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CNN Live Today
Flu Shot Lottery; Voting Volunteers Mobilizing Nationwide to Make Sure Election Isn't Compromised
Aired October 21, 2004 - 10:30 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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's check in on Bloomfield, New Jersey this morning. Hundreds of people are hoping a winning lottery ticket will get them a shot in the arm, literally.
Our Mary Snow is here with one city's answer to the vaccine shortage.
Mary, good morning.
MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.
And you know, this lottery is expected to be the first of its kind in the nation, which a stroke of luck to determine who gets a flu shot. Nearly 20 percent of this town's population is made up of senior citizens. Today, they'll get a shot at securing a flu vaccine.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I'm sorry, we don't have the vaccine at this time.
MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Calls for flu shots haven't let up in Bloomfield, New Jersey since the town decided last week to hold a lottery to ration 300 doses of the flu vaccine. Since then, Bloomfield has become the poster child for the flu shot shortage, even finding its way into the presidential campaign.
KERRY: And just today we learned that a town in New Jersey is being forced to use a lottery system to decide who is going to get a flu shot.
BUSH: I know there are some here who are worried about the flu season. I want to assure them that our government is doing everything possible.
MAYOR RAYMOND MCCARTHY, BLOOMFIELD, NEW JERSEY: We never anticipated this. This was just a thing that we thought was a normal procedure, let's go. We put it together.
SNOW: Bloomfield's town officials held a strategy session ahead of its unusual vaccine lottery. Unlike neighboring towns, Bloomfield does not buy its vaccines from Chiron, the vaccine maker forced to halt production because of contamination concerns, it gets them from Aventis, the only other vaccine supplier to the U.S. And the first shipment came in before the public health crisis began. The town didn't want to have long lines of senior citizens, like other places, and decided a lottery was being fair.
TREVOR WEIGLE, BLOOMFIELD HEALTH DIRECTOR: It's sad that we have to do this, but good, maybe this is a wake-up call, you know. Maybe we have to do some better planning in our health care system here in America.
SNOW: But some of Bloomfield's 8,000 seniors don't see the lottery working either.
RITA LYNCH, BLOOMFIELD RESIDENT: Never won anything in my whole life. I don't know that I'd win anything medical either.
MUSGRAVE: This is America, we're supposedly the best of the best. And with this, we're not.
SNOW: Some 60 million flu vaccines are expected to be produced by January, compared to last year's 87 million. And health experts say the shortage will continue to drive demand.
IRWIN REDLENER, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: And I think there's no turning back now. We're going to see a whole new dynamic about the demand for flu vaccine from now on like we've never seen before in this country.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SNOW: And as for the demand here in Bloomfield, registration for the lottery was supposed to get under way in just about an hour from now. Well, already a couple of hundred people have shown up. What they're doing today is doing the paperwork, signing up. Next week will be the actual lottery, and the town's mayor says he's already gotten some calls from other places around the country asking about the process here -- Daryn.
KAGAN: And in terms of risk factor or who should really be getting it, it's honor system, people having just to vouch for their age or what their health condition might be?
SNOW: Absolutely. What's happening is senior citizens are eligible. They have to bring proof that they live in the town; it's for residents only. Anyone under the age of 65 has to bring a doctor's note to say that they are high risk and could be eligible.
KAGAN: Mary Snow from New Jersey, thank you.
RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: The head of the flu vaccine firm linked to this year's shortage is making no guarantees about next year's supply. Chiron's CEO says he hopes the factory will be ready to meet demand for flu shots next year. The company plans to hire outside experts and consult with American and British regulators to fix the problems that it had this year at its Liverpool plant.
KAGAN: The flu shortage story is making waves in the political world. An aide to Dick Cheney says the 63-year-old vice president recently received a flu shot. A John Kerry campaign aide took a shot at that calling it one example of a "do as we say, not as we do" administration. Health officials have said the limited vaccines should be given to those at high risk of flu. With a history of heart problems, Cheney does fit that high-risk category.
Flu shots are available to members of Congress. An aide to the Capitol physician says lawmakers are on the honor system for whether they fit the at-risk criteria.
Voting volunteers are mobilizing nationwide to make sure the November 2nd election isn't in any way compromised.
As CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin reports, both parties are getting very involved.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST (voice-over): Tania Clay didn't have to remind these volunteers in Houston about what happened in Florida.
TANIA CLAY, PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY: We all know about Florida.
TOOBIN: But she knew it would serve as a call to arms.
CLAY: We know about a lot of the problems that were encountered by elderly voters by the hanging chads.
TOOBIN: A call to avoid another election from being decided in another controversial Florida-like recount.
The call has been answered in classrooms and church halls from Texas to New York, from Washington to points west. Thousands of volunteers are taking classes on every election right that could become an election wrong.
JONAH GOLDMAN, LAWYERS COMM. FOR CIVIL RIGHTS: Until you press that "register my vote" button you can call a poll worker over and have them cancel that ballot.
