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Tornadoes Kill Dozens of People in Midwest; Spam Sleuth Brings Major Junk E-Mailer to Justice; Interview With Mike Enzi

Aired May 10, 2003 - 15:00   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.


FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, HOST: NEXT@CNN begins right now.
Among the stories coming up on NEXT@CNN, it's been a wild week for tornadoes with dozens of people killed and a wide swath across the Midwest and Southeast. We'll get some insight on what's going on and whether it's really that unusual.

Also, we'll talk to a spam sleuth who brought a major junk e- mailer to justice.

And we'll take you to the world's biggest model rocket contest.

The National Weather Service says this was likely the most intense week ever for tornadic activity in the U.S. since record keeping began in 1950. Starting last Sunday, so-called supercell thunderstorms have swept across the midsection of the country, generating nearly 300 tornadoes that have that killed more than 40 people, and it's not over yet.

Joining us now for more on today's twister outlook, plus a little tutorial on how they form, is CNN meteorologist Orelon Sydney. Orelon, what's the very latest?

ORELON SYDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, the latest is we continue to see tornado warnings in a couple of very volatile areas. We have two tornado watch boxes there, called particularly dangerous situations by the Storm Prediction Center. And that means that you could see very strong thunderstorms with violent tornadoes -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right, thanks very much, Orelon. We'll be checking again with you in a moment.

We want to take you now to Jerusalem, where U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is stepping up to the mike momentarily. He's meeting with the Israeli Foreign Minister Shalom there. Let's listen in to Jerusalem.

(INTERRUPTED FOR COVERAGE OF LIVE EVENT)

WHITFIELD: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: It's been an intense week of tornadic activity in a good part of the nation all week. And Orelon Sydney has been keeping a close watch on it and trying to help us understand why it's been happening the way it is. And it seems as though Oklahoma has been hit twice in as many days, hitting them really hard.

SYDNEY: That's right. In fact, we've had a tornado warning somewhere every day of this week since last Sunday. And tomorrow, we'll continue to do this again. We're going to take this whole thing and pick it up and take it over to the mid-Atlantic. I'll show you that in a moment.

We continue now with two particularly dangerous situation tornado watches in effect for parts of Oklahoma, stretching northward into northern Missouri. We also have some watches out to the east. This particular watch box now has expired. The watch box two and three continue in effect. And we continue also to have heavy rain, especially around Cincinnati, and flash flood watches are in effect for really this entire area. Anywhere you see it raining, there pretty much is flash flooding possible, and some already in progress across the region.

A new watch box has just now been issued as well, and this one is going to be down into parts of North Carolina and Virginia. That will be in effect until 9:00 p.m. tonight. It looks like we'll continue to see tornado possibilities here, not quite on the map yet. We haven't gotten it. But if I had to look at it, I'd say it will probably be about somewhere about through here. And tomorrow, we're also going to find severe thunderstorms working their way towards the Delmarva, and then continuing up into New England.

The cold front system causing all of the problems pushes its way south and eastward. Thunderstorms should not be severe along the Gulf Coast, but right up through Philadelphia, Baltimore, down towards Washington, D.C., there's a good chance for continued severe thunderstorms. Temperatures very, very warm ahead of this. St. Louis, 84 today. Look what happens tomorrow. Behind the cold front, dropping off into the 60s -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: And Orelon, when we talk about severe, potentially severe weather in that Delmarva area of Pennsylvania, et cetera, are we talking about tornadic activity that could make its way there as well?

SYDNEY: It's certainly possible. The Storm Prediction Center originally just had a slight risk for that area tomorrow. They've upgraded that now to a moderate risk, and that's what we've seen throughout all of this week, being continually upgraded from one level of threat to another level. The high threat, of course, is the highest, and we see that now across just about all of the Midwest and the plains today.

WHITFIELD: All right, Orelon Sydney, thank you very much.

Well, coming up, we'll go live to Oklahoma City, one of the several places that Orelon has been talking about, bearing the brunt of this wild week of tornadoes. And if you hate spam, you'll love our next guest. She's busted a spammer that sent more than 800 million e-mails in one year. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The second tornado in as many days swept through the Oklahoma City area last night. One person was seriously injured, but no one was killed. Damage is heavy, though, and the president has declared Oklahoma a federal disaster area. Brian Cabell joins us now from the suburb of Bethany, Oklahoma, where residents are starting to pick up the pieces. And Brian, what is the situation there right now?

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'll tell you, Fredricka, it's another day of cleanup here in the Oklahoma City area, another day of hope, hope that the tornadoes will finally give them a break. This was the second one, of course, in the last two days.

The one that hit last night around 10:00 not nearly as severe as the one that hit on Thursday. But it was severe enough -- take a look behind me, as a matter of fact. This is Gene's Mower Sales and Service. What you're looking at was the showroom of Gene's Mower Sales and Service. About 80 percent of the building is now gone. It was made of cinder blocks, it was made of bricks, it had a steel roof. That roof is about 100 yards down the road or so.

Gene got here, Gene Wilson, by name, got here shortly after the building came down last night. And he said when he got down here, people were already here ready to help out, ready to help him clean up, ready to salvage things.

And they did manage to salvage most of the stuff, as a matter of fact. Take a look back here behind the "no parking" sign. Those are the go carts, those are the power mowers and other equipment that they managed to save out of the showroom, and he says there are some scratches, but for the most part he will be able to sell those and service those within the next week or so.

