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Housing Market Up; Jim Carrey Condemns "Kickass 2"; Aaron Hernandez Speaks Out; Red Panda Back Home; Blackhawks Win Stanley Cup
Aired June 25, 2013 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Opening bell just about to ring on Wall Street, if it hasn't already. Investors are hoping for a rebound today after stocks finished in the red yesterday. There it rang. Let's go back to CNN business anchor Christine Romans. She's live in New York. Nice to see the plus signs.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: We need a bounce, Carol. We need a bounce, please, it's starting to get ugly out there. Yeah loo, the Dow is down 140 points yesterday, futures were up 100 points just before the opening bell, so you could see a triple-digit move. Volatility is the story.
The Dow has moved, Carol, 100 points at least one way or another for 9 of the past 10 days. This whiplash, I know how you love it, the roller coaster, it's probably going to continue.
I want to talk about housing. If you don't have -- if you're not in the stock market, maybe you have exposure to the housing market. Carol, an amazing number on home prices, an amazing number on home prices. Home prices in April up 12.1 percent from this year compared with last year. If you look just from March to April, up 2.5 percent, just over one month. This is the biggest jump in seven years. You saw those cities, any of your colleagues living in Atlanta saw 20 percent price jump in home prices in Atlanta over the last year. San Francisco, look at some of these.
Here's something interesting about this number. These home prices are jumping in some of these cities because there's not a lot of inventory on the market. Those of you who are out there saying, oh, interest rates are so low, I want to buy a house. You're complaining you can't find a lot of inventory. That seems to be one of the things driving up home prices, people who definitely are in the market to buy a house, they are not finding a lot of choices out there. This is a strong, strong housing number, I want to be clear, strong housing number, tight inventory, stocks rebounding, Carol.
COSTELLO: Yeah, you can see it. We're up over 100 points already. On that very good news, Christine Romans, thanks so much.
Coming up next in the NEWSROOM, Jim Carrey slamming violence in Hollywood, including his own movie. It's amazing. We'll tell you about it next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COSTELLO: So, you star in a big Hollywood movie called "Kickass 2," they pay you big bucks to play a baseball bat wielding mass crime fighter who maims and kills, you know, standard stuff in Hollywood, then Sandy Hook, murdered kids, gun control, and guess what, if you're Jim Carrey, you renounce your own movie. CNN entertainment correspondent Nichelle Turner is in New York to tell us more. Good morning.
NISCHELLE TURNER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, it's not the first time we've heard Jim Carrey come out against violence and violence in -- after Sandy Hook, he did do a song back in March called "Cold, Dead Hands," which was a mark against gun violence, but it was a surprising move when he took to Twitter to kick start this controversy and it does have people wondering just what was he expecting when he took this role?
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Colonel Stars and Stripes reporting for duty.
TURNER: "Kickass 2" finds itself in the crosshairs of public controversy, the film's star, Jim Carrey, says the movie is too violent, tweeting "I did 'Kickass' a month before Sandy Hook, and now cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to others involved in the film. I am not ashamed of it, but recent events have caused a change in my heart."
Some critics are confused by Carrey's turnaround.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY, WALL STREET JOURNAL: The whole thing's a little bit surprising because the name of the movie is "Kickass," this is "Kickass 2," in case you didn't get the message from the first "Kickass," and so it's surprising he didn't realize that's what this movie does, it kicks butt.
TURNER: Carrey was one of many Hollywood stars who came out against gun violence after the Sandy Hook massacre, some called Hollywood hypocritical for making billions of dollars on movies with gratuitous gun fights. This summer's slate of blockbusters with a body count certainly seems to be more of the same, something Mark Millar, the creator of "Kickass" defends. He responds to Carrey on his blog saying "our job as storytellers to entertain, and our tool box can't be sabotaged by curtailing the use of guns in an action movie." Publicist Marvet Britto says Carrey missed an opportunity to make a point about violence.
MARVET BRITTO, GLOBAL PR & BRAND STRATEGIST: In this instance, he's called attention to the film by stepping away, but he didn't use the opportunity and the platform to educate an audience why he stepped away and the importance of gun violence.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TURNER: You know, there is another question being raised here, Carol. Carrey is taking the stand, but is he still taking a salary for the movie? Some say it's one thing to promote it, but it's another thing if you're going to profit off it. I did ask Carrey's reps to clarify if he is still getting paid for the movie, but they have not yet responded to that.
COSTELLO: No comment yet. Nischelle Turner, hanks so much.
Still ahead in the NEWSROOM, it's a tough day for Rafael Nadal, one of the world's premier tennis players bounced in the first round at Wimbledon.
