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New Issue of "Charlie Hebdo" Coming Out Tomorrow; Barbaric Tactics of Boko Haram; Interview with Education Secretary Arne Duncan

Aired January 13, 2015 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, here we go with the five things you need to know for your new day.

At number one, French police are looking for up to six accomplices in the Paris terror attack, this according to the AP. Surviving staffers of "Charlie Hebdo" are preparing to release a new edition of that magazine tomorrow.

Reports out of Indonesia say crews appear to have found the fuselage of AirAsia Flight 8501.. In the meantime, the second black box, the cockpit recorder, has been pulled now from the water.

The Twitter and YouTube accounts of the U.S. Central Command hacked, apparently by ISIS sympathizers. Officials say no classified information was obtained in

that hack. No military networks were compromised either.

President Obama will host congressional leaders from both parties at the White House today. On Monday, he told the new Republican-led body they should find a way to work together, before he threatened to veto their top legislation.

College football bragging rights now belong to Ohio State. The Buckeyes routed Oregon 42-20 to win the first ever college football playoff national championship.

We do update those five things. Visit newdaycnn.com for the latest.

Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Michaela.

As Michaela just said, the new issue of "Charlie Hebdo" is about to hit newsstands, even after the massacre of the magazine's editorial staff. Defiant, surviving colleagues publishing a record 3 million copies of the new issue. On the cover, the Prophet Mohammed holding a sign that says "Je Suis Charlie," below the headline, "all is forgiven." Senior media correspondent Brian Stelter joins us live from Paris with more on this historic issue.

It's incredible that what they've been able to pull off in this past week, Brian. BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: It really is. You know,

they lost so many staff members, their veteran cartoonists and other editorial staff members as well. But they were able to come together starting on Friday in a series of editorial meetings and figure out what to put in this eight-page issue of the magazines. Now, we know that it was printed overnight. We know it's now being delivered to newsstands and it will officially come out tomorrow morning.

And, Alisyn, you know, what I'm struck by standing here looking at some of the tributes, a lot of people have brought their favorite covers of the magazine and put them up here at this tribute that continues to get people here gathering. Well now they're going to have another cover to add to the list because this cover showing a tearful version of the Prophet Muhammad with the message, "all is forgotten," which, of course, is open to interpretation, that cover is definitely provocative. You know, at the same time that the magazine is triumphantly coming out again, releasing an issue just one week after the attacks here, they are being provocative and many U.S. media outlets, including CNN, are choosing not to show the cover because it is offensive to some Muslims.

CAMEROTA: And, Brian, is that right, because, I mean, you classify it as provocative, but it's certainly not the pornographic or obscene, any sorts of types of cover that we've seen in the past. I mean it's pretty poignant. Why not show the cover in the U.S.?

STELTER: You raise an important point. Some of the cartoons that have been published in the magazine in the past are vile. Some of them are pornographic, as you said. This one is not. But any depiction of Muhammad is considered to be taboo, you know, among many adherence to Islam. Not all, I should say. Not all Muslims feel that way, but many do. And we have seen in the past scattered incidences of violence related to depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.

You know, here, at one of the former offices of the magazine four years ago, there was an arson attempt when they were preparing to cover - to publish an image of the Prophet Muhammad. We saw over the weekend a firebombing at a German newspaper who also republished one of these cartoons. So there are safety issues to consider on the one hand and sensitivity issues to consider. That's what CNN and others are considering. But, on the other hand, we have seen "The Washington Post, "The New York Post" and some other American outlets go ahead and show the new cover. We've also, by the way, seen many French media outlets go ahead and republish it today.

CAMEROTA: There's so much to debate and discuss on this topic. Brian, thanks so much.

Well, CNN's Impact Your World is utilizing resources to support those impacted by the attacks in Paris. For more go to cnn.com/impact.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Young girls used as suicide bombers. Now as a result, bodies are literally littering the streets of a major Nigerian town? We keep telling you about Boko Haram. They are operating almost unchecked, it seems. Can anything be done to slow them down? Should the west be more involved? CAMEROTA: Plus, No Child Left Behind. The secretary of education wants

to scrap the Bush era law and start from scratch. What does that mean for your kids? The secretary of education himself will tell us live.

