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American Morning

Egypt's "Day of Departure"; Google Gets 75,000 Resumes; Wanna Bet?; Crowds Overflowing in Cairo; Desert Shrimp

Aired February 04, 2011 - 08:00   ET

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

T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you all. It's Friday, the 4th day of February. I'm T.J. Holmes.

KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Kiran Chetry. Glad you're with us. T.J. was mentioning the crowds in Tahrir Square overflowing this morning. Here is a look at what it looks like right now. The day of departure as it's being dubbed in Egypt with crowds gathering. A big change over the past two days, largely, peaceful.

HOLMES: They are hoping this is going to be the last day that Hosni Mubarak is in power in Egypt. Our Frederik Pleitgen is there in Cairo. He is with us now. Frederick, tell us about the crowds today. We saw the violence over the past couple of days. These crowds appear to be massive but, so far, peaceful.

I'm just told we have lost our Fred Pleitgen.

We weren't even sure today we were going to be able to get a lot of live pictures or live reporters given what we've seen the past couple of days with the crackdown, systemic crackdown on journalists. A lot of the live signals went down -- reporting has become more difficult and dangerous. We will be working to get our Fred Pleitgen back up and get a live report from Cairo if we can.

CHETRY: And earlier, we did talk to Ivan Watson who said that, you know, yesterday, he feared for his life. And that today, it's a very different story. That the troops, the Egyptian army troops are providing protection for the people who want to come out there and peacefully protest.

So, a very different scene than the harrowing tales yesterday of harassing reporters, reporters being beaten. And, of course, the day before where we saw the crowds outright attacked in the streets.

HOLMES: And the White House right now have been involved from the beginning of this crisis, but they have been on the phones working, trying to come up with a plan, discussing one at least to have President Mubarak resign, not down the road in September when the other elections are going to be held, but as quickly as possible.

CHETRY: "The New York Times" is reporting today the plan would put the vice president, Omar Suleiman, in charge of a transitional government. So far, though, Mubarak isn't budging.

Candy Crowley joins us live from Washington.

Good to see you this morning, Candy.

I thought it was interesting. Christiane Amanpour, our former colleague, now with ABC News, talked to Mubarak yesterday. And he said President Obama doesn't understand how this would work. If I left, it would be chaos. And that he's saying that for the good of the country, he needs to stay until this transition takes place.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: And there are some within the State Department and we have been cautioned by U.S. officials that there's no one thing that they're working. And we're also being cautioned that there is a limit to U.S. power, believe it or not, about what they can and cannot bring about.

So, a lot of things are out there, and "The New York Times" reporting on one and CNN has reported on that.

But what we also have are other officials, American officials and diplomatic officials, saying, listen, in some respects, the truth is if the opposition now has to step up and try to come forward with some sort of ideas about how to make this peaceful transfer, that, in fact, there is a certain amount of sense to be made of what President Mubarak said, which is we look out there and we do see chaos, particularly yesterday and, obviously, today so far seeming peaceful, but that there is some fear of what would happen in that transitional time and would Suleiman actually be acceptable and actually under Egyptian law, he's not exactly the person that is seen as the person would take over if Mubarak left.

So, there are a lot of options out there, none of which the U.S. is totally in control of, let's put that out there, because if President Mubarak doesn't want to leave, there's not a lot the U.S. can do to force him and I think at some level, there is also the need and they are telling us this, U.S. officials are saying there's a need to keep some leverage with Mubarak, because the minute you're out there going, OK, you need to leave, you need to get out, you lose any leverage you might have with him should he choose to stay.

So, there are lots of scenarios going on out there, none of which, as you can see, has kept people off of that square or move Mubarak out of office. So, we are still where we were.

HOLMES: Candy, how real and great are the fears of trying to balance, having stability on the street right now with Mubarak leaving versus some instability that might come down the road in the leadership vacuum also if he leaves right now?

CROWLEY: Well, exactly and that's what a lot of people are weighing, saying, don't' think that Mubarak leaving right now would instantaneously lead to stability because they don't believe it would, because you do leave a vacuum. Because we've had 30 years of authoritarian rule there is no one opposition that is strong enough to begin to move toward a democratic process of elections in September and whatever.

So, a lot of people in the U.S. and elsewhere feel that there does need to be some time given for the opposition to get itself together for elections in September, which is not to say that another scenario isn't what we're learning in "The New York Times" and have learned at CNN that, you know, obviously, Mubarak could leave immediately. But, then, who fills that vacuum and will it be acceptable the people we're now seeing in the square?

So, this is by no means a "Here's plan A, let's do it" because of two things -- one, many plans out there, many ideas out there as they talk not just amongst themselves, American officials, but people in the region. And what they think is happening, because there are other countries, obviously, right around Egypt that have a huge stake in what happens here.