Amazingly, despite the demolition here, look next door at these homes, you got some broken windows, but for the most part, the houses fared very well in this Oklahoma City suburb. In fact, we talked to the governors office a little while ago. They said there is virtually no structural damage. We've seen a little bit, some roofs, but that's about it. No problem whatsoever.

Only seven injuries, according to the governor's staff, over -- because of last night's tornado.

Clean up here has been relatively quick. Take a look at the roads here. The roads already -- they are coming through. If you were here an hour ago, there would be no traffic on this road. If you looked over here about three hours ago, it was covered with debris. But the people have been out here, the officials have been out here cleaning up.

And that's what strikes you about this town. We've been here the last couple of days, is the resiliency, the fact that everybody has chipped in to help out. And the governor, we talked to him about an hour ago, he said that's the thing that strikes him as well, the resiliency of the Oklahomans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. BRAD HENRY, OKLAHOMA: Through the ravaged neighborhoods yesterday. And I talked to residents who totally lost their house and all of their personal possessions. And they were upbeat, they were in good humor, they were so thankful and happy that their families and their neighbors were safe.

It's amazing with all this devastation that there's been no loss of life attributable to the storm. And that's a testament to our preparedness in Oklahoma, our response teams did a great job. It's a testament to our meteorological technology, and our greet meteorologists that we have here in Oklahoma.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABELL: President Bush has, of course, now declared Oklahoma a disaster area. That means financial -- some funding will be coming in very shortly. That's much needed, and people here welcome that. But what they would welcome, especially, Fredricka, is some relief from mother nature.

WHITFIELD: No kidding. All right, thanks a lot, Brian Cabell. And of course, a lot of folks there are crediting some good early warning signs and that's why they believe the number of injuries was so low.

Well, ever wish you could track down the people who send all of that junk e-mail in your inbox? From Mary Youngblood, an investigator with Earthlink, going after spammers is a big part of her job and she just reeled in a big, very big catch.

And Mary, good to see you. Thanks for being here.

MARY YOUNGBLOOD, EARTHLINK: Thank you very much.

WHITFIELD: When I say big catch, we're talking about this Buffalo spammer. What is that?

YOUNGBLOOD: Buffalo spammer is a spam ring that we believe originates out of Buffalo, New York. And this is a person and with his accomplices that have sent millions and millions of junk e-mails to Internet users all over the world.

WHITFIELD: And what's the technique? Is there a particular specialty of this Buffalo spammer, able to infiltrate more inboxes than any of the others because of any particular technological advantage?

YOUNGBLOOD: Well, I think he uses software that a lot of spammers use, but this particular spammer in general was very, very vigilant and very, very egregious with his actions. He would forge people's from lines and he would sign up accounts with stolen credit card information, and he just didn't stop, whereas 99 percent of the spammers, when we go after them, they usually stop.

WHITFIELD: You spend a lot of your time looking for spammers. How do you go about trying to pinpoint who they are, where they are and how they are able to cause so much frustration?

YOUNGBLOOD: That's a good question. What we do is we study the spammers and we learn their patterns. Many of them use the same type of user names and passwords. They send the same exact spams over and over again. And they'll make miner changes to them to try to get around your filters. But we study their patterns. And once we learn their patterns, then we can look for them before they start spamming. We can see them when they just get on the Internet, and we can get them after 10 seconds of being on the Internet and have their account canceled and have them knocked offline.

WHITFIELD: So most of us recreational users would have to rely on people like you to help filter out some of these spammers, or is there anything that we can do as consumers to try to cut down on the spam that ends up in our inboxes?

YOUNGBLOOD: Well, getting them reported is the most important thing that end users can do. They learn how to read e-mail headers, and there is some secret information inside e-mail that lets you see where the actual origins of the e-mail coming from. Consumers can learn more about that online. They can also choose user names that won't get generated by spammers, user names that are more intricate and detailed, with numbers in the middle of them instead of just their first name at their domain name. So there are certain things that users can do to avoid spam, and then if they do get it, to report it to the correct network, so that network can take action on the spammer.

WHITFIELD: Does it seem like some users are more apt to get more spam than others?

YOUNGBLOOD: Yes. Like I said, with the user name. If you have your first name at earthlink.net or at AOL or at MSN, chances are you are going to get targeted by spammers, whereas if you have a complicated user name, they won't generate it and you shouldn't see. I have friends that have followed my instruction and have never received a single spam.

WHITFIELD: All right. Well, thanks very much, and hopefully -- or it would be nice if many of us who feel very frustrated by it, there's a day in which there will be a limited number of spams that end up in our inboxes.

YOUNGBLOOD: Well, those of us out there that are fighting this war, doing everything we can to keep junk mail out of everyone's users -- out of everyone's inboxes.

WHITFIELD: Because I don't think anybody welcomes it.

YOUNGBLOOD: No one likes it. I've never heard anyone ask for it.

WHITFIELD: All right, thanks a lot, Mary. Good to see you.

YOUNGBLOOD: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Well, coming up in our next half hour, just how much harm did veterans suffer after being exposed to radiation during nuclear tests in the 40s and the 50s? And we'll go live to the world's largest model rocket contest and find out what model rockets have to do with homeland security.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The U.S. government may have vastly underestimated the radiation some servicemen were exposed to during nuclear tests in the 40s, 50s and 60s. The medical claim of a lot of veterans may now be reopened. CNN's Kathleen Koch joins us now from Washington with the details. Kathleen, what do you have?

