Return to Transcripts main page
Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
"I don't Know What I'm Gonna Do"; Finding A New Family; Biggest Fine Ever For A Single Company
Aired November 19, 2013 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ZORAIDA SAMBOLIN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Boy, oh, boy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I never saw myself living in a car.
SAMBOLIN: Stick around for this story. Homeless and in high school. A teenager booted from the foster system finally finding a family.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): A wonderful ending.
SAMBOLIN: Oh, it is just fantastic.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN (on-camera): Welcome back to EARLY START, everyone. I'm John Berman.
SAMBOLIN (on-camera): And I'm Zoraida Sambolin. It is 31 minutes past the hour.
And this morning, we are getting a better sense of the devastation across the Midwest after dozens and dozens of tornadoes ripped through such a wide swath of the nation. This, folks, a live look at Washington, Illinois. Much that city now in ruins.
In New Minden, Illinois, near St. Louis, a grandmother and her brother died when a tornado tore their home apart. Their relatives rode the storm out in a creek bed, racing over to the destroy farm house moments after the weather passed, but home was gone and the 78-year- old grandmother was buried under a pile of rubble.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMY TIPPIN, STORM VICTIM: Just kept saying, get me out, get me out. And then, I just was holding her and I told her how much I loved her.
LINDA AGNE, STORM VICTIM: We were planning on a Thanksgiving down here. We were going to fry a turkey down here so we were all looking forward to that. But we don't know what we're going to do now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAMBOLIN: Oh my goodness. We are so sorry for their loss and all of the loss there. The death toll from these storms has now reached eight, and we're now seeing just what it was like when the twisters actually hit. Here's Gary Tuchman.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Heading toward us!
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the tornado that came through Washington, Illinois. A frightening and increasingly familiar image in this video age, but what unique about this video --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my God! Holy (EXPLETIVE DELETED)
TUCHMAN: -- is that the man shooting it kept shooting as it started to destroy his house. It could have been the last thing Kris Lancaster ever did, but he survived.
KRIS LANCASTER, TORNADO SURVIVOR: I got hit by some debris or something and cut my eye in three places.
TUCHMAN: His wife and children survived, too. But this is what happened to their house. Gone. Even they can barely recognize it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is my bedroom right here. I was sleeping on that side of the bed and when the sirens went off and the wife yelled at me, I jumped up, threw some clothing and put my running pants on and I went through the house. I actually went and checked here and the kids were over here so I went through this way was my kitchen.
TUCHMAN: Incredibly, the plates in the kitchen cupboards remain completely intact. The rest of the kitchen destroyed. The home was Mandy Lancaster's dream house.
After you came out of the basement and saw what this tornado did to your house, were you incredulous that you survived?
MANDY LANCASTER, TORNADO SURVIVOR: Yes. I don't know how anybody made it through this.
TUCHMAN: Mandy did not want her husband to shoot the video, but he was transfixed.
KRIS LANCASTER: That water tower just to the left of it is where I started seeing it coming across, coming across, coming across.
TUCHMAN: It wasn't until after the tornado hit that Kris joined his family in the basement. The day after, they look for keepsakes.
(LAUGHTER)
KRIS LANCASTER: The video of my wedding.
TUCHMAN: And they try to figure out what happens next.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know where to go. I don't know what to do. All I can do is just stand here and look at it.
TUCHMAN (on-camera): like so many families here, Kris, Mandy, their children, have lost almost everything. But right now, this family prefers to focus on something they haven't lost, each other.
KRIS LANCASTER: The good lord above was with me. All I can say is I got three angels up there. I got my father, my grandparents, my grandma and grandpa up there. They're looking down on me. They're my guardian angels for me today. They say you got to stay here and take care of your family.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): Gary Tuchman, CNN, Washington, Illinois.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: And you can see the families in Gary's piece picking through the rubble and that's happening from Missouri all the way to Wisconsin with so many people looking for anything they can find which of course is the first step to putting lives back together again. Indra Petersons is in Washington, Illinois this morning. Indra, what's the latest there?
INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes. You know, John and Zoraida, I just lost a little bit of ear piece. I'm not sure what you guys asked here, but I did want to let you guys knows, we are talking now about an EF-4 tornado with winds as high as 190 miles per hour. We don't talk about the past link here. We now know it was 34-1/2 miles long and a half mile wide.
So, take a look at the kind of images we have now been seeing. Very hard to even identify what is here and next to me. I mean, maybe a radiator, maybe a cooler. I mean, we're also looking behind me, we see downed power lines. And again, this was a city had that two-story houses or this residential neighborhood had two-story houses. There's really nothing left here.
We took a cruise around the neighborhood yesterday and it was just devastating to see homes made of brick completely leveled down to the ground and then you would look next door and everything was intact. That is just the way the nature of these storms. I do want to give you a quick update about the weather here across the country. What we're looking at is this dome of high pressure now in place in the northeast.
So, the system that produced all of the severe weather is now offshore and what we're looking at here now is just some cooler temperatures. Only about five to 10 degrees below normal. Not really a big deal. It's what is out in the Pacific Northwest that is currently dumping snow. We're talking Montana, Wyoming, even Idaho. That storm system will make its way across the country.
We're going to be talking about heavy amounts of snow in that region, even upwards of about a foot, but eventually, as it makes its way across the country, we're going to be talking about rain into the Ohio Valley by the end of the week and looking like in the Midwest by the middle of the week.
And I point that out because that means right here, we're going to be talking about rain as early as tomorrow. By Thursday, heavy rain blasting even in through Saturday and unfortunately, that rain flip over to snow. And so, it looks like today will be the last day the residents again have to really take the time to clean up, guys.
BERMAN: They don't need that rain and snow coming. Indra Petersons for us in Washington, Illinois. Thank you so much.
Thirty-six minutes after the hour. And Toronto's mayor is promising a war and calls it a coup. Strong language, Rob Ford, upset and angry and vowing revenge after the city council stripped him of most of his powers. This, of course, in light of the revelations that he smoked crack and bought illegal drugs while in office.
The vote was overwhelming. It was 36-5. The council has no way to actually impeach Ford so it can only take the step that it did, but Ford compared what the council did to an act of international aggression.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROB FORD, MAYOR OF TORONTO: This, folks, reminds me of when -- I was watching with my brother -- when Saddam attacked Kuwait and President Bush said, I warn you, I warn you, I warn you, do not. Well, folks, if you think Americans politics is nasty, you guys have just attacked Kuwait.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Yes, he said that. And as the debate, it was ongoing. You see that there. Ford ran into a fellow councilmember, knocking her nearly to the ground, but he caught her. He apologized. Meanwhile, in an exclusive interview with CNN, Ford explained why he decided to come clean about his drug use.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FORD: I just had enough. I was sick and tired of all of these allegations and all of this (EXPLETIVE DELETED) excuse my words and all it is. Sorry, kids, I shouldn't swear in front of the kids, but, after a while, I know what I'm doing is right. I'm serving the people. I'm saving taxpayers' money. And you know what, I made mistakes. I drink too much. I smoke some crack some time. What can I say? I made a mistake. I'm human.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: And then he lied about it, of course. Ford's new TV show, "Ford Nation," that's right, his new TV show launched last night. He spent the broadcast defending himself and he insists that he will be re-elected in 2014. That will be some campaign.
(LAUGHTER)
SAMBOLIN: The story continues.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SAMBOLIN (voice-over): All right. Former vice presidential candidate, John Edwards, is getting back to his professional roots. He is set to open a new law practice with his former law partner, David Kerby (ph). The firm will represent what Edwards calls disenfranchised little people and he also says he wants to give the little guy a pair chance. Edwards made millions as a lawyer before he began his political career, a career that ended after revelations of an affair and charges of corruption.
BERMAN (voice-over): Voters in Albuquerque today will decide whether to ban abortions after 20 weeks. This is believed to be the first referendum of its kind ever, especially in a municipal election. Albuquerque is home to one of the few late-term abortion clinics in the country. And those behind the referendum say that the clinic should be shut down. The state attorney general says the law, if approved, would be unconstitutional.
