The Presidential Medal Of Freedom
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, I'm Brooke Baldwin. Top of the hour, a lot bubbling at this moment. Let's get right to it. First, some exciting pictures coming at us over the course of the next few hours. Live during the show, the president is going to be giving out 13 people, the highest award a civilian can receive, that being the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And by the looks of some of these faces, I know you recognize a couple of them. You have legendary rocker, Bob Dylan. Former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright. Former astronaut and U.S. senator, John Glenn and Tennessee basketball star, Pat Summitt. So we're going to bring all of that to you live. But first, just in to us here, as primary voters in Texas hit the booths, word of a shooting near a polling station. In fact, here's some video just back from the scene. This is San Juan, Texas. Here's what we know. A campaign worker reportedly shot in the leg and the suspect is on the run. This is happening, as I mentioned, in San Juan, Texas. This is in south Texas. If you're familiar, this is very close to the border with Mexico. Want to begin by bringing in Yvonne Ramon, the elections administrator in the county. And, Yvonne, so this happened near a polling station? Can you tell me how near? What happened?</s>YVONNE RAMON, ELECTIONS ADMINISTRATOR: Well, allegedly, Brooke, there was a shooting that took place. And some supporter of a candidate was standing in their sight and allegedly a vehicle drove by and the person was shot in the leg. And I called the poll location immediately as soon as I found out and the judge of the poll location had no knowledge that this had taken place because, of course, it didn't happen in the poll location area. It was across the street And a ways away. So there was no ruckus or anything like that, that the polls have remained open and the people have continued to vote. The only details that I have is that the person was taken for medical care.</s>BALDWIN: That was my next question, how is that person's injuries. Is this a he or a she?</s>RAMON: It was a man.</s>BALDWIN: This was a man. So the man was shot and he was taken to the hospital?</s>RAMON: Yes, he was. He was taken for medical care. And I just got off the phone with San Juan police department and they did say that they do have extra security there now, but that everything is calm and things have continued as they were before.</s>BALDWIN: OK. So really the obvious question is why. I know this happened too recently for anyone really to know. Just to be clear. And if you -- if we can help you, you said this person is now on the run. Do you have any kind of vehicle description? Description of what this individual, this shooter looked like?</s>RAMON: We don't have any information like that, because the officer that I spoke to at the San Juan police department says that no one heard the shot. And so that's why I think it maybe took a while for them to respond. And it wasn't until the alleged victim went ahead and notified that this had happened.</s>BALDWIN: I understand. Yvonne Ramon, thank you for calling in. If you do or the authorities in the area finally do find this individual, please let us know. We would love to update it.</s>BALDWIN: Meantime, let's talk about Syria here. Syria has hit the point where it is spiraling out of control. They have fighting across the country. We're going to show you some of that here. But we're also getting some new details about that massacre that happened Friday night. We talked about this yesterday, just the sheer numbers, 49 children among the victims, total 108 victims. Today, the United Nations is saying, yes, it is clear beyond a doubt that the Syrian government absolutely played a role here. So let me show you this. Watch this with me. This is newly acquired video. This shows when and where it happened. You hear that? This is Friday evening. This is the Syrian city of Houla. You can hear and see this tank shell exploding, the smoke there filling the streets. But that is not the way most of the victims died. Listen to this, if you would.</s>RUPERT COLVILLE, SPOKESMAN, U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS OFFICE: A tiny small number appeared to be killed by shelling, artillery and tank fire, which took place over a period of more than 12 hours, but the majority appear to have been the result of house-to-house summary executions of armed men going into houses and killing men, women and children inside.</s>BALDWIN: Going into houses and killing these children inside of them. It's an astonishing charge by the United Nations, which now is saying the Syrian government massacred these women and these children. With me now from Turkey, Syria's neighbor to the north is CNN's Ivan Watson. And, Ivan, the shocking charge, it's pretty shocking, is it not, coming from the U.N.?</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, Brooke, if you listen to more of that interview, he goes on to accuse the pro-government militia, who are known as shabiha, which roughly translates into ghosts, directly accuses them of killing these people, saying that they are probably the ones who killed most of the people who died, including some 49 children under the age of 10, some of them who appear to have been hit with axes. And in my nearly 15 months of covering this crisis and this brutal crackdown on the Syrian opposition -- it began as a peaceful protest movement, calling for democracy -- I don't think we've ever seen atrocities to this scale. And this is in a country that has seen no shortage of bloodshed with thousands of people killed. Even worse, is talking to eyewitnesses and survivors of of what happened in Houla on Friday night. We talked to a little boy, who's supposed to be around the age of 11, who witnessed shabiha, these pro- government militia, who sometimes wear jeans and sneakers, shoot his mother in front of his own eyes, and at least two of his siblings. They left him for dead, he says. He's now an orphan.</s>BALDWIN: In the 15 months you say you've been covering this, this is absolutely the worst of the worst. And we have reports, Ivan, of fighting from all around the country. We just want to show our viewers just some of that. Take a look.