Security Threats Aboard Two Flights; The River Keeps Rising; Muslims and Christians Clash; Steeler's Mendenhall In Trouble Over Bin Laden Tweets
HALA GORANI, CNN ANCHOR: We are following two separate security threats aboard airliners. A passenger was trying to open an exit door in the middle of one flight and that leads to security fears. That just hours after a threatening note was found aboard another plane. We'll bring you the latest on that. And you are looking live at the swollen Mississippi River in Memphis where the water is rising and more residents are being told to evacuate. We have new information about when and where the river will crest. And this --</s>GORANI: Deadly and very frightening violence in the streets of Cairo. Just two months after protests led to a new government, Muslims and Christians clash, and a church goes up in flames. I'm Hala Gorani. I'm in for Don Lemon today. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. Well, breaking news out of St. Louis this Mother's Day. An unruly passenger aboard a Continental flight is blamed for causing the plane to divert to St. Louis. It had taken off from Houston. It was originally headed to Chicago. According to airport officials in St. Louis, the passenger tried to open the forward exit while the plane was in the air. The passenger was restrained and the plane eventually landed safely. At this time, all we know is that a male passenger was taken off the plane and other passengers resumed their flight. And a second airliner also had to be diverted today. A note found aboard a Delta flight triggered a security scare. Flight 1706 was en route from Detroit to San Diego when a flight attendant discovered a suspicious note in the restroom. The plane then landed in Albuquerque. It spent several hours in a remote area of the airport while the luggage was screened. The passengers were interviewed. The TSA says the security sweep of the plane found nothing and the plane was cleared to fly out to San Diego. Well, now to our top story this weekend, of course, the peek into Osama bin Laden's life in hiding. We've seen these videos newly released about 24 hours ago. Five different videos seized during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden have been released by U.S. intelligence officials. Now, each of them had the sound removed, presumably to avoid spreading bin Laden's words. That might be one of the explanations. Now, President Barack Obama believes that it's possible that bin Laden got help from inside Pakistan to avoid being discovered. Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad is less than 40 miles from the capital. You see it there on the map, very close to the Pakistani military academy. Here's what President Obama said on CBS' "60 Minutes."</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan. But we don't know who or what that support network was. We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government. And that's something that we have to investigate and more importantly the Pakistani government has to investigate. And we've already communicated to them, and they have indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had. But these are questions that we're not going to be able to answer three our or four days after the event. It's going to take some time for us to be able to exploit the intelligence that we were able to gather on site.</s>GORANI: The president there said there has been some sort of support network to keep Osama bin Laden in hiding. Now, the United States did not tell Pakistan, an ally, that it was going to conduct a raid in Pakistan and that this raid on bin Laden was coming. The national security adviser tells CNN's "STATE OF THE UNION" that Special Forces pulled enough information from e hideout to fill a small college library. The trails of bin Laden started when intelligence officials identified and tracked one of his trusted couriers. Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA, tells CNN's Fareed Zakaria the agency first told the Bush administration about the courier a few years ago.</s>MICHAEL HAYDEN, FMR. DIRECTOR, CIA: I think it was about four years ago, in 2007. We had built up sufficient lead information on the name of the courier that we thought it was ready for presidential primetime. So, we briefed it to the president, not as something eminent, but as our most promising lead to track down bin Laden because, frankly, Fareed, the trail had been cold for a long period of time.</s>GORANI: Hayden says that an important lead in the hunt for that courier came from detainee interrogations at so-called "black sites," secret CIA prisons located outside of the United States. All right. Let's turn our attention to Memphis now. And officials there are warning residents to brace for a large-scale disaster as the Mississippi River continues to rise. This is as live view from downtown Memphis with the Interstate 40 bridge in the background. A lot of the park you see in the shot is now underwater. As you can see from this map, no fewer than eight Midwestern and Southern states have been dealing with the rampaging river. Let's go to Cairo, Egypt, in a second. This is Cairo, Illinois -- a town saved for the moment by a controversial move this week by the Army Corps of Engineers. CNN's Ted Rowlands is there with more on that. Hi there, Ted.