settlement that some folks have missed is when was the last time you got 49 state attorneys general, 49 republicans and democrats having to do anything together? i think one of the important things here is this is a step towards doing big things across party lines. we ll leave it at that because end point ended a minute ago. fredricka whitfield i apologize for the 43 seconds i ve stolen from you. that s okay. that s okay. i m willing to share. captions by vitac www.vitac.com hello everyone, i m fredricka whitfield in for kyra phillips who s on assignment. we begin with whitney houston. as her family prepares for saturday s funeral, new details suggest troubling behavior in houston s final days. don lemon is in los angeles. what are you hearing about those final moments? reporter: some really sad information that i got yesterday from a source who is briefed on whitney houston s activity and behavior just days before her death. i m told that on wednesday and thu
had made its own nuclear fuel rods domestically for the first time. it was loading these into what it said was a reactor for medical purposes, not for nuclear weapons. but this is going to be watched very closely here in washington and in israel, of course, because the question is whether this development, this announcement of them being able to make their own nuclear fuel rods is actually the real deal. can they do it? do these fuel rods work? how good is the quality? is this another step potentially on iran s road to potentially making nuclear weapons? that s the key question for intelligence agencies right now. what does this all mean? iran s had a lot of problems with its nuclear efforts. are they really successful at this? have they made the decision to go forward. c.i.a. director david petraeus says one of the things he s watching very carefully is whether they re going to make that move to go for highly enriched uranium. that would be a significant step on the road to
international journalists. russian s foreign minister is in syria trying to keep it from being the latest arab government to fall. many world leaders say moscow is ignoring the slaughter of civilians. ivan watson is in istanbul, turkey, covering this for us. is there any optimism that russia can rein in this violence? reporter: that s a big question. the russian foreign minister definitely got a hero s welcome as he arrived in damascus. he seemed to be one of the biggest allies and friends of president bashar al-assad right now. the russian line has been that the western governments have not been putting enough pressure on the opposition groups to stop violence as well. if you want to know how wide the differentiation is between the two sides in syria, just about 100 miles away the artillery shells continue to rain on the opposition held city of homs where hundreds of civilians are believed to have died in just the past couple of days, kyra. now you re also seeing a growi
before this. but actually, the decision by secretary clinton was to allow them to shutter the embassy and the rest of the staff got out we re told in a convoy over land to jordan. now, the reason the u.s. is doing this, they say, is that the government has refused the syrian government has refused to address its security concerns. and what were they? well, the embassy in damascus is located right off on a very busy street. and the u.s. says there was concern after some car bombs last month that perhaps there could be the embassy could be a target of al qaeda. that bombing, by the way, was linked to al qaeda. so they decided to do this. but obviously there was a lot of concern about whether they could get out. so that staff includes as i said the remaining staff, 17 people, plus the ambassador are now out. kyra? and sort of a bit of a coins d dense here? this is right after syria and russia blocked the resolution calling for president assad to be removed from office. t
i m fredricka whitfield in for kyra phillips. we have a number of stories developing on this busy morning but we begin with your pocketbook. just minutes ago we learned the jobless rate has fallen to 8.3%. that s a pretty billing surprise seeing some economists expected it to tick up. let s get perspective from christine romans. what have you learned about how this number has gone down slightly? you know, the economy grew in january, and it grew jobs. it grew more jobs than anyone really thought. 243,000 jobs were created in january. the jobs growth, fredricka, was pretty widespread. in professional and business services, 70,000 jobs created. leisure, hospitality, health care again. but even manufacturing and health care jobs, those have been two bright spots the past couple of months. health care for maybe the past year or something. one thing that s interesting about these numbers is 243,000 jobs. we ve had a hard time having jobs growth like this and sustaining it. the