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American Morning
The Cost of Combating Terror; Lagging Youth Enthusiasm; New Muppet Movie; Gibson Lands Role in "Hangover 2"; Gulf Oil Spill: 6 Months Later; Double Amputee Does it All
Aired October 19, 2010 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. Thanks so much for being with us on this Tuesday. It's October 19th. I'm Kiran Chetry.
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. I'm John Roberts. Thanks so much for being with us.
A lot happened while you were sleeping overnight. Let's get you caught up on what it was.
The White House ready to hand over $2 billion to Pakistan to help fight terrorists along the border with Afghanistan and announcement it could come later on this week. But what can all that cash really accomplish? A live report from Islamabad, just ahead.
CHETRY: And forget the dolls or building blocks. It's the iPhone and iPad that are quickly becoming a toddler's favorite toy. And while many parents might enjoy the downtime, it help might, you know, end one of those tantrums while their son or daughter is playing with the gadgets, some in the medical community are being concerned. We're going to find out why.
ROBERTS: And courting the youth vote. Te candidates have been trying to woo young voters for this year's midterm elections. But as our T.J. Holmes found out, many young voters are not that plugged in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
T.J. HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: How closely are you guys following the midterms?
EOIN KENNY, COLUMBIA RESIDENT: Not too closely.
HOLMES: Now, why not? Why not?
KENNY: You work 60 hours a week. There's not really a lot time for anything else, you know? I mean, it's all business here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: And we'll have more on this why this voting bloc seemed to have wane this election cycle.
CHETRY: Well, first this hour, the cost of combating terrorism. The White House is about to sign a $2 billion check to the Pakistan government.
ROBERTS: All that cash intended to help the Pakistanis fight terrorists along their border with Afghanistan. The aid package is being finalized right now. It could be announced later on this week.
Our Frederik Pleitgen is joining us this morning live from Islamabad.
Frederik, what does the U.S. want the Pakistanis to do with the money?
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, for a long time, John and Kiran, the U.S. has wanted Pakistan to get tougher against the Taliban and al Qaeda, especially in the North Waziristan area, which is that area that actually borders Pakistan and Afghanistan. The U.S. believes that that is where a lot of al Qaeda and of Taliban senior leadership are.
And the U.S. basically wants the Pakistani army to launch a ground offensive into that area. They've been wanting them to do that for a very long time.
However, so far, the Pakistanis are saying that their army is too far stretched. They're saying most of their soldiers are involved in flood relief. Of course, as you know, a lot of this country is still flooded and there's a lot of army soldiers involved in trying to mitigate that. And also, they've conducted some anti-terror operations in the past.
So, right now, the Pakistanis are saying that it's simply not possible for them to do that -- John and Kiran.
CHETRY: Is there support for them to do that among the Pakistani people, regardless of whether they feel they can do it, you know, practically speaking? I mean, is there the will?
PLEITGEN: Well, I think if there were the will, it is certainly something that they could do. You know, I've been in touch with some senior Pakistani military officials and what they have been telling us is basically they have been giving me a list of things that they want from the U.S. They're saying that basically, the big problem they have is that the Pakistani military is still an army that's very much geared towards fighting a conventional war against its arch-enemy, India.
They say they don't have the basic counterinsurgency tools. They say what they want from America is counterinsurgency training and gear. They're talking about body armor, things like night-vision goggles, things like helicopters, things like armored cars. These are the kind of things they want and they say they need if they're going to be able to go into that -- into those areas.
So, right now, they already seem to have a pretty clear idea of the things they want to do with those $2 billion, Kiran and John.
ROBERTS: All right. Fred Pleitgen this morning in Islamabad -- Fred, thanks.
A developing story now out of Russia's Chechnya region, the parliament building there attack by suicide bombers today. "Reuters" is reporting that security forces killed the four attackers. Lawmakers were going into the building at the time. They were not hurt. They're now in a safe location.
CHETRY: Well, Barbara Walters has a message of her two co-hosts who walked off the set last week during the segment with Bill O'Reilly: Don't do it again. Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar stormed off the set in protest when the FOX host made a controversial comment about Muslims and the September 11th attacks. Well, yesterday, the two co-hosts defended their actions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
JOY BEHAR, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": On this show, we always speak about standing up to bigotry. So, I stood up.
