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Obama Talks to Ohio Voters; Votes Are Recounted in Mexico; Syria's Assad: Revolt Has Failed; Amputee Makes Olympics; No More Jail Time For Bahrain Boy; Floodwaters Swallow Villages

Aired July 05, 2012 - 12:00   ET

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

(BEGIN LIVE FEED IN PROGRESS)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm so pleased so to see, once again, the outstanding mayor of Maumee, Tim Wagner. There he is.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: One of the best senators in the country, your Senator Sherrod Brown.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: One of your outstanding members of the congressional delegation, Marcy Kaptur is here.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And your former governor and my campaign co-chair Ted Strickland is in the house.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: I love you. It is great to see you. I hope that everyone had a wonderful Fourth of July.

We invited some people over for a barbeque. Had a chance to say thank you to our incredible men and women in uniform and -- and we are so proud of them.

And then it was Malia's birthday yesterday. She is 14 years old, and I know, it happens too fast. Don't even remind me, she is going into high school next year, which means that she's -- see, when she was small I could say all of these fireworks I had arranged for her birthday. But she doesn't believe me anymore.

So now, unless you have been hiding out in the woods somewhere, you are aware of the fact that it's campaign season.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Fired up and ready to go!

OBAMA: Fired up.

It's campaign season again. Look, I understand it's not always pretty to watch. There's been more money flooding into the system than we have ever seen before. More negative ads, more cynicism, and most of what you read about or hear about on the news has to do who is up or down in the polls instead of what these issues actually mean for you and for America.

So it can be frustrating. I know sometimes it may be tempting to kind of turn away from all of it and just turn off the TV, TiVo everything that you want to watch so you can skip over the commercials. It's easy sometimes to, I think, lose interest and lose heart when you hear what is going on in Washington.

And I'll be honest with you, I think that there are some to folks who are betting that you will lose interest. That will -- that are betting that somehow, you are going to lose heart.

But here you are in the heat. I'm betting that you are not going to lose interest. I am betting that you are not going the lose heart.

I still believe in you. I'm betting on you. And the country is betting on you, Ohio. Because you understand that even though politics may seem real small right now and may seem real petty, the choice in this election could not be clearer. And it could not be bigger -- the stakes could not be bigger.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You can do it!

OBAMA: I know. With you.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: The choice -- what's going on in this election is bigger than just a choice between two candidates or between two parties. It's about two fundamentally different visions of where we go as a country.

You see, I believe in an America where no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, you can make it if you try.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: We've never been a country -- we've never been a country looking for handouts. We are a nation of strivers and risk-takers and entrepreneurs -- workers, but what we ask for is that hard work pays off. That responsibility is rewarded.

The idea is if you take responsibility for your life, and if you put in the effort, if you do the responsible thing, then you can find a job that pays a living wage, that you can look after your family, buy a home. That you can retire with some dignity and some respect. That you won't go bankrupt when you get sick.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: That you have -- you have that core middle class security that built this country, and that you can pass that on to your kids, so they can do things that you never even imagined. That's the essence of America, and I believe in that basic promise of America, because I lived it. That's my biography.

And I had grandparents whose service at World War II was rewarded by them having a chance to go to college and buying their first home. Because I had a hard-working mom who raised me and my sister right, but also had some help so that we could end up going to the best schools in the country, even though we didn't have a lot of money.

I got involved in politics. I ran for president in 2008 and some of you joined me in 2008, because --

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: -- we believed in that basic bargain that built the largest middle class in history and the strongest economy in the world, and we felt like that basic bargain was slipping away. That hard work was not always rewarded. That being responsible didn't always get you ahead. That folks who acted irresponsibly sometimes were making out like bandits, while ordinary folks were having a tougher and tougher time.

So we came together in that election, Democrats, but also independents, and yes, some Republicans, to restore that basic bargain that built this country. And we knew it was not going to be easy and we knew it would take more than one year or one term, or maybe more than one president.

But what we didn't realize is that we were going to be hit by the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes. And that's been tough on a lot of folks, including people here in Ohio. It robbed millions of people of jobs, in their homes, and their savings, and it pushed the American Dream even further from reach for a lot of people.

