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Negative Ads Saturate Americans; Possible Charges in U.K. Phone Hacking Scandal; Remembering Astronaut Sally Ride; HIV/AIDS Conference Talks About Cure; Aurora Shooting Suspect's Apartment Filled With Explosives; More Troops Provided To Olympic Games

Aired July 24, 2012 - 11:00   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: And hello everyone. I'm Kyra Phillips. It's 11:00 on the East Coast, 8:00 on the West.

We're three days out from the 2012 summer games. Time for Britain to beef up security again. We're live in London.

Chemical weapons in Syria -- that threat, igniting a furious, international fallout.

And honoring a pioneer of U.S. space flight. Sally Ride went where no American woman had gone before.

We begin with the house of horrors allegedly rigged by the suspect in the Colorado theater rampage, James Egan Holmes. A law enforcement source tells CNN that Holmes was bent on causing the explosion and fire that would quote, "consume the entire third floor of his apartment complex". Neutralizing that network of home-made bombs was a complex and life-threatening process as my colleague Randi Kaye reports from Aurora.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sunrise, Saturday morning. Members of the ATF, FBI, Aurora police, bomb experts, even chemists gather at the suspected shooter's apartment and devise a plan to get inside. They call it a controlled detonation.

SERGEANT CASSIDEE CARLSON, AURORA, COLORADO, POLICE: First and foremost is we need to render the area safe. The most immediate threat is the tripwire.

KAYE: It's just after 8:00 a.m. and this team has already been at it for more than 24 hours, trying to figure out a way to defuse or detonate explosives the suspect set inside.

Through the window of his third floor apartment, they can see a web of trip wires and a living room full of about 30 homemade IEDs strung together with firecracker shells.

There are also jars of black powder and liquid accelerant, cans of gasoline, too.

At 10:33 a.m., progress. CARLSON: We have been successful in defeating the first threat, which includes defeating the tripwire and the first incendiary device.

KAYE: A robot driven by a bomb technician does the dangerous work humans can't, spraying water on the control box in the kitchen wired to the IEDs, disabling explosives while preserving evidence.

CHIEF DAN OATES, AURORA, COLORADO, POLICE: This apartment was designed, I say, based on everything I have seen, to kill whoever entered it. And if you think we're angry, we sure as hell are angry.

KAYE: A couple hours later, just before noon, firemen shout, "Fire in the hole," and then ...

At 12:08 p.m., confirmation the most serious threat is over.

CARLSON: We have been successful in detonating the second triggering device. We are confident that we have eliminated all major threats at this point. However, there are many hazards that remain inside this apartment.

KAYE: Hazards like improvised napalm and other flammables and accelerants designed to intensify the fire after an explosion.

By 6:00 p.m., much of the dangerous material is hauled away to this open field outside the city limits and detonated.

Back here at the suspect's apartment, investigators try to preserve what they can as evidence. Whatever explosives and ammunition are left go to an FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia. They also take with them a Batman poster, a Batman mask, and a computer, hoping it contains clues to a motive.

Saturday evening, residents from the evacuated buildings nearby are allowed to return home, many still jittery about what might have been.

TANYA LUJAN, EVACUEE: I didn't know, like, if they're going to be OK, if that place was going to blow up while I was at work or you know it what. It was just -- it was really scary.

KAYE: With the apartment secure, the focus turns to where the suspected shooter got all his materials. Investigators say in the last 60 days, he bought more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition online, including a 100-round magazine for the assault rifle. They track a large number of deliveries to his apartment.

OATES: We also think it begins to explain some of the materials he had in his apartment.

KAYE: Police Saturday do a sweep of the University of Colorado medical school where the suspect was enrolled. They have to be sure he didn't booby-trap the campus.

They also do a thorough search of all biohazard and radioactive material he may have had access to and confirm it is all secure. Now, investigators know the suspected shooter wanted to extend the carnage beyond the movie theater. And while they have learned so much more about what he allegedly planned, they just don't know why.

Randi Kaye, CNN, Aurora, Colorado.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well, as prosecutors prepare to formally charge James Holmes with first-degree murder for Friday's theater massacre, the big question is why. Why would a 24-year-old who by most accounts was a brilliant student, allegedly go on this ruthless shooting rampage?