(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)
WHOOPI GOLDBERG, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": When you say Muslims are responsible for 9/11, does that mean Muhammad Ali? Because Muhammad Ali is a Muslim. Does that mean Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? To me, you need to be distinct when you say things like because there is a volatile time.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
ROBERTS: Well, after Whoopi and Joy were allowed to explain themselves, Barbara Walters took them to task on the air. Let's look at this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARBARA WALTERS, CO-HOST, "THE VIEW": This is a country that's full of rage. You just used the word volatile yourself. We must be able to have conversations. That means all of us, without fury, without rage, without screaming, without obscenities, without walking off. It's very dramatic.
People love train wrecks. People want us to do more of it because it's good for the ratings. You don't walk out of your own home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: There you go. Bill O'Reilly was also weighing in. He says that Americans are fed up with, quote, "politically correct nonsense" and that there is no question there is a Muslim problem in the world that the ladies of "The View" won't acknowledge.
ROBERTS: So, in other words, we can expect to see this train wreck continue in a future episode which -- as Barbara Walters pointed out -- would be good for the ratings. Well, seven would-be New York governors squared off last night on Long Island in a very bizarre debate. Democratic frontrunner Andrew Cuomo and Tea Party-backed Republican Carl Paladino shared the spotlight with a retired madame, former Black Panther, and a candidate running on the Rent is Too Damn High ticket. At times, it seems more like a "Saturday Night Live" kit than a political debate.
Here's a sample for you.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
JIMMY MCMILLAN, NY GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Rent, it's too damn high.
KRISTIN DAVIS, NY GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: In fact, businesses will leave this state quicker than Carl Paladino at a gay bar.
(LAUGHTER)
CHARLES BARRON, NY GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Asking Andrew Cuomo and Carl Paladino to end corruption is like asking an arsonist to help us put out the fires. It doesn't make sense.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
ROBERTS: Well, it wasn't much of a debate between the two main candidates. The latest "New York Times" poll has Andrew Cuomo leading Carl Paladino a comfortable 59 percent to 24 percent.
CHETRY: Yes. Even the most generous polling lately to Paladino, it's still an 18 percent gap that he's thrilling Cuomo.
ROBERTS: It would have been good to see them face off on the issues since they're the leading candidates. But there wasn't a whole lot of that last night.
CHETRY: Well, how about to Nevada where the Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle is taking some heat for remarks she made to a group of Hispanic high school students. She was questioned about why she uses images of -- or why she used images of Latinos in one campaign commercial where she slammed her opponent for being soft on illegal immigration. And here is here response.
(BEGIIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHARRON ANGLE (R), NEVADA SENATE CANDIDATE: So that's what we want is a secure and sovereign nation, and, you know, I don't -- I don't know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me. I don't know that.
We what we know about -- what we know about ourselves is that we are a melting pot in this country. My grandchildren are evidence of that. I'm evidence of that. I've been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly.
(END VIDEO CLIP) CHETRY: Angle spokesman says that she was trying to make the point that this country is a melting pot. That means you can't judge people based on stereotypes or the way they look.
ROBERTS: Didn't sound like a direct response to the question, but maybe I missed it.
Two weeks out, what do college students and recent grads have to say about the upcoming midterm elections? You may be surprised by their mood and what's on their minds. That's next. T.J. Holmes talks with young voters, coming up next.
It's 10 minutes after the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Twelve minutes after the hour. We're back with the Most Politics in the Morning.
College-aged kids, they were considered the key demographic in the 2008 election, but they don't seem to be that engaged in this upcoming election.
CHETRY: Our T.J. Holmes is live in Aiken, South Carolina, this morning, getting a chance to talk to some of the young voters.
And the enthusiasm just isn't there this year. But are they telling you why?
T.J. HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. They got other things to do. That's the short of it. And you're going to hear that in just a second.
Good morning to you guys. Coming to you on the third stop on the second day of this bus tour that's going to take us down to Tampa. Of course, we started out with you guys in Charlotte, North Carolina yesterday morning. But we made a stop in Columbia, South Carolina yesterday before coming here to Aiken.
And we stopped at a place I know, at least John is very familiar with, the Flying Saucer Bar and Restaurant there. I don't know what John did back in 2008 when he was there during the campaign, but they're still talking about him. Something having to do -- I heard the phrase "table dance" going around a lot, but that's neither here nor there.
(CROSSTALK)
ROBERTS: Memories are foggy. There's a mist covering all of that. I'm not quite sure. But I do remember the Flying Saucer, quite an amazing place.
HOLMES: Yes. Yes, maybe foggy for you, but they remember you quite well --
ROBERTS: Uh-oh! HOLMES: -- back there in Columbia, John.