But you know what? This crisis has not changed the fundamental character of America. It hasn't changed the fundamental character of this town or this state or this part of the country. We still got people who are working hard and we still have people who are acting responsibly. It hasn't diminished our belief in the ideals that we were fighting for in 2008.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And our mission right now is not just to recover from the economic crisis, although that is job one, our mission is to give back to America, to Americans all across the country what's been lost, that sense of security.

Our goal isn't just to put people back to work tomorrow, but it is also to build for the long haul an economy --

(END LIVE FEED)

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to NEWSROOM INTERNATIONAL. I'm Suzanne Malveaux.

That was President Obama at the historic Wolcott House Museum. That is in Maumee, Ohio. That is just a few miles from Toledo.

It's his first off in a two-day bus tour dubbed "Betting on America." We're going to have more of that speech streaming live on CNN.com.

I want to get right to it now.

We've got allegations of voter fraud in a presidential e election and a massive recount. We are talking about Mexico right now. Presumptive President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto is denying that his party bought vote, stuffed ballots and intimidated voters. But some election observers, they are disagreeing. Now, more than half of the ballot boxes are individually recounted.

Our Rafael Romo joins us.

Rafael, talk a little bit about the preliminary results here. We understand that he believes that this has been a bad behavior on both parts. He got 143,000 precincts and a lot of accusations flying.

What do we know? What is the evidence so far?

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN LATIN AMERICAN AFFAIRS EDITOR: Exactly. Well, I had the opportunity to speak to electoral authorities in less than an hour ago and they gave me the latest tally in the presidential race. And here, we have it for you.

With 92.20 percent of the votes counted, this is how it stands right now today at this moment. It's 38.4 percent for Enrique Pena Nieto, the frontrunner. The challenger, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has 31.41 percent. The third place, Josefina Vazquez Mota at 24 percent. And the number fourth place is Gabriel Quadri of the New Alliance Party at 2 percent.

Now, they're going to finish, Suzanne, counting all of the votes in the presidential race tonight. Tomorrow, they go to legislators -- they go the representatives and then Saturday to senators. And then, officially, they're going to say once and for all, who won this election and then it's expected will be over. But --

MALVEAUX: What is the timetable of that?

ROMO: Well, it's not over until it's over. And so, the challenger, Lopez Obrador, still has an opportunity to go to the tribunal -- the electoral tribunal -- and say I have these allegations that I am presenting before you and then they are going to investigate.

But the time line is this: the tribunal will work on them and investigate all of that and they have to have a final answer by September 6th, because by December 1st, the new Mexican president has to be sworn in.

MALVEAUX: So, this all has to be sorted out before December, there is time to play out.

And why do you suppose there are these widespread allegations of corruption? Is that because of the history of the party that used to be in power?

ROMO: It serves to do a little bit of history to who the PRI is. This is the party of the government of Mexico for 71 years, and yes, it happened many, many times -- stuffed ballots, vote buying, intimidation, all kinds of problems. And what people are saying is, this is happening all over again.

There are at least three major accusations. One is that they were handing out gift cards for people to buy groceries in exchange of votes. The other one --

MALVEAUX: Really?

ROMO: Exactly. That's what they are saying. A bunch of people lined up at a particular store by the name of Soriana in Mexico City, and they said, the PRI gave us gift cards in exchange for votes and some of them were mad because the cards didn't have money that they were promised.

There's another allegation by a group called civic alliance that 30 percent of the voters were somehow intimidated or witnessed a case of vote buying. And then the last one by the youth movement called "I am 132" saying that they received 1,100 allegations of some sort of irregularities.

So, yes, it is -- it is a very convoluted case. But all put together, nobody really expects the result to change.

MALVEAUX: So, if it doesn't change and he ultimately becomes the president, does it undermine his legitimacy here? Are people going to accept him as the real new president, the new leader of Mexico?

ROMO: Just to give you an idea, in 2006, in the last presidential election, the incumbent, the current president, Felipe Calderon, won by less than 1 percent, and two months passed before he was officially the president-elect. This time, we have a difference of 7 percentage points, so I do not expect that it's going to be a big issue. I expect Enrique Pena Nieto is going to become the next president of Mexico on December 1st, with a very decent mandate and these issues are going to go away.

But last time around, the challenger protested for 48 days and caused chaos in Mexico City, blocking streets --

MALVEAUX: Yes.

ROMO: -- staging sit-ins and a number of different things that really made him lose a lot of voters this time around.