It's unclear if Holmes has been diagnosed with any mental disorder, but the video of Holmes during his first court appearance yesterday is pretty revealing and it was disturbing and it's raising a lot of questions about his mental health.

Now, compare that moment to this video. This is Holmes in high school giving a neuroscience presentation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES HOLMES, ACCUSED THEATER GUNMAN: I'm James. I have been working with a temporal illusion. It's an allusion that allows you to change the past.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: His goals are to become a researcher and make scientific discoveries. It's a good start.

HOLMES: Came here tonight, feel like they have a super power and I might let them have more fun.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Now, that was six years ago. Holmes was 18-years old at that time, lecturing on illusions.

I want to bring in Chris Cline, vice president of clinical services at Skyland Trail here in Atlanta, along with criminal defense attorney B. J. Bernstein about how this could play out in court.

And just to let folks know, Skyland Trail is a fantastic place to go for mental health issues and so that's why I wanted to talk to you, Chris. I know a lot about Skyland Trail, what you do there and it's pretty remarkable.

When you see video of this young man lecturing on illusions, and we'll talk more about what temporal illusions are and subjective experience in a minute, and then you see what happened on Friday and what he looked like in that courtroom, what's telling to you?

CHRIS CLINE, VICE PRESIDENT, CLINCAL SERVICES, SKYLAND TRAIL: Well, I think to me it makes me remember that mental illness strikes everyone. It's average children, it's average teenagers, average young adults, typically, who are dealing with tremendous amounts of stress and it's not clear whether he was experienced mental illness, but he clearly in high school looked like a pretty average kid and that wouldn't be -- it wouldn't be hard to imagine an average person developing mental illness in their young adult years.

PHILLIPS: So let me ask you about that because I think a lot of folks are at home, right, parents especially, saying to themselves, how could this kid be so bright and so successful and then all of a sudden, boom, right?

Explain that to folks.

CLINE: Well, mental illness doesn't discriminate. It isn't based on your intelligence. It isn't something that's based on whether you're wealthy or poor.

PHILLIPS: Doesn't matter if you had great parents or horrible parents.

CLINE: It doesn't. Its a lot about your genetic predisposition and how your brain is built and then the stressors that you experience. And young adults experience a tremendous amount of stressors as they make that developmental transition from being a child to being an adult.

And college-age children who have a predisposition for mental illness often have the first severe signs of mental illness show up at that time.

PHILLIPS: Why is it common in the, you know, 19, 20, 21, 22 -- you know, early 20s -- why is that the age?

CLINE: Because of all the stress. It is a loss of the support system a person has grown accustomed to and many new expectations and challenges that a person may not be prepared for.

And, so, just like all of us who experience stress when we went to college, someone who is genetically predisposed to have a mental illness may start to show signs of that at that time.

PHILLIPS: And maybe that's what we need to explain maybe a little deeper here. We all get stressed, right? And sometimes we bite our fingernails. Sometimes we can't sleep. We all handle it in different ways. OK, this is very different.

CLINE: Absolutely.

PHILLIPS: So how do you know the difference between a child that's -- or a young man or a young woman who is just having a hard time, right, and stressed out versus the onset of mental illness?

CLINE: Well, and that's where it gets tricky is because young adults pick up very quickly. They're very attuned to their environment. They pick up quickly that the world around them does not handle well information that is strange or atypical.

And, so, when they start to say, well, I'm experiencing this or that and they feel shot down, they're going to start to hide those symptoms and, so, it's really important if you're at all concerned as a parent of a child whose behavior is starting to become atypical or different than it was, to get them in front of a mental health professional.

Because they're going to hide it from their parents. They're going to keep that information from their friends and parents because they don't know how to talk about it.

PHILLIPS: All right, but here is what's interesting. Six years ago, he's talking about temporal illusions, OK? When we look at this video, he's lecturing on temporal illusions. Explain what that is.

