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CNN Saturday Morning News
Deadly Meningitis Outbreak; Get Flu Shot or You're Fired; Turkish Soldiers Returns Syrian Fire; Saving Lives in Syria; Unemployment Rate Falls To 7.8 Percent; Jobless Numbers Questioned; Space X Launch Set For Tomorrow; Mars Rover Will Try Its Scoop; Wild Card Was a Wild Game; Sleep Better, Not Always Longer; A Tough Road To Stardom; How Body Language Changed Debate
Aired October 06, 2012 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR: From the CNN Center this is CNN SATURDAY MORNING it is October 6th. Good morning, everyone, I'm Randi Kaye.
A deadly disease is killing people across the country and it all started after patients were injected with these bottles of infected medicine.
Also, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch is backtracking from his tweet on yesterday's jobs report. Well sort of, kind of. We'll tell you what he's saying.
And an expatriate Syrian doctor is back in his homeland -- he's on a mission that's both noble but dangerous.
Five people are dead as a deadly disease sweeps through the country. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention says its fungal meningitis and 47 people in seven states are now sick. It all started after they received a contaminated steroid injection that was supposed to cure them. Now physicians and clinics in 23 states are checking patient records to see how many received the fungus-contaminated injections.
Our Brian Todd has all the details.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Just a week after getting a steroid injection she thought would help her, Janet Russell is in intensive care at a Tennessee hospital. That tainted injection might well have given her meningitis. Her family is more than just concerned.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Of course, we're just worried sick is the main thing.
TRACY BARREIRO, JANET RUSSEL'S DAUGHTER: This doesn't happen in America. I mean, this doesn't -- I mean, I know I hope that sound -- but you're just thinking this is something that is not even real.
TODD: Their mom is one of more than two dozen people in Tennessee and dozens more in at least seven states believed to be victims of an outbreak of fungal meningitis from bad steroids. Some have died.
Meningitis is an inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord. Health officials believe the victims in this case got it from a tainted batch of this steroid -- methyl prednisone acetate injected into the spinal column to treat back pain.
In Maryland, a state where hundreds of people could have been exposed, we went to clinics known to have received shipments of the steroid. At the SurgCenter in Bel-Air, at least six people got injections.
JANICE STEWART, SURGCENTER OF BEL-AIR, MARYLAND: The ones we've talked to have all been fine, thank goodness. And hopefully they'll continue to be fine. I mean they say that the symptoms can take -- could take a while to show up.
TODD (on camera): But other clinics here could have a bigger problem. An administrator at the Green Spring Surgery Center in this building in Baltimore did not want to go on camera with us, but did tell us that they had 300 patients who got injections of that drug. The administrator said that they are working with federal and local officials to investigate the case. They have contacted all 300 of those patients. The ones who have had mild symptoms he says they have urged to get checked.
The administrator says they have no confirmed cases of meningitis from people from this facility who got the drug. He did say that they are disappointed in the drug manufacturer and that that manufacturer put patients at risk.
(voice-over): The manufacturer is the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Massachusetts, in a statement to CNN, the company says it has recalled that steroid, is working with health officials in the investigation and has shut down temporarily. Quote "The thoughts and prayers of everyone employed by the NECC are with those who have been affected."
As for this form of meningitis --
(on camera): How dangerous is this? Is this very contagious?
DR. LUCY WILSON, MDE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & MENTAL HYGIENE: So this type of meningitis is not believed to be transmissible from person to person, so we're really reaching out to people who have been exposed to the contaminated products and those of the people who should be looking for symptoms.
TODD (voice-over): Those symptoms include fever, chills, headaches, stiff necks, and unlike patients who have other types of meningitis they can even get small strokes.
(on camera): Officials are scrambling to get the word out to as many people as possible who may have taken that steroid, very concerned that this outbreak could grow significantly in the days ahead.
Brian Todd, CNN, Baltimore.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAYE: Hospital workers in Colorado are being told get a flu shot by the end of the year or you are fired. It is part of a state program requiring 60 percent of health care workers to get the vaccination, but some hospitals have made it mandatory for everyone.
If an employee refuses they could be suspended and eventually fired. Now, some say that it violates their rights.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To me, it's the issue of civil rights. I don't want to get the flu shot and to me it seems like I am forced into putting a virus in my body that I object to.
