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American Morning

French Protests; Zacarias Moussaoui Trial; 'Sleepless in America'

Aired March 20, 2006 - 06:29   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's tell you the story out of Paris, where French protesters say they're going to give the government until tonight to back off that proposed labor law or risk a national strike and even bigger protests. Meanwhile, anywhere from 500,000 to 1.5 million protesters demonstrated across France on Saturday. The French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, says he's not giving in.
Let's get right to CNN's Chris Burns. He's live in Paris this morning.

Hey, Chris. Good morning.

CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Soledad.

It's painted all over the papers here, "Le Crise," "The Crisis." Mr. De Villepin is going to have to decide today whether he really does want to dig in his heels. And that's what we're hearing so far, that even despite these increasingly violent protests by students -- and also, labor unions also have been joining in some of those protests -- especially after that weekend, huge protests on Saturday, De Villepin, at least as of this morning, is digging in his heels and he's on a public relations offensive meeting with business leaders, with students, with unemployed, trying to make the point that this law is aimed at -- aimed at hiring a lot of youth back on the job because the youth unemployment in this country is about one out of four. And one out of two, 50 percent, in some of these areas where there were riots in the mainly immigrant areas last November.

So this is aimed at fighting that. Will that be enough by -- with this public relations offensive today to dissuade the unions from calling -- from not calling this general strike? We'll have to see this evening -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Hey, Chris, these pictures have been pretty dramatic, but not everybody agrees with the demonstrations. There are counter- protests, too, right?

BURNS: Well, absolutely. There was not -- certainly not as big as what we saw over the weekend, but there were hundreds of students who demonstrated in the heart of Paris yesterday demanding that the schools where there have been sit-ins for weeks now open up now. That students, the sit-in students pull out so they can go back to school and take their exams.

Their final exams are coming up. They want to get a job. And if you think about also the general public opinion, we look at some polls, more than 60 percent of the country is against this -- this first employment contract that loosens up the rules for up to two years allowing businesses to fire students without initial employers -- employment within two years, but that is certainly not going to appease a lot of people, especially the unions. We'll see tonight whether they do call the strike -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Yes, we sure will see.

Chris Burns for us this morning.

Chris, thanks -- John.

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: A CNN "Security Watch" now. The sentencing trial of al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui gets back on track this morning in Washington after a week in which the prosecution came perilously close to losing its death penalty case.

Here's CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The actions of government lawyer Carla Martin turned the sentencing trial for Zacarias Moussaoui upside down. She sent e-mails disclosing trial transcripts to aviation security witnesses who were scheduled to testify, and that violated the judge's order that witnesses not follow the case until after they had taken the stand.

Judge Leonie Brinkema was angry, calling in the witnesses one by one to see how much they were coached. The witnesses said Martin had no impact, but the judge said it was impossible to tell. She struck them all as tainted and said any mention of aviation security was banned from the trial.

Now, aviation security is crucial to the government's case. Prosecutors promise to show jurors that if Moussaoui had revealed his al Qaeda associates and their conspiracy to crash planes into buildings, then the government could have tightened airport screening and possibly stopped the September 11 attack.

Prosecutors asked the judge to reconsider. By Friday she did and agreed to a compromise. New aviation experts are allowed as long as they had no contact with Martin.

The trial now resumes where it left off, with the key FBI agent who arrested and interrogated Moussaoui four and a half years ago.

Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTS: Stay with CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

Now for a look at what else is making news this morning, let's go to Carol Costello, live in our newsroom.

Good morning, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, John.

Good morning to all of you.

A bombing in Baghdad as the war hits the three-year mark. A roadside bomb exploded in central Baghdad today. At least six killed, including two Iraqi police commandos.

In the meantime, Iraqi police have found more bodies in Baghdad. Nearly 190 bodies have been found over the past eight days.

