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American Morning

Nicaraguan Diplomat Found Dead in New York; Avandia Pulled From Shelves in European Countries; New Tropical Storm Makes Its Way Across Caribbean; Robert Gates Weighs in on Afghanistan; "What the Pope Knew," a Special Investigation; Gates Want to Leave in 2011; Stakes High in Nevada Race; Healthier School Lunches; Tracking the Tropics

Aired September 24, 2010 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning to you, it's Friday, September 24th. Glad you're with us on this AMERICAN MORNING. I'm Kiran Chetry.

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. I'm John Roberts. Thanks so much for being with us. Here are this morning's top stories.

The diabetes drug, Avandia, pulled from the market in Europe. It's now available only in the United States. But here, they have put tough new restrictions on it. Regulators deciding the drug's health risks outweigh the potential benefits. Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta coming up with important medical information for the 600,000 Americans taking Avandia. He'll be coming our way in just a moment.

CHETRY: Also senate Democrats are deciding not to vote right now on extending middle class tax cuts. They say that they'd rather wait until after the November elections. It's leaving millions of Americans wondering what will become of their take home pay in 2011.

ROBERTS: And Defense Secretary Robert Gates weighing in on Bob Woodward's account of a battle royal within the Obama administration over afghan war strategy. Gates says the new book overplays the internal conflict.

CHETRY: And our top story this morning, the search is on for a killer after a shocking discovery not far from the United Nations right during the meeting of the General Assembly. A Nicaraguan diplomat who worked in New York for eight years was found dead in his Bronx apartment. It was a gruesome crime scene.

Susan Candiotti has the latest on the investigation. We learned some information about a possible motive. What are police saying.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're now saying they don't know exactly why it happened. But they're saying there was no evidence of a robbery. Again this leaves open other possibilities and they're looking into a number of them.

But we can tell you they found a bloody scene at the small studio apartment where this young diplomat lived, 34-year-old Cesar Mercado. He worked at the Nicaraguan mission here in New York for eight years. His body was found yesterday morning when the driver came to pick him up. The front door was closed, but not locked.

And when they went inside, they found the body just inside the door. They found two knives. His throat had been slashed and he'd been stabbed in the stomach. The knives were not next to the body, they were, interestingly, in the bathroom. One knife was a 12-inch knife, a steak knife, and a smaller paring knife was found in the sink, which was described by police as filled with blood.

So now police have to track down, you know, how this could've happened, what other possibilities are involved here? What led to this? And it's just a mystery right now.

ROBERTS: Other than the obvious, the knives and the body, what else would police have removed from the apartment to examine this?

CANDIOTTI: Well, one thing they'd want to look at certainly is look at his phone records, look at a computer, talk to people who knew him to see obviously whether he had any enemies, this kind of thing. I can tell you that neighbors certainly in that building are absolutely stunned about what happened and so are his colleagues who work with him.

And they said he was at work just the day before. One of his colleagues at the mission said this, quote, "We have absolutely no clue what would be the reasons for what would apparently be a horrendous murder, but forensics will tell the story."

CHETRY: So the police investigators took his car, as well.

CANDIOTTI: They did, which had diplomatic plates on it. Of course, the driver came to pick him up. So whether they've established the time of death is still something we're trying to find out.

ROBERTS: Susan, thanks.

Now to an AMERICAN MORNING health alert, the potential life and death decision now facing hundreds of thousands of diabetics in America who are taking the drug Avandia. Avandia has now been banned in Europe. And here in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration says new patients who want the drug will face tough restrictions.

Our chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us live this morning from the CNN center in Atlanta. This has been a controversial drug, the focus of a lot of reports and concern. Now something's being done, Sanjay.

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. This is a medication that showed a lot of promise, a lot of diabetics looking for different types of medications.

Really back more than three years ago now, there were concerns that were raised. Could there be a link to heart attacks, heart problems with this particular medication? There were hearings in July of this year and people have been waiting for a decision for some time now.

The decision sort of as you say, two parts to it. One is that patients who are currently taking Avandia, they can stay on this medication as long as they sign a waiver that says that they are aware of the health risks that we're talking about specifically.

New patients have to go through a process. And this process has to be developed by the drug company. That's going to be forthcoming. But basically in a nutshell, they have to simply prove that other medications that exist to treat diabetes don't work. And that's sort of the conclusion the FDA came to.

So it's a pretty strict thing in they're not pulling it from the market, but they're going to greatly limit how much of this Avandia is out there in the United States.

ROBERTS: In Europe, quite a different story. What happened there?

