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ROBERTS: Thirty seven minutes after the hour. U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill is back from North Korea overnight and very positive about achieving nuclear disarmament there. Assistant Secretary of State Hill joins us now live from Seoul, South Korea. Secretary Hill, thanks very much for being with us. Let me ask you, first of all, you said that you were buoyed by these talks. What gives you a sense of optimism?</s>CHRISTOPHER HILL, ASST. SEC. OF STATE: That was only half the sentence. I said I was also rather exhausted by the thought of what we have to get done. So look. This is a long process, step by step. What was encouraging was the fact that the North Koreans are prepared to move ahead and shut down the reactor. They're also clearly prepared to disable the reactor, break the thing so it can't be brought back online. You know we got a long way to go. We've got some 50 kilos, 110 pounds of fissile material. We got to get a hold of that frankly, we've got</s>ROBERTS: Let's start with the</s>HILL: Well, you know, we've got the international inspectors who are supposed to get in there pretty soon and they're going to spend a few days kind of figuring out their terms of reference and then soon thereafter, the North Koreans are going to shut the thing down and they're going to put seals on it and keep it shut down. We don't want them to just stop with shutting it down. We want to get on with the next step of disabling. And that will come probably the actual disabling where you break it and it can't be brought back online, we're talking probably a few months to get that step done. Right. What about the plutonium? Would North Korea actually hand it over the plutonium that they've reprocessed?</s>HILL: Well, there are two things. First of all, there's the plutonium that they've already reprocessed. That's about 110 pounds. Yes, they're going to have to hand that over at some point because we made an agreement with the North Koreans will they will get de- nuclearize, that is they will get rid of all their nuclear programs, all their weapons so they're going to have to hand that over but frankly that is going to be at a later stage. What we're trying to do now is make sure that that 110-pound problem doesn't become 220-pound problem. That is, we would like to get this reactor shut down so we don't have more plutonium to deal with.</s>ROBERTS: What do you know about any bombs they may have? There was a nuclear test last year. It was either a very, very low yield weapon or it malfunctioned. Do they have a nuclear arsenal and would you gain access to that?</s>HILL: Well, hard to say. You know, transparency is not the name of the game there. They don't like to tell you stuff. So what we do know is they had some kind of explosive device. So we don't know if they've been able to take this 110 pounds -- you know out of 110 pounds you can make something like eight, maybe even 10 weapons, depending on your weapon size, so we don't know if they've ever been able to marry it up with a missile. They certainly haven't tested that. The point is if we can get a hold of the plutonium, then we won't have to worry about plutonium nuclear bombs.</s>ROBERTS: What about, you mentioned this in the beginning here, this idea that uranium enrichment program. That was the flashpoint a few years ago. Now the big question is to whether or not they had an uranium enrichment program at all. Do they?</s>HILL: I wouldn't go that far because what we do know is they made a lot of purchases of certain very specialized equipment such as centrifuges and these specialized aluminum tubes that by the way only fit in these kinds of centrifuges. So there's a lot of equipment purchased and that equipment is very much consistent with a highly enriched uranium program. Whether they were able to make it work, whether they are able to actually finalize the thing is hard to say, but whatever, we need to know what they did with that stuff.</s>ROBERTS: Right.</s>HILL: If the centrifuges are sitting in a tunnel somewhere, we got to have a look at them. So we need to get at this program. And we've had some preliminary discussions on that, but we're going to need a lot more discussions on it to get absolute clarity on what that was all about.</s>ROBERTS: Chris, I know that you've returned from North Korea and from the talks at least in North Korea discouraged several times, so it's encouraging that you're a little bit optimistic after this visit. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, thanks for being with us.</s>HILL: Thank you very much.</s>CHETRY: Forty one minutes after the hour now. We head over to Chad Myers. Houston, Texas, lay it on us.</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Houston, Texas?</s>CHETRY: Yes, we came in with a tower shot for KHOU and usually I try to quickly check the highs and the currents, but I didn't get a chance to.</s>MYERS: Pretty good, obviously, hot. Houston never gets cool in the summertime waiting for that first cold front that will come through Houston that is probably sometime late September but anyway a pretty decent day in Houston today. A couple of thunderstorms could slow down the airport between 4:00 and 6:00 tonight. Otherwise, right now we have Des Moines and Davenport right on down to Louisville, the rain showers there. Some of the heavier showers were around Cincinnati. They have now moved east to almost Wilmington and then points southward, right there, the northern Kentucky international airport there, Cincinnati, Kentucky airport there, a little bit slow this morning. Planes not getting off the ground for you just yet in some of the areas, but it'll clear up. The storms are clearing up, so you'll get cleared up earlier. From Cedar Rapids back to Iowa City, some very heavy rainfall over night. See this big square there that's all painted green? Flash flood warnings for you. So if you're driving around that area today, you need to be a little bit careful. Some of the streams and creeks are out of their banks and also some downtown flooding. A nice day though in New York City today. 77, 79 tomorrow. For your weekend planner for DC, if you're traveling there, it's a beautiful city. I was there yesterday, it looks great. Go see the botanical gardens. Maybe one of the most overlooked things downtown. Everybody wants to go see the air and space museum. I went to the botanical gardens yesterday. They were amazing. Kiran.</s>CHETRY: You're right. They are absolutely beautiful especially if you're a flower lover. Call it the curse of the winning lottery. A Montreal couple picking up their check for $27 million. They won the Canadian lotto last month, so happy about it. But then on Monday, police arrested a suspect that they say planned to kidnap the couple, force them to withdraw money and then kill them. The suspect apparently blabbed about his plans and then one of his friends turned him in.</s>ROBERTS: New York Yankee Jason Giambi is going to talk about steroids. That tops our quick hits now. Giambi agreed to cooperate with George Mitchell's investigation of steroids in baseball. Giambi says he will be candid about his past but he won't talk about anyone else. A few things are better than a lovely sunset especially one that looks like the Virgin Mary. Residents in Superior, Arizona gather every evening to look at the sunset and the image that it casts on this house which they say looks just like the Virgin Mary. You make up your own mind. And disaster at amusement park in Kentucky. One young girl badly injured on a ride and rushed to the hospital. How to keep your children safe at the amusement park this summer coming up.