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Naked Student Killed by Police in Alabama; Pennsylvania Prosecutor and Wife Charged with Abuse; Seven Dead as Meningitis Outbreak Grows; Venezuela Votes Today; Israel Eyes Lebanon after Drone Downed; More Shelling Across Turkey-Syria Border; Obama, Romney Hit the Trail
Aired October 07, 2012 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.
We begin with a deadly shooting at an Alabama college campus. A college campus police officer shot and killed this 18-year-old freshman at the University of South Alabama overnight. School officials say Gilbert Collar was naked and acting erratically.
They say he confronted the officer, rushed him several times and ignored warnings to back off. The school says the officer shot the young man in the chest once. His friends say they're shocked at what happened.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COLGAN MEANOR, FRIEND: You could ask anyone that knew him, he was a great, loving guy, always made people smile, you know. He's not the kind of guy that people knew him and said he would do something like this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: CNN legal contributor, Paul Callan, said Alabama law may well come into play in this case down the road.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL CONTRIBUTOR: Alabama also has virtually the identical stand your ground law that Florida has. So do you know that the officer in this case can probably say he was -- he felt that he was in danger of his life and he was standing his ground in shooting?
So I'm betting as this proceeds, you may see that law that we've heard so much about in the Zimmerman case in Florida rear its ugly head now in Alabama.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: The officer involved in the shooting has been put on administrative leave until the investigation is complete.
All right, now to Pennsylvania where the state's deputy attorney general and his wife are accused of severely abusing two children they adopted. Police arrested Douglas and Kristin Barber after the kids had a doctor's visit.
Investigators say the doctor noticed several fractures on the 18- month-old girl's head, and the 6-year-old boy appeared starved. The couple faces charges of assault and child endangerment. Their attorney has not commented.
We now know that the meningitis outbreak has spread to nine states and that 91 people are sick according to the CDC. Moments ago, the number killed by meningitis is seven, but thousands more could be potentially exposed.
The source is contaminated steroid injections to treat back pain. The medicine was traced to one specialty pharmacy, the New England Compounding Center outside Boston.
All right, turning to international news now, it's Election Day in Venezuela. People are going to the polls to vote for their next president. There were long lines outside voting stations well before doors opened, and despite some delays, voting is going smoothly.
Even Venezuelan ex-patriots in New Orleans lined up to vote in the early morning. President Hugo Chavez is hoping to hold on to power. His challenger this election is a centrist state governor.
Israeli military experts are examining the remains of a drone that entered their air space. The military shot down the craft as it entered the southern part of the country.
Israeli security experts suspect the drone originated from Lebanon and not Gaza. It did not carry any weapons or explosives and so far no one has claimed responsibility for it.
All right, now to the conflict in Syria, shelling continue to cross the Syrian/Turkish border for the fifth day now. This morning Turkey fired four retaliatory shells into Syria. A witness said no one was injured.
But the shells landed very close to a border town. U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta expressed his concern at this recent development, 100 people have been killed in the violence across Syria today.
The second round of debates gets under way this week, but it won't be the men on the top of the tickets, it's the vice presidential candidates on the stage this Thursday. CNN's political editor, Paul Steinhauser, is here with each side's strategy.
PAUL STEINHAUSER, CNN POLITICAL EDITOR: Hi, Fred. Foreign policies in the campaign spotlight tomorrow when Mitt Romney gives what his team is billing as a big speech at the Virginia Military Institute, which happens to be in a crucial battleground state.
We may hear Romney criticize the president over last month's killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We face a time when there is tumult in the Middle East and other parts of world and people are asking, where is the America? Where is American leadership?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEINHAUSER: As for the president, he starts the week out west before reaching out to voters Tuesday in another crucial swing state, Ohio. Both campaigns will highlight high profile surrogates this week.
