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Shooting at Purdue; Snow and Extreme Cold Expected; Female Bombers in Russia; Japan's Dolphin Slaughter

Aired January 21, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, thank you very much.

Good to be with all of you on a Tuesday. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We are following those reports of that shooting at Purdue University in Indiana. The news at this hour, as I can tell you directly from the Purdue University Twitter site, this is the update -- no ongoing threat to campus. Resume normal operations. EE, that's the electrical engineering building, will remain closed. Check purdue.edu for updates.

And still no word as far as anyone has actually been hurt, but you can take a look at some of the video that we've been watching from some of our affiliates out of Indiana. And we have video of a man believed to be the suspect. Appears there handcuffed, getting patted down. The shooting apparently happened in this electrical engineering building. Again, that's the latest what we have, no ongoing threat, 13 minutes ago tweeted from Purdue University. No reports of injuries. One person is in custody.

Joining me now in studio, HLN law enforcement analyst Mike Brooks, and Jean Casarez, CNN legal correspondent in New York.

And, Mike Brooks, first to you. No ongoing threats.

MIKE BROOKS, HLN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Right.

BALDWIN: So, sigh of relief for a lot of people there in West Lafayette, Indiana. But still, this electrical engineering building still considered a crime scene, yes?

BROOKS: Absolutely. And, you know, they lifted the shelter in place for the rest of the school, but I think that was out of an abundance of caution because it said the report of a shooting. They didn't say anything about anyone being shot. So we don't know if there was any injuries or not, but they do have one person in custody. And I think that was the smart thing to do, until they got a good handle. Take a look at video surveillance, find out exactly what the movement of this person was.

But it sounds like everything was there in that electrical engineering building. But, you know, notifying 30,000 undergrads at that campus, the notification system they had via Twitter, via e-mail, on their website -

BALDWIN: Pretty efficient I have to say. BROOKS: Extremely efficient. And, you know, every campus has something like this now because of these active shooter situations.

BALDWIN: Jean Casarez, what more do you know?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN LEGAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Purdue had been saying that the shooting was at or near -- reported at or near the electrical engineering building. They are now saying for the first time that it was reported to have taken place in the electrical engineering building.

BALDWIN: Inside.

CASAREZ: And as you say, that lift for everyone to stay in shelter has been taken away but for that building. So the order to stay in place is still in force in that particular building. It has not been lifted.

But we are seeing one person in custody. Shooting by Purdue saying reported around noon. A Purdue student told CNN it was about 12:24 p.m. he was in that building, he said, and he got a text, an official text from the university, saying to stay in place and to take cover. But we do not know of any injuries at this point. But, still, this is a campus that is under constant surveillance. As you said, this is a crime scene. And that building, the electrical engineering building, is where it is reported that that shooting took place.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: We will follow this through the next two hours. As soon as there are updates, we'll bring them to you. Jean Casarez and Mike Brooks, thank you both very much.

Want to move along and talk about this smack of winter heading both to the east, the Midwest, bringing bitter cold and monster snowfall. Take a look at what's moving eastward. This driving blizzard blowing out of North Dakota. The storm could bring the biggest accumulation of snow we have seen thus far this winter.

CNN is covering this winter blast from all corners of the affected areas. We have Zain Asher out and about in New York and Manhattan, where the region is really bracing for the worst still to come. Ted Rowlands for us in Chicago, where several inches of snow have already fallen. Margaret Conley is live at LaGuardia Airport watching all those cancellations in bright red on those flight display monitors. We'll head to you in a moment. And also meteorologist Jennifer Grey tracking all the latest warnings and advisories from the Weather Center.

But, Zain Asher, let's begin with you in the thick of things there in and around Columbus Circle. I know I read that the snow is supposed to tease New Yorkers through the day but then really hit hard a little later on. Tell me - tell me what you're seeing where you are.

