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CNN Sunday Morning
Boy Scout Missing in North Carolina; Anti-War Protesters Endure Freezing Temperatures; NYC Braces for Cop Indictments
Aired March 18, 2007 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Well, hello there, everybody. It is Sunday, March 18th. Good morning to you all from the CNN Center here in Atlanta. I'm T.J. Holmes.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning, everybody. I'm Betty Nguyen. We want to thank you for starting your day with us. Snagged by a late winter storm. Are things finally getting back to normal in the Northeast? We have those details.
HOLMES: Dueling demonstrations in D.C. We will show you how thousands are honoring a grim Iraq War milestone. Plus we are going to show you this...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SNOW: If you knew your unborn baby was gay and there was as prenatal treatment to change that, would you?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NGUYEN: Hmm, a preacher's hypothetical suggestion for parents anger gay rights activists and fellow evangelicals. We have those details in 15 minutes.
But we do have new developments right now in the search for a missing Boy Scout in the mountains of North Carolina. It is freezing cold. And a light snow has been falling this morning in an area of the search, which is in the northwest corner of the state. The 12- year-old disappeared yesterday after a hike with his troop.
Here's the description. He is Caucasian, 5'4", 110 pounds, reddish brown curly hair. He was wearing blue jeans, a red jacket with reflective tape and a dark blue hat.
Now the boy's name has not been released. But again, he is just 12 years old. Saundra Lewis of the Wilkes Rescue Squad has been keeping us posted this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SAUNDRA LEWIS, WILKES RESCUE SQUAD: We're just finding signs of where he was walking yesterday afternoon, and eating a little bit of lunch, and that sort of thing. We've not really found anything significant from last night.
HOLMES: OK. Was he off on a walk by himself? I know everybody was out on a hike, but did -- were they pretty much going off in their own direction and this 12-year-old boy was allowed to just go pretty much where he wanted in the woods?
LEWIS: No, the group was together. They were actually at -- back at their campsite. After they came back, they noticed that he was missing.
HOLMES: OK. So the hike was over. They were back at their site, and he maybe just took off by himself somewhere?
LEWIS: We're not really sure why or what happened. But they were all back at the campsite. He was seen at the campsite. And then, a few minutes later, he was missing.
HOLMES: OK. You have any reason to believe any foul play involved here? Or does it appear that he walked off on his own?
LEWIS: No, there's no foul play. We don't see any signs of that.
HOLMES: OK. See any signs, as well, that he may be injured in any way?
LEWIS: Not that we know of.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NGUYEN: And CNN meteorologist Bonnie Schneider is closely watching the temperatures in that search area.
Bonnie, what are the conditions like this hour, because we know overnight it got down into the 20s with a little bit of snow.
BONNIE SCHNEIDER, CNN METEOROLOGIST: That's right. And the sun hasn't been up that long, Betty. It actually came out 7:29 this morning. What are you looking at right now is Google Earth. We have zoomed into the area of Doughton Park. And you can see, here's Alleghany County, this is in the western half of North Carolina, an area known as the Western Piedmont, just to the east of the foothills.
Southward we have Wilkes County and there is Traphill, North Carolina. The area highlighted in green, that indicates the border of the state park. It's about 30 miles of hiking trails. Let's take a look at the weather conditions. Currently, it is 28 degrees there, the sun is shining. Winds are fairly calm, not as windy as it was yesterday. They are out of the northwest at five to 10 miles per hour.
Notice the overnight low, down to 23 degrees, so not much of a change than where we are now. The problem is, Betty, that we're still below freezing. We haven't warmed up past the freezing mark. The forecast calls for temperatures to get up to 50 degrees. It is going to take a little while longer before that happens.
NGUYEN: Well, hopefully he can hold out. And he does have a light jacket on, we pray that it is enough to make it through the night and through the day until somebody finds him.
Thank you, Bonnie.
SCHNEIDER: Sure.
HOLMES: Crowded airports across the Northeast this morning, the complaints are flying a whole lot more freely than the passengers with some 3,600 flight cancellations on Friday and Saturday, there is a huge backlog. Some stranded passengers won't catch a plane until tomorrow or even Tuesday. De-icing rules were a big factor in the delays and the cancellations. Many planes simply could not take off quickly enough after being de-iced and had to be hosed down again and again and again. And another problem here, some airlines ran low on the de-icing solution.
