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U.N. Calls Sudan Worst Humanitarian Crisis In The World; Fighting Continues In Najaf; X-Prize Spacecraft Explodes After Liftoff; Low Airfares

Aired August 09, 2004 - 13:30   ET

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

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


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A former joint chiefs chairman hospitalized in intensive care right now. General John Shalikashvili is in guarded condition at an army medical center in Tacoma, Washington. No details at this time on why he fell ill, however. We're watching this one closely for you.
In Iraq this hour, a lot of black gold is not moving. Officials say they're halting production in the southern oil fields because of sabotage threats from radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. His forces remain locked in a battle with U.S. Marines in Najaf. An update from CNN's Matthew Chance momentarily.

Sizing up the misery in Sudan: A fact-finding team from the European Union says contrary to what the U.S. Congress calls it, there's no evidence of genocide in the war-torn region of Darfur.

BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: So, whether or not it's genocide, the conflict in Sudan has caused what the United Nation calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour is in the Darfur region with the latest.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Betty, indeed, as people quibble about what's actually going on in terms of semantics, what's really happening is a massive humanitarian crisis. There are some one million people who have been displaced from their homes, burned out, cattle stolen, lives lost, and families killed, and they are now in urgent need of help.

We were at a big camp here in western Darfur earlier today, and we saw the first aid delivery in five months since the camp has sort of sprung up. And what it was was not what they needed most, which was food, but more it was plastic sheeting, blankets and gericans, which they also need because of the rains, because of what they need in terms water collection. But what they really need most is food, and that is very slow in coming.

It's opened up somewhat in the last month or so, but the pipeline and the prepositioning never took place. And so, right now, they're just trying to race against time to get food to these camps. And it's very, very difficult. It's a huge challenge.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIE NOELLE RODRIGUE, MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES: We can see an increase in the diarrheal diseases, an increase in the respiratory infections also, and malaria is expected also in many places during the rainy season.

So, we were prepared for that, and we have everything on the ground to manage this. But as you say, the sanitation is an issue in most of the camps, and it still has to be improved to avoid having these kind of outbreaks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: The sanitation, the threat of disease is really going to be the major killer unless something's done about it. Because right now, although the violence is somewhat subsided, there is still this huge need to get food to about two million people who are in desperate need and who are 100% reliant on outside aid, because they can't go back to their homes.

They've been burned out. They've missed the planting season. They can't harvest, so they're really dependent on international aid. And the hungrier they get, the weaker they get, then the more risk of disease there is, and that is a big risk, especially since we're in the rainy season and it could be a big problem according to aid workers here.

NGUYEN: Christiane, time is obviously of the essence, and you said aid is trickling in slowly. Any indication when aid will be allowed in, full on when people can really get all the necessities that they need?

AMANPOUR: Well, since Secretary of State Colin Powell and the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan visited this area and also Khartoum had spoke to the Sudanese government last month, the access for aid and humanitarian workers has increased.

But because it was so late in starting -- this is a crisis that's been underway for 18 months now -- there's so much to be done. And it's simply impossible to get the massive amount of tonnage you need to get in quickly. And they need many, many more -- much more funding, much more better -- much better logistic operations, more aid workers. They just need to get a lot of bulk in here quickly.

And logistically, it's going to be more and more difficult, the more the rain set in. But it's basically because they've only just started in a serious way that they're so far behind.

NGUYEN: They need help on a lot of fronts there. Christiane Amanpour, thank you.

Miles?

O'BRIEN: Turning now to Iraq and the holy city of Najaf, where tensions are rising once again as renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr vows to fight to the death to get U.S. and Iraqi forces out of the city. This as the governor of Najaf gives troops the go-ahead to engage Sadr's militia in the city.

CNN's Matthew Chance reports from Baghdad.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, fighting raging still in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf, where U.S. forces facing off against the Mehdi army, loyal of course to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Now, we've had latest casualty figures from those several days of fighting. The U.S. military saying at least 360 of those Mehdi army fighters killed in combat operations. They say at least four U.S. soldiers have also been killed in the battles that have been raging around that holy city.

