Toxic Tap Water May Last Days; A-Rod Fights Suspension; Another Retailer Reports Hacking
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: And Fred, thanks so much. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Kyra Phillips. Coming up, A-Rod may have won a battle against the MLB, but not the war. His suspension reduced. But he's not done fighting to get his bid to get back in the game. And a massive data breach now spanning far wider than we thought. Hear how scammers may try to trick you into giving them more information. And New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in damage control. Could the bridge scandal impact his future political aspirations? Former Governor Bill Richardson joins me live. We begin, though, with a state of emergency for some 300,000 people now in West Virginia who have been told not to use their tap water. Officials just wrapped up a news conference saying it could be days before it will be safe to drink the water or even bathe in it. Nine counties are in the middle of a very dangerous situation after more than 7,000 gallons of a toxic chemical leaked out of a storage tank and into the ground water. But there is some good news. Fresh drinking water is arriving by the truckload. Sixteen tractor trailers sent from the Department of Homeland Security helped to stock distribution centers. CNN's Erin McPike live in Washington. So, Erin, first of all, have officials offered any type of timeline as to when this would be completely cleaned up?</s>ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, Kyra, there is no end date right now and actually we want to play for you a little bit of the press conference that Jeff McIntyre, who is the president of West Virginia American Water, held just a short time ago. And he explained why.</s>JEFF MCINTYRE, PRESIDENT, WEST VIRGINIA AMERICAN WATER: I would expect that we are talking days. Our teams are out. You know, we have -- we have employees that have worked the system that are extremely knowledgeable with the system are out collecting samples and looking at flushing activities at this time but we are talking days.</s>MCPIKE: And, Kyra, the water company has also explained through statements that they will want to test this water repeatedly and come up with a safe results repeatedly before they deem it usable again. So in other words, it won't just be on the first test that they produce a water level that's safe, that they say OK, go ahead and use it, everyone. So that's why it's going to take days once they finally get a safe result -- Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: All right. So with regard with Freedom Industries, the company responsible for the leak, it's been issued this cease operations order from the State Department of Environmental Protections. So do we know yet if criminal charges are actually going to be brought against the company?</s>MCPIKE: Well, that is very possible. And just last night, Booth Goodwin, who is one of the U.S. attorneys in West Virginia, said several times that he will launch an investigation and he says that just for negligence there could be criminal charges brought against that company -- Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: All right. Erin McPike, thanks so much. Well, it may be a long time before anyone sees Alex Rodriguez swing a bat at Yankees Stadium. An arbitrator ruled today that the slugger should sit out the season for his involvement in a performance- enhancing drug scandal. It's strike two for A-rod who's running out of chances now to get back on the field. CNN's Jason Carroll has more -- Jason.</s>JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this decision is very disappointing for Alex Rodriguez and his team, but it was not entirely unexpected. Alex Rodriguez releasing a statement a little earlier today saying, "The number of games sadly comes as no surprise as the deck has been stacked against me from day one. I have been clear that I did not use performance-enhancing substances as alleged to the Notice of Discipline or violate the Basic Agreement or the Joint Drug Agreement in any manner, and in order to prove it I will take this fight to federal court. "I will continue to work hard to get back on the field and help the Yankees achieve the ultimate goal of winning another championship." I am told that Alex Rodriguez would have actually accepted a 50 or possibly even a 65-game suspension. There would not have been an admission of guilt, but they would have taken their lams and moved on, so to speak, but that did not happen. Major League Baseball, of course, wanted the entire 211-game suspension to stand. That did not happen. They released a statement as well saying, "While we believe the original 211-game suspension was appropriate, we respect the decision rendered by the panel and will focus on our continuing efforts on eliminating performance-enhancing substances from our game." As you can imagine, a number of sports fans are weighing in about the 162-game suspension. Here's what they had to say.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I'm from Boston, and I thought the penalty was a little too strong. So I'm good with the 162.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MAN: How do you hand out a 162-game ban to one person and not give anything to all these other people that are doing the same thing? Well, yes, I guess it is, if you talking about just A- Rod, yes, I think it's too harsh.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I think it's ridiculous. I think they should -- if they gave him anything, it should be 50 games at the max.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Whole career should be out. Not enough.</s>UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I think he deserves it. I don't think there should be doping in baseball. It's America's past time.