In all of this confusion now there is a lot of unclaimed luggage to by sorted through and reunited with the owners. Earlier this morning, we talked with a spokeswoman at the Philadelphia Airport about how all of these problems are being addressed.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PHYLLIS VANISTENDAL, PHILADELPHIA INTL. AIRPORT: Apparently this morning, there are a few cancellations. We were not showing any flight delays, but several cancellations, and the information that I've received is there may be some crew issues based upon the availability of who is getting to Philadelphia International, or, you know, they've already extended their time limit.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(WEATHER REPORT)
NGUYEN: Well, we want to get you to the war in Iraq, because new tactics, new victims and this weekend, a chemical attack to tell you about. Bombers detonated three chlorine-filled trucks in Anbar province. Two Iraqi police officers actually killed, 350 Iraqis and six coalition force members were sickened by the fumes. And those victims are now recovering.
Well, this fourth year anniversary sparking anti-war protests around the country. Protesters are expected to march against the war a little bit later today in New York. But yesterday, you can see it right here, demonstrators took their protest to the Pentagon.
CNN's Gary Nurenberg reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GARY NURENBERG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The 2007 march on the Pentagon began at the Vietnam War Memorial, near the stepoff point for the 1967 march on the Pentagon that helped galvanize opposition to the Vietnam War.
The 30-degree temperatures were a long way from the heat of Iraq for Reserve Army Sniper Garrett Reppenhagen. He took part in nearly 200 missions in and near Baquba, worries about friends still serving and wants them home now.
REPPENHAGEN: I feel that the military was hijacked by this administration and used immorally in a war of aggression.
NURENBERG: Counter demonstrators confronted marchers as they passed the Lincoln Memorial. They, too, felt it important to be here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is my country and I love it, and I thank God for the president and all the presidents that really stands for freedom. That's what it's all about, freedom.
REPPENHAGEN: I respect their point of view but you know, we're going to continue to represent the majority of America.
NURENBERG: Among speakers at the Pentagon rally, Seaman Jonathan Hutto, active duty, opposed to the war.
JONATHAN HUTTO, CO-FOUNDER, APPEAL FOR REDRESS: Tell your congressperson to get a backbone and get a spine and to stand up on a mandate that the American people gave them last November!
NURENBERG: Demonstrators hope their actions here will make a difference.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But even if it doesn't, just for one's own integrity, one has to come out with one's body to protest.
NURENBERG: What one Brooklyn man called an American tradition.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that's the history of this country, that what you feel you have to come out and say loudly.
NURENBERG (on camera): Loudly or quietly, some of the demonstrators plan to stay in Washington to lobby Congress, which next week considers funding for the war.
Gary Nurenberg, CNN, at the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NGUYEN: Well, here's a question for you, what strategic choices lie ahead for ending the war and sectarian violence in Iraq? This morning on CNN's "LATE EDITION WITH WOLF BLITZER," he's going to be talking with National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. That comes your way in two hours at 11:00 Eastern.
HOLMES: A tragic twist to a familiar story. You've heard stories, of course, of teachers having sex with students. Police in Knoxville say an 18-year-old boy in a sexual relationship with his 30- year-old teacher was shot and killed outside the teacher's home and police say the teacher's husband was the one that pulled the trigger. He has now been charged in that killing.
New York authorities hoping for calm, but prepared for possible trouble tomorrow, that is when grand jury indictments are unsealed against three police officers. They face charges for their role in a shooting of a groom hours before his wedding. Defense attorneys say they are confident the officers will be cleared.
Senior correspondent Alan Chernoff has the latest on the latest on this case.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A city that was on edge as the grand jury deliberated this week in the Sean Bell shooting case, was relatively calm Saturday. Only a few dozen people show at a rally to protest the fact that just three of the five officers who shot at the groom's car were indicted.
Monday morning, three police detectives, who say they've done nothing wrong, are to appear at this Queens courthouse to be arrested and fingerprinted.