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Fredricka, it is truly astonishing revelation, and it's got a lot of veterans around the country saying, we told you so. These are veterans who believe that they were essentially used as guinea pigs by their very own government.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three, two, one, fire.

KOCH (voice-over): Nuclear test blasts emitting deadly radiation watched during the 40s, 50s and 60s by nearly 400,000 servicemen. Ken Kendall (ph) was an Army corporal stationed in the Nevada desert.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When the explosions would go off, the shock waves came towards us. We could watch it come across the desert floor, and it went underneath our feet. It was like an earthquake going underneath our feet, and it was raised in a cloud of dust four to five feet up in the air.

KOCH: Some developed cancers and were compensated, but many others were turned down, because the military said their exposure was too low to have caused their illnesses. Now, a scientific panel has found the Pentagon underestimated the amount of radiation many of the servicemen received.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For example, was it gamma exposure? In those cases, it may be a factor of two or three too low. Neutrons may be three to five too low. In the case of inhalation, which would have only affected a small number of the veterans, those could be underestimated by factors of 10 to 100.

KOCH: A study insists the correct levels would still be too low to cause most cancers, but other experts say the inhalation cases are serious.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The dosage is 10 or 100 times higher, and the uncertainty are that big that those exposures would often be comparable or in the same range as received by many Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors.

KOCH: Veterans' attorneys charge the government underestimated to avoid paying damages.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We believe it's deliberate. It's hard to see how it could be otherwise.

KOCH: But the report blames the low estimates on the fact that many servicemen didn't wear or weren't giving film badges that registered their exposure. And questionable assumptions were made about where the men were and for how long. The Veterans Administration says it will now reexamine the cases of 18,000 veterans it had denied compensation, but it's unclear how many are still alive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of that takes time, a little bit cumbersome. But the fact is, as we do it, we will be looking specifically at the veteran, what we can do, if we can make sure that he gets the advantage of the doubt.

KOCH: Kendall (ph), who has chronic skin problems he believes were caused by radiation exposure, says veterans deserve at least that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I love my country. I think it's the greatest country in the world, but we have been used and lied to.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOCH: The question now is time, because it can take years for the Veterans Administration, other defense agencies to decide just which veterans now should be compensated for their illnesses. And the fear is that few of the men will be left alive by the time the government sorts all this out -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right, it's just the beginning. Thanks very much, Kathleen Koch.

Well, still ahead on NEXT, we'll talk to a scientific sleuth about a novel approach of tracking how diseases spread around the world.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Two very different sciences, geography and medicine, are turning out to be the ying and yang needed to help track infectious diseases. Medical geographers are helping to find clues in dealing with fast-spreading diseases like SARS. Joining us now from Dallas, University of North Texas geography professor, Joseph Oppong. Good to see you, professor.

JOSEPH OPPONG, MEDICAL GEOGRAPHER: Good to see you.

WHITFIELD: OK. Well, this technique has been around, the technique of mapping in the use of medicine. But what makes it so much more sophisticated these days?

OPPONG: With what we call geographic information systems, we are able to map the spread of disease. Geographers have been mapping phenomena for a long time. And applied to the disease, we are simply tracking where the disease is carrying, why it is occurring there, not somewhere else. So we are able to show the special patterns, the special variation of that particular disease.

WHITFIELD: Well, in order to have accurate mapping, don't you also need an accurate source on finding out where the disease is? Already, we've seen that there's been some level of dishonesty coming out of China. So how has that deterred any real accurate mapping, or been a hurdle?

OPPONG: Clearly, the accuracy -- as you say correctly, the accuracy of your information, of the data you have determines the accuracy of your map. If the data that your map is based on is inaccurate, your map is going to be inaccurate. You're simply representing what you have in your data.

In the United States, we have a difficult problem with confidentiality. The more accurate information you have, the better your representation of that. And so, we are able to show the information, only insofar as we have accurate data for it, yes.

WHITFIELD: So if you know then going into it that there's going to be some margin of error, then how confident can anyone feel about the mapping that is taking place?

OPPONG: You clearly can factor that margin of error into it. If you know that your data is 90 percent accurate, you can use that -- that information in projecting what the pattern is, actually, because you have a sample, and that sample helps you to then focus on what, in fact, is a pattern out there.

WHITFIELD: Say, in the case of the West Nile virus, how was the mapping used to help scientists and doctors able to pinpoint some of the real target areas, or the fact that the migratory -- the birds and the migration of the birds was, in fact, related to the cases of reported West Nile?

OPPONG: See, that is very, very interesting. You find the ecological circumstances within which these birds migrate, and if you can produce a map of the migration patterns of these birds, then you can relate that also to the geography of the diseases. And after you relate the two of them, you can see what patterns there are.

In fact, the fascinating thing is that maps stimulate the formulation of a hypothesis about what could be causing a disease, how that disease could be spreading. We're able to visualize that disease problem in context of where it is, why it is there, and we can be able to maybe think about issues that we were not able to think about otherwise.

WHITFIELD: Is that why it's been important to be able to determine the connection or be able to try to discern the connection between, say, Hong Kong and Toronto, since that's where we're seeing the most cases of SARS being reported?

