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Microsoft Buys Nokia; UNHCR: Syria Worst Humanitarian Crisis of 21st Century; Leading Women: Melinda Gates; Japan Announces $420 Million Fukushima Nuclear Plant Plan

Aired September 03, 2013 - 08:00   ET

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

KRISTIE LU STOUT, HOST: I'm Kristie Lu Stout in Hong Kong. And welcome to News Stream where news and technology meet.

A sad milestone in the Syrian crisis. There are now more than 2 million Syrian refugees seeking a new life outside the country.

The Japanese government announces a plan to stop leaks of radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.

And why Microsoft is buying Nokia's handset division.

Now Syria has been front and center in recent weeks with the international community weighing its response to a deadly chemical weapons attack. But as that debate rages, Syrians continue to suffer. The United Nations says more than 2 million Syrians are now refugees. They're seeking safety in neighboring countries. And tiny Lebanon has taken in the most more than 720,000.

Now the UN says Syrian refugees make up almost one-fourth of Lebanon's population. And Jordan is hosting more than half a million Syrian refugees. But don't forget 4.25 million Syrians have been displaced inside the country. And that means more than 6 million Syrians have fled their homes. And each one is a person uprooted now fighting for survival.

Arwa Damon shares stories from Lebanon.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARWA DAMON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hayam (ph) is not this 25-year-old's real name. She is terrified. When she first arrived here in Lebanon's Bekkaa Valley from Syria, she went to a small local group that was distributing food.

"They called me back in the evening saying we have a distribution at 7:00 p.m.," she recalls.

She says she got there with a friend of hers. Two men then said they had to drive to the warehouse.

"They attacked us. We started to scream and cry," she remembers speaking softly.

She says the men tried to rape them, but they fought back.

"They said why are you scared? Nothing happened. You are married. Why are you afraid of this? It's not your first time."

There was no one she could turn to, not even her family.

"They will say, why did you go there? And they aren't going to listen. Either they will kill me, or they will send me to my parents and they will kill me. We are a tribal society."

And so the mother of three suffers in silence. The stigma prevents many of the victims of sexual abuse from seeking help. And there is no way to know how widespread such abuses are.

But as the Syrian refugee population grows, so too does the landscape for all forms of exploitation.

Rahaf (ph) is just 14. Her mother says she sent her to clean houses, to make much needed extra money. One day, three teens tried to corner her. She ran home crying.

"They scared me. They made me hate life," she remembers.

Her mother adds, "she said momma, I would rather die in our country than have these problems."

At least 2 million Syrians are now refugees in neighboring countries. And that's just the registered number. In reality, aid groups say it's much, much higher.

Host countries simply cannot adequately handle the influx. And even organizations like UNHCR say they have less than 50 percent of the friends required to meet basic refugee needs.

The global community has failed to unite and end the war in Syria, but there's no justification to failing to provide funding for refugees, or for protecting the most vulnerable among them.

Arwa Damon, CNN, Beirut.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LU STOUT: Now the UN says that one Syrian becomes a refugee every 15 seconds on average. And that means in the time it took to show you Arwa's report, 11 more Syrians just became refugees.

Now the UN high commissioner for refugees calls Syria the great tragedy of this century. Antonio Guterres says the suffering and displacement is unparalleled in recent history.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTONIO GUTERRES, UN HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES: Children are dramatically traumatized by violence. It's a lost generation. So indeed the human tragedy that is out of proportion with anything we have seen in the present century. And even Darfur, all these horror, can now not be compared with what's happening in Syria.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LU STOUT: Now the UNHCR says it sees no sign of the Syrian exodus ending. It has only escalated in the last year.

Now Ben Wedeman joins us live from the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. And Ben, for the scores of Syrians who end up there at the camp, what kind of life do they have?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a very difficult life, Kristie. What you have here is people living in tents, they're living in caravans. At the moment, it's hot and dusty, that the winter rains are just a few months away. Many people very -- who we spoke to here today very anxious that some sort of solid shelter be provided before those rains start. Many people really just getting by on the supplies, the food supplies provided by the United Nations and other relief organizations. But many people don't have money to buy anything beyond those supplies. They can't buy fresh fruit and vegetables, they can't buy meat, very difficult situation here.

And this is -- Jordan is a country that already has a weak economy, it cannot absorb the more -- the hundreds of thousands of people here.

At Zaatari refugee camp, you have a population of 120,000, in Jordan 519,000 have registered as refugees. But we saw a Jordanian official quoted in one of the newspapers in a Amman today saying the actual number of Syrian refugees in this country is 1.2 million.

So that 2 million figure we're hearing from the UNHCR, that's just the registered refugees. There are many more who haven't registered and they're fairly scraping by at the moment -- Kristie.

