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Examining Potential Setbacks for Flight 370's Underwater Search; South Korean Ferry Capsizes; Obama Urges Schools to Partner With Employers; Ukrainian Troops Fail, Again; Dow Up on News; Cell Phone Kill Switch Coming Soon?

Aired April 16, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: We are just past the bottom of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

And right now the best hope of finding Flight 370 is thousands of feet below the surface of the Indian Ocean. And CNN has learned just exactly why its previous mission was cut short, because it turns out a crucial oil which protects its electronics actually ran low.

So, an alarm went off. The Bluefin team had to bring their thing back to the surface, but I can tell you it now back at work here, and is faced with the task of mapping a section of the ocean roughly 230 square miles.

So, a little perspective, imagine scouring America's third-largest city, Chicago. in the pitch dark. It is a task that the U.S. Navy admits will take anywhere from six weeks to two months.

But then you have technical glitches and ocean silt. Those are just a few of the many challenges facing this piece of equipment, this Bluefin-21.

And CNN's Tom Foreman breaks down the other potential setbacks that could affect the underwater search for Flight 370. Tom?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The challenges facing the crew operating the Bluefin are really quite immense on the surface of the water. If they have a storm, if the waves kick up, it's very hard to launch and retrieve this thing.

But beneath the water, it gets unbelievably complicated because they are entering a foreign and hostile environment in the deep ocean.

It sounds simple. Send this robot down. Let it ride around and take sonic pictures of the ocean floor, but they don't even know what the ocean floor looks like.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration points out that 95 percent of the deep ocean floor all around the world is unmapped.

So what's the terrain like down there? Is it smooth like this, or is it craggy like the Grand Canyon or the Rocky Mountains? How do you maneuver around all of that if you're not sure what you're dealing with?

What about the pressure at the bottom of the ocean? If you were to go out and go for a swim and you just swam down to, say, 10 feet down, you would feel 19 pounds per square inch of pressure.

This is a totally different thing. Push this thing down to two miles down. Then you're going to have more than 4,700 pounds per square inch. If go down to the three miles down, it's the same as if you had an African elephant standing on your big toe.

That's how much pressure would be built up at that level, and this machine has to operate at that depth. It is not an easy trick.

On top of which, what about the bottom itself? What is it made of? The ocean is full of silt. That's the leftover bits from decaying plants and animals and interstellar dust and volcanoes and dirt, all sorts of things that have bled into the ocean over many periods of times.

And that builds up on the bottom. There are cores taken of this that are routinely a hundred feet in length, so we don't know how deep it is here. We don't know if it's solid. We don't know if it's soft.

We don't know if it would be hiding bits of this plane that they're looking for down there.

All of this together, gigantic challenge for the Bluefin that makes this much more experimental. Even though it's a great tool for handling this, it's up against the odds.

BALDWIN: And another desperate search happening now off the coast of South Korean, nearly 300 people, many of them students, teachers from a South Korean high school missing after their ferry suddenly sank.

So, they were on a class trip, heading to a resort island considered kind of like the Hawaii of Korea, until, as you see it, just the unthinkable happened

Moments ago, CNN obtained audio of what passengers heard as the ship tilted. It was an announcement over the loudspeaker saying, Don't move. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (via translator): Don't move. If you move, it is more dangerous. Don't move.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Officials say at least six people are dead. At least 164 have been rescued so far, and many passengers had jumped from the ship into the freezing water, not obeying the whole "don't move" dictum.

And now military dive teams are searching for them, and a U.S. Navy ship is also helping in the search. One expert says, and I'm quoting him, "It's just an absolutely, positively horrific situation. It's nightmarish."

So, CNN International's Amara Walker joins me right now. So, welcome to the CNN family, by the way.

And, first, so you're conversational in Korean. You have been looking at Korean Web sites, looking at different texts, because you have, what, families waiting and some of them are texting with their kids on the ferry.

AMARA WALKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It has been heartbreaking to read some of these text messages.

It is quite chilling, too, because some of these messages are the last messages that we're seeing from the passengers, most of them who were students. They sent it to their family members and their friends.

And I want to show some of them, and as you can imagine they are just heart-wrenching.

One son texted his mother, and he said, "Mom, in case I don't get to say this, I love you."

And his mom, she didn't really know what was going on, so of course, she says, "Why? Of course I love you, too, my son."

It's these kinds of messages that really kind of get to the heart of it.

Another student sent messages to his friends. And he wrote to his friends at the school theater club and he said, "I think we're all going to die. If I did anything wrong to you, please forgive me." And then he ends it by saying, "I love you all."

And then there is another conversation between a desperate father and his teenager. And the father tells him, "I know there is a rescue operation under way, but if it's possible get out of your room."

And the student says, "No, Dad, the ship has tilted and I can't get out. No one is in the hallway."

And we need to stress here we don't know the fate of these students at this time.

BALDWIN: We know six people are dead, multiple others have been rescued, but that still leaves a lot to not be heard from.

And then, you know, we played the audio saying, don't move. But a lot of the people, and I'm sure thank goodness they did, hopped off the ship and they've been rescued.

