Transcripts For WRC Today 20100425 : vimarsana.com

today s sunday, april 25th, 2010. captions paid for by nbc-universal television raindrops falling on our lens. welcome to today on a sunday morning. i m lester holt. i m jenna wolfe. did you see the weather yesterday? the pictures were unbelievable. all of that changed yesterday. in a very big way. forecasters warn the conditions were right for major storms this weekend and they were correct yesterday. a deadly outbreak of tornadoes dut across the south. here s what we know. ten people are confirmed dead and three of them children and all were in the state of mississippi. one of those tornadoes were estimated to be three-quarters of a mile wide. experts say as many as 25 twisters touched down on saturday. it s not over yet. there s still a threat of severe weather today. our weather team has it covered and we ll bring you the latest on the devastation and where the storm system is headed today. turning to politics. president obama took some time away from washington this weekend vacationing with the first lady. this week he ll take his push for financial reform on the road heading to iowa to continue his main street tour. can he win over main street and republicans in the effort to regulate wall street. we ll have more on that just ahead. plus we have interesting visitors in the studio this morning. one i m certainly anxious to meet maybe not. animal expert jeff corwin has brought a parade of exotic animals you will not want to miss. there are pauses between the segments. is that just you trying to catch a break. would you leap off a 255 building and no, it s not a rhetorical building. there s a place to do just that and they provide earplugs and it is in las vegas and it is a daredevil s dream and i was invited kindly it s so loud. i picked up on how loud it is, lester. listen, when duty calls i make sure people can hear me. you re braver than me. we ll see my leap of faith coming up. we do have serious news to begin with. the tornado to the south. charles headlock is in mississippi. charles, good morning. joo good morning, lester. the search continues this morning for more victims who may be trapped by the tornado debris. the mayor of yazoo, mississippi, says he believes there are people unaccounted for in his city. the survivors said they heard the tornado warnings yesterday and couldn t believe their eyes. storm chasers drove straight into the path of the tornado which cut across six counties in western mississippi just after noon local time. i m in a tornado right now. tree limbs could be seen flying as the cameramen did the only thing they could do, stay inside as the storm passed over. we re all right! we re all right! reporter: what was left of this part of yazoo city, mississippi, pointed out what remained of homes, churches and businesses and now piles of bricks and debris. inside mitchell saxton s steakhouse, employees and customers ran for safety inside a cooler. others were not so lucky. at least a dozen people were brought to a triage center set up in the parking lot of a wrecked grocery store. helicopters carried the seriously injured to hospitals. tornadoes were reported in more than 40 locations saturday. the result of thunderstorms stretching from the south up into the midwest that left some homes like this one in tennessee, vulnerable to lightning strikes as well. we ve got a lightning strike in the early part of the morning that hit the roof of this log cabin with a metal roof and pretty much set it on fire all inside the attic. reporter: the worst of the damage was farther south near the belt of twisters stretch tradition louisiana to mississippi. haley barbour spoke from yazoo city. we have resources on the ground, but we need them. it s a really bad tornado. the tornado was onned ground for more than 150 miles leaving behind a trail of despair and residents with the unenviable task of starting over. jenna? charles haddlock, charles, thank you. about 80 miles from yazoo city is kilmichael and that s where we find our own kerry sanders. good morning. reporter: good morning, jenna, here, five people killed when this tornado came through here. that house that you see right there and the car behind me, that house moved into the car. not the car into the house, it moved it at least 30 feet. it s very muddy because of the torrential rains that came down as well, and i can smell the timber because it just broke as well as take a look at the strength of this. how strong this was tornado? well, this is a beam from one of the mobile homes, not this mobile home, another mobile home down the road. we don t know how far. up here in the tree you can see that s a chevy trailblazer that s twisted and upside down. so a tremendous force. one of the tornado weather experts that s been out here and looked at it has determined that the speed of the winds was at least 160 miles an hour and the way they do that is they look at the trees and it s completely peeled off and all of the bark is gone and all of the leaves are gone. it will take more analysis, but bottom line is this was a devastating tornado and five people killed here including three children and one three months old and one 9-year-old and one 14-year-old. now that the weather s passed i m assuming people will be going home to survey the damage. are the roads now open? reporter: they re closed in this area, the mississippi state troopers are out and they have them closed. they re going to make sure people are residents by showing an i.d. to get in, but mostly they want to make sure plus they have to restore the power to this area so the power crews are in here already working to make sure and they re trying to restore this. now herely lester. haley barbour is the