LU STOUT: So the actual number could be much, much higher.

Now Ben, the UN also says that around half of those Syrians who are forced to leave are children. And three-quarters of them are under the age of 11. So what kind of support, education, counseling, what do they have there?

WEDEMAN: Well, there are schools, there are medical facilities here, but the schools they're -- it's difficult to sort of get children who have been uprooted from their lives, ripped from their homes, to really sit down and focus on education.

We were speaking to some boys, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, none of them said that they were going to school and expressed no interest in going. So what -- you have to keep in mind that when people become refugees they sort of loose their entire sort of social grounding. Many, for instance, in this camp, 75 percent of the inhabitants are women and children. Many of the men are still in Syria or they've gone elsewhere in Jordan to find work. So really the social fabric of the family, which is so important in a country like Syria -- or in Jordan for that matter -- really is in tatters are a result of this uprooting of million of people.

LU STOUT: You said because of the uprooting people lose that social grounding. What about their safety and their security? The Zaatari refugee camp is so huge. I think you said over 120,000 refugees are inside there. What kind of security is inside there? Is there a sense of lawlessness inside?

WEDEMAN: Well, you speak to people. And that is law and order is one of their concerns.

Now the Jordanian military and police do have a presence around the camp, but they're very hesitant to go inside. In fact, we were at a clinic in the camp just about an hour ago where there was a woman who had been attacked in one of the streets. And she was being treated by Jordanian doctors and nurses, but she was saying now who do I go to for justice? And they said we -- there's nothing we can do. The Jordanian police are hesitant to come inside the camp. And there isn't really any form of sort of a neighborhood watch here. So security is a problem in this camp. And it's one that many people say is one of their prime concerns.

LU STOUT: All right, Ben Wedeman reporting live from the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. Thank you, Ben.

And during all this talk of a western strike on Syria and the heightened tensions in the region, Israel says it launched an experimental missile in the Mediterranean Sea.

Now Russia's early warning system was the first to detect what it called ballistic objects in the area.

A U.S. military official says no American forces were involved in the test.

And the Obama administration is continuing to try to garner support for members of congress.

Now let's go live now to our senior White House correspondent Brianna Keilar for more. And Brianna, the White House has been making the case for strikes against Syria. But just how much support is there?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it does appear that there is a little more support, certainly, than we saw this weekend. The White House right now feels pretty positively following a meeting yesterday with two key Republicans, Senator John McCain who, of course, President Obama defeated in 2008 and Senator Lindsey Graham. They are two of the more prominent hawks in congress. They certainly would like to see more done in terms of aid to the rebels and perhaps military retaliation than say the Obama administration would like to see.

But the hope here from the White House is that they can find a sweet spot and work out the language of what that resolution authorizing force would be.

At this point, though, Kristie it's still very important to emphasize and that's why you're seeing so much outreach from the White House. I think there's still a sense that they're not quite there yet. They have a lot of convincing to do, but I think they're feeling here at the White House, talking to officials, I think they're feeling a little better about their prospects for getting something through congress.

LU STOUT: OK. So they have a lot more convincing to do. Why? Why the hesitation? What are you hearing?

KEILAR: Well, there's a couple of things. And I think it's what Americans are concerned about as well as members of congress. And that is, you know, how iron clad is the intelligence? Americans, congress, they've been burned before. Iraq looms very large in their memory. And there are a number of concerns even from members of congress who might actually go along with the resolution that would authorize force. They certainly want to be sure that there's no room for there to be boots on the ground and they want to be sure that this is a limited engagement. They want to make sure that there's an end point so that it's not something that drags on and on.

And for instance, for McCain and Graham on their part, they want to make sure that there's more assistance to the rebels.

As you've heard, Kristie, there's a lot of concern, well, who -- how do you know exactly who the rebels are? What if you give them weaponry and it falls into the wrong hands. McCain certainly feels that that is a risk worth taking. And as the U.S. actually does have the resources to be sure that you pinpoint the rebels who will be friendly to the U.S.

LU STOUT: All right, the Obama administration there -- they've been out there trying to rally up support.

I understand the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, they will both testify to the Senate foreign relations committee on Tuesday. What should we expect to hear?

KEILAR: Yeah, this is going to be a big hearing today. And I think what we're expecting to hear is them making the case. The headline of the case that the administration is making is if congress does not authorize the use of force, if a message isn't sent by the U.S. then it says not just to the Assad regime, but it says to Iran and it says to Hezbollah go ahead, try us, you know, on some of these policies that we have, we might just let you get away with it. And that's really, I think, what you see the administration really pushing.

Now there have also been a number of classified briefings that explain the intelligence the U.S. government has to support the fact that chemical weapons have been used and it's the Assad regime using them.

