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American Morning
A Deadly Walk in the Park for NYC Man; Winter Shows No Mercy; Snow Expected in Parts of the Northeast; No Breakthroughs on Health Care Summit?; Foreclosure Remedies; Employed and Uninsured; Haiti Emergency Over?; Tracking the Assassins
Aired February 26, 2010 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: It's Friday. And if you're here watching us, it means you're either at home trying to dig out or you somehow made it into the office. But welcome. Boy, the Northeast really getting a beating today with the snow on this Friday. It is February 26th. A lot of people saying, when the heck is winter going to be over?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, yes, it will be over when it's over. And until then, it's going to be ferocious.
John Roberts is off today. I'm Christine Romans filling in for him. Here are some of the big stories we'll be telling you about in the next 15 minutes.
Snow and sleet coming down sideways, pelting people. Some were trying to crack the ice off their cars in the northeast this morning. This latest winter storm may only be getting started too. We'll have the latest warnings and delays and what it looks like for your commute right now.
CHETRY: So did you watch it yesterday? They came, they talked, but the White House health care summit may have been just what the president didn't want -- political theater. Did the bipartisan give and take actually accomplish anything? We're live at the White House with a full report just ahead.
ROMANS: Desperately needed supplies still not reaching those who need it in Haiti. Still held up by red tape because the government there says the emergency is over. Even when there weren't these hurdles, there were tragic delays. Soledad O'Brien is there to show us why that decision by the government is causing all new chaos.
CHETRY: The top of the hour, we begin with the winter storm that is still pounding the northeast as we speak and it's slowing the morning commute to a crawl in many places. It actually got stronger overnight making a weird turn, if you will, and ended up dumping more than two feet of snow in parts of New Jersey, upstate New York, and Pennsylvania. That's where hundreds of members of the National Guard were actually called up to help deal with all the snow. A combination of 50-mile-an-hour wind gusts in some places, heavy wet snow. It proved deadly in New York City when a hundred pound tree limb came down on a man in Central Park. He was killed. A very powerful and strange storm has meteorologists fascinated but travelers pretty frustrated, and we're all over the extreme weather this morning.
Rob Marciano live at the extreme weather for us. We also have Reynolds Wolf. He's outside in the elements in Philly.
First, though, we're going to check in with Susan Candiotti live in Central Park this morning. As we said this was a scene of tragedy when a huge elm limb went down on somebody that was there.
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Oh, yes. It's a horrible tragedy, to say the least. But messy is the watch word here today.
Look at the snow. We're in at the foot of Central Park on the south end of it right now in Columbus Circle, and you can see some of the tire tracks here. You see they got about a foot of snow here. It has been snowing nonstop since yesterday.
As you indicated, it's coming down straight, it's coming across sideways, and you know they've done a fairly good job of cleaning the streets here in New York. We're seeing barely any traffic, of course, at this hour, but we are seeing some buses go by. But the commute for a lot of people coming in this morning, it's a mess on the tunnels. We hear that in New Jersey they have suspended bus service into the city for now.
But look at this guy over here at the foot of Central Park. Managed to clear out the sidewalks just a bit so he could open up his coffee shop there. But it did, as you indicated, a walk in the park proved fatal for one man here in Central Park.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CANDIOTTI (voice-over): The wet and heavy snow proved too much for some trees, raining down branches across New York's Central Park. In one unfortunate case, the timing proved deadly. Police say a 46- year-old man from Brooklyn was killed when a large limb fell on his head as he walked through the park. Just blocks north of that scene, an entire tree fell on a city bus, forcing police to close part of New York's famous Fifth Avenue. Luckily, no one was hurt there. The crews were scrambling to keep up with trees falling all over the city.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right now, we have trees down at four locations at 76th Street, 71th Street, 69th Street and 68th Street.
CANDIOTTI: It made for an uglier than usual commute for New Yorkers with people literally racing to get home before it got worse.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New Jersey it's snowing a lot more, so I figure let me go now.
CANDIOTTI: But the worst of it wasn't in New Jersey. Some areas northwest of New York City could see more than two feet of snow. There were some brave souls out during the day. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Driving is crazy today. Crazy. Ridiculous.
CANDIOTTI: But by nightfall, Orange County, New York, had declared a state of emergency, banning all but plows and emergency vehicles from the roads. The storm knocked out power for tens of thousands in the area and outages extended as far north as Vermont.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CANDIOTTI: In fact, the latest numbers, more than 22,000 people without power in the New York region. Also, it's a rarity, but public schools are out here in New York City. And in terms of flights, you better call ahead of time because they canceled more than a thousand yesterday and they're still canceling more this morning.
Back to you.
CHETRY: Susan Candiotti in a very snowy Central Park for us this morning, thank you.
ROMANS: OK. So the weather is so bad in parts of northern Pennsylvania, the National Guard had to rescue some high school students stranded after their buses got stuck in the snow. There's power outages, canceled flights, lots of canceled flights. For more, our Reynolds Wolf joins us live from Philadelphia.
