that they've got these replacements. If, for some reason, they couldn't fix this adequately, this is an issue. We've got six astronauts up there who are -- you know, what happens?

ZARRELLA: Well, yes, you know, you have two of these pumps up there, so they have the one that's still operating, and this one that failed, and they'll install the new one. Hopefully, it will go right.

Because what you've got here is, this pump literally cools the avionics and the electronics in the U.S. laboratory, in the U.S. side of the space station.

VELSHI: Right.

ZARRELLA: The Russian side has its own cooling system for that. So now they've had to shut down part of the U.S. side, so that those pieces of equipment -- the science lab, the experiments, the avionics, the electronics -- don't overheat and get really, really hot.

VELSHI: Right.

ZARRELLA: So now, while the astronauts are not in any danger, you really want to have that second cooling system up, because you just can't do what you need to do up in the space station without both of them working. Isn't that right, Mae?

JEMISON: Absolutely. So what you want to do -- what you're doing right now is standing down on the science a bit.

VELSHI: Right.

JEMISON: You're not doing as many of the experiments and the work that you are actually up in space to do.

VELSHI: All right. Well, that's a good explanation. Thank you to both of you for helping us understand this.

Again, I know a lot of people find that these things are very common. But this one is a little bit different. Very important. Probably about 50 minutes left in this.

Dr. Mae Jemison, thanks very much for explaining it to us -- John.

ZARRELLA: Yes, Ali, I was going to say one thing. Remember, this 800-pound mass that they're going to have to move out today and then put that new one in, in the Sunday space walk. So it's -- maybe weightless, but there's a big mass they've got to move around up there.

VELSHI: All right, John. We'll stay on it together. Thank you so much for that, as always. John Zarrella in our Miami bureau.

I want to switch to money for a second. A bleak outlook by the Federal Reserve has investors on the run today. I'm going to show you what's going on on the stock market when we come back. I'll explain to you why that's happening.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Let's take a look at what this Dow is doing right now. Down abut 237, 230 points. That's actually not as bad as it's been. You can see the percentage drop there is about 2.14.

I'll remind you that the Dow is 30 stocks. They are 30 very important stocks. But the broader market, we tend to look at the S&P 500. And the percentage drop there is actually greater than the Dow, which is why I like to sort of pay attention to what's going on today.

I'll tell you what's happening here. The Federal Reserve came out yesterday, and said that, yes, if you're feeling like this economy isn't forging ahead the way you think it should be, you're right. Things are a little slower than they were expected to be. There's some danger that, in fact, this economy might be slowing down again. This is that danger of a double dip recession: what we've been worried about, what's happening in Europe, and whether that would influence us. And, of course, this recession was started by foreclosures. It was started by credit tightening up.

So where are we right now? Well, here's what the Federal Reserve said. It said things are tough. And it's going to try and do what it can to help out the economy. But it's sort of in a hard place.

Let me explain to you. Central banks, like the Federal Reserve, or the Bank of England or the European Central Bank, well, they're like driving a car that doesn't have a steering wheel and doesn't have gears. It just has a gas pedal and a brake.

The brake is for when you want to slow the economy down. You raise interest rates, making it more expensive to borrow money, so people don't spend as much, and that slows the economy down. It reduces demand; prices come down.

What if you want to get the economy to go faster, like we do right now? You hit the gas pedal. That's when you lower interest rates. It makes it easier for people to borrow. They go out and spend money. That spending of money means that businesses hire more people. Those people have jobs. They spend. Demand increases, and the economy strengthens.

Well, what if that doesn't happen? What if somebody offers you a mortgage for virtually no interest or offers to sell you a car at virtually no interest for a loan, but you don't take it, because you're worried that you may not have your job down the road?

That's the problem. Consumers are not spending. They are not confident that this economy is coming back, so everybody is hoarding their cash. Even companies are hoarding their cash, because if we get a double-dip recession, where will they go to borrow money?

We saw at the end of 2008, the beginning of 2009, nobody could borrow money. Even if you had good credit or you were a company. And so when people don't know what the economy is going to do, they save their money. They hold onto it, because they're not sure they're going to be able to borrow it later. Until we think that this economy is getting better, we won't start spending again, nor will businesses. And that is why you're seeing that kind of difficulty on the market today.

If you want to see more about money, tune in every weekend, 1 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, 3 p.m. Eastern on Sunday for "YOUR $$$$$." We'll get into some of these topics a little more.

