Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Today

Cow in Alabama Tests Positive for Mad Cow Disease; March Madness; Israeli Forces Raid Jericho Prison

Aired March 14, 2006 - 11:35   ET

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

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now on to our Daily Dose of health news, officials say tests confirm a third case of mad cow disease surfaced in the U.S. The Agriculture Department says a cow tested positive for the infection in Alabama. What does that mean to all of us?
Our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen here with some of the answers.

So if one cow has it, does it mean all the cows in Alabama?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: No. Because this is not a contagious disease. And that's something people really need to keep in mind. Just because one cow on the farm has mad cow disease -- scientific name, BSC -- it's not contagious. They didn't spread it to the other cows. What they need to do right now is trace back where did that cow get sick? It takes years and years for this disease to incubate.

Now unfortunately, this cow, it appears, was born before 1997. In 1997, the government put in a ban on the kind of feed that seems to cause this disease. In other words, cows eat contaminated feed. They get mad cow disease. Well, that feed isn't supposed to be used in this country, 1997 until now. However, this cow appears to have been born before 1997. So you might think, well, pretty simple, you try to trace it back to see if other cows were sick, you try to see if you can figure out what happened.

The problem is that it's very difficult to trace back a cow's life. Authorities have been talking about having a mandatory tracking and identification system for many years now, but they've never done it. So they may never know exactly what feed made this cow sick, and then they don't know how to find the other cows who might have also eaten this feed and might have also gotten sick.

KAGAN: Which brings me to my concern. When I first heard this story it was yesterday after eating a very nice marinated flank steak, thinking, oh, maybe that was not such a good idea. Do we need to stop eating red meat?

COHEN: No one is saying to stop eating red meat. The USDA, in fact, has said that the fact that they found this cow. This cow is what's called the downer cow. The cow had fallen down, so they tested it for mad cow disease, found they had it, killed it, buried it, never got in the food supply. They say this is a sign that the beef supply is safe, because they caught it. They kept it from actually getting into restaurants.

KAGAN: They caught that one.

COHEN: They caught that one. And some people say, what are they not catching. Because again, you can't trace back. You know that cow got the disease from something it ate.

KAGAN: It was hanging out with other cows that were eating the same stuff.

COHEN: And it's very, very hard to track back. And experts have told the USDA, you've got to get a tracking system to figure this out. They haven't done it in a mandatory way.

KAGAN: That makes yesterday's flank steak not taste quite as good.

Elizabeth, thank you.

There's some major news this morning about treating heart disease, the nation's number-one killer. A new studies by the makers of Crestor show that high doses of the cholesterol-lowering drug actually reduced the amount of artery-causing plaque. It's too soon to tell whether this adds that to fewer heart attacks. Some doctors are excited about the study's findings. They say it could signal a major breakthrough in actually reversing heart disease. Crestor has come under fire by a consumer group that claims the drug has more side effects than its competitors. The group say this study does not change its opinion.

A couple of hours ago, a group of hearing specialists met to discuss findings from a survey on iPods and other electronic devices. Turns out users may risk permanent hearing damage, especially if they listen at high volume and for long period of times.

Here's a fact check on what the American Speech Language Hearing Association found in its survey.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): New technologies may be giving American teen as head start on hearing loss. More than half of all teens in a new survey says they had experienced symptoms like ringing in their ears, or having to turn up the volume on radio or televisions. Could this be the result of too much time on the cell phone or with the iPod? There's no proof, but 82 percent of American teens say they use a cell phone regularly. That's slightly higher than the number of adult surveyed.

Students are also more than three times as likely as adults to listen to an iPod. Though, strangely, adults say they listen to their iPods for longer periods of time. More than 42 million iPods have been sold in the United States. That means almost one out of every seven Americans has one.

(END VIDEOTAPE) KAGAN: To get your Daily Dose of health news online, log on to our Web site. You'll find the latest medical news, a health library and information on diet and fitness. The address is CNN.com/health.

Put out your brackets and listen up, actually, you know what, don't even bother with your brackets, because we're going to give you the interesting stories behind the brackets. It is NCAA tourney time. John Feinstein joins us. Beyond just filling out your brackets, he's going to tell you some great stories that really are going to touch you. That's coming up just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Looking at live pictures. This is the West Bank. This is Jericho and the prison that a Israeli military force surrounded earlier. They were attacking it. There are six prisoners inside who they want. It appears that some other prisoners are leaving.

