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Train Collision in Connecticut; Powerball Jackpot at $600 Million; Facebook at One
Aired May 18, 2013 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. A look at our top stories right now that we're following.
Two commuter trains crashed leaving dozens to the hospital in Connecticut. Investigators are trying to figure out what happened in the accident last night. We'll go live to the scene in a moment.
And a Boston bombing survivor says she will dance again even though she lost part of her leg in that April blast. We'll follow the story of Adrienne Haslet-Davis.
And if you have already bought your Powerball ticket or you're planning to buy one for tonight, what are your odds of winning that $600 million jackpot? We'll ask an expert in a moment.
Train service between New York and New Haven, Connecticut, could be restricted for days after that terrible crash last night. Two trains colliding during rush hour in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Nine people are still being hospitalized. These pictures show the inside of the train right there. There is debris and shattered glass, just about everywhere.
Susan Candiotti is live at the scene. So Susan, how extensive is this investigation?
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Extremely. You can see right over my shoulder at the back end of one of the trains that was involved in this collision. Just beyond it is Interstate 90. That's how close it was to the main highway. For hours today, National Transportation Safety Board investigators going over every inch of the track here. We are talking about a debris field that covers about 200 yards. That is about the length of two football fields.
They are measuring the tracks. They're climbing on top of the cars, going in and out of them trying to figure out what went wrong. We are talking about a commuter train on its way from New York to New Haven when it suddenly derailed and then a train going in the opposite direction smacked into it. Passengers talk about feeling bumps along the way, hearing a loud noise and then feeling a sudden impact.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was sitting down. I actually lifted it up. You can see the dust coming from the other side.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Babies crying. Everything. They had to go pick them up and everything else on the floor.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're just on the train. And then we just hear a crash and then we didn't really know what it was. Everybody started screaming. We saw smoke. We didn't really know what to expect.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The train really stopped suddenly. There is a lot of commotion. People are really worried. Some guy was injured. They called for a doctor who we had one fortunately.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CANDIOTTI: And at last check, nine people remain hospitalized, two of them in critical condition. But at most, at least 70 people were treated at the hospital. Two senators from Connecticut, both surveyed the damage. One of them calling it staggering.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D), CONNECTICUT: The damage is absolutely staggering. Ribbons the size of cars are torn away like ribbons of cloth. Tons of metal tossed around like toy things. Insides of the cars are shattered.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CANDIOTTI: So among the possibilities investigators are looking at include, let's see whether the brakes might have failed, whether there was a problem with the signals or possibly with the tracks. We'll be hearing from them at a news conference at about 5:00, in about an hour from now, Fred.
WHITFIELD: OK. We'll look forward to that. Thanks so much, Susan, for bringing that information to us.
All right. South Korea's defense ministry is confirming that North Korea fired three short-range missiles today. The missiles were fired away from South Korean waters. But South Korea now says its army is on high alert. Tensions had been strained on the Korean peninsula after the U.N.-imposed tougher sanctions on Pyongyang.
All right. Back here in the U.S., a lot of people are feeling lucky, or at least they got their fingers crossed. People are rushing out to buy Powerball tickets today. It's because the jackpot is at a whopping $600 million. The drawing is tonight. So if you're still waiting to buy a ticket, what are you waiting for? Or maybe you're trying to find out, I don't know, if there is a kind of a special formula.
This guy right here, Professor Michael LACEY just might know the best way in which to kind of formulate a ticket. He's a professor of mathematics at Georgia Institute of Technology. Good to see you.
PROF. MICHAEL LACEY, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: Good to see you.
WHITFIELD: So you have your ticket. Is it the winning ticket? You picked the numbers.
LACEY: Most likely not.
WHITFIELD: No? Did you pick the numbers or random?
LACEY: I picked the numbers myself and I specifically chose them to avoid what many people would call their lucky numbers.
WHITFIELD: And that would be birthdays, anniversaries.
LACEY: Birthdays, anniversaries, the number one, the number seven, the number 13, 11 and so on.
WHITFIELD: And those numbers, particularly birthdays and anniversaries fall between one and 30.
LACEY: Yes.
WHITFIELD: And so you're saying cancel those out. Don't go buy those numbers.
LACEY: If they are important to you, play them.
WHITFIELD: But if you want to win?