ZAIN ASHER, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Brooke. Well, actually the last - literally the last five seconds, it's just started to come down slightly harder. But the real drama is expected around 4:00 today. You know, mother nature is sort of trying to be gentle with us, kind with us, because it's starting to sort of ease us into it, right? So this morning, the snow is relatively light. But the real action is between 4:00 and 10:00 this evening. That's when we're expecting roughly around eight to 12 inches of snow. So if you're a snow lover, today, trust me, you are in business. But if you're like me and you shy away from cold weather -- oh, it's getting - it's actually really coming down hard right now. But if you shy away from cold weather, then with the wind chill of minus five degrees Celsius, it is going to be cold. You might want to wrap up warm and stay inside.

But Mayor Bill de Blasio did talk about just how much the city is really preparing, 2,000 sanitation workers, certainly all hands on deck. He had also mentioned that if you don't have to be outside, if you don't have to be outside, if you don't have to be driving your car, if you can keep the streets clear, it does, obviously, allow the sanitation workers to do their jobs more efficiently. The NYPD talking about the issues with construction sites, especially because of the wind gusts that could make debris certainly a problem for pedestrians.

I've been speaking to people who tell me that they've been sort of prepared for this. This is nothing that - nothing new for New Yorkers because they have prepared for this. But if you're walking around, certainly do be careful.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Watching those taxis behind you, that's always my barometer in Manhattan of how things are going. And it looks a-OK so far. Zain, thank you very much.

You know, temperatures in the Midwest are supposed to be 15 to 20 degrees below average. Ted Rowlands, to you. Are you feeling that?

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I am. It's very cold, Brooke. It's been a cold winter. You know, a depressing winter. We had snow hours ago and you see the streets of Chicago have been plowed and salted. No big deal.

But look at the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Normally it is full of pedestrians. Hardly anybody out here today. People are staying inside their office buildings, trying to stay away from the elements because it is so cold. We're in single digits right now. The wind, of course, that's a big problem. You see the flags up here on the Michigan Avenue Bridge, they are blowing. That sends the temperatures way below zero and downright miserable. The good news for us is that we've got another day or so. But the bad news for the folks in the east is, this is coming your way and it's not fun.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Under the beautiful blue sky, Ted Rowlands, looks can be deceiving. Ted, thank you.

Let's talk flights. To LaGuardia Airport we go. Margaret Conley, tell me, how many cancellations are you seeing where you are? MARGARET CONLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, the snow came down earlier than expected and there's more of it. There's a winter storm warning until 6:00 tomorrow morning. The National Weather Service, they say there could be snow accumulation three to seven inches and also winds could be 16 to 21 miles per hour. But that's just for day side (ph). That's expected to get a lot worse into the evening.

You can take a look behind me, see how this has impacted flights. That board there, that's for American Airlines. Yellow means delays or cancellations. There have been a lot of cancellations here this morning. But flights -- or airlines have actually been cancelling flights earlier. Like JetBlue, for example, they did that today as well. Also, the Port Authority, they gave us the numbers of flight cancellations. There are 352 flight cancellations at Newark. There were 200 flight cancellations at JFK and 300 here at LaGuardia.

I also want to show you, Brooke, outside, we have a second camera. And you can see right here what that is showing you. That's our mass (ph) cam. If you look to the right there, you can see a lot of snow coming down. That's what people are having to get through to get to the airport here. And you can also see, there's not a lot of traffic. That has been the biggest issue, people trying to get in and out of this airport.

We talked to a lot of people who worked here. There were delays. The snow came down faster than they could salt it. So people were zigzagging all over the roads. Brooke, the TSA does tell us, as usual, people should be checking the airlines before they make their way to the airport.

BALDWIN: Check long ahead. Thank you very much, Margaret.

And Jennifer Grey is watching all of this for us in the weather center. And just seeing the snow really already coming down for folks in New York, how much worse is it going to get?

