Bird Deaths In South America
RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR(voice-over): From CNN world headquarters in Atlanta, this is</s>CNN SATURDAY MORNING. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anyone that was directly involved with Adam pretty much lived in fear.</s>KAYE: That from the brother of Adam Mayes, the man suspected of kidnapping two girls and killing their mother and sister, who is now dead. And today we put same-sex marriage in focus. What President Obama's new stance on the issue means for his campaign and what critics are saying. And we have Reed Alexander, the Nickelodeon star, who is using his fame to fight childhood obesity with a new mission and a new website.</s>KAYE: Good morning, everyone. I'm Randi Kaye. It's 8:00. Thanks for waking up with us. Let's get you caught up on some morning headlines. President Obama's support of same-sex marriage is paying off big for his re-election hopes, literally. A Democratic source telling CNN that the president raised $2 million in the first 24 hours after making his remarks. That comes as a new" USA Today"/Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans, 51 percent, approve of the president's position. Let's bring in Athena Jones. She's in Silver Spring, Maryland this morning where a law allowing same-sex marriage is due to take effect next January but opponents hope to stop it from becoming reality. Athena, good morning to you. Give us a little bit more about the voter reaction there to President Obama's comments. What are you hearing?</s>ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Randi. We're here early. There's going to be a farmers' market later today so we're hoping to do our sort of informal polling on some of the voter reaction here in Maryland. But Gallup and "USA Today" have put out the first national poll since the president made his remarks on Wednesday and that poll shows that 51 percent of people approve of the president's position on same-sex marriage, 45 percent disapprove so that's still fairly close, fairly evenly divided that people are. But if you look at it by party, you'll find that 71 percent of Democrats approve while only 23 percent of Republicans approve and independents are a little more evenly split at 53 percent. Now, there's been a lot of discussion this week about whether this will impact the president politically, whether it will help him or hurt him, whether it will help Romney or hurt Romney, the fact that Romney is against same-sex marriage. The Gallup people asked that question as well. They found that when asked if the president's position on same-sex marriage makes people more likely to support him or less likely, just 13 percent said it made them more likely to vote for President Obama, 26 percent said less likely. But 60 percent, which is of course the majority, said it would make no difference. So we're hoping today, as you mentioned, here in Maryland, Governor O'Malley signed a law in March that would legalize same-sex marriage starting in January, but there are people trying to get a measure on the ballot to get people to be able to vote down that law and keep it from taking effect. Hopefully, today, we'll get a chance to talk to some people out and about on their Saturday morning and see how they feel.</s>KAYE: We know it's early but there's also Athena been a lot of talk about the impact of President Obama's decision on black voters and now as you know several black leaders have sent this open letter to the president. Have you had a chance to review that letter and what it said?</s>JONES: I have. It's really interesting. This came from the Reverend Al Sharpton and also Julian Bond, who's the chairman of the NAACP and several others. They are really calling for unity in the black community. They understand that this is an issue that many have said can cause division in the black community and I'll just highlight one of the paragraphs. They said as leaders in today's civil rights movement, we stand behind the president - behind President Obama's belief that same-sex couples should be allowed to join in civil marriages. But they also go on to say in this letter that people can disagree about this but we can still have a civil debate about this and we can still work together on other issues facing the black community, such as unemployment, education, those matters. Interestingly enough, I interviewed a black couple yesterday for a story tomorrow who talked about the fact that there's a lot of talk about whether blacks will punish the president or abandon the president. But they say that maybe it takes President Obama himself, as the first black president, to be the one to voice this opinion and to maybe get more people in the black community to begin to look at this more closely and to be a little understanding so there won't be as much -- many people against it. So he'll help to bring people together in the black community around this issue. We'll see what happens, Randi.</s>KAYE: That is an interesting perspective. Athena Jones, thank you very much. Mitt Romney travels into the heart of Christian conservatism today. He's giving the commencement speech sat Liberty University. That is the school founded by television evangelist Jerry Falwell. Romney's camp says the speech will focus on personal responsibility and hard work and that the issue of same-sex marriage will come up. We'll bring you that speech live in our 10:00 hour here on CNN. Newt Gingrich will be among friends when he makes his first campaign pitch for Mitt Romney. The former candidate will speak on Romney's behalf at the Georgia state GOP convention next week. Gingrich of course was a long-time congressman from Georgia and won that state's primary earlier this year. JPMorgan Chase scrambling in the wake of a massive $2 billion trading loss. The big bank now faces a credit downgrade much like the one that this country got last year. The bank's CEO Jamie Dimon admitted it was a major mistake by the bank. Many expected a harsh reaction from Wall Street. Shares for JPMorgan dropped around 10 percent but the market as a whole was pretty quiet, actually. Three more people have been taken into custody for allegedly helping Adam Mayes evade police. Mayes killed himself in the woods near Alpine, Mississippi earlier this week as soon as police were starting to close in on him. Next to him at the time were the two sisters that he had kidnapped after killing their mother and older sister. Authorities say the girls are still shaken. Mayes' wife has been charged with two counts of murder in the case as well. It's been a rough year for birds in South America. More than 7,000 birds, 7,000, have turned up dead in Chile and Peru, 5,000 alone in Peru and at least 2300 along beaches between Cartagena and Playa de Santo Domingo, Chile. We're waiting for Reynolds Wolf, who's supposed to be joining me to talk a little bit about this. Reynolds, are you coming?</s>REYNOLDS WOLF, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely, I am here. Kind of an unusual event to see there. Bird kills do happen. That's the weird thing about the situation. In fact there was a bird kill back in 2011 in Arkansas. After they did some studies on the bodies of the birds, they found out that many of them actually had died from concussion. They believe actually concussion due to noise. Still a big mystery as to how they may have perished along parts of Peru and the Chilean coast.</s>KAYE: So what can be done about it? Are the numbers just going to keep going up?</s>WOLF: What's interesting about it, a lot of this remains a mystery. What they're going to have to do is take the bodies of these birds. Many of them they say show the signs of death actually due to damage from net, which is kind of unusual. Birds do often die in nets. The sea-faring birds go down. They of course eat some of the anchovy off the coast of South America and it's not unusual to have them die. However, this number, this many, over 5,000, that's a little bit extreme so really it's going to be interesting to see what pans out over the next couple of days and perhaps at least a week to get some results back on some of the autopsies they'll perform on these birds. But very unusual to say the least to see this madness, very unusual.</s>KAYE: And last year, I mean who knows if this is related, but 3,000 dead birds were found in Arkansas.</s>WOLF: That's right.</s>KAYE: Is there possibly -- could there be a connection?</s>WOLF: The ones that died in Arkansas many people believed, it got really crazy for a while. There were some people blaming UFOs. There were people saying, perhaps thunderstorms. Actually they think it was caused by concussions due to fireworks. Now, in this case kind of similar, the location is very different. But in terms of what the autopsies will show on these birds, who knows. I would say the number one thing to really check out is basically what they're eating. This is the time of the year where you normally have</s>KAYE: Reynolds, thank you for the update. Appreciate it. Some critics say President Obama could lose support after his support for same-sex marriage, but could he actually gain some from the other side of the aisle? Next I'm talking to a gay Republican for his take on the president's historic announcement. First, we want to wish a very good Saturday morning to all of our viewers, folks in Washington, DC. It looks like not a bit of wind there. The flag just laying low.