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A Look at World Cup Scenarios; New Flight 370 Search Area Shifts South; GM Halts Cruze Sales Over Airbag Issue; Toddler Likely Died from Being Overheated

Aired June 26, 2014 - 09:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM.

CROWD: I believe that we will win. I believe that we will win.

COSTELLO: Game day.

CROWD: USA. USA.

COSTELLO: The U.S. versus Germany. In just hours the mighty matchup, how the U.S. doesn't even have to score to advance.

NANCY GRACE, HOST, HLN'S "NANCY GRACE": We are getting reports that your son has been found in your basement. Sir? Mr. Bothuell, are you --

CHARLIE BOTHUELL, SON FOUND IN BASEMENT: What?

COSTELLO: A bizarre revelation.

GRACE: Sir, did you check your basement?

COSTELLO: Live on Nancy Grace's show.

BOTHUELL: I've checked my basement.

COSTELLO: Questions swirling.

BOTHUELL: For anybody to imply that I somehow knew that my son was in the basement, it's absurd and it's wrong.

COSTELLO: A father finding out his 12-year-old missing son is alive and in his basement.

Cruzing for a recall.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: General Motors has ordered its North American retailers to stop selling the Chevrolet Cruze sedan.

COSTELLO: General Motors facing another recall this morning.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Some 33,000 cars are involved.

COSTELLO: What's going on at GM?

And contraception in court.

DAVID GREEN, CEO, HOBBY LOBBY: Our faith is very important in our starting this company.

COSTELLO: One of the most closely watched cases, Hobby Lobby and the Obama administration.

PROTESTERS: What do we want? Freedom. When do we want it? Now.

COSTELLO: Pitting corporation's religion and rights.

PROTESTERS: When do we want it?

PROTESTERS: Right now.

COSTELLO: We're live at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Let's talk, live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Can you feel it? Americans are at a World Cup fever pitch as three hours from now the U.S. takes on powerhouse Germany, oh, but the weather at the site of today's match in Recife, Brazil could have a huge impact on the match. Nearly three inches of rain have fallen so far, making this the rainiest day in Recife since April.

The forecast called for continued rainfall which could be heavy at times throughout the match. But back here at home fans will be packing bars and restaurants and outdoor venues for viewing parties.

Yes, a lot of people will be playing hooky today. If you need a note to get out of work to play hooky, Coach Jurgen Klinsmann got you covered. The U.S. team twitted this out, the note says, call on your boss to, quote, "act like a good leader and take the day off."

Well, we're not taking the day off. We had to work but we're going to be in the bar after the show, that's for sure.

We've got this huge match covered for you with CNN's Lara Baldesarra in Brazil, Rachel Nichols, host of CNN's "UNGUARDED" is with us, CNN Sports' Andy Scholes is here, and also CNN's George Howell is at Grant Park in Chicago.

Welcome to all of you.

Lara, I want to start with you. Tell us about the weather there.

LARA BALDESARRA, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: This is just brutal, Carol. This rain is incessant. It is not stopping, from the moment I woke up this morning, you could hear the winds just gusting outside of my hotel window. The rain has just been falling like you said it has been almost three inches of rain and we're not that long into the morning here.

Now this is a big concern. It's a big concern for two reasons. Number one, is that there is a bit of speculation right now that the roads are flooded, surrounding the stadium so it might in fact hinder the ability for the teams to actually make it to the stadium. So if that's the case, what will it do for the match? Could it be delayed? Could it be postponed? We don't know. These are all things that were still -- that are still up in the air.

The other big concern is about the actual pitch itself, where they're going to be playing this match. Now I don't know how this pitch has held up. Hopefully it's held up pretty good. You have to remember this is a newly constructed stadium so the drainage systems here are -- should be very good.

However, if the pitch is not in very good shape this could actually work in the USA's favor because all the USA needs is a draw. All the -- all Germany needs is a draw in order to progress. Now that being the case, when the pitch isn't that great, a lot of players, they don't really find their footing all that well. They don't want to be at risk of injury. Their coach does not want them to be at risk of injury.

So you don't go out there necessarily and play as hard as you would. You don't want to risk that. The goal is to make it to the World Cup final, to win the World Cup, not just to win any one game, so that would really play to the USA's advantage because all they need here is a draw to definitely move forward -- Carol.

COSTELLO: So if the game is canceled and both coaches agree that's a draw, in essence, is that what you're saying?

BALDESARRA: No, no.