OPPONG: In fact, the SARS issue brings geography, the contribution of geography to disease into very, very interesting focus. For us, geographers, this SARS thing here has shown what we expect. There's nothing surprising to the geographer. There is a principle we call special interaction. It says that places that interact a lot, for various reasons, would have similar characteristics.

For example, why doesn't occur first in Toronto, in Hong Kong, and then interaction with Toronto. Canada has a big population of Hong Kong people who migrated to Canada, and therefore there is a lot of interaction between Canada. And when immigrants move, they not only move with their culture, they also move with their disease patterns that occur in their specific communities. So the interaction, the close relationship between Hong Kong and China and Canada then translates into this disease.

In other words, one of the things that is coming, as we think about SARS, is that there are no local diseases. Every time I talk about it, I want that to be clear, there are no local diseases. In a world where there's so much travel, diseases in Hong Kong can be in the United States or in Canada in this present situation the next day.

WHITFIELD: OK, professor...

OPPONG: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

WHITFIELD: Professor Joseph Oppong, thank you very much for joining us. Appreciate it. Very interesting.

OPPONG: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Well, more on SARS in this next news recap. Animals at the Beijing zoo are getting extra vitamins and Chinese medicine to protect them from the SARS virus. Zoo keepers say the vitamins are designed to boost the immune system, and so far they appear to be working. No cases of SARS have turned up in animals or humans at the zoo. Something for everyone to learn there.

Well, scientists have discovered a new species of jellyfish that has arms rather than tentacles. It is reddish and about a yard wide, hence the name, Big Red, and they found 23 of the creatures off San Francisco, Hawaii, Japan and Mexico. And that's about all scientists know about Big Red so far. They don't know what it eats, how it reproduced, or even if the samples they have found are a male or female.

When we come back, we'll find out why top NASA officials and at least one senator turned out today to watch high school kids fire off rockets. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Well, it may not be brain surgery, but it is rocket science. All day long, we've been bringing you images from the Team America Rocketry Challenge in Northern Virginia; 100 high school teams competing to build the perfect model rocket.

Joining us now is Senator Mike Enzi to talk about why some model rocketers are saying, Washington, we have a problem. Senator, what does this hobby have to do with homeland security? Why are you there?

SEN. MIKE ENZI (R), WYOMING: There's been an overreaction in Washington and people have become concerned about the possibility of explosives. I'm glad we're having this event today so that people can see that what these rocket modelers are working on is a fast burn, rather than an explosion. And there's a possibility that Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will ban APCP, which is the most usual rocket motor. It's a non-detonable rocket fuel that these people are using throughout the United States in rocket competitions.

Events like this really help kids to get involved in science in a hands-on way, and it will lead them into all of areas of science. So we are -- it's very important that we don't keep the rocket motors out of their hands. I have a bill, S-724, with nine co-sponsors, that we're trying to get done by May 24 to keep this hobby intact.

WHITFIELD: And you see that potentially the ATF might be in some way thwarting the learning process, the exploration of many of these kids who are out there now demonstrating their interest in rocket science?

ENZI: I think people have got to see the activity, the months of thought that had to go into these rockets and the hours of work to build them. It's led to a lot of different areas of science that they could develop in. And if we have this overreaction from ATF and it stops this, it will hurt the education of kids in America. This is the first year of this event. There were 900 teams across the United States that participated. I bet you next year, there will be two or three times that many that will participate, and 100 of them will wind up in the finals like this and get to demonstrate their skill and get some rewards for it.

WHITFIELD: Is your presence there or your participation really just a way of appealing to your constituents who in your state have made it very clear that they're not exactly excited about the ATF? It is a place in which people are very much advocates of the right to have guns, and that the ATF is an enemy, or an unsavory government agency to many of your constituents?

ENZI: No. It has nothing to do with that. I've had almost a lifelong interest in rockets. In 1958, I was part of an explorer post that sent up rockets. That was before there were the magazines or the books or the model shops or anything like that. We felt beaten by the Russians at that point in time. And we wanted to come back and have a better America than Russia had. And I think that the race to space has done that. And out of the race to space come so many different things that help us here on earth. People have heart transplants and open heart surgery. Some of those things would not have been possible without the race to space. We just don't even realize how far reaching it is.

And my main interest is in doing that, and hoping that next year, I can get a Wyoming team, at least a Wyoming team into the finals

WHITFIELD: OK, Senator Mike Enzi, thank you very much for joining us. Appreciate it. Enjoy the show out there.

ENZI: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: That's all we have time for today. But NEXT will be back tomorrow with another hour of news seen through the lens of science and technology.

Among the stories we'll be covering, a preview of the annual coming out party of the video game industry, a lowdown on what will be hot in next week's gaming trade show known as E-3. That story and more coming up tomorrow at 5:00 Eastern time, 2:00 Pacific. Hope you'll be watching, and thanks for joining us today.

Ahead on CNN, "CNN LIVE SATURDAY" coming up at the top of the hour. That's followed by "PEOPLE IN THE NEWS" at 5:00 Eastern time, with profiles of Osama bin Laden, and the number two man in the al Qaeda terrorist network, Ayman al-Zawahiri. And "CNN LIVE SATURDAY" is up at 6:00 Eastern. Join me again for that hour.