governor of mississippi, he is in yazoo city. thank you so much for being with us. thank you for having us. watching the scenes of you walking through the wreckage, i remember you walking through katrina. did you have flashbacks to the scene similar to you? compared to a gigantic several hundred mile wide hurricane with a tornado is apples and oranges, but this tornado was gigantic. i heard you report that it may have been three-quarters of a mile wide, from flying over to places where it appeared several miles wide. so it did tremendous damage here. by god s grace it did not come through the central part of yazoo city, but it clipped the edge, but the damage is just horrendous. it s hit so many counties. do officials have a handle on the casualties or is there still an active search and rescue going on today? there s still some search and rescue going on in yazoo county and i expect that s the same thing in chock tau county apparently the two hardest-hit counties. this tornado is still on the ground in louisiana across the river and for 150 miles through mississippi. it was a big, big tornado, and it looks like it hardly ever rose up. at times it s reported there may have been twin tornados a little bit apart, but there is still search and rescue here, though not much, but there s the isolated house here and there. as the mayor said there are some people who are unaccounted for, but we don t have reason to believe that they were trapped in the rubble. there were cars trapped on the roads and down in the ravines. i don t think those have yet been found, but we re not taking anything for granted. you mentioned the highway patrol and the national guard. no looting and we re making sure anybody that s out there, we ll find them here this morning. that s really good to hear. we understand this is your hometown, yazoo city. what were your personal thoughts as you rolled into town. i have two brothers who live here still and my wife and i still have our home here. we were blessed that none of those houses were hit, but many of the people that i saw here 30 minutes after the storm passed through were children, friends, the grandchildren s friends. what struck me the most was almost immediately you saw people get out their four wheeler and get out their chain saw if they were not hurt and come to the area where the storm was and it s a very long area and they just went in and started helping, started cutting, clearing, going into people s houses to try to help the people and the volunteers and the help from the surrounding counties. i m very proud of the state agencies and the highway patrol and the national guard. johnny on the spot done a great job. governor barbour, thank you for spending time with us. send our best to the folks as they effect the recovery. we appreciate you spending time with us. thank you, lester. that storm system is expected to produce severe weather today. the weather channel s chris warren has more on where it s headed. good morning to you, too, lester. this is going to be day four with the severe weather threat. we take a look here. the good news is we are now in the clear in louisiana, mississippi, alabama and georgia, the northern portion of florida on into the carolinas. this is where the severe weather is right now. as we make our way into the day, we are going to have the threat of large hail, damaging wind and yes, possibly more isolated tornadoes. this will extend from central florida all of the way up, look at this. all of the way up as far north as baltimore. we do have the threat for severe weather. this threat will be diminishing as we make our way into the night as the storm system moves up the east coast. jenna? chris, thanks. now to politics and after getting r&r president obama will focus another r when he returns to work, reform. this week he continues his main street tour in iowa, pushing the overhaul the rules that govern wall street. david is moderator of meet the press. good morning. this week like we said, is in iowa. same message, different audience. how will this resonate with both? there s a big anti-establishment waving the country against rules of wall street. the civil fraud charges against goldman sachs and the e males coming to light this morning against betting against the housing market making it worse. i think there s a big desire for some new rules for how the financial system operates. only the president is tapping into that. there is a big debate on republicans on how to do that. it s tough for the republicans to stand in the way of this kind of reform. as you mentioned with the republicans. senate republicans unanimously opposed this and the sides are starting to come together and negotiating. how are the talks coming up to this point? i ll be speaking to senators dodd and shelby on meet the press and we ll get a sense of where the sticking points are where some of the areas of conciliation are where you might actually get some republican votes. you ve been hearing more potential moves of republicans to come onboard and there are big philosophical differences and it comes down in a large measure to what it is that government can do well when it comes to regulation and there were regulators on the watch when the financial crisis happened before and they weren t able to see it and they weren t able to prevent it. how are new layers of regulation going to prevent the next crisis? that s the crux of the argument. i want to switch gears and talk about immigration. there s another bill getting attention this week and that s the illegal immigration act that jan brewer signed into law this week. it s causing a lot of uproar. so what impact do you think this might have on a national scale? i think there s going to be a lot of momentum