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PEREIRA: The world is slowly but surely sadly getting acquainted with the barbaric tactics of Boko Haram. Over the weekend, they reportedly used girls as young as 10 as human bombs. This in the wake of last week's attack in Baga, a town on the border, which may have killed thousands of people. What can be done to stop this terrorist group and how much help should come from the west? Want to put this question to senior international correspondent Nic Robertson and CNN military analyst, retired Army General Major - Major General, pardon me, James "Spider" Marks. He's also the executive dean at the University of Phoenix.

Nic, just joining us there from Abuja, the capital in Nigeria. And I need to ask you, we heard of this horrifying report out of Baga. Very hard to get information, I understand, from that small town. The fact that some 2,000 people were killed, yet the Nigerian army, the military there, the defense minister calling those reports exaggerated and giving pushback. Why? Help us understand that.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're coming up to elections here, so this is a bad news story for the government because the implication is that once you have the army check post overrun there and hundreds, thousands of people burned out of their homes, 30,000 people forced to flee, the government's influence and control has gone in that town, so how can you have free and fair elections. So it's bad news for the government if Boko Haram is really seen to be getting stronger and taking more territory from them. People will think, OK, we need a different government. So I think perhaps this is a sense of why we're getting some pushback. The army does say it has, you know, photographic surveillance, evidence of the sort of lower death toll, but they haven't made that public. So I think most people remain very skeptical.

PEREIRA: Spider, this is something that has gotten a lot of attention on Twitter. A lot of people are saying, wait, where's the outrage for - for what's going on in Nigeria. We saw 4 million people marching in the streets of Paris. We saw world leaders gathering there to sort of stand in solidarity with Paris. Where are those calls for the same kind of justice for the people of Nigeria? Help us understand the difference here and maybe why we're not hearing the same level of outrage? Or is there a reason?

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes. Good morning, Michaela.

Yes, the issue is, you know, the stark difference, isn't it? World leaders, very prominent, linking arms, walking in Champs-Elysees, complete solidarity against this -- and outrage against what happened in Paris, vis-a-vis what we see in Nigeria, which is truly not -- it should not be surprising. Look, what's happening in Nigeria is barbarous. It's horrible. I mean it's complete madness, yet it's not a priority. The United States, unilaterally, could do almost anything it needs to do to root out Boko Haram. It would be a long-term effort, but it could be done. And the United States has the capability. All the elements of power, we have those in complete --

PEREIRA: So why not?

MARKS: It's not a priority. That's the problem. We are committed elsewhere in the world. Black West Africa is not a priority. Very stark, very hard to say, but that's the case right now. It's a regional issue. If we were to see Boko Haram appear in some other region of the world, white Africa, which is North Africa, or in the Mideast in some way, we would be alarmed. But it's a regional issue. It recruits regionally. There's a limitless supply of radicals in that part of the world that are willing to do these incredibly barbarous acts. But if we can contain it, if it can be contained, if it can self-contain, in other words, it doesn't have an ability to metastasize or expand elsewhere, frankly, sadly, we're OK with it.

PEREIRA: But, see, that's where the issue is, because this one town or this one city of Baga is right along the border with Chad. And, Nic, I want to bring you back in. There is a real concern. President Goodluck Jonathan sent his sympathies to Paris, yet he's said nary a word about what happened in that border town where there was a slaughter of some reports saying 2,000 people. This is radical terrorism seemingly unfettered.

ROBERTSON: Unfettered and metastasizing for that reason. We've heard that from the, you know, from the archbishop (INAUDIBLE) here, an influential figure, saying exactly that. Look, here you have Boko Haram in Nigeria. They've just struck across the border in Cameroon. They've got the freedom of access into Chad, across Tunisia to the north. This is a growing more than regional threat reaching into North Africa. When did Boko Haram get more weapons? When Libya fell apart in 2011.