I think there is a lot of skepticism over that. I don't know if we're going to get maybe to the very heart of that just because of the classified nature of some of that, Kristie.

LU STOUT: All right. Brianna Keilar joining us live from the White House. Thank you.

And later today, CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour will be speaking Syria's ambassador to the United Nations. This exclusive interview with Bashar Ja'afri will be happening 7:00 p.m. London time.

Now you're watching News Stream. And coming up next, the Japanese government says it will pour almost half a billion dollars into the cleanup efforts at Fukushima.

And the stubborn Rim Fire in California is now -- good news here -- 70 percent contained. We'll give you an update on that.

Also, a shakeup in the mobile phone industry. Microsoft gets Nokia's handsets for a whopping $7.2 billion.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LU STOUT: Welcome back. You're watching News Stream. And you're looking at a visual version of all the stories we've got in the show today.

Now later in the hour, we'll show you the realization of a decade's long dream. Diana Nyad finally swims from Cuba to Florida at the fifth attempt.

But first, we're going update you on the ongoing situation at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Now Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced that the government will spend close to half a billion dollars to tackle the toxic water crisis at the crippled power plant there. About $320 million will be spent on freezing the ground around the reactors. And what that will do is prevent radioactive ground water like what you see here from seeping out into the ocean.

But that is just a short-term solution. So another $150 million has been earmarked for developing a better system for processing the radioactive water.

Now there's been a growing sense of crisis since the plant operator Tepco announced a 300 ton radioactive water leak two weeks ago.

And just over the weekend, they discovered several radiation hotspots on the ground, even where no water was evident.

Let's cross now to CNN's Paula Hancocks in Tokyo.

And Paula, will the government measures announced today work? Will they stabilize the situation at the plant?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kristie, that's certainly was the government is hoping. They're promising more money, more workers, and they're hoping this is going to allay the fears that the domestic audience has.

But of course this is also an international audience. The Japanese prime minister is very well aware that people around the world are watching the constant mishaps and the constant drip feed of bad news from the Fukushima nuclear power plant very closely indeed.

And of course when this highly toxic water is seeping into the Pacific Ocean going into international waters and affecting other countries, he understands that there's something needs to be done.

But of course what many people in Japan and around the world are asking is why did it take so long for the Japanese government to get involved? We went onto the streets of Tokyo and asked what people thought.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Although Tepco is responsible, I think it is difficult to rely on a single company to deal with all these issues. This is something that is going on in Japan. If we are to tackle this issue as a nation, the government should take the lead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): It irritates me. Tepco's late reaction and its nature to keep things hidden is very wrong.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I fear for the children and the people in the next generation and also for eating the contaminated fish that has been exposed to tainted materials.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): And after two-and-a-half years, we are not moving forward. We were stuck at where we were. So I think they should bow our heads and gather the world's intelligence and counter this issue as their first priority.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANCOCKS: Now some Japanese media is also questioning the timing of this announcement by the Japanese government. Of course in the past they have said that they would give financial support to Fukushima. They've said that they would have a new policy and emergency measures in place.

But it comes just a few days before there's a decision on who will hold the Olympics in 2020 and some of the more cynical amongst us are suggesting that this announcement comes this week to try and allay fears of the Olympic committee as well to show that Japan can still hold such an international event -- Kristie.

LU STOUT: Yeah, the timing is very curious indeed.

Now the government has finally stepped in after a number of setbacks for Tepco. There's a lot of anger on the streets of Tokyo there, but what went wrong? I mean, was it the scale of the problem and dealing with the hundreds of tons of radioactive water or was it the capability of the Tepco team?

HANCOCKS: Well, certainly Tepco has been singled out by the nuclear regulator, by the government as the main faction that is to blame. The nuclear regulator, the chairman, on Monday was basically saying that Tepco's been handling this situation in a very haphazard measure and has basically been reacting to one crisis after the other using stop gap measures and hasn't really look towards the longer term.

And so the government says this is what they are trying to do, trying to have a more comprehensive plan, a policy in place so that it's not just a reaction on a daily basis, on a weekly basis to mishaps that are happening, but looking further afield so that they can have a further plan in place.

And of course a lot of criticism has been put in place about these water storage tanks. They were very hastily erected. They were basically meant to be a temporary storage system for this highly radioactive water. And there have been leaks. And the government today is saying that they will change some of those water storage tanks. And again people are asking, well, clearly they weren't up to the job. Why weren't they changed sooner?

LU STOUT: All right, Paula Hancocks reporting live for us from Tokyo. Thank you, Paula.

Now earlier I spoke to Michael Friedlander. He's a former nuclear power plant operator and nuclear engineer. And I asked him just how concerned we should be about the recent leaks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL FRIEDLANDER, FRM. U.S. NUCLEAR POWER PLANT OPERATOR: The leakage in and of itself in terms of if you're outside the plant boundary to the general public, I think in the big picture is probably isn't something I would necessarily be concerned about.

