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College Campus In Indiana Is On Lockdown After Report Of Gunman; Shooting At Allentown, PA Hospital In Hospice Wing; Fewer Feel Ready For Retirement; Embedded CNN Journalists Share Experiences Of U.S.-led Invasion Of Iraq; Two Girls Arrested For Threatening Steubenville Rape Victim's Life

Aired March 19, 2013 - 15:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour, I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Just wanted to update both of our breaking news stories. We're watching these two situations percolating.

The first out of Indianapolis, the Indiana University, Purdue campus, is on lockdown still after this report of a gunman.

The school has tweeted, telling folks to seek shelter, telling folks that a man with a long gun had been spotted.

We're watching that situation out of Indianapolis.

Also today, word of another shooting, this one at a hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania. This is the Lehigh Valley Hospital.

We're told this incident took place on the fourth floor. This is actually the hospice wing of the hospital. No word yet on victims.

Police say this is not an active shooting situation. We're making calls. As soon as we get any more updates for you, we'll pass them along.

And now let's go to Ali Velshi and Christine Romans with the business news you need.

ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: From the CNNMoney Newsroom in New York, I'm Ali Velshi. Christine Romans is with me because we're talking about one of her favorite topics, retirement.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute conducted a survey and they asked people, are you getting ready for retirement? Are you saving some money? Are you doing something?

Sixty-six percent, two-thirds of you, say yes. Christine says that's bad news.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: That's bad. It's down from three-quarters before the Great Recession, so fewer people are thinking about and getting ready for retirement and that's a problem as we all get older.

VELSHI: Now, let's talk about how this breaks down.

They asked people, how much confidence do you have in having enough money saved up for retirement? Thirteen percent say they are very confident. Thirty-eight percent say they're somewhat confident. So, that's about half the pie.

Here's the problem, Christine. Twenty-one percent are not too confident in having enough money to save for retirement. Look at that, more than a quarter, not ready at all.

ROMANS: And this right here together is an all-time high, people not ready for retirement.

VELSHI: Let's see how breaks down in terms of how much people have saved.

The total saving and investment for retirement, these people are doing OK. About 24 percent have more than $100,000 saved. About 19 percent have $25,000 to $100,000. They can catch up, but they're going in the right direction.

Obviously, some of these people will be younger, as well.

ROMANS: What is this?

VELSHI: Look at that. Twenty-nine percent have between $1,000 and $25,000 saved for retirement. That's basically nothing.

Oh, my God. Twenty-eight percent have less than -- and, by the way, this is 28 percent of the 66 percent who are saving for retirement. Twenty-eight percent of 66 percent have less than $1,000 saved up.

ROMANS: And why is it? Even in retirement, 39 percent of retirees say that they have debt. They're concerned about their debt levels. People say their day-to-day life expenses are getting in the way, too much debt and they just feel like their job market uncertainty means that they're not saving for retirement, either.

VELSHI: Yeah, well, you've got to save for retirement.

Here's the question they posed to retirees. They said, could you come up with $2,000 for unexpected expenses in the next month? Can you can come up with $2,000?

Here's the good news. Sixty-nine percent said they definitely or probably could.

But when you ask people if they could not, 32 percent say they definitely or probably could not or don't know.

ROMANS: Or they don't, and that's the interesting thing about retirement planning. Only two percent of people said that retirement planning was the most urgent financial issue pressing on Americans right now.

And that means we didn't know in many cases. We're not engaged in a strategy. And I know it sounds sort of Pollyanna after all we've been through, but we have a lot of big challenges in this country.

If so few people are saving more than $1,000, that's got real public policy implications.

VELSHI: A lot of people don't know how much they're going to need for health care, how long they're going to live.

We've got a lot of tools for you on CNNMoney.com, which you can go to and at least get a sense of where you fit in. How much money might you need for retirement? It really, really is crucial.

One of the things you always say Christine is that Americans plan for a lot of stuff, but we are unlike a lot of cultures in which we don't really plan for retirement, often until it's too late.

ROMANS: We spend more time in this country planning our next vacation than we do the rest of our life, retirement.

Also, we tend to spend a lot of time planning on our kids college education and we forget our own retirement. Remember, the cardinal rule in personal finance in this country -- always plan for your retirement first.