TOOBIN: And preparing to head off to battleground states like Florida yet again, ready for the legal war that begins November 2.
DOUG CHAPIN, ELECTIONLINE.ORG: You hear talk of so-called SWAT teams of state based lawyers who will be available to go to courtrooms.
TOOBIN: Many of the volunteers are lawyers schooled in the latest local election laws. Others are poll watchers or people who say they're helping other people vote.
They come from groups like People for the American Way, Americans Coming Together and Election Protection. Some were formed by Democratic Party sympathizers after the 2000 vote recount.
DENNIS ARCHER, PAST PRESIDENT, AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION: Here's my message to those Republican operatives, the few that there are, who have heretofore dealt in voter intimidation. Don't even try it.
TOOBIN: The Republicans refuse to answer that charge, but lawyers from both parties will face off in places like Florida, where in many places those troublesome butterfly ballots have been replaced by controversial electronic voting machines.
In Ohio more than 70 percent of voters will still be voting on punch card ballots. And both parties have attorneys in every county of Pennsylvania, where election officials say, old-fashioned voting machines and an overload of voter registrations could cause problems.
GOLDMAN: Across the country there will be about 25,000 volunteers participating in the program including over 5,000 legal volunteers.
TOOBIN: The volunteer effort is also fueled by the belief that November 2 will not be the end of election 2004. Consider that this is the first election in which every state must let people vote with provisional or paper ballots if their names can't be found on local voting rolls.
But the rules on who can use them and how they're counted vary from state to state.
MILES RAPOPORT, NON-PARTISAN VOTER ADVOCATES: This is the worst possible nightmare. You can imagine a situation where that happens and the margin of victory is exceeded by the number of professional ballots that it will be weeks trying to figure out who won in that state because the lawyers will fight over every provisional ballot as if it were a recount.
TOOBIN: Democrat Henry Berger has trained more than 700 New York lawyers, all headed for battleground states.
HENRY BERGER, NY COUNCIL, KERRY 2004: I think when the voters wake up on November 3 they're going to read newspapers that say that either Bush or Kerry could win the election, that there are three or four states that have not yet been decided and that challenges will continue for several days until all the ballots get counted.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SANCHEZ: That report from our senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
By the way, CNN's Paula Zahn is going to hold a townhall meeting in Springfield, Ohio tonight. Pardon me, you can watch it at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, right here on CNN.
KAGAN: Talking about getting fired. And no, I don't have any inside information. You just got here.
SANCHEZ: I just wanted to snap back for a moment.
KAGAN: No. Not only talk about getting fired, it's happened to a lot of people, myself included. Some people say it's the best thing that ever happened to them.
SANCHEZ: Yes, because you can come out of it somehow.
KAGAN: We'll find out.
SANCHEZ: In more ways than you realize, in fact.
Ahead, a top map cartographer. What's a cartographer you ask? We're going to tell you what a cartographer is. We're also going to tell you what the new atlases are saying. New information, folks, about your world.
KAGAN: Plus, frightening moments from this tornado in Florida. We'll find out where, ahead on CNN LIVE TODAY.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: So, you're home watching Rick and me today because you just got fired from your job. It is not the end of the world. In fact, it might just be the beginning of the best part of your life. That is the philosophy behind the book "We Got Fired! ...and It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened To Us."
The author, Harvey Mackay, joins us from Albany, New York. Good morning.
HARVEY MACKAY, AUTHOR, "WE GOT FIRED!...": Good morning. Nice to be with you, Daryn.
KAGAN: I think we share something in common, you and I.
MACKAY: Both been fired?
KAGAN: Both been fired.
MACKAY: Did you land on your feet?
KAGAN: I'm here.
MACKAY: Looks like you were one of the lucky ones. Wonderful.
KAGAN: Did OK. First TV job, got fired from.
How many times have you been fired?
MACKAY: Just once. A was a teenage boy. My father got me the job. He headed the Associated Press in the Twin Cities. Took advantage of his name, took advantage of the contacts, asked to get off early, come in late, play in golf tournaments, shamed the Mackay name.
KAGAN: Oh, no.
MACKAY: But I learned from it, and I'll never forget it.
KAGAN: So, you would say you're one of those that would say it was one of the best things that ever happened to you?
MACKAY: Well, that's true for the following reason. Governor Jesse "the Body" Ventura, who's one of the 25 interviews of 30 interviews -- he said, "You're not a failure if you get fired. You're a failure if you fail to learn from that experience."
KAGAN: Absolutely.
MACKAY: And I did.
KAGAN: I agree with that.
You have lots of advice in your book. First of all, number one sign -- you have a number of them, but what would you say is the number one sign you're about to be fired? Don't be taken by surprise?
