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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Search Intensifies for Teens Lost at Sea; Obama Wrapping Africa Trip; Republicans Target Obama. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired July 28, 2015 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm John Berman. About 29 minutes after the hour right now. Christine Romans is off today.
Developing this morning, the search for two 14-year-old boys from Jupiter, Florida, lost at sea has focused further north, about 60 miles off the coast of Jacksonville and enlarged to an area the size of Indiana.
[04:30:06] Coast Guard officials say they have been searching for Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos for 72 hours, night and day. They're not giving up hope they say.
And neither are the boys' mothers who spoke last night to Anderson Cooper.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAMELA COHEN, MOTHER OF MISSING 14-YEAR-OLD PERRY COHEN: Both boys are very, very comfortable on the water. They are just as comfortable on a boat and on the water as they are on land. They are avid fishermen, they're avid swimmers, they are extremely athletic and very skilled and knowledgeable about being on the water which is one of the reasons why the search and rescue has maintained the force it has because there is such strong belief that they will be rescued and found very soon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Let's get the latest on the search from CNN's Martin Savidge in Florida.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.
Of course, the families continue to be hopeful that those two teenagers will be found alive and well. But the Coast Guard actually says, you know, there is actually reason to have that hope. They say, one, they are aggressively searching but two, given the weather conditions in the Atlantic that they are seeing, it is possible a person in the water could survive for four to five days. This would be day four. One troubling factor is, of course, that their boat was found upside
down and they weren't with it. Now, we don't know how it got upside down or when it happened. The authorities say that they sent a rescue swimmer down to investigate.
One of the things he noted of the vessel, the engine cover of the outboard was off. Did that mean they had some kind of a mechanical breakdown of some sort? And then later that afternoon, Friday, we're talking some severe storms went by, which on land may not seem that bad, but when you're out in the water in a small boat, that could actually be very bad.
And then also, the finding of the boat itself. The coast guard says there is good and bad to that. The bad is the fact you did not find the two young men with it. The good is it gives them a specific area to search and by using drift and current models, they can extrapolate. The bad is, it is much harder to find a person in the water than it is to find a boat. But, again, back to where I started with, there is still reason for hope -- John.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: All right. Our thanks to Martin Savidge for that.
Happening now, President Obama in the final hours in the trip to Africa, a trip that is focused on the fight against terrorism and for human rights. But President Obama is coming under fire for ignoring Ethiopia's own human rights issues during his time there. The president praised the country's government as democratically elected, even as his aides expressed concern about the integrity of those elections.
This morning, the president becomes the first ever sitting U.S. president to speak before the African Union.
CNN's Robyn Kriel joins us now from Addis Ababa with the latest.
Good morning, Robyn.
ROBYN KRIEL, CNN AFRICA CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.
Yes, he is expected to speak at 1:30 local time at the African Union, addressing the African Union Commission, the first sitting U.S. president to do so. He is expected to touch on issues of terrorism and possibly praising efforts here in East Africa, the African Union force in Somalia who has been fighting Somalia insurgent group al Shabaab.
That force has become a model that the African Union is key to other countries battling other similar issues. He is also due to talk about democracy. We're not sure if he's going to come out swinging as he did in Kenya, for women's rights and gay rights, as well as the issues of corruption. However, the issue of democracy is high on his list.
South Sudan is another critical issue really that we chatted to White House officials yesterday. We understand that the U.S. really lost patience when it comes to South Sudan, as well as regional leaders and praising the work of Ethiopia and Kenya in dealing with that, as well as dealing with the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees, criticizing other countries that they say are hindering and not helping the peace process. They want to see an agreement reached by South Sudanese leaders by August 17th. That is their deadline. That is when the situation needs to be solved, they say.
BERMAN: All right. Robyn Kriel, that speech coming a few hours from now. Thanks, Robyn.
President Obama took time in Ethiopia to slam two Republicans who want his job. With Donald Trump calling him a disaster and Mike Huckabee accusing him of marching the people of Israel to the oven door, the president did not hesitate to fire back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The particular comments of Mr. Huckabee are I think part of just a general pattern that we have seen that is -- would be considered ridiculous if it weren't so sad.