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, basically going to see the worst of it during the afternoon commute, unfortunately. Right now, the snow is stretching anywhere from D.C. up I-95 through New York. Boston just now starting to see a little bit of snow coming down. Zooming in on D.C., Baltimore, you can see covered in white, meaning a lot of snow already coming down. New York City blanketed with snow, as we speak. More will come down as we go through the afternoon and evening hours.

I want to track this hour by hour and you can see, as we go through the evening commute, this is this evening at 6:00 p.m. Look at that, snow in D.C., New York, and Boston. It is going to be a mess if you are trying to get home after work today. And then Boston should be pushing out of your area during the early morning hours tomorrow. The Cape could still be dealing with a little bit of snow around 7:00. And then this just continues to push off into Canada as we go through tomorrow afternoon.

Snow totals. Huge amounts, especially across the Jersey shore. Long Island, we could see anywhere from 10 inches of snow. New York City, possibly six to eight inches of snow. And temperatures, Brooke, are going to be cold overnight. We could see temperatures feeling like 14 below zero as we go through the overnight hours.

BALDWIN: We will check back in with you, Jennifer Gray, in the next two hours. As you mentioned, this is happening, this is the big story right now. Jennifer, Margaret, Ted, and Zain, thank you all very much.

Now just into CNN, remains found in New York's East River have been confirmed as those of missing autistic teenager Avonte Oquendo. DNA test results on the remains found last week match those of the missing team. You see Avonte disappeared back in October and his family launched this widespread search for him. Much more on this story as we're getting new information next hour. So stay tuned for that.

Coming up, hundreds of dolphins are being killed in a horrible way because of some tradition. Caroline Kennedy now getting involved against the operation here. We'll share that with you.

Plus, on the day Chris Christie is inaugurated for a second term in New Jersey, a new poll suggests the surprising opinions of Americans when it comes to Chris Christie's 2016 chances.

And not just one here, but now three female suicide bombers may be on the loose, wandering around Sochi near the Olympics. Keep in mind, we're like two weeks away from the games. Are these black widows planning an attack? We'll talk about that coming up.

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BALDWIN: As thousands of Americans are preparing to head to Russia for the Winter Olympic games, authorities in the city of Sochi are hunting potential terrorists. Look at this with me. This woman, this is one of the most wanted women in Russia right now. She is a black widow, part of Russia's extremist female terrorist group seeking to avenge the deaths of their husbands. And when you look at her again here, she's got this four-inch scar across her left cheek, she walks with a limp and has a stiff left arm that apparently doesn't even bend at the elbow. And now we know she may not be working alone. These wanted fliers being scattered across hotels in and around Sochi with the faces of these three separate women, all of them these so-called black widows. A fourth black widow killed if a gun battle over this weekend.

CNN also has learned that U.S. law enforcement agents have spent the past few weeks interviewing people here in the United States with ties to the Caucasus region. Look at the map here, because I know a lot of people aren't familiar with this when we're throwing out words like Dagestan and we're looking at Sochi, et cetera. I know you've heard of Dagestan because that is where the Boston bomb suspects, the Tsarnaev brothers, hail from. To talk about this, Christopher Swift, he is attorney and adjunct professor of national security studies at Georgetown University.

Christopher, welcome.

CHRISTOPHER SWIFT, NATIONAL SECURITY PROFESSOR, GEORGETOWN UNIV.: Good to see you, Brooke. Thanks for having me on. BALDWIN: So when you read recent interviews with Vladimir Putin, you know, Russia basically saying they have everything under control. They dubbed this area around Sochi the ring of steel, passing out these fliers of these women, though, to hotels in Sochi. Doesn't that tell you they don't have this under control?

SWIFT: Not yet. They don't have it under control yet. And, look, here's the reason why. One of the things that people forget about when you're dealing with terrorism and insurgency generally is that the adversary gets a vote. And there's a very big difference between fighting against a large army invading your territory and fighting against a single woman or a small teams of women bent on suicide bombing. It's a completely different kind of operation and one that really requires more of a law enforcement, boots on the ground approach.