MALVEAUX: And do you think that it just happens here, cover the 2002 ballot recount in 2000, Gore versus Bush, and it's messy. It's messy in a lot of places.

ROMO: No hanging chads in Mexico, but we're talking about gift cards.

(LAUGHTER)

MALVEAUX: OK. Fair enough. We'll be following it. Thank you.

ROMO: All right.

MALVEAUX: On to Syria -- we are talking about this number here: 16,700. That is the estimated number of people killed in Syria since the uprising began just 16 months ago. This is staggering. You are talking about almost 17,000 people, most of them civilians caught up in the fighting.

Everyday, scenes like this all across Syria playing out here -- shells, mortars, gunfire, street battles. Just today, at least 24 people reported killed in the fighting or caught in the crossfire.

CNN cameras and reporters are still not allowed inside Syria. So, we are watching the developments from Lebanon and from Turkey.

I want to bring in CNN's Ivan Watson. He is in Istanbul.

And, Ivan, we know that the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- again, he is talking this time with a Turkish paper and he certainly has a different opinion, a different outlook of what is taking place in his country. He is saying these protesters, these oppositions figures are actually paid to demonstrate.

Tell us what's really going on?

IVAN WATSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think it's fair -- yes, well, it's fair to say that. The newspaper in Turkey's "Hurriyet", a staunchly secular Kamalist newspaper here, serialized long interview with the Syrian president in which he argued that this uprising, the most serious challenge to the rule that his family has had over Syria for more than 40 years, was basically a foreign conspiracy, that demonstrators were being hired for $10 apiece to go and protest in the streets against his government.

And now the price has been raised to $50, he claims, which is hard to imagine when we have seen Syrian security forces shooting at those demonstrators, so you would think that you need more than $50 to stand up and say, "down with the government."

And he's gone to repeat the line that he said for more than a year, that the uprising is a foreign conspiracy, the U.S., his neighbor Turkey, other governments arming terrorist -- Islamist terrorists -- in an effort to try to bring down his government. Also, saying all these allegations of the human rights abuses against his government coming from the United Nations even, that there maybe a few mistakes that were made, but his government does not accept responsibility for the alleged crimes against humanity -- Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: And, Ivan, tell us more about what he says. He says he still believes that he is loved by most of the Syrian people, and we have seen this kind of talk before where leaders seem to be quite out of touch with what is taking place on the ground. Is that possible? That he really believes that?

WATSON: Perhaps. I mean, there are supporters of Bashar al- Assad who believed firmly in him. He's believed to have a lot of support particularly within his minority sect of Alawites, this religious minority that is very well represented at the highest echelons of the military and within the government.

But it is clear with more than 15 months, with this death toll of more than 16,000 dead, that there are a lot of Syrians who definitely do not like their president and will die to get rid of him -- Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: And, Ivan, very quickly here, talk about the tension now between Syria and Turkey. We know that Syria shot down one of the planes from Turkey and now those Turkish pilots. The bodies I believe have been discovered?

WATSON: They have. This is a major international incident that has put these two neighbors really very much on edge, at the risk of a military conflict between them. The two pilots from this Turkish reconnaissance jet that Syrian anti-aircraft defenses shot down last month, their bodies have been recovered from the eastern Mediterranean Sea, from a very deep death of more than 2,000 meters. The Turkish government says the bodies were recovered today.

Now, in a very strange twist, the vessel -- the ship that helped find the bodies and the wreckage, and recovered them is an American research vessel the Nautilus commanded by the U.S. marine explorer Bob Ballard who is famous for the discovering the Titanic in 1980s. This ship happened to be docked here in Istanbul when this incident happened.

The Turkish government just told me they reached out to this vessel, which has a lot of the submersibles, remote-operated vehicles that can dive to depths and levels that no Turkish ship has, and they have been brought in by the Turkish military in Syrian territorial waters to do this emergency search and recovery operation --

MALVEAUX: Interesting connection.

WATSON: -- was a rescue operation, now a recovery operation -- Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: All right. Ivan, very interesting connection there. Appreciate it.

Here is more of what we are working on this hour from NEWSROOM INTERNATIONAL:

They are calling them the Syria files. This is a massive dump of secret documents on the Internet that could paint a darker picture of the country's violent civil war.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: A scathing report today from an independent panel investigating Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster. The crippled Fukushima plant spewed radiation and forced tens of thousands of folks out of their homes. That was after last year's earthquake and tsunami. The report calls Fukushima a manmade disaster brought on by the failures of the plant's operators, regulators and the Japanese government.