There has been calls for the violence to come to an end, but at the moment, Muqtada al-Sadr is resisting any compromises, saying that, if necessary, he'll fight to the death in the holy city of Najaf.

MUQTADA AL-SADR, SHIITE CLERIC (through translator): In this situation, you can't have democracy and occupation. You can't have freedom and occupation. Let's remove the occupation first, then there'll be freedom and democracy. But not democracy or freedom with an occupation.

I'll keep on resisting. I'm staying in Najaf, and I won't leave until the last day of my life. My stay is to defend Najaf, the holiest place. Whoever wants to stay is welcome.

CHANCE: Well, the U.S. military says that it won't abandon Najaf either. In fact, it says its forces have taken up positions around the sacred Imam Ali mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam. It's also the place, according to U.S. officials, where Mehdi army fighters are holed up and using as a staging ground to launch attacks against U.S. forces.

They say they've got permission from the governor of Najaf to operate in and around the shrine of Imam Ali if necessary. Although, they say they're not planning to do that at this stage -- mindful, perhaps, of the explosive backlash any attempt to perhaps storm that mosque may have amongst Iraq's Shiite majority population.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NGUYEN: Ahmed Chalabi, the one-time darling of the Pentagon, and his nephew are vowing to return to Iraq to answer what they call ridiculous charges.

Arrest warrants were issued yesterday for Ahmed and Salem Chalabi. Ahmed Chalabi is wanted on charges of dealing in counterfeit money. Salem Chalabi is the person put in charge of Iraq's war crimes tribunal, and he is wanted in connection with murder. He says the allegations are simply an attempt to discredit the war tribunal before Saddam Hussein is put to trial.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SALEM CHALABI, IRAQI WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL: I quit a very lucrative job in the world's largest law firm in the city to go and work for nothing in Iraq for the last year-and-a-half, and put my life at risk. I mean, I have, you know, around 50 bodyguards protecting me, and I live in a very protected area. And to do all this and be charged with this kind of ridiculous thing really is outrageous for me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Ah, to dream a little dream, and then have it tumble toward a rather unhappy splashdown after a little in-flight breakup. Some X-prize hopefuls are now back to the drawing board.

Koko, the famous gorilla, tells her handlers something painful. Don't worry, there's a happy ending, animal lovers.

And yikes! Swimming with the sharks, while they munch on some oceanographic roadkill of sorts. LIVE FROM's diet aid of the day straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: In the state of Washington, a splashdown and a letdown, but not a stand-down. An attempt to build a spacecraft that could bag its builders 10 million bucks leads to a humbling lesson in the vicissitudes of rocket science.

John Yeager, of CNN affiliate KCPQ, with our story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN YEAGER, KCPQ REPORTER (on camera): Good day for a launch?

PHILLIP STORM, SPACE TRANSPORT CORP.: Yes, it's a great day.

YEAGER (voice-over): But Phillip Storm didn't get much sleep last night. This is a crucial test of his solid-fuel booster rocket, the same fuel used on the shuttle, but this sure doesn't look like the shuttle.

STORM: I design things to make it glamorous, yet we just designed it for function.

YEAGER: The goal: launch this 23-foot tall rocket four miles up and retrieve it safely from the Pacific. At stake, the $10 million X Prize, that will go to the first private company capable of launching a human being into space twice in a two-week period. A mannequin's inside today. Can you see him in there?

Everything's done on a shoestring budget. Storm tells us the local fire chief brought this in case things get out of hand.

(on camera): Not only that, but their chief competitor going for the X Prize is none other than billionaire Paul Allen. STORM: Yes, he's got. I mean, yes, Paul Allen is funding Burt Rutan, and he's got $20 million, $25 million invested in the project, so I mean, that's a lot. We're definitely the underdogs.

YEAGER (voice-over): Still, he has NASA experience and a drive to one day cash in on the space tourism market, said to be worth millions.

But all of that is just shooting for the stars unless this rocket works. And today, it didn't.

STORM: Basically the engine, the propellant wasn't manufactured properly.

YEAGER: His fault, Storm says, and his tight budget meant that he couldn't test it before today's launch.

STORM: Back to the drawing board.

YEAGER: On the Washington coast, John Yeager.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: I wonder if John is related to the Yeager, Chuck Yaeger.

