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Syrian Refugees' Plight Examined; A Look at the Economy; Jodi Arias Trial Update; Arkansas Passes Tough Anti-Abortion Law

Aired March 7, 2013 - 15:30   ET

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


BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Technology, sports, business, health, science, showbiz news, hitting it all in the power block, beginning with this warning here. Subaru recalling 47,000 cars and SUVs for a pretty good reason. They could start on their own.

They all these have remote starters that could malfunction. Subaru said if you drop the key fob, the engine might start and run for as long as 15 minutes. And it can turn off and on until either the car or the key fob runs out of juice. The recalled models include the Legacy and the Outback, Impreza, and XV Crosstrek.

How is this for a bonus, $1.1 million after less than six months on the job? That is what Yahoo! is paying new CEO Marissa Mayer.

Alison Kosik is live at the New York Stock Exchange with a pretty sweet deal.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Very sweet deal.

But it is a sweet deal, Brooke, that is really based on performance. At least, that's the way Yahoo! sees it. Look at this. Yahoo! is actually up 46 percent since Marissa Mayer took over in July, so, Yahoo! stock doing really, really well.

It posted better-than-expected earnings. Revenue for the company is growing again. True, Yahoo! is still dealing with weak display ad revenue, but she is turning things around. So, what is she getting? She is getting $1.1 million for six months of work, not bad pay.

This year, she's going to be eligible for a $2 million bonus and that's not the whole shebang. Look at this. Besides the $1 million salary and the $2 million bonus, she's also got $57 million in stock and a retention bonus.

But keep in mind a good portion of that stock she won't be able to turn around and sell for another four to five years because it's basically an incentive to get her to stick around, to do well, to lift the stock price.

But you know what? Look how she compares to other female CEOs. Her $1 million salary is not so unusual. It's a lot better than the $1 salary Meg Whitman took last year. She is HP's CEO, but then again, maybe that's all she should get is $1 because HP is just struggling, not doing so well.

Brooke?

BROOKE BALDWIN, ANCHOR, "CNN NEWSROOM": Good for these women. Alison Kosik, thank you very much.

KOSIK: Sure.

BALDWIN: The elusive "God particle" that is fundamental to the universe's creation could now be within reach. Scientists using a giant atom smasher -- is that technical -- big atom smasher -- discovered a new particle last year.

Physicists have been analyzing it ever since to see if it is a Higgs- Boson. That was the "God particle." Scientists in Italy say it's looking more and more like it, but they still have to determine if the particle has zero spin before they can confirm it.

You ever wonder how an astronaut -- I know I've sit and wondered this myself, being a space geek -- how do you eat a sandwich in space? It's not about ice cream and freeze-dried beef, folks.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield here with a how-to video on YouTube, awesome videos, awesome pictures from this guy. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HADFIELD, CANADIAN ASTRONAUT: Peanut butter is open. Squeeze it onto the tortilla carefully. And now a little honey.

Notice something cool about the honey? Instead of the bubble sitting up at the top because there's no gravity to make it float up, the bubble is floating in the middle.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: And there you have it, a peanut butter and honey sandwich from Commander Chris Hadfield, his treat in space.

By the way, we will be talking -- I will be talking to him up in space next week. Join me for that.

A soldier is found alive 33 years after being reported missing in action. This soldier was a Soviet rifleman wounded in battle. This was way back in 1980 during the invasion of Afghanistan.

Local Afghans, they rescued him. He has been with them ever since living a semi-nomadic life as a traditional healer under the name Sheik Abdullah.

Sheik Abdullah was found by a non-profit group tracking down 263 Soviet soldiers still missing in Afghanistan.

Twenty-one U.N. peacekeepers grabbed by Syrian rebels have not been harmed. This is what we're hearing now from the United Nations. The U.N. is working to get them released. The peacekeepers from the Philippines were taken in the Golan Heights area. That's the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is in Amman, Jordan, and do we know why, Nick, in the first place, why the rebels took these peacekeepers?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, not far from where I'm standing, they were picked up by a brigade calling themselves "The Martyrs of Yarmouk" -- that's an area near the capital of Damascus.

And they say they picked them up to use them as a degree of leverage to try and get the Syrian regime to pull out of villages where they had been fighting.

They say they were unharmed and being kept as guests and a video released today seems to back that up.