behind immigration reform now because of this issue. there was already some momentum happening before. i think the president s under a fair amount of political pressure as are senate mercantile exchange democrats including and that s hiss pafrnic voters who want to see immigration reform tackled on a comprehensive level, something that was tried and failed by president bush. president obama has committed to that. there s a rift in the senate right now over the fact that imgagz reform seems to have a push behind it than even climate change legislation. that will play out and this arizona law is something that the president has preemptively spoken about thinking that on he s violated people s civil rights and he has the justice department thinking about that. i think we re about to get into a bigger debate here. david, thank you. it s time now for a check of the morning s other headlines and for that we head over to michelle kozinski. good morning, lefter and jenna. good morning, everyone. we begin with the gulf coast where the severe weather is the coast guard says it now appears as much as 424,000 gallons of oil could be leaking each day and the slick is 25 times larger than it appeared to be on friday. a small amount of lava is now flowing from the icelandic volcano. the volcano is still spewing ash and the plume is nearly two miles high, but the ash is just falling locally. the airports in iceland remain closed and now this is a whale of a story. researchers in rhode island spotted 98 north atlantic white whales feeding near block island sound. the whales travel up the east coast every spring and believe it or not, there are 300 to 400 whales left because they ve been hunted to near extinction. that s the news now back to lester, jenna and chris. that s a third of the entire population of that type of whale and they re huge. they get up to 70 tons. it s terrific to kapt tur on tape. michelle, thanks. chris warren from the weather channel is back with us also have a little bit of light rain now moving out onto the eastern shore of maryland. temperatures are in the mid 50s around town right now. radar shows most of the showers now moving out into far southern maryland. more rain and maybe a thunderstorm likely later this afternoon. have a good sunday. and that s a look at your national forecast. jenna? chris, thanks. up next on today, new information in the case involving the murder of a hollywood producer s wife, but first, these messages. - my mother used to say, always keep your heart open. this mother s day, my wish is that my open hearts collection at kay jewelers becomes a universal symbol of hope and love, because if your heart is open, love will always find its way in. police in cancun, mexico, are still building a case against a hollywood producer who is under investigation for his wife s murder. as authorities await forensic results, the victim s body will soon be released to her family. miguel almaguer join us live from cancun. good morning. reporter: lester, good morning. this murder investigation began back in early april, but now movement and progress in this case. last week monica behresford-redmon s family fought to bring her body back home to los angeles. tomorrow they ll be able to do just that. for over two weeks her remains have been considered evidence in a brutal homicide investigation. translator: the body can be released because the experts have what they need. the family is anxious for it to be returned home and be given its religious rites. reporter: her husband bruce is free to travel within mexico, but not to leave. a former producer for cbs hit show survivor behresford-redmon is the only suspect in his wife s murder. in california, court documents, the family has filed for permanent custody of the couples children. we ll be able to address questions that arise from our grandchildren and help guide them toward a fruitful future. we need to bring the body there so all of the people that love her can really, you know, say good-bye. meeting with the state attorney general s office twice last week, monica s family shared documents and e-mails relevant to the case. an electronic paper trail of the couple s troubled marriage. prosecutors call the information important to their investigation, but have yet to say if they ve established a motive. translator: all these documents show senor bruce was responsible for the problems in the marriage. it will affect the investigation. reporter: potential evidence in a case focused on just one man, a suspect that hasn t been charged with any crime in his wife s murder. but that could all change this week. investigators say forensic results are due back any day and they say that could lead to an arrest. lester? miguel almaguer, thank you. we re back, but first these messages. meplace familiar. or somewhere more unique. nice. then expedia lets me compare dates to find out when i can save the most cash. done and done. we should do this more often. where you book matters. expedia. expedia. 