GUPTA: Yes, you know, this is one of those interesting things. I think it shows how scientists can look at the same evidence and they come to the same conclusion, but they weight it a little bit differently.

So in Europe, Avandia's not going to be available at all. It's not going to be available. Obviously there's going to be no advertisements. It's been pulled completely.

You know, both the European -- sort of the equivalent of the FDA in Europe and the FDA had conversations. They tried to coordinate how they were going to approach Avandia, but in the end, they came to slightly different conclusions here. In the United States, they want to keep it as part of the arsenal, but just limit it.

ROBERTS: Now, when it comes to the dangers, what are they? What are they, and people who are going to say on Avandia, what should they be watching for?

GUPTA: Well, one thing worth pointing out, it's a bit controversial as to exactly what the dangers are and how much the dangers are there. The company itself Glaxo-Smith-Klein, we talked to them, and they released a statement specifically saying Avandia is going to remain a good treatment for diabetes.

But the concern from scientists is twofold. One is that is this a medication that causes fluid retention in the body that is profound enough to actually cause heart problems? That's the issue.

But John, as you know, this issue always comes up. You have someone treated for diabetes, they're taking the medication. Diabetes can cause heart problems. So is it the diabetes or the medication? In this case they compared Avandia to other existing diabetes medications and found that Avandia still posed this risk. It wasn't the disease itself, it was more the drug, John.

ROBERTS: Good information this morning from Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Doc, thanks so much.

GUPTA: Thank you.

CHETRY: Well, it didn't take long for president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to clear a few seats at the U.N. General Assembly. Ahmadinejad in a fiery speech yesterday slammed Washington, criticized capitalism, and took a few shots at the world body itself.

But it was his statement about 9/11 that got all of the headlines, proving to be the most outrageous. The Iranian leader insisting, quote, "Some segments within the U.S. organization orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order to save the Zionist regime.

The majority of most American people as well as most nations and politicians around the world agree with this view."

Well, apparently not. The remarks sent European and U.S. delegates to the hall in protest. We got word from the EU. They put out a statement calling the 9/11 remarks by Ahmadinejad, quote, "outrageous and unacceptable."

ROBERTS: The first woman executed in Virginia in nearly 100 years. Teresa Lewis was put to death by lethal injection last night. Lewis was convicted of hiring two men to kill her husband and stepson in 2002 for insurance money. Her case grabbed international attention because defense attorneys had argued that Lewis was borderline mentally disabled.

CHETRY: Seven minutes past the hour now to politics and your paycheck. Are they on a collision course this morning? Well, Senate Democrats have decided not to vote on extending middle class tax cuts until after the November elections. In other words, your take home pay hangs in the balance come January 1st.

Brianna Keilar's live from Washington this morning. And there's a chance it could go right down to the wire. There's a chance nothing could get done. What's going on right now?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Democratic leaders are saying that they couldn't get this done because they were getting no support from Republicans, Kiran.

But what you have is a split in the Democratic Party that put off dealing with these Bush era tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year, to put that after until after the November election. Most Democrats said, hey, let's get behind President Obama's plan. We'll keep in place those tax cuts for Americans who make $250,000 or less and then let those tax cuts for those making more expire come the new year.

And they said if Republicans vote against it, we can slam them for holding tax cuts for the middle class tax cuts hostage for the wealthy.

But the thing was, there was a small minority of Democrats who say this is a bad idea. They're vulnerable Democrats fighting for reelection. And they basically said, look, we're fighting for our political lives. Don't give our GOP opponents the ability to say we're raising taxes during a bad economy. And so we're seeing this kick down the road after the election on these tax cuts, Kiran.

CHETRY: So interesting, though, because there are many in the Democratic Party and some, you know, Democratic pundits who say this is the key issue to get behind. This is really here in black and white. It's a winning situation for Democrats. Yet it doesn't appear that's how some of them feel as they head into, as you said these midterms and hotly contested districts.

KEILAR: We also had some Democrats who said they felt like they were winning on the messaging here that they felt they were aligning themselves with the middle class on these tax cuts. And so they're saying, let's win on that messaging, but we also don't have to make these really vulnerable Democrats make this tough vote, because some of them were saying right away we're going to be having ads up from our Republican opponents who say, look, the Democrat is raising taxes during a bad economy. And they felt like they were going to pay dearly for it in November.

CHETRY: We'll see what happens after the elections. People take the vote then and we'll see. Thanks, Brianna.

ROBERTS: Also new this morning, the Justice Department objecting to a request filed in federal court by log cabin Republicans for an immediate halt to the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays. The White House says it is committed to a repeal, but that terminating the 17-year-old policy immediately would be untenable and could put service members at risk.

