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Ivan Downgraded to Tropical Storm; Two Americans and a Briton Kidnapped in Iraq; NASA Also Tracking Hurricanes; Golf's Ryder Cup

Aired September 16, 2004 - 14:32   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.


BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Toned down but till a troublemaker. Just a short time ago, the deadly Hurricane Ivan was downgraded to a tropical storm. It's still bringing lots of rain as it moves inland, and Georgia is bracing for possible tornadoes. CNN meteorologist Jacqui Jeras will have a live report just ahead.
Meanwhile, two Americans are among the latest foreigners to be kidnapped in Iraq. The pair and a British man were abducted from a walled house in Baghdad. All three worked for a Middle Eastern construction firm which has offices in that home.

And Democrat John Kerry is preparing to go before the National Guard to criticize one of its most famous one-time members. Kerry speaks at the National Guard Association in Las Vegas next hour, and he is expected to blast President Bush's handling of the Iraq war. CNN will have live coverage of Kerry's speech at 3:30 Eastern.

But now, back to Ivan, which is no longer a hurricane. For the latest on the conditions, we want to go straight to Jacqui Jeras in the CNN Weather Center.

(WEATHER REPORT)

NGUYEN: Jacqui Jeras, continuing to follow it for us. Thank you so much -- Miles?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Finding refuge and assistance in a storm like Ivan can be difficult. Even hospitals, where you might guess the walls are hearty and the generators gassed up and ready, were not spared the wrath of Hurricane Ivan.

CNN's Sara Dorsey live in Pensacola with a look at some of the damage there to one hospital -- Sara?

SARA DORSEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello to you, Miles.

It was a long night for people in Pensacola and people here at the West Florida Hospital. To give you an idea of the damage, I'm going to let the photographer pan back here. Those are office buildings -- medical office buildings that were badly damaged. The hospital itself did have some broken windows and took on a little water, but patient care continued here and no one was injured.

But just by looking at those office buildings, you get an idea of how strong the storm was coming through here. The windows are broken. Some of the side of that building just sucked away. And also, we should mention, in this area, Interstate-10 collapsed. About eight section of that, we're told by the highway patrol, just fell into the water there over the bay, and there's a truck that was driving on that that has fallen in. The police tell us they believe that there is a person in that cab, probably deceased at this point since that did fall through.

So, it will be interesting to see how they're going to remedy that problem, because that is the bridge that links this area to the eastern part of the state. So, that's going to be something to look at. Plus, you know, with all the rain that came down, we're going to have to wait and see if there's going to be flooding in this area and things like that.

People here really are just starting to recover at this point. The cellular phone systems and regular land lines are still down. I talked to one gentleman that works at this hospital, and he told me the last time he talked to his wife, two trees had fallen on their home and their roof was beginning to go.

So, he's very scared and trying to get done with the shift here and help his patients, and then also trying to get home through blocked roadways and things like that to get to his family and see just how things are going.

So, very scary for the people in this town as that storm came through last night.

O'BRIEN: Sara Dorsey, Pensacola, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Next, tracking storms from space: How NASA helps forecasters get the best data on storms like Ivan.

And this...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, HOST, "360": I'm just going to walk over there just to give you a sense of how strong some of these winds are as we go here. It really picks up. We were in a protected zone over here...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: CNN's Anderson Cooper gets into the teeth of Ivan and almost gets spun a full 360. We'll tell you more about that after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: Remember the movie "Singin' in the Rain?" Gene Kelly does that dance number on the wet street? Well, CNN's Anderson Cooper has been doing some reporting in the rain covering Hurricane Ivan. Take a look at his two-step from Mobile, Alabama.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: The hope here, though, is that people have been prepared. They have evacuated, or tonight they are hunkered down, because this storm is coming and it is coming on fast.

I thought it was bad two hours ago. I thought it was bad an hour ago. It gets worse and worse and worse.

It's very almost difficult to stand at times. You really have to push yourself into the wind. And I'm parallel to the wind. If I turn perpendicular at this point, I am not sure I could actually even stand up. It is getting very nasty out here very fast.

Definitely the winds are a little bit stronger right now. I got some video to show -- man. I got some video to show you: two homes catching fire. Authorities did respond to it. There were fire trucks on the scene. We don't have any word on any injuries. We hope those homes have been evacuated. Most of the homes -- a lot the homes here, have been evacuated already.