Let's go to our Guy Raz, who's on the phone from Jerusalem to tell us the latest about what's happening in Jericho -- Guy?

GUY RAZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, clearly what's happening right now is it appears as if this siege is beginning to wind down, perhaps. Of course, Israeli forces had raided this facility about 9:00 a.m. local time this morning, more than eight hours ago. Essentially, the Israeli government says in order to apprehend six wanted militants, including Ahmed Saadat, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Now, about 180 prisoners inside this jail had already given themselves up earlier today. They were not wanted by Israeli forces. They left voluntarily. But there are some 80 prisoners still inside of this facility, including, of course, those six wanted men. And we understand as many as 24 of those prisoners inside are injured. And as many as four people inside that prison have been killed, as well.

Now, as I say, the Israeli military had raided this complex earlier this morning. This is in the West Bank town of Jericho. It's a town under Palestinian Authority control. It's a jail, a prison, under Palestinian Authority control. And most of the prisoners inside are petty criminals, small-time thieves and so on who have been incarcerated and arrested by Palestinian officials and security forces.

Now, the six prisoners whom Israel is after have been incarcerated in that prison as a result of an international agreement that was brokered by the United States and the United Kingdom. And in that agreement, essentially U.K. and U.S. observers would have monitored that jail. When they withdrew earlier this morning, Israeli forces raided it and that raid continues as we speak.

KAGAN: All right, Guy, thank you. Guy Raz is in Jerusalem. In reaction to the Israeli attack on this prison, there were number of kidnappings across the Palestinian territories, including the abduction earlier of an American teacher in -- well, somewhere in the West Bank. And for more on that, let's go to our Elise Labott -- Elise.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN STATE DEPT. PRODUCER: Yes, Daryn. Well, this is an English professor, Douglas Johnson, at the American University in the West Bank town of Jenin. He was seized by militants when he was buying something from a street vendor. But our word from the State Department, several officials telling us the word they're getting from the consulate in Jerusalem is that he was freed hours later.

Now, I might point out that although this was a U.S. and British mission, joint mission that was taking place in Jericho, the State Deparment is saying that there were no U.S. monitors in the prison at this time. This is under British command, and apparently the monitors rotate in and out various U.S. and British officials there at any one time. three-point there were no American monitors there at this point.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, calling for calm, reached out to both Israelis and Palestinians this morning, also to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The U.S. saying they want to see this resolved as quickly and peacefully as possible -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Elise Labott on the phone. Thank you for the latest on that. So it appears that that American professor who was abducted earlier has been released, according to American officials.

We're going to take a break. We're back in just a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: A bunch of stories to update you on.

First of all, an American teacher has been freed in the West Bank after being abducted earlier today. This in reaction to an Israeli attack on a prison in Jericho. Douglas Johnson, a professor at American University in the West Bank, we hear from American officials, has now been freed.

Here in the U.S., President Bush in Rochester, New York, today. He is talking about Medicare prescription drug coverage. Getting started a little bit early. The president was supposed to start talking about noon Eastern. We'll hear more later about what the president had to say.

And then south of there in Annapolis, Maryland, big problem with a barge that got away. Basically, a runaway barge. It ran into the bridge of State Route 50. There you see it. And that has authorities concern about whether or not the integrity of the bridge can hold up all the traffic that goes back and forth against -- up across that bridge. So they've closed the bridge, so traffic's tied up for miles in either way. And this is one of the bridges that takes you from Annapolis into the Washington D.C. area.

OK. We'll lighten things up a little bit. Are people around your office, are they running around with these, brackets? Basically you either have the fever for the NCAA basketball tournament, which opens tonight in Dayton, Ohio, by the way, or you don't. The ball bounces until April 3rd when the national champion is crowned in Indianapolis.

John Feinstein is author of "Last Dance: Behind the Scenes of the Final Four" joins me from Washington this morning.

Good thing you weren't coming from in Annapolis, John.

JOHN FEINSTEIN, AUTHOR, "THE LAST DANCE": You're not kidding, Daryn, because you would have an empty chair here if I was coming from there.

KAGAN: You know what, we would tack track you down on the phone; you don't get away that easily.