So, it's not just, "OK, the U.S. wants this." It's -- we have, you know, they are talking to a number of other people. And the true limits of power that even the leader of the Western world has at this particular point. There just is not -- if people want to go out in a square in Cairo, there's not a lot the president sitting in the Oval Office can do about it.

If Hosni Mubarak wants to sit in the palace and stay there as president, there's not a lot this president can do about that other than used what leverage he has with both opposition groups, with other leaders in the region and with President Mubarak, to see what the U.S. can do to try to keep the lid on anything worse happening than has already happened.

HOLMES: All right. Candy Crowley, thank you. We will see you again soon. And by "soon," I mean, Sunday morning, 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time and again at noon, right here on CNN -- Candy Crowley with "STATE OF THE UNION." Thanks so much, Candy.

CHETRY: Let's check in again with Frederik Pleitgen. He is live for us on the phone from Cairo.

Sorry, we lost for a minute there earlier when we try to connect. What is the latest and what's it like out there today?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Hi. Good morning.

Yes, I'm right in the middle of Tahrir Square, which is, of course, where the protests are happening. I can tell you right now that it really is a very peaceful scene here.

I would say there's tens of thousands of people who are still coming into Tahrir Square. I actually was in one of these checkpoints coming in here just a couple of minutes ago. I think that's actually why I lost your signal. But there seems to be hundreds of people standing next to me, trying to get in here as well.

Most people I've spoken say that now, they feel they have more momentum than they ever have before since they, you know, fought back one of those sieges that have been going on the past couple of days and have managed to remain on the square here. And they are saying that they are going to stay here until Mubarak goes. And, of course, as you know, they labeled this day as "the day of departure."

So, they feel that this should be the day that Hosni Mubarak steps down. But, right now, it's just sort of a cheerful mood here. But the one thing I can tell you about is what we've been talking about before.

There is no single sort of figure who is pulling these people together. You have sort of little groups of protesters starting chants, but there is not really one single person holding speeches and tying all of this together -- Kiran.

CHETRY: All right. Frederik Pleitgen for us this morning in Tahrir Square -- thanks so much.

HOLMES: Let's turn to some weather now. We have yet another new winter storm in the South this time, once again. In particular, Dallas -- Dallas is in a deep freeze. They are getting ready, of course, to host the Super Bowl on Sunday.

It might have to do it with five inches of snow on the ground. That's what is there right now. It's made getting around treacherous certainly in Dallas where a lot of festivities have been put on hold. There at least been tamped down a bit because of the weather.

Also, Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, many places in the South dealing with this.

CHETRY: Jacqui Jeras joins us right now. We take a look at that radar picture, Jacqui.

It is not supposed to look like that and it's certainly not supposed to look like that at the airport in Dallas/Fort Worth.

JACQUI JERAS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I know, right, but every time, it's like 57 degrees. So, it's not going to get above freezing today.

So, this is certainly unusual. It's a record-breaking snowfall and really unprecedented to see, you know, subfreezing temperatures for this long for a week, with two winter storms that you're dealing with. So, unfortunately, it's making travel very, very difficult.

We've got parts of interstates shut down in the Dallas area as well. Let's go ahead and take a look at some of the video that we have out of there, showing you the five inches on the ground. Yes, you know, the snow plows, they brought extras in, by the way, because Dallas promised the NFL that they were going to be able to keep the city up and going and operational.

DFW remains open right now. However, Dallas Love Field, all of the runways are closed there. We've also got runways closed at Corpus Christi because of the freezing rain. And we've had problems with freezing rain in Houston, too, by the way, and part of the interstate is shut down there. Lots of accidents being reported in the Houston area today also.

The big picture for today shows that Gulf area of low pressure is the big storm system of the day. This thing is going to bring heavy rain to Atlanta, expecting to see potential flooding here as well. It's going to ride up the coast, move through the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast for tomorrow, but shouldn't be too powerful of a storm for you.

The Arctic air remains entrenched in the nation's midsection and it feels like minus nine in Chicago still, guys. Chicago is still having some problems, by the way, too, because it's a little windy there, tough time with the little ice and snow on the runways.

So, much of the country is still kind of dealing with this big winter blow and the models are hinting, unfortunately, at another big one late next week. We'll keep you posted on that as it develops.

CHETRY: When you say "big one," how big are you saying?

JERAS: You know, I -- you know, it feel like it's hurricane season, guys, where every time we look at the models, there's another big storm and you're like, really? Another one? It's not looking good.

CHETRY: I will buy some more rock salt today because you never know. Thanks, Jacqui.