There are a lot of police out on the streets. They're afraid of looting. But at this point, it's hard to imagine anyone looting in this kind of temperature and this kind of wind. OK, this is a big gust right now.

We're in a pretty secure location, believe it or not. I know the picture is probably pretty bad. I know my mom is probably watching; she's not all that thrilled. But it's actually -- we're very safe. We took a long time to pick this location, and so we feel pretty good about it. As long as the satellite truck stays upright, we're going to try to stay on the air.

I'm kind of looking around to see if CNN brought a boat, because it looks like -- I hope it doesn't happen, but looks like we'll have some difficulty just get around tomorrow.

One has to feel for the people who are living through it. But to see Mother Nature at its full force, it makes you feel very insignificant, I got to tell you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: All right. Anderson Cooper.

If you think this hurricane season is much busier and earlier in the year than seasons past, you'd be exactly right. In all of 2003, seven named hurricanes developed. The year before that, only four -- which leads us to the question: What is driving this relentless parade of killer storms?

Believe it or not, space is a good place to try to find some answers. Marshall Shepherd of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is with us now. Marshall, good to have you with us.

MARSHALL SHEPHERD, NASA RESEARCH METEOROLOGIST: Thank you for having me. O'BRIEN: All right. Not a lot of people probably know that NASA tracks these storms, as well. Why don't you tell us what kinds of capabilities NASA has to look at storms and what that information can do for forecasters?

SHEPHERD: Sure. Well, NASA -- our role is really to try to understand things like hurricanes and other weather and climate processes. Our partners at NOAA do the forecasting, and we try to find out what the heck's going on.

Here's a unique view of the hurricane from one of our spacecraft called TRIMM. This thing actually has a radar very similar to the weather radar you see on the ground. And we can look inside the storm, and we really want to get inside the storm to understand the intensity changes in these storms.

O'BRIEN: And you -- are you able to see things that you wouldn't be able to see by flying an aircraft through storm dropping those dropsondes and so forth?

SHEPHERD: Well, certainly, the aircrafts are a vital part of what we need to collect to understand these storms. But the value of satellites is they allow us to see these things on a somewhat continuous basis. They also allow us to track the storms for longer periods time.

Sometimes, we can actually peer into these storms when they're developing -- storms like Ivan and Frances -- when they're well out into the ocean, past or beyond the range of the aircraft. It's really useful to get as much information on these storms so that we can feed that information into the models.

O'BRIEN: And what do you know right now? What's out there? We've know -- we've been talking about Jeanne a little bit. Are there other waves out there -- that begin as waves and then they become tropical depressions and so forth. What do you see out there?

SHEPHERD: Well, it's amazing. These storms in general, they come off the African coast or they form out there in the Atlantic. And certainly we saw Jeanne forming, and they all feed off of the ocean water.

Here's a satellite view of the ocean water, and you saw those very orange and red colors representing the warm fuel supply. If you think of these things as big heat engines, and you're seeing an example of that engine, the hurricanes convert that warm Gulf water, for instance, or Atlantic water into energy, the same way a car converts gasoline into energy.

And so, we look out as it's coming off of Africa to see how much fuel is available in the Atlantic Ocean. And this year, these storms are running on 93 Octane. There's a lot of warm water out there.

O'BRIEN: We know a lot, but there's a lot we still don't know about predicting these storms -- and really more important, perhaps, their intensity and where they're headed. Those are the big ones, obviously.

What are the improvements right now, and what needs to be improved?

SHEPHERD: Well, over the last few decades, we've made significant strides in the hurricane track forecasts. We've got errors down to about 100 miles on either side. But the intensity forecast, that's the Holy Grail.

Here's an experimental model -- climate scale or general circulation model that we're working on at NASA. Again, this is an experimental model, but if we can get inside these storms and also improve these models, we hope to make significant strides in those intensity-change forecasts.

O'BRIEN: And modeling the entire globe's weather pattern is a computing challenge which is hard to even get a handle on. Give us a sense -- and there may not be an easy answer to this right now; I hope we'll have an answer someday -- do we know why we're seeing the pattern all of a sudden?

SHEPHERD: Well, we think in 1995, there is evidence that we entered another natural active phase. Back in the 1940s to about 1960, there was a really active hurricane phase, and then things got relatively quiet from about 1970 to '94. But starting in 1995 -- that was a really active season, you may remember -- and we think we entered one of these multidecadal phases of warmer sea surface temperatures and low wind sheer near the coast of Africa, all of which are favorable for development of storms.

