Recorded video of her in a hotel left her a shell of herself. And hot pocket. An ecigarette battery exploids in a mans pants catches them on fire. The warning being issued. Today thursday, february 25, 2015. From nbc news this is today with matt lauer and savannah guthrie. Back in the land of the living. It seems like a long time since i have seen you. It is nice to be out of my apartment. Yes, i got a flu shot. Well talk more about that later. Im amazed you touched me. Me, too. Lets start can the dangerous storms hammering the eastern half of the country. The death toll climbing to at four of those died in virginia. More than 238,000 people without power from the carolinas to maine. This tuesday there have been at least 34 confirmed tornadoes. We have it all covered including the impact on travel. Well start with miguel almaguer. Reporter the storm took at least eight lives. Three were killed in this region alone. The storm went right through this community. It was a powerful and deadly system. Another night of severe weather. In pennsylvania some 50 homes damaged. Dangerous winds in new york city. In long island firefighters rushed to extinguish cars on fire and clear downed trees in neighborhoods. In washington, d. C. Hammering hail. It was the smallest towns hit overnight rescues in virginia. Some communities wiped off the maps as homes were destroyed. Took my truck up in the air and glass was coming in. I thought the truck was going to turn over. Reporter frank rose witnessed the deadly swiser blow through waiverly, virginia. Everywhere. What can you do . Reporter the wild weather claiming the lives of two men and a toddler tossed from a trailer 300 yards adding to the storms death toll another man killed in South Carolina when a gust of wind snapped a tree on to him. He was laying down and the tree was on top of him. He was hurt. Reporter the powerful storm system battered the gulf coast. Among the hardest hit, a trailer park in convent, louisiana where it looked like a blender. Reporter some parts of florida reduced to rubble. More than 200,000 lost power. This morning while the storm is diminishing the scope of the damage is just being realized. Later today virginias governor will visit some of the hardest hit communities like this one while the storm system passed over in a matter of hours in places like this one it will take months to rebuild. Oxford, north carolina. Thank you. You might expect the airlines are feeling the effects of the severe weather. Blake mccoy is at ohare in chicago. Good morning. Reporter good morning to you. Airlines trying to hit the reset button this morning after more than 2,000 flights were cancelled nationwide yesterday. The Worst Airport in the country for the cancellations right here at chicagos ohare. Snow overnight, more than a foot in some parts of northwest indiana. Blizzardlike conditions cracking power lines leading to dierz warnings. It is terrible. It is going to get worse. Stay home. The roads are ice underneath the snow. Reporter hundreds of accidents snarled traffic. Thankfully no children aboard this school bus when it was sent sliding. Chicagos two major airports became ground zero for cancellations. 1,300 flights cancelled wednesday in chicago alone. We actually changed our flight. We were supposed to leave at 1 30 today and then united contacted us and try to move it up. Reporter cancellations stretching across the country including syracuse, new york, where one airline bought pizza for this flight that had to be diverted because of the storm. Flights cancelled this morning even though the worse of the weather moved out. It will take time to get things back to normal. Got to work itself out of the system. Lets turn to mr. Roker for more on all of this. A really interesting situation developing along the north rock aaway coast. They are airlifting people who got stuck on a boat, a fishing boat, moments ago. The coast guard sent out a Coast Guard Boat to try to rescue them. They went aground. The Coast Guard Boat capsized. Luckily all five members of the coast guard on that boat are okay. As you can see right now coast guard chopper rescuing people off that fishing vessel. That gives you an idea how bad this storm was. The good news is the worst of the storm is over as far as the heavy winds and rain. We are still dealing with that but you can see heavy rain pushing off. What we are concerned now is what is behind it. Colder air filtering in. You can see snow developing. We wont call it a blizzard, but we will have wind gusts up to 40 miles per hour, Poor Visibility on i75, i80, parts of i90. It is going to be a real mess traveling. Snowfall amounts not the worse but the winds will calm down. That will give better visibility behind the front. Temperatures are much milder. Look at some of these accumulations we are looking at. Cleveland two to five. Gary, pennsylvania four to seven. The good news is we have warmer weather coming, milder weather but folks are still digging out and dealing with the mess left tornadoes that touched down. Thank you very much. Now to the president ial race and notable shift from Republican Marco Rubio going after donald trump and so is the last republican nominee, mitt romney. We have it all covered this morning. We have Peter Alexander in houston where tonights final Republican Debate before super tuesday will be held. Reporter this is the tenth republican president ial