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White House Lunch Date; Paul Stalls Senate Vote on Brennan; Job Market Shows Signs of Life; North Korea Claims U.S. Igniting Nuclear War; Lion Kills Intern in a Cage; Northeast Braces for Snow, Wind; Government Opens Probe of UNC-Chapel Hill

Aired March 07, 2013 - 09:00   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: We're out of time. We'll see everybody back here tomorrow morning. Let's get right to "CNN NEWSROOM" with Don Lemon begins right now.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, a chilling reminder of a cold war. This morning, North Korea shocks the world and warns the U.S. that a preemptive nuclear strike is possible plus this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KENTUCKY: I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: I guess you can call him the Energizer Bunny on Capitol Hill, that is. Senator Rand Paul keeps going and going and going, talking for nearly 13 hours. The story behind his filibuster.

A California woman, living her dream. This morning her family reeling from her death. We'll tell you about a lion's deadly attack on one of its caregivers.

Plus tempers flare on the basketball court as college rivals come to blows resulting in, get this, six technical fouls and five ejections. Wait until you see the play that started this fight.

You're live right now in the CNN NEWSROOM.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Don Lemon in for Carol today. We begin this hour in Washington, D.C., of course where the White House keeps -- well, they're singing a new tune right now, with a focus on peace. Today President Obama's new charm offensive continues with a sit-down meeting with Representatives Rand Paul of Wisconsin -- Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, I should say, and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.

It's a dollars and cents lunch date with the ranking members of the House Budget Committee.

White House correspondent Dan Lothian joins us now.

Dan, the president has been extending the olive branch recently, hasn't he?

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: He really has and first of all I should point out that we've just learned from the White House that that lunch will be taking place at 12:25 today but certainly, you know, we have seen a shift in strategy by this White House, just about a week ago the president was seemingly saying, you know, what more could he do? Now there is this aggressive push to court Republicans, the president working the phones, there's that lunch that you just talked about, and then last night the big dinner where a lot of those senators who attended were very optimistic about working towards finding compromise here in Washington.

And the president himself, according to a senior administration official, felt that there were a good exchange of ideas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LOTHIAN (voice-over): It was a dinner date with Republicans and President Obama picked up the tab. Blocks from the White House at the swanky Jefferson Hotel, food and fiscal challenges in an effort to find compromise less than a week after across-the-board cuts kicked in.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: How did the meeting go?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Just fine.

LOTHIAN: Twelve Republican senators invited by the president broke bread for more than two hours.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What was the tone in the room like?

SEN. JOHN HOEVEN (R), NORTH CAROLINA: Very positive, encouraging, candid, focused on how do we come together. Compromise is necessary and it's possible. The issue is, how do we get there?

LOTHIAN: President Obama has stepped up his outreach to Republicans in recent days. A series of phone calls, this dinner, and planned trips to Capitol Hill next week, engaging in a way his critics say he failed to do in his first term.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Ultimately the way we're going to get stuff done, personal relationships are important and obviously I can always do a better job.

LOTHIAN: The dinner didn't result in any major agreements but it was viewed as a positive step in the right direction.

HOEVEN: That's why these kinds of dialogues are so important and there needs to be more of them.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LOTHIAN: So, again, these senators seeing that dinner as a good foundation for future discussions, they did talk about putting together some kind of strategy so they could have more of these sort of face-to-face meetings. Now again, the president not only sitting down for lunch today but headed up to Capitol Hill next week where he will be meeting separately with Senate Republicans, also House Republicans as well -- Don.

LEMON: The important question is, who has lunch at 12:25? What about noon or 12:30 or --

(LAUGHTER)

What is this 12:25?

LOTHIAN: You know, that's funny because when I saw it come out, I said the same thing. It should have been 12:30, 12:15.

LEMON: Right.

LOTHIAN: The president has a schedule throughout the day. A very tight schedule so he was open at 12:25 so that's when they're holding it.

LEMON: A five-minute lunch it seems like to me.

LOTHIAN: That's right.

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: 12:25 to 12:30, thank you very much, Dan, we appreciate it.

LOTHIAN: Right. OK.

LEMON: And you know what, forgive Kentucky Senator Rand Paul if he doesn't have much to say today, he did a lot of talking yesterday, nearly 13 hours' worth.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: I rise today to begin to filibuster John Brennan's nomination for the CIA. I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: He did, from 11:47 Wednesday morning to well past midnight. The senator's attack focused squarely on the president's drone program and its use on American citizens overseas and possibly here on U.S. soil.