(LAUGHTER)

Not at all. I'm saying if this game goes on and it is played, I would -- I would expect, my guess, my prediction with that is that we would see a draw because you're not going to have coaches that want to put their top players out there, want them to play as strong or as forcefully because when the pitch is really wet, when it's not as firm, it becomes a little dangerous. The footing for players isn't as great so why would Germany risk that? Their goal is to win the World Cup, not just to win this game, that benefits the USA. Because all they need is a draw to get through.

COSTELLO: OK, so, Rachel, you see why soccer may not catch on after this, because it's all so confusing.

RACHEL NICHOLS, CNN HOST, UNGUARDED WITH RACHEL NICHOLS: Well, we talked about this yesterday. There's all kinds of factors here, but I think it's easy for American fans to follow. The U.S. team just needs to tie to get in. They could win to get in. They could even lose to get in today, which is pretty amazing, and the connections between this U.S. and German team is partly what makes this game so fascinating.

You're going to have this incredibly personal, unusual situation, Carol, where even before the soccer starts, nearly a quarter of the U.S. team is going to be mouthing word for word the German anthem as it plays. You've got of course the coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, was a national soccer hero in his youth and then coached the German national team before he was poked by the U.S. Most of the staff of the German team is his old staff.

Then you have five players on the American team who actually were born and grew up entirely in Germany. They have U.S. servicemen fathers, German mothers, and they now play for the U.S. It's funny, they even congratulate each other in German sometimes when they score goals. One of the heroes of one of the last game, Jermaine Jones, he actually played on the German national team before coming over to play for the U.S. team, so a ton of connections here, these guys all know each other.

But they all say the ones who now play for the U.S., they're not going to be playing very hard against their former home country. They got a lot of personal stake in this game. It's not just for everything they're playing for in the World Cup but come on, it's for bragging rights with the guys they grew up with.

COSTELLO: Absolutely. And of course the players are still trying to make it to the game, as is our own Fred Pleitgen. He's in the car somewhere trapped and -- are the roadways flooded, Fred?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. The roadways are more than shot. The roadways are actually turning into lakes at this point. We left our hotel which is in Recife to get to the stadium, which I would say about seven miles away and we got about 100 yards down the road and then we were in massive traffic, all the roads as I said are starting to flood.

We've tried to go through several sort of small villages to avoid some of the roads that have been washed away. We're seeing police on the streets everywhere, redirecting traffic. A lot of the traffic isn't moving at all. Quite frankly, I'm not sure how a lot of the fans are going to be able to get to the game because right now it's very, very difficult. Things aren't moving along at all and the few roads that are actually still working are not in very good condition.

As one we saw a dead body at the side of the road because a man had been run over by a car. And it was such a bad roadway there. So It really is very torrential and I can only recommend people who are trying to get to that game to leave as early as possible -- Carol.

COSTELLO: That is crazy. OK. So the best place to be watching the game is probably here in the United States right at home. Right?

George Howell, I'll get to you in a minute. But first, I want to go to Andy Scholes because there are many, many ways that the U.S. team can advance even if they lose.

ANDY SCHOOLS, CNN SPORTS: That's right, Carol. And Rachel touched on it a little bit earlier. The easy way of course to move on in advance is just win or draw against Germany, that happens, you automatically -- you move on. Now if we lose and Ghana and Portugal tie it's also good news, we would move on.

Now when to panic, if we lose and Ghana or Portugal win, Carol, that's when all these tiebreaker scenarios are going to come in. They'll play now. In the World Cup these are where the tiebreakers work. It starts to go to differential, then goes to total goals scored, then head-to-head then the drawing of lots, which is the coin flip. That's happened once in 80 years, not going to happen today, that would be very highly unlikely.

Now out of all these scenarios, the Web site 538 they crunched all the numbers for us, we -- and they say the United States has a 76 percent chance of moving on today. So that's good news, 76 percent chance. We'll take it, it will likely happen. There's a couple scenarios bad for are and for us. Ghana winning by two and us losing by one. But let's just hope that doesn't happen.

COSTELLO: I hope not. OK. Out to Chicago in George Howell.

So, you're waiting outside the bar, are people gathered yet?

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Not outside the bar. That con that earlier leading into it, I thought that was funny, so no comment on the bar yet, Carol, but you look back behind me, so right back there, that's where you expect to see some 25,000 people today here in Chicago. Now keep in mind we're talking about people -- a lot of people leaving work, some people driving in from other places all to be here in Chicago.

The one thing about this city, when you look for fans, I mean, have you seen the crowds, have you seen the crowds the last few days here in Chicago? 10,000 just over the weekend. Before that, it was like a sea of red, white and blue. Today it's supposed to be the biggest number of fans that we've seen turn out here in Chicago, so you could almost say there's a competition among cities.

