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Recruiting Station Bomb Plot; Private Spacecraft Splashes Down; Last Lifeline Gone for Millions

Aired December 08, 2010 - 14:00   ET

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

ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: All right. I want to bring you some breaking news right now from Maryland.

Authorities today arrested a Baltimore man on suspicion of planning a -- plotting to bomb a U.S. military recruiting station. The suspect is due in court this hour.

CNN's homeland security correspondent, Jeanne Meserve, is on the story. She just got her hands on the indictment. She's been reading it up to this minute.

Jeanne, what have you learned in there?

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ali, they have now named this individual. His name is Antonio Martinez, AKA Muhammed Hussain. He's been charged with attempt to murder federal officers and employees, and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

As we have told you earlier today, this is someone who law enforcement had been watching since October. They became aware of him because of some postings on a Facebook page that were reported to them.

They worked with undercover agents and an informant to develop this case. And he, according to this complaint, wanted to target this recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland, which is not too far outside of Baltimore.

Why did he want to target that? Well, according to the affidavit, he indicated that the military continued to kill their Muslim brothers and sister and they would need to expand their operation by killing U.S. Army personnel where they live.

He stated that jihad is not only in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but also in the United States. This, according to the criminal complaint.

Now, this all has been unfolding for several months, but the arrest came this morning at that recruiting station in Catonsville. Let me read you the part of the complaint which outlines what happened there this morning.

In the morning, "he met, as planned, with the undercover agent and the informant in the parking lot. He was observed by surveillance agents inspecting the components of a bomb in the back of an SUV. This was an inert device that had been supplied to him by the FBI."

According to this complaint, "It appeared that he was arming the device as he had been instructed to do. He then drove the SUV, as planned, to the recruiting center, parked it in front of the building. He exited the SUV, got in a different vehicle. They drove to a vantage point."

He was then called by the undercover agent and told them that there were indeed soldiers in the recruiting center. And at that time, according to the complaint, "Martinez attempted to detonate the device," which was in fact an inert bomb. He was immediately placed under arrest at that time. And so he was arrested just hours ago, appearing in a court in Baltimore at this hour.

Ali, back to you.

VELSHI: All right. We had some pictures up there of that court. We have got live shots outside of there when his hearing takes place.

We were also just showing you -- there's the court where his hearing is going to take place. We were also just showing you from our affiliate, WJAL, pictures of that recruiting center outside of Baltimore that Jeanne was just talking about.

Jeanne, you also mentioned that part of the government's indictment -- there's the recruiting center that we're talking about from WJAL.

Jeanne, the issue here may rest on whether he was equipped to and willing to go ahead with this without the encouragement of law enforcement officials. Does that indictment speak to that?

MESERVE: Yes. I just got this minutes ago and am just in the course of reading it, but I can tell you, according to this complaint, there were many conversations that were recorded, activities of his that were observed. And according to this, he was offered several opportunities to back out of this plot which he did not take advantage of.

He also tried to recruit others who were civilians to this plot. He was not successful in doing that.

So the allegation being made by the government was that this was his idea. He made movements to carry it out. He was offered an out and didn't take it.

Clearly, here, law enforcement very concerned about possible allegations and charges from some people that they engaged in entrapment in this instance. They are trying to establish in this complaint that they did not do so.

The secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, was making remarks to the press a short time ago. She commented that stings like this and like the one in Portland, Oregon, just last month, are very important tools for law enforcement, that there are rules of the road. She says law enforcement is aware of those rules and follows them to the letter.

Back to you, Ali.

VELSHI: OK, Jeanne. I'll let you get back to reading that complaint. Let us know. As you find anything, just let us know and we'll get you back in here with more information.

We have got our cameras ready for you. We've got our cameras ready at the courthouse. We'll stay with you on that.

Jeanne Meserve, our national security correspondent, on this new development.

Something else happening. It's called the Development Relief and Education Alien Minors Act. That spells DREAM to its supporters. It's an outrage to its enemies, though.

It's a gateway to U.S. citizenship for young people who were not born in the United States but have never really known any other home. It won't put to rest America's long and painful immigration debate, but it could have a global impact if supporters, who you see here, earlier this morning, can sway lawmakers who may cast do-or-die votes as soon as today.

Here's what you need to know about the DREAM act.