SAMBOLIN: A united Methodist pastor has been convicted of breaking church rules by officiating at a gay wedding. It was the wedding of his son. Reverend Frank Schaffer (ph) said he did it because he loved his son and it was his duty to minister to everyone. And he decided to go ahead with the trial because he would not accept a ban on ever officiating a same-sex marriage again. This trial will resume today with a jury set to decide on whether to defrock him.
BERMAN: This is a church trial.
SAMBOLIN: It is a church trial. He could also face suspension. I talked to him last weekend.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAMBOLIN (on-camera): He's really conflicted. You know, this is a church that he has loved from the time that he was a young boy.
BERMAN (on-camera): But as a child that he loves even more.
SAMBOLIN: Exactly. And that's exactly what he said. He has three gay children and he said, you know, how do you make decisions like this? And his church is divided as well. So, it's really an interesting story.
Forty minutes after the hour right now.
Google is paying up for monitoring millions of internet users. The search giant has settled claims from 37 states from the District of Columbia that its advertising network shadowed those who used the Safari web browser. The company insists it was inadvertent and is not admitting any wrongdoing. The cost to Google, a mere $17 million.
SAMBOLIN: And if you use Instagram or Snapchat or even Facebook, you'll know what this is. Do you know what it is?
BERMAN: It's a selfie.
SAMBOLIN: It's a selfie. And that word is the Oxford dictionary's word of the year. Editors define the term as a photograph taken of one self and uploaded it to a social media website and it dates the first usage back to 2002. A few other big words on the list, twerk. (LAUGHTER)
BERMAN: What if you take a selfie and yourself twerking?
(LAUGHTER)
BERMAN: I think Oxford would explode.
SAMBOLIN: Yes. That's jackpot. Binge watch is another one and show rooming, that's when you price an item in the store and find it cheaper online. I didn't know that one.
BERMAN: Leave it to those --
SAMBOLIN: But you know, the pope actually took a selfie.
BERMAN: He was not twerking.
(LAUGHTER)
SAMBOLIN: He was not twerking.
(CROSSTALK)
BERMAN: Forty-one minutes after the hour.
Coming up, he was all but abandoned living in his car until he found his family.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED KID: It was just god's time to bring him home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A new family, new life, new name, new journey, and I'm going to live it to the fullest.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: This, folks, is an incredible story and one of our favorite. You got to see this. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SAMBOLIN: Forty-five minutes past the hour. Welcome back to EARLY START. We have a remarkable story for you this morning. It is from Texas about a teenager who never thought that he would have a real family. Seth Miller (ph) spent most of his life in foster housing, but when he turned 18, he was forced out. Too old to be placed with a foster family any more.
The high school senior was living in his car. But once a Dallas area TV station profiled him, he's got an amazing call. It turns out his biological sister had been adopted years earlier. Her parents knew she had a brother and now they finally knew who he was and wanted him to become a part of their family.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SETH MILLER, ADOPTED AT 18: It's almost like a kid's first Christmas or a kid's first birthday, you know? They don't know what to really do. I don't really have the words to describe how happy and how joyful you are and how grateful you are for everything.
ARA HUNT, ADOPTIVE MOTHER: This is the family that the day he was born, God wrote on his head, Hunt. I believe that in everything that I have in me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAMBOLIN: So, Seth is now living with the Hunt Family, calls Ara Hunt mom and will soon be changing his name. Despite being 19, the Hunts are adopting him so he will officially become one of them for the rest of his life.
BERMAN: That is so wonderful that that family is now altogether and they have each other.
SAMBOLIN: Just incredible. And just to have such big hearts and to do something like this. And like she said, you know what, he was a part of us when he was born. We just didn't know it yet.
BERMAN: So lovely. So hard (ph) for 18, 19 years olds.
SAMBOLIN: Yes. Beautiful story!
BERMAN: All right. Forty-six minutes after the hour. Let's take a look at what's coming up on "NEW DAY." Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan here with us now. Hey, guys.