OK. Let me give you a check on some of the top stories that we're following right now on CNN. A global alert has now been issued for a convicted murderer who escaped from an Arizona prison last week.

The U.S. asked Interpol to issue the alert for John McCluskey. Police believe McCluskey and the woman who allegedly helped him break out of prison may be in the Pacific northwest. They may also be in Canada. McCluskey supposedly changed his look and now has a black beard. A new report from the Labor Department says productivity was down in the last quarter. This is the first time that productivity has dipped in a year and a half. It's a measure of how much work we actually produce from the time that we're at work. The drop can be seen as another indicator that the economy might be recovering more slowly than expected.

In England, researchers say dropping temperatures could lead to an increased risk of heart attacks in older people. A study in the "British Medical Journal" says that a 2-degree drop is associated with a 2 percent increase in heart attack risks for people over 75. Researchers aren't sure yet if turning up the thermostat or putting on warmer clothing is actually the answer to lowering that risk.

And there's a group out there that wants to make sure that people with disabilities are not shut off from the world. And that includes the virtual world. We'll take you to the "Edge of Discovery" when I come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: All right. Imagine controlling sports cars with your breath, or slaying dragons with a click of a mouse. I don't really understand that one, because dragons don't really exist. But there is a group out there that wants to make the virtual world accessible to everyone. Gary Tuchman takes us to the "Edge of Discovery."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Steve Spohn is an avid gamer. He's also disabled.

STEVE SPOHN, DISABLED GAMER: I have a form of muscular dystrophy that's called spinal muscular atrophy. Right now I can move my hands, and that's about it.

TUCHMAN: Using only a mouse and an on-screen keyboard sometimes limited his gaming experience. So he looked online for help and came across an organization founded by Mark Barlet.

MARK BARLET, THE ABLEGAMERS FOUNDATION: The AbleGamers Foundation is a nonprofit that helps get disabled people into gaming.

TUCHMAN: The Web site's forums encourage people to share game recommendations and useful tips.

BARLET: Able-bodied people see the wheelchair. Able-bodies people see the crutches, and they don't see -- always see the person. Gaming allows you to shed all of that.

TUCHMAN: The foundation also works with developers to create modified equipment, like this device that controls a game almost entirely by blowing in and out through a tube.

BARLET: I'm either (BLOWING) or (BLOWING), depending on what I'm doing. TUCHMAN: Or this controller, built with larger buttons for easier access.

As for Steve Spohn, he stays busy as associate editor of AbleGamers.com.

SPOHN: I think the community will always exist for video gamers. For me, it was a place where I fit. I often say that I found a place in AbleGamers where I needed them and they needed me.

Gary Tuchman, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: OK. Here -- I'm onto a topic that so many of you care so deeply about, particularly if you work in or have worked in the manufacturing sector. You know millions of manufacturing jobs have disappeared in the United States over the last decade. Next hour, the president is signing legislation to help out. But is it really going to help? Is it going to bring some of those jobs back? We're going to take a deep look at "Made in the USA" when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: All right. One of the ways to solve this recession is to try and do something for the decimated manufacturing industry in this country. In a little over an hour, the president is going to sign something called the Manufacturing Enhancement Act of 2010. Now, it aims to help U.S. manufacturers. Here's how.

Many manufacturers use raw materials or products that they have to buy elsewhere, and to keep America competitive, what would happen is there would be tariffs or duties on importing the materials that you need to manufacture into things. And, of course, the U.S. has a high labor cost. So manufactured goods in the U.S. are already more expensive, made more expensive when you have to pay tariffs on the things that these manufacturers are importing.

So this bill will temporarily suspend or reduce tariffs on materials that U.S. manufacturing companies use that are made abroad. In some cases, not in all cases. Some independent estimates suggest that this move could create up to 90,000 new American jobs.

Now, that sounds like a lot. But let me show you how many jobs have been lost in manufacturing in America.

I want to go back to just after World War II. And I want to trace that line there. You can see that manufacturing was really on an upswing, all the way until 1979. That was the peak. Back in 1979, there were 19.6 million manufacturing jobs in this country. Think about it. The '50s, the '60s and '70s, that's what this country was built on. Workers worked for factories. They made things. They got pensions. They got to retire at a regular age, and virtually nobody got laid off.

Look what happened after 1979. Look at the number of manufacturing workers and the way they've declined from 1979. Look to about the year 2000, and it's very sharp decline. So a lot of people say it's because of this recession, but in fact manufacturing jobs have been lost in this country for a long time.