In any case, I should tell you, there are more than two dozens teams that are vying for that X Prize, 10 million bucks for the first team to fly a craft that can carry three people to space -- that's 62 nautical miles -- twice in as many weeks. And Rutan and his team are going to try September 29th. We'll have a live coverage.

NGUYEN: But the first attempt happened a long time ago, right?

O'BRIEN: No, no, no, that wasn't actually an official X Prize attempt. They got to space. That was just to show they can do it. Now they're off to the races at the end of September, and the question is, would you go?

NGUYEN: Into space?

O'BRIEN: Onto one of those rockets, yes.

NGUYEN: I can't even ride a roller coaster, no way.

O'BRIEN: Not for you? All right.

NGUYEN: Nope. I get motion sickness. It's not a good thing.

O'BRIEN: I'll wave.

NGUYEN: Yes, I'll just wave to you from the ground. All right.

Well, it almost sounds like a joke. How do you pull a tooth from a 300-pound gorilla? Very carefully, of course, especially when that gorilla is a celebrity. Koko is famous for knowing sign language, and she was able to sign to her handlers in California that she had a toothache.

She was even able to communicate on a scale of one to 10 how badly her tooth hurt. Koko was put under yesterday and given a full head-to-toe exam, during which that problem tooth was extracted, and I understand, Miles, afterwards, she wanted to see the specialist who helped her out, and one lady in red she really liked a lot, so the lady handed her a card, and Koko, of course, in gorilla form, ate it.

O'BRIEN: Yes, it's funny, I met Koko about 10 years ago, and she started doing the sign thing, and Penny Patterson, her, you know, human helper read the sign, and said I'd like candy. That's the problem, she's eating too much candy. There you go. Toothache, there you go.

If you thought pulling a tooth out of a gorilla's mouth was touch and go, you've got to listen to this next fellow.

NGUYEN: Oh, yes, Jimmy Hall at more adventure in one day, most of us ever see, or ever want to see in a lifetime. He tells us how he literally swam with sharks during a feeding frenzy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY HALL, SWAM WITH SHARKS: The goal of this was not to see the dead whale, which was disgusting. The goal was to see the sharks feeding on it. It sounds rather funny, but it's actually been a dream of mine to find something like this; probably more than 20 years ago when I first heard about a dead whale and the kind of action going around it.

So when I heard about this one, fortunately the weather was perfect. We had a boat, we dropped everything, blazed out there, and it was everything we expected it to be. It was one of the highlights of my life.

The first thing I thought when I saw the sharks was, I wanted to get in the water. That kind of went against us, because we were in such a panic, we tied up to the whale, dropped the cage in the water, then I jumped in the water, and all of that activity actually, believe it or not, kind of, I don't know if it scared the sharks, but they quit eating because of that, and they would swim around and look at us, but they would not feed on the whale anymore.

So the second day we went out there we eased into the water and swam up to it slowly, and that didn't seem to upset them. And that's when we got that one just epic shot of the big tiger shark just, you know, ripping a chunk off of that whale we were filming from one or two feet away.

It was the pinnacle of all my years of diving. It was the one 30 seconds, 45 seconds, of just the best thing I've ever seen under water. I was never worried in the water. The sharks were, they had plenty to eat, and I just wasn't on their list of what they wanted to eat, which is the case with sharks.

The term "maneater" is an incredible misnomer. The sharks don't eat people. They're so big, certain kinds of sharks, that they occasionally will mistakenly bite a person, but it's just -- we're not what they want to eat. Any time you're in clear water, the sharks know what you are, you're not in danger of being bitten.

If you can't have fun in life, why have life, you know? You're not going to be lying on your death bed going, gee, I wish I'd worked more. No, you're not, you're going to remember a day like this, out with the tiger sharks, or out on the water surfing; a day in the office you're not going to remember.

So, spend as much time as you got to working to finance your fun. You got to do what you got to do to make it happen. So work hard, play hard and live. I'd rather blow up than rust. I ain't going to fade away or anything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Dude, I got to tell you, what happens when the sharks get tired of that sushi bar? They're going after Jimmy.

