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EARLY START
U.S. Ambassador Slashed in South Korea; 90 Million Facing Monster Winter Storm; Michael Brown's Family to Speak Today; Boston Marathon Bombing Trial; Iraqi Forces Aim to Take Back Tikrit
Aired March 5, 2015 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: An American ambassador attacked with a knife, slashed in the face while giving a speech. We're live with who was behind the violence and we're going to tell you how the ambassador is doing this morning.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: From Texas through the northeast, millions of us facing a monster winter storm. Thousands of flights already canceled, schools closing, roads are dangerous, folks. We're tracking what you need to know for the day.
BERMAN: And a damning report for Ferguson, Missouri. Federal investigators find a pattern of discrimination inside the police force, but they still found no evidence to charge Officer Darren Wilson for killing unarmed teenager Michael Brown. No evidence to say it was any different than Darren Wilson said it was. We'll have reaction from the family later this morning.
Welcome back to EARLY START, everyone. I'm John Berman.
ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans. 31 minutes past the hour.
This morning, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea is recovering from surgery overnight after a knife attack in Seoul. Ambassador Mark Lippert slashed in the face as he was preparing to give a speech. Officials say the surgery to repair the four-inch facial wound was successful. Police do have a suspect in custody, we're told.
International correspondent Andrew Stevens tracking developments for us from Hong Kong. Let's bring him in now. Andrew, we understand the ambassador was injured on the face and on the forearm. He had surgery, a lot of stitches to close those wounds. Tell us what we know this morning.
ANDREW STEVENS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That is right, Christine. 80 stitches an that's just on his face alone and near three hours in surgery to close the wounds. Now, this was considered a low security event, the U.S. embassy not asking for additional security. Mr. Lippert was going to the Korean Council of Reconciliation and Cooperation, which is basically a group that tries to bring the two Koreas together peacefully. He was sitting there waiting to give a speech early in the morning, this was a breakfast meeting, when he was approached and assaulted by a Korean man who we understand was yelling anti-U.S.-South Korean military drill slogans. Basically, there are military drills going on there at the moment. He was violently against them. And he violently attacked the ambassador. He slashed him in the face; a ten-inch knife was used. The man was wrestled to the ground.
The pictures show the ambassador remarkably cool, you'd have to say. He left the auditorium. He was helped out, but he did not need any help to walk to a car. He then went to hospital. It was reported that he was speaking to the surgeon at the hospital. Nearly three hours of operations there to close up those wounds.
What we know, Christine, at this stage about the assailant, he is a 55-year-old and he is known to police. Police describe his behavior as unpredictable and he also has a record. In 2010, he was given a suspended two-year sentence because he threw a lump of concrete at the Japanese ambassador to South Korea. He was charged and given that suspended sentence.
So there is form involved in this man. As I say, not particularly a high security event. There was no expectations that anything possibly like this could happen. Mr. Lippert himself is putting on a very brave and quite humorous face. I mean, he's already been tweeting about the event. Tweeting in his name, his wife, his son and also the family dog, saying, "I'm deeply moved by the support I got from Koreans. We will be back as soon as possible, ASAP, to advance U.S.- ROK, Republic of Korea, alliance." And that's Korean there, says "Let's work together."
But certainly, the president of South Korea, President Park, saying this was an intolerable assault not just on the U.S. but also on Korea, on the relationship, and on their military relationship as well.
ROMANS: And the President of the United States, Andrew, reaching out personally to his ambassador. Those two go way back. They are friends from when the president was a senator. So obviously some warm wishes from the White House as well.
Andrew Stevens, thanks for that.
BERMAN: 34 minutes after the hour. And, man, this overnight storm slamming --
ROMANS: I can't take it. I can't take it anymore.
BERMAN: -- a big chunk of the country right now. It's not over. It's not over
It's hitting from Texas all the way up to the northeast, including New Jersey, the hometown of Christine Romans. 90 million people under serious series of winter watches and advisories this morning.
ROMANS: The weather is doing a number on travel. If you have a flight today, you better check with your carrier because you probably don't have a flight today. Already some 2,000 flights are grounded. That number will continue to rise. The snow is falling hard just outside Boston, the region already buried under 8 feet of snow in just -- it's just over 2 inches away from setting an all-time record.
Meanwhile, the scene playing out just as the storm started. Look at this roof, the roof of this Shell station collapsing in Fall River. No one, thankfully, was hurt.
BERMAN: Snow and ice just all over the roads in Ohio. Cars you can see right there, they're stuck in the street. They cannot move on their own accord. They need human beings to push them off the road. That car's not going anywhere.
ROMANS: Sleet and heavy snow sweeping across southern Indiana. Forecasters say up to a foot of new snow could be on the ground there this morning. The storm shutting down schools and forcing businesses to close up shop.
BERMAN: Severe weather hitting West Virginia hard too; it prompted an emergency declaration from the governor. Flooding, you can see it right there, that is the big concern. The latest storm could dump another 8 inches of snow on West Virginia.