The measure covers illegal immigrants who came to the United States before the age of 16, typically in the arms of their parents, who have lived here for at least -- the teenagers who have lived here for at least five years. To qualify for eventual citizenship, they have to graduate from high school or get a GED, a high school equivalency certificate.

They'll also have to pass a criminal background check. And the Obama administration says DREAM would strengthen the military and strengthen the economy because they would have to go to college or join the military.

They also -- Republicans, by the way, call it mass amnesty. The votes for this could go either way. Whatever happens, you'll hear it first, right here on CNN.

Our "Sound Effect" now is an echo from late July, when a bill to cover health care costs for 9/11 rescue and recovery workers came up short in the House. Today, the measure faces a cloture vote in the Senate. Sixty votes needed to set up a final vote in the waning days of this Congress.

The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation bill is named for an NYPD detective who worked amid the ruins of the World Trade Center and died of respiratory failure at the age of 34, after he worked on the rescue. The House did approve the bill in September, but back in July, when a procedural move blocked it, one of its most passionate supporters could hardly contain his disgust.

I brought it to you then. I want you to hear once again New York Democrat Anthony Weiner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ANTHONY WEINER (D), NEW YORK: We see it in the United States Senate every single day, where members say, we want amendments, we want debate. We want amendments, but we're still a no.

And then we stand up and say oh, if only we had a difference process we'd vote yes. You vote yes if you believe yes! You vote in favor of something if you believe it's the right thing!

If you believe it's the wrong thing, you vote no! We are following on procedure --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Will the gentleman yield?

WEINER: I will not yield to the gentleman! And the gentleman will observe regular order. The gentleman will observe regular order!

The gentleman thinks if he gets up and yells louder he's going to intimidate people into believing he's right. He is wrong! The gentleman is wrong!

The gentleman is providing cover for his colleagues rather than doing the right thing! It's Republicans wrapping their arms around Republicans rather than doing the right thing on behalf of the heroes!

It is a shame. A shame!

If you believe this is a bad idea to provide health care, then vote no! But don't give me the cowardly view that, oh, if it was a different procedure -- the gentleman will observe regular order and sit down!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: Ouch! The gentleman he's talking about -- because that's how you have to refer to people in Congress -- is Peter King, representative from New York, as well a Republican who was actually supporting the bill, but they were disagreeing on it.

The bill is expected to cost around $7 billion over 10 years. Its prospects in the Senate are cloudy at best. We will keep you posted on the vote.

Now we're going outside the beltway, way outside the beltway. Within the past few moments, if all went according to plan, a capsule named Dragon completed two full orbits of the Earth and is about to -- maybe it already has -- splash down in the Pacific Ocean. It rode into space this morning on a rocket named Falcon that you see there, blazing a trail in 21st century space flight.

That's today's "Two at the Top."

CNN's John Zarrella at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Unfortunately, too far to be able to see whether this thing is splashing down.

But you do have some news on this capsule that we're expecting to drop about 500 miles off the coast of Mexico into the Pacific Ocean.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you're absolutely right, Ali. It may well be in the water now off of Mexico. We just haven't gotten confirmation yet from SpaceX. But, in fact, within the last five minutes or so, they did confirm that they had all three chutes deployed, which is a very good sign, which obviously means that the vehicle reentered the Earth's atmosphere and apparently reentered the Earth's atmosphere intact.

And as you mentioned, this is the Dragon spacecraft. It was put up into orbit by SpaceX, a commercial company, on its Falcon rocket. And we are getting confirmation. My producer Rich Phillips (ph) saying it has landed in the water about 500 miles off Mexico. And according to SpaceX, everything looks great -- according to NASA. NASA officials reporting that.

Now, you know, Ali, this is historic, ,because it is the first time in history that a commercial company has ever launched a rocket, put a capsule in orbit, orbited the Earth, and then successfully returned that capsule back to Earth. Up until now, only five nations in the world have done this.

And all this is a precursor to eventually SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, another company. They have contracts with NASA to fly cargo to the International Space Station. They'll be replacing the space shuttle.

You know, the great irony out here today, Ali, is the launch of the SpaceX rocket, and Discovery sits out there about four-and-a-half miles from me, on Launch Pad 39-A -- you know, problems with the foam on the giant external tank -- waiting to lift off hopefully in February, as the shuttle program begins to wind down. Probably coming to a close next summer.

And so the really critical importance is that these commercial vehicles can pick up the slack and take over getting that cargo to the Space Station -- Ali.