CHETRY: This is a flight delay you don't want. The three astronauts were heading home from the International Space Station, but NASA says that the spacecraft got stuck while it was trying to undock from the space station last night. NASA engineers are trying to figure out what's wrong. The astronauts are going to give it a try again. They could be on their way home tonight.

ROBERTS: That's a heck of a place to get stuck.

Facebook, the social networking site was down again yesterday. Technical problems are being blamed, Facebook calling the two and a half hour crash the worst it's had in four years. On Wednesday, company executives say a third party network provider caused another lengthy outage.

Oregon Public Broadcasting put its tongue in cheek putting out a breaking news bulletin that read "Worker productivity rises. U.S. climbs out of recession."

CHETRY: It may be a little bit of truth to that. People spend a lot of time on Facebook.

ROBERTS: Unbelievable how much time they spend on Facebook, on Twitter, texting each other, you know, the devices always in the hand. CHETRY: Yes.

ROBERTS: Does anybody read anymore?

CHETRY: And it's not always about work, you know. Not always discussing work issues.

ROBERTS: I would hardly think they are discussing work at all.

CHETRY: Well, we have our 13th named storm crossing the Caribbean, tropical storm Matthew roaring towards Central America this morning. It could make a turn for the southeast United States next week. Rob's been keeping an eye on it. The extreme weather center is where he is this morning. We're talking about hurricane hunter aircraft going in --

ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I'm just updating my status there talking about the weekend there.

CHETRY: But when you tweet or Facebook, you're actually giving us weather info.

MARCIANO: I get annoyed when people give me useless information. So I try to put out useful information. So yes, we'll be tweeting about Matthew throughout the weekend and into next week.

We've got this tropical storm that's blown up. And look at the satellite really exploded here. We've got winds at 50 miles an hour. We'll be increasing lightly over the next day or two. As it begins to head towards the -- the Yucatan peninsula and Honduras-Nicaragua border. So we'll do that tomorrow as a potentially strong tropical storm.

And we don't know what happens after that. It could get to the Gulf of Mexico, and once it does that, then all bets are off because you're pretty much surrounded by land, and the U.S. impact would certainly be in play next week.

Of greater concern immediately as the rainfall happening across parts of Wisconsin. Check out some of the video coming out of Arcadia, Wisconsin, yesterday. Evacuations in this town lies along the river. And it just, boom, up and over the banks with over a half a foot of rainfall in less than a 48-hour period. And there are a number of counties along the Wisconsin River that will be in flood stage as we get to Sunday. We could see flooding as bad as we saw back in 1993.

Meanwhile, also, record heat across the eastern third of the country. All that and much, much more to come and multiple tweets between now and our next hit in the next 30 minutes.

CHETRY: Thanks, Rob.

ROBERTS: Thanks, Rob.

Coming up on the Most News in the Morning, the war within the White House. Bob Woodward's new book reveals internal battles over U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Now Defense Security Robert Gates is answering back. We'll have that answer coming right up. It's 13 minutes after the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHETRY: Sixteen minutes past the hour. Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING.

Stories we're watching this Friday. Police in San Antonio releasing a tape that featured a little bit of a brawl on a bus between two moms. One of them had a baby strapped to her chest when it happened. The city recently announced a new code of conduct for bus riders. And they're using this video from back in 2009 as an example of how not to behave.

Well, a tense three minutes, 23 stories above the city of Buffalo. The French daredevil completing a high wire walk between the twin statues of the city's Liberty building last night. He's not done yet. Let's take a look. There he is, there he is. There he is. He's got three high-wire walks, he says, planned in Niagara Falls on Sunday.

ROBERTS: He's got a safety harness on. What kind of a challenge is that?

CHETRY: Yes, I know, that's a piece of cake.

ROBERTS: Come on, anybody could do that.

CHETRY: We can do that with our eyes closed in high heels.

ROBERTS: And how about that brawl on the bus with the baby?

CHETRY: Yes. What not to do.

