Michael Jackson's Death Investigation; Government Predicts Flu Could Sicken 30 to 50 Percent
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Here now are some of the other stories we're watching right now. Four U.S. service members in Afghanistan are dead; victims of a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan. A NATO spokesman says they were patrolling in one of the most dangerous parts of the country. 42 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan this month. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani may be planning a run for governor. Republican representative Peter King tells the "New York Daily News" Giuliani is a 50-50 bet to run next year. He failed in his presidential bid last year. Home prices on the rise: a key new home price index shows prices were up 3 percent over the first quarter of this year. It's a small spike, but it's the first rise in three years. Prices are still down around 15 percent over this time last year. One drug after another administered within hours of each other. Preliminary findings suggest Michael Jackson died of an overdose two months ago today. CNN's Thelma Gutierrez has documents and what investigators believe happened.</s>THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This 32-page document released in Texas reveals there was lethal levels of the powerful drug Propofol in Michael Jackson's blood at the time of his death according to preliminary findings of the Los Angeles coroner. The police affidavit says Dr. Conrad Murray, Jackson's personal physician told detectives he had been treating the star for insomnia for six weeks, giving him an IV drip with 50 milligrams of Propofol diluted with Lidocaine every night. Murray worried Jackson was becoming addicted to Propofol. In an attempt to wean him off, Murray put together other combinations of drugs that succeeded in putting Jackson to sleep for two nights prior his death. On June 25th when those drugs failed, Murray told detectives what he did hour by hour. He said around 1:30 in the morning he gave Jackson 10 milligrams of valium. At 2:00 a.m. he injected Jackson with Ativan, an anti-anxiety drug. And an hour later the sedative Versed. At 5:00 a.m. more Ativan. At 7:30, more Versed. Murray says he monitored Jackson's vital signs the entire time. According to documents at 10:40 a.m. after repeated requests and demand from Jackson, Murray administered 25 mg of Propofol and Jackson finally went to sleep. After 10 minutes Murray says he went to the bathroom and was gone for two minutes. When he returned he says Jackson was no longer breathing. Murray says he administered CPR until paramedics arrived but those efforts proved futile. (on camera): Dr. Conrad Murray's attorneys released a statement saying "Much of what was in the search warrant affidavit is factual, however, unfortunately, much is police theory. Most egregiously the timeline reported by law enforcement was not obtained through interviews with Dr. Murray as was implied by the affidavit." Thelma Gutierrez, CNN, Los Angeles.</s>COLLINS: Since Jackson's death, investigators have searched the house where he died, as well as the offices and home of Dr. Murray. Keep in mind, he has not been charged with anything yet and the coroner's finding does not necessarily mean a crime was committed. Our senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin talked with Anderson Cooper about what might happen next.</s>JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: It would be some version of manslaughter, an unintentional killing. But you can still go to prison for several years. Keep in mind though that these sorts of medical situations, it's very rare that they give rise to criminal charges. Malpractices suits, yes, losing your medical license, yes, but an actual criminal case resulting in a jail sentence, very unusual.</s>COLLINS: In a statement, the Jackson family expresses "full confidence in the legal process and commends the efforts of the L.A. County coroner, the district attorney and the police." New numbers to tell you about on the possible toll from the swine flu. A government panel has released a report saying between 30,000 and 90,000 people could die from the H1N1 flu this fall and winter. And more than 120 million could get sick. Senior CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joining us now with more on this perspective, of course, important. So the numbers are alarming when you hear them, Elizabeth. The worse-case scenario is what we're talking about.</s>ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, the high end of the ranges that you just mentioned, Heidi, those are the worse-case scenarios. So let's take a look at what this report found. This was found by the president's council of scientific advisors and let's put it in perspective of what happens every year with the flu. What this report found is that it predicts there could be 30,000 to 90,000 deaths from swine flu this upcoming flu season. To put that in perspective, every year 36,000 people die of regular seasonal flu. Secondly, the report found that 30 percent and 50 percent of Americans could become ill with swine flu, regular flu five to 20 percent of Americans become ill just from regular seasonal flu. So what you're seeing here, bottom line is that this will likely be a much worse flu season than other flu seasons because this year you have regular flu, plus you have swine flu on top of that. What they can't say is exactly how many people will die. You will see those ranges are huge, that's because, Heidi, nobody has a crystal ball. Everyone is just estimating at this point.</s>COLLINS: Yes, of course, and trying to prepare. A lot of people are asking, in fact, where do we stand on a vaccine now? When will they really be ready? Because we're looking at fall, right?</s>COHEN: Right. We're looking at fall. I mean, they would like to start vaccinating for flu really in September. That's when the shots are often available, but for swine flu they don't expect the shots to be available until the middle of October and even then there won't be enough available for everyone who needs to get it, to get it all at once. However, there will be more doses available as the season progresses and not everyone necessarily needs to get a swine flu shot. Top on the list are pregnant women and, actually, younger people. Usually we talk about older people getting shots for flu, for swine flu it's actually younger people who are more vulnerable.