There are a couple of reasons for that. Automation. It doesn't take as many people to make things in 2010 as it did back in 1950.

No. 2, there are lots of people in the world who are making things, and many of them work for a lot less per hour than American workers are prepared to, including the benefits that we like to give our workers, the safe environments, the air-conditioned factories. Well, there are a lot of places that will make things without those conditions for their workers.

What else is at play, and will this help? What can this administration do to tackle this unemployment rate, and maybe help some of the people in the Rust Belt of this country? In fact in all 50 states who have loved manufacturing jobs?

I want to turn to two experts to have this discussion with. One is Peter Morici. He's a professor of international business at the University of Maryland. And Diane Swonk, an economist at Mesereau (ph) Financial from Chicago.

Good to see you both. You're both so great at explaining these things.

Diane, let's talk about this, because I have a lot of viewers who are connected to the manufacturing industry one way or another. And they don't want to hear that manufacturing in this country is dead, and that Americans are not competitive. But the fact is, there are some things we can't make in America for the price that people want to pay for them.

DIANE SWONK, AUTHOR, "THE PASSIONATE ECONOMIST": Well, that's true. Although I think it's a real misnomer that we don't make anything anymore. We make a lot of things. In fact, much of the decline in manufacturing employment was more your first point, due to automation than outsourcing.

Another part of the decline in manufacturing employment has been because in fact people don't work in -- many temporary workers now work on a manufacturing floor. In Illinois, during the height of the manufacturing activity of the 1990s, we saw as much as half of temp jobs in Illinois were going to work in manufacturing floor, and they showed up in the service sector, not in the manufacturing sector.

That said, I think the reality is, you can't go back. And although we do produce a lot in this country, we have to produce it very efficiently, and the jobs we're creating in manufacturing are not the jobs that of my father's generation, who worked for General Motors corporation, or my stepfather, who was a UAW worker at Ford. They worked at a time when you barely needed a high school degree to work on an assembly line.

Now to work in a manufacturing plant, you need at least an undergraduate degree. So, the kinds of jobs they're going to be generating still aren't going to do anything about all those people who lost the jobs previously --

VELSHI: All right. You make a good point. We still have almost 12 million people involved in the manufacturing industry here when our peak was 20 million, and we have other industries that employ people, Peter. What should we - before we figure out how we fix this -- what should we be trying to fix. Should we be trying to manufacture more things in the United States, and if so, what should they be?

PETER MORICI, FORMER ECONOMICS DIRECTOR, U.S INTERNATIONAL TRADE COMMISSION: Well, certainly we should be trying to manufacture more things in the United States, but we can't bring back the past. About half of the job losses in the last decade were from things like productivity. You know, we simply can make more things with fewer people. And from -- let's face it, American labor is expensive.

However, the other half is probably due to say, China's undervalued currency and similar undervaluation in other countries, which is certainly manipulated and provides an export subsidy. The fact that, for example, Americans can't get into the Chinese market in certain areas where they have very competitive products, because of very high tariffs, automobiles, 25 percent.

So, those trade barriers have created sort of one-way free trade. If we had balanced trade, we might not have 19 million jobs, but we might have 13 or 14 million jobs. Where should they be? They certainly should be in the high-tech areas. And the middle-tech areas, Liz, such as automotive components and so forth, where we have lost out to Asians but where labor costs don't make much difference.

And there's some surprising areas that are middle tech. For example, steelmaking. Did you know that the cost of making a ton of hot-rolled steel, the labor cost is about 50 bucks an hour, and the cost of bringing it across the Pacific is more than twice that? It's hard to say china's labor costs -- they've got much to do with that and everybody pays the same amount for steel mills, and everybody pays the same amount for iron ore and scrap.

VELSHI: Diane, do you think this move that the administration is making to temporarily reduce some of those tariffs that Peter is talking about, to at least some of the materials that's coming in, if you're manufacturing steel stuff in the United States to come in at a lower price. Do you think that will help American businesses? Do you think this might result in this estimated 90,000 new jobs?

SWONK: I don't get to the 90,000 --

MORICI: No.

SWONK: -- but I do think it's a symbolic move. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it's going to cost us $290 million -- no billion, no trillion there - million, over ten years in terms of lost tariffs. So if that's how much they're saving, even if they put every single dollar in -- it's $29 million a year. And I'm making rough calculations on the back of an envelope -- I can't get more than 250 to 500 jobs a year, depending on the cost of your worker with benefits in. So, I'm having a really hard time getting to those 90,000.

