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NEWS STREAM

Sergio Garcia Makes Racist Comment About Tiger Woods; Syrian Regime, Hezbollah Fighters Pound Qusayr; Leading Women: Save the Children's Jasmine Whitbread; Moore, Oklahoma Tornado Rated EF-5; Acid Attack Victim Fights Back; Microsoft Unveils Xbox One

Aired May 22, 2013 - 08:00:00   ET

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


PAULINE CHIOU, HOST: I'm Pauline Chiou in Hong Kong. Welcome to News Stream where news and technology meet.

As the scale of tornado devastation becomes clearer in Oklahoma, incredible stories of survival emerge from the rubble.

In India, a story that's both tragic and inspiring. We'll tell you about one woman's fight for justice after she was attacked with acid.

Apple CEO defends his company against allegations of tax avoidance.

And Microsoft unveils the next generation Xbox.

Survivors of the deadly tornado in Oklahoma are struggling to pick up the pieces of their lives. There is little left of the 2,400 homes that were in the twister's direct path. Despite the extreme damage, many are thankful just to be alive.

The tornado killed at least 24 people, that is far fewer than the initial reports. The medical examiner's office says in the chaotic aftermath, some of the dead were apparently counted twice.

But some people are still searching for their loved ones. No new survivors or bodies have been found since Monday.

In the hard hit city of Moore, the fire chief has sworn to search every damaged piece of property three times over.

CNN's Stephanie Elam joins us now live from Moore, Oklahoma.

Stephanie, it's the morning of day three there, what kinds of challenges do the search crews and all of the families face today?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Pauline, it's been a rough road for these families, which as a community together they're not looking to recover because as you said no one has been found alive. That does not mean that people are not still searching for loved ones. The mayor of this smalltown of Moore saying that he doesn't expect that the death toll number will climb higher, but at the same time, people are still trying to reconnect with loved ones and that's giving people a bit of heartache, still, as we continue out here.

Behind me, if you look out behind me, far out back there, that is where one elementary school was completely devastated where they lost seven children in that one school there. Another school, which was also hit, miraculously no one there died. The teachers there going out of their way to shield these children. And so the further we get away from the tornado, the more that we're hearing stories of a miraculous safety and also heroes coming in to help these people. But still at this point, they're trying to still get power back here. There's not necessarily water pressure. So still a lot of recovery for the people here. And all in all, they're saying about 10,000 residents were directly impacted by this tornado.

One other issue here, besides trying to find loved ones, people are still trying to find their animals, their pets. And we were talking to one woman who had made it back to the house she is renting with her husband of 10 months. They had just moved in. And she says that she was at work and she started to get text messages from their security system telling them that their doors were being breached. It was all just about gone.

But that was not the most important thing they were looking for.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Heartbreaking. I just want to find her. She's our little baby. And everything was gone. She was in a crate and it's all gone. We searched at Home Depot. We went to the warren. We went to all the shelters. No one had seen her. We posted online at Facebook sites already trying to just get it out there that, you know, she's missing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ELAM: So that would be their dog, Sugar, that they're looking for.

And their story was very common with a lot of other people who are coming back to this home that, honestly Pauline, it almost looked like someone just decided to take everything, put it into one massive blender and then throw it back on the streets.

It's unbelievable. Street signs are gone. There's just nothing but wood around. And then in the afternoon, it started to really, really rain. The wind started to kick up. So the people who were out there searching through the rubble had to then leave because it was just too cold and too hard to search. So they're going to go back in there today to see what they can find.

But the same time, they've got to be careful, because just a lot of nails. There's a lot of treacherous ground to step -- that you want to avoid when you're stepping. And so the people had been needing tetanus shots as they're out there looking for the rubble for their loved ones and their pets.

A couple of pets have been found, though, so there is still hope out there, Pauline.

CHIOU: Yeah, and pets are like family members, so understandably -- we understand why that woman was so upset.

It's such a fluid situation. And Stephanie, you did mention that families are still looking for loved ones. But just how difficult is it for relatives to try to connect with each other, considering the power situation and also the cell phone connection and the situation there?

ELAM: One of the issues is that cell phone towers being down. They're coming back.

One thing they're asking, though, for people that are safe and that have not been able to get in touch with their family is to just go ahead and register. They have different web sites here. That they're asking people to register with so that at least the word can be out like, hey, I'm safe. I'm OK. I'm just maybe with family or maybe I'm in Texas, a neighboring state or something like that.

So that's what they're asking people to do to make sure that they get the word out there to these shelters so that everyone knows that they're OK.

CHIOU: Stephanie, thank you very much. It's day three. It's going to be another long day there in Moore, Oklahoma. Stephanie Elam giving us an update.

Well, this is where the Plaza Tower Elementary School once stood on this street. Take a look at that. At least seven children died here.