Well, Paul wasn't alone. He got some help. A couple of fellow senators took over for a brief time asking questions or reading tweets, but it was a Tea Party senator who did the heavy lifting, grabbing a bite to eat while still making his point, or pausing to grab a much needed drink of water. Something he did plenty of times, but in the end, he grew tired and it was time to wrap it up.

Chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash joins us now.

OK. I'm sure his mouth is tired, he's doing some of -- a lot of mouth exercises and stretching this morning.

(LAUGHTER)

And a lot of drinking of water, Dana.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Well, you know, he had to eventually wrap it up because nature was calling, I think that's --

(LAUGHTER)

That's the real story behind the story. But, you know, I thought what was most interesting about this, well, there's lots of interesting things, first of all, just because we hear so much about partisanship in Washington, which is very real, what was going on here at least at the beginning of this 12-hour filibuster was something that does have bipartisan support which is concern about the administration's policy or non-policy or questions about whether or not they would use drones against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil?

You saw a Democrat, Ron Wyden who has those concerns go to the floor as well. But by 11:00 or midnight what this turned into was conservatives blowing up the Internet, blowing up the twitterverse saying excuse me, other senators, where are you? Even the RNC chair said other senators should get out there.

So this started out, you know, as somebody who was alone, he had a couple of his fellow true real conservative senators with him, then by the -- by midnight he had his fellow senator from Kentucky, who happened to be the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, coming to the floor, going back into the Senate saying that he's courageous so it really became kind of a clarion call for conservatives by the end of the day and there were a lot of frustrated conservatives that he -- that were -- more senators out there with him.

LEMON: Right. Right. And he did have some opposition which I'm going to talk about a little bit later on here on CNN. But, so then, Dana, now what?

BASH: Well, if you were watching it at 12:30 at night, you saw that there was a lone Democrat out there, Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate, and what he was doing was effectively waiting for Paul to finish so that he could file a procedural motion in order to move John Brennan's nomination forward.

Of course this is all about blocking John Brennan to be the next CIA director in order to make this point about drones. We are going to wait to see if Rand Paul and his -- and his fellow opponents will back down today or whether or not they're going to let the clock run out. It is possible that if they don't back down, this vote which we thought would be yesterday, might not be until tomorrow, the weekend or even next week. But it will happen and even he admitted that he knows he doesn't have the votes ultimately to block John Brennan.

LEMON: Another filibuster of sorts. Thank you, Dana Bash, we appreciate it. Now to some good news from Washington. The government said today that initial weekly jobless claims fell to a six-week low.

Christine Romans joins us from New York to help us get through this report. She's all smiles this is morning and she should be.

What exactly did we learn, Christine?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Don. It's an encouraging report, it showed that 340,000 Americans lined up for the first time last week for unemployment benefits, a six-week low. It's down 7,000 from the prior week and sometimes, Don, this can be a kind of choppy report week to week so we like to look at something called the four-week moving average.

That's almost near the lowest level since 2008 so this shows you, when I look at a longer trend I can show you in a longer trend chart here because I love charts. I can show you that this is a number that has been trending lower and that's -- and I guess I don't have that chart, but it's a number that has been trending lower and it's good news overall and when you see, Don, when you see under 350,000 jobless claims every week, it's a sign to economists that you could see meaningful job creation ahead when you have fewer and fewer people having to line up for unemployment benefits so that's good news.

LEMON: Yes, We like looking at you better than a chart.

(LAUGHTER)

ROMANS: I like -- you know, I love my charts.

LEMON: You do.

ROMANS: I love my charts.

LEMON: You do. It helps to illustrate but you're not bad on the eyes. Thank you, Christine Romans.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

LEMON: We appreciate it.

You know, this morning North Korea is ratcheting up its usual fiery rhetoric and even invoking the threat of nuclear war. The communist nation engaging by -- enraging, excuse me, by the likelihood of tougher U.N. sanctions and as usual the U.S. seems to be the target of its latest aggression.

CNN's Anna Coren is in Seoul, South Korea for us this morning.

Good morning, Anna.

ANNA COREN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Don. As you say, we're used to the fiery angry rhetoric coming out of North Korea but nothing quite like this. They threatened a preemptive nuclear strike on the United States and South Korea. Now they've made the threat of preemptive strikes in the past but never a nuclear strike which would then suggest that it has nuclear capabilities.

Of course it tested its nuclear bomb last month which is why the United Nations is meeting in New York in less than an hour to vote on a resolution which will no doubt impose tougher sanctions on North Korea.