But I do think the idea of reducing tariffs and increasing our competitiveness by reducing costs for manufacturers is a very important concept and symbolically, I think it carries more weight than it does in terms of actual jobs.

VELSHI: But Peter, ultimately when we're looking at the Dow we're looking at today, and S&P off almost 3 percent today, we still have another problem in this economy, and that is -- we're down about 2 percent on the Dow. We still have consumers, average Americans who are not fully convinced that we're not headed for a tougher economy down the road. And we have businesses who are not spending their money because they're worried about it.

MORICI: Well, businesses need customers and capital to create jobs. Focusing on customers, if imports are so much more than exports, when that money leaves the country, that's a customer loss that isn't gained back by us selling something abroad. If we would cut our trade deficit in half even, we probably could add three or four hundred billion dollars this year, you know, or over a couple of years to GDP, and the commensurate increase in employment.

We simply must do something about the overvalued dollar, vis-a- vis the Chinese currency, and if the Chinese won't do it, then we have to find some way to do it for them. Like -- also, the issue of a lot of these trade agreements are very one-sided. We cut tariffs to zero today on a lot of these components. But what is the other side doing for us? Are they cutting their tariffs?

VELSHI: All right. Good discussion. We'll continue to have it, obviously. There's a lot more to talk about. I hope you'll both come back regularly as you always do. Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesro Financial. And Peter Morici, professor of international business at the University of Maryland. Thank you very much. Good seeing you both.

All right. Take the total population of New England, put that region under water. That's the situation in Pakistan right now. That country's deadly, destructive flooding, is the worst in decades. We're going "Globe Trekking" to Pakistan, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: You may have heard this story before, but Pakistan's flooding continues. It's very serious. It's an area the size of New England, basically underwater.

Let me show you on this map. This is Pakistan. You can see India on the south. You can see Afghanistan on the north. The tan area is the area that is affected by the flooding. It's the worst in 80 years. More than 1,300 people have been killed. Fourteen million people have been affected.

The brown part on the map that you can see there, that is the area that is actually flooded. Those are districts that are flooded. The red here are the areas that are most affected by it. That's where the most serious flooding is. You see that little green part over there? That's an area where flooding is expected. This is most of the country in this case. You can see that it reaches all the way to the southern port city of Karachi. Islamabad is up there in the north, flooding everywhere in this country.

Dan Rivers is in Islamabad. Let's go to him for the latest on what's going on in Pakistan. Dan?

DAN RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Ali. The scale and scope of this disaster just keeps growing with every passing day. As you say, the U.N. are now saying that 40 million people are affected in one way or another. And that 6 million are in direct need of humanitarian assistance.

The U.N. today has launched a massive appeal for $459 million that they say they need. And that's just going to take them through the next three months. Not even a year. A massive amount of money, half a billion dollars, almost. And 288,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed. So, this is an enormous disaster, as you say, affecting from the very far north of Pakistan, right the way down to the sea in the south.

VELSHI: Let me ask you something, Dan. I saw an article the other day about a cigarette merchant in one of the affected areas. He wanted to make a $40 donation, the equivalent of $40, to some relief organization. And he kept driving around from village to village, town to town.

And the only charities he could find willing to take his money from Taliban-operated charities. This is a guy who doesn't support the Taliban. He's a secular Pakistani, he didn't want to have to do this. But he said that's all there was.

RIVERS: Yes. I mean, there's certainly -- Islam has charities who have links to terrorist groups. Basically (INAUIDBLE) is one which has alleged links to Lashkari (INAUDIBLE), which was behind Mumbai attacks in 2008 in India. They have been very visible on the ground with camps, handing out food and shelter.

And there is a bit of a sort of aid battle going on, if you like, between the hard-line Islamists and is the government, where the Islamists are trying to show they can do a better job. A better job at delivering aid, and a better job at convincing the population that they should trust them, rather than the government and the army. And the army and the government and particularly President Zadari has been heavily criticized for doing too little too late.

VELSHI: And he was out of the country for a part of this.

RIVERS: Yes, that's right. He was in the U.K., went ahead with that U.K. visit to absolutely stinging criticism. He spent some of the time in Europe, visiting his family chateau in France, while the death toll and number of people affected kept going up and up and up. And he has absolutely been lambasted in the press and media here for basically appearing to be callous and uncaring. His advisers say well it was vital, this visit. He was drumming up aid while he was on this trip and it was crucial that he went for the foreign relations of Pakistan with the U.K.

