Today, tuesday, october 15th, 2013. Announcer from nbc news, this is today with matt lauer and Savannah Guthrie. Live from studio 1a in rockefeller plaza. And good morning, everyone. Welcome to today on a tuesday morning. Im Savannah Guthrie. Im matt lauer along side Natalie Morales and al roker. Its like you drew up the show today because you love technology. Oh, man. We have things on the show, later on well talk about break through inventions that will change your life and could change the world. And then another guest. I see your break through inventions and raise you one bionic man. We have a bionic man in the studio. This is as far as science can go to replicating a human body. He can do a lot of things. Well check him out. He looks like he is asleep. You have to wake him up. Well wake him up. Hes not a morning program. For the second straight night, emergency crews at l. A. X. Are dealing with homemade dry ice bombs. Tom could sstello is on the stor us. What can you tell us . They found dry ice bombs inside a plastic bottle like this one. It had gone off underneath a plane sitting at 148. Two other devices also found in a restroom but did not explode. This time there were no evacuations, no injuries and airport operations were not effected. This follows sunday evening when dry ice exploded inside a restroom that only employees have access to. That was in terminal two. No injuries and no significant damage although it temporarily shutdown a tsa checkpoint and delayed flights. Theyre now investigatiing incidents. Have they said anything about whether this could be related to International Terrorism . Our sources dont believe that at all. After sunday nights event they thought it was a prank. Keep in mind, making a dry ice bomb in a plastic bottle has been a Junior High School gag for decades. Its simple. You put dry ice in a bottle. You put in water and close it. The Carbon Dioxide warms inside the bottle and explodes. It can happen quickly if youre not careful or if youre too close you can get hurt. Why anyone would do this a second night after the police and fire response on sunday has police wondering what the motive might be in this case. And at an airport. Thank you, appreciate it. A possible end to the Government Shutdown could be in site. Peter alexander is at the white house with more on that. Hi, peter. Reporter hi, matt, good morning to you. And end to the shutdown and to the ability to borrow money both in the works here. Senate insists congress is the closest its been to a deal. Senate republicans will get a look at the plan a few hours from now. They could vote within 24 hours but the real hurdle maybe House Republicans that are going to discuss the negotiations this morning as well. The third week may finally be the charm. With the u. S. Expected to run out of money to pay its bills in less than 48 hours and americans bracing for a possible default to old senate adversaries closed in on a deal to avoid an economic disaster. We have made tremendous progress. Its safe to say we made substantial progress and we look forward to making more progress in the near future. Reporter Senate Sources tell nbc news the agreement would fund the government for three more months through january 15th and would extend the nations ability to borrow money until early february. Still up in the air whether john boehner and House Republicans will be on board. With one conservative already saying its the senate surrender cauc caucus. We stand a good chance of defaulting and defaulting would have a potentially devastating effect on our economy. Reporter across the nations capitol frustrated tourists are all but ignoring the shutdown marching around barracades at the national monuments. Still an end to the crisis cant come soon enough for furloughed workers and contractors, like this single mother that filed for Unemployment Benefits last week and is looking for a new job. Things are going to be extremely tight for the next few months. Its going to take me months to overcome, you know, missing out on three weeks of a paycheck. Reporter again, the biggest potential obstacle here is any mass protest by House Republicans and, remember, even if this all goes well, matt, this budget deal would only reopen the government for about 90 more days. Unless the two sides reach a bigger deal soon, we could be back here early in the new year. Nobody wants that. Peter alexander, thank you very much. Chuck todd is nbcs political director and chief white house correspondence. Good morning to you. Good morning. Optimism coming out of the senate but as peter mentioned what can be in the bill that will give john boehner political cover to take it to a vote in the house . The best thing to give him the cover is if its 80 votes in the senate. If its some big number. If you remember the end of the year tax deal in 2012, fiscal cliff, there was more than 80 votes in the senate. What that gave john boehner was saying more than half of the Senate Republicans voted for this, guys, im putting it on the floor and im going to let everybody vote for it but im not convinced theyre going to get that big vote out of the senate. The only thing that can give boehner the cover to throw it on to the floor and let democrats bring this home is if its just the calendar. If were starting to expire. Given what members of Congress Heard from the public over the last couple of weeks t fact that they cant agree, are we more or less likely, given temporary measures, to see the same battle down the road . Were more likely to see the same battle. Even though they know how the American People disapprove of this . This is not i think whats going to happen here is youre going to have a fight inside the republican party. It really has split the republican party. J john boehner has done his best to keep it from blowing up and thats why youll see some sort of potential shutdown again. When we talk about political fights in this country we often talk about the Political Center and the common wisdom has been that there is 40 on the right, 40 on the left. 20 somewhere in the middle. Somewhere in the middle. Maybe theyre wishy washy about things. We did a survey and its startling what it found. It is. A majority of the country is in the middle. 