100% fruit & veggie juice with no added sugar. just one glass equals two servings of fruits and vegetables. with tasty flavors like cranberry, strawberry, banana, it s like a farm stand in every bottle. the fruits you love mixed with the veggies you need. just, you know. demonstrating how we, uh, mix the fruits and the vegetables. ocean spray. grower owned since 1930. still to come on today. becoming a single parent by choice. why more and more women aren t waiting for a guy to become moms. plus, where the wild things are. they re right here. why? always jeff corwin is here with some friend, but first, these messages. - ooh, wait i ve got it. he went to jared. - he went. he went to jared. female announcer: jared has five times the selection of ordinary jewelry stores, with thousands of loose diamonds and hundreds of settings to create your own one-of-a-kind ring. - [laughing] - i take it you told her. to help your skin get healthy and clear. fast forward a few years. .and now that your problem is wrinkles we still have the solution dermatologists recommend most. neutrogena anti wrinkle moisturizer with pure retinol sa. in just 1 month it s clinically proven to smooth even the deepest wrinkles. so all you neutrogena girls it s time to become neutrogena women. neutrogena recommended most by dermatologists. a cool day for you outside. with pretty low visibility. we re going to warm up a bit. good morning. it is 8:26 on sunday, april 25th, 2010. i m kimberly suiterses with your news break. new today, an off duty d.c. police officer was carjacked in prince george s county. it happened around 10:00 last night in the 3800 block of old silver hill road in suitland. there are no reports of any injuries during the carjacking. police arrest aid man in connection with the stabbing in wheaton. edwin escobar salmarone faces attempted first-degree murder charges. he s accused in a confrontation that happened early yesterday morning at grand view and anales avenue. police say he crashed his camry into a hon doo accord and began banging on the honda. police say one passenger got out of the honda when escobar stabbed him. he was arrested yesterday in adelphi. the victim is expected to be okay. a panda watch under way at the national zoo. zoo officials artificially inseminated mei xianging in january. she could give birth any day. zoo cork workers have to wait and see if a baby emerges because signs can be deceiving. if she is pregnant it would be important for the species. only a few thousand pandas live around the world. your weather is coming up next. stay with us everyone. here s to the believers. the risk-takers. the visionaries. the entrepreneurs. who put it all on the line to build and run their own businesses. at at&t, we know something about that. our company started out in a small lab, with not much more than a dream. and today, we know it s small businesses that can create the jobs america needs. that s why at&t is investing billions to upgrade and build out our wired and wireless networks. making them faster, smarter, and more secure. connecting small businesses to markets across the country, and around the world. we invest now, because we know it will pay off. with new jobs, new growth, from a new generation, putting their belief in the future on the line. now is the time for investment and innovation. the future is waiting. and the future has always the future is waiting. and the future has always been our business. at&t. we re coming up on 8:30 shortly. chuck bell joining us live with the latest weather. thanks, kimberly. we are off to a cloudy start in the washington area right now. i think we re going to see a break or two of sunshine here late this morning, early this afternoon before another chance for rain showers with embedded thunderstorms comes our way later today. temperatures in the mid 50s right now around washington. already warmer air to our south. quantico 60. the last of the morning rain showers now onto the eastern shore and leaving extreme southern maryland. we ll get a break or two of sunshine. noticeably warmer today. highs in the upper 60s and low 70s. risk of a strong to perhaps severe thunderstorm late this afternoon and this evening. we ll keep a weather eye to the sky for that. maybe a rumble or two tomorrow, as well. we ll see you again at 9:00 for the and we re back on this sunday morning, april 25th, 2010. our thanks to the fans braving the rain outside studio 1a this morning. inside studio 1a i m jenna wolfe along with lester wolfe. it is rain outside, and lester said i don t know, my hair, i said okay. we ll stay inside. is that how it went? the tornadoes tore through mississippi. we started out knowing it would be bad and it turned out to be a deadly day. at least ten people were killed and dozens more injured and thousands without power. we ll get the latest in the hardest-hit areas where the cleanup and recovery is just beginning. switching gears. raising a child alone can be difficult and more and more these days people are becoming single parents by choice. it s happening more often especially among ing issel women in their 30s and 40s deciding they re not waiting for a guy to have a child. we ll take a closer look at the choice and the realties and the repercussions for doing so. look at this fellow. gives me the creeps just looking at him. animal expert jeff corwin swings by with some of the exotic and slithery creatures. he s thinking his buddy. take a look at this fellow. this guy will be interviewing me. tell me he s been fed and fed well. exactly. speaking of fears. just ahead i take to the skies overlooking las vegas to try out one of the city s newest and most daring attractions. truly, truly, a leap of faith, let me just say, if you re not afraid when you try it something is definitely wrong and these things very very, very rarely scares me and i was scared. is that the same place that has the roller coaster on the top. it has the different rides up there. good for you. you want to do the snake segment, too? absolutely. we ve got a lot to get to and we want to start this half hour with serious news. the deadly tornados that tore through the south on saturday. our ken kerry sanders is in mill springs, mississippi. good morning. reporter: good morning, lester. here in chocktaw county, five people were killed, including three children, a 3-month-old, a 9-year-old and 14-year-old. this is part of the devastation in the area. haley barbour, the governor of mississippi has declared