[04:35:00] When you get rhetoric like this, maybe it gets attention and maybe this is just an effort to push Mr. Trump out of the headlines. But it's not the kind of leadership that is needed for America right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Mike Huckabee, not backing down. The former Arkansas governor reissued the warning that the nuclear deal with Iran could lead to Israel's demise.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE HUCKABEE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Three times I have been to Auschwitz. When I talked about the oven door, I have stood at that oven door. I know exactly what it looks like, 1.1 million people killed. For 6,000 years, Jews have been chased, and hunted and killed all over this earth. And when someone in the government says we're going to kill them, I think, by gosh, we better take that seriously.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Donald Trump did not pass up the opportunity to advance his view that the Iran nuclear deal and the president in his words are bad for America.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He's probably the worst president in the history of our country. He's a very divisive person, which is why he brings this kind of stuff up. And he should have devoted more time to working on a good nuclear deal with Iran instead of what he's doing, because he is just a disaster for our country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: This morning at 10:00 Eastern, Secretary of State John Kerry, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, and Energy Secretary Earnest Moniz will testify in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the Iran nuclear agreement.
The House Select Committee on Benghazi has postponed hearing scheduled for Wednesday after the State Department tentatively agreed to turnover new documents. Those new documents include 5,000 pages of e- mails fro Hillary Clinton's top staff during her time as secretary of state. The chairman of the Select Committee warns that if the documents produced are what he calls anemic or underwhelming, again, his words, he will schedule a compliance hearing.
The chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee is calling on President Obama to fire IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. Republican Jason Chaffetz of Utah accused Koskinen of misleading Congress and failing to cooperate with an investigation into claims that the agency illegally targeted Tea Party groups applying for nonprofit status. House Republicans also announced they have begun contempt proceedings against the IRS chief.
New developments in the death of Sandra Bland, the prosecutor in Prairie View, Texas, announced a panel of lawyers will be brought in to help his office investigate the case. That case could go to a grand jury next month. Police say Bland hanged herself in her jail cell three days after she was arrested during a routine traffic stop.
In Medford, Massachusetts, a 30-year police veteran has been placed on leave for threatening to shoot a motorist in the head. That motorist identified as Michael happened to have a camera on his dashboard when off-duty Detective Stephen LeBert pulled him over Sunday night for driving the wrong way to a traffic circle. At first, Michael says he tried to back away because Detective LeBert was not in uniform.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DRIVER: Oh, I didn't know you were a cop.
COP: I'll blow a hole right through your (EXPLETIVE DELETED head. I'll put a hole right through your head. Pull over.
DRIVER: OK, OK, OK, OK.
COP: You're lucky I'm a cop because I'd be beating the (EXPLETIVE DELETE) out of you right now.
DRIVER: Geez.
COP: Give me your license.
DRIVER: I also want to let you know --
COP: Give me your license.
DRIVER: OK, I also want to let you know I have a dash camera. It was definitely nerve wracking when someone is like, hey, I'm going
to shoot you, digging for his gun, telling me he's going to shoot me. I'm like, that's a bit extreme, don't you think?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Medford's police chief calls the Detective LeBert's actions troubling.
Joyce Mitchell is due in court today. The former Dannemora prison employee will be arraigned for her role helping Richard Matt and David Sweat escape from Clinton correctional facility last month. It took authorities nearly three weeks to track down the pair before police killed Matt and wounded Sweat.
Be sure to join us tonight for a CNN special report. "The Great Prison Escape" investigates how it all went down. This airs tonight at 9:00 Eastern, only on CNN.
It is time now for an early start on your money. Alison Kosik here with that.
ALISON KOSIK, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: And good morning.
Stocks in China continue to get hit hard. The Shanghai's benchmark index fell 1.7 percent today. That follows 8.5 percent plunge yesterday. That was the worst drop since 2007. You see stocks in China have actually tumbled in recent months wiping out trillions of dollars.
We are seeing that in stocks around the globe and oil. Plus, in commodities like oil, prices continue to fall there. For today, it looks like other markets are shaking it off. European stocks up are a bit, so are U.S. stock futures. That could mean the end of a five-day losing streak for U.S. stocks.
Prisoner could take college courses on the government's dime. According to "The Wall Street Journal", the Obama administration will cover Pell grants for some prisoners. And that will cover almost $6,000 to year-in tuition fees and book.