MACKAY: Well, there's 25 of them in the book. But just a few of them: all of a sudden if you're reporting relationship changes; if all of a sudden your office is moved a little bit away from the power base; you are invited to meetings, but you haven't been invited by the superior -- your superior; your subordinate is at the meeting and you didn't do the hiring at the meeting.
So it can -- there's a lot of signs there, and it's called "the chill is on."
KAGAN: "The chill is on." You know, it's all well and good to put a happy face on this experience, but really, the first feeling is one of rejection. How do you learn how to handle that?
MACKAY: Yes. And it's a very serious subject, because it's not only you, but it's the families and friends that surround you. But if you happen to be mergers, acquisitions, laid off, fired -- number one, don't panic. Number two, if you're going to burn your bridges, you'd better be a darned good swimmer, because it's amazing how many times that people can help you that did the firing, such as Lou Holtz when he got his Notre Dame job.
You want to form a kitchen cabinet. Mayor Bloomberg, Michael Bloomberg said people remember two things, "Who kicked you when you were down, and who helped you on the way up."
KAGAN: Absolutely.
MACKAY: So, you want to form that kitchen cabinet. You want to also know that the given reason is not necessarily the real reason, so you want to find out why you were fired so you can learn from it.
KAGAN: And you don't waste a lot of time in this book. You get to, all right, let's roll up our sleeves and here's some tips for finding your next job.
MACKAY: Well, getting a job is a job, Daryn. It's not 40 hours a week. I mean, it's 24/7. You have to have that plan. You have to know that 70 percent of all jobs come from networking. You have to get on there and surf the Web. Again, go back to your kitchen cabinet. Hopefully you haven't burned those bridges where you have a network where you might be able to go to work for a competitor.
So, there's a myriad of things that you can do if you practice the right concepts.
KAGAN: Well, it would appear that this work thing is kind of working out OK for you since that firing as a teenager. Congratulations on the book.
MACKAY: Thank you.
KAGAN: Once again, it's called "We Got Fired! ...and It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened To Us." Harvey Mackay -- thank you, Harvey. Good to see you.
MACKAY: Thank you. Bye, bye.
SANCHEZ: Well, there's some good business information. Let's get some more now from Rhonda Schaffler. She's standing by with business.
KAGAN: Hi, Rhonda.
(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)
KAGAN: Thank you.
SANCHEZ: And look at this video. Look out, Mr. Castro, there's a step there! Didn't get to it in time. Fidel Castro takes a tumble. We'll tell you how he's doing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: Well, we have breaking news coming out of New York City -- actually out of Switzerland. News that American gymnast Paul Hamm is allowed to keep his gold medal. This, of course, has been a controversy since August 18th, when he really didn't win it in the men's all-around competition at the Olympics in Athens. There was a question about the scoring, and the South Korean gymnast filed an appeal, which has now gone to an international sports court, and it has, the three-judge panel, decided that, in fact, Paul Hamm can keep his gold medal. Comments now from the gold medalist.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL HAMM, GYMNAST: Yes, I'm actually, you know, really upset with the FIG handled the whole situation. I think that they could have put an end to it the day of the competition, and it wouldn't have had to go this far, because, I mean, the same reasons that (INAUDIBLE) decided why they shouldn't be changing the medal ranking are really also the same reason that the FIG couldn't change the medal ranking, and it would have been nice if it would have ended that very day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: Paul Hamm making his first comments. Another story that we're following today. We live in a changing word. And we're not talking just politics, style or technology, instead, literally a changing world, the physical evolution, the way the planet we live on changes. Most are subtle enough to go largely unnoticed, except by trained experts, like the person you're about to meet.
This is Allen Carroll. He's a chief cartographer for the "National Geographic," which basically, I guess, means you're a mapmaker, right?
ALLEN CARROLL, "NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC" CHIEF CARTOGRAPHER: That's right. Yes, I'm not a heart specialist.
SANCHEZ: Like the man who our country was named after or part of our country, or part of our country. I guess that's another geographical argument.
Daryn, you there?
KAGAN: I'm here.
SANCHEZ: Hold this for me. How much do you think that weighs?
KAGAN: Well, I don't have to go to the gym today.
SANCHEZ: Seven pounds. This is seven-pound book. This is a brand-new atlas that you guys have put out, and I understand this is a little more Internet-friendly, right?
CARROLL: A lot more Internet friendly. It's -- the only world atlas on the market that has a completely, fully integrated Web site. So as the world continues to change, we can send people directly from every political map directly to its own page on the Web, and we'll post updates as the world continues to change. You can literally print out a little map and stick it in your book, if you'd like.
SANCHEZ: How much does the world change? And on what basis? Explain to our viewers what you mean by our changing world.
CARROLL: It changes in lots and lots of ways. And our political maps alone we've made more than 17,000 changes and updates. Those include the height of Mt. Everest a little bit. That's not based on actual change, but new measurements. The Dead Sea...
SANCHEZ: Now I was reading about that. How is it possible that Mt. Everest could rise another seven feet?