states of emergency in at least 17 counties. how strong was this tornado? the winds in one case according to the deputies here picked up one of those chevy s-10 pickups and deposited al it almost ten miles away. the wind is estimated at 160 miles an hour. i ll look for a piece of wood to sort of demonstrate how strong the winds were because it actually tore off some of the here we go. it tore off the bark and you can see right here. i ll just bring it up to you. there you go. it s completely clear. that s how the experts determine how strong the winds were here. it will be a long time for cleanup here. there s no power in the area. several roads have been closed down by state troopers to figure out people will take a look around and sort of cause problems, but it s going to be a very long cleanup here and in some cases it s very sad because there are going to have to be several funerals. ten people killed thus far and the count could go higher. lefter? kerry sanders in mississippi. thank you. now here s jenna. thanks. the weather channel s mike side cell also in mississippi. he s in yazoo city. much of it was leveled by yesterday s tornadoes. good morning. reporter: here in yazoo county there were four fatali fatalities and picking up with the damage. that would put it up as high as 165 miles an hour. look at this building. i m standing on the roof of this building and mangled steel beams and corrugated aluminum, just a pile of debris. let me take you back to yesterday. we have a swarm of tornadoes and the preliminary count yesterday, 54 twisters across the south from louisiana into alabama and look at the damage and the spin in the atmosphere. this is one super cell thunderstorm that traveled from tolula, mississippi, all of the way to starkville, mississippi. it may have been more than one tornado that caused this damage and the national weather service will be out today to see exactly how bad it was. again, wind speeds as high as maybe 165 miles an hour. the cleanup continues this morning and the mayor of yazoo city, jenna still thinks there may be some people that need to be looked for. back to you. mike seidel, thanks. where is that storm system heading? the weather channel s chris and a good sunday morning on news4. meteorologist chuck bell. we re off to a mostly cloudy start this morning. but the overnight showers have come to an end. we ll be dry for the next several hours. if you have something you need to do outside, it s a good time to get started. already in the low to mid 60s just down to our south. here s a check of live doppler. next chance for rain showers doesn t come till mid to late afternoon today. then we have i have a strong to severe thunderstorm. we ll keep you posted. and, of course, you can follow these storms on satellite or cable on the weather channel and of course, you can always go to weather.com. lester and jenna? up next, going it alone. why more single women are choosing parenthood before finding a mate. that s right after these messages. . 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[music, talking, laughing] what makes hershey s s mores special? hershey s chocolate goodness that brings people together. pure hershey s. according to recent census bureau statistics, one out of every four children are raised by a single parent, but these days that s happening more and more by choice. it s a growing trend among women, deciding to have children with no men in sight. you re one of my best friends. don t you want to help me? we don t have to have sex. will you be my baby daddy? in jennifer lopez new movie, it s the back-up plan. it s time for the back-up plan. for marie, it was plan a. plan a was get married, have kids and live happily ever after. not all of them, just a couple. and she called it her default plans. the choice was have a child on my own and never have a child, choose or die and for me the choice was clear. reporter: both women had a dream with a deadline. you start to get older and your clock starts ticking and it s ticking louder and you prioritize dating. still single and nearing 40 a an unconventional choice became an opportunity. louise who wrote the book knock yourself up gave birth with her son scott with the help of a sperm donor. i really, really thought about it because most of us we don t want to make this decision. so we re really jumping through a lot of hoops psychologically to think about, is this really want what i want? ann marie also had her two children through a donor. she s embraced single parenthood. were my children going to be marked by not being in a two-parent family? i thought of those things. on the other hand, i think that a stable, loving parent is the critical part. reporter: a challenge these single moms by choice have embraced. the happiness of having been able to do this and having the joy of a child in my life has brought me through any kind of hard times because it s something that i wanted so much. joining us now with more is psychologist dale atkins and relationship expert robby ludwig. good morning to both of you. good morning. robby, let me start with you. why is this becoming more and more of a common option for women. well, we have women who are earning a lot more money so they re able to support having children and women are realizing that after 35 sometimes their options of fertility is decreasing and they re out there, they re single women in their 30s and 40s and may not have found the right guy. so they re used to taking matters into their own hands and saying if i want to have a child and this amazing experience, maybe i ll just do it on my own. let me ask you this, some people may look at this and criticize it is aing this say selfish choice and an inappropriate choice, that can be