years working with you. as i said, we will always be friends and i look forward to seeing you in new york. i will see you there soon. the next chapter. one more day. i ll be here tomorrow. so will i. i ll see you then. t.j., thank you very much. good afternoon, i m alina cho. fredricka is off today. it s saturday december 24th. thanks so much for joining us. two big stories today. politics and the christmas eve shopping crunch. in virginia, two candidates not making it onto the ballot. newt gingrich and rick perry. what happened? and last-minute holiday shopping. will it be the therapy that retail needs? let s start with politics and a surprising announcement from the republican party in virginia. newt gingrich and rick perry will not appear on the state s presidential primary ballot. the region? the candidates did not submit enough signatures to qualify. athena jones joins us from washington. athen ark, how did this happen? a lot of supporters of these two candid
next year. but here s the thing, folks, both parties want this. they agree that there should be an extension of this tax holiday. the problem here is that house republicans refuse to settle for the two-month band aid, the two-month extension that has already been passed by the senate. listen. our house gop negotiators are here and ready to work with their counterparts in the senate. he s not lucy, i m not charlie brown. we re not falling for that football stunt, again. okay, lucy and charlie brown. that s what we ve come to now, kate. it can be silly season up there sometimes. but just getting more and more silly, it seems. so, is this just all for show and eventually what people want to know, whether or not this is going to get done, is it? well, it s a good question. right now there s no clear answer, to be quite honest, as it seems both sides at the moment are more dug in than ever before. as you said, the house rejected the senate compromise that two-month extension
stood by his call for more negotiations. let s extend the payroll tax credit for a year. all we re asking for is to get the senate members over here to work with us to resolve our differences so we can do what everybody wants to do. less than two weeks before the iowa caucuses republican ron paul, now the new leader of the pack. in a new poll 28% say paul is their man compared to 25% who back newt gingrich. paul is holding a town meeting. that is happening in iowa this hour. more on the surge in the state later, our political ticker. turkish police detain dozens of people in an alleged ter or plot. many of them, journalists. journalists held this demonstration in istanbul. it was just hours after the police roundup. now they say free press is under attack, but the government says those detained were suspected members of the press and propaganda wing of a banned separatist group. some american troops who just returned home from iraq have just learned now that they may
collapsed. people left homeless are dealing now with freezing temperatures. in north africa today tunisians are counting millions of votes by hand. the results of parliamentary elections are expected tomorrow. tunisia was the first country to overthrow the dictator in what became the arab spirang. 80% turned out. many faced long waits. i waited three hours to cast your ballot. something like 3 1/2 hours. we didn t feel it. it was like five minutes because we were very, very happy to be inside there. well worth it for many of those folks. tunisia s new parliament will write a new constitution, decide on a system of government. the united states ambassador to syria is now back in washington today because of threats against his personal safety. ambassador robert ford angered the syrian regime by voicing support for anti-government protesters. the u.s. says that ford could return, but officials say that syria must first stop inciting violence against the ambassador. m
and welcome back to this special report on the uprising in libya. we ll go back and show you how libya reached the boiling point. like its neighbors in libya, has massive unemployment, a large youth population and a high cost of living. a lot of turmoil and all of it came together as a kindling, really. and then ten weeks ago a young man in tunisia set off a domino effect that s yet to end. in a small town, 26-year-old mohammed set himself on fire as people watched in horror. one of a generation of jobless college graduates, he had set up an unlicensed fruit cart to support his family. authorities confiscated it and some reports say a female government employee slapped him when he turned to complain. he likely died feeling he had enough. a week later, december 24th, protests erupted in other tunisian towns and a 18-year-old was dead.