There's fear thousands may have been left homeless by a powerful cyclone that ripped through the northeast coast of Australia. When it hit land, the winds were whipping at about 120 miles per hour. Heavy rains came right along with the wind.

Damage is said to be extensive. A dozen people have minor injuries.

Perhaps some signs of moving forward in the Middle East. Hamas has put together a list of possible cabinet picks for its new government. The list was submitted to Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. The militant group Hamas won a January 25 election by a landslide but is still trying to form a government.

Guess what, people? FEMA wants its money back. The agency is now sending out letters asking people to return funds they received by mistake. That could be up to 51,000 people.

FEMA says some of the claims were fraudulent and also owns up to paying some people twice, meaning it was FEMA's mistake. FEMA says a total of about $1.7 million people got assistance after hurricanes Rita, Katrina and Wilma.

And on a health note, get this: medical researchers are looking into whether a drug to treat Parkinson's could lead to compulsive gambling. It's all because of dopamine, which plays a role in the way the brain controls movement. But researchers stress this is all preliminary and there is no definitive link, but it -- but it's interesting.

A drug could cause compulsive gambling.

O'BRIEN: It's kind of strange, isn't it?

COSTELLO: It really is.

O'BRIEN: I guess we'll see. All right, Carol. Thank you.

Let's get a look at the forecast this morning. Chad's got that. He's at the CNN Center.

Happy spring, Chad. CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, later on today, at like 1:20 in the afternoon Eastern Time it turns into spring.

O'BRIEN: Oh, we still have time, then for everything to clear up.

MYERS: We still have time.

O'BRIEN: Good.

MYERS: It's still winter. Tell that to the people in Kansas. They know it's still winter.

(WEATHER REPORT)

Thanks, Chad. Appreciate it.

ROBERTS: Thanks, Chad.

Coming up, our series called "Sleepless in America." We'll take a look at the toll that all those sleepless nights are taking on your body.

O'BRIEN: Also, another sign of life in New Orleans. We're going to show you how Hollywood is helping the city get back on track.

ROBERTS: And later on, Andrea Yates gets a new trial while her ex-husband starts a brand new life with a brand new wife. The latest twist in the case ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Well, we're all so tired. There's a pretty good chance you just woke up. But once you go to sleep, the fact is that more Americans than ever aren't getting enough sleep. It affects the way we work, the way we interact, and even the way we think.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes a look this morning at our restless nation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): We live in a world where day and night no longer matter. We can work, play, eat, pretty much do anything we want around the clock. What we don't do enough of is sleep.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would say I average about six hours of sleep.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About four to six hours maybe.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably get four or five hours.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four or five hours.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm tired every day. Every -- every night I'm tired.

GUPTA: As a society, we are chronically sleep deprived, researchers say. Most of us need seven and a half to eight hours of sleep, but we're only getting an average of about six and a half during the week, a little more on weekends.

The shortfall doesn't go away. In fact, it builds. Researchers call this our sleep debt.

DAVID DINGES, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: Day after day living on reduced amounts of sleep you become more impaired, more dependent on caffeine, have more difficulty concentrating, at greater risk for falling asleep, more difficulty remembering, but you think you are doing fine.

The facility is set up to control those factors that typically influence sleep-wake behavior.

GUPTA: David Dinges runs the Sleep and Chronobiology Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. His lab deprives healthy people of sleep to see how they do.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The baby cried and upset her...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mother.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: George cannot believe his son stole a...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Quarter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Blue, red, green...

GUPTA: Stay up for 24 hours like this test subject and you are likely to perform as well as someone who has had a couple drinks.

Here's something else. Experiments show for the vast majority of people, sleeping six hours a night for a week will result in mental lapses and sleepiness as severe as if you had stayed up all night long. Long term, lack of sleep can have serious consequences on our health.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The less you sleep, the more likely you are to die of all causes or to have a heart attack or a stroke or have diabetes or to have weight gain.