If you're inside the plant, though, that's something that I would be concerned about, if I was a worker, simply because Tepco, as you indicated, has completely lost all accountability for what type of radioactive contamination they have, where it's at, where it's going, and how it got there. So that would be something to concern me if I was a power plant operator there.

LU STOUT: That's right, real concern for the workers here at the Fukushima plant.

Now there are two concerns here, you've got the leaking containers as well as the groundwater contamination. Let's talk about the leaking containers first, because you can build a new, better container, is that a good fix?

FRIEDLANDER: It's not a sustainable solution for the long-term. At the end of the day, simply having that kind of a source term sitting in an unprotected outside area that's exposed to the elements, you subject yourself to potential damage due to a tornado as we saw in Tokyo yesterday, potential impact of a typhoon, another earthquake, because when you have that quantity of radioactive contamination sitting outside in an unprotected element, you're simply not in control of it.

And so that radioactive contamination needs to be removed and it needs to be put in safe configuration.

LU STOUT: All right, there's also the issue about groundwater contamination. We know that they set up these steel barriers to prevent contaminated water from leaking out into the ocean. Just today the government announced a $470 million plan. A lot of that is going to go towards freezing the ground underneath the reactor to prevent groundwater intrusion.

But is that going to work?

FRIEDLANDER: You know, this technology has been put in place for a whole number of geological minds and drilling of tunnels and things like that. It's really designed to be a temporary fix while construction project is ongoing. It's never been undertaken at the scope and scale and the type of duration that we're talking about here.

You know, in my view I'm not a geologist and I'm certainly not a hydrologist, so I can't give an expert opinion. But my opinion as an engineer, again this is not a sustainable, long-term solution.

LU STOUT: Now, the government is really taking the reigns to manage the situation, this crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Tepco, what went wrong with the plant operators there?

FRIEDLANDER: You know, Kristie, if you go back you look at the events prior to the tragic days of March 11, if you look at the days immediately following and then if you look at things that have occurred over the last two-and-a-half years you can really only draw one conclusion and that is that it's really just been completely lack of nuclear professional standards.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LU STOUT: Nuclear expert Michael Friedlander there.

Now the former basketball star Dennis Rodman has touched down in the North Korean capital Pyongyang. He's on a five day tour, his second visit this year.

Here he is with the North Korean leader on his last visit.

Now Rodman, he refers to his tours as basketball diplomacy. Some want him to campaign for the release of American Kenneth Bae currently in prison in North Korea. But Rodman says he's just there to talk basketball with his friend Kim, that's the North Korean leader Kim Jong un.

Now Bae was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in February, convicted of hostile acts.

Now after the break right here on News Stream, the Rim Fire in California's Yosemite National Park is still going strong. We'll give you an update on the very latest and what is being done to contain it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LU STOUT: All right, coming to you live from Hong Kong, you are back watching News Stream.

Now in northern California the Rim Fire is still raging, but some progress to report on the battle against the blazes there. Let's get that update with Mari Ramos. She joins us from the World Weather Center -- Mari.

MARI RAMOS, CNN WEATHER CORREPSONDENT: Hey, Kristie. A little bit of good news, the first bit of good news that we've had with this fire since it began in early August.

Now what we have here -- mid-August, I should say -- is the fire has been spreading very, very quickly. And this is what this Google animation is showing you here.

What we're -- the latest information that we have from authorities is that the fire is now 70 percent contained. It's burned over 950 square kilometers and it's still the fourth largest fire in California history.

I want to show you some pictures -- what does it mean to be 70 percent contained? Well, you know what, that fire is still burning. What the progress that they've been able to make, the firefighters have been able to make is lines like that where they burn areas ahead of the fire and then once the fire gets there it can't spread any longer.

So they've been able to do this quite well. They're using a lot of air power like those helicopters that you saw there, also air tankers, airplanes to get to the areas that are hardest -- harder to reach. But they literally have to do these burnout areas all around to try to prevent the fire from spreading.

You can see some of the burned areas there already. These are areas that were burned by that fire, people slowly starting to be able to evaluate what happened to their homes. The air quality has also improved somewhat.

But get this, that target date for the fire to be completely contained, or actually to be -- for them to be 100 percent contained -- is September 20. So it's still quite a days away. Let's hope the weather does cooperate.

Look at this picture -- I'm going to head to Portugal -- this is a picture from northern Portugal. And you see the two women there on the bottom right-hand of your screen looking at a fire that is burning in that area. There's still a high fire risk across Portugal. I was reading this news flash from the European Commission. And they were saying that high fire danger remains in this area.

They have 16 active fires burning in that region according to their report. And that's believable. And some of those fires are quite large. In some cases, burning hundreds of hectares at a time.

