School Kids Killed in China; New Greek Protest Planned; Freedom of Expression or Cultural Disrespect?; FBI Raids Northeast Locations
PHILLIPS: The Dow gained almost 150 points yesterday. Six triple digit moves now in the last two weeks. As we approach the opening bell, stocks were right back where they were last Thursday before the so-called flash crash. Felicia Taylor has a preview of today's market action from the New York Stock Exchange. She's always looking flashy.</s>FELICIA TAYLOR, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: I don't know about that, but I'm trying. Thanks, Kyra. You know, the Dow did pretty much recovered all of that 1,000- point drop in the week since it happened, and we have a little bit of a lower open today but not too badly, down about 20, 21 points. The reason volatility may be dying down. Let's keep our fingers crossed. Ahead of the opening bell, though, investors did get a look at the latest weekly jobless claims. New claims for unemployment benefits fell slightly last week. So, that's good news. Continuing claims fell as well about a little less than expected. More than 4.6 million Americans do continue to collect benefits. However, Gold Prices, they have been pretty high up until this morning. They're slipping just a bit after two days of record-closing highs. Investigators have been flocking to the security of gold because there has been so much uncertainty over Europe's debt crisis, and again, last week's bumpy ride for U.S. stocks. Let's see where the numbers do stand right now after just a few minutes after the opening bell, the Dow is down 23 points, that's 2.5 percent, the Nasdaq is off a third of a percent, and the S&P; is off a fifth of 1 percent. Pretty much across the board is the banking stocks right now that are getting hit so far in just about two minutes of trade -- Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: All right. Felicia, thanks. And then in Greece, the crippling debt crisis is setting the stage for a new protest just days from now. It may not be as confrontational as what we saw last week, but it's impact could be even more dramatic. Labor unions say that their walkout next week will close schools, shut down public services and leave hospitals with only emergency staff. It will also paralyze travel by air, ground, and sea. Labor unions are protesting cost cutting reforms, and they say will hit low earners the hardest. Now, we continue our breaking news coverage on the failed car bombing in Times Square. We just got word within the past 20 minutes or so that an FBI spokesperson tells us that search warrants have been carried out in several places around the northeast in Boston. The justice department is saying that the searches are the product of evidence that has been gathered in the investigation subsequent to the attempted Times Square bombing and do not relate to any known immediate threat to the public or active plot -- or an active plot of some sort against the United States. That's been told to us straight from the FBI. Now, two people have been taken into custody for alleged immigration violation. As you know, A Pakistani-born man, Faisal Shahzad, has been charged in the failed attack. Investigators have been trying to figure out if anyone else were involved in that. All right. Shall we talk about our kids' clothes for a minute, OK? Does it irritate you sometimes the way your son or daughter dresses? How about when your son has draggy pants like this. Does this just drive you nuts? I'm sorry, but this is New York State Senator Eric Adams. I promise I'm going somewhere with this -- is his droopy pants campaign to pull up your pants. OK. If a kid looked like that, come on now. All right. Now, that's just one issue that's got parents talking and also school administrators with regard to how our students dress. I don't know if you remember this story that we ran. It was all about a revealing prom dress on this gal in Oxford, Alabama. She wanted to go to her senior prom. I don't know. Come on, I think she looks beautiful. But, this one, all right, I can understand. It's a little much, but she was actually a college student, a 20-year-old college student in Brazil who was expelled for wearing this short skirt. There was a bunch of public outcry. They got her back into class, by the way, so that didn't work. But, now, let's talk about this for a second. The American flag. Kids being lambasted for wearing the American flag. Do you think that's fair? We're talking about five students at a California high school who wore clothes with American flags to school on the traditional Mexican holiday, Cinco de Mayo. They got noticed. It also got them kicked out of school after they refused to take the shirts off. Freedom of expression or cultural disrespect? CNN's Dan Simon has the debate.</s>DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It began when Austin Carvallo and four of his friends showed up at school wearing American flag T-shirts and red, white, and blue bandanas. That they wore the colors on Cinco de Mayo, a May 5th holiday that is widely celebrated by Mexican-Americans, was viewed by school administrators as incendiary. So, the students were asked to flip over their shirts and hide anything to do with the American flag. Three of them refused and were sent home.</s>MATTHEW DARIANO, WORE AMERICAN FLAG: They told us, basically, we will be kicked out or we get suspended. They threatened us with suspension, and so, we all decided that we were just going to leave school.</s>AUSTIN CARVALLO, WORE AMERICAN FLAG: I have lot of Mexican friends. I don't dislike Mexicans, but I think that we should be able to wear an American flag whenever we want.</s>SIMON: And so a controversy was born.