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Running the Dodgers; Program Being Revived to Help Air Traffic Controllers do Better Job; The Future Pharmacist: A Robot; Photojournalists Killed In Libya; Syria Lifts Emergency Law; Key Border Crossing In Rebel Hands; Optimism Fading In Libya; Working The 2-2-1

Aired April 21, 2011 - 14:00   ET

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

T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Well, host Cat Deeley will be in the middle of it all, helping us cover Will and Kate's big day. And she was on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and had a very interesting confession. Check this out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, NBC "THE ELLEN DEGENERES SHOW")

CAT DEELEY, CNN ROYAL WEDDING CONTRIBUTOR: It's kind of exciting. There's a bit of me that absolutely terrified cause I think something like over 750 million people watch. I mean, it literally makes me want to vomit slightly into my own mouth.

(LAUGHTER)

DEELEY: And I'm very nervous about it.

But I think it is going to be good. I'm doing it with Piers Morgan and Anderson Cooper so I've got to keep those two --

ELLEN DEGENERES, HOST, NBC "THE ELLEN DEGENERES SHOW": Where will you be?

DEELEY: We'll be right by Buckingham Palace. They've built us kind of this structure, and so when Kate Middleton and --

DEGENERES: My cousin.

DEELEY: Sorry?

DEGENERES: She's my cousin.

(LAUGHTER)

DEGENERES: I'm her 15th cousin.

DEELEY: That can't be true.

DEGENERES: It is true. I'm her 15th cousin. Someone let me know that and I'm not invited.

Anyway, go ahead. (END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: I'm related to William, as well.

You can join Cat, Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan on Friday, April 29th, starting at 4:00 a.m., for the royal wedding experience here on CNN.

But before all that, Soledad will make sure you're all caught up in her documentary, "The Women Who Would Be Queen." That's Sunday, 8:00 Eastern.

You can watch it. Of course, you can DVR it. Whatever you do, get involved.

As we cross over into the next hour now, boy, it's all fun and games, isn't it, until somebody runs up mountains of debt and goes through a brutal divorce? Such is the plight of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Have you heard this now? They're soon to be run by Major League Baseball because the commissioner, Bud Selig, fears the team's owner is running into the ground. That owner would be Frank McCourt, an East Coast real estate developer who is divorced from his wife, Jamie McCourt. This could fill up a legal textbook.

As we speak right now, the Dodgers are more than $400 million in debt. Selig won't let member borrow more. So this month, McCourt reportedly took out a $30 million personal loan just so he could make payroll. He got that loan from Fox Broadcasting.

Before we get too far out into left field, let me bring in Harvey Levin out there in Los Angeles. He's a lawyer, a journalist, a Dodger follower as well. He joins us from the studios of TMZ, where he's creator, host, and executive director.

Man, it takes a while to introduce you these days, you've got so many titles, Harvey. But good to see you, buddy.

Let's talk about the Dodgers. We are to be talking to you about a sports story, but is the divorce the reason for the downfall of the team? Is that what people are going on?

HARVEY LEVIN, HOST, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, TMZ: Well, First of all, T.J., we are all over sports here at TMZ. We do a lot of sports stories, and we've been following this divorce. And yes, it is.

And what happened is this -- that because this divorce, T.J., is so brutal, and they have filed so many documents, all of these things became public record. They weren't public record before Jamie and Frank McCourt went into divorce court.

Now we know that the McCourts' kids were drawing a salary from the Dodgers, and yet they weren't really employed. We know that the McCourts pulled $145 million out of the team and may not have paid any taxes on it. We know there are certain losses carried forward, a technical tax term, but things that have raised the eyebrows of IRS agents. And we also know, because of this divorce, the IRS is investigating the McCourts and the Dodgers.

So, all of this is the backdrop. And then the Fox thing comes along, and it's all under the microscope. And Selig is looking and saying, wait a minute, this is all laid out for me right now. It's not speculation. They're saying it against each other, and I'm going to take control of the team.

HOLMES: OK. What's going to help the team? It sounds like just the divorce and the proceedings allowed for the opening up of these books. But even if they settled the divorce, and that is done and over with, the team still has problems.

Any chance McCourt is going to continue as the owner of that team?

LEVIN: Well, McCourt fully intended to stay on as the owner -- at least that's what he said. Now, whether he would sell it, you know, after the divorce is over, who knows? But they're both vying.