VELSHI: That is a big move. All right.

So you have confirmation that this capsule has dropped into the Pacific Ocean, which is where we expected it to drop. The chutes have deployed, and you are hearing preliminary information that everything seems to be intact.

If this is all true then, John, this is remarkably historic. This signals one more step in the transfer from NASA, where you are, of transportation of people and goods and space into the commercial sector, maybe making it like the airlines.

ZARRELLA: Yes, exactly. And many of these people like Elon Musk have equated it to that. It's how the airline industry first started. Then the commercial companies got it. And, you know, bang, it takes off, and now we're flying all over the world every day, thousands of flights a day. And ultimately, the hope is that commercial companies will be able to make this transition work and that NASA can then move on to do what NASA does best, exploring the heavens, taking astronauts out to Mars, and to explore asteroids.

The thing about this, too, is SpaceX, at some point, hopes -- although they don't have a contract for this yet -- that by 2015, they will be able to start carrying U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station. Between now and then, with shuttle no longer doing that, the Russians are going to be doing that for the United States at a cost of $50 million a ride -- Ali.

VELSHI: Right. Actually, that's an important consideration. The business of doing it commercially will end up being more effective than governments doing it.

ZARRELLA: Yes.

VELSHI: John, good to see you, as always. I hope this turns out to be the good news story that we think it is right now.

Well, the latest twist in the WikiLeaks/Julian Assange drama, a group of Internet activists say it is Operation Payback time. The group is expanding its cyber campaign against companies and individuals seen as anti-Assange. It comes as the WikiLeaks founder cools his heels in a British jail, arrested on a Swedish warrant.

Anyway, after hitting PayPal, a Swedish bank, and Swedish prosecutors, these pro-Assange hackers say they have targeted MasterCard because it severed links with WikiLeaks. They've had the MasterCard corporate Web site down for hours.

The company issued this statement: "MasterCard is experiencing heavy traffic on its external corporate Web site, mastercard.com. We are working to restore normal speed of service. There is no impact whatsoever on our cardholders' ability to use their cards for secure transactions."

Well, imagine having a degree, a family, a career, and then your job, your savings and your jobless benefits all disappear. Why people just like you may not put a turkey on the table this holiday season, coming up in just a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: A lot of Americans have lost their jobs in the past few years, more than eight million. When they do, they can apply for unemployment insurance. But a bunch of them have run out of that insurance, and some of them are called 99ers.

Why? Because you can get -- let me show you how it adds up to 99.

You can get 26 week of regular benefits. That's through your state. And then you get up to 53 weeks of emergency benefits. There's four different tiers there. And if you're still unemployed after all of that and you live in certain states, you can get another 20 weeks of extended benefits.

That adds up at the bottom to 99 weeks. It's not for everybody, by the way. It's even less if you live in one of the states that doesn't have the extended benefits.

But the people who have exhausted all benefits, federal and state, are called 99ers -- 79ers if you live in one of those other states. But collectively, you'll refer to them as 99ers.

And by the way, these people aren't being helped by the president's huge tax cut deal.

CNN's Mary Snow looked at one 99er's story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEBORAH SAVILLE, OUT OF WORK SINCE 2007: We can do 1:00.

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): To look at 50-year- old Deborah Saville, you wouldn't know she's homeless. Yes, she has some sporadic work, but she's among the millions of Americans who are jobless and whose unemployment benefits have run out.

SAVILLE: Right before my eyes, you know, it's just like everything, yes, falling apart. And also, what goes along with that is sort of my zest for life. And I don't know -- like, you know, like a future.

SNOW: Deborah envisioned her future in museums. She was working as an assistant curator at the Brooklyn Museum in 2007 when she lost her job. Then she got evicted.

These days, she's staying with whoever will take her in, including two nights at a shelter. Now she's sleeping on the floor in this artist's loft but needs to be out before Christmas.

Deborah tells us every day is a strategy of survival.

SAVILLE: So, you know, I've had to make choices where, like, I get like a small amount of money to put on my phone because it's just like -- it's just a prepaid cell phone. And then put a little gas in my car, and then make a little more money.

SNOW: While she searches for work, she's also applied for a grant to a masters program in social work, her original career. And in the meantime, takes odd jobs.

