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Health Care Reforms; Plan of Questionable Value; Answering Health care Questions; Blueprint for Security; Doctor Accused of Sexual Abuse; Dysfunctional Allies?; Back From Afghanistan; Principal Bans Hugging at School; America's War Next Door

Aired March 24, 2010 - 09:00   ET

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

KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Meanwhile the news continues right now, CNN NEWSROOM with Kyra Phillips continues.

Hi, Kyra.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Admit it, you guys, if they kept all our mikes on during the commercial breaks they'd have plenty of bloopers.

CHETRY: Oh, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

CHETRY: No argument here.

PHILLIPS: See? Kiran, I love how transparent you are. John, you're just faking it. All right, happy Wednesday, guys.

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIPS: We're going to be move straight ahead. I know I have to leave it there.

We're going to talking over the next couple hours about, of course, friends and allies, looking at each other but not seeing eye to eye. Has the bond between the U.S. and Israel ever been this strained?

Parents trusted him with their children's lives. Prosecutors say he broke that trust in sickening ways. Was this guy a sex offender first and a pediatrician second?

And so green, so lush, so toxic. What is it about this small scenic California farming town that's making babies sick? Our special investigation next hour.

The ink is dry, the pens are down, the gloves are off. And Jill Dougherty is filling us in on where health care reform goes next.

And remember the government program to help you save from foreclosure? Well, guess what? The program itself might need saving. Stephanie Elam tells us why it's getting slammed. And your questions about changes in your health care. What will reform mean when it's time to see the doctor or the surgeon or the pharmacist? Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta has some answers for us.

We're at the top of the hour now, and the ink is barely dry on the new health care law, and now the fight returns to Capitol Hill.

The Senate begins debate over possible changes to the House measure, and Senate Republicans are champing at the bit and promising to use every maneuver possible to undermine or defeat the measure.

Fourteen states have already filed lawsuits saying the law is unconstitutional. As for the president, he'll go behind closed doors today to restrict federal funding of abortions. It was that promise that clinched the final, critical votes for the bill's passage.

As a matter of fact, it was the very issue that stirred so much rage that a congressman shouted "baby killer" in the House chambers during Sunday's historic vote.

CNN's Jill Dougherty at the White House.

So what's the deal with this executive order being signed behind closed doors, and what does it mean, Jill?

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, the president really had to reassure members of Congress and the Senate who supported -- who do not support abortion rights that the federal restrictions on funding for abortion remain in place. That nothing had changed.

And so what he does is he signs an executive order. And, again, it just really is one more step to reassure them that everything is going to be the same and that federal money will not be used for abortions.

PHILLIPS: So, Jill, why wasn't this just put in the bill?

DOUGHERTY: Well, in effect, it kind of is in the bill because nothing changes. But there was so much concern by people, let's say Bart Stupak, a member of Congress who would be here today.

In fact, the president has 13 members of Congress and one senator who are all -- who do not support abortion rights who will be here for the signing. It was just one more way of making it explicit. They needed that because it was so contentious. They really wanted the president to go that extra step.

PHILLIPS: And now the president hits the road tomorrow. So what's his next move?

DOUGHERTY: Right. So he goes to Iowa City, Iowa. Why there? Because that's where -- back in 2007 -- he began the campaign, and during the campaign began his campaign for health care reform, so he goes back to the beginning and once again goes out to talk with Americans about how this bill should work. PHILLIPS: Jill Dougherty at the White House. Jill, thanks so much.

And as expected, the health care reform law is headed to court. Fourteen states have now filed lawsuits trying to challenge it. Attorneys general from South Dakota to South Carolina say it's unconstitutional because Congress is mandating that people buy health insurance.

Legal experts say the lawsuit has little chance of succeeding because under the Constitution federal laws trump state laws.

Senator Ted Kennedy spent decades fighting for health care reform, and he was not forgotten when the overhaul was finally signed into law.

Kennedy's youngest son, Patrick, left this note by his grave at Arlington National Cemetery. "Dad, the unfinished business is done."

Kennedy died of cancer in August. President Obama credited the late senator's work in yesterday's bill signing.

We've received hundreds of e-mails from you asking what the health care reforms will mean. Well, in less than 10 minutes we're going to get some answers from CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Then next hour we'll answer more of your questions. We're going to be joined by a doctor and a lawyer about the changes that you can expect to see.