STEVEN SUMMER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, COLORADO HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION: We need to have a work force available when the public needs it if they're sick. I think people choose to work in a hospital.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAYE: If workers have a medical condition that prevents them from getting the shot, they have to wear a mask.
October is breast cancer awareness month, but one of the Catholic church's largest archdiocese is telling its members not to donate to the largest breast cancer fighting organization. The Archdiocese of Atlanta is directing its one million parishioners to stop supporting Susan G. Komen for the cure.
The group's biggest fundraisers are its annual races. Now in a memo, the church praised Komen's work but criticized its funding of Planned Parenthood which provides funds for abortions.
The better than expected jobs report changed the picture of the economy. The Labor Department says the unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent in September, a drop of three tenths of a percent from August. Now, the current rate is the lowest level since President Obama took office. Those jobs numbers were good news for President Obama as he prepares to face off against Mitt Romney for their next debate.
Romney, who rallied in Virginia yesterday, spends today in Florida preparing for the next debate and will hold a debate victory rally this evening. The President is laying low at the White House with no public events today. He spent yesterday rallying supporters in the swing state of Ohio.
This will certainly make the President smile. September proved to be a lucrative month for his re-election campaign. Democrats raised $181 million. That's a record. And in the last month of the campaign, that cash could prove crucial, especially for ad buys in those toss-up states.
We have some new developments in that shooting that killed a U.S. border patrol agent. The FBI now thinks he may have died by friendly fire. 30-year-old Nicholas Ivie was shot and killed this week in Arizona. Initially officials said Ivie and his colleague who was wounded in the incident came under fire after responding to a sensor that went off. But authorities say the only shell casings found at the scene were those belonging to the agents.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COMMANDER JEFFREY SELF, CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION: As you know, investigators have made progress into the investigation, into agent Ivie's death. And we're looking into the possibility that it was a tragic accident, the result of friendly fire.
The fact is the work of the border patrol is dangerous. All of us who wear the uniform know this and yet this special breed of men and women willingly put themselves in harm's way to serve their country and to protect their communities against those who wish to do us harm.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAYE: That news comes as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano traveled to Arizona to meet with officials and Ivie's family. Reacting to his death Napolitano said in part, quote, "This tragedy reminds us of the risks our men and women confront, the dangers they willingly undertake, while protecting our nation's borders."
Ivie is the third border patrol agent killed in the line of duty just this year.
The butler did it. That is the ruling from the Vatican court today. Paolo Gabrielle the Pope's former butler will serve a year and a half in jail for stealing the Pope's confidential papers and leaking them to a journalist. A book based on those papers claims corruption within the Vatican hierarchy.
And then Gabrielle's trial created the biggest scandal to hit the Vatican. We'll have a live report on that coming up.
Tensions flare as Syria and Turkey clashed for a fourth day. While the death toll rises and the United Nations take a stand. We'll take you to the region.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: Now to that deadly attack in Libya in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed. Two Tunisians are being detained in Turkey in connection with the fire that destroyed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. The men had been on a watch list provided by the U.S. to Turkish authorities. FBI investigators have not talked with the two Tunisians yet but a U.S. says they hope to do so soon.
The fighting in Syria is spilling across its borders. Turkish soldiers are returning fire after a shell from Syria landed near a border village. It's been four days since clashes began between the two countries.
Our Nick Peyton Walsh joins us live now from Beirut. Nick good morning, we're hearing that the shell was aimed at the Syrian opposition groups, not at Turkey. What is the latest that you're hearing on that?
NICK PEYTON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well it seems to be the case and most troubling that we're now on the fourth consecutive day of these exchanges of fire between the Turkish and the Syrian military. A local Turkish official saying that they think the Syrian army were targeting rebel groups active in the border area. But they appear to have overshot and landed a shell inside Turkey in an area that wasn't populated but close to a village.
Turkish residents there are terrified talking about how the forests are on fire, their livelihood and many of their lives being destroyed by this and the constant sound of gunfire in the background.
So this war very much spilling across the border and I think the diplomatic efforts we saw earlier, Turkey, are saying it didn't want a war; Syria offering its deep condolences, but not actually the apology which many had sought from it, trying to keep a lid on things, but the situation on the ground out of control it seems; perhaps the so called fog of war causing a problem here.