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COSTELLO: Finally, Aaron Hernandez's side of the story starts to come out. His lawyer says there's no warrant for the NFL's players arrest and criticizes the media. Hernandez's friend was found murdered less than a mile away from his home. Police have searched Hernandez's house twice, spent three hours in nearby woods on Monday. Here's CNN's Susan Candiotti.
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SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: For the first time since last week, lawyers for Aaron Hernandez are breaking their silence in writing. In a new statement saying Hernandez is being subjected to, quote, "a relentless flood of rumors, misinformation, and false reports, including that an arrest warrant has been issued." CNN has not reported this.
A law enforcement source tells CNN, quote, "there is no arrest warrant, it wasn't true last week, and it isn't true today."
In response to Hernandez's attorney, the D.A. did not address the arrest question. Police are not calling Hernandez a suspect.
On Monday, investigators equipped with metal detectors trudged through woods just outside the upscale community where New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez lives. No word on what they were looking for or what, if anything, they found.
No Hernandez sightings during the day on Monday. He remains the focus on a murder investigation into the shooting death of a friend, Odin Lloyd, who's body was found less than a mile from Hernandez's home.
The tight end has had brushes with the law before, but nothing like this. He's being sued by a man who claims Hernandez shot out his right eye in February after leaving a Miami strip club called Tootsie's. But Alexander Bradley, seen here in April in a Hartford, Connecticut, mugshot from an unrelated incident did not press charges or identify Hernandez. In his hometown of Bristol, Connecticut, Hernandez is remembered as a high school football phenom.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's, like, the hero of our school.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Never in a million years would I think of anything like that happening to him.
CANDIOTTI: The Patriots saw a bright future, too, signing him to a reported $40 million contract extension just last year.
AARON HERNANDEZ, NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS: Just a blessing and hopefully I make the right decisions with it and have a good life.
CANDIOTTI: Susan Candiotti, CNN, North Attleborough, Massachusetts.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: Still ahead in the NEWSROOM, on the hunt for a red panda, the search that stopped D.C. in its tracks. The story of Rusty, next.
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COSTELLO: It's 46 minutes past the hour time to check our "Top Stories".
This morning, Edward Snowden remains very much invisible; the man who exposed a secret U.S. surveillance program still in hiding a full two days after leaving Hong Kong. The U.S. believes he may be hunkered down possibly in a transit area of the Moscow airport.
Arizona Senator John McCain is calling out Russian President Vladimir Putin for taking advantage of the situation.
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SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I have known about Vladimir Putin for a long, long time. He is an -- as I said, he's an old KGB colonel apparatchik that has disdain for democracy and the things we stand for and believe in. And if he sees a situation, he'll take advantage of it. I mean anybody that takes somebody's Super Bowl ring has got to be not exactly like us.
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COSTELLO: Of course, John McCain is referring to the allegation by the New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft who joked at an event earlier this month that Putin stole his 2005 championship ring.
Four years after Michael Jackson's death, his son is preparing to take the stand in the family's wrongful death lawsuit. Attorneys say Prince Jackson, now 16 years old, will testify after a doctor completes his testimony. Michael Jackson's children and his mother are suing AEG Live, claiming the concert promoter hired and supervised Dr. Conrad Murray. AEG disputes the claim.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You okay?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
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COSTELLO: West, Texas is suing a fertilizer supplier over that April explosion. The suit claims the company blindly sold ammonium nitrate to a firm that didn't handle it properly. The explosion at that fertilizer plant killed 15 people, leveled homes and damaged two schools and a nursing home.
Clean up now under way across Chicago following a powerful storm settle trees and power lines came down. More than 200,000 customers lost power as a result. About a fourth of them are still waiting for electricity to come back on. Fire fighters also had to rescue a woman who had got trapped in her garage after a tree fell on top of her house.
A mystery at a museum in Britain. Curators at the Manchester Museum say an ancient Egyptian statue spins all on its own. They event set up time lapse footage to show what's going on. Superstition aside some possible physical explanations include vibrations from visitors with clunky feet or perhaps vibrations from the traffic from the roads outside. Or perhaps supernatural, who knows?
On the loose, one red panda. Where? Washington, D.C. and the search for Rusty quickly became the talk of the town in the nation's capital. but now Rusty is safe and sound. Brian Todd tell us the big question now is how Rusty managed to run away.
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BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Captured, crated, on the way home. Rusty the red panda, not even a year old, missing from Washington's National Zoo for several hours. He made his way into a busy neighborhood off zoo grounds before being captured safely.
