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U.S. Calls Boko Haram Kidnapping an "Outrage"; Flight Hits Severe Turbulence, Injures Six; Transplanted Blood Causes Old Mice to Perform Better; Sterling Drama Continues; Circus Acrobats Fall; Michelle Knight Speaks

Aired May 05, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. is calling what's happening in northern Nigeria an outrage. More than 200 schoolgirls have been kidnapped by an Islamist extremist group called Bolo Haram.

You're looking at the leader of that group, Abubakar Shekau. Today he claimed responsibility for the kidnapping in this video and made outrageous promises to sell the women.

CNN has learned from State Department officials that a representative will be heading to Nigeria.

Our White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski is in Washington with more on the U.S. response.

And Michelle, do we know what the U.S. is doing specifically to try to help find these girls?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Martin, yeah, the word specifically, that's kind of the kicker there.

We don't know the specifics. Even though the president of Nigeria came right out and said that he had contacted President Obama, that they had spoken, that he had asked President Obama for the U.S.'s help on this matter, both the White House and State Department don't want to give too many details at this point.

Clearly it's a sensitive situation, but you can just tell by the way they frame things that you don't want to say exactly what the U.S. is doing. But we know there are some moving parts here.

We know now that the undersecretary of state is going to travel to Nigeria. We don't know exactly when, possibly as early as this week, with a team to help the Nigeria and plan.

What exactly will happen next remains to be seen, but here is what the press secretary said today during the briefing.

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JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This is an outrage and a tragedy and we are doing what we can to assist the Nigerian government to support its efforts to find and free the young women who were abducted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSINKSI: The U.S. has used some strong words to describe what has happened, "heinous" and "malicious," "showing terrible intent," in the kidnapping of these girls.

But the way the U.S. assistance thus far has been described is in intelligence sharing, helping the Nigerians with their military efforts, helping them with their criminal justice system.

So it sounds like there's coordination that's going on there, and we are waiting for more information on what exactly will happen just like you are, Martin.

SAVIDGE: I have got to assume, Michelle, that U.S. officials have seen that video, and I'm wondering what they're saying about it. Is it credible?

KOSINSKI: Yeah, State Department officials have given an indication that they say it looks to be credible.

It's been shocking, really, to them, as well, as they said. They kind of described in the briefing today, we heard from the press secretary, calling this outrageous, so to see the video and have the Nigerians not really be able to find these girls after nearly a month.

The U.S., though, wouldn't answer the question when it was asked directly of the press secretary today, do you think that the Nigerians are doing what they can? Do you think they can handle this on their own?

They wouldn't -- they didn't want to really get into specifics of making a judgment call on what the Nigerians themselves have been doing at this point.

But we do know that the U.S. is now assisting in those kind of general ways that have been described, and we know the secretary of state, John Kerry, did said publicly that the U.S. would do everything it could to try to resolve this situation, Martin.

SAVIDGE: Yeah. As we should. All right, Michelle Kosinski, nice to see you. Thank you very much.

Do you feel like shouting in anger every time that you have got to pay a baggage fee at the airport?

Those fees are adding up to big, big profits for the airlines. A new report released just today shows how much they are making.

Plus, everyone wants to feel young again. A new study might just hold the key of achieving that goal, but the process, it could make you a little queasy. That's coming up.

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SAVIDGE: Terrifying moments for passengers on a U.S. Airways flight that was bound for Orlando. The plane hit a patch of severe turbulence just moments after take off from Philadelphia. That forced the pilot to turn around.

Six people were hurt when they were thrown around the cabin, including two flight attendants. One passenger hit her head so hard it left a dent in the roof of the cabin

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I thought we were going down. I really did.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were going and then, all of a sudden, there was just like a drop like you're going down the bottom of a roller coaster and things just flew up in the air.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw the lady three rows in front of me. She bashed her head all the way up to the plastic, and to describe it, the plastic was broken.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: The airline says the fasten seat belt sign was illuminated at the time. A passenger told CNN's "NEW DAY" what happened.

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MARK PENSIARO, PASSENGER (via telephone): All of a sudden the airplane dropped, obviously hit a strong down draft. The airplane kind of rotated a little bit. Everybody kind of let out a collective, Holy crap, what was that?

It had been bumpy. You know, it was pretty much light turbulence, choppy turbulence, the whole flight, and frankly I was surprised to hear that anybody was injured, because I don't know who would have had their seat belt off.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: Meantime, airlines have taken measures in recent years to boost their bottom lines, and baggage fees are playing a huge role in that.

We are learning today how much money the airlines made last year from those very unpopular fees. And I warn you, you might want to be sitting down when you hear these numbers.

CNN's Erin McPike joins me now from Washington, and, Erin, I'm bracing but give us the numbers.

ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're seeing a big spike in profits for U.S. airlines just from one year from 2012 to 2013.

Back in 2012, the industry overall brought in $98 million in profit. That jumped last year to $12.7 billion, big boost there, and these ancillary are what's doing a lot of that for the industry.

So, we know also that a quarter of those profits in 2013, $3.3 billion, in fact, came from baggage fees alone from when you check your luggage.

Now, broken down by airline, let's put up that screen if we can. Delta was the biggest victor in all of this. They brought in $833 million last year in baggage fees. United, $625 million.

Then look at these two taken together, U.S. Airways at $528 million and American Airlines at $506 million. Those two merged last year. When you put those together, that is over a billion in baggage fees in profit alone.

Then Spirit Airlines rounding out the top five with $212 million.

And another fee are changes in reservations, so reservation change fees brought in $8 billion, as well, for the industry last year.

SAVIDGE: I have been stung by both of those.

Erin McPike, that only means, of course, that those fees aren't going away.

MCPIKE: No. Not at all.

SAVIDGE: Thank you very much for that.

How do you make an aging mouse feel young again? And, no, this is not a joke. Researchers say the answer is in their blood.

Now the bigger question is, will it work for humans?

And then, one year ago, how I remember this one well, three women were rescued from years of captivity at the hands of Ariel Castro.

One of them spoke to CNN with haunting details about her kidnap.

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SAVIDGE: You know that old saying, you're young at heart? We actually could be on to some new research that suggests that the "Fountain of Youth" may actually be in the stuff that the heart pumps, the blood of young people, and it is all coming from work involving these two fellows, done at Stanford, the University of San Francisco and Harvard.

Scientists put the blood of the young mouse, the one on the right, into his aging counterpart and found the elder on the left there performed better on tests of strength and memory, which is fascinating.

Joining me now senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen, Elizabeth, what are the old mice getting out of this from the younger ones? ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: When they tested them they found they could do mazes better, which speaks to memory. They found they were stronger.

They found that they could run on a treadmill. The old mouse could run on a treadmill just as long as the young mouse, as long as he had the younger mouse's blood, because they apparently do make treadmills for mice. Who knew, right?

But it's amazing that they got those results, and they got them consistently through several different studies.

And one of the -- I want to show you one of the ways, Martin, that they actually did the blood transfusion. One of the groups actually sewed a young mouse to an old mouse.

They actually sewed them together, the gray, old one and the white, younger one, so that they shared a circulatory system.

So I thought that was pretty interesting. That's one way to get blood from one animal to another.

SAVIDGE: Right. Not too practical in the human world, but OK, so what is it in the blood? Do we know?

COHEN: They're not sure, but they think it may be a protein called GDF11, and GDF11 promotes new cell growth, and that's what's sort of a sign of being younger is that there's more cell growth, it's faster.

And so they think that protein may be what's going on.

So in one of the studies, they didn't do the whole transfusion thing. They just gave them the protein, and that actually seemed to work pretty well, just on its own.

SAVIDGE: So what do we do with this? How does this, you know, convert to the human side of things and especially in a lot of us who would say, boy, I would love to feel younger?

COHEN: Right, so are you already picking out your young person who you're going to get your -- you're looking around the studio?

SAVIDGE: It does sound a little spooky in the sense that, yeah, I'd like some of your youngest blood, please.

COHEN: Right, 12-years-old, please.

No, I would like to emphasis that this is a great day to be a mouse. This is not necessarily a great day to be a human.

This may never work in humans, and one reason for that is that if they ever do try it, they may find that it causes, for example, cancer, because it promotes cell growth, so it may promote bad cell growth. It may promote cancer and tumors.

So this may never ever come to fruition, but they can maybe look at the principles of it. For example, this specific protein, is there something they can do with this protein to, say, help stave off Alzheimer's or help stave off the muscle wasting that can happen to older people.

So I know that you won't see two people sewn together. I feel pretty sure that we're never going to see that, but you may never see any of this.

This may just be something that's fabulous for mice, won't work so well in humans.

SAVIDGE: Well, you know, there was that thing called vampires which sort of worked on that same premise.

COHEN: You know, maybe those vampires -- maybe they were onto something, right? Maybe they were onto something.

SAVIDGE: All right, Elizabeth, thank you very much.

COHEN: Thanks.

SAVIDGE: The CEO of Target is out. Gregg Steinhafel has left the company, effective immediately, in the wake of last year's massive data breach where the credit card numbers and the other crucial information from as many as 110 million customers were stolen.

It was possibly the biggest hack of its kind in history at a cost to the company of about $61 million.

One year ago, we heard the name Ariel Castro for the first time and learned how he abducted three women and held them for years.