JERAS: It's a good idea.

HOLMES: Thanks, Jacqui.

Well, they say "neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night" -- the post office. Well, in Indianapolis, they are pushing the post office with that ode, but the mail carrier is having a bit of a problem there. They still can't reach about a third of the homes there days after that storm dumped more than a foot of snow on the city.

CHETRY: Well, Chicago is still trying to dig out from the third biggest storm in the city's history. Many drivers are now being reunited with their cars that were towed off of Lake Shore Drive -- a big, big thruway there and it had to be shut down because of how many vehicles were stranded on it. Earlier this week, it was closed after that whiteout condition storm. So, you know, adding insult to injury. But, hey, at least you're getting your car back!

HOLMES: Also coming up in about 20 minutes, closely watched monthly jobs report. And we say that companies are finally hiring.

CHETRY: Also, journalists threatened, attacked, arrested but not silenced -- the war on the media in Egypt.

HOLMES: Also, it's a tweet heard around the world and it came from fashion designer Kenneth Cole. One more reason, one more warning why you should check those 140 characters before you hit "tweet."

It's 10 minutes past the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETARY OF STATE: This is a violation of international norms that guarantee freedom of press and it is unacceptable under any circumstances.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: That's right. That was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking out yesterday after we saw the pictures and heard the reports of journalists being chased, harassed, punched, clubbed, some hospitalized, just simply terrorized. Some have ended up locked away and others in the hospital still.

This morning, Al Jazeera said that, quote, "thugs" raided their offices in Cairo, destroying their equipment. So, a clear effort to silence the media and keep this story of the Egyptian uprising from leaving its borders.

We're going to be speaking right now with Mona Eltahawy. She was born in Egypt and is a columnist and reporter who is based in Cairo.

Now, we've been looking -- and welcome, Mona. Thanks so much for getting up with us this morning.

We were looking at the picture of the demonstrations today. The largest crowd by estimates of our reporters that we've seen, yet peaceful. What has changed overnight?

MONA ELTAHAWY, COLUMNIST: Absolutely. What has changed is that the Mubarak regime realized that the entire world was watching as his thugs were unleashed on peaceful, pro-democracy supporters. The uprising has been peaceful so far, and only time that we've seen violence is when Mubarak people moved in.

And, as you mentioned, the Al Jazeera office was ransacked by Mubarak thugs. Human rights activists, I know, have been arrested. Bloggers, I know, have been arrested, and members of the youth movements that were instrumental in launching this uprising have been arrested which tells me that the Mubarak regime is giving its best effort to silence this uprising because it knows that Egyptians in the millions are turning out and saying enough of Mubarak, we want freedom.

CHETRY: Well, in some ways, it seems to have backfired because of these journalists who were all telling their harrowing stories from our own Anderson Cooper to different times, to many of the other stories in news organizations around the world. And today, we see a very different scene. Is it safe to assume that the Mubarak regime has realized that this didn't work, and it is going to be a safer place for journalists or is that too early of an assumption to make?

ELTAHAWY: You know, it's absolutely astounding to think in this day and age that any regime can think that it can beat journalists and the word is not going to get out. So, it's kind of an indication of the parallel universe that the Mubarak regime exists in. I mean, it also shut down the internet for several days until they allowed it to work again a couple of days ago. So, I think they're realizing that they concerted efforts to just shut down this mass uprising.

The efforts are not working. And what we need to see, though, is more pressure from the international community. The Germans came out today and said that they would not sell any more weapons to Egypt, and I think the U.S. administration and other allies of the Mubarak regime should take this as an indication of what they can do to stop the violence against peaceful protesters because today is a fantastic day.

I mean, as an Egyptian watching, thousands upon thousands of my people rallying peacefully for Democracy. I mean, I'm ecstatic. So, I think that, you know, the world is watching and Mubarak needs to know he cannot crack down like this.

CHETRY: So, what's the next step? We heard from Vice President Suleiman. He spoke with ABC's Christiane Amanpour and said we are going to let them be in the streets. We're going to let them protest. We wish they wouldn't, but we're not going to stop it. Is that a satisfactory enough position and will these protesters accept him stepping in at least temporarily, if, indeed, this handover happens?

ELTAHAWY: The number one demand of the pro-Democracy supporters in Tahrir Square, in Cairo, and other parts of Egypt is that Hosni Mubarak step down. So, until that happens, you will continue to see protests every day. I'm already seeing on Twitter that people have called next week resistance week just in case Mubarak doesn't step down today.