But let's hear how earlier on last week the Turkish Prime Minister tried to diffuse the situation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TAYYIP ERDOGAN, TURKISH PRIME MINISTER (through translator): Turkey wants peace and only peace in the region as well as safety. That's our sole concern. We don't want war and we never would. The consequence of wars in the region in Iraq and Afghanistan is obvious. We are also aware of the price Syria has paid in the year and a half.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALSH: Well they have since then suggested that Syria should not try and test Turkey, so I think the situation, as I said, now in its fourth consecutive day and many wondering quite where it stops. This is a new constant front in the Syrian civil war -- Randi?
KAYE: And Nick we've been watching really I mean this horrific massacre in Syria now. But now it seems as though this is turning into a regional conflict with both of these countries firing into the other. How much concern is there about that?
WALSH: Well there's always been a concern. Really I mean, we've seen these shells land in Lebanon and Jordan, but not quite to the same effect. Turkey is of course a key back up of the Syrian rebels. It's been quite open in its support for them. And there are many of them do seem to have some sort of refuge in southern Turkey, that particular border area where much of it under kind of rebel control if you take out of the equation the Syrian regime air power.
And I think the concern really here is we're now seeing this exchange of fire suggesting that the Turkish and Syrian military are almost facing off against each other. Is this going to continue? We have not seen the Syrian apology which Turkey clearly wanted and Syria almost tried to blame rebel groups in there, what they refer to as terrorists, that perhaps being behind some of these shells.
So an unwillingness I think for both sides to accept a step back perhaps and certainly Turkey very keen to show that it will not tolerate any more Syrian aggression. Remember Turkey is a NATO member here.
KAYE: Right.
WALSH: So the consequences of this escalating are very severe indeed -- Randi.
KAYE: Certainly so Nick Peyton Walsh for us in Beirut, Nick thank you.
As the fighting in Syria rages on, an expatriate Syrian doctor is back in his country. He's secretly helping to treat the wounded and the dying. Jim Clancy the details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MOHAMMED: We're now only just a few minutes of the Syrian border. And we just saw the Turkish -- of course the -- the border patrol passing by. So we have to stop for a few minutes, probably an hour or maybe until the -- until either they pass or start (ph) the evening and then we can go through.
JIM CLANCY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is Mohammed, a Syrian expatriate who has heeded the call to return home and help those in his country who are in desperate need.
MOHAMMED: I hope I don't get (inaudible).
CLANCY: He's a dentist by profession. He left Syria a decade ago, and today, he is determined to get medical supplies and know-how where they're needed.
He's not radical, he says. He's not extraordinary. He left his family at home in Saudi Arabia and plowed half of his life savings into these monthly cross-border missions to coordinate medical relief among the rebels.
MOHAMMED: This is one of the few supplies that the civilians are using. This are dressings. They help stop the wounds so help to clot.
CLANCY: We're headed for a secret hospital still under construction, hugging the mountains and a Turkish border. The Free Syrian Army hopes it would be protected from air strikes.
We can't show you the exterior. More than $400,000 is need to get this place up and running.
MOHAMMED: We hope that companies can donate their instruments. We hope that governments can bring us supplies. We'll bring them in as (inaudible) through those roads. CLANCY: These supplies are expected to last a month, say the doctors, some donated by the Turkish government, dropped at the border and marshalled here in part by Mohammed.
MOHAMMED: These are the needles. How everything is exposed. They did their best, but we still have a lot to do.
CLANCY: More than an hour's drive away and we're at another field hospital, another secret location. This time in the town of Salma.
MOHAMMED: We need to replace the ministry of health. We're doing the job of the ministry. The difference is that our hospital are being always (inaudible) these bombs. When you build the hospital, it doesn't mean that it will stay. So we -- I mean the budget is so huge, and unless there's international support, we cannot do it ourselves.
CLANCY: Mohammed can finally hand over the few supplies he's carried from Turkey. Bandages with a blood clotting agent. "Will they help," he asks? "Yes," a surgical nurse assures him. Fighters in the battlefield will use them. They stop wounds bleeding about 50 percent of the time.
Supplies here too are thin on the ground, but help comes from a sympathetic source, Libya, where the urgent demands of conflict are still fresh in their minds.
ABDULHAKIM ALFERJANI, ASEEL CHARITY LIBYA: There is no one in the world feeling what they feel. These people like Libyan people you know.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You understand them.
ALFERJANI: Yes, we understand them. That's why we are here.