LACEY: Understand that they are also important to many people. If you're lucky enough to win you may share the prize with other unknown friends.
WHITFIELD: OK. Well, sometimes that's all right especially if we're talking about $600 million.
LACEY: Of course.
WHITFIELD: We can share. But what is the formula? What is the explanation behind the odds, if there is one? We are talking about one in 175 million people. The chance of winning. How do you explain this mathematically how this comes about?
LACEY: It's a big number. If you take the number 175 million and double it, you reach essentially the population of the U.S.. So it's like you choose, of the entire U.S., you choose two people. That's what it's like. Another way is if you're a couple and if you play the lottery, you are actually more likely to win the lottery than to have five births, quintuplets in your pregnancy.
WHITFIELD: My goodness. You're kidding me. That seems outrageous and totally impossible. Really impossible. We know it happens. OK so if there are numbers you want to avoid say one through 30 - you know, if you want to be lucky and you're just not trying to be sentimental about it all, above 30 - 31 and above. Are there certain numbers that seem to hit the most?
LACEY: All numbers are equally likely. So if you choose one, two, three, four, five and six is the power ball that's as equally likely as any other possibility. However, there may be three or four people who make that same selection.
WHITFIELD: Earlier we showed that there are certain states that seemed to be the luckiest or in recent years. We are talking about Indiana, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Minnesota. And there were common denominator numbers that seemed to pop up in a lot of the winnings. 26 being one of them, 31, 36, 48. Does that sound reasonable? Do you buy that?
LACEY: I hadn't heard of these coincidences before.
WHITFIELD: I don't know the source of the information but I saw it reported. So I don't know who gathered it or if you're mathematician minds all are in agreement on this.
LACEY: What happens is in random events certain coincidences come up. People like explanations. That something is behind it rather than just the explanation that these things happen.
WHITFIELD: And geographically, should we be looking at certain locales when trying to make the purchase? You know, going to the most remote of gas stations where there are fewer people who are plucking the numbers?
LACEY: That might mean you stand in line shorter but you're not going to make yourself more likely to win.
WHITFIELD: OK. I want to do what you did. Because you likely have the winning number. What do I need to do before I buy my ticket tonight?
LACEY: A quick pick will work just fine.
WHITFIELD: Quick pick.
LACEY: The other or if you want to be a little, the numbers I selected are just in numerical order but they start at 53. So that's equally likely as any other combination though not very many people would have selected numbers this way.
WHITFIELD: OK. So maybe we'll be talking tomorrow if we find out there's a winner. I'm calling you first to find out if it's you.
LACEY: I would be happy to come by.
WHITFIELD: OK. Good deal. Good luck to you. Good luck to me too because based on your advice I'm going to get my tickets tonight.
LACEY: Best of luck.
WHITFIELD: All right. Professor Lacey, good to see you. Appreciate it. All right. Facebook - well guess what? They're celebrating a huge milestone. They may be consider themselves pretty lucky, too. It's the one-year anniversary of going public. But then again maybe kind of unlucky. It didn't pan out the way they wanted it initially. However, it has grown up. That company has since the IPO but the company is still searching for a way to make investors not just like it but love it.
Allison Kosik is at the New York Stock Exchange.
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ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): First came the excitement. Then came the waiting.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: We're still waiting for the actual, indications over the NASDAQ where it could be -
WHITFIELD: Facebook was to begin its trading about 25 minutes ago, and now finally the moment has arrived.
KOSIK: The sheer size of its public debut, 400 million shares overwhelmed computer systems at the NASDAQ delaying orders. It cost the exchange up to $62 million to compensate some firms involved. After the share price peeked at $45 on IPO day, the price plummeted. By the end of the summer it was under $18.
But new products like Graph Search and Facebook Home Mobile platform helped the price recover and stabilize around $27 a share. But the key to recovery has been meeting the biggest challenge dodging Facebook since it went public, how to make money from mobile. In the last year, Facebook has worked to move ads from the side of the page and into the news feed, making them more mobile friendly.
DAVE KERPEN, CEO, LIKEABLE MEDIA: So people are seeing the ads the same way they are seeing updates and that's what has gotten a lot of response from advertisers.
KOSIK: How effective the ads are depends on Facebook's 1.1 billion user, 750 million of whom now use the mobile app each month. Users can see which friends like the brand or products being advertised and an extra enticement to click and buy.
