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CNN Live Today
Bomber Eric Rudolph To Face Victims in Court; Evicted Gaza Settlers Confront Uncertain Future
Aired August 22, 2005 - 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: Right now, at 30 minutes past the hour we focus back here in the U.S.
At any moment now a sentencing hearing is set to get under way for convicted serial bomber Eric Rudolph. His fate is sealed. A plea bargain spared him the threat of the death penalty. It assures him life in prison. But emotions may well overshadow the legalities. Rudolph's victims and their survivors will fill about 300 seats this morning.
Tony Harris is outside the federal courthouse to set the stage.
Tony, good morning.
TONY HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Daryn.
It probably be a standing-room only crowd in the courtroom building behind me if that were allowed. As you mentioned any moment now we believe the sentencing hearing for Eric Robert Rudolph will begin. It may be under way right now.
When it does get under ray Eric Robert Rudolph will receive multiple life sentences for his Atlanta area attacks, and then he will come face to face with some of his victims Atlanta-area victims, including value Fallon Stubbs. Fallon Stubbs was just 14 years old when one of Eric Robert Rudolph's bombs went off at Centennial Olympic Park, just a short distance from where we are right now. She was injured in the blast, but her mother, 44-year-old Alice Hawthorne, was killed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FALLON STUBBS, DAUGHTER OF ALICE HAWTHORNE: My main message is not gonna be of, you know, of hate and that I hate you and I feel like you've wronged me. It's just gonna be of a positive nature and to take this experience, learn from this experience and hopefully you can change who you are to, therefore influence other people, not to take the same road that you have.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: And, Daryn, once the hearing is complete, Eric Robert Rudolph will be transferred to the super max facility, which is the high security federal prison in Florence, Colorado -- Daryn.
KAGAN: Tony, with the long list of crimes, a lot of people wondering why and how did Eric Robert Rudolph escape the death penalty?
HARRIS: Well, that was in a plea agreement, as you know, that was struck with the federal government at the time. What Eric Rudolph says is that in entering the plea agreement, he denied the federal government of its true goal, which was to have him convicted and sentenced to death. So that was part of, at least, his motivation for entering in the plea agreement.
KAGAN: All right. Tony Harris live in downtown Atlanta. Thank you.
We're also hearing for the first time from Eric Rudolph's mother. She sat down for an exclusive interview with CNN's Rick Sanchez.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RICK SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Were you as fascinated as the rest of us to hear how Eric was able to survive in the mountains for such a long period of time?
PAT RUDOLPH, ERIC RUDOLPH'S MOTHER: Yes. It's very interesting, you know, that he knew how to do all this. And I'm sure a lot of it he didn't know, he just improvised as he went along. I don't see him as a monster. I don't think I could.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: You can see more of that exclusive interview with his mother tonight on "Anderson Cooper 360," 7:00 Eastern, 4:00 Pacific here on CNN.
Now a look at our dock today and a look at legal briefs. Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa will be able to confront the man who allegedly ordered a hit on him. Sliwa is expected to testify today in the racketeering trial of John Jr. Gotti. Thirteen years ago Sliwa was shot in a botched hit. Prosecutors say Sliwa's criticism of Gotti's father prompted Jr. to order that attack.
A Philadelphia man is to be arraigned today on murder charges in connection with the death of his ex-girlfriend and unborn child. The body of Latoya Figueroa was found Saturday in a wooded lot. She had been missing for more than a month.
Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad was transferred to a Maryland prison today to face charges in that state. Muhammad has already been sentenced to death for the shooting in Manassas, Virginia. Muhammad and Lee Malvo will face a single trial in Maryland for the killing of six people there.
The final Jewish settlement in Gaza is being cleared right now. Netzarim had been one of the hard-line settlements over the years, but the settlers appeared resigned to their fate today. There was no violence. The remaining settlers were put on buses. There are still two Jewish settlements in the West Bank to be cleared. The settlements will be torn down and military posts removed before the land is headed over to the Palestinians. Many in the thousands of evicted settlers had nowhere to go. The Israeli government is paying to put those people up in hotels, but just temporarily.
As our CNN's Paula Hancocks reports, the now homeless settlers are feeling both anger and confusion.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Jerusalem Hotel lobby, with more settlers than paying guests. A scene playing out in many hotels across Israel. The government has rented 2,000 hotel rooms to house the settlers for 10 days at least. Most of these families have been here since last Wednesday. Meir Moller says he has no idea where he and his family will be next Wednesday.
