the israeli national accused of roaming three states, stabbing 18 people and killing five of them. apparently elias abuelazam has been caught twice before but set free to only stab again. it was when he tried to board a plight in atlanta that he was nabbed. he s due to appear at a hearing in just a couple of hours for extradition to michigan on murder charges. homeland security corn den jeanne meserve live in washington with more. what are you hearing now? reporter: he s an israeli citizen. as you mentioned he was nabbed as he tried to board a flight to go d back to his home country. authorities believed that this man is responsible for stabbings in michigan, ohio, and virginia, five of them fatal. elias abuelazam, a 33-year-old israeli citizen, living legally in the u.s., was arrested wednesday night as he was about to board a delta flight to tel aviv. the suspect was located at the boarding gate. atlanta s hartsfield airport and was called to the front of the boarding a
mike marusarz tells us about the man who has been on the run for months. reporter: the accused serial slasher slipped out of police hands twice before he was finally snatched at an atlanta airport. just last week 33-year-old elias abuelazam was arrested during a traffic stop on an outstanding warrant outside d.c. police even found a knife and hammer inside his blazer. still, he posted bail and was released. that is he a question i want to ask him, why? i ask myself and i ask god why. reporter: 17-year-old antwaun wilson was alone on the street and then started stabbing. richard booker was almost murdered. i never hurt so much in my whole life. i ve never come so close to death. reporter: it led them to a party store near flint where 14 attacks took place. he should be hanged. reporter: this man says he hired abuelazam a month ago. details from co-workers and store surveillance video helped convince police he was their guy. the israeli national is in america le
economists say the outlook is grim after an unexpected report on unemployment. wall street is reacting with the dow losing nearly 380 points over the last three days. david muir reports. reporter: the figures were eye-opening, unexpected. the number of american workers filing new unemployment claims jumping to its highest level in nearly six months. any way the data is cut, the numbers are dismal for employment. reporter: with more than 14 million americans looking for work, 25 million if you count those who have given up, the economic domino effect is clear. families increasingly having trouble holding on to their homes. new numbers revealed banks now taking over homes at a near record pace. more than 92,000 homes were taken by the banks in july, up 9% in just one month. by comparison, banks repossessed about the same amount in all of 2005 before the recession. now that many in a month. what we re really dealing with right now is an historically unprecedented cycle t
and good morning. welcome to today on a friday morning. i m matt lauer. and i m meredith vieira. this is the fourth straight day of storms that have pounded iowa, leaving the state heavily flooded. that s right. ames has been hard hit, flooding so severe there the city has been forced to shut down its water supply to about 56,000 people. we ll have a live report from the scene straight ahead. also ahead, an nbc news exclusive. general david petraeus spoke with nbc s david gregory overnight. his first interview since taking command of u.s. and nato forces in afghanistan. he is onboard with president obama s july 2011 date to begin pulling u.s. troops ousted region. or is he not? we ll get a live report from kabul just ahead. also ahead, lindsay lohan is only 24 years old. she s had more than her share of trouble with the law and addiction. right now, she s in rehab for the fourth time. this time, it s been ordered by the court, after she served a couple of weeks in j
next week. if i move a little, we may see that overturned car that came in on the bridge. she s got a couple things she s working on. a big rig accident near livermore and what s going on at the bridge right now. eric and kristen, we ll keep track of that overturn crash on the bridge, especially with that camera behind you guys. now livermore we have an overturned big rig blocking the two left lanes as you make your way towards airway. check how traffic is quickly slowing to 3 mph. but where you see where it says 73 mph, that s where i highly recommend drivers heading through livermore or coming on tracy get off. you may want to get off first street and work your way around 580 and possibly connect on 580 or 680. here is the drive time for you right now. it s already grown to 35 minutes. so this is a big delay. we re talking about 15-minute delay and that s just right when you approach the airway. apparently some fertilizer or ground cover has also been spilled and some