CLANCY: Dr. Rami Habib is a pediatrician here and he is exasperated. A plan to acquire two ambulances has fallen through.
DR. RAMI HABIB, PEDIATRICIAN: We don't want a lot of things. We just want feelings that somebody is supporting you. Somebody is looking after you. Somebody is thinking of you.
CLANCY: The provision of goods, says Mohammed, is haphazard. It needs to be coordinated. It needs to be efficient. Delivery needs to be targeted. On this mission, he visits several other medical clinics, places so protected that camera cannot follow. He's optimistic he can convince others to come here and give their support.
MOHAMMED: The purpose of this trip to show my leagues in Saudi Arabia and Europe and the States, it's easy to come in and out. It's not that difficult.
For the past two days we've been hearing bombs continuously. So what? None of these reached us. So those conditions will continue. I think there is a lot of work on our side also to do.
CLANCY: Traveling back to the border, we look in at the progress of the secret hospital. Even without the necessary equipment, the triage room is already in use.
MOHAMME: We believe that the Turkish border will be the main gate to Syria, the main gate of relief. That's why we appreciate the Turkish help, at least keeping a blind eye for us to work.
CLANCY: For the rebels in these border enclaves, the fight against the regime is in desperate need of a lot more than just ammunition.
Jim Clancy, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAYE: The U.S. Navy's newest warship won't be named after a historic figure or president, but one of the navy's own. Take a look here. This is a live picture out of New York of the USS Michael Murphy. The ship is being commissioned and honors Murphy, who was a Navy SEAL lieutenant.
Murphy was killed during a reconnaissance mission back in 2005 in Afghanistan. He was leading a four-man team on a mission to find a key Taliban leader when Murphy's team came under fire. Murphy was the first American awarded the medal of honor posthumously for the Afghanistan war.
Venezuelans go to the polls tomorrow one month ahead of the U.S. Venezuela will elect its president. 58-year-old Hugo Chavez is hoping subsidies that have kept gas prices low will help his re-election bid. It's only $2 to fill up your tank there. In an effort to woo young voters, he's taken on a rapper's persona during rallies.
His 40-year-old opponent, Henrique Capriles Radonski also is advancing social programs, but he says he'll also make government more efficient and repair Venezuela's infrastructure.
Authorities in Texas say a 17-year-old boy killed his mother and sister, then calmly dialled 911. We've got the tape. You'll hear his chilling words next.
And if you're leaving the house right now, just a reminder, you can continue watching CNN from your mobile phone. You can also watch CNN live from your laptop. Just go to cnn.com/TV.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAYE: Friends describe him as the quiet kid, really sweet and gentle. But in a call he made to 911 early Thursday, he describes himself as pretty evil. Listen to this oddly calm voice identified by police as 17-year-old Jake Evans describing what happened at his family's home in a gated community in Parker County, Texas.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ok. What's the emergency?
JAKE EVANS, ALLEGEDLY KILLED MOTHER AND SISTER: I just killed my mom and my sister. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What?
EVANS: I just killed my mom and my sister.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You just killed your mother and your sister? How did you do that?
EVANS: I shot them with a .22 revolver.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAYE: The young man goes on to tell the 911 operator how he lured his 15-year-old sister from her room and shot her and then went downstairs and shot his mother three or four times. The motive isn't clear.
He tells 911 that he wasn't angry with his mother or his sister. Then he says something about not liking people's attitudes and feeling they were suffocating him in a way, but he was clear about why he used a gun.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EVANS: I thought it would be quick, you know? I didn't want them to feel any pain, that's why I used the gun.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ok.
EVANS: It was like everything went wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAYE: Police say Jake Evans' father was out of town on business when the killings occurred. Evans is charged with capital murder and is jailed without bond. We've reached out but haven't been able to determine if he has a lawyer yet.
There is a verdict in the case against the Pope's butler. His crime, his punishment and the latest from the Vatican.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAYE: The Vatican court found Pope Benedict's former butler guilty of stealing and leaking private papers to a journalist. Those papers became the fuel for a book alleging corruption in the Vatican hierarchy. Barbie Nadeau joins us from Rome with some reaction on this. It sure didn't take the court long, right, to rule.
BARBIE NADEAU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, in many ways this was just a technicality. Paolo Gabriele, the Pope's lawyer (SIC) has already confessed to the crime. He admitted that he made photocopies and gave them to an Italian journalist who published them in a book. It was really a formality, and a nice little bookend to a scandal that has really been embarrassing to the Holy See, generally.