WALKER: Yeah. We heard from survivors. And one survivor said that the instruction given over the loudspeaker p.a. was to put on your life vest and stay put. And it looks like many people may have obeyed, but what was chilling about what the survivor said was that the people who did not obey and put on those life vests and jumped into the water, the very frigid waters, those are the ones who probably survived.

BALDWIN: Amara, thank you. Stick around right here with me. I just want to bring Mary Schiavo in this conversation.

Mary, just as an accident investigator and an expert in this, what do you make of what Amara just said, just about how the ship was telling them one thing, but some didn't listen to what the ship was saying and jumped overboard, and they were fine.

What do you make of that sort of protocol?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: The instruction to stay put is absolutely horrific.

There have been many other ferry capsizings, sinkings and accidents and the instructions should be to get to the lifeboats and get the people off the boat.

There have been ferry sinkings in this country, and of course, the drill, the life boats drill and the ability to get them to those and get off the ship are what saves lives, and it's been proven countless times.

BALDWIN: We know, even though we're showing pictures in daytime, it's nighttime right now. The waters, I believe, are in the ballpark of 50 degrees.

What do we think is happening in this kind of rescue effort right now?

SHIAVO: Unfortunately, a good part -- as you can see from the pictures, a good part of that ship will be filled with water.

And the fact that they said it came on very quickly makes you realize or believe, at least, that there was a very large breach in the ship, either from whatever it hit in the hull if it did hit something, and that sounds like what happened, or from the doors itself, from the big doors that open to allow vehicles to go on and off.

If those were breached as the ship started to tilt and to sink, that allows the water to rush in very quickly.

And it's an interesting physical effect, you can't fight that kind of inflow of water. It's just too powerful and too strong. So, if you didn't get out at first, it was very hard to fight through that water.

But the Coast Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard, has been able to rescue people like that. They actually go on the ship with their diving gear and will do it. And hopefully they have those kinds of people onsite in South Korea.

BALDWIN: Hopefully the U.S. is able to help as quickly as they possibly can. Mary Schiavo and Amara Walker, thank you both very, very much.

Minutes from now, President Obama will be speaking at a community college and he says one of the answers is job training programs in those schools.

Live pictures here from Pennsylvania, we will see the president speaking minutes from now.

We'll talk to Jake Tapper, host of "THE LEAD," next.

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BALDWIN: Here is something for you, something just a bit unusual here, live pictures from Pennsylvania, because what we will see, President Obama and Vice President Biden, a rare joint appearance outside the nation's capital.

They are in Oakdale, Pennsylvania, at a community college in Allegheny County.

So, Jake Tapper joins me now. He's up next, of course, with "THE LEAD." And, so, Jake, why the joint appearance and tell me what they're up to?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR, "THE LEAD": Here's the problem. About a half of employers who are looking for employees say that, the pool that they're drawing from, the workers don't have the skills they need.

So you'd think that vocational and technical schools, community colleges would be talking to local employers and trying to match them and make sure that what they are teaching is relevant, but they're not.

So, what the administration is trying to do is get -- they're devoting $600 million to this, trying to get schools and employers better attuned to one another in terms of what employers need in terms of skills and credentials and what those schools are teaching.

It's common sense, but of course, it's not happening.

BALDWIN: When we talk about the skills and hopefully when they do talk they will be able to help these students get those jobs, what kind of jobs are we talking ability?

TAPPER: Actually, over the next eight years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 2012 until 2022, these are the jobs that are going to be open.

There are going to be 522,000 software-developing and computer- programming jobs that open up. More than a hundred thousand pharmacists, 224,000 electricians and 132,000 welders.

So, when you add this up, and this is just four out of many categories, when you add this up, we're talking about potentially millions of jobs that are going to be open if these Americans have the skills that are necessary.

BALDWIN: OK. Again, we are watching live pictures, Oakdale, Pennsylvania.

Mr. Tapper, we will see you in 15 minutes, of course, at the top of the hour on "THE LEAD." Thank you, sir.

And --

TAPPER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: -- coming up next, we will take you back to the search for this missing plane in just a moment.

But first, the growing crisis in Ukraine, pro-Russian militants in a faceoff with the country's army in the east, CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is live on the ground to show us the unfolding drama.

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BALDWIN: We have to focus on the crisis in Ukraine.

Ukraine's attempt to calm cities near its border with Russia went nowhere today. Ukrainian troops failed again to move on government buildings seized by militants friendly with Russia, as fighters loyal to Moscow also rumbled in in ever greater numbers.

So, in several cities, you have the pro-Russians and their supporters sharing the same tense streets with Ukrainian troops and their supporters, very, very confusing and potentially, very, very explosive.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh was in the midst of the chaos today. He joins me in Donetsk with a little bit more.

Nick, just to be blunt, I mean, I imagine not an especially proud day for the Ukrainian military, I gather.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There's been a remarkable to watch them move around this part of eastern Ukraine.

