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Snow, Ice To Impact Major U.S. Impact; Twenty To Thirty Whales Stranded In Everglades; Passenger Files Claims Against Metro North; Truck With Radioactive Material Stolen In Mexico; Fast Food Strikes Called For 100 Cities

Aired December 04, 2013 - 10:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the "NEWSROOM", a shocking revelation: the union rep for the engineer in that deadly train derailment says he was nodding off moments before the crash. Just how big of a problem is this?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If I was to get $15 an hour, I mean, you got to understand where I'm coming from, how that would change my life tremendously. My kids could have simple things like Christmas gifts. Things that people take for granted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: She says a few dollars more in her paycheck would change her life. Fast food workers like this woman planning to walk off the job tomorrow, all part of a push for higher pay.

Plus this, what's it like behind the wheel of the car actor, Paul Walker, died in?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is it easy to do something stupid?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, it is. It's just having so much power under your foot that, you know, things can happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: More than 600 horsepower, hair-trigger steering. Was it all too much to handle? Second hour of "NEWSROOM" starts now.

And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me. Get ready for the arctic invasion, plummeting temperatures from Montana to Texas, Missouri to Ohio. We're talking snow, ice, sleet, freezing rain. Places in Colorado seeing major traffic backups with heavy snow and much more to come.

Minneapolis could get up to 10 inches of snow while places like Ohio may get hammered with ice. Look at the drastic changes in temperature. Dallas is predicted to have a high of 81 degrees today. That temperature is due to drop to 31 degrees by Friday. That's a swing of 50 degrees.

We have team coverage for you this morning. CNN's Ana Cabrera is in Boulder, Colorado where as much as 10 inches of snow expected to fall today. Indra Petersons is in the CNN Severe Weather Center. Let's start in Boulder, though, shall we, with Ana. Good morning.

INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It's the combination of the snow and extremely cold temperatures that are making for dangerous conditions this morning. In fact, this is the mall, a popular place if you're familiar with boulder. We've seen a lot of people falling as they're walking this morning. We're talking to drivers who have said they've been slipping.

Even the Department of Transportation tells us it' tough to have effective de-icing during this kind of weather because the freeze point is just so low for the snow that they're putting down that de- icer on that it's an issue in terms of getting traction. That's why ire 70 was closed for some time yesterday because of the drastic -- teens for highs, single digits in the metro area with temperatures dipping to negative ten at night.

The National Weather Service telling us this could be the coldest stretch of air Colorado has seen in years. And it's not just Colorado really feeling the pain of this arctic air mass. It's really about a dozen states across the country that are at least experiencing some, if not going to experience a lot of these cold, icy, snowy conditions in the next few days. Several inches on the ground now. We'll be here to watch what happens from here. Back to you.

COSTELLO: All right, Ana Cabrera, many thanks. Ana Cabrera live in Boulder.

By Friday the storm could cause extremely dangerous conditions in some cities that aren't so used to it. Look what it's done in Duluth, Minnesota. It's covered in snow. Now that nasty weather is headed south. Indra Petersons is here to tell us where exactly that storm is headed.

PETERSONS: There's a lot to be taking a look at. Looking at Colorado, there's more snow. Another 16 inches is still possible to solve in through Minnesota, same thing. Look at all of this heavy snowfall and that's not even the main story. Here is what we need to be watching. This is the system making its way south and pushing off to the east. We're concerned with the wintry mix. Notice all the pinks.

When talk about anywhere from southern portions of Missouri all the way back through Texas, we have a threat of sleet and rain. And that mix extended all the way into the Ohio Valley on Thursday. And where you have the freezing rain in that pink zone, you have the threat for downed power lines and trees. And it looks like some of the National Weather Services are thinking that ice storm is possible.

COSTELLO: Many thanks to you.

I told you before the break about those 20 to 30 whales beaching themselves in Southern Florida. This is in Everglades National Park. We don't know exactly why this is happening. John Zarrella is on the phone to hopefully fill us in with more information.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): It's not common when they do this. But it certainly does happen. And where they are is a very, very remote area of the everglades national park on the West Coast. A fisherman spotted them last night. Several of them had beached themselves. Several others were still out in the water. For folks out there, you have to understand, it is all flat out there, very, very shallow water.

In some places less than a foot deep at low tide. And even at high tide you may not get more than 3 feet or 4 feet, if that the. Right now there are volunteers that are out there, National Park service folks, fish and wildlife biologists are headed out to the scene, if not already there, to try to see if they can encourage the whales that are still out in the water to get into the deeper water hopefully when the tide comes up if it hasn't already come up. And they were able to manage to get some of the beached whales off of the beach before they expired.

COSTELLO: How would they get them off the beach? It would seem to be an insurmountable task.