ROBERTS: Come on.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the president's new Afghan strategy is working. And he doesn't expect major changes after an upcoming review in December. He says the U.S. and its allies are making slow, tough progress in the war zone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT GATES, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I believe that actually this is one of those instances where the closer you are to the front line in some respects, the better it looks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: Secretary Gates is also weighing in on Bob Woodward's new book detailing indecision and infighting at the White House over the war strategy. Chris Lawrence is live at the Pentagon for us this morning. What's the secretary saying about "Obama's Wars"? CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, he was pretty blunt. You know, he said the first phases of this war back in 2001, 2002, he said we won that phase when the U.S. troops came in and kicked the Taliban out of Afghanistan, girls started going to school again. He was also very blunt in saying we didn't took our eye off the ball. We got distracted by Iraq. He says we're getting resource and fund the war in Afghanistan. And he was quite honest. He says, look, the Taliban came back in. He also said that really it hasn't been until about the last year and a half that he feels the war has been resourced to the point where they can make an actual change in Afghanistan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT GATES, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I would say since the beginning of 2009 with the president's first decision to add another 21,000 troops and then his decision in December to add another 30,000 and the increase in civilians that we have actually begun. And I would say a tripling of the foreign -- of our partners' troops, that we have actually got the resources in Afghanistan to partner with the Afghans and have some prospect of dealing with a resurgent Taliban.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAWRENCE: Again, getting the resources just last year for a nine-year war. He also seemed to telegraph a little bit about what we can expect in the coming months when this next strategy review happens in December. He says it's not going to be anything like the one that happened last year. More tweaks and changes. No wholesale strategy change. In fact, the defense official here in the building told me. He said, think of it like you're adjusting the old rabbit ears on your television, but not actually changing the channel -- John.

ROBERTS: All right. Chris Lawrence for us live at the Pentagon this morning. Chris, thanks.

This programming note, Bob Woodward is going to be Larry King's guest next week on Wednesday night, 9:00 Eastern right here on CNN.

CHETRY: All right. Well, when will he switch back to campaign mode? The architect of President Obama's 2008 run and one of his closest advisers in the West Wing now talking about his future this morning. David Axelrod's next move. It's 20 minutes past the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHETRY: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. Twenty- three minutes past the hour.

We've been following the story of the embattled mega church pastor, Eddie Long. He's going to be making his first public comments on this growing sex scandal from the pulpit Sunday. Through his attorneys, he's denied the claims in three lawsuits that he coerced young male church members into sex. Long has a congregation of more than 30,000 followers and he thanked people for their prayers and support in a Twitter message last night. ROBERTS: At the same time as Bishop Long is battling back against those charges, the Catholic church has been rocked by cases of priest sex abuse.

CHETRY: A CNN special investigation premiering this weekend raises some questions about what the pope knew and when during his time as a cardinal and Vatican official. Gary Tuchman joins us now with a preview of this special investigation.

Hey, Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Kiran and John, hello to you.

The reason we're doing this right now is that we've obtained some previously secret documents from the Vatican. These were documents that for 30 years were literally in Vatican safe. And what they show is that bishops throughout the United States were writing letters to Cardinal Ratzinger, who's today Pope Benedict when he was the head of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, desperately asking him to please get rid of defrocked priests in our diocese who have molested children.

In some cases, these priests were already in jail. In some cases, these priests wanted to be let go of their obligations. But what the documentation shows is that Cardinal Ratzinger slowed down or opposed the defrocking of these priests.

Now, one of the segments in our hour talks about Cardinal Ratzinger when he was the archbishop in Munich and back then, the Vatican does acknowledge that Cardinal Ratzinger allowed a molester priest to be in his archdiocese. The plan was not to let him be in a parish but to keep a careful eye on him and not tell the police, not tell the public.

Well, all the officials did a miserable job of keeping a careful eye on this man. He molested again. And in an hour, we talk to one of the victims of the priest and one of Cardinal Ratzinger now Pope Benedict's top officials in the Vatican.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Munich should have suspended him in 1980. Mr. Ratzinger or whoever should have made sure he was no longer involved in the church. Should have cut him off. This would have saved a lot of victims from him.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): The Vatican admits Cardinal Ratzinger approved Hullerman's transfer into his diocese in Munich, but says it was Ratzinger's deputy who placed the pedophile priest in a new parish. A decision the Vatican says Ratzinger was unaware of.

Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican's prosecutor, worked with the pope for years on sex abuse cases. When he sat down with me at the Vatican, it was his first-ever television interview on the pope's record. MONSIGNOR CHARLES SCICLUNA, VATICAN PROSECUTOR: Now, we're talking about a big, huge diocese with a minimum 1,000 priests. The archbishop of Munich probably needs a delegate. And he would then delegate his decisions and the follow-up, and two -- two other people.

TUCHMAN (on camera): That's totally understandable. But of those 1,000, I would bet you they're not that many sexual molesters. And it's probably pretty easy --

SCICLUNA: I hope not.

TUCHMAN: That's right. It's probably pretty easy to keep track of sexual molesters. And my question for you is maybe it's possible that could Cardinal Ratzinger have done a better job keeping track of sexual molesters?