KAYE: There was some talk thought Barbie, that the Pope might pardon the butler is. Is this still a possibility? Can he do that? NADEAU: It's a probability at this point. Even the Vatican spokesperson said today it's very, very likely that the Pope will actually pardon his former servant, but it's a matter of the Pope's discretion, when he'll do it and if he'll do it.
And you know, Paolo Gabriele has been sentenced to 18 months in jail, and whether or not he has to serve that time or not, we still don't know. He may be pardoned prior to that or he may be able to serve that time on house arrest where he is tonight.
KAYE: Has there been really any official fallout from the book and the allegations of corruption?
NADEAU: Well, there has within the Holy See. The Pope ordered a special commission of cardinals to investigate in tandem with the criminal investigation into Gabriele's leaking of the documents -- just what happened. If there was anyone of a higher ranking, any cardinals -- anyone, you know, much higher in the Holy See that was involved in making these documents.
Of course, the butler may not have known exactly what documents were damaging to the Holy See in general -- those that allege financial corruption and infighting and things like that. There's always a line of there's someone else that may have helped him or guided him in some way in choosing the documents that were leaked then to do the most damage.
KAYE: Barbie Nadeau thank you very much. Appreciate the update.
And back here at home, the better than expected jobs report results have become contentious in a highly charged political atmosphere, first the numbers, then the controversy.
The Labor Department says the unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent in September. That's a drop of 3/10 of a percent from August. The current rate is the lowest level since President Obama took office.
Former General Electric CEO, Jack Welch set of a fire storm yesterday, sending out this tweet questioning the validity of yesterday's unemployment number, accusing the administration of changing the numbers.
Mr. Welch appeared on "ANDERSON COOPER 360" last night to talk about those allegations.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JACK WELCH, FORMER GM CEO: I've got a tweet throughout that I stand by.
ANDERSON COOPER, HOST, CNN'S "AC 360": Right. But you don't regret --
WELCH: I can't prove that they did anything.
COOPER: But in your heart, you think they somehow cooked the books?
WELCH: I don't really know, but I do know this that these numbers are implausible.
COOPER: But, you know, so many politicians these days are saying like -- like Michele Bachmann will say something that factually is not correct or not provable and then they'll say I'm just asking the question. Is it responsible to say I'm just asking the question?
WELCH: Should have put the question mark at the end like I did last night. A question mark would have been better at the back of that.
COOPER: OK, so you are kind of backing away?
WELCH: I'm not backing away.
COOPER: Do you wish you could amend your tweet?
WELCH: I wish I added the question mark at the back, but the same implication is there.
COOPER: OK, I want to bring our business correspondent, Ali Velshi, because I don't pretend to be an expert on this stuff. Ali, what do you make of Jack Welch's tweet and what he's saying tonight?
ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, this is very troubling. I mean, anybody who has asked me in my entire career who the best CEO in America is, the answer would be Jack Welch.
Jack Welch needs to be out there helping this country get back on track. There are CEOs and all sorts of people re-tweeting what he said. I think he's absolutely right that there are questions to be asked about the methodology.
That household survey that comes up with the unemployment number, I have said for my entire career people should pay less attention to it. Pay attention to the payroll survey. Pay attention to hours worked and wages and income.
That's what touches people, but to say something like this is like Donald Trump saying that President Obama is not an American citizen without any proof. You are Jack Welch.
Jack, you've got to take this opportunity while everybody is listening to you to actually say yes, Anderson, I'm taking that tweet back. I'm going to send a new tweet to say I was exaggerating.
There are problems. Maybe BLS should look into it, but to throw out the accusation, that's like asking the government how often do you beat your wife?
WELCH: I should have had a question mark, Ali, at the back of it. Let's face it, OK, but the facts are no matter how you want the look at this, we had 25 economists polled before this number came out. The average number they expected was about 115,000. Not one of them had a number below 8.1.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAYE: The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which determines the unemployment number is a non-political and independent agency.
This weekend, NASA will try something it has never done before on Mars. The rover will use its robotic arm to conduct a very important test and we'll show you the latest pictures.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAYE: Welcome back. It's 36 minutes past the hour now. Space travel is now officially a business. The first privately contracted resupply mission to the International Space Station will launch from Cape Canaveral tomorrow.