KERPEN: Right here, my friend victor is recommending Master card to me right on my phone. And that's really powerful.
KOSIK: And lucrative. At the time of the IPO, Facebook was getting less than 15 percent of its ad revenue from mobile and today it's 30 percent, and that helped Facebook shares to a 20 percent gain over the past six months. There are plenty of challenges ahead as Facebook's user base has gotten older it risks losing younger ones.
KERPEN: For the short and medium term the fact that your mom is on Facebook and your kids aren't on Facebook is a good thing for advertisers and a good thing for investors, but over the long term it's dangerous to see younger people leaving Facebook.
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KOSIK: And while Facebook is losing young people to other social networks there is a pretty big silver lining there. Many young people are leaving Facebook for Instagram which Facebook bought for a billion dollars before last year's IPO. At the time the move drew criticism because Instagram wasn't making money. But it turns out Facebook was able to scoop up its biggest competitor. It looks like money well spent today. Fredricka?
WHITFIELD: All right. Good deal. Thanks so much, Alison Kosik.
All right. A million bucks worth of jewelry gone in a poof, in a bling - or a blink. How life is imitating art at the Cannes Film Festival. Next.
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WHITFIELD: Sounds of gunfire at a jewelry heist not unusual on screen at the Cannes Film Festival. But this time the drama was real. A 43-year-old man is actually allegedly responsible, firing a gun loaded with blanks during this live television interview. You see on the set people are scrambling. The chaos even sent Oscar-winning actor Cristoph Waltz, running for cover. The suspect told police that he believes in god and wants to change the world. He was examined by a psychiatrist who said he is not mentally ill.
And if that wasn't exciting enough, jewels worth about a million dollars were stolen from a hotel room in Cannes. Chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper has details.
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JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This week they are the most riveting sight on the Riviera. They're bodies bejeweled by the biggest baubles. All that bling an irresistible target for paparazzi and, it turns out, for thieves. As the celebs at the Cannes Film Festival discovered those diamonds disappeared.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Diamonds. The only thing in the world you can't resist.
TAPPER: A jewelry heist in the luxurious Cote Azur. Sounds just like the plot of Hitchcock's 1955 classic "To Catch a Thief."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Filmed on the beautiful French Riviera.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You have a very strong grip. The kind (INAUDIBLE).
TAPPER: But the jewelry company Choppard says this thief is no Carey Grant managing to make off with less than a million dollars worth of bling. Small potatoes when you're talking diamonds in 2013. But a bigger question for us - why are all these jewelers bringing their wares to Cannes? I mean, what's in it for them. Well, it turns out - big bucks.
WENDY ADELER, VP MARKETING PHILANTHROPY/ADELER JEWELERS: They are not definitely passing through a lot of hands along the way. So that they are very, very secure as they travel. We make sure that we have accountability every step of the way.
TAPPER: Wendy Adeler said once her father jeweler Jorge Adeler started loaning his pieces to celebrities to wear on the red carpet, sales to real people well, they spiked.
ADELER: It sort of helps to show case your designs on a larger scale and a larger audience.
TAPPER: While the investigation in Cannes continues, French police say the thief swiped the safe unscrewed from a wall in a hotel room, sometime between 8:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m., prime party time during the week-long film festival. Perhaps the thief was taking advantage of that night's hot premiere, "The Bling Ring" by director Sofia Copola.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let's go to Paris. I want to rob.
TAPPER: That film is about, you guess it, a jewelry heist. It debuted within hours of the real life lift. Life imitating art imitating life on the movie world's most glamorous stage.
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WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks, Jake Tapper, for taking us to Cannes in that way.
All right. Police say whoever did it had to have known the jewels were being stored in a specific place in the hotel room. They also believe it is likely to have involved more than one person.
All right. From tragedy to triumph we follow one Boston bombing survivor whose past as a dancer is helping her survive for the future. It's a new normal after losing part of her leg.
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WHITFIELD: Boylston Street in Boston was the last place a dancer named Adrianne Haslet-Davis ever stood on her own. And then the bombs went off and the dancer lost part of her leg. Anderson Cooper followed her recovery.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This was Adrianne in just one week after the Boston Marathon bombings.