VELSHI: All right, I don't make these mistakes because I've got Christine reminding me and now do you, too.

From the CNNMoney Newsroom in New York, I'm Ali Velshi with Christine Romans. We'll be back same time tomorrow.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Ten years after the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, our CNN photojournalists who were there on the ground embedded during this war are now sharing their stories about the heartbreak, about the horror, and the humanity they witnessed through their cameras during some of the war's fiercest fighting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREGG CANES, CNN PHOTOJOURNALIST: The night the war began, the commander of the air group told the pilots that tonight they were going to downtown Baghdad.

The agreement that we had with the navy is that we would not broadcast live until the last plane from the mission had touched down.

I know you just got out of your jet ...

We got a commander on a live interview as he stepped out of his plane. He was still sweaty. He was still wearing his parachute.

DAVID ALLBRITTON, CNN PHOTOJOURNALIST: We crossed in to Iraq after a night of watching rockets and planes go over and seeing the war begin.

We had seen the convoy where Jessica Lynch had been taken. We were told by command that they're actually going in to get Jessica Lynch, so we sat there and listened over the radio, what was going on.

As a cameraman, we love to be in the center of things, so it's killing you to not be there getting the pictures.

DAVE RUST, CNN PHOTOJOURNALIST: I was at the CNN headquarters which was the Palestine Hotel and I was bending over, tying my shoe and all of a sudden there was a huge explosion.

And right after the explosion, my room kind of filled with dust and debris. I ran out into the hall and, as soon as I got out there, I realized that the room next door to me had been hit.

Fortunately, there was nobody in that room.

GABE RAMIREZ, CNN PHOTOJOURNALIST: In an effort to clear out one of the buildings that they suspected the insurgents were in, the tank fired a shell into the building, and military-aged men came out with their hands out and surrendered.

The problem is that the shell continued to go through the intended target and into an adjoining house.

It was surprising the number of people that came out of that house and it was one of those things where you decide whether you're a journalist or whether you're a human being.

There was a baby just a few months older than my own daughter. She was actually choking on debris, so I had to use my fingers to remove the debris from her mouth and gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

JONATHAN SCHAER: It comes back in my dreams often. I was just going to go shoot some B-roll of an exterior of the main hospital in Baghdad and, while I was out there, a car came screeching up, a very religious, older gentleman came out of the car and he was holding a dead boy who had been shot in the head.

The man wanted me to help revive this child, and there was absolutely nothing I could do. I felt really helpless.

DOMINIC SWANN, CNN PHOTOJOURNALIST: It was this sort of organized chaos.

The hospital had been designed for Saddam Hussein's personal needs, so it wasn't set up to handle mass-casualty situations.

So you would have one doctor yelling instructions to his team and three feet away, four feet away, you had a whole other team who were working on somebody as fast as they could.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Being embedded with these medics, it was up close and personal. Choppers would come in. They'd bring in the wounded. They'd throw them right into the tents. The wind was blowing, the dust flies.

They tried to do their best. There was a lot of carnage. There was a staff sergeant there. We were by his side and he just died.

You feel helpless. I'm not a doctor. It was just one of those thing that's part of war.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: More teens are facing trouble today in connection with that Steubenville, Ohio, rape case.

Two girls now have been arrested for threatening the life of the victim -- yes, the rape victim -- on Twitter, on Facebook.

Here are just two messages the sheriff read to our Poppy Harlow.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF FRED ABDALLA, JEFFERSON COUNTY, OHIO: One says, you ripped my family apart, you made my cousin cry, so when I see you, (INAUDIBLE) it's going to be a homicide.

I take this seriously.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Of course.

And the next?

ABDALLA: And the next is, I'll celebrate by beating the (INAUDIBLE) out of Jane Doe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Wow. A hearing will decide whether the girls will be released.

Let me bring in a couple of folks I have with me. Defense attorney Drew Findling joins me in studio, along with HLN'S "Evening Express'" Ryan Smith. And anti-bullying blogger Holly Briley is on the phone with me from Ohio.

And, Holly, I'd like to begin with you because you have this blog. You have become very involved here in the Steubenville case.

Let me just ask you, off the top, why? Why become so involved with this trial in Steubenville?

