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Computer Worms Attack Unsuspecting PCs; NASA Review Board Releases Columbia Findings; Mars Closest To Earth In 60,000 Years
Aired August 23, 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.
RENAY SAN MIGUEL, HOST: Every week, NEXT@CNN brings you news about events in science, technology, and the environment that change the world we live in.
Well, during this next hour, we'll have live coverage of a rally that commemorates another world-changing event, the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech."
While we wait for that rally to start, we will bring you as much as we can on the big stories on our beat this week.
And we're going to start with the recent outbreak of computer worms.
You know, some are calling this the worst week ever for computer attacks. Three major worms are circulating in cyberspace, clogging inboxes and snarling corporate networks.
Here to sort it all out is Dr. Peter Tippett. He's chief technology officer for the company security -- for the security company TruSecure. And he joins us from our Washington bureau.
Dr. Tippett, thanks for being with us today.
DR. PETER TIPPETT, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, TRUSECURE: Thank you.
SAN MIGUEL: So there was some last-minute kind of maneuvering to keep this latest (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- the latest worm to hit, the Sobig virus, from doing the damage that it said it would do. Can you describe what exactly was going on with the security experts there?
TIPPETT: Well, there was some confusion. The Sobig virus actually started in January, and this is the F version of it, the sixth version of the Sobig virus. This particular one got more legs, it got to more places. About 22 percent of North American companies got a copy or an infection, a significant event from it. And that was early in the week.
Toward the end of the week, it was pretty well understood that the virus was going to go look for more work to do. And on Friday, at 3:00 Eastern time, it was programmed to go elsewhere on the Net, look up a few places, and try and find more program, and get to do more infectious things.
SAN MIGUEL: OK. But it wasn't able to, because there had been some steps taken by ISPs and by, you know, network administrators to keep that from happening, right?
TIPPETT: Well, that's one reason it didn't. Another is that, you know, the last five versions of this worm had exactly the same functionality plugged in. And in none of those cases was it particularly dramatic. So we at TruSecure didn't expect that this one was going to be particularly dramatic either.
SAN MIGUEL: OK. Well, why are we still worrying about this? After Melissa, the Love Letter virus, Code Red, all the threats, plus, you know, September 11, which focused a lot on cyberterrorism, or the threat there. Why are worms and viruses still a problem?
TIPPETT: You know, that's a challenge for all of us. Of course, the bad guys are making them more and more tricky, and more and more interesting, and more unusual.
But also, our corporations and people just aren't doing the simple, easy things that we can do to make them not a problem. We rely heavily on antivirus products, and that's a good thing. But we don't do simple things, like block attachments to e-mail in our gateways. Only 72 percent of companies do that in the last TruSecure survey. And of the ones that do, only about 20 percent do it right.
You know, we publish at trusecure.com a list of 100 file types that should never come in corporate networks. And, you know, if you block those, that list has been up for four or five years, you wouldn't have gotten any of those viruses or worms.
SAN MIGUEL: Let me ask you kind of a scary question here. Were there any corporations affected or targeted by this week's worms, the Blaster, the Welchia and Sobig?
TIPPETT: None of them were targeted. But as I mentioned, about 22 percent of North American companies, mostly the smaller ones, got a major impact from Sobig. About 19 percent had a major impact from Blaster, and Welchia or Nachia (ph) had a lesser effect on both.
SAN MIGUEL: When it comes to home users or (UNINTELLIGIBLE) or maybe when it comes to the corporate users who are working from home, or who are logging in from hotels, you know, from business locations, conventions, that kind of thing, the growth of broadband affecting the spread of these worms and viruses?
TIPPETT: Absolutely. The major impact, the major vector for the virus getting into the corporation, for the first two, for Sobig -- I'm sorry, for Nachia and Blaster, was from the home user and a business partner. That particular worm didn't require any e-mail. It just came to machines that had a particular kind of exposure to the Internet.
Now, corporations don't have that exposure to the Internet. They don't expose what's called port 135 to the Net. But many, many, many home users and people at hotels and so on do. The use of personal firewalls, the use of routers at home, the use of simple configurations that come, they're built into Windows XP. You know, they're free and pretty much available, but they're not being used. SAN MIGUEL: OK. And then finally, we need to wrap this up by talking about Microsoft, as we said.
And I know, we've heard this before, they've been a target for a long time now because they're the world's biggest software company, because, you know, in their products, they are putting functionality over security, because that's what their customers want. Their customers want to be able to do all of these things with Windows, but that will leave some back doors open.
Give me a grade on how you think Microsoft is handling all of this.
TIPPETT: You know, Microsoft is (UNINTELLIGIBLE) maligned. They make big software that we all use, but Apple and Linux and other big players (UNINTELLIGIBLE) all have complex operating systems that are all more or less equally vulnerable.
For example, it has -- it's four times more likely that a Unix Web site will be hacked than a Microsoft Web site. It's just that right now, worms are more targeted and viruses at the Microsoft world.
SAN MIGUEL: Dr. Peter Tippett is the chief technology officer for the security company TruSecure. Thanks for your time. We appreciate it.
And when coming up, we will go live to Washington where thousands of people are gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to remember the historic march on Washington 40 years ago.
Also ahead, the panel investigating the shuttle "Columbia" disaster is about to release its report. We'll get some insight from an expert on NASA.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SAN MIGUEL: Taking a look now at some NEXT news headlines.
Twenty-one people died Friday and 20 more were injured when a Brazilian rocket exploded on the launch pad near the seaside city of Sao Luis. The VLS-3 rocket was three days away from its scheduled liftoff. It was Brazil's third attempt to get into space.
Residents of Anniston, Alabama, have won a settlement in a case involving PCB pollution from a chemical plant. Two companies, Monsanto and Solutia (ph), have agreed to pay more than $700 million to settle the case. An attorney for the homeowners says Monsanto knew the PCBs were a health hazard to town residents but did nothing to warn the public.
An anonymous computer user is suing the recording industry, saying that the industry's legal moves against music downloaders are unconstitutional. The plaintiff, known only as Jane Doe, says the industry association, the RIAA, is violating her right to privacy. Jane Doe says her ISP has received a subpoena from the RIAA asking for information about her, one of more than 1,000 subpoenas the association has sent out.
Well, it was nearly seven months ago that the space shuttle "Columbia" broke apart as it reentered earth's atmosphere, killing the seven astronauts on board. On Tuesday, the "Columbia" accident investigation board plans to issue its final report on the cause of the disaster.
And joining us to talk more about that and what NASA will need to do to return to flight is Keith Cowing. He's with nasawatch.com.
Keith, thanks for being with us today.
KEITH COWING, NASAWATCH.COM: My pleasure.
SAN MIGUEL: You know, we've heard so much over the last few months about the foam strike on the leading edge of the wing and how that contributed to it and how NASA handled that. Are you expecting anything else other than that from this report? Are we expecting any other major surprises?
COWING: Surprises, no. I think the cause is pretty well known, and they've actually demonstrated it to great detail. What will come out is a bit less -- oh, you can't put your arms around it easily, the word "culture" is often used to describe it.
But what will come out in this report is a rather detailed look back at how NASA came to be, where it is today, what it does well, but mostly what it is not doing well, and that is really what the focus of this is going to be on.
SAN MIGUEL: And has that focus changed considerably since the investigation into the "Challenger" accident? I guess what I'm wondering is, has there been -- have there been some changes in how the "Challenger" investigation was done and how this one was done?
COWING: Well, they had -- clearly had the benefit of experience of looking back at what had been done with "Challenger." I think the circumstances are a bit different. This is the 21st century. I mean, we have information bouncing around much faster than it could back then.
But fundamentally, at its core, you had a horrible accident where people were killed in front of everybody's eyes, and you had the engineering figured out pretty quickly. But as was the case with "Challenger" will be with this report, the real problem here is human.
SAN MIGUEL: And you talked about the culture that was involved with those humans working on the shuttle program. You know, NASA's management culture has come under attack for being too rigid, for stifling voices of criticism and dissent. A fair accusation?
COWING: Yes. I mean, I used to work there, and nasawatch.com is kind of like the water cooler for everybody who has an issue to raise that they couldn't do through, you know, legitimate means. But, you know, I think it's a bit unfair to cast this shadow. I mean, culture is sort of a key that all reporters have on their keyboards these days. And when something happens at NASA they don't quite understand, they say, Oh, it's culture.
There's more to it than that. There's a culture within NASA works, there's the contractor community, there's Congress, and then there's the public. So I don't want to cast the blame elsewhere.
But you've got to understand NASA not by itself, but within the context with which, you know, it does all these marvelous things, and scant attention is paid to the fact that all these spacecraft operate perfectly. It's when one thing goes horribly wrong that suddenly we think, Well, the entire agency is messed up. That's not true.
SAN MIGUEL: Well, I mean, I was going to ask for a report card on Sean O'Keefe and the NASA administrator and then the chairman, Admiral Hal Gehman, who is looking into this, what you -- how you think that they've done through all of this.
COWING: I both -- I'd give them both A-minuses thus far.