Frank fired his wife Jamie. That was the first thing he did once the divorce papers were filed. She is maintaining, as recently as yesterday afternoon, she is still a 50 percent owner. And it sounds like she'd like to step in and take over.

So they're not giving up right now.

I do not think just because of the problems the Dodgers are having that means the McCourts are out. Look at the New York Mets. Financially, they're actually, I believe, in worse shape than the L.A. Dodgers, yet Selig is doing nothing about that. So I don't think you can count the McCourts out of this.

HOLMES: Harvey, one more thing to you here. You're out there, you're in L.A., you're a Dodger follower, and maybe, I should assume, maybe you're a fan as well. But a lot of people are.

This is a historic franchise, a beloved franchise. How are people taking this news right now?

Are they abandoning the team? Are they expressing venom towards the McCourts? I guess, what is the fan reaction?

LEVIN: The fans are just so angry at the McCourts over this whole thing, because they really do believe they have compromised the team. And on top of everything else, you have that brutal beating of the Giants as fan at the opening game.

HOLMES: Yes.

LEVIN: So it's been a bad couple of months all around here. But, yes, T.J., I'm telling you, there is a lot of bitterness toward the McCourts, particularly Frank right now.

HOLMES: All right. Towards the McCourts and maybe not towards the team. We'll see if people will rally around that team right now.

Harvey, good see you, as always. I won't say -- by the way, I said hello with introducing you with all that stuff. So good to see you as always, my man. You take care.

LEVIN: Good seeing you, T.J.

HOLMES: We'll see you.

We'll turn to some politics here now.

The next election for president, still more than a year and a half away. But if you're going to run, you've got to figure this out pretty soon.

Our "Sound Effect" right now is from a guy who's been toying with that decision twice in the past quarter century, but says this time it's different. This time he is "very serious."

You can probably guess who I'm talking about right now, real estate mogul, reality TV star Donald Trump. He's riding high in some early polls, mainly on name recognition, maybe. But he insists he's a serious businessman with some serious ideas for this country.

If you caught CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING," you heard our Kiran Chetry and Ali Velshi trying to ask Trump why if he is all about business, is he embracing the controversy over President Obama's birthplace.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, ENTREPRENEUR: The reason I'm doing so well in the polls is because people know that I'm a smart guy, I'm a good business guy.

KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, but you can't get out of the gate -- you can't get out of the gate in a general election if you say that -- you're questioning whether Barack Obama was born in America. You won't win.

TRUMP: Oh, I don't think that at all. I think there's a real question as to whether or not -- and frankly, 75 percent of the people in the Republican Party are really doubting whether or not -- they have very big doubts.

So, you know, there are a lot of people. I don't know why he doesn't just show his birth certificate.

ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: Well, you know what?

TRUMP: I'd much rather run man-to-man. I don't know why he just doesn't show his birth certificate. But the reason I'm up in the polls isn't that.

VELSHI: Donald Trump --

TRUMP: The reason I'm up is because I'll protect this country from China and OPEC and all the others that are ripping us off.

VELSHI: Let me ask you this --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Wow, that was a good time.

A brand new poll from the Pew Research Center shows voters in general, and especially Republicans, have heard more lately about Donald Trump than about all other possible candidates combined.

(NEWSBREAK)

HOLMES: Well, you have been hearing a lot about the slate of incidents involving air traffic controllers. Now an old program is coming back that will give them a better perspective of the job they do. It's all meant to keep you safe. You'll hear about it in minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: Well, the FAA has fired two air traffic controllers for, you guessed it, sleeping on the job. One of them worked in Miami. The other was in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Other cases of sleeping controllers have been reported in Washington, Seattle, Reno, Nevada. There are two suspected cases in Lubbock, Texas, as well. All of the incidents happened during the overnight shift, mostly at local control towers.

The FAA has enacted new rules hoping to prevent more incidents. And CNN's Jeanne Meserve now reports, an old program is about to be revived that may help controllers do a better job.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Countless times a day, air traffic controllers and pilots converse. But do they really understand what one another is saying?

DEREK BITTMAN, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: Sometimes, you know, we have been told by pilots, "Hey, I can't do that." And, you know, we may or may not understand why they can't.

MESERVE: In hopes of cultivating better understanding, starting in the coming weeks air traffic controllers will be able to fly in a cockpit to see exactly how their communications impact a working flight crew, particularly during takeoffs and landings.

PAUL RINALDI, NATIONAL AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS ASSOCIATION: It really is so valuable for air traffic controllers to see at that critical point of flight that teamwork that's happening and why we really shouldn't give them a different instruction that they're not expecting.