</s>CARROLL: During the entire arbitration process, Alex Rodriguez was allowed to play ball. That may not be the case this time. Representative from Major League Baseball who I spoke to said, this arbitrator's decision is final so he will not be able to play baseball even while he takes his fight to next level. So do not expect him to show up for spring training but Alex Rodriguez says, just one minute, that may not be the case. He is going to ask his attorney Joe Tacopina to ask a federal judge for an injunction to allow him to keep playing while he keeps fighting. Jason Carroll, CNN, New York.</s>PHILLIPS: So the Target store chain says it looks like that credit card security breach is actually worse than originally reported. Here's the new figure. 70 million customers may have had their personal information hacked. Credit card numbers, phone numbers, mail and e-mail addresses. It's almost the biggest theft of customer data ever in this country. And now another store is saying that it has a security issue as well, Neiman Marcus. During the height of the holiday shopping season Neiman Marcus officials said that hackers broke into their computer systems and started grabbing private customer information. How many customers? Well, we don't know yet, but there's a few things that you can do now if you think you might be one of them. Jennifer Mayerle is following the story for us. All right. So if we think the hackers got our personal information because I was impacted by the Target situation. What do you do?</s>JENNIFER MAYERLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the first thing I would say is be aware and be wary. Because we know that they've gotten phone numbers, e-mail addresses, you really want to be careful about who is contacting and what kind of information you're giving out past this point. And there's a couple different things that you can do to protect yourself. Monitor your bank statements. That's the biggest thing because if you see anything on there that seems out of the ordinary, you want to call your bank, you want to call your credit card company. Just make sure and inquire -- make sure that's a legitimate charge that you did. Don't click on strange links. You know, people could e-mail you looking for other information. Don't click on anything that you don't know where it's coming from. If you have a question, try to contact whoever e-mail you. Be aware of fishing scams. Anyone looking for extra information from you. And you can contact a credit monitoring service. Now Target is offering this to their customers for free for a year because of the situation there. It's just a good idea to do anyways, potentially if you think you might be a victim of this. Now let's get into what is going on with Neiman Marcus and the background there.</s>PHILLIPS: Yes, what's Neiman Marcus saying?</s>MAYERLE: Because this is something that they said they were alerted to in mid-December. But it took until January 1st for a forensic team to determine that there in fact was fraud at the department store. They worked or working with the Secret Service now with that forensic team. They seem to be uncovering more information and because they know they are a victim of this cyber security fraud, that means that customers are also victims in this case. So far they don't know how widespread it is. The other unknown is what was the timeframe that they think this security breach happened. And Neiman Marcus is saying that they will contact those people who they believe their credit cards have already had fraudulent charges. So look out for -- to be contacted from them if you think he might be involved. And that Neiman Marcus is also addressing the problem. They issued a statement today saying in part, "We have begun to contain the intrusion, has taken significant steps to further enhance information security." And of course that is essential right now given that Target has had this kind of a breach that Neiman Marcus is now the latest one to have this kind of a breach.</s>PHILLIPS: And what more can you tell us about banks and credit card companies and what they're doing? Because when I was impacted by the Target situation my bank is actually the one that told me don't worry, we're monitoring everything, we'll let you know what you should do. We're going to get you a new debit card. So they were very proactive.</s>MAYERLE: It's nice to feel that comfort from them.</s>PHILLIPS: Yes. Definitely.</s>MAYERLE: Especially if something like this is happening. And that's what they're doing in this case, too, you know. A CNN staffer got this letter in the mail that said, hey, your visa card was a part of this fraud and we're monitoring it. They gave him a new card. And that's happened with more than one bank. And they gave him a new card. If you have any question about what you're getting in the mail, though, before you use that new card, you might want to go ahead and contact your bank.</s>PHILLIPS: Then cut a check.</s>MAYERLE: Just double check saying, hey, did you send me this card? Always good to double check.</s>PHILLIPS: Great advice. Jennifer, thanks so much. Well, President Obama sent condolences to the family of Ariel Sharon today, calling the former prime minister a leader who dedicated his life to the state of Israel. Sharon died today in a hospital just outside of Tel Aviv. He'd been in a coma for eight years since a massive stroke in January 2006. Ariel Sharon was a general in the Israeli Army before entering politics. He was elected and re-elected prime minister and shocked the world in 2005 when he pulled all Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza. He was 77 years old at the time of his stroke. Ariel Sharon died today at the age of 85. Well, coming up, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson joining me live. He's got a lot to say about Chris Christie and also Dennis Rodman. We'll talk to him right after the break. Plus a new government report found that your GPS is spying on you, beaming back data that some companies are holding for up to seven years.