On top of that, Miles, we do not have an El Nino right now, and that's conducive for the Atlantic hurricane season.

O'BRIEN: Isn't that ironic? El Nino actually helps stave off hurricanes...

SHEPHERD: That's right.

O'BRIEN: ... while it causes misery in other ways.

Marshall Shepherd is with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. thanks very much for your time. Appreciate it.

SHEPHERD: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: And keep up the good work trying to figure out how these storms work and how they get strong.

SHEPHERD: We'll be busy.

O'BRIEN: All right. Yes, you will.

All right. Much, much further north than that, how's the weather in Michigan, you might ask? CNN's Larry Smith knows.

LARRY SMITH, CNN SPORTS: That's right, Miles. Coming up here on LIVE FROM, Tiger Woods is no longer the number one player in the world of golf. But I'll tell you why he still holds the key to American success in this weekend's Ryder Cup.

That's coming up on LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: Well, take a look at this. Ivan has moved out, and the people, well, they are moving back in. This is a look at our affiliate WDSU in New Orleans as people are making their way back to their homes. The sun is out. This is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.

They're making their way back to see the damage, what kind of damage Ivan left in its wake. Although New Orleans was spared a lot of the brunt of this storm, hopefully they won't see too much when they get back to their homes.

In sports now, it's Cinderella story time again -- well, maybe. Each year's, America's best golfers -- you can argue the world's greatest golfers -- face an always underdog team of Europeans, but it never seems to work out the way you would expect.

Our man at the Ryder Cup is Larry Smith, of course, and he's in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, today with a preview. Hi there, Larry.

SMITH: Hi, how are you?

Yes, you're right, just one team at the individual sport of golf becomes a team competition. Every two years is the Ryder Cup.

You know, Tiger Woods, a couple of weeks ago, lost his ranking as the world's number one golfer, but he remains the focal point anytime he steps on the golf course. And he is that this weekend at the Ryder Cup.

But the focus for Woods: trying to improve upon a dismal record in Ryder Cup play. Already the most dominant golfer of his era at age 28, Woods is just 5-8-2 in Ryder competition. The U.S. has won only one of the three Ryder Cups that Woods has been a part of, a fact that isn't lost on him or his captain.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TIGER WOODS, GOLFER: I don't ever go into any tournament thinking that it'd be great to lose, you know? I think it'd be asinine to think that way. And you guys know how competitive I am. And I go out there with the intent to go out there and win points for the U.S. Team.

HAL SUTTON, GOLFER: You're the one that chose to be as great as you are. I mean, they're going to judge you by this. This is another barometer of success for you. So, let's be prepared for this. Let's give it all we've got. Let's lead this team.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SMITH: So, the challenge has been issued. Friday is the -- very crucial for Woods and the U.S. Team. Woods has been shut out on the first day in each of the two Ryder Cups he's played in.

To be fair to Tiger, though, the Americans will need more than just him to recapture the Cup. Among the team members on this year's U.S. Team, only Phil Mickelson and David Toms have winning records in Ryder Cup play.

Stay with us. LIVE FROM will continue after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Well, that wraps up LIVE FROM for this Thursday. Of course, there's much more on Hurricane Ivan ahead -- now Tropical Storm Ivan, formerly Hurricane Ivan. Stay with CNN for that.

NGUYEN: Judy Woodruff picks up that next. Hi, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF, HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": Hi, Betty. Thanks to you. Thanks to Miles.

Today on "INSIDE POLITICS," we'll look at just how crucial a certain segment of the female vote is shaping up to be in the race for the White House.

Plus, Arnold for president? He may not have been born in the U.S., but if one California lawmaker has his way, the Governator may soon be able to run for the highest office in the land. We'll have the story when "INSIDE POLITICS" begins in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: Now in the news -- Ivan is now a tropical storm as it plows through the southeast. It was downgraded from a hurricane about an hour ago. The Gulf coast is reeling from downed trees, power outages, and flooding. Seven people were killed in tornadoes in Florida. We'll get the latest straight ahead.

Plotting violent Jihad -- that's the accusation against two terror suspects in a new federal indictment. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the charges at a news conference this afternoon. Both men are already in jail on other charges: one in Florida; the other in Egypt. They're accused of trying to recruit and raise money in the U.S. for terrorist activities.

American troops patrol an upscale Baghdad neighborhood to investigate a bold, early-morning kidnapping. Several gunmen took two Americans and a Briton from their combination home and office. National guard usually on duty at the time reportedly did not show up for work.