MESERVE: Rinaldi did the cockpit familiarization training before 9/11. After the terror attacks, the program was suspended because cockpit security became of paramount concern. As a result, about one- third of the nation's 15,000 controllers have never had the cockpit experience.

The Transportation Security Administration has now given the green light to its revival, and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration is embracing it.

RANDY BABBITT, FAA ADMINISTRATOR: I was a professional airline pilot myself and had controllers on board. It gave a great understanding. It's a two-way dialogue, and it helps both parties understand some of the work environment that the other is operating in.

MESERVE (on camera): The program is voluntary and doesn't cost a thing. Because the cockpit jump seat wouldn't ordinarily generate revenue, controllers can sit in it for free. But the payoff, former participants say, is significant.

Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Well, most of us, of course, just trash our food scraps. But one gourmet chef is using what's usually garbage to us to actually feed us. Does that sound delicious or what?

I'll explain this one in a couple of minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: Well, a lot of people take some kind of prescribed drug. In fact, a new report from a consulting firm shows nearly four billion prescriptions were written last year. The overall price tag for those drugs? More than $307 billion. That is up more than two percent from 2009.

When it comes to filling those prescriptions, there's always concern that maybe a mistake will be made. But our Dan Simon shows us a high-tech solution to change that in "The Connection."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Meet your future pharmacist, a robot that picks and packages drugs with perfect precision, with little or no danger of accidentally mixing up the medication.

(on camera): When people hear about robotic pharmacies, they may think to themselves, well, we don't need pharmacists anymore.

LYNN PAULSEN, DIRECTOR, UCSF PHARMACY: Well, in actuality, what we're doing is we're live leveraging the pharmacists so they can spend more time in the hospital really focusing on the improvement in drug therapy. SIMON (voice-over): Lynn Paulsen purchased this robotic equipment for the University of California San Francisco Hospital for $7 million. It's not at your neighborhood pharmacy yet, but medical experts believe someday it will be.

The robot gets its commands from a digital prescription pad from a doctor's orders entered into a computer database. From there, the machine plucks the pills one by one and packages them.

PAULSEN: Twice a day we get an electronic feed of all of the doses for every patient in the hospital that needs to be filled.

SIMON: The equipment will even assemble and mix intravenous medicine, which all but ensures that the products are just right and limits human exposure to these dangerous medications. Through a bar coding system, the hospital will be able to track all of these drugs from the time they're manufactured until the time they're administered.

(on camera): No matter what safeguards are put in place, human beings are always going to make mistakes. According to the Institute of Medicine, there's at least one medication error per day involving patients and hospitals across America. Systems like this are designed precisely to eliminate those problems.

(voice-over): This system, for instance, would likely have prevented the near-tragic medical mistake involving the twins of actor Dennis Quaid. In that 2007 mix-up, hospital staff at Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles gave Quaid's 10-day-old twins massive overdoses of the blood thinner Heparin. The problem was blamed in part on nearly identical packaging for both the infant and adult concentrations of the drug. UCSF says through bar code scanning, the wrong medicine would have been immediately detected.

As for this technology, most hospitals won't be able to make use of it until the prices come down. And once that happens, the future of medicine looks to be safer.

Dan Simon, CNN, San Francisco.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Well, about 21 minutes past the hour now. We'll give you a look at some of the stories making headlines.

You remember that picture, don't you? One year now after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, BP is suing somebody. They're suing the manufacturer of the rig's blowout preventer because it didn't prevent a blowout.

The report released last month determined the oil spill was caused by a piece of drill pipe trapped in the rig blowout preventer, which is, of course, intended to stop oil from leaking into the ocean. BP claims the preventer should have cut through the pipe and sealed that well. Well, a lot of folks got those iPhones, got those iPads, and apparently you are being tracked. A watch group site called iPhone Tracker says your whereabouts are being stored without your knowledge in a secret file. Two researchers say they discovered the hidden tracking file. Their surveillance started last June, when Apple released its latest operating system.

Apple has not responded to the allegations just yet.

And the governor of Idaho making sure his state agencies do not implement President Obama's health care reform laws. Governor Butch Otter issued an executive order stating that agencies and employees of the state are banned from implementing the reform and barred from accepting federal funds to do so.

Well, what do you do with the scraps of food left on your plate? Most of us toss them down the disposal, toss it in the trash. As simple as that, right? Well, about a third of garbage from an average household comes from what you eat and drink.

