now he s backtracking. good morning to you and welcome to early start. it is 5:00 a.m. in the east. we do begin with breaking news overnight. we re following three big developing stories. first of all, the director of the movie top gun so i dead. he reportedly jumped off a bridge. christine romans is here. what you have found out? we found out that hollywood waking up to news really sad news. mourning the death of top gun director tony scott. they re treating this case as a suicide. saying he jumped off the vincent thomas bridge yesterday in san pedro, california. his death take the entertainment industry and insiders by surprise. we use the word shocking all the time when we hear about these deaths. but to think of tony scott, brother of ridly scott, one of most prominent and successful directors we have jumping off a bridge is almost impossible to contemplate. scott directed many blockbusters like top gun, crimson tide. he also produced a number of f
dismissals. there s a $1 billion rights issue pure speculation. okay. welcome to the show. i was a little lonely on friday. how did it go? i was lonely. dublin was good? i was not lonely. no. you ll have time at the end of this week and a little bit next week. we ll have to make the most of it while we re together. for the next three days. let s tell you what s coming up. celebration is over for europe s top politician. leaders of germany, france and freese will hold a series of meetings this week. on friday the greek prime minister, antonis samaras is expected to ask for more lenient bailout terms when he meets both those leaders. top politicians refused to grant athens any further concessions. ahead of that the german foreign minister is holding a conference in berlin later. at the same time ecb policymaker has said a greek exit would be manageable. he made the comments in an interview with a german newspaper. he stressed he would prefer if greece did stay in
this morning northern california is once again reacting to flames burning out of control. the record heat and dry weather this summer created optimum conditions for wildfire. thousands of people in a rural area east of redding have been told to leave their homes as a fire nearly 19 square miles continues to grow. the ponderosa fire has been has destroyed at least seven others. firefighters would rather rip down these trees than allow them to burn. they spent sunday trying to establish a fire line to keep the flames from reaching a cluster of homes. this fire s path is directly headed towards many of these homes. our number one goal is to get them out and get your firefighters in to put this fire out. the fire started saturday morning. the cause hasn t been determined. but it started after a series of lightning strikes in the area. this has been a fast moving fire due to the fact that conditions are dry, the brush, the grass, even the timber is incredibly dry. as t
all states the president won in 2008 up for grabs now. it is good to be with you guys. reporter: the romney camp is trying to course correct not just with where the candidate goes but what he says. it s a two-pronged approach. streamline his economic message and reclaim the idea of romney the businessman as a positive, not a negative. i know what it s like to hire people and to wonder whether you re going to be able to make ends meet down the road. reporter: and try to shred the president s calling card, his credibility and character. like with this brand new ad slamming the president for a pro-obama super pac commercial which blamed romney for a woman s death. it was an ad cnn found to be inaccurate. what does it say about a president s character when his campaign tries to use the tragedy of a woman s death for political gain? doesn t america deserve better than a president who will say or do anything to stay in power? and of course the romney campaign really hop
role at the republican national convention? i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. we begin with mitt romney s preparations for what may be the most crucial week of his presidential campaign. with several new polls out including our own showing him losing ground to president obama, romney begins a bus tour on saturday through four swing states he absolutely needs to win. but he s still traveling without a running mate. dana bash is here in the situation room taking a closer look. these are going to be huge days the next week. look, the day is young traveling without a running mate as we speak. you never know what s going to happen. regardless, mitt romney is going to have several vp-buzz generating news with him. but the campaign knows it first has to do some refining about the man on the top of the ticket, romney himself. oh beautiful, for spacious skies. reporter: if you turned on your television last month, there s a good chance you saw this brutal att