First, our vice president was dissed in Israel, then Israel's prime minister got the snub here. It's pretty clear. The U.S. and its key ally in the Middle East are fighting like never before. And in a word, here's why.

Jerusalem. It's in the eastern part of the holy city where many Palestinian Arabs live and where they had hoped to create their future state capital. But Israel, which governs all of Jerusalem, insists on building more apartments there for its Jewish residents.

Well, last night the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, went to the White House for a good talking-to by President Obama. But unlike most visits by Israel leaders, there was no photo-op, no chitchat with reporters afterward. Nothing.

So why is this all so critical? Because Americans lead the peace effort there. And then there's Iran.

We'll go live to Jerusalem later for the bigger picture.

Good all issue number one. Oh yes. It's still the economy by a mile.

Take a gander at this CNN Opinion Research poll done over the weekend. We asked, what's the most important issue to your vote for Congress? Forty-three percent said the economy, 23 percent answered health care, education tops for 11 percent.

While the deficit and wars were 8 and 7 percent respectively. Terrorism a point more than energy.

Meaningless goals, lousy execution, making a bad problem even worse. Not exactly high praise for the government program to keep Americans in their homes.

Stephanie Elam is with us to talk about a watchdog group's report.

And Stephanie, they really ripped into this foreclosure program.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. They made it very clear how they feel about this, Kyra. We're talking about the $75 billion loan modification program.

And basically we have the special inspector general of the TARP bailout -- talking about Neil Barofsky here -- coming out, really saying that the program has a lot of problems. It says it may help as little as 1.5 to 2 million people. And that's about half the target of what the Obama administration had in mind when this was announced in 2009 in February.

And keep in mind that about eight million people are reportedly behind on mortgages or are in the foreclosure states. So they're saying that the government set meaningless goals that were unclear and believes the program is actually going to fall short of its goal all together.

They're also saying that the implementation of the program was mismanaged and it put people into trial modifications without getting the proper documentation that would be necessary to even take them on to a more permanent setup.

And now they're saying that there's a large number of defaults that are at risk here because people may still have issues with these and may still end up losing their homes, which is just crazy to hear about.

So through February, if you take a look at where we are through February, 170,000 borrowers got permanent modifications. More than 1.3 million, though, were in those trial modifications. And the Treasury says that 40 percent of the homeowners in the program may re- default, and the reason for that is because the program didn't factor in the total borrower's debt.

So at this point, Kyra, Neil Barofsky is saying here's what needs to be to happen. They need to clarify their expectations of this program. The Treasury Department needs to do that. They're also saying that they need to let servicers use other forms of income verification to make sure they have the right documentation so people can move out of trial ones into permanent fixes for their situation with the mortgages.

Also they're saying they need to work to bring down the risk of defaults here. And if you take a look at this all together, the biggest thing I see coming out of this is that Barofsky believes, because this wasn't handled in the right way in the first place, this could actually spread the foreclosure crisis out over several years than helping to truncate it as of now.

And as for the Treasury Department, they're saying that there are some successes out there and they shouldn't just be judged completely on the number of people who have permanent modifications.

They say that they are going to work to become more clear about their objectives. But it's pretty clear, Kyra, that overall Neil Barofsky thinks that this program is a bunch of mess.

PHILLIPS: A bunch of mess. That was well put there.

ELAM: Yes.

PHILLIPS: Unlike Vice President Joe Biden.

ELAM: Because there's too many different things.

PHILLIPS: Who likes to throw out an F word there. Yes.

ELAM: Did I scare you?

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIPS: Yes, I got a little nervous. Thanks, Stephanie.

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIPS: All right. Well, you've been filling our inbox with questions about changes in your health care, and we're answering them in just a few minutes. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here.

REYNOLDS WOLF, AMS METEOROLOGIST: And we have got one big storm system that's rolling through the middle of the nation that could bring a lot of different rough weather, types of rough weather in terms of heavy snow to the Rockies and possibly some severe storms to parts of Dallas and Ft. Worth.

That full story is coming up in a few minutes. You're watching CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, we have received tons of your e-mails with questions about health care, and chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here with answers at our health care desk.

You know we've had our stimulus desk. We've had all kinds of desks.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we do.

PHILLIPS: But you know what? (LAUGHTER)

PHILLIPS: We've got to have a health care desk.