Photojournalist William Walker takes us to one restaurant that's closing the loop, using garbage as a way to feed us.

That's today's "Green Solutions in Focus."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICAH WILLIX, EXECUTIVE CHEF, ECHO RESTAURANT: This is a European restaurant that focuses on seasonal cuisine, fresh food that's really ingredient-driven.

My name is Micah Willix. I am the executive chef for Echo Restaurant.

On a busy night, we usually serve 350 to 400 meals.

Local radishes, just got in yesterday. Cleaning them well.

Just the preparation process of making food for 350 people a day creates a lot of food waste, a lot of scrap. Every restaurant in the country produces a lot of food waste.

When you serve 350 people, you can produce up to 1,000 pounds of food. We do about 1,000 pounds of food waste a month. That's a lot of waste.

We really wanted to reduce our footprint and tried to make sure that there's no waste going out of our kitchen. So 100 percent of our food waste now goes to compost. So none of that goes to the landfill now.

Right now I'm skinning flounder and portioning them into sizes for later on tonight. Everything can be composted.

We mix all of our proteins and vegetable scraps and fish, chicken, beef, lamb, lettuce. It all goes in the compost. Brussels sprouts, carrots, onion skins, herb stems, any little trimming, you name it. If you can eat it, we'll compost it.

Here we have fish. Here we have pasta with vegetables. And it all goes to compost.

It gets picked up and taken to a facility. That's mixed with other scraps from landscaping businesses and tree businesses and other markets and restaurants, and gets broken down into compost. We then take that compost, buy it back, and put it onto our roof to grow vegetables and fruits that we use in the restaurant.

We're heading up to the rooftop garden now. Right now we have herbs and garlic in the boxes. We are about to grow tomatoes, cumbers, radishes, lettuce, arugula, some potatoes and peas. All of the produce that we grow goes directly into the restaurant. We're closing the loop.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: All right. We're about 25 minutes past the hour now.

All eyes on Texas. Those massive wildfires burning there, is there any relief in sight? It's going to depend on the weather.

We're checking in with Chad in just three minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: All right. We're at the bottom of the hour here now. Chad Myers joining me with the map, with eyes on Texas.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Texas.

HOLMES: OK. Can the firefighters get these fires under control, or they are going to need Mother's Nature's help?

MYERS: I don't think that they can get it by themselves.

HOLMES: On their own.

MYERS: If the wind would continue like it's been, things like that, there's no way the firefighters -- the fire lines are so big now. If you have a 640-acre fire, it's one mile by one mile by one mile. They've got four miles of things to fix, right?

When you get 10,000 acres or a million acres in some -- you know, the fire line's so big, you need some rain. You need some help. And we're getting a little bit today.

We're getting cloud cover. It's not raining so much over Texas, but it will later today. In fact, there's even a chance of severe weather in Dallas-Fort Worth again, probably some more hail.

But now the western half of the state, western third, from Amarillo back to -- it's still very dry out there. Not a cloud in the sky.

It's going to be that way for the next couple of days. But there will be an awful lot of rainfall in the forecast. I kind of have to give you a map here.

There would be Kansas. Here's Oklahoma. And then here's Texas. OK.

Well, so, not great, but it's raining. And that's where most of the fire activity is, anyway.

The PK Fire, right about there. A bunch of other fires out here to the west of DFW, Dallas-Fort Worth. That's great.

This is five days' worth of rainfall. And in some spots in Arkansas they could pick up 11 inches of rain in the next five days. It's because the humidity is up. The mugginess is in Dallas and Shreveport and Austin.

Temperatures are warm but not dry. The dry is way out in the West -- Albuquerque and Lubbock and Amarillo. That's the areas that are dry.

Here's the current rainfall right now. Storms moving through Jackson, going towards Hattiesburg. And there are some showers popping up.

This is going to be one of those "Why not me?" type of shower activity and storms today, because there are going to be storms here, but they're going to look just like a checkerboard -- here/there, here/there, here/there. And the county that really might need it might not get it.

But, you know, it's kind of the lottery out here. You get some rainfall, you'll take it.

HOLMES: Just here, before we let you go, with so much in the last couple of weekends with tornado outbreaks and what not, people see this ugliness, any chance for this stuff moving and being that kind of nastiness?

MYERS: I would say there's probably a 50 percent chance of right like that, that would be the area of severe weather today. Mainly wind and hail, a few tornadoes in north Texas along the river, but that's it.