SAN MIGUEL: OK. And the reason is, they've been up front, but why? But what else, what else is playing into that (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
COWING: Well, up front is important, and I think, you know, they both stood their respective grounds, which needs to be done to a certain extent.
Hal Gehman was pushing for a lot more information than NASA was necessarily wanting to give, and yet NASA was there trying to, I think, protect the -- not the rights, but sort of the respectability and the right to sort of be able to talk without fear of suddenly being thrown up on -- I mean, I'm used to being on TV, but a lot of these NASA folks were afraid to be tossed up in front of television. So O'Keefe kind of jumped in front of that.
So there's a bit of a back and forth on this, but I think out of this mix comes the information that was needed.
SAN MIGUEL: And finally, will -- do you think this report will lead some at NASA to think about other ways to get into space besides the shuttle flight? Will there be a hard look at other alternatives of manned launches?
COWING: Yes, good question. NASA was already working on a concept to replace the shuttle before the accident. And now, of course, the focus is much more on how you would replace the shuttle and how long you'd keep the shuttle flying until such time as the replacement comes in. And by the way, where is the money going to come from?
SAN MIGUEL: All right, there is the question. And we'll have to leave that for another time. Keith Cowing is with nasawatch.com. Thanks for joining us today. COWING: My pleasure.
SAN MIGUEL: Well, coming up, we'll have live coverage of the rally in going on in Washington that's honoring the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech 40 years ago this week.
Also, Mars is closer than it's been in thousands of years. We'll tell you how to get a good look when NEXT continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Check out these robot faces. Look more human than humans might like.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Get a little freaked out by the robot here. But you know what?
KELLAN: According to an article in the September issue of "Popular Science," David Hanson fashioned a robotic face to look like his girlfriend. He has one of these faces attached to a three-legged stool that he carries around with him. Why? Hanson explains to CNN's Kyra Phillips.
DAVID HANSON, HUMAN EMULATION ROBOTICS: I believe that these robots can serve as a very useful tool for investigating the way that people communicate with one another.
KELLAN: Wow, we've seen robots with a variety of human abilities that these robots have, cameras for eyes, software that emulates human movements. But they still look like robots, nothing quite this lifelike.
HANSON: I believe that within our lifetimes, we're going to see some very, very smart machines, and we want to give them a sociable face so that they cooperate, they love us, we love them. That's my goal.
KELLAN: But some argue that Hanson's creations cross a line. They're too human, making people feel more repulsed than comfortable.
What do you think?
Ann Kellan, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAN MIGUEL: Well, this week brings a treat for amateur astronomers. Mars will be closer to earth than it's been in the last 60,000 years. It's providing stargazers with a unique opportunity to see the Red Planet as never before.
But why are we so fascinated with Mars, and what does this opportunity mean to the scientific community? Well, David Eicher is the editor of "Astronomy" magazine. He joins us now from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to help us bring Mars into clearer focus.
Well, this has got to be a great time for you and all the other astronomers out there.
DAVID EICHER, EDITOR "ASTRONOMY": It certainly is, Renay. Mars fever has caught, not only for amateur astronomers, who are getting their best look at the planet ever and that we'll ever have in our life, but also for professionals, as you know, with the Mars Rovers and other spacecraft that are en route.
SAN MIGUEL: (UNINTELLIGIBLE), I'm not a physics -- I don't have a doctorate in physics or anything, or orbital mechanics, but describe why this is happening right now, why it's so much closer.
EICHER: We're in a very fortunate time. And because both Mars and earth's orbit are not -- orbits are not circular, we play a bit of a sort of a roulette wheel that goes around, and every once in a while, though we have oppositions, when the planets are fairly close every couple of years, we don't have one that's this close, which is about 34.6 million miles away from earth, for a very, very long time, 60,000 years, as you've said, and we don't have one that's this good coming until about 2287 at the earliest.
So this is our time to get Mars and to make the most of this week that's coming up.
SAN MIGUEL: Exactly, get your telescopes now, because it's going to be a long time before it happens again.
EICHER: Indeed.
SAN MIGUEL: So tell us, what time of day? What direction in the sky? Tell us how to view this with our telescopes.
EICHER: If you go out and look late in the evening, 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. local time, you look to the southeast, Mars will be by far the brightest object in the sky. It's dazzlingly bright. It'll look like a star to the naked eye and binoculars. But you'll see its orangy color very well with a small telescope.
And this is where we get lucky with this, because we're in a time now where you can get a four- or a six-inch telescope very easily, for a couple, $300, go out and look at Mars and see features, albedo features that are dark and bright patches of the Martian desert, and also the south polar cap, very, very easily with a small telescope at fairly low magnification.
SAN MIGUEL: And this is going on right now. I mean, it's already pretty bright. But I'm wondering, you know, what's the, you know, over a period of days, how many days can we expect this to go on?
EICHER: It's going on right now. We reach the closest point, that magic 34.6 million mile whisker distance, on Wednesday. And then we'll look ahead and be able to see Mars well into October and have it be very large in our sky. It's nearly as large as Jupiter, which is typically much larger in our sky.
And so we'll be able to continue on with this, although the best point will come midweek this week.
SAN MIGUEL: OK. I have to ask you, though, those who can't even afford $300 for a, for a, you know, a cheap telescope, with the naked eye, can you still -- can it still marvel you with the naked eye?
EICHER: You can see that it is dazzlingly bright, just with the eye alone. And you really can see that orange color, because Mars is a rusted planet that's covered by iron oxide in its deserts, and you can see the color strikingly.
You can also check and see if there may be an astronomy group in your area, a club or a society, a little star party that may be going on that you may want and go and grab onto a telescope and get a closeup view, which will show you these details of dusty regions and regions that are not so dusty on the planet, and also the frozen carbon dioxide polar cap.
SAN MIGUEL: How is NASA and how other space agencies taking advantage of this situation? Tell me about the probes that are now heading Mars's way, or will be heading Mars's way?
EICHER: They are en route right now and will be arriving, a quartet of satellites, in January.
And the American landers, the Mars Rovers, will be, as opposed to the laser-printer size of the Mars Pathfinder Rover that we had in 1997, we now have some golf-cart-sized Rovers that are much larger, more sophisticated, and they're going to very much more exciting locations, Goosef (ph) Crater, where one of the American Rovers is going, is clearly an ancient dried lake bed, where we can see there was a lot of water flowing around on the surface and to -- in Mars' ancient history.
So we're going to get a close-up look as to why Mars might have been warm and wet and now is cold and dry.
We've also got a European lander, Beagle Two, going there, and, of course, the Japanese orbital probe that will looking at Mars' atmosphere.
So we expect to very good close-up look at where the water was on Mars and perhaps start to solve that riddle of what happened to Mars, why it might have been a very vital, wet planet with lots of stuff floating around, flowing around the surface of the planet, and somehow became very carbon dioxide-rich and died.
SAN MIGUEL: How -- as an astronomer who knows, you know, how to find Mars, whether or not it's close or far away, how do you maximize this time? What's going on right now to get people interested in astronomy? EICHER: Well, we have a lot of interest now. And there's certainly a great amount of interest on the newsstand, on our Web site, astronomy.com, and also, this is one of the big events that we've had since several bright comets a number of years ago that's thrusting a lot of people getting into this and realizing they can go out, and it's very easy to, with a small telescope, even binoculars, see these things as a world.
We can see in a four-inch telescope Mars as a little globe with features on it that, even though it may be a long way away, it's our nearest celestial neighbor.
We also have a couple of bright comets that are coming up this coming spring. So that -- we hope those will engender a lot of interest in the subject and show people how easy it is to go out and step into the universe and look into the three-dimensional cosmos that surrounds us every day.
SAN MIGUEL: You know, it usually is a comet, like, you know, Halley's comet or some of the others that have been around over the last few years and gets people involved in looking skyward, now you've got a planet that's been there for (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
EICHER: Yes, we've got a planet.
SAN MIGUEL: Exactly. David Eicher, editor of "Astronomy" magazine, wish you good stargazing this coming week. Thanks for joining us.
EICHER: Thank you so much, Renay.
SAN MIGUEL: Well, the Moscow International Air Show is under way with more than half a million visitors expected before the weekend is over. As Jill Dougherty reports, it's offering lots of opportunities for deal-making and cooperation between former cold war rivals.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): In the skies over Moscow, MIG fighter jets pierce the clouds. Down below, Russia's aerospace industry, hungry for money, scouts for buyers.
Founded 10 years ago, the Moscow International Air Show is growing, attracting 800 exhibitors from 38 countries.
This year, for the first time ever, U.S. combat aircraft, courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.
Coming in for a landing, the giant B-52 bomber, symbol of the cold war. During the 1960s, B-52s patrolled the skies 24/7, ready to attack the Soviet Union. This newer version's latest mission, the war in Iraq.
Now Russia's most famous pilot, who used to fly Soviet planes ready to retaliate against the U.S., is in the B-52 cockpit. Bringing the bomber to Moscow was his joint idea, along with the U.S. military attache.
COL. MAGOMED TOLBOYEV, RUSSIAN AIR FORCE (through translator): I'm a colonel in the Russian air force. He is a colonel in the U.S. Air Force. We shook hands and said, "We have to keep our word as an officer." We drank 100 grams of vodka, and it all worked out.