But, you know, this was an ominous tone to Omar Suleiman's interview with Christiane Amanpour yesterday, because he said, when she asked him, what if they don't go home? He said, you know, we will tell their parents to tell them to go home. Completely missing the point that there are parents, children, and grandchildren at Tahrir Square. And you know, I've seen in this very paternalistic way that represents this dictatorship that people are fighting against.

So, we're still seeing this kind of parallel try. So, I think that Egyptians will continue to demonstrate and demand Democracy and freedom, and the Mubarak regime is struggling to catch up. Until Mubarak steps down, you will see people in their thousands out in the streets demanding his removal from office.

CHETRY: And just quickly, is Vice President Suleiman part of the Mbarak regime in the eyes of the people?

ELTAHAWY: Vice President Suleiman is very much part of the Egyptian regime. He was head of intelligence. He's very much connected to torture inside Egypt and also as part of the rendition program for the U.S. administration where terrorism suspects are taken to Egypt and tortured by the Egyptian regime. So, he is not trusted as part of the regime. But what I'm hearing from opposition right now is, first they want Mubarak to go, and then, they consider negotiating with Omar Suleiman, and then, eventually, he goes and they form an interim government. Number one target is Mubarak for his removal, and then, they will consider talking to Omar Suleiman, but they do not trust him either because he's definitely part of the regime.

CHETRY: Well, Mona Eltahawy, it's great to get your take on this. I know that you're very close to this story. You're an Egyptian journalist yourself. Thanks so much for joining us this morning.

ELTAHAWY: Thanks, Kiran.

CHETRY: T.J.

HOLMES: All right. Kiran, the chairman of the joint chief, Mike Mullen, making an appearance on "The Daily Show." He's talking about the military's relationship with Egypt saying that the U.S. is ready to assist if needed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": We have trained their officers, have we not? They've come here and trained at our war colleges?

ADM. MIKE MULLEN, CHMN. OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: They have, actually by the hundreds, if not thousands over the course of that 30 years. So, we've got an awful lot of contacts. We've got relationships. They've lived with us. Their families have lived with us. So, one of my chief goals right now is to make sure we keep the lines of communication open.

I've talked to my counterpart a couple of times, and also that we've got our military ready, should any kind of response or support be required. That is the case right now, but I'm very focused --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: All right. So, there we heard from Admiral Mullen about that situation on "The Daily Show." Not a joking interview.

HOLMES: Not at all. Not at all.

CHETRY: A serious interview taking place trying to get more information on the U.S. role and position on the situation in Egypt.

Well, still ahead, how not to tweet. Fashion designer, Kenneth Cole, making a quip about Cairo and sparking worldwide outrage. It's one of the all-time biggest Twitter fails.

HOLMES: Also, if you want to be taken seriously and improve your career, a very simple thing you can do this morning. We'll tell you what the key to the success could it be.

CHETRY: I'm not doing it.

HOLMES: It's 20 minutes past the hour. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: Well, it's 24 minutes past the hour now. We have another warning for you, that you need to maybe get somebody else in the room to check out that tweet before you hit send. Today's lesson comes to us from Kenneth Cole. Take a look at the tweet he sent out yesterday and then had to apologize for it.

It says, quote, "Millions are in uproar in Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online," end quote. And a big whoops. An hour later, Cole had to tweet again saying, quote, "We weren't intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment."

CHETRY: He understands the sensitivity, then, why would he attach a link to his spring collection?

HOLMES: It was after the fact. Again, some people just don't think it through sometimes before they hit tweet. So, despite this, the company's stock was actually up slightly yesterday.

CHETRY: Free advertising.

Talking about job competition, Google announced it received 75,000 job applications from around the world last week. It's 15 percent more than its previous high set back in 2007. Last month, you'll remember that the internet giant announced it was hiring more than 6,000 employees this year, and clearly, that is a job many people want to get. 75,000 applications. That must be fun to be in charge of, you know, the job search.

HOLMES: They go through all those, though, you probably get great candidates in there somewhere. We told you before the break that we're going to tell you the key to success, how you could possibly climb your way up the ladder, something very simple, and you can do it right now. Sit up straight and stop slouching. Northwestern has a study out that says the less you slouch, the more powerful you will feel and also the more powerful you'll come across to others.

CHETRY: You better change your Twitter picture.

HOLMES: We'll just see.

CHETRY: You're completing slouching.

HOLMES: I was working.

CHETRY: You're slouching.

HOLMES: I was working. I was on the road. Here, let me change the picture, but, they did an experiment that found that the better posture suggests you're a better leader. It also has an effect in the way you feel about yourself and certainly the way people perceive you as well.

CHETRY: There you go. Sit up straight just like your mommy always said. Well, Hasty Pudding's 2011 Man of the Year -- did you see this one coming?

HOLMES: Hasty Pudding?