CLINE: In his lecture he was talking about the ability to shift time, to experience time differently than other people do. And I think he, like many young adults, is curious about a lot of different things and, for most of us, when we were struggling with experiences internally, we start to try to find answers to those out in the world.

PHILLIPS: So do you think he might have discovered something different about himself so that caused him to want to study temporal illusions and subjective experience?

CLINE: I think it's very likely he was asking a lot of questions, and I don't know that we know more than that at this point. I think we need to wait and see what comes out with more data before we rush to judgment about whether he has a mental illness or something that's different than that.

You know, we want to rush to find answers because this is a very, very upsetting and frightening experience for everyone to consider, but I don't think we want to rush to judgment about him having a mental illness or not at this point.

PHILLIPS: All right, we'll talk a little bit more about what he is lecturing about and how to be more proactive, of course, as a parent, but B. J., I want to bring you in. I mean, my gosh ...

B. J. BERNSTEIN, ATTORNEY, THE BERNSTEIN FIRM, PC: I see this all the time.

PHILLIPS: .,.. you see this all -- OK, so you're ...

BERNSTEIN: Young people always in my office who -- a criminal thing is actually what triggers seeing me, getting them to a psychiatrist. The family is so close, and they may say, you know, my son is changing at 16, 17, 18, and my first thing is, is it drugs?

But sometimes they're taking drugs to self-medicate and then something happens. They get arrested one time and then a second time and then I'm the independent, third person saying, wait a minute, I'm seeing some signs that -- and then the family sometimes are in denial.

When I say I want to send your son or daughter to a psychiatrist and, particularly, my young men because they -- you can't really get an official diagnosis all the time for bipolar-schizophrenic until they're in their mid-20s and yet they're experiencing signs that would indicate that as early as 17-, 18-, 19-years old.

And, so, there's that crash between what clinically we can do or know, but the common sense kicks in because of the reality of what they're doing is inconsistent with previous behavior.

PHILLIPS: Interesting. So when a parent comes to you with a teenager or early-20s, like a son or a daughter, and they're starting to get into trouble, is that one of the first things you think about is --

BERNSTEIN: Always.

PHILLIPS: ... the mental state and mental illness and should we get this before trying to defend them or get them out of jail or -- you think about the mind, you think about that healing process first?

BERNSTEIN: Especially with boys because it really is -- I mean, Skyland Trail is filled with them. I've had clients go to Skyland Trail with these issues where they start getting more and more antisocial. They start doing stranger behaviors and, when I get them in rehab and they're clean and they're still doing it, then I even have more idea that there's something psychiatric going on.

So that having been said, then you look at this situation and, I will tell you, I'm not necessarily sold yet with the unique facts of this case that that may be the case here.

PHILLIPS: Why?

BERNSTEIN: First of all, there's a lot -- there's some reports, some psychiatric reports out there and studies with mass shooters and how they react. There is a lot of planning here and there's a difference -- there's, I believe, one report that talks about mass shooters who mass shoot, but don't really hit people and, so, they are having a psychiatric episode. It's not thought out the same way versus the methodic way that some of the victims are describing the shooting occurs and him going in and out.

So, yes, mental health issues are going to be huge in this case, but I'm not sure yet whether it's going to be his defense.

PHILLIPS: Interesting. So then when you're talking about mental illness, a big question here is, did he understand right versus wrong?

BERNSTEIN: Correct. And that's a legal standard.

PHILLIPS: OK. So how do you figure that out? You're the mental health expert here. How do you sit someone down or study someone or treat someone and try and figure out, OK, did they understand right from wrong?

CLINE: There's a pretty extensive forensic psychiatric evaluation that happens when someone may have mental health issues that impair their ability to know right from wrong.

So that will be something that his lawyer will make sure happens and that we find out more about later.

PHILLIPS: And before I let you go, I mean, B. J., if you were defending him, you know, where do you ...

BERNSTEIN: You're on the phone now with psychiatrists. You get one yourself that you hire and then also it will trigger the state having one. So there will be more than one psychiatrist doing exams. You want it sooner rather than later.