Now, this is going to be an experiment to see if education programs can keep convicts from returning to prison repeatedly. This is a part of a broader push to overhaul the criminal justice system. The prison population has actually grown dramatically, John, in the last few days, and is a way to not get them to go back, but something to go toward.
[04:40:02] BERMAN: You've seen him talk about mandatory sentencing, you see him grant clemency in some cases. And interesting step along those lines.
KOSIK: Yes.
BERMAN: All right. Alison Kosik, thanks so much. A serious burst of heat moving to the Northeast. They will only get
worse before it gets better. Let's get to meteorologist Ivan Cabrera with more -- Ivan.
IVAN CABRERA, AMS METEOROLOGIST: The heat continues to build. In fact, John, we're going to be talking about temperatures in the 90s for an extended period, incredible. Washington and New York and Boston also into the upper 80s to 90. The humidity is going to make it feel even hotter over the next few days. And 90s continue into the weekend. So, there will be no relief in sight. This is going to be a big deal.
Further south and west, this is what we have. The heat warnings that are in effect. The Kansas City and St. Louis, there the temperatures will feel like they are about 105 to as high as 115 as you factor in the humidity through the afternoon.
So, we're going to watch that closely. Look at Dallas. You have been in the 100s. You will stay in the 100s through the end of the week. That is going to be brutal stuff.
And again, we talk about temperatures that approach those levels. Heat warnings will be in effect for the next few days. All right. We are tracking storms today, damaging wind potential, large hail and some isolated tornadoes from Iowa heading up towards Minneapolis and to portions of International Falls. We will watch the storms as they continue to build later on this afternoon -- John.
BERMAN: All right. Ivan, thanks so much.
A woman shoots and kills her attacker in West Virginia, but did she do police a huge favor and help them solve several cold cases? That bizarre story next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:45:06] BERMAN: A woman in West Virginia who killed her attacker in self defense may have inadvertently led police to a serial killer. Investigators now suspect Neal Falls may be connected to murders in several states. The woman who survived the attack in her home worked as an escort. She tells police she fought him off, grabbing his gun and firing the fatal shots.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HEATHER, ESCORT KILLED ATTACKER IN SELF-DEFENSE: When he strangled me, he just wouldn't let me get any air. And when he laid the gun down to get the rake out of my hands, I shot him. I knew he was there to kill me. I could tell he had already something, because he said that he was going to prison for a long time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Police say evidence found at Falls' car included a kill kit which could link him to a string of murders in other states. The 911 calls during the tragedy that unfolded in a Lafayette,
Louisiana movie theater could be released today. John Houser gunned down two people last week before turning the gun on himself. Investigators are now searching for a motive.
We get the latest from CNN's Ryan Nobles.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The grand theatre here in Lafayette where two people were killed and nine others wounded is no longer an active crime scene. Police have handed the building back over to its owners. The owners are in the clean up process right now, but they do hope to reopen as soon as possible.
On Monday, Mayci Breaux and Jillian Johnson, the two victims were killed in this tragedy were laid to rest. Big crowds coming out for both, even folks that didn't necessarily know these two young women, but we're touched by what happened here in this community.
Meanwhile, we are learning a lot more about the shooter John Russell Houser. He kept a diary and in that diary wrote about coming here to the grand theatre at 7:15 on Thursday night. He was staying in a nearby Motel 6. And CBS News obtained video of the moments right before he left the motel to come here to Lafayette.
Meanwhile, those nine victims wounded. Seven have left the hospital. There are two still recovering and they are improving -- John.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: All right. Ryan, thanks.
A California teenager is in police custody this morning after a missing girl was found dead. Madyson Middleton was last seen (ph) on Sunday riding at her family Santa Cruz apartment building. The 8- year-old's body was found inside the dumpster in the complex. The 15- year-old suspect also lived there. He is being questioned by police.
This morning, the FBI is investigating a suspicious package sent to buildings in Oregon. Some of the mail contained an unknown substance. The U.S. postal inspector said it is very likely the mail was all related. He said he could not comment on the nature of the letters, but said there was no reason to believe the general public is at risk.