Oklahoma's lieutenant government says some of them actually drowned in the basement where they were seeking shelter.

Meteorologists had warned the residents to go underground to survive a direct hit from the tornado. It took just 10 minutes for the tornado to go from relatively powerless to extremely destructive. Initial assessments put it in the most powerful category of measurement, which is an EF-5.

Moore was struck by another EF-5 tornado on May 3 back in 1999.

Now the city references that on its emergency management webpage right here. But it says there's a very small likelihood of Moore being struck by a tornado. There's an extremely smaller chance of Moore experiencing another May 3 type event. How your words can come back to haunt you.

Well, the city urges residents to have their own storm safe room, or underground cellar, but says it has no public shelters because they are not advisable.

Officials now question -- face questions, rather, about their decisions.

Well, survivors will tell you that waiting to find out the fate of a loved one is excruciating, even when there is a happy ending. Kyung Lah brings us one family's story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They knew where it was going.

RICK ROBERTS, GRANDFATHER: You could just see it, you know, pulling up everything. And it was on a beeline course dead straight toward this day care where my grandsons were.

LAH: What was left of the day care, his three year old and six week old boys inside.

ROBERTS: You can't look at it and not break down. There's no way. I'm sorry.

LAH: Across town, his daughter Janna, who rode out the tornado at school district headquarters where she works.

She already knew Briarwood Elementary, next door to the day care was flattened. For three hours, she was trapped behind live electrical wires, desperately texting for news of her sons.

JANNA KETCHIE, MOTHER: Those three hours that I didn't hear anything, those were the longest three hours of my life, knowing that I'd never see him again. No mother should ever have to go through that. No.

DR. BOB LETTON, OU MEDICAL CENTER, PEDIATRIC TRAUMA: It's hard. And there were -- a lot of the kids we were seeing were school age, eight, 10 years old.

LAH: Children were being rushed into Children's Hospital. 51 patients came into Dr. Bob Letton's trauma ward, but that wasn't the hard part of the night for him.

LETTON: Yeah, it's -- it hurts, because you know if they could get to you, you have half a chance. But a lot of them never got here. And I'm not sure whether they needed to be here or not.

LAH: In the stream of children in the emergency room, little Grayson Ketchie (ph), his ear hurt, a bad wound to his head, his baby brother...

UNIDENTIFIED BOY: That's my baby.

LAH: You're baby?

UNIDENTIFIED BOY: Yeah.

LAH: Unscathed, because their day care teacher covered them with a mattress and her own body. Amazingly, no one in this day care center died.

ROBERTS: It's a miracle. It's an absolute miracle.

LAH: Grayson (ph) is a little shaken, as you might imagine.

What happened to day care?

UNIDENTIFIED BOY: It broke.

It broke?

UNIDENTIFIED BOY: Yeah.

LAH: But he's quickly on the mend and ready to play.

Oh, you got me!

One family's lucky turn who understands there are so many neighbors who are not.

KETCHIE: I'm sorry. We'll be praying for you and your family. It's all I can do.

LAH: Grayson (ph) has been discharged from the hospital, heading home. His parents say their house was not damaged by the tornado.

Kyung Lah, CNN, Children's Hospital, OU Medical Center.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHIOU: We'll have more on the tornado and its aftermath a bit later on News Stream. But coming up next, her life was forever changed by a vicious acid attack. Now 10 years on, find out how one young woman in India is trying to rebuild it one painful step at a time.

Also, Apple's CEO is being grilled by U.S. lawmakers. Is the tech giant paying its fair share in taxes?

And will Microsoft's new Xbox be a gamechanger in the video gaming industry? We'll take a look.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHIOU: At a time when sexual assaults in India have made news with tragic frequency, our next story from New Delhi is both difficult to watch and also inspiring. 10 years after an acid attack left her severely injured and blind, a young woman is vowing to pursue justice against her attackers. Sumnima Udas has her heartrending story, but we must warn you this report shows severe acid burns. Images that may be disturbing to some of our viewers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUMNIMA UDAS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is what Sonali Mukherjee used to look like. President of the student's union in college, captain of the national cadet court, an honor student set to pursue a PhD in sociology. But her life changed in an instant 10 years ago when three men started harrassing her. When she refused their advances, they threw a jug of acid on her.

SONALI MUKHERJEE, ACID ATTACK VICTIM (through translator): All I could feel was a burning sensation as if someone had thrown me into a fire. I was in excruciating pain for the first three to four months.

UDAS: In a fraction of a second, Mukherjee had lost her ability to see, hear, eat, walk, and talk.

SANJEEV BAGAI, DOCTOR AND CEO, BLK HOSPITAL: She had no normal skin left on her face. Her face was almost 95, 98 percent burned and scarred. She had no ears. She had no eyes, no eyelids and no scalp at all.

Really, the challenge was to give her kind of a normal face, somewhat close to what a normal human being would look like.