Hi, Reynolds.
REYNOLDS WOLF, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Hi, guys. We are coming to you from Philadelphia from Society Hill. I'm here with CNN photo journalist Kim Borelen (ph). And for our viewers that are tuning in across America, it's kind of like we're inside a giant snow globe.
The snow coming again horizontally, and that's basically what's in the air. What's on the ground we've had I'd say about six to eight inches of snowfall. Much of it though began melting yesterday afternoon. Last night, a good part of it was basically like what you see under my feet, but then it snowed over I'd say the last six to eight hours. It's just been a remarkable transformation where now we have heavier snow that has been piling up in many places.
Now, I'm going to pick up kind of where Susan Candiotti left off. She was talking about the power situation in parts of New York. Power here in Philadelphia for the most part is in pretty good shape. The problem is, though, we do anticipate the winds to pick up. And as the winds pick up, we're going to see some tree damages. If we have tree damage, of course, there are going to be more power outages so that is certainly a big concern for us.
The roadways also a concern, although we do see some traffic moving here along South Street. Let's watch out. Let's not get flattened by one of these trucks.
These guys are going to be coming through. They're doing sort of a pretty nimble and pretty slow pace. We have seen some city buses come though, a few taxis. So things are working but still, if you don't have to go out on the major roadways, by all means don't. Roads in some places have been treated. They're in pretty good place, but the overpass as we have that air going below and above it, you're going to have some slick spots.
Let's talk air travel. For Philadelphia, in terms of Southwest Airlines, all flights canceled. You're not going anywhere if you're going to fly that. And, of course, with the wind conditions and with the snow, I would not be surprised to see more issues at the airport here in Philadelphia. All over the region it's going to be a big nightmare for a lot of people.
That's the latest we got from Philadelphia. Let's send it back to you in the studio.
ROMANS: All right. Reynolds Wolf in Philly. Thanks, Reynolds.
CHETRY: All right. So it's six minutes past the hour right now. The snow is piling up and the storm is creeping along. And so how much longer will it last?
Let's bring in Rob Marciano at the extreme weather center. You know what I find sometimes, Rob, I mean, you're a meteorologist -- hubby is a meteorologist -- no one believes you guys until they step outside and say where the heck did all the snow come from?
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes. And this storm is a remarkable one for kids and meteorologists alike. A different type of storm track. It's sitting and spinning. It's hitting a road block. I haven't seen one of these in years, if not a couple of decades.
All right. Let's go over the snow totals first and then we'll show you how much more is coming. Pocono Summit, 19 inches; West Milford, New Jersey, 18 inches; Ithaca, New York, 16; Binghamton, 14 and Central, 9.6. And there is more to come although it will be winding down as we go throughout the day today.
You know, there's a little bit of dry air sliding into the northern part of this system but the overall circulation is not moving anywhere. So it's going to sit and spin over New York and pretty much has to wind itself out.
Now, all the warm air has been wound out of this system. It's gone. It's aloft. It's all cold air at the surface now from New Haven back to New York into Philadelphia, and so the snow that is falling today is lighter and it will be blowing and that will lead to snow drift also.
How much more do we expect across the northeast? Generally speaking, figure four to eight. Maybe another 10 in spots today. So take what you see outside and add another half a dozen inches, maybe 10 inches in some areas as well.
The other facet to this storm that we haven't really talked about is the wind, yes, but also the water, flooding rains from Connecticut to Maine. We've had flooded roads across parts of Maine and New Hampshire because of the storm surge coming in on the east part of this system. So, almost like a land falling hurricane with snow with this go around. Certainly a remarkable storm and it is not done.
We'll talk more, much more about it in about 30 minutes, guys. Stay tough up there. I know it's a busy one for you.
ROMANS: OK, quick question. Is it going to be so wet? I mean, the snow that we have right now is so wet and heavy, it's much different than the last couple of big storms we've had. I mean, just doing our (INAUDIBLE), you know, there in our front driveway was really -- it's really heavy, heavy snow.
MARCIANO: And that's the dangerous part of it. Tree limbs down. You saw the big tree limbs coming down, and that's the dangerous part. That's what knocks out power outages and that's what makes it difficult to remove. Temperatures are dropping so the snow will become lighter but we're getting more snow on top of the already wet snow.
ROMANS: Right.
MARCIANO: So it's not going to get easier.
CHETRY: Yes. It is a different consistency for sure and it is causing a lot of problems for the power companies around the area.
All right. Rob Marciano, we'll be checking in with you a lot this morning. Thanks so much.
MARCIANO: All right.
CHETRY: Eight minutes past the hour. Other stories, new this morning.
Taliban now claiming responsibility for coordinated suicide bomb attacks in Afghanistan. At least 17 people were killed in two huge explosions at a hotel in the heart of Kabul and dozens of others were hurt in those attacks. A Taliban spokesman says that five suicide bombers carried out the attacks which occurred about 20 minutes apart.