And, of course, earlier on, the opposition leader told CNN that he expected they would be released imminently, but this has come at a very bad time for rebels.

Just after Britain said they'd give them body armor and armored cars and after they got a seat on the Arab League, an important body in this region, it fuels suggestions that they've got extremists in their ranks and their leadership can't really keep everybody under control, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Nick, I know we have been reporting for months and months on this massive number of Syrians who have been fleeing to Jordan to seek asylum to stay safe from this ongoing war.

You've talked to some of the refugees. What do they tell you?

WALSHI: Remarkable stories, as many as 5,000 people in one night come from Syria's violence here into Jordan, a country really destabilized already.

One story stood out to us, though, recently, and the teeming Zatari (ph) refugee camp, it's doubled in size in the last two months, an old lady wouldn't give us her name, from Daraa, explained how soldiers came looking for her in her house because her sons were all fighting with the rebels.

They dragged her out into her garden, shot her in her legs and then set fire to her house.

She tells us she was alone when this happened. Her sons weren't there. But for many people, I think that just epitomizes the sheer brutality at the heart of this war, this defenseless old lady, now lying in bed in this refugee camp for months.

Brooke?

BALDWIN: Nick Paton Walsh in Amman, Jordan. Nick, appreciate it.

To sports now here at home, this is being called the dunk of the year. Jamaal Crawford jumps, takes the ball between his legs, passes it over his head. Blake Griffin takes it from there, here, windmilling it into the basket.

It might look like a Harlem Globetrotters' move, but these -- watch it again. Boom! L.A. Clippers took last night's game, 117-to-101, over the Milwaukee Bucks.

Taylor Swift, unintentional house-flipper? Yes, and she's pretty good at it.

A source close to the singer tells "Vanity Fair" that Swift has sold the Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, estate that she bought just last summer. The house was near her then-boyfriend Conor Kennedy.

E! Online reports Swift sold the property for $5,675,000. Profit? One million bucks.

Arkansas now passing the toughest abortion law in the country. It bans almost all abortions after the 12-week mark of pregnancy.

Senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen here, talk to me about this. Just compare it for me. The Supreme Court ruled that it was the 24-week mark, correct?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, 24-week mark. Some states have gone to 22 weeks.

BALDWIN: Wow.

COHEN: But 12 is really unprecedented.

Now, most women do get their abortions in the first 12 weeks, but a lot of them don't. This is huge for women in Arkansas who want to get abortions after the 12th week.

BALDWIN: Is it being challenged? It is now, right?

COHEN: It is. Groups have said that they are going to challenge this and experts we spoke to said there's a pretty good chance that this is going to be challenged successfully and here's the reason why.

Roe Vs. Wade basically set it up, saying a state can tell you not to get an abortion if that fetus would be viable outside the womb, but a fetus at 12 weeks is not viable outside the womb.

So, there's a pretty decent chance that this 12-week rule is not going to survive a court challenge.

BALDWIN: The governor was overridden in this case, correct?

COHEN: And the governor was overridden. That's correct.

BALDWIN: OK, Elizabeth Cohen, thank you very much.

Coming up here, Ali Velshi with your business news that you need today on this Thursday. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: From the CNNMoney Newsroom in New York, I'm Ali Velshi.

Another day, probably another record for the Dow Jones Industrials. I don't like to make too big a deal about market records. They're like weather records. I mean, who cares if it was the warmest winter on record? I care about the trend.

If it's continuously warmer winters, the trend tells us the planet's heating up. If you look at the stock market, the Dow, in this case, tells us, well, something's going on. The trend is strong and it's been strong for the past four years.

Why? Let me give you some of the reasons. The Fed has kept interest rates so low, you can't make much money in the bank or in bond funds. You're forced into the stock market to make money, which makes it "TINA," "there is no alternative."

David Kelly of JPMorgan Asset Management helped coin that phrase on my show this weekend. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: What on earth is a "TINA" market?

DAVID KELLY, MANAGING DIRECTOR, J. P. MORGAN FUNDS: There is no alternative, and the point is there is no big investment alternative to having money in the stock market right now.

I do believe that home prices will move up and that's part of any person's investment plan, ought to be own a home. I think buying a house in the United States right now is a great idea, so I think that's part of a strategy.

But you also need to have liquid financial assets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: Besides, buying a house takes the money and it takes a while to get the money back.

