championship. lebron james. the whole team. lebron james. doesn t everyone just think lebron james is the heat? good morning, everyone. nice to have you with us on this very, very early start. i m ashleigh banfield. i m zoraida sambolin. let s get started here. let s start with the developing news this morning out of egypt about the health of former president hosni mubarak. we re getting conflicting reports about his actual condition. a state news agency is reporting the 84-year-old is clinically dead. but his lawyer says that he is in a coma. the military says mubarak s condition is critical. but that he is, indeed, still alive. all this confusion coming at a very critical time for egypt. thousands gathering overnight in cairo s tahrir square to protest the military leaders who were supposed to oversee the transition to democracy. instead, they are grabbing more power. ivan watson is live in cairo. ivan, what is the latest on mubarak s condition? reporter: the late
tensions have been building ever since. mary snow is there witnessing the protesters and she s joining us there by phone. so, mary, give me an idea of what the police presence is like and is this crowd growing? it s been a massive crowd this morning, fredricka. down here in lower manhattan in the surrounding blocks around the new york stock exchange. we are on one intersection where there has been pretty much a standoff between police and protesters and there was a barricade up preventing them from going any closer to the new york stock exchange and on the last few minutes we have seen some arrests. people were carried out and how we have seen, also, more police showing up at this intersection where we are with handcuffs. the police got on the loud speaker just a short time ago telling protesters to get on the sidewalk. they have blocked the intersection in this block right near the stock exchange and it s pretty much protesters just kind of in this standoff with police. it
a distant second is rick perry, who spent a lot of time down there in florida, and pundits thought he would be the one to win that straw poll result. the other one that came out this weekend, michigan, and mitt romney is at the top. no surprise here. listen, romney was born in michigan. his father a former governor there. very popular. romney won the primary there back in 2008. he was expected to win. but perry did go up to michigan and campaign and he was a distant second. for perry, i think a lot of people are saying that those uneven debate performances, especially last week and the attacks on rick perry over his stance on illegal immigration, may be taking a toll. one other thing from the debates or from the straw polls, michele bachmann nowhere to be seen near the top. remember she won the straw poll in iowa in august. but she finished very low down in both of these straw polls. one thing about those, they are important. they are a gauge or a test or a barometer of a cam