UDAS: Now, this 27 year old is in the middle of a long fight, a painful one that no one should have to endure. She's just undergone her 27th reconstructive surgery.

For years, it was a lonely battle for survival.

CHANDI DAS MUKHERJEE, FATHER OF ACID ATTACK VICTIM (through translator): Being the head of the family, I couldn't afford to breakdown. My father passed away in shock. My wife slipped into depression.

UDAS: But Sonali Mukherjee was not one to give up or remain silent.

She participated in the country's most popular game show last year, the Indian addition of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

"I've grown up watching your films and now I can't see you, but I can feel you," she told the host who is also India's biggest superstar Ametabetchan.

Mukherjee won the 40,000 jackpot.

SONALI MUKHERJEE (through translator): I participated for two reasons: I needed the money and I wanted the world to know what an acid attack victim has to go through in this country.

UDAS: The men who scarred her for life, though, were freed after just two years in jail. Mukherjee has appealed the court's decision. Years on, she's yet to get a date in court.

SONALI MUKHERJEE (through translator): My father spends every single penny. He sold our land, gold, everything to pay for legal fees and my treatment hoping I would get justice. But in the end, we lost everything while the criminals are out there.

UDAS: This year, India passed a law that punishes perpetrators of acid attacks with 10 years to life in prison along with a fine. It's unlikely to have an impact on Mukherjee's case, but she is resolute.

All she wants is justice, she says, and she'll fight for that until her last breath.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHIOU: Hers is really an amazing story of bravery and the face of so much adversity.

Well, Sumnima Udas joins us now live from New Delhi with more.

Sumnima, you showed us how Sonali lost her vision and her hearing, but can she possibly get any of her senses back with these surgeries?

UDAS: Pauline, doctors say it's actually very difficult for her to get her vision back, because she's lost most of her cornea, she's lost almost all of her optic nerve, which is what connects her eyes to her brain. But this is something that they would like to work on in the end once all the other surgeries are done. They hope to reconstruct her cornea and also maybe look into maybe giving her a bionic eye, which is essentially a prosthetic eye.

But again, this is the last thing they will do.

In terms of her other senses, when she first arrived to this particular hospital, which was a year ago, she had no lips. She couldn't eat. So they basically had to feed her with a straw. She couldn't talk, because her vocal cords were completely melted. She had no ears. She had no ear drums. So the doctors say she only had like two holes on the side of her skull, so they had to reconstruct her ears and her ear drums. And should couldn't move at all until about a year ago because her chest and her spinal area and her armpits, all of that had melted so she couldn't move at all.

Now doctors say by the end of this year, they hope she will look something like a human being, in their words. And then they will start working on her vision -- Pauline.

CHIOU: We do see some physical progress, step by step. How does Sonali envision her life later on down the road? What does she eventually want to do?

UDAS: Well, she really wants to start her life all over again. And what she really feels bad about, she kept talking about over and over again, is what her parents have had to go through because of her circumstances. Her father hasn't been able to work for the past 10 years, because he's basically been able -- had to feed her every day with that straw until about last year. He's had to lift her -- take her to the hospital, take her to the bathroom every day. So she feels bad about that. She really wants to start her life all over again.

But she's very aware that she may never be normal again, or may never have a normal face, may never have a normal job, a normal life. So she's quite pragmatic as well. And she says that her state of Jharkhand, which is where she's from, they promised to build her a book shop and that's what she'd like to do, for sure, at least that will pay for a little bit. And maybe she can take care of her parents then. And also she'd like to really work in terms of the rehabilitation of other acid attack victims as well, Pauline.

CHIOU: So she's not giving up on her dreams. And also, hats off to her parents for being so devoted.

Sumnima, thank you very much for bringing us her story. Sumnima Udas there live from New Delhi.

And you can read more about Sonali Mukherjee's tragic story on our website, CNN.com/international. There you can also find out about the victims of acid attacks in Colombia and Afghanistan. Their fight to see their attackers brought to justice, and the surgeons helping them recover.

We want to bring you an update now on a story out of Italy that we've been following for some time now right here on CNN. The Italian news agency Ansa is reporting that a judge has ruled that the captain of the capsized Costa Condordia cruise ship faces trial.

The ship ran aground in January of last year off the coast of Italy. 32 people died in that disaster. Ansa reports that Francesco Schettino will now be tried for dereliction of duty and also multiple manslaughter charges.

Still to come right here on News Stream, a strategic town under siege. Rebel fighters in Syria say they're struggling to hold their positions against government troops and Hezbollah fighters in the town of Qusayr. We'll have a report (inaudible) coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHIOU: We're coming to you live from Hong Kong. You're watching News Stream.

And you're looking at a visual version of all the stories in the show today. We started with the devastation in Oklahoma. A little later, we'll look at a Syrian town under siege. But now let's turn to the big story in technology today, Microsoft's new Xbox.

