used. we ll give you a close look at this extraordinary piece of american history. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. let s begin this hour with the breaking news. algeria s official news agency has just announced the end of a rescue operation aimed at freeing hostages, including americans held by islamic militants. u.s. government officials tell cnn that may not necessarily, though, be the case. let s get straight to our pentagon correspondent chris lawrence working this story for us. chris, be what is the very latest that you re hearing? wolf, the latest that we re getting from u.s. officials is that some americans may have escaped but some may still be held by those hostage takers and they are still seeing signs perhaps of some intermittent fighting, suggesting that perhaps this isn t over yet. as the hostage situation stretched to a second day, u.s. officials scrambled to find a resolution and determine the state of the americans still in militant hands
0 restricting high-capacity clips, some republican lawmakers are now warning a limit on one kind of big magazine just means more smaller magazines in the future. a ban on certain kind of magazines means more magazines. anyone who s trained at all, as i know from my time in the army, can change a magazine in one to two seconds. a ban on so-called assault weapons, in connecticut there already was a ban on assault weapons and adam lanza was still able to obtain one. freedom group filed a lawsuit against president obama. that lawsuit alleged the task force vice president biden was leading about reducing gun violence should have included public input. back to you in new york. sthoeup let s talk a steve: here in new york the legislature passed what governor cuomo is referring to as the toughest gun laws in the country. there is an assault weapons ban if it includes at least one military feature. what i m talking about, let s take a look at a graphic. you see the mr-1 rifle. it s got a
the reporting is that the local police officer said, this is campus police, said do you want a 72-hour mental health evaluation, a 72-hour detention, and she was dr. lynn fenton was empowered to order such a hold, but they say the cop had no reason to order such a hold herself and were deferring to the doctor s judgment. the doctor said, he s already put in his notice that he s withdrawing from the university, so they said the hold wasn t necessary. i mean, does a campus psychiatrist, mark, have an obligation to the community, not just the campus in. to me, the answer is, yes. i just can t get past that the facts are that black and white, they re that perfect. but if those are the megyn: i get ya, we don t know until we hear it ourselves in court. let me tell you, megyn, if there s ever a time when we re going to truly hear what happened and come back and go, ooh, i shouldn t have thrown that psychiatrist under the bus, this may be the case. but, yes, i ll play along, and if th
i don t believe they had to arrest him megyn: they could monitor him? could they monitor him? what could they do to sort of watch out to make sure he wasn t exactly. they could have monitored him. they could have put him in that 72-hour psych evaluation. that could have really led to preventing isn t there a difference between a patient saying, you know what and sometimes. there s even sometimes i feel like harming myself and even hundreds of people versus him saying i am going to harm hundreds of people very soon megyn: totally. and the difference, apparently, kicked in in his consultations with dr. fenton because she broke patient confidentiality and called the cops. and, megyn, in every jurisdiction there s a mental health law that says if someone says, hey, i m going to harm myself or others, you can put them under evaluation. megyn: what you re saying is that the cops were not empowered
an issue that s getting heightened attention, we have made clear, i think, in very stark terms our concern about it. i wouldn t want to characterize our assessments based on intelligence any more than that. megyn: conor powell covering syria life from our mideast bureau today. reporter: again, the white house reiterated its stance that the use of chemical weapons is a red line and there would be consequences. it appears, though, to have very little impact on the assad regime which we now have learned has begun preparing, mixing and loading gas into bombs to use on its own people. now, this comes as fighting is moving closer and closer to the rebel or to the assad strongholds in damascus. sarin gas is one of the most deadly chemical weapons in all of the world. it can kill within hours if this not treated, and it can kill dozens and hundreds and thousands at a time depending on how it is used. keep in mind, it only has a shelf life of about 60 days, so once you mix it, you