Return to Transcripts main page
American Morning
Severe Weather Slams East Coast; WikiLeaks Founder, A Wanted Man; The Lennon Legacy; Eight Million Abandon Credit Card; "No Tolerance For Functional Illiteracy"
Aired December 01, 2010 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. And thanks so much for joining us. It is December the 1st. I'm John Roberts.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Time is just flying by. I'm Kiran Chetry. We have some new viewers this morning that we're very excited to welcome to announce the launch of CNN HD in Japan today.
ROBERTS: Yes. So welcome to AMERICAN MORNING and "Konbanwa," which is good evening. I hope I got it right in Japanese. It's actually 8:00 at night in Japan, but it's just now becoming 6:00 in the morning on the east coast.
CHETRY: And we want to get you caught up on all the day's news. A beast of a storm slamming the east coast this morning from the Florida Panhandle to Maryland. Buildings have been damaged by high winds, trees and power lines down, tornado watches are out. And we're live on the ground with the very latest.
ROBERTS: The most wanted man, the man behind WikiLeaks, Julian Assange now being hunted by Interpol. That's the International Police. But from his undisclosed location, he is still chirping and says Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should resign. We're live in London with the latest on the search and the worldwide fallout from it.
CHETRY: And credit cards declined. Millions of people cutting their plastic or getting cut off by credit card companies. It's a dramatic example of how Americans are changing their lives and their spending habits. But will the trend continue?
ROBERTS: But first, nature's wrath, and it is widespread this morning reaching from the Florida Panhandle all the way up into the northeast. Dangerous winds and rain damaging dozens of homes and businesses in the south, while folks here in the north are bracing for possible flash floods.
CHETRY: The weather is right for tornadoes, as well. If you take a look at the satellite picture, tornado watches are -- this is actually radar here -- in effect from South Carolina to our nation's capital. Our Jacqui Jeras is live on the ground in Buford, Georgia this morning.
Hi, Jacqui. What's going on? We just lost Jacqui right when we went to her. But we want to let you know that she is there following the latest. They have some extreme weather, and tornadoes as we know, chilling and unpredictable. Coming up at 8:40 Eastern Time, we're going to be speaking to Reed Timmer of the Discovery Channel "Storm Chasers." We'll be talking to him about why he continues to run toward these storms when everyone else is being warned to get out of the way.
ROBERTS: And as soon as we reestablish contact with our Jacqui Jeras, we'll bring her up for you. And we do have her. Jacqui, are you there? Come in, Jacqui.
JACQUI JERAS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I'm here. Hello, can you hear me?
ROBERTS: Yes, we got you now.
JERAS: You got me.
ROBERTS: Yes. How's the look up there?
JERAS: Hey, all right. Good deal. Yes, well, there's a lot of damage here, actually. We're talking about 56 homes. About 12 of those received some major damage and are unlivable.
You know, this is a suburb of Atlanta in late November. To have a storm like this a little bit on the unusual side. Not sure at this point if it was a tornado or if we're looking at a microburst or just straight line winds, but it is pretty widespread here.
Go ahead and take a look at the pictures to give you an idea. There you can see insulation, roofs that have been taken off of homes and damage just spewed about through the neighborhoods. This is about two miles away, by the way, from the mall of Georgia, very busy shopping mall. So this certainly could have been much worse. What's amazing is that nobody was injured.
Power remains out in the area and all the gas has been turned off, as well. And it's bitterly cold here this morning too, guys. By the way, behind this front, we're talking about temperatures in the 30s this morning and the wind chill is about 24 degrees. So certainly feeling more like northern weather than Atlanta type of weather.
Now the storm system that caused all this damage continues to be on the move at this hour. Take a look at our radar picture and show you where that threat area is today. And that's really from South Carolina on up into Maryland, even into the Baltimore area where that threat of tornadoes is ongoing.
Now, north of that system, not so much severe, but we're dealing with some very blustery conditions. We are looking at winds today that could be gusting anywhere between 30 and 50 miles per hour, and they're going to be increasing after that sun comes up today. If you are traveling today, we're expected to have a lot of problems up and down the east coast because of the rains and because of those winds. Those cold temperatures on the backside of the storm blowing over the warmer lakes. So the Great Lakes getting the lake-effect snow machine effect. Could see anywhere between eight and 14 inches of snow.
So still dark here in Buford, Georgia. As the sun comes up, we'll be able to get a better look at this neighborhood behind us. I don't know if you can see this one home where the roof has been blown off and the whole side of this building has been exposed. John and Kiran, back to you.
CHETRY: Rough weather out there. Jacqui, thanks so much.
ROBERTS: Brand new fallout now over that huge document by the Web site WikiLeaks. Its founder Julian Assange has landed on Interpol's most wanted list alongside the likes of Osama bin Laden. What they're looking for him for is alleged sex crimes. And that is clearly not the only trouble he's in.