BALDWIN: These women bent on suicide bombings, these are the women, they are ladies instead of men because it's easier for them, I know, to walk around, maybe go less noticed.

SWIFT: That's right.

BALDWIN: But, Christopher, tell me more about their M.O. Do you think they are armed right now?

SWIFT: Well, it's hard to know whether they're armed right now, but what we do know is that in the past, to the extent that the caucuses emirates - that's the umbrella group that sort of oversees the various militants in Dagestan and other republics in southern Russia, to the extent that they've been able to operate outside their home turf, it's been primarily by using female suicide bombers.

The other important thing to note here is that unlike some of the female suicide bombers we saw five or 10 years ago in the war between Russia and Chechnya, these suicide bombers are much more ideologically motivated. They're not taking revenge for the loss of a family member. They're really taking, you know, targeting civilians rather than the security services, again with the objective of instilling fear and pushing people away from the Olympics.

BALDWIN: So civilians, specifically, as a target.

SWIFT: That's right.

BALDWIN: When you read, too, though, about this threat, I keep seeing this word "unprecedented." Unprecedented because geographically, where the Olympics are taking place, you have these wars going on. It's unprecedented too because of this threat announced well ahead of the Olympic games. And so since the summer, there have been three attacks, proof that, for lack of a better word, the bad guys can carry this out.

SWIFT: Very much so. Look, the particular group of people that are fighting in the north Caucusus, that are targeting the Olympics now, they've been fighting against the Russians since 1994. That's 20 years. And during that period of time, much like what we see happening in Syria today, that group of people went from being sort of secular nationalists secessionists to being radical solifi (ph) jihadists. They're more radical, they're more ruthless, they're more resilient, they're small in number, but they're willing to hit civilians, and that's something that the old secessionist Chechen movement wasn't willing to do.

BALDWIN: OK, Christopher Swift, thank you very much.

SWIFT: Good to be with you.

BALDWIN: Coming up, you will hear from the real wolf of Wall Street. He is talking about everything from his victims, his time with Leonardo DiCaprio, to his over-the-top bachelor party with some details here too hot for TV.

Plus, bottle nose dolphins rounded up in a cove by fishermen, brutally slaughtered. But the fishermen say they are doing nothing wrong. I'll talk live with someone who is fired up over this, next.

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BALDWIN: Japan's annual killing of bottle nose dolphins is stirring anger and outrage. And we have some video of this operation. But as you can imagine, and just a warning for you, it's graphic and it shows these animals in distress. The slaughter ended earlier today in a cove near this fishing community in southwestern Japan. And here's some of the video made by animal rights activists.

The dolphins are herded into the cove by the hundreds. In the past, the operation has turned this cove blood-red. According to a member of Japan's fishing union, the plan was for fewer than 100 dolphins to be captured or killed this year. And maybe you've seen this, this Oscar- winning documentary, it's called "The Cove." It really put a spotlight on these dolphins, these infamous dolphin killings. And the filmmakers talked to Piers Morgan that this practice, they say, has to end.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FISHER STEVENS, PRODUCER, "THE COVE": I'm kind of shocked that it's still going in, especially after "The Cove" and this film "Blackfish" that just came out. It's absolutely horrifying that it's still going on, especially since they don't eat these dolphins. They are killing them now mostly for pet food and for fertilizer and the rest they ship off to become pets, animals, trained animals in sea parks around the world.

LOUIS PSIHOYOS, DIRECTOR, "THE COVE"/EXEC. DIR., OCEANIC PRESERVATION SOCIETY: Over 20 million people now have seen "Blackfish" and we're coming up against that tipping point now in culture where I think there's going to be a huge shift in the next couple years. I say about another 10, 15 million more people see that movie, it's going to be game over for all dolphin parks.