NGUYEN: Yes, exactly.

O'BRIEN: He ought to be careful. Work hard, play hard, die hard, undoubtedly, those are words to live by. However, we certainly will remember the images.

NGUYEN: Well, they share a love of swimming. A family and not much else, of course. The Olympic dream of two brothers who aren't that crazy about each other. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: Well, the '04 Olympics are just four days away, and today, a team much of the world will be rooting on is in Athens. The Iraqi contingent includes a boxer, a swimmer, a weightlifter, two runners, a judo expert, and a taekwondo champion.

Gone is the climate of fear that past Iraqi Olympians were forced to compete under when Saddam Hussein was in power. His son Uday was known for torturing and jailing athletes who did not perform to his standards.

Well, as competition heats up, airfares are coming down.

O'BRIEN: Darby Mullany joining us live from the New York Stock Exchange with details on some price shifts with, gosh, fuel prices going up, airfares going down, the airlines are obviously hitting the squeeze, huh?

DARBY MULLANY, CNN FINANCIAL NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it seems like kind of a strange paradoxical situation. But hey, if you're up for a vacation, now may be the time to book it.

Good news for travelers: Some airfares are actually at their lowest levels in years. Last week, average leisure fares on the high- volume routes tracked by Harrell Associates were down 30% from a year ago. Average business fares were down 9% year over year, and the decline comes despite the soaring fuel prices we're seeing and huge losses in the airline industry.

Here are some examples of the cheep flights: Denver to Phoenix you can get for $56, or Chicago to L.A. for $69. So, what's fueling the trend? Well, there are more seats available this year, discounters are expanding and discounters are serving more markets, and several new players have entered the fray. Among them, Ted, which is the United Airlines discount carrier, and Independence Air, which recently launched at Washington's Dulles airport.

Miles and Betty, at this point, it looks like it will be cheaper to fly than to get a cross-town cab in Manhattan.

O'BRIEN: Really, cheaper than coffee in some hotels there. That's amazing. These airlines must be dying to fill those seats up.

All right, let's talk about TiVo, shall we? I guess I bought my TiVo a little too soon, huh?

MULLANY: Yes, perhaps. We were trying to save money. TiVo has cut the price of its digital TV recorder in half. Now you can get a TiVo for as low as $100. The TiVo service lets users pause live TV and store up to 40 hours of programming.

The price drop comes as cable companies come out with their own recording services. The competition's heating up. TiVo shares, however, are trading around a 16-month low. No help to the stock.

As for the rest of the market, stocks are pretty mixed today. Got the Dow Industrials up 17.25 points, and the Nasdaq composite is little changed -- decliners running slightly ahead of gainers. Oil prices closing in on $45 a barrel.

That is the latest from Wall Street.

Coming up, cement prices could shoot through the roof. I'll tell you why in the next hour of LIVE FROM.

In the meantime, Miles, Betty, back to you.

O'BRIEN: All right, our business foundation, Darby Mullany, thank you very much.

NGUYEN: Well, coming up on our second hour of LIVE FROM, more on the story everybody is talking about, of course that is terror in New York. One of the authors of "TIME" magazine's fascinating article on the plot joins us next.

And is John Kerry finally getting his bounce? We'll check in on the horse race as LIVE FROM rolls on. A few messages now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Tourist helicopters used as terror weapons? New reports emerging about al Qaeda's attack planning and surveillance in the New York City area.

NGUYEN: Plus, new evidence that could clear Scott Peterson, and an appearance from the star witness. We'll get you ready for the next steps in the case.

O'BRIEN: Two-year-old twins spending their first days apart. Their relieved mother talks about her dreams for them finally coming true.

NGUYEN: And super soy: Does this popular food really live up to the hype? Our Dr. Gupta is on the case.

From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Betty Nguyen in for Kyra Phillips.

O'BRIEN: And I'm Mile O'Brien. This hour of CNN's LIVE FROM begins right now.

NGUYEN: Tourist helicopters crashing into New York City landmarks. Explosive-laden limousines sent careening into buildings. These are just two scenarios reported today of what al Qaeda may have been planning for America.