But no, we found young people there, of course. College town there in Columbia. And the young people we found -- I found one guy who's a recent graduate, and another guy he worked with, were part of a start-up, you know, entrepreneurs, starting a new business.
Listen to them and you'll see why the president and his administration are out in force right now trying to get these young people motivated because right now, it doesn't sound like they are or engaged at all.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EOIN KENNY, COLUMBIA RESIDENT: In May --
HOLMES: In May?
KENNY: -- 2010.
HOLMES: So, this was still in the midst of this whole economic downturn and whatnot, and then, you know, all the news reports about kids. I'm sure you know some folks stayed in school longer. They went to law school or maybe they graduate --
KENNY: They don't have jobs and they graduated longer than me.
HOLMES: Really?
KENNY: Yes.
HOLMES: So, what happened with you? You just got lucky then?
KENNY: I -- you know, you can say that I got lucky or I was just good, but, you know --
HOLMES: What did you say?
KENNY: I like to say I'm good, but I think I might have been a little lucky.
HOLMES: How closely are you guys following the midterms?
KENNY: Not too closely.
HOLMES: Now, why not? Why not?
KENNY: You work 60 hours a week. There's not really a lot time for anything else, you know? I mean, it's all business here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's this whole problem with voting in America where not enough people go out to vote, but at the same time, there are a lot of people going out to vote that just vote and they don't even know what they're voting for. So, you know, it's like where does the real problem lie there? KENNY: You know, worse thing is to have an opinion on politics and not really know what's going on, you know? Probably this classic story of young people that don't really know what's going on in politics. Alvin Greene all the way, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: So, you hear the guys kind of explain their logic, their reasoning. Yes, I'm working too hard, first of all, but also, because Barack Obama is not at the top of the ticket, because he's not on the ballot this time around, the young people are telling us that's why they're not so much engaged in what's happening. And the president knows he has that as a major task as well. Now, I heard the name, you guys, we've all heard this name off a lot, but Alvin Greene.
Of course, he is the man, the unknown, who came out of nowhere, unemployed and found his way on to the Democratic ticket, and he's now running for Senate here against Jim DeMint. A lot of people named that particular race as why they're not engaged and why they believe other people are engaged. People here in South Carolina really do believe that is a perfect example of people not paying attention and not being informed and walking into a voting booth and just clicking a name.
I had a man admit to me yesterday that he, in fact, did that. He said, I remember there was another Greene years ago or something, and so, people here aren't engaged, but they admit that's a perfect example of what happens when people aren't engaged. Here in Aiken now, guys, to wrap it up and so we're back to you just got here to Aiken. We're going to make our way up and down this street about 30,000 people here in this town.
It has a rich history, but they're really concerned about where they're going to go down the road in the future. So, you'll be seeing reports from here in Aiken throughout the day. We're just getting started here on day two, stop three of our bus tour.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: All right. That's why you were only sipping at that beer. You got a long way to go. You got to finish strong.
HOLMES: Oh, I thought we edited that part out. I'm sorry.
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: And if anybody is not engaged in this election, they just need to stop by the flying saucer in Columbia because it is a veritable hot bed of rich, political discourse.
HOLMES: Yes.
ROBERTS: T.J., thanks so much.
HOLMES: Yes, it is. All right, guys.
ROBERTS: Great to see you. Next stop for T.J, and the CNN Election Express is going to be Macon, Georgia. We'll check in with them tomorrow. And a reminder, for all the latest politics, check out CNNPolitics.com.
CHETRY: Also, Christine Romans is going to join us in just a moment talking more about Facebook in the hot seat. Congress are now saying they have some questions for Facebook after a privacy breach which could end up getting marketers access to everything you do online. So, what do you need to know to protect yourself? Christine will show you coming up. Seventeen and a half minutes after the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: It does make you laugh. It brings back some memories. And also scares you that some of the staff members have no idea what we're talking about when we say The Muppets. Ms. Piggy, Kermit, Fozzie Bear all in high-level talks this morning about a big screen come back.
According to Hollywood reporter, The Muppets will be teaming up with co-stars, Chris Cooper and Amy Adams and Rashida Jones in a new film, "How I Met Your Mother," started Jason Segel co-writing and co- producing and storing his character on a quest to reunite the Muppets so they can save a movie studio from greedy villains who want to tear it down and drill beneath it for oil. Wow, it's getting heavier than the days of the --
ROBERTS: It feels like the perfect thing for Kermit the Frog to be involved in.
CHETRY: Great!