Now, how he appeared in court, again, it could also be that he's bewildered because he realizes what's happened. He's been in a jail. I doubt he slept. I'm sure that that there are death threats and other inmate issues and words being said, so I don't take the bizarre behavior yesterday as a confirmation of mental illness. I want to be clear on that.

PHILLIPS: Could he be faking it?

BERNSTEIN: I don't think -- what do you think?

CLINE: I think that possibility is out there. Certainly people who understand that mental health may be an excuse for having broken the law try and use that, but I don't know that anybody can say that at this point.

PHILLIPS: Got it. Well, it's definitely an interesting discussion.

BERNSTEIN: And a good one to have because parents really -- it doesn't have to get to this point and there are a lot of young people struggling and we're afraid to talk about it. People are embarrassed. You can't be embarrassed.

PHILLIPS: It's a great point and you know that all too well, Chris ...

BERNSTEIN: Yeah.

PHILLIPS: ... and that's what I wanted to achieve in this discussion. Thank you both so much. Appreciate it.

CLINE: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Chris Cline, B. J. Bernstein, appreciate it.

OK. And Holmes next hearing is scheduled for Monday where he will likely face first-degree murder charges and we will be covering that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Just three days before the start of the London Olympics, the British government is deploying an additional 1,200 troops for security. That move means that more than 18,000 British troops are now involved in protecting the games. And it comes after the security contractor for the games said it would not be able to provide the number of security personnel promised.

Zain Verjee is joining us live. So, Zain, what prompted the latest move?

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Basically, the security company, G4S, totally messed up, Kyra. They said they could deliver the numbers and, at the last hour, -- actually 11:59:59 -- they said, oops, sorry, British government, we're actually not able to deliver this.

So there was a massive panic and a real focus on the security situation, so what the British government decided to do was draft in the military. So, they've added today 1,200 extra troops. That's over and above the 3,500 they already had drafted in to cover the shortfall.

So, with the defense beefing up the Metropolitan Police, you've got 18,200 troops to deal with security in the Olympics. So, the British government is saying we're just going to take a no-risk approach and we're going to bring in the military and the message from London today is the army is in charge of security for the Olympics.

PHILLIPS: And what's the reaction, you know, to all the troops being at the venues?

VERJEE: You know, Kyra, from people I have talked to and a lot of the interview that is you listen to and read about, people are actually OK with that. They think that the military can handle it OK. They feel safer.

I mean, when you have this private security company that really did mess up big time, they couldn't even have the people that they said would show up at the venues even show up, so you didn't even know whether the security guys would be there or not.

So what the army is going to be doing is things like checking bags, metal detectors, x-rays, scanners. You've got CCTV everywhere, so they're monitoring the situation and people feel better about it.

PHILLIPS: All right, Zain Verjee, thanks so much.

And for one U.S. Olympian, the biggest hurdle she has to overcome is her health. Rob Marciano, here to explain. Rob?

ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Her name is Carrie Johnson and she's fit, as you would imagine, very strong. A sprint kayaker, she competed in the last couple of Olympics while battling a disease that causes intense pain, fatigue, pain, and weight loss.

And she'll have to keep that all at bay again if he's going to have a shot at gold.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MARCIANO: Carrie Johnson starts graduate school this fall to become a veterinarian, but before she hits the books, she's hitting the water.

Sprint kayaking in her third and final Olympics, she'll race in both the 200- and the 500-meter sprints.

Johnson has yet to earn a medal, but she's determined to finish strongly.

CARRIE JOHNSON, U.S. OLYMPIAN: Every athlete is lining up on that start line, you know, with the goal and the dream of winning an Olympic gold medal, but I think if you can paddle away and say, I did absolutely everything that I could do, then you would have to be satisfied with that.

MARCIANO: Johnson won gold in the 2011 Pan Am games, but her success hasn't come without struggle. She has Crohn's disease, an incurable intestinal ailment that also causes fatigue.

JOHNSON: When I have the harder days, I have a real appreciation for just being able to train.

MARCIANO: While it kept her out of the water for a little while, Johnson views her disease as extra motivation, pushing her through nearly six hours of training a day.

What is going through your mind, technically? You know, how long do you want that paddle in there and how strong is the stroke? And how are you balancing? There's got to be a lot of things to think about.