Detective Michael Oliver, who fired 31 shots at the car. Undercover detective Gescard Isnora, who fired first and shot 11 bullets. And detective Marc Cooper, who fired four times.
Queens D.A. Richard Brown will reveal the grand jury's criminal charges.
The detectives were part of an undercover narcotics operation November 25th at the Kalua strip club in Jamaica, Queens, where Sean Bell was celebrating his bachelor party.
The NYPD says undercover detective Isnora approached Bell's Nissan Altima. Bell's car bumped the detective, then hit an undercover police minivan twice.
Five officers fired a total of 50 bullets at the car, killing Bell and wounding his friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield.
The victims were all unarmed.
Defense attorneys tell CNN they're disappointed, but not shocked, that the grand jury chose to indict three of the officers.
PHILIP KARASYK, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Consider it like a two-foot hurdle to convict is like a 10-foot hurdle, beyond a reasonable doubt. So there is a long way to go between an indictment and a conviction at trial.
CHERNOFF: Indeed, defense attorneys and the detectives' union chief predict the officers will be cleared of criminal charges at trial.
MICHAEL PALLADINO, DETECTIVES' ENDOWMENT FUND: These officers, as all of law enforcement officers do throughout the country, they get up every morning and they humbly go to work. And acting in good faith, they try and protect the public.
In this particular situation, that's what our detectives did.
CHERNOFF: Police officers were acquitted of murder charges in the 1999 case of Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times in his Bronx apartment building.
That sparked widespread protests in New York, and black activists warn, it could happen again.
REV. AL SHARPTON, NATIONAL ACTION NETWORK: We're going to fight until the end, until we get justice.
CHERNOFF: Allan Chernoff, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: Well, up next, you have got to see this one. A story that is certainly sparking some debate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SNOW: If you knew your unborn baby was gay and there was a pre- natal treatment to change that, would you?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: Whoa, is this all a theory, or will we have to answer this question sooner than we think?
NGUYEN: And a small plane crash, but there are survivors. We are going to tell you where this plane came down.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get down on the ground! Get down!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: And tempers flare at a KKK rally in Texas. Stay here.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: An update now in the Oklahoma plane crash we told you about yesterday. Authorities have released the identity of the person killed in that crash. That's 50-year-old Bobbie Blanchard of Arlington, Texas, died when the plane crashed on a restaurant air strip near Marietta. Three others, including the pilot, survived.
Well, a chemical scare in Minnesota. Ammonia leaking from a train led authorities to evacuate more than 100 people for a few hours. Others were warned to stay inside. This happened in Lake City, in the southeastern part of the state. Ammonia fumes can be fatal if inhaled. Lake City's mayor says no one was injured or had to be hospitalized.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get down on the ground! Get down!
(END VIDEO CLIP) HOLMES: You are looking at a Ku Klux Klan rally. And this is what it turned into. Three people were arrested after a scuffle there. The rally comes two months after some white students at a state university there were photographed making fun of African- American stereotypes at an off-campus party. About two dozen Klan members attended the rally which drew about 500 onlookers.
NGUYEN: Here's another story for you. Tampering with the unborn. Not exactly an idea you expect from a religious leader, but that is what a Baptist minister says the Bible supports, if the unborn shows genetic signs of being gay.
CNN's Mary Snow reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SNOW (voice-over): If you knew your unborn baby was gay and there was a pre-natal treatment to change that, would you? Southern Baptist leader Reverend Albert Mohler suggests there could be a biological basis. And if there was, he says the Bible would sanction a change in biology, reasoning homosexuality is a sin.
REV. ALBERT MOHLER, SOUTHERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: I think if you went to Christian parents and said, look, here is -- here's a way you can help your child not just to deal with homosexuality in terms of resisting homosexual acts but actually to have that entire process reversed. I think most Christian parents would go for it in a heartbeat.
SNOW: Gay rights supporters are outraged.
HARRY KNOX, HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN: Being gay is an immutable, unchangeable gift from God. And to act as if we can throw that gift back by using hormone treatments on fetuses in the womb is just reprehensible.
SNOW: Some evangelicals are unhappy, too, they say being gay is a choice and a sin that could be overcome by prayer and counseling. Mohler provoked the debate by commenting on research he read about but admits there is no proof its credible and experts agree.