GUPTA: Eye-opening problems that should make us all want to get a good night's sleep.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: All this week we're going to be examining America's changing sleep habits. Tomorrow, AMERICAN MORNING'S Dan Lothian takes a look at 24/7 America and its effect it's having on the way we sleep.

A nine to five lifestyle a thing of the past for many people. But is it a welcomed change?

We'll take a look at that.

ROBERTS: Still to come this morning, New Orleans gets a star turn on the big screen. We'll show you how Hollywood is helping out with the city's recovery.

And later on, three years after the invasion of Iraq, has a civil war really broken out? We'll talk with "TIME" magazine's Baghdad bureau chief.

That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MUSIC)

O'BRIEN: All right. Starting the morning with a little Stevie Wonder. And Spike's 49.

ROBERTS: Right. And you went to see his new movie.

O'BRIEN: I did.

ROBERTS: Yes.

O'BRIEN: "Inside Man." Thumbs up. Loved it.

ROBERTS: Good flick?

O'BRIEN: Yes.

ROBERTS: As much as you saw.

O'BRIEN: We're talking to Spike tomorrow about his new movie.

ROBERTS: Right.

O'BRIEN: It's a real departure for him. It's an awesome movie. I loved it.

Let's first, though, talk about some of the stories making news. Carol's got that for us. She's in the newsroom.

Hello.

COSTELLO: Hello, Soledad.

Good morning to all of you.

President Bush marking the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion with a speech in Cleveland. He's expected to ask for patience and reflect on the sacrifice made by U.S. troops. After the speech, the president expected to take questions from the audience.

CNN will have live coverage of the president's address. It's set to get under way around 12:20 p.m. Eastern.

Critics of the war also turning out. Some 10,000 people protested in Portland, Oregon. The carried signs that read "Stop the war" and "Impeach the evildoer."

Peace activist mom Cindy Sheehan and rocker Michael Stipe of REM are heading a concert-rally in New York City. Bring Them Home Now is set for tonight.

The Zacarias Moussaoui trial resumes for the first time since last week's witness debacle. A government lawyer broke the rules by contacting some witnesses. Now that lawyer might be called to testify.

In the meantime, the FBI agent who arrested Moussaoui is expect on the stand for cross-examination. His testimony could send Moussaoui to death row.

Accusations flying. Closing arguments expected today in the plagiarism case involving Dan Brown's bestseller "The Da Vinci Code." Authors of a nonfiction book, "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail," claimed Brown lifted their plot. Brown and his wife admit they used the book but say they also used hundreds of other books and documents during their research.

We're live in London in the next hour of AMERICAN MORNING.

And happy first day of spring. It's time to shovel your driveway. A major snowstorm moving across the great plains. Oh, it's going to be a nasty commute.

Up to 15 inches of snow expected to fall from Nebraska to the Texas Panhandle.

I guess in the southern hemisphere, though, Chad, it won't be spring today. So let's just concentrate on that.

(WEATHER REPORT)

ROBERTS: All right, Chad. Thanks very much. Nice forecast for the first day of spring.

MYERS: Right.

ROBERTS: It seems like science fiction, but could it soon be science fact? What if you could beam your own image to another location, attend a meeting without actually being there?

Our own Miles O'Brien with another installation of "Welcome to the Future."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do get to work from home, but then I wind of having to leave for days at a time. I work in a virtual company. Sure, it's cool that I'm always talking to my coworkers on the computer and being able to shoot instant messages out. But at the same time, there is something lacking about that.

To be able to effectively communicate you need to be able to see people's reactions. So it would be wonderful if I could just spin my chair around and suddenly be seeing everybody that I'm trying to communicate with. And so, if I could do that without traveling, then that would be fantastic.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So what if Phillip (ph) could beam himself to a meeting instead of having to travel to it? Is this the future, or has Phillip (ph) seen one too many movies?