ROMANS: Virginia is also dealing with dangerous flood conditions: heavy rain, melting snow left parts of that state under water. Emergency responders are using rafts to reach people trapped in their homes by the flood.
BERMAN: This storm is dangerous for drivers this morning. It's leaving a lot of kids at home. When is this all going to stop? Meteorologist Derek Van Dam tracking the latest. Derek.
DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: That's right, John and Christine. It is going to be a messy Thursday morning commute anywhere from Dallas, Texas, through the Tennessee River Valley all the way to the Big Apple. You don't even need to be a meteorologist to see that cutoff divide with our cold front. Warm moist air to the south and east with our changeover of precipitation taking place across Tennessee and into Kentucky.
We have over 90 million people under some sort of winter storm watch, warning or advisory today. You can see we are expecting upwards of a foot of snowfall in some locations. Be careful traveling along the I- 40 corridor. Lesser amounts towards the nation's capital and New York City but still treacherous travel conditions possible across Interstate 95. Upwards of .25 to .50 of ice still possible with the storm, anywhere from parts of Louisiana through even Mississippi and into West Virginia. We'll keep a lookout for that. And New York City, your temperatures take a nose dive with snowfall expected throughout the course of the day.
Look at the temperature contrast. Jacksonville, Florida, compared to Chicago. We're talking upwards of 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Back to you.
BERMAN: All right, Derek, thanks for that.
The family of the unarmed black teenager whose shooting death by police set off days of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, they are set to speak out this morning at a news conference in Ferguson. For the first time, we're going to hear their reaction to the new Justice Department decision not to bring criminal charges against the officer, Darren Wilson, who shot Michael Brown. They said the evidence simply does not support bringing any charges at all.
Michael Brown's family will also no doubt have something to say about the new blistering report from the Justice Department, the 102-page document detailing systemic discrimination against African-Americans by the City of Ferguson and the police department there. We have new reaction from the mayor of that city.
CNN's Sara Sidner in Ferguson with the latest.
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SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ferguson mayor responding to the scathing report by the Department of Justice. The DOJ highlighting issues they say that blacks were unfairly targeted, especially during traffic stops and arrests and tickets. The DOJ saying that it seems the department and the city were more concerned about getting revenue than about public safety and that black folks paid the highest price.
ERIC HOLDER, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: A community where local authorities consistently approached law enforcement not as a means for protecting public safety, but as a way to generate revenue, a community where both policing and municipal court practices were found to be disproportionately harmful to African-American residents.
SIDNER: While the population is 67 percent black, at least 85 percent of those who were pulled over for traffic violations were arrested or ticketed were black. The Department of Justice pointing that it's that toxic background that was around and helped create what happened after Michael Brown was killed by Officer Darren Wilson. However, the DOJ did not find enough evidence to charge Darren Wilson
with civil rights violations. He was not indicted by a grand jury either.
However, the police chief and others inside the department may have to pay the piper. The DOJ talking about e-mails, including racist e- mails that were sent by the department. We do now know that the mayor has responded to those who have sent those e-mails.
JAMES KNOWLES, FERGUSON MAYOR: This type of behavior will not be tolerated in the Ferguson Police Department or any department in the city of Ferguson. Immediately upon leaving that meeting, the three individuals were placed on administrative leave pending an investigation. One has since been terminated.
SIDNER: A source close to the investigation tells me that the two others put on administrative leave will no longer work for the department either -- John and Christine. (END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: Sara Sidner, thank you.
Time for an EARLY START on your money. This morning, Asian stocks lower. China lowered its growth target from 7.5 percent to about 7 percent.
BERMAN: Suffering.
ROMANS: I know. The new normal, Chinese officials say, will be this slower rate for Chinese growth. European shares are more optimistic ahead of news from the European Central Bank later this morning. U.S. stock futures not moving very much. We're going to see if stocks can break this two-day losing streak, but perspective here, the very close to record highs. It's been a six-year very, very profitable bull run for the market.
Big corporate story today. McDonald's is banning chicken treated with human antibiotics, antibiotics commonly used for humans. McDonald's is one of the largest buyers of chicken in the U.S. That means this could change how chicken is produced and consumed more broadly. Not all antibiotics are banned. Producers can use some deemed necessary for health reason. McDonald's under huge pressure to improve the quality of its food and its slumping sales.
This is all about antibiotic resistant bacteria in the human population. There's so much -- when you look at how food produced and all of these antibiotics and the drugs that are being fed to the animals that produce the food that we eat, it's actually -- it's affecting human health. Many people say they're worried.
BERMAN: And of course, McDonald's is such a big consumer and buyer of products like this, that when they decide to do something, it affects the entire market.
ROMANS: You know, and they need the millennial audience to want to eat at McDonald's And when you become more healthy, or at least perceived to be more healthy, that might draw them, the millennials, back in.
BERMAN: 41 minutes after the hour.
