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Indian Train Bombings Investigated; Chicago Train Accident a Mystery; Wind Fuels California Wildfire; Rumsfeld Visits Iraq; Astronauts Test New Repair Tools on Space Walk

Aired July 12, 2006 - 13:00   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, HOST: Hello, everyone. I'm Kyra Phillips at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.
Terror on the tracks. We're lime in Mumbai as the hunt intensifies for the bombers behind yesterday's train attacks.

It wasn't terror, but it was terrifying. Hundreds of Chicago subway riders chased by smoke and flames at the height of rush hour.

And if you think Albert Einstein was just a wild-haired solitary scientist, think again. The man who discovered the theory of relativity also found fidelity -- well, kind of relative. Love letters, revealed.

LIVE FROM starts right now.

The death toll is rising but the trains are still rolling in Mumbai, India. Nervous commuters are riding the rails amid wreckage from yesterday's horrifying string of bombings. Others in Mumbai are burying their dead, still others trying to unearth clues to the bombers.

Our Aneesh Raman is in Mumbai. He joins us now on the phone.

Aneesh, what's the latest with the investigation? Go ahead, Aneesh. Aneesh, do you hear me? Do we have contact? Aneesh Raman, do you hear me?

All right, we'll continue to try to connect with Aneesh Raman there. We're having some technical difficulties. We'll move on and get back to Aneesh in a second.

Now because it has so many people, India has a lot of everything else, including conflict. The country's population is more than one billion, or almost a sixth of the people on the planet. The overwhelming majority, 80 percent, are Hindu. Thirteen percent are Muslim, two percent Christian.

The city of Bombay officially changed its name to Mumbai in 1995.

We've connected now with Aneesh Raman, live from Mumbai on the phone. Tell us the latest on the investigation, Aneesh.

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, good afternoon. Authorities here are being careful not to explicitly link these attacks with any specific militant group within India. This is a country, and Mumbai is a city that has seen attacks like this before. It has also seen sectarian tensions hit boiling points with rioting and such in the aftermath of attacks, and so authorities are being careful as they proceed forward, to make any link. And they've yet to do so.

Meantime, though, the city itself, as you mentioned a population of over a billion for India. About 16 million of them live in Mumbai. Ten million of them take the commuter rail that was attacked in those 11 moments of terror yesterday.

The city has rebounded. It is a resilient people here. They defy, and they say so all day today, the terrorists by going about their business. But of course, for the families of those killed, it is an entirely different story.

We've just come from an area north of the main part of Mumbai, where some 15 bodies were cremated, as is Hindu tradition. And we met with one of the families who lost their 28-year-old son. Also, a husband to a 26-year-old wife, the father to a 4-year-old daughter. And the family is just crippled with grief. They are angry at the government. They are angry that the phone lines were cut for hours yesterday. They had no idea what the situation was with their son, with their husband. They had to go out hospital to hospital.

And they are resigned. They feel that Bombay has seen terrorism and it will see terrorism again, and that the government can and will do very little to change the situation.

There are some 700 people who have been wounded in the attacks, some 185 confirmed dead. But among the 700, again, there are those who find no joy in survival, people who have been paralyzed, who are now crippled.

And so as the city as a whole does try to move forward -- and I've come into a city that is unremarkable, unchanged, you can't tell that an explosion of this sort took place a day ago. The stories within this story remain of those trying to now start an entirely new life in the aftermath -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Now Aneesh, I know that you just came from the morgue where family members are trying to I.D. the bodies. No doubt, this was probably an emotional time for you and everybody else there. Can you give us a feel for how it's going?

RAMAN: Well, for a lot these families, it is simply just the desire for closure. It's been long enough that they can assume that their loved ones are, in fact, one of the casualty numbers, one of those who perished in these attacks. But finding that closure -- for some of these bodies there was no identification papers on them. Police had nothing more than clothing and perhaps same keepsakes that people had with them to identify who these people were.

