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Search for Missing Navy SEAL; No Decision on Pistorius' Bail; Bombing in Damascus; Body Found in LA Hotel Water Tank; Tracing Diamond Thieves; Fish Fraud: What's Really in Your Seafood?; Russian Officials Pushing for Total Ban of International Adoptions

Aired February 21, 2013 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Oscar Pistorius will not get out on bail today. His court hearing adjourned without a decision on whether to let the Olympic star out of jail. He is charged with murdering his girlfriend.

Also police pulled the lead detective off the case today; very strange development. Full details and we are live from South Africa in just a minute.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CONTRIBUTOR (voice-over): A search is under way right now for a 34-year-old Navy SEAL who's missing off the coast of Hawaii. Navy officials say the sailor got separated from his unit, but they are not releasing any other information about the incident at the moment.

The U.S. Coast Guard and local crews are helping with the search. We're going to update you with the details of this story as soon as they become available.

MALVEAUX: And a gunfight, a car crash on the Las Vegas Strip killed three people today. Just check out the pictures there, pretty dramatic.

Police say someone in an SUV fired at police inside a Maserati not far from Caesar's Palace. Well, that caused the Maserati to blow through an intersection, causing a multi-car crash. A taxicab caught fire, killing the driver and passengers. The Maserati's driver also died. Three other people involved in the crash, they were injured. No word yet on what actually led to the shooting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: And Oscar Pistorius not going to be let out of jail, at least not today. The bail hearing ended a couple of hours ago, the judge putting off any kind of decision here and also another strange development.

HOLMES: Yes, that's right. This is day three, going into day four in this murder case. We're going to go now to Pretoria, South Africa, police there suddenly removing the lead investigator after a revelation that came out of nowhere. Robyn Curnow is outside the courtroom.

Robyn, extraordinary developments. Again, this just goes on and on.

ROBYN CURNOW, CNN HOST: It does, doesn't it? I mean, it is like a television drama, "CSI South Africa," somebody said. And it does get so bizarre because that lead investigator who took over, who took the stand yesterday, gave quite an embarrassing , quote, "evidence" on the -- on the stand.

It turned to have also been charged with seven counts of attempted murder himself. Now, of course, the police coming out and saying, well, we are now going to remove him from the case; they've put one of the top detectives on the case now.

But essentially this points to bungling perhaps of the case. And somebody asked the police commissioner if they were embarrassed; this is what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POLICE COMMISSIONER: Embarrassing? There is nothing embarrassing for us as the police, because that's a judgment that you are taking and you -- (inaudible) have that judgment.

But at this point in time I don't know when we talk about embarrassing and we talk about great performance (ph). I'm not a judge. We are not magistrates. We can't say it was (inaudible) performance (ph), not (inaudible) performance (ph). That's not for us to judge. It is for that court to judge whether it was a crate or a poor performance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CURNOW: OK. Well, here inside the Pretoria magistrate's court, there were also some really bizarre twists and turns, again, very dramatic and compelling evidence coming out throughout the day. I'm going to bring in a law professor, Llewellyn Curlewis, just to take us through some of the key points.

And I was in that courtroom, and it was -- it was riveting. For me, it seemed like the state was really punching holes in Oscar Pistorius' version of events that night.

LLEWELYN CURLEWIS, LAW PROFESSOR: Sure.

CURNOW: (Inaudible) key points on that.

Sure. You must now remember that Oscar Pistorius bears a heavy ownership proof to convince the magistrate that exceptional circumstances do exist for him to be allowed out on bail.

So you can imagine that the prosecution went all guns ablaze to -- in order to skewer loopholes in the defense case.

CURNOW: And also some details coming out about positioning, positioning of cartridges, for example, where cell phones and a gun were found. I mean, this is forensic evidence that it telling, in many ways --

CURLEWIS: Right.

CURNOW: -- so early on, isn't it?

CURLEWIS: Right. Remember the defense had the -- must prove the exceptional circumstances. Therefore, they need any and everything they can use to corroborate their version. Now forensics obviously, one way to do so, and that's probably the reason why they went about as they did.

