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Rep. Rangel Stepping Aside for Now; Health Reforms Last Chance; Iraq Election Security; Chile's Utter Annihilation; Stocks Set For Flat Open; Nissan Recall; Funding for Healthier School Lunches; Gone Without a Trace: The McStay Family Vanishing

Aired March 03, 2010 - 08:59   ET

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

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REP. CHARLES RANGEL (D-NY), WAYS & MEANS COMMITTEE: -- that my chairmanship is bringing so much attention to the press, and in order to avoid my colleagues having to defend me during their elections, I have, this morning, sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi asking her to grant me a leave of absence until such time as the Ethics Committee completes its work.

Now I know that all of you have a professional obligation to ask questions, but I'm afraid if I went down that road, that it would distract me from what I have to do in terms of completion of the president's health bill as well as making certain that our committee gets a good jobs bill.

So that I will not consider it rude if you insist on asking questions when I told you I won't answer. And I hope that you understand that I don't intend to be rude to you as I leave.

So thank you this morning, and I got to get back to work.

QUESTION: This isn't all our fault that you're stepping down, as you said at the outset. It's not because of press attention that you're stepping down, is it?

RANGEL: I don't recall saying it's your fault.

QUESTION: It's not really that, is it?

QUESTION: No questions, please.

RANGEL: Yes. Why? That's subjective.

QUESTION: Mr. Rangel, who's going to take over your post?

RANGEL: Like I said, I hope you don't mind if I don't take questions. OK? Thank you. I want you to have a great day.

QUESTION: Why the change from last night, sir?

RANGEL: I also would like to say that from the very, very beginning, I had offered this to Speaker Pelosi. Thank you.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Congressman Charles Rangel there calling a press conference there saying that he has sent a letter, a request, to Nancy Pelosi requesting a leave of absence until the Ethics Committee has continued its investigation or hashed out all the details that it's looking into as Charlie Rangel has been under fire for a number of months now for a variation of things.

Our congressional correspondent Brianna Keilar now joining us live.

This is a press conference that was called by Charlie Rangel. Some thought that perhaps he would make a clear-cut announcement that he would be stepping down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. But instead, he says he's asking for a little bit of time.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, no, he actually is saying that he's going to step aside temporarily from his post as House Ways and Means chairman. A very powerful post.

And I actually hold here in my hand, Fredricka, this is something that was handed to me by one of his aides. This is the resignation letter -- at least the temporary one -- that he submitted to Speaker Pelosi.

It says, "I respectfully request a leave of absence from my duties and responsibilities as chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means until such a time as the Committee on Standards completes its findings on the review currently under way."

There's actually a number of ethics issues that Charlie Rangel is contending with right now. Most recently on Friday, we saw the House Ethics Committee admonish him, say that he broke the House gift rules for travel that he took to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008. Travel that was corporate sponsored.

As it turned out, they said they couldn't -- be definitive that he knew it was corporate sponsored, but certainly two of his staff members knew, and because of that, they said he was responsible for the behavior of his staff.

But there's a number of other issues, frankly quite larger than what we saw on Friday, hanging over his head. Perhaps one of the largest ones has to do with earnings that he got from a rental property he owns in the Dominican Republic that he didn't file taxes on, didn't pay taxes on.

And, Fredricka, this is someone who -- at least was -- the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. This is the committee that deals with taxes. So he was facing tremendous pressure from Republicans who are going to have a vote today, schedule a vote today really on his leadership and asking him to step aside.

But he was, as we saw in the last few days, starting to face pressure from within his own Democratic caucus and that really proved to be the breaking point over the last 24 hours -- Fred.

WHITFIELD: And so, Brianna, I wonder if perhaps Pam, our producer, is able to kind of re-rack the statement because while he's temporarily stepping down, at the same time he doesn't necessarily talk about long term what he's looking for but he's not saying that he's giving up the post all together.

KEILAR: No. What he's saying is that he's stepping aside temporarily until the Ethics Committee deals with the issues that it is dealing with. Right now there are a number -- and the Ethics Committee is very secretive in how it operates, so at this point we do know that he is being looked at for some other potential ethics violations, but we don't know what the outcome of those investigations will be.