Now, this morning, a column of Ukrainian went into one of the cities to the south at a place called Slavyansk, which has been the focus very much of the pro-Russian protesters here.

They were met as they went in by local residents, it seems, who surrounded them, slowed them down. We've seen quite a lot of that, actually, over the past few days, and then it appears that pro-Russian militants, these pretty well equipped, pretty well organized, disciplined guys, turned up and took control of those armored personnel carriers.

Five or six of them then drove them to Slavyansk, a town where it's pretty much pro-Russian, protesters in control there, paraded them in the city center, and then drove off with them in one direction. Ukrainians who were, in fact, inside them, taken to a different building and fed lunch, we were told, by the self-declared mayor, saying they hadn't, quote, "yet surrendered."

So, clearly a change in control of the vehicles. And something else quite similar, we witnessed, too, in a village called (inaudible) where we saw another Ukrainian column of armor come in there.

According to locals, they fired shots in the air and damaged a car as they drove. That made residents very angry who then again surrounded these Ukrainian armored personnel carriers and eventually a deal was struck using a local police chief and a veteran from the Soviet war in Afghanistan to negotiate in which the Ukrainian soldiers gave up the firing pins in their weapons in order to secure passage out of there.

So, an extraordinarily messy day for those little interventions we've seen of the Ukrainian military here, and what Kiev was promising would be an all-encompassing, what they say, anti-terror operation to regain control of here.

BALDWIN: So, Nick, just given all that you have seen from your perspective there, is the Ukrainian military any factor in all of this?

WALSH: Well, it's the state of readiness that's the factor. They've come into this area in many ways very unprepared. The unit we saw was supposed to be sort of almost elite paratroopers in (inaudible) who were surrounded by local residents and they looked exhausted, very ill equipped, too.

So, it's been a messy response. The Ukrainian security forces moved in, first of all, on Saturday and got ambushed on the way into Slavyansk, losing one of their guys being killed there, five injured, and since they've tried to build up forces, move around and each time they seem to stumble.

We see a lot of them, though, in the skies in jets and helicopters, but just no force or presence on the ground.

Brooke?

BALDWIN: OK, Nick Paton Walsh in Donetsk, Ukraine, thank you so much.

On Wall Street, some positivity there with the Dow rising -- look at this -- more than 140 points here.

Alison Kosik joins me at the New York Stock Exchange to talk about why stocks are doing so well. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Just a couple minutes away from the Closing Bell, any guess what Wall Street's up to?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PHARRELL: Because I'm happy.

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.

Because I'm happy.

Clap along if you feel like --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: They're happy. We just wanted to hear that. Thank you, Pharrell. Just a good excuse to play some good music before I let you go.

Alison Kosik --

KOSIK: How can you not feel happy when you hear that song by Pharrell? How can you not feel happy?

BALDWIN: Heard it a gajillion times. Love that song.

Anywho, talk to me about the numbers, the Dow up quite a bit here, two minutes before the Closing Bell.

KOSIK: You know what? Wall Street doing its own little happy dance because of some solid headlines.

First of all, earnings today, they have been pretty good, keeping stocks in the green.

Also, Fed chief Janet Yellen reassured investors at a speech today in New York here, saying that interest rates are going to stay low for a while. That essentially means that borrowing money will continue to be cheap.

Plus, economic growth in China, yeah, it's slowing down, but not as fast as expected, so you roll that all into one and you get a lot of green arrows on the screen today, for once seeing triple digits to the upside.

But this is just today, because you look at how the market's been lately, lately it's been really, really volatile. We've been getting, I don't know, whiplash with the markets lately.

We've had these triple digit swings yesterday. Stocks are actually down for the month. This is because we've been getting mixed signals from earnings season overall.

But today, up arrows, ah, yes, seem to be the patter, Brooke.

BALDWIN: We'll take the green on the screen. I know investors will take the green on the screen.

And you had me with your tweet. You have 60 seconds, Alison Kosik, to explain this, "James Bond-type kill switch coming to a cell phone near you."

KOSIK: Think James Bond kill switch. That's what this is, coming to a cell phone next July.

So what this would essentially do is allow you to be able to remotely disable your phone, wipe all of your personal data off it.

Why do this? Because if a crook steals your phone, he's going to get your information potentially, so what this does is hopefully deter thieves from stealing that phone in the first place.

The thing is this just a pledge right now by phone companies and carriers to put this kill switch in action in their phones, you know, companies like Apple, Google, Samsung, and carriers like Verizon and AT&T.

So, it's just a pledge. No one's out there cracking the whip and enforcing this, but at this point, Brooke, some states are actually working on laws to make this kill switch mandatory.

So, what you may see happen, if these companies don't actually get in there and do it, some states may pass their own laws to get it done anyway.

Brooke?

BALDWIN: And on cue, the Closing Bell.

Alison Kosik, thank you so much, in New York for me.

That does it for me. I'm Brooke Baldwin at the CNN World Headquarters here in Atlanta.

If you missed anything on the show, go to the Brooke Blog, CNN.com/Brooke.

And now, Jake Tapper starts right now with "THE LEAD."