DOUGHERTY: The other reason it worked out, the Pentagon this year ignored the bigger and more famous Paris Air Show, payback, many military observers believe, for France's opposition to the war in Iraq. Russia too opposed the war, but Moscow and Washington are trying to patch up relations.
GEN. EDWARD LAFONTAINE, U.S. AIR FORCE: That truly represents the increased participation and cooperation between the United States and Russia. The opportunity to participate in this air show, from my perspective, is historic.
DOUGHERTY (on camera): During the cold war, this air base was top secret. It's where the Soviet air force tested its new military aircraft, hiding it from U.S. spy planes.
(voice-over): Nowadays, Russia is eager to show off and to sell its most advanced aircraft no longer under wraps.
Jill Dougherty, CNN, Moscow.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAN MIGUEL: And coming up in our next half hour, we'll have more coverage from the Martin Luther King, Jr., rally that is about to get under way in Washington. They're running a little bit behind schedule. But as you can see, the crowds are starting to fill up.
We're also going to get some insights from a historian of the civil rights movement.
Also ahead, nature achieves some feats of manufacturing that scientists are trying to imitate.
Those stories and much more coming up after a break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SAN MIGUEL: NEXT@CNN continues in just a minute, after a check of what is going on at this hour.
You're looking at a live picture from Washington, where the observance of the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington is under way. A high-water mark of the civil rights movement, the 1963 march featured the legendary "I Have a Dream" speech from the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
The baseball world has lost one of its great players and one of its best-known fathers. Word today that Bobby Bonds died of cancer at the age of 57. In addition to being the father of superstar Barry Bonds, Bobby was an all-star outfielder with the Giants and several other teams in the '60s and '70s.
An internal report at the Environmental Protection Agency says the White House pushed the agency to downplay air pollution risks in New York after the September 11 attacks. The report says the EPA did not have sufficient data when it announced the debris-laden air was safe a week after the World Trade Center collapsed.
We'll have more top stories at the top of the hour. Now back to NEXT@CNN.
And welcome back to NEXT. Today in Washington, as we said, one of the high-water marks in the struggle for civil rights is being remembered. It's the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington.
Joining us to discuss where the movement has gone since then Akinyele Umoja. He's an associate professor of African-American history at Georgia State University.
Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your time today.
AKINYELE UMOJA, GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY: Good to be here, Renay.
SAN MIGUEL: Tell us, I've asked Congressman John Lewis this, but I'd like to get a historian's perspective as well, of course, he was there, but I'd like for you to kind of...
UMOJA: He has a little advantage
MIGUEL: Exactly. Categorize for us what things were like for African-Americans in the country in August of '63.
UMOJA: August of 1963, you really have to look at some of the conditions that motivated the march during that particular time. You know, in the Southern states -- in Mississippi and Alabama, Louisiana, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Congress of Racial Equality and several local chapters of the NAACP had taken an initiative to push forward the Civil Rights Movement at that particular time.
And there was a reign of terror, really intensifying around 1965 through 1963 against black organizations and black activists and just local blacks who were supporting the movement during that particular time. There were dozens of people, throughout the South who were assassinated, basically, there were political assassinations, including and culminating with the assassination of Medgar Evers in 1963.
So, it was a reign of terror going on through the South at that time. And -- you know, for people born in the last 20 years, they might not recognize that many people were prevented from their right to vote, that black people could not work in central business districts in several cities throughout the South and several towns throughout the South, that black elders were oftentimes referred to as "boy" and "girl," if they were trying to do business in white-owned establishments and firms during that particular time. And the level of poverty, during that time, was devastating in terms of black community.
MIGUEL: I will ask, what do you think today's youth need to take away from that time in history and the memories that we're experiencing today? But, there is something that has always fascinated me in reading some of Taylor Branch's books, "Parting the Waters" and "Pillar of Fire," Martin Luther King, Jr., in leading everybody up to the march on Washington, wasn't just dealing with -- you know, those who wanted to keep the Jim Crow Laws alive and those who wanted to maintain segregation. He was trying to keep everybody control within his own movement, not just the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, NAACP, the Urban League, everybody had their own ideas about what they wanted to do and he had to keep them focused, keep -- as we've heard, -- you know, keep their eyes on the prize.
UMOJA: Well, there was certainly tension within the Civil Rights Movement. There were different ideological expressions in the movement at that time. In fact, if you look at it, SNCC and CORE, probably constituted -- and when I say SNCC, I'm talking about Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Congress of Racial Equality, they were probably the most radical element of the Civil Rights Movement, at that time. Of course, they were nonviolent, but then they believed in pushing the action, they believed in having more confrontational demonstrations. But, even aspects of the -- of their organizations were going to the most dangerous areas in the South to register people to vote. There were some areas that Dr. King wouldn't have necessarily gone into without federal support or help, and they went regardless of that help. And, that was one of the issues of that particular time also, is that SNCC and CORE activists would go into the most dangerous places in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and they wouldn't receive federal support. You also had elements that were a little more conservative, in terms of the national leadership, of the NAACP the national leadership of the Urban League, at that time.
MIGUEL: And, they didn't want to take any, quote, "unnecessary risks."
UMOJA: Exactly. More confrontational stances, they didn't agree with during that particular time, so Dr. King was in the middle of that, if you will.
MIGUEL: OK.
UMOJA: And, SCLC was in the middle of all that.
MIGUEL: And, you mentioned this, as well, not getting any federal support. He also having to -- he's having to fight his own government, in particular the Kennedy administration tried to talk him out of marching in the days before. And then you had J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Talk a little about that.
UMOJA: Well, those are two separate issues. We'll come back to -- about the issue about the march. J. Edgar Hoover was certainly an enemy of the Civil Rights Movement at that particular time, an enemy of Martin Luther King, had investigated Martin Luther King, had threatened his life, had -- tried to encourage Martin Luther King to commit suicide. So there were -- and it wasn't just J. Edgar Hoover, there were several elements of the American government and intelligence community at time, they saw Martin Luther King as a major threat.
Now, in terms of the Kennedy administration and the march, the Kennedy administration, I don't believe it was days, I think it was a lot prior to that. There -- when the march was first talked about, there were people inside of the Civil Rights Movement who considered coming to Washington and engage in nonviolent action, which wasn't necessarily peaceful. In other words, they talked about laying on the runways to stop the airplanes, they talked about challenging the Department of Justice because at that time the Department of Justice wasn't protecting civil rights workers in the deep South states, at that time, who were facing the Ku Klux Klan and facing racist law enforcement during that particular time. So, the Kennedy administration recognizing -- we have to realize another element of history, that was during the cold war. And it would be a major international embarrassment, at that time when they were criticizing the Soviet Union for human rights violations, if black people who are demonstrating, showing that the United States government itself -- the federal government is being slow in responding to the Civil Rights Movement. So, it was that pressure that made the Kennedy administration and the liberal element of the democratic party, labor unions, predominantly white churches in the United States, came in to support the movement and also gave resources to support the national civil rights organizations at that particular time and support the march.
MIGUEL: You have helped set the stage for us for our -- for the anniversary of the march on Washington, very eloquently. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. We appreciate it.
UMOJA: Thank you, Renay.
MIGUEL: Akinyele Umoja with Georgia State University, Professor of African-American history, there. Thanks for your time.
UMOJA: Thanks.
MIGUEL: We want to go, now, to Kathleen Koch she is at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and she's got more on the events going on there -- Kathleen.
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Renay. Well, as you can see, the event is now well under way. We've already heard from a number of speakers. And what really impresses me most, as I look around this crowd and as I've walked around through this crowd throughout the day, is how the composition of the crowd is very similar to what it was 40 years ago when Martin Luther King, Jr. made his very inspiring "I Have a Dream" speech, because it is not just an African-American gathering, here today. There are whites, there are Hispanics, there are members of the Arab-American community, and there are people of all ages, here. I sat and had a hot dog, this afternoon for lunch, next to a father who is here with his two young sons, ages 3 and 1. And, he wasn't here 40 years ago, but he wanted his sons to be here to be a part of this celebration. Because he believes it's very important, and it's important to their future.
There's a great deal of concern, here, that many of the gains that have been made over the last 40 years could be erased, that there are efforts afoot to turn the clock back. Some point to the Bush administration, some point to just conservative republicans in general. And there is a great concern, also, with the Patriot Act passed since 9/11, just the erosion of civil liberties in the United States in general. It's a very broad group, though, obviously very different from 40 years ago in that respect.
More than 100 different organizations have helped put on this mass rally and the march. There are tents -- some seven tents down on the mall, just East of here, where they've been having teach-ins all day talking about all sorts of issues from education to civil rights, gay and lesbian rights. So, a lot of various issues coming together here.
One thing that they're really pushing for, though, and I don't know if you addressed this with your last speaker, is voter registration. They are putting on a 15-month push to register as many people as possible. They feel like many in the black community are very disenfranchised and don't participate enough in the political process, so they quote figures saying that 47 percent of African- Americans under the age of 44, only 47 percent voted in the last presidential election and they feel like that's a lot of untapped power, a lot of untapped energy that they could really wield to help accomplish some of these goals here if they could just get the people to participate. So, that's one of their big messages here, Renay.