Space X Corporation of California successfully demonstrated it could do the job back in May when it docked its spacecraft with the ISS. Now it has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA for a dozen of these cargo missions.
It sounds so simple. Scooping up a small shovel full of dirt physical you consider it's being done on Mars by NASA rover called "Curiosity." This weekend, the space agency says it will try to activate "Curiosity's" robotic arm to dig up some Martian soil.
The rover will then analyze its makeup. "Curiosity" is looking for minerals using x-ray defraction. This process has never before done on Mars.
It was a wild card game that turned into, well, a pretty wild game. In Atlanta, the Braves lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the first ever one-game wild card playoff.
The fans littered the field after a call against the Braves in the eighth inning. With one out and runners on first and second base, the Braves hit a pop-up to shallow left field. Two Cardinal players let the ball drop.
That would have loaded the bases, but the umpire ruled it an infield fly and the batter was called out. The rule was used to prevent fielders from letting a catchable ball drop in order to get two outs instead of one had they caught the ball.
The Braves manager protested but was overruled. In the American League wild card, the Baltimore Orioles beat the Texas Rangers 5-1 to advance.
If you're waking up this morning, but not quite feeling 100 percent, well, we may have some tips that can get you back to your best.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAYE: Welcome back. If you're not feeling rested this morning, we might be able to help you. If you're getting plenty of sleep, but you're not feeling recharged, you may not be getting that quality sleep.
Fitness and nutrition expert, Mark MacDonald is here with some simple steps that could help all of us. He's also the author of "Body Confidence." All right, so you write in your book know the hours of sleep that you need. Is eight still the standard?
MARK MACDONALD, FITNESS AND NUTRITION EXPERT: That's the starting point. Reality is sleep is genetic. So like I need about six to seven hours to feel great, where my wife, Abby, needs about eight to nine.
So you have to go back to a point where you felt like, OK, when I slept this amount of hours, I felt fantastic. That's where you start from because it all depends on your quality of sleep, how deep you get.
KAYE: Now in this business, certainly and a lot of other people I'm sure, our schedules are so erratic. So how important is a set sleep schedule and consistency?
MACDONALD: You know, we were just talking about this, how big it is, because your body craves balance and consistency. So the best thing with the sleep schedule is great. Like think of a kid.
When a kid has a set sleep schedule, they're going to be much better and that's when they are cranky when they are tired. So ideally what you want to do is wake up around the same time each day and then go to sleep around the same time each night.
Now when you can't do that and you actually stay up too late, still wake up at the same time. You can make your sleep up, just go to bed a little bit earlier the next night and eventually you'll make up that deficit.
KAYE: You can make it up?
MACDONALD: Yes, that's the biggest thing.
KAYE: How about napping? Does that help you make it up?
MACDONALD: Napping helps if it's consistent. But if you nap during the day and then it's going to make you go to bed later, so if you're not napping at the same time each day, it's not as good. So ideally, you can make up sleep. Just go to bed a little bit earlier, but still wake up at the same time roughly each day.
KAYE: OK, so you brought some props with you. These look very familiar to me, I will admit. These are things that can help you sleep better. Walk me through some of them.
MACDONALD: It's all about quality. So we talk about your sleep is cycles. So you have light sleep, deep sleep, then dream, like your REM sleep. So ideally what you want to do is with your light sleep aspect or your deep sleep, you want to have a dark environment. So dark environment releases the hormone melatonin, which is your sleep hormone and a quiet environment.
KAYE: That you put over your eyes.
MACDONALD: When it's light out, your body inhibits the release of melatonin. In a dark environment, your sleep hormone you release it. In a quiet environment, you want to make sure that you have a quiet environment because that interrupts your sleep cycles, too.
KAYE: OK, so maybe some ear plugs or white noise.
MACDONALD: Ear plugs or like white noise, but when you sleep with the TV on, set the alarm so 20 minutes later it turns off automatically.
KAYE: An alarm clock, you say?
MACDONALD: Ideally you wake up without an alarm clock. If you need it, use it initially. But ideally you want to wake up without it and you want a good pillow right here so that you have the proper biomechanics.
KAYE: OK, that's a great looking pillow, pretty comfortable?
MACDONALD: Tempurpedic. It's fantastic. It keeps your body aligned correctly, optimum sleep.