CURNOW: And they also painted a picture of Oscar Pistorius as a violent person, eliciting you know, incidents where he perhaps assaulted somebody or threatened them and the sort of accidental shooting of a gun in a restaurant. You know, they are trying to paint a picture of him as beyond the golden boy.

CURLEWIS: You must understand that the state must prove premeditated murder, because they allege that the Schedule 6 offense in our center as we -- has taken place.

And in order to do, so they can't picture -- bring us a picture of a happy-go-lucky, world-famous athlete. They must -- they must prove through this -- to the court that this is an offender, that this is a murderer. Yes. (Inaudible).

CURNOW: Thank you so much, Llewellyn Curlewis there.

And, of course we're back here tomorrow. It is hoped, according to many people close to the case that there will be a final judgment, that there will be some sense from the magistrate whether Oscar Pistorius gets bail or not.

MALVEAUX: All right. Robyn, thank you. Appreciate it

Also covering other stories: we mentioned a car bomb exploding at the heart of Damascus.

HOLMES: Yes, this appears to be targeting the headquarters of the Syrian government ruling party, the Baath party.

MALVEAUX: Ivan Watson, he is covering the story in neighboring Turkey.

Ivan, first of all, does anybody claim responsibility for what happened today?

IVAN WATSON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: No. We haven't had any claims of responsibility yet, Suzanne. We certainly know that this was a massive blast, according to all the video evidence that has emerged. It devastated this square, damaging buildings all around it and hurling cars, setting fire to more than a dozen of them.

The Syrian state news is reporting that some 63 people have been killed in this blast and more than 200 wounded. And some of the casualties are school children, since there are at a least two schools in the nearby vicinity. Take a listen to what some of the survivors were telling Syrian state TV today, Suzanne. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): This is terrorism. This is murder. This cannot be endorsed by Islam. This is the dirty work of Nusra Front. May God curse them. They come and kill our women and children, then claim that it is in the name of Islam. What kind of Islam are they talking about?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): To the free Syrian army, I am from Iraq. The car blew up when I was in the area. Why? Why? May God curse you. Is this the freedom that they want? May God curse you, the FSA.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: So we hear there are people, survivors condemning not only the Free Syrian Army, which is the main name for the Syrian rebels, but also a hard-line Islamist group that's been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government -- that's the Nusra Front. Again, no claims of responsibility thus far.

In the past the Nusra Front has claimed responsibility for car bombings in Damascus. Another Syrian opposition group in exile which calls itself the Syrian National Coalition, it has published a statement, Suzanne, condemning this act, calling it a heinous crime.

MALVEAUX: All right. Ivan, thank you. I know that -- you were saying that bomb was absolutely huge.

(CROSSTALK)

HOLMES: (Inaudible) destruction, the breadth of destruction.

It's interesting. He mentioned the Al-Nusra front. This is the organization where we're talking whether the U.S. should arm rebels. In that discussion about who those arms might go to? That's who we're talking about, the Al-Nusra Front, who the U.S. claims is linked to Al Qaeda.

And when you talk about arming the rebels, they could be ending up with the guns. These are the guys we don't like.

MALVEAUX: And just to hear that woman, unbelievable.

Los Angeles hotel guests, they are pretty upset now. They were drinking water from a water tank that had a dead body in it.

HOLMES: This is extraordinary. We did this yesterday, didn't we? But we're knowing a bit more now.

This is the body of a 21-year-old Canadian tourist. She had been missing for weeks. Well, today the health department now looking into whether the water was actually harmful for the guests in the hotel.

MALVEAUX: Kyung Lah, she actually reports that the hotel has had a bizarre past that actually includes serial killers. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SABINA BAUGH, BRITISH TOURIST: It tasted horrible. It had a very funny, sweetly disgusting taste. It's a very, very strange taste. I can barely describe it.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Michael and Sabina Baugh, tourists from the U.K., never imagined the source of that indescribable taste and that it would trace back to 21-year-old Elisa Lam.