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's crazy. It's crazy. The day you're getting kicked out of school for wearing red, white, and blue. Come on.</s>SIMON: Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California is 40 percent Hispanic. The following day, 100 students, most, if not all Hispanic, skipped school and marched to city hall saying they've been disrespected by their fellow students.</s>TERESA CASTILLAS, PARENT: It's not that they were sitting at the bench having lunch, minding their own business. They were actually taunting other kids.</s>SIMON: An accusation, those students deny, but by then the incident had blown up. Watch as an American flag is ripped off a pickup truck in the middle of the student protest. The school district pleaded for cooler heads, but at the same time, acknowledged it was wrong to tell the students to remove their American flags. (on-camera): The principal later apologized saying a mistake was made, but the damage was done. Tempers on both sides have been elevated ever since which leads us to what's happening inside this gymnasium.</s>MARK ZAPPA, PARENT: This was no small infraction. This was not a speeding ticket. I want to see the principal and the vice principal fired or you will face</s>SIMON (voice-over): What school board members hope would be a healing event turned into a shout fest at this board meeting Tuesday night. Student Teresa Corona said the administrators made the correct call.</s>TERESA CORONA, STUDENT: On the Fourth of July, you don't see the Hispanic students going down to the parade wearing nothing but Hispanic flags. You don't see that.</s>SIMON: The debate went on for more than an hour.</s>JOY JONES, PARENT: Please note, the students were not making a political statement.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would rather be here discussing the Constitution than discussing what happened if a kid would have got injured on that campus.</s>SIMON: In the end, school board members wanted the forum to serve as a teaching moment. Instead, it spotlighted what appears to be a deep division. Dan Simon, CNN, Morgan Hill, California.</s>PHILLIPS: You can see the parents' outrage. Now, let's hear from a man who says it's the principal's prerogative to order students to take off the tees. Philip K. Howard, the author of "The Death of Common Sense," talked with our John Roberts last night.</s>JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: You heard Philip and what a lot of the parents that had to say that it would be ridiculous to tell a kid that he can't wear an article of clothing that got the American flag and blazing on it. You might think that school administrators have taken leave of their senses by saying, you can't wear that. You come down to the office.</s>PHILIP K. HOWARD, AUTHOR: Yes, absolutely. I think the people who run schools ought to have wide latitude to enforce values of the schools just as they do in charter schools and parochial schools and other schools. And if the principal thinks that wearing the flag in this context was disrespectful, maybe the same way as walking on a flag or burning a flag and particularly on this holiday, I think the principal ought to be able to enforce values to say we're not going to have a racially hinged statements in clothing or otherwise. Just as public schools in New York ban the wearing of certain kind of gang bracelets or other things because they get people riled up. I think principals ought to have that authority.</s>ROBERTS: Some people would think equating an American flag T- shirt with a gang bracelet, that's a little bit of a stretch.</s>HOWARD: Maybe not, maybe not when Cinco de Mayo and maybe not when the kids are really flashing it in the face of the other Spanish kids. The American flag is meant to be a symbol of honor and freedom. It's not meant to be a bandanna, with all due respect.</s>PHILLIPS: A lot of people think that Cinco de Mayo is Mexico's Independence Day, but actually, it's not. Instead, it marks the Mexican army's victory over the French army in 1862, and it's observed in the U.S. as a celebration of Mexican heritage. I want to update you now on the breaking news story we've been following for the past hour. Several places in the northeast rated linked maybe to the Times Square car bomb case. Homeland security correspondent Jeanne Meserve with us now with more details. Jeanne, what can you tell us?</s>JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, we wish we knew a little bit more about what's happening this morning. All we can tell you is that a federal law enforcement source tells us that search warrants are being executed in Boston, New York, and New Jersey. There's a statement from the Justice Department and also from the FBI in Boston confirming that search warrants are being executed. Two individuals were taken into custody during these searches on immigration violations. They say it does relate to the probe of Faisal Shahzad, but the statements go on to say it does not relate to any known immediate threat to the public or active plot against the United States. Clearly, since Shahzad was arrested, they've been trying to pull all the threads on this investigation to determine if he had any associates here in the U.S., how he got the money, where he got the training, if anybody helped him put things together before he left -- allegedly left that bomb in Times Square. This is clearly an outgrowth of that, but we don't have the specifics on who they picked up here or why their suspicion fell on these individuals and these locations -- Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: OK. We'll follow up with you. Jeanne, thanks. More from the CNN NEWSROOM. Straight ahead.