Brandie Smith, a senior zoo curator involved in the capture tells how zoo keepers lured him into their grass after surrounding him.
BRANDIE SMITH, SENIOR CURATOR, NATIONAL ZOO: And we were able to walk up to him. We sent the keepers, with which he's most familiar, so the keepers called his name, he was familiar to them they calmed him down. We were able to approach him with the net, capture him in the net, transfer him to a crate and then we just took him to our veterinary hospital.
TODD: Red pandas are listed as vulnerable with 10,000 of them or less in the world. Rusty was born in captivity. Could he have survived on his own? We asked Smith what dangers he faced outside the zoo.
SMITH: I think the biggest danger is if he ate any inappropriate food.
TODD: That's any food other than bamboo or the other treats regularly prepared by his keepers. For the moment, zoo officials say Rusty has no visible signs of injury or illness. We pressed a zoo spokeswoman on another key question. How in the world do you lose a red panda, how did it happen?
PAMELA BAKER-MASSON, SPOKESWOMAN, NATIONAL ZOO: Well we don't know right now, in all honest -- complete honesty, we do not know. That habitat has housed red pandas for several years. No one has escaped from it before. The habitat is constructed to keep red pandas in and to keep people out.
TODD: A possible clue, red pandas are called arboreal animals, natural climbers, tree dwellers.
(on camera): Could Rusty have used a tree to climb out of this exhibit behind me? Well zoo officials say their horticultural team came here after he escaped and found no obvious route out, but they are not ruling it out as a possibility and one possibility could be right here, you see the electric fence, the exhibit is on the other side of that fence, there is a tree up there on one side of the electric fence that kind of hangs over. That could have been one of the escape routes.
(voice over): Zoo officials say they'll look at surveillance cameras, do the best they can to trace Rusty's movements between 6:00 p.m. Sunday when he was last sighted and 7:30 Monday morning when they noticed him gone.
DENNIS KELLY, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ZOO: We're going to look every aspect of the exhibit. We will not let this happen again.
TODD: Even though Rusty shows no visible sign of illness, zoo officials say they'll keep him in their veterinary hospital for at least a few days and monitor him before placing him back in the exhibit with his female partner Shama.
Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Rusty is safe and sound this morning.
Still ahead, bounce from Wimbledon in the first round. Rafael Nadal is likely salting today. "Bleacher Report" is next.
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COSTELLO: A stunning finish to the Stanley Cup finals last night in Boston. The Chicago Blackhawks snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in game six to win the series. Andy Scholes is here with "Bleacher Report." Good morning.
ANDY SCHOLES, BLEACHER REPORT: And good morning, Carol. The Blackhawks were less than two minutes away from having to go back to Chicago for a winner take all game seven with the Bruins. But everything changed in a matter of 17 seconds. Boston was up 2-1 late in the third period last night when the Blackhawks came storming back.
Jonathan Toews nice pass here to Bryan Bickell this goal ties the game. Then 17 seconds later, off the rebound, Dave Bolland finds the back of the net. Blackhawks shocked the Bruins, 3-2. They win the series, four games to two. Patrick Kane named the playoff MVP as Chicago wins their second cup in the last four years.
PATRICK KANE, NHL PLAYOFFS MVP: Hopefully we can stay together a long time because that's two cup in four years and we seem to only be getting better and better as players as time goes on here. So it's unbelievable to be in this situation.
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SCHOLES: There's a huge upset the first day at Wimbledon. French Open champion and fifth seeded Rafael Nadal lost in straight sets to the 135th ranked player in the world Steve Darcis. Now he lost in that and Nadal's 23 match winning streak and it's the first time he's been ousted in the first round of a grand slam event.
Well here is a bad combination. Double-decker buses, tall basketball players and low overpasses. Check this out. LeBron nearly decapitated during the Heat's victory parade yesterday. Luckily, King James saw these bridges coming and he was able to duck. An estimated 400,000 fans lined the streets of downtown Miami to celebrate the Heat's second straight NBA championship.
Well the Toronto Blue Jays had a team record 11 straight wins coming in last night's game in Tampa, but the Rays would put an end to that streak. Tampa Bay hit back to back to back home runs in the second inning. The second of them coming from right here, Will Myers. This is his first at-bat ever at Tropicana field. Great moment for him there. Rays win the game 4-1 and Carol, the Blue Jay's 11-game winning streak was the longest in the majors since your Tigers won 12 in a row back in 2011.
COSTELLO: That was one of the happiest times of my life, Andy. Thanks so much.
The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM after a quick break.
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COSTELLO: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, right now, George Zimmerman's trial is starting up again. People who say they saw the confrontation between Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin may take the stand.