CHETRY: The Justice Department and the Pentagon have launched criminal investigations. But from his undisclosed location, Julian Assange is still talking and still stirring the pot and really getting into the government's skin. Now he's calling on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to resign.
ROBERTS: Our Atika Shubert has the latest for us. She's live in London this morning. And pretty bold statement for Assange to make. It's pretty clear he's at least in a war of words with the U.S. government.
ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. It's a bold statement considering he's keeping a very low profile. You know, unlike the previous releases, no press conferences or, you know, big interviews given. In fact, he just gave an interview to "Time" magazine but was from an undisclosed location and it was over a sort of a Skype format. And so we simply don't know where he is. But he did make it very clear that he wants Hillary Clinton to resign. Here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VOICE OF JULIAN ASSANGE, FOUNDER, WIKILEAKS: I don't think it would make much of a difference either way. But she should resign if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage activities at the United Nations in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up. Yes, she should resign.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SHUBERT: Now, what he's referring to there is that leaked cable that apparently shows instructions from the Secretary of State to U.S. diplomats to gather information about top U.N. officials including Ban Ki-moon, including biometric details. So these are some pretty serious allegations. The State Department spokesperson has denied that and said the secretary of state just wants his diplomats to be diplomats, not spies.
CHETRY: You know, speaking of WikiLeaks, another document dump expected to be released by the whistle-blower Web site. This one supposedly about exposing a bank?
SHUBERT: That's right. He actually gave an interview about a month ago to "Forbes" magazine and in it he hinted that WikiLeaks was sitting on information from what he described as a major U.S. bank. And he also described it as a mega-leak, meaning that it would be thousands of documents. But he wouldn't say anything else. He simply said that it would be something akin to the e-mails revealing what happened inside Enron and that we could expect that release early next year.
ROBERTS: All right. Atika Shubert for us in London this morning with the latest on that. Atika, thanks so much and we'll see you again in our next hour.
And our Jeffrey Toobin, our CNN legal analyst, is with us this morning. He's going to be joining us in the next few minutes to talk about what this Interpol warrant really means for Assange and whether he could be charged as a spy by the United States. And next hour, we're going to hear from White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. The huge diplomatic mess that they're dealing with and, of course, the fallout in places like the Middle East.
CHETRY: Also new this morning, no "Slurpees" at the White House, but there might be more summits ahead. Both sides at yesterday's bipartisan sit-down agreed to start talks right away on extending Bush-era tax cuts. Both sides also said they wanted to work together, but neither sounded quite ready to give any ground. There's a shot of the president with Eric Cantor. President Obama wants more summits and he says he will invite Republicans to Camp David.
ROBERTS: As classes resume today at a Wisconsin high school, we're learning more about Monday's hostage standoff. The 15-year-old gunman has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Students revealed they tried to calm him down with small talk about hunting and fishing. And police say they moved in after hearing the gunshots. That's when the gunman shot himself. Marinette High's principal credits social studies teacher Valerie Burd for keeping 23 other students safe during Monday's five-hour ordeal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CORREY LAMBIE, PRINCIPAL, MARINETTE HIGH SCHOOL: She saved the lives of many students by her calm demeanor and her heroic way. I think her leadership in that classroom was the calming attitude that the students needed to get them out of their safely. And I'm very proud of her.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: And as for a motive into the shooting, investigators say they've talked to the gunman's parents, but they admit they may never know why he did it.
CHETRY: Well, a frightening ride last night for passengers aboard a Montreal-bound American Airlines jet. The Boeing 737 out of Dallas landed at Trudeau International and then slid off the pavement about three quarters of the way down the runway. None of the passengers or crew hurt. No serious damage to the plane either. Just some scary moments as we said, but they're now trying to figure out what happened.
ROBERTS: And thankfully you got back from Toronto last night, albeit a bit late.
CHETRY: Yes, we did have some turbulence and some rough weather on the way back. Few flights canceled, but, yes, safe and sound.
ROBERTS: Stormy weather up and down the east coast. And we'll have more on that coming up a little bit later on.
Also coming up, losing Lennon. The lead singer for the group OAR talks about the legendary Beatles' influence on his music and how he came to write a song about John Lennon's death and what would have happened if John Lennon hadn't died. It's called "Dakota."
CHETRY: Putting away the plastic. More than eight million Americans stopped using credit cards. We're going to take a look at why the dramatic change in our spending habits.
ROBERTS: And British singing sensation Susan Boyle promoting her new album and running into a bit of a problem while performing on "The View." Boyle versus the frog. We'll show you how she handled it coming up.
It's nine minutes after the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Twelve minutes after the hour now. If Osama bin Laden is the most wanted man in the world right now, Julian Assange may be running a close second. Interpol has just added the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks to a so-called "red notice wanted list."