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, guys.
SAMBOLIN: Good morning.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We've got a couple of new pieces on Obamacare to talk about. First of all, we're learning that a private firm warned them in the spring that its website rollout would have glitches. What exactly were they told? What did they do about it? We'll tell you.
Also, a CNN exclusive with a woman President Obama originally touted as a health care success story. Now, she is uninsured after buying insurance on that Washington State exchange. A little bit of a nuance there, but we're going to tell you why she says the program is all wrong.
BOLDUAN: And another arrest for George Zimmerman to talk about this morning. He's behind bars after his girlfriend accused him of pointing a gun at her and locking her out of her home. We have the 911 calls. Pretty dramatic. And, we're going to look at whether these charges can stick and what this means.
BERMAN: All right. Thanks, guys. Look forward to seeing that. You know, George Zimmerman is the subject of our "Morning Rhyme" today. These are the --
SAMBOLIN: Believe it or not.
BERMAN: -- best tweets of the day. Someone out with a very imaginative, you know, clever sense of rhyme sent us this. He said, "Zimmerman, Zimmerman, oh, what a clown. When you're in prison, you won't stand your ground." We're not endorsing these tweets, folks. We're just telling you they rhyme really well and it's an impressive use of language.
I just want to read the name of the man who tweeted them again, because -- it is S2jvoxmusic (ph).
SAMBOLIN: There we go.
BERMAN: So, well done. You can come up with your own tweets. The hash tags are morning rhyme and EARLY START. Send them our way.
SAMBOLIN: All right. And coming up, it would be the biggest government settlement in the U.S. history. JPMorgan and the justice department set to end their fight over that crazy mortgage meltdown. That is ahead in "Money Time."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: Welcome back to EARLY START, everyone. It is "Money Time" which means Christine Romans is here.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: I know. 16k on the Dow, 1,800 on the S&P, hit it, didn't hold it, couldn't hold it. You know, the Dow has all managed another record close. The NASDAQ and the S&P were both lower on the day, actually. Look, you know, it was a little bit of a caution sign.
I want to show you the numbers, though. We got as high as 16,030 and the S&P reached 18,002, just could not hold that level there. So, what does Dow 16,000 mean for you? Everyone is asking this. What does it mean, Dow 16,000? Here's one expert on that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DOUG HIRSCHHORN, AUTHOR, "TRYING PSYCHOLOGY PLAYBOOK": It's a classic example of emotions overtaking rational decision making and thinking about the numbers and the fundamentals as opposed to just some number which is a great number and cool and interesting and round, but it really has no relevance as far as -- or shouldn't have relevance as far as how you make your decisions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Yes. So, you know, your life doesn't change at 16,000 and your investment strategy shouldn't either. That's what the trading psychology experts like that guy say. So, here's why it does matter. It matters because this year, it has been an amazing run to 16,000. The Dow is up 22 percent. The NASDAQ up 31 percent. The S&P 500 up 26 percent. Check your allocations that you have your stock bonds, cash in the right mixture for your age and goals. That's what --
BERMAN: Why are you looking at me? What do you know?
(CROSSTALK)
ROMANS: But you know, I mean, these big round numbers an important time to take a look at your strategy.
All right. This is historic. The biggest fine ever for a single company to pay is likely going to be announced today. We've been telling you about this. It's in the works. JPMorgan Chase and the justice department agreeing on a landmark $13 billion settlement over the bank's mortgage practices and lead up to the financial crisis. Now, this agreement helps JPMorgan's CEO, Jamie Dimon, put a whole host of state and federal investigations behind this company.
It also includes a big portion, $4 billion that's supposed to go directly to struggling homeowners. Of that amount, at least, 1.5 billion is going to go to reduce loan payments for homeowners with mortgages under water, meaning that, you know, they've got -- what they owe on the house is more than the house is worth.
Up to $500 million is going to pay for a partial loan forgiveness. They have a $2 billion could be used in part to fund new loans for low income buyers. So, watch the space and we will, of course, be watching very closely to make sure that money is getting to homeowners. That's been one of the complaints of some of mortgage settlements we've seen before.