ROBERTS: And if you love the hit movie "The Hangover" as much as Kiran did, get ready for "The Hangover 2."
CHETRY: I wasn't on the band wagon for the hangover. Sorry.
ROBERTS: Come on. You loved it. It's in the works, "Hangover 2" after Mike Tyson won critical acclaimed for his cameo role in the first film. Producers are hoping to catch lighting in a bottle of second time by casting Mel Gibson in the sequel. He's going to play a tattoo artist in Thailand. It will likely be Gibson's first on-screen role since his violent audiotape rants against his ex-wife went public back in July. Talk about a comeback.
(LAUGHING)
ROBERTS: The Muppets and Mel Gibson.
CHETRY: And Muppets are timeless, though. We have an old TV that still has a VCR that you could plug it in. My mother brought the great Muppet caper up and my kids watch it. I mean --
ROBERTS: That was great.
CHETRY: It was. A New York City band called Atomic Tom has gone nuclear. There's a YouTube video that's been viewed more than a million times. In it, the group performs a song on the New York subway using their iPhones as instruments. It turns out their real instruments were stolen, so they improvised for the video using iPhones as keyboard, guitar, drums and microphone. You didn't even to add in the story line about it being stolen. That's just cool enough.
ROBERTS: Good for them. I have the little keyboard app on my -- I can't make it to a whole lot.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: You need the keyboard app on the iPad.
ROBERTS: Yes, but they were using iPhone. You have like this mega technology.
ROMANS: And you know, those iPhone they were using if they bought them in the last quarter, they are one of the 6,456 iPhones that were sold every hour.
ROBERTS: $4.3 billion in profit?
CHETRY: Every time we feel good about ourselves -- we start feeling good about ourselves, John goes if you would have bought Apple stock in 1982, this is how much money you would have made --
(LAUGHING)
ROBERTS: No, if you had bought it ten years ago.
ROMANS: Yes. Apple stock has just down --
ROBERTS: From $7 to $300.
ROMANS: And about $300. And then over night, it came back down a little bit because even those unbelievable numbers for Apple's quarter were a little bit disappointing to people on the street. Let me tell you what, the iPhone, the iPad, and all these Apple products did for Apple computer in the three months that just were completed, 14.1 million iPhones sold, nearly 155,000 of them every single day. That comes down to about --
ROBERTS: Which is why is it possible to make a phone call these days.
ROMANS: 6,500 an hour, iPad's $4.2 million sold in just two quarters, the iPad. They're selling more iPad than even there in Macintosh computers. That comes out to 46,000 a day, about 1,900 an hour, and believe it or not, the analysts who are obsessed with this company had been expecting even bigger iPad sales. That's why you're seeing the stock down a little bit.
But look, they call this -- Steve Jobs said he was blown away by the quarter, and he made a rare appearance on the conference call after the earnings results. Usually, that's uncommon (ph) this call. It's been a couple of year since he had -- he came on and said, look, we made $20 billion in sales, a record quarter for both sales and earnings. The question now is, can Apple keep it going? He said they still have some tricks and surprises left for the end of the year.
CHETRY: Didn't he also diss the android version of this?
ROMANS: Yes --
(CROSSTALK)
ROMANS: Yes. You know, he's spunky on there. He seemed a little -- he seemed very enthusiastic about the report.
ROBERTS: Is he the richest guy in the world yet?
ROMANS: No, not the richest, but boy, he's up there.
ROBERTS: His Apple is worth more than the Microsoft --
ROMANS: So rich that it doesn't even matter.
ROBERTS: Yes.
ROMANS: Yes. I mean, these products, these gadgets from Apple have really struck a chord with America.
ROBERTS: They do have great design team. No question.
ROMANS: Yes. And quickly I want to say about another thing that's viral with Americans and that is and the world, frankly, Facebook. 500 million users. Still questions about your security of your privacy. If you really do expect to have security and privacy in a social network, I will point out.
Congressman Ed Markey and Joe Barton want Facebook to answer some questions about some recent questions about concerns about applications that maybe sharing your information or allowing your information to be available to online marketers and advertisers. This privacy leak -- the Facebook kind of downplaying the fact of a breach or a leak. They're sort of just saying that, look, this is the way the web works. It was just -- you know, this is the way these applications were made, and we're asking our designers who make these applications to be more careful, but --
ROBERTS: It's just the way they were made.
ROMANS: Look, if you really --
ROBERTS: Suck in all the data we possibly can.
