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Super Typhoon Slams Philippines; Jobless Rate Inches up to 7.3 Percent; Obama Offers Apology on Health Care Woes; Jonathan Martin harassed by Teammates

Aired November 08, 2013 - 09:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The football player may not have been the only one targeted by his teammates.

Plus this.

MAYOR ROB FORD, TORONTO: Because I'm going to kill that (EXPLETIVE DELETED) guy. I'm telling you, it's first-degree murder.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mike Tyson.

FORD: But I'll fight him. I'll (INAUDIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: The mayor of Toronto does it again. Tom Ford apologizing for threatening to kill someone.

NEWSROOM starts now.

Good morning. I'm Carol Costello, thank you so much for joining me.

One of the strongest storms ever recorded on the planet now roaring across the Philippines. With wind gusts as strong as 235 miles per hour. We're getting reports of flooding, power outages, roofs torn off homes, trees ripped out of the ground. The super typhoon has killed three people and more than 700,000 people reportedly have fled its path.

What's worse, hundreds of thousands of people affected are still recovering from a 7.1 magnitude earthquake that hit just last month. At this point it's still hard to grasp the full extent of the typhoon's damage.

CNN's Karen Maginnis is tracking the typhoon from the CNN Severe Weather Center, Australian reporter Kathy Novak is in Manila. We're having some trouble getting her -- we have her.

Kathy, we have you. I know you're in the middle of a typhoon so it's difficult. But what's happening?

KATHY NOVAK, AUSTRALIAN REPORTER: Well, this typhoon is continuing to make its way across the country. It's expected to continue to impact the Philippines for the next 11 to 12 hours before it heads out towards Vietnam. Not only is this the strongest possible category 5 storm, what's so destructive about it is that it has made landfall across several places in the country.

Now the Philippines is made up of many small islands and this typhoon has been hitting homes built right along the coast and that includes, as you mentioned, in an area that was just hit by a major earthquake last month that killed more than 200 people and left more than 5,000 people homeless. Those people now living in tents, again having to evacuate because of this typhoon.

Many of those areas have been cut off from power and from any communications all day and that has made it extremely difficult for authorities to assess the casualties and the damage, so as you mentioned the official death toll has remained at three for a number of hours but that is expected to climb as more information comes through and already in the local news we're hearing new reports of deaths but those have not been officially confirmed yet.

COSTELLO: Kathy Novak, reporting from the Philippines this morning.

Now let's head to the weather center and Karen Maginnis.

Karen, take it away.

KAREN MAGINNIS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes. And, Carol, this is catastrophic. It is deadly and it is record setting, because when it did make landfall initially, that was during the morning hours, Philippine time, we did see some winds sustained at 195 with gusts up to 235. If you think of the top end of the take-off speed of a 747, it is higher than that.

We are looking at winds now, they have been weakening as it has moved across the Philippines. Right now 165 miles per hour, but still a category 5, super typhoon that is expected to move into the South China Sea and by Saturday, be out over the open waters and perhaps impact the coastline of Vietnam, going into the beginning of Monday, with 100-mile-per-hour winds.

We'll keep you updated -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Karen Maginnis, thanks so much.

Just minutes ago a new pulse of the economy and the news is mixed at best, according to the Feds, 204,000 jobs were created in October, which is actually better than expected, but the nation's unemployment rate bumped up to 7.3 percent, so let's take a closer looking at the numbers, shall we, and what they mean.

CNN's Poppy Harlow is in New York with the nuts and bolts of the job report. And for analysis we'll turn to David Wessel in Washington. He's the economics editor for "The Wall Street Journal."

Poppy, first to you, break it down for us.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, Carol. What an upside surprise. I mean, economists surveyed by CNN Money thought only 120,000 jobs would be added in the month of October. Instead we get this shocker, 204,000. The unemployment rate remains pretty steady at 7.3 percent. The big question in this report was, was there going to be a big impact or skewed numbers because, you know, we have those weeks in October where the government was shut down and all those federal workers were furloughed.

That really didn't skew the numbers so much as we had expected and looking on your screen, what you see is how many jobs were added each month this year. This is actually the third best month this year in terms of jobs added. One other thing to note is that the number of jobs added in the previous two months in August and September were also revised significantly higher so that's a bonus as well.