And if you think of the numbers and you think of the city and you think of the chaos that is everyday life here to begin with, if you factor that in to a grieving family desperate to find an end to this, it is tiresome, it is exhausting. And for many of them, they simply want closure and to move forward. But for many of them, as well, they don't feel that this is going to be the end of terrorism. And they feel very little faith that anything can be done -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Aneesh Raman, thanks.

And in about 20 minutes, we are going to talk to a terrorism expert that's going to talk about what Indian intelligence is saying with regard to one or two terror groups that might be behind those explosions and why they would want to do that.

Meanwhile, no signs of foul play, no suggestion of terror. But commuters in Chicago are still on edge and investigators still on the case of a subway train that jumped the track yesterday and caught fire.

CNN's Keith Oppenheim joins me with the latest -- Keith.

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're standing in front of a news conference right now, which is with Kitty Higgins from the National Transportation Safety Board. Pardon me for standing away (ph) there for a second, because there's a lot of noise around here in this very busy intersection of Chicago.

But the gist of what Miss Higgins has said is that National Transportation Safety Board is going to have six investigative teams to get a better understanding of what caused the last car, the eighth car, of a commuter train to go off the tracks yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): It all started just outside of Chicago's famous loop, in a tunnel along the El's second busiest transit line. As many as a thousand people were on board.

The first sign of trouble, hundreds of commuters piling out onto the sidewalk, covered in soot, coughing, some overcome by the smoke.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These people didn't know what happened. Some people were screaming. Some people were yelling. Some people were telling other people to be calm. Some women were saying they were going to pass out, that they were feeling faint.

OPPENHEIM: The head of the transit authority says the last car in an eight-car train hopped off the tracks, starting a small fire that filled a tunnel and car with smoke.

Here, you can see the damage on the car, which was pulled up from the subway last night.

FRANK KRUESI, PRESIDENT, CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY: The inspection of the car and any damage it sustained will help us determine the possible cause of derailment. Until that inspection is complete, I don't intend to speculate on what may have caused the train to derail.

OPPENHEIM: So no sign of foul play, but plenty of fear on a day that started with a train bombing in India, a stark reminder of the risks train commuters face every day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OPPENHEIM: There were more than 150 commuters, Kyra, that were taken to nearby hospitals. Most were treated and released with respiratory problems and things like that, although two are still in critical condition at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Again, what we're hearing at this news conference behind me is that it's going to be, as it often is, a long process for investigators to get a good sense of why this train went off the tracks.

So even though we look at the injuries here, that it's not nearly as bad as it could have been, still, the attitude from government investigators is quite serious. They want to know what caused this derailment.

Back to you.

PHILLIPS: And Keith, just quickly, I know you're monitoring the live event there, and we'll continue to check in with you. But just to lay it out, because yesterday, of course, with what happened in Mumbai and the explosions on the train tracks and then this happened, a lot of people got nervous, especially in that area, wondering if, indeed, there might be some sort of connection or a tie to terror. But at this point, nothing to that sort is surfacing, right?

OPPENHEIM: That's correct, Kyra. At this point, what we're hearing from city officials is that this is not believed to be terrorism at all.

Still, as you point out, from, like, you know, 5 p.m. yesterday afternoon to about 8 p.m., there were a lot of people coming out on the street. They didn't really know what it was. All they knew, that as passengers, they were walking through a smoky tunnel and trying to get onto this street that I'm standing on right here. It was a pretty harrowing experience for them.

So, really, until you hear it officially, and you're a passenger on the train, you don't know what's going on, but you heard earlier in the day that there were terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world. It can be a pretty confusing thing.

PHILLIPS: "Daily Herald" bringing us some pretty powerful images also. Keith Oppenheim, thanks so much.

Fanning the flames. Sadly, that's not just a figure of speech for Yucca Valley, California. Strong winds are fueling wildfires that have devoured thousands of acres and displaced hundreds of people already. These are pictures of the aptly named Sawtooth Fire and it bites into tinderbox terrain. CNN's Kyung Lah has the latest now from Yucca Valley -- Kyung.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, what firefighters say we have here due to the weather conditions is a recipe for this fire to continue to grow. We're continuing to see flames in this area.