I think we're going to have the most fans out here to watch the game -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Well, we'll check back with you. Can't wait. Thanks to all of you, Andy Scholes, Fred Pleitgen, Rachel Nichols, George Howell, Lara Baldesarra.

I'm back in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: A bombshell new theory in the Flight 370 mystery. Australia authorities now say the doomed airliner was likely on autopilot and the crew in an unresponsive state. Now this means the new search area moves and mushrooms in size from the mere 330 square -- from a mere 330 foot square miles in that red circle. Two, to a much vaster 23,000 square miles in that red search area to the south. It's like comparing the size of Louisville, Kentucky, to the entire state of West Virginia.

Aviation correspondent Richard Quest is with me now to parse this out for us.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Right.

COSTELLO: So let's start with that bombshell new theory. Now they believe that the plane was on autopilot for hours before it crashed?

QUEST: They believe it was on autopilot because of the way the plane must have flown to cover the seven arcs. Remember those vital handshakes, satellite links between the plane, the satellite and the ground station. Well, to have covered those seven arcs in the time that the plane was flying, they now say it clearly had to have been flown in a very precise fashion and the only way that could have happened would have been on autopilot.

Now, the extrapolation from that is, of course, that everybody on board, that there was some sort of lack of oxygen. We don't know that. All they are saying is that the nature of the flight to get it down there in the time that it took for the precision that it was required shows or suggests the plane was being flown on autopilot.

But, Carol, what we did get today was a treasure trove of information. We got a full scale 60-odd page report from the Australians. This is exactly the sort of interim report, chapter and verse, what happened, where the plane flew, the various mechanics, the assumptions of the satellite handshakes. There is a huge amount of information that has now taken them back to the seventh handshake, back to where they first believed it was, Carol.

COSTELLO: So in leaping through those 60 pages, what most surprised you, Richard?

QUEST: Nothing surprising, because we've always known the complexity of this. But what is interesting is how those erroneous pings, which the ocean shield heard in those 30 days, at the end of the 30 days, how that completely skewed the investigation. Those pings which we now know were wrong did not come from the black boxes, that led them well and truly, pardon the phrase, down the garden path.

And what they've done exactly as they said they were going to, they've gone back to the original data. They've looked at it again and said you know something? It's not here. It's down here.

I'm reading what they've all been talking about this morning, what the deputy prime minister of Australia says. He says listen, when we start searching in August, we may find it in hour one. We may find it in day one. It may take the full 12 month.

But this is encouraging. They have a better idea of where to look.

COSTELLO: I like how you say this is encouraging because this is a vast search area and there's no guarantee the plane is down there within that space. QUEST: I think -- well, if you're looking for a money back guarantee

I have to agree with you carol. There's nowhere else to look, frankly and yes it's a vast area. Remember, Bluefin-21 searched 850 or so. This is 60,000.

But the bathymetric study being done now of the underwater terrain, that will help them hugely. Once they start searching in August again, it's not going to be the same very slow mechanistic way of Bluefin-21. It will be a much different operation.

COSTELLO: All right. Richard Quest, thanks so much. >

General Motors is trying to get in front of another automotive misstep. The company briefly telling its dealers to stop selling its top selling Chevy Cruze because of a glitch with potentially deadly results, the airbag might not deploy in a crash. Now, this wasn't officially a recall, just a stop sale.

But G.M.'s CEO Mary Barra says there may be additional separate recalls ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARY BARRA, G.M. CEO: We're going to continue to look at the data that we get and we're going to take the action that we need. That's our commitment to customers, if we find an issue we're going to deal with it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, it's possible we could be hearing more recalls down the road?

BARRA: It's possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Christine Romans is following the story from New York.

Seems every G.M. car is affected, doesn't it?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, this Cruze is gm's best selling car, Carol.

And we can tell you right now that the company is again selling that vehicle, the 2013-2014 Chevy Cruze. They have rescinded the stop sale order and here is why. They have located every single one, tens of thousands of them, some 33,000, every one of the cars with this potentially faulty inflater on the driver's side airbag that could be a problem. They're finding those cars and they're going to fix them.

They're now selling these cars again. It is their best selling car, 248,000 of those sold last year, so the stop sale could put a dent in June sales mostly likely if they couldn't sell them for a couple of days.

This is a real problem again for Mary Barra and G.M., Carol, no question, but there is this perception that this highly -- you know, your car is a computer, a specialized computer, with lots of parts from lots of different suppliers and if they're going to be recalling them over and over again or stop sales to fix a product, that makes consumers mad because they paid a lot of money for something, expected to work.

It's really been a hit on the auto industry but specifically G.M. so far this year.

COSTELLO: Absolutely. So what do you do if you have a car with a faulty air bag?