Now one of them is describing her kidnapping and what Castro did when he got her back to his home. That's next.

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SAVIDGE: In about five-and-a-half hours the L.A. Clippers will face off with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Team owner Donald Sterling has been banned for life and faces a $2.5 million fine. But not his wife, who is a co-owner.

CNN's Ted Rowlands has the soap opera that has everyone's attention.

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TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: With a win this weekend, the Los Angeles Clippers are moving on to the next round of the NBA playoffs.

Meanwhile, off the court, the drama surrounding team owner Donald Sterling continues to grow.

In an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters, V. Stiviano, the woman heard with Sterling on the now infamous recordings, defended the Clippers' owner and claims she is still close with him.

BARBARA WALTERS, ABC: Is Donald Sterling a racist?

V. STIVIANO: No. I don't believe it in my heart.

WALTERS: What is his state of mind right now?

STIVIANO: Confused. I think he feels very alone.

ROWLANDS: Meanwhile, Sterling's wife, Shelly, who was at this weekend's game, says she thinks the NBA's plan to hire an executive to run the team is a great idea, releasing a statement that seems to indicate she would like to hold onto the Clippers, which is part of a family trust.

The statement says in part, "As a co-owner, I am fully committed to taking the necessary steps to make the Clippers the best team in the NBA. That has been my aspiration ever since 1981."

IRA BOUDWAY, BLOOMBERG: She is saying, essentially, that you can do what you want to my husband.

He is a racist, maybe. You can strip him of his control as the board of governor.

But this is a piece of family property, and you can't just take away our property. We didn't do anything. We didn't say anything. This is not us.

ROWLANDS: As for Donald Sterling's next move, it's still unclear if he will be willing to sell

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on CBS' "Face the Nation" says after speaking to Sterling, he doesn't think he'll go down without a fight.

MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI, LOS ANGELES: I think he thinks he's going to be the owner for a long time, that he wants to stay the owner.

And I said this will be a long, protracted fight and a painful thing for a city that is a great city, great American city.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SAVIDGE: CNN's Ted Rowlands there.

Well, it was supposed to be a day of high-wire acts and a lot of fun memories at Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus until a midair stunt went horribly wrong.

We're going to warn you that the video you're about to see is disturbing. Out of nowhere, eight acrobats hanging by their hair some 25 feet in the air in a stunt that was called "The Human Chandelier" suddenly plummeted to the show floor, injuring a performer on the ground as well as those on the air.

It was such a surprise that some witnesses really thought it was part of the act until the music stopped and people realized that the horrifying scene they had just witnessed was real. Another performer on the ground and two other people were hurt. Witnesses were stunned, as we say, by what they saw.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We see them. It was -- they were doing acrobats with their hair, and all of a sudden -- it was like eight girls, and all of a sudden, it was just boom. It just falls.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The chandelier, the metal bracket that they were actually attached to just dissembled from the main bracket and it tumbled right on top of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: An investigator says that the rig fell because a ring holding it snapped. It was supposedly designed to hold 10,000 pounds but was holding just 1,500.

The cause of the accident, though, is still under investigation.

And it's been a year since three young women who lived for more than a decade locked up against their will were able to walk free and move on with their lives.

Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus finally escaped, but their experience obviously will stay with them forever.

Michelle Knight talked to CNN's Anderson Cooper about her time with Castro and what her last year has been like.

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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "AC 360": What did he tell you to get you inside the house?

MICHELLE KNIGHT, FORMER KIDNAPPING VICTIM: In the car he said that he had puppies, so when we got like a quarter down the road, he's like, that's my van right there, and it says puppies for free.

So I was like, OK, I can take one home to my son, because unfortunately, his dog had passed away.

So we get in the backyard, and I really didn't think nothing of it until, you know, we got into the house fully. That's when it dawned on me that this was a mistake to get in this car.

COOPER: You knew by then this is wrong?

KNIGHT: Yeah. And then I end up being trapped in a small room, a small pink room. That's where he proceeded to tie me up like a fish and put me on the wall.

COOPER: You said tie you up like a fish. What do you mean?

KNIGHT: My legs and hands were bound like this. And I was that far from the floor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: And just to bring you up to speed on this story in case you don't remember, the "House of Horrors" was torn down and Ariel Castro killed himself in prison.

Anderson Cooper's two-part interview with Michelle Knight airs tonight and tomorrow on "AC 360" and that'll be at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, only on CNN.

And coming from Cleveland, just like much of the nation, Cleveland took this story so much to heart, and covering that story, it's now so good to see those young women because that's where the focus is, on their recovery, how they are doing one year later, but they still have a long way to go.

That's it for me. Thanks for watching.

"THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts now.