GUPTA: We've got to have a desk. Yes.

PHILLIPS: Isn't this great? This is all for you.

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIPS: We're going to hopefully be doing this --

GUPTA: The first desk.

PHILLIPS: There you go. You're the first, Doc. And then folks, we're talking about the digestion when you swallow your gum. I don't know -- does insurance cover that if anything goes wrong?

(LAUGHTER)

GUPTA: I'll have to look that one up specifically. 2700 pages. It better have something about that in there.

PHILLIPS: Thank you, Sanjay. All right, let's get to our first question, shall we? Here -- this is coming via Twitter from Virginia. "What will happen when there are not enough doctors to oblige all of the patients?"

GUPTA: This is probably one of the most common questions we get. And the math is pretty simple here, Kyra. Right now they predict that there'll be a 40,000 doctor shortage even before the health care was signed. Forty thousand primary care doctor shortage.

Now you're going to add about 32 million more people that have insurance. So you can -- you know the math is pretty simple. By the way, those 32 million people who sign up for new programs, a lot of them will get free preventive services, as well, which will obviously increase the need and demand for doctors even more.

There's incentives built in to try and get more primary care doctors into the system. Student forgiveness loans, for example. Increased reimbursements for certain primary care specialties.

They're also banking on this idea of community health centers. They're not hospitals but they're places you can go if you have something --

PHILLIPS: We have stories actually on this.

GUPTA: Yes.

PHILLIPS: Right.

GUPTA: And they can service a lot of the non-urgent, non- emergent needs of a particular community so that may help take some of the pressure off those primary care doctors, as well. But I think this is going to be an issue going forward.

PHILLIPS: Well, and also to -- that's right. Those clinics are called doc in a box, right?

GUPTA: Some --

PHILLIPS: During college. Those were the places you ran to.

GUPTA: People call them that.

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIPS: Not very --

GUPTA: You're one of them.

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIPS: Sanjay, we shouldn't have talked about swallowing gum before the segment.

But the hope is, too, right, if more doctors are made available that less people will be flooding the emergency rooms because that's a huge problem right now.

GUPTA: That's absolutely -- what you're describing is absolutely the case. And ERs have a lot of overhead expenses. There's a lot of things that go into taking care of a patient in an emergency room, so taking care of the exact same patient with the exact same diagnosis just simply costs a lot more in an ER.

So you know, getting people to be able to maintain their doctors visits would be a huge advantage.

PHILLIPS: All right. Another question here. This one coming from Joans in New Jersey. "Does the elimination of lifetime caps under the new health care bill apply to existing policy holders as well as new insurance sign-ups?"

GUPTA: The short answer to this question is yes, and that's some good news potentially. The scenario is this, Kyra, is that you've been healthy, fine your whole life. And then you get sort of medical problem, whether it's a trauma from a car accident or some sort of chronic disease.

And there's this concern all of a sudden, will your insurance company cover anything? Will they stop paying after a certain amount of money? That's what a cap is.

Under the health care bill, what they're saying is for all policy holders, new policy holders, existing policy holders. There will be no lifetime caps on what insurance companies should pay to take care of you.

And as far as annual caps, the cap in any given year, they say it's going to be much more restrictive. The Department of Health and Human Services is going to create that language specifically, but that's what we're hearing about annual and lifetime caps.

But again all policy holders.

PHILLIPS: OK. (INAUDIBLE) Daddy via Twitter here. Here's the question. "What happens if I can't afford health insurance and don't qualify for Medicaid? What are my options?"

GUPTA: This is a common scenario. Someone's cost of living is high enough where they simply can't afford health care insurance, but it's also too high to qualify for Medicaid.

Two scenarios. One is if they have some sort of medical problem they can within 90 days qualify for what's known as a high-risk pool. They can join these pools of medical care around the country.

PHILLIPS: How do you do that? You just --

GUPTA: Well, you have to qualify. So it's usually people who have some sort of medical problem now and are -- because of money can't buy insurance. Either the premiums are too high or they're not making enough money to buy health care insurance.

And so you sign up for the pool and it's using, you know, the volume of a lot of people signing up to try and negotiate rates with health care insurance companies. It's still going to cost money, which is why the federal government is saying we're going to put $5 billion into these pools to take care of people like this.