ARTHUR CAPLAN, UNIV. OF PA. CENTER FOR BIOETHICS: As of today there is no simple marker, no simple test, nothing you could do to say that person is going to become gay.
SNOW: Bioethics expert Arthur Caplan says he wouldn't be surprised if tests in a decade or so could determine the likelihood of someone's sexual orientation. He sees it as dangerous territory and one where firm rules need to be established.
CAPLAN: Are we going to allow doctors, encourage those who do genetic testing to do this kind of thing just because it fits somebody's preference? Somebody's bias? Somebody's bigotry?
SNOW (on camera): The bioethics expert we spoke with says the job of medicine is to treat disease and disorder. And he advocates laws to prevent genetic testing from being used for anything else, such as sexual differences.
Mary Snow, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NGUYEN: Well, millions have taken them to fall asleep, but some sleep aids may have serious and dangerous side effects.
HOLMES: Yes. Now the government wants new warning labels on some popular sleeping pills. Coming up, the look at the risks of sleep walking, sleep eating and even driving while you're asleep.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: Well, you might be talking and doing other stuff in your sleep if you are taking some of these drugs here. The FDA calling on drugmakers to add new warnings to some popular sleeping medications. The labels would warn users of potential reactions including conditions like sleep walking or even sleep driving.
The warnings would apply to 13 different drugs, including brands like Ambien and Lunesta. The complete list is available at cnn.com/health. And our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta has more on one of these bestselling versions of these drugs.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The man in this police video looks drunk, but he may be actually asleep. He said he was sleep driving the night he was arrested after taking two Ambien tablets.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I went to bed, I was reading, the next thing I know, there was a policeman at my car door.
GUPTA: He doesn't want us to his name or show his face. According to him, he doesn't even remember getting into the car. His case is on appeal after being convicted with driving under the influence.
Dr. Carlos Schenk says he has documented 32 cases of people with no previous history of sleep walking who began sleep walking, including walking, eating, even driving while sleeping under the influence of Ambien.
DR. CARLOS SCHENK, MINN. SLEEP DISORDERS CTR.: Ambien does increase the percent of slow wave sleep, which is a stage of sleep that promotes sleep walking.
GUPTA: Doctors wrote more than 48 million sleep aid prescriptions in the United States last year. Ambien, the top seller, netted its manufacturer over $1.7 million by 2006 third quarter.
In a statement, Sanofi-Aventis said it could not comment on specific cases, adding this. "It is important to emphasize that although sleep walking may occur during treatment with Ambien, it may not necessarily be caused by it. It is difficult to determine with certainty whether a particular instance of sleep walking is drug- induced, spontaneous in origin, or a result of an underlying disorder.
There is no large study to gauge the risk, but for the vast majority of Ambien users, Dr. Schenk says, don't worry and to follow the warning labels provided with prescriptions.
SCHENK: Even a sip of alcohol with Ambien can be dangerous. So I would strongly discourage any use, even a sip.
GUPTA: And if you do sleep walk after taking the drug, you should stop taking it. This man wishes he had.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I had no intention of driving, and I would just like people to know that, in particular the judge that hears my appeal.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: Some scary stuff there. Well, again, that was our Dr. Sanjay Gupta reporting for us.
NGUYEN: All right. There is a major pet food recall that we want to tell you about, because it's under way right now, and it covers a long list of brand names made by the company Menu Foods. There it is, on the screen. The pet food is sold at places like Wal- Mart, Safeway, even Kroger. And you can go to menufoods.com/recall for specifics or just call the number on the screen, there it is, 1- 866-895-2708. The recall was announced after at least 10 pets that ate the food actually died of kidney failure.
You can get more information on this story at cnn.com.
HOLMES: Social Security, Medicare, massive strains on the federal budget. Has the government promised too much?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our long-range problem is much worse, and it's very close to becoming a reality, because Boomers start retiring next year.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: Coming up, a warning from one of Washington's top bean counters, we are going broke.
NGUYEN: And going nowhere fast, that snowstorm across the Northeast is causing a ripple effect for travelers across the country. We'll give you an update.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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