JOHNSON: Using your legs is actually a really important part of paddling, which people don't realize. That really starts the rotation that brings the boat forward.

MARCIANO: And all this while not falling in.

JOHNSON: Yes.

MARCIANO: because the boat you're on is pretty skinny.

JOHNSON: It is. The widest part is just pretty much wide enough to get your hips in. So it's very unstable if you're not used to it.

MARCIANO: And if you're just some reporter getting in there, what are the odds of me staying afloat?

JOHNSON: We've never had anybody get into the boat for a first time and stay up. Even the Olympic rowers.

MARCIANO: So I'm going in?

JOHNSON: You're going in.

Grab the cockpit and step in with one foot, step behind and sit down. Grab the paddle right around where the grips are.

MARCIANO: Yeah. Oh, there's no way. There's no way I'm staying up. How in the world do you balance on this thing?

JOHNSON: Don't hit your head on the dock.

MARCIANO: Yeah, OK. There's no way.

You were right. Just one second. That's impossible!

An Olympian, I am not, clearly.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Grab the cockpit, grab a lifeline, grab the dock, grab Carrie.

MARCIANO: I should have grabbed everything. It was unbelievable. It was like sitting on a tight-wire. I have never felt such instability. So there's that, plus the speed. You saw how ripped up she was.

PHILLIPS: I was just going to say. I was looking at the back of her arms. My goodness, she's ripped.

MARCIANO: a lot of core strength, there's legs involved as well. She goes five meters per second or about 12 miles an hour. They're cruising. We were there with a motor boat just trying to keep up with her.

Sprint kayaking, she does 200 meters in roughly about 40 seconds and she'll be able to compete towards the end, I think around August 7th, so mark your calendars.

PHILLIPS: You'll be sitting back on the couch, watching her go.

MARCIANO: Sipping some lemonade.

PHILLIPS: Thank you so much.

More than 10,000 athletes from 205 countries will be in London for the games, kicking off with opening ceremonies this Friday and, obviously, Rob can't wait.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(AUDIO BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Allah Akbar!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: The Taliban just releasing this video of a suicide bombing attack on a U.S. base in Afghanistan. Two Americans died in the June 1st attack.

You can hear the people who shot the video yell, Allah Akbar, God is great. As he drove off from the attack, the truck bomber said he's taken revenge for those who insult Islam and the Koran.

President Obama mincing no words in warning Syria not to use its chemical weapons under any circumstance. The president spoke out yesterday at a VFW convention.

His strong words were echoed around the world after Syria admitted for the first time it has chemical weapons and warned it would use them if faced with a foreign attack.

Mohammed Jamjoom monitoring developments out of Abu Dhabi for us. So, Mo, sounds like Syria now trying to tone down its threat.

MOHAMMED JAMJOOM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Kyra. Very interesting what happened today. The man who actually gave the press conference yesterday, in which it was announced that Syria had chemical weapons and that they would use them on any foreign aggressors, today, suggesting that his comments were taken out of context, saying that there is a deliberate taking out of context by the international media of his remarks because there's fabrications about the weapons program in Syria.

It's very interesting what the Syrians are saying today. Another statement that was posted on the Syrian foreign ministry website stated that the international media is involved in fabricating claims about the weapons of mass destruction program in Syria so that there will be an excuse for international powers to intervene militarily into Syria.

So they're walking back these claims a bit they made yesterday, but it's really not allaying any of the fears that have been expressed by the international community about the chemical weapons stockpiles Syria has.

Kyra?

PHILLIPS: Yeah, so, Mohammed, what do you think? I mean, is this all talk and it's just a threat and now they're sort of being called on it or threatened and now they're backing off, saying, OK, well, really -- I mean, we just think about what happened in Iraq and all the threats of chemical weapons and we saw what happened there.

JAMJOOM: What it looks like, Kyra, and a lot of analysts are suggesting this, is that Jihad Makdissi, the spokesperson for the Syrian foreign ministry, possibly gave away too much yesterday.

Yesterday was significant, not just because of these threats to foreign aggressors, people who would intervene in Syria, but also because it was the first time that Syria actually admitted that it had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles.