HOLMES: All right, Chad, we appreciate you as always. Thank you so much, sir.

The Yankees, the beloved, the historic Yankees are being sued. Would you believe that their logo is not really theirs? I'll explain in just a couple minutes, yes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: Well, we're right at bottom of the hour here. I have some stories you may have missed. Jamie McCourt, you know that name? Well, he's the co-owner -- or she, excuse me, the co-owner of the L.A. Dodgers welcoming the MLB's takeover of the franchise. But the other owner, her husband that she's divorcing, Frank, says not so fast.

Baseball's commissioner Bud Selig is appointing a representative to oversee the financially troubled franchise for quote, "The best interest of the club, its great fans and major league baseball", end quote. The divorce battle between them in the courts last year highlighted the financial troubles of the team.

And speaking of baseball, a New York woman is suing the Yankees for trademark infringement. Why? She claims that her uncle created the team logo that you see but was never paid for the work. She says her uncle, who lived in Europe, was commissioned to create the logo for the team in 1936. She says he did not realize they actually used his work until he came to America in 1947. She says the logo contains her uncle's trademark or signature p. The Yankees said they have not yet been served with any law suit.

Well, Donald Trump continues to make the rounds in the media, further fueling speculation that he will announce a run for president. One of his biggest platforms, the economy, and a strong dislike for China's economic policies. He called in to CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING" earlier to voice his concern over China's currency valuation.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, ENTREPRENEUR/TV REALITY STAR: If they didn't manipulate the currency where we were competing one-on-one, I wouldn't say, absolutely, I wouldn't even think about the tax. But they're making it impossible for our people, our companies to do business to compete.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

HOLMES: Well, Trump has yet to officially announce if he'll run for president.

A Florida mother breathing a sigh of relief after her 2-year-old daughter fell from a fourth floor hotel balcony. The kid's OK. An alert tourist who was in the pool -- who was at the pool, saw the child hanging from the balcony, caught her has she fell. The child suffered no scratches, no bruises from the fall, even after striking the third floor railing as she fell. Goodness.

Also, two Photojournalists killed covering the conflict in Libya being mourned today. Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington died after being severely wounded after covering the fighting. Both had covered war zones extensively, with Hetherington receiving an Oscar nomination after a documentary on the Afghan War.

It is an area that is not safe for people to live. Just ahead, CNN is getting rare access inside the area surrounding Japan's damaged nuclear facility.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HOLMES: Well, it's time for us now to go globe trekking. Our first stop today, Syria, and that's where the government has lifted the country's nearly 50-year-old state of emergency. I'm bringing in our colleague, Michael Holmes, to talk about this and other things. Michael, good to see you as always.

Let's go back a little bit. People have been hearing emergency law since the unrest in the Middle East, north Africa. Several countries have it. Let's go back and explain why they were put in place in the first place.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well basically, keep a lid on the people. These laws have broad powers of crushing dissent, you know, no protest without permission, permission is never given, and people can be detained without charge, locked up for lengthy periods, sometimes years without any -- and it's all allowed under the emergency law.

Significant that this has been lifted, yes, and a lot of Syrians are going to be going, wow, this is amazing after 50 years of this thing. But a lot of the protesters are saying, it's a sham. They're saying it's a time buying thing by Assad and that it's not good enough.

You know, one opposition spokesman just rejected it outright. And it's important to remember that a new anti-terror law is on the books, and that really gives similar powers, you know, you can use that any way you really want. You know, and so, yes, it's an up and down thing. Meanwhile, you're seeing continuing violence like we have, and even more planned tomorrow.

T.J. HOLMES: So, the emergency law and the announcement that it's going to be lifted didn't help a bit to --

M. HOLMES: No more of the demands.

T.J. HOLMES: They wanted the emergency laws.

M. HOLMES: They did want it and now, there's this sort of double about it from the protesters, from many of the protesters, doubting the veracity of it, doubting that it really means anything.

T.J. HOLMES: All right. Let's turn now to Libya, new developments out of the there as well. Rebels have seized control of a keyboarder crossing in Tunisia. Now, give us the relevance of that, because we hear about the back and forth at least trying gain ground in separate cities. But now, why is it important that a border crossing possibly in the hands of rebels?