The new Xbox was unveiled at an event at Microsoft's headquarters on Tuesday. CNN Money's Adrian Covert got a behind the scenes look at the Xbox One.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Introducing Xbox One.

ADRIAN COVERT, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Today, Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One, which is the latest iteration of its gaming consoles. And while every aspect of the Xbox One, from the controller to the Kinect cameras to the CPU are an improvement over previous versions like the Xbox 360, but core gameplay itself is not radically different from anything Microsoft has done in the past.

The updated Kinect camera is the central component of the Xbox One. And Microsoft promises it'll offer deeper, more detailed motion detection than ever before. This could open up new possibilities in how we game, but whether or not developers support that remains to be seen.

YUSUF MEHDI, MICROSOFT: I think in this generation, you will see Kinect start to play a very real and authentic addition to how you game with the controller.

It's hard to give the control or the haptic feedback in all of that, tactile sense of things. But there have been some things that, you know, you're going to start to see where -- because of the Kinect in conjunction with the controller, we can tell, you know, if you lean, if someone throws something and you kind of naturally go up, it puts a shield up.

COVERT: When it comes to the gaming companies, Microsoft has generally been ahead of the curve in embracing the nongaming aspects of its hardware. With the Xbox One, it's no different. There's still going to be tons of streaming content this generation, but now you'll be able to directly connect your cable box And the really big thing is that they're going to develop their own original TV content for the Xbox, which will set it apart from the likes of Sony and Nintendo.

BONNIE ROSS, 343 INDUSTRIES: Today, along with Nancy, I'm thrilled to announce a live action Halo television series.

NANCY TELLEM, MICROSOFT: With respect to original series and all the original content we are producing, it really is the idea that what we put on our platform will truly be differentiated. And that -- and we're in a unique position with the use of Skype, SmartGlass, and all sorts of other interactive features that actually we outlined today. And more will be disclosed.

It really will be a differentiation to watch any type of entertainment content on our platform compared to others.

COVERT: One of the things that Microsoft has been keen to point out is how they've built the Xbox One to be able to adapt and evolve to any unforeseen or merging tech trends that may pop up in the future. They believe that when new things to arrive, they'll be able to seamlessly integrate it into the framework of the Xbox.

Another thing to believe is that they'll be able to harness the power of the cloud in the future for processing power. And they think the Xbox will actually be able to do more in the future than it can do now.

If that happens, Microsoft will be prime to compete against the likes of Sony, Nintendo in this current console war.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHIOU: And that was CNN Money's Adrian Covert reporting from Microsoft headquarters in Washington State.

Well, you may have noticed something during Adrian's story, you saw TV, movies and sports on the new Xbox, but what you didn't see were any games. It was 28 minutes into Microsoft's presentation before the first Xbox One games were announced.

Microsoft promises they'll talk more about Xbox One games in June.

That could show how Microsoft sees the new Xbox, not just as a gaming console, but as a general entertainment device. But one expert told us there will always be a market for a dedicated game console.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROB FAHEY, GAMESINDUSTRY.BIZ: I think for that, you need to look at the fact that there are about 100 million people out there who bought a Playstation 2. There are over 100 million people who bought the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. So that's a big market of people who have grown up with videogames and who love the experience of playing video games with a controller in front of a big TV, which is a pretty different experience from playing Angry Birds on your phone.

I think it's a similar debate to the discussion over whether, because we can watch movies on our TVs at home the cinema was going to die. And of course cinema didn't die in the end.

So they're quite different experiences. There's always going to be a market for something that's more involving, more engrossing than what you can do on the phone or a tablet.

However, is this a challenge to the games industry? Absolutely, 100 percent, because if you lose all the people who are only playing casually that's a pretty small target market to aim for that you have left. And there is a -- as the phones and the devices start to get more powerful -- that's one of the big reasons we're seeing this new generation of hardware arrive now, because realistically your new iPhone, your new Samsung Galaxy phone is probably similar in power to the existing games consoles. And that's just not a situation those people can allow to continue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHIOU: But if Microsoft is pinning its hopes on any device to take over the living room, the Xbox is probably their best bet. Since its launch in 2005, they've sold over 76 million of the previous generation Xbox 360 behind Nintendo's Wii, but roughly on par with rival Sony's Playstation 3.

Compare that to Microsoft's other consumer products -- the Windows Phone OS took just 3 percent of the smartphone market in the first quarter of this year, according to IDC. Microsoft Surface is doing even worse. They shipped less than a million tablets in the same period. That's less than 2 percent of the market.