CHETRY: They're hunting him down in connection with an arrest warrant in Sweden for alleged sex crimes. And the U.S. Justice Department is also moving ahead with a criminal investigation. CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin is with us this morning. So we're talk about two different things. They want Julian Assange. As we know he's in, you know, the guy who is responsible for leaking all of these documents through WikiLeaks. But at the same time, they're investigating him for a sex crime. What's going on?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, there are two big investigations. In terms of the red notice with Interpol, that's not technically an arrest warrant. What that means is that if he enters a country that's part of Interpol, and that's most of the world, that country will inform Sweden that he's there and Sweden can then start negotiating to get him back.
We don't know what stage the U.S. criminal investigation is at. It's certainly my belief based on what the attorney general said that they have already got an arrest warrant for him, and they are just waiting to find the appropriate moment in the appropriate country -- CHETRY: For the WikiLeaks or for the sex allegations?
TOOBIN: For the WikiLeaks. The sex allegation is just a Sweden thing. But the WikiLeaks allegations are an American criminal investigation. I think they already have a secret warrant for him. And the question is, can they find him and can they get him?
ROBERTS: When you look at statements from American officials, Hillary Rodham Clinton saying we're under attack.
TOOBIN: Right.
ROBERTS: Eric Holder saying we think that he has committed criminal acts. It looks like they're going to do something. But what really can they do? Because if you look at past history, Pentagon papers, for example, they tried to prosecute the guy who leaked the documents, but they couldn't prosecute the "New York Times" or the "Washington Post" for it.
TOOBIN: Right. And I don't think they are looking to prosecute the "New York Times."
ROBERTS: No. But can you prosecute WikiLeaks? Because they didn't steal the documents, they only published them.
TOOBIN: Well, it is a crime to pass along classified information even if you are not the original source of it. But you're right that the case is a lot more complicated than people think. You know, just because Assange is out there bragging about having published all this, they think oh, you can just put him in jail.
You know, there are a lot of missing steps here that we don't know the answer to. Obviously, Private First Class Manning has been arrested for disclosing some material to WikiLeaks. But we don't know whether he's the source of all these documents, how he got the documents, what exactly Assange's role was. Did he handle the documents? Did he handle a thumb drive? All that stuff is important in a criminal case. The government may be able to prove it, but it's certainly not public yet how they could connect the dots.
CHETRY: And so assuming they are able to catch him somewhere or find him -- because as you said right now, people don't even know where he is.
TOOBIN: Right.
CHETRY: How confident are you that he can actually be extradited to the United States?
TOOBIN: You know, it's -- again, it depends where he's -- where he's found. If he is in the U.K. somewhere where he's been recently, that's a very close relationship in law enforcement between U.K. and the United States, but --
CHETRY: And he's an Australian citizen? TOOBIN: He's an Australian citizen who lives mostly in Sweden. He's certainly not going to Sweden voluntarily any time soon given the fact the rape charges are pending against him there.
If they get him in the U.K., I think it is likely he will come back to the United States. But remember, Ecuador offered him some sort of asylum yesterday. If he could actually get to Ecuador, I think it's probably -- it would be a lot harder to get him back.
ROBERTS: But the -- but the bottom line here, you know, the U.S. took it on the chin --
TOOBIN: Yes.
ROBERTS: -- a couple of times in the past from WikiLeaks. Do you think they are at their breaking point now that you -- you can't rub their nose -- you can't rub the nose of the U.S. government in this stuff for as long as he has without them taking some sort of action?
TOOBIN: Absolutely. I -- I think you cannot -- as you say, rub your -- rub the United States government's nose in committing repeated illegal acts and expect to get away with it. Plus you have the other factor, he's now a huge celebrity. Yes, I mean, his name and picture has been everywhere for weeks. He cannot just disappear the way Daniel Ellsberg could in the Pentagon papers because Daniel Ellsberg was not -- he's the person who leaked the Pentagon papers, he is not -- was not a public figure the way Assange is.
Assange, in many parts of the world, is now a very well-known person, and -- and you just can't hide in -- in modern life that way. And also, you know, people are --
ROBERTS: They're what?
TOOBIN: They are not happy with -- with the -- you can't say that on T.V. Come on.
ROBERTS: You just did.
TOOBIN: I just did. It's live T.V. Come and get me cop. The --
ROBERTS: There's going to be a red notice after this.
TOOBIN: That's right. And, you know, after Assange, it's me, I guess because there's some sort of --
ROBERTS: Don't go staying in Sweden. All right. Thanks, Jeff. Good to see you this morning.
CHETRY: All right. If you're looking to lose 20 pounds, you don't have to give up French fries?
ROBERTS: Really?
CHETRY: They have a new diet for you out there. One man set out to prove potatoes are not so bad.
