[Sanchez:] Up to 31 million people are being threatened by severe weather in the already battered southern plains. Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri has more.
[Pedram Javaheri, Cnn Meteorologist:] Hey, good Wednesday morning to you, Boris and Christine. A quiet start here across the region but we'll see some storms begin to ramp up as we go in towards the afternoon, and eventually the evening hours across portions of Texas on onto Oklahoma here. Severe weather possibility extends a little farther towards the east come Thursday as well, impacting portions of the Gulf Coast states. And really the ingredients in place here. We've got the Gulf moisture, we've got the cool air back behind it. And the concern is the highest concerns for damaging straight-line winds and also for some large hail. And again, a few isolated tornadoes possible in this region. But this is going to be primarily a wind event across this region, impacting over 30 million people. Austin, Dallas on a
[Romans:] All right, Pedram, thank you so much for that. Let's get a check on CNN Business this Wednesday morning. Resilience is the word here around the world. Global markets are higher, there is brand-new data that shows China's economy performed very well in the first quarter. The world's second-biggest economy group by 6.4 percent compared to a year ago. You look at Wall Street, resilience is the word. Stocks so close to record highs. Futures are pointing slightly higher ahead of a whole bunch more corporate earnings. Stocks ended up higher Tuesday. Gains for the year, more than 13 percent now for the DOW. More than 20 percent for the NASDAQ. The DOW closing 68 points higher, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ also up a little bit, slowly building toward very close records. A lot of people think that they will make records here soon. PepsiCo and Morgan Stanley will release announce their earnings today. We knew that the corporate earnings season was going to be a little bit disappointing, and it's coming in exactly as expected, if not a little bit better. And so you've just got this, again, resilience is the word I'm using of the stock market. Meantime, Apple and Qualcomm have reached a deal. Apple and the chipmaker agreed to drop all of their legal disputes Tuesday. The settlement included an unspecified payment from Apple to Qualcomm. The two will still work together announcing a new six-year license contract and a multi-year chipset supply agreement. The settlement comes after Apple alleged that Qualcomm charged an unfair amount to license its patents to place calls, connect to the internet, and for other technologies that Qualcomm had that Apple uses. Qualcomm stock closed up 23 percent after the announcement. Apple stock was flat. Fake reviews are boosting the sales the tech products on Amazon. Fake reviews. A new investigation by a British consumer education ground found a lot of tech companies, categories, rather, on Amazon are flooded with products from virtually unknown brands all boosted by product reviews that appear to be fake. Amazon said even one inauthentic review is one too many. So buyer, beware
[Sanchez:] You got to be careful, yes. As the fire started to engulf the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral, you may have heard President Trump weigh in. He tweeted out his advice to put out the flames. While you were sleeping, comedian Stephen Colbert gave his analysis.
[Stephen Colbert, The Late Night Show:] In the midst of all this, and the fire was just raging at its hottest, Donald Trump offered his, ah, help. Tweeting, "So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly." What does does he think every time there's an emergency in France, they're like, look, the cathedral is on fire, we must check Donald Trump's Twitter feed. What is going on? Ooh! No!