Now it's on to "JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS."

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired September 16, 2004 - 14:32   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Toned down but till a troublemaker. Just a short time ago, the deadly Hurricane Ivan was downgraded to a tropical storm. It's still bringing lots of rain as it moves inland, and Georgia is bracing for possible tornadoes. CNN meteorologist Jacqui Jeras will have a live report just ahead.
Meanwhile, two Americans are among the latest foreigners to be kidnapped in Iraq. The pair and a British man were abducted from a walled house in Baghdad. All three worked for a Middle Eastern construction firm which has offices in that home.

And Democrat John Kerry is preparing to go before the National Guard to criticize one of its most famous one-time members. Kerry speaks at the National Guard Association in Las Vegas next hour, and he is expected to blast President Bush's handling of the Iraq war. CNN will have live coverage of Kerry's speech at 3:30 Eastern.

But now, back to Ivan, which is no longer a hurricane. For the latest on the conditions, we want to go straight to Jacqui Jeras in the CNN Weather Center.

(WEATHER REPORT)

NGUYEN: Jacqui Jeras, continuing to follow it for us. Thank you so much -- Miles?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Finding refuge and assistance in a storm like Ivan can be difficult. Even hospitals, where you might guess the walls are hearty and the generators gassed up and ready, were not spared the wrath of Hurricane Ivan.

CNN's Sara Dorsey live in Pensacola with a look at some of the damage there to one hospital -- Sara?

SARA DORSEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello to you, Miles.

It was a long night for people in Pensacola and people here at the West Florida Hospital. To give you an idea of the damage, I'm going to let the photographer pan back here. Those are office buildings -- medical office buildings that were badly damaged. The hospital itself did have some broken windows and took on a little water, but patient care continued here and no one was injured.

But just by looking at those office buildings, you get an idea of how strong the storm was coming through here. The windows are broken. Some of the side of that building just sucked away. And also, we should mention, in this area, Interstate-10 collapsed. About eight section of that, we're told by the highway patrol, just fell into the water there over the bay, and there's a truck that was driving on that that has fallen in. The police tell us they believe that there is a person in that cab, probably deceased at this point since that did fall through.

So, it will be interesting to see how they're going to remedy that problem, because that is the bridge that links this area to the eastern part of the state. So, that's going to be something to look at. Plus, you know, with all the rain that came down, we're going to have to wait and see if there's going to be flooding in this area and things like that.

People here really are just starting to recover at this point. The cellular phone systems and regular land lines are still down. I talked to one gentleman that works at this hospital, and he told me the last time he talked to his wife, two trees had fallen on their home and their roof was beginning to go.

So, he's very scared and trying to get done with the shift here and help his patients, and then also trying to get home through blocked roadways and things like that to get to his family and see just how things are going.

So, very scary for the people in this town as that storm came through last night.

O'BRIEN: Sara Dorsey, Pensacola, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Next, tracking storms from space: How NASA helps forecasters get the best data on storms like Ivan.

And this...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, HOST, "360": I'm just going to walk over there just to give you a sense of how strong some of these winds are as we go here. It really picks up. We were in a protected zone over here...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: CNN's Anderson Cooper gets into the teeth of Ivan and almost gets spun a full 360. We'll tell you more about that after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: Remember the movie "Singin' in the Rain?" Gene Kelly does that dance number on the wet street? Well, CNN's Anderson Cooper has been doing some reporting in the rain covering Hurricane Ivan. Take a look at his two-step from Mobile, Alabama.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: The hope here, though, is that people have been prepared. They have evacuated, or tonight they are hunkered down, because this storm is coming and it is coming on fast.

I thought it was bad two hours ago. I thought it was bad an hour ago. It gets worse and worse and worse.

It's very almost difficult to stand at times. You really have to push yourself into the wind. And I'm parallel to the wind. If I turn perpendicular at this point, I am not sure I could actually even stand up. It is getting very nasty out here very fast.

Definitely the winds are a little bit stronger right now. I got some video to show -- man. I got some video to show you: two homes catching fire. Authorities did respond to it. There were fire trucks on the scene. We don't have any word on any injuries. We hope those homes have been evacuated. Most of the homes -- a lot the homes here, have been evacuated already.

There are a lot of police out on the streets. They're afraid of looting. But at this point, it's hard to imagine anyone looting in this kind of temperature and this kind of wind. OK, this is a big gust right now.