ROMANS: If you really think that, you know, your information is just not out there, that's what -- I just think -- assume the information is out there -- and from there on out.
CHETRY: Younger people don't seem to care as much. I mean, you know, when you talk about the sharing of the world on the internet, sharing your every move, your every photo, but, you know, in this case, you can change the privacy settings. I don't know if they certainly make it easy enough for everybody to understand how to do that.
ROMANS: It's not easy for me to figure out how to do that.
ROBERTS: It takes a lot of mouse clicks.
ROMANS: Yes.
ROBERTS: Christine, thanks.
ROMANS: Just abstain
ROBERTS: Just (INAUDIBLE) about the whole thing.
CHETRY: Or some more paper. You can add your personal diary.
ROMANS: Can you do the whole tease in the Kermit the Frog? More Kermit. Please, John. More Kermit.
ROBERTS: Everything in moderation.
CHETRY: Exactly. Speaking of that, how about what your kids play with in moderation? How about your iPhone, your iPad? Apparently, toddlers, the toddlers said this is the favorite toy out there, and it has some early educators, and childhood development experts are a little bit concerned about it. Is it doing more harm than good? What about the educational apps out there? We're going to talk about it, coming up.
ROBERTS: And police officer shot and killed by a suspected gang member, but how did the alleged murder weapon end up in Chicago from Mississippi? Tracing the life of a gun, coming up next. Twenty-seven minutes now after the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Crossing the half hour right now. Time for a look at the top stories this morning.
The White House is getting ready to hand Pakistan a $2 billion security assistance aid package to help fight extremists along their border with Afghanistan. Sources tell CNN the announcement will be made later this week when Pakistani officials are in Washington for high-level talks.
ROBERTS: It's been called one of the biggest drug bust in Mexico's history. Police seizing 105 tons of marijuana yesterday morning in a border city of Tijuana. It looks like construction materials there, the bags of cement, but no, that's bags of pot. There was a brief shootout involved, too. Government agent suspected drug runner was injured. Eleven people in total were taken into custody.
CHETRY: And one of two farms in Iowa that's being blamed for the nationwide salmonella scare has been cleared now to begin shipping eggs again. The FDA saying that Hillandale Farms has been extensively tested and that there's no evidence of salmonella contamination and the operations can resume immediately.
ROBERTS: The distance between Mississippi and Illinois is more than 600 miles, but somehow, a gun that was used to kill a cop in Chicago back in May traveled all that way.
CHETRY: And unfortunately, this is becoming all too familiar. Chicago has become a hub for illegal weapon sales. After officer Tom Wardum was killed, we decided to track the life of the gun and show how that fatal shot was fired.
Randi Kaye joins us now with an "A.M." original. It is a story you'll see only on "AMERICAN MORNING." And it really a long and winding tale to get to this.
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It sure is, 600 miles, as you said, from Mississippi to Chicago. We're talking about gun trafficking, which is very big business. The ATF says there are something like 300 million guns in circulation in the United States right now.
But when the police go after the gun traffickers to try and break up their rings, say in Mississippi, the traffickers just move it elsewhere. They know where it's easier to buy guns and profitable to sell them to criminals that would not otherwise be able to buy guns on their own. And this is what happens.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KAYE: Thomas Wortham wanted to be a police officer just like his father. But his promising career with the Chicago police department ended suddenly in May. Officer Wortham was gunned down by four alleged gang members trying to steal his motorcycle. It happened in a matter of seconds just outside his parent's house.
His father, a retired police sergeant, grabbed his gun to try to save his son.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw them with their guns out and I hollered out to him.
KAYE (on camera): You shot one of them?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I won't say anymore than that they shot my son and returned they were shot.
KAYE (voice-over): This is where the tale of tragedy ends. But investigators would soon figure out where it began, about 600 miles away in Mississippi where the gun used in the murder was first purchased.
This ATF agent who asked not to be identified worked the case in Mississippi.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That trace showed that one of our defendants had purchased that firearm in Mississippi.
KAYE: The ATF says it was purchased in 2007 by a man who was paid $100 to buy guns for gun trafficker Quali (ph) Gates.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The individual went in, completed the paper work and gave the firearms to Mr. Gates and never thought about the guns again.
KAYE: The ATF says Gates paid at least three people to buy guns for him which he then sold to gang members in Chicago.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He preyed upon young college students without much money and he would offer $100 to go into a gun store, fill out paper work and hand them a bag of guns, simple as that.