The information came from evidence seized in overseas raid, but the White House is playing down these theories. CNN Homeland Security correspondent Jeanne Meserve joins us now from Washington with the latest -- Jeanne?

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Aired August 9, 2004 - 13:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A former joint chiefs chairman hospitalized in intensive care right now. General John Shalikashvili is in guarded condition at an army medical center in Tacoma, Washington. No details at this time on why he fell ill, however. We're watching this one closely for you.
In Iraq this hour, a lot of black gold is not moving. Officials say they're halting production in the southern oil fields because of sabotage threats from radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. His forces remain locked in a battle with U.S. Marines in Najaf. An update from CNN's Matthew Chance momentarily.

Sizing up the misery in Sudan: A fact-finding team from the European Union says contrary to what the U.S. Congress calls it, there's no evidence of genocide in the war-torn region of Darfur.

BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: So, whether or not it's genocide, the conflict in Sudan has caused what the United Nation calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour is in the Darfur region with the latest.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Betty, indeed, as people quibble about what's actually going on in terms of semantics, what's really happening is a massive humanitarian crisis. There are some one million people who have been displaced from their homes, burned out, cattle stolen, lives lost, and families killed, and they are now in urgent need of help.

We were at a big camp here in western Darfur earlier today, and we saw the first aid delivery in five months since the camp has sort of sprung up. And what it was was not what they needed most, which was food, but more it was plastic sheeting, blankets and gericans, which they also need because of the rains, because of what they need in terms water collection. But what they really need most is food, and that is very slow in coming.

It's opened up somewhat in the last month or so, but the pipeline and the prepositioning never took place. And so, right now, they're just trying to race against time to get food to these camps. And it's very, very difficult. It's a huge challenge.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIE NOELLE RODRIGUE, MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES: We can see an increase in the diarrheal diseases, an increase in the respiratory infections also, and malaria is expected also in many places during the rainy season.

So, we were prepared for that, and we have everything on the ground to manage this. But as you say, the sanitation is an issue in most of the camps, and it still has to be improved to avoid having these kind of outbreaks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: The sanitation, the threat of disease is really going to be the major killer unless something's done about it. Because right now, although the violence is somewhat subsided, there is still this huge need to get food to about two million people who are in desperate need and who are 100% reliant on outside aid, because they can't go back to their homes.

They've been burned out. They've missed the planting season. They can't harvest, so they're really dependent on international aid. And the hungrier they get, the weaker they get, then the more risk of disease there is, and that is a big risk, especially since we're in the rainy season and it could be a big problem according to aid workers here.

NGUYEN: Christiane, time is obviously of the essence, and you said aid is trickling in slowly. Any indication when aid will be allowed in, full on when people can really get all the necessities that they need?

AMANPOUR: Well, since Secretary of State Colin Powell and the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan visited this area and also Khartoum had spoke to the Sudanese government last month, the access for aid and humanitarian workers has increased.

But because it was so late in starting -- this is a crisis that's been underway for 18 months now -- there's so much to be done. And it's simply impossible to get the massive amount of tonnage you need to get in quickly. And they need many, many more -- much more funding, much more better -- much better logistic operations, more aid workers. They just need to get a lot of bulk in here quickly.

And logistically, it's going to be more and more difficult, the more the rain set in. But it's basically because they've only just started in a serious way that they're so far behind.

NGUYEN: They need help on a lot of fronts there. Christiane Amanpour, thank you.

Miles?

O'BRIEN: Turning now to Iraq and the holy city of Najaf, where tensions are rising once again as renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr vows to fight to the death to get U.S. and Iraqi forces out of the city. This as the governor of Najaf gives troops the go-ahead to engage Sadr's militia in the city.

CNN's Matthew Chance reports from Baghdad.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, fighting raging still in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf, where U.S. forces facing off against the Mehdi army, loyal of course to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Now, we've had latest casualty figures from those several days of fighting. The U.S. military saying at least 360 of those Mehdi army fighters killed in combat operations. They say at least four U.S. soldiers have also been killed in the battles that have been raging around that holy city.

There has been calls for the violence to come to an end, but at the moment, Muqtada al-Sadr is resisting any compromises, saying that, if necessary, he'll fight to the death in the holy city of Najaf.