51 is in the middle. The wings, the dominant part in washington is in between the 25 yard lines. But the vast majority of the country, a majority of the country is in between the 25 yard lines. When you look at these people in the 51 . I wouldnt call them independents. This is the center and theyre not wishy washy on politics. They have strong views. Its just that some of them are supposedly liberal and some of them are supposedly conservative. This is people that live their every day lives and look at politics through their own lives. They dont look at it with a blue jersey or red jersey. Lets see some of the things they believe in. Where do they stand . All right. On the issue of government legislating how people behave in their personal lives, guns, abortion, marriage, marijuana, look what they say. Large majorities are pro marijuana, progay marriage. Theyre like get out of my life. Dont tell me what to do. How should the u. S. Handle itself in terms of foreign affairs. This is where you see the war weariness. This is folks that are basically saying we dont need to be patrolling the world. Theyre for defense cuts. Again, this is a majority of the country and amajority of the middle. A majority want taxes raised on people that earn more than 1 million a year. But theyre antiregulation. They dont want government in the way of oil drilling and things like that. While their economic pop yulousn this stuff theyre against it. Whether its on marriage or college admissions. Tweet us using the where i stand and well check in with tamron in the orange room on that subject in a few minutes. Thank you so much. One of the worlds most wanted Al Qaeda Leaders is expected to appear in court today one week after his capture in libya and the decision to bring him to new york is a controversial one. Richard engle has more on that. Good morning to you. Reporter good morning, savannah. It has been a long road to get here for abu anas al libi. Much of what he told his interrogators will not be admissible in court but u. S. Officials believe they have a strong case against him for allegedly planning the 1998 bombings of u. S. Embassies in east africa. He allegedly has the blood of more than 200 people on his hands. A key al qaeda planner, u. S. Officials say, indicted for the bombings of american embassies in kenya and tanzania 15 years ago. This is his only confirmed photograph, a passport snap of abu anas al libi. One of al qaedas founders, a freeman until two weekends ago when he was ambushed by u. S. Special ops in libya and whisked to a u. S. Warship in mediterranean. Without miranda rights hes been held and questioned until a preexisting medical condition. His family says its a severe case of hepatitis, lead his captors to transfer him to u. S. Soil. In new york al libi has rights including the right to remain congress. Some members of congress say he should have been shipped to guantanamo bay, an off site prison where he could have been interrogated more fully. We should have been able to keep him as long as we had to to get that intelligence. Because hes on the american mainland it has to stop. Reporter but now he is here. Al libi, one of the most senior al qaeda members ever brought to u. S. Soil. A defendant 15 years in the making. Of the 21 men indicted for the 1998 embassy bombings, only three remain at large. Richard engle at federal court in manhattan, thank you very much. Natalie is here with the rising death toll from a powerful earthquake. Good morning, guys. Theyre searching for survivors after the massive earthquake in the philippines. At least 85 people are dead. Hundreds of others are injured. The 7. 2 magnitude quake knocked down buildings, cracked roads and caused fires. Rescuers tried to free victims from rubble and debris. Today is a muslim holiday and most schools and offices were closed and that may have reduced the number of causalities. Theres a new report this morning that the nsa is collecting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal email aaccounts around the world including americans. Pete williams is in washington with the latest on this. What can you tell us . Reporter good morning, this comes from documents in the Washington Post from nsa leaker Edward Snowden and they show that the nsa gathers address books and contact lists from emailers and instant mess messengers. Theyre from foreigners and not americans. Now the nsa says it uses the day to look for connections focussing on what it calls valid foreign intelligence targets like terrorists, human traffickers and drug smug letters and the agency says its not interested in personal information about ordinary americans. Still, the program does capture the address books of potentially millions of americans but the nsa says it follows rules to minimize gathering, using, or disseminating that data, natalie. Pete williams, thank you, pete. The Supreme Court will consider today whether a michigan ban on affirmative action is discriminatory. It focuses on a 2006 voter approved amendment prohibiting universities from using race as a factor during admission. Following the law, African American and latino enrollment declined. Now several civil rights organizations are challenging the ban. John bon jovi made a super fans dream come true this weekend when he showed up to walk her down the aisle in las vegas. She was begging the star to do the honors. His tour was in town and it was the same chapel where bon jovi got married in 1989. Im not sure if youre the groom if you feel up staged. Yeah, actually snafu got married to bon jovi. I cant believe we did this. Exactly. Meanwhile, youre out fishing and enjoying yourself this is what happens. This is just outside of dallas. Look at that, boom. About 200 feet off the bow. They had seen the thunder heads rolling in and decided to get into port but not before that happened. Unbelievable stuff. Boaters are the number one fatalities when it comes to lightning