KAYE: The ATF says it knows of 16 guns that Gates trafficked into Illinois. This map shows some of the crimes involving those guns. The problem is, there's no way to know how many of Gates' guns are still on the street. The ATF says it can't trace them until they're used in a crime and recovered.
KAYE (on camera): This room is where the ATF in Chicago stores some of the illegal guns it's recovered off the street. Over the last few years agents say they have seen a greater demand for more dangerous guns. Criminals are no longer satisfied with the smaller gun like this 25. They're now demanding that traffickers bring them something like this, a nine millimeter. You can see the difference. This one can do much more harm.
KAYE (voice-over): Chicago AFT agent Andrew Traver says an illegal gun may stay on the street for decades.
ANDREW TRAVER, ATF: We have recovered guns originally purchased in the '70s that turn up in homicides here. They can bounce around and be used in multiple crimes.
KAYE: Traver says guns are trafficked into Illinois from at least 25 states because there are no gun stores in Chicago.
KAYE (on camera): How much money do the traffickers stand to make?
TRAVER: I'm sure close to 100 percent profit on the guns they sell.
KAYE (voice-over): In the case of Officer Thomas Wortham, Gates made a few hundred dollars' profit on the gun that fired the fatal shot, in the game of gun trafficking, the price of a policeman's life.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
Officer Thomas Wortham had just returned from two tours of Iraq. The gun trafficker in this case is now serving ten years in prison, which is a significant sentence for a trafficker. The three surviving gang members allegedly involved in the officer's shooting are awaiting trial.
ROBERTS: Do the people who are being paid to go into the gun store know they're buying guns for illegal purposes? KAYE: In this case the man that bought the gun used three years later in the shooting death of Thomas Wortham, he said he didn't know. In fact, he didn't know until the ATF spoke with him about this. He was approached at a gas station. He had a daughter in the hospital and he was on the way to visit her and Gates, the trafficker in this case, approached him, offered $100, gave him a shopping list. He bought the guns, and they think it's a victimless crime, the straw purchasers.
ROBERTS: Why did he think he was buying the guns?
KAYE: He needed the money.
ROBERTS: I know, but somebody says, hey, here's 100 bucks, buy me a bunch of guns. That sounds legit.
KAYE: He can't buy them legally. You would think that they would know that they're going to be used for something very wrong, but in this case he said he never knew. And he apologized and said he was very, very sorry.
CHETRY: A life is lost in this case and this is all too common.
KAYE: Absolutely.
CHETRY: Randi Kate, thanks so much.
ROBERTS: Tomorrow on "American Morning" CNN's T.J. Holmes gives us a chilling look inside the Chicago gun culture and shows us how easy for kids to get their hands on deadly weapons.
CHETRY: Well, 36 minutes past the hour. Forget the rattles, the building blocks, even the DVDs. That's all passe now. If your kids have the choice, it's the iPhone they want to play with. But is it doing more harm than good? We'll break down the pros and cons next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: It's 40 minutes past the hour right now. Cheap child care? There's an app for that. It turns out the iPhone is not just a must have for adults but for toddle toddlers, as well. So could the toy have a negative impact on your little one's development? Joining me now with more on this is Tovah Klein. She is the director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development. Thanks so much for joining us.
TOVAH KLEIN, DIRECTOR, BARNARD CENTER FOR TODDLER DEVELOPMENT: Thank you.
CHETRY: My husband forwarded me the article saying beware. You know, we have two and a half and a four and a half year olds who love these. My friends, they echoed the same sentiment. This is the new cool thing for kids to play with. But is it bad?
KLEIN: It's hard. If you have one and so attractive, and we're so attracted to it, as adults, how could a child not be? But it works against the way children learn and you have a two and a half and a four year old?
CHETRY: Yes.
KLEIN: You know they're curious. They observe. They pick things up and figure things out. And what the iPhone or iPad or the gadgets do is put information out to them that they respond to rather than letting them figure out how does this work or what do I do with this as they'll do with open-ended objects like blocks.
CHETRY: That's interesting. One of the things marveled at. I just look this with my son playing, is the fine motor skills. He knows how to use this thing. Listen to a little bit of this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got it!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: This is a game where you simulate licking a lollipop. At two and a half, I'm not saying the next genius, but it's pretty neat to see them be able to use this device.
KLEIN: Yes. I think part of it is as adults we are in awe of this stuff. How could we not be? Then we see your young children using it so easily growing up with it. There's almost like an awe factor. Wow. What does this mean for my child?