MIGUEL: We got you, and Kathleen, it sounds to me like -- just one quick question, here -- it sounds to me like -- you know, there's an attempt to try to turn this remembrance -- and, you know, everybody there has -- might have an agenda, I understand -- but to turn this into kind of a partisan event, as well. I don't suppose you know if anybody from the Bush administration, any of the African-American figures who are on the Bush administration have been asked to speak at this particular event?
KOCH: That's a very good question, Renay. And I know that you interviewed a few hours ago the reverend Jesse Jackson and asked him about that. Does the Bush administration not get points for putting such outstanding African-Americans, you know, on -- President Bush on his cabinet and in his administration. I do not know if they were invited to speak. I do know that there are some political figures here, Howard Dean is here, and I know that presidential candidate Senator Joe Lieberman was supposed to be here. But, when I spoke with one of the organizers this morning, William Fauntroy, who was a delegate from D.C. to the U.S. Congress for years and also helped organized the march in '63 and then did organize the celebrations in '73 and '83. He said the politicians will be recognized, that they will be introduced. But he says they're here to listen today, that the message is coming from the people today, and they want to send it back to the politicians and get some action.
MIGUEL: Got you. Kathleen Koch live from the Lincoln Memorial. Thank you so much for the report.
When we come back, we'll have more coverage of the rally as NEXT@CNN continues, so please stay with us.
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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANN KELLAN, CNN REPORTER: Dolphins have all the five senses we do. They see, hear, smell, touch and taste. They also have another, a sixth sense, that the military, especially the Navy, is interested in. It works like sonar, currently used to find objects under water from sunken treasures to downed aircraft. Dolphins send out sound waves that bounce off an object and back to the dolphin, helping to identify what the object is and where it is, scientists call this echo location. Researchers from New College of Florida and the University of South Florida put a couple of dolphins at Disney World to the test. The results were published in the journal "Nature."
They put an object the dolphins had never seen before behind a black screen. The dolphin later identified the object out of a group of others. Researcher Heidi Harley says dolphins using echo location can tell the difference between two cylinders that have only a millimeter difference in the thickness of their walls. But, more studies need to be done to determine how consistent and accurate this sixth sense really is.
Ann Kellan, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MIGUEL: Now we're be back to me. Checking some stories making news on our beat this week, $180 million at the bottom of the sea. That is the estimated value of this ship's cargo, the paddle wheel steamship went down in a hurricane in 1865 off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. The SS Republic was en route from New York to New Orleans with thousands of gold coins to aid post-war reconstruction efforts. The team that found the wreckage last month had been looking for 12 years. It's likely to be the richest cargo ever recovered.
News on another more famous ship wreck now, scientists who visited the wreck site of the Titanic report that the ship is decaying at an alarming rate. One expert estimates that it's losing 600 pounds of steel everyday; it's being gobbled up by corrosive microbes. Increased tourism and souvenir hunting also contribute to Titanic's disintegration. The crow's nest where one crewman had shouted "Iceberg straight ahead!" has now broken away and the bow is completely covered with rust.
A giant panda at the San Diego Zoo gave birth to a healthy cub on Tuesday, but the baby's twin has not been born, and zookeepers have all been given up hope that it will be born alive. According to zoo officials, 20 hours is the longest known time between panda births, but it's been days now, and odds are the second cub won't make it.
On a happier note though, zoologists in China are celebrating the birth panda twins conceived through artificial insemination. Mother, Xuexue, gave birth just over two weeks ago and the little guys are said to be doing just fine.
Las Vegas got some heavy rain this week and that has led to an unusual problem -- wandering tortoises. Some of these guys are native to the Nevada Desert, and at least one is an exotic pet, but they were all rounded up this week from neighborhoods by a local environmental group. Experts say rain in the desert often draws these reclusive animals out in search of a good, long drink of water. Why not?
Well, the lonely sponge is just a massive cell and fibers and lives on the bottom of the ocean, but this simple animal can teach us a thing or two about improving our telecommunications networks.
Fred Katayama has that story from New York City.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FRED KATAYAMA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Deep beneath the ocean lies a lowly creature on the floor called the sea sponge. But, it creates this intricate web of glass called the Venus flower basket. This sheer beauty of nature's creation lured Bell Lab scientists Joanne Aizenberg to study it.
JOANNE AIZENBERG, LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES: You try to look at one feature, and you find in ways so in other things that you were not even looking for.
KATAYAMA: She saw the light.
AIZENBERG: This is the fiber, and we can see the come -- light coming only through the core.
KATAYAMA: She discovered that sponge fibers were made of glass similar to that used in man-made optical fibers, the core of today's cutting-edge telecommunications transmitting light at high speeds to send voice and data around the world. The biological fibers, too, distribute light emitted by organisms around it.
But, nature trumped man in two areas. The sponge's fiber is much more durable, it doesn't snap the way this man-made fiber does. And, nature creates it at the cold temperature of seawater, where as manufacturers have to blast glass in furnaces to produce fiber.
AIZENBERG: Nature is using materials that nature decides to use. It's beyond and much better that what we can do in the labs.
KATAYAMA: It has the potential of being a much cheaper way to create fibers as well.
MICHAEL RAYMER, UNIV. OF OREGON: But there are other applications that are on the horizon for optical fibers that this might really benefit from, and one nice example of that is the idea to embed thousands of optical fibers into the wings of a new aircraft and use those optical fibers to sense the strain that's being placed on the aircraft.
KATAYAMA (on camera): The sponge research is part of a hot emerging field called biomemedics. Researchers mine the depths of the ocean and nature for clues on how to build and improve technology.
(voice-over): Nature perfects things through evolution where only the strongest survive. A Bell Labs spokesman says the company hopes its findings will make their way into the business world in a few years. If successful, the creature that Greeks had used as paintbrushes, centuries ago, could help transform the communications industry.
Fred Katayama, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MIGUEL: Well, when we come back, we will have more coverage from the rally going on this afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial to remember Martin Luther King, Jr. and the march on Washington 40 years ago this week. Stay with us, we will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MIGUEL: We have some breaking news to bring to you, right you now. CNN has learned that convicted child sex abuser and defrocked Roman Catholic priest, John Geoghan, was taken Saturday from the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center to Leo Leominster hospital in Leominster, Massachusetts. That's according to a hospital spokeswoman who did not know anything more at this time regarding the cause as to why the former priest was taken from the correctional center where he was serving time to the hospital. All we know is that convicted child sex abuser and defrocked Roman Catholic priest, John Geoghan, was taken Saturday from the correctional center where he had been sentenced to a hospital. When we get more information, we will bring it to you.
We are continuing our coverage of the 40th anniversary of the march on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. We're waiting for Martin Luther King III to take the podium. As soon as that happens we will bring that to you, but we want to join, again Akinyele Umoja who is the Georgia State University professor of African-American history. And I want to ask you...
UMOJA: Studies.
MIGUEL: Studies, pardon me. We wanted to ask you about the young people of today, who were not born -- who, maybe all they've seen of the "I Have a Dream" speech is of course the video -- the famous video that has played countless times on television and specials. Now, if there was one lesson you think they'd need to take away from all that was at stake back in August of '63, what do you think it would be?
UMOJA: Well, one thing I would like to emphasize with young people is I think we need to talk to them more about the march, because it's important to know, as you talked t to me about earlier, what led up to the march, I mean, what happened after the march, because I think if you give youth a picture to just significant or great events is what changed history, they won't really have a idea of how social change comes about. But it's really the organizing that was done on local levels, really that inspired the march, and then after the march, the organizing that continued to go on in the deep South and other places that kind of led to some of the significant changes that they would see and experience.
MIGUEL: And a lot of those -- the organizing done by young people.
UMOJA: Exactly.
MIGUEL: By students, people in their 20s themselves, and not just African-Americans, but whites, as well.
UMOJA: Exactly. Exactly. As, one of the things, I think, she mentioned earlier is that the march was multicultural, today. It was multicultural at that time. There were whites and blacks in attendance, there. At the same time, I think it's good for young people to understand, really, the sacrifices that people made, really local people that there were -- you know, a lot of times we have these images of great leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, but there were welfare mothers who were involved in the struggle, there were people who had formerly being gang members who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement, at that time. I interviewed a man who was a bootlegger...
MIGUEL: Is that right?
UMOJA: ...who was involved Civil Rights Movement at that particular time, and decided, his name is C.O. Chin, who decide he would support the movement in Canton, Mississippi, where the movie "Time to Kill" was filmed.
MIGUEL: Oh.
UMOJA: And so, he was a major figure in that community. Since he had respect in the underworld, really, he was able to give that support to the movement at that particular time. So, there were a variety of figures and individuals who supported the Civil Rights Movement, during that time.
MIGUEL: All bringing their different experiences to bear in the struggle for civil rights.
UMOJA: Exactly.
MIGUEL: And, a lot of young people would go on in the next year to -- actually right now we want to go to Martin Luther King III, who we believe is about to be speaking.