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Brings Major Junk E-Mailer to Justice; Interview With Mike Enzi>


Aired May 10, 2003 - 15:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, HOST: NEXT@CNN begins right now.
Among the stories coming up on NEXT@CNN, it's been a wild week for tornadoes with dozens of people killed and a wide swath across the Midwest and Southeast. We'll get some insight on what's going on and whether it's really that unusual.

Also, we'll talk to a spam sleuth who brought a major junk e- mailer to justice.

And we'll take you to the world's biggest model rocket contest.

The National Weather Service says this was likely the most intense week ever for tornadic activity in the U.S. since record keeping began in 1950. Starting last Sunday, so-called supercell thunderstorms have swept across the midsection of the country, generating nearly 300 tornadoes that have that killed more than 40 people, and it's not over yet.

Joining us now for more on today's twister outlook, plus a little tutorial on how they form, is CNN meteorologist Orelon Sydney. Orelon, what's the very latest?

ORELON SYDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, the latest is we continue to see tornado warnings in a couple of very volatile areas. We have two tornado watch boxes there, called particularly dangerous situations by the Storm Prediction Center. And that means that you could see very strong thunderstorms with violent tornadoes -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right, thanks very much, Orelon. We'll be checking again with you in a moment.

We want to take you now to Jerusalem, where U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is stepping up to the mike momentarily. He's meeting with the Israeli Foreign Minister Shalom there. Let's listen in to Jerusalem.

(INTERRUPTED FOR COVERAGE OF LIVE EVENT)

WHITFIELD: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: It's been an intense week of tornadic activity in a good part of the nation all week. And Orelon Sydney has been keeping a close watch on it and trying to help us understand why it's been happening the way it is. And it seems as though Oklahoma has been hit twice in as many days, hitting them really hard.

SYDNEY: That's right. In fact, we've had a tornado warning somewhere every day of this week since last Sunday. And tomorrow, we'll continue to do this again. We're going to take this whole thing and pick it up and take it over to the mid-Atlantic. I'll show you that in a moment.

We continue now with two particularly dangerous situation tornado watches in effect for parts of Oklahoma, stretching northward into northern Missouri. We also have some watches out to the east. This particular watch box now has expired. The watch box two and three continue in effect. And we continue also to have heavy rain, especially around Cincinnati, and flash flood watches are in effect for really this entire area. Anywhere you see it raining, there pretty much is flash flooding possible, and some already in progress across the region.

A new watch box has just now been issued as well, and this one is going to be down into parts of North Carolina and Virginia. That will be in effect until 9:00 p.m. tonight. It looks like we'll continue to see tornado possibilities here, not quite on the map yet. We haven't gotten it. But if I had to look at it, I'd say it will probably be about somewhere about through here. And tomorrow, we're also going to find severe thunderstorms working their way towards the Delmarva, and then continuing up into New England.

The cold front system causing all of the problems pushes its way south and eastward. Thunderstorms should not be severe along the Gulf Coast, but right up through Philadelphia, Baltimore, down towards Washington, D.C., there's a good chance for continued severe thunderstorms. Temperatures very, very warm ahead of this. St. Louis, 84 today. Look what happens tomorrow. Behind the cold front, dropping off into the 60s -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: And Orelon, when we talk about severe, potentially severe weather in that Delmarva area of Pennsylvania, et cetera, are we talking about tornadic activity that could make its way there as well?

SYDNEY: It's certainly possible. The Storm Prediction Center originally just had a slight risk for that area tomorrow. They've upgraded that now to a moderate risk, and that's what we've seen throughout all of this week, being continually upgraded from one level of threat to another level. The high threat, of course, is the highest, and we see that now across just about all of the Midwest and the plains today.

WHITFIELD: All right, Orelon Sydney, thank you very much.

Well, coming up, we'll go live to Oklahoma City, one of the several places that Orelon has been talking about, bearing the brunt of this wild week of tornadoes. And if you hate spam, you'll love our next guest. She's busted a spammer that sent more than 800 million e-mails in one year. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The second tornado in as many days swept through the Oklahoma City area last night. One person was seriously injured, but no one was killed. Damage is heavy, though, and the president has declared Oklahoma a federal disaster area. Brian Cabell joins us now from the suburb of Bethany, Oklahoma, where residents are starting to pick up the pieces. And Brian, what is the situation there right now?

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'll tell you, Fredricka, it's another day of cleanup here in the Oklahoma City area, another day of hope, hope that the tornadoes will finally give them a break. This was the second one, of course, in the last two days.

The one that hit last night around 10:00 not nearly as severe as the one that hit on Thursday. But it was severe enough -- take a look behind me, as a matter of fact. This is Gene's Mower Sales and Service. What you're looking at was the showroom of Gene's Mower Sales and Service. About 80 percent of the building is now gone. It was made of cinder blocks, it was made of bricks, it had a steel roof. That roof is about 100 yards down the road or so.

Gene got here, Gene Wilson, by name, got here shortly after the building came down last night. And he said when he got down here, people were already here ready to help out, ready to help him clean up, ready to salvage things.

And they did manage to salvage most of the stuff, as a matter of fact. Take a look back here behind the "no parking" sign. Those are the go carts, those are the power mowers and other equipment that they managed to save out of the showroom, and he says there are some scratches, but for the most part he will be able to sell those and service those within the next week or so.