WikiLeaks doing it again. On the Web today, first batch of what WikiLeaks says is a huge pile of official e-mails hacked or intercepted from the Syrian government this time. They say there is more than 2 million official messages. Some of them from the highest levels of the government and that the Syrians will be embarrassed by what's in those e-mails.

Our Atika Shubert, she is in London.

Atika, I know you've been poring over a lot of this stuff. Clearly, this is a lot to go over, 2.5 million emails, give us what you have found so far. Is there anything that strikes you?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's more than 2 million, but so far, only about 15 have been fully published and released. And while it might embarrassing for the Syrian regime, it actually seems more embarrassing at the moment for an Italian company that has apparently been setting up an advanced radio network for the Syrian regime, particularly for police and military helicopters and vehicles.

And we are not talking about the distant past here either. We are talking e-mails as recently as February 2012, at the height of some of the worst violence.

So a lot of questions are likely to be asked if this Italian company as to what it was doing, supplying and possibly helping the regime in its crackdown.

MALVEAUX: Is there any other evidence of other private companies also assisting the Syrian government or is that just one of the first ones that we know about?

SHUBERT: It's the first one that we know about. But again, more than 2 million e-mails and more than likely that we will see more of the business dealings coming up.

One of the interesting points in the e-mails that I saw just recently is that one of them seemed to suggest that a U.S. company was refusing to sell components to this Italian company, because of sanctions. And the Italian company was trying to find a way to sidestep around it. So, it goes to shows some of the difficulties the Syrian regime has had in actually getting what it needs.

MALVEAUX: I'm assuming it's too early that the Italian company would actually respond to what has come forward. Is that right, Atika?

SHUBERT: We have tried to contact them and they have promised a press release. But so far, there has been no comment from them.

MALVEAUX: Give us a sense of the timing of this? Why are we seeing this now? We know that the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is still in pretty deep trouble.

SHUBERT: Yes, it's a good question. I mean, remember, Julian Assange could not actually be there for this release because he's holed up at the embassy of Ecuador seeking asylum. So, the exact timing of this is a bit of mystery.

It could well be that WikiLeaks is trying to put this out to show that they are a legitimate news organization -- that they are still publishing material, despite the fact that their editor and founder is clearly in a bit of a legal corner. He's basically in this embassy, and he can't get out. If he does step out, he will be arrested for breaching the bail conditions and possibly extradited to Sweden.

MALVEAUX: All right. Atika, if you get more on those e-mails, we'll come back to you and get a sense, there's more news of that -- I appreciate it. I know a lot of work ahead. Appreciate it.

So, what are folks listening to around the globe right now? Here is a taste of what's popping in France.

(MUSIC)

MALVEAUX: That is pretty hot. Heavily influenced by Zouk, a French-Caribbean style of music that translates to shake. Twenty-six- year-old Shym. She is making a splash with a smash hit at allure (ph).

Some of the biggest brands in sports are betting their reputations of these factories in Pakistan?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: It was a commercial airline crash that killed 228 people. Air France flight 447 went down in the Atlantic after taking off from Rio headed for Paris.

Well, that was three years ago. And today, we have a final word from investigators on what happened, what went wrong and who's to blame.

I want to bring in Richard Quest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It all began on May the 31st, 2009. Shortly after 2200 hours UTC, universal time, the time standard used in aviation, Air France flight 447 took off from Rio de Janeiro heading for Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. It was an Airbus A330 200 series, carrying 228 people, or souls as they say in the industry -- 216 passengers and 12 crew members.

Four hours into the 11-hour journey, things started to go wrong. At 0200, the plane entered a thunderstorm with strong turbulence, and the pilots made a short course correction to avoid the bad weather. Then, a problem with the plane's pitot tubes, the small probes that are used to measure the speed of the airplane. It's believed they got clogged with super cold ice.

The speed sensors iced over. In the cockpit, the computers behaved as they were supposed to, the autopilot disengaged. The plane's co-pilot, who was the pilot flying overreacted by pulling back on the side stick, and the plane started to climb.

Within a minute, the plane had climbed to 38,000 feet, and was outside its certified parameters. There was a stall warning as the plane's air speed dropped dramatically, and the plane fell out of the sky, falling at nearly 11,000 feet a minute.