Her situation has driven her to meetings like this one for 99ers, a term for people who have exhausted the 99-week limit on unemployment benefits. Kian Fredrick is an organizer in what's become part political action, part support group.

KIAN FREDRICK, 99ER ORGANIZER: To say get a job, you've got your 99 weeks, where are the jobs? 99ers want to work.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need a TOP (ph) so we can EAT. SNOW: 99ers have also staged rallies, pressing Congress to extend what is already an unprecedented amount of benefits. But opponents say if there's an extension, there needs to be spending cuts.

After losing benefits seven months ago, Deborah isn't holding out hope for more government help and braces herself for the possibility of living in her car.

SAVILLE: I don't know where I'm going to end up. You know? I mean, I need my car. I can't be potentially homeless and without something that allows me to do what I need to do.

SNOW: Mary Snow, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: Now, our reporter Mary Snow couldn't be with us today, but she let us know that she just spoke to Deborah. Deborah's reaction to the president's new tax deal? She calls it disgusting and says a large number of unemployed people are being ignored.

Well, if you know someone who likes downloading unauthorized material online like copyrighted movie and music, a controversial new bill in the Senate is taking aim straight at the sites that allow this.

I'll tell you what you need to know next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Now, some people may think nothing of downloading a free song or a movie here or there from an unauthorized file-sharing site like the once-popular Napster, but Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy thinks it's a big deal, reporting that intellectual property theft costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion every year.

Leahy is sponsoring the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act which he says will give the Justice Department tools to track and shut down Web sites that provide access to unauthorized downloads or sale of copyrighted content and counterfeit goods. And that could involve movies, music, even pharmaceuticals.

Joining us now to give us his thoughts on the legislation is social and digital media entrepreneur Rik Willard.

Rik, good to see you.

RIK WILLARD, SOCIAL & DIGITAL MEDIA ENTREPRENEUR: Hello, Ali. How are you?

VELSHI: Good.

Rick, this seems to be obviously a good move, the government getting out there and enforcing laws that protect copyrights and protect patents. Is it a good move?

WILLARD: Well, clearly, protecting against copyright infringement is a good move. As a business person, I have to admit that, and I support it.

I think what the issue here is, is that there's a provision for a black list, an arbitrary black list, if you will, that would assign guilt to companies before they've had due process, which could hinder entrepreneurs in the digital arena from getting financing, from even starting ideas in the first place like a Napster, which led to iTunes, which led to resurgence of the American economy.

VELSHI: But Napster was doing something. It may have created all sorts of innovation that is valuable to us today, but ultimately it was judged to have been doing something that was illegal.

WILLARD: It absolutely was doing something that was illegal, and it got called on it, and it got relegated into the position where it belonged, into a sphere of competition. You know, you have to pay for that kind of stuff now, and eventually it got marginalized. But it has to start somewhere.

Innovation in the digital arena starts in the gray areas. It starts with an idea that something can be done better, can be made better. And as a result, sometimes it's a gray area.

VELSHI: Let me get you some responses from a bunch of different groups.

The AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, part of the AFL-CIO, said, "This legislation will make it easier to shut down rogue Web sites which are dedicated to stealing the television programs and sound recordings created by our members."

I want to read you something from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "While no single effort can entirely resolve this massive problem, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act is a critical step in the right direction."

So you've got two very different views on the matter. What's the right way to go? As an entrepreneur, as a digital entrepreneur, as a businessman, you want both. You want the ability to have the latitude to be creative and operate in gray areas, but when you come out with something that's valuable, you want protections for that.

So what's the best way to govern this?

WILLARD: I think the best way to govern it is to really start with dialogue from entrepreneurs in the trenches. And I think that's the one group that really hasn't been included in this conversation by the committee. And if they really want to get this right for all American business, for the spectrum of American business in the economy of ideas and innovation that we happen to excel at, then we are going to have to be part of the dialogue. VELSHI: So you're not opposed to regulation in the space. You just want regulation that will foster innovation in the digital world without crushing innovation?

WILLARD: That's exactly right. I mean, copyright laws are important. They protect ideas. They protect products.

But when it's taken to an extreme with a sort of arbitrary -- this black list is really the hot button on this, because it allows the attorney general's office to almost arbitrarily target and make guilty before due process certain companies. And it stifles entrepreneurship and it stifles innovation when people don't want to get in trouble, so they don't put ideas out there.