We're in a pretty secure location, believe it or not. I know the picture is probably pretty bad. I know my mom is probably watching; she's not all that thrilled. But it's actually -- we're very safe. We took a long time to pick this location, and so we feel pretty good about it. As long as the satellite truck stays upright, we're going to try to stay on the air.

I'm kind of looking around to see if CNN brought a boat, because it looks like -- I hope it doesn't happen, but looks like we'll have some difficulty just get around tomorrow.

One has to feel for the people who are living through it. But to see Mother Nature at its full force, it makes you feel very insignificant, I got to tell you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: All right. Anderson Cooper.

If you think this hurricane season is much busier and earlier in the year than seasons past, you'd be exactly right. In all of 2003, seven named hurricanes developed. The year before that, only four -- which leads us to the question: What is driving this relentless parade of killer storms?

Believe it or not, space is a good place to try to find some answers. Marshall Shepherd of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is with us now. Marshall, good to have you with us.

MARSHALL SHEPHERD, NASA RESEARCH METEOROLOGIST: Thank you for having me. O'BRIEN: All right. Not a lot of people probably know that NASA tracks these storms, as well. Why don't you tell us what kinds of capabilities NASA has to look at storms and what that information can do for forecasters?

SHEPHERD: Sure. Well, NASA -- our role is really to try to understand things like hurricanes and other weather and climate processes. Our partners at NOAA do the forecasting, and we try to find out what the heck's going on.

Here's a unique view of the hurricane from one of our spacecraft called TRIMM. This thing actually has a radar very similar to the weather radar you see on the ground. And we can look inside the storm, and we really want to get inside the storm to understand the intensity changes in these storms.

O'BRIEN: And you -- are you able to see things that you wouldn't be able to see by flying an aircraft through storm dropping those dropsondes and so forth?

SHEPHERD: Well, certainly, the aircrafts are a vital part of what we need to collect to understand these storms. But the value of satellites is they allow us to see these things on a somewhat continuous basis. They also allow us to track the storms for longer periods time.

Sometimes, we can actually peer into these storms when they're developing -- storms like Ivan and Frances -- when they're well out into the ocean, past or beyond the range of the aircraft. It's really useful to get as much information on these storms so that we can feed that information into the models.

O'BRIEN: And what do you know right now? What's out there? We've know -- we've been talking about Jeanne a little bit. Are there other waves out there -- that begin as waves and then they become tropical depressions and so forth. What do you see out there?

SHEPHERD: Well, it's amazing. These storms in general, they come off the African coast or they form out there in the Atlantic. And certainly we saw Jeanne forming, and they all feed off of the ocean water.

Here's a satellite view of the ocean water, and you saw those very orange and red colors representing the warm fuel supply. If you think of these things as big heat engines, and you're seeing an example of that engine, the hurricanes convert that warm Gulf water, for instance, or Atlantic water into energy, the same way a car converts gasoline into energy.

And so, we look out as it's coming off of Africa to see how much fuel is available in the Atlantic Ocean. And this year, these storms are running on 93 Octane. There's a lot of warm water out there.

O'BRIEN: We know a lot, but there's a lot we still don't know about predicting these storms -- and really more important, perhaps, their intensity and where they're headed. Those are the big ones, obviously.

What are the improvements right now, and what needs to be improved?

SHEPHERD: Well, over the last few decades, we've made significant strides in the hurricane track forecasts. We've got errors down to about 100 miles on either side. But the intensity forecast, that's the Holy Grail.

Here's an experimental model -- climate scale or general circulation model that we're working on at NASA. Again, this is an experimental model, but if we can get inside these storms and also improve these models, we hope to make significant strides in those intensity-change forecasts.

O'BRIEN: And modeling the entire globe's weather pattern is a computing challenge which is hard to even get a handle on. Give us a sense -- and there may not be an easy answer to this right now; I hope we'll have an answer someday -- do we know why we're seeing the pattern all of a sudden?

SHEPHERD: Well, we think in 1995, there is evidence that we entered another natural active phase. Back in the 1940s to about 1960, there was a really active hurricane phase, and then things got relatively quiet from about 1970 to '94. But starting in 1995 -- that was a really active season, you may remember -- and we think we entered one of these multidecadal phases of warmer sea surface temperatures and low wind sheer near the coast of Africa, all of which are favorable for development of storms.

On top of that, Miles, we do not have an El Nino right now, and that's conducive for the Atlantic hurricane season.