ROMANS: New York Congressman Charles Rangel received a formal admonishment today for breaking House rules. The Ethics Committee says he accepted Caribbean trips from a company that lobbied Congress. Rangel says it's his staff's fault and he shouldn't be blamed. Rangel is chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee.
CHETRY: Also SeaWorld says it has no plans to release the killer whale that drowned its trainer. This is amateur video that was taken just moments before the 12,000 pound orca named Tilikum grabbed trainer Dawn Brancheau by her ponytail and pulled her into the water. Autopsy results showing that Brancheau died of drowning as well as multiple injuries.
Shows in Orlando and San Diego are going to be canceled again today. The parks themselves are remaining open. Trainers are being offered counseling and as of this point they say they're still evaluating the future when it comes to the killer whale shows.
ROMANS: Oh, it's just chilling to see the video of those last moments, you know. I know that all those people --
CHETRY: Were there when it happened.
ROMANS: All right.
CHETRY: Well, still to come on the Most News in the Morning, Democrats and Republicans, they sit down and talk health care. It was six hours long, but did they accomplish anything when all was said and done? White House reporter Ed Henry is going to be breaking it down for us in just a moment.
Ten minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROMANS: It's 12 minutes past the hour. A quick check of what else is new this morning.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is reopening disability claims from the gulf war. The move could affect thousands of veterans still suffering from injuries and illnesses, 19 years later. VA secretary Erik Shinseki says his department will take a fresh bold look at these cases and improve training for medical staffers who work with gulf war veterans.
CHETRY: Now to the president's health care summit. After an all-day televised meeting at the White House with leaders from both parties, it appears that Democrats are ready to go it alone on health care reform. The bipartisan summit was in itself and on its face historic, but dominated by fundamental differences between the two sides. And so this morning we're asking did anything really change?
Ed Henry is live at the White House for us this morning. And you know, you've covered this for years. You've covered Washington, you've covered politics, what stuck out for you about what we saw go down yesterday?
ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, you're right, Kiran. And after years of covering politics, covering the White House, I've never quite seen a summit like yesterday. The president of the United States taking this extraordinary effort to go across the street to historic Blair House and try to hash this out with Republicans. But I think you're right, the bottom line question after all of the histrionics is did it really change any minds?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HENRY (voice-over): The stakes couldn't be higher. He's betting his presidency on getting a health reform deal. This was his last- ditch attempt to save it.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What I'm hoping to accomplish today is for everybody to focus not just on where we differ, but focus on where we agree.
HENRY: A tall order when you throw dozens of members of Congress into a made-for-TV drama at the historic Blair House.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Can I just finish, please?
HENRY: The president's 2008 rival, Republican John McCain, quickly tweaked him over campaign promises.
MCCAIN: Eight times you said that negotiations on health care reform would be conducted with the C-SPAN cameras. I'm glad more than a year later that they are here. Unfortunately, this product was not produced in that fashion. It was produced behind closed doors. It was produced with unsavory, I say that with respect, dealmaking.
HENRY: The president defended the transparency of the talks and gave as good as he got.
OBAMA: Let me just make this point, John, because we're not campaigning anymore. The election is over.
MCCAIN: I'm reminded of that every day.
OBAMA: Well, yes.
HENRY: Even the sharp exchanges were civil, if a bit jaded, each party hammering familiar talking points.
SEN. JOHN ROCKEFELLER (D), WEST VIRGINIA: The health insurance industry is the -- is the shark that swims just below the water, and you don't see that shark until you feel the teeth of that shark.
REP. PAUL RYAN (R), WISCONSIN: Regulate all of this? (INAUDIBLE) people in Washington decide exactly how this works and what you can and cannot buy?
HENRY: After about six hours, Republicans believe they made their case to the American people, that the president's plan is simply too costly.
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER (R), TENNESSEE: It means for millions of Americans, premiums will go up because those -- when -- when people pay those new taxes, premiums will go up and they will also go up because of the government mandates.
HENRY: But Democrats believe the president got the better of the Republicans.
OBAMA: So, Lamar, when you mentioned earlier that you said premiums go up, that's just not the case according to the Congressional Budget Office.
ALEXANDER: Mr. President, if you're going to contradict me, I ought to have a chance to --
OBAMA: No, no, no, no. Let me -- and this is -- this is an example of where we've got to get our facts straight.
HENRY: A CNN fact check gives the edge to the president. The CBO found that his plan would lower premiums for millions of Americans, and those facing hikes would get better coverage.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HENRY: But the bottom line is there was no major breakthrough yesterday, no Republicans saying they're ready to cross the aisle and support the president's plan. So the bottom line, after all of this, is that the Democrats are privately getting ready to use this process, this procedure, the shortcut known as reconciliation so they don't need a super majority, just a simple majority in the House and Senate.
They haven't pulled the trigger on that. They're just getting ready on that. But, still, they do not clearly have the votes in the House and Senate, even just simple majority.
So it's still far from reality, whether the president can even get his health care effort on civil majority. Still a lot of work for Democrats ahead, Kiran.
CHETRY: Absolutely.