CHETRY: Yes. They do this every year. It's a big honor. It's a big honor. Jay Leno will be honored tonight. Harvard University. That's right. The award is presented annually to performers who've made a lasting and impressive contribution to the world of entertainment. The group woman of the year, by the way, was actress Julianne Moore, and she was roasted last month. So, there you go, Jay. Congrats.

HOLMES: Congrats to Jay.

And a lot of people are betting a lot of moneys on the Super Bowl. About $10 billion supposed to be thrown around out there. Half of those bets, though, have nothing to do with the actual football game. Some of those bets have to do with how long the national anthem will last. Christina Aguilera is going to be singing it. Right now, the over/under is a 1:56 seconds. They'll even bet on how long she'll hold the very last note brave. Over/under there, six seconds. Comedian, Jimmy Kimmel, is ready to place a bet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY KIMMEL, COMEDIAN: I am going with the under. I'm going under six seconds. I think she's going to do it on --

(APPLAUSE)

KIMMEL: Every person I talk to thinks she'll go longer to show off because it's the Super Bowl, but I say no, I don't think Christina Aguilera is a show off. Do you hear that, Christina? I don't think you're a show off.

(LAUGHTER)

KIMMEL: And only a show off would sing the word "Brave" for more than six seconds.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: But Jimmy is bringing up a point. And our Pete, stage manager, brought up the same point. These are so easy to cheat. I mean, one of them is how many times they bring up Brett Favre. If you're an announcer, just say it four times and you can make big money. I mean, I don't get --

HOLMES: There's an integrity to it all as well.

(CROSSTALK) CHETRY: All right. Well, it is the Super Bowl of the cutest babies. A Pittsburgh hospital tweeted this picture of newborns wrapped up in terrible towels. It was a direct challenge to a hospital in Green Bay which then fired back with baby cheese heads. These poor things! All right. They're newborns. They have to wear cheese on their heads already? They can't decide? I guess not if you're in packer country. Congratulations, moms.

HOLMES: Football crazies. That's cute, though. That's very cute.

Coming up, still on the sports themes. We are going to be taking on some of the biggest myths out there about sports. One of them being that defense wins championships. Not really. You want to stick around for this conversation between a sports geek and a numbers geek, coming up.

CHETRY: Yes. The freakonomics of sports, is it? That's pretty interesting.

All right. Well, who's hiring? We're awaiting brand new numbers are coming out just a couple of minutes on the state of the economy and the job situation. Are we looking at better times ahead? Christine Romans is listening in, and she's going to be joining us with the update coming up in a couple of minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: It's the bottom of the hour here now on this "American Morning." Let's give you an update on what is happening in Egypt right now. This has been the billed as "day of departure," the day they want Mubarak out. The protesters say they are not going anywhere until he does. You are seeing some video here.

What has been a relatively peaceful day so far in Cairo standing by, soldiers are out in force this morning trying to head off any violence before it even erupts, but so far we are seeing overflowing of crowds.

CHETRY: Well, winds of change flowing into Jordan as well, demonstrators on the streets of Amman today calling for the right to elect their own prime minister. King Abdullah II tried to stave off the unrest by firing his government and also appointing a new prime minister. The king, in fact, even offered opposition leaders a role in the new government. All of that has been flatly turned down.

HOLMES: Also a hostage situation on a bus in North Carolina. A man got on board. Had he a gun. He made the driver pull over near Raleigh, and 33 people were allowed to get off. The driver and gunman and two remaining passengers continued on to a nearby gas stags and police officers had to use a stun gun to arrest that suspect. No word on why he did this in the first place.

CHETRY: A close call for a 10-year-old boy. Take a look at this video. He was walking and playing his hand-held Play Station when he just literally walked off the edge of a subway platform. This happened in Italy.

Fortunately a police officer was nearby. He jumped on to the tracks and lifted the boy back up on to the platform and was helped up by bystanders before the train arrived. Apparently he really wasn't that hurt, which is pretty amazing.

HOLMES: Also a blackout of e-mail at the White House. This was yesterday morning. Apparently some kind of tech glitch yesterday morning shut down some of president Obama and his top advisers use. The classified communications, however, not affected. They eventually got the e-mail up and running by the middle of the afternoon.

CHETRY: We just have the Bureau of Labor Statistics latest news on the job numbers. We're going to get Christine Romans for us to break it down. You were worried about a decrease. What are you seeing here?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: I'm seeing jobs grew 36,000 in the month. We told you the consensus was for more like 150,000.

This report is a little bit funky. That is a technical term. Jobs grew 36,000, so the economy added 36,000 jobs. But the unemployment rate fell four percentage points. It's nine percent is the jobless rate. So it went from 9.4 to nine percent for the jobless rate. So that is good, the jobless rate going in the right direction. On the other hand, you don't see a lot of jobs being created.

