Ahmadinejad In America; Missing Boy Scouts; UAW Strike
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news. Eight missing Boy Scouts. The urgent search right now in the North Carolina mountains. Campus firestorm.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: His government perishes, and tortures and executes dissidents. There is no freedom of speech in Iran.</s>ROBERTS: Iran's president addresses Columbia University today. Plus, extreme photo sharing. A teen's picture posted on Flickr gets used in a racy ad without her permission. Could it happen to you? The fight over who owns your image online, on this AMERICAN MORNING. And good morning to you. Thanks very much for being with us as we kick off a brand new week, Monday September the 24th. I'm John Roberts.</s>KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Kiran Chetry. And we start with breaking news out of North Carolina this morning. A search right now in the mountains near Asheville for 11 members of a Boy Scout troop. They didn't come home last night as scheduled from a weekend camping trip. It was in the Pisgah National Forrest. Overnight we heard from a woman who's son and husband are on the trip. She says she thinks the troop just decided to stay put. She sounded confident that they were all right.</s>LISA LOGAN, MOTHER OF MISSING SCOUT: I think more likely than not what happened is they got behind in their schedule, saw they weren't going to get out by dark, decided it was probably safer for all of the boys to just stop, camp and come out in the morning. And I feel like that's what they're doing. I have a complete peace that they're fine.</s>CHETRY: All right. There we have it. Eight boys and three adults were camping in the mountains near the Blue Ridge Parkway. Police in Haywood County say their cars were found in the campground parking lot. They were supposed to come home at 9:00 last night. Some of the mothers started calling when there was no phone call to let them know that they were actually on their way. It was a five- hour drive for many of them. Well, police will be holding a news conference at 7:30 a.m. Eastern Time. We will bring it to you live. We're also going to check in with our reporter who is on the scene in North Carolina with an update in just a couple of minutes.</s>ROBERTS: Other headlines new this morning. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in New York City today stirring up controversy about (ph) his speech at Columbia University this afternoon. He denies that the U.S. and Iran are headed toward war and he denies that Iran is building nuclear weapons, even wants them. But he refused to answer the question posed to him by "60 Minutes" last night about whether Iran is arming insurgents in Iraq.</s>MIKE WALLACE, "60 MINUTES": Are you saying that it is not the policy of this government to send weapons into Iraq? Sir, forgive me, you're smiling, but this is a very serious matter to America.</s>PRES. MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, IRAN, (through translator): It's serious for us as well. I dare say it's serious for everyone. It seems to me that it's laughable for someone to turn a blind eye to the truth and accuse others. It doesn't help. And the reason that I'm smiling, again, it's because the picture is so clear, but American officials refuse to see it.</s>WALLACE: Mr. President, can you tell me that you are not sending weapons to Iraq? Very simple, very directly.</s>AHMADINEJAD: We don't need to do that. We are very much opposed to war and insecurity.</s>WALLACE: Is that no, sir?</s>AHMADINEJAD: It's very clear the situation. The insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests.</s>ROBERTS: Well, protests are planned at Columbia University today for the Iranian president's visit. AMERICAN MORNING's Alina Cho is live near the campus for us this morning. What's security like up there today, Alina?</s>ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, good morning. Police are already here on campus and they are getting ready to lock down a six-block radius. So security is in place. That's because in a matter of hours, as you mentioned, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be coming here and some students, faculty and even some elected officials in New York say they are ready. They will be here, too. Said one, to make his life miserable. Now there are protests planned for today. Not sure exactly how large they will be. But having said that, there was a small gathering here on campus yesterday. Even got a bit heated at times. One New York state assemblyman said Ahmadinejad should be arrested when he comes to Columbia, not invited to speak and others said the same.</s>NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I think it is an outrage against civilization for Columbia University to lend its prestige and its status to a man -- to a dictator whose government executes homosexuals, tortures and kills journalists, locks up students.</s>CHO: Now what's gotten people so mad is that Ahmadinejad has made a number of controversial statements. He's called the holocaust a myth and said Israel should be wiped off the map. Now Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, says he plans to personally challenge Ahmadinejad on a number of issues, including these. He also said that the very fact that Iran could not hold an open discussion like this is the same reason why Ahmadinejad should be allowed to speak here. One Columbia dean went a step further.</s>DEAN JOHN COATSWORTH, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: If Hitler were in the United States and wanted a platform from which to speak, he would have plenty of platforms to speak in the United States. If he were willing to engage in a debate and a discussion to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly invite him.</s>CHO: Now Ahmadinejad will be giving a speech here starting at 1:30 this afternoon, assuming everything goes as planned. He'll also be answering some tough questions. The event is closed to the public, only students, faculty and staff are allowed. Six hundred tickets were made available. They were gone in an hour. And, John, contrary to earlier indications, the Iranian foreign minister says Ahmadinejad does plan to visit Ground Zero. And one Iranian news agency even said that he also plans to visit with 9/11 victims.