So what he's saying is he's stepping aside for the time being because it's causing so much attention and people are having to defend him, and really, obviously, the situation will be reconsidered once the Ethics Committee says what its findings are on these other violations.

Now, Fred, if they come out and on the very serious violations they say that he did something wrong, then presumably you would expect that he would lose more support than we've seen him losing right now.

WHITFIELD: OK.

KEILAR: But, you know, in the last few months we've heard House Speaker Nancy Pelosi really stand by him and say wait until all of this plays out. Well, that's obviously not happening anymore. Apparently she accepted this temporary resignation.

WHITFIELD: And, Brianna, it was a very short statement so once again, for those who were just now joining us, let's listen in just moments ago. This is what Charlie Rangel said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RANGEL: I have this morning sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi asking her to grant me a leave of absence until such time as the Ethics Committee completes its work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: So Brianna Keilar back now with us. Have we heard from Nancy Pelosi?

KEILAR: We haven't heard at this point -- that I am aware of. I'm actually scrolling through my BlackBerry right now and I don't have any statement from her office. But presumably he wouldn't come out and announce that he submitted his resignation, at least temporarily, unless she is going to accept it. What I thought was really interesting, Fred, was he said there at the end of his statement -- and we didn't just play this for you -- he said, you know, from the beginning I offered this to Speaker Pelosi.

We haven't check on that at this point to really see what her response would be to that, but Nancy Pelosi is a long-time ally of Charlie Rangel's. He has been in the House for decades. And they have been friends, if you will.

She has stood by him very much in the last few months amid calls by Republicans that he step down. But what happened here was Nancy Pelosi -- when Democrats came into power, when they took over the House, when they took over Congress, she promised that she would run the most ethical Congress in history, the most ethical House in history, and she's taken a lot of flak for Charlie Rangel and certainly some of the suspicion, at the very least, that hangs over his head.

So she has weathered quite a bit of criticism, certainly from Republicans, and a lot of questions from members of the media like myself over this issue.

WHITFIELD: All right, Brianna Keilar, thanks so much.

So, once again, Charles Rangel coming out just a short time ago this morning saying that he has requested a leave of absence from his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee. And that letter being sent to Nancy Pelosi.

Brianna Keilar, thanks so much. Appreciate that.

All right, meantime, the presidential push for health care reform. A few hours from now, President Obama will unveil his latest health care bill and it's considered a last-ditch effort to create a bipartisan measure.

But it's not expected to win any support from Republicans. That opposition is expected to be unanimous. Instead, the revisions appear aimed at calming the nerves of moderate Democrats.

Time is running out. Democratic leaders want to push the overhaul through Congress before the end of the month.

So let's get the latest now from CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux.

So, Suzanne, what do we expect the president to spell out today?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Fred, one of the things that his aides tell me is that this really is his final act here, this is his final version of health care reform, the legislation, as he sees it.

And he's trying to do a couple of things. Obviously he's trying to show that he is open at least to some Republican ideas. He has added some of those on to his own blueprint, if you will. And he's also trying to convince, give political cover, to some of those moderate Democrats who say, look, we are showing -- we are acting in good faith here, so let's get on-board, cut some of the things that he's talking about from the bipartisan health care summit last Thursday, he listened to Republicans.

He is open to a couple of things. One of them being taking on fraudulent medical charges. Another thing he's going to talk about is new funding for resolving malpractice disputes, lawsuits, increasing doctors' reimbursements when it comes to Medicaid, and offering tax incentives to cut down on doctor visits. Doctor visits that might be unnecessary.

All of this, he is saying, "I've learned from you Republicans, I've embraced some of these proposals, these ideas, that you put forward last week, so let's see if we can get something done."

WHITFIELD: And the Republicans' reaction so far?

MALVEAUX: So far, they're not really buying it, Fred. I mean they're looking at this and they're fundamentally in disagreement with the whole approach. They essentially want to start over. We heard from the minority whip Eric Cantor in this statement, he said that, "If the president simply adds a couple of Republican solutions to a trillion-dollar health care package that the American people don't support, it isn't bipartisanship, it's political cover."