M. HOLMES: It is significant because what it does is it gives the rebels better access to one of the other key towns in the area that then puts them closer to Tripoli within about 140 miles of Tripoli, in fact. And so, Gadhafi forces apparently fled, some of them went across the border into Tunisia we're told. And this place, I mean, it's called Melouf (ph), it's about 140 miles southwest of Tripoli. So, it gives a better strategic sort of positioning. You know, meanwhile, of course we continue to see what's going on in Misrata, as well, which is at seven weeks of siege now there.

T.J. HOLMES: Now, the back and forth, it took a while to see if this was a -- is this an opposition, a rebellion of some kind, and then it started looking more like a civil war, and in some ways starting to look more like traditional war in that they were starting to capture some of Gadhafi's fighters.

M. HOLMES: Yes INAUDIBLE.

T.J. HOLMES: Prisoner of war? What do they do with them?

M. HOLMES: Well, they had -- a lot of them have defected as well. I mean, it is without doubt a civil war. The problem is the rebels don't have the command and control structure, they don't have the discipline, they don't have the weapons to properly prosecute a war the way it would need to be fought to win. And Gadhafi, of course, fighting back, as we're seeing in Misrata, by just pounding civilian targets in a horrible way. NATO in a bind because it's very hard to hit those targets from the air when they are hidden under trees and the like. And so, you've got this awful situation. This is a stalemate.

T.J. HOLMES: You said NATO kind of in a bind, but they haven't been shy about criticizing NATO saying, hey, we need more help.

M. HOLMES: They have but NATO is saying, well, we're doing what we can. You've got Italy, France, and Britain now sending in advisers or people who are helping coordinate things there. And the President Sarkozy of France saying NATO is going to do more, they are going to bomb more of Gadhafi's assets. The problem is finding those assets isn't easy. And particularly Gadhafi's people, more and more are trying integrate within the people, using pickup trucks, not military vehicles, that sort of thing.

T.J. HOLMES: All right. Let's take a quick transition over to Japan right now, I want our viewers to look at this. Stan Grant got a rare look inside that exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility, take a quick look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STAN GRANT, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Now, I am inside the 20 kilometer zone, so I need to take precautions. As you can see, I'm wearing some face covering here and down at my feet, my shoes are also protected. This is to stop me coming in contact with any potentially contaminated material on the ground or breathing in any contamination.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

T.J. HOLMES: And Michael, that evacuation zone, it seems like nobody would want to be in there. And some want to get back to their homes or businesses but the government, you know, is starting to enforce this evacuation zone.

M. HOLMES: They've got to strictly enforce it. No one is allowed within three kilometers of the plant, no one. And there is going to be limited access within about inside a 20 kilometer zone. They're going to let people in very briefly, people temporarily going back, businesses and farmers, they want to go back in and get their stuff out, paperwork and stuff like that. The time limit for that's going to be two hours. Everybody goes in, has to go through a decontamination process. And I think they are saying they only get to go once.

T.J. HOLMES: All right, our Stan Grant doing that reporting there for us. You'll see more from him throughout the day here on CNN.

Michael Holmes.

M. HOLMES: Good to see you, mate.

T.J. HOLMES: Good to see you as always, my man. Thanks so much.

M. HOLMES: My namesake.

T.J. HOLMES: Yes, exactly, brothers from another mother.

M. HOLMES: Exactly.

T.J. HOLMES: All right. Well, why are so many air traffic controllers out there just falling asleep on the job? Some of them even going to sleep on purpose. There's one report that a guy came in and he made a bed when he went to work. Well, it could be because of something called the 2-2-1. Exactly what is it and why does that make them all so tired? I'll explain in a couple of minutes, stay with me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: All right, we're about a quarter of the top of the hour now. We've heard all of those stories, by now, about the air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job. And in fact, it was announced today that two were fired for sleeping, one in Miami, one was in Knoxville, Tennessee. In at least one of the recent incidents the controller is accused of having to go to sleep on purpose.

So, why is it so hard to stay awake while guiding plane loads of people to a safe landing? Some say it is the way their schedules are set up. So, for our big breakdown, let's have a look at how this all works. It's something called a 2-2-1. You might hear more about this, but this is what it means. It's based on working progressively earlier start times.

So, on your first day, you roll in, 3:00 p.m., you work until 11:00. The next day you work 2:00 until 10:00, and so on.

But the problem comes in in the fourth day. You only have eight hours between the end of your shift and the beginning of the next one. That's the small red bar you see there between day four and day five. You only get eight hours there.

Now try to factor in in that eight hours you have to get sleep, you have to do your daily routine, you have to get food, you have to go to the grocery store, go to the bank, pick up your dry cleaning, whatever else. There's not a full opportunity to get a full night's sleep.