SCICLUNA: Knowing Cardinal Ratzinger when he delegates something, then you feel that you are responsible. Now, it is very sad -- it is very sad to delegate things to people and they put you down. What do you do? You are frustrated.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If Cardinal Ratzinger in Munich did not know about Father Peter Hullerman, he should have. That's one of the things that an archbishop does. You always know where your priests are. He wasn't minding the store.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHETRY: So, you know, that seems very damning that, you know, it was all about delegation in some cases some would say passing the buck. Anything good come out of this?

TUCHMAN: I think it's fair to say that since the Cardinal Ratzinger has been Pope Benedict, he's done more than any other pope to combat child abuse, sexual abuse. He's met with victims. He's made public apologies. But what's noteworthy is that, you know, these documents, we have half a signature on them. And he's never made a personal apology.

ROBERTS: Yes, I was wondering about that.

TUCHMAN: He's never made a personal apology. And a lot of the victims we talked to in this hour, they didn't know about these things until we showed them the documents. And I felt terrible about that because they've gone through so many years -- in some cases, 30 years. In this documentary, we talked to a deaf man who went to a deaf school. Two hundred deaf children were molested by one priest and there was a delay in defrocking this man. And these poor men were so vulnerable they couldn't hear, they couldn't talk and they were being children they were being repeatedly molested.

ROBERTS: So Pope Benedict doesn't mean any kind of personal apology, but has he accepted some sort of personal culpability in all this?

TUCHMAN: No personal culpability. Certainly culpability on behalf of the entire Catholic church. And there's no -- what's very important is this documentary, we are in no way trying to slam the institution of the Catholic church. It's an amazing institution that gives comfort and faith to hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. But we are slamming very severely these child molesters and people who should have and could have done more for the children.

CHETRY: Gary Tuchman. It'll be very interesting. We'll be watching.

TUCHMAN: Thank you.

CHETRY: Thanks so much.

ROBERTS: Good job, Gary.

CHETRY: And just a programming note, you can catch this. It's a CNN special investigation, "What the Pope Knew" in its entirety. It's Saturday and Sunday night, 8:00 Eastern right here on CNN.

We'll take a quick break. Twenty-eight minutes past the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHETRY: Thirty minutes past the hour. Time for a look at our top stories.

The FDA's putting new restrictions on the popular diabetes drug, Avandia. And Europe choosing to completely pull it off the market. Doctors in the U.S. now told to prescribe it only as a last resort to certain patients.

ROBERTS: Eddie Fisher, one of the most popular singers of the 1950s has passed away. Affiliate KTLA says he suffered from complications of hip surgery. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One for the millions of records that he sold and another for television. But his biggest claim to fame may be his high-profile marriages to stars like Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, and Connie Stevens. Eddie Fisher died at the age of 82.

CHETRY: And Stephen Colbert goes to Washington. He's the host of "Colbert Report" on Comedy Central. He's going to be testifying on something quite serious. An expert witness today on Capitol Hill today on a hearing on illegal immigration. He spent a day last month picking vegetables on a farm in upstate New York. Part of a campaign to invite U.S. citizens to replace illegal immigrants who work on farms.

ROBERTS: Well, the man who built President Obama's historic 2008 presidential campaign is already thinking repeat. Senior adviser David Axelrod talked about his future yesterday saying that he'll leave the West Wing, sometime 2011 to work on the 2012 campaign. But he didn't nail down an exact date on when he'd depart from the White House.

CHETRY: And we're also following another White House departure, Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying that he wants to leave next year. Our senior political editor Mark Preston is following that for us live at the cnnpolitics.com desk.

It's not a mass exodus, but it seems like we've been talking about one after the other the past few days.

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL EDITOR: We sure have, Kiran. We sure have, John. You know, we often see this in an administration, you know, a couple of years in, the people who were with the president in the first couple of years tend to leave. They want to get out before the new re-election campaign begins.

And in fact, that's what we heard from Robert Gates yesterday. You know, his timing, he thinks is that if he gets out in 2011, the confirmation process for a new secretary of defense will not get caught up in politics. There is a very complicating factor, though. As you know, the president is talking about drawing down some of the 30,000 troops that he has sent to Afghanistan for the Afghanistan war.

You know, our own Adam Levine, who is the supervising producer down at the Pentagon has a great story right now on cnnpolitics.com which really kind of caves into Gates' thinking on whether he stays or whether he goes. So still up in the air exactly the timing on that but Gates is certainly looking for the exit.