CHETRY: They consider 36,000 a net even?

ROMANS: Yes, 36,000 is not enough.

Now, we got all of these revisions for 2010, and actually 2010 created 215,000 fewer jobs than we thought. Eight of the 12 months of 2010 were revised down. So we created fewer jobs than we thought. Yet when you look at the trajectory of those jobs in November and December, we created more jobs than we thought.

Look, this is what we're doing. The jobs market is such and so important we are micromanaging a whole year's worth of data trying to figure out where we're going here. So things were a little bit better in November and December. We don't know what effect the snowstorms might have had in January to only create 36,000 jobs. We know the jobless rate fell to nine percent and that's certainly something we want to see. We want to see the jobless rate going down, but we want to see more jobs created overall.

I want to point out something quickly about health care. For months we have been talking about health care. Health care added jobs in the month, and health care over the past year, has added on average 22,000 jobs every single month. That has been a consistent place where we have been adding jobs in health care.

Manufacturing also added some jobs in January, 49,000 jobs. There's been a little bit of rejuvenation in that sector after months and months of steady job loss. You're seeing a little bit of job creation there as some of the exports are picking up in places.

But transportation, warehouse employment, that fell in January. It means we're shipping things and moving things. So I would say this report is offering mixed signals where we go from here.

HOLMES: It's so important for people to reconcile. We only manage this many jobs, but the rate fell by a significant amount. That number is so significant to people, but the drop-off in times means people are not a part of that work force and being counted any more. So it's so deceiving.

ROMANS: That is absolutely right. If you have people frustrated after a year and drop out of the labor market and suddenly they are not counted and that can drop the number as well.

CHETRY: I'm interested to see, as they dig into this more, why they thought they would add 150,000. I know we've had bad weather.

ROMANS: I'll tell you something. Economists have been confounded by this number the past year -- well, two or three years. Dynamic labor market is so big and sprawling and people are losing and getting jobs all the time that it's hard to put your finger on exactly what is happening, which is why we look at trends to try to see month after month the trend.

The trend has been improving, but not where you'd like to be 19 months into an economic recovery, not at all. So that is why we keep looking at the trends. And the trends for November and December was a little bit better but then January faltered.

HOLMES: Christine, nine percent unemployment?

ROMANS: Right.

HOLMES: Christine, appreciate you bringing that to us as soon as we got it.

ROMANS: You bet.

HOLMES: Coming up, you want to win a bet next time you are watching a football game? We will help you do so because we are going to debunk some of those favorite sports myths out with a couple of whiz kids that are coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: The Super Bowl is coming up in just couple of days. It's 40 minutes past the hour. Everybody knows defense wins championships, right, fellows?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes!

HOLMES: All right. Yes? No? Yes? Everybody knows that. But my next guests proposing that this phrase be replaced by this one -- quote, "Defense is less sexy and no more essential than offense, but I urge it anyway." Say what, now? That defense wins championships is just one of a number of sports cliches and superstitions being challenged by a self-proclaimed finance geek and a sports geek who crunched some numbers for their new book called "Sports Casting, the Hidden Influences behind how sports are plays and games are won."

John Wertheim, senior writer at "Sports Illustrated, and Toby Moskowitz, a finance professor at the University of Chicago both in Arlington freezing a bit for me this morning. Gentlemen, thank you both for being here. Defense does not win championships according to your numbers. Please explain.

JOHN WERTHEIM, COAUTHOR, "SPORTS CASTING": It sounds good. Everyone from Michael Jordan to my son's youth league coach says it. But the truth is you run the numbers and there is very little that suggests defense is any more to winning a championship as offense is. It's great to have and so is offense, and if you got both, all the better. But there is very little indication that defense matters more than offense. It's one of the sports cliches we looked into in this book.

HOLMES: So when you looked back, it seems offense is as important to have a superior offense as it is to a superior defense, and the numbers were about even, the teams who have won a Super Bowl had the better offense as opposed to a better defense.

TOBIAS MOSKOWITZ, FINANCE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: Yes. That's right. One of the things that we think that the reason people banter around defense wins championships is defense is less glorious. It's easy to encourage people to score. It's harder to get them to play defense. I think that is where it comes from.

HOLMES: Something really interesting and a lot of guys will have problems with this and a lot of NFL players will have a problem with this. A direct quote here, you say the NFL is wimpy. And you say that because of the play calling. As dangerous of a sport and macho of a sport this is, they are scared to take risks.