LEILANI MUNTER, RACE CAR DRIVER/ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST: Don't buy a ticket to a dolphin show. The truth of the matter is, is that what keeps these dolphin drives going is the animals that are being sold into captivity. And as long as people keep buying tickets to dolphin shows, this is going to keep happening. So you have the power to stop this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: The U.S. ambassador, Caroline Kennedy, has tweeted this, that she is, quote, "deeply concerned by inhumaness of drive hunt dolphin killing." But many in Japan disagree. They say this is a cultural tradition.

HLN's Jane Velez-Mitchell. I know, Jane, you have some very strong feelings about this. And as we just heard -- and I was trying to understand why they're doing this, whether it's food -- you just heard maybe fertilizer, pet food, some of these dolphins are sold to aquariums. But again, these Japanese fishermen say, listen, this is no different than killing animals for food in this country. You disagree.

JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL, HLN HOST: Well, I don't necessarily. I say, you know, there is a certain hypocrisy to killing a lot of animals -- pigs, cows and chickens. We kill about 9 billion for food in this country every year and then pointing the finger at others who kill animals and say, you're doing something wrong. And that's why I don't kill animals. I don't eat animals. And I don't wear leather. I'm what you call a vegan.

That being said, this is really not about supplying food to hungry people because the critics say the mercury level in these dolphins is off the charts and they're not really suitable for human consumption. This is about cold hard cash. This is follow the money. Getting these cute dolphins, they kill the ones that aren't cute, and they take the ones that are cute and they put them in these theme parks, selling them to the highest bidder.

When you see animal abuse, Brooke, follow the money, because this really is about kidnapping these highly intelligent animals, who have brains that are larger than the human brain, who have these incredibly complex family communities who often stick together, momma and baby, for their entire lives, kidnapping them from the wild, pillaging their pods, and then taking those hostages to these theme park where is they can be trained to do those cute tricks for us. Yes, we do need to look in the mirror.

BALDWIN: I know it sounds horrible, but again, the Japanese say this is a cultural thing. This Japanese lawmaker, you know, even questioned whether it was appropriate for Ambassador Kennedy to even get involved -- we just showed her tweet -- to get involved in this. You say what?

VELEZ-MITCHELL: I applaud Ambassador Kennedy for sticking her neck out.

BALDWIN: Yes.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: I feel that the most important role of government is to speak for the voiceless and the helpless, and these animals are completely voiceless and helpless. If you can do this to animals, you can do this to children, you can do it to old people. Really, the mark of a civilization is how you treat your animals, and that, I believe, was Gandhi who said that. So I think it's a litmus test for civilization. This is savagery and it's caught on tape savagery.

And as for this is going on hundreds of years, well the Dolphin Project, run by Rick O. Berry (ph), did a study, went to town and found out, in Thyji (ph), according to him, this is his claim, that it's only been going on since the 1930s and it really got underway big-time in the 1960s because, again, it's about the theme parks. That this isn't something that's been going on for hundreds of years. In his opinion, it's only been about the aquarium industry and supplying the goods to the aquarium industry.

BALDWIN: It's incredible what we've been seeing lately just with "Blackfish" and the current against SeaWorld, even though they're saying we're doing things just fine. And now with everything with the dolphins. Might make some families think twice. JVM, thank you.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Thank you, Brooke, for covering this.

BALDWIN: You got it.

Something else you have to hear. This new study says that 85 of the richest people in the world, 85 people, have the same amount of money half the people in the entire world. We'll explain that.

Plus, speaking of wealth --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would say 90 percent was legal in terms of the day-to-day operation, 95 probably. But the 5 percent was incredibly disruptive and disgusting and poisoned everything else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: This man is the real wolf of Wall Street and he talks to Piers about real bad boy behavior on Wall Street, drugs, prostitutes, millions of dollars. Where did he decide to draw the line? Do not miss that conversation.

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