</s>COLLINS: Yes. Good reminder there. Also remind us of what we should be doing to prevent swine flu. A lot of hand washing and coughing in our elbow or arm, right?</s>COHEN: That's right. You just named two of them. There are really three basic things you should think about doing. First of all, you should think about washing your hands frequently with hand sanitizer or soap and water. Don't go out if you're sick. Don't go to work. Don't send your kids to school. You're just going to make the problem worse for yourself and for other people. Also cough or sneeze into your sleeve, not into your hands.</s>COLLINS: Yes. Very good. All right. Elizabeth Cohen, our senior medical correspondent. Sure do appreciate that. President Obama taps one of his top money man for a second term now. Just last hour, the president nominated Ben Bernanke to remain as the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Bernanke has gotten mostly positive remarks for his handling of the financial crisis and the nation's worst recession since the 1930s.</s>BEN BERNANKE, CHAIRMAN, U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE: The Federal Reserve, like other economic policymakers, has been challenged by the unprecedented events of the past few years. We have a goal and deliberate circumstances demanded, but our objective remains constant. To restore a more stable, financial and economic environment in which opportunity can again flourish and in which Americans' hard work and creativity can receive their proper rewards.</s>COLLINS: The Senate will need to confirm Bernanke, of course, into a second four-year term and then later CNN's Stephanie Elam is going to be talking with us a little bit more about Ben Bernanke. That will come your way on the back half of this hour. Homeowners take heart, we have some encouraging news to share. Just last hour we learned the U.S. home prices gained some ground from the first quarter of the year to the second. The first quarterly increase in three years, in fact. It adds to the optimism that the housing crisis may be easing, but we still have to give you this reality check. Last quarter's home prices are still down 15 percent from one year ago. We are following another money matter this morning, the national deficit. As an American how much debt are you and your grandchildren facing? Just in now the congressional budget analysts say deficits over the next decade will total $7.1 trillion. Christine Romans is part of the CNN money team and she's joining us from New York this morning. We have those numbers right, Christine?</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, what we are expecting they had for some time the White House had said $7.1 trillion will be the 10-year deficit. We expect them actually to raise that to about $9 trillion. So think of that 10 years, over 10 years a budget deficit of $9 trillion, what does that mean? Well, this is how you measure I guess the books of the country. The money that's going out and the money that is coming in.</s>COLLINS: Do me a favor, Christine. Let's remind everybody the difference between deficit and debt. Because I'm not quite sure people totally get that and why it's important.</s>ROMANS: The deficit is the difference right now between what our government is spending every month and what we're taking in every month. So what we know is that we're spending way, way more every single month than we are taking in. We are spending on a far-reaching expensive program to try to remake and rescue the American economy. The sky rocketing spending on unemployment benefits, health care, bailout programs and a lot of different bailout programs, frankly, a lot of different things. At the same time, revenue is plunging. The tax receipts that are coming into the government are plunging. So we're spending more. I mean, think of it what your own books look like at home. You know, money coming in is less because of the declining income and payroll taxes, those are declining and that is hurting the government coffers. All kinds of non-wage income, the recession has hurt and also the stimulus tax credit, people aren't spending as much on taxes because part of the stimulus was to give a big tax break there. So, the money that's coming in is far, far less than the money that's going out and over 10 years that deficit could be like $9 trillion. What's the debt? The national debt, this is all the money that we have already spent that we haven't paid for and that is about 11, more than $11 trillion, almost $12 trillion. I mean, it goes up by the second, frankly. That's a growing, growing number. That's what we have already spent that we haven't paid for as soon as we borrow that. We borrow that from ourselves and we borrow that from overseas lenders, from foreign governments. We issue treasury bonds and we pay interest on it. The worry is you borrow so much money, Heidi, and then in the future you pay so much on interest that it starts to limit the amount of investment that you can do in your own economy.</s>COLLINS: Exactly this is why we talk about China so much.</s>ROMANS: Sure.</s>COLLINS: Interestingly, these numbers - this year's deficit will be less than what's predicted earlier?</s>ROMANS: It's interesting, a little bit less, and the reason why is because we expected we would be spending a lot more money on the bailouts to the banks, frankly, that we actually had to. And that's the small - I can't even call it a silver lining, really, because when you're talking about this much red ink there's very little optimism about it, but we didn't spend as much as we could have on the banking rescue and on some of the other bailouts and so that's why the numbers, while still humongous and still a record will not be quite as bad as we had thought before.</s>COLLINS: OK. All right. I understand what you're saying, I do. All right.</s>ROMANS: It's a lot of money and the calculation that they're making right now is that we have to spend a ton of money right now to get this economy fixed so that it can grow again in the future. That's what the gamble is here.</s>COLLINS: All right. Well, Christine Romans is watching all the numbers for us.</s>ROMANS: Sure.</s>COLLINS: We sure do appreciate that. In fact, we continue to watch the numbers as we check out the Dow Jones industrial average and you see there, up about 87 points or so, resting at 9,596. Pretty early in the trading day about 40 minutes, I should say. We'll continue to watch those numbers throughout the day. A model goes to court to unmask the blogger who is attacking her, now that blogger claims she has been wronged and she is going to sue.