Ultimately, there's going to be these exchanges. As you know, Kyra, in four years, it's like a supermarket of health care plans available to you. You go shop as opposed to -- you know, just having one or two choices. You have lots of choices allowing them to compete for your business.

That's the hope that eventually people can get their premiums lower on that. And if they can't still, they'll get subsidies.

PHILLIPS: Got it. Thanks so much. You know this is -- you know we cover a lot of story, and the health care -- I mean, just yesterday on my blog in less than two hours we had 500 questions.

We just made one mention of send us your questions. There are so many Americans that are interested in this and have a lot of questions. And it's not stopping. I mean it's continuous and we're getting more and more.

GUPTA: You know, what's amazing, I've read this bill twice, 2,700 pages. I felt it mandatory for me to read it twice to understand it. But there are things that people are asking --

PHILLIPS: That's better than a lot of our lawmakers who never got through it the first time.

GUPTA: Right. Yes, I know. They never had the chance.

PHILLIPS: Never got through it the first time. GUPTA: But there are a lot of questions that are coming up that, you know, are going to be questions that people just simply didn't think through. Even though it's a long, you know, bill, there's going to be things that come up that people are going to have to sort of figure out still with this. And that's what's going to take place over the next several months if not years.

PHILLIPS: Keep doing the health desk.

GUPTA: Yes. I'll be here.

PHILLIPS: And help us all. Thanks, Sanjay.

GUPTA: You'll have me back then?

PHILLIPS: Yes. You're doing fabulous.

GUPTA: All right.

(LAUGHTER)

PHILLIPS: All right. We'll have more obviously with Sanjay in the 10:00 hour and also coming up tomorrow.

All right. The calendar says it's spring, but it looks a lot like winter in Broomfield, Colorado.

Check this out. This is just outside Denver. Wet snow falling late yesterday at a rate of up to an inch an hour. Nineteen inches of snow in Boulder, Colorado yesterday. Now that storm is going to head to north Texas.

You know, Reynolds, we thought spring had sprung when we saw the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C. What happened?

WOLF: I know. Saturday afternoon is when it officially began and it's still old man winter still hanging on.

(WEATHER REPORT)

PHILLIPS: All right, thanks, Reynolds.

WOLF: You bet.

PHILLIPS: A split decision on the case of a teenage lesbian barred from taking her girlfriend to the high school prom. But few are dancing for Joy in Aberdeen, Mississippi this morning. Back in 90 seconds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Court hearing is set for this hour in Cleveland. Fifty-year-old Anthony Sowell is accused in the brutal murders of 11 women. Their remains were found last year in his home, now dubbed the House of horrors. Sowell faces 85 charges which includes murder, rape and kidnapping. He's pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. She won her legal battle but lost her chance to dance. A federal judge agreed with Mississippi teenager Constance McMillen. He ruled that McMillen's First Amendment rights were violated when her high school refused to let her take a same-sex date to the school's prom.

But the judge also refused to order Itawamba County School System to hold that dance that was canceled due to controversy.

Changing security at the airport. Metal detectors may no longer have the last word. Instead, it might be you in a face to face interview with screeners.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: A blueprint for airport security, President Obama's choice to run the TSA says he has a model in mind. Israel.

CNN's Kate Bolduan is at the security desk this morning in Washington, D.C.

So, Kate, fill us in.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Very interesting. Hey there, Kyra.

Well, after this position remained vacant for more than a year, President Obama's new pick to lead the Transportation Security Administration will be sitting down for a second day of confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill today.

And yesterday Retired Army Major General Robert Harding started laying out his ideas for U.S. airport security, saying he really wants to beef it up to better resemble certain airports overseas. Listen here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAJ. ROBERT HARDING (RET), TSA NOMINEE: I agree with you that we should move even closer to an Israeli model, whether it's more engagement with passengers. I think that increases the layers and pushes the layers out. I think that's a very important aspect of providing security is engaging the public. The last point --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Now you heard right there. He says more engagement with passengers. Well, the Israeli system is marked by aggressive questioning of passengers, and it's praised by security experts as making their system one of the most secure in the world.

But Kyra, it's also criticized by some privacy and civil rights advocates especially who say that the system leads to passenger profiling.

And one more point also during the hearing, Harding endorsed the use of full-body imagers at airports that we've been talking so much about that also have raised some privacy concerns among some, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, and there was a lot of concern, too, that the head post had remained vacant since the Bush administration.