HOLLY BRILEY, CREATED ANTI-BULLYING BLOG (via telephone): I became involved with the trial in Steubenville, initially -- I know Alexandria Goddard, who is a personal friend of mine, and I knew that she was being sued for the freedom of speech information. I had been following the case with her on her blog. I became involved when I heard the horrifying things that had happened to this girl, the video, and just the bullying online by her peers, with the posting of the pictures, the horrible things they said about her.

You know (INAUDIBLE) all of that, it just horrified me beyond belief. And having experienced some of that myself, I sympathize and empathize with her at the same time.

BALDWIN: Yeah, I know your blog -- I was looking at it today -- focuses -- of course, you were showing some of the tweets, harassing this -- we'll call her Jane Doe -- this victim here in Steubenville.

But Ryan Smith, let me just bring it back to that. Holly, stand by with me. Bring it back to these tweets. They totally crossed the line.

RYAN SMITH, ANCHOR, HLN'S "EVENING EXPRESS": I think they crossed the line. The problem is, our country and our laws haven't caught up to these kinds of tweets as to whether or not they're breaking the law or not.

Because you think about it, the way the kids use Internet these days, and the way they use Twitter and Facebook, first of all, they've got mediums to try to transmit this kind of hate that are far beyond anything we know about.

Secondly, our laws, they're accused of menacing, so that's threatening serious body harm, or aggravated menacing is a taking it a step further, threatening that murder, but does it rise to that level or are these kids online just simply throwing out messages?

They don't understand the depth of what they're doing, I think. And, also, the context, we need something in our laws that accounts for this because our laws account for something that is physical, and you could see almost when these online things are a different story.

BALDWIN: Drew Findling, it sounds simple, update the laws. Why haven't we done that yet?

DREW FINDLING, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Yeah, I mean, Ryan is spot-on. He perfectly describes menacing and aggravated menacing, but they don't contemplate mass text messages and Facebook messages and tweets.

They just don't take those into account, so really the legal question is, how reality-based were they? Did somebody really think amongst all these tweets they receive that they were going to be murdered or seriously injured?

And it's a difficult case to prove in a court for an adult. The problem for these two young ladies is they'll be in juvenile court again where a judge will decide what's in their best interests, and their best interests may be some degree of rehabilitation.

BALDWIN: What I thought about when I was thinking about cyber- bullying laws, I immediately thought of the Tyler Clemente in New Jersey.

And that was a landmark, monumental case. Laws were written in New Jersey because of this horrendous incident that happened several years ago.

But is this just a state-by-state basis? Is that how this will work in terms of cyber-bullying laws?

SMITH: Yeah, very much so. It's going to be state by state, and then each state is tasked with this idea of getting up to speed.

But then how do they differentiate between what happened in the Tyler Clemente case and what happens here?

And it not only goes to what the person is feeling who's on the other of those tweets, but the person who's sending it because I'm sure their lawyer -- Drew, you can probably back me up on this -- will get in there and say, you know what? They didn't mean to do anything except throw out a comment.

And, so, how do you determine whether or not they've crossed that line.

FINDLING: That's a great point that you bring up, Brooke. Forty- nine states have bullying statutes. Only 13 have specific cyber- bullying statutes.

BALDWIN: Fourteen.

FINDLING: Fourteen, I'm sorry.

And the problem is that they just -- the bullying statute doesn't specifically respond to the massiveness and the casualness of a tweet or a text message.

BALDWIN: The tweeting, the text messages, I was talking over dinner with my family just about the photos, the deletion of photos. It changes the game now as we move forward in terms of these cases, these trials and also just prosecuting them.

Guys, thank you. Ryan, Drew, appreciate it. And, Holly, thank you.

And, now, it's the drink. This is the drink that has been in the news lately. You might not have heard of it.

Let me get this right. It's called "sizzurp." It reportedly sent rapper Lil Wayne to the hospital. We're going to explain what this stuff is that people are drinking coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Minutes away from THE LEAD. Jake Tapper joins me live for a preview, and, Jake Tapper, your guests are getting bigger and bigger. I mean, my goodness, Lebron James, the dude is like 6' 7". JAKE TAPPER, ANCHOR. "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER": Lebron James is a large individual. We had him yesterday, along with Stephen Colbert and Michael Bloomberg.