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking foreign language).</s>BALDWIN (voice-over): So Ivan, my next question, is this: is this beginning to resemble a Bosnia-like situation where it's not just rebels fighting the government, but something much worse, where you have ethnic group fighting and killing another ethnic group within the same country? It's basically everyone for themselves. Is that a proper way of characterizing this?</s>WATSON: Well, there's definitely a sectarian and a growing sectarian dimension to the violence. I think it's important to note that there's still a government in Syria that has more weapons than anybody else. The Syrian government has tanks and helicopters and artillery as well as troops and has shown no hesitation about using them, even after signing on to a U.N.-brokered peace plan about two months ago that the U.N. special envoy to Syria is trying to revive today, if you can imagine. Within 24 to 36 hours of this massacre taking place in Houla, we were getting reports that the Syrian artillery were shelling another city, Hama, and killing scores of people there. There's no sign the violence is going to stop. The real reaction that we've seen since the Houla massacre, and these revelations have come out, is that the U.S. and about seven or eight other countries have expelled Syrian ambassadors and senior diplomats from their capitals.</s>BALDWIN: So let me jump in, Ivan, because --</s>WATSON: I don't think that's going to bring an end to -- yes, sure.</s>BALDWIN: That was my question, right? So you have all these countries. They're kicking out these Syrian diplomats, but the question really is, so by doing this, how does that really hurt the Assad regime?</s>WATSON: To be honest, is that going to stop the kind of massacre that we saw on Friday? No way. This government has been condemned repeatedly by the international community. It's been accused repeatedly by the United Nations of committing crimes against humanity for the better part of a year and three months. And it has not stopped carrying out this kind of violence. Why would losing its ambassadors and charges d'affaire in a couple of western capitals stop it from continuing what it's doing? And in the meantime, the rebels are arming themselves up dramatically. They're getting access to new weapons. They're not a cohesive armed unit and they're carrying out revenge attacks as we speak right now. One rebel commander I talked to, Brooke, claimed responsibility for torching a police station in a town hall in a northern town just Monday. And these people are calling for the blood of the same sectarian group as the Syrian president, Bashar al Assad, that Alawite minority, which is disproportionately represented in the Syrian security forces and in the government.</s>BALDWIN: Ivan Watson, 15 months and counting. It is horrendous and it needs to stop. Ivan, thank you so much, reporting live (inaudible). We have more news for you here unfolding right. "Rapid Fire," roll it. Tonight the presumed Republican nominee for president will finally earn the numbers to back up that title, Mitt Romney expected to meet -- to reach that magic number, 1,144 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination with a win in today's Texas primary, and then he will become the official nominee at the Republican Convention in August. And new numbers out today reveal the lowest average home prices since mid-2002, the lowest, major cities like Atlanta, Chicago, New York saw home prices hit new lows in March. Experts say affordable mortgages combined with much lower home prices should help to bolster the housing market now. Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense, delivering his very first commencement speech as the head of the Defense Department. He spoke to hundreds of graduates at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.</s>LEON PANETTA, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Our nation now looks to you, the next generation of military leaders, to confront the challenges I just outlined, to protect our nation and to ensure that America always has the strongest military force in the world.</s>BALDWIN: And a witness says a piece of that plane that fell from the sky yesterday was, quote, "so hot you couldn't touch it."</s>BALDWIN (voice-over): Here are pictures of it. It's about the size of a BlackBerry. This happened in Toronto. Canada's Transportation Safety Board confirms pieces of an engine fell from an Air Canada 777 shortly after takeoff.</s>DON ENNS, TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD, CANADA: It did have a failure in the back end of that engine at the end that produces the power. And this is the debris that came out of a tail pipe of that. Exactly what happened with the initiating event was, as of yet, we haven't gotten into it enough so that we don't really know.</s>BALDWIN: Can you imagine having that falling on your car? The plane heading to Tokyo with 344 people onboard, the engine problems forced the plane to turn around. No one was hurt. First lady Michelle Obama making the TV rounds today. She stopped by "Good Morning America," stopped by "The View." She's not talking any heavy politics, though. She's rather talking about growing gardens, raising healthier children. The ladies on "The View" asked she had ever thought about running for office.</s>MICHELLE OBAMA, FIRST LADY: There are so many ways to serve, and being president is one of the hardest ways, and that's one of the reasons why I tell Barack I'm a little smarter than him. I've picked the easier job.</s>OBAMA: But, no, I have no interest in politics. Never have, never will.</s>BALDWIN: First lady there just this morning. Got a lot more for you. Watch this.</s>BALDWIN (voice-over): It's known as the Flame, a powerful virus infecting computers and like James Bond, its expertise is spying. Plus, if Donald Trump is still a birther, apparently Mitt Romney isn't bothered, because tonight in Vegas, they're meeting face to face. Plus, radioactive debris (ph), radiation from Japan's nuclear crisis now found in fish off the coast of California.