I was in Niger, which borders the south of Libya, at that time afterwards when the weapons were flowing through. Things (INAUDIBLE). Helicopters dismantled on the backs of trucks being taken out of military bases in Libya, taken through Niger, to Nigeria, right beneath it. Boko Haram got their hands on a massive haul of weapons.

Boko Haram is growing at the moment and right now Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon. But it's connected through Niger to Mali. Al Qaeda is in Mali. It's connected through Niger to Libya, where it got the weapons from. When the weapons go south, the people, the ideology goes north. And al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, they're getting stronger in the east of Libya. You know, it's almost endless across the north of Africa.

So, yes, that is a metastasizing threat here that will over time if not thwarted at least underpin the al Qaeda threat and the ISIS threat that's growing in North Africa, which then threatens Europe just across the Mediterranean. Not just weapons, not just terrorism, but an outflow of migrants which is destabilizing Europe at the moment.

PEREIRA: Right. Our thanks to Nic Robertson and to Spider Marks. You know, I think it's important to note that this word we keep using, metastasize, it is like a cancer. It has to be routed out because, again, this threat seems to be growing. Thanks to both of you.

MARKS: Thanks, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, thanks, Michaela.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan ready to revamp the No Child Left Behind Act. So what's next and how will this benefit your kids. We are speaking with Arne Duncan live, up next.

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ARNE DUNCAN, EDUCATION SECRETARY: In America, education has always been a bipartisan cause and it must continue to be that. We all need to work together to show that education fulfills its great promise as the great equalizer for our children.

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CUOMO: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan speaking about plans to scrap President George W. Bush's signature education law, No Child Left Behind. Duncan is pushing for expanded access to preschool, increased funding, and testing, but these ideas could set up a whole new war with the GOP and there's going to be plenty of other points of pushback. So, let's have him make the case for himself.

Here's the secretary now, Arne Duncan. Thank you very much. Obviously community college is a big part of this also and we want to talk about all of it. But before we test your ideas, Secretary, let's blame everybody else. This law has been up for revision since 2007. They cannot find a compromise in D.C. for all the promises and priorities that all politicians put on education. Where do you get the confidence that this time will be any different?

DUNCAN: Well, thanks so much for having me, Chris, and obviously Congress has been a little bit dysfunctional for a while now, but I always say education has to be the ultimate bipartisan issue, and kids don't care about politics and Republicans and Democrats. I think what every parent wants, what my wife and I want for our kids, is to have our children have access to a great education.

We should all work together. That starts with high quality early learning. That includes more resources on the K to 12 side and make sure that students have access to high expectations, so if they work hard and they graduate from high school they're truly ready for college and career ready. As you talked about, the president's pushing so hard to make sure that young people have access to community college if they want that. We have to educate our way to a better economy and we have to make sure that every single child in this nation has access to a well-rounded, world class education.

CUOMO: Nobody's going to disagree with that. It's all going to be about how it gets done, how we pay for it, and how much. And I think most parents out there would agree that the politicians deserve an "f" in terms of their ability to compromise on this issue.

So, let's look from the youngest and move through the options. Pre-K, people say, oh, that's really expensive and we don't really know for sure that they get an curriculum value at that age. You say no, it matters, maybe matters most of all. Why?

DUNCAN: That's exactly right, Chris, and I make the case everywhere I go that investing in early learning education, preschool, is the best investment we as a nation can make. There have been long-term studies, 30, 40-year studies that show for every dollar that we invest in high quality early learning, we as a nation, we as taxpayers $7. Less incarceration, less teenage pregnancy, less young people dropping out of high school, more going on to college, more going onto the world of work. That's the best investment we can make.

Ultimately education is an investment, not an expense. We have to stop playing catch up. We have far too many children who start kindergarten a year to 16 months behind. That's not fair to them, to their classmates, to their teachers. So, the best thing that we can do is to invest in high-quality early learning opportunities, and we want to significantly expand that to families that want it across the country.