All right. Ed Henry for us this morning. Thanks.
And also for full coverage of the ongoing health care debate, you can head to cnn.com/healthcare.
ROMANS: All right, up next on the Most News in the Morning, new help for the unemployed and unemployed homeowners may be on the way. Gerri Willis "Minding Your Business" this morning.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: U2 said it better than we could. Get on your boots today because you're going to need it.
This is a shot this morning from Honesdale, Pennsylvania. It's near Scranton. Thirty degrees right now, but the real story of course is all of that snow out there. Look at that truck going by with a nice -- a nice flatbed full of snow on the pick-up truck.
Well, anyway, 20 minutes past the hour right now. Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning.
ROMANS: That's right. We're "Minding Your Business". That means Gerri Willis is here today to give us -- maybe some good news for unemployed homeowners. Maybe some good news. At least it's another plan on -- on the table that --
GERRI WILLIS, PERSONAL FINANCE EDITOR: We're not short of plans. I got to tell you, there're a lot of plans out there. Most of them haven't worked.
The Mortgage Bankers Association proposing a new plan that would allow unemployed homeowners to stay in their homes.
Let's talk about the details of that. They would allow mortgage payments to be reduced for nine months for 31 percent of income -- whatever income you might have if you're unemployed. That would include your jobless benefits.
Borrowers were -- would ultimately repay the mortgage in full because they would opt into the president's Making Home Affordable plan and they would roll in the money that they hadn't paid, the debt they still owed into that loan. Then they would be reevaluated every three months as they're in this program.
Now I spoke to John Courson who runs Mortgage Bankers Association yesterday and he says I have no idea how much this would cost. It's a proposal right now.
As you probably know, Treasury has been considering how to help jobless folks who are getting into foreclosure the old-fashioned way. They don't have any income and they're trying to think of new things to do, including a possible ban on foreclosure. That's something else that's being discussed by Treasury, which would -- essentially, what they're talking about is that you couldn't go into foreclosure unless you had a conversation with your lender and they considered modifying that loan.
So the reality, guys, is that we are throwing everything we can against the wall, trying to figure out a program that's going to work. You know, the local programs, small programs in Philly, in Connecticut have had more traction in some cases than the national programs we've talked about.
ROMANS: That's because the real estate market as we always say (ph) is so local. Every -- every different little plague of foreclosure is different. People's situations are different and so to have a -- a big fix from, you know, from the top down it's a little bit difficult, isn't it?
WILLIS: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, at this point, there's so much frustration out there. We only had something like 112,000 folks who were actually helped out by Making Home Affordable. You know, we're trying to find some other kind of solution out there for -- particularly people who are in real trouble.
CHETRY: Right. And I mean, it's just -- it's common sense. If you don't have a job they can modify your mortgage all you want, you still can't pay it.
WILLIS: Right.
CHETRY: You know, and it's --
ROMANS: That's what's difficult.
WILLIS: That's what this plan would do. This would be the bridge to getting to a plan you could actually pay money into. See if it works, if Treasury likes it, if they take the bait.
ROMANS: All right. Gerri Willis, "Minding Your Business." Thanks, Gerri.
WILLIS: My pleasure. CHETRY: Coming up next on the Most News in the Morning, they make too much to qualify for government (INAUDIBLE) assistance, not enough to afford their own health care. They're called the working uninsured. Is there a plan to help them?
Twenty-three minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning.
Twenty-six minutes past the hour right now, and our week-long examination of "Broken Government" continues this morning, and right now lawmakers in Washington, basically spinning their wheels while health care costs continue to skyrocket.
Millions of people are living without insurance and it's not just the people who have no jobs. There's a growing number of working Americans who simply can't afford insurance.
David Mattingly joins us live now from New Orleans with an "A.M. Original" and, you know, some of the people that you spoke with are trying to find creative ways to get coverage.
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Kiran. Cheap and easy health care is something uninsured workers dream about finding. But here in New Orleans, some of them are actually getting that chance.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARCEL RIVERA, UNINSURED WORKER: That will work.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Marcel Rivera had to drop his health insurance about seven years ago. At $500 a month, he says it got too expensive when he had other bills to pay.
MATTINGLY (on camera): What sort of choices would you have to make if you had health insurance? What would you be giving up?
RIVERA: My daughter Kayla's (ph) tuition in college.
MATTINGLY: You couldn't pay your daughter's tuition if you paid for your health care?
RIVERA: I could not. It's either one or the other.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Rivera is one of an estimated 80,000 people living uninsured in New Orleans. He's among the working uninsured, stuck making too much money to qualify for government assistance, but not enough to afford health insurance.
MATTINGLY (on camera): But while the health care debate rages in Washington, Rivera and others like him are finding another option.
Down here on Canal Street, there's a clinic that's quietly giving these uninsured workers something they haven't seen in years -- affordable health care.
It's upstairs, this way.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): It's a short climb up an empty stairwell to what used to be Sunday School classrooms at a Methodist church, and this is where we find a clinic preparing for explosive growth.