(INTERRUPTED BY LIVE EVENT)
END
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Releases Columbia Findings; Mars Closest To Earth In 60,000 Years>
Aired August 23, 2003 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RENAY SAN MIGUEL, HOST: Every week, NEXT@CNN brings you news about events in science, technology, and the environment that change the world we live in.
Well, during this next hour, we'll have live coverage of a rally that commemorates another world-changing event, the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech."
While we wait for that rally to start, we will bring you as much as we can on the big stories on our beat this week.
And we're going to start with the recent outbreak of computer worms.
You know, some are calling this the worst week ever for computer attacks. Three major worms are circulating in cyberspace, clogging inboxes and snarling corporate networks.
Here to sort it all out is Dr. Peter Tippett. He's chief technology officer for the company security -- for the security company TruSecure. And he joins us from our Washington bureau.
Dr. Tippett, thanks for being with us today.
DR. PETER TIPPETT, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, TRUSECURE: Thank you.
SAN MIGUEL: So there was some last-minute kind of maneuvering to keep this latest (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- the latest worm to hit, the Sobig virus, from doing the damage that it said it would do. Can you describe what exactly was going on with the security experts there?
TIPPETT: Well, there was some confusion. The Sobig virus actually started in January, and this is the F version of it, the sixth version of the Sobig virus. This particular one got more legs, it got to more places. About 22 percent of North American companies got a copy or an infection, a significant event from it. And that was early in the week.
Toward the end of the week, it was pretty well understood that the virus was going to go look for more work to do. And on Friday, at 3:00 Eastern time, it was programmed to go elsewhere on the Net, look up a few places, and try and find more program, and get to do more infectious things.
SAN MIGUEL: OK. But it wasn't able to, because there had been some steps taken by ISPs and by, you know, network administrators to keep that from happening, right?
TIPPETT: Well, that's one reason it didn't. Another is that, you know, the last five versions of this worm had exactly the same functionality plugged in. And in none of those cases was it particularly dramatic. So we at TruSecure didn't expect that this one was going to be particularly dramatic either.
SAN MIGUEL: OK. Well, why are we still worrying about this? After Melissa, the Love Letter virus, Code Red, all the threats, plus, you know, September 11, which focused a lot on cyberterrorism, or the threat there. Why are worms and viruses still a problem?
TIPPETT: You know, that's a challenge for all of us. Of course, the bad guys are making them more and more tricky, and more and more interesting, and more unusual.
But also, our corporations and people just aren't doing the simple, easy things that we can do to make them not a problem. We rely heavily on antivirus products, and that's a good thing. But we don't do simple things, like block attachments to e-mail in our gateways. Only 72 percent of companies do that in the last TruSecure survey. And of the ones that do, only about 20 percent do it right.
You know, we publish at trusecure.com a list of 100 file types that should never come in corporate networks. And, you know, if you block those, that list has been up for four or five years, you wouldn't have gotten any of those viruses or worms.
SAN MIGUEL: Let me ask you kind of a scary question here. Were there any corporations affected or targeted by this week's worms, the Blaster, the Welchia and Sobig?
TIPPETT: None of them were targeted. But as I mentioned, about 22 percent of North American companies, mostly the smaller ones, got a major impact from Sobig. About 19 percent had a major impact from Blaster, and Welchia or Nachia (ph) had a lesser effect on both.
SAN MIGUEL: When it comes to home users or (UNINTELLIGIBLE) or maybe when it comes to the corporate users who are working from home, or who are logging in from hotels, you know, from business locations, conventions, that kind of thing, the growth of broadband affecting the spread of these worms and viruses?
TIPPETT: Absolutely. The major impact, the major vector for the virus getting into the corporation, for the first two, for Sobig -- I'm sorry, for Nachia and Blaster, was from the home user and a business partner. That particular worm didn't require any e-mail. It just came to machines that had a particular kind of exposure to the Internet.
Now, corporations don't have that exposure to the Internet. They don't expose what's called port 135 to the Net. But many, many, many home users and people at hotels and so on do. The use of personal firewalls, the use of routers at home, the use of simple configurations that come, they're built into Windows XP. You know, they're free and pretty much available, but they're not being used. SAN MIGUEL: OK. And then finally, we need to wrap this up by talking about Microsoft, as we said.
And I know, we've heard this before, they've been a target for a long time now because they're the world's biggest software company, because, you know, in their products, they are putting functionality over security, because that's what their customers want. Their customers want to be able to do all of these things with Windows, but that will leave some back doors open.
Give me a grade on how you think Microsoft is handling all of this.
TIPPETT: You know, Microsoft is (UNINTELLIGIBLE) maligned. They make big software that we all use, but Apple and Linux and other big players (UNINTELLIGIBLE) all have complex operating systems that are all more or less equally vulnerable.
For example, it has -- it's four times more likely that a Unix Web site will be hacked than a Microsoft Web site. It's just that right now, worms are more targeted and viruses at the Microsoft world.
SAN MIGUEL: Dr. Peter Tippett is the chief technology officer for the security company TruSecure. Thanks for your time. We appreciate it.
And when coming up, we will go live to Washington where thousands of people are gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to remember the historic march on Washington 40 years ago.
Also ahead, the panel investigating the shuttle "Columbia" disaster is about to release its report. We'll get some insight from an expert on NASA.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SAN MIGUEL: Taking a look now at some NEXT news headlines.
Twenty-one people died Friday and 20 more were injured when a Brazilian rocket exploded on the launch pad near the seaside city of Sao Luis. The VLS-3 rocket was three days away from its scheduled liftoff. It was Brazil's third attempt to get into space.
Residents of Anniston, Alabama, have won a settlement in a case involving PCB pollution from a chemical plant. Two companies, Monsanto and Solutia (ph), have agreed to pay more than $700 million to settle the case. An attorney for the homeowners says Monsanto knew the PCBs were a health hazard to town residents but did nothing to warn the public.
An anonymous computer user is suing the recording industry, saying that the industry's legal moves against music downloaders are unconstitutional. The plaintiff, known only as Jane Doe, says the industry association, the RIAA, is violating her right to privacy. Jane Doe says her ISP has received a subpoena from the RIAA asking for information about her, one of more than 1,000 subpoenas the association has sent out.
Well, it was nearly seven months ago that the space shuttle "Columbia" broke apart as it reentered earth's atmosphere, killing the seven astronauts on board. On Tuesday, the "Columbia" accident investigation board plans to issue its final report on the cause of the disaster.
And joining us to talk more about that and what NASA will need to do to return to flight is Keith Cowing. He's with nasawatch.com.
Keith, thanks for being with us today.
KEITH COWING, NASAWATCH.COM: My pleasure.
SAN MIGUEL: You know, we've heard so much over the last few months about the foam strike on the leading edge of the wing and how that contributed to it and how NASA handled that. Are you expecting anything else other than that from this report? Are we expecting any other major surprises?
COWING: Surprises, no. I think the cause is pretty well known, and they've actually demonstrated it to great detail. What will come out is a bit less -- oh, you can't put your arms around it easily, the word "culture" is often used to describe it.
But what will come out in this report is a rather detailed look back at how NASA came to be, where it is today, what it does well, but mostly what it is not doing well, and that is really what the focus of this is going to be on.
SAN MIGUEL: And has that focus changed considerably since the investigation into the "Challenger" accident? I guess what I'm wondering is, has there been -- have there been some changes in how the "Challenger" investigation was done and how this one was done?
COWING: Well, they had -- clearly had the benefit of experience of looking back at what had been done with "Challenger." I think the circumstances are a bit different. This is the 21st century. I mean, we have information bouncing around much faster than it could back then.
But fundamentally, at its core, you had a horrible accident where people were killed in front of everybody's eyes, and you had the engineering figured out pretty quickly. But as was the case with "Challenger" will be with this report, the real problem here is human.
SAN MIGUEL: And you talked about the culture that was involved with those humans working on the shuttle program. You know, NASA's management culture has come under attack for being too rigid, for stifling voices of criticism and dissent. A fair accusation?
COWING: Yes. I mean, I used to work there, and nasawatch.com is kind of like the water cooler for everybody who has an issue to raise that they couldn't do through, you know, legitimate means. But, you know, I think it's a bit unfair to cast this shadow. I mean, culture is sort of a key that all reporters have on their keyboards these days. And when something happens at NASA they don't quite understand, they say, Oh, it's culture.
There's more to it than that. There's a culture within NASA works, there's the contractor community, there's Congress, and then there's the public. So I don't want to cast the blame elsewhere.
But you've got to understand NASA not by itself, but within the context with which, you know, it does all these marvelous things, and scant attention is paid to the fact that all these spacecraft operate perfectly. It's when one thing goes horribly wrong that suddenly we think, Well, the entire agency is messed up. That's not true.
SAN MIGUEL: Well, I mean, I was going to ask for a report card on Sean O'Keefe and the NASA administrator and then the chairman, Admiral Hal Gehman, who is looking into this, what you -- how you think that they've done through all of this.
COWING: I both -- I'd give them both A-minuses thus far.
SAN MIGUEL: OK. And the reason is, they've been up front, but why? But what else, what else is playing into that (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
COWING: Well, up front is important, and I think, you know, they both stood their respective grounds, which needs to be done to a certain extent.