VELSHI: Rik, good to talk to you. Thanks very much for joining us to clear this up for us.

Rik Willard, we'll talk to you again soon.

(NEWSBREAK)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Where did we get that "Off the Radar" music? I love it.

Good to see you, my friend. I've missed you.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I have missed you. I know.

VELSHI: You figured it was cold enough, we didn't have to report on any weather. It was just cold. That's all you can say.

MYERS: Right.

VELSHI: Northern lights -- I love the northern lights.

MYERS: You are from Canada. And you saw them.

VELSHI: That's right. Yes.

MYERS: When you were growing up, I'm sure they were --

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: Yes. I mean, look, I had to get out of Toronto to see it because you can't see anything from the skies of Toronto.

MYERS: Of course.

VELSHI: But remarkable. I mean, just look up. It's like, what is that? What is going on? The skies are colorful and they're moving.

MYERS: I know. I saw it one time in my entire life.

VELSHI: Really? MYERS: Yes, in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. So way up there.

VELSHI: Right. Further north than Toronto.

MYERS: Correct. It is the ions, it's a coronal mass ejection, this solar flare, solar wind flying out of sun and hitting our atmosphere.

This is Norway. A couple of weeks ago we got permission to put it on the air today. And it was just an amazing sight up here.

VELSHI: Wow.

MYERS: Now, you don't know this yet, but we've hacked into your blog and we've put the Web site on your blog already.

VELSHI: OK, great. So people can go see it.

MYERS: I didn't do it. That was Jessica, your producer. She put it on there.

VELSHI: Fair enough. She's allowed to do that.

MYERS: Exactly. She's been on the air. She's your co-anchor now.

VELSHI: Yes.

MYERS: So you can go on and see the real live, uncut video. But this is just stuff that we love.

Did you know that Uranus and Neptune and Saturn and Jupiter all have aurora borealis?

VELSHI: I did not know that.

MYERS: Now, they're not called that, because aurora borealis means northern lights. Right?

VELSHI: Right.

MYERS: And there's aurora australis --

VELSHI: Southern lights.

MYERS: -- southern lights, but we don't get to see those. The penguins get to see those.

VELSHI: Is that right?

Truly, for anybody who hasn't seen it, it really is worth -- because this is like nothing you've ever seen. It's like a fantastic multimillion-dollar light show in the sky.

MYERS: They thought back in the Roman goddess times this was the god of Aurora, the god of dawn, renewing herself so that the sun would come up the next day. They thought a lot of weird things back then.

VELSHI: I tell you. I would be convinced! You can't imagine -- if you didn't know what was going on in the sky you could definitely think this is heavenly or this is about the gods.

MYERS: Can you imagine what this would have looked like without lights? Before there was electricity, to the people that were up there in Norway? They were just like -- they must have sat there on the snow in awe. So - but anyway, it's good stuff. It's on Vinneo.com (ph). And there's another link to the site. And it's your blog.

VELSHI: Go to my blog and I will have it. Good to see you, my friend.

MYERS: Good to be back.

VELSHI: All right. Chad is with us. Will take care of all your weather needs.

Hey, a prison riot triggered what's called the worst such fire in one country's history. I'll take you right there after the break. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Let me give you some updates on some news we're following right now. A federal court is the scene of an appearance right now in Baltimore for a man suspected of plotting to bomb a military recruiting station that you see right there. 21-year-old Antonio Martinez, also known as Muhammad Hussain, allegedly tried to recruit others to help him set off a truck bomb, but was rebuffed. Authorities said they had him on their radar for month.

A Senate vote pending on a measure granting conditional U.S. citizenship to young illegal immigrants. They have to first have to finish high school or go through college or the military. It's called the DREAM Act. Democrats are pushing for passage. Opponents are calling it mass amnesty for illegal immigration.

A commercial space capsule named Dragon has just become the first private spacecraft to orbit earth and successfully return. It splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at the top of this hour. Parent company Space X wants to fly missions to the international space station by this time next year.

And this news just in. Urban Meyer stepping down as the head coach of the University of Florida football team. Athletics director Jeremy Foley announced that this afternoon.

We'll bring you more information on this, but we are expecting there will be a press conference at 6:00 p.m. Eastern time tonight to discuss Urban Meyer stepping down as head coach of the University of Florida football team.