Let's move on to the White House a little bit, as well. You talk about Larry Summers who is one of, if not the top economic adviser for President Obama. Well, he's leaving, as well. And we're starting to hear from Wall Street executives that, in fact, you know, President Obama might want to look to the business community for some help with his economic team. We have a great story on cnnmoney.com, which has crossed over to our cnnpolitics site. And we have CEOs talking about the fact that in order to have a real strong robust in varied economic teams, not only do you reach out to academic institutions, you need to reach out to the business community. So a great story on that.

Check it out on cnnpolitics.com. And let's close with this. You might want to chew your Tivo over the next 39 days or so if you're not a political junkie. So far we've seen $140 million worth of ads being run by special interest groups. 167 special interest groups, that is. And we expect that to more than double as we head into election day.

In fact, Evan Tracy (ph), who is our friend here on "American Morning" and here on CNN politics, he says expect to see more groups, more ads, and just a whole blanketing of these political commercials as we head into election day. So if you're not a political junkie, you might want to turn the Tivo on. John, Kiran.

ROBERTS: No question. One group of people who really love the ad season, television stations who get all that revenue coming in.

PRESTON: Absolutely. Make lots of money.

ROBERTS: Sure does.

Mark, thanks so much. We're going to check back in with Mark in our next hour. And a reminder for all the latest political news, go to our web site, cnnpolitics.com. Nobody does it better.

CHETRY: Well, the only person living in a 125-unit condo high- rise in Florida says, "well, my lonely days are over this morning" -- almost. You may remember the story. Construction started on the building in '05. By the time it was done in '08, the real estate market had tanked. Both buyers could not close a deal. All but one guy. Well, now the new owners are auctioning off the units, many at deep discounts to people who originally put down deposits.

ROBERTS: Lovely looking building. I particularly like the spigot in the kitchen. It's my favorite kind.

Surfing the clouds. Jetblue is the latest carrier planning to offer wi-fi in the sky. The airline says that the installation of a new fleet wide satellite system is going to start by the end of 2012. 2012?

CHETRY: Yes, that seems a little --

ROBERTS: Get with the program, guys. It's 2010. Come on. Two years? What's taking them so long?

CHETRY: They've got a lot of planes in that fleet.

Well, still to come. The stakes are high in Nevada's Senate race. The tea party's Sharron Angle threatening to unseat Senate majority leader Harry Reid. The interesting thing, though, was that no one's really popular in the polls right there in that state. So how this outcome could impact the next presidential election. We're going to talk about it, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHETRY: Thirty-eight minutes past the hour right now. Time for this morning's top stories. The FDA putting new restrictions on the popular diabetes drug , Avandia. It was completely pulled off the market in Europe. Doctors in the U.S. now prescribing it only as a last resort.

And you know what? We are going to switch to politics right now, as well. If you think of this year's midterm elections in terms of a chess match, a GOP win in the Nevada Senate race could mean check mate for the Democrats. At stake, in the battle between tea party favorite Sharron Angle and majority leader, Harry Reid, potential control of the U.S. Senate.

Let's take a look at the latest CNN-Time Opinion Research Corporation poll. With Angle having a one-point lead right now over Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Political analyst and editor of "Las Vegas City Life" Steve Sebelius joins us to break it down. He's live in Las Vegas this morning. So, first of all, thanks for getting up with us

STEVE SEBELIUS, "LAS VEGAS CITY LIFE," EDITOR: No problem. Glad to be here. CHETRY: When you look at those numbers, Steve, no one's hitting it out of the park six weeks before election day. What's going on in Nevada right now that's behind those numbers?

SEBELIUS: Well, I think the number one factor is Harry Reid's unpopularity -- his unfavorables are at 52 percent. Normally, that's fatal for a politician. Time to call the moving van. But in this race, Harry Reid kind of lucked out because Sharron Angle has a lot of baggage and he's been bringing them out the whole time. So her unfavorables have been rising as his ads have exposed some of the things that she has said. So neither candidate is very popular, but neither candidate can really pull away either.

CHETRY: It's interesting because let's pop up that graphic one more time. You see the none of the above, which is interesting, Nevada, the only state that allows none of the above, right, to be on the ballot. It's pretty high. I mean 11 percent right now. Not undecided, but no, that they're not voting for anybody. What does that do to the race? Who does that favor?

SEBELIUS: That actually favors Harry Reid because any vote for anyone but Sharron Angle helps Harry Reid. There's a minor party candidates, none of the above will do better than it's probably ever done before in Nevada. I don't know if it'll get to 11 percent. But certainly it's going to be higher than it normally is as a protest vote saying "we don't like Harry Reid, but we really don't like Sharron Angle either, so we're not going to vote for either of them."