Hal Gehman was pushing for a lot more information than NASA was necessarily wanting to give, and yet NASA was there trying to, I think, protect the -- not the rights, but sort of the respectability and the right to sort of be able to talk without fear of suddenly being thrown up on -- I mean, I'm used to being on TV, but a lot of these NASA folks were afraid to be tossed up in front of television. So O'Keefe kind of jumped in front of that.
So there's a bit of a back and forth on this, but I think out of this mix comes the information that was needed.
SAN MIGUEL: And finally, will -- do you think this report will lead some at NASA to think about other ways to get into space besides the shuttle flight? Will there be a hard look at other alternatives of manned launches?
COWING: Yes, good question. NASA was already working on a concept to replace the shuttle before the accident. And now, of course, the focus is much more on how you would replace the shuttle and how long you'd keep the shuttle flying until such time as the replacement comes in. And by the way, where is the money going to come from?
SAN MIGUEL: All right, there is the question. And we'll have to leave that for another time. Keith Cowing is with nasawatch.com. Thanks for joining us today. COWING: My pleasure.
SAN MIGUEL: Well, coming up, we'll have live coverage of the rally in going on in Washington that's honoring the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech 40 years ago this week.
Also, Mars is closer than it's been in thousands of years. We'll tell you how to get a good look when NEXT continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Check out these robot faces. Look more human than humans might like.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Get a little freaked out by the robot here. But you know what?
KELLAN: According to an article in the September issue of "Popular Science," David Hanson fashioned a robotic face to look like his girlfriend. He has one of these faces attached to a three-legged stool that he carries around with him. Why? Hanson explains to CNN's Kyra Phillips.
DAVID HANSON, HUMAN EMULATION ROBOTICS: I believe that these robots can serve as a very useful tool for investigating the way that people communicate with one another.
KELLAN: Wow, we've seen robots with a variety of human abilities that these robots have, cameras for eyes, software that emulates human movements. But they still look like robots, nothing quite this lifelike.
HANSON: I believe that within our lifetimes, we're going to see some very, very smart machines, and we want to give them a sociable face so that they cooperate, they love us, we love them. That's my goal.
KELLAN: But some argue that Hanson's creations cross a line. They're too human, making people feel more repulsed than comfortable.
What do you think?
Ann Kellan, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAN MIGUEL: Well, this week brings a treat for amateur astronomers. Mars will be closer to earth than it's been in the last 60,000 years. It's providing stargazers with a unique opportunity to see the Red Planet as never before.
But why are we so fascinated with Mars, and what does this opportunity mean to the scientific community? Well, David Eicher is the editor of "Astronomy" magazine. He joins us now from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to help us bring Mars into clearer focus.
Well, this has got to be a great time for you and all the other astronomers out there.
DAVID EICHER, EDITOR "ASTRONOMY": It certainly is, Renay. Mars fever has caught, not only for amateur astronomers, who are getting their best look at the planet ever and that we'll ever have in our life, but also for professionals, as you know, with the Mars Rovers and other spacecraft that are en route.
SAN MIGUEL: (UNINTELLIGIBLE), I'm not a physics -- I don't have a doctorate in physics or anything, or orbital mechanics, but describe why this is happening right now, why it's so much closer.
EICHER: We're in a very fortunate time. And because both Mars and earth's orbit are not -- orbits are not circular, we play a bit of a sort of a roulette wheel that goes around, and every once in a while, though we have oppositions, when the planets are fairly close every couple of years, we don't have one that's this close, which is about 34.6 million miles away from earth, for a very, very long time, 60,000 years, as you've said, and we don't have one that's this good coming until about 2287 at the earliest.
So this is our time to get Mars and to make the most of this week that's coming up.
SAN MIGUEL: Exactly, get your telescopes now, because it's going to be a long time before it happens again.
EICHER: Indeed.
SAN MIGUEL: So tell us, what time of day? What direction in the sky? Tell us how to view this with our telescopes.
EICHER: If you go out and look late in the evening, 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. local time, you look to the southeast, Mars will be by far the brightest object in the sky. It's dazzlingly bright. It'll look like a star to the naked eye and binoculars. But you'll see its orangy color very well with a small telescope.
And this is where we get lucky with this, because we're in a time now where you can get a four- or a six-inch telescope very easily, for a couple, $300, go out and look at Mars and see features, albedo features that are dark and bright patches of the Martian desert, and also the south polar cap, very, very easily with a small telescope at fairly low magnification.
SAN MIGUEL: And this is going on right now. I mean, it's already pretty bright. But I'm wondering, you know, what's the, you know, over a period of days, how many days can we expect this to go on?
EICHER: It's going on right now. We reach the closest point, that magic 34.6 million mile whisker distance, on Wednesday. And then we'll look ahead and be able to see Mars well into October and have it be very large in our sky. It's nearly as large as Jupiter, which is typically much larger in our sky.
And so we'll be able to continue on with this, although the best point will come midweek this week.
SAN MIGUEL: OK. I have to ask you, though, those who can't even afford $300 for a, for a, you know, a cheap telescope, with the naked eye, can you still -- can it still marvel you with the naked eye?
EICHER: You can see that it is dazzlingly bright, just with the eye alone. And you really can see that orange color, because Mars is a rusted planet that's covered by iron oxide in its deserts, and you can see the color strikingly.
You can also check and see if there may be an astronomy group in your area, a club or a society, a little star party that may be going on that you may want and go and grab onto a telescope and get a closeup view, which will show you these details of dusty regions and regions that are not so dusty on the planet, and also the frozen carbon dioxide polar cap.
SAN MIGUEL: How is NASA and how other space agencies taking advantage of this situation? Tell me about the probes that are now heading Mars's way, or will be heading Mars's way?
EICHER: They are en route right now and will be arriving, a quartet of satellites, in January.
And the American landers, the Mars Rovers, will be, as opposed to the laser-printer size of the Mars Pathfinder Rover that we had in 1997, we now have some golf-cart-sized Rovers that are much larger, more sophisticated, and they're going to very much more exciting locations, Goosef (ph) Crater, where one of the American Rovers is going, is clearly an ancient dried lake bed, where we can see there was a lot of water flowing around on the surface and to -- in Mars' ancient history.
So we're going to get a close-up look as to why Mars might have been warm and wet and now is cold and dry.
We've also got a European lander, Beagle Two, going there, and, of course, the Japanese orbital probe that will looking at Mars' atmosphere.
So we expect to very good close-up look at where the water was on Mars and perhaps start to solve that riddle of what happened to Mars, why it might have been a very vital, wet planet with lots of stuff floating around, flowing around the surface of the planet, and somehow became very carbon dioxide-rich and died.
SAN MIGUEL: How -- as an astronomer who knows, you know, how to find Mars, whether or not it's close or far away, how do you maximize this time? What's going on right now to get people interested in astronomy? EICHER: Well, we have a lot of interest now. And there's certainly a great amount of interest on the newsstand, on our Web site, astronomy.com, and also, this is one of the big events that we've had since several bright comets a number of years ago that's thrusting a lot of people getting into this and realizing they can go out, and it's very easy to, with a small telescope, even binoculars, see these things as a world.
We can see in a four-inch telescope Mars as a little globe with features on it that, even though it may be a long way away, it's our nearest celestial neighbor.
We also have a couple of bright comets that are coming up this coming spring. So that -- we hope those will engender a lot of interest in the subject and show people how easy it is to go out and step into the universe and look into the three-dimensional cosmos that surrounds us every day.
SAN MIGUEL: You know, it usually is a comet, like, you know, Halley's comet or some of the others that have been around over the last few years and gets people involved in looking skyward, now you've got a planet that's been there for (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
EICHER: Yes, we've got a planet.
SAN MIGUEL: Exactly. David Eicher, editor of "Astronomy" magazine, wish you good stargazing this coming week. Thanks for joining us.
EICHER: Thank you so much, Renay.
SAN MIGUEL: Well, the Moscow International Air Show is under way with more than half a million visitors expected before the weekend is over. As Jill Dougherty reports, it's offering lots of opportunities for deal-making and cooperation between former cold war rivals.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): In the skies over Moscow, MIG fighter jets pierce the clouds. Down below, Russia's aerospace industry, hungry for money, scouts for buyers.
Founded 10 years ago, the Moscow International Air Show is growing, attracting 800 exhibitors from 38 countries.
This year, for the first time ever, U.S. combat aircraft, courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.
Coming in for a landing, the giant B-52 bomber, symbol of the cold war. During the 1960s, B-52s patrolled the skies 24/7, ready to attack the Soviet Union. This newer version's latest mission, the war in Iraq.
Now Russia's most famous pilot, who used to fly Soviet planes ready to retaliate against the U.S., is in the B-52 cockpit. Bringing the bomber to Moscow was his joint idea, along with the U.S. military attache.
COL. MAGOMED TOLBOYEV, RUSSIAN AIR FORCE (through translator): I'm a colonel in the Russian air force. He is a colonel in the U.S. Air Force. We shook hands and said, "We have to keep our word as an officer." We drank 100 grams of vodka, and it all worked out.