Time now for "Globetrekking." First stop, Chile. A fire in an overcrowded prison in the Chilean capital of Santiago has left at least 83 inmates dead. Chile's president told us that the fire erupted after a prisoner riot. Other reports say the fight involved rival gangs who set mattresses on fire.

Hundreds were evacuated. Some 14 are said to have life threatening injuries. Nearly 2,000 inmates were housed in the San Miguel Prison that was built to only house only 1,000. Frantic relatives gathered outside prison walls, screaming for information on their loved ones. Some threw rocks and glass bottles and scuffled with police. One woman told reporters, quote, "It's exasperating not to know if they are alive or dead."

OK. Let me take you to Afghanistan now in an act of justice. This is hard to look at.

You'll recall this story of Bebe Aisha, seen here in the pictures. How could we possibly forget it? In a stunning act of brutality, her husband cut off her nose and her ears earlier this year. It happened in an area controlled by the Taliban after she was accused of bringing shame to her family.

Police have now arrested her father-in-law. They say he held Aisha at gunpoint and ordered five others, including her husband, to cut her. Aisha was a child bride. Her case became widely known when our sister publication, "Time" magazine, used a picture of her on its cover. With support from aid groups and the U.S. embassy in Kabul and the charity of a hospital in San Francisco, Aisha was flown to the U.S. and had successful reconstructive surgery.

She's now 20 years old and living in New York, receiving treatment for emotional problems from her ordeal.

Our last stop, Iran. The government has what it considers a serious problem, and it has nothing to do with its nuclear program. We're talking about a soaring divorce rate. And leading the charge, Iranian women.

The government is so worried, in fact, it's renamed the traditional marriage day to "no divorce day." "The New York Times" reports that over this decade, the number of divorces has tripled to just over 150,000 this year from around 50,000 ten years ago.

The big news here is that Iranian women are finding new and unique ways to use the country's legal system to escaped unwanted marriages. And not only are divorces rising, but the time says marriages are also failing early. Thirty percent of divorces happening in the first year of marriage, 50 percent in the first five years.

Well, the numbers are in. It doesn't look so good. Students in the United States are still far behind countries -- kids in other countries. So, how do we fix our schools? I'll talk to the head of one of the largest teacher's unions in the country next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) VELSHI: Well, the time to fix our broken public school system is now. We talk a lot about this on this show. There's a serious problem with the education system in this country, and our kids will ultimately pay the price.

Here's proof. The Program for International Student Assessment, commonly called PISA, tests 15-year-old students from more than 70 countries around the world. Every three years, the group releases the results of these tests in reading literacy, math and science. The United States ranked 14th out of 34 countries in reading skills, 17th in science and a below-average 25th in math.

America has seen significance performance gains in science since 2006. That's the good news. But student performance in reading and math are pretty much unchanged since 2000. So what have we learned from this latest assessment?

Joining me now is Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. A regular guest on our show.

Randi, good to see you. Thank you for being with us.

RANDI WEINGARGEN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS: It's great to be with you, Ali.

VELSHI: This is a problem regardless of where you stand on how to solve the problem in the United States. It's a problem on which we're united. You don't have a whole lot of people saying the American system is working so well that it's at the top of the list.

WEINGARGEN: Right.

VELSHI: In some of the cases we've moved a little further behind, particularly in mathematics which is so crucial to the things we think are going to be important in the future. What are your thoughts on these rankings?

WEINGARGEN: It is -- first off, it is as Arne Duncan said, a wake-up call, but only if we actually look behind the data.

You know, I tend to love football, or love football. So, I often use the football game tape as a way of explaining education. You have to deconstruct. You have to deconstruct, you have to look behind it. So, what we see is that the place that we've actually advanced the most is the place that doesn't get tested nationally. In science. Because where there's a real focus on learning instead of on test obsession.

And what we look at -- so that's an irony in terms of our current system of education versus other people's systems of education.

But when you look at the countries that out-compete us, what they do is that they out-respect us in terms of teachers. They out-prepare us in terms of teachers. And they out-invest us in terms of the focus on students and the smart investments they do for students. So Finland, it has tremendous focus on teacher preparation. Singapore, a national curriculum on science, math and English. And all the countries that out-compete us, they focus on collaboration with teachers and collective responsibility of students and of parents as opposed to the conflict-ridden situation we have in America.

VELSHI: Well, that is an interesting. You and I talk about this a lot. It does seem remarkably conflict-ridden. In some cases, at various times, it looks like both sides are to blame. It does seem as a society, we do not afford teachers in many cases the respect they deserve.