BOLDUAN: Yes, absolutely. Since the Bush administration, Harding is actually President Obama's second choice for this position. Erroll Southers was nominated but then withdrew his name after a situation where he changed his story, really, on a disciplinary matter while he was an FBI agent.

But this post -- it's a very important post, some have said, and we all talk about it -- this post -- all the time. It's very important and it has remained vacant for over a year now and people are very happy to see that these confirmation hearings are at least beginning.

But there's really no date yet. As -- you know, we know it needs to go before the full Senate, Kyra, and no date yet set for when that vote will happen.

PHILLIPS: Yes. We'll track it. Thanks, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Of course.

PHILLIPS: Accused of raping kids. A Delaware pediatrician heads to court today but without his hired attorneys.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: Live in the CNN NEWSROOM, Kyra Phillips.

PHILLIPS: And it's almost 9:30 Eastern Time, about 30 seconds away. We're keeping a close eye on Wall Street right now, waiting for the opening bell.

Investors are keeping a close eye on the latest barometer of the economy, of course. We're going to have a new housing report just minutes from now.

But yesterday's rally on the ropes? Hmm, we'll take a look at the board as soon as the bell rings. There it is.

Also we're going to talk about these credit scores we monitored in the opening bell. Do you know and you even know how you got it? Well, some lawmakers on Capitol Hill want to help you keep track of who's looking at your scores. A House panel is actually holding a hearing this afternoon on credit reporting and its impact on you and me. On the hot seat, representatives of the three major credit bureaus that rate you.

OK. It's a story that just makes your skin crawl. A Delaware pediatrician is headed to court for the first time today accused of abusing more than 100 of his patients. Sometimes, the parents were right there in the next room. We have more on this in two minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) PHILLIPS: This story shocked us. It shocked parents and it disgusted a very trusting community. A Delaware pediatrician charged with rape. Dr. Earl Bradley is accused of sexually abusing more than 100 kids, some of them as young as 3 months old, all of them patients of his. He's in court today, and we promised you that we would stay on this story. So, on the phone once again, Chris Barrish, who's been covering this story for the news journal in Wilmington, Delaware.

So, Chris, any surprises going to come out of today's arraignment? What do you think?

CHRIS BARRISH, REPORTER, "THE NEWS JOURNAL" (via telephone): I don't think so. It will be the first time anybody seen him since he was arrested in December out in public. So, he'll probably plead not guilty to his attorney. I don't expect him to say much. One new development is that his private attorneys left the case last week, and now, he's being defended by the office of the public defender.

PHILLIPS: And that's because the judge froze his assets, right? Why did he do that?

BARRISH: The Attorney General Beau Biden put a lien on his assets or the court put a lien on his assets so that victims who would be suing him and his estate will be able to recover some of these assets. Now, the private attorney said that this put him in a position where he would have to petition the court to get paid for himself, and the experts he was planning to hire to put on a mental health defense and that it was basically just too much hassle and effort, and he decided he wasn't going to do it.

PHILLIPS: As you and I talked about when this first broke and we read about the 471 counts that he was indicted on, it's going to be pretty hard to prove in any way, shape, or form that this guy should be cut any type of break because of what he did and what was captured on videotape. Remind our viewers, Chris, just how disgusting these allegations were.

BARRISH: What's been reported in police affidavits is that he was recorded having intercourse and oral sex with children ranging from 3 months to 13 years old. Five of the children, according to court documents, appeared to lose consciousness or stop breathing during the attack. He was barking commands at victims. In one, he had a violently enraged expression on his face. And these were attacks he committed at his office. He would take children away from their parents ostensibly to give them ice cream or a treat or just to calm them down if they got a shot, and he would do this while he had other patient waiting and he pulled it offered, according to prosecutors, about a dozen years.

PHILLIPS: And that's what a lot of us wanted to know. How could he pull this off? And you were telling us, apparently, he was very good at kind of schmoozing the parents. There was a playroom and kind of a whole setup of different areas where other kids could be distracted with their parents while he would say, oh, it's OK, let me take, you know, little Johnny in and give him his checkup. BARRISH: Exactly, but not doing the checkup like go, you know, just calm him down or give him a treat or -- he had one room he was setting up as like a movie theater. He had one room decorated as Pinocchio, and what he would do is he would look for vulnerable parents, like a parent changing a diaper with another child who was crying, and he would say, you know, let me take the little girl away for a second and, you know, one second on the -- or five seconds on the first, this would turn into a minute on the second one or even five minutes.