On the other hand, it is taking time from them interacting with people, figuring out the social dance between, say, two toddlers or two young children, figuring out how objects work, figuring out how to build block towers or do puzzles. This is a screen. I'm not looking at you. I'm not picking up on the social cues, and it's very much about responding in a particular way.
CHETRY: So is it similar to TV? The reason they don't want you having your child in front of the TV too often is because it's just -- they just sit there. Is that the concern with iPhones, as well?
KLEIN: I think it is a couple things. It is passive. But you're responding to something thrown at you. So it's sort of like a pacifier. I'm a parent, too, right. You're desperate and hand them something like a candy or something, but it's a slippery slope. It's in a restaurant because they're screaming, the grocery line, it becomes a slippery slope, as opposed to we want them to learn over time how to be bored, how to deal with frustration, how to not get what they want all the time.
And this is very immediate satisfaction but nothing more really. I mean, it is fun.
CHETRY: Right. Now, when they get older, I was showing you the two and a half year old and my four-year-old, they have apps to trace. Practice letters in some cases, putting together puzzles. Not that much different than if they were doing it, I guess, with a puzzle or with a piece of paper or pencil, or is it very different? KLEIN: I think it is very different. Children learn through all of their different modalities. They touch, smell, see. They see themselves in space. So holding a pencil and feeling it on the paper and getting a sense of the weight of it and impact on it, I think they get power. I push hard on this paper, look at what happens. And then they have something to keep from it. It is different than responding, again, to a fairly circumscribed set of things they can do.
CHETRY: So the bottom line is we all do it, but just think about it.
KLEIN: Really think about it.
CHETRY: It's not the best thing for them.
KLEIN: Probably not the best thing.
CHETRY: Thank you for joining us this morning. Tovah Klein, great to talk to you.
KLEIN: Thank you.
CHETRY: John?
ROBERTS: Six months after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, what's the real toll on wildlife? Our Rob Marciano returns to one facility where volunteers cleaned and cared for birds and turtles covered in crude. When's the scene like now? Rob is live in New Orleans for us coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Welcome back to The Most News in the Morning. Forty- seven minutes past the hour right now.
You know, this week marks six months since a Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and led to the nation's worst oil spill in history. An estimated 200 million gallons flowed into the Gulf of Mexico coating the water and the wildlife.
ROBERTS: But thanks to a lot of people who are working very hard around the clock, hundreds of oil-soaked animals were given another chance at life.
Our Rob Marciano is in New Orleans this morning. Several months ago, he managed to go to one of those rescue centers and actually helped clean a bunch of birds.
That must have been a great experience for you -- Rob.
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Oh, yes. It was gratifying just for the short time that I got to do it. These people who do it every day for the past six months and in some cases make a career out of it. You see it in their eye and you the passion that they -- that they have. And -- and -- and the care and love that they give to these animals. And they know that when this rig exploded six months ago that -- what the impact would be on wildlife and we've seen no shortage of that and no shortage of heroes and hard workers trying to get it done. And I tell you what, in the last half a year we've come a long, long way.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARCIANO (voice-over): I first visited bird rehab centers back in mid-June. There was frantic shuffling of rescued pelicans. Cleaning oiled feathers, medically treating the sick.
(on camera): Here you go.
(voice-over): And feeding the weak. It's a different scene now.
(on camera): It already smells better in here.
(voice-over): Over 800 rescue birds moved through this facility and more than 2,000 were treated from Louisiana to Florida during the last six months.
DANENE BIRTELL, FACILITY MANAGER, TRI-STATE BIRD RESCUE: The fact that it's empty is a huge sign of success and makes us very happy.
MARCIANO (on camera): So this is where there were birds.
BIRTELL: This morning. This morning.
MARCIANO: This morning there were birds.
BIRTELL: The birds were released out of here.
MARCIANO (voice-over): That's huge. The last of the BP affected birds finally return to the wild.
RHONDA MURGATROYD, WILDLIFE COORDINATOR, DEEPWATER HORIZON RESPONSE: When they go out and I see them fly out of those kennels that's when you see me smile, that's when I'm happiest.
MARCIANO (on camera): Come on, guys.
(voice-over): I know the feeling. Four months ago I got to release some pelicans in Texas.
(on camera): Absolutely spectacular.
(voice-over): But the sober fact remains over 6,000 birds were found dead since the spill. And other animals are still fighting for their lives.
(on camera): My God. Look at the size of that turtle. Come on, big mama.
(voice-over): Big mama tips the scales at 220. (on camera): Want some shrimp?