strikes. Good news, new york state paying for lady liberty to be open. If youre heading to new york check it out the next three days. Maybe showers tomorrow. Otherwise, partly sunny skies. Our top weather story today, we have a big storm system coming out of the plains. Its bringing snow into parts of the dakotas where they saw it yesterday. Well continue to see heavy r rain. We have the left over of Tropical Storm octave and well be looking at two to three inches of rain from khan academy is a notforprofit with a mission of providing a free worldclass education for anyone, anywhere. If you look at a khan academy video, they cover everything from basic arithmetic to calculus, trigonometry, finance. You can really just get what you need at your own pace. And so, bank of america came and reached out to us and said, we are really interested in making sure that everyone really understands personal finance. Were like, well, were already doing that. And so it was kind of a perfect match. We are starting out with some fog and some low cloud cover. We will see a mix of clouds and and thats your latest weather. Thanks, al. Thank you very much of. We told you about the woman in florida that found herself stuck on a raised bridge dangling over the train track and now were starting to hear the 911 calls that came in. The tapes are telling the frightening story of a rescue in real time. Oh my god. She is stuck up there. The 55yearold woman got about halfway across a Railroad Drawbridge when it rose 22 feet in the air to make way for boat traffic on the waterway below. She is on the tracks on the bridge. The bridge is open. The bridge is open and shes on there . Shes on it. She couldnt get off and the bridge opened. They scrambled to get to the scene with stunned witnesses watching in disbelief. Honestly, i thought it was probably a stunt or something. It was just that unbelievable. Reporter as the drama dragged on, callers begged for someone to help. She is holding on tight. On to the beams. Okay. We need to bring this bridge down now. I dont know how much longer she is going to be able to hold on. Reporter after holding on to the train tracks for nearly 30 minutes, some worried how long she could last. Shes trying to hold on but nobody can reach her because its too high. Reporter rescuers were finally able to use a fire ladder to bring the woman down to safety. She was visibly shaken but not injured. Its still unclear why she crossed the bridge marked with no trespassing signs. Now Florida East Coast railway is waiting to decide if theyll press charges for the woman trespassing. Its amazing that she could hold herself up there for half an hour. What a frantic situation. Right. Lets swing over to the orange room now. Tamron is covering for carson over there and is tracking how people are responding to that nbc news esquire new American Center survey. Tamron, good morning. Good morning, guys. People are responding to this quiz. In interesting ways, for example, brent dixon says yes, most americans are actually libertarians. I have a few others, chris says im a dem through and through but liberal policies are not always right. Its important to to be open minded. I have another that says, im right in the middle and its exactly as you said, i just want a fair country for everyone. Hashtag is where i stand. Right in the middle, theres something called the mba middle. So if you take the quiz, youll see where you fall in this spectrum. Interesting note, we asked the middle who they trust, guys, the most and the answer is president obama and oprah winfrey. The most trusted people according to those that fall in the middle. Sorry about that, guys. You thought we were in the running . Didnt workout. Tamron, thank you. Theres the ticket for 2016. Could be. Coming up, Madeleine Mccanns parents speak out in a rare interview in the wake of a possible break in the case of their daughters mysterious disappearance. But first, on a tuesday morning, this is today on nbc. As a group we like to think weve been there done that but every once in awhile something comes in the studio and has us slap jawed. So coming up, he walks, he talks, he even breathes. Say hello to our little friend, the incredible bionic man. Well see him in action. Ive got some competition. Well see him in action. Ive got some competition. Robert redford is here live for as your life changes, fidelity is there for your personal economy, helping you readjust along the way, refocus as careers change and kids head off to college, and revisit your investments as retirement gets closer. Wherever you are today, fidelitys guidance can help you finetune your personal economy. Start today with a free oneonone review of your retirement plan. Faster than kenny can dodge a question. Honey, howd that test go . [ female announcer ] in just 60 seconds, youve got snack defying, satisfying mmm. Totinos pizza rolls. Mmhmm. Hmm. [ female announcer ] zero to pizza. Pronto. Now in two bold new flavors down to a science. Youre the reason we reformulated one a day womens. A complete multivitamin that now has extra b vitamins, which help convert food to energy. Energy support for the things that matter. Thats one a day womens. Energy support for the things that matter. The pain started up and wrapped around to the front. I couldnt play my bassoon because of the pressure that i felt throughout my whole head. The blistering and the rash was moving down towards my eye. The doctors at the emergency room recommended that i have it checked out by an eye doctor. There was concern about my eyesight. When i had shingles the music stopped. Good morning. I am stan stovall. Here is a look at one of our top stories. The trial begins today for the city police veteran accused of shooting a trainee in the head during a training exercise. Facesr william kern assault and Reckless Endangerment charges and the accidental shooting of cadet raymond gray. In februaryy that prosecutors say that in february he improperly used a firearm to scare gray away from a window. In the incident and is filed a lawsuit against the city for 5 million.