Now a few days ago North Korea came out and said that as a result of these sanctions, it would scrap the 1953 Armistice that effectively ended the Korean War and of course this grabbed everybody's attention. Now we're hearing also that North Korea is conducting large scale military drills across the country land, and the sees the South Loren Defense minister who's described this as unusual, the scale that it is on so, Don, I think it's certainly fair to say that tensions are rising here on the Korean Peninsula.

LEMON: So tensions are rising. I was just going to ask you how the threats are viewed in the Korean Peninsula but hey, the tensions are rising.

COREN: Most definitely, and as far as the South Korean military is concerned, you know, they are always on high alert but obviously with these threats of nuclear attack, even more so. South Korea is going to be holding joint military drills with the United States starting next week and that of course is when North Korea says it will scrap the armistice so obviously we'll be keeping across that and also for North Korea's reaction after those U.N. passes its resolution on the tougher sanctions -- Don.

LEMON: Anna Coren, thank you very much.

To central California now where police are investigating a deadly attack by a lion. Twenty-four-year-old Diana Hanson was an intern at the indicate sanctuary and was inside the cage with a 350-pound lion when it turned on her. Her family says she died doing what she loved.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL HANSON, VICTIM'S FATHER: She was so happy when she got that internship. She was having so much fun down there. It was her dream job. She was so happy there, it makes it bearable that she died so happy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Wildlife experts familiar with the facility describe it as professional and well run but this morning there are a lot of questions about exactly what happened and why.

CNN's Dan Simon takes a closer look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DALE ANDERSON, CAT HAVEN FOUNDER: Our thoughts and prayers go out to our friend and family -- and to her family at this time and this trying time. DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The 24-year-old volunteer has been identified as Diana Hanson from Washington state. Her Facebook page shows her picture with large cats. Her father released a statement last night saying in part, "Diana was so excited at working in Cat Haven and living in California. Her favorites were the tiger and the lion, Cous Cous, who killed her today."

JENNIFER MICHAELS, THE JUNGLE JENNY FOUNDATION: We're moving over to the African lions and I'm going into the den.

SIMON: Jennifer Michaels, also known as Jungle Jenny, got an up close view of the lion while getting a tour of the animal sanctuary called Cat Haven in central California.

MICHAELS: I didn't see any type of aggressive behavior or anything that I needed to be worried about.

SIMON: Cat Haven is a 100-acre wooded sanctuary, home to some of the rarest cats in the world including lions, tigers and leopards. It describes itself as an innovative park, dedicated to the preservation of wild cats.

Five-year-old Cous Cous came to the sanctuary as a cub. The founder Dale Anderson said this species of lion no longer exists in the wild.

ANDERSON: The North Africans were killed off in the wild about the 1920s.

MICHAELS: Yes.

ANDERSON: So all the ones you see are in captivity.

SIMON: As for the victim, Diana Hanson, it's not clear exactly how she died but her father says big cats were her passion, writing, "We will miss you so much but I know that you will be happy, for now, you truly are in the eternal cat haven."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIMON: I think what's striking about that statement is the father seemed to show no animosity or bitterness towards this facility. In fact he says that the way to honor his daughter's memory is to support animal sanctuaries just like this one.

Don, the key question this morning is what were the protocols, were they followed, were they ignored, how did this young woman find herself trapped in this situation?

LEMON: Dan Simon. Thank you very much for that, Dan.

It is probably not the best time to get in the water. We're going to tell you why because tens of thousands of them, sharks that is -- tell you where they are and where they're going.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Let's check your top stories on CNN.

The last of the 115 cardinals who will elect the next pope is due to arrive in Rome today, but the officials started the secret vote known as the conclave has not been set. Cardinals have been meeting behind closed doors, discussing church business and sizing up the competition.

CNN parent company Time Warner spinning off its magazine division. By year's end, TIME Incorporated will be an independently publicly traded company. TIME is the nation's top selling magazine publisher, with titles including "People," "In Style," "Fortune" and "Money."

In south Florida, beaches are closed because of these guys. Look at that. Oh my gosh.

Those dark spots you see are sharks, tens of thousands of them. This particular species is the spinner shark. They are heading north after migrating south for the winter. We warned you.

Maryland's Bay Bridge has reopened after winds may have knocked over this tractor trailer. There it is dangling off the side of that bridge. Police are investigating while the driver was on the bridge while it was under a wind restriction. They say the driver escaped with only minor injuries.

A massive storm dumped as much as 20 inches of snow in northern Virginia is now taking aim at the Northeast coast. New York is in its path. But Boston may be in the bull's eye.

This morning, hearty New Englanders are bracing for heavy snow, high winds, even some coastal flooding.

CNN Meteorologist Jennifer Delgado is in the coastal town of Scituate, Massachusetts.

How is it going there?

