good morning. welcome. i m soledad o brien. welcome to starting point. we are coming to you from manchester, new hampshire. we are coming to you live from the airport diner. five day ways from primary day here. our starting point this morning is something that you are bogey to hear on the combine trail today which is the future of the american military. just about four hours president obama will reveal his plan for a slimmed-down force that will no longer be fighting two full-blown ground wars. digging into the details and talking a lot about it this morning. also, mitt romney, does he have a tea party problem? they didn t go away in iowa but could new hampshire be different? we are going to ask the tea party favorite and romney supporter christine o donnell this morning. and despite the sparring back in 2008 in this very state, senator john mccain is now backing mitt romney. he is going to join thus morning to tell us why. then oops, we deported your teenage daughter. a fa
surging along with his poll numbers, i understand. tell me more about that. that s right, they raised a million dollars in 24 hours after those iowa caucuses and he is fighting hard for votes here in new hampshire. you know, the conventional wisdom was, kyra, that he would spend more time in south carolina because that s where a lot of social conservatives are, not so much up here in new hampshire. but keep in mind, rick santorum has a rust belt republican approach to how he wants to go after votes here in this new hampshire primary. he s talking about giving tax breaks to the manufacturing industry to get them to have a rebound. he s also talking about tax breaks for middle class families, so, all of that really aimed at those sort of factory workers and lunch bucket republicans who work in a lot of these towns here in new hampshire. at a town hall event earlier this morning, he was talking about what the difference is between iowa and new hampshire and how he feels he sho
to south america. tonight mitt romney s feeling so confident about his chances here in new hampshire, he isn t even here. romney started a quick trip to south carolina this afternoon leaving his rivals to snipe at each other. newt gingrich belittled rick santorum s record going all the way back to when they served together in the house, back in the 1990s. gingrich then was speaker. if you think of us as partners, he would clearly in the historical experience would have been the junior partner. he s not a bad person, i want to be clear about this. well, senator santorum took offense at being labeled a junior partner. i was no junior partner in that. newt was not involved in that revolution when it came to the corruption and scandal. he sat on the sidelines. cnn s jim acosta keeping up with the increasingly pointed back and forth. romney s in the lead here. i assume if gingrich and santorum are going after each other, they think they ve got to fight for second or thir
to 14 years in prison for the murder of a black teenage, stevon moore, at least two decades ago. the judge said they committed a terrible and evil crime because of racial hatred. they were convicted with new forensic evidence that was not available back then. for the first time in more than 50 years, a british foreign secretary is in myanmar. william hague is meeting with government officials bringing a message of reform and offering britain s help. he s also meeting with pro-democracy leader aung san suu kyi. her party has been re-establi re-established and will be part of elections in april. those are the top stories from cnn. world business today starts right now. good morning from cnn london. i m charles hodson. and good afternoon from cnn hong kong, i m andrew stevens. you re watching world business today. our top stories this thursday, january 5th european investors are on edge as greece sounds the alarm and france faces a big test on the bond markets. a