It's very warm across Europe. And I know if you're watching from there you're thinking, yeah, and we love it. And overall, yes, this is kind of summer's last hurrah so to speak as generally clear skies take over most of the continent here.

But remember, still quite hot and quite dry across the southern tier. And we're going to see temperatures on the rise all the way up into southern parts of the UK. But that high fire risk remains across North Africa. Much of the southern portion here of Europe over the next few days. So be extra careful when you light a fire.

And last but not least, I want to show you over here Tropical Storm Toraji. This one making landfall over western parts of Japan probably overnight tonight.

Now the storm itself is not very intense, but it is enough to cause some problems here. The risk for flooding, the risk for landslides. And yes again the risk for tornadoes. Hopefully nothing like what we saw on Monday afternoon with some thunderstorms that popped up over that area. They're still cleaning up. And the main concern is going to be rain and again more rain across these areas of Japan already affected by the tornado. Now they've got to worry about a tropical storm. Back to you.

LU STOUT: Wow, Japan getting hit really hard this week.

Mari Ramos there. Thank you.

You're watching News Stream. And still to come, once a world leader in mobile phones, now Nokia's handset business is being bought out by Microsoft. We'll have the details straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LU STOUT: I'm Kristie Lu Stout in Hong Kong. You're watching News Stream and these are your world headlines.

The United Nations says more than 6 million people have been forced from their homes by the fighting in Syria. In just 12 months, 1.8 million people have left the country, more than 4 million are displaced within Syria itself.

U.S. President Barack Obama continues to try to rally lawmakers ahead of next week's vote on military action in Syria. And Mr. Obama plans to meet with more legislators before heading to Europe.

In other news, Japan's government says it will spend nearly half a billion dollars to contain radioactive water in the country's damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. Now over the weekend officials found radiation levels there were 18 times higher than previously thought.

Microsoft says it will buy Nokia's mobile phone business for $7.2 billion. It's a move that alters the identities of two of technology's biggest names.

Now the purchase, it moves Microsoft closer to becoming a company that sales hardware as well as software. And as for Nokia, it was once the world's biggest mobile phone maker. Now it won't make phones any more.

Now the two companies are already very closely linked. Now Nokia's smartphones all run Microsoft's Windows Phone software, but neither has been doing particularly well. Windows Phones lag far behind Android and Apple's iOS.

And as for Nokia, well if you're looking for them in this list of the top 5 smartphone makers, you won't find Nokia's name here.

But while their smartphone sales were slow, that doesn't mean Nokia isn't successful anymore. They were the second biggest mobile phone manufacturer in the second quarter of this year, showing just how many phones Nokia sells even if most of them aren't smartphones.

Let's get more now on this deal. CNN's Jim Boulden joins me now live from London. And Jim, first, why did Microsoft make this move?

JIM BOULDEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It's a very good question. I think a lot of analysts are asking that as well. Microsoft, of course, as you say, had a very close tie with Nokia anyway, but it seems to want to do what Google and what Apple have done which is to own the hardware and the software.

And Steve Ballmer said to me earlier -- the outgoing CEO -- that he said, look, you know, we're transferring this company from being software and services into doing more of the vertical integration to also having the hardware as well.

You think of the Xbox that it is very successful with. And Microsoft owns the hardware and some of the games where the other way, of course, is you look at the Zune which didn't work very well, Kristie.

But this is transforming the company, there's no doubt about it.

LU STOUT: All right, Jim, sorry I thought we were expecting a soundbyte there.

But you said it's going to transform the company. Will it transform the industry? Will it revive Microsoft and turn it into a mobile player?

BOULDEN: Well, that's exactly what Steve Ballmer is looking to do. And what's interesting of course is they're bringing Stephen Elop back. Now Stephen Elop used to work at Microsoft, he then went to Nokia. You know, a lot of people thought when this happened three years ago that this day today would happen, in fact that they're bringing in Stephen Elop back in to run what they're calling the devices part of Microsoft. And that's exactly the interesting thing with Steve Ballmer leaving now, the question was whether or not Steven Elop would eventually become the new CEO and that's one of the questions I put to Steve Ballmer earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE BALLMER, CEO MICROSOFT: Well, our board is going through an open succession process. Obviously confidential inside the board, but open in the sense of considering any and all qualified candidates both internal to Microsoft and external.

I certainly shared as part of this process just a little bit before we announced publicly my plans. I shared with Risto Siilasmaa, the Nokia chairman, and Stephen Elop, I reassured them that our board and I are 100 percent committed to doing this deal. I wanted to make sure that Stephen was 100 percent committed to joining us running our devices business, which he is, that's proceeding and independently our board will, as I said, do its proper job in considering candidates to be the next CEO of Microsoft.