Well, staying in the tech sector now, Apple stands accused of tax avoidance on a grand scale. U.S. lawmakers say the tech giant has shifted billions of dollars in profit away from the United States to lower its tax burden. But Apple's CEO Tim Cook stood firm against those allegations when he appeared on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

Joe Johns has more details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please stand and raise your right hand.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The head of America's most iconic technology company got a grilling from lawmakers on Capitol Hill Tuesday. At issue, whether Apple tried to avoid paying its fair share of taxes.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, (R) ARIZONA: Can you understand there's a perception of unfair advantage here?

TIM COOK, APPLE CEO: Honestly speaking, I don't see it as being unfair. I'm not an unfair person. That's not who we are as a company.

JOHNS: Citing a committee report, senators accused the tech company of keeping income overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Apple has $144 billion in cash, but $100 billion of that is overseas and not subject to the 35 percent corporate tax rate.

SEN. CARL LEVIN, (D) MICHIGAN: Apple has arranged matters so that it can claim that these ghost companies for tax purposes exist nowhere.

JOHNS: Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company is simply expanding into foreign markets. He cited the $6 billion in U.S. taxes the iPhone and iPad maker paid last year.

COOK: Apple has real operations in real places with Apple employees selling real products to real customers. We pay all the taxes we owe, every single dollar. We not only comply with the laws, but we comply with the spirit of the laws.

JOHNS: Coming to Apple's aid, outspoken Republican Rand Paul complaining about the clunky tax code and defending the tech giant's tax strategy.

SEN. RAND PAUL, (R) KENTUCKY: I'm offended by a $4 trillion government bullying, berating and badgering one of America's greatest success stories. You know, tell me one of these politicians up here who doesn't minimize their taxes. Tell me a chief financial officer that you would hire if he didn't try to minimize your taxes legally.

JOHNS: But Senator John McCain couldn't let Cook leave without getting to the heart of the matter.

MCCAIN: What I really wanted to ask is why the hell I have to keep updating the apps on my iPhone all the time, and why you don't fix that.

JOHNS: Joe Johns, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHIOU: You're watching News Stream. And still to come, a trail of destruction as seen from above. Get a bird's eye view of the tornado's path across Moore Oklahoma.

And more militants join Syria's civil war as shells rain down on a strategically important city.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHIOU: I'm Pauline Chiou in Hong Kong, you're watching News Stream. And these are your world headlines.

The mayor of Moore, Oklahoma says he does not expect the death toll to climb from Monday's massive tornado. 24 people were killed in the EF-5 tornado, the strongest category on the meteorologist scale.

With relations strained, North Korea has sent one of its top military officials to China. North Korean state media reports that a top North Korean general left Pyongyang on Wednesday as a special envoy of the leader Kim Jong un. The reports say he met with senior Chinese officials in Beijing.

Microsoft has unveiled its next generation Xbox. The Xbox One is designed to be more than just a gaming console. Microsoft boasted about its ability to show live TV and sports. It is set to go on sale later this year.

The conservative dominated council that vets presidential hopefuls for Iran's upcoming elections has disqualified two prominent politicians. One of them is former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The other is a close aid of outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Five of the eight candidates who were approved to run are conservatives with ties to the supreme leader.

Well, this is an image of the storm system that struck Oklahoma on Monday. It shows the beginning of the mammoth tornado that killed at least 24 people. The twister cut a path of destruction 17 miles long, that's more than 27 kilometers.

And as Chris Cuomo shows us, the difference between life and death can be a matter of meters.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN CORREPSONDENT: We are going take you through the tornado's path from beginning to end. If you look down here, you'll see a brown line. It starts with debris field going in this direction. That is actually the tornado's trail. As you see, it's going to get much more dramatic as we get near a populated area.

You can trace with your finger a line where the tornado went. The path is the obvious. It's about a block and a half wide. You notice it by seeing everything that's destroyed. Everything that looks like paper on the ground, they are homes, timber, roofs, cars. And 16 minutes, that was the warning window before it touched down. Then a 10 minute window during which it went from heavy wind to destroying everything in its path.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my god!

CUOMO: This is where the tornado was. Look at the difference between life and death, between losing everything and losing nothing. Over the water, it looks like it disappears. Then when touches land and destruction resumes.

Scientists say debris from the tornado can hit 10 times as high as we are right now into the air. Look at the trees. It looks like people pulled them up and laid them down like they were weeding their garden. They are huge, rooted pine trees. Cars are littered along the trail. They were never there. They were tossed like toys.

When you look at the debris, you can understand why search and rescue is difficult. It's hard to get into the areas. Once you do, to find your way through the homes is literally like digging through a hay stack. This tornado is one that this community has seen before. In 1999 and 2003, terrible tornadoes here that carved almost the same path for this community.

This part of the community shows the randomness and intensity of the tornado. A block away, they have been spared. This part of the debris trail ends at a school where children lost their lives.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHIOU: It's such a different vantage point from that bird's eye view.

And as we've told you, the city of Moore does not provide public tornado shelters. It says so right here on its emergency management webpage. Now the city says schools have plans for severe weather conditions, but after the deaths of at least seven children in one elementary school people are now raising questions about school safety.