MATTINGLY (on camera): How many patients do you expect to have here?
LUANNE FRANCIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NEW ORLEANS FAITH HEALTH ALLIANCE: Oh, we expect to see, first year, about a thousand patients, and then growing that exponentially.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Luanne Francis is the executive director of the private donation-driven New Orleans Faith Health Alliance, which charges working uninsured families a small fee to join, then just $20 a visit for the same basic care they would get at almost any doctor's office -- no tax dollars involved.
HERBERT SANCHEZ: Oh, yes. I've been going (ph) every day, you know? But --
MATTINGLY: Uninsured welder Herbert Sanchez says he's already more than $30,000 in debt after emergency gallstone surgery. The clinic offers care his family would otherwise have to do without.
OBAMA: I know -- I know Senator --
MATTINGLY: Surprisingly, clinic administrators do not believe whatever reform is passed in Congress will make health care affordable for many of the working uninsured any time soon.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, it's going to take a while -- if they enacted it tomorrow, it's going to take a while for all of this to roll out. What do you do?
MATTINGLY (on camera): I'm not hearing a lot of optimism at this table.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): But Marcel Rivera, who is on the clinic's board of directors, hopes that affordable insurance is on the way. If not, he has to find a way to stay healthy for four more years when he qualifies for Medicare.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MATTINGLY: And this clinic provides a safety net for those uninsured workers for primary care and for wellness care, but if they're injured or if they have any kind of serious illness that they have to go to the hospital, they still do not have that safety net.
So this is some of the stress is taken off of them, but it's still not perfect -- Kiran.
CHETRY: Right. You're still, you know, praying that there's not an accident, praying there's not a catastrophe because you would know how to pay for it.
David Mattingly, thanks so much.
ROMANS: All right. Just about half past the hour and that means it's time for this morning's top headlines.
People in the northeast waking up to near blizzard conditions, heavy, heavy wet snow creating danger on the road, grounding close to 1,000 flights and taking down trees and power lines. Rob Marciana -- Rob Marciano coming up to tell us where we could see as much as 3 feet of snow.
CHETRY: SeaWorld says it has no plans to release the killer whale that drowned its trainer.
We have some amateur video that was taken just moments before the 12,000 pound orca name Tilikum grabbed trainer Dawn Brancheau by her ponytail and pulled her into the water. Autopsy results released show that Brancheau died of drowning as well as multiple injuries.
The shows right now in both SeaWorld Orlando and San Diego will be canceled again today, but the park will be open. We're going to have much more on this story later in the hour.
ROMANS: It appears Democrats are ready to push forward on health care reform on their own. President Obama's bipartisan health care summit failed to bring the two sides closer on key areas of disagreement. Republican leaders want to scrap the existing bills and simply start over, but Democrats refuse, saying that's not an option.
CHETRY: Well, six weeks after the earthquake in Haiti and thousands of people are still starving, and many more living in tent cities and thousands of the dead still don't have their own graves -- but the government there has inexplicably declared that the emergency is over.
ROMANS: And that decision is stopping even more people from getting the food, water and medicine they need -- people who clearly don't agree that things are back to normal.
Soledad O'Brien has the story from Port-au-Prince.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Earthquake relief supplies have been flowing in and out of Haiti's main airport, bypassing typical customs delays and taxes imposed on foreign imports. The government didn't impose restrictions to allow the quick distribution of tents and medicines and other goods.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Airport over there, just talk to the guy over there from the airport.
ANNETTE STOKES, DOCTOR FROM MILWAUKEE: How do you expect they're going to come down here and help when we can't get our medical --
O'BRIEN: But this week, the government said the emergency situation is over. Officials ordered customs agents to stall relief supplies so they can insure the organization qualifies to bring in goods tax-free. An official with the Department of Civil Protection told us by phone Haiti wants to make sure commercial groups don't sneak in contraband or bypass taxes. But some relief organizations say the delays mean desperately needed supplies are sitting at the airport.
STOKES: That we don't have anything to even see the patients that we were supposed to come down here to see.
O'BRIEN (on camera): How many patients are we talking about?
STOKES: Probably 300 a day.
O'BRIEN (voice-over): They've been told the only way they can get them out quickly is to pay custom taxes. That can run as high as tens of thousands of dollars when you're talking about tons of food or construction equipment to rebuild or repair.
(on camera): How much money do they want you to pay?
TERRY NELSON, LIGHT MINISTRIES: Well, I'm trying to find out right now.
O'BRIEN: What are you bringing in?
NELSON: Tents. I got 250 tents I'm giving to people that are without shelter.
O'BRIEN (voice-over): The alternative: emergency relief organizations could wait to be certified by the government. Some small relief groups we talked to found themselves with no cash to pay and no time to wait as they arrive here on short-term missions to help the needy.
BILL MANASSERO, MAISON DE LUMIERE ORPHANAGE: A bunch of things shipped in to us to help us to repair houses, to -- tents to give away to people that need homes, and right now, we can't get our things out of customs.