VELSHI: Dan Rivers, thanks very much for the update. We'll stay on this story as it continues to develop. Dan Rivers is in Islamabad. One of the stories we're following of natural disaster.

Want to show you the other one right now, and that's in Russia. Look, heat and fire creates a miserable summer. You think you're hot here in the United States, where there is a heat wave? Take a look at this in Russia.

Let me show you a NASA picture, if we can pull that up, Michael. This map from NASA, which is really showing the extent of this. So, you've got Moscow over here. Most of this is in central Russia. But take a look at the darkest color. That's how big this area is that is affected by fires and smoke in it one of the worst heat waves in memory.

Now, this first map -- this is just showing the heat wave. Temperatures have soared to over 108 degrees Fahrenheit in some of these places. This is pretty remarkable.

Let me show you another map here that will show you the level of colorless and odorless carbon monoxide. This is the stuff like when you're smoking cigarettes. The other day I told you that being in Moscow was like smoking two packs of cigarettes every few hours. Take a look at that, that red that you see, that orange, that is all unsafe. And you can see this is not just in Russia, this is all over Europe. Look at the intensity over Russia.

And let me show you the third map, which is showing us the fires burning. This is actually a view from space of the fires that are burning. You've got smoke covering so much of this country. Moscow is in the top left corner there. These wildfires are the deadliest in the country since 1972. You can see clouds -- I mean, to give you a sense of it, it would be if there were clouds in the U.S. extending from San Francisco all the way to Chicago.

Matthew Chance has been covering this for Moscow. Let's listen to him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, as you can see, the winds have finally blown away, the thick blanket of smoke that's been smothering Moscow for the past week. We can finally breathe again without choking.

But meteorologists say the smoke is likely to be back. Hundreds of wildfires are still raging across vast swaths of Russia, despite efforts of tens of thousands of firefighters. Among them now, Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, pictured on state television, actually piloting an aircraft being used to drop water on the forest fires. Throughout this crisis, Putin has been showing himself in personal charge. He has criticized local officials for negligence. He has assured villages that burned homes will be built. Now it seems he has taken to personally putting out the flames.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Moscow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: And we will continue to cover those stories.

The flies have it. It is a design for a better solar panel. Let's just say the story caught our eye, and it is the "Big I," coming up next.

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VELSHI: This just into CNN. Former Illinois Congressman Dan Rostenkowsk has died. He rose from Chicago's rough-and-tumble political scene to become one of the most powerful politicians on Capitol Hill.

Rostenkowsk first entered Congress in 1959. He eventually became chairman of the tax writing Ways and Means committee. The Democrat played a key role in passing major Social Security and tax code reforms along with a controversial expansion of Medicare. Rostenkowsk was defeated in 1994 after becoming mired in scandal. He eventually pleaded guilty to corruption charges and served over a year in federal prison. Dan Rostenkowsk was 82 years old.

All right. Think twice before you use your fly swatter the next time. Those pesky flies may soon be used in solar panels. I'll tell you about it when I come back.

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VELSHI: So, we have this segment we do every day called "The Big I." The I stands for idea. But sometimes it's actually about a big eye, like an eye on a fly. What if these flies were something other than a nuisance that you had to get rid of or kill or swat? What if flies could hold the answer to our energy needs?

I don't know enough about this. That's why I brought an expert in for this right now. Professor Akhlesh Lakhtakia is with Penn State University. He's with one of his students, Drew joining us now to tell us what we've been talking about.

Professor, I've been bragging about this all day, telling our viewers you have to tune in to figure out how flies are connected to solar energy. What are we talking about here?

AKHLESH LAKHTAKIA, PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING, PENN STATE UNIVERSITY: Well, essentially, we're talking about a solar cell surface, which is far more efficient in collecting light because its surface is decorated with the -- with eyes of a fly. Not exactly the eyes of a fly, but copies of the eyes of a fly. VELSHI: In other words, the eye of a fly is particularly efficient if you're trying to create an array that you collect solar energy -- I guess this means we have to explain -- solar energy is collected by having some sort of a flat surface that absorbs the sun's rays?

LAKHTAKIA: That is correct. That is what most solar cell surfaces are, they are essentially flat. There is a certain amount of texturing on these surfaces to increase light collection efficiency. But the eye of a fly is an amazing object.

