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Coalition Fights for Mosul Against ISIS; The Modern Dating Game Using Apps; Couple Uses Wedding Budget for Incredible Things; Obama, Merkel Meet on Ukraine

Aired February 09, 2015 - 14:30   ET

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

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Now, that snow, of course, has to go somewhere. In these narrow streets, it's a huge hazard, especially for emergency crews. Now, these mounds, Brooke, I've got to show you this, because it looks like there's nothing there, but, look, there's movement that something is there.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Is there a car?

FLORES: If you dig in, I can almost bet you that there's a car in here, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Oh, my gosh.

FLORES: So I want to show you - I'm going to try to dig in here to see what we find, Brooke. It's an Expedition here. But, yes, there you see, there's the light. It's actually a car. It's a silver car.

Now, that's the highlight here. The dangers when there's a narrow street, imagine emergency vehicles, trying to come through here and they're not able to, because of these conditions -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: Looks like you're in a Beacon Hills, beautiful any other time of the year, beautiful there, but what's behind snow door number two.

Rosa Flores, be safe. All these people getting around. That is a lot of snow, indeed.

Thank you. Thanks for being out in it as well. Go get warm.

FLORES: You're welcome.

BALDWIN: Coming up next here on CNN, it is Iraq's second largest city, now controlled by ISIS, and now the coalition is stepping up attacks on Mosul. We'll take you live to Iraq.

Plus, reality star and former Olympic champion, Bruce Jenner, now part of this investigation into a car crash that killed one woman. Hear what police are looking for, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Just past the bottom of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. In the battle against ISIS, Kurdish troops, backed by coalition

airstrikes have taken fresh territory from the terror group near the Iraqi city of Mosul. Let's take a look at the map. Mosul is Iraq's second largest city. It's the currently controlled by ISIS and plans are now underway for Iraqi and Kurdish forces to try to re-take the city later this year.

Let's go to Phil Black, who's live in Erbil, in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

Phil, are the Peshmerga making gains, at least around the city of Mosul?

PHIL BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, they really have, Brooke. There's no doubt. Various front lines across this region, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that ISIS militarily is really struggling. What those Kurdish fighters have done is not just stopped the ISIS advance, but they have rolled back its territorial gains to a significant degree, and have now dug in defensive lines, which they are holding. What they have done is taken away from ISIS its ability to move forward and conquer new territory, which is so very different to the situation as it was last summer, when ISIS first moved in to this region of northern Iraq, really conquering all before it, gaining ground so very quickly. The Iraqi army fled before it, even the Kurdish fighters. Well, they had a tough time at first too.

This does not mean, though, that victory is imminent. The Kurdish fighters believe that they are winning, but there is still some really important work to do. And you touched on it. They are moving through and clearing out the remaining territory. And that includes the city of Mosul. That is expected to happen once the Iraqi army has been retrained, rebuilt, and to a significant degree, re-motivated, to the point where it is capable of re-taking that significant city, street to street. That's the sort of fighting it's going to be, rebuilding that army. It's a big job. So there's a lot of speculation about the time frame for when such an operation could begin. Some U.S. officials have said as early as April. Here in northern, Iraq, it seems more distant than that. The Kurds believe later in the year is far more likely -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: Still, the fact that they're gaining ground, that is excellent news.

Phil black, thank you, in Erbil.

Next, what happened in the car crash involving Bruce Jenner? Someone died in that crash. Police are not ruling out manslaughter. We'll have more on that.

Plus, just in, the former police officer who kept losing his wives is accused of trying to hire a hit man to kill the prosecutor who took him down for one of those murders. Drew Peterson's chilling new chapter, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BALDWIN: After a deadly car crash, Bruce Jenner says he is cooperating with police, but that will not stop question after question about what exactly happened. Jenner, the Olympic gold medalist-turned reality TV star, has been in the headlines recently over reports he's begun transitioning between being a man to being a woman. Jenner was not hurt in this crash, but a woman in another vehicle was killed. Five children and two adults were injured. They were sent to the hospital.