KAYE: All right, the thing is just try to get as much as you can. Napping is OK, but don't throw off your sleep schedule.
MACDONALD: Get a schedule, high quality. It's not about doing more. It's about the highest quality sleep possible.
KAYE: Take some vacation time. Sleep a lot. All right, Mark, thank you. Nice to see you.
MACDONALD: Thanks, Randi.
KAYE: From slum to opera singer, a member of Mitt Romney's much maligned 47 percent takes to the stage and sets a new tone for perception of the poor and how a hand up got him to center stage.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAYE: From one of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., to center stage at the Kennedy Center, it's been a long, hard road for one of the country's rising opera singers.
He never asked for a handout, but is glad for the government's helping hand. Here's Barbara Starr.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The 31-year- old Solomon Howard sings to the rich and powerful. His voice has brought him here to the Kennedy Center singing Mozart with the Washington National Opera.
It's as far away as you can get from this, one of Washington, D.C.'s poorest neighborhoods, where Solomon grew up the eldest of seven children.
SOLOMON HOWARD, BASS, WASHINGTON NATIONAL OPERA: We lost our home and then stayed with families, different families. We sometimes would walk until we could find something, somewhere to stay.
STARR: His family, part of the 47 percent referred to by Republican candidate Mitt Romney in that controversial video, addressing wealthy Republican donors. But Solomon says his mother and stepfather never thought it was the government's job to take care of them.
HOWARD: They always, you know, instilled great values and morals in us and just never to give up and to keep pursuing.
STARR: After a life of food stamps and no health care, finally, a teacher heard Solomon sing.
HOWARD: She said no, I want you to try this. You're going to be serious about it and see what you have.
STARR: There was a college scholarship, an audition before opera legend Placido Domingo. The help was needed, but Solomon says don't put him and his family in some category of easy labels.
(on camera): So as family that's been through it, when you see this debate in the country, the whole 47 percent question --
HOWARD: Right.
STARR: You know, what do you want people to really begin to understand about that?
HOWARD: It's very important. I remember a few times when we ate off of the Salvation Army food truck. Had Salvation Army not been there, maybe I would have missed a meal that night or those few nights. What the government does for us here is very helpful. At the same time, we do have to take responsibility for ourselves.
STARR (voice-over): By the way, this opera singer would also like to do other things.
HOWARD: I would like to do voiceovers. This is CNN.
STARR: Barbara Starr, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAYE: He did it. This is CNN.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEWSROOM": Likes James Earl Jones. That's a powerful voice. I would love to know the evolution of when he discovered he had a beautiful singing voice.
KAYE: He has an amazing voice. "CNN NEWSROOM" starts at the top of the hour so Fred is here. Join us for a day. I can hear his voice all day long.
Good to see you. We got a lot coming up straight ahead noon Eastern hour our legal guys, of course, will be with us. What do you think about the idea of being able to being tracked by federal authorities by way of your cell phone? KAYE: I don't like that idea at all.
WHITFIELD: I know. It definitely makes a lot of people uneasy. It's at the core of a legal case. The Justice Department thinks that they are within the law by being able to track people by use of the cell phone.
We're going to have a spirited discussion on that one. And then are you a big Bond fan? Who is not? Can you name the majority of the actors who played James Bond?
KAYE: Now you're going to put me on the spot -- Pierce Brosnan.
WHITFIELD: There you go. Pierce Brosnan, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Daniel Craig the newest, well, one of the first was a non-Brit. His name is George Lazenby.
He joins us and he talks to us about what that experience was to do one film he could have done seven. What happened as to why he didn't carry out with the seven-Bond film contract?
That's coming up later at 2:00. And then 4:00 Eastern Time, everybody wants to know what it's like to see the world by way of a bird's eye view. There's a documentary out on Discovery Channel.
It's incredible. Not just the bird's eye view that's incredible, but the technology, the cameras, how they attached it to some of these birds in order to see these.
KAYE: And what it feels like to take flight.
WHITFIELD: Exactly, we talked to the director and producer. It's a phenomenal encounter and journey and that's actually in France. Look, the baboons here. Who would have thought they were one of the greatest predators of the flamingos. Straight ahead.
KAYE: We'll see you then. Thank you. What the candidates said during the debate this week was telling, but their body language also spoke volumes. We'll ask an expert, a body language expert to take a look.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAYE: Voters, pundits and the media might have poured over every word the candidates said this week in the presidential debate, but we're taking a different look at things and checking out how blinking, posture, finger pointing and even hugs played a role.