Seventeen minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Twenty minutes after the hour now, and time for our "Morning Talkers".
British singing sensation Susan Boyle is in New York City promoting her new album, but sales which have gone through the roof, by the way. Got a little choked up during an appearance yesterday on "The View." Unfortunately, though, it happened in the middle of a live performance of the Christmas carol "Oh, Holy Night". Here's what it sounded like.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SUSAN BOYLE, BRITISH SINGER: (SINGING "OH, HOLY NIGHT").
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: Whoops.
CHETRY: Oh, my goodness.
ROBERTS: Boyle tried to recover from a little bit of a vocal malfunction. (INAUDIBLE) host Whoopi Goldberg, Sherri Shepherd rushed to her rescue telling the audience she had a little frog in her throat, so --
CHETRY: Did she finish it?
ROBERTS: It happens.
CHETRY: Or did she stop at that point? That was it?
ROBERTS: She stopped. That was it, full stop.
CHETRY: All right. Well, Boyle was part of the lineup of last night's Rockefeller Center tree lighting as well. The 74 -- did that get in the way of you getting around yesterday? Or did you avoid it?
ROBERTS: I wasn't anywhere near it, so --
CHETRY: It's beautiful, but it is not fun --
ROBERTS: I used to -- I used to --
CHETRY: -- to be stuck there.
ROBERTS: I used to live right across the street.
CHETRY: Yes, there was John last night watching the lighting out of his window.
But the 74-foot Norway spruce from Neopath (ph), New York has 30,000 energy-efficient multi-colored L.E.D. bulbs. They did this last year, as well, strung of five miles of wire. And the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree display will be up and running until January 7th.
ROBERTS: It was great when I was right across from Rockefeller Center. I didn't need to put a tree up in the apartment. Just look out the door --
CHETRY: Yes. Just look right outside.
ROBERTS: - and look at the window and there was the Rockefeller Tree.
Have you seen the Nativity scene in downtown Des Moines in Iowa? It's like butter. Actually, it is butter. Artist Sarah Pratt's butter sculpture of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus will be on display this weekend in the 42-degree cooler at Des Moines Diocese Headquarter. It's part of a fundraiser for the city's only emergency family shelter.
CHETRY: Pretty creative.
ROBERTS: Sure.
CHETRY: I don't know how they do that.
ROBERTS: If you're there in Des Moines, be sure to stop by.
CHETRY: Beautiful.
Well, the head of Washington State Potato Commission just ended a 60-day diet eating nothing but potatoes. That's actually my dream. About 20 of them every day, and he lost -- Chris Voight, 21 pounds. His cholesterol dropped 67 points.
Voight was protesting the Agriculture Department's decision to remove potatoes from some federal food programs. His first meal after the spud diet ended yesterday, tacos and fajitas.
ROBERTS: Right.
CHETRY: So I'm sure his cholesterol is right back up there.
ROBERTS: Now, did he just -- do we know if he just ate the potatoes, did he eat them boiled, did he eat them baked, did he have French fries?
CHETRY: Any form of potatoes.
ROBERTS: Does that get (ph) your cholesterol -- I guess your cholesterol could be down if you --
CHETRY: Eat French fries in olive oil.
ROBERTS: Yes. Canola oil --
CHETRY: Yes.
ROBERTS: Something like that, yes.
CHETRY: Start something (ph).
ROBERTS: We'll investigate further into this to find it, because it sure sounds yummy, doesn't it?
CHETRY: Yes.
ROBERTS: Coming up on the "Most News in the Morning", the Lennon legacy. O.A.R. lead singer Marc Roberge talks about John Lennon's influence on his music and his Lennon tribute song "Dakota", as we're counting down to our special documentary in the 30th anniversary of John Lennon's death this weekend.
Stay with us. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Twenty-five minutes after the hour.
December 8, 1980, a day that will live in infamy for legions of John Lennon fans. As part of a CNN documentary titled "LOSING LENNON" that airs this weekend, we're talking to people who had a personal connection to the tragic events of that day when Lennon was gunned down by Mark David Chapman.
People like radio writer Laurie Kaye, who was part of a team that did the last interview with Lennon on the day he died. When she heard about the shooting that night, she ran right over to Roosevelt Hospital where Lennon was taken.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LAURIE KAYE, RADIO WRITER: When I got to the hospital, there were -- there was a lot of press out in front. I got out of the cab and there were glass doors. And through those glass doors less than 20 feet away, I saw Yoko Ono surrounded by a knot of people. And at one point they were talking to her, and she collapsed. I mean, I can't do it obviously as she did, but it was like in -- in grief. I just read pure grief from that visual, and I -- I knew that he'd died. I knew that was the news that she was hearing at the time. And it -- it felt profoundly sad, of course.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: It's the first time in 30 years, by the way, that Laurie Kaye has talked about it.