(voice over): Hollywood has taken the hologram out of this world, like this scene from "Star Wars Episode III."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE, "STAR WARS EPISODE III": General Kenobi has made contact.

M. O'BRIEN: But how close is this to reality?

MICHAEL KLUG, CO-FOUNDER, ZEBRA IMAGING: The vision of "Star Wars" is something that can be achieved, but the means by which to achieve it will be -- will not be what's represented in the movies.

M. O'BRIEN: MIT grad and co-founder of Zebra Imaging, Michael Klug, has mastered the art of creating these larger-than-life holographic images. Boiled down, they are three-dimensional pictures projected with a pair of lasers. But Klug says interacting with these 3-D figures still presents a challenge.

KLUG: The hologram is not something that can occupy space without having some piece of film somewhere between your eye and the holographic image.

M. O'BRIEN: However, Klug believes we could still see a version of holographic virtual meetings come to life within the next decade.

KLUG: Once we get those basic technologies out and demonstrated, the sky is the limit.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTS: Coming up, a new twist in the Andrea Yates case. Her new trial set to start today, but over the weekend her ex-husband started a brand new life. We'll explain.

And later on, more on the third anniversary of the war in Iraq. A closer look at whether Iraq is really in the middle of a civil war.

Ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: A look now at some of the stories we're working on this morning.

Three years after the Iraq invasion the debate heats up over whether Iraq has fallen to civil war.

The Moussaoui sentencing trial resumes today.

Riot police are on alert in Paris.

A Category 5 cyclone slams into Australia.

And heavy rains lead to severe flooding in Texas. We're keeping an eye on the weather there. And here, as well.

ROBERTS: Well, Amazon.com is breaking into financial services with a little bit of help, and marketers are also phishing for female Web surfers.

Carrie Lee is "Minding Your Business" for you this morning.

Good morning, Carrie Lee.

CARRIE LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, John. Good morning to you.

Well, you know, when it comes to Amazon.com, it's all about partnerships. Fidelity and Amazon have now come together, and Amazon obviously an important platform for Fidelity with 55 million active customers.

What this basically means is that in Amazon's 32 categories, if you go to the financial services link, Fidelity is the only option that comes up. So good -- good tool for Fidelity to get in there and try to get more people.

ROBERTS: And what about this phishing expedition?

LEE: This is very interesting.

Now, you know how the Web and television are coming together? Well, they are trying to get more and more creative when it comes to marketing commercials. So a couple of unique ideas here.

First of all, Dove, the soap company, has recently launched some online two-minute vignettes that star Felicity Huffman -- here's a look at one of them -- of "Desperate Housewives," putting her basically superimposed into some classic television shows.

There she is in the middle of "The Brady Bunch," right next to Florence Henderson.

And then there's another one here. And this is my personal favorite from brushwithromance.com. This is from the folks at Oral-B, the toothpaste company, with a soap opera site.

You go to the Web site, you put your own name in. You pick your romance partner. I picked Fabio -- and here you go, your own -- your own individual story line. Mine is called "Sensitive Stranger: Carrie Will Never Let Him Go."

S. O'BRIEN: Because they want you as a shopper or they want just women?

LEE: Kind of bringing the whole idea together. You know, games, fun, getting people involved online. Of course there is a tooth- brushing message in that one, but basically the whole idea of getting women on and playing around and having a good time.

S. O'BRIEN: Sure.

ROBERTS: Amazing.

S. O'BRIEN: Interesting.

LEE: We can always dream.

S. O'BRIEN: A Fabio girl?

LEE: There you go.

(LAUGHTER)

ROBERTS: Some dream that is.

S. O'BRIEN: Exactly.

LEE: Yes. There you go.

S. O'BRIEN: Thanks, Carrie.

LEE: OK.

S. O'BRIEN: As we approach the top of the hour, let's get a check of the forecast with Chad.

Good morning.

MYERS: Good morning, Soledad.

(WEATHER REPORT)

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