(on camera): How close were you to the second explosion? ADRIANNE HASLET-DAVIS, BOSTON BOMBING SURVIVOR: I was right in front of it, right in front of the (INAUDIBLE) where it was. I felt the direct impact. It immediately blew off my left foot.
COOPER: How far away was the bomb? Do you know?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My guess would have been about five feet.
COOPER: Five feet.
HASLET-DAVIS: Yes. We're lucky to be alive.
COOPER (voice-over): Her strength along with that of her husband Adam who just returned from a tour in Afghanistan with the air force and was also injured in the bombing inspired people around the world.
(on camera): You're determined to dance again.
HASLET-DAVIS: I am. Yes. Dancing is the one thing that I do that when I do it I don't feel I should be doing anything else, ever. I feel so free.
COOPER (voice-over): Adrianne agreed to let us to follow her recovery on the long road to dancing again.
HASLET-DAVIS: 17, 18, 19, 20. Oh!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nice.
COOPER: While she faces months of grueling therapy, her physical training as a dancer has helped better prepare her for learning to navigate the world with one leg. She also agreed to videotape her everyday life. Her new normal.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What are you doing?
HASLET-DAVIS: I am getting my very first manicure and pedicure in 20 days today since the marathon. Feeling more and more like a girl and more normal even though only one of my feet are getting painted. Check those babies out.
COOPER: There are simple milestones and there are others that are hard.
HASLET-DAVIS: I will be going home tomorrow. It makes me really sad because I don't feel like I'm ready. I'm nervous. And scared to walk the streets of Boston for the first time after all of this. I have been living in this bubble of safety. Now I'm just going to go out into the real world and a world with bombs and strangers and memories that I don't know if I'm ready to face.
COOPER: Two and a half weeks after the bombing, it's time to go home.
HASLET-DAVIS: I really appreciate your encouraging words.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody's out there rooting for you. Show them what can happen instead of the bad guys.
HASLET-DAVIS: Instead of the bad guys is right. I totally agree.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You go, girl.
COOPER: And the next day, despite her fears, she returns to Boylston Street where it all happened.
HASLET-DAVIS: After seeing the memorial and seeing people there and just paying their respects, hearing people tell me that I was an inspiration, it's very sweet, first of all, that they would want to give me their support.
I think it's also for them it's important to see that all of us that were affected are moving on and trying to find some sort of normalcy. And for them to be able to kind of have that knowledge that life goes on after such a horrible tragedy.
COOPER: Anderson Cooper, CNN, Boston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Wow. So inspiring. So, tonight, the photographers who were there in Boston on that day, they tell some incredible stories. "Back to Boston, Moments of Impact," that's tonight at 8:00 right here on CNN.
But first, up next we'll take you to a country where girls are more likely to go to work than to go to school.
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WHITFIELD: For girls living in developing countries getting an education is not something they take for granted. That's the subject of the CNN film "Girl Rising."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (voice-over): This is a 16-year-old Purmina (INAUDIBLE). She lives in (INAUDIBLE) Nepal. Purmina is one of the lucky ones. She's attending school.
PURMINA: I'm proud of my school.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Girls in Nepal have a higher illiteracy rate than boys. Room to Read, a global non-profit group that promotes literacy and gender equality in education is trying to change that.
RISHI AMATYA, ROOM TO READ: The girls education program started out because we found out that most families if they were able to educate only one child it was boys that got preferred over girls.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Purmina attended primary school but government education is free only through the 5th grade. Organizations like Room to Read allow her to continue her education. PURMINA: I'm the first person getting education in my family. We are from a poor family. We cannot afford all to go to high school.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Purmina lives with her family above a carpet factory. Her father is paralyzed and her mother is blind. Without an education Purmina says she would probably end up working at the carpet factory. But now she has big dreams.
PURMINA: I want to be an eye doctor when I grow up. Because my mother is blind. So I want to be an eye doctor in the future.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Purmina is 17 years old now and she's waiting to find out if she passed her 10th grade final exam. All the best to her. CNN films "Girl Rising" premieres Sunday, June 16th at 9:00 p.m. Eastern.
And that's going to do it for me. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. CNN NEWSROOM continues at the top of the hour with my colleague, Don Lemon. Right now, time for a special edition of "Sanjay Gupta, MD" on Angelina Jolie and breast cancer.