CHETRY: So it sort of seems like a bad move on the part of Republicans. I know there was a big tea party surge and a lot of money in there for Sharron Angle, but some buyers' remorse, because if it would have been another more mainstream GOP candidate, this probably wouldn't even be close.

SEBELIUS: I think you're right. Now, Harry Reid would've gone after whoever came out of that primary. And their negatives would have been driven up, as well. But candidates who ran in the primary, such as Sue Lowden, who is a Las Vegas businesswoman, Danny Tarkanian, who is the son of the former coach, or even John Chachas, who is a Wall Street investment banker. I've got to believe that all those candidates are doing far better against Harry Reid than Sharron Angle has done. Just not having her baggage to exploit.

CHETRY: Right. Just to give people an example when you say her baggage -- she 's not necessarily appealing to independents with some of the things that she's said. She called the BP oil spill victims' account a slush fund. She has said as your senator, I'm not in the business of creating jobs. She was in a radio interview insisting that a young girl who was raped by her father should not be allowed to have an abortion saying two wrongs don't make a right and that you can make lemons out of lemonade.

I mean, regardless on where you stand on the issue, it didn't come out right. I guess you could say. But Harry Reid has also had his share of flubs, as well and angered people. He also said something in one speech. "Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today which is really good."

SEBELIUS: Yes, Harry Reid, I think, in that case, that's probably the least of his gaffes. What he was trying to say is that the number of jobs lost there isn't as bad as we expected. But think about some of the other things that Harry Reid had said. He called one of his fellow United States senators hot. He said that Barack Obama is great because he doesn't have a Negro dialect. He said the war is lost. That's something that's definitely come back to haunt him.

Harry Reid's aides, believe me, they get nervous every time he's around a microphone. I think they're probably the biggest fans of health care reform because they're worried about having a heart attack every time Harry Reid speaks. You never know what the guy's going to say. And in that he shares a little bit of that with Sharron Angle, his opponent.

CHETRY: So there you go and that's why none of the above is high right now in terms of the ticket. Unemployment, also the highest in the nation in Nevada right now. I think you guys are at 14.4 percent. How much of the anger is about the lack of answers in terms of unemployment?

SEBELIUS: I think that's a key factor. I think there was a poll in the "Las Vegas Review Journal" here, conducted by Mason-Dixon that showed 71 percent of all Nevadans think that's the biggest issue facing the states, 72 percent, biggest issues facing the country. That's what people are really concerned about.

So to an extent, all these ancillary issues, immigration and all of the gaffes that the candidates have made on the campaign trail are really irrelevant to people who are looking for jobs who can't find jobs and that, I think, has bedeviled Harry Reid. That's one of the reasons that his numbers aren't higher and Sharron Angle's been able to exploit that a little bit. If that's what the voters go to the polls to decide the election, Harry Reid could definitely lose.

CHETRY: And that's the other thing that seems to break in her favor even those these polls are quiet tight is that the anti- incumbent mood is probably at an all-time high, at least what we've seen in decades. Yet Harry Reid has been in Congress since 1992. So you know, how is he proving, hey, put me back in there? I'll do a better job this time helping you guys get jobs.

SEBELIUS: Well, he's really having a difficult time proving that. Harry Reid has not only been in Congress a long time, but he's also the majority leader of the Democrats in the Senate. He's tied to the Barack Obama agenda. And now even democrats are coming out and saying, look, the president's been focusing on a lot of things, health care and what not. But we need him to focus on jobs. We need our incumbents to focus on jobs because that's the number one issue we're facing, certainly Nevada and the rest of the country.

And Harry Reid, I think, is having a difficult time doing it. He can talk about the stimulus. They just passed a jobs bill that he says will give people jobs. But right now as you mentioned the unemployment rate is so high that people are focused on that, I think, to the exclusion of everything else.

CHETRY: All right. Bottom line, you are so close to this. You followed it. Is he going to pull out a win in the end?

SEBELIUS: Well, we're in Las Vegas. If I was a betting man, I would bet on Harry Reid, but I wouldn't bet on a margin of victory more than say three percent. The minor party candidates none of the above are going to draw some votes, but Sharron Angle is definitely within a striking distance.

She's a definitely a factor. She can win, and I think Harry Reid's staff knows that and so they've been playing this race very tight. I think Harry Reid, ultimately, though, will pull it out.

CHETRY: All right, well, it's great to get your take this morning. Steve Sebelius, editor of Las Vegas "Citylights" and a political analyst. Thank you.

SEBELIUS: Great to be with you, thanks.

ROBERTS: Coming up, American hiker Sarah Shourd. She spent 410 days behind bars in Iran before being released 10 days ago. She joins us live coming up at 8:10 Eastern. That's just about 25 minutes from now.