DOUGHERTY: The other reason it worked out, the Pentagon this year ignored the bigger and more famous Paris Air Show, payback, many military observers believe, for France's opposition to the war in Iraq. Russia too opposed the war, but Moscow and Washington are trying to patch up relations.
GEN. EDWARD LAFONTAINE, U.S. AIR FORCE: That truly represents the increased participation and cooperation between the United States and Russia. The opportunity to participate in this air show, from my perspective, is historic.
DOUGHERTY (on camera): During the cold war, this air base was top secret. It's where the Soviet air force tested its new military aircraft, hiding it from U.S. spy planes.
(voice-over): Nowadays, Russia is eager to show off and to sell its most advanced aircraft no longer under wraps.
Jill Dougherty, CNN, Moscow.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAN MIGUEL: And coming up in our next half hour, we'll have more coverage from the Martin Luther King, Jr., rally that is about to get under way in Washington. They're running a little bit behind schedule. But as you can see, the crowds are starting to fill up.
We're also going to get some insights from a historian of the civil rights movement.
Also ahead, nature achieves some feats of manufacturing that scientists are trying to imitate.
Those stories and much more coming up after a break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SAN MIGUEL: NEXT@CNN continues in just a minute, after a check of what is going on at this hour.
You're looking at a live picture from Washington, where the observance of the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington is under way. A high-water mark of the civil rights movement, the 1963 march featured the legendary "I Have a Dream" speech from the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
The baseball world has lost one of its great players and one of its best-known fathers. Word today that Bobby Bonds died of cancer at the age of 57. In addition to being the father of superstar Barry Bonds, Bobby was an all-star outfielder with the Giants and several other teams in the '60s and '70s.
An internal report at the Environmental Protection Agency says the White House pushed the agency to downplay air pollution risks in New York after the September 11 attacks. The report says the EPA did not have sufficient data when it announced the debris-laden air was safe a week after the World Trade Center collapsed.
We'll have more top stories at the top of the hour. Now back to NEXT@CNN.
And welcome back to NEXT. Today in Washington, as we said, one of the high-water marks in the struggle for civil rights is being remembered. It's the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington.
Joining us to discuss where the movement has gone since then Akinyele Umoja. He's an associate professor of African-American history at Georgia State University.
Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your time today.
AKINYELE UMOJA, GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY: Good to be here, Renay.
SAN MIGUEL: Tell us, I've asked Congressman John Lewis this, but I'd like to get a historian's perspective as well, of course, he was there, but I'd like for you to kind of...
UMOJA: He has a little advantage
MIGUEL: Exactly. Categorize for us what things were like for African-Americans in the country in August of '63.
UMOJA: August of 1963, you really have to look at some of the conditions that motivated the march during that particular time. You know, in the Southern states -- in Mississippi and Alabama, Louisiana, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Congress of Racial Equality and several local chapters of the NAACP had taken an initiative to push forward the Civil Rights Movement at that particular time.
And there was a reign of terror, really intensifying around 1965 through 1963 against black organizations and black activists and just local blacks who were supporting the movement during that particular time. There were dozens of people, throughout the South who were assassinated, basically, there were political assassinations, including and culminating with the assassination of Medgar Evers in 1963.
So, it was a reign of terror going on through the South at that time. And -- you know, for people born in the last 20 years, they might not recognize that many people were prevented from their right to vote, that black people could not work in central business districts in several cities throughout the South and several towns throughout the South, that black elders were oftentimes referred to as "boy" and "girl," if they were trying to do business in white-owned establishments and firms during that particular time. And the level of poverty, during that time, was devastating in terms of black community.
MIGUEL: I will ask, what do you think today's youth need to take away from that time in history and the memories that we're experiencing today? But, there is something that has always fascinated me in reading some of Taylor Branch's books, "Parting the Waters" and "Pillar of Fire," Martin Luther King, Jr., in leading everybody up to the march on Washington, wasn't just dealing with -- you know, those who wanted to keep the Jim Crow Laws alive and those who wanted to maintain segregation. He was trying to keep everybody control within his own movement, not just the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, NAACP, the Urban League, everybody had their own ideas about what they wanted to do and he had to keep them focused, keep -- as we've heard, -- you know, keep their eyes on the prize.
UMOJA: Well, there was certainly tension within the Civil Rights Movement. There were different ideological expressions in the movement at that time. In fact, if you look at it, SNCC and CORE, probably constituted -- and when I say SNCC, I'm talking about Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Congress of Racial Equality, they were probably the most radical element of the Civil Rights Movement, at that time. Of course, they were nonviolent, but then they believed in pushing the action, they believed in having more confrontational demonstrations. But, even aspects of the -- of their organizations were going to the most dangerous areas in the South to register people to vote. There were some areas that Dr. King wouldn't have necessarily gone into without federal support or help, and they went regardless of that help. And, that was one of the issues of that particular time also, is that SNCC and CORE activists would go into the most dangerous places in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and they wouldn't receive federal support. You also had elements that were a little more conservative, in terms of the national leadership, of the NAACP the national leadership of the Urban League, at that time.
MIGUEL: And, they didn't want to take any, quote, "unnecessary risks."
UMOJA: Exactly. More confrontational stances, they didn't agree with during that particular time, so Dr. King was in the middle of that, if you will.
MIGUEL: OK.
UMOJA: And, SCLC was in the middle of all that.
MIGUEL: And, you mentioned this, as well, not getting any federal support. He also having to -- he's having to fight his own government, in particular the Kennedy administration tried to talk him out of marching in the days before. And then you had J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Talk a little about that.
UMOJA: Well, those are two separate issues. We'll come back to -- about the issue about the march. J. Edgar Hoover was certainly an enemy of the Civil Rights Movement at that particular time, an enemy of Martin Luther King, had investigated Martin Luther King, had threatened his life, had -- tried to encourage Martin Luther King to commit suicide. So there were -- and it wasn't just J. Edgar Hoover, there were several elements of the American government and intelligence community at time, they saw Martin Luther King as a major threat.
Now, in terms of the Kennedy administration and the march, the Kennedy administration, I don't believe it was days, I think it was a lot prior to that. There -- when the march was first talked about, there were people inside of the Civil Rights Movement who considered coming to Washington and engage in nonviolent action, which wasn't necessarily peaceful. In other words, they talked about laying on the runways to stop the airplanes, they talked about challenging the Department of Justice because at that time the Department of Justice wasn't protecting civil rights workers in the deep South states, at that time, who were facing the Ku Klux Klan and facing racist law enforcement during that particular time. So, the Kennedy administration recognizing -- we have to realize another element of history, that was during the cold war. And it would be a major international embarrassment, at that time when they were criticizing the Soviet Union for human rights violations, if black people who are demonstrating, showing that the United States government itself -- the federal government is being slow in responding to the Civil Rights Movement. So, it was that pressure that made the Kennedy administration and the liberal element of the democratic party, labor unions, predominantly white churches in the United States, came in to support the movement and also gave resources to support the national civil rights organizations at that particular time and support the march.
MIGUEL: You have helped set the stage for us for our -- for the anniversary of the march on Washington, very eloquently. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. We appreciate it.
UMOJA: Thank you, Renay.
MIGUEL: Akinyele Umoja with Georgia State University, Professor of African-American history, there. Thanks for your time.
UMOJA: Thanks.
MIGUEL: We want to go, now, to Kathleen Koch she is at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and she's got more on the events going on there -- Kathleen.
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Renay. Well, as you can see, the event is now well under way. We've already heard from a number of speakers. And what really impresses me most, as I look around this crowd and as I've walked around through this crowd throughout the day, is how the composition of the crowd is very similar to what it was 40 years ago when Martin Luther King, Jr. made his very inspiring "I Have a Dream" speech, because it is not just an African-American gathering, here today. There are whites, there are Hispanics, there are members of the Arab-American community, and there are people of all ages, here. I sat and had a hot dog, this afternoon for lunch, next to a father who is here with his two young sons, ages 3 and 1. And, he wasn't here 40 years ago, but he wanted his sons to be here to be a part of this celebration. Because he believes it's very important, and it's important to their future.
There's a great deal of concern, here, that many of the gains that have been made over the last 40 years could be erased, that there are efforts afoot to turn the clock back. Some point to the Bush administration, some point to just conservative republicans in general. And there is a great concern, also, with the Patriot Act passed since 9/11, just the erosion of civil liberties in the United States in general. It's a very broad group, though, obviously very different from 40 years ago in that respect.
More than 100 different organizations have helped put on this mass rally and the march. There are tents -- some seven tents down on the mall, just East of here, where they've been having teach-ins all day talking about all sorts of issues from education to civil rights, gay and lesbian rights. So, a lot of various issues coming together here.
One thing that they're really pushing for, though, and I don't know if you addressed this with your last speaker, is voter registration. They are putting on a 15-month push to register as many people as possible. They feel like many in the black community are very disenfranchised and don't participate enough in the political process, so they quote figures saying that 47 percent of African- Americans under the age of 44, only 47 percent voted in the last presidential election and they feel like that's a lot of untapped power, a lot of untapped energy that they could really wield to help accomplish some of these goals here if they could just get the people to participate. So, that's one of their big messages here, Renay.