Former President Clinton teams up with Mr. Obama at a fundraiser tonight in California. Two days later, Clinton campaigns for the president in another battleground, Nevada.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANN ROMNEY, WIFE OF MITT ROMNEY: Mitt is up to the task. He's prepared.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEINHAUSER: Romney's wife, Ann, goes in front of cameras Wednesday morning when she's a special co-host on ABC's "Good Morning, America."
But the highlight of the week is this week's vice presidential debate. Both running mates are preparing for their only showdown, which will take place Thursday in Danville, Kentucky.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I'm looking forward to it, I really am. The thing about Congressman Ryan is he's been straight forward up to now about everything he is -- all the significant changes he wants to make. We have a fundamentally different view on a whole range of issues.
REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN (R), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm studying. I'm reading Joe Biden's speeches, watching Joe Biden tape and just studying on all the various issues.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEINHAUSER: And thanks to Romney's strong performance at last week's debate, there is even more on the line at the VP showdown -- Fred.
WHITFIELD: All right, thanks so much, Paul. Big week ahead, all right, the much anticipated vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan this Thursday. CNN has full coverage starting 7:00 Eastern Time.
All right, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a big case this week. Affirmative action is on the docket and the decision could impact public colleges and universities across the country.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) WHITFIELD: Space travel will officially begin as a business with a launch tonight. Space X will send the first privately contracted resupply mission to the International Space Station. Launch time is from Cape Canavaral, Florida, 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
Space X successfully demonstrated it could do the job back in May when it docked a capsule with the space station. Tonight's launch will be the first of many under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA.
Honda is recalling 268,000 CRV that popular SUV, model years 2002 to 2006. Honda says there is a faulty window switch in the driver's side door, and if it gets wet, it can start a fire. So far no crashes or injuries have been reported, but Honda said it does have a switch for fires.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a case that could impact every public college and university in the nation. It's an affirmative action case in which the justices will hear arguments on race-based admissions at the University of Texas.
Here are the facts. Abigail Fisher, a white Texas high school student was rejected for admission at UT. Any Texas student in the top 10 percent of their graduating class is guaranteed admission.
But students who fall short of that like Fisher did are admitted according to a formula. Race is just one of several factors in that equation.
Fisher says the university violated her 14th Amendment Right under the Equal Protection Clause. Attorney Debo Adegbile is president of the NAACP Legal and Education Defense Fund. He supports affirmative action. Good to see you.
Attorney Stuart Taylor who co-authored "Mix Match, How Affirmative Action Hurt Students It Intended to Help and Universities Won't Admit It." Mr. Taylor wants Ms. Fisher to win her case.
Both guests have actually filed briefs on this Fisher versus UT case. Good to see you both of you, gentlemen. So Mr. Taylor, you first. You know, what will be Ms. Fisher's arguments since she was not in the 10 percentile that would have assured her admission based on academic accomplishments.
STUART TAYLOR, LEGAL JOURNALIST AND ATTORNEY: Her main arguments are that the University of Texas is violating principles the Supreme Court laid down in its last affirmative cases in 2003.
In particular, the court said, universities said could use race, but they could not engage in racial balancing, which means they could not seek proportional representation of the population.
University of Texas overtly does that. The court said you have to phase out racial preferences within 25 years. Nine of those years are gone, and it's quite clear, in part because of the slowness of working towards racial proportionality. And what they call critical mass of every minority in every classroom, it's quite clear that the University of Texas is on a trajectory that would extend racial preferences for many, many decades. And that clearly violates the guidance of the Supreme Court in the Gruder case, which is the leading case.
WHITFIELD: And you said quite the opposite, that the University of Texas in your view, after being years of excluding students, now it is one of inclusion so why should its affirmative action policy or the policy it extends be protected?
DEBO ADIGBILE, ACTING PRESIDENT/DIRECTOR-COUNSEL, NAACP LDF: It should be protected because it's right squarely within what the Supreme Court told colleges and universities they could do after the Michigan affirmative action cases.