A million dollars in gold found in a shipwreck 300 years old. Who tracked it down and where and how can we get our hands on it. Find out next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:51:39] BERMAN: It is now official. The Boy Scouts of America has lifted its blanket ban on the openly gay adult scout leaders and employees. Reaction is pouring in and the changes sparking strong resistance from some quarters, especially Mormon officials. The Church of Latter Day Saints, the largest single sponsor of Boy
Scouts, says it may leave the organization. In a statement, the LDS church says it is deeply troubled by the policy changed, despite a compromise allowing religious based groups to set their own policies on the long divisive issue.
New York's LaGuardia Airport, yes, it gets no respect, and really probably deserved all that much. It was voted the worst airport in America. Vice President Biden even compared it to a third world country. Now, LaGuardia is getting a makeover.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo with Vice President Biden at his side announced a $4 billion plan to completely redesign the airport. It will break ground next year with the completion date set for 2020.
The U.S. Olympic Committee is looking for a few good cities to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games now that Boston has withdrawn. Boston had been the U.S. candidate, but pulled the plug on the bid Monday. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh declined to sign the host city contract that would make Boston responsible for Olympic cost overruns. A lot people of Boston never got fully behind this bid. Runner up Los Angeles is expressing interest in taking Boston's place. They already have a stadium.
With NFL training camp getting under way, the Arizona Cardinals are breaking new ground, hiring the first female coach in the league. The Cards announced Jen Welter has been added to their staff as a training camp and pre-season coaching intern. Welter expressed her appreciation on Twitter, saying she is honored to be part of the team and gave special thanks to Arizona head coach Bruce Arians.
There is actual gold in the shallow waters off Florida's Treasure Coast. A salvage operation uncovered more than $1 million of gold coins and artifacts from a shipwreck nearly 300 years old. It includes a rare gold coin made especially for the king of Spain. The discovery came a few weeks ago, but was kept under wraps until now.
Times keep getting tougher for the American family. Why the typical American family's wealth has continued to shrink in the last few decades. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:57:16] BERMAN: Time now for an early start on your money. Alison Kosik is here with that.
KOSIK: And good morning.
Another rough day for stocks in China, tumbling even more this morning. Shanghai's benchmark index falling 1.7 percent today. That follows 8.5 percent plunge yesterday, the worse drop since 2007.
You know, it has been breathtaking. Chinese stocks have tumbled wiping out trillions of dollars in recent months. Other markets are shaking it off. European stocks are up and U.S. stock futures. Yesterday, the Dow fell 128 points. Stocks have dipped on five days
in a row on concerns about global growth and the looming interest rate hike.
The typical American family is poorer than it was 25 years ago. Median family wealth is now about $81,000. That is a 5 percent decline since 1989. Why? Income stagnated and middle class struggling with rising costs.
But here's a "but". If you dig into the numbers, when look at the typical net worth by race, actually everyone has gotten wealth year. But here's the thing, is the diversity of population, with blacks and Hispanics making up a bigger share of the population. That's causing the median wealth to fall. So, there's still a big wealth gap with whites at the top.
Google Plus getting the boot in the past. The Google Plus profile was a requirement to access some of Google's more popular products. Well, not anymore. YouTube will no longer require a Google Plus membership to comment on post or videos. And similar are coming to other popular Google products.
But if you are one of the few who uses the social network, don't worry, it still will exist as a tool for people with similar interests to communicate. You know, John, this just didn't catch on Google Plus.
BERMAN: What happened?
KOSIK: Some people found it to be cumbersome. It took all of their information and put it out there. Too much sharing. Over-sharing.
BERMAN: I can never figure out what to use it or what the point was.
KOSIK: It was confusing. You know, Google sort of threw everything at the wall. Something stick, something don't.
BERMAN: And there was this Facebook thing also that seemed to work pretty well.
KOSIK: That could do it.
BERMAN: All right, Alison. Thanks so much.
EARLY START continues right now.
(MUSIC)
BERMAN: New overnight, the search for two missing teens off the Florida coast is growing in size and scope. The Navy is now involved, scouring an area the size of Indiana. We will hear from the parents of the missing boys.
The president wraps up an historic overseas trip, but what did he say that has him in some hot water? A live report just moments away. And Republicans in the race for the White House. This is full contact
campaigning. They have been going after each other and going after the president as well following the president's most pointed remarks yet about the Republican field. I'll tell you what they said coming up.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm John Berman.