One mother said he took her daughter away, and she waited for, like, five to ten minutes while people were waiting in the waiting room and literally went outside and found the child walking back with him from this outbuilding he took her to crying. You know, she's not sure what happened in there and is waiting, you know, to see if she's on the videotape. So, this is just a case that's just, you know, enraged people down here.

PHILLIPS: Yes. It enraged us, too. I mean, he deserves the worst punishment possible. We will follow today's arraignment.

And Chris, it's always great talking to you. Chris Barrish is a reporter for "The News Journal" joining us there from Wilmington, Delaware. Chris, we really appreciate your insight.

BARRISH: Thanks, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: You bet.

An Irish bishop has resigned amid the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Bishop John McGee apologized for any abuse by priests to his diocese that happened on his watch. Five Irish bishops have handed in resignations since December due to this scandal. The Vatican has accepted two of them.

And remember her story? A killer whale dragged this SeaWorld trainer under water, killing her last month. And now family members of Dawn Brancheau want to make sure her final moments don't go public. A SeaWorld security camera reportedly recorded it and today, a Florida judge is expected to decide just how long to hold the release of the video. Under state law, the video will become public record once the investigation ends.

We told you some foreclosure horror stories, but here's a real twist. A cleaning crew sent by the bank to a Florida home found dozens of dead snakes inside. Seventeen other snakes were barely alive. That's not enough to make you a bit squeamish. There were also dead scorpions, frogs, insects and mice. One cop called it the nastiest home he's ever been in. The home's previous owner has been arrested on animal cruelty charges.

So, is this how friends behave, using words like "insulting", not taking photos when they get together? This is where the U.S.-Israeli relationship is right now. In less than a minute, we'll tell you why.

And the academy award for best actress goes to Halle Berry. Remember that? It was on this date. Eight years ago, she became the first African-American to win that award. The movie was "Monster's Ball," and in her tearful acceptance speech, she paid tribute to all the women that came before her.

And remember Captain Joseph Hazelwood? He was at the helm of the Exxon Valdez when the massive oil tankers run aground on the state in 1989. Eleven million gallons of oil spilled into Alaska's Prince William sound.

Oh, yes. And in 1958, Elvis joined the Army. He reported to the draft board in Memphis, Tennessee, for his induction. A day later, they gave him a buzz cut. Private Presley was trained in tanks during his two years in service and obviously never stopped writing his music.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

Dysfunctional allies? The U.S. and Israel are stuck right now over the issue of construction plans for East Jerusalem. Israel is defiant about moving forward. The U.S. wants it stopped, saying Middle East peace is at stake. Our Kevin Flowers is in Jerusalem.

Kevin, the U.S. and Israel are tight. We've known that for years. The U.S. gives Israel nearly $3 billion a year in aid. So, how far will Israel push this building issue?

KEVIN FLOWERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, that's a question a lot of people are asking here as well. And what we know for certain is that it's almost politically impossible for the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to announce publicly a freeze on construction in East Jerusalem. If he did that, his coalition would fall apart. He would be out of power. But the very least what the United States would like to see is an end to these various public announcements that we've seen from the Israeli government about new Israeli construction in East Jerusalem.

Just last night, it was revealed that -- by the Jerusalem municipality, that 20 more units of Israeli housing in an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem had gotten approval last week, this during the entire sort of breakdown of relations with the U.S. over this very issue. So, it's moves like these that the Americans see as provocative and not being helpful to getting the Israelis and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. So, they definitely like to see that change -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: And we're not just talking about a peace deal here that the U.S. and Israel and the Palestinians have been working on for years, but also the U.S. and Israel's joint stand on Iran. Anybody in Israel worried that this growing rift will stop two old allies from tackling that Iranian threat?

FLOWERS: I don't think many people here believe that the U.S. won't stand behind Israel in face of an Iranian threat, but what people are worried about is that issues like this, a rift, a deterioration in relationships over construction in East Jerusalem, construction of settlements in the west bank, that these all take away attention from what is the number-one priority for this Israeli government, which is to shine international attention on the potential threat from Iran. That's what they're worried about and that's what they want people to pay attention to more than anything else -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Kevin Flower, appreciate it.