CARROLL: Well, of course tectonic forces made it rise its 29,000 feet. But we just recently -- scientists measured it more accurately using the latest technology. So they actually upped the measurement by all of seven feet.
SANCHEZ: So it didn't rise tectonically, or we didn't see any plate shifts actually; they just went and looked at it again, and said oh, my god, we had it wrong the first time? CARROLL: That's right. Exactly.
SANCHEZ: But now there is an area, the Dead Sea apparently dropped 27 feet. Explain that one to us.
CARROLL: That one's real, and that's due to human use. The water is very precious in the Middle East, and a lot of the water that would have drained into the Dead Sea is being diverted for agriculture, for irrigation. So it actually has gotten lower in the last few years.
SANCHEZ: Let's go through a couple more of these that are kind of fun. Calcutta is no longer pronounced Calcutta?
CARROLL: It is Calcutta. Every once in a while, we try to keep as close to the local pronunciations and spellings as we can, and so that's a part of that effort.
SANCHEZ: You try to Anglicize it for us so it doesn't sound too weird, but kind of respect the way that they would say it, right?
CARROLL: Well, in fact, if anything, we're getting away from Anglicizing, because we live in an international world, and we want to respect how people call their own places. So we have two names for instance, for Rome. One is Roma. The other is Rome.
SANCHEZ: The -- I remember when the Soviet Union came apart, that all of a sudden, boy, you guys must have been really busy. All these countries, seemingly, I guess to most people, just came out of nowhere. Example in Yugoslavia now. Official different names in that region, correct?
CARROLL: Yes, that's right. I mean, the breakup of the Soviet Union, of course, was dramatic, it made the headlines; everybody's familiar with it. The changes going on today might be a little bit more subtle. But there -- in a lot of ways, they're even more profound, as the globe becomes ever more interconnected and interdependent. We do have one brand-new country in East Timor, which was formerly part of Indonesia.
SANCHEZ: Here's a chance for you to get on your soap box. I'm literally asking you. I know we as Americans oftentimes have been called somewhat ethnocentric. We don't know much about the rest of our world, except in our borders. Tell us, in your words, why it's important that we do know all these things about all these countries and all the areas outside of our borders?
CARROLL: Well, thanks so much for the chance to preach. Here I go -- it's just, as I said, we're all part of, essentially, a hugely interconnected system -- ecologically, economically, politically, culturally. I think it's vitally important for all of us as world citizens to understand what's going on around the world. Us as individuals, us as families, and we hope that this will be used every day by families as they watch the news, as they complete homework assignments.
SANCHEZ: Well said, and I hope my kids are listening.
Mr. Carroll, thanks so much for being with us, sir.
CARROLL: Thank you. My pleasure.
SANCHEZ: I appreciate it.
And you're over there, you're just getting into that book.
KAGAN: I'm having a good time.
SANCHEZ: Just hard to carry around, though.
KAGAN: That's it. But I'm picking an island for a nice little vacation perhaps.
SANCHEZ: Just like you.
KAGAN: But it's work. It's work here. Twisting and turning, a tornado making its way part of one Florida county last night. We'll tell you where.
SANCHEZ: And it left behind some incredible damage. We're going to have more on this story, when CNN LIVE TODAY continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: We'll take a look at what's making news overseas in this morning's "World Wrap." Dozens of people are dead and dozens more missing in Japan after a powerful typhoon struck the main island. The storms triggered flash floods that washed away entire hillsides and forced rooftop evacuations. More than 13,000 people are staying at emergency shelters. And tens of thousands of air travelers have been stranded.
Britain's Prince Harry was hit in the face with a camera in what Buckingham Palace is calling a scuffle.
Is that a good English accent?
SANCHEZ: Yes, a scuffle.
KAGAN: A scuffle.
OK, the incident happen outside a London nightclub early this morning. The Royal Press Office says the 20-year-old was bumped as photographers tried to get his picture. A photographer's lip was cut in the process.
SANCHEZ: He was coming out of a club, right.
KAGAN: Yes, out of a club.
But this -- look at this, Cuban President Fidel Castro, yes, is tripping there. He fell after giving a speech last night. Doctors have confirmed that the 78-year-old leader suffered a broken left knee and a hairline fracture in his left arm. Less than a minute after his fall, Castro appeared on national television saying he'd recover as fast.
SANCHEZ: Yes, I was watching that again. I don't know if we can roll that back. Notice there's nobody there to help break his fall, and the reason is, because of the security detail around him, they had no one sitting in the front two or three rows, there's no one there. So the first person who comes to him is like from the fourth row, who has to climb over those chairs to get to him. It's kind of a -- can we get it?
Here it is. Here it is. See, there's nobody there. See, everybody comes running from the fourth row, but someone could have helped break the fall if it hadn't been for the tight security, but they had nobody there, so.
KAGAN: There you go. Some nasty broken bones to recover.