And because of that instead of allaying fears by the Syrians saying, hey, we're not going to this use it against our own population. We would only use it if facing aggression from foreign powers.

What it did, in fact, was it increased outrage by international powers. Many countries saying, hey, you can't be saying this. You can't be using chemical weapons. You have to act responsibly.

Kyra?

PHILLIPS: Mohammed Jamjoom out of Abu Dhabi for us. Mohammed, thanks.

And Barack Obama once said everybody knows politics is a contact sport, but in sports, when that contact is too rough, the ref throws a flag.

No such penalty in politics. A new survey show 78 percent of voters are fed up and frustrated with the nasty tone of politics. Check out this Romney ad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message.

MITT ROMNEY, (R), FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNOR & PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The Chinese are smiling all the way to the bank, taking our jobs and taking a lot of our future, and I'm not willing to let that happen.

ANNOUNCER: He made a fortune letting it happen. Newly published documents show Mitt --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: That ad itself addressed what the Romney camp calls false and misleading information put out by the Obama team. It asked the question, when a president doesn't tell the truth, how can we expect him to lead? That's one example of the multimillion dollar negative ad buys on both sides of the campaign. When will Americans reach their saturation point? Good question.

Let's bring in our political editor, Paul Steinhauser, for that.

Let's drill down on the survey. What did it say?

PAUL STEINHAUSER, CNN DEPUTY POLITICAL DIRECTOR: This campaign has gone from negative to pretty much nasty. Let's drill down on the survey. It's from Marist. As you mentioned, nearly 8 in 10 said they're frustrated by the negative tone. Almost two-thirds say the negative ads are hurting the political process and we've seen negative ads before, but almost three-quarters say the campaigning this time around is more negative than it was in past presidential cycles. What's the reason? Well, I pointed to it. A lot of this is the campaign ads. Just about all the campaign ads running in the last two months from the campaigns, from the Republican and Democratic parties, and from those independent groups, the so-called super PACs, they're almost all negative in nature. A lot more ads spending. A lot more ads than in 2004 and 2008 at the same time.

Take a listen. Here is a taste of each side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message.

(SINGING)

ANNOUNCER: Where did all the Obama stimulus money go? Friends, donors, campaign supporters, special interest groups. Where did the Obama stimulus money go? Solyndra.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEINHAUSER: People say they don't like negative ads, but guess what, they're effective. That's why you will probably see a little bit more of this. We have 3.5 months to go until Election Day. I don't think we'll get rid of any of this stuff until after that -- Kyra?

PHILLIPS: You will be watching then all. You've got it.

(LAUGHTER)

STEINHAUSER: Every one of them.

PHILLIPS: Thanks.

A political postscript, former President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush dropped by Romney's campaign headquarters in Boston yesterday. Bush has kept a low profile during the campaign. His visit might help erase the idea he doesn't really back Romney. Bush, however, says he will not attend the GOP convention.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: One is the former head of Rupert Murdoch British's newspapers, the other, a former aide to British Prime Minister David Cameron, and now both Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson could face charges in the U.K.'s sweeping phone hacking scandal. Six other journalists also face charges. Their suspected hacking victims included a murdered school girl and celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Paul McCartney.

Dan Rivers following developments out of London.

Dan, any surprises in today's announcement?

DAN RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think this was widely expected, but it is hugely significant. This is the first time since this whole scandal erupted here that we've had people charged actually with allegedly commissioning phone hacking itself. Before people have been charged with, you know, allegedly trying to cover it up or lying about it. It is alleged in court. But now we've got people charged with the offense of, you know, commissioning phone hacking which is illegal in this country. So eight of the 13 suspecting that were being considered have now formally been charged. They include Rebekah Brooks who was the CEO of News International, one of Rupert Murdoch's most trusted executives. She used to edit the former tabloid, "News of the World," along with her deputy, Andy Coulson, who went on to become a prominent Downing Street communications director. She's charged with three counts, him with five.