I want to put this in perspective, though. We will take all the jobs added we can get. This is a number that will slowly help bring down the unemployment rate. But I emphasize slowly because there are still so much pain out there for so many people that want to be working.

Yes, the unemployment rate has come down but you've still got 11.3 million Americans, Carol, that want to be working that are unemployed. So you still have a real big problem on that front.

I will tell you some of the gains we saw. Retail up 44,000, manufacturing, health care, a lot of gains there as well in terms of jobs so overall the headline number is strong, unemployment stays relatively the same, and I think the question now, we're looking at Dow futures down, why isn't the market soaring on this? Well, the bigger issue here is what is the Federal Reserve policy going to be?

Is it going to change now that we saw this gain in jobs? We've been seeing this pretty consistently. Is the Fed going to pull back all that stimulus it's been propping up the housing market in this economy? That's a big question.

COSTELLO: It's got to at some point. OK, Poppy, thanks so much.

HARLOW: Right.

COSTELLO: Let's turn our attention to David Wessel. So Poppy mentioned 200,000 jobs created. It looks like the government shutdown didn't affect this jobs report but that doesn't mean the government shutdown didn't affect our economy, right?

DAVID WESSEL, ECONOMICS EDITOR, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Well, that's true. I mean, yesterday the White House told us that the government spent $2 billion paying people -- government employees who didn't work, which is really hard to take at a time when we have a deficit.

Look, I think the jobs report is good. What you're hearing around town here is a giant sigh of relief. People were worried that the shutdown showdown had really led businesses to stop hiring. That didn't happen. Not only 204,000 jobs in October, but they revised up the numbers for August and September by 60,000 jobs, so it's encouraging, a sigh of relief.

COSTELLO: It is encouraging but the biggest growth came in retail, and retail people don't make much money so big picture here, is that really the best news we could have received today? WESSEL: No. Absolutely not. Manufacturing jobs did increase a little, that's encouraging but they're pretty steady. A lot of the jobs are low wage jobs, no doubt about that, and as was just pointed out there are 11 million people still without work, four million of them have been out of work for six months or more, and there's another eight million people who say they're working part-time, and wish they could get full-time jobs.

And I think those numbers are going to keep the Federal Reserve on the sidelines for a little bit longer. They are worried about how hard it is to get a good job, and they don't want to start putting the brakes on until that goes away.

COSTELLO: Poppy Harlow, David Wessel, thanks so much for your insight. I appreciate it.

WESSEL: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: You're welcome, too.

Many of the jobs created this month are held by hourly workers. You heard that. Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he wants to help them out. He wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour, which would be phased in over three years. The minimum wage is now $7.25 an hour.

President Obama says he supports the plan, Reid's timeline is short, he wants the increase approved this month in about two weeks. But with Congress' Thanksgiving break coming up the measure could linger.

Today a milestone in the treatment of mental health, Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services secretary, is expected to announce new guidelines that will require doctors and insurers to treat mental illness the same as physical illness, increasing access to care.

We'll bring you her remarks live in just about a half hour.

This comes as President Obama takes responsibility for technical problems that have plagued the healthcare.gov Web site, but the president didn't stop there. He also responded to criticism of how he characterized the loss impact on those who already have insurance.

Athena Jones is at the White House with more.

Good morning.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Any minute now the president will be departing the White House heading down to New Orleans to talk about the economy. But of course he's still dealing with the fallout over healthcare.gov and the word that millions of Americans are getting cancellation letters from health insurance companies because of Obamacare.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JONES (voice-over): President Obama is apologizing to Americans losing their health insurance under the Affordable Care Act despite his frequent promises they'd be able to keep plans they like, telling NBC News --

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am sorry that they, you know, are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me.

JONES: About 5 percent of Americans buy their insurance on the individual market and some of them are losing their plans as insurance companies cancel policies that don't meet tough new Obamacare standards.

OBAMA: We weren't as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taken place and I want to do everything we to make sure that people are finding themselves in a good position, a better position than they were before this law happened.

JONES: The president said most people getting cancellation letters will be able to get new plans at the same price or cheaper on the new marketplaces. And he stuck to his administration's latest promise that the troubled healthcare.gov Web site will be fixed by the end of the month.

OBAMA: It's better now than it was last week and it's certainly a lot better than it was on October 1st. I'm confident that it will be even better by November 30th and that the majority of people are going to be able to get on there, they're going to be able to enroll.