The president, Fred, is going to make it clear, however, he's not interested in starting all over and he's not even interested in doing things kind of in a piecemeal fashion in a much smaller bit, a plan B, if you will.

He is going to be pushing forward once again comprehensive health care reform, adding some of these Republican proposals, saying essentially, "Why don't you get on-board?" If the Republicans aren't up for it, he is really -- the audience that he's trying to go for, Fred, are those Democrats who say this is the final thing.

WHITFIELD: And, Suzanne, I remember House Speaker Nancy Pelosi summarizing it this way. She says, if perhaps the plan is bipartisan because it does borrow some ideas from the GOP, perhaps the vote won't be bipartisan. All right.

MALVEAUX: That's the main strategy of the White House is look, if you can't get the Republicans on board with the votes, at least throw in some of these proposals, these ideas and call it bipartisan.

MALVEAUX: Suzanne Malveaux at the White House, thanks so much.

Of course, we'll have live coverage of President Obama's unveiling of this new health care package that's scheduled to get under way 1:45 p.m. Eastern Time.

All right, a baby snatching. Pretty scary stuff. But you'll cringe when you hear just how easy it was for one alleged kidnapper to get a child away from his parents. ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I'm Rob Marciano in the CNN Severe Weather Center. Another winter storm rolling across the mid- Atlantic? Does it turn north to the rest of the northeast? Plus a west coast storm coming. Weather is next.

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WHITFIELD: Some good news to report now on an alleged child abduction in Jacksonville, Florida. The baby boy has been found safe and the suspect is in custody.

Police say a woman posing as a child welfare worker abducted the infant from his home last night. The baby's parents encouraged the woman when -- or encountered, rather, the woman when they took the child in for a checkup at a Jacksonville hospital.

The woman followed the couple home, convincing them to turn the baby over to her due to an ongoing investigation. The couple became suspicious and called police a couple hours later.

And again, good news now, the baby has been re-united with the family.

So to Iraq now. And four days before the country's parliamentary elections, a trio of deadly suicide bombings killed 29 people and wounded 42 others today in Baqubah. Police say as the victims from the first two explosions were being taken to a hospital, a third bomber walked up to the building and self-detonated.

CNN's Arwa Damon is live in Baghdad this morning with more on how the U.S. military is preparing Iraq's security forces to contend with potential election violence.

Good morning to you, Arwa.

ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Fredricka. Let's just start by recapping this morning's violence because it does tie into the specific training that Iraqi security forces are receiving from the U.S. military.

Now the first explosion the suicide car bomber detonated, he appeared to have been targeting a government institution and an Iraqi police station. Then, just two minutes later, the second suicide car bomb detonates. That happening in the center of the city, the city of Baqubah.

The target there appears to have been either a political office belonging to one of the parties here, or the local government headquarters. And then, as you just mentioned, an hour later, when all of the victims were being rushed to the hospital, a third suicide bomber walked inside and detonated.

Now the U.S. military has been trying to train the Iraqi security forces to try to help prevent these types of attacks from taking place. In the lead-up to these elections, and of course, on Election Day itself. The reality, though, is that there is no exact way that can fully prevent these types of attacks from happening. There isn't the technology out there that exists -- according to the U.S. military -- that can accurately and consistently detect explosives, especially in the type of an open-air environment like the one that we have here in Iraq.

A lot of the training that the U.S. military's focusing on with the Iraqis isn't just trying to prevent these attacks, but also trying to manage the situation after these attacks take place.

By that, I mean they're trying to give them medical training so that the Iraqi security forces who are often either already on the scene or first responders to the scene can at least save as many lives as they possibly can -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: And, so Arwa, President Obama has promised a pull-out by 2011. I'm wondering how these elections might impact that date.

DAMON: Well, Fredricka, these elections play directly into that date. We already have under 100,000 U.S. troops in country. That drawdown, if we stick to the current time line, is supposed to continue so that by the end of August, there are only 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

General Odierno, of course, expected to make a recommendation about that in the next few months.