isolating for a mother, can it not? it can make her feel like she s questioning her choice and the choice is a measured choice and it takes a long time to kind of decide that, but what we really need to do is to understand and emphasize the value of helping to raise a child and bring a child into the world and have that experience, and also why shouldn t this woman have that fulfillment if that s what she wants? and we need to have communities that support her. a lot of these women are deciding to do this later in life, 30s and 40s. there s also the issue of the biological clock ticking. this biological clock. i don t know if i m hearing mine. is it a psychological thing? is it a physical thing? it s probably both. you have to listen to your booedet and truth of the matter is for women they can t have kids just at any age. not yet. maybe that will happen so this is something you really need to consider and sometimes the guy doesn t always come along at the right time. if you interview some of these choice moms they wanted sometimes the traditional route of getting married and having a child within this nuclear family. anybody in an ideal state knows that that s a great option for children and it s good psychologically and they have to grieve that themselves. sometimes things don t happen in order. and the other point is that when they do decide to do this, they again, as i said before need to be supported but other people have to understand that it takes a lot of people to raise a child well and they need to know that it s not just being on hand for baby-sitting and being back up, but to support the person in her choice as an adult and saying i would like to be a part of the adult community and i want children to be available to my children, but this is something that as i get older i m not as flexible. i m a little more tired. right, and a lot of these moms are much more fatigued than younger moms. it s also the issue of balancing work and family. a lot of these moms do it because they want to keep their career and they realize they want to have children. they often don t take care of themeses in the process. sometimes you can be ready for a child later when everything is in place, but you also need to have a male role model. you need other women and emergency baby care like through a national program like care.com which is available for last-minute if you need that emergency babysitter, but you need a community of support otherwise it s very isolating, but they have found on the upside that the mother/child relationship can be very intense because that child is getting a lot of focus which can be very healthy for a child. the children themselves are independent and they take on more responsibilities and they feel as if they re a team very often and one of the things that we know about these kids which is wonderful is that they make decisions with their parents, decisions their peers wouldn t normally make. they re part of the discussion with the parent about when are we going get a new refrigerator, where are we going vacation? it s nice to know that there are options. and adoption is an option as well. dale atkins and robe ludwig. thank you both, very much. up next, the great outdoors brought inside to studio 1a. lester! where s lester? first, these messages. - remember this place? - it s where we first met. - what about here? - our first kiss. i don t remember this place. - you will. male announcer: the visibly brighter leo diamond. one more reason kay is the number one jewelry store in america. for many people getting in touch with nature means getting to a national park or exploring a far-off place, but animal expert jeff corwin says go no further than your own backyard. he s out with a children s book series starting with your backyard is wild. he s here with some friends. good to see you. you re a city guy. did you do backyard exploring. my dad was a boston cop and my mom was a nurse and i grew up in a three-family apartment building and i wrote this book because i wanted young people to discover that they need to have contact with nature, but you don t have to necessarily do it in some spectacular national park. that was your inspiration. it can begin in your own backyard. i really feel american families have lost their connection with nature. so the spirit and the mission of your backyard is wild is to really take families, connect them to the natural world because i believe when you have a connection to nature you re a smarter, more productive and more well rounded. the first book deals with salamanders and box turtles and you ll get on and some of which you have brought here today. this is not a box turtle. if you like those fingers and yeah. this is a biting turtle? it can bite. good grief! this is an alligator snapping turtle. of course, the characters gabe and lucy, they begin in new york city in the backyard of brooklyn and make these amazing discoveries and these two characters find their way into the florida everglades. alligator snapping turtle. what is it? is it an alligator or turtle? what makes this turtle very special is the way it s built. it actually resembles an alligator. this guy right here. just try to lift him up, how would i lift it. of the most important thing is to keep your fingers behind the mouth. he s pretty heavy. that s a lot of turtle. he weighs about 100 pounds and he s one-third your weight. if you guys can zoom into his mouth. now look at that. if you look into his mouth you see that pink thing right there? yeah. that right there is a lure and what he ll do is he ll sit there at the bottom of a bayou and he ll jig the little tongue and he brings the bait in. you ve got anal combart. we re running out of time here. i m not sure i m wild