Race is considered as one of many factors in an effort to have a diverse student body that represents the students that are graduating from Texas high schools because the university recognizes that the pathways to opportunity need to be visibly open to every segment of society.
And that if a flagship institution is to fulfill its mission, we need to have kids learning from each other in the classroom, on the campus, on the fields of competition and everywhere.
WHITFIELD: And so Mr. Taylor, what's the matter with that argument? How is it that your interpretation and those who are going to be arguing on the same side that you are is that affirmative action is actually serving as a crutch and that it hurts the very people that it is designed to serve and help?
TAYLOR: Well, let me begin by saying I agree with Mr. Adegbile that a racial adversity and especially intellectual diversity is a great thing to have. Other things equal, the more racial diversity, the better, as far as I'm concerned and my co-author is concerned.
The question is how far you're going to compromise other values, such as merit selection and the well-being of the individual students to accomplish that.
By using very large racial preferences, much larger than most people realize in terms of the academic gaps between entering students who are black or Hispanic or white or Asian.
There is kind of a hierarchy with Asians at the top in terms of academic qualifications. By using very large racial preferences, the University of Texas and most other universities in our view are setting up a lot of these students to fail.
They're misleading them into thinking they're very well qualified academically to go to University of Texas when, in fact, they're not.
University of Texas knows that most of them will rank pretty far down in the class, doesn't tell them that, and we think that's harming a lot of the supposed beneficiaries and not helping them. WHITFIELD: And so, Mr. Adegbile, how do you respond to that?
ADEGBILE: Well, Mr. Taylor is entitled to his own views, but he's not entitled to his own facts. He wildly misdescribes what's happening at Texas and what's happening in schools across the country.
African-Americans, Latinos, many others and white students benefit from having a diverse student body and the university recognizes this. The idea that people are harmed by having access to flagship institutions doesn't really ring true with most people in their common experience.
The dean of my law school said to us on our first day, all of you are terrific, but we could have cleared the decks and taken the next 400 and they would have been just as terrific.
So there's not an entitlement that any one person has to go to college or law school, for that matter, but there is an opportunity for educational institutions to consider race as one of many factors far from the quotas or racial balancing that Mr. Taylor describes and that have been illegal and unconstitutional for a very long time.
WHITFIELD: Debo Adegbile and Stuart Taylor, thanks so much, gentlemen, for your time. Appreciate it. Of course, we will be watching the U.S. Supreme Court as it takes on this case as early as this week.
All right, a debate unlike any other. We'll show you what Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart had to say when things got rather heated and O'Reilly weighed in on those who use media to spew hate.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: All right, it was a different kind of debate and some people liked it a whole lot better than the presidential one. Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart battle it out last night. Our Josh Levs has some of the highlights for us right now.
JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it was really interesting and let's remind everybody that it was only online. You can only watch it on the web. It's called "The Rumble 2012." They are raising money for charity in doing it and as you can imagine there were sparks flying when they disagreed. Here's a really good example.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL O'REILLY, FOX NEWS: Income redistribution, do you believe in it?
JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": Do you?
O'REILLY: No. I asked first.
STEWART: I believe in Social Security. Do you believe in Social Security?
O'REILLY: Yes, absolutely. STEWART: So we're both socialists.
O'REILLY: No, no. Do you believe in redistribution?
STEWART: Social Security is income redistribution.
O'REILLY: No, it's not. You pay into it.
STEWART: But you don't pay into it what you get out of it. Some people pay more.
O'REILLY: An a cumulative effect? No, no, no, no, no.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEVS: If you're wondering about the le levitation had this ramp under the podium so he was moving up and down.
WHITFIELD: All right, and they also took on the media.
LEVS: This was really interesting. A lot of people didn't see this coming, but they went and sat down in chairs and took questions from the audience. This is something Bill O'Reilly said. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: The problem with the discourse situation in America is capitalism. Listen to me and follow closely. You can make a lot of money by being an assassin, a lot of money. It doesn't matter if it's right wing or left wing.