O'BRIEN: The government says relief organizations should turn their relief supplies over to the Haitian government, to be certified as donations. The government promises to give them back once they confirm the organizations are eligible for tax exemptions.
We asked a customs director why the materials can't just be donated. The response we got -- no response at all.
(on camera): I just want to understand why people, when they come to get their things, have to pay so much money? Why a tax?
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
O'BRIEN: It seems if you're donating things like tents and food, they should be just donated.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He cannot answer that question. You have to see somebody else who's --
O'BRIEN: Somebody else -- there's not one person in this building who can answer the question, why tents can be donated?
Two relief workers we spoke to who have been working in Haiti a long time told us that's turning supplies over to the government and then hoping they turn them back to you is a little too risky for them. A doctor we spoke to says she's only in town for few days hoping to help people and that waiting really isn't an option for her. All of them are calling their donors and informing them that they may have to pay taxes on the things they thought they were donating and giving to the people of Haiti who need them so desperately.
Soledad O'Brien, CNN, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHETRY: Well, the Haitian government says that it is not stalling relief supplies. Under Haitian law, the emergency ended after a month. And going forward, they need to make sure that all relief supplies are really going to the needy. They estimate that process could take a week.
It will be interesting to see, though, I mean, Soledad clearly called them out on it and nobody could give her an answer as so why they would -- they would try to tax something like tents in the midst of an emergency.
(CROSSTALK)
ROMANS: For this country, the government trying to regain control after an international television, it's been very clear that the government has had no power and no control for sometime even before this disaster, quite frankly. But if it is stalling relief getting there and actually helping people in stabilizing the situation, then it may simply be too soon for the government to try to be, you know, putting back their rules and trying to take control again.
But clearly, it's a -- clearly, it's a dysfunctional situation. I don't think that is a controversial statement at all.
CHETRY: No. And at the end of the day, it's these people that are literally starving and dying and living in tent cities that need the help. I mean, that would qualify for those people as an emergency continuing.
All right. Well, we'll continue to follow that story. Great reporting from Soledad this morning.
ROMANS: That's right. And Rob tracking a monster storm that's pounding the east coast right now and will continue to swirl here and continue to dump a lot of very wet snow. The latest forecast -- straight ahead.
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CHETRY: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning.
Australia is warning Israel that there could be a diplomatic rift between the two countries over last month's assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai. Now, some suspecting Israeli hit squad using fraudulent Australian passports actually killed Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
ROMANS: The Australians are concerned Israel may have condoned the use of those bogus passports. Meanwhile, investigators are trying to track down the killers. They have their hands full as Paula Newton reports.
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PAULA NEWTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Here at MI-6 in London, Britain's global spy headquarters, they know how tough it will be to crack this case. There are a handful of assassinations that have never been solved in this country.
Now, privately, officials in two countries that have had their passports used in this operation, have told CNN they are getting nowhere in this investigation, and that's despite what they call a meticulous Dubai investigation and all that CCTV footage.
The problem, the mug shots you see here could depict the assassins already in disguise, or maybe some on the hit squad have already changed their appearance.
Now, let's take a look at the operation itself. It spans the globe, really. Dubai officials say it was all staged in Austria. Operatives funneling all their information through a central command there, false identities and passports came from Ireland, Britain, France, Germany and even Australia. Now, interesting here, Dubai authorities say there must have been at least one reconnaissance mission, and maybe more.
Now let's go through that CCTV footage with Bob Baer, a former CIA officer.
BOB AYERS, FORMER CIA OFFICER: Freeze it. What I'm trying to see is hefty up top, bald, bigger bald. Let's see what he looks like when he comes out now.
NEWTON: OK. Goes in -- comes out with a disguise.
AYERS: Freeze. We're going to compare.
The surveillance is watching for this bald guy, and suddenly, he's gone, and there's now a dark hairy guy with glasses in front of them and they're still is looking around for the bald guy. So, it's just another way of a little extra added security to throw off any surveillance.
At this point in time, this is really interesting because the woman is looking right into the CCTV camera. Again --
NEWTON: She's spotted. She knows it's there.
AYERS: She knows it's there. She's looking up. She's letting it take a look at her. She's not afraid of having her picture taken. She's looking right at it.
NEWTON: So, this suggestion that they were sloppy having their identities exposed on CCTV?
AYERS: It's a suggestion that's not founded in reality. Somebody doesn't know what they're talking about to make that kind of a suggestion.
Now, the man on the right is going to go to verify the room number that the target is in. This man is staying behind to perform surveillance to make sure nobody comes in and interrupts the other guy while he's checking out the room number.
NEWTON: And there's nothing about this from your training that appears strange to you.
AYERS: No.
NEWTON: Textbook?
AYERS: That's a good operation. Good operation.
They had advanced notice of their target's movements. They prepared people to travel and assassinate the target. They coordinated multiple flights for multiple people all around Europe, arriving at the same time.
They got in place. They killed their target. They all went back and disappeared into the mist. That's a pretty professional operation.