On the other side, we do see teachers unions sometimes appearing stubborn with respect to promoting qualified teachers over tenured teachers, over teachers with time in the game as opposed to those that are the best. How do we - how do both - look, you're the teacher side. Tell us how we move forward on that front.

WEINGARGEN: Well, one of the things that I -- look, I'm a fighter just as much as anybody else, and I'm fierce about kids' interest and about helping teachers serve kids.

But what I've learned in the last two or three years in terms of the successful school systems in America and nationally is that they do something very different. They collaborate, they don't fight. They problem solve. They roll up their sleeves and figure out what's working and follow the evidence. And that's what we have to do.

At the same time as there is no epidemic of bad teachers, we do have to deal with situations of incompetence. But we also really have to support teachers. You know, we spend -- waste $7 billion a year in America on the attrition of teachers. That money could go into investments of teacher quality, student success, things like that.

Finland has no attrition of teachers. In fact, what Finland does is it attracts teachers from the top 10 percent of the high school ranks. And it pays for teachers' degrees, and teachers are really respected and invested in.

VELSHI: I want to ask you one question. Michelle Rhee, the former schools' chancellor -- commissioner in Washington, D.C. Perhaps the reason why the mayor of D.C. did not win a nomination as the Democratic candidate and hence is no longer the mayor. She's no longer working there. Now she's starting an organization where she says she is going to campaign to bring the changes she tried to bring to the D.C. school system across the country.

Now, you've had some stuff to say about this. You hope that she -- I guess I won't paraphrase you because you're right here, but you kind of hope she mellows out in the way she approaches it.

WEINGARGEN: Look, you know, I wish Michelle a lot of luck. I hope that she's successful in her endeavors. I hope she gets what she wants to get out of it.

But the bottom line is this. The schools that work in America, the systems that work in America -- and now we see this with PISA -- they work through collaboration and collective responsibility and engaging teachers in the hard, hard work and important work of educating kids. They're not conflict-ridden.

We all know how to do conflict. This is the time to actually break the status quo and work together directed at the mission of educating children.

VELSHI: Randi, always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks so much for joining us as you always do. We are all determined to solve this problem, and hopefully we do it together. Randi Weingarten.

WEINGARTEN: Great. Thank you.

VELSHI: OK. Breaking news just coming in to us. University of Florida football coach Urban Meyer has resigned. It comes after the worst-ever season as a head coach. The Gators finished with a 7-5 record. He will coach the team in the Outback Bowl, though, which takes place January 1st.

A federal court appearance is taking place in Baltimore for a man suspected of plotting to bomb a military recruiting station. You're looking live at the courthouse there in Baltimore. Twenty-one-year- old Antonio Martinez, also known as Muhammad Huissein, allegedly tried to recruit others to help him set off a truck bomb, but they rebuffed his approach. He's been charged with an a attempt to murder federal officers and employees and attempts to use -- attempt to use -- an attempt to use a weapon of mass destruction against federal property. Authorities say they had had him on their radar for months.

The commercial space capsule called Dragon has splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. It's the first private spacecraft to orbit earth and come back safely. Quote, "everything looks good," says NASA spokesman Josh Byerly (ph). Stay with us for reports from the recovery team.

And remember the big announcement NASA made last week about the arsenic-loving bacteria that could live on other planets? Now one scientist says the study is just wrong and junk science. We'll hear her argument, next.

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VELSHI: It was the announcement that was supposed to answer the question we asked for decades. Is there life on other planets? Instead, NASA announced last week that microbes can live and even thrive off of arsenic, which is a deadly poison to us. They said that the implications of this could open the doors to life existing on other planets once thought to be unable to support life. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FELISA WOLFE-SIMON, NASA ASTROBIOLOGY RESEARCH FELLOW: I was taught as a biochemist that all life on earth, all life we know of, to harken back to the pale blue dot ideas of Carl Sagan -- all life we know of is here so far. And if there's an organism on earth doing something different, we've cracked open the door to what's possible for life elsewhere in the universe. And that's profound. And to understand how life is formed and where life is going.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: We were all pretty amazed by this. We were glued to it, actually. But since then, there's been some criticism. In fact, one microbiologist says this announcement is simply unfounded.