about this. tell me about and why is it looking at me? because you look delicious, lester. really, the mission of these books is to get people excited about our national heritage. animals like alligator snapping turtles and alligators really represent our heritage and the only way we can appreciate these creatures is to get to know them and this is one of america s greatest success stories and this is a species that nearly became extinct and because of good conservation they made an incredible comeback. if you were here 30, 40 years ago in flo are rida, they were practically jenna, come on over. okay. so lester, where are you going? come on, lester. i hear you have a fear of snakes. oh! let s take this out to show people because i don t want to be the only one that gets to see this. i make no promises. you grab the back end. for real? he s heavy. are you kidding? come on. it won t, like lester, can you help her? i d love to. the reason why we brought this incredible snake out right here. this is a burmese python, this is a 16-foot snake. this used to be someone s pet that then was abandoned. are you okay there? it s on my hand. we re checking your blood pressure. he s strong, huh? yeah. i can take the rest out? what happened is people have taken these know animals and if you go to the florida everglades you ll discover more than 100,000 of these snakes in the habitat. great to have you here. the backyard is the camera is not that wide! listen, we just launched a website called corwin connect, jeffcorwinconnect.com and it s designed to connect people to nature. we re back after this. you did it! it s absolutely recesseblue one!g. 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[ male announcer ] now with 0% apr for 60 months. it s a whole new volkswagen. and a whole new game. the plan we worked on for your retirement makes sense. just stay on track. what is. that s the guidance you get from fidelity. thanks. stay on the line! whatever your destination, fidelity will help you get there. because when it comes to investing, you should never settle. fidelity investments. when you think las vegas, one of the first things that comes to mind is taking a little gamble. now there s a daring new way to do that. it starts out with a rooftop and a not-so-flattering jump suit and a whole lot of courage. veg a ta vegas, the city of lights, its architecture made famous by pyramid, towers and fountains. the newest adventure to hit the strip is called sky jump. it s a ride, it s a dare and a freefall, controlled, of course. reporter: where folks plunge 855 feet from the top of the stratosphere hotel and casino. are you kidding me? this is the only sky jump in north america and the tallest sky jump in the world. when someone jumps off how fast are they jumping? they re moving at a speech approximately 80 miles an hour. the stratosphere is the tallest building west of the mississippi, but before i found out what it felt like, i had a little business to take care of. we need you to fill out a few things. is by things you mean sign my life away. it s just your waiver that you re willingly know andingly going to jump off the top of the stratosphere towers. i m going to sign right here. signature of sky jumper. we are good to go. excellent, meredith? this is great. you ll know the today show is here from miles away. a few tightening measures. ooh! that s a rib! and ooh, the one thing i didn t prepare for. i have to go to the bathroom. before taking the plunge, i ll let a few suckers on i mean, hotel employees go first. it s pretty high. i ve done scary things and this is nuts. i m scared of heights so this is it for me. is there any chance you ll wimp out? no. you re going to do this? i m doing it. we ll see about that. well, how was it? nuts. what were you afraid of? falling. obviously. it s an incredible experience. you ve got to do it. fine, my turn. unless anyone else wants to cut the line and go ahead of me. safety is big here and just like santa, these guys check everything twice. let s do this, people. the doors finally open and my jitters start to jump. no way! okay, don t push me. please don t push me. are you ready? no! wait! wait! my last words. fate loves the fearless! i can see for miles! i see paris! i can see new york! wait, those are just hotels here in vegas! that was unbelievable! but i think i was a little nervous. so if it s all the same to everyone, i think i ll do it one more time. i love vegas! i guess the third time s the charm because look at the surprise reception upon my final landing. hi, jenna, i m the mayor of las vegas. oh, wow! this was not the way i wanted to meet you. did it look like i knew what i was doing. to be honest i closed my eyes. you closed your eyes? the only thing better is if someone brought me a martini. there we go. how do you like that? normally, i don t drink on the job. is it yours or mine! that s mine! are you kidding me? the mayor always has a martini. tell me how you like it. shaken, not stirred. like a true mayor. it s 5:00 some place. drink up, everybody! doing it with me next year? i d rather play with a python. that s it for us on a sunday a string of deadly tornadoes devastates the south. to you that same storm system is headed our way. we ll tell you what you can expect as it bears down on us. and a potential environmental disaster in the gulf of mexico as a sunken oil rig continues leaking oil. good morning, everyone. welcome to news4 today. i m aaron gilchrist. i m kimberly suiters. the news is just ahead. first a quick check on our forecast. chuck bell joining us now on the set. we re not going to get anything like the south got yesterday. no, is not like they had in the south yesterday. that being said, there s still a risk for strong