John Kerry's Jewish Roots; International News; Marge Schott Dies
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Super Tuesday and it looks like John Edwards is going to be dropping out of the race this afternoon. We'll have live coverage. Firefighters in Baltimore fighting a huge warehouse fire all night. Still not under control, but officials say no danger to area residents. The Iraqi Governing Council was supposed to sign a temporary constitution today, but that's been delayed. There is three days of mourning following yesterday's suicide bomb attacks. And in Venezuela, protesters take to the streets after the government rejects a petition for a vote on recalling the president. The government says the petition did not have enough valid signatures. A federal jury will begin deliberating the fate of Martha Stewart and her stockbroker today. If convicted, the homemaker, Stewart, could face 20 years in prison. Sentencing guidelines, though, make a one-year sentence, though, more likely. We update the top stories every 15 minutes, and our next update is at 5:45 Eastern. Does this look like the scene at the Democratic Convention this summer in Boston? John Kerry now at the top of the heap after winning 28 out of 31 primary contests total. He won 9 out of the 10 states yesterday in the Super Tuesday contest. He only lost in Vermont because Howard Dean, that's his home state, won there. John Edwards, though, made it a close race in Georgia. But with no Super Tuesday wins, and he has only won one primary so far, that in North Carolina, he has decided to quit the race. Well he stopped short of a concession speech last night in Atlanta, but he did sound like he was supporting John Kerry. Listen in.</s>SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I also want to take a moment and congratulate my friend, Senator John Kerry. He has run a strong, powerful campaign. He has been an extraordinary advocate for causes that all of us believe in, more jobs, better health care, a cleaner environment, a safer world. These are the causes of our party, these are the causes of our country and these are the causes we will prevail on come November, you and I together.</s>LIN: Excuse me, he actually won South Carolina. Now the official announcement from John Edwards that he is leaving the race is expected in Raleigh, North Carolina this afternoon at a high school. And CNN is going to have live coverage at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. We've been delving into John Kerry's Jewish roots and have come up with a connection that seemed almost inevitable. John Kerry had relatives who died in the Holocaust. Two have now been traced to Nazi death camps. Our Chris Burns brings us that story.</s>CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): John Kerry's Great Aunt Elizabeth (ph) cringes when asked what would have happened to her during World War II if her father hadn't converted from Judaism to Catholicism and changed his name from Kohn to Kerry. That I don't even want to think about, she says. Her father, Otto, and John Kerry's grandfather, Frederick, shed their Jewish name at the turn of the century, as many other Jews did, to avoid anti-Semitism. But in 1942, the Nazis came to this Vienna apartment building and took away two siblings of John Kerry's grandmother. Jenny and Otto Lowe, a great aunt and uncle of John Kerry, remained Jewish and died in the Holocaust.</s>FELIX GUNDACKER, INSTITUTE FOR FAMILY HISTORY RESEARCH: Jenny was murdered a little bit later in the concentration camp of Treblinka and Otto died in the concentration camp in Theresienstadt.</s>BURNS: These documents recorded Jenny's and Otto's deaths at the Prague (ph) based Terezin Initiative Institute. Little surprise, the Kerry's stressed (ph) their name before the war. (on camera): Here in a Vienna cemetery the name Kerry set in stone. The final resting place of John Kerry's Great Uncle Otto and his Great-Grandmother Mathilde. (voice-over): Note that Mathilde's last name Kohn was omitted. Probably because Hitler was coming soon, says Otto Kerry's daughter. That was no help for John Kerry's Jewish relatives. (on camera): The Holocaust link could make this memorial that much more real for John Kerry. It's a remembrance of Jews deported from here and slaughtered by the Nazis in remembrance of Jenny and Otto Lowe. Chris Burns, CNN, Vienna.</s>LIN: That's fascinating. All right. We also want to touch on some other international news, especially in the wake of yesterday's big breaking news, the suicide bomb attacks in Iraq. For that we're going to go to our senior editor on the international desk. David Clinch joining us now.</s>DAVID CLINCH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL EDITOR: Carol, good morning.</s>LIN: Good morning.</s>CLINCH: Yes, that was fascinating stuff from Chris.</s>LIN: Yes.</s>CLINCH: We will continuing to look into John Kerry's background in Central Europe. We're also still following up on Iraq yesterday. I haven't had to spend the night looking at horrific pictures...</s>LIN: That was awful yesterday.</s>CLINCH: ... of bits of bodies, as we did yesterday. But we're following up on this almost imponderable question of who could have done this. I mean we've been talking about this since yesterday and there still are no answers. I mean no answers on a -- on a political level, no answers on a forensic level. There just are no answers yet, so.</s>LIN: Right, because the Iraqis were telling Jane Arraf yesterday in Baghdad surely these were outsiders not Iraqis.</s>CLINCH: Right. And we looked into that a little bit more. And what they seem to be saying is that they don't know who it is but outsiders in this incident is impossible for them to believe that any Muslim could have done this, impossible for them to believe that any Iraqi could have done this and we don't know. We simply don't know. If we find out more today forensically on who the bombers were, who the attackers were, we will immediately report that. But of course it then remains...</s>LIN: Right.</s>CLINCH: ... to be clear who they were working with, for, et cetera,...</s>LIN: OK.</s>CLINCH: ... what the motivations. Very difficult situation for us to look into.</s>LIN: Haiti sort of got buried yesterday with these claims (ph).</s>CLINCH: Yes, it did. It did. I mean, obviously with the Iraq story, and then the election, the Democratic story last night. But in Haiti, the rebel leader, Guy Philippe, made a statement during the day yesterday saying the country is in my hands. Now he is saying this because he basically does control a lot -- a lot of the country. But of course he is also saying this as a couple of hundred U.S. Marines, and now French troops as well, are watching very nervously from inside presidential compounds.