on this holiday morning. and we ve got a lot of news. we begin with the weather. first a new wave of spring storms is pounding the midwest. in fact, some of the worst damage is in battle creek, michigan. a storm packing 80-mile-an-hour winds snapped trees, brought down a lot of power lines. in fact, across the state some 100,000 homes and businesses lost power. a violent storm hit the chicago area. ferocious winds uprooting trees and sending them on the tops of houses and cars. the trees just doubled. it was the strongest wind i ve seen in a long time. that s the important part. nobody got hurt. houses can be rebuilt, people takes a long time for them to get rebuilt. the severe weather grounded 450 flights at o hare airport sunday. could be more of the same today. we ll let you know whether there could be more of this. that s not exactly the news you want if you re coming back from your holiday vacation. we want to know what s in store for you today. rob marcian
congratulations everybody mission assembly complete. shepard: 12 years later, $100 billion later, astronauts have finally finished building the international space station. it is done. final step attaching a 60-foot extension boom that will help with future repairs on board that station. the orbits outpost weighs about 500 tons. the equivalent of a dozen fully loaded semi-trucks. and the interior is said to be roughly the size of that of a boeing 747. this was the last ever spacewalk that a shuttle crew is scheduled to perform. and the shuttle endeavour is set to retire after this mission. by the way the shuttle commander mark kelly was scheduled to hold a video conference with his wife. nasa had no plans to release any video to the public. another visiting day in the testimony of trial casey anthony as witnesses describe smelling what they said they thought was human remains in the young mother s car.
and, a vehicle that we can one day use for exploration and hopefully, we ll move in that direction and we re building a heavy-lift vehicle where contracting with some private companies for commercial capability, to access lower earth orbit and it is you know, we are still, still moving forward, unfortunately, we re not going to have a u.s. crew vehicle for the immediate future but that will not be forever and we have had gaps like this before. bill: i know you have gabby s band on your wrist and you are wearing the wedding ring around your neck and can you show our audience that? and while you do that, katie, i want to know what kind of shuttle mate he is in the international space station! well, this shuttle crew is great to have on board. they came right in and, got to work and they made their plans, really clear to us so we could be part of what they are doing, and, you know, they are great guests to have, they don t
two commercial jets nearly colliding moments after vice president joe biden arrived at the same airplane. one of them was coming nor a landing when it came in at 300 feet another jet taking off. a tornado rips through philadelphia destroying several buildings. surveillance video captures debris and trash cans swirling all over the place during the wild storm. witnesses say she just had seconds to get inside to safety. most of the debris came from a nearby auto shop that lost its roof in the twister. a beer distributor and crab house were also crushed in that storm. another special wake-up for the shuttle crew this morning. a song written just for them. watching over us you guys are the passing time that song is luna written
mark kelly blast off with the shuttle endeavour. docked at the international space station this morning. shuttle crew greeted him with smiles and hugs. the shuttle s last scheduled mission bringing the most expensive pay load ever to that station. it s a 2 wld device designed to help us all learn more about how the universe was formed. the vice president s plane landed and then disaster was almost there. new report details how close two planes came to a violent collision. continuing coverage of the floods in the south. and one thing you probably haven t seen is the biggest concern all along the river. that little thing is it. we ll explain what it is and why it is important come up.