And a short time ago, Oklahoma's lieutenant governor spoke CNN USA. And here's his exchange with John Berman.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A lot of people are asking about the issue of shelters, particularly in the schools. I know there was a state rep who proposed a bond issue to fund some of these shelters in all the schools. Do you support that measure? Because from the outside looking in, it seems to a lot of people that these shelters really should be part of the school system.

TODD LAMB, OKLAHOMA LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: Well, I understand your question. It's an important question to ask. Right now, I'm focused on the recovery and the relief effort. Congressman Cole (ph), we're in his congressional district, and I look forward to visiting with him. I saw him this morning briefly. I look forward to visiting with him to get his thoughts and advice and suggestions for his hometown where he grew up, where he lived, where his family was and is. And I get his thoughts for any federal legislation as opposed to just any state -- state legislation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHIOU: In Moore, Oklahoma, there's destruction as far as the eye can see. That damage could actually tell scientists a lot about the tornado. Tom Foreman has that from the virtual studio.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Investigators are going to be picking through all of this rubble and studying the entire path of this storm for weeks because they want to understand precisely how strong was block by block by block. And one way they do that is by picking specific targets.

For example, a typical house out in the neighborhood there, the school which was right there, or the hospital here all in a row all in the same general area.

What are they looking for? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has established standards, for example, what it might take to knock down a typical house out there.

This is what they've come up with. In term of winds, you have to have about 97 miles an hour in the wind to tear the roof off, 132 miles an hour to start making the walls collapse, and at 200 miles an hour you can expect this entire structure to fail.

Now that's very different when you move to something like the school, which is generally in the same neighborhood. Here you have a flat roof, big open rooms inside. Here, you'll see the roof start collapsing at about 101 miles an hour, the walls falling in at 139, and all of it failing at 176. So you see, it's less robust than a typical house, but that's because of all those open rooms like gymnasiums and cafeterias.

And yet, when you move on to a much bigger building like the hospital, which would seem to be a huge target sitting out there when these winds come along, it fared much better because there's a lot of concrete, a lot of steel, this is just a much tougher building than many around it. Here, if you want to see the roof come off, the winds are going to have to top 114 miles an hour. And it's still probably only going to take part of the roof. The same with the walls, 148 miles an hour to start taking any of them down. And the whole structure will probably remain until you hit at least 210 miles and hour, maybe even 240, 250, 260.

Different buildings, all in the same area, different degrees of damage. But by analyzing that damage, they can figure out precisely how strong this storm was ever step of the way.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHIOU: And for more on that damage and more on the deadly tornado that tore through Oklahoma, we turn to meteorologist Jennifer Delgado. And Jen, we now know that the tornado was much stronger than we thought, because it had been upgraded to the highest strength category, hasn't it?

JENNIFER DELGADO, CNN WEATHER CORRESPONDENT: That's right, now we do know. And we all suspected that it was very likely going to be an EF-5. And that means those winds were up to 337 kilometers per hour.

Now it did travel for 27 minutes. And keep in mind we are talking about it being 2 kilometers wide.

Now this is the second EF-5 to strike Moore in less than 14 years. And I want to correct myself, it actually traveled for 40 minutes, roughly 27 kilometers. That is incredibly.

In addition to this new information that we know now that it was the EF-5, we also want to show you how this storm system moved as it made its path along that 27 kilometer trail.

Now, as we go over to our graphic for you, and we want to point out to you, again, we do know again this was an EF-5. As we zoom in a bit for you, and we know that it hit two schools very hard, of course. And for one of those schools, for Briarwood, it was an EF-5 as it passed over that region.

Now as I flip over to our Google Earth, this is actually showing you some of the damage that was left behind. You can see total destruction. This is what happens when you're dealing with a tornado rated an EF-5. And that is the strongest.

Now keep in mind as I said to you, this is actually the second one that has moved across that region.

As we take the path of it Moore for you. As it passed over the next school, this was actually an EF-4, a little bit weaker, but certainly still a very strong tornado, nonetheless.

Now as we hop back over to our graphic, because apparently it has gone to black. And now it's moving back again. As we show you this, and we're going to step out of the way because we're going to have to move this manually, you can see for yourself where this goes to -- an EF-4 and then eventually just roped out and fizzled away.

Now as we go on about the forecast, today we're still looking at a chance for some severe weather, but we're also talking a slight risk. You can see the rain down towards areas including Louisiana. And then if you look up into the northeast as well as into the Ohio Valley, that is where we're looking at the slight risk category for severe storms for today.

Now as we move across parts of China, some very heavy rainfall came across the region where we picked up 150 to 200 millimeters of rainfall in a very short period of time. Of course you had that black storm warning. And that was making for a pretty exciting night, I would imagine. As we go through today and tomorrow, we will continue to see a few more showers across that region, Pauline, but it's still going to be rather hot across parts of China.