BOULDEN: This is probably your last big deal as the CEO of Microsoft. Just sum it up for you as this is sort of the final deal by Steve Ballmer at Microsoft.

BALLMER: I'm not finished. I'm running very hard until we do have a CEO successor. I only know one way to do things. I only know one way to do things. I have a significant ownership position in Microsoft and will continue to do what I think are the right things with support from our board every day.

This is, though, the biggest deal I've ever done at Microsoft in 33 years. And it's part of what I'd call probably the most significant transformation of the company. I'm excited. I'm excited to welcome the now 32,000 Nokia people who will be joining the Microsoft family. Together we're going to go out there and really drive hard, great new innovation and great increases in marketshare.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOULDEN: And I can't help but thinking again, Kristie, it's only $7 billion. Think of what it would have been if they had bought Nokia some 10 years ago. It's just change to Microsoft.

LU STOUT: That's right.

You know, at the peak of its market cap. And also I couldn't just help but realize just then in your exchange there with Steve Ballmer a little bit of his trademark enthusiasm is still there even though he's on his way out.

And, you know, let's talk about Nokia. Back in 2000, 10 years ago plus, I remember the Nokia Communicator. I mean, that was the hot gadget, that was the coveted thing. Now Nokia, especially in terms of the smartphone wars, it's a has been.

So, what does this deal say about Nokia, the once mighty mobile giant?

BOULDEN: Yeah. And remember that their operating system Symbian used to just be -- just think everybody wanted that. And now, you know, what's left of Nokia after this part gets split off, is services, is the networking and the plumbing of high speed networks, and obviously -- and mapping. And so what's -- a positive you looking at it, is you're now going to have two tech companies in Finland, because Microsoft is promising to keep most of the people who worked for the handset maker in Finland. You have these two companies trying to do separately what they really couldn't do together, because the handset maker was dragging down Nokia itself.

And so the new Nokia group, if you want to call it that, is going to have a very different focus and be a faster growing company, they promised to me. And I talked to the Timo, who is the CFO and sort of the interim president. And this is what he had to say about the new Nokia going forward.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TIMO IHAMUOTILA, CFO, NOKIA: If we look at first half 2013 numbers, Nokia's underlying profitability -- or Nokia Group's underlying profitability was about 4 percent. And a big part of that was coming from NSN, i.e. the network's business. Now if we would look at this on proforma basis, Nokia Group's profitability actually would have been 12 percent if we would sort of take out the business which is moving to Microsoft.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOULDEN: So the faster growing company, Kristie, but I can't help but think this is an end of an area, of course, for Nokia. It's a -- the chairman was a bit emotional, I would have to say in the press conference this morning. He was saying, you know, it was a very -- I don't know about difficult decision, but it was one he didn't think he'd have to make splitting the company basically, splitting off what was what you and I -- everybody else think of as Nokia and selling it to Microsoft.

LU STOUT: That's right, selling the core handset side of the business. It is an end of an era. Jim Boulden reporting live for us. Thank you.

Now in the late 20th Century, it felt like everyone had a Nokia, the 3201, it was a breakthrough as one of the first phones to have an internal antenna. Now Britain's Telegraph newspaper says that it is still one of the best selling phones of all-time.

Now as for Microsoft, it's another step toward the company following Steve Ballmer's vision of becoming a devices and services company.

Now there's been plenty of attention on Microsoft's struggling tablet, the Surface. But it's worth noting the Microsoft has made successful hardware in the past. It's about to introduce its third generation game console, the Xbox One.

Microsoft is also a major manufacturer of keyboards and mice. Now they may not be as cool as phones, tablets, and game consoles, but they are still important.

Now let's talk about cyber bullying. It's been given a lot of attention this year after several high profile cases of teenagers committing suicide after being harassed online.

Now in the UK, one woman has gone on the offensive, spending hours every day hunting down internet trolls.

Matthew Chance tells us about her quest for internet justice.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's become a scourge of the Internet age: online bullies, or trolls, targeting vulnerable users on social media sites for abuse. In Britain, several teenage suicides have forced the often anonymous practice into the headlines, stirring public outrage and calls for more to be done.

(on camera): We're hear in the Welsh seaside town of Abaryswyth (ph). One woman is leading a remarkable campaign against the cyber bullies she tracks online. Kaitlin Jackson was spurred into action by the abuse she and her own family have suffered. She now tracks down the internet trolls and calls on social media sites to act.

(voice-over): A grandmother of two, she's spent hundreds of hours trawling the web reporting often sickening online abuse. She says she's forced hundreds of cyberbullies off the internet, messaging them directly and informing police. But that has also made her family a target.