Let's look at the S&P 500. The Dow is made up of 30 companies. The price of those stocks are based on the expected earnings of those companies. On that basis, stocks are a better value today than they were five years ago when the Dow was at the same level.

Now, I've heard people say, well, the Dow is just 30 companies. What does that tell us?

Fair enough, so let's look at the S&P 500. You may have mutual funds that are made up of the 500 companies. If you'd invested in the S&P 500 and the Dow back on the same day in March in 2009, you'd have actually made more money on the S&P 500. Your return over this period is 140 percent. Before I hear any more excuses about how this is the exception somehow, let's look at the Wilshire 5,000. That's exactly 6,000 small- and medium-sized companies and it is -- that looks like the same chart. It's up 135 percent since it bottomed out in the spring of 2009.

Nobody ever wants to buy stocks when they're down. Everybody wants to get in when records are being set. That's why most investors missed this run. They were scarred, understandably, by the brutality of that market in 2008 that basically cut the stock market in half.

Most retail investors, mom-and-pops, they were all gun shy to get back into the market. A lot of money flew out of the market over that period, so that's part of the problem.

It's very, very hard to know when to get into the market, so basically what you should do and I'm not in the business of telling you to get into stocks, but you should really be considering that -- you know, look at how much risk you're prepared to take and get in.

Make sure some of your money is in the stock market.

Right now, we're looking at heading towards another record. The Dow is up 25 - a quarter of a percentage, point-tow, 14,331.

From the CNNMoney Newsroom in New York, I'm Ali Velshi.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: The federal government has its eyes on the University of North Carolina and the manner in which the school has handled allegations of sexual assaults.

The school has been the scene of demonstrations in support of a university sophomore who says she was punished in retaliation for reporting an alleged attacker to the school's honor court.

The feds will also investigate charges contained in a complaint that says an assistant dean of students was pressured by higher-ups to under report the number of these alleged sexual assaults.

The school administration denies the charge lodged in January by five women. The federal Education Department will conduct the investigation.

Anger management in exchange for bullets? Well, one Florida lawmaker is getting a lot of flack here for this idea. She is Democratic state senator Audrey Gibson. She filed the bill Friday.

Here's what she wants. She wants people to complete at least two hours of anger management before they're allowed to purchase bullets.

She says a case where a teen was shot over an argument around loud music is what gave her this idea.

Criminal defense attorney Holly Hughes, "On the Case" with us in studio. Good to see you, my friend.

HOLLY HUGHES, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Hi, Brooke.

BALDWIN Let's just begin with -- obviously, she -- there is more to this story than meets the eye. This bill is two-fold.

HUGHES: It is. It's Bill 1678. And the two-fold is, number one, there has to be a three-day waiting period before you can purchase a firearm because, you know, the first question that pops into your mind is, anger management before you can buy bullets? What if you've already got a gun, right?

So, the first part is three-day waiting period to purchase the firearm. The second part is not only do they want you to complete two hours of anger management -- it can be online or face-to-face -- but her bill makes it a crime to purchase the ammunition without having done that.

So, this isn't just some little administrative detail that you forget and so they're going to fine you. It would be a criminal offense if you failed to complete the two hours and submit the certificate prior to buying the ammunition.

BALDWIN: So, then, if this went through, though, wouldn't this be yet another excuse or reason to get even more bullets on the black market?

HUGHES: Absolutely. And, see, that's -- you know, the opponents are saying what they've been saying all along. It is not the taxpayers, the law-abiding citizens that would have a problem with this. They're the ones that are going to follow the rules.

What we're talking about when you talk about gun control and ammunition control is the people who are going to skirt the law.

So, putting something like this on the books, what the opponents say -- not the proponents, but the opponents say -- is it's not going to make a difference because, if people want to get a hold of ammunition, they're going to get a hold of ammunition.

So, you just have your buddy go and do the two hours, right? He gets the certificate and then he can buy as much ammunition as he wants and give it out to his friends.

BALDWIN: There is a way around a lot of things.

HUGHES: Absolutely.

BALDWIN: Do me a favor. Will you stick around with me?

HUGHES: Absolutely.

BALDWIN: Because I am now hearing we are going to take the Jodi Arias trial live.

We were just chatting yesterday. Here she is, back on the stand. All these questions, 220 questions from jurors asked of her through this judge. Well, today, she's back on the stand now, answering some questions from her own defense attorney.