As the earlier reports make clear, over the next 3 1/2 minutes, there was confusion in the cockpit as the pilots tried and failed to regain control of the aircraft. So far, in the early reports, the accident investigators from France have been focusing on a series of sustained mistakes by at least one of the pilots.

Finally, after falling 38,000 feet, unable to regain control, the plane plunged into the sea and sank to the ocean floor.

Days later, crews found wreckage in the equatorial waters within Brazil and Africa, 570 miles northeast of Natal, Brazil.

It would be two years and several searches later before the so- called black box, the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, will be recovered.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: Richard Quest is joining us from London, and it looks like this is going to close this particular chapter of the flight, and why three years? Is that typical?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN: It took three years, because for the first two years they didn't have the most important information. The cockpit recorder and the data recorder which was in the bottom of the southern Atlantic ocean, and the early reports make it clear that without the information they probably would never have fully understood. Once they got the data recorders, the rest became putting the pieces of the jigsaw in place. Big questions unanswered, why did the pilot behave as he did, and the report does fundamentally make some assessments and suggests, Suzanne, and basically says that the pilot was overwhelmed. He made inappropriate moves, and what we get from now having a full picture is that in certain surprise circumstances, Suzanne, it becomes very difficult for the crew to keep perspective of what they are doing.

MALVEAUX: Do we know as the victims' families, are they satisfied with the full picture? QUEST: I don't know is the short answer. We needed this investigation so that it does not happen again. And the 50-odd recommendations talk about education and flight information given in the flight, and all of the things that if this in future conditions will ensure this -- this is a seminal crash. Every so often one of the crashes comes along and everybody has to rethink the things they have to redo certain things, and in the case of aviation, they have to rethink the way that pilots are trained a on the way they fly the planes in certain circumstances.

MALVEAUX: All right. Richard, thank you. Appreciate it.

She is already the most traveled secretary of state in U.S. history. We will tell you where Hillary Clinton is headed next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: She is already the most traveled secretary of state in U.S. history and now Hillary Clinton is about to ad to the record. She is beginning an overseas trip to take her to at least seven countries and make stops in France, Japan, and she is also visiting Mongolia, Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia and may go to Israel as well when she is in the area, and plus one other country.

When people think of Pakistan they think of political extremism, right? Well, you may not know that they contribute to the world and the country's pop culture and it is a billion dollar business in Pakistan, and we are going to go to a factory in the Punjab province that manufactures everything from bag pipes to footballs.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REZA SAYAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Mohammed Arraf has a important job, he gives his stamp of approval to the bag pipes that are responsible for the most sales around the world. He gives his stamp of approval to the top exporters of bag pipes in the world. And this place might surprise you, Pakistan.

Pakistan is the most successful exporter of bag pipes?

ZAFAR GEOFFREY, BAGPIPE EXPORTER: Yes.

SAYAH: It is said they started to make them in the 1920s when a Scottish businessman came to set up a factory and more than a century later, they have more than a dozen bag pipe factories and both big and small. Do you make them as good as the Scottish do?

GEOFFREY: Yes, we do make them by the Scottish standard.

SAYAH: And they were so successful that the manufacturers started to make successful items like those of vintage American footballs and vintage American basketballs and this is going to surprise Americans, replica civil war uniforms made in Pakistan.

Do you think that the people who are in America who are playing with a vintage American football, do they think they believe it is made in Pakistan?

GEOFFREY: If they don't know it, they should know it.

SAYAH: And today, they export dozens of items and dozens of surgical instruments even all made here in Pakistan.

GEOFFREY: And we are increasing and doing about $1.4 billion exports from this small city.

SAYAH: Those exports include some of the world's most popular footballs or soccer balls and the labels say Nike and Adidas, but these are hand stitched in Pakistan and during the 2011 world cup when demand spiked, so did the production. Forward sports makes 25,000 balls everyday.

You will see the stitching speed, they are doing the job by hand and looks like doing it by machine.

Some of the biggest names of sports equipment manufacturing have built their names and recognition on these factories this Pakistan. So each ball is put through tough quality control tests and they are heat tested and water tested and impact tested and with machines that shoot each ball 3, 500 times. Only then are the balls packed and shipped away.

GEOFFREY: The balls stitched in Pakistan will be definitely be able to have quality.