JENNIFER DELGADO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Hi there, Don.

How is it going? Well, I can tell you -- very windy, very cold out here. Wind gusts up to about 45 miles per hour.

If you look out into the bay, you can see some of the waves crashing and still some white caps. Now, a couple hours ago, the wave heights were higher when we were dealing with high tide. We are hearing, though, we had storm surge right around three feet now.

As we go later tonight, as well as tomorrow, we're going to go through two more periods of high tide. Tomorrow morning, we're going to be worried about it because potentially, we're talking about more coastal erosion, as well as coastal flooding, especially in some of these communities.

You can see, over to the east, you can see some of the homes there, you can see how close these homes are. Well, many of these roads have been impassable so residents are staying at nearby hotels, because basically, it's a convenience factor.

But keep in mind, Don, this whole area has already suffered a lot of damage from superstorm Sandy and the big nor'easter from February 9th. So they certainly don't need another storm like this.

But the reality is, we're going to be dealing with this for the next 24 to 36 hours. Wind, as well as some snow mixed (AUDIO GAP) -- Don.

LEMON: Jennifer Delgado hunkered down.

DELGADO: Five minutes.

LEMON: Yes. Thank you very much.

DELGADO: All right.

LEMON: Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Almost three months after the Newtown massacre, Congress is set to start voting today on stricter federal gun laws.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: No charges will be filed against a California retirement home worker who refused to give CPR to a dying resident. Eighty-seven- year-old Lorraine Bayless died last month after collapsing in the Glenwood Gardens dining room.

Local police say the worker who refused a 911 operator's request to start CPR did not break any laws. The facility bars employees from providing medical care.

In just about 40 minutes, a Senate committee could begin taking up the first proposed changes to federal gun laws since the Newtown massacre, a bill aimed at curbing gun trafficking appears to be gaining steam, but three others backed by the Obama administration face stiff opposition. Those would expand background checks, ban assault weapons and outlaw magazines with more than 10 rounds.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the subject of a federal investigation this morning after a group of women filed a complaint about how the school handles sex assault cases.

David Mattingly joins us now.

And, one of the women, David, telling the probe was open after a complaint alleged that UNC has, quote, "an atmosphere of sexual violence." What are the specific allegations here -- accusations? And why did the government agree to step in?

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this investigation is being handled by the Department of Education and it comes from five women behind this complaint, four of them claiming they had been sexually assaulted while they were students at UNC, and then another joining in the suit as a former dean of students. The lead complaint tells a disturbing story here. She talks about how she reported allegations that she had been raped and was told by administrators that, quote, "rape is like football, saying you take a look back at it and wonder what you could have done differently." So that is the most disturbing allegation here.

But the complaint goes on saying that women were made to feel that administrators fostered an environment of silence and hostility toward cases of alleged rape.

Now, these women submitted a 34-page brief back in January, the Department of Education now saying, yes, we're going to launch this probe after they provided more information, but they're cautioning everyone saying, yes, we're looking into this but there is not an indication that there's been any wrongdoing found so far.

LEMON: You know, we heard you on the morning show this morning. And when you read that quote, everyone gasped at that quote. I mean, if these accusations are true, I mean, they're terrible.

How is UNC responding to this?

MATTINGLY: At the moment, there's not a whole lot hey can say. A spokesman for the University of North Carolina after this probe was launched says that the university confirms that they have received that there will be a probe and that they will respond appropriately to all the requests and that are made and they will cooperate fully.

In recent months, they have been defending themselves in the way they handle rape cases on campus. This now is just another layer, another aspect of this ongoing complaint against the university.

LEMON: There's an honor court, right?

MATTINGLY: Yes.

LEMON: And one of the students says she was threatened with expulsion after the school's honor court said she created an intimidating environment for publicly accusing her alleged attacker?

MATTINGLY: This is a long story in itself. This young woman is currently a student at the university. She is involved in this federal complaint, but she also went to the student-run court, this honor court and lodged complaints against her ex-boyfriend about alleged sexual assault.

She said that those charges were found that he was not guilty and now, the ex-boyfriend has lodged complaints within that same honor court against her saying she has created a hostile environment on campus toward him.

So, one of the possible punishments here, the most extreme punishment she could get if she's found guilty by this court, by this student court is expulsion, but they haven't got to that point yet.

LEMON: Oh, interesting story. And I'm sure going to follow on it. Thank you, David Mattingly. Appreciate it.

He's known for his outspokenness, a trait that was on full display in the Senate. Rand Paul's lengthy filibuster, was it just a political stunt or did it open the door to a bigger debate? Our political panel weighs in.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)