O'BRIEN: Isn't that ironic? El Nino actually helps stave off hurricanes...

SHEPHERD: That's right.

O'BRIEN: ... while it causes misery in other ways.

Marshall Shepherd is with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. thanks very much for your time. Appreciate it.

SHEPHERD: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: And keep up the good work trying to figure out how these storms work and how they get strong.

SHEPHERD: We'll be busy.

O'BRIEN: All right. Yes, you will.

All right. Much, much further north than that, how's the weather in Michigan, you might ask? CNN's Larry Smith knows.

LARRY SMITH, CNN SPORTS: That's right, Miles. Coming up here on LIVE FROM, Tiger Woods is no longer the number one player in the world of golf. But I'll tell you why he still holds the key to American success in this weekend's Ryder Cup.

That's coming up on LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: Well, take a look at this. Ivan has moved out, and the people, well, they are moving back in. This is a look at our affiliate WDSU in New Orleans as people are making their way back to their homes. The sun is out. This is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.

They're making their way back to see the damage, what kind of damage Ivan left in its wake. Although New Orleans was spared a lot of the brunt of this storm, hopefully they won't see too much when they get back to their homes.

In sports now, it's Cinderella story time again -- well, maybe. Each year's, America's best golfers -- you can argue the world's greatest golfers -- face an always underdog team of Europeans, but it never seems to work out the way you would expect.

Our man at the Ryder Cup is Larry Smith, of course, and he's in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, today with a preview. Hi there, Larry.

SMITH: Hi, how are you?

Yes, you're right, just one team at the individual sport of golf becomes a team competition. Every two years is the Ryder Cup.

You know, Tiger Woods, a couple of weeks ago, lost his ranking as the world's number one golfer, but he remains the focal point anytime he steps on the golf course. And he is that this weekend at the Ryder Cup.

But the focus for Woods: trying to improve upon a dismal record in Ryder Cup play. Already the most dominant golfer of his era at age 28, Woods is just 5-8-2 in Ryder competition. The U.S. has won only one of the three Ryder Cups that Woods has been a part of, a fact that isn't lost on him or his captain.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TIGER WOODS, GOLFER: I don't ever go into any tournament thinking that it'd be great to lose, you know? I think it'd be asinine to think that way. And you guys know how competitive I am. And I go out there with the intent to go out there and win points for the U.S. Team.

HAL SUTTON, GOLFER: You're the one that chose to be as great as you are. I mean, they're going to judge you by this. This is another barometer of success for you. So, let's be prepared for this. Let's give it all we've got. Let's lead this team.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SMITH: So, the challenge has been issued. Friday is the -- very crucial for Woods and the U.S. Team. Woods has been shut out on the first day in each of the two Ryder Cups he's played in.

To be fair to Tiger, though, the Americans will need more than just him to recapture the Cup. Among the team members on this year's U.S. Team, only Phil Mickelson and David Toms have winning records in Ryder Cup play.

Stay with us. LIVE FROM will continue after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Well, that wraps up LIVE FROM for this Thursday. Of course, there's much more on Hurricane Ivan ahead -- now Tropical Storm Ivan, formerly Hurricane Ivan. Stay with CNN for that.

NGUYEN: Judy Woodruff picks up that next. Hi, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF, HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": Hi, Betty. Thanks to you. Thanks to Miles.

Today on "INSIDE POLITICS," we'll look at just how crucial a certain segment of the female vote is shaping up to be in the race for the White House.

Plus, Arnold for president? He may not have been born in the U.S., but if one California lawmaker has his way, the Governator may soon be able to run for the highest office in the land. We'll have the story when "INSIDE POLITICS" begins in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: Now in the news -- Ivan is now a tropical storm as it plows through the southeast. It was downgraded from a hurricane about an hour ago. The Gulf coast is reeling from downed trees, power outages, and flooding. Seven people were killed in tornadoes in Florida. We'll get the latest straight ahead.

Plotting violent Jihad -- that's the accusation against two terror suspects in a new federal indictment. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the charges at a news conference this afternoon. Both men are already in jail on other charges: one in Florida; the other in Egypt. They're accused of trying to recruit and raise money in the U.S. for terrorist activities.

American troops patrol an upscale Baghdad neighborhood to investigate a bold, early-morning kidnapping. Several gunmen took two Americans and a Briton from their combination home and office. National guard usually on duty at the time reportedly did not show up for work.

Now it's on to "JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS."

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