KAITLIN JACKSON, ANTI-CYBERBULLY ACTIVIST: They turn around and says we're going to hand out mother and daughter pictures to pedophiles. And they've going to sell the pictures to the highest bidder. And I've downloaded pictures to take to the police of my granddaughter -- my granddaughter's head coming out of a man's backside being born, man's genitalia on show. It's just completely inappropriate and unacceptable.

CHANCE: How does that affect the other members of your family?

JACKSON: My daughter is really angry about it. And I'm angry about it.

CHANCE (voice-over): Kaitlin's crusade comes amid an uproar in Britain over the suicide of 14-year-old Hannah Smith who hanged herself after being relentlessly bullied on one social media website. Another victim, 17-year-old Daniel Perry. He reportedly believed he'd befriended a girl on Skype only to find their chats had been recorded by blackmailers who demanded money. He jumped to his death from a bridge near his home on Scotland.

For Kaitlin Jackson, the tragedies make stricter controls on social media sites all the more urgent.

JACKSON: These sites have got to take responsibility, you know, for what they've created. I mean, the actual sites in general are fantastic idea -- you know, I can't knock the idea -- but with this comes responsibility that they need to take in hand.

CHANCE: Some of the sites maintain security measures are in place, but critics say unless they're tightened more lives may be destroyed by the trolls stalking the web.

Matthew Chance, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LU STOUT: Wow, fascinating profile of an online activist against cyberbullying. You're watching News Stream. And coming up next, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban has more inspiring words about the power of education. We'll hear from her next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LU STOUT: Now this week on Leading Women, she is one of the top executives in global philanthropy on a mission to empower women and tackle some of the world's biggest health problems. And Melinda Gates is the co- chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I recently sat down to speak with her about her aim to help women in developing countries.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LU STOUT: She's a global mover and shaker. Co-founder of one of the world's largest private foundations, with an endowment of more than $38 billion, she's wife to the richest man on the planet. And according to Forbes, the third most powerful woman in the world.

MELINDA GATES, CO-FOUNDER, BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION: If by having that placement on the list it helps me to lift up all these women's voices around the world, then it's fantastic. And sometimes it will help open the door to a government meeting where the person might have though, oh, they only wanted to meet with Bill, but OK now I'll meet with Melinda.

LU STOUT: I met Melinda Gates in Kuala Lumpur at a global conference on family planning.

Her goal: get contraceptives to another 120 million women around the world by 2020.

GATES: What matters is doing absolutely everything we can to help women and girls flourish worldwide.

LU STOUT: There are conservative groups, religious groups in Africa, parts of Asia and the United States, very vocal, against birth control. So how do you plan to counter that negative influence?

GATES: What, we have to do is put the women and the girl at the center of this. And they're saying I want to feed the children I have, I want to educate the children I have, but I can only do that if I can limit how many I have, or space them.

LU STOUT: Gates' push also has some personal implications.

Your are a Catholic. And we know the church's stance on contraception. So how do you reconcile your faith and your work?

GATES: I grew up in the Catholic faith. I'm still Catholic. But what I know that women also need is a modern tool. So I bridge the two by saying this is helping women survive and it's helping babies survive.

LU STOUT: As co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, her job is multi-faceted, focused on their core mission: global health, global development and education.

Do you have a typical work day? How would you describe your day-to- day work?

GATES: My role is really to help set the strategy for the foundation and then to trust the teams and make sure we're hiring the very best people and keeping the best at the foundation.

And then when I'm on the road, it's really all about learning about what's going on at the country level and seeing what we can do in terms of advocacy to keep these issues top of mind and top on the agenda both in the developing world and with the donor nation.

LU STOUT: Melinda Gates met Bill Gates while at Microsoft where she rose to general manager of information products and they married in 1994.

But back in the day when you were at Microsoft and you were engaged and he's the boss and you're still working together, was it tough?

GATES: I had very clear boundaries. And my teams knew that, that I did not go home and discuss work with Bill, because he was the CEO. And I think that allowed me to be effective with them and for them to know that I was leading them as a team.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LU STOUT: A revealing interview.

Melinda Gates speaking to me earlier there.

Now another leading woman, Pakistani student Malala Yousafzai has just opened what has been called one of the largest libraries in Europe. Now the 16-year-old famously campaigned for girl's rights to education and was shot by the Taliban.

Now Yousafzai received treatment in England following the shooting. And at the library of Birmingham, she called for action on global poverty and terrorism.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MALALA YOUSAFZAI, WOMEN'S EDUCATION ADVOCATE: Dear brothers and sisters, we must not forget that 57 million children are out of school. We must speak up for peace and development in Nigeria, Syria, and Somalia. We must speak up for the children of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan who are suffering from terrorism, poverty, child labor and child trafficking. Let us help them through our voice, actions, and charity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LU STOUT: Thank you Malala.