Here is how the elections play in to it. There are great concerns about post-election violence because, first of all, these elections are going to determine if Iraq stays on this path of democracy, if you want to call it that, or if it turns and becomes more of a conservative fundamental and to a certain degree, anti- American state.

There are also a number of parties that aren't part of the current political process, and they're saying that if the government that emerges from these elections as sectarian as this one, there is going to be even more violence. Fredricka?

WHITFIELD: Arwa Damon, thanks so much for that update.

And now to this terrible situation in Uganda. Rescuers today are using hand tools to dig through rivers of mud that bury people alive. Massive landslides wiped out several villages on Monday.

More than 100 bodies have been recovered. Some of them from a hospital and a church where people ran to actually seek shelter. Hundreds of people are missing.

MARCIANO: You know, Fredricka, the monsoon season, the rainy season, just about to start so it's not like they're in the middle or end of it --

WHITFIELD: It's terrible. MARCIANO: -- to where they have had a lot of rain. They're just getting into it but that area very close to an area that's been deforested. So, as you know, that's always a problem with mudslides.

WHITFIELD: Yes, really is terrible. And talk about precipitation, we're getting a lot of it, too, in the southeast. Certainly not of that magnitude but we are getting hit nonetheless.

(WEATHER REPORT)

MARCIANO: Fredricka, we'll look for a bit of a warm-up as we head toward the weekend at least.

WHITFIELD: Maybe something called spring is on the way.

MARCIANO: It's trying. It's trying but --

WHITFIELD: Wouldn't it be nice?

MARCIANO: I wouldn't bet the bank that it's going to arrive on time. Let's get through this month and then we'll talk more about spring.

WHITFIELD: This has been a long haul of a winter for everybody.

MARCIANO: It certainly has.

WHITFIELD: Across this country. All right, thanks so much, Rob. Appreciate that.

And we'll be right back, 90 seconds, with top stories.

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WHITFIELD: Welcome back. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. A look at our top stories.

That's Congressman Charlie Rangel early this morning making an announcement that he is temporarily stepping aside as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee as the Ethics Committee continues its investigation. He sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

And Kentucky's embattled senator, Jim Bunning, blinks in his obstruction to allowing emergency funding for unemployment benefits. Bunning's big objection was there was no funding mechanism, he says, to support the measure but he ended his de facto filibuster late last night.

And U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates takes one small step closer in allowing gays to serve openly in the U.S. military. He is commissioning a study that will focus on the implications of repealing the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy for homosexuals.

The topic and the planned study goes before the House Armed Services Committee today. The report is due December 1st. And one earthquake but two tragedies. Karl Penhaul takes us to quake-ravaged and tsunami-battered Chilean coast in search of a fishing village that today is little more than a memory.

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WHITFIELD: We should know in a few hours the fate of the two remaining U.S. missionaries being held in Haiti. A Port-au-Prince judge says he will decide whether to release the two women or keep them in jail indefinitely.

Last month the judge released eight other members of the group. He held the remaining two so that he could learn about their motives.

The group was arrested for child kidnapping. They say they were trying to get the young earthquake survivors to a safe place.

And to Chile now where four days after the massive earthquake, the death toll is still rising. Here's what we know. Nearly 800 dead. That's according to Chile's outgoing president.

She's promising law and order in the disaster zone amid growing reports of looting in the central and southern regions of that country. Thirteen thousand Chilean troops have been dispatched to quell the lawlessness as the nation still rumbles with at least a dozen aftershocks reported in the past day alone.

And as if the quake wasn't damaging enough, residents of the fishing village known as Dichato were dealt a double dose of destruction. Tsunamis spawned from the quake slamming ashore and leaving little more than utter annihilation.

CNN's Karl Penhaul is there with the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From the shorelines, or from the high ground, the coastal town of Dichato looks the same. Almost total destruction.

"This is a catastrophe. This was a great tourist and fishing community. Now it's like firewood," he says.

This was the scene shot by amateur videographers minutes after three tsunami waves swept away people and their homes.

Witnesses say the waves rolled in five meters, or 15 feet high, shortly after the quake. You can make out a house roof floating off, and the town's center flooded.

