Chemical Plant Explodes In Louisiana; Ferocious Wildfires Scorch Colorado; Midwest Cleans Up After Brutal Storms; Brutal Storms Hammering East Coast; Flight Cancellations Due To Weather; Supreme Court Rules Genes Cannot Be Patented
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: We have breaking news right now. A burning chemical plant near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is the Williams Olefins plant. It is near Geismar, Louisiana. Something triggered an explosion. That fire is still burning. Well, so far, police and firefighters are only saying that there are some injuries, some people who are hurt. They are not saying how many or how badly. They don't have that information yet. But this plant produces chemicals used to make plastic. Now, emergency officials, they have evacuated a two-mile radius around that plant. They are telling people who live nearby to stay in their homes as a precaution. This is CNN NEWSROOM, and I'm Suzanne Malveaux. We are following this story, storms, strong wind gusts could hit Colorado today. It is bad news for fire fighters who are struggling to contain a ferocious wildfire. This is near Colorado Springs. Now, officials now say that the black forest fire has burned down 360 homes and destruction far from over. I want to bring in Victor Blackwell. He is in Colorado Springs. Victor, how many homes are we talking about here in the path?</s>VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Suzanne, it's tough to answer because of the wind. The officials here say that the wind is making the storm so unpredictable the fire fighters on the front lines who are preparing for this, digging out lines, they prepare for the fire to go in one direction and then it goes in another or in two directions. But I can tell you this that in the last 18 hours, this situation has intensified dramatically. Consider these numbers. Yesterday, last night, in fact, the sheriff told us 92 homes had been destroyed by this fire. This morning that number is up to 360 making this the most destructive storm as it relates to property in Colorado history. The people covered by this evacuation order last night, that number was 10,000. Today, that number is 38,000. So, when you ask about properties that are in danger, I can tell you, inside that 93 square mile area that's being covered by this, the 93,000 acres instead, that are being covered by this evacuation order, 13,000 homes. Of course, no one expects all of those homes to burn but that's the number of homes that could be in danger.</s>MALVEAUX: Victor, I assume that fire fighters are really gearing up for those high winds that's expected there. What are they doing to prepare for this afternoon?</s>BLACKWELL: Well, they're continuing the water drops that we've seen now that some of the smoke has cleared out. Early this morning, it was so hazy that it was difficult to get planes up. But we know they've got about four to eight choppers. We saw that DC-10, the tanker 911, dropping retardant and water. But the people who have been pushed out of their homes, they're scattered all over. Some of them are in hotels. Some of them are with friends and family. There's a shelter that's opened. Actually, one had to be evacuated because of poor air quality so they were moved to another shelter. I spoke this afternoon with a family of seven living in a camper in a Walmart parking lot waiting to find out if their home is one of the 360 that have been destroyed and if the fire is moving in that direction -- Suzanne.</s>MALVEAUX: All right. Victor, thank you. Be safe as always. On the east coast, the threat today, it is rain, wind, hail, potential tornados as well. It's the same storm system that pounded the Midwest last night. Setting off tornados, dangerous straight line winds, luckily no one was hurt. Chicago got hammered with hail and lightning. Look at this. This is the Willis Tower, took a direct hit. Many of you know the landmark building as the Sears Tower. I want to bring in our Chad Myers at the CNN Weather Center. Chad, you used to live in Chicago.</s>CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes.</s>MALVEAUX: I know that building well. That is very dramatic.</s>MYERS: Yes.</s>MALVEAUX: I imagine people were pretty afraid when they saw that.</s>MYERS: You know, and if the storms didn't bump into each other last night, Chicago would have had a much bigger hit. No question about it. But the storms were bumping into each not allowing one storm to be what we called super cell tornadic thunderstorm and that was the great news. I know it looked ugly. I know the skies were green. That's the hail in the sky. Think about looking at an old coke bottle. You look down in the bottle, you see the green on the top of the bottle. That's the same kind of refraction that you get from the hailstones in the sky. That's why your sky was green last night, almost an aqua at some time. That weather has now pushed offshore. We talked about that derecheo (ph) that was possible yesterday. It never really developed into anything as significant as the one last year but the weather has slid off down the Jersey shore. What we're worried about for the next couple of hours as this all moves on by is that regeneration of weather here just to the south of Washington, D.C., here's West Virginia, and into Virginia. The new threat for severe weather today is slightly south of D.C. The tornadic threat from the tide water back towards Raleigh in the 5 percent. Now, there is still a slight chance all the way back even into West Virginia and into Mississippi so that's kind of where it is there. Here is your hail probability, the core there right over tide water into the piedmont of North Carolina, same story here. But we will see severe weather, some severe weather, whether it's hail, wind, all the way back, Mississippi, Alabama, here in Atlanta for sure reaching (ph) to Charlotte and all the way back up into Raleigh. That's the bull's eye today if we're ever going to see severe weather. Not as severe, though, the potential, as yesterday. Still there but not like yesterday.