I'm going to push in right all the way. You see that fire back there. We're not really sure if that's backfire or if that's backfire that's advancing toward these homes that backfired.

From what fire department tell us, they're intentionally setting these fires so that the fire will burn in on itself. But it's not supposed to get this close, this low. It's actually supposed to climb over the ridge. So we need to confirm what's happening out there.

But what we can tell you about the weather conditions is that it is very breezy out here. It is hot. Triple digits. And there is low humidity. What the fire department tells us is that this means that this fire could continue to grow.

Right now, it is at 26,000 acres. It is zero percent contained and is burning out of control. Hundreds of people have been evacuated; 1,500 structures are in danger, according to the fire department.

The hardest hit area is a residential area called Pioneertown. Firefighters trying to save some of the historic homes on Main Street. They say they have, though, lost some homes in the surrounding area that surrounds Main Street.

At this point, the fire department says that they have lost 30 structures. They can't confirm for us if those are homes or if they are other types of businesses or buildings. Firefighters say what they're facing today is a grueling fight with this fire.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRACEY MARTINEZ, SAN BERENDO FIRE DEPARTMENT: These are people's homes. This is their life. This is where they live. A lot of our firefighters on this fire live here, as well. That could be their neighbors. We have firefighters that live in Pioneertown where the fire went through. We still don't know if there homes are gone, as well.

So it's a hardship. And it's not only a hardship, you feel it and it's very personal. And when you go and you're out there and you're fighting the fire, you're try to save a structure, every structure you save is a blessing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAH: Now this is an area that has not burned for sometime, and something firefighters are facing is a lot of brush out here, Kyra. This is a lot of fuel that they have to fight when this fire is just literally gobbling it up. And these winds certainly are not helping -- Kyra. PHILLIPS: Kyung, remind me again, a little southern California flavor. If I remember right, this is not far from Los Angeles, obviously, in Hollywood. Isn't this where a lot of old western movies were filmed a long time ago?

LAH: You are absolutely right. We're about two hours east of Los Angeles. This is an area where a lot of the Hollywood cowboys actually formed a retreat. This was the place where they got away. And this eventually became a place where they made a lot of those westerns, those black and white westerns that many of us watched as children. So this is something that they really want to preserve.

Firefighters do believe that on Main Street in Pioneerville what they've been able to do is they've been able to save those primary historic homes, but if they've lost any outside of that Main Street area, they have not been able to confirm that for us.

PHILLIPS: And Kyung, we're actually looking at videotape now of one of those movie locations, of a studio that actually was burned down. I'll tell you what. Next time we talk, we'll try and figure out what exactly was shot there and see if we can jog our memories. Kyung Lah, thanks so much.

Kyung just mentioned weather conditions fueling those flames. Meteorologist Jacqui Jeras watching the situation for us.

Hey, Jacqui.

(WEATHER REPORT)

PHILLIPS: Jacqui, thanks.

Back to Iraq for Donald Rumsfeld. The defense secretary arrived unannounced today, as VIPs always do, for meetings with the government and Q&A session with U.S. troops.

His visit comes at a critical time. More than 100 people have been killed in Baghdad alone just since this weekend.

CNN's senior international correspondent Nic Robertson joins me now with more -- Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld got a huge welcome from troops up in Balad. It's a massive military air base about 50 miles north of Baghdad. Very secure base.

The secretary of defense talked to the troops, told the troops that he wanted to thank them personally for their services, for what they were doing in Iraq.

He got a big ovation as he came in, but he also got some very tough questions, one soldier asking him about -- about roadside bomb clearing equipment. He said, "Look, the IED clearing equipment that we have is three years old. It's out of date." The soldier told secretary of defense that New York City has newer mine clearing equipment than this. Secretary of defense said $3.6 billion are being spent on the roads -- on dealing with roadside bombs alone.

But that gave you a sort of flavor for what some of the soldiers there were thinking. The roadside bombs are their biggest concern, the biggest killers in Iraq at the moment.