John Lennon's music and his life has been an inspiration to many, many people, especially his fellow artists. I sat down with Marc Roberge. He's the front man for rockers O.A.R. Roberge wrote the recent song "Dakota" about Lennon's death.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MARC ROBERGE, O.A.R. LEAD SINGER: (SINGING "DAKOTA").
When we walked up to the Dakota, my wife and I, it immediately -- just took me to another place. For some reason, I kind of felt like, you know, I wanted to imagine what it was like that day.
ROBERTS (on camera): Set the scene for me, Marc, and -- and how did this come together in your head?
ROBERGE: I stood across the street and I watched and I tried to imagine this going down. And then I tried to imagine what if it never happened? And that's really the question of the song is if you just kept walking on your way, I mean, would the world be different? And I think the world would be better.
ROBERTS: How do you think he affected the world?
ROBERGE: I think John Lennon affected the world through not being afraid to say what he wanted to say and singing music is his way of saying it. And I don't even care if you don't like the Beatles and you don't like Lennon's music, you can't deny that he's affected the world. He would take like his experience, his personal experience and then make it universal. And so as I came up in music, I saw that as something I could identify with.
ROBERTS: What was the first Beatles song you ever listened to?
ROBERGE: When I got "Sgt. Peppers", that was the first album I'd ever listened to, listened to, OK, listened to an album from beginning to end.
ROBERTS (voice-over): Songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."
ROBERTS (on camera): Is it just you? Or is it other -- other bands of your generation that are also looking to music by him, you know, would hold him in reverential status?
ROBERGE: Nearly every single band I've come across in the last 10 or 15 years, whether they know it or not in some way were all inspired by the Beatles and inspired by a guy like Lennon.
ROBERTS: That's kind of remarkable.
ROBERGE: It is. I mean, only a few times someone comes along in 40 years, does enough of a lifetime that inspires generations to come.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS: And the documentary "LOSING LENNON: COUNTDOWN TO MURDER" premiers this weekend Saturday and Sunday nights at 8:00 Eastern, right here on CNN.
CHETRY: So he seemed -- he seemed like a really nice guy.
ROBERTS: He is. He's a very nice guy. Very talented as well and just reveres John Lennon.
CHETRY: It's -- it's amazing. I mean, the whole generation as we said -- as he said, somebody comes along only once in a generation that really affects, you know, music, listening to an album from beginning to end. That's unheard of nowadays.
ROBERTS: I was writing a piece about it yesterday for our -- for our website, just thinking that, you know, I was 8 years old when the Beatles really exploded on the scene in 1965 here in America, and I got their first album. But it was their fifth album actually, my first piece of vinyl that I ever owned "Help," and I remember dropping the needle on that first track and hearing John Lennon's voice. It was like I've never experienced anything like that in my life, and it sits with you to this day. You can still remember.
CHETRY: Absolutely. And that's why, I mean, just now you can download Beatles for the first time and people are jumping on it --
ROBERTS: Yes.
CHETRY: -- all these years later.
ROBERTS: Yes.
CHETRY: We look forward to seeing that Saturday night and Sunday night 8:00 p.m. here on CNN.
We're crossing the half hour right.
The man behind WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is now hiding out. He's in an undisclosed location, on the Interpol's most wanted list, but that's for a rape charge out of Sweden. He's still talking. And he's also feeling the heat over releasing thousands of classified State Department documents. The Justice Department and the Pentagon launching criminal investigations into the latest document dump.
ROBERTS: Painful hit this morning for people caught in the recession job hunt -- unemployment benefits for thousands of Americans expired at midnight after the Senate failed to advance a bill that would have extended the deadline that would've filed for assistance through next year. It's estimated that 2 million Americans will be affected in the coming weeks.
CHETRY: And a long of violent storms bearing down on the East Coast this morning. Tornado watches stretching from the Carolinas to our nation's capital. And the dangerous weather already leaving a massive path of destruction, possible tornadoes damaging at least 56 homes in Georgia. Fortunately, no reports of any injuries.
ROBERTS: One of those places is Buford, Georgia. That's where our Jacqui Jeras is this morning. And she has got a look at what's going on weather wise across the country.
Good morning, Jacqui.
JACQUI JERAS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Hey, good morning, guys.
Yes, folks here are waking up to some very chilly conditions as temperatures only in the low 30s. And it feels like mid-20s here.
You can see one of the homes that was damaged behind me, very extensive, one of the sides has been taken off as well as much of the roof. And I'm told is that's there's a lot more damage, even some homes that were wiped out, basically, down the line. And once the sun comes up, we're told we'll be able to show you some more of those pictures.
