[Betty Nguyen, Cnn Anchor:] It is Tuesday, July 19. Right now Britain is reaching out to its Muslim community. Tony Blair tries to bring more Muslims into the mainstream. But is he just swimming against the current? We'll go across the pond for that. Plus, the lowdown on the high court could today be the day that President Bush makes his Supreme Court choice? And Emily is about to take what could be its final shot. And people in south Texas are running for cover. From the CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta, I'm Betty Nguyen, in for Carol Costello this morning. Hi, everyone. Chad Myers will have your forecast in just a moment. Also ahead, you have noticed your credit card payments going up lately? What's behind the trends in plastic? And Kenny Rogers, the pitcher, ticked off yet another news camera. But first, here are the stories now in the news. There has been a deadly shooting northeast of Baghdad this morning. Gunmen fired on a minibus, killing 10 Iraqi civilians who worked for a U.S. military base. The bus then swerved out of control and crashed into a car, killing three more people. He commanded American troops in the Vietnam War. Retired General William Westmoreland has died. He was 91 years old. Westmoreland always contended that the U.S. did not lose the war in Southeast Asia. And American Airlines flights from Fort Lauderdale to San Juan, Puerto Rico made an about-face last night after a passenger found a suspicious note saying "bomb, bomb, bomb meet the parents." A bomb squad searched the plane. The flight finally landed in San Juan about five hours late. CNN is your hurricane headquarters. And we are keeping a close eye on the movements of hurricane Emily this morning. Residents along the Texas Gulf Coast are preparing for the worst. Parts of Texas could see as many as 10 inches of rain. But it looks like they may escape a direct hit from the storm. That is some good news. The rain is also expected to be a problem for residents in Mexico City. But they will also to contend with Emily's expected 90 mile per hour winds. Landfall should take place a little bit later today. The cleanup is already underway in Emily's wake, though. Many tourist areas in the Yucatan Peninsula lost power poles and plenty of trees. But luckily there have been no reports of fatalities. You want to keep it tuned to CNN. We are your hurricane headquarters. And speaking of that hurricane, Chad Myers is here tracking Emily good morning, Chad.
[Chad Myers, Cnn Meteorologist:] Good morning, Betty. It rolled off the Yucatan Peninsula with very little momentum, very little going for it whatsoever. But in the overnight hours, it has really blossomed into something again, back up to 90 miles per hour, headed to be a category three. Now, a category three, from 111 miles per hour up to 130 miles per hour. That's what a category three is. And that is considered a major hurricane. Don't expect it to be on the high side of that number, but certainly it is going to be in that range somewhere. There it is, coming off Progresso and Merida. And as the storm moved right into the Gulf of Mexico, this is where the warmest water is right now. There's South Padre. We have a reporter there. Here's Mexico. Laguna Madre, right through here, a very swampy region right through here. But Monterey, the town, or the city that I'm very worried about. It could be picking up five inches of rain there and four million people live in that city right there. So as the storm tracks south of Texas that's the Rio Grande River right there it is going to move into Mexico itself, make very heavy flooding and rainfall for many of those mountain areas. The mountains all then, obviously, the water has to run down. And as it runs down, people get flooded and they don't even know that they're in the way. So we have to be very careful out there. Winds at 90 miles per hour, headed to about 115 at landfall. And that should be very close to 2:00 in the morning, like 20 hours from now. Landfall may be a relative term, because there's not much land here where landfall is going to be occurring. But then it runs up the mountains and into Monterey. Now, if the storm does not make this little turn do you see this little bow here? If it does not make that bow, it'll be much closer to Brownsville and Matamoros. And some of that right front quadrant will get up into Texas. And that's why hurricane warnings are posted for the southern coast of Texas, all the way from about Port Mansfield right on down to Brownsville and including South Padre Island. So I assume that they'll be probably evacuating South Padre later on today.
[Nguyen:] Yes, better safe than sorry.
[Myers:] Absolutely.
[Nguyen:] Thank you, Chad.
[Myers:] You're welcome.
[Nguyen:] CNN has learned that two of the London terrorist bombers traveled to Pakistan just a few months before the attacks. Shazad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan spent nearly two months traveling in Pakistan. They returned to Britain in February. Now, the reason for their trip and their activities in Pakistan are still unknown. And we are learning more this morning on British intelligence leading up to the attacks. The "New York Times" reports that an assessment of threats was issued less than a month before the bombings. That assessment stated there was no group with current intent or capabilities to carry out an attack. And it was that assessment that led to a lowering of the threat level from severe defined to substantial. Now, two Tennessee sisters injured in one of the bombings are in good condition. But their mother says they still have emotional wounds. Emily and Katie Benton were injured by flying debris in their subway car. They were moved from a London hospital and are now being cared for at Duke Medical Center in North Carolina.