NEWTON: Even though so much of it was caught on CCTV.
We're here now with the Serious Organised Crime Agency, they're the ones in charge of investigating this here in Britain.
There are clues from the credit cards used issued by a bank in the United States and information on the escape routes to Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Rome, Bangkok, Doha, with many of the suspects tracked to the same city, Zurich. From there, though, the trail goes cold.
Officials in several countries confirm a few things to CNN. For starters, they say this investigation would be a lot easier if they had some of the original travel documents used and they say they expect their citizens to get a lot more scrutiny when traveling to the Middle East. Finally, they tell us, Israel is still not cooperating with the investigation.
Paula Newton, CNN, London.
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CHETRY: It is fascinating.
ROMANS: A real cloak and dagger.
CHETRY: You know, "Bourne Identity," the movie script.
ROMANS: All right. It's 42 minutes past the hour. The snow is still coming down in parts of the northeast. Rob is tracking that storm.
All right. Good morning, Rob. Tell us what we're in for.
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Better days ahead. But it's going to take a while to get to those days.
Today, it's going to be a slow-moving storm. It's a historic actually for parts of New York. And we're going to run it down, where it's going next, when CNN AMERICAN MORNING comes right back.
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CHETRY: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. Forty- five minutes past 6:00 here in New York. It's time for your "A.M. House Call," stories about your health.
Exercise may do a lot more for our kids than just keep them fit. It also seems to help their grades. A UCLA study of middle and high school students found that those who took the longest to complete a one-mile fitness test, also had the lowest test scores. If you don't have time to exercise, there is some good news.
You don't have to spend hours at the gym to get results that you want. A lot of experts now say that interval training is twice as effective because the short burst of intense exercise sessions can basically pack a week's worth of workouts into less than an hour. These sessions were originally developed for Olympic athletes, but now studies show that most of us can handle kicking up the intensity a notch and then bringing it back down.
Women over 50 with fatty diets are raising their risks for a stroke, especially if they eat a lot of cookies and pastries because they're loaded with artery-clogging transfats. A huge federal study of more than 87,000 women found that those who ate the most fat were 44 percent more likely to suffer the most common form of stroke. Those are the health stories. John and I always go back and forth about the interval training.
ROMANS: And what does John say about --
CHETRY: I don't know. He doesn't like it as much as I do. I think it's great, but he says that in terms of fat burning it's not as -- he doesn't believe it is good in terms of fat burning. He thinks you, but I like it. I think your body gets -- if your body knows you're going to run for three miles, and you're going to run at the same pace, it knows it can sort of -- you know -- ROMANS: I like to wait for the health study that corresponds with what I actually do in my own life, because eventually if you wait long enough, there will be a new health study.
CHETRY: It will be running after soon-to-be three kids --
ROMANS: Yes, that's right.
CHETRY: Will be all the cardio you need for the week.
ROMANS: Oh, man. Okay, and all the cardio you need for the week shoveling snow but be careful, you know. It's 47 minutes after the hour. Let's get quick a check of the morning's weather headlines. Rob Marciano is in the Extreme Weather Center in Atlanta. Be careful. Lift with your legs, right.
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Use your legs.
ROMANS: Right.
MARCIANO: That's right. Use your legs and be careful and help thy neighbor especially if they're elderly. All right. But we're not done with this thing yet. Sitting and spinning. We got wind with it as well. On most of the areas now that were rain yesterday, turned over to snow with the exception of extreme coastal New England, and where there was rain, there was some pretty heavy duty wind gusts. Parts of Maine 70 mile an hour wind gusts, Concord Airport New Hamster, 68-mile-an-hour wind gusts. You couple of that with some snow, at least further to the west, and you're going to have some drifts for sure.
Over a foot and a half in parts of the Poconos and northern New Jersey with more snow on the way. As you can see, we're getting a little bit dry air in here, but you also see that circulation really isn't moving all that much with snow falling mostly to the south of New York and into New York proper and Jersey continues to be the hardest hit at this point, but temperatures are far enough below freezing where now we're starting to see a little bit of a drier snow.
look at all the warnings and advisories that are up from Northern New England all the way down to North Carolina. As a matter of fact, in parts of the central Appalachians, including North Carolina and Virginia, we've had blizzard warnings out for the rest of today, in the higher elevations, and windy conditions with high wind warnings posted for Baltimore and D.C., so even though you're not seeing a whole lot of snow down there, you're getting the wind.
Now the 4 to 8 inches expected in the areas that already got a foot, foot and a half, so we could see -- we will see total accumulations and in New York City, for instance, of 12 to 18 inches before this is all said and done and it won't be done until well into tomorrow. Christine, Kiran back up to you.
ROMANS: Rob Marciano, thanks, Rob. We'll check in with him again. CHETRY: We sure will. All right. In the meantime, our top stories just minutes away including at 5 minutes past the hour, a missing actor, found dead in Vancouver. Why a former "Growing Pains" star may have taken his own life?