dedete. Lone star state show down first without jeb bush on stage. And for Donald Trumps rivals, marco rubio and ted cruz perhaps their last stance before super tuesday. Anyone not named donald trump looking for southern comfort. I can win. I can grow this party. The question right now is how do we prevent nominating a candidatat who loses the general election or for that matter donald wins the general election as president. Reporter for ted cruz everything bigger in texas. Crown jewel of super tuesday is the great state of texas. Reporter new polls show him holding a 15 point lead. The Rubio Campaign calling on trump to repudiate robo calls from a leader of a White Nationalist group. The white race is dying out in america and europe because we are afraid to be called racist. Reporter trump responded to similar calls last month. Nothing in this country shocks me. Reporter the billionaire is hinting at a running mate. We are going to probably choose somebody somewhat political. Reporter now rejoining the political fray mitt romney. I think we have good reason to believe that there is a reporter four years after he was pressed to release his returns romney is pressing the 2016 front runner to do the same. Either hes not as wealthy as he says he isis reporter an issue trump first addressed on today the morning after winning the primary. Will people be surprised at the rate you pay . I fight like hell not to pay taxes. I hate the way the government spends my money. Reporter trump calling romney a fool. There is no bombshell other than i pay a lot of tax and the government wastes the money. Reporter closer than 1r5 points. One interesting dynamic in attendance george h. W. Bush. Chuck todd is nbcs political director and moderator of meet the press. Nicole wallace, political analyst. Last gop debate tonight before super tuesday. Anyone whose name is not donald trump had better do something tonight to try to slow him down going into tuesday. What are their options . Winning the nomination is like climbing to the top of everest. Donald trump is half way there and marco rubio is at the bottom of the mountain with a much heavier pack and a lot less oxygen. It is possible but extremely difficult. Rubio and cruz and kasich. I think the rubio plan is to sort of stay the course, go after cruz, play this one more long game. Hope cruz is eliminated after super tuesday and hope next wake up, come on the today show and say i finished second and now it is a twoman race. There is a lot of ifs there. I think he can attract the real support he has to show he is tough enough to take on trump. Does he absorb the punches, land few good one liners or use this opportunity to take the turn and try to become more president ial than they are in. If he was anybody but donald trump i would say he is so far ahead what he might do is start to make the turn to look more president ial. The real vulnerability he has even among supporters is his temperament. His supporters said i like you are different. I am worried about your impulse control challenges. Opportunity to display a better temperament he passed on it. I would expect him to act more president ial i dont think we can expect that from him. That is not the way he rolls. That is not what his voters like. I think he goess lets talk about cruz. He went through marco rubios set of circumstances that would allow him to emerge. If cruz loses texas what do the polls show now . It shows cruz ahead. Pick your poll. He has to work hard. Ted cruz has a one state strategy on super tuesday. Put your historian hat on for me. Every poll i look at doesnt show marco rubio having a shot of winning any state on super tuesday. Anyone secured the nomination they have an answer for that. What they say is that everything about this cycle is historic in nature and that Washington Post stunning editorial about stopping trump. They feel urgency to stop trump and that would create historic rush towards them in the final days and weeks. This issue of taxes. Mitt romney thinking there is a bombshell there. Donald trump said i pay low taxes because i dont want to pay high taxes. Does it matter for trump . I dont think it matters. The only thing that matters to trump would be what romney brought up if his net worth is not what it was. Mitt romney is doing to donald trump by just sort of openly speculating what harry reid did to mitt romney four years ago paying taxes. Mitt romney, this is his way of participating in the stop trump movement. He is running against a rigged system. This is the real feature of the campaign, i heard this. Thanks for bringing me up to speed. I appreciate it. Big new developments in ongoing fight over the u. S. Supreme court. The white house said to be considering republican governor Ryan Sandoval of nevada as possible nominee to the high court. The republican governor is a abortion rights. Nomination of a republican would be seen as attempt by president obama to stop the blockade of choices. The u. S. Olympic committee ahead of games of brazil. A usoc doctor testified. He said the committee is considering several steps inchuding pretreating closing of all usoc personnel and providing bed nets. They will have a zika vaccine ready for phase one Clinical Trials by this summer. The scandal involving defective air bags. Uncovered evidence that takata was deceiving auto makers for years. Internal emails said the company was aware they were defective. If