Try catching a fly. You will find it is difficult to do so. And the reason for that is that the fly has about 270 degrees of vision angle. So, this means it is a very efficient collector of light coming from the back, partly from the back but also from the periphery.

And if you could use the same idea and texture the surface of a solar cell with a structure that looks like the eye of a fly, we would have more light collected. That's the idea behind this research.

VELSHI: All right. Show us what you've got there.

LAKHTAKIA: Well, we have, for example -- I don't know if you can see this. This is really small.

VELSHI: Hold that up real still to the camera, and we'll see if we can see it. What is that that you've got?

LAKHTAKIA: This is the surface on which we put nine eyes of a fly -

VELSHI: Right.

LAKHTAKIA: -- and then we coated it with nickel and we made this about 0.5 mm pec (ph) --

VELSHI: We've got a picture of that up close that we can show them. These are real eyes of a fly?

LAKHTAKIA: Well, these were at one time real eyes of a fly, yes.

VELSHI: Or several flies, I guess.

LAKHTAKIA: Several flies, yes. And that was done and then the eyes were plucked out, and what was left is a dye.

VELSHI: Right.

LAKHTAKIA: Now, this dye is something that can be used to stamp a surface and therefore reproduce the structures on the eye. And when they begin to make this process industrially scaleable, that's the whole idea here. We don't have to be killing a lot of flies. Because we just begin with a few flies, collect the eyes, make several of these dies and then stamp the surfaces of solar cells or solar cell-like devices in order to improve the light collection efficiency. VELSHI: My producer is asking me to ask you about something about a stake that you put outside a window.

LAKHTAKIA: Something to do with -- I'm sorry, what?

DREW PULSIFER, PH.D STUDENT, PENN STATE : How we captured the flies.

LAKHTAKIA: Oh, I will let Drew answer that question because he did that dirty job.

VELSHI: Well, last summer to collect the specimen to get my work through the entire winter, I basically spent maybe three or four weeks with rotting meat in a jar outside my apartment where I'd periodically walk out and catch the butterflies that were attracted to the rotting meat with a small fish net. And that's basically the story of how I caught maybe, like -

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: I guess academia is not as much glory as it seems, is it, Drew?

Let me ask you this. Why -- this seems remarkable. Why do we need flies at all for this if you've figured out -- what's the nature of the fly's eye? Is it an even shape or is there something unique about it that only occurs in nature that's hard to replicate in science? I figure once you figured it out, I would think you could manufacture these?

PULSIFER: Well, the difficulty in manufacturing these things is that the fly eye is curved on several scales. You have a millimeter curvature is what you see when you look at the eye with your naked eye. And then under something like an optical microscope, you'll see that the surface is textured with a 20 micron diameter lenses. And then if you look at it with a high-resolution scanning electron microscope, you'll see that its surface is textured with 200 nanometer features.

The combination of all these features are what allow it to collect light from many angles and also have anti-reflective properties.

And we can identify the structure. But to reproduce them with our current nanomanufacturing techniques, it would be very difficult and expensive, where with this process we can reproduce an entire eye in two steps, rather than with a technique that would have to serially meld away material to leave this texture we're looking for.

So, our technique is a simplified way of doing it. But you can only do it by working with actual fly eyes rather than building it up with some human-made machine.

VELSHI: Well, we do this everyday, but you guys definitely meet the prerequisites for our segment that we call the "Big I." So, thanks very much. We look forward to seeing how this work proceeds. And as the professor says, it is scaleable and we hope this helps us collect more energy from the sun and makes us a little bit more energy efficient. Gentlemen, thank you for being with us. Professor Professor Akhlesh Lakhtakia and Drew from Penn State University. Thanks a lot, guys.

LAKHTAKIA: Thank you, Mr. Velshi.

VELSHI: If you want to know more about this, this is really interesting, you can read the professor's full report on the fly-eye project at the online journal Bioinspiration and Biomemetics. That is at iopscience.iop.org. Iopscience.iop.org. You can also see more on the images and information at the professor's Penn State site, esm.psu.edu/ -- you know what? Just go to the first site.

All right. We're going to take a bit of a break. When we come back - this is a fascinating story. A long-time friend of senator Ted Stevens of Alaska reflects on the plane crash that claimed the senator's life. It's a trip the friend had been invited to go on. And I'm going to talk to him next.

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