And you can get much more on all of our Leading Women on our website, just go to CNN.com/leadingwomen.

Now you're watching News Stream. And still ahead, on her fifth attempt 64-year-old Diana Nyad finally completes a marathon swim from Cuba to Florida. And she did it without the use of a protective shark cage. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LU STOUT: Welcome back.

Now it took her 35 years, but marathon swimmer Diana Nyad had a dream and she finally achieved it. It was on her fifth attempt, she completed a historic Cuba to Florida swim. And the 64-year-old is the first person to swim the distance without a shark cage.

Now she spoke with CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DIANA NYAD, ENDURANCE SWIMMER: I won't get up, because I can't. Hi, honey.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: How are you?

NYAD: You know what's so great about it, Sanjay, is that it's all authentic, just it's a great story. You have a dream 35 years ago, doesn't come to fruition but you move on with life --

GUPTA (voice-over): Sunburned and still swollen, that 64-year-old Diana Nyad speaking out about her incredible feat and it's just been hours after swimming across the treacherous waters between Cuba and Florida without a shark cage. It was a dream, decades in the making. And it wasn't always a sure thing.

NYAD: I'm just like every other human being, even the bravest soldier has doubts, has fears.

GUPTA: In fact, she tried four separate times over three decades to do something that no human had done before, and each time. And each time, she failed. We have followed Diana every step of the way, and this past Saturday, we were there again.

This time she wore a full body suit, gloves, booties, and a new silicone mask to protect against those jellyfish stings.

53 hours and 112 miles of actual swimming and then this.

NYAD: We should never, ever give up.

GUPTA: But it was no surprise to those of us that know her that she agreed to sit down and talk to us just hours after getting out of the water.

NYAD: I don't wake up gay or even female or 64. I just wake up like a, get me out of another day, you know? I'm not relating to that, but I must say that I'm extremely -- vain isn't a good word, because it doesn't have to do -- I mean, I sit down with you today with no makeup, what 64-year-old woman would even do that?

So, it's not vanity, but it's more like pride of fitness and youth. I think that I'm just the youngest 64-year-old that ever lives and I go by a store window sometimes and catch myself in a mirror, oh, no, you're right on 64.

GUPTA: If you're ever wondering what goes on in the head of someone like Diana, just listen to this...

NYAD: My whole mantra this year was: find a way.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LU STOUT: She is so incredible, isn't she? I'm just so inspired.

Now for something completely different, I want to tell you about an accident, it was caused by a police boat heading out to an emergency call as Jeanne Moos tells us, it was all caught on tape.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There's been a boating accident, call the police! Wait a minute, that is the police.

A Washington, D.C. harbor patrol boat slammed into two docked boats as it took off siren wailing. Witnesses say it was answering a distress call of people possibly in the water. It turns out the now sinking boat was on loan.

(on camera): It's a holiday weekend, you borrow a boat, you dock it. You're handing out at a dockside restaurant with friends. What could possibly go wrong?

(voice-over): Shawn Kyukendall found out the hard way.

SHAWN KUYKENDALL, DOCKED THE DAMAGED BOAT: Somebody came in and said a boat has been hit and you walk out and the crowd just -- 100 people or so crowd around where our boat was. And the left side completely submerged.

MOOS: Time to let the owner know there's a giant hole in your boat.

KUYKENDALL: Kind of not the phone call you want to make.

MOOS: But owners Shari Saunders took it really well.

SHARI SAUNDERS, BOAT OWNER: It's not his fault. I'm glad he wasn't on it. I'm glad he's not hurt.

MOOS: There's even cellphone video of one of the officers aboard the police boat that caused the accident telling the owner to relax.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (inaudible)

MOOS: I can't imagine being more relaxed than Shari.

SAUNDERS: Accidents happen, people do stupid things. And I'm sure they'll take care of it and make things right.

MOOS: Police say they're investigating. But this isn't exactly Watergate. Actually, that's Watergate right there in the background where the famous break-in occurred. All that's been broken here is a boat.

At least Shawn had a sense of humor about it.

KUYKENDALL: No pun intended, my heart sank.

MOOS: I think that pun was intended.

This is what wasn't intended.

Holy hull.

Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LU STOUT: All caught on tape.

And finally, well I don't have a clever way to say this, so get a load of this gator? Now hunters in the U.S. state of Mississippi they made this recordbreaking catch on Sunday. I mean, check it out. The unlucky gator, he weighed in at a whopping 328 kilograms. Smile for the picture there. But amazingly he wasn't the biggest catch of the day. A second hunting party broke the record just an hour later.

Now this guy was a hefty 329 kilograms, beating out the other alligator by 1 kilo.

Both were about 4 meters long.

Wow.

Now that is News Stream, but the news continues at CNN. World Business Today is next.

END