</s>MALVEAUX: All right, Chad, we're going to be watching. Stormy weather disrupting air travel as well. CNN correspondents, they tweeted out these pictures of passengers. This is Chicago's O'Hare Airport. They were sleeping on cots last night. That's right, more than 360 flights cancelled at O'Hare just yesterday alone. The storms has also caused more than two dozen flight cancelations at Chicago's Midway Airport. And big decision here. U.S. Supreme Court ruling on an issue that's been in the headlines recently, quite frankly, because of actress Angelina Jolie. What we're talking about here is the gene mutation linked to an increased risk of breast cancer. Now, you might recall Jolie revealed that she had undergone a double mastectomy because the mutation put her at higher risk of the disease. Well today, the high court ruled that human genes cannot be patented. I want to bring in our Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin to talk about that angle, also our Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Jeff, I want to start with you first here. So, this particularly involves a case with a company that identified the brac one, brac two gene mutation. So, explain, not in legalese but in simple terms here, what did the court decide?</s>JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, what the court said, unanimously by the way, in an position -- in an opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, they said, look, this brac gene is part of the body. It's like an elbow and you can't patent an elbow. You can't patent something that everybody has and occurs naturally in the world. What you can patent is what you do to it and how you test it. But the actual part of the body itself, which the patent office had granted a patent on, you can't do it. So, anyone, any company can now go to that gene and come up with its own tests for breast cancer or for anything else. That's the gist of the decision.</s>MALVEAUX: That was a very good explanation there, Jeff.</s>TOOBIN: Well, thank you, Suzanne.</s>MALVEAUX: Pretty simple.</s>TOOBIN: That's why I'm here, you know?</s>MALVEAUX: The elbow -- the elbow analogy, I like that.</s>TOOBIN: The elbow.</s>MALVEAUX: So, Sanjay, so if you want to get tested, right, genetic testing here, how would that impact you? Would it actually be cheaper now? Is there more competition? What does this mean for people who actually want to undergo these type of tests?</s>DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I think both those things. I think it's likely, not right away but soon, it'll probably become cheaper and it will probably become more accessible. There is an interesting nuance here just to build a little bit on what Jeffrey said because I think this is important. But the headlines you'll read from myriad, the company that was at the heart of this lawsuit was that the Supreme Court upheld the patenting of CDNA. And I had a lot of people who will read that CDNA is complementary DNA and the science which Jeff again explained is they're not saying you can -- you know, when they are looking for the gene, they are looking for a specific gene but then in order to make it useful to them to study it, they got to make a copy of it, a template --</s>MALVEAUX: Right.</s>GUPTA: -- if you will. And that's the CDNA. That -- they have to do that. They have to actually use their techniques to create that copy and then from there they can make the testing for the -- for the gene mutations. Other companies will now be able to create their own templates and make their own testing. It was the gene itself that they were trying to patent. Your gene, mine, anybody who has a mutation of that -- of that breast cancer gene, that's what they were trying to patent and they can't do that.</s>MALVEAUX: And, Jeff, I want to bring you back here because this was a unanimous decision which is really pretty rare in the Supreme Court. Why did that happen?</s>GUPTA: Well, you know, in fairness to the justices, about 30 to 40 percent of their decisions are unanimous every year. It tends to be the high profile constitutional issues that are -- that are the one where you get all the 5-4 decisions and the big decisions that we're all waiting for by the end of the month, the future of affirmative action, the future of the voting rights act, the two same sex marriage cases about the defense of marriage act and proposition 8 in California. We didn't get a decision on those today. And we will probably get them either next week or the following week. Next Monday is the next day the court sits and you can be sure that those will not be unanimous.</s>MALVEAUX: Oh, yes, those are going to be hot. All right, Jeff. Thanks. Jeffrey Toobin in New York and, of course, Dr. Sanjay Gupta here in Atlanta. Good to see you.</s>GUPTA: Thank you.</s>MALVEAUX: For more on Supreme Court rulings, go to CNN.com and coming up, the fallout now over the secret government surveillance of phone and Internet traffic now creating some pretty unusual alliances. We're talking about the political impact up next and Rob Lowe moving back to the west wing. Only this time, he is playing John F. Kennedy. The resemblance, uncanny. A sneak peek up ahead. Then a Hispanic boy slammed for wearing a Mariachi outfit while singing the "National Anthem" at the -- at an NBA finals. Well, he is speaking out. You're going to be hearing what he is saying plus you can hear him sing, too.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the people were talking bad was because of what I was wearing. And it's not my fault. It's what I love. And I'm just --