CHIOU: Oh, OK. Ready for the mugginess. Yeah, we did have a lot of rain, a lot of thunder and lightning...

DELGADO: A lot of action, right.

CHIOU: Yeah.

All right, thank you so much, Jen.

We're going to move on to the situation now in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Jordan today as delegates from 11 countries, known as the Friends of Syria, meet in Amman. They're discussing a U.S.- Russian proposal for a peace conference aimed at ending Syria's civil war. And the violence is not letting up.

Syrian troops, backed by Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, have been pounding rebel positions in the western town of Qusayr. The head of the opposition group, the Syrian National Council, has urged all rebel factions to rush fighters and weapons to this town.

Nic Robertson reports on the battle for Qusayr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is the sound of a city being crushed, Syrian government shells slamming into the town of Qusayr. From a distance, this strategic city appears shrouded in gunsmoke, the worst shelling, activists say, since the government began an offensive more than three weeks ago. CNN cannot verify the authenticity of these YouTube videos, but their message is clear.

"Qusayr is besieged by Assad's and Hezbollah's forces," this activist says. "Please, god, help us. Where are the Arabs, where are the Muslims," he pleads?

Another activist, Haddi Abdullah (ph) narrates his trip to the front line. "They have destroyed two tanks." They will show us a second tank. A third tank is trying to pull the dead and injured from the two tanks.

But as Abdullah (ph) returns from the front line, runs across open ground, those behind him not so lucky. Caught in a shell blast. His reaction, "I can't imagine what's happened to them," he says. "The regime shot at us."

As the dust settles, they discover two fighters were killed.

At the makeshift medical center, there is chaos. Injured fill every space. "This is a real war in Qusayr," the doctor shouts above the cries of pain. "More than 100 injuries this day, but we don't have much material"

Look at the difference a year makes. The same doctor, the same town 14 months ago, only he seems years younger, medical supplies not so scarce, smuggled along this vital rebel supply line from neighboring Lebanon.

The town, although mostly surrounded by regime forces, relatively unscathed. Back then, local leaders planned for the worst -- how to feed the estimated 30,000 civilians living there. Now, their worst fears appear to be coming true. A government offensive to drive them out once and for all.

Against the mightier military force, they say they are holding out. The question is, for how long?

Nic Robertson, CNN, Hatay, Turkey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHIOU: Still ahead on News Stream, we'll get a world sport update. We'll tell you why pro golfer Sergio Garcia is apologizing for a joke he made about his rival Tiger Woods.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHIOU: This week's Leading Woman is the CEO of an international organization dedicated to helping children around the world. As the head of Save the Children, Jasmin Whitbread concentrates on motivating her staff and inspiring others to pay it forward. Here's Becky Anderson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORREPSONDENT: She's a defender of the poor.

JASMINE WHITBREAD, CEO, SAVE THE CHILDREN: Wish you all the best with your futures.

ANDERSON: A crusader for children around the world

WHITBREAD: Children shouldn't be going to bed hungry. They shouldn't be missing out on a basic education. These things are not expensive. They're not hard to solve.

Education for children who have been...

ANDERSON: Jasmine Whitbread heads an international aid organization working in more than 120 countries. And the goal...

WHITBREAD: Our mission is to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children. I want to get help, life saving aid to kids caught up in emergencies or in very poor countries to really challenge some of these fundamental wrongs that can't be allowed to continue into the 21st Century.

ANDERSON: Save the Children operates with a global staff of roughly 14,000. The organization says it reached 45 million children in 2012 through assistance, community activities and services.

How would you describe yourself as a manager?

WHITBREAD: I think that I've become a stronger manager and more of a leader since focusing more on where I'm trying to inspire people to get to. So it's more about helping to create the vision of where it is we want to get to and less in the detail I would say.

ANDERSON: And to rally and inspire her troops, Whitbread regularly leaves the London headquarters for site visits all over the world.

WHITBREAD: Morning.

CROWD: Morning.

WHITBREAD: Morning.

I'm very well, thank you very much for welcoming me here.

ANDERSON: We join her as she tours projects in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The needs are enormous.

WHITBREAD: So show me, where does the water come up to?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, the water will come up to this level?

ANDERSON: She gets an update on the aftermath to the flood.

WHITBREAD: So should the school be relocated to somewhere else?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need the school to (inaudible) and get the fence around this school with some kind of retaining wall around -- the water will no longer stop us again.

WHITBREAD: All this rubbish here, which really is, you know, affecting the day to day life of everything -- whether it's the school or the clinics or anything that we see. It's all too easy in a remote city somewhere to imagine programs that are very neat and fit into logical frameworks and are focused on either water and sanitation or education or health and nutrition. And actually real life is much more messy than that.