Alison Levitt, from the prosecutors here in Britain, explained the rationale behind the decision.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALISON LEVITT, U.K. PROSECUTION SERVICE: All, with the exception of Glen Markeir (ph), will be charged with conspiring to intercept communications on the 3rd of October 2000 until the 9th of August 2006. The communications in question are the voice mail messages of well-known people and/or those associated with them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RIVERS: So Glen Markier (ph), she referred to there, was the private detective who had already been charged and convicted in a separate case of phone hacking royal contacts. He though was at the center of all these allegations as well, so he's also facing four further charges.

There's been some reaction already. Rebekah Brooks already coming out with a statement saying -- denying she's guilty, saying she's distressed and angry about this decision, and she will be campaigning to prove her innocence.

Andy Coulson as well has also come out and spoken, this time on camera. Here is what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDY COULSON, FORMER DEPUTY EDITOR, "NEWS OF THE WORLD" & FORMER DOWNING STREET COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Anyone who knows me or who has worked with me will know I wouldn't or, importantly, that I didn't do anything to damage the Milly Dowler investigation. At the "News of the World," we worked on behalf of the victims of crime, particularly violent crime. And the idea that I would then sit in my office dreaming up schemes to undermine investigations is simply untrue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RIVERS: Of course, it was the case of the murdered school girl, Milly Dowler, whose phone it was alleged was hacked into by journalists that caused this ongoing story to really explode in the public consciousness here. Now we have a more kind of comprehensive list of some of the alleged victims. They include Sir Paul McCartney, Jude Law, Actors Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, from sports and footballers, soccer players here, including Wayne Rooney, from politics to home ministers here, as well as a deputy prime minister, and even a survivor of a terrorist attack. That gives you an idea of the broad cross section of people who it is alleged were targeted by these journalists.

PHILLIPS: Dan Rivers out of London. Dan, thanks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, if she'd had a better forehand, Sally Ride may have made hit on the tennis court, but that wasn't in the stars for this brainy kid from Los Angeles. We remember Ride for her ground- breaking role in the final frontier. The first American woman and the youngest American to fly in space passed away of pancreatic cancer at 61. I had the honor of interviewing Sally Ride back in 2008 as the nation marked the 25th anniversary of her historic flight aboard space shuttle "Challenger." And even after all those years she was still awe struck by her big adventure.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Take me back there. What do you think is the most vivid memory from that moment?

SALLY RIDE, ASTRONAUT: Well, without a doubt the most vivid memory is the moment that the engines light and the solid rockets light. There is just nothing like it. I have been trying for 25 years to come up with the words to describe it, and I just haven't been able to. It's tons and tons of rocket fuel exploding underneath you and that's what it feels like.

PHILLIPS: I don't think you could ever top that kind of adrenaline rush.

RIDE: I don't think so. I'm not sure I'd want to, frankly. That was exhilarating enough for me, and it was absolutely spectacular.

PHILLIPS: Was it spiritual as you kissed the heavens?

RIDE: You know what was absolutely amazing to me was the feeling I had looking back at earth, the perspective that that view gives you on your planet is just -- you can't get it just standing on the ground with your feet firmly planted on earth. You can only get it from space, and it's remarkable how beautiful our planet is and how fragile it looks.

PHILLIPS: Did you think at that moment, wow, I am making history?

RIDE: I thought at that moment, wow, I get to do this! But then after I got back and the, you know, the enormity of it hit me, I realized I was making history, that I had made history and that's made the whole thing very special for me.

PHILLIPS: Sally, you were going to be a tennis pro. How did you make the switch to I think I'll be an astronaut?

RIDE: Well, I think maybe that switch was made for me by my forehand. It wasn't my better stroke, so I think I probably made the wise decision, but I was a very avid, competitive tennis player when I was growing up and on into college.

PHILLIPS: And so what made you decide to be an astronaut? I was reading that you were reading through the paper and you saw some type of -- there's all kinds of urban myths out there. What really happened?

RIDE: Well, this one is kind of amazing. I was a physics major. In fact, I was in grad school just a couple months away from getting my PhD. In physics at Stanford and I was literally standing in the Stanford student cafeteria on Tuesday morning at 8:00 in the morning reading the Stanford student newspaper and you saw in the lower right- hand corner of page three an ad that NASA had put in the Stanford student newspaper and newspapers around the country saying they were looking for astronauts. So I guess I got this job by applying through an ad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Sally Ride showed all of us and every little girl that even the sky wasn't a limit.