the customer request records or makes an audit we will have a lot of failures, sometimes 38 . Regulators are under pressure to every takata air bag in america. Encouraging news saying this years flu vaccine is most effective in years. Cdc recommends everyone get a flu shot every year. Usually half of americans get that. Did you read that with your fingers crossed. I got a shot in november but it didnt work out. Frightening scene at a kentucky convenience store. This guy on the right suddenly flames and sparks shoot out of his pants. He runs outside, takes the pants off. The man says an ecigarette battery blew up in his pocket. He suffered burns on his legs. He is able to walk. Warned to keep the batteries away from coppers and other metals including car keys. That is a big deal. More on the weather from al roker. Looked like he was ready to take off. Lets show you what we have right now. A Beautiful Day out west. Temperatures will be in the 60s in the Pacific Northwest. We have windwindy, snowy conditions. Spartanburg, anderson reaching 54. The mountains will have some flurries early, a mix of snow and rain in spots, then becoming partly cloudy and windy. High for asheville, hendersonville just reaching 42. Cold and thats your latest weather. Coming up, erin andrews and her father tearing up in court as he takes the stand in her civil lawsuit. Testimony. And Melania Trump defending her husband and revealing what happens when they disagree. This is today on nbc. Hillary clinton i do not believe we live in a singleissue country. The economy is rigged in favor of the top. Americans havent had a raise in 15 years. But i want to go further. Hardworking immigrant families living in fear. Racism Holding People back. Wall street and big financial interests along with drug companies, insurance companies, big oil companies. The indifference, the negligence. Thats what i want to take on. Im running for president to root out all of these barriers. Because i think america can only live up to its potential when we make sure that every american has a chance to live up to his or her potential. Im Hillary Clinton, coming up, is Johnson Johnson baby mom, dad. Son. Now that fedex has streamlined our ecommerce and helped us grow our business, i think its time we start acting like a business. Okay. Here we go. Oh, look at this. Ok, so number one. No personal items are permitted in the workplace. So those will need to come down. Well be doing some mandatory testing. And theres also a strict no dating policy. 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Bernie sanders has always stood with our veterans, and thats why hell never rush to put our men and women in harms way. Judgment. Integrity. Bernie. At 727. We have a number of School Districts in Western North arolina. Either on delay or closed this morning. The information is on the ticket at the bottom of the screen. And many are in the dark this morning. Rutherford county showing the most outages in Western North carolina. 996 outages. In the upstate. Anderson county showing a little more than 11 hundred outages. Greenville county over the 34 hundred mark. Spartanburg county also with more than 34 hundred outages. And these outages. Of course. The result in many cases of power lines down. Fallen trees. This is east park avenue in spartanburg. A big tree there pulling down power lines and causing outages for this area. Accident in greenville on white horse road at i85 has injuries and is blocking the road. And in Travelers Rest on highway 25 at partly cloudy in the upstate early, mostly sunny and breezy for the afternoon. Southwest winds 928. Highs for greenville, spartanburg, anderson reaching 54. The mountains will have some flurries early, a mix of snow and rain in spots, then becoming partly cloudy and windy. High for asheville, hendersonville just reaching 42. Cold overnight, a few flurries in the mountains, lows of 27 to 31. Mostly sunny friday, highs of 40 to 52. Snow and rain in spots, then becoming partly cloudy and windy. High for asheville, hendersonville just reaching 42. In th [ cheers and applause ] 7 30 on a thursday morning, 25th day of february, 2015. We will get outside and say hi in just a little while. Inside studio 1 a we want to look at the mornings headlines. The death toll is rising from the powerful storm system. At least eight People Killed from louisiana to virginia where a state of emergency is declared. Senator marco rubio demanding donald trump tell a pro trump White Supremacist Group to stop making robo calls. The wise race is dying out in america and europe because we are afraid to be called racist. Reporter that group is not affiliated. The republican candidates will connecticut prosecutors are asking the state Supreme Court to send Michael Skakel back to prison. They say a judge made a mistake three years ago by reversing conviction in the 1975 murder of his neighbor. Robert kennedy, jr. , who is writing a book about his cousins case attended a hearing. Another high profile case and more testimony. It was emotional. Jurors heard from andrews father who told the court his daughter has been a shell of her former court. Reporter dramatic emotional testimony, erin andrews breaking down seeing her father in tears on the stand. First time in my life as her father where i didnt know if i feared for her life. Reporter Steve Andrews describing agony after naked videos of his daughter went vi