SAYAH: And Pakistan has been in the news because of militant attacks and a lot of investors are staying away because of the security concerns, but many say that this is exactly why it pays to do business here. Plenty of space, and raw materials are cheap, and so is labor. Is there anything that you can't make?

GEOFFREY: Only we can't make the atom bomb, it is not good.

SAYAH: That is not such a bad thing. Reza Sayah, Pakistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: NATO trucks and supplies are moving into Afghanistan from Pakistan again. This is a major development, because Pakistan locked down all border crossings. That happened seven months ago when the coalition forces mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani troop troops and now NATO is using alternative troops to get the supplies in and it is costing about $100 million a month extra however. And Pakistan reopened the border to supply missions today.

They call him blade runner and losing his legs has not stopped him from making the Olympics.

North Korea, one of the world's most oppressive countries last year with more than 3 million people there primarily women and children were starving, all while the government was working to build a nuclear weapon. And now the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is loosening up in interesting ways. He is allowing women to wear pants and Yankee earrings and platform shoes and also people can eat pizza, and making mobile phones available and giving trips to the Olympics.

And now to the Olympics. Scott Pistorius is the first amputee to compete in the Olympic games, and he is going to run from the aid of prosthetic blades.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is a self-confessed speed freak. He has loved motorbikes and action sports since he was a child.

SCOTT PISTORIUS: Yes, I have these ones that I use for sports and running.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But the South African champion Scott Pistorius is also a double amputee, and because of a birth defect, he has been wearing prosthetic legs since he was 1 years old. So before practice, he does not just change the shoes, but the legs. Taking off the everyday walking prosthetics and putting on the running blades. A man who refuses to see himself as someone who needs a helping hand. An attitude that took him to the recent world championships as a member of the South African able-bodied team where he won silver in the 400 meter relay despite not running in the final race.

PISTORIUS: It was very disappointing to me, because I know I ran the second fastest time in the semi-final in my leg, and it is one of those things unfortunately.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That disappointment now behind him, Pistorius is now looking ahead to London 2012 obviously the longer term plan is the Olympics.

PISTORIUS: You know, I have said all along I have run a qualification time, and my goal is to be consistent where I am, and if you look at where I am, and what I have to do to be consistent, there is a lot of work ahead of us in the quest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And his coach has been beside him in his quest to run world class times.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know we battle. I can give you one example, because it took us three months to get him out of to starting blocks because he has no feet or balance to stand still, and we must do a four-point stop, and took us three months to get him out of the starting blocks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But the sprinter's jou journey is not yet over.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is a champion, and champions are born. And I know it. I'm almost going for 40 years in training. And I can see it. Because he's got all the abilities as a champion. And we did it gradually.

CURNOW: He's become a bit of a hero. Fans and sponsors lining up to meet the man known as "the blade runner." As Oscar Pistorius sweats it out here on the training track, he says he wants to be known by his athleticism rather than by his disability. CURNOW (voice-over): Which is why he gets upset when a small group of skeptics still question if his prosthetic legs give him an unfair advantage.

: If the legs did provide such an advantage that some of the people are claiming they did, then their would be a lot more amputees using the exact same prosthetic legs that I have, running the same times that I have. And that's not the case.

CURNOW: Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter, who defines the Olympic spirit.

Robyn Curnow, CNN, Pretoria, South Africa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: She's a glamorous star of the formula one racing scene, but a tragic injury may have just brought her career to a screeching halt.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: If you follow Formula One racing, you know Maria de Villota.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIA DE VILLOTA, FORMULA 1 TEST DRIVER: Hello. I am Maria de Villota, the (INAUDIBLE) Formula One test driver. And my racing career started in Madrid where I was born in (INAUDIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: Today she is in a hospital in critical but stable condition after a crash during a test drive in England. She lost her right eye after undergoing extensive surgery. She was preparing a car for Sunday's British Grand Prix when the accident occurred.

An 11-year-old boy arrested and accused of protesting in Bahrain is not going to get jail time. Now that's the ruling today from a court in the capital of Manama. Well, the case against little Ali Hasan has drawn strong criticism from activists all around the world. The was one of the youngest demonstrators arrested as part of the government's harsh crackdown on protesters. They've been trying to silence protesters since the Arab Spring uprising that swept the region last year. Mohammed Jamjoom, he's joining us from Abu Dhabi.