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PHILLIPS: It wasn't long ago that AIDS WAS considered a death sentence. A cure seemed impossible. Now, the impossible, a cure, is a very real possibility. And here is some perspective. According to two U.N. aides, 34.2 million people are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. And of those, 2.5 million people were newly infected last year alone, which is why finding a cure for AIDS is the focus right now at the International AIDS Conference, where more than 20,000 scientists, activists, and world leaders are gathering.

It even includes our own chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who is in D.C., where the conference is actually being held this year.

Obviously, a lot going on in the background, Sanjay. Now, we're learning more about a man who says he's been cured of HIV. You were the first person to actually speak with him at the conference, I understand. Tell me his story.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a remarkable story of a guy named is Timothy Brown. Let me just say as well, Kyra, because you can hear the noise in the background, I have been through many of these HIV/AIDS conferences around the world. It's the first one here since 1990 in this country. They're often marked by protests, people who are often marking, trying to get improved access for people for treatment, people who are protesting the decrease in funding as part of the president's emergency plan. So what you're hearing, again, just to start it up, a few hundred people down there, this appears at a lot of these conferences.

But, Kyra, to your question, one of the things that people are focused on is the story of Timothy Brown, who scientists say -- this is not hyperbole, because I've been reporting on this quite a bit -- they say he's the only person in the world that's been cured of AIDS. What happened with him is he in fact received a bone marrow transplant as part of his treatment for leukemia. They believe it's that transplant that in fact in essence taught his cells to resist the virus that causes AIDS.

I talked to Timothy Brown earlier. Here's how he put it to me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: Does it mean you have no symptoms? No virus? How do you --

(CROSSTALK)

TIMOTHY BROWN, HIV PATIENT; I quit taking my HIV medication on the day I got my first transplant unfortunately the leukemia came back, so I had to get a second transplant about a year later. After the first transplant, I did very well, I gained muscle weight and went back to work, and everything was great, but the leukemia came back. My HIV was gone after like three months after the first transplant, totally eradicated.

GUPTA: Completely gone?

BROWN: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: Again, Kyra, as you might imagine, scientists are very interested in Timothy Brown. They've been studying him for the last several years, trying to figure out exactly what happened after that bone marrow transplant. As you might guess, Kyra, more importantly is what it means to everybody else. People don't use the word "cure" very often, and they're very careful at a conference like this, but leading scientist from several different countries using that word and using it surrounding Timothy Brown interested.

PHILLIPS: Is he a typical patient, though, Sanjay?

GUPTA: He's not a typical patient. He's someone who had leukemia, subsequently got a bone marrow transplant and what he received had a specific genetic difference where the cells did not easily accept the virus into the cells, so obviously people aren't going to get bone marrow transplants as a way to treat HIV/AIDS, but the question is, can you arrive at that same outcome a different way? Can we teach the cells in our body to become resistant to the virus? It's not a vaccine. They're talking about a cure. These are people who are already diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, some are already sick. They're saying could you possibly teach your cells to resist the virus the way timothy's body did.

PHILLIPS: Wow, Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much.

Sanjay will be back in the next hour to talk about the key to containing the spread of HIV. He'll take a closer look as some of the recent successes and proposals.

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PHILLIPS: And before we end the hour, I would like to take a moment to note the end of an era. A fond memory from my childhood that gave me my first introduction in news. "The Weekly Reader," a staple in classrooms for decades, it's shutting down. It was bought out by rival "Scholastic." And "The New York Post" records that it's being folded for "Scholastic News." Most of the 60 employees have been let go. Indeed, the end of an era.

A quick stock market update. Let's take a look at the big board. Dow Jones Industrial Averages down 124 points.

All right, that does it for us. Thank so much for watching, everyone. You can continue the conversation with me on Twitter, at kyraCNN, or on Facebook.

NEWSROOM INTERNATIONAL begins right after this.

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