CNN's Jean Casarez joins me with more on this.

And let's just first begin, you know, these questions about was Jenner being, you know, trailed by the paparazzi? What are police saying about that?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Police are saying he originally had been followed by the paparazzi, but that he was not trying to get away from them at the time this all happened. And the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is saying that they don't, at this point, believe that that had any causal connection at all to this very tragic accident.

Now, they're in the midst of an accident investigation right now. And that can take a long time. In fact, they say, on the record, it can take up to a year. Now, the accident investigation will then determine if there is a criminal investigation. But the first thing they have to do is really reconstruct what happened, because there was a car, a Prius, that was stopped, the white Lexus that was driven by the woman who ultimately died, hit that, and this is a very windy, narrow portion in Malibu, and then Bruce Jenner allegedly was driving the Cadillac Escalade that went into the Lexus that then veered into oncoming traffic, and that's when the fatality occurred.

BALDWIN: Part of the investigation, they know what time the accident happened, looking into text records, phone calls, et cetera, to see if that may factor in at all.

Jean Casarez, as you mentioned, this could take a little while. Thank you very much.

CASAREZ: Thanks.

BALDWIN: I want to turn now to a stunning development in the case of Drew Peterson. Ring a bell? Remember, this is the retired police sergeant who is now accused of trying to hire a hit man from behind bars to take out the prosecutor who sent him to prison. Peterson was convicted in 2012 in the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Her death in 2004 was ruled accidental. But then that case was reopened when Peterson's fourth wife, Stacey, disappeared three years later. Peterson now stands accused of wanting to kill the man, right here. This is the prosecutor, James Glasgow.

Let's talk about this with legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, Sunny Hostin. Knows a thing or two about being threatened as a prosecutor.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: First of all, I guess his attorney is calling this absurd, saying he would have nothing to gain by killing this man. How do you just, theoretically, how do you call for a hit from behind bars?

SUNNY HOSTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, you have the privilege of having people come in and visit you. You can also send letters. You can also make phone calls. Oddly enough, though, when you are in prison, there are signs everywhere, Brooke, that say --

BALDWIN: You're being recorded.

HOSTIN: -- "All of your calls are being monitored." But oftentimes, prosecutors get a lot of evidence for future cases by monitoring inmates. And they do make these kinds of mistakes. It's not unheard of that a defendant from inside will try to put a hit out on either a prosecutor or someone else. And this is sort of like an occupational hazard for prosecutors. It's in a sense, your worst nightmare, because most people know that if they kill the prosecutor, there's going to be another one right behind you to take their place, but it does happen. I was threatened as a prosecutor. And so it's not unheard of. But it's a little crazy, right? You start to think, like, his defense attorney is saying, he's spending 38 years in prison for killing his wife, then, why kill the prosecutor? It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

BALDWIN: I would have to imagine it would affect any chance of an appeal if this was true?

HOSTIN: Well --

(LAUGHTER)

-- certainly, I think that's something that would be considered. And the bottom line is, you know, I often say, you just, you can't make sense of crazy. But I'm -- this was filed today. I'm looking at the complaint and it makes it pretty clear that they believe that he, you know, is guilty --

(CROSSTALK)

-- at the very least of trying to solicit murder for hire. Just unbelievable. The story sort of never ends.

BALDWIN: OK, Sunny Hostin, thank you. Appreciate it.

HOSTIN: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, the modern dating game, where true love, ladies and gentlemen, is merely a swipe away. New apps are making big changes in the way we fall in love. That story after the break.

Plus, the average cost of a wedding in the United States is in the ballpark of $25,000. My next guests decided to take their wedding budget and do something incredible with it. They join me live with their story. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: OK. Here's the deal. If you've not been on the market, the dating market in a while, let me just tell you, it has changed. The online and offline worlds, they're emerging in real time.