The good news now is you have 81 hours to catch up on all of your rest before you have to get to work again after day five.

Now more than half of the controllers out there work this shift. Because of problems, though, with sleeping, the Federal Aviation Administration making some changes.

Air traffic controllers will now have a minimum of nine hours off between shifts. Now that's still a change, even though it only goes from eight hours, was the minimum before, to nine, but still, that's a difference.

Also, they can no longer put in an unscheduled midnight shift after a day off. Not the end of the 2-2-1 necessarily, but still some kind of change. The controller's union agreed to implement these changes right away after meeting with the FAA.

That is your "Big Breakdown" for today.

Let's turn to President Obama now. He is getting ready to speak live at a town hall meeting in Nevada. He mainly wants to talk about the plan to cut the deficit.

Our Dan Simon standing by for us live in Reno at a renewable energy Company.

There you are. Dan, hello to you. Set the scene for everybody.

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, hi, T.J., this is going to get going in just the next few minutes. Let me tell you where we are and why the president is coming here.

We are at the Electrotherm Company. This is a company that has a machine called the Green Machine. They are able to take waste heat, like water coming from a boiler or the steam that comes off of a boiler, and then convert that into renewable energy. No emissions whatsoever. So this is a good opportunity for the president to highlight his commitment to funding new forms of energy.

We're also in Nevada, of course, and this is considered a battleground state. It was a huge battleground state back in '08. I actually spent a great bit of time here during that election. The president, though, ended up carrying it by 12.5 points.

But the economy here in Nevada still shaky, and Nevada leads the nation still in foreclosures. One out of every 35 homes here in Nevada here facing foreclosure. So I would expect a few questions coming from the crowd about the housing crisis. The president, of course, at Facebook yesterday. Taking a little bit of heat online today, T.J., for not answering or taking that many questions, taking only eight questions for the hour. So perhaps he might take a few more here today.

HOLMES: Dan, if you can, do this for me quickly. The fundraiser in San Francisco this morning, some protests there when the president was trying to speak.

SIMON: Right. You know, only in San Francisco could you have liberal activists protest the president at a fundraiser.

These were actually paying activists. They went to this fundraiser at the St. Regis Hotel. They were upset about the custody of Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of providing classified information to WikiLeaks.

One person ended up singing; it was a bit of a disturbance. It was a small crowd, so the president had to stop what he was doing and listen to these people. Eventually, things kind of returned to normal, but a bit of a disturbance there in San Francisco.

HOLMES: All right, Dan Simon for us in Reno. Event about to get underway. Dan, we appreciate you. Thanks so much.

Folks, what if I told you there was a tax that some critics call arbitrarily enforced, unrealistically burdensome? Would you care if the tax primarily affected only one particular type of job? Would you care if those being taxed were professional athletes?

It's called the "Jock Tax." We'll discuss the merits in just a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMS: Tax Day, you love it, don't you? They can be confusing, it can be tension-filled for a lot of Americans, but especially if you're a professional athlete. OK, I know a lot of them make a lot of money, but let me explain here.

According to the "L.A. Times," 20 of 24 states with franchises in at least one of the four major pro leagues have laws that require visiting athletes to pay state income tax for each game that they play there.

You get that? They call it a jock tax. While the initial intent was to make any nonresident pay tax on income earned in the state, some of the biggest targets became athletes and those high-income earners, some entertainers as well.

Many athletes have had to employ numerous accountants to file more than 100 pages of returns to as many as a dozen states and Canada to try to cover taxes on income earned on the road.

Well, D.C., Washington D.C., the city council trying to join in on this trend to tax visiting athletes, hoping to raise millions for their budget.

By the way, the 2011 congressional calendar calls for 123 workdays for members of the House. And after working all of those days in Washington, Congress does not pay local D.C. taxes.

So the question today, is the so-called jock tax fair? Mark Skoda is the founder and the chairman of the Memphis Tea Party. He is joining me from Memphis; there he is. And Rick Horrow joins me on the phone, he's a sports and business analyst, as well as attorney.

And, haven't talked to you in a while, Rick. Good to have you. So let me start with you.

Help people understand, yes, targeting the high-dollar athletes, those millionaires is one thing, but does this also hit some of the guys maybe playing in AAA baseball and playing for minor league hockey and guys who are just making a few thousand dollars a year?

RICK HORROW, CNN SPORTS ANALYST (via telephone): Yes, T.J., hello.