SANCHEZ: He just didn't even know that step was there.
KAGAN: We have the second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY, which begins right now.
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 October 21, 2004 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's check in on Bloomfield, New Jersey this morning. Hundreds of people are hoping a winning lottery ticket will get them a shot in the arm, literally.
Our Mary Snow is here with one city's answer to the vaccine shortage.
Mary, good morning.
MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.
And you know, this lottery is expected to be the first of its kind in the nation, which a stroke of luck to determine who gets a flu shot. Nearly 20 percent of this town's population is made up of senior citizens. Today, they'll get a shot at securing a flu vaccine.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I'm sorry, we don't have the vaccine at this time.
MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Calls for flu shots haven't let up in Bloomfield, New Jersey since the town decided last week to hold a lottery to ration 300 doses of the flu vaccine. Since then, Bloomfield has become the poster child for the flu shot shortage, even finding its way into the presidential campaign.
KERRY: And just today we learned that a town in New Jersey is being forced to use a lottery system to decide who is going to get a flu shot.
BUSH: I know there are some here who are worried about the flu season. I want to assure them that our government is doing everything possible.
MAYOR RAYMOND MCCARTHY, BLOOMFIELD, NEW JERSEY: We never anticipated this. This was just a thing that we thought was a normal procedure, let's go. We put it together.
SNOW: Bloomfield's town officials held a strategy session ahead of its unusual vaccine lottery. Unlike neighboring towns, Bloomfield does not buy its vaccines from Chiron, the vaccine maker forced to halt production because of contamination concerns, it gets them from Aventis, the only other vaccine supplier to the U.S. And the first shipment came in before the public health crisis began. The town didn't want to have long lines of senior citizens, like other places, and decided a lottery was being fair.
TREVOR WEIGLE, BLOOMFIELD HEALTH DIRECTOR: It's sad that we have to do this, but good, maybe this is a wake-up call, you know. Maybe we have to do some better planning in our health care system here in America.
SNOW: But some of Bloomfield's 8,000 seniors don't see the lottery working either.
RITA LYNCH, BLOOMFIELD RESIDENT: Never won anything in my whole life. I don't know that I'd win anything medical either.
MUSGRAVE: This is America, we're supposedly the best of the best. And with this, we're not.
SNOW: Some 60 million flu vaccines are expected to be produced by January, compared to last year's 87 million. And health experts say the shortage will continue to drive demand.
IRWIN REDLENER, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: And I think there's no turning back now. We're going to see a whole new dynamic about the demand for flu vaccine from now on like we've never seen before in this country.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SNOW: And as for the demand here in Bloomfield, registration for the lottery was supposed to get under way in just about an hour from now. Well, already a couple of hundred people have shown up. What they're doing today is doing the paperwork, signing up. Next week will be the actual lottery, and the town's mayor says he's already gotten some calls from other places around the country asking about the process here -- Daryn.
KAGAN: And in terms of risk factor or who should really be getting it, it's honor system, people having just to vouch for their age or what their health condition might be?
SNOW: Absolutely. What's happening is senior citizens are eligible. They have to bring proof that they live in the town; it's for residents only. Anyone under the age of 65 has to bring a doctor's note to say that they are high risk and could be eligible.
KAGAN: Mary Snow from New Jersey, thank you.
RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: The head of the flu vaccine firm linked to this year's shortage is making no guarantees about next year's supply. Chiron's CEO says he hopes the factory will be ready to meet demand for flu shots next year. The company plans to hire outside experts and consult with American and British regulators to fix the problems that it had this year at its Liverpool plant.
KAGAN: The flu shortage story is making waves in the political world. An aide to Dick Cheney says the 63-year-old vice president recently received a flu shot. A John Kerry campaign aide took a shot at that calling it one example of a "do as we say, not as we do" administration. Health officials have said the limited vaccines should be given to those at high risk of flu. With a history of heart problems, Cheney does fit that high-risk category.
Flu shots are available to members of Congress. An aide to the Capitol physician says lawmakers are on the honor system for whether they fit the at-risk criteria.
Voting volunteers are mobilizing nationwide to make sure the November 2nd election isn't in any way compromised.
As CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin reports, both parties are getting very involved.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST (voice-over): Tania Clay didn't have to remind these volunteers in Houston about what happened in Florida.
TANIA CLAY, PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY: We all know about Florida.
TOOBIN: But she knew it would serve as a call to arms.
CLAY: We know about a lot of the problems that were encountered by elderly voters by the hanging chads.
TOOBIN: A call to avoid another election from being decided in another controversial Florida-like recount.
The call has been answered in classrooms and church halls from Texas to New York, from Washington to points west. Thousands of volunteers are taking classes on every election right that could become an election wrong.
JONAH GOLDMAN, LAWYERS COMM. FOR CIVIL RIGHTS: Until you press that "register my vote" button you can call a poll worker over and have them cancel that ballot.