"CNN Money's" Laurie Segall took a look at the search for modern love in the new series, "Love Incorporated." And today, she hits the town to find out how this new app tracks your location and shows you eligible prospects in your path.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAURIE SEGALL, CNN MONEY TECH CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There's really no better way to talk about how things have changed and like the online dating scene than going offline to a bar in New York City on a Friday night.

(on camera): Do you use apps to date?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I use Tinder.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tinder. I've been on Qpid for a few years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've been on Qpid for a few years.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've been on it.

SEGALL: I think the bar right now is littered full of people on online dates.

(voice-over): The modern dating game, where you're a click or a tap away from love, or something like it. Apps that let you swipe through your options. People are pixels, where the formula for love is coded into your Smartphone, filtered by location, age, gender. What are you into? What's your religion?

True love may never change, but the way we find it has evolved. And here's the thing about love now. Mobile has changed everything.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, no. No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People are not looking to meet someone because that's what they're going for.

SEGALL: Remember when you used to ask a friend to set you up? Hinge is an app that browses your Facebook friends and connects you with a match. Older plays like, OK Qpid and match.com, you used to check those from a computer. They're now on your phone. And Tinder, which uses geo-location to link up nearby people who are both interested. Swipe right if you're interested, swipe left if your not. If you both swipe right, it's a match. There are more options than ever.

Sean Raths founded Tinder. He's managed to gamify finding a date. (on camera): We used to have the world where there was online and

then there was offline. You know, something like this kind of provides like a really interesting median that you guys are very much capitalizing on.

SEAN RATHS, FOUNDER, TINDER: Online and offline, the distinction and behind a computer, which is usually at a fixed location, but with our phone, it's with us everywhere we go.

SEGALL: Part of your algorithm that makes Tinder successful is this idea of taking out the rejection factor.

RATHS: There's so much we can do with Tinder and the information that we pick up from you, and, you know, we can make some really good guesses on to who we think that you might be interested in.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So you get a kissy face.

SEGALL: Oh, my --

(LAUGHTER)

Do you think that technology changes things for the better or changes things for the worse?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think definitely for the worse.

SEGALL: Why?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don't feel like meeting anybody in a bar, because you feel like you have like 50 matches on your phone, and lots of people meeting people when you go out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: OK. We'll have much more from Laurie Segall throughout the week on "Love Incorporated."

But my next guest -- I'm so excited to introduce you to both of them. They were well beyond dating, all set to walk down the aisle, when they made this decision that left their relatives, quote, "shocked and frozen." Instead of having the big party and the white dress and tuxedos and the photographers and the tiered cake and the yada, yada, this couple has been spending their wedding budget on this incredible cross-country trip, performing one act of kindness in each of the 50 states.

Joining me now, I have Mark and Ismini Svensson sitting with me here in New York.

Congratulations, belatedly, on the whole getting hitched things, which is the reason we're all sitting here and talking.

I have to say, I saw this piece on CNN.com over the weekend, and I was like, we've got to get them onset. Because, so you popped the question. You're a civil engineer. You

meet at Georgetown University. You pop the question. At what point do you decide not to have the big poufy wedding and instead do what you did?

ISMINI SVENSSON, SPENDING WEDDING BUDGET ON CHARITY PROJECTS: Mark?

MARK SVENSSON, SPENDING WEDDING BUDGET ON CHARITY PROJECTS: It's one of those decisions where it just kind of comes naturally. You're in the planning stages, you're talking about the typical stuff and you go through, OK, where are we going to have it, who are we going to invite? And at some point, you're constantly reminded that there's a big hole in the process. Someone important is missing.

BALDWIN: Your father?

ISMINI SVENSSON: Yeah. My father was a civil engineer and an economist. He was a very kind and compassionate man. He unfortunately passed away while at a charity event he had organized. He gave a last speech on love and kindness and the importance of giving back to the less fortunate. And then, in front of a packed audience, he passed away from a heart attack.