Now, the storm system continues to be on the move at this hour. And it is producing that threat of severe weather still. As we take a look at the radar picture, we'll show you just how widespread this storm is from Canada all the way down into parts of Florida. The tornado watches now remain into effect from South Carolina, stretching on up through Maryland. And you can see that new watch just added that includes the Delmarva Region, as well.
Now, the Northeast, for the most part, is being spared by the severe threat of this storm. But winds are going to be a major issue along with the heavy rain. There you can see the wind speeds in the 20s and 30s, not to mention the gusts that are beyond that, which could reach 50 miles per hour. So, in that in and of itself can cause some damage.
The backside of this system is very, very cold. And you can see those lake effect snows kicking in all across the Great Lakes. On the side of Lake Ontario, like Erie, we're likely going to see anywhere between eight and 14 inches before all said and is done. And we're talking several days that we'll be dealing with these lake effect snows.
As we take a look at the big picture, you can see that's our main storm system impacting the east, another little clipper-type system will eventually make its way down towards the upper Midwest.
If you're going to be traveling today, a lot of delays can be expected. And primarily up and down the Eastern Seaboard, we're expecting over an hour delays due to the rain and wind in Boston and New York City metros. D.C. and Philadelphia, same story there. Atlanta and Charlotte, it's primarily the strong winds around 40 miles per hour with those gusts. And then Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit, we'll be dealing with some of the snow and the wind.
The temperatures are certainly colder. Behind this front, we're talking about a 20-degree difference for sure, 61 in D.C., but that's going to be early in the day. Expect to watch those temperatures fall as we head through the afternoon hours. Thirty-nine in Kansas City, 20 degrees in Minneapolis. So, certainly very, very chilling.
And, of course, cold here in the Atlanta metro area, as well. All these people don't have power. So, for the most part, these houses are empty. People are trying to stay with their friends and relatives.
John and Kiran, back to you.
ROBERTS: Jacqui Jeras for us this from Buford, Georgia -- Jacqui, thanks.
And we'll check back in with Jacqui as the sun begins and she's allowed in to that neighborhood a little further and got to look at the damage there.
Also coming up next: choosing cash over credit. More than 8 million Americans are no longer using credit cards. We're going to break down why there's been a dramatic change in spending habits.
Thirty-four minutes past the hour
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Coming up now on 38 minutes after the hour. Can you guess the story that got the most searches on Yahoo! -- we're talking about something other than Google, can you believe that?
CHETRY: It's amazing.
ROBERTS: On Yahoo! in 2010.
CHETRY: The most searched thing on Yahoo! was Google. Just kidding.
ROBERTS: No. It was the Gulf oil spill. Yahoo! says millions of us watched live feeds of the BP disaster, turned to the Web for answers about its impact.
World Cup soccer -- our executive producer Jamie will like that -- the iPhone, and the television show "American Idol" were also among the most searched. Celebrities who cracked the top 10 search list: Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, and Justin Bieber.
CHETRY: The Biebs!
All right. Well, Christine Romans joins us this morning with more on spending habits.
You talked a lot about how times are changing. People are taking out credit cards. People are choosing to either be able to pay for it or not buy it.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSNIESS CORRESPONDENT: Or they're getting kicked off their credit cards by their issuer. That's part of this trend, too.
Look, TransUnion has fascinating data, showing something that's unheard of in American life -- fewer credit cards. Eight million of you have cut up your credit cards altogether, or you've been denied credit cards, your credit card companies kicked you to the curb because you're a high-risk customer. So, 8 million fewer people with credit cards. That means 78 million people without a credit card right now.
Why the decline? Well, in credit speak, it's charge offs in the higher risk segments and more conservative spending in the lower risk segments. What that means in English is the cards that were shut down by banks, customers are not purchasing as much, and people are paying down their balances.
People with a good credit history who are good users of their credit cards are becoming more conservative. And they are cutting up their cards. And people who, frankly, are not good customers of credit have been kicked to the curb by their credit card companies, because they can't make any money off of them anymore because of credit card reform.
The average credit card debt, though, did edge up just a little bit. Just a little bit. In case you're wondering, it's $4,964 right now. That is up a little bit, but it is down sharply from the third quarter in 2011, down 11 percent.
So, over the past year, that's an amazing amount of debt that the American people are paying off. It is a huge credit purge in this country. People are paying down their debts either because they want to or because they're being forced to.
CHETRY: Either way it's a good thing.
ROMANS: Either way, it's a good thing. We cannot carry this much debt. We simply cannot.
ROBERTS: It's extraordinary. It sounds so un-American --
ROMANS: I know.
ROBERTS: -- paying down your debt, doesn't it?
Question for you: you say people are cutting up their credit cards?
ROMANS: Yes.
ROBERTS: Is it OK to cut it up your credit, but not cancel it? Because that affects your credit rating.
