how important is that for nato? for sweden to join? i think the integration of the collective defense system is very important. we ve done a lot over the years even as a nonmember. but having them as a member, being able to integrate fully when you think about things like air defense, air space coverage. when you think about sea lanes and sweden occupies an important coastline in the baltic sea and north sea where russian naval forces go in and out of st. petersburg. so integrating with sweden is very, very useful. as for where they go on membership, i think we have to see allow erdogan and turkey play this.
avan watson, thanks. the u.s. virgin islands still facing trouble as well. two thirds of the cell service still knocked down. st. john no cell service at all. a cruise ship will evacuate. priority to high risk pregnant women, elderly. i can t imagine what it would be like to have diabetes or be seven months pregnant or have a child with special needs or have little children. i mean it would be really, really frightening. kudos to royal caribbean but certainly an odd dynamic when the priva cruise shipping industry is doing the job of th government. i know american airlines had its first flight in and out of st. thomas. so that s part of the process as we ve seen in puerto rico is
east coast today had better start thinking delay. i think that i do have some suggestions. they should check with their airlines and go to it the airline website and most of the time if there s something big going on they will have a splash on the homepage of the airline website to let you know where to go. call your travel agent. remember, even if you booked your ticket through priceline or expedia or orbitz or travelocity, you have a travel agent. there is an 800 number on the website. call them, find out what s going on, whether or not you re flights are delayed. if you are planning on going through st. louis, forget about it. you are in trouble now. and they re going to either have to reroute you or the flights will get canceled. it s going to be a big mess across the country. is this the kind of thing that people right now should be getting on the phone to rental car agencies, hotels, just kind of have to do this over land. well, either you re going to have to do it over lan
that part. for people getting in and out of st. louis, i think they will have to start thinking of alternative means of transportation in the near term at least in the next two or three days before they open up runways and start to figure out what they re going to do with all of the airline gates. you have to realize that these gates are owned and leased by individual airlines so they re going to have to come in and figure out some new ways of handling the operations. indeed. charlie, thanks so much. safe travels when you re out there. take care. more on the breaking news bringing you all the severe storms causing the extent of damage in missouri. we ll get a news conference any minute now on the latest from airport officials. when will they start flights again? we hope that question is asked when we take you there live. who shows up with a brake looking like this?