MIGUEL: We got you, and Kathleen, it sounds to me like -- just one quick question, here -- it sounds to me like -- you know, there's an attempt to try to turn this remembrance -- and, you know, everybody there has -- might have an agenda, I understand -- but to turn this into kind of a partisan event, as well. I don't suppose you know if anybody from the Bush administration, any of the African-American figures who are on the Bush administration have been asked to speak at this particular event?
KOCH: That's a very good question, Renay. And I know that you interviewed a few hours ago the reverend Jesse Jackson and asked him about that. Does the Bush administration not get points for putting such outstanding African-Americans, you know, on -- President Bush on his cabinet and in his administration. I do not know if they were invited to speak. I do know that there are some political figures here, Howard Dean is here, and I know that presidential candidate Senator Joe Lieberman was supposed to be here. But, when I spoke with one of the organizers this morning, William Fauntroy, who was a delegate from D.C. to the U.S. Congress for years and also helped organized the march in '63 and then did organize the celebrations in '73 and '83. He said the politicians will be recognized, that they will be introduced. But he says they're here to listen today, that the message is coming from the people today, and they want to send it back to the politicians and get some action.
MIGUEL: Got you. Kathleen Koch live from the Lincoln Memorial. Thank you so much for the report.
When we come back, we'll have more coverage of the rally as NEXT@CNN continues, so please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANN KELLAN, CNN REPORTER: Dolphins have all the five senses we do. They see, hear, smell, touch and taste. They also have another, a sixth sense, that the military, especially the Navy, is interested in. It works like sonar, currently used to find objects under water from sunken treasures to downed aircraft. Dolphins send out sound waves that bounce off an object and back to the dolphin, helping to identify what the object is and where it is, scientists call this echo location. Researchers from New College of Florida and the University of South Florida put a couple of dolphins at Disney World to the test. The results were published in the journal "Nature."
They put an object the dolphins had never seen before behind a black screen. The dolphin later identified the object out of a group of others. Researcher Heidi Harley says dolphins using echo location can tell the difference between two cylinders that have only a millimeter difference in the thickness of their walls. But, more studies need to be done to determine how consistent and accurate this sixth sense really is.
Ann Kellan, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MIGUEL: Now we're be back to me. Checking some stories making news on our beat this week, $180 million at the bottom of the sea. That is the estimated value of this ship's cargo, the paddle wheel steamship went down in a hurricane in 1865 off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. The SS Republic was en route from New York to New Orleans with thousands of gold coins to aid post-war reconstruction efforts. The team that found the wreckage last month had been looking for 12 years. It's likely to be the richest cargo ever recovered.
News on another more famous ship wreck now, scientists who visited the wreck site of the Titanic report that the ship is decaying at an alarming rate. One expert estimates that it's losing 600 pounds of steel everyday; it's being gobbled up by corrosive microbes. Increased tourism and souvenir hunting also contribute to Titanic's disintegration. The crow's nest where one crewman had shouted "Iceberg straight ahead!" has now broken away and the bow is completely covered with rust.
A giant panda at the San Diego Zoo gave birth to a healthy cub on Tuesday, but the baby's twin has not been born, and zookeepers have all been given up hope that it will be born alive. According to zoo officials, 20 hours is the longest known time between panda births, but it's been days now, and odds are the second cub won't make it.
On a happier note though, zoologists in China are celebrating the birth panda twins conceived through artificial insemination. Mother, Xuexue, gave birth just over two weeks ago and the little guys are said to be doing just fine.
Las Vegas got some heavy rain this week and that has led to an unusual problem -- wandering tortoises. Some of these guys are native to the Nevada Desert, and at least one is an exotic pet, but they were all rounded up this week from neighborhoods by a local environmental group. Experts say rain in the desert often draws these reclusive animals out in search of a good, long drink of water. Why not?
Well, the lonely sponge is just a massive cell and fibers and lives on the bottom of the ocean, but this simple animal can teach us a thing or two about improving our telecommunications networks.
Fred Katayama has that story from New York City.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FRED KATAYAMA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Deep beneath the ocean lies a lowly creature on the floor called the sea sponge. But, it creates this intricate web of glass called the Venus flower basket. This sheer beauty of nature's creation lured Bell Lab scientists Joanne Aizenberg to study it.
JOANNE AIZENBERG, LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES: You try to look at one feature, and you find in ways so in other things that you were not even looking for.
KATAYAMA: She saw the light.
AIZENBERG: This is the fiber, and we can see the come -- light coming only through the core.
KATAYAMA: She discovered that sponge fibers were made of glass similar to that used in man-made optical fibers, the core of today's cutting-edge telecommunications transmitting light at high speeds to send voice and data around the world. The biological fibers, too, distribute light emitted by organisms around it.
But, nature trumped man in two areas. The sponge's fiber is much more durable, it doesn't snap the way this man-made fiber does. And, nature creates it at the cold temperature of seawater, where as manufacturers have to blast glass in furnaces to produce fiber.
AIZENBERG: Nature is using materials that nature decides to use. It's beyond and much better that what we can do in the labs.
KATAYAMA: It has the potential of being a much cheaper way to create fibers as well.
MICHAEL RAYMER, UNIV. OF OREGON: But there are other applications that are on the horizon for optical fibers that this might really benefit from, and one nice example of that is the idea to embed thousands of optical fibers into the wings of a new aircraft and use those optical fibers to sense the strain that's being placed on the aircraft.
KATAYAMA (on camera): The sponge research is part of a hot emerging field called biomemedics. Researchers mine the depths of the ocean and nature for clues on how to build and improve technology.
(voice-over): Nature perfects things through evolution where only the strongest survive. A Bell Labs spokesman says the company hopes its findings will make their way into the business world in a few years. If successful, the creature that Greeks had used as paintbrushes, centuries ago, could help transform the communications industry.
Fred Katayama, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MIGUEL: Well, when we come back, we will have more coverage from the rally going on this afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial to remember Martin Luther King, Jr. and the march on Washington 40 years ago this week. Stay with us, we will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MIGUEL: We have some breaking news to bring to you, right you now. CNN has learned that convicted child sex abuser and defrocked Roman Catholic priest, John Geoghan, was taken Saturday from the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center to Leo Leominster hospital in Leominster, Massachusetts. That's according to a hospital spokeswoman who did not know anything more at this time regarding the cause as to why the former priest was taken from the correctional center where he was serving time to the hospital. All we know is that convicted child sex abuser and defrocked Roman Catholic priest, John Geoghan, was taken Saturday from the correctional center where he had been sentenced to a hospital. When we get more information, we will bring it to you.
We are continuing our coverage of the 40th anniversary of the march on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. We're waiting for Martin Luther King III to take the podium. As soon as that happens we will bring that to you, but we want to join, again Akinyele Umoja who is the Georgia State University professor of African-American history. And I want to ask you...
UMOJA: Studies.
MIGUEL: Studies, pardon me. We wanted to ask you about the young people of today, who were not born -- who, maybe all they've seen of the "I Have a Dream" speech is of course the video -- the famous video that has played countless times on television and specials. Now, if there was one lesson you think they'd need to take away from all that was at stake back in August of '63, what do you think it would be?
UMOJA: Well, one thing I would like to emphasize with young people is I think we need to talk to them more about the march, because it's important to know, as you talked t to me about earlier, what led up to the march, I mean, what happened after the march, because I think if you give youth a picture to just significant or great events is what changed history, they won't really have a idea of how social change comes about. But it's really the organizing that was done on local levels, really that inspired the march, and then after the march, the organizing that continued to go on in the deep South and other places that kind of led to some of the significant changes that they would see and experience.
MIGUEL: And a lot of those -- the organizing done by young people.
UMOJA: Exactly.
MIGUEL: By students, people in their 20s themselves, and not just African-Americans, but whites, as well.
UMOJA: Exactly. Exactly. As, one of the things, I think, she mentioned earlier is that the march was multicultural, today. It was multicultural at that time. There were whites and blacks in attendance, there. At the same time, I think it's good for young people to understand, really, the sacrifices that people made, really local people that there were -- you know, a lot of times we have these images of great leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, but there were welfare mothers who were involved in the struggle, there were people who had formerly being gang members who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement, at that time. I interviewed a man who was a bootlegger...
MIGUEL: Is that right?
UMOJA: ...who was involved Civil Rights Movement at that particular time, and decided, his name is C.O. Chin, who decide he would support the movement in Canton, Mississippi, where the movie "Time to Kill" was filmed.
MIGUEL: Oh.
UMOJA: And so, he was a major figure in that community. Since he had respect in the underworld, really, he was able to give that support to the movement at that particular time. So, there were a variety of figures and individuals who supported the Civil Rights Movement, during that time.
MIGUEL: All bringing their different experiences to bear in the struggle for civil rights.
UMOJA: Exactly.
MIGUEL: And, a lot of young people would go on in the next year to -- actually right now we want to go to Martin Luther King III, who we believe is about to be speaking.
(INTERRUPTED BY LIVE EVENT)
END
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Releases Columbia Findings; Mars Closest To Earth In 60,000 Years>