Amazingly, despite the demolition here, look next door at these homes, you got some broken windows, but for the most part, the houses fared very well in this Oklahoma City suburb. In fact, we talked to the governors office a little while ago. They said there is virtually no structural damage. We've seen a little bit, some roofs, but that's about it. No problem whatsoever.

Only seven injuries, according to the governor's staff, over -- because of last night's tornado.

Clean up here has been relatively quick. Take a look at the roads here. The roads already -- they are coming through. If you were here an hour ago, there would be no traffic on this road. If you looked over here about three hours ago, it was covered with debris. But the people have been out here, the officials have been out here cleaning up.

And that's what strikes you about this town. We've been here the last couple of days, is the resiliency, the fact that everybody has chipped in to help out. And the governor, we talked to him about an hour ago, he said that's the thing that strikes him as well, the resiliency of the Oklahomans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. BRAD HENRY, OKLAHOMA: Through the ravaged neighborhoods yesterday. And I talked to residents who totally lost their house and all of their personal possessions. And they were upbeat, they were in good humor, they were so thankful and happy that their families and their neighbors were safe.

It's amazing with all this devastation that there's been no loss of life attributable to the storm. And that's a testament to our preparedness in Oklahoma, our response teams did a great job. It's a testament to our meteorological technology, and our greet meteorologists that we have here in Oklahoma.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABELL: President Bush has, of course, now declared Oklahoma a disaster area. That means financial -- some funding will be coming in very shortly. That's much needed, and people here welcome that. But what they would welcome, especially, Fredricka, is some relief from mother nature.

WHITFIELD: No kidding. All right, thanks a lot, Brian Cabell. And of course, a lot of folks there are crediting some good early warning signs and that's why they believe the number of injuries was so low.

Well, ever wish you could track down the people who send all of that junk e-mail in your inbox? From Mary Youngblood, an investigator with Earthlink, going after spammers is a big part of her job and she just reeled in a big, very big catch.

And Mary, good to see you. Thanks for being here.

MARY YOUNGBLOOD, EARTHLINK: Thank you very much.

WHITFIELD: When I say big catch, we're talking about this Buffalo spammer. What is that?

YOUNGBLOOD: Buffalo spammer is a spam ring that we believe originates out of Buffalo, New York. And this is a person and with his accomplices that have sent millions and millions of junk e-mails to Internet users all over the world.

WHITFIELD: And what's the technique? Is there a particular specialty of this Buffalo spammer, able to infiltrate more inboxes than any of the others because of any particular technological advantage?

YOUNGBLOOD: Well, I think he uses software that a lot of spammers use, but this particular spammer in general was very, very vigilant and very, very egregious with his actions. He would forge people's from lines and he would sign up accounts with stolen credit card information, and he just didn't stop, whereas 99 percent of the spammers, when we go after them, they usually stop.

WHITFIELD: You spend a lot of your time looking for spammers. How do you go about trying to pinpoint who they are, where they are and how they are able to cause so much frustration?

YOUNGBLOOD: That's a good question. What we do is we study the spammers and we learn their patterns. Many of them use the same type of user names and passwords. They send the same exact spams over and over again. And they'll make miner changes to them to try to get around your filters. But we study their patterns. And once we learn their patterns, then we can look for them before they start spamming. We can see them when they just get on the Internet, and we can get them after 10 seconds of being on the Internet and have their account canceled and have them knocked offline.

WHITFIELD: So most of us recreational users would have to rely on people like you to help filter out some of these spammers, or is there anything that we can do as consumers to try to cut down on the spam that ends up in our inboxes?

YOUNGBLOOD: Well, getting them reported is the most important thing that end users can do. They learn how to read e-mail headers, and there is some secret information inside e-mail that lets you see where the actual origins of the e-mail coming from. Consumers can learn more about that online. They can also choose user names that won't get generated by spammers, user names that are more intricate and detailed, with numbers in the middle of them instead of just their first name at their domain name. So there are certain things that users can do to avoid spam, and then if they do get it, to report it to the correct network, so that network can take action on the spammer.

WHITFIELD: Does it seem like some users are more apt to get more spam than others?

YOUNGBLOOD: Yes. Like I said, with the user name. If you have your first name at earthlink.net or at AOL or at MSN, chances are you are going to get targeted by spammers, whereas if you have a complicated user name, they won't generate it and you shouldn't see. I have friends that have followed my instruction and have never received a single spam.

WHITFIELD: All right. Well, thanks very much, and hopefully -- or it would be nice if many of us who feel very frustrated by it, there's a day in which there will be a limited number of spams that end up in our inboxes.

YOUNGBLOOD: Well, those of us out there that are fighting this war, doing everything we can to keep junk mail out of everyone's users -- out of everyone's inboxes.

WHITFIELD: Because I don't think anybody welcomes it.

YOUNGBLOOD: No one likes it. I've never heard anyone ask for it.

WHITFIELD: All right, thanks a lot, Mary. Good to see you.

YOUNGBLOOD: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Well, coming up in our next half hour, just how much harm did veterans suffer after being exposed to radiation during nuclear tests in the 40s and the 50s? And we'll go live to the world's largest model rocket contest and find out what model rockets have to do with homeland security.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The U.S. government may have vastly underestimated the radiation some servicemen were exposed to during nuclear tests in the 40s, 50s and 60s. The medical claim of a lot of veterans may now be reopened. CNN's Kathleen Koch joins us now from Washington with the details. Kathleen, what do you have?