</s>TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Hala. They actually pronounced it Cairo here, a little different. Let's look at, first of all, how much water we are dealing with. This is water from the Mississippi River. But it's not the Mississippi River. You see way off in the distance that building -- that is about a half mile or quarter mile away from the banks of the Mississippi River. All of this water into this spillway came from the Mississippi, so far away, and it came all the way up the levee here. This is the Mississippi levee protecting the city. They've got two problems here. You see the wall on the backside of this little V and that red barge in the back. That's the Ohio River. And that comes right up against that retaining wall, that brick wall. And the good news is, is the levels of both of these bodies of water, both of these rivers, have dropped over the last few days. People who have been evacuated for the last week-plus are now coming back into their homes. The authorities are telling them they should leave in the evening hours because, specifically, the Ohio River has a lot of pressure on it. And if this levee gives way, of course, this entire city would be flooded within a few hours. So, people are being asked to leave in the evening hours, but a huge sigh of relief. A lot of worried folks thought they were going to lose their homes. One of the things that they believe helped save their home was the decision by the Army Corps of Engineers to blow up a levee on this side of the Mississippi River. The problem with that is it did flood farmland in neighboring Missouri. There are a lot of farmers who have lost their homes and had their flooded -- their farmlands flooded. They are not happy at all. In fact, they are going to court to try to get some relief. But the folks here in Cairo are happy and, for the most part, home.</s>GORANI: All right. Ted Rowlands in Cairo, Illinois, not Cairo, Illinois -- thanks very much. We look forward to more of your reporting at 10:00 p.m., a little bit later, with some of your exclusive reporting. Thanks, Ted. Cities and towns downstream from Memphis will begin feeling the impact of the rising waters in the coming days. New Orleans already has a plan in place. Jacqui Jeras has more on that at the CNN weather center. What is this -- what is this plan? What are people bracing themselves for in this part of the U.S.?</s>JACQUI JERAS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, they are trying to avoid, basically, a catastrophe in New Orleans, because if they don't open some of these levees, kind of similar to what they did in Cairo, but they don't have to explode it. They already have a spillway system in place where they can just move gates and do a variety of things to help to protect that city. All right. Let's talk a little bit about this and talk about how long we still have to go and where some of these crests are going to be. Memphis, we are looking at Tuesday for a crest, 14 feet above flood stage. Then we'll be watching Vicksburg, Notches (ph), Red River Landing and Baton Rouge on the 23rd. And after that, it will be New Orleans. Now, right now, the official forecast for New Orleans showing the river already rising, expected to be flooding out of its banks potentially by Tuesday and then cresting into next week. But it's expected to crest just below the levee, by about a half of a foot. And the reason why it's going to stay below is because they have this system in place, all right? The river is cresting right now up here into the boot heel of Missouri. It's got hundreds of miles to go. So, ahead of it before that wall of water gets here, what they are going to do is they're going to open the gates at the Bonnet Carre Spillway. And what that is, is basically just a channel where they're going to open up an area between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain to allow that water to flow through here. It's going to release some pressure and it's going to divert some of that water. They've done this before, nine times before, in fact. And most recently happened back in 2008. It was a successful mission. That's the good news. Now, the second thing that might happen, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer has requested to open a second one in Morganza, Louisiana. This is just north of the Baton Rouge area. That will also relieve some of that pressure and divert that water down through an area here that's kind of swampland. But, unfortunately, there's also a lot of people who live here and a lot of farm fields in this area. Now, they've asked for it, but it hasn't been approved just yet, Hala. So, we'll have to wait and see what happens in the days ahead. But there could be another kind of controversial thing happening when they more -- may release some more of that water.</s>GORANI: All right. Thanks very much, Jacqui. And we'll catch up with you a little bit later with more on that. Many Southern states still reeling after deadly tornadoes ripped apart entire communities and took hundreds of lives. Also ahead, now, some moms are counting their blessings on this particular Mother's Day. First, though, tensions flare between Muslims and Christians in Egypt. At least a dozen are dead, hundreds more are injured. We'll tell you what happened in Cairo and why some people say they are starting to become very concerned with what's going on in Egypt today. We'll be right back.