WERTHEIM: You have this great irony where the NFL is a brutal, violent sport. With we all love it but the play calling is remarkably not risky. We have coaches basically making decisions that sometimes are in the best interest of them keeping their job or not getting criticism, but the play calling is actually not always most conducive to their team winning.

So you have this great sort of contrast of this incredible violent sport and yet coaching is very conservative.

HOLMES: You called it a lot of loss aversion going on. Let me talk about a few more things you all tackle in the book. One of the things is, do fans superstitions actually matter? Is there really a home field advantage? You tackle in the book also is there really an "I" in team?

Let's go to the part of being a home field advantage. In that regard, isn't it proven that, true enough, yes, if you have home field advantage, you're playing at your home field stadium, a court, teams do better, right?

MOSKOWITZ: No, that is absolutely right. Home field advantage is one of the things we look at, no question it's not a myth. It exists in every sport. It's remarkably consistent across sports. You see it everywhere.

The interesting thing is what drives it. We look at some of the conventional explanations -- home crowd affecting players or travel fatigue. We find that doesn't really matter, that largely, it resides among the referees. The officials tend to see thing the home crowd's way, and it's remarkably consistent across sports.

HOLMES: Let's go after that, because people left field to go after the referees about calls. What you all have discovered in this book is that referees are human and they succumb to pressure. And at home they get pressure from the home crowd to make certain calls?

WERTHEIM: We have this conformity affect in all social psychology. You basically make a split-second decision and 100,000 people are going to love it. You make the call the other way 100,000 people will boo it and say bad things about your mom. It's a split- second decision. Home crowd, we find you have a big differential between the calls the home team gets versus the visiting team.

HOLMES: And one thing I want to hit on here -- Pittsburgh is a small market, but you have seen remarkable success with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowls and the Pittsburgh Pirates in baseball are terrible. Why is that?

WERTHEIM: Well, again, it's the way these are structured. Everything in the NFL is designed to give parity across teams. Small markets have a chance and there is revenue sharing and salary caps, and plus they only play 16 games. In baseball it's the opposite. A lot of the money is concentrated on the big markets and over 162-game season, the better team usually wins out. So there are huge differences across these leagues.

HOLMES: OK, 15 seconds here guys. Got to go. So using the crunching of your numbers, can you predict who is going to win this game on Sunday?

WERTHEIM: We say there really is an "I" in team contrary to the conventional wisdom. You really do need that superstar. Green Bay, more pro bowlers, so I will go with green bay.

MOSKOWITZ: I'll -- I'll take Pittsburgh or my wife is going to kill me. So she is a big, big Steelers fan.

(LAUGHTER)

HOLMES: Well, all of the number crunching it really goes down to making the wife happy at the end of the day. Jon and Tobias, fellows good to see you.

WERTHEIM: Exactly.

HOLMES: I appreciate you braving the weather out there to talk to us as you all. Enjoy your weekend there.

It is about a quarter to the top of the hour here on this AMERICAN MORNING.

We are right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: About 12 minutes to the top of the hour now. We've been keeping a close eye on what's happening in Egypt today. A "day of departure" it's been billed and trying to get President Mubarak, get this to be the last day in office.

Relatively peaceful so far this morning but we are starting to get reports. There have been some injuries now after rocks, once again, are flying. We have seen this being used throughout these protests; the protesters lobbying rocks back and forth at each other. But it appears by some reports that this is starting to happen once again.

We are also getting word that the stock exchange in Cairo is going to reopen on Monday. It's been closed all week because of the chaos in the street. We've got a close eye on this.

CHETRY: All right, also just in to CNN, a source with the knowledge of the situation is now telling CNN that Mark Kelly, the husband of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords will serve -- he will serve as commander for the final flight of the space shuttle "Endeavour."

Obviously a very difficult decision to make for him, something he trained for, for most of his professional life and then with the tragic shooting of his wife, all of that was put into question.

But, anyway, the official announcement is going to be taking place at a NASA press conference later today. The flight, the final space shuttle "Endeavour" launch with Kelly is scheduled for April.

HOLMES: Also coming up, our Tom Foreman's "Building up America" reports and you are not going to believe what they are planning to build in the middle of the desert just outside of Las Vegas. He'll tell us.

It's 12 minutes to the top of the hour. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHETRY: Well, when you think of enjoying a wonderful seafood meal or where seafood's harvested probably not thinking of the Nevada desert as the first place to comes to mind.

HOLMES: Yes but a fully functioning shrimp farm not far from Las Vegas could soon produce some pretty big profits.

Our Tom Foreman, live in Las Vegas with this morning's "Building up America." Good morning to you, sir. TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you.