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Fredricka, it is truly astonishing revelation, and it's got a lot of veterans around the country saying, we told you so. These are veterans who believe that they were essentially used as guinea pigs by their very own government.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three, two, one, fire.

KOCH (voice-over): Nuclear test blasts emitting deadly radiation watched during the 40s, 50s and 60s by nearly 400,000 servicemen. Ken Kendall (ph) was an Army corporal stationed in the Nevada desert.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When the explosions would go off, the shock waves came towards us. We could watch it come across the desert floor, and it went underneath our feet. It was like an earthquake going underneath our feet, and it was raised in a cloud of dust four to five feet up in the air.

KOCH: Some developed cancers and were compensated, but many others were turned down, because the military said their exposure was too low to have caused their illnesses. Now, a scientific panel has found the Pentagon underestimated the amount of radiation many of the servicemen received.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For example, was it gamma exposure? In those cases, it may be a factor of two or three too low. Neutrons may be three to five too low. In the case of inhalation, which would have only affected a small number of the veterans, those could be underestimated by factors of 10 to 100.

KOCH: A study insists the correct levels would still be too low to cause most cancers, but other experts say the inhalation cases are serious.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The dosage is 10 or 100 times higher, and the uncertainty are that big that those exposures would often be comparable or in the same range as received by many Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors.

KOCH: Veterans' attorneys charge the government underestimated to avoid paying damages.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We believe it's deliberate. It's hard to see how it could be otherwise.

KOCH: But the report blames the low estimates on the fact that many servicemen didn't wear or weren't giving film badges that registered their exposure. And questionable assumptions were made about where the men were and for how long. The Veterans Administration says it will now reexamine the cases of 18,000 veterans it had denied compensation, but it's unclear how many are still alive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of that takes time, a little bit cumbersome. But the fact is, as we do it, we will be looking specifically at the veteran, what we can do, if we can make sure that he gets the advantage of the doubt.

KOCH: Kendall (ph), who has chronic skin problems he believes were caused by radiation exposure, says veterans deserve at least that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I love my country. I think it's the greatest country in the world, but we have been used and lied to.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOCH: The question now is time, because it can take years for the Veterans Administration, other defense agencies to decide just which veterans now should be compensated for their illnesses. And the fear is that few of the men will be left alive by the time the government sorts all this out -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right, it's just the beginning. Thanks very much, Kathleen Koch.

Well, still ahead on NEXT, we'll talk to a scientific sleuth about a novel approach of tracking how diseases spread around the world.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Two very different sciences, geography and medicine, are turning out to be the ying and yang needed to help track infectious diseases. Medical geographers are helping to find clues in dealing with fast-spreading diseases like SARS. Joining us now from Dallas, University of North Texas geography professor, Joseph Oppong. Good to see you, professor.

JOSEPH OPPONG, MEDICAL GEOGRAPHER: Good to see you.

WHITFIELD: OK. Well, this technique has been around, the technique of mapping in the use of medicine. But what makes it so much more sophisticated these days?

OPPONG: With what we call geographic information systems, we are able to map the spread of disease. Geographers have been mapping phenomena for a long time. And applied to the disease, we are simply tracking where the disease is carrying, why it is occurring there, not somewhere else. So we are able to show the special patterns, the special variation of that particular disease.

WHITFIELD: Well, in order to have accurate mapping, don't you also need an accurate source on finding out where the disease is? Already, we've seen that there's been some level of dishonesty coming out of China. So how has that deterred any real accurate mapping, or been a hurdle?

OPPONG: Clearly, the accuracy -- as you say correctly, the accuracy of your information, of the data you have determines the accuracy of your map. If the data that your map is based on is inaccurate, your map is going to be inaccurate. You're simply representing what you have in your data.

In the United States, we have a difficult problem with confidentiality. The more accurate information you have, the better your representation of that. And so, we are able to show the information, only insofar as we have accurate data for it, yes.

WHITFIELD: So if you know then going into it that there's going to be some margin of error, then how confident can anyone feel about the mapping that is taking place?

OPPONG: You clearly can factor that margin of error into it. If you know that your data is 90 percent accurate, you can use that -- that information in projecting what the pattern is, actually, because you have a sample, and that sample helps you to then focus on what, in fact, is a pattern out there.

WHITFIELD: Say, in the case of the West Nile virus, how was the mapping used to help scientists and doctors able to pinpoint some of the real target areas, or the fact that the migratory -- the birds and the migration of the birds was, in fact, related to the cases of reported West Nile?

OPPONG: See, that is very, very interesting. You find the ecological circumstances within which these birds migrate, and if you can produce a map of the migration patterns of these birds, then you can relate that also to the geography of the diseases. And after you relate the two of them, you can see what patterns there are.

In fact, the fascinating thing is that maps stimulate the formulation of a hypothesis about what could be causing a disease, how that disease could be spreading. We're able to visualize that disease problem in context of where it is, why it is there, and we can be able to maybe think about issues that we were not able to think about otherwise.

WHITFIELD: Is that why it's been important to be able to determine the connection or be able to try to discern the connection between, say, Hong Kong and Toronto, since that's where we're seeing the most cases of SARS being reported?