And, Mohammed, first of all, this little boy, he was already held in jail for a month before being released on bond last month. Now we've got the -- this ruling here. He's not going to be locked up again. But what does it actually say about Bahrain's harsh treatment of some of these protesters?

MOHAMMED JAMJOOM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Suzanne, members of the opposition in Bahrain and human rights activists in that country say the fact that an 11-year-old boy was locked up in Bahrain for that amount of time really shows that this crackdown against protesters in Bahrain is still going on. They say that this boy should never have been locked up. They say that he was a victim of this continued crackdown that's been going on ever since the protests started in Bahrain in February of 2011.

Now, for their part, the Bahraini government, they're saying that this boy wasn't just locked up because he was at an illegal gathering. They're saying that he had a history of vandalism. They're saying that on the day that he was arrested in May, that he was also burning tires and blocking one of the thoroughfares in Bahrain and that that's why he was locked up. That he'd also had a history of skipping school.

They're saying that they did this for his benefit and that he was treated well in this detention facility. But that's not an argument that's holding water with opposition activists in Bahrain. They say, look, this is a kid. This is a child. An 11-year-old. How can you lock up an 11-year-old, especially for this amount of time?

Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: All right, Mohammed, we know that the Arab Spring has not caught on there in Bahrain. We know it's also the location of a very important base. A U.S. military base there. And, of course, that has caused some complications for the Obama administration, the U.S. government getting involved.

Thank you very much, Mohammed. Appreciate it.

Devastating flood waters wiping whole villages off the map in India. We're going to get a closer look.

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MALVEAUX: Welcome back to NEWSROOM INTERNATIONAL. We take you around the world in 60 minutes. Let's take a look at what is trending this hour.

The secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, he is actually in Slovenia today urging Syria to find a political solution to the country's crisis. Also praising Slovenia for its commitment to NATO missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan. But before the meetings began, here's what he tweeted. "Great bike ride with Slovenian PM Jansa at the Brdo Estate. Inspiring landscape. Ready for meetings with Slovenian leaders."

Imagine your entire state underwater from massive flooding. Well, people in Assam, India, that's actually what they are experiencing. Rains from a relentless monsoon have pushed a major river over its banks onto thousands of villages. Sara Sidner, she's taking a look at this overwhelming devastation.

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SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A sea of floodwater leaves no trace of the villages that lie beneath, or the dozens of lives the water has claimed. On the water's surface, the struggle to survive comes into sharp focus. Those with access to boats save themselves and their animals if they can. Floodwaters have forced nearly a million people to leave their homes. In all, about 2 million have been affected by the flooding.

"How will I survive? I've been forced to move to railway tracks with my children," villager Sabir Ali (ph) says.

Desperation reigns in the temporary shelters that have been set up.

"There is no water, no food, for me and my children," villager Sahida Begum (ph) says.

The state of Assam lies in India's northeast. It is a part of the country that many complain have long been neglected by the central government. A place with fewer services and less infrastructure than other states.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who toured the area, says the government is doing everything it can to send in flood relief. So far, the army and disaster management division have sent nearly 1,400 rescuers to the area.

MANMOHAN SINGH, INDIAN PRIME MINISTER: Over the next two days, our focus will be on rescuing people still (INAUDIBLE) in flood waters, and upon extending relief to those who have been forced to leave their home.

SIDNER: The monsoon rain started the second week of June, and Assam has seen weeks of flooding. Some stranded villagers say they have waited for days but food rations have yet to reach them. Two thousand villages are now inundated with water. Nearly every district in the state is consumed by it. Other villagers have refused to leave their homes, willing to lose their lives trying to save what little they have left.

Sara Sidner, CNN, New Delhi.

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MALVEAUX: Our favorite photos of the day from around the world coming up next.

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MALVEAUX: Several stories caught our attention today. Photos as well. Take a look at this. If you look closely, this map makes America look like the shape of Florida. It's 500 years old. It was discovered at the university in Germany. Scholars say this is the first map in which the name America appears.

Flower experts from around the world have transformed a park in Moscow into a garden paradise. We don't have a picture of it, but it was Russia's first ever international flower show. Fifty thousand people, they're expected actually to attend. We're going to try to get that picture for you later.

No fireworks needed for the light display. This was the sunrise yesterday at Copacabana Beach in Brazil. Quite nice.