(voice-over): This wounded loggerhead is one of 21 turtles still recovering at the institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi.
(on camera): This is one of the Kemp's Ridley affected by the oil spill and it's important that every couple of days, couple of weeks, couple of months depending on the -- how sick the animal is to get a check on their blood and see how the oil has affected them.
(voice-over): Marine vets check his heart and lungs, too.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I wanted to see and look inside the mouth to make sure --
MARCIANO: This guy is recovering from swallowing a fishing hook; likely forced from his normal habitat by the oil slick.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Back in the tank he goes.
MARCIANO: But not back into the wilds. Not yet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to over winter them and keep them in optimal temperatures and make sure that they're exercised; they are treated properly so when they are released they can go and fend for themselves.
MARCIANO: For now, it's kiddie time in the pool.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're right there. Perfect. Let him go.
MARCIANO: A safe training spot so that one day they'll get back into the Gulf.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MARCIANO: Well, that little guy along with the couple of the other turtles actually featured on the air two months ago when we had that telethon in prime time so they're still not quite ready to get out there. You know, that -- that rehabilitation center, the turtle one, they have seen 10 to 20 times the number of turtles they typically see in a year. So no question whether there was oil on those animals or not that the -- the oil spill certainly affected them.
Let me give you a couple of other numbers, 600 -- 362 turtles released; 278 nests relocated to safe areas and from those nests, 14,000 hatchlings made their way back into the water. And over 1,200 birds are released.
So there is time certainly to celebrate the success and the long way we have come in the last six months but the long-term effects on the survival rates and the reproduction rates of these animals, that's still yet to be seen.
And later on today, we're going to go into marshlands and where we hear there are still plenty of oil out there. And what they're doing about it to clean it up. So as far as that's concerned, we're still -- we still have a long road ahead -- John and Kiran.
ROBERTS: I'm looking forward to that. Not much cuter than that baby turtle either Rob.
CHETRY: Oh no, they make a lot of progress.
MARCIANO: No, no they are amazing animals.
CHETRY: They really are. Thanks, Rob.
Coming up next, we're going to meet Aimee Mullins, a world-class athlete, a fashion model and actress and she's hoping to redefine your definition of disabled. Its 52 minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: It's 5 minutes down to the top of the hour.
Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta has brought us some inspiring stories for his ongoing series "THE HUMAN FACTOR". This morning he profiles a remarkable woman, a double amputee who says her disability is at the very heart of her success.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Aimee Mullins wants to redefine disabled.
AIMEE MULLINS, ACTRESS, ATHLETE, AMPUTEE: (INAUDIBLE) I found when looking up disabled was shocking. It starts out like wrecked, stalled, maimed, maimed, lame, mutilated.
At first it was almost humorous. And I was reading this thinking, you can't be serious.
GUPTA: At one-year-old Mullins became a double amputee. She was born without fibula bones in her legs. And doctors amputated what was left. Having never met another amputee until she turned 18, life with prosthetics was challenging.
MULLINS: When I was a teenager, you know, junior high, I would have traded prosthetics for flesh and bone legs in a heartbeat.
GUPTA: But look at what she's accomplished. As I said, Aimee is redefining the very term disabled.
MULLINS: The shift for me was going through the process of, you know, wishing I was something else to acceptance and then to celebration, having fun with it. To then deciding actually I determine what my strengths and weaknesses are.
GUPTA: It's that determination that propelled Mullins to become a successful actress, a model, an athlete. She was named one of "People's" most beautiful 50 people in the world. She's modeled high fashion in London. She broke world track and field records in the 100-meter, 200-meter, in long jump events. And when she's not competing, she spends her free time working with the Women's Sports Foundation.
MULLINS: We use this phrase a lot, we say, you know, in spite of having prosthetics legs, she's been able to accomplish x, y and z.
GUPTA: Right.
MULLINS: And I was finally able to articulate why I was frustrated with that this year and it's because of having prosthetics legs that I have been able to accomplish x, y and z.
GUPTA: To Mullins, her prosthetics are a source of strength, not disability. That's a message she wishes everyone could hear.
MULLINS: Ultimately one day, if I could just be Aimee Mullins. It doesn't have to be prefixed with disabled athlete or whatever.
GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN reporting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: We're back just in time to say thanks so much for joining us in this AMERICAN MORNING. We'll see you right back here bright and early tomorrow.
ROBERTS: The news continues here on CNN with Kyra Phillips in the "CNN NEWSROOM." Good morning, Kyra.