Coming home in the middle of the night. Family members stayed up late to welcome home hundreds of troops fresh off a year's deployment on the battlefield of Afghanistan. We get the story now for Linda Figueredo of affiliate WTOC in Savannah, Georgia.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And then very tired.

LINDA FIGUEREDO, WTOC REPORTER (voice-over): Three-year-old Katie Hanley (ph) and hundreds of families with the 48th brigade of the Georgia National Guard braved the cold.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've got blankets and hot chocolate.

FIGUEREDO: Waiting for their loved ones to arrive home from Afghanistan.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're just looking forward to them coming home so we can kind of get back to normal, a new normal, actually. And we're just happy at this point the deployment's over and everybody's coming home safely.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've been lucky. He's been there several times, but for short deployments, this has been the longest one, and the hardest with a 3-year-old and a 3-month-old.

FIGUEREDO: And Hanley knows exactly what her daddy is going to do once he sees her.

UNIDENTIFIED KID: Daddy is going to smush me.

FIGUEREDO: Waving flags and holding signs, these families, friends, and loved ones can't wait to hug their soldiers again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To see him right in front of me, that's going to be awesome.

FIGUEREDO: And the cheers start to build.

PEOPLE: USA. USA.

FIGUEREDO: And finally, families see the soldiers march into a control field at Ft. Stewart.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congratulations for a job well done.

FIGUEREDO: Then the waterworks begin as 300 soldiers are reunited with their families. These brave men and women of the 48th Brigade are returning home from Afghanistan, where they spent a year training and mentoring Afghan Security Forces. Our cameras captured the moment when Katie finally got her hug from daddy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And this is what you think about, you think about this constantly while you're overseas.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It felt good to see everybody here, you know, knowing that your family members are here waiting on you to get home.

FIGUEREDO: Safe at home in the arms of their loved ones.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Now, the rest of the 48th is expected home next month. The National Guard soldiers will spend a few more days on active duty before returning home to their families.

And a somber homecoming in Hot Springs, Arkansas; the body of Navy Seal Adam Lee Brown arrived there yesterday. He died Saturday of injuries from a combat mission last week in Afghanistan. Friends, family, people who didn't even know him showed up there to honor him.

He actually got the Bronze Star for his bravery in battle. And we remember him and also lift up the 1,019 U.S. troops who have died in Afghanistan and the 4,390 that have been killed in Iraq.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, just think, one day you could tell your grandkids, "Back in my day they used to let us embrace at school. They were called hugs." Yes, at one middle school in Oregon, it's come to this. Hugging banned, hands off, no Xs, no Os.

Now, why would the principal do something like that? Don't we encourage hugs, not drugs? Don't we see bumper stickers that say, "Have you hugged yourself today?" Don't we put Huggies on our little babies? Why hate on a hug?

Help me get my arms around this. Well I'm going to let reporter Sophie Soong from KPTV in Portland try to explain in a very uncomfortable manner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SOPHIE SOONG, KPTV, PORTLAND: It was that more-than-hugging behavior that first caught Principal Allison Couch's attention. She says school is a place for learning and when the hugging distracted from that she had to put an end to it.

She says not only were student arriving late to class because of the hugs but some kids got hugs even if they didn't want one. The most extreme case, she says girls would hug boys as a game to see how long it would take to get them aroused.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That just seems absolutely just strange and shocking.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: What he said. Well, when you put it that way, maybe it's not such a bad idea.

Health care reform, proponents, detractors and promises made, we're digging into that story next hour beginning with Jill Dougherty at the White House -- Jill.

DOUGHERTY: Well, Kyra there is another health care signing here at the White House today, but this one is being done in private and we'll have details at the top of the hour.

POPPY HARLOW, CNNMONEY.COM: And we all know Starbucks, but did you know that they give health care to a lot of their employees that aren't full-timers, even the baristas behind the counter. It's costing the company $300 million, but it's critical. We're going to tell you why coming up in the next hour.

WOLF: And it is an early spring time storm that could bring some heavy snow to parts of the Rockies and possibly some strong thunderstorms to the southern plains. We're going to give you the full details coming up in just a few moments.

PHILLIPS: Thanks, guys.