TOOBIN: And preparing to head off to battleground states like Florida yet again, ready for the legal war that begins November 2.
DOUG CHAPIN, ELECTIONLINE.ORG: You hear talk of so-called SWAT teams of state based lawyers who will be available to go to courtrooms.
TOOBIN: Many of the volunteers are lawyers schooled in the latest local election laws. Others are poll watchers or people who say they're helping other people vote.
They come from groups like People for the American Way, Americans Coming Together and Election Protection. Some were formed by Democratic Party sympathizers after the 2000 vote recount.
DENNIS ARCHER, PAST PRESIDENT, AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION: Here's my message to those Republican operatives, the few that there are, who have heretofore dealt in voter intimidation. Don't even try it.
TOOBIN: The Republicans refuse to answer that charge, but lawyers from both parties will face off in places like Florida, where in many places those troublesome butterfly ballots have been replaced by controversial electronic voting machines.
In Ohio more than 70 percent of voters will still be voting on punch card ballots. And both parties have attorneys in every county of Pennsylvania, where election officials say, old-fashioned voting machines and an overload of voter registrations could cause problems.
GOLDMAN: Across the country there will be about 25,000 volunteers participating in the program including over 5,000 legal volunteers.
TOOBIN: The volunteer effort is also fueled by the belief that November 2 will not be the end of election 2004. Consider that this is the first election in which every state must let people vote with provisional or paper ballots if their names can't be found on local voting rolls.
But the rules on who can use them and how they're counted vary from state to state.
MILES RAPOPORT, NON-PARTISAN VOTER ADVOCATES: This is the worst possible nightmare. You can imagine a situation where that happens and the margin of victory is exceeded by the number of professional ballots that it will be weeks trying to figure out who won in that state because the lawyers will fight over every provisional ballot as if it were a recount.
TOOBIN: Democrat Henry Berger has trained more than 700 New York lawyers, all headed for battleground states.
HENRY BERGER, NY COUNCIL, KERRY 2004: I think when the voters wake up on November 3 they're going to read newspapers that say that either Bush or Kerry could win the election, that there are three or four states that have not yet been decided and that challenges will continue for several days until all the ballots get counted.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SANCHEZ: That report from our senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
By the way, CNN's Paula Zahn is going to hold a townhall meeting in Springfield, Ohio tonight. Pardon me, you can watch it at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, right here on CNN.
KAGAN: Talking about getting fired. And no, I don't have any inside information. You just got here.
SANCHEZ: I just wanted to snap back for a moment.
KAGAN: No. Not only talk about getting fired, it's happened to a lot of people, myself included. Some people say it's the best thing that ever happened to them.
SANCHEZ: Yes, because you can come out of it somehow.
KAGAN: We'll find out.
SANCHEZ: In more ways than you realize, in fact.
Ahead, a top map cartographer. What's a cartographer you ask? We're going to tell you what a cartographer is. We're also going to tell you what the new atlases are saying. New information, folks, about your world.
KAGAN: Plus, frightening moments from this tornado in Florida. We'll find out where, ahead on CNN LIVE TODAY.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: So, you're home watching Rick and me today because you just got fired from your job. It is not the end of the world. In fact, it might just be the beginning of the best part of your life. That is the philosophy behind the book "We Got Fired! ...and It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened To Us."
The author, Harvey Mackay, joins us from Albany, New York. Good morning.
HARVEY MACKAY, AUTHOR, "WE GOT FIRED!...": Good morning. Nice to be with you, Daryn.
KAGAN: I think we share something in common, you and I.
MACKAY: Both been fired?
KAGAN: Both been fired.
MACKAY: Did you land on your feet?
KAGAN: I'm here.
MACKAY: Looks like you were one of the lucky ones. Wonderful.
KAGAN: Did OK. First TV job, got fired from.
How many times have you been fired?
MACKAY: Just once. A was a teenage boy. My father got me the job. He headed the Associated Press in the Twin Cities. Took advantage of his name, took advantage of the contacts, asked to get off early, come in late, play in golf tournaments, shamed the Mackay name.
KAGAN: Oh, no.
MACKAY: But I learned from it, and I'll never forget it.
KAGAN: So, you would say you're one of those that would say it was one of the best things that ever happened to you?
MACKAY: Well, that's true for the following reason. Governor Jesse "the Body" Ventura, who's one of the 25 interviews of 30 interviews -- he said, "You're not a failure if you get fired. You're a failure if you fail to learn from that experience."
KAGAN: Absolutely.
MACKAY: And I did.
KAGAN: I agree with that.
You have lots of advice in your book. First of all, number one sign -- you have a number of them, but what would you say is the number one sign you're about to be fired? Don't be taken by surprise?
MACKAY: Well, there's 25 of them in the book. But just a few of them: all of a sudden if you're reporting relationship changes; if all of a sudden your office is moved a little bit away from the power base; you are invited to meetings, but you haven't been invited by the superior -- your superior; your subordinate is at the meeting and you didn't do the hiring at the meeting.