ZARRELLA: They're bill (ph) whales, but not enormous whales. With enough people, they're able to move them back into the water and try to coax them by holding them up. I've seen this done. It can be done. And it certainly is a tedious job. And sadly, in many cases these whales do expire before it's accomplished to getting them into deeper water. But there's a major rescue effort underway now. And it's a very remote area of the park over on the west coast and only accessible by boat.

COSTELLO: You said that biologists would try to coax them back into the ocean. How do they do that?

ZARRELLA: Literally, it's just by force. They're grabbing them, a bunch of people are holding them. They're trying to point them in the right direction. They try to hopefully orient them so they can get them into deeper water. In some cases it's just literally walking them out to the deeper water. And once they do that, they are then able to hopefully keep them going in that direction. A lot of times they just turn around and dolphins do the same thing and come right back to shore and re-beach themselves.

And of course, scientists, biologists are still unclear as to what it is that ultimately leads to these whales and dolphins, you know, beaching themselves. Whether it's viral whether it's environmental. Nobody knows what the cause is when you see something like this happen. But they're working very hard to at least try to save as many of these whales as they can.

COSTELLO: Many thanks to you.

BALDWIN: This just in to CNN. A female passenger on Sunday's derailed train in New York has filed a train against the metro North. Her client suffered a fractured spine, a broken collarbone and several broken ribs. This claim comes with the question about the highway hypnosis that could have caused in this derailment. A union rep said he caught himself nodding off.

It could be key to explaining what happened. But federal investigators say the union rep spoke out of turn. And now the NTSB has kicked the rail union off the case. Earlier this morning a former NTSB director weighed in on the crash saying that fatigue is a real danger in the industry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER GOELZ, FORMER NTSB MANAGING DIRECTOR: Fatigue is an insidious issue because it's not easily documented. It tends not to have a high priority on the part of either management or on the part of the operators, the unions. Because you get -- sometimes you get paid extra for working later or working longer. So it is a tough issue. I think management has started to focus on it. But it really is a personal responsibility of the operator.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: The derailed train's driver is scheduled to talk to NTSB investigators today.

A difficulty ahead for the family of the victims of last year's massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. The 911 tapes are scheduled to be released later this afternoon. An attorney tried to block the release to protect relatives. But a judge ultimately agreed with a ruling by a state freedom of information commission.

CNN will air some of those calls, but will not be in Newtown for the one-year anniversary next Saturday out of respect for the families.

Still ahead, an exclusion sift look inside one of deadliest nuclear disasters in history. CNN gets exclusive access inside the Fukushima nuclear plant.

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COSTELLO: A truck filled with radioactive material and stolen from a town near Mexico is now the subject of a search by the U.S. Homeland Security Department and Mexican authorities. The material, Cobalt 60, is used in medical treatments. But as CNN's Nick Parker told me, there are other potential concerns.

NICK PARKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is something that has been voiced as something that could potentially be used to make a fairly low-level kind of dirty bomb to be honest with you. But at the same time, if it's in fairly small quantities, it's not particularly harmful to the public. But that said, obviously this particular cargo in the quantity that it was is judged as extremely dangerous by the Mexican authorities.

COSTELLO: Officials says they believe the suspects were only after the truck and had no idea that it was carrying toxic material. Fast food workers take their fight for a minimum wage hike nationwide tomorrow. There have been a number of protests over the last year beginning in New York and spread to other cities. But tomorrow's event is being built as the biggest yet for the campaign. Alison Kosik is in New York with more on this, this morning. Good morning.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. So a year after they started those strikes, they're returning here to New York City tomorrow. They're across the country to cities like Chicago, L.A. and Denver. They're demanding that federal minimum wage go from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Living on $7.25, you cannot do it.

KOSIK (voice-over): This is what minimum wage looks and sounds like.

SHENITA SIMON, FAST FOOD EMPLOYEE: I would rather sacrifice my meal and my husband would too to make sure my kids can have what they need.

KOSIK: They are fast food workers struggling every day.

EDUARDO SHOY, FAST FOOD EMPLOYEE: How can you live on $7.25? You couldn't pay your apartment. If you have a family of may be zero, you could support yourself. If you have a family, two kids, a wife, where you live at, underneath the bridge? Yes. That's not right.

KOSIK: The median pay for fast food workers is $9 an hour or $18,720 a year.

ASST. PROFESSOR DORIAN WARREN, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: They're taking these because they're desperate in an economy that is still not creating enough work for people who want to go to work and still not creating enough middle class jobs.

KOSIK: Eduardo Shoy lost his job a few years ago. Now 58 with two children headed to college, he works at Kentucky Fried Chicken in New York earning $7.25 an hour. He also works a night shift as a forklift operator at Kennedy airport. He moved his family to another state and is trying to sell his house.