JONES: Obama's apology comes as a bipartisan pair of senators filed legislation Thursday to delay for a year the fine to be levied on people who don't buy health insurance by the end of March citing the problems with the Web site.

West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Illinois Republican Mark Kirk say, quote, "This commonsense proposal simply allows Americans to take more time to browse and explore their options, making 2014 a true transition year."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JONES: Now there may be another battle brewing over Todd Park. He's the administration's chief technology officer. The White House says that Park can't testify before the House Overnight Committee next week as requested because he's too busy trying to fix healthcare.gov.

That committee's chairman, Chairman Darrell Issa, a Republican out of California says he may compel Park to testify -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Can't say I'm surprised. Athena Jones, thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM new bombshell accusations of the Dolphins bullying story. The attorney for Jonathan Martin says his abuse was nothing new.

John Zarrella is on the story this morning.

Good morning, John.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. The Miami Dolphins players say they've had enough talking. They put on their game faces instead. I'll have that story coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Checking our top stories at 15 minutes past the hour.

Secretary of State John Kerry has just arrived in Geneva amid hopes that a deal can be reached on Iran's nuclear program. He's joined by the French foreign minister the British foreign secretary.

The trip comes just hours after Iran's foreign minister told CNN that an agreement is expected to be reached before talks end tonight.

The push to get the Washington Redskins to change their name follows the team outside the nation's capital.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Hey, hey, ho, ho, the name has got to go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Hundreds protested last night in Minneapolis just before the Vikings hosted the Redskins. The American Indian Movement called the protest in an attempt to raise awareness of racism in sports. The Redskins owner has defended his team's name.

It continues to get uglier in Miami. The Dolphins' Jonathan Martin now fighting back through his attorney. David Cornwall says his client was targeted by team mates, quote, "Jonathan endured harassment that went far beyond the traditional locker room hazing. For the entire season and a half that he was with the Dolphins he attempted to befriend the same teammates who subjected him to the abuse with the hope that doing so would end the harassment.

Despite these efforts the taunting continued. Jonathan endured a malicious physical attack on him by a teammate and daily vulgar comments."

The statement ends with a vulgar quote allegedly by a teammate about what he would do to Martin's sister. And it is vulgar.

CNN's John Zarrella is in Miami with more.

Good morning, John.

ZARRELLA: Good morning, Carol. You know, on Wednesday the Dolphin players were very, very open about their feelings after their practice. Yesterday they really didn't want to talk, at least most of them didn't, about anything but football.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZARRELLA (voice-over): Richie Incognito's locker, his clothes hanging neatly, quite a contrast to the mess and how else do you put it, caused by the Incognito/Jonathan Martin bullying scandal. Thursday Dolphins head coach Joe Philbin was back in front of the microphones, he wanted to talk Tampa Bay, the opponent Monday night, nothing else.

JOE PHILBIN, MIAMI DOLPHINS HEAD COACH: Any comments that we would make at this time would be, you know, a disservice to the process that's about to take place.

ZARRELLA: In the locker room most players had had enough of it, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The only time we have to deal about this is when the media comes here, you know, asks us questions.

ZARRELLA: When asked how does a locker room stay together with all this distraction, people outside of the football world don't get it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That sucks for them, you know.

ZARRELLA: OK. We get that. Players who would talk were still trying to make sense of it all.

KYLE MILLER, MIAMI DOLPHINS TIGHT END: It gets to the point where you can't differentiate between what's fact and what's opinions.

ZARRELLA: What's been most puzzling is the relationship between Incognito and Martin that has begun to emerge. Can we really believe they were best friends as some have said? Two men from very different backgrounds and experiences. Martin, a Stanford grad, who talked of attending Harvard Law, a quiet guy by all accounts, and Incognito, perhaps the polar opposite, a man who at least one time apparently thought little of screaming racial slurs and using vulgar language publicly.

RICHIE INCOGNITO, MIAMI DOLPHINS GUARD: Who let the (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

ZARRELLA: The player twice voted by his peers one of the dirtiest guys in the game.

TYSON CLABO, MIAMI DOLPHINS OFFENSIVE TACKLE: What's perceived is that Richie is this psychopath racist maniac, right? And the reality is that Richie was a pretty good teammate and that Richie and Jonathan Martin were friends.