Now that same area is dry. Fishing boats dragged more than two miles from their moorings by the tsunami. Rescue workers comb the sludge and debris for bodies.

"We're combing the wreckage by following the path the waves took as they swept in to the town," he says. Then the earth begins to heave -- again.

(On camera): There's just been an aftershock and the leader of the firefighters has called for his men to suspend their search and head to what he calls the security zone.

(Voice-over): Police in this town of 5,500 confirmed eight people died in Saturday's tsunami but say around 50 are still missing.

The survivors are struggling to come to terms with what hit them. 68-year-old Ana Aranada (ph) takes us down to Violet Street. Her house was a block away on Petunia Street. Now there's nothing to go home to.

She tells me when the quake struck, she ran out in her nightclothes. Her neighbor's house withstood the shaking but they were too old and frail to outrun the waves. They died.

Karl Penhaul, CNN, Dichato, Chile.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Well, perhaps you're compelled to help. CNN wants to help you "Impact Your World." Click on our Web page, CNN.com, and go to the "Impact Your World" section. And the way you can help both the quake victims of Haiti and Chile, there's a lot of advice right there. "Impact Your World" on CNN.com.

On Wall Street, investors made it three in a row yesterday but just barely.

Stephanie Elam is in New York with a look at whether the games are likely to continue today.

Hi, Stephanie.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Fred. Yes, well, at this point we're looking for a flat open after a closely watched report on the jobs market came out.

Payroll processing firm ADP says 20,000 jobs in the private sector were lost in February. That's the smallest number of cuts in two years. We'll get the government's monthly report on jobs. That will be on Friday.

But I can tell you this. We will see more job cuts coming from the U.S. Postal Service. The agency is proposing a workforce reduction of 30,000 positions but unlike corporate America, the USPA is not allowed to lay off workers.

Instead the Postal Service must go ahead and do most of the cuts through retirement and attrition. The Postal Service expects to lose nearly $8 billion this year and is asking Congress to cut Saturday mail delivery as well.

And the nation's biggest student loan company is jumping into retail banking. Sallie Mae is launching two online savings account that over above-average interest rates, taking consumer deposits -- well, actually help Sallie Mae strengthens its balance sheet but it's entering a highly competitive sector with (INAUDIBLE).

So we're getting ready to hear the opening bell. There you go. We're pretty much looking for a pretty flat opening. Futures are just slightly higher today. News out of Greece could help lift some of the sentiment today. The debt-ridden nation really had a plan to cut costs by more than $6 billion. It's something it really needed to do and trying to see if we get the early numbers here going for you.

All right. The Dow is up six points at this time, so like I said, not really a big mover and a shaker to start to the day, so we'll keep our eyes on it, Fred.

WHITFIELD: The day is young, as they say. All right, Stephanie Elam --

ELAM: Yes, exactly.

WHITFIELD: We appreciate that. Thank you.

ELAM: Sure.

WHITFIELD: All right. We all know the numbers. A college degree will pay for itself many times over, but does it matter which school you graduate from? We'll look at the hidden value of a sheepskin.

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WHITFIELD: Toyota's well-publicized problems with sudden acceleration are slamming the brakes on vehicle sales. Toyota reporting a 9 percent drop in February sales. The stall applies for nearly all but one of the car models -- the Prius, which despite being part of the recent recall is enjoying a 10 percent uptick in sales. Meanwhile, Ford Motor Company's sales hit a new gear last month, up 43 percent. Much of the increase attributed to big purchases from car rental companies.

And another recall to tell you about this time, Nissan. Nissan is recalling more than 530,000 vehicles to fix potential brake and fuel gauge problems. The vehicles with potential brake pedal problems are the 2008 through 2010 Nissan Titan pick-ups, Armada SUVs, Quest minivans, and the Infiniti QX56. The ones with possible gas gauge problems are the 2005 through 2008 Titan, Armada, and Infiniti QX56. Plus the Frontier Pick-Ups, Pathfinder, Xterra SUVs, the models in question were made between January and March 2006 and between October 2007 and January 2008.