You go in, you're a hater, radio, cable, in print, whatever, you get paid. There are people who do that. They go in. They don't even believe half the stuff they say and they just rip it up and get paid a lot of money. That is, of course, for everything. They're phonies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEVS: And that's getting a lot of talk today hearing Bill O'Reilly say that about people out there who don't say what they mean, but just they are there to make minds you hate on both sides.
WHITFIELD: Interesting.
LEVS: Yes.
WHITFIELD: All right, well, pretty fiery debate that a lot of folks were watching on the web.
LEVS: Yes, on the web and there's what a lot of the activity --
WHITFIELD: Something tells me they'll be able to watch it again.
LEVS: You know, these days, I mean, doing this -- yes, that was on the web. I'm also encouraging everybody during the debates, the presidential debates, vice presidential debates, to be on the web with us, cnn.com because we do a lot of fact checking along the way.
I'm on Twitter doing a lot of fact checking the whole time so you know, this experience is where we are right now, and I also have the hash tag going, rtfacts.
I'm giving you facts during the debate, so important. But meantime, obviously, we're in a two-screen society right now and that's where we are.
WHITFIELD: But the real thing, vice presidential debate this Thursday live on TV or cnn.com. All right, thanks so much, Josh. Appreciate that.
All right, political endorsements from the pulpit, that's not suppose to happen by law so why are more than a thousand pastors across the nation breaking it? We'll explain.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: Now to a controversial move today by 1,400 pastors who are intentionally breaking a law by talking politics from the pulpit. It's part of an annual movement called "Pulpit Freedom Sunday."
Some pastors may go as far as endorsing a candidate for president with the hopes that the IRS will revoke their tax-exempt status. It's part of a growing effort by the group, "Alliance Defending Freedom" to challenge the Johnson amendment, which they say is unconstitutional.
It states, religious organizations cannot participate in or interfere in any political campaign on behalf of any candidate.
All right, it's one of the biggest challengers for the busy traveler staying fit while you are on the road. Our Richard Quest has a plan that will have you doing push-ups in your PJs.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RICHARD QUEST, HOST, CNNI'S "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS" (voice-over): Andrew Meyer has been training me for four years. He knows my travel lifestyle well. So he's put together a routine of exercises suited to a hotel room of any size when you wake up, in your PJs, all in 10 minutes.
ANDREW MEYER, PERSONAL TRAINER: You're going to sit all day in a meeting, and you've probably been on the plane for four hours up to 16 hours depending how far you've flown and your body is just stuck. It just wants to move, so move.
QUEST: So the workout, six simple steps.
MEYER: First let's do a squat. The thing about the squats is you'll be in a sitting position all day. The squats is not actually to load your body up, it's to make you move.
Push-ups and make sure you're squeezing your shoulder blades together so you're not pushing forward on your shoulders, keep your head level with your back.
The next one, backward lunges, this is going to really mobilize your hips. The fourth one is standing rows. We want to make sure your muscles are moving as much as possible. Try to get your hip closer and your body up nice and straight.
QUEST: I'm trying.
MEYER: And the last exercise that we'll do just to round everything off, put your foot up on the bed like that go into a lunge position, and do this as much as you can.
QUEST (on camera): So now to do it for real. In a reasonable amount of time, allowing 10 to 15 minutes before you have a shower.
(voice-over): The whole routine, 10 squats, 10 push-ups, 10 lunges, 10 standing rows and the glute stretchers. You'll find you still have time a shower and breakfast.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Now we know where Richard gets all his energy from. Hotels.com says traveling in America was up for about 5 percent in the first half of the year. So maybe that, too, is an incentive to get your workout in.
All right, I'm Fredricka Whitfield. I'll be back in one hour from now. We'll be focusing on issues President Obama and Mitt Romney are addressing to try and win votes in the Latino community. Stay with CNN. "YOUR MONEY" starts right after this.
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