And dangerous flooding in the upper Midwest this morning how does the rest of the nation look this weekend? Rob's got the forecast right after the break. It's now 46 minutes after the hour.

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ROBERTS: Coming up now at 11 minutes to the top of the hour, we're going to get a quick check of the morning's weather headlines. Rob Marciano in Atlanta starting -- where are we starting? You had a map of the tropics up a second ago.

ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Did I throw you there? Well, you know, listen, I adapt. It's Friday, we'll work with you here, John and Kiran, we'll start with Tropical Storm Matthew, 50-mile-an- hour winds right now. This thing blew up yesterday and it's about to come onshore Nicaragua and Honduras about 200 miles east of the border there.

Moving very quickly so they're getting hit with a strong tropical storm here tomorrow as it looks like when it's going to hit land and this is what it does. Over the next few days, kind of gets up into Belize, Yucatan Peninsula. Where it goes after that, not too sure, but if it does get into the Gulf of Mexico, pretty good chance of that happening one way, shape, or form next week.

Then we've got some problems, anywhere from Florida to Texas coastline so definitely keeping an eye on that very much. So also keeping an eye on what's going on across the Midwest, a lot of flood watches and warnings out actually for rivers on the rise.

Check out what happened in Minnesota yesterday. South of Minneapolis is where most of the rainfall was in some cases well over half a foot up to 9 or 10 inches up to a 48-hour period, rivers up and over their banks there in Blue Earth County.

That's the result there so not a whole lot more rain expected for you folks. But there are a lot of rivers, including the Wisconsin River is not forecast to crest until tomorrow or Sunday.

Here's some of the rainfall estimates Rochester, north, over 6 inches in the pink areas radar estimating eight inches or so. The other big story is the heat, 96 degrees in yesterday. It was 93 degrees in D.C. At Dulles, 56 days this year where it's been over 90 degrees. That's a record on top of it being the hottest summer on record.

And now we're well into the second full day of fall and going to be 95 or so in D.C. Try to stay cool guys. We'll have snow before too long. Don't you worry.

CHETRY: Thank goodness. We don't want our pumpkins get sunburned out there in D.C.

MARCIANO: No, no. Sauce them up.

CHETRY: Thanks, Rob.

Well, healthy meals make healthier kids? Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to tells us about a new battle plan for the school lunches in his "Fit Nation" report. It's 50 minutes past the hour.

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ROBERTS: It's 54 minutes past the hour right now. First lady Michelle Obama has made it her mission to try to end childhood obesity. Well, now Congress is trying to do it its part by making school lunches healthier.

ROBERTS: Our chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now with details and Sanjay, there's an awful lot at stake here when it comes to the health of our kids.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: There really is and you know, I think a lot of people hear that we're doing a segment on school lunches and maybe their eyes start to glaze over thinking that we talk about this all the time, but if you dig into the story a little bit deeper, it is quite interesting.

First of all, you know, there are 100 retired generals and admirals who are weighing in on this. Retired generals and admirals writing letters to the congressmen and congresswomen saying, you know, look, the school lunches are a real problem here.

And now they've joined with Tom Vilsack who's the agricultural secretary to try and get this Childhood Nutrition Act passed by next week. Why the military folks are so involved is they're saying specifically that if you look at people between the ages of 17 and 24, more than a quarter of them are simply unfit to serve.

They're unfit to serve in the military because they're too overweight. Think about that. More than a quarter young adults unfit to serve and they really -- when they start to really dissect the problem, they point a lot of fingers at school lunches and that's why this issue is coming up specifically.

About 40 percent of a child's calories during those formative years come from school lunches and they really are focused on this particular issue because I think if they can start to reform that then they can start to address this problem.

Parents have a certain expectation in terms of what the food is in those school lunches and what we're coming to learn is that it's a lot of times the school lunches aren't very good at all. They exceed a lot of the requirements in terms of saturated fats, in terms of sodium, in terms of sugar and that's a real problem.

CHETRY: We talk about unhealthy school lunches and you take a look at some of these menus and you're thinking how could anybody think that's a good idea for your kids to eat? What did you find that was -- to you?

GUPTA: Well, first of all, a lot of schools did not want the show us their menus because I think in part because of this very issue. I'm a parent who now has kids in school and I, again, I'd like to think that the lunch they're offering is going to be pretty healthy.

But first of all, you know, 67 percent, about two thirds exceeded the dietary guidelines for fat intake. That's a starting point, 72 percent exceeded the salt requirements. A typical menu, for example, on a day like Friday, they had a choice of a hamburger, (inaudible) with salsa, a chicken corndog.