All right. It's a question that has dogged high school students for years. Will the blood, sweat, and massive tuition costs of a prestigious college really payoff down the road? CNN's Christine Romans has been crunching the numbers and has some pretty revealing answers for us -- Christine.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It can pay off for you if you focus in the right places.

Look, 3 million kids in the class of 2010 have taken the SAT or the ACT. They're going to go on to college this fall, and there are some important questions and decisions for them to make, right? Because there are not a lot of jobs right now. We don't know what's going to look like in four years.

So, we checked out the colleges that seem to pay off, Fredricka. These are the -- now, you might not be able to afford all of these. You might not be able to get into them, but just for argument's sake, Dartmouth College grads average median mid-career salary, $129,000.

WHITFIELD: Gosh.

ROMANS: MIT, Harvard, Harvey Mud, Stanford, also on this list of the top ten is Notre Dame, Penn, Princeton, a couple of other ones too. So, the big prestigious schools you probably heard of.

Let's talk about the degrees that pay off. Engineering really dominates this list. My poor dad, he really wanted an engineer. He didn't get any engineers. Aerospace engineering, chemical engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, these are mid-career median salaries, you know, above $100,000. Economics is up there at $101,000.

These are all numbers from payscale.com, Fredricka, and I'll tell you that other surveys have shown a lot of interest in the next ten years or so for statisticians, for people who are actuaries, because anything about numbers and data is going to be incredibly important as we go forward. So, I guess you could sing and hum in your mind that little song, "Mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys" but insert "liberal arts majors" because Spanish, Music, Theology, Elementary Education, social works, some of these pay less than the median American salary.

The highest paid English majors, if you're curious, English majors out there, they tend to be technical writers, so they do much better than average. And political scientists, the political scientists that are paid the best tend to be intelligence analysts, so come on, I'm not saying dump the liberal arts degree.

A broad liberal arts education is incredibly important. Hold your e-mail, hold your fire. Everyone needs to know a little bit of everything, but just in terms of the degree that you come up with, engineering, math, numbers, that seems to be the thing that is paying off for people right about now. You know, and also one last point.

WHITFIELD: Yes.

ROMANS: A 4.9 percent unemployment for people with an undergraduate degree, 4.9 percent. So here we are agonizing over 10 percent unemployment in this country. Even though it's expensive, even though we don't know how we're going to pay for it, there is a buffer from that college degree. If you have a college degree, your unemployment rate is much lower than the general population. So, something important to remember as you're trying to figure out how to pay for college.

WHITFIELD: Interesting stuff, and hopefully, junior high and high school kids are paying attention then and maybe re-shifting their focus as they think about their four-year college plans or senior college plans.

ROMANS: Think about -- everyone's moving into senioritis, right? I mean, it's March. It's going to be spring. These kids are going to have senioritis. How hard is it to try to explain them, you need to be an aerospace engineer, Mr. 18-year-old. Get moving on that.

WHITFIELD: They need to be paying attention to you, quite simply. All right. Christine Romans, thanks so much. Appreciate that.

ROMANS: Bye-bye.

WHITFIELD: All right. One second on the clock. One last hope on the court. It's an amazing video that you'll want to see again and again -- and again and again.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: A look at our top stories right now. A registered sex offender suspected in a teenager's murder is due in court today. A body found in the heavily wooded area yesterday is believed to be that of 17-year-old Chelsea King (ph). Authorities in San Diego expect to make a positive identification later on today. King had been missing since Thursday.

And rapper Lil Wayne will likely be sentenced today on a gun possession charge. The sentence thing was called off yesterday after a fire broke out in the New York courthouse. Eight people had minor injuries. Lil Wayne is expected to get a year in jail.

And it's really not model behavior, but Naomi Campbell is not likely to face charges for her latest outburst. A hired driver told police that Campbell hit him from behind, and his head struck the steering wheel causing a bruise. The driver has decided not to pursue the criminal -- or the matter in criminal court. Campbell has previously pleaded guilty to assaulting people hired to work for her. An aide to the model says there's more than a story than meets the eye.