MEIR MOLLER, NEVE DEKALIM SETTLER: At the end of the week, we will be thrown out of the hotel and we don't know where we will be. So our situation is a situation of great doubt, and of great confusion.
HANCOCKS: Moller has been in Israel for 40 years and moved to the Neve Dekalim settlement seven years ago with his wife and daughter. He says it is a close-knit community, many of whom are now in the same hotel as him, but no guarantees from the government it would keep the community together.
MOLLER: We actually have very good food here. It's wonderful. But when you eat something very good and you know that a week later you don't know where to go, then you can't enjoy even the food you eat. You're can't enjoy the room's you're in.
It's a kind of a grotesque situation in which we're provided with a so-called vacation, so to speak, but on the other hand you know that five days later our future looks very obscure.
I lost my house. I lost my job. My daughter doesn't know in which school she's going to learn. This is a very bad situation.
HANCOCKS: The family has just one suitcase of clothes. They refused to pack before the evacuation, just like many other settlers refusing to accept that it would happen. Moller even believes his family will live in Neve Dekalim again in the future. His wife Rachel is less willing to speculate.
RACHEL MOLLER, NEVE DEKALIM SETTLER: I feel really confused and I try not to think about it.
HANCOCKS: Some 8,500 settlers will have been evacuated by the end of the pullout. So many of them now living in hotel rooms are angry at the government for not sufficiently planning for the days after the pullout.
Paula Hancocks, CNN, Jerusalem.
(END VIDEOTAPE) KAGAN: To California now, a commencement ceremony after more than a half century of waiting. Nearly 60 Japanese-Americans interned during World War II received their high school diplomas yesterday. A new California law allows school districts to give diplomas to students who were held in internment camps. More than 400 people have received diplomas through the program.
As one graduate said yesterday, some may consider a diploma just a piece of paper, but to him it is a symbol. Congratulations to them.
Still to come on CNN LIVE TODAY, Northwest Airlines faces its third day of standoff from some workers. How the strike is affecting travel, coming up next.
And is gassing up starting to get a bit too expensive for your pocket? Find out how a can of cooking oil can go a long way.
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(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)
KAGAN: Talking about a different type of transportation, are you tired of the gas prices? Well, we're going to tell you how you can fill up for free. All it takes is a trip to your local fast food restaurant. Really. That story's just ahead.
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KAGAN: Well, deep sigh, another week, another record for gas prices. Triple A saying the national average for a gallon of unleaded self-serve regular is now $2.61 a gallon. Diesel is also at record level, $2.65 a gallon.
There's actually a bit of good news for motorists, when you take inflation into account, today's average price for unleaded regular would have to climb to more than $3 a gallon to match the record set back in 1981.
So, gas prices are rising each day. Some Americans have now turned to alternative fuels to power their vehicles. Take, for example, a man in upstate New York trying something that might make your mouth water as your drive down the highway. He has recycled cooking oil.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The best seafood anywhere outside New York City. Oysters are really good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Primarily they come from the fresh fish. Some people do take doggy bags home with them. We have people who come through and take our used frying oil.
PETE HEALEY, GREASE CAR DRIVER: Canaletto's (ph) has some of the best oil around. This kind of oil is not conflict oil. It's diesel is petroleum based and most of it comes from the Middle East and other place where's there seems to be nothing but conflict these days. And this doesn't. This comes from the back of a local restaurant and it's kind of recycling at its best.
You can come here and pick up your order to go. And then bring it home, filter it and put it in your tank and use it. Diesel oil is thin at normal temperatures. And if you heat vegetable oils to 150 degrees, that oil is thin enough to explode in a similar fashion to diesel fuel.
Liquid gold, almost $3 a gallon. I'm pouring this five gallon jug of oil that I got from the back of restaurant through a filter into this barrel. And it then will be ready to pour directly into my grease tank in the trunk of my car and use as fuel.
Took me five minutes to collect it. It will take five or 10 minutes to filter it, and I'll pump it into my tank. And I won't reach into my wallet once.
There are two tank now in this car. There is one tank that came with the car that's used for diesel fuel. And this is an alternative tank for the oil.