Joining us now is Rosemary Redfield. She's a professor in the zoology department at the University of British Columbia.

Rosemary, thank you for joining us. What's your problem with this announcement?

ROSEMARY REDFIELD, PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA: OK. My personal concern is the quality of the data.

But I do need to say that I was just the sort of trigger that released a ground swell of scientists who have come forward to say, yes, and there's this problem and this problem and this problem. Problems that I didn't know enough chemistry to understand.

So, there's a lot of problems. I can describe a few of them in simple terms if you'd like.

VELSHI: Yes, give me the nuts and bolts of it. Our audience are not usually scientists, and I'm certainly not. So -- in broad terms.

REDFIELD: OK. This is the low-tech version. OK.

The first thing is that they assume -- they calculated how much phosphorus bacteria would need and said, these bacteria couldn't possibly couldn't grow on how much phosphorus there is. They must have been using arsenic instead. But their calculations were way off because they based them on how much phosphorus bacteria use when they have all the phosphorus they could possibly need rather than what happens when they're starved. So, that's one problem. They miscalculated, so they made this mistaken assumption.

Another problem was that they weren't careful in making sure their samples were clean before they analyzed them. When they purified DNA to analyze whether it had arsenic in it, they didn't wash it at two critical steps. They didn't wash it. So, there's a strong chance that the very small amounts of arsenic that they detected were actually just contamination from the arsenic medium, not actually part of the DNA.

There were a lot of other problems with the data. Many, many places where the numbers didn't make sense. Like one month the bacteria had nearly 400 units of arsenic. And the next month they only had 10. Lots of problems like that that I and other scientists have now been able to notice now that the paper is finally available.

VELSHI: All right, Rosemary --

REDFIELD: And so, our sense is they were too eager to publish.

VELSHI: OK. Well, that's good point. Rosemary Redfield a professor in the zoology department of the University of British Columbia.

I want to read you a statement we received from NASA in response to this. It says, "My research team and I are aware that our peer- reviewed science article has generated some technical questions and challenges from within the scientific community. Questions raised so far have been consistent with those outlined by journalist Elizabeth Pennisi in her "Science News" article, which was published along with our research. Our manuscript was thoroughly reviewed and accepted for publication by science. We presented our data and results and drew our conclusions based on what we were shown. But we welcome lively debate since we recognize that scholarly discourse moves science forward. Science is in the process of making our article freely available to the public for the next two weeks to ensure that all researchers have full access to the findings."

All right. We'll continue to stay on that story and bring any updates we get on it.

Democrats are claiming victory in the last governor's race to be decided this election year. We'll be right back with the big stories crossing our political ticker.

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VELSHI: All right. Political junkies, time now for a CNN political update. If you're really one of the people frustrated that the election is over, you want more, it continues. More than a month after the election, the last governors race has finally been decided.

Our chief national correspondent John King in Washington with the results. Are we ready to make a projection?

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Ali, what are the junkies going to do now? Minnesota's about to get the first Democratic governor in two decades. And he is Mark Dayton who was a member of the United States Senate. That's because Tom Emmer, the Republican candidate, has conceded. He conceded after a statewide recount didn't narrow the 9,000-vote divide between the two and he had no further court options, so Minnesota will have a Democratic governor come January.

The family of Elizabeth Edwards, we are told, Ali, planning a funeral now for Saturday. She died yesterday, of course, at the age of 61 after a six year battle with cancer. We're told by the family and others she'll be buried next to her son Wade. Wade was a teenager who died in a tragic car crash back in 1996. There is a memorial Web site set up now, elizabeth-edwards.org. If you're fighting cancer yourself or cancer has touched your family, you can not only say farewell to Elizabeth Edwards but leave your thoughts there.

And tonight on "JOHN KING U.S.A." Ali, a very interesting voice in many big debates right now. Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia. He's a big vote the Democrats need on that "don't ask, don't tell" issue. Could come up for a vote tonight in the Senate.

And while the liberals don't like it, many moderates don't like it, he came out with a statement saying he thinks the president did the right thing on this tax cut deal. Is that just because Jim Webb's on the ballot in 2012, Ali? We'll put the question to him tonight.

VELSHI: All right, John. Good to see you as always. John King. Your next political update an hour away.

Stay with us. I'll be right back.

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VELSHI: My time is up, but I'll be joining Brooke in just a moment as she continues with NEWSROOM. Brooke?