Some homeowners are completely out of the game. They're not even in the house anymore, you know? And they really got hurt along the way. Fresh or frozen for turkey?
SAMBOLIN: I'm doing fresh this year, but I've done both.
ROMANS: I know. I'm going to doing fresh, I think, too. You might have a tough time finding a fresh --
SAMBOLIN: I ordered mine --
ROMANS: Did you.
SAMBOLIN: Sure did.
ROMANS: Butterball says it's going to have plenty of large frozen turkeys, but it's only going to be shifting about half as many of the large fresh never frozen turkeys to the supermarkets this year. It seems like they just couldn't (ph) get fat enough over the summer --
(LAUGHTER)
ROMANS: -- which seems like a tough problem they have which is couldn't get fat enough this summer. So, they didn't have enough really fresh turkeys.
BERMAN: The exercise -- reaching down -- SAMBOLIN: Make sure you order early. The moral of that story, you buy early rather so that --
ROMANS: Yes. I'm going to do a farmer's market. I'm going to get like a jersey bird, I think.
SAMBOLIN: Cool.
BERMAN: Well done. Keep it local.
(LAUGHTER)
All right. Fifty-four minutes after the hour. Coming up, a teenager and a principal. They risk their own lives to save a friend when the unthinkable happens. You're going to meet a couple of heroes right after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: Welcome back, everyone. A 13-year-old in Michigan and a school principal are being called heroes today for saving a friend's life. The 14-year-old was walking near his school Monday when he grabbed a downed power line. An awful idea, folks. He was trying to push it out of the way, but it was live and he was shocked severely. So badly his hand would not let go of the wire.
So, his friend grabbed a stick and pushed the wire away. Quick thinking. And the principal grabbed the teen despite warnings that he too could be shocked. The teen is now being treated at a hospital. The power company is investigating how this all happened, but there is one lucky kid right there. Do not ever grab downed powerlines.
SAMBOLIN: And hip hip hooray for those heroes. That's fantastic. All right. I love ending on a positive note. That is it for EARLY START. "NEW DAY" starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've never been in a tornado before. I never want to go through one again.
CUOMO: Path of destruction. New video showing how a twister destroyed a town. The struggle for hundreds of thousands still without power and amazing stories of survival.
BOLDUAN: Arrested again. George Zimmerman behind bars this morning for allegedly pulling a gun on his girlfriend. Could he do real-time for this? We have the dramatic 911 calls.
MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Monday night mayhem. Tom Brady lets loose on the refs after the team loses on the final play. The refs threw a flag but no penalty was called. Did the refs blow it?
CUOMO: Your "NEW DAY" starts right now.
ANNOUNCER: This is "NEW DAY" with Chris Cuomo, Kate Bolduan, and Michaela Pereira.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CUOMO: Good morning. Welcome to "NEW DAY." it's Tuesday, November 19th, six o'clock in the east. And we start with the destruction in the Midwest. We now know it was a real monster that attacked Washington, Illinois. A ferocious Ef-4 tornado, 166 miles an hour winds, hundreds of thousands are still without power in this mad scramble to deal with tremendous loss from Missouri to Wisconsin. The death toll from Sunday's onslaught of twisters now rising to eight.
Let's go to CNN meteorologist, Indra Petersons. She's live in Washington, Illinois where they're still trying to figure out the extent of the damage. Indra, good morning.
PETERSONS: Yes. Good morning, Chris. We all saw that damage yesterday. And today, we now know from the National Weather Service that, yes, this was an EF-4 tornado. So, just picture winds at 190 miles per hour, stretching for over 34 1/2 miles, and tThe width of this tornado now, we know, was a half mile wide.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETERSONS (voice-over): Hundreds of thousands are still without power this morning after Sunday's deadly tornado outbreak. Illinois's governor declaring seven counties disaster areas in the wake of more than 70 reported twisters that tore across the Midwest from Missouri to Wisconsin, killing at least eight people.