Family of four? Dad's got a business, mom stays home with the kids, then one day, they all just vanish.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right. In just that fast, a change. Rapper Lil Wayne will not be sentence today on a gun possession charge. His sentencing was called off yesterday after fire broke out in the New York courthouse. Eight people had minor injuries. Lil Wayne is expected to get a year in jail.

All right. Let's shift gears now from a college campus to a high school basketball court. Get ready to be simply amazed.

No joke. Just less than a second on the clock in Rochester, New York when the high school player simply let it fly. The shot from beyond half-court not only beat the buzzer -- you see right there? Yes, it won the game.

ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Nice work. That will win you a game, of course.

WHITFIELD: Isn't that cool? Have you ever had a moment like that, Rob, where you just kind of save the day and everyone went crazy and cheered and lost their pants over it?

MARCIANO: What?

WHITFIELD: Or their minds. You know, I'm just thinking the sport stuff, you know.

(LAUGHING)

MARCIANO: Exactly. No. To answer your question, Fredricka, I've never made a half-court shot with a game on the line.

(CROSSTALK)

WHITFIELD: I don't know what that feeling's like, but you know --

MARCIANO: I can appreciate it, you know.

WHITFIELD: It's fun to watch.

MARCIANO: All right. Let's talk about what's going on around the northeast. You definitely want to keep them on here, because it is kind of chilly. Boston and New York, we're looking at the rain/snow mix here. I think eastern parts of New England, including Boston down south toward Newport, Rhode Island, the cape will see a fair amount of wet snow today, but as far as it being a winter warning or winter storm warning now, we're not really looking at that.

Back through Philly, it's kind of filtering through, and here's been the problem spot back through Virginia Beach. The low is right here. It's slowly moving that way and what it's doing behind this is creating a little bit of rain and wind and winds have been gusting over 30 miles an hour in spots; right now about -- well, about 30 miles an hour there north-northwest winds.

You kind of see as the storm moves off to the northeast those winds are going to shift from the north to the northwest and pretty gusty and a little kind of wet and a little bit on the miserable side there today because of the wind and the rain.

How much snow do we expect to accumulate today? Computer models just slowing really the Cape where we see the accumulations yesterday down across the southeast; check out some of these numbers. Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, 11.3; Fletcher, North Carolina, 9.0; parts of Georgia, seeing 8, 9 inches; Asheville, North Carolina seeing 8.8. So the major metropolitan areas seeing just enough snow to kind of wet the roadways and maybe some of the suburbs seeing some snow pile up on the roads but this time of year, getting it tough to stick.

One hour and five minutes delays right now in Philadelphia. I'm seeing 25-minute delays in San Francisco because of this storm that's rolling into the Pacific Northwest and central and northern California. Heavy rain right now and maybe some embedded thunderstorms in this. It looks like some pretty bright returns down there across parts of the Bay Area.

So maybe some claps of thunder involved in this storm that's coming into the West Coast. This is the first of two that's going to come in, the second one coming in Friday.

But look at the big blue "H" here. This is going to start to try to get some warmer air in the midsection of the country and then slide it off towards the north. And maybe just give us a little bit of a glimpse of spring -- or what looks like spring -- briefly, this weekend.

You have that to look forward to, Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: That would be nice. Yes, I forget what spring feels like --

MARCIANO: We all do.

WHITFIELD: What any kind of warmth feels like. I've been like cold to the bone all winter long. All right Rob, thank you.

MARCIANO: You're welcome.

WHITFIELD: Ok, three reasons now why March 3rd is a day to remember. It's the day President Lincoln approved the Charter for the National Academy of Sciences. That was in 1863. March 3rd, 1933, Mt. Rushmore is dedicated; stone-faced for 77 years now. And in 1931, Cab Callaway and his orchestra record "Minnie the Moocher". You know, "hidey, hidey, hidey ho", that song. It became the first jazz song to sell a million copies.

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WHITFIELD: All right, the first lady is in Mississippi today pushing her plan to get kids in shape. It's called the "Let's Move Campaign." But if kids are eating a bunch of junk at school, a lot of that movement might be for nothing.

The stimulus is helping out there, making school lunches healthier. Our stimulus desk guru, Josh Levs, is here to explain it all.

JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I got a new title there, Fred.