So it can -- there's a lot of signs there, and it's called "the chill is on."
KAGAN: "The chill is on." You know, it's all well and good to put a happy face on this experience, but really, the first feeling is one of rejection. How do you learn how to handle that?
MACKAY: Yes. And it's a very serious subject, because it's not only you, but it's the families and friends that surround you. But if you happen to be mergers, acquisitions, laid off, fired -- number one, don't panic. Number two, if you're going to burn your bridges, you'd better be a darned good swimmer, because it's amazing how many times that people can help you that did the firing, such as Lou Holtz when he got his Notre Dame job.
You want to form a kitchen cabinet. Mayor Bloomberg, Michael Bloomberg said people remember two things, "Who kicked you when you were down, and who helped you on the way up."
KAGAN: Absolutely.
MACKAY: So, you want to form that kitchen cabinet. You want to also know that the given reason is not necessarily the real reason, so you want to find out why you were fired so you can learn from it.
KAGAN: And you don't waste a lot of time in this book. You get to, all right, let's roll up our sleeves and here's some tips for finding your next job.
MACKAY: Well, getting a job is a job, Daryn. It's not 40 hours a week. I mean, it's 24/7. You have to have that plan. You have to know that 70 percent of all jobs come from networking. You have to get on there and surf the Web. Again, go back to your kitchen cabinet. Hopefully you haven't burned those bridges where you have a network where you might be able to go to work for a competitor.
So, there's a myriad of things that you can do if you practice the right concepts.
KAGAN: Well, it would appear that this work thing is kind of working out OK for you since that firing as a teenager. Congratulations on the book.
MACKAY: Thank you.
KAGAN: Once again, it's called "We Got Fired! ...and It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened To Us." Harvey Mackay -- thank you, Harvey. Good to see you.
MACKAY: Thank you. Bye, bye.
SANCHEZ: Well, there's some good business information. Let's get some more now from Rhonda Schaffler. She's standing by with business.
KAGAN: Hi, Rhonda.
(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)
KAGAN: Thank you.
SANCHEZ: And look at this video. Look out, Mr. Castro, there's a step there! Didn't get to it in time. Fidel Castro takes a tumble. We'll tell you how he's doing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: Well, we have breaking news coming out of New York City -- actually out of Switzerland. News that American gymnast Paul Hamm is allowed to keep his gold medal. This, of course, has been a controversy since August 18th, when he really didn't win it in the men's all-around competition at the Olympics in Athens. There was a question about the scoring, and the South Korean gymnast filed an appeal, which has now gone to an international sports court, and it has, the three-judge panel, decided that, in fact, Paul Hamm can keep his gold medal. Comments now from the gold medalist.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL HAMM, GYMNAST: Yes, I'm actually, you know, really upset with the FIG handled the whole situation. I think that they could have put an end to it the day of the competition, and it wouldn't have had to go this far, because, I mean, the same reasons that (INAUDIBLE) decided why they shouldn't be changing the medal ranking are really also the same reason that the FIG couldn't change the medal ranking, and it would have been nice if it would have ended that very day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: Paul Hamm making his first comments. Another story that we're following today. We live in a changing word. And we're not talking just politics, style or technology, instead, literally a changing world, the physical evolution, the way the planet we live on changes. Most are subtle enough to go largely unnoticed, except by trained experts, like the person you're about to meet.
This is Allen Carroll. He's a chief cartographer for the "National Geographic," which basically, I guess, means you're a mapmaker, right?
ALLEN CARROLL, "NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC" CHIEF CARTOGRAPHER: That's right. Yes, I'm not a heart specialist.
SANCHEZ: Like the man who our country was named after or part of our country, or part of our country. I guess that's another geographical argument.
Daryn, you there?
KAGAN: I'm here.
SANCHEZ: Hold this for me. How much do you think that weighs?
KAGAN: Well, I don't have to go to the gym today.
SANCHEZ: Seven pounds. This is seven-pound book. This is a brand-new atlas that you guys have put out, and I understand this is a little more Internet-friendly, right?
CARROLL: A lot more Internet friendly. It's -- the only world atlas on the market that has a completely, fully integrated Web site. So as the world continues to change, we can send people directly from every political map directly to its own page on the Web, and we'll post updates as the world continues to change. You can literally print out a little map and stick it in your book, if you'd like.
SANCHEZ: How much does the world change? And on what basis? Explain to our viewers what you mean by our changing world.
CARROLL: It changes in lots and lots of ways. And our political maps alone we've made more than 17,000 changes and updates. Those include the height of Mt. Everest a little bit. That's not based on actual change, but new measurements. The Dead Sea...
SANCHEZ: Now I was reading about that. How is it possible that Mt. Everest could rise another seven feet?