We have some dramatic new video of the Boston Marathon bombing. That as we learn, surprisingly to many people, the strategy that the defense will use to try to avoid the death penalty of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
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ROMANS: What a dramatic start the trial of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been so far. On opening day, jurors saw graphic images and they heard witnesses describe this horrible scene near the marathon finish line. But the big news, during opening statements, the defense admitted that Tsarnaev took part in the bombing, making clear how they intend to avoid the death penalty. We get more this morning from CNN's Alexandra Field.
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ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christine and John, the start of this trial marked by emotional testimony from the victims, graphic images and videos never seen before. One video that particularly resonated inside the courtroom was taken from surveillance video inside a running store on Boylston Street. It's recorded at the time of the explosion. You can see a panel of glass blown out of the window, people from the street running to the store, trying to take cover.
At the same time, we heard testimony from the manager of that store who says he was the one in those videos grabbing clothes off the rack, running outside, trying to use those clothes to make tourniquets and trying to triage some of the injured who are out there on Boylston Street on the day of the marathon.
The prosecution made opening statement laying out the charges against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. They paint him as a self radicalized extremist who is bent on attacking America. A man with a plot that he planned to carry out alongside his brother.
He faces 30 charges, 17 of those charges come with a possible death sentence. In a move that may have surprise some people on the courtroom, the defense made their opening statements conceding the vast majority of the facts of the case. Saying that, yes, in fact, their client, the defendant, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was the man behind this attack.
But they went on to say the case they will make, the place they differ from the argument made from the federal government is what motivated Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. They say this is a young man preyed upon by his older brother, the true mastermind of this plot.
The plan here for the defense is to try and build some measure of sympathy for Tsarnaev. They feel that will be key when it comes to the sentencing phase of this trial and jurors are faced with the question whether or not they could choose the death sentence here -- Christine, John.
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ROMANS: Alexandra Field, thank you so much.
Now, new progress in the fight to take back a key Iraqi city from ISIS. We're live with new developments after the break.
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ROMANS: This morning, Iraqi forces reportedly making progress in a major offensive operation to retake the city of Tikrit from ISIS. Iraqi troops are said to be approaching the city from five directions to prevent ISIS militants from escaping or bringing in reinforcements. This, as ISIS releases a new propaganda video shot in the battle zone around Tikrit. That video aimed, of course, at including recruits to join ISIS in the fight.
Senior international correspondent Nic Robertson following events for us this morning. Nic, what's the latest?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the latest from the front is that it is going relatively well. That some of the smaller villages around Tikrit have been taken. Tikrit of course not just strategically important because it's on the highway between Baghdad and Mosul to the north, but it's also psychologically important. It's, if you will, the sort of carp and part (ph), as the government would see it, the Sunni resistance against the government. This is the birth place of the former president Saddam Hussein. So it is important at many levels.
They are saying they are attacking from five sides; they're trying to stop ISIS getting the recruits coming in. They say that the potential of problems of IEDs is a big one they have to be careful of. And I think if we look at the recent track record of the Iraqi army taking quite an amount of time to take a percentage of that village, al Bagdadi, in the west of the country, taking a long, long, long time to take control of the oil refinery to the north of where they are now, Tikrit, in the town of Beji. So success here is not expected to happen overnight.
And part of the success will come in the composition, they say, of the 30,000 troops involved. It is not just Iraqi army. It's Shia militias, but perhaps most significantly, some Sunni tribesmen fighting alongside the government forces there. Why is that important? Because this is a Sunni heartland area. And unless there are Sunni elements on the government's side, this really gets perceived at the front line as a sectarian fight. And certainly there are sectarian elements there on the ground, we've seen them ourselves, in the Iraqi army. And that is a concern for human rights organizations, that the fear of retribution. Because for the Iraqi army here, they saw ISIS back in June last year single out and kill 1,700 Shia government forces by the Sunni group ISIS.
So there's a lot at stake here psychologically, tactically, and of course cohesively. Can the government really be seen as non-sectarian on this? Christine?
BERMAN: Yes, an important, important point. Nic Robertson. Thank you, Nic.
54 minutes past the hour. College tuition soaring. Which schools give you the most bang for your buck, the best return on your education investment? An EARLY START on your money is next.
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ROMANS: Let's get an EARLY START on your money this Thursday morning. U.S. stock futures are up slightly, trying to break a two-day losing streak. The Dow fell 106 points yesterday. The S&P 500 also down, pulling back further from Monday's record highs. Here is some important perspective: Six years ago, stocks hit bottom after months of losses. Since then, the stock market has climbed 210 percent. All right, tuition and student debt levels are soaring. So students
need a good return on that hefty investment. According to Pay Scale's brand new report this morning, Harvey Mudd gives students the most bang for their buck. The 20 year return on investment, almost $1 million. Also in the top three. Caltech and Stevens Institute of Technology. Notice something? They all have a heavy focus on engineering.
All right, a U.S. ambassador attacked with a knife. New details on how he's doing this morning and who did it. "NEW DAY" starts right now.