ROMANS: Yes. And now, you have to watch out for inactivity fees. There are new rules to prevent inactivity fees. You can cut up your credit card and not cancel it. These are people are cut off and cancel cards. These are what these numbers are.
If you're not going to borrow money in the next six to 12 months, don't worry about closing out a credit card and hurting your credit score short-term. Because it only matters if you're going to borrow money, and then, eventually, it will go back up again. If that card is a temptation, get rid of it. My advice is, if that card is a temptation, get rid of it.
CHETRY: You just hear at the department stores, people in line when you're waiting in line, would you like to open a blah, blah, blah credit today, you can get 20 percent off your purchase? And you hear people, no, no, no, no. And you didn't used to hear that.
ROMANS: It's a new world. If you can't pay for it now, you really shouldn't buy it. If you can't pay for it in three months, you really shouldn't buy it. And that's the way we're all starting to think.
ROBERTS: Hang around, you're going to want to hear about this. Just in case you decide to have another baby. All right.
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERTS: Today's installment of another good reason to watch what you eat. This one aimed toward pregnant women or women who are thinking about becoming pregnant. Because researchers in Colorado just finished a two-year study of expectant moms and their diets. They discovered whatever the mother eats and drinks directly impacts what their kids will eat and drink after they're born.
CHETRY: I call this study another reason to make pregnant moms feel guilty and freaked out about every single thing you do.
ROBERTS: The study concludes that the smell and taste of the food that the mother is eating physically changes the fetus' brain, effectively shaping the baby's tastes.
CHETRY: It's interesting.
ROBERTS: So, a question for you: do your kids crave French fries?
CHETRY: Yes. But we joke -- they both love French fries. But we joke around that my daughter has my exact same taste for strange things, like pickles and olives.
ROBERTS: All things you ate while you were pregnant?
CHETRY: Yes.
ROBERTS: Further proving --
CHETRY: I guess it's just a matter of time before they all want the gyro platter and the falafel sandwich from 46th Street.
ROMANS: It certainly does not apply to me. I ate everything -- as you guys know, I ate everything under the sun, exotic, plan, doesn't matter. Everything when I was pregnant.
CHETRY: All you're eating was cheese fries.
ROMANS: All my kids eat are chicken nuggets. That's it.
ROBERTS: My new kids who are expecting to be born next March will probably have a craving for salads, Chick-fil-A, and vanilla milk shakes.
CHETRY: Yummy!
ROBERTS: Yes!
ROMANS: You guys are making me hungry, real hungry.
CHETRY: All right. Well, we are actually going to talk about something else that's not as happy.
Being trapped in a burning skyscraper with no way out. Well, coming up: how a new invention could save your life.
Forty-two minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: A national education summit is now underway in Washington, D.C. It's organized by two former state governors, one Republican, one Democrat who want digital education to be the norm in America's classrooms.
And joining us now from Washington, Jeb Bush, the former governor from Florida and Bob Wise, the former governor from West Virginia. They are the co-founders of the Digital Learning Council. Gentlemen, thanks for being with us this morning. It's good to talk with you.
BOB WISE, FOUNDATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION: Good to talk with you. Thank you.
ROBERTS: Governor Bush, let's start with you. What I find very exciting about this idea of digital learning in the classroom is the learning programs can be individualized, tailored to specific students. Tell me more about that.
JEB BUSH, FOUNDATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION: Well, I mean, children learn at different paces and at different ways. And teachers for the last hundred years have had to struggle teaching to the median, if you will. Now, with adaptive software and all this rich digital content that's available and will explode on to the scene if we make policy changes, teachers could literally teach a class of diverse students at different paces and in different ways without making life incredibly difficult for them.
In fact, it would be -- I think it would make the profession of teaching much more enriching for them, as well. So, we're at the precipice of, I think, of a digital revolution if we put digital learning at the forefront (ph), right in the core of learning rather than its periphery.
ROBERTS: You know, this is something we were actually talking about around the dinner table not too long ago. Colleges, Howard Gardner, I guess, back in the 1980s put forward the theory of multiple intelligences and how children learn at different paces. And some of them while they may demonstrate an immediate aptitude for a certain subject actually may have a deeper meaning and you just need to be able to tap into that. Governor Wise, would this program be able to do that? WISE: This absolutely is tailored to what Howard Gardner has written about so much, because now, what a teacher is able to do is to take the best possible content from all over the world and now has more time to actually spend with each student and meet their individual learning need. And so one student may learn better this way, one student has these needs. You have the high-quality digital content coming in, and you have the skilled teacher is working with each student to make sure that each one understands it. And also, now, each student moves, as Governor Bush says, each student moves at his or her own pace.
ROBERTS: Right.
WISE: And so, we do away with seat time, and we have a much more effective learning environment.