OK, some people getting this. Billions of dollars in wasted productivity in offices in America. Some people their eyes glaze over. That's who we're talking to today. I want to get behind some of the great stories behind the brackets, not just a bunch of teams.

Now I want to talk about a couple of schools in particular. First of all, Bucknell, what can you tell us about them and the key young men on that team?

FEINSTEIN: Well, you know, three years Bucknell still wasn't giving basketball scholarships. And it was struggling in the middle of the Patriot League, and they made a decision to give scholarships, and not only won the Patriot League last year, but they were one of these Cinderella teams that we all looked for the first week of the tournament. That's what makes this such a big event to so many people. They beat Kansas, which was a number-three seed. And this year, they're back in the tournament.

And the two kids who are their leaders, Charles Lee and Kevin Bettencourt, were both non-scholarship players, Daryn, when they first came to Bucknell. They couldn't get scholarships from Division I teams. In fact, Bettencourt wanted to go to Holy Cross where his brother had played, and they didn't have a scholarship for him. So they were both all league players this year, and Charles Lee was player of the year in the Patriot League, the kind of team I always root for.

KAGAN: Yes, kids who really want to play the game...

FEINSTEIN: Exactly.

KAGAN: especially in this day and age when you hear about all the corruption in amateur sports, and kids who love the school and want to play.

Another school that people are surprised is there in Belmont in Nashville. The Bruins will be playing the UCLA Bruins.

FEINSTEIN: Right. It's the Bruins versus the Bruins, but one group is far more famous. Of course, UCLA, won more national championships than anybody with 11, 10 of them under the great John Wooden. And this is Belmont's first trip to the NCAA tournament. And most people think they're a racetrack, but they're not; they're a college, as you said, in Nashville. And they won their league -- and they get to play, they're a 15th seed. They get to play a number-two seed. There have been four times in the history of the tournament when a 15th seed has won a first-round game.

KAGAN: It can happen.

FEINSTEIN: So it's not impossible, although the 15th seed I'm looking at is Winthrop, which is going to play Tennessee in the first round in Greensboro. They're a team that's been in the tournament five of the last seven years, one of those teams that wins their one- bid league, and the one-bid leads to me are so much a part of this event and the magic of it.

KAGAN: What does it mean to a school of that size to get an opportunity like this, even if they only play one game?

FEINSTEIN: Well, it means a lot financially, first of all. You get $164,000 just for getting into the tournament.

KAGAN: I'll take that.

FEINSTEIN: But if you look historically at schools, whether they're schools like Winthrop and Belmont, or schools like Duke and North Carolina, the power schools, admissions go up, endowment money goes up, contributions from boosters go up, licensing goes up. That's one of the big controversial issues, that the schools sell player uniforms with their names on it. How many J.J. Redick uniforms are there floating around the country? J.J. Redick doesn't see a nickel of it.

Now fortunately next year he'll be a very wealthy young man and playing for the NBA. But most of the kids who play for all the schools, whether they're the big name schools or the little schools, aren't going to play professional basketball, and they never see a nickel of these billions of dollars that are being made off of this tournament.

KAGAN: OK, we want to talk about the stories, but I have to put you on the spot here. Who do you think is going to win it all?

FEINSTEIN: Well, Connecticut is the best team, Daryn. They have the depth. They have the experience. They have a hall of fame coach in Jim Calhoun. But that doesn't mean they win, because in one-and- out anything can happen. I mean, when you talk about why this event has become so huge, you talk about Villanova beating Georgetown. You talk about N.C. State, Jim Valvano's famous sprint, beating Houston. Those are the -- that's the reason this event is different from so many others.

But Connecticut has the best basketball team.

KAGAN: Any given game, it can go either way. It's a lot of fun to watch, and fun to watch it with you. John Feinstein. Thanks, John, good to see you.

FEINSTEIN: Thanks, Daryn.

KAGAN: The book is called "The Last Dance."

FEINSTEIN: If you're watching your waistline, turns out you might want to avoid a popular sleep aid. We'll tell you why, coming up LIVE TODAY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MARKET REPORT)

KAGAN: I'm Daryn Kagan. International news is up next. Stay tuned for YOUR WORLD TODAY. And I'll be back with the latest headlines from the U.S. in 20 minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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