BALDWIN: Oh, my goodness.

ISMINI SVENSSON: It was a tragic event, yeah, unfortunately. And then, in order to honor his memory, Mark and I came up with this idea, instead of having a big wedding reception and a honeymoon, to travel to all 50 states in the U.S. and perform one act of kindness in every state.

BALDWIN: Wow. So, you take this money that was budgeted for the big wedding, and I know some family members, they wanted the big party, right? And you had to tell them, no, we would like to travel to every single state and do something. Give me examples of what you've done in different states?

MARK SVENSSON: For instance, in Los Angeles, and everything -- every act of kindness that we've performed is the result of suggestions we've received online. When we first started traveling, very quickly, we realized that, you know, people, once we started posting on Facebook and Twitter, that people were sending us suggestions, saying, OK, you know, when you come to my state or my area, this is an idea of something that you can do.

BALDWIN: They got involved.

MARK SVENSSON: Very fast people were getting involved. Some acts of kindness include in Los Angeles, we helped furnish a home for two women who were formerly homeless. In Texas, we helped elderly individuals with grocery shopping. In Florida, we did -- we partnered with the Humane Society to raise funds for them. And what else?

ISMINI SVENSSON: Every state, every state was different. So we visit patients suffering from cancer, children in hospitals, disabled young athletes, anything you can imagine. People started sending us suggestions for social media and we were following their leads.

MARK SVENSSON: And thinking about it now, the list goes on and on. And one of the unique things is we got to really tackle different issues that we otherwise probably wouldn't have by taking these suggestions from individuals.

BALDWIN: 14 states to go. Somehow, you were balancing this between having a 21-month-old.

ISMINI SVENSSON: Yes. A little girl.

BALDWIN: Taking her with you.

ISMINI SVENSSON: With us.

BALDWIN: Take her early on, I imagine as your father taught you early on, how to make the world a better place.

ISMINI SVENSSON: It's true. It's important for us to do this as a family. And, you know, motherhood for me is like the biggest blessing in life. And I think we're going to cherish these memories forever. We spent time with our baby and we meet all these wonderful people across the country. It's a blessing.

BALDWIN: We will continue following your blessings and your journey.

"Stay United." You see their T-shirts.

If you want to get more information or if you want more on their story, go to CNN.com/impact.

Ismini and Mark, thank you both very much.

MARK SVENSSON: Thank you very much.

BALDWIN: I really appreciate it.

ISMINI SVENSSON: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: If I ever get married, I will have you in mind, doing good things instead of having a big, poufy party.

(LAUGHTER)

Thank you both.

ISMINI SVENSSON: Thank you, Brooke. Thank you.

MARK SVENSSON: Thank you very much.

BALDWIN: All right, let's continue on here. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

The United States right now is considering getting even more deeply involved in the most violent conflict Europe has seen in years.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(EXPLOSION)

(UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

(EXPLOSION)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: This massive explosion wiped out a weapons plant. This is outside of Donetsk. This is the area where fighting continues to worsen each and every day, in eastern Ukraine. This is the part of the country now under control of the pro-Russian separatists. But across the country, across Ukraine, more than 5,000 people are dead, and almost one million displaced. And that number, by the way, is expected to continue to rise.

President Barack Obama now facing tough questions, should the United States give defensive, yet deadly arms to Ukrainian soldiers. Originally, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, unequivocally, no, worried that Russian President Vladimir Putin might become more aggressive, might retaliate with even more force. But today, we saw this news conference with President Obama and Chancellor Merkel, standing side by side, speaking from the White House, and heard a bit of a softened message. Here they were.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANGELA MERKEL, GERMAN CHANCELLOR (through translation): The French president and I have decided to make one further attempt to make progress through diplomatic means.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: In the face of this aggression and these bad decisions, you know, we can't simply try to talk them out of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)