The tourist from Vancouver, Canada, came to Los Angeles January 26th. She checked in at the Cecil Hotel. Surveillance video from the hotel's elevators show her acting unusual, as if she's hiding from someone.

Then Lam disappeared January 31st.

The Baughs never saw Lam, but knew something at their hotel was off.

SABINA BAUGH: There was something wrong. The pressure in the water was terrible. The shower was awful.

LAH (voice-over): The hotel's maintenance man responding to guests' complaints went to check the four rooftop tanks that feed the building's main water supply, tanks that are unlocked, but the rooftop is locked to guests. The maintenance man found Lam's body inside one of the tanks at the bottom.

SABINA BAUGH: It made me feel really sick yesterday until now, knowing that we've been drinking this water for eight days.

MICHAEL BAUGH, BRITISH TOURIST: Makes you feel physically sick, literally physically sick. But more than that, you feel psychologically it's not -- you know, you think about it and it's not good.

LAH (voice-over): The L.A. County Department of Public Health said the hotel was immediately placed on a flush only order, but not ordered to shut down. A reasonable solution, says the health department, if the hotel provides bottled water.

The hotel would not speak to CNN on or off camera, but it did notify guests about a, quote, "health and safety condition". Guests tell us if they leave, they don't get a refund. If they stay, they must sign this legal agreement, releasing the hotel of legal liability.

It says, if guests stay, quote, "you do so at your own risk and peril."

This gruesome discovery is the latest chapter in a dark history for the Cecil Hotel. At least two serial killers have lived here, including "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez, found guilty of killing 13 people in the 1980s. He lived on the 14th floor of the hotel.

KIM COOPER, HOTEL HORRORS BUS TOUR: He was living here during his killing spree, going out at night and killing people.

LAH: And so this is just the latest unusual chapter in a storied history?

COOPER: It is. And I think it's the sort of thing that's going to be hard to forget, because it's just such a -- such a graphic and disturbing story. And I hope that we find out what happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: Very graphic and disturbing. Later today we're going to find out what the health department actually has to say about all of this.

HOLMES: Can you imagine that?

MALVEAUX: Clearly a lot of people really upset about it.

HOLMES: (Inaudible). You find out that's what is it. Boy.

Here's what -- more of what we're working on this hour for NEWSROOM INTERNATIONAL.

Thousands of companies hacked. Yes, thousands. We're going to have "The New York Times" journalist reporting this after the newspaper itself was attacked.

MALVEAUX: And later, this is pretty cool. It looks like a giant Slinky, right? But that is actually a building in Japan shrinking before your very eyes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: Welcome back. That daring heist this week at the Brussels Airport, the stuff of movies, those thieves, of course, managing to steal, what, $50 million worth of diamonds from a plane as it sat on the tarmac?

MALVEAUX: So the whole operation happened in a -- just a matter of minutes. But as Zain Asher shows us, unloading these diamonds wouldn't be as fast.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZAIN ASHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Straight from a Hollywood movie, masked gunmen commandeering an armored vehicle during a botched heist. But in this real-life plot, things go precisely as planned. The thieves have already managed to steal the diamonds; now they just have to sell them.

JOHN KENNEDY, JEWELERS' SECURITY ALLIANCE: You don't just get $50 or more, however much it is, in diamonds and then say, how are we going to get rid of this? You've arranged beforehand to do that.

ASHER: Usually with the help of fences, illegal wholesalers willing to buy stolen diamonds for less than they're worth and selling them at a profit.

DONALD PALMIERI, GEMPRINT CORPORATION CHAIRMAN: Whoever thinks they're buying bargain basement diamonds should be careful because we're going to be able to find them sooner or later.

ASHER: Experts say these stolen diamonds might be sold for just 30 cents on the dollar, possibly ending up in a foreign country where controls are nowhere near as strict.

KENNEDY: You're talking, you know, an India, Israel countries that have very large diamond facilities.