Secretary of defense went on to meet with Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq. Of course, his biggest concern of the moment, he had just come from a session in his parliament, where parliamentarians have been giving him a very tough time over security in Baghdad and -- and the militias that have been responsible for some of the killings over the weekend.

No doubt, Secretary Rumsfeld trying to get to the bottom of how Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister here, wants to deal with that. The issue of the insurgency in Baghdad, the issue of militias in Baghdad affects the whole country. Parliamentarians here not satisfied the prime minister has a plan. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, very likely, wanting to hear some of those details -- Kyra.

PHILLIP: Now Nic, you mentioned Maliki in talking about security in parliament. But he really took a beating today, didn't he?

ROBERTSON: Oh, he really did. He gave a 14-minute speech, and he talked in that speech about the need for more intelligence and that we need to face the killers and that the reconciliation plan is really the last hope for the country.

And the militias who were running around the town over the weekend, other Baghdad, killing people, 40 people in one district, just dragging them out of their car, shooting them for who they were. If they were Sunnis, they were killed. If they were Shias, they were let go.

He said that no security service in Baghdad have the city under control.

The parliamentarians came right back at him, female parliamentarians, male parliamentarians, asking him for details. Who are these militias? What exactly are you doing? How can you say the city is safe when -- when there are areas that you don't seem to control?

So a very, a very tough time for the prime minister today. And he's only been in office for a couple of months, and he has set Baghdad as his sort of showcase of where he's going to make security work -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: He's got a long road ahead, Nic Robertson, thanks so much.

Well, ever since the Columbia disaster, NASA has been working to make shuttles safer. Today's walk in space could help. We're going to show you how when LIVE FROM continues, right here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Artillery fire in Lebanon. It's from Israel. And if the threats from both sides come to pass, there could be lots more to come.

It follows a raid this morning in Northern Israel. Three soldiers killed, two taken hostage. Their fate is unknown right now. Hezbollah guerrillas claim they did it to win the freedom of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

We're live from the Israeli-Lebanon border in just a few minutes.

Lebanon becomes Israel's second front against militants right now. The first is Gaza, where an Israeli soldier is believed held captive and where several -- where several Israeli air strikes today reportedly killed a police officer and a member of the Hamas government. Palestinians promise revenge. Israel says no letup until the missing 19-year-old army corporal is back home and safe.

President Bush is on his way to Germany. He's due to arrive in a couple of hours on the Baltic coast of what used to be communist East Germany, home turf of the new Germany chancellor, Angela Merkel. On Friday, the two will travel separately to the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia.

One final outing for two shuttle astronauts. Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum are wrapping up the third and final space walk of their 13-day mission. They've been trying out tools and materials that may be used to repair shuttles while they're still in space.

CNN space correspondent Miles O'Brien joins me with the details now.

So what happened to the statue? And by the way, do you like the music? That's just for you, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CO-HOST, "AMERICAN MORNING": You know, I'm a big Steve Miller fan. Can we just -- can we just listen to the music?

PHILLIPS: Yes, let's pot it up. Let's let the live pictures roll...

(MUSIC)

O'BRIEN: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Am I a joker, a smoker? Is that what you're saying?

PHILLIPS: You're a midnight toker.

O'BRIEN: No comment. Let the record show who said that.

PHILLIPS: Oh, Miles, I miss your sense of humor.

O'BRIEN: Yes. I didn't inhale. That's all I can tell you right now.

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: Let's take a look at these live picture from space before I get in deeper trouble here on LIVE FROM.

This is -- it's all over but the cleanup, as a matter of fact. You're looking at Mike Fossum at the end of the robot arm there. He's kind of hidden there, actually. Let me just show you where to look, because it's kind of hard to see. He's right in there.

And they have wrapped up their tools. This right here -- this is all part of the Quest (ph) air lock, some of the gas that they use to fill that up with -- all the suits up with air and so forth.

And this spacewalk reaching a conclusion after doing some work which has Columbia in mind. By the way, so you know, they're over the South Pacific, making their way towards California at 17,500 miles an hour. They'll soon be over Michigan by the time we finish this live shot, just about.