ROBERTS: So, Governor Bush, how do you envision these programs and these curricula, working, would it be on a school board by school board county by county level, state by state level, or would you establish national programs that would then trickle down to all the states?
BUSH: Frankly it's kind of all three. You have the common core standards that's an effort of 48 states to craft higher, simpler standards that then content providers could create courses that would meet those standards. State policy has to change to kind of liberate the digital learning environment. Digital learning wasn't anything but a dream when most of the rules and regulations around schools were created. So, you have to modernize the rules, and then the implementation and execution as it always has been and will be is done at the local level.
ROBERTS: And Governor Wise, of course, the $60,000 question in all of this is how do you pay for it? And how do you ensure equal access? How do you make sure that failing schools in inner cities are just as plugged into this program as more affluent schools in the suburbs?
WISE: That's what's exciting to me is because those low schools and inner cities, those low performance schools aren't getting the teachers that they need, the high-performing teachers. They aren't getting the content they need. This gets it to them. How do you pay for it? We actually believe that this is very cost-effective, because now, for instance, instead of having to have a specialty teacher in physics in every one of the high schools, now you can have an online high-quality physics teacher.
And then you have teachers in each of the classrooms helping their students learn. So, it's a very effective way to get high quality content and particularly very sophisticated content to many, many different areas. So, we think that over time, it proves cost- effective. And indeed, if you look at some studies in virtual schools, you already see the cost effectiveness.
BUSH: And John, you know, textbooks will eventually go away. And there's hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on textbooks. So, there's opportunity here, which is necessary because my guess is for the next ten years we have flat spending in education as states struggle with their budgets.
ROBERTS: Sure do. I mean, it's a very upsetting concept if you can find the money and get the follow through. Governor Bush, since before we go, I want to ask you a little bit about politics here because, as you know, there's a bit of war of words that's erupted between former governor Sarah Palin -- oops, there they are. They're back -- former Governor Sarah Palin and your parents.
Your mom said recently in an interview she would rather that Sarah Palin stay in Alaska running for president. She turned around and called your father a blue blood president. I'm wondering, what's your take on a potential candidacy for Sarah Palin in 2012?
BUSH: I don't know. I think if she runs, she'll be tested just as the other candidates will be. Look, my mother has a history of plain-spoken spokenness. That's why she's incredibly popular. I love her for all sorts of other reasons, as well. I'm not going to get into a fight where I'm actually criticizing my mother, I promise you that.
ROBERTS: I wouldn't --
BUSH: I know what happens when that happens.
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERTS: I wouldn't expect that you would. Yes, I could imagine what would happen, but people do like her for being so plain-spoken. Would you support a Sarah Palin run in 2012?
BUSH: If she wins the nomination, I'll support the Republican nominee.
ROBERTS: All right. Governor Jeb Bush, Governor Bob Wise, thanks for being with us this morning, and really, good luck with the digital program. It does sound very exciting.
BUSH: Thank you.
WISE: Thank you.
CHETRY: Pretty cool.
We have this amazing discovery that could really save your life. Imagine getting trapped in a burning skyscraper, no way out. Now, there is a new invention that could make all the difference. Fifty- two minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: A pretty neat invention to tell you about today. It would save your life if you ever were trapped in a burning building.
ROBERTS: Oh, yes, towering infernos. They make for thrilling plots for Hollywood movies, but in real life, being in a building far beyond the reach of any ladder is certainly a deadly nightmare.
CHETRY: One San Francisco inventor thinks he might have a solution. Gary Tuchman shows us what it is.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Since September 11th, 2001, Dr. Kevin Stone has been thinking about the rescue challenges of tall buildings.
DR. KEVIN STONE, DEVELOPED RESCUE REEL: Right now, if you're in a disaster or fire and earthquake, your choices are to get down the stairwell or to try to get to the roof. Tall buildings often will get filled with people, and the stairwells essentially become unusable.
TUCHMAN: Stone's solution is called the rescue reel. He says the small and portable system is intuitive and easy to use.
STONE: Hook it to something that wouldn't go out the window, such as a door or desk or a hook and get into a universal harness, clip it to the device, and lower themselves to the ground. A non- trained person will be able to safely get out of the building in under 10 to 15 seconds.
TUCHMAN: Designed for buildings under 100 stories. Stone thinks rescue reels can one day be as common as fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems.
STONE: As we build taller and taller buildings, the likelihood of rescue departments being able to get people out of tall buildings safely is going down rather than going up.
TUCHMAN: He says the commercial version of the device should be available in time for the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
Gary Tuchman, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS: Pretty interesting device.
CHETRY: Yes. If you can get it on yourself and get out and have the wherewithal in a fire. Yes.
ROBERTS: I guess if you train people and you head them, you know, in an office building, it's something that can definitely help.
CHETRY: All right. We're going to take a quick break. Your top stories coming up in just two minutes.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