ZARRELLA: Players even saying they hung out together, off the field and on it. They played next to each other on the left side of Miami's offensive line, protecting the franchise quarterback's blind side. So were they friends? Enemies? Did Martin hang with Incognito because he was afraid not to?

In time we'll know, just not right now.

(END VIDEOTAPE) ZARRELLA: And we're not going to know much more today from the Dolphins or the coaches, that's for sure. It is an off day at Dolphins camp, as they get ready for their Monday night game against Tampa Bay, and that game is in Tampa -- Carol.

COSTELLO: OK, I got to ask you about another nasty thing hanging out there, there's a report a woman accused Richie incognito of inappropriate touching. What can you tell us about that?

ZARRELLA: Yes, apparently it happened at a golf tournament, a Miami Dolphins golf tournament back in May of 2012. He came up to her and was allegedly inappropriately touching her with a golf club. She did file a police report, but ultimately no charges were filed -- Carol.

COSTELLO: John Zarrella, you're going to join us next hour, we appreciate it.

Dolphins mess is just the latest hit the NFL has taken. Next hour we take an in-depth look at the powerhouse brand. Mean Joe Green among our guests, the special begins at 10:30 Eastern right here on CNN.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM a stunning admission from "60 Minutes" about its reporting on Benghazi. We'll tell you why Lara Logan is now apologizing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: It's a rare misstep for one of the most well-respected news programs in the world. "60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan is now admitting she was wrong. She says she and her producers were lied to by a source who claimed to have been an eyewitness to last year's attack in Benghazi. She appeared on "CBS This Morning" to apologize.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARA LOGAN, "60 MINUTES" CORRESPONDENT: The most important thing to every person at "60 Minutes" is the truth and today the truth is that we made a mistake, and that's very disappointing for any journalist. It's very disappointing for me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN foreign affairs reporter Elise Labott is following the story from Washington.

So take us through this, this man said that he was a witness, he was there, he saw the American ambassador's body in the consulate in Benghazi. Was he lying about all of that?

ELISE LABOTT, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS REPORTER: Well, really no one knows what the truth of his story is, Carol, because this gentleman that spoke to "60 Minutes" he go -- went by the pseudonym Morgan Jones but now we know his name is Dylan Davies. He was a contractor that was training Libyan guards in Benghazi at that U.S. mission.

Now he told "60 Minutes" and he wrote in a book that has been published that he went to the compound that night, that he disobeyed orders from his supervisor and tried to get to the compound, then he went to the hospital, and saw the ambassador's body. We later know that he did try to get to the compound, but he was blocked by road blocks and he ended up going back to his home, which is what he wrote in an incident report for his company, Blue Mountain, that subsequently was revealed after this "60 Minutes" report.

So basically he told his supervisors one story, told "60 Minutes" another story, told the FBI another story, and now as the dots are being all connected, "60 Minutes" is doing the right thing and saying that they were misled.

COSTELLO: So he was, indeed, lying. So what's his motive here? I mean, what's Dylan Davies saying about this?

LABOTT: Well, presumably motive is to sell a book. He has a very extremely provocative book coming out about warnings that he told the State Department about security and a very harrowing account of what he was doing on the ground that night which we later know not to be true.

He said in a statement to CNN, and I quote, "The account in my book is consistent with what I gave to the FBI and the U.S. authorities about what happened in Benghazi." But according to CNN's Evan Perez who spoke to the FBI just recently, there are inconsistencies with what he has in the book with what he told the FBI, and now his publisher, Threshold Publications, is saying that they haven't seen the FBI report, but in light of all these recent revelations, they're going to review this book very carefully and take action.

So in fact what he tried to do is come out with this very provocative book with this harrowing account. It may be that this book that he wrote is discredited and certainly he was disingenuous when he spoke to "60 Minutes."

COSTELLO: Elise Labott, thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the mayor of Toronto admitted smoking crack cocaine but now he has to explain this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FORD: Brother, you've never seen me (EXPLETIVE DELETED) go. You think so, brother? But when he's down I'll rip his (EXPLETIVE DELETED) throat out. And I'll poke his eyes out. I will, (EXPLETIVE DELETED), when he's dead, I'll make sure that mother (EXPLETIVE DELETED) is dead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: What was Rob Ford so angry about?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)