ROMANS: They're going to contact you. You don't know if they do or not. It's 2013-2014, they know which cars those are. Now, they're going to alert people and get those fixed.

But if you want to buy one of the cars it's a successful product for this company, they are selling them again right now.

I will say, though, sales overall have not been deemed since February because of the deadly ignition switch problem, sales have not been dinged and the stock is up overall this year. So, G.M., people are still buying cars, Carol. If they want to buy a G.M. or Chevrolet car they'll still do it. Certainly the reputation hit on the company has been very difficult.

COSTELLO: All right. Christine Romans reporting live for us, thanks so much.

Still to come in THE NEWSROOM, a father charged with murder after leaving his toddler in a hot car all day long, now new details coming out with the release of the father's arrest warrant.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Just when you think the story could not get any worse, new details coming out this morning about a Georgia man who police say left his 22-month-old son to die in a hot car last week.

Justin Harris now charged with murdering his son, Cooper. Police say not only did this father lie about the time line in which his son died, but even returned to his car during his lunch break at work.

CNN's Victor Blackwell has more for us this morning.

Good morning, Victor.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, good morning. We got an answer to the question so many people were asking, where is mom in this whole story?

Well, we understand that she was questioned by detectives here at Cobb County police department headquarters. They would not give details of that conversation.

However, we are learning details of the claims police are making about what happened the day Cooper died. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL (voice-over): Early last Wednesday morning, Justin Ross Harris was seen at this Atlanta area Chick-fil-A. The newly released arrest warrant says, after breakfast, Harris was seen strapping his 22-month-old son Cooper into his car seat.

He drove less than a mile away to his Home Depot store support center where he works as a web designer.

Normally, Harris takes Cooper to a day care center on site, but not on this day. Instead, Harris headed inside the office and left his toddler in a rear facing car seat in the back, in a blazing Georgia sun.

Investigators say Harris returned to the SUV at lunchtime, opened the driver's side door and placed something inside. He then closed the door and walked off.

The temperature outside hit 88 degrees that afternoon. The temperature inside the SUV, potentially exceeded 130 degrees and Cooper was likely already dead.

The arrest warrant says at 4:16 that afternoon, at the end of the workday, Harris returned to the SUV and started the drive home. Seven minutes later and about two miles down the road, Harris screeched into this parking lot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hopped out of the driver's seat, opened the back door, pulled his child out, laid him on the concrete and tried to resuscitate him.

BLACKWELL: But little Cooper was dead. Patrol officers were in the area when the 911 calls came in.

SGT. DANA PIERCE, COBB COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT: Medical personnel arrived on the scene to determine that a child apparently had been in the automobile, the father's automobile since about 9:00 this morning.

BLACKWELL: Harris told police he somehow had forgotten to drop Cooper off at day care that morning.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He just screamed, "What have I done," loudly. Obviously it was a bit dramatic, you know, hands in the air looking up towards the sky, "What have I done?"

BLACKWELL: But police say it was all an act, charging him with cruelty to a child and felony murder.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'll be entering a plea of not guilty at this time.

BLACKWELL: More than 10,000 people have signed an online petition urging the district attorney to drop the charges.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no way it would have been intentional, especially from the father's reaction.

BLACKWELL: Meanwhile, investigators continue to search for answers.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Let's talk about those charges. The felony murder charge still stands, but we now know that the cruelty to a child charge has been downgraded from first-degree to second-degree. The difference here is that first-degree requires the state to argue malice, intent, that he intentionally meant to deprive his child of some sustenance, water, food.

Second-degree only requires that the state prove negligence, so a major difference there. Also we learned from the medical examiner's office the manner of death here, homicide, cause of death, hyperthermia, which is simply an overheating of the body. Hopefully, we'll learn more today -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Going back to the wife, the mother, is the couple estranged?

BLACKWELL: Well, we don't know much about that. There was a long obit written in the "Tuscaloosa News", the newspaper where this -- in the community where the child will be buried Saturday. It writes that he was a blessing to his mother and father. It writes -- it reads very rosy. So it's a good picture there.

But as far as any problems between the couple, we've read all the public reports, no problems that we know of between the two.

COSTELLO: Did they any other children?

BLACKWELL: Not that we know of. We know of this one child. We know that they were married for a little more than six years. They lived together in a small town, Moundville, Alabama, in Hale County there. And since Justin Ross Harris moved here and starting working for a Home Depot about two years ago, they've been in this community in Marietta just outside of Atlanta.

COSTELLO: Victor Blackwell, thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, it's one of the biggest decisions left for the high court to decide, will a private company like Hobby Lobby be forced to provide emergency contraceptives to their employers -- or employees, rather? We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)