ANDERSON: How does it stack up to other places where you have projects?

WHITBREAD: Sierra Leone is a special place, also, because of the energy of the people. There is a can-do attitude around it, so you do sense that Sierra Leone is on a journey somewhere. And we all know where we want to take it for children.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHIOU: And that is Jasmine Whitbread of Save the Children.

A world sport update is just ahead as one of the favorites is forced to pull out of the French Open. Alex Thomas will tell you who will miss the tournament coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHIOU: A spat between two of the world's tough golfers Sergio Garcia and Tiger Woods has taken an ugly twist. Let's join World Sport's Alex Thomas for the details.

Alex, what's been happening?

ALEX THOMAS, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Pauline, Tiger Woods, golf's world number one, has taken great offense to remarks from Sergio Garcia, a long time rival, and someone that he simply doesn't get on with. In the last few minutes, this is what Tiger Woods said on Twitter talking about something that Garcia said at a European tour event here in the UK last night. He said, "the comment that was made wasn't silly, it was wrong, hurtful and clearly inappropriate. I'm confident that there is real regret that the remark was made. The Players," means the Player's championship, "ended nearly two weeks ago and it's long past time to move on and talk about golf."

What's hilarious about that -- or not hilarious, actually because it's far from a laughing matter, is that by sending this tweet out, Pauline, and I'm just responding to this, because it only happened in the last few minutes. He's doing completely the opposite, we will not be moving on from this. This will be a huge talking point now in the world of golf and beyond as well, because Tiger Woods is saying to Sergio Garcia it wasn't just a flippant comment.

And the comment I'm referring to is that when asked at a European tour player's awards dinner last night here in the UK about whether or not Sergio would make amends with Tiger Woods and invite him for dinner before the U.S. Open, Garcia said, yeah, sure I'll have him over for dinner every night. We'll have fried chicken. And that, of course, has racial connotations.

This was the statement from Garcia via the European tour afterwards saying, "I apologize to any offense that may have been caused by my comment on stage during the European tour players awards dinner." The statement went on to say, "I answered a question that was clearly made towards me as a joke with a silly remark, but in no way was the comment meant in a racist manner."

And yet as I've just said, on Twitter, Tiger Woods clearly is taking it as far more serious than just a silly remark.

And this has awful echoes of when Tiger Woods won the Master's golf tournament for the first time, Pauline, announcing himself to the world as a genius golfer to be and the champion that he's become. And a former Master's champion Fuzzy Zoeller when asked what Tiger would be serving at the following year's champion's dinner said, oh, I don't know -- and he made a remark about fried chicken and saying, "anything that those people like."

And it was seen as a racist remark. And given the chance to let Fuzzy Zoeller off the hook, Tiger Woods did not take it and made it clear that he was offended by it. And it really hurt Fuzzy Zoeller's reputation. And the same might now be said about Sergio Garcia's reputation, Pauline.

CHIOU: Yeah, I remember that incident back in the late 90s when that comment came out from Fuzzy Zoeller. It was just horrifying. You would think that other people would learn from that, but apparently not. So this is certainly not the end of the story.

OK, Alex, thank you very much for the update there and for the recent tweet from Tiger Woods.

We're going to move on right now about grizzlies, and we're not talking about the NBA basketball team. A grizzly bear got his jaws around one man's video camera. And Hala Gorani has the incredible images.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HALA GORANI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is as close as any of us would ever want to get to the jaws of a grizzly bear.

Those teeth, that tongue, you can almost feel the animal's breath.

The amazing footage comes from one curious cub who discovered a video camera in the wilds of Alaska.

The camera belongs to wildlife photographer Brad Josephs. Even he was amazed his GoPro somehow survived the grizzly closeup.

BRAD JOSEPHS, WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER: Normally, about 99 percent of the time, I think that bear would have probably crushed the camera. I would have been out another $300, because I have lost a lot of cameras to bears. So I really kind of try to avoid that.

GORANI: Josephs has been capturing footage of these bears for years, always from a safe distance, he adds.

Josephs says he knows this particular three-year-old cub. And doesn't think she meant any harm.

JOSEPHS: I think that bear probably knew it was my camera and just wanted to sort of smell it and play with it a little bit, but just didn't want to break it.

GORANI: Josephs posted his video online, turning the bear into an internet sensation with nearly 700,000 views on YouTube and counting. But the photographer says he wasn't trying to create more fear about the animal's what he calls bearanoia.

JOSEPHS: My whole job in life really is to make people appreciate bears, because you know, when you appreciate these animals people start loving them, appreciating them, they want to conserve them. And that's what the bears really need.

GORANI: You could say this video brings new meaning to an old saying, "sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you."

Hala Gorani, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHIOU: That is some view there, isn't it? I can barely stand it.

Well, that is News Stream, but the news continues here at CNN. World Business Today is coming up next.

END