You know, it's part of Las Vegas lore that people here consume more shrimp here than anywhere else in the country and that got some entrepreneurs here to start thinking small.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FOREMAN (voice-over): In Las Vegas, tourists love big spectacles and little shrimp, eating 22 million pounds a year. Problem is in this land-locked state, shrimp are often frozen and from far away. But this year, that could change.

FRANK DELUCA, GANIX BIO TECHNOLOGIES INC.: The size of this building is a 36,000 square foot fabricated structure.

FOREMAN: A half hour north, Blue Oasis is building a plant to grow shrimp in the desert and take on the foreign companies which dominate the American market. Scott McManus is the CEO.

SCOTT MCMANUS, GANIX BIO TECHNOLOGIES INC.: I mean, its 1.4 billion pounds is brought into the U.S. last year, approximately. And 90 percent of that comes from overseas.

FOREMAN: Each of these tanks can hold 100,000 shrimp and they hope to harvest 500,000 pounds a year.

(on camera): Why hasn't this been done before?

MCMANUS: Well, the big issue is how do you deal with the affluent within the system?

FOREMAN: The waste?

MCMANUS: The waste, exactly.

FOREMAN (voice-over): Here, each tank is an ecosystem unto itself. Waste water is naturally recycled in what they say is a chemical-free process and never dumped into the environment but they won't say much more about how the system works. That's their secret developed at a remote lab in North Dakota over the past eight years.

(on camera): So where are we now?

MCMANUS: Right now, we're in what we call our sort and ship facility.

FOREMAN (voice-over): They will say they hope to take the idea far beyond Vegas, putting these fresh shrimp farms and new jobs near every major city.

(on camera): You think that will sell?

MCMANUS: Absolutely.

FOREMAN: You're counting on it? MCMANUS: Exactly. I'm counting on it big-time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOREMAN: When this plan is up and fully operational in the middle of the summer, it will employ about 25 people. But they have the capability to really expand out there a great deal and they think that if the demand here goes up, you can tell they are only producing a tiny amount of what even Vegas would consume. When it expands, that would mean more jobs over time and, effectively, something worth remembering here because of the way the shrimp market works, those are jobs that are effectively being re-imported into this country from elsewhere.

So, a lot of folks happy about that as they try to build up their part of America out here in a little way.

CHETRY: Makes sense. Fresh has got to be better than frozen, right? Tom Foreman for us this morning, thanks.

FOREMAN: Ok.

HOLMES: Thanks, Tom.

CHETRY: We're going to take a quick break. It's 55 minutes past the hour. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: And of course, so many people counting down to kickoff when the Steelers meet the Packers on Super Bowl Sunday.

But right now, we're going to talk about one in particular who will be watching, Eddie Canales.

CHETRY: Yes, two moments changed his life; both occurred on the football field. We're going to meet this week's "CNN Hero."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS CANALES, INJURED PLAYING FOOTBALL: Growing up in Texas, football is very important just like a religion. You get the adrenaline going. You want to win.

EDDIE CANALES, CNN HERO: It was senior night. Chris was having the game of his life.

C. CANALES: It was the fourth quarter. I made a touchdown saving tackle and hear my teammates saying, Chris, come on, let's go. I couldn't move.

E. CANALES: You don't even want to think that your son may never walk again. It was a hard pill to swallow.

C. CANALES: Around my one-year anniversary, I was going through a lot of depression. E. CANALES: I said let's go to a football game.

C. CANALES: We ended up watching another young man suffer a spinal cord injury.

E. CANALES: Chris, he turns to me, he says, "Dad, we have to help him."

I'm Eddie Canales. My goal is to be there for young men that have suffered spinal cord injuries playing high school football.

C. CANALES: When we hear about an injury, we go to the family as soon as we can.

E. CANALES: Since we started we worked with 19 families just in the state of Texas. We help them with ramps in their homes, wheelchair-accessible vehicles.

It's a very expensive injury. Someone injured on the professional level is going to be taken care of, but on a high school level, it's a totally different story. We wanted to make sure that these kids are not forgotten.

C. CANALES: We're a band of brothers. Our biggest bond is football.

E. CANALES: They were on the gridiron, but they have never quit. They have never given up. That's what keeps me pushing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Who do you know who is making a difference maybe in your neighborhood? We want to hear about them. This is what you need to do. Head on over to our blog, AMERICAN MORNING blog at CNN.com/am; we would like for you to nominate somebody you know.

CHETRY: Well, that's going to do it for us today. We will continue to follow the developments all day long here on CNN, the developments in Egypt.

So glad that you joined us, and we'll see you back here bright and early on Monday.

HOLMES: Thanks for being with us here this week. We need to hand it over to my colleague in Atlanta. "CNN NEWSROOM" continues right now with Don Lemon. Hey there Don.