MUQTADA AL-SADR, SHIITE CLERIC (through translator): In this situation, you can't have democracy and occupation. You can't have freedom and occupation. Let's remove the occupation first, then there'll be freedom and democracy. But not democracy or freedom with an occupation.

I'll keep on resisting. I'm staying in Najaf, and I won't leave until the last day of my life. My stay is to defend Najaf, the holiest place. Whoever wants to stay is welcome.

CHANCE: Well, the U.S. military says that it won't abandon Najaf either. In fact, it says its forces have taken up positions around the sacred Imam Ali mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam. It's also the place, according to U.S. officials, where Mehdi army fighters are holed up and using as a staging ground to launch attacks against U.S. forces.

They say they've got permission from the governor of Najaf to operate in and around the shrine of Imam Ali if necessary. Although, they say they're not planning to do that at this stage -- mindful, perhaps, of the explosive backlash any attempt to perhaps storm that mosque may have amongst Iraq's Shiite majority population.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NGUYEN: Ahmed Chalabi, the one-time darling of the Pentagon, and his nephew are vowing to return to Iraq to answer what they call ridiculous charges.

Arrest warrants were issued yesterday for Ahmed and Salem Chalabi. Ahmed Chalabi is wanted on charges of dealing in counterfeit money. Salem Chalabi is the person put in charge of Iraq's war crimes tribunal, and he is wanted in connection with murder. He says the allegations are simply an attempt to discredit the war tribunal before Saddam Hussein is put to trial.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SALEM CHALABI, IRAQI WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL: I quit a very lucrative job in the world's largest law firm in the city to go and work for nothing in Iraq for the last year-and-a-half, and put my life at risk. I mean, I have, you know, around 50 bodyguards protecting me, and I live in a very protected area. And to do all this and be charged with this kind of ridiculous thing really is outrageous for me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Ah, to dream a little dream, and then have it tumble toward a rather unhappy splashdown after a little in-flight breakup. Some X-prize hopefuls are now back to the drawing board.

Koko, the famous gorilla, tells her handlers something painful. Don't worry, there's a happy ending, animal lovers.

And yikes! Swimming with the sharks, while they munch on some oceanographic roadkill of sorts. LIVE FROM's diet aid of the day straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: In the state of Washington, a splashdown and a letdown, but not a stand-down. An attempt to build a spacecraft that could bag its builders 10 million bucks leads to a humbling lesson in the vicissitudes of rocket science.

John Yeager, of CNN affiliate KCPQ, with our story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN YEAGER, KCPQ REPORTER (on camera): Good day for a launch?

PHILLIP STORM, SPACE TRANSPORT CORP.: Yes, it's a great day.

YEAGER (voice-over): But Phillip Storm didn't get much sleep last night. This is a crucial test of his solid-fuel booster rocket, the same fuel used on the shuttle, but this sure doesn't look like the shuttle.

STORM: I design things to make it glamorous, yet we just designed it for function.

YEAGER: The goal: launch this 23-foot tall rocket four miles up and retrieve it safely from the Pacific. At stake, the $10 million X Prize, that will go to the first private company capable of launching a human being into space twice in a two-week period. A mannequin's inside today. Can you see him in there?

Everything's done on a shoestring budget. Storm tells us the local fire chief brought this in case things get out of hand.

(on camera): Not only that, but their chief competitor going for the X Prize is none other than billionaire Paul Allen. STORM: Yes, he's got. I mean, yes, Paul Allen is funding Burt Rutan, and he's got $20 million, $25 million invested in the project, so I mean, that's a lot. We're definitely the underdogs.

YEAGER (voice-over): Still, he has NASA experience and a drive to one day cash in on the space tourism market, said to be worth millions.

But all of that is just shooting for the stars unless this rocket works. And today, it didn't.

STORM: Basically the engine, the propellant wasn't manufactured properly.

YEAGER: His fault, Storm says, and his tight budget meant that he couldn't test it before today's launch.

STORM: Back to the drawing board.

YEAGER: On the Washington coast, John Yeager.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: I wonder if John is related to the Yeager, Chuck Yaeger.