We'll dip in. We'll talk to Holly, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Well, big news from Washington. As we've been reporting, the 13-plus hour filibuster with Senator Rand Paul now over, and now, because of that, they are able to continue on, have this full vote in the Senate.

I can now tell you that John Brennan has been confirmed by a full vote in the U.S. Senate to be the next chief of the CIA. John Brennan, it is a go.

Now, I want to take you live to Phoenix, Arizona, for the Jodi Arias trial here. A lot of questions have been asked of her from members of the jury.

It's now at the point here where she's sitting on the stand. This is her defense attorney. This is Kirk Nurmi.

This is where if there are any holes left, according to these attorneys, in what she was saying when she was answering from the jury -- this is the chance to fill in the holes from both -- not just the defense, the prosecutor has a chance, too.

Here's the defense.

JODI ARIAS, MURDER DEFENDANT: Just a simple conversation.

KIRK NURMI, JODI ARIAS' DEFENSE ATTORNEY: And in terms of how the relationship ended, it sounds like you would have been the one who at least initiated the conversation. Is that correct?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Objection.

JUDGE SHERRY STEVENS, MARICOPA COUNTRY, ARIZONA: Overruled. You may answer.

ARIAS: Yes, I asked if we could talk and we sat down at the table.

NURMI: Now, at this point in time, you and Mr. Burr (ph) were still in the home?

ARIAS: Yes, that's accurate.

NURMI: And it sounds like you still have a lot of bills to deal with and that sort of thing together, mutual bills?

ARIAS: Yes. Utility, mortgage. Uh-huh.

NURMI: After you broke up with Darryl, how long did the two -- the two of you obviously didn't have other places to live at the time of this conversation. Is that accurate?

ARIAS: Yes. We only had the house for living arrangements.

NURMI: OK. So do you both stay in that house for some time?

ARIAS: He stayed until early December and then he moved back to the Monterey peninsula.

NURMI: So we're talking about after this break we're talking about approximately four months or three months, I guess, of cohabitating?

ARIAS: Yes.

NURMI: And was there romantic or sexual relations between you after the conversation?

ARIAS: No sexual. The only romantic relations was after he pulled out and kissed me on the lips. That was the last contact we had of a romantic nature.

NURMI: The time period between you broke up and the moment in time you just told us about him pulling away in his truck, was the relationship between you and Mr. Brewer, would you describe it as civil?

ARIAS: Definitely.

BALDWIN: What's going on here, this is the Jodi Arias trial. Holly Hughes, criminal defense attorney, let me bring you back in.

I was counting, how many days has she been on the stand? Seventeen? This is the 17th day. At what point is this done?

HUGHES: Are we going to see the end of Jodi Arias? Yes. Her attorney will do this follow up that you were talking about earlier. Then the prosecution, Juan Martinez will get to follow up on his follow up.

BALDWIN: From the jury questions?

HUGHES: From the jury questions. Then it will be over. Then she'll resume her seat at the defense table.

But I think, Brooke, we're going to see a day 18. No court Monday, no court Tuesday. It's going to be next Wednesday.

So, strategically speaking, what her attorney should do is take all of this day, so when the jurors go home for a long five-day break, they have Jodi's version playing in their head and they don't get to see Juan Martinez catching her in their own lies because that's what they would focus on all weekend.

BALDWIN: The tactics in the courtroom, all strategy.

HUGHES: Absolutely.

BALDWIN: Let's take a look at the Big Board. Four minutes away from the closing bell.

This high we haven't seen, way above it now as we are closing from five-and-a-half years ago.

Back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: A massive Girl Scout cookie heist appears to be solved. Christopher Morgan confessed to stealing, listen to this, nearly $19,000 worth of Girl Scout cookies. That's a lot of Thin Mints. That's more than 5,000 boxes of cookies and people there are appalled.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just can't understand that, you know? I know they're out here working hard to sell their cookies so they could do some of the things that they want to do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, with this coming to light, we're going to look at more security measures we can put in place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Security measures at a Girl Scout cookie facility.

The storage facility owner has pledged to reimburse the Girl Scouts for their losses here. He fired that cookie thief who faces charges.

That's it for me. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Let's go to Washington. "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer starts now.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Brooke, thanks very much.