good morning. cnn this mor it is sunday, mth. i m kristin fisher in for amara walker. i m boris sanchez. kristin, i hope that getting that hour of sleep unnecessarily snatched away from your night didn t hurt too bad. of all the mornings to fill in for amara, right? i triple checked my alarm clocks this morning. we both made it and here we are. and here is what we re watching this morning. they started evacuating i think at 12 in the morning or one in the morning and they just started the national guard taking people out as they go. parts of california underwater, homes and businesses flooded with levees pushed to the brink. and we have got another big rainmaker on the way. this was the first time something like this was reported to us. we haven t had any other incidents that i can recall. three texas women believed to be missing in mexico after crossing the border more than two weeks ago. what her family is saying and what investigators are saying about the cas
seems a little odd that the black kid are there with a white santa. it s all good. to each his own. you was scared of santa. he s got the cutest things. you can t really see my phone. there s a black santa and white santa stocking that we found. ryan, you re the best. thank you. cnn this morning continues right now. so glad that you could join us this morning on the eve before the eve of christmas. good morning, everyone. poppy and kaitlan are off and i m here with the lovely and smart and talented sara seidner. i was wondering where you were going with that but you re good. we re going to catch you up on the five big stories this morning. more than half the population is under winter storm and wind chill alerts as a major storm moves across the country. it s not like a snow day when you were a kid. this is serious stuff. please take this storm extremely seriously. more than 820,000 power customers are in the dark, thousands of flights have been cancel
underway for millions across the u.s. and it s already canceled 1,000 flights. we are live on the ground. in memphis, two more officers and three emt workers off the job this morning for their response in the beating of tyre nichols. this as we are hearing nichols in his own words for the first time. secretary of state antony blinken walking a diplomat tightrope as vie less is escalating in the middle east. he is meeting with the palestinians. another suspicious incident at the dallas zoo. two monkeys believed to be stolen, also this. hollywood losing another tv icon. laverne & shirley star cindy williams died at 75. her family remembering her as kind and generous with a, quote, brilliant sense of humor. cnn this morning starts right now. we are going to begin with the dangerous ice storm freezing the south from texas all the way to west virginia. nearly 40 million americans under winter weather alerts. this is a live look in arkansas where the declared a
wrongs. president biden wipes out federal marijuana possession convictions. what that means for the effort to decriminalize marijuana nationwide. we have a series of serial murders occurring. people are scared to come out. police in california on the hunt for a killer. the one characteristic they are asking the community to zero in on as the search for the suspect continues. newsroom starts right now. good morning. it is saturday, october 8th. good morning. you are live in the cnn newsroom. we start this morning in eastern europe. at least three people have been reported dead in a huge explosion that crippled europe s largest bridge and pair lased a key supply route for russia s war in ukrainian. that blast crippled the only bridge linking russia to the annexed territory of crimea. the kerch bridge is a huge symbol for the kremlin and the attempt to reunify crimea with the russian mainland. let s get to fred pleitgen. russia blamed the explosion on ukraini
attempt to claim crimea from ukraine. russia claims at least three people were killed. a russian investigative committee arrived this morning to inspect the damage and so far no one has claimed responsibility for the blast. cnn s fred pleitgen is live for us from kyiv with the very latest on this. fred, russian officials are now saying traffic has resumed on the bridge? how is that happening? reporter: well, they are saying that the traffic is in reverse on that bridge. they are trying to clear the cars off that bridge but trying to get the traffic moving again as fast as possible. essentially, what they are saying is that all of this happened, this explosion happened in the early morning hours of this morning. when the lacey latest that they have is a struck they say exploded, even though it s not exactly clear whether or not that is the case, that a truck blew up. we have some of that video of that explosion taking place, which seems to have been massive. as a result ther