It hits them on a relative basis. OK, so theoretically, as the tax code should be deployed, the people that are making the most money pay the most taxes, that's at least in the world we're supposed to live in.

The bottom line of all of this is it's an attempt to generate money from people who work in the state, and there have been a number of lawsuits about whether it's overreaching. They've all decided that as long as you correspond the number of days the team is actually playing visiting-wise, one day if it's a basketball team, three, four if it's a series in baseball, and don't double-dip by charging him a state tax elsewhere, it's legitimate, it's constitutional.

Then you get into the issue of what you're raising the money for. Is it the stadium pieces, which are good investments, is it for public/private partnerships, is it budget reduction? All of those are separate issues as well.

HOLMES: Mark, let me bring you in here now.

And the Tea Party you're part of often advocates for lower taxes, fewer taxes, but do you have a problem in principle with a particular set, a group of athletes specifically being targeted by a tax like this when they may visit a state two, three times a year to go play a ballgame?

MARK SKODA, FOUNDER, MEMPHIS TEA PARTY: Well, you know, T.J., I'm -- it would be very easy for me to say, you know, tax those athletes, they're all rich guys, they should be taxed as much as we can get from them.

The reality, though, is the problem is the whole tax code. And you're absolutely right, as you introduced at beginning of this session, is that we have been doing this for many, many years throughout all these states, and it's a revenue generator. The problem I have is we continue to reform the tax code in ways that are more and more focused on specific groups, even individuals. You recall, of course, the Democratic Congress that tried to tax the Wall Street bankers for funds they received as a result of the bailout.

You know, I'm one of the people that have come to sort of embrace the fair tax idea and to really do away with much of these shenanigans. Whether D.C. or any other state, it's just dragging the economy.

HOLMES: Rick, let me bring you back in cause D.C. is now thinking about doing this with the so-called jock tax, and they've also had this idea they just passed as well, they are going to do Internet gambling within the city to try to raise money.

Are these just a sign of the times? Desperate times call for some desperate measures?

HORROW: Creative times call for creative measures.

And if you accept the fact that all localities are trying to develop user fees to generate revenue, to try to pay for their budget or pay for special projects, I guess this is a normal part of social policy.

From the athlete perspective, I've known a lot of these issues, I've helped draft a few, and as long as they don't double-dip the athletes on the state level, meaning federal taxes plus a couple of other states, then it's a legitimate way to raise the dollars from people, you could argue, who could afford it and apply it to legitimate uses.

HOLMES: Well, one more thing to you here, Mark, and do this for me in a bout 15, 20 seconds.

Do you see this just maybe as a precursor to other things and more creative taxes that maybe cities and states might try to implement? Does this scare you a bit?

SKODA: It does, and this is the problem. It's accelerating, because we're seeing states now want to tax interstate commerce on the Internet and many other vehicles. They need the money, they're in trouble, they're going to find, quote-unquote, "creative ways." We need simplifying, not create more complexity.

HOLMES: All right, Mark Skoda, also Rick Horrow. Guys, this is one that's been out there for a while, but a lot of people were surprised to even hear that it exists.

Gentlemen, we appreciate you. We'll see more about the jock tax.

Well, folks, stay with us because in two and a half minutes I am going to confess my sins right here to you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HOLMES: Well, in today's "XYZ," I'd like confess my sins.

I drive a Chevy Tahoe. It gets 15 miles to the gallon in the city. While some people have SUVs to haul their large families around, it's just me driving by myself to work every day.

I have a number of TVs in my high house and leave them on just about all day, every day.

I often turn the water on in the shower, then I walk downstairs to maybe grab breakfast, leave the water running, then I go back upstairs to take a shower.

I buy 24 packs of bottled water at a time. Then I throw those bottles away without recycling.

In the winter I crank the heat up to 75 or 76.

All the light bulbs in my house are still the old school, less efficient incandescent bulbs.

Those are my eco-sins. I'm confessing them to you because tomorrow is Earth Day. It often goes ignored by many of us, including me. Not going to ignore this year. Why? Well, maybe it was an awakening. Maybe I was scolded recently by an environmentalist. Maybe I'm tired of wasting my own money.

Whatever my reasons, whatever yours, happy Earth Day.

Brooke, I just confessed to you on national TV.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm impressed it was just 60 seconds of confessions, friend. Oh, T.J. Holmes.

HOLMES: There's some other stuff.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Thank you, sir. You just walk on out of that shot. Thank you.