SHOY: For me, it's tough, real tough. I can't do none of the things that I used to do. I used to able to pay my mortgage, able to pay my car payment, able to take my family out to dinner. Now we had to cut it out and we had to sacrifice a lot of stuff.

KOSIK: Eduardo will take to the streets in New York this Thursday to take part in a strike which demands that the federal minimum wage be raised to $15 an hour. The protests have expanded since last November when 200 fast food workers staged a one-day strike at more than 20 restaurants in New York City. And this past July and August, there were protests across the country.

SHOY: Once the nation is hearing it, you know, we've been striking all over the country so people are getting an understanding. They're seeing the light of what is going on.

KOSIK: But the industry says it has created jobs in this difficult economy. In response to the strikes, the National Restaurant Association said in a statement, dramatic increases a starting wage such as those called for in these rallies going to challenge the job growth history, increase the prices for restaurant meals, and lead to fewer jobs created.

WARREN: Half of all Americans make $26,000 a year or less. So this fast food worker movement possibly going to do the same thing that the industrial workers did to our economy in the 1930s and '40s.

KOSIK: Now, these protests seem to be having an impact even though a $15 federal minimum wage could be a long ways off of becoming a reality. We've been talking to people since they started these. A couple told us they were promoted to full time, and another said they were able to get more hours. So the protests at least are resonate inning that way.

COSTELLO: I was just going to ask you, do people fear they lose their jobs? But it doesn't sound like that.

KOSIK: Exactly. They're worried about that. But in the end they want to get out there and state their case. This is just a huge growing problem. You look at what's been happening since the recession. During the recession, we lost more than 8 million jobs. Lots of them haven't come back. Many people over the age of 25 have to take these minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet.

And now there's a trend that six of the ten fastest growing jobs over the next decade, these are low paying jobs. These are home health aides, veterinary technicians. A lot of people trying to make ends meet on a minimum wage of $7.25.

Still to come in the "NEWSROOM", new safety concerns about the exotic car that Paul Walker was ride in when he died.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like kind of taming a wild animal. If you were taming a wild animal, you would be afraid of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: We'll talk to an expert about why that Porsche in a deadly crash may be too dangerous to drive.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Breaking news has to do the celebrity chef, Nigella Lawson. A fraud trial is now under way in London and there are also that she used cocaine and marijuana and that is why these two sisters were able to extort money from their family. She's on the stand testifying. This is the latest testimony. She said, she admitted to using cocaine twice. One with her late husband, John Diamond when he learned his cancer was terminal in order to give him, she said, some escape from his treatment.

And once in July of 2010 when felt subject to terrorism by her then husband Charles Saatchi. As you know, he's the ex-husband. The famous tabloid shot where he had his hands around her throat. She also testified that she felt he bullied her through her marriage and that he attempted to force her to testify in this trial to save his own reputation. Erin McLaughlin has been listening to the testimony and joins us now with more. Good morning.

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. That's right of the celebrity chef, Nigella Lawson, admitting in court today that she used cocaine on two separate occasions. Once with her late husband John Diamond when he learned that his cancer was terminal in order to give him, quote, "some escape" from his treatment. And once in July, 2010, when she felt subject to, quote, "terrorism" by her then husband, Charles Saatchi.

This admission is counter to the claims of the two former assistants on trial. They claim that she habit actually used drugs, facing charge by the prosecution of allegedly abusing Saatchi as much as a million dollars. But clearly this portrait that the defendants have painted, the defense has painted so far of the celebrity chef as a-ha bit wall drug user, she's clearly countering those allegations in that statement.

COSTELLO: Let you get back to the court. Erin McLaughlin live in London.

It's been more than two and a half years since Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactor was badly damaged in a tsunami. Clean up is expected to take as long as 40 years. CNN's Ana Coren was granted access inside the plant. It's the closest a journalist has ever been allowed to the recovery work.

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ANA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We are here inside reactor four at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant. It was in here where there was that massive high explosion that severely damaged the building. But this was the least damaged of the four reactors because it was under maintenance and wasn't actually operating.

Now two and a half years later, Tepco says it reached a milestone. That massive crane behind me is removing 1500 fuel rods in that cooling pool to a storage pool next door. It's a slow and delicate process that going to take about a year, but once finished it going to mean that this reactor can be decommissioned. Attention going to then turn to reactors one, two, and three that suffered far worst damage. The situation there is serious and the levels of radiation are dangerously high.

They've begun removing debris, but the clean up inside the reactors is a long way off. It won't be decommissioned for at least 40 years. As for the future of nuclear power in Japan, no one really knows. More than 50 reactors have been shut down with the public very concerned about their health and safety. But Japanese prime minister is pushing to re-open them, believing that Japan can have a safe nuclear future. Ana Coren, CNN, Fukushima, Japan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Still to come, as the one year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tapes are set to release later today. It's over objections from some of the victims' families. We'll talk about that next.

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