</s>ROBERTS: Well, we'll see if that happens. And we'll be talking, by the way, to John Coatsworth, who's the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, coming up in our next hour of AMERICAN MORNING. And also you can watch live coverage of the Iranian president's address at Columbia University, 1:30 Eastern Time this afternoon. And if you're away from your television set, go to cnn.com, just follow the links to the live debate.</s>CHETRY: All right. Back to our top story. And it's an overnight search for a missing Boy Scout troop in North Carolina. Jeremy Butterfield is with our affiliate WLOS in Raleigh, North Carolina, this morning. Live at the command center in Cruto (ph), North Carolina. Good morning, Jeremy. And what do you know so far about what authorities think may happened to this troop?</s>JEREMY BUTTERFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, with talking to search and rescue crews and taking to some relatives, what they tell us is, this Boy Scout troop, Troop 217 out of Raleigh, came to this area to go for a weekend hike and camping trip. They were scheduled to be back Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening, sometime back in Raleigh. When no one showed up, the phone chain began and eventually the authorities here were called. They began their search 9:30 Sunday night. They were on the mountain by 10:30 at Black Blasom (ph) in the Pisgah National Forest. They had four crews out there, four teams of three, with dogs, search and rescue dogs. They say they spent the night overnight searching for these boys. They have kept one crew up there right now. The other crews are back here and they are expecting to bring in even more for the morning. They say five more crews are expected to come in for the morning and continue this search. Now the boys were prepared for a weekend camping trip, so they do have gear with them. They do have sweatshirts, long sleeved shirts, that sort of thing. And also rescue crews tell us that overnight the weather was not entirely too terrible. There was no rain. It didn't get extremely cold. So everyone here is just hoping that they went with their training, their Boy Scout training there, hunkered down when they did get lost. Maybe stayed there for a little while. Wait until morning. That's what the parents are hoping will happen, that they'll come out when daylight comes up and they'll have a better time finding them then. Live here from Cheron (ph), I'm Jeremy Butterfield. Back to you, Kiran.</s>CHETRY: And, Jeremy, one quick question. Do we know if anybody in the troop, the three scout leaders, had cell phones or had any way to communicate by phone?</s>BUTTERFIELD: Well, from what I've been told, phone coverage in that part of the mountain is nonexistent. Basically even if they did have a cell phone, they wouldn't have coverage. They say they haven't had any contact with the boys. The search and rescue teams have been combing the area. They haven't had any contact as of yet. But again, they're hoping that as daylight comes up, they'll have more luck of finding these boys.</s>CHETRY: All right, Jeremy, thanks so much. We'll check in with you a little bit later as well. News conference scheduled in about an hour and a half. Hopefully we'll get more details on what could have happened. Thanks.</s>ROBERTS: Time to check in now with our AMERICAN MORNING team of correspondents for other stories new this morning. I strike deadline for auto workers at General Motors 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time this morning. Ali Velshi following all this. He joins us. Good morning, Ali.</s>ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John. This is actually interesting because the deadline was September 14th, a week ago Friday, and the United Auto Workers had been extending their talks with General Motors on an hour by hour basis. But everybody was expecting a result. All of the sudden, at 1:00 in the morning Eastern, the UAW issued a strike deadline -- they issued a statement where it said, unless UAW members hear otherwise, between now and the deadline, we will be on a national strike against General Motors at 11:00 a.m. Eastern. Now there are two schools of thought on this. We've been sort of talking to people who follow this very closely. One is that that's good news. That if they've set a strike deadline, it means they've settled a number of issues. However, the wording in the press release, John, suggests that there are problems. And the other point of view this that this is, in fact, serious. That these people might actually walk off the job. The contacts we've made on the ground at Union Local say that they are prepared for a strike. The picket signs are ready and their members know what to do if the strike is called at 11:00 a.m. Eastern. We'll be on that story, John. We'll bring you more on it as it develops.</s>ROBERTS: All right. I mean, what are the chances of that actually happening, you think, Ali?</s>VELSHI: They seem to have increased a little bit. There seem to be some real sticking points. However, people say that even if there is a strike, which would be the first in a very long time, it wouldn't go on very long.</s>ROBERTS: All right. Ali Velshi for us this morning. Ali, thanks. We'll keep checking back in with you, particularly on that issue of whether or not they'll go out on strike. Rob Marciano at the CNN weather desk tracking extreme weather from Kansas all the way up to Minnesota today. Rob.</s>CHETRY: A drop in gas prices topping your "Quick Hits." The latest Lundberg Survey says pump prices fell about two cents in the last couple of weeks to a national average of $2.79 a gallon. Newark, New Jersey, by the way, has the lowest average price, $2.51 a gallon. Chicago still with the highest in the nation. Gas prices in the windy city, $3.16. Well, evil reigned at the box office this weekend, at least "Resident Evil Extinction." It was a zombie flick that debuted in the top spot, bringing in $24 million. "Good Luck, Chuck," "The Brave One" and "3:10 to Yuma," as well as "Eastern Promises," round out the weekend's top five. Well there's a big free speech debate on a different campus making news this morning. The student newspaper at Colorado State drops the "f" bomb when writing about our president. We're going to talk with the editor who made that call, up next. Also, the family members of fallen Iraq War veteran say that these t-shirts go too far. A fight for their good names is still ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.