WHITFIELD: Guru.

LEVS: Guru, I like that. Well, you know because there are a lot of kids eating junk, we know this.

WHITFIELD: Yes.

LEVS: You know, this is a real problem. And since the first lady is going there today, we wanted to take a look at how much money that school district in Jackson, Mississippi, is getting.

Check out this whopping figure, it's huge but you know what, $34 million to this one school district coming out of that giant pile of money last year in the stimulus. The thing is as you look at that, that's actually not really shocking because a lot of people don't realize this but by far the biggest expenditure for jobs out of that stimulus pile is for education. It's for teachers' way more money going into schools than going into those shovel-ready projects we heard so much about.

So 34 mil to that district; and here is what we noticed within that. Take a look at this figure, almost $200,000 -- it's $188,000 to buy double oven steamers and some other things to make school lunches healthier. What they're doing here is they are getting rid of some of those old deep fryers that a lot of food was going into.

We have some pictures here for you of what we're talking about here because I didn't know what they were. Double oven steamers, a much healthier way to still quickly prepare mass quantities of food -- the theory being you use this to make the food instead, kids have healthier options and ultimately they will be living healthier lives.

And this is just the kind of thing the first lady has been talking about pretty often, including recently at the National Governors' Association.

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MICHELLE OBAMA, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: We can't forget, for example, the 31 million of our children participate in federal school meal programs. So we don't want to be in the position where we take one step forward with parents making good decisions but then we take two steps back when lunchtime rolls around at school and kids are faced with poor choices in the school cafeteria.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOSH: And Fred, for us here at the Stimulus Desk, this is another good example of what we look at. There are all sorts of projects out there getting funding from all these hundreds of billions of dollars. And in many cases it's certainly a worthwhile project. The question for all Americans to decide is what is appropriate use of stimulus fund and what's not? And people can weigh in on either side of this one -- Fred.

WHITFIELD: And important too, so say your kid's school doesn't have a double steamer stove --

LEVS: Yes.

WHITFIELD: -- as a parent what do you do to try and get improvements in your school's lunches?

LEVS: You know, we were thinking about that because a lot of times people hear about one place getting something like -- wait what about my kid. I'm seeing the things that my kids supposed to eat at lunch, I want one of those.

So let me give you a couple of resources here. We're going to take this computer behind me. The first web page you're seeing is our stimulus page, the CNN.com/stimulus which I have open right here. I think, we could take that, there you go.

But I have two pages that I want you to see. This is the First Lady's program called "Let's Move" which talks to you about what she's doing to try to get healthier options all over the country. And this -- really quickly, it's called the Healthier U.S. Food Challenge. A school challenge, Healthier U.S. School Challenge and it talks you through what can be done.

Now, I've posted these links for you at my page. Let's go to that. These links are up for you right now. You can click on them yourself at our blog at CNN.com/Josh. They're also at my Facebook page, JoshLevsCNN and they're at my Twitter right now, JoshLevsCNN. Check them out for yourself.

It talks you through what to do if you want to try to get your school involved and, Fred, to get some federal support there.

WHITFIELD: Oh, very good. All right, thanks so much.

LEVS: You bet.

WHITFIELD: Very helpful, Josh, I appreciate that.

All right, we've got a lot going on in the CNN NEWSROOM. Here's what our reporters are working on for the next hour. We begin with White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Fred, aides say the president is moving into the final act. He is going to be talking about legislation -- health care reform legislation that he wants to push forward and that he is embracing some Republican proposals. We'll have more on that at the top of the hour.

SARA SIDNER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Sara Sidner in Concepcion, Chile. After five days the earthquake has stopped but these aftershocks keep rolling in. We're going to give you an update on the destruction, the security situation after days of looting and the desperation still in this city. That's coming up in the next hour.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And I'm Susan Candiotti in New York. A child directing planes at JFK? It's apparently on tape and the FAA is investigating. I'll have a live report coming up.

WHITFIELD: All right, thanks all of you ladies. And we're also closely following the hour's breaking news with one of the nation's most powerful politicians temporarily stepping aside due to scandal.

We're right back after this.

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