CUOMO: All right, two more points. The first one, you want standardized testing in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school as well. People don't like that. Common core has become a real divisive issue. You have U.S. rep Mark Takano, you know, just one of many, Democrat from California, former school teacher. He says, among other things, study after study has shown that students learn the most when they are taught in a multitude of ways. Standardized testing takes away from those important learning methods, encourages educators to only teach to the test. You know that is a common refrain of criticism, you disagree, why?

DUNCAN: No, I actually don't disagree. I agree, and what I said yesterday in my speech (INAUDIBLE) take a look at it, is we think in many places there is too much testing going on, and as a parent I absolutely feel that sentiment as well. And, so - -

CUOMO: But you want standardized testing?

DUNCAN: So, we think students should be evaluated annually. We think every single year it's very important for parents to know how their children are doing, for children themselves to know whether they're making progress or not, whether they're learning. I would say the goal to great teaching is not just to teach, it's to have students learn. But where there is too much testing we're challenging Congress to say to states let's set some real limits on how much testing is going on. Where there's too much testing, too much teaching to the test, too much test prep, that's a real problem and I addressed that very directly yesterday. CUOMO: Community college, the push back on that issue is that one, we don't know that college is even the right way to get into the job force anymore, and if you make it too easy for people to get into college you wind up getting the wrong people going in who don't want to work forward enough, and all these other kids are struggling, and they don't qualify, the wrong kids qualify. Those are the typical points of push back, you response?

DUNCAN: I fundamentally disagree, but we, again, have to educate our way to a better economy. The days in which you could just graduate from high school and go get a high wage job that helps you progress into the middle class, it's pretty hard to do that today. And to have young people have access to a community college, whether they're 28- year-olds, whether they're 38-year-olds, or whether they're 58-year- olds coming back to retrain, and retool, remanaging jobs, high tech jobs, jobs related to the health care area, advanced manufacturing.

When I visit community colleges, and I've been to dozens around the country, those are some of the most inspiring visits I ever make. These are people across the spectrum coming back to school to gain the skills to enter the middle class. We need to support those efforts and support the partnerships between community colleges and local industry. Many community colleges today are becoming regional economic engines. They're driving economic activity.

CUOMO: Right.

DUNCAN: They're creating jobs in their communities. We have to support that. We want to keep great jobs in our communities and ultimately in our nation.

CUOMO: Secretary, my only advice for you is that you should go on a shame campaign with Congress to get them to act. NEW DAY will help. CNN will help. We wish you good luck, Secretary Duncan. You're going to have a lot of challenges in front of you, but the biggest one is getting Washington to do anything about this.

DUNCAN: Thank you so much.

CUOMO: We'll be here.

DUNCAN: I'll take you up on that offer, thank you so much.

CUOMO: You got it, Secretary.

Alisyn, over to you.

CAMEROTA: Okay, Chris. Here's an unexpected story, the rapper Eminem, known for his controversial lyrics and battles with other singers, today he's known as the Good Stuff. We'll tell you how that works straight ahead.

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CUOMO: Good Stuff. Let's get somebody who deserves the attention. How about Eminem? What? Yes. Here's why. (BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

CUOMO (voice-over): Gage Garmo, a high school student from Detroit fighting a battle against cancer. Unfortunately, he is losing this battle. The way he's been fighting it, though, is such an inspiration. Take a listen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He never had any sad or mad spirits about it. He was always just so positive and that honestly kept us positive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's never negative about anything, and that's one thing that really stood out.

CUOMO: And that's why his friends, they're a huge fan of his, and they know he is a huge fan of Eminem. So, they started a social media push to bring Gage to Eminem's attention. Guess what? It works out. Eminem visits Gage in his home over the weekend. One condition, he didn't want any of you to know about, but the friends couldn't help themselves. They wound up talking about it. They guy - --

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CUOMO (on camera): Eminem spent an hour with the kid, lifted his spirits, helped him when he needed it most.

PEREIRA: How amazing.

CAMEROTA: That's great, that's wonderful. We love Eminem.

CUOMO: There it is, he is the real "Slim Shady." Let's get you to the "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello. Slim, but not shady.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Maybe. Thanks so much, have a great day. NEWSROOM starts now.