CARROLL: Well, of course tectonic forces made it rise its 29,000 feet. But we just recently -- scientists measured it more accurately using the latest technology. So they actually upped the measurement by all of seven feet.
SANCHEZ: So it didn't rise tectonically, or we didn't see any plate shifts actually; they just went and looked at it again, and said oh, my god, we had it wrong the first time? CARROLL: That's right. Exactly.
SANCHEZ: But now there is an area, the Dead Sea apparently dropped 27 feet. Explain that one to us.
CARROLL: That one's real, and that's due to human use. The water is very precious in the Middle East, and a lot of the water that would have drained into the Dead Sea is being diverted for agriculture, for irrigation. So it actually has gotten lower in the last few years.
SANCHEZ: Let's go through a couple more of these that are kind of fun. Calcutta is no longer pronounced Calcutta?
CARROLL: It is Calcutta. Every once in a while, we try to keep as close to the local pronunciations and spellings as we can, and so that's a part of that effort.
SANCHEZ: You try to Anglicize it for us so it doesn't sound too weird, but kind of respect the way that they would say it, right?
CARROLL: Well, in fact, if anything, we're getting away from Anglicizing, because we live in an international world, and we want to respect how people call their own places. So we have two names for instance, for Rome. One is Roma. The other is Rome.
SANCHEZ: The -- I remember when the Soviet Union came apart, that all of a sudden, boy, you guys must have been really busy. All these countries, seemingly, I guess to most people, just came out of nowhere. Example in Yugoslavia now. Official different names in that region, correct?
CARROLL: Yes, that's right. I mean, the breakup of the Soviet Union, of course, was dramatic, it made the headlines; everybody's familiar with it. The changes going on today might be a little bit more subtle. But there -- in a lot of ways, they're even more profound, as the globe becomes ever more interconnected and interdependent. We do have one brand-new country in East Timor, which was formerly part of Indonesia.
SANCHEZ: Here's a chance for you to get on your soap box. I'm literally asking you. I know we as Americans oftentimes have been called somewhat ethnocentric. We don't know much about the rest of our world, except in our borders. Tell us, in your words, why it's important that we do know all these things about all these countries and all the areas outside of our borders?
CARROLL: Well, thanks so much for the chance to preach. Here I go -- it's just, as I said, we're all part of, essentially, a hugely interconnected system -- ecologically, economically, politically, culturally. I think it's vitally important for all of us as world citizens to understand what's going on around the world. Us as individuals, us as families, and we hope that this will be used every day by families as they watch the news, as they complete homework assignments.
SANCHEZ: Well said, and I hope my kids are listening.
Mr. Carroll, thanks so much for being with us, sir.
CARROLL: Thank you. My pleasure.
SANCHEZ: I appreciate it.
And you're over there, you're just getting into that book.
KAGAN: I'm having a good time.
SANCHEZ: Just hard to carry around, though.
KAGAN: That's it. But I'm picking an island for a nice little vacation perhaps.
SANCHEZ: Just like you.
KAGAN: But it's work. It's work here. Twisting and turning, a tornado making its way part of one Florida county last night. We'll tell you where.
SANCHEZ: And it left behind some incredible damage. We're going to have more on this story, when CNN LIVE TODAY continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: We'll take a look at what's making news overseas in this morning's "World Wrap." Dozens of people are dead and dozens more missing in Japan after a powerful typhoon struck the main island. The storms triggered flash floods that washed away entire hillsides and forced rooftop evacuations. More than 13,000 people are staying at emergency shelters. And tens of thousands of air travelers have been stranded.
Britain's Prince Harry was hit in the face with a camera in what Buckingham Palace is calling a scuffle.
Is that a good English accent?
SANCHEZ: Yes, a scuffle.
KAGAN: A scuffle.
OK, the incident happen outside a London nightclub early this morning. The Royal Press Office says the 20-year-old was bumped as photographers tried to get his picture. A photographer's lip was cut in the process.
SANCHEZ: He was coming out of a club, right.
KAGAN: Yes, out of a club.
But this -- look at this, Cuban President Fidel Castro, yes, is tripping there. He fell after giving a speech last night. Doctors have confirmed that the 78-year-old leader suffered a broken left knee and a hairline fracture in his left arm. Less than a minute after his fall, Castro appeared on national television saying he'd recover as fast.
SANCHEZ: Yes, I was watching that again. I don't know if we can roll that back. Notice there's nobody there to help break his fall, and the reason is, because of the security detail around him, they had no one sitting in the front two or three rows, there's no one there. So the first person who comes to him is like from the fourth row, who has to climb over those chairs to get to him. It's kind of a -- can we get it?
Here it is. Here it is. See, there's nobody there. See, everybody comes running from the fourth row, but someone could have helped break the fall if it hadn't been for the tight security, but they had nobody there, so.
KAGAN: There you go. Some nasty broken bones to recover.
SANCHEZ: He just didn't even know that step was there.
KAGAN: We have the second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY, which begins right now.
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