In any case, I should tell you, there are more than two dozens teams that are vying for that X Prize, 10 million bucks for the first team to fly a craft that can carry three people to space -- that's 62 nautical miles -- twice in as many weeks. And Rutan and his team are going to try September 29th. We'll have a live coverage.

NGUYEN: But the first attempt happened a long time ago, right?

O'BRIEN: No, no, no, that wasn't actually an official X Prize attempt. They got to space. That was just to show they can do it. Now they're off to the races at the end of September, and the question is, would you go?

NGUYEN: Into space?

O'BRIEN: Onto one of those rockets, yes.

NGUYEN: I can't even ride a roller coaster, no way.

O'BRIEN: Not for you? All right.

NGUYEN: Nope. I get motion sickness. It's not a good thing.

O'BRIEN: I'll wave.

NGUYEN: Yes, I'll just wave to you from the ground. All right.

Well, it almost sounds like a joke. How do you pull a tooth from a 300-pound gorilla? Very carefully, of course, especially when that gorilla is a celebrity. Koko is famous for knowing sign language, and she was able to sign to her handlers in California that she had a toothache.

She was even able to communicate on a scale of one to 10 how badly her tooth hurt. Koko was put under yesterday and given a full head-to-toe exam, during which that problem tooth was extracted, and I understand, Miles, afterwards, she wanted to see the specialist who helped her out, and one lady in red she really liked a lot, so the lady handed her a card, and Koko, of course, in gorilla form, ate it.

O'BRIEN: Yes, it's funny, I met Koko about 10 years ago, and she started doing the sign thing, and Penny Patterson, her, you know, human helper read the sign, and said I'd like candy. That's the problem, she's eating too much candy. There you go. Toothache, there you go.

If you thought pulling a tooth out of a gorilla's mouth was touch and go, you've got to listen to this next fellow.

NGUYEN: Oh, yes, Jimmy Hall at more adventure in one day, most of us ever see, or ever want to see in a lifetime. He tells us how he literally swam with sharks during a feeding frenzy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY HALL, SWAM WITH SHARKS: The goal of this was not to see the dead whale, which was disgusting. The goal was to see the sharks feeding on it. It sounds rather funny, but it's actually been a dream of mine to find something like this; probably more than 20 years ago when I first heard about a dead whale and the kind of action going around it.

So when I heard about this one, fortunately the weather was perfect. We had a boat, we dropped everything, blazed out there, and it was everything we expected it to be. It was one of the highlights of my life.

The first thing I thought when I saw the sharks was, I wanted to get in the water. That kind of went against us, because we were in such a panic, we tied up to the whale, dropped the cage in the water, then I jumped in the water, and all of that activity actually, believe it or not, kind of, I don't know if it scared the sharks, but they quit eating because of that, and they would swim around and look at us, but they would not feed on the whale anymore.

So the second day we went out there we eased into the water and swam up to it slowly, and that didn't seem to upset them. And that's when we got that one just epic shot of the big tiger shark just, you know, ripping a chunk off of that whale we were filming from one or two feet away.

It was the pinnacle of all my years of diving. It was the one 30 seconds, 45 seconds, of just the best thing I've ever seen under water. I was never worried in the water. The sharks were, they had plenty to eat, and I just wasn't on their list of what they wanted to eat, which is the case with sharks.

The term "maneater" is an incredible misnomer. The sharks don't eat people. They're so big, certain kinds of sharks, that they occasionally will mistakenly bite a person, but it's just -- we're not what they want to eat. Any time you're in clear water, the sharks know what you are, you're not in danger of being bitten.

If you can't have fun in life, why have life, you know? You're not going to be lying on your death bed going, gee, I wish I'd worked more. No, you're not, you're going to remember a day like this, out with the tiger sharks, or out on the water surfing; a day in the office you're not going to remember.

So, spend as much time as you got to working to finance your fun. You got to do what you got to do to make it happen. So work hard, play hard and live. I'd rather blow up than rust. I ain't going to fade away or anything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Dude, I got to tell you, what happens when the sharks get tired of that sushi bar? They're going after Jimmy.

NGUYEN: Yes, exactly.

O'BRIEN: He ought to be careful. Work hard, play hard, die hard, undoubtedly, those are words to live by. However, we certainly will remember the images.