[Patty Benton, Sister's Mother:] It was really hard for me to sit there and listen to it and think of the images that my daughters will carry in their minds for the rest of their lives. You know, they've lost their innocence in a way that most people, none of us will ever have to experience. I won't lie to you and say that there's not anxiety there or that they're not having flashbacks or, you know, that there's not some emotional stuff that they're going to have to deal with. It's not just the physical healing, it's the emotional healing, as well.
[Nguyen:] And another American who witnessed one of the blasts is Steve Schulz. He is a teacher from Sanford, Maine who was vacationing at the time when a bomb tore through a double-decker bus. He was nearby trying to shield the eyes of the schoolchildren next to him. He then spoke to another witness about what they saw.
[Steve Schulz, Witnessed Attack:] The amazing thing that came out of that conversation was here I am a Christian man, he's a Muslim man, and together in the face of this hysteria, we realized the only thing we could do was help these innocent children. Having been through this event, it makes me realize all the more that my job as the teacher is to tell this story. I'm going to bring this back to my classroom. I'm going to talk about this with my kids. Not that any one of us singularly can stop this, but I think it's that notion of we've got to work together.
[Nguyen:] "An evil ideology," that is what the British prime minister calls the version of Islam that led to the deadly bombings there in London. Blair also says he is ready to work with the Muslim community to take on the extremists. That work begins today. And CNN's Robin Oakley joins us from Ten Downing Street in London with more on an important first step for the prime minister. What do you know about this meeting today Robin?
[Robin Oakley, Cnn Correspondent:] Well, Betty, Shahid Malik, a British member of the a member of the British House of Commons, who is himself a Muslim, said after the terror attacks on the London subway that condemnation was not enough, that the British Muslim community had to confront the evil voices that were in their midst. And basically the meeting today between Tony Blair and Muslim leaders and the leaders of other opposition parties in the British parliament is to discover exactly what ideas the Muslim community themselves have to prevent the radicalization and recruitment of disaffected young Muslims, and, of course, what the British government can help them to do in that process. And we've already seen this week 500 imams issue a fatwa, a decree condemning the violent attacks in London, which will be read out at mosques all over Britain on Friday. And members of the Muslim community are saying that they are keen to do what they can to help, though, of course, they are also saying that they can't really do the job of the security forces for them Betty.
[Nguyen:] Robin Oakley in London. Thank you for an update on that meeting. Well, life in prison that's what Eric Rudolph got for the 1998 bombing of a women's clinic in Birmingham. A federal judge sentenced Rudolph to two consecutive life terms for the attack that killed an off duty police officer. The officer's widow called Rudolph a terrorist and a monster. Emily Lyons also spoke at that sentencing. She was a nurse at the clinic who was severely injured in the attack.
[Emily Lyons, Bombing Victim:] What I told him essentially was that he failed. He didn't shut the clinic down, or the one in Atlanta. He did not cause anyone to leave the employment of the clinic and patients either rescheduled or went to another clinic. He made me a mentally stronger person than I had ever been. So he's the one to thank for that.
[Nguyen:] And you can hear more of that interview with Emily Lyons coming up on AMERICAN MORNING at 7:00 Eastern. More "News Across America" now. A Florida teacher will stand trial for having an affair with a 14-year-old student. That trial starts December 5. Now, the defense for 24-year-old Debra Lafave is expected to center on what her attorney calls mental problems. Plea negotiations broke down over the length of a prison term. Lafave's lawyer says putting an attractive woman like her in prison is similar to throwing raw meat to lions. Well, the mother of a murdered 6-year-old was questioned late into the night by police in Washington, D.C. Police say the boy was found in a bathtub with his hands and feet bound. He was discovered by his grandmother. The cause of death has not been disclosed. And we have new pictures this morning of wildfires near Phoenix, Arizona. Firefighters are working to keep a pair of fires away from a hospital and other structures. So far, only three mobile homes have been damaged by the blaze. But fires are believed to have been started by lightning strikes. And Discovery remains grounded for now. But NASA is hopeful that a new round of tests could finally make headway with a fuel sensor problem. That problem caused last week's launch to be scrubbed. The current launch window for the shuttle closes on July 31. But that could be extended by almost a week. The next one opens in September.
[Wayne Hale, Saddam Hussein Deputy Program Manager:] My rule has never been to plan my life around the shuttle launch schedule because, you know, things happen. It could be the weather. It could be technical problems. It could be any number of things. And a few days delay to figure out what is going on and make sure we're safe is always the right answer.
[Nguyen:] NASA set the launch window for the maximum amount of daylight that's needed so that new cameras can get a good look at the shuttle as it lifts off to make sure there are no problems like the one that doomed Columbia. Still to come here on DAYBREAK, the president changes his wording. What would happen if someone in his White House is caught red-handed in the CIA leak scandal? Also ahead, we have a look at what is pushing the price of plastic up, up and away for many of you. But first, here's a look at what else is making news on this Tuesday morning.