ASHER: But the thieves will have to make sure the diamonds don't get traced.

KENNEDY: They may, in fact, try to conceal some piece of it for some period of time. They may not want to get rid of $50 million at once. It may be too difficult. There aren't a whole lot of people who have the means to come up with payment that quickly.

ASHER: They'll also be up against state-of-the-art technology. Some polished diamonds have a unique fingerprint, allowing them to be matched to stolen diamonds in an international database.

PALMIERI: It's actually very simple. We just place the diamond, table them on the optical glass. We center it. We close the door. And we run it.

ASHER: Retailers are also strict about the diamonds they buy, demanding a GIA-grading report which lists each stone's unique characteristics, possibly helping identify stolen ones. So, you will not accept any diamond from anybody that comes to sell to you, diamonds without this report.

ADAM BAZELL, DIAMOND CONSULTANT, SHENOA & CO.: That's correct. It has to have a report showing that it's gone through the right institutions.

ASHER: But retailers admit that even stolen diamonds can have certificates and thieves will often have diamonds re-cut to make them harder to trace.

KENNEDY: The people they're going to sell them to are going to be corrupt people. They're not going to be selling it in the open market to the normal buyer in due course.

ASHER: And it is in every jeweler and diamond-cutter's best interest that these stolen diamonds are recovered because, if too many stolen diamonds saturate the market, the price of diamonds could fall and that impacts the industry as a whole.

Zain Asher, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Because that would be a shame if the price of diamonds came down a little bit.

MALVEAUX: Yeah, well, you know, be sure when you buy my diamond ...

HOLMES: Right. I will.

MALVEAUX: OK?

HOLMES: I like it when the guy says, be very concerned if you get offered a cheap diamond. I mean, anyone would be, how much?

MALVEAUX: All right, so, this is -- I don't know. Do you fish? You a big fisherman?

HOLMES: I love fishing. Yeah.

MALVEAUX: This is called fish fraud. Smoked salmon, filet of sole, all of this, 90 percent of the fish we eat in this country comes from somewhere else. A lot of folks don't even realize that, right?

HOLMES: Even if you didn't -- yeah, even if you thought otherwise. A new report revealing a third of the time the fish you think you're buying is actually something else all together.

We'll tell you what's really is in that tuna can, coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: All right, we have a warning for all of you guys who love seafood. The snapper or the tuna that you bought might not actually be even the real thing.

HOLMES: Yeah, I see. (INAUDIBLE).

A new study finds a third of the time you buy fish in the United States, you are not getting what you paid for. You're getting substitutions. We're talking fish fraud.

MALVEAUX: Kat Kinsman joining us from New York. You've been all over this study here. Kat, tell us who is this group and how did they find this out?

KAT KINSMAN, CNN EATOCRACY EDITOR: So, the group is called Oceana and they are a consumer advocacy group. And they sent volunteers and staffers to a whole lot of different restaurants and grocery stores and had them take little samples of fish and sent them out for DNA testing.

HOLMES: OK, and what did they find?

KINSMAN: So what they found, unfortunately, one-third of the time that consumers were not getting the fish they thought they were paying for.

So, salmon lovers can rest easily because for the most part they were getting what they thought they were supposed to get. But if they were ordering snapper, say, that was often being substituted for much less expensive fish.

And, if they were ordering tuna, it was also substituted for something called white tuna, which is a euphemism for something called escolar, which is also known as "Ex-Lax fish," on occasion. And -- yeah, unfortunate.

And grouper was being sometimes substituted for something -- for four other varieties of grouper that were overfished or, on occasion, other kinds of fish that were -- had been flagged for excess mercury.

MALVEAUX: So, this doesn't sound very good. I mean, I imagine that, If you're not getting what you paid for, but you're also being misled, there's probably something that's not quite right about the fish? Is that what they found?

KINSMAN: Well, 91 percent of the fish that we're eating in the U.S. is actually imported, and that includes fish that was caught here and sent overseas for processing. That's a really, really long food chain, and deception can happen along the way. You know, it can happen anywhere from the boat to somebody mislabeling fish at the restaurant.