OPPONG: In fact, the SARS issue brings geography, the contribution of geography to disease into very, very interesting focus. For us, geographers, this SARS thing here has shown what we expect. There's nothing surprising to the geographer. There is a principle we call special interaction. It says that places that interact a lot, for various reasons, would have similar characteristics.

For example, why doesn't occur first in Toronto, in Hong Kong, and then interaction with Toronto. Canada has a big population of Hong Kong people who migrated to Canada, and therefore there is a lot of interaction between Canada. And when immigrants move, they not only move with their culture, they also move with their disease patterns that occur in their specific communities. So the interaction, the close relationship between Hong Kong and China and Canada then translates into this disease.

In other words, one of the things that is coming, as we think about SARS, is that there are no local diseases. Every time I talk about it, I want that to be clear, there are no local diseases. In a world where there's so much travel, diseases in Hong Kong can be in the United States or in Canada in this present situation the next day.

WHITFIELD: OK, professor...

OPPONG: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

WHITFIELD: Professor Joseph Oppong, thank you very much for joining us. Appreciate it. Very interesting.

OPPONG: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Well, more on SARS in this next news recap. Animals at the Beijing zoo are getting extra vitamins and Chinese medicine to protect them from the SARS virus. Zoo keepers say the vitamins are designed to boost the immune system, and so far they appear to be working. No cases of SARS have turned up in animals or humans at the zoo. Something for everyone to learn there.

Well, scientists have discovered a new species of jellyfish that has arms rather than tentacles. It is reddish and about a yard wide, hence the name, Big Red, and they found 23 of the creatures off San Francisco, Hawaii, Japan and Mexico. And that's about all scientists know about Big Red so far. They don't know what it eats, how it reproduced, or even if the samples they have found are a male or female.

When we come back, we'll find out why top NASA officials and at least one senator turned out today to watch high school kids fire off rockets. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Well, it may not be brain surgery, but it is rocket science. All day long, we've been bringing you images from the Team America Rocketry Challenge in Northern Virginia; 100 high school teams competing to build the perfect model rocket.

Joining us now is Senator Mike Enzi to talk about why some model rocketers are saying, Washington, we have a problem. Senator, what does this hobby have to do with homeland security? Why are you there?

SEN. MIKE ENZI (R), WYOMING: There's been an overreaction in Washington and people have become concerned about the possibility of explosives. I'm glad we're having this event today so that people can see that what these rocket modelers are working on is a fast burn, rather than an explosion. And there's a possibility that Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will ban APCP, which is the most usual rocket motor. It's a non-detonable rocket fuel that these people are using throughout the United States in rocket competitions.

Events like this really help kids to get involved in science in a hands-on way, and it will lead them into all of areas of science. So we are -- it's very important that we don't keep the rocket motors out of their hands. I have a bill, S-724, with nine co-sponsors, that we're trying to get done by May 24 to keep this hobby intact.

WHITFIELD: And you see that potentially the ATF might be in some way thwarting the learning process, the exploration of many of these kids who are out there now demonstrating their interest in rocket science?

ENZI: I think people have got to see the activity, the months of thought that had to go into these rockets and the hours of work to build them. It's led to a lot of different areas of science that they could develop in. And if we have this overreaction from ATF and it stops this, it will hurt the education of kids in America. This is the first year of this event. There were 900 teams across the United States that participated. I bet you next year, there will be two or three times that many that will participate, and 100 of them will wind up in the finals like this and get to demonstrate their skill and get some rewards for it.

WHITFIELD: Is your presence there or your participation really just a way of appealing to your constituents who in your state have made it very clear that they're not exactly excited about the ATF? It is a place in which people are very much advocates of the right to have guns, and that the ATF is an enemy, or an unsavory government agency to many of your constituents?

ENZI: No. It has nothing to do with that. I've had almost a lifelong interest in rockets. In 1958, I was part of an explorer post that sent up rockets. That was before there were the magazines or the books or the model shops or anything like that. We felt beaten by the Russians at that point in time. And we wanted to come back and have a better America than Russia had. And I think that the race to space has done that. And out of the race to space come so many different things that help us here on earth. People have heart transplants and open heart surgery. Some of those things would not have been possible without the race to space. We just don't even realize how far reaching it is.

And my main interest is in doing that, and hoping that next year, I can get a Wyoming team, at least a Wyoming team into the finals

WHITFIELD: OK, Senator Mike Enzi, thank you very much for joining us. Appreciate it. Enjoy the show out there.

ENZI: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: That's all we have time for today. But NEXT will be back tomorrow with another hour of news seen through the lens of science and technology.

Among the stories we'll be covering, a preview of the annual coming out party of the video game industry, a lowdown on what will be hot in next week's gaming trade show known as E-3. That story and more coming up tomorrow at 5:00 Eastern time, 2:00 Pacific. Hope you'll be watching, and thanks for joining us today.

Ahead on CNN, "CNN LIVE SATURDAY" coming up at the top of the hour. That's followed by "PEOPLE IN THE NEWS" at 5:00 Eastern time, with profiles of Osama bin Laden, and the number two man in the al Qaeda terrorist network, Ayman al-Zawahiri. And "CNN LIVE SATURDAY" is up at 6:00 Eastern. Join me again for that hour.

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Brings Major Junk E-Mailer to Justice; Interview With Mike Enzi>