The next hour I'll take you to Cattleman City, California, a Latino version of Mayberry USA, but with one hug -- or huge rather and disturbing distinction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How do we know if a birth defect is more than one mother's misery?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): It's such a small town and such a large problem. We want to give our children life, not death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Our investigation straight ahead in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Can anything beat back the rising tide of drugs, guns and violence along the U.S. Mexican border? In the search for an answer, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led a U.S. delegation to Mexico yesterday where she candidly admitted much of the problem Mexico is facing stems from America's appetite for illegal narcotics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We know that the demand for drugs drives much of this illicit trade that guns purchased in the United States as we saw some of the examples outside are used to facilitate violence here in Mexico. And the United States must and is doing its part to help you and us meet those challenges.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: And those challenges grow daily. Drug-related violence has gotten so bad that the Mexican border town of Juarez is now one of the most dangerous places in the world to live and die.

CNN's Gary Tuchman gives us a blood-curdling first-person account of the incredible violence there. And I've got to warn you, this story is not for the squeamish.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This man has just watched gunmen ambush his brother and murder him. In one of the most frightening cities in the world, Juarez, Mexico, a place where 16 young people can get killed at a party by narco traffickers, who apparently made a mistake, targeting the wrong house and few are stunned by it.

Drug cartels are at war in this city of 1.5 million; law-abiding citizens be damned.

This past weekend, we went to the funeral of an American woman who worked at the U.S. consulate in Juarez. She was shot and killed, along with her American husband and unborn child. It happened right in front of the Juarez mayor's office, a stone's throw away from El Paso, Texas.

Over the next few hours we saw firsthand what has led to Juarez having the highest murder rate in the world.

(on camera): There's no such thing as a quiet weekend day here in Ciudad Juarez. About one hour ago, police got a call that in this murky river there was a body. When they got to the scene, they indeed found the body with a bullet hole right in the forehead. Behind me, members of the military with guns, police; these guys will probably be at another murder later today.

(voice-over): We didn't realize how quickly we'd see them again.

(on camera): Only ten minutes after we left that river, a five- minute drive away, this was the scene. Two men in that gold pick-up, six gunmen came up to them. The driver ran out, was shot and now he is under that tarp.

(voice-over): Why was he targeted? We may never know. This is the brother of the victim who was also in the pickup. The gunmen left him unharmed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We were just going to the tire shop to pick up a tire and nothing more.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Thirty minutes later, another execution- style killing. A worker in an electrical store shot multiple times at close range. Neighbors are afraid to talk about what they know and fear the murderers will come after them.

I asked this man if he heard anything.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nada.

TUCHMAN (on camera): Nada?

As an observer, it is very disturbing how this all starts feeling very routine. We're seeing the same police officers, the same members of the military. No matter how nice the neighborhood is or how light the sky is or how many children are out on the streets, if these narco traffickers are targeting you or they mistake you for someone they want to target, you're almost as good as dead.

(voice-over): We're told that something horrible happened in the middle of the desert outside of Juarez. We drive on a gravel road into near total isolation to see what police discovered from an anonymous tip.

(on camera): What the authorities found here was a mass grave; this hole right here had five decomposed bodies, one of them without a head.

(voice-over): It had been less than four hours since we arrived in Juarez when we saw this scene. The body of a man shot more than a dozen times at close range in the back seat of a car. Outside the police line, a woman who didn't want to talk sobs.

This woman was one house down from where the execution took place.

(on camera): So did you hear gunshots?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

TUCHMAN: You're right next door to where they happened.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, yes, but no, we didn't hear anything.

TUCHMAN: Would you be afraid to tell me if you did hear something?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, yes.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): So many people are afraid in Juarez. After a sunny Saturday afternoon here, you see why.

Gary Tuchman, CNN, Juarez, Mexico.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: And you're looking at a live picture of a court hearing right now that just started in Florida. It will determine whether to keep footage of this SeaWorld trainer under lock and key. A security camera actually captured the death of Dawn Brancheau after one of the killer whales dragged her under water last month. Brancheau's family wants to make sure that her final moments don't go public in hopes that the judge will hold on to that video's release.

And a hearing is under way in Cleveland. Fifty-year-old Anthony Sowell is accused in the brutal murders of 11 women. Their remains were found last year at his home now dubbed the "House of Horrors". Sowell faces 85 charges which include murder, rape and kidnapping. He's pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.