Body language expert, Patti Wood, joining me now in studio this morning. Good morning to you. So I guess when you look at the debate and we've done this even with some of the other debates, but winning a debate isn't just about what you say, right? It's how you say it and what you look like.
PATTI WOOD, BODY LANGUAGE EXPERT: Exactly. Because so much of the emotion and the power is communicated nonverbally and so much of how we read that in Olympic brain, that primitive brain is done through that non-verbal behaviour. KAYE: If we look at the beginning of the debate from Wednesday night, the moment that Governor Romney and President Obama came on stage, tell me what you see.
WOOD: Well, I see the president going into what I call the politician's hand shake, high in the arm saying I'm in control. I'm the alpha here. Setting the tone for how he thinks the debate will go.
KAYE: That's the arm on -- hand on the arm.
WOOD: The higher on the arm the more power and control that person is showing. It's very typical of politicians to do that, high in the arm handshake to show that control.
KAYE: And that's power.
WOOD: They continue to hit each other.
KAYE: What is that? Is that a guy thing?
WOOD: That's a guy thing. The hitting says I like it, but there's other people watching.
KAYE: So when you go back to the podium and they started the debate. The president is taking a lot of heat, a lot of criticism for looking down.
WOOD: Yes.
KAYE: -- shaking his head, nodding a lot.
WOOD: Yes. The downward motion, he wanted to stay contained. He was really, really upset with how much Romney was over speaking, overlapping, interrupting, going over the time.
And to keep that presidential look, unfortunately, he did that by putting his head down and that made him lose his power to the visual realm of the audience.
KAYE: What does you want tell the audience?
WOOD: It tells -- it makes the audience feel like he feels defeated.
KAYE: Not good.
WOOD: And it's interesting because though it was containment that's not how it felt to us.
KAYE: What about Romney? Many times during the debate, he was blinking very rapidly.
WOOD: Yes. That showed his tension. Often was when Obama won a point in the debate, you saw Romney responded by doing that blinking, showing high stress level and then jump in and typically take the turn away as soon as it happened.
KAYE: He's doing it here, a lot of big movements, the hands up and down and rocking back and forth.
WOOD: Exactly, remember the last time I said he need to do that. He needs to bring up his energy and bring up his gestures. He listened. He did that, right here.
KAYE: Do you think he was tuned in?
WOOD: I think he was. He was a little bit caffeinated, like double espresso caffeinated.
KAYE: I think he was up for days exactly. His eyes were blood shot just practicing and rehearsing maybe. I don't know.
WOOD: And the energy, completely changed. I was so struck by that.
KAYE: Yes. What about, we talked about his blinking. What about Obama's smile?
WOOD: Well, he had a couple of real smiles when he won a couple of points, when he was talking about Obama care and he smoothly went into the points. He gave real smiles.
But most of the smiles were in irritation to things he thought Romney were saying were absolutely ridiculous. Like you have no idea how hard this job is was the smile he was giving Romney.
KAYE: So eventually it ended. Let's talk about the hugs and the handshakes at the end. What did you see there?
WOOD: Well, remember we talked about Obama being in control at the beginning. That's the primacy effect. There's a recency effect that occurs at the end of the debate the last thing viewers remember.
It was very interesting. Romney didn't want to leave the stage. He kept staying. He wanted to be the last visual we had. He revelled in it and stayed and stayed and stayed. Obama left.
KAYE: What about Obama's body language at the end? Did he seem to be hunched over a little bit?
WOOD: He did.
KAYE: Very interesting.
WOOD: Again, I do feel like he realized he didn't do well. And there was a point even in his closing statements where you felt he had given up. He was so weary at that close and didn't do what I wanted him to do and that was to look straight at that camera and make that appeal.
KAYE: The next debate will be in a town hall setting. Do you think we'll see a different sort of body language there?
WOOD: Well, I'm very interested to see if Romney can keep up his energy like he did so well here. I'm very interested to see if Obama comes up to the bar and he does so well when there's an audience. I want to see some of that charisma and warmth. KAYE: All right, always very interesting. Thank so you much, Patti. Appreciate you coming in.
WOOD: My pleasure.
KAYE: That was a lot of fun. "CNN NEWSROOM" continues with Fredricka Whitfield. Watch your body language today.