Today. we have Denis McDonough, the new chief of staff of the White House. We'll get his reaction to these alarming reports out of Syria, talk to him about some other things.

And, of course, we also have Republican Marco Rubio.

And then I know you are a big NCAA brackets person, so I want you to know Nate Silver, the genius nerd statistician who predicted the election and all sorts of other things, we're going to look at his picks and he's going to look at mine and we'll see who comes out ahead.

BALDWIN: Nate Silver? I like you, Jake, but my money may be on that guy. We'll see how it goes.

TAPPER: That's wise. You're a wise woman. Very wise.

BALDWIN: Jake, we'll see you, THE LEAD in just a matter of minutes.

But now, soda and cough syrup, it is a dangerous combination. It is becoming big in the hip hop industry.

Rapper Lil Wayne, out of the hospital, but could this cocktail known as "sizzurp" be the reason he was admitted?

Miguel Marquez has the story. Miguel?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The 2009 documentary, "The Carter," presents an intimate portrait of Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr., the rap star Lil Wayne.

In the film, he used "sizzurp" which may have landed him in intensive care here and could have killed him.

Syrup, "sizzurp," "purple drink," or "lean," it's all the same stuff, a home-made drink concocted using the prescription drug, promethazine, containing codeine. It is mixed with sweet drinks, even candy, then sipped.

The drinker feels euphoric and calm. Those who use it say it slows your roll.

"Sizzurp" has been around since the 1990s, but its popularity appears to be growing because of the prevalence not only in the rap world but in pop culture, generally.

Take Far east movements like G-6, for example.

Last August, 14-year-old Paveria Linsen (ph) from St. Paul, Minnesota. died after consuming the drink. It's also blamed for the deaths of hip hop artist. Robert Earl "DJ Screw" Davis, Jr., and Chad Lamont Butler known as "Pimp C."

The drink has even found its way into professional sports. Green Bay defensive end Johnny Jolly and former Oakland quarterback Jamarcus Russell and Terrence Kiel were all arrested on charges of misusing the drug.

Kiel died in an unrelated car crash in 2008. Both Jolie and Russell are trying to restart their careers.

All this from a prescription cough syrup being used as a party drug, ruining some lives, taking others.

If "sizzurp" did cause Lil Wayne's health problems, he may have nearly been its most latest and most famous victim.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: It seems a little obvious, but the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America does say that this is obviously an off-label -- a way off-label use of a drug, a not over-the-counter drug, a drug that has to be prescribed by a doctor, and they say doing that is not only dangerous, it's possibly fatal.

They try to prevent that, from people using it for those purposes, obviously.

This particular drink is worse for kids under 16, though, and if you're prone to seizures like Lil Wayne is, apparently, it can be deadly, as well.

Brooke?

BALDWIN: And to quote you, Miguel Marquez, it slows your roll.

Miguel Marquez, thank you very much.

Coming up Indiana Jones, Han Solo, Harrison Ford has had some memorable roles. Today, he is on Capitol Hill, playing a different one.

We're going to tell you what he's doing there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Now some video that shows you how some people have total nerve and will do just about anything to get a little attention.

Let me set the scene. You'll see the mayor of Kansas City. This is a Sly James, standing on the stage giving his state of the city address when this happens.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SLY JAMES, KANSAS CITY MAYOR: Those early efforts resulted in $5 billion in investment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This man just got through talking about exactly what the (INAUDIBLE) ...

JAMES: Well, that was unfortunate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Well, that was unfortunate is what the mayor uttered there. I can tell you, I saw security chasing that guy down. They actually brought him into custody, police did

The mayor said he had no problems with what he wanted to say, only, quote, "a small problem with the method in which he said it."

Now to Harrison Ford. He has flown the Millennium Falcon. He told terrorists to get off his plane. But now the 70-year-old actor and producer is in Washington, D.C. today to talk to lawmakers about, what else? Flying.

Yes, the 70-year-old is a trained pilot, was invited by the Missouri representative, Sam Graves, to join members of the House general aviation caucus to talk, quote, "issues of importance to the general aviation community."

And there you have it. I'm Brooke Baldwin at the CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta.

Now, we're going to toss things off to my friend, Jake Tapper. "The Lead With Jake Tapper" starts right now.