Let's talk a little bit about why they're doing this. Let's go back to January of 2003. Familiar footage to us all by now, unfortunately. But want to remind everybody why this is important.

Columbia, January 2003, a pound and a half piece of foam off that orange external fuel tank hits the left side of the wing in a very critical spot, the so-called reinforced carbon-carbon, which is where the shuttle gets hottest. This is -- when it's coming in it comes in like this, more or less, Kyra. And the nose cone and these spots here get hottest, about 3,000 degrees.

Now if you had a Columbia-sized hit, there's not much you can do about that. But that was about eight inches in width. There's not enough space goo to make that work. But if you had a little ding or a scratch that you were a little bit concerned about, that you could patch in, prior to Columbia, they didn't have it as an option.

Earlier in the program, shuttle managers thought about repair. They thought, "We can't do that." And now post-Columbia, it was sort of a mandate to look at that.

So does this look familiar? This is the ever so sophisticated space putty knife. And...

PHILLIPS: Isn't that amazing how basic -- how incredible the technology is but how basic the tools are?

O'BRIEN: It's a mix. He's got those $250,000 custom gloves we talked about yesterday with the putty knife, which, you know, has basically got a funny extension on it, but it's what you get at Home Depot.

PHILLIPS: And explain what he's doing, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Well, he's putting on what is called no wax, officially what the astronauts are calling affectionately black goo. And trying to put it on as thinly and evenly as possible. They tried this last year, and it didn't work out so well, Kyra.

But the bottom line is, in the vacuum of space, gas that is trapped inside that goo on Earth, with 14 psi, pounds per square inch, where we all live, it starts to sublimate gas in space. And so it became -- it didn't set up so well. You would not be happy with this little dry wall repair. You'd make John do it over.

And so -- so what they are doing is trying some techniques for when they apply it. Like apply it when it's warm and let it cure when it's cold, for example. In other words, apply at orbital sunset and then as it gets very cold see what happens. All those samples, they've taken some fancy infrared pictures of them. And then they'll bring the whole kit and caboodle back, and engineers will go over it and see if they really do have some progress here on a possible repair scheme for the future.

The question is: who would sign on the dotted line to say this is a safe way to bring an orbiter home?

PHILLIPS: Right. And well -- and you mentioned Columbia and the whole foam disaster. How -- are the astronauts -- I mean, what kind of safety checks do they do or other type of things do they do to check that tank, check the foam? Or is it one of those things where you're just sort of heading back and hoping that everything's going to be OK?

O'BRIEN: Yes, I mean, it's really -- it's so night and day compared to the pre-Columbia stage.

Of course, we told you all about what's going on at launch. The cameras that we use. We showed you all those tremendous views that they had, you know, for the solid rocket boosters.

Tremendous amount of effort in space. As they dock, they did that somersault we told you about, took pictures there.

There's more. On Friday, when they undock, right before they undock from the space station, they're going to do yet another inspection. Because it occurred to the engineers, wait a minute. They're up in space for two weeks. They're exposed to the possibility of micro-meteorites or space junk. And so they're going to do an actual survey with the shuttle's robot arm on one side. Then they're going to undock and take a look on the other side, because they can't get both sides while they're docked.

They're going to stay close enough that if there's a problem that they see, they can go back and dock at the space station if need be, and just make sure one more time that they have an intact heat shield.

So they really are -- and there you see, they'll go out a mile or so away. They'll look at the other side of the orbiter. I mean, the truth of the matter is one of the biggest concerns they have is the possibility of running into a space -- piece of space junk or micro- meteorite -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Wow. Just like flying. You don't want one of those birds to get inside your wings, right?

O'BRIEN: No, you don't.

PHILLIPS: All right, Miles, appreciate it. We'll keep checking in.

O'BRIEN: All right.

PHILLIPS: Even the toughest cowboy might shed a tear as an historic California town goes up in smoke. More on where the west was won as LIVE FROM continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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