</s>LIN: Right, but he said he was going to support the transition to prime minister.</s>CLINCH: Right. And he also says he doesn't want to be president. But from the support we see him getting and from the statements that he is making, he certainly seems to be enjoying the power that he has got at the moment. So watching that very closely in Haiti. Lucia Newman is still there. And also keeping an eye on Venezuela, not perhaps quite at that level in -- as the violence in Haiti was, but a fascinating story. Hugo Chavez, the president there, under pressure again continuously from what they describe themselves as democratic supports of the democratic process. But he, of course, the elected president. They have been trying to get him out for a long, long time. It's come to a head now. They thought they had enough signatures to have a referendum to get him recalled. Now the election group that is controlling that says there weren't enough signatures. The people who are trying to get him out, reject that. They are actually asking for Jimmy Carter's help, the Carter Institute involved, as they have been for a long period, in monitoring this process, saying that they will help, but of course trying to get everybody to remain calm in the meantime.</s>LIN: Right.</s>CLINCH: Calm is not what we saw in the streets in Venezuela last night. So watching that.</s>LIN: Right.</s>CLINCH: And then you know all sorts of fascinating stories we're looking into today, including one I think you're probably going to talk to Matthew Chance about that's coming up soon.</s>LIN: Right, this great story out of London.</s>CLINCH: Coca-Cola and Britain being -- actually, today there's a bit more of the hard news peg to it today because they are -- actually, the Ad Council in Britain is looking into whether Coca-Cola is using false advertising in this product they sell here also,...</s>LIN: Right.</s>CLINCH: ... Dasani. But in Britain, this bottled water in Britain, they admitted yesterday or the day before, that it's actually just tap water that they purified.</s>LIN: From the Thames, right?</s>CLINCH: From the Thames, which comes through, you know, as it does for everybody else, that they purify it and sell it as Dasani. Now, you know, Coke makes a lot of money selling sugary water...</s>LIN: Right. Right.</s>CLINCH: ... for a dollar a can, so perhaps it shouldn't be that much of a surprise. But a fascinating story, nevertheless.</s>LIN: Yes, but it's not the natural spring up in Alps.</s>CLINCH: Yes, that's of course what people think of when they -- when they see...</s>LIN: Have you seen the Thames lately?</s>CLINCH: Yes.</s>LIN: That's what makes it interesting to me.</s>CLINCH: Just exactly how pure is it that's the question.</s>LIN: Yes. All right. Thanks -- David.</s>CLINCH: All right.</s>LIN: A lot to do today.</s>CLINCH: OK.</s>LIN: Well, let's check on the weather to see how things are warming up across the country. Rob Marciano in with a colored map.</s>ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Hi, Carol.</s>LIN: All right, well we're about to go to the mighty Barry Bonds. You're not going to believe this one, Rob, but lots of questions in the sports world whether Barry Bonds was using steroids. There's a report in the "San Francisco Chronicle" that's alleging that Barry Bonds' personal trainer was giving him steroids and human growth hormones. Now that trainer is currently -- has been indicted by the federal government. Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield were also implicated in this story. Now this is what Barry Bonds' attorney had to say. "We continue to adamantly deny that Barry was provided, furnished or supplied any illegal substances at the time by Greg Anderson. The credibility of the unnamed source familiar with Anderson should be questioned. Now this latest pronouncement is a complete disregard to the truth, to Barry Bonds' inherent athletic ability and his tremendous accomplishments as a Major League Baseball player for the past 18 years." Former Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott died Tuesday at the age of 75. Schott was a colorful character whose on and off field antics made her one of the most controversial owners in league history. Larry Smith reports here.</s>LARRY SMITH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Marge Schott was a Cincinnati auto dealer who bought a controlling interest in the Reds in 1984. Schott barely knew her own players' names, yet she was Cincinnati's most visible fan. Dressed in red and white, cigarette in hand and with a Saint Bernard dog by her side, she occupied a front row seat at Riverfront Stadium for almost every home game. At first, Schott seemed to be refreshingly eccentric. She seemed intent on keeping ticket prices down and creating a family atmosphere at the ballpark and would often rub fur from her dog, Schottzie, on players' uniforms for good luck. But over her 14 years as the Reds owner, Schott's behavior became increasingly bizarre and then downright ugly. In 1990 when the Reds made it to the World Series, Schott was reportedly drunk as she celebrated in front of a national TV audience. The Reds won the series in four games. But after finding out about lost profits for games five through seven, she was livid and refused to fund a victory party. In 1992, a Reds employee filed a wrongful termination suit against Schott. In court testimony, employees said she often used a racial slur when referring to her black players and that she had a swastika arm band in a drawer in her home. Schott issued a statement denying she was a racist. But two weeks later, she was quoted as saying that "Adolph Hitler was initially good for Germany." After an investigation into her remarks, baseball suspended Schott from day-to- day operation of the team for the entire 1993 season. In 1994, Schott was quoted as saying she didn't want her players to wear earrings because -- quote -- "only fruits wear earrings." And in 1996, after praising Hitler again, Schott was suspended for two- and-a-half seasons. Finally, in April of 1999, under pressure from Major League Baseball, Schott agreed to sell her controlling interest in the team and a strange chapter in baseball's history came to a close. For CNN Sports, I'm Larry Smith. Marge Schott 1928-2004.