HOLMES: That seems nuts. It's caught here then sent overseas and sent back and then it's not even what you think it is. How do you make sure you get what you pay for?

KINSMAN: Well the great thing is that there are a lot of people who are doing the right thing. And you can make sure to patronize stores and fishmongers who are registered with some of these advocacy groups. And you can also go to your fishmonger and make sure that you're getting something from the whole fish. So, the further it gets from the whole fish, the harder it is to determine where it's come from. You can also -- like with diamonds, if the price seems too good to be true, it probably is.

MALVEAUX: All right.

KINSMAN: And, also, just ask questions. Just don't be afraid to get to know the people who are selling you your fish and ask as many questions as you need to feel comfortable. There are a lot of people doing the right thing. Don't punish them. So make sure that they're still getting your business.

MALVEAUX: All right, thanks, Kat.

HOLMES: Kat's wearing a necklace that says "barbecue" while we're talking fish.

MALVEAUX: You couldn't help but notice that, Kat. I mean, only someone from Eatocracy's site would wear a "barbecue" necklace.

HOLMES: We might go into the whole bourbon thing we were talking about yesterday or the other day. Monday, I think it was. Yeah, your childhood excursions to bourbon distilleries.

MALVEAUX: Thanks, again. Appreciate it. All right, now, after banning American families from adopting Russian children, officials in Moscow, they are now pushing for a complete ban on international adoptions.

HOLMES: Yeah, we're going to introduce you to the orphans whose futures hang in the balance. That's coming up when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Welcome back to NEWSROOM INTERNATIONAL, where we take you around the world in 60 minutes.

The top stories now.

HOLMES: Yeah, South Africa, of course, the Oscar Pistorius murder case. Police today pulling the lead investigator off the case and replacing him. It turns out the man who was leading the investigation is himself facing attempted murder charges.

MALVEAUX: In Syria's capital, a car bomb exploded killing 53 people, injuring more than 200. The target, the headquarters of the government's ruling party in Damascus. Several schools are nearby. Some of the casualties were reportedly children.

HOLMES: A terrible explosion there.

Now, news today that negotiations with Iran are about to kick into high gear in the hopes of slowing down the nuclear program there. Western officials tell CNN they are prepared to make Iran what they're calling a serious offer of new economic incentives. In exchange, Iran would have to close down an underground uranium facility and let in international inspectors.

MALVEAUX: And Western officials, they are optimistic about the new offer, saying Iran might now be feeling less pressure from the United States. John Kerry, the new Secretary of State, he has publicly spoken in favor of negotiating with Iran.

And in Russia. there are 130,000 children who need homes, but Americans cannot adopt them. That is because the country has banned adoptions from the United States.

HOLMES: Yeah, and there are many in Russia who disagree with that. As Phil Black reports from Moscow, the kids, well, of course, they're caught in the middle.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Sonya (ph) is only eight-years-old but she already knows a lot about love and rejection. She was given up at birth, adopted not long after, but then returned to the orphanage when she was five because her adopted parents realized she had learning difficulties.

I'd like to go back to my family, she says. I love them, and they just left me. Steofa (ph) spends most of his day in a wheelchair. He has Spina bifida. His dream is for his condition to be cured, so a family will want to adopt him.

Six-year-old Kalia (ph) doesn't know why he was given up at birth. He says, my parents kicked me out of the family. I want to go to a new family because then you have parents.

These children all live in a Moscow orphanage, three- to 18-year-olds, some live with disabilities. Most don't. They're among Russia's 130,000 orphans. In 2011, only around 7,400 were adopted by Russian families.

Despite the obvious need for more people who are willing to love these children, Russia has banned Americans from adopting here. And some officials are now pushing for a total ban on all international adoptions.

The orphanage director, Nadezhna Hrekina (ph), supports international adoption because she says there aren't yet enough Russian families willing to do it.