NGUYEN: Well, they share a love of swimming. A family and not much else, of course. The Olympic dream of two brothers who aren't that crazy about each other. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: Well, the '04 Olympics are just four days away, and today, a team much of the world will be rooting on is in Athens. The Iraqi contingent includes a boxer, a swimmer, a weightlifter, two runners, a judo expert, and a taekwondo champion.

Gone is the climate of fear that past Iraqi Olympians were forced to compete under when Saddam Hussein was in power. His son Uday was known for torturing and jailing athletes who did not perform to his standards.

Well, as competition heats up, airfares are coming down.

O'BRIEN: Darby Mullany joining us live from the New York Stock Exchange with details on some price shifts with, gosh, fuel prices going up, airfares going down, the airlines are obviously hitting the squeeze, huh?

DARBY MULLANY, CNN FINANCIAL NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it seems like kind of a strange paradoxical situation. But hey, if you're up for a vacation, now may be the time to book it.

Good news for travelers: Some airfares are actually at their lowest levels in years. Last week, average leisure fares on the high- volume routes tracked by Harrell Associates were down 30% from a year ago. Average business fares were down 9% year over year, and the decline comes despite the soaring fuel prices we're seeing and huge losses in the airline industry.

Here are some examples of the cheep flights: Denver to Phoenix you can get for $56, or Chicago to L.A. for $69. So, what's fueling the trend? Well, there are more seats available this year, discounters are expanding and discounters are serving more markets, and several new players have entered the fray. Among them, Ted, which is the United Airlines discount carrier, and Independence Air, which recently launched at Washington's Dulles airport.

Miles and Betty, at this point, it looks like it will be cheaper to fly than to get a cross-town cab in Manhattan.

O'BRIEN: Really, cheaper than coffee in some hotels there. That's amazing. These airlines must be dying to fill those seats up.

All right, let's talk about TiVo, shall we? I guess I bought my TiVo a little too soon, huh?

MULLANY: Yes, perhaps. We were trying to save money. TiVo has cut the price of its digital TV recorder in half. Now you can get a TiVo for as low as $100. The TiVo service lets users pause live TV and store up to 40 hours of programming.

The price drop comes as cable companies come out with their own recording services. The competition's heating up. TiVo shares, however, are trading around a 16-month low. No help to the stock.

As for the rest of the market, stocks are pretty mixed today. Got the Dow Industrials up 17.25 points, and the Nasdaq composite is little changed -- decliners running slightly ahead of gainers. Oil prices closing in on $45 a barrel.

That is the latest from Wall Street.

Coming up, cement prices could shoot through the roof. I'll tell you why in the next hour of LIVE FROM.

In the meantime, Miles, Betty, back to you.

O'BRIEN: All right, our business foundation, Darby Mullany, thank you very much.

NGUYEN: Well, coming up on our second hour of LIVE FROM, more on the story everybody is talking about, of course that is terror in New York. One of the authors of "TIME" magazine's fascinating article on the plot joins us next.

And is John Kerry finally getting his bounce? We'll check in on the horse race as LIVE FROM rolls on. A few messages now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Tourist helicopters used as terror weapons? New reports emerging about al Qaeda's attack planning and surveillance in the New York City area.

NGUYEN: Plus, new evidence that could clear Scott Peterson, and an appearance from the star witness. We'll get you ready for the next steps in the case.

O'BRIEN: Two-year-old twins spending their first days apart. Their relieved mother talks about her dreams for them finally coming true.

NGUYEN: And super soy: Does this popular food really live up to the hype? Our Dr. Gupta is on the case.

From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Betty Nguyen in for Kyra Phillips.

O'BRIEN: And I'm Mile O'Brien. This hour of CNN's LIVE FROM begins right now.

NGUYEN: Tourist helicopters crashing into New York City landmarks. Explosive-laden limousines sent careening into buildings. These are just two scenarios reported today of what al Qaeda may have been planning for America.

The information came from evidence seized in overseas raid, but the White House is playing down these theories. CNN Homeland Security correspondent Jeanne Meserve joins us now from Washington with the latest -- Jeanne?

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