ROMANS: At 15 after, new information about that deadly killer whale attack at SeaWorld. New video taken moments before the 12,000 pound orca attacked and whether it will now be let go.
CHETRY: Also at 50 minutes past the hour, a special report on broken government. Is a town making its people sick and did their leaders ignore it? Those stories and more coming up in our next hour.
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CHETRY: Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING. Fifty-two minutes past the hour right now. Stalled efforts at health care reform just one example of the partisan grid lock that led to a broken government.
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CHETRY (voice-over): Our John Avlon says that hyperpartisanship that people he calls wingnuts are really at the heart of the problem.
ROMANS (voice-over): And he has a special edition of wingnuts of the week. John is in Tallahassee, Florida. John, your special edition of wingnuts of the week pertaining to our broken government series altogether, but first let's talk about the health care summit yesterday and did you think that was a real display of bipartisanship or did you think that that was some political theater?
JOHN AVLON, COLUMNIST, THEDAILYBEAST.COM: I actually thought it was civil and substantive, but there weren't any major breakthroughs, you know. So, I think it gets filed ultimately under the category of photo op bipartisanship. But you know, what's frustrating for so many folks listening at home is to hear the reluctance around the table saying again and again on all these specific things they agree on and yet they're unable to get past that impasse, and it's partly philosophy, but I think mostly it's just partisan politics.
CHETRY: Let me play devil's advocate here just the refreshing, I guess, nature of actually seeing people come face to face and sort of hash it out, as opposed to letting the spin machines go into effect after the fact or, you know, sending mass e-mail out, refuting the other guys. I mean, they were at least in there with their hands rolled up trying to sort of refute each other, and was there anything that struck you as refreshing about that? I haven't seen it in a long time.
AVLON: You know, I think it's great when the President and Congress sit down together at a table. It reminds people that, you know, there can be civility and accountability when people sit down at a table with the cameras present.
There's an exchange of ideas. It's honest, it's invigorating, but what -- it's a matter of also moving beyond that moment to real progress. On the one hand, I think they should do more of those. I wouldn't hold my breath. I don't think it's going to happen, but I think it's actually a great moment both for the President and the American people. But you know when they --
ROMANS: I was just thinking, you say that hyperpartisanship is what is ruled here and that has what's really led to a dysfunction in the government and that, you know, it's the heart of its current problem. Take us through some of the seminole events that you say have led up to this moment where we are, where it's such a big deal to see them getting along around a big table.
AVLON: That's exactly right. But remember, roughly one year ago, President Obama was in his honeymoon period, approval ratings near 60 percent and Rush Limbaugh said four words that help turn the tide -- "I hope he fails." And who knew at the time that ended up would become a rallying cry for many folks on the Republican side of the aisle. A call to obstruction isn't that ended up undercutting a lot of that postpartisan promise, but of course, you know, it's not all one side. Neither party has a monopoly on virtue or vice.
The stimulus bill in retrospect, the way it was passed, the amount that was passed, really ended up turning a lot of people against the Democrat unified control of congress and seemed to undercut a lot of President Obama's post partisan promises. In fact, 11 senators democrats ended up voting against the stimulus bill in addition to the Republican side of the aisle, and one blue dog Democrat, Jim Cooper, from Tennessee had a revealing comment.
Speaking of Nancy Pelosi and the liberal house leadership, he said, they don't mind the partisan fighting because that's what they're used to. In fact, they're really good at it, and they're a little bit worried about what a post partisan future might look like. That showed that this was all going to be heading in a more partisan direction than the American people would have hoped and believed.
CHETRY: Right. And one of the things that you talk about when you call people out as wingnuts, is also injecting fear and hate into the debate as well, that you can't just disagree but you actually have to vilify your opponent. Where we seen that over this past discussion of health care especially?
AVLON: That is one of the biggest things is that we've had policy debates derailed by advocates who are playing to people's worst instincts, pumping up hate in the service of hyperpartisanship, and one of the people who really, I think, have come to symbolize that is former Republican house member Dick Army, who's head of an advocacy organization has helped pump up a lot of protests with language like this, saying in front of one crowd, nearly every important office in Washington, D.C., today's occupied by somebody with an aggressive dislike of our heritage, our freedom, our history and our constitution.
Now once you start using language like that to incite crowds and the service of partisanship, that's going to lead to dysfunction, anger fear, and division.
ROMANS: How is Washington broken? How is it broken, our government by this wingnut behavior?
AVLON: It's really paralyzed and polarized more than ever before. I mean the voting patterns in Congress are more polarized than ever before. The problem is that was the first year of the Obama administration. Politics usually take hold even more aggressive way as we head into the mid-terms. So, unfortunately you look at the political environment right now, and you can only say soberly that this is likely to get worse before it gets better. An election year there are people going to be slinging even more wingnutry and fear that we've seen in the past year.
CHETRY: At least you did the smart thing by getting to Florida and staying out of the snow. John Avlon great to see you as always. Thanks so much. John's new book, by the way, "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America" is available in bookstores right now.
We're going to take a quick break. Your top stories 90 seconds away.
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