We're driving on vegetable oil at the moment. Everyone notices the smell of French fries first, and they ask questions about it. And I get to explain how vegetable oil, used by restaurants, ended up in my fuel tank.
I love saving money. And I do really like the fact that it's giving us at least a partial solution to the problem of conflict oil and Middle East fuel.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: Well, experts say that vegetable oil is much cleaner, safer and less expensive fuel than petroleum-based products.
Whenever we talk about oil the focus always seems to be on the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, but most of America's oil actually comes from Canada. One part of Northwest Canada, in particular, has vast amounts of oil that are nowhere near running dry. Here now are facts on that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN (voice over): Alberta's oil sands are believed by some to be the largest single oil reserve in the world. More than 1.5 trillion barrels of oil are estimated to be there. Mixed in with the sand, water, and clay in the area, roughly the size of Florida, extracting the oil from the sand, though, is not easy.
And with current technology, officials realistically expect only about 335 billion barrels of oil is actually recoverable. At current production rates, reserves of the oil sands should last at least another 400 years.
To keep things in perspective, though, if the oil sands were the U.S.'s only source of oil -- American cars and trucks could burn through the entire reserve in just about 40 years.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: Let's go ahead and take a look at this time around the world. It's 6:50 in Baghdad, where it looks like lawmakers are making some progress on a draft of the constitution with that deadline looming.
Back here in the states, it is 10:50, in Boston, where things got a bit hot and steamy last night at Fenway Park, stay with us. We're back with a quick check of your morning forecast.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: Let's take a look at stories making news coast to coast. Close call in the skies over Chicago -- actually we will get to the Tango story in just a minute --there we go. There's our right picture.
Looking at the highlighted area there. You're gonna see a four- foot long missile fall from an F-16. Two jets apparently touched by -- they were touched in a performance by the Air Force Thunderbirds. No one was hurt. The ground show is grounded until an investigation is completed.
Another mid-air mishap for you. This hang glider spent more than two hours dangling from power lines. It is north of Great Falls, Montana. The flier was suspended upside-down for 100 feet off the ground until crews were able to bring him down.
Boston's Fenway Stadium, the Rolling Stones kicking off their latest North American tour. The graying rockers are all nearing retirement age, but they are showing no sign of rust. Two-hour set featured 40 years of songs.
All right, now on to the -- well, we'll try again. Now on to the Tango. It is sultry and hypnotic. And the Tango is hugely popular in Buenos Aires. That is where Argentines say it was first danced 125 years ago.
CNN Carolina Cayazzo takes us now to the Third Annual Tango Championship.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CAROLINA CAYAZZO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): They didn't win any prize here but Ana and Fabio are indeed celebrating, winning the semifinal competition in Australian enables them to participate in the Third World Tango Championship in Buenos Aires.
ANA ANDRE, TANGO DANCER: In Australia, it's still growing. It's still quite a small community, but just for what it does for Tango around the world is really special and just to see, like over 6,000 people here tonight, it's got to do something.
CAYAZZO: This couple from Japan, won the second place in the stage Tango category.
I feel very happy, she says. And the champions took home a prize of around $1700 and a two-month contract in Japan. They are Argentineans.
We are very happy. We didn't expect it, she says.
Fifteen couples from Asia to Latin America were competing for the three winning places, according to one viewer (ph), that's easy to understand. Junior Cervila says the essence of tango is universal.
JUNIOR CERVILA, CONTEST JUDGE: I think that Tango is, as I said, it's feeling. So feeling is not Argentinean. So if a couple has that, doesn't have to be Argentinean, and that's what we saw tonight here.
CAYAZZO: A huge audience came to enjoy the show. Some of them were ready to get on the dancing floor just for fun.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, United States. I'm here for an exchange program. And I love tango. That's why I'm here. I'm very interested in the dance. It's very interesting to me.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I like the people that I meet when I dance tango. It's just a nice atmosphere.
CAYAZZO: Many said they'll be back next year. With their recent success of the American show "Dancing with the Stars" and the announcement of a rematch between the two finalists, interest in Tango dancing has never been hotter. Here in Buenos Aires, the locals want to take full advantage of this phenomenon and make sure that this city remains part in the very center of the tango craze. Carolina Cayazzo, CNN, Buenos Aires.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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