category 2 hurricane. we re going to have the latest track of the storm for you. and for the first time in history, a commercial spacecraft linking up with the international space station. let your geek flag fly, folks. we are going to take you live to outer space in just a moment. hi, everybody. welcome to early start. i m ashleigh banfield. look who s here! good morning. nice to have you here. i m alina cho. zoraida has the day off today. it is 5:00 a.m. in the east. on this friday before memorial, we ve got lots of news. we do, so let s get right to it. this is a big story. for the first time in 33 years in fact, the anniversary today new york police may finally have their man in the murder of etan patz 33 years ago. he is 51-year-old pedro hernandez. he is under arrest and is expected to be charged with second-degree murder. he was 19 at the time that 16-year-old the etan patz disappeared while walking on his bus stop in 1969. hernandez was working in a
detectives how he lured young etan from the school bus stop at west broadway and prince street, with the promise of a soda. he then led him into the basement of the bodega, choked him there, and disposed of the body by putting it into a plastic bag and placing it into the trash. we re going to be joined in just a moment by lisa cohen, after etan the 2009 book is considered the definitive work on this case and it s 33 years to the day, this is a day, may 25th, that is the national missing children s day, it was named this day by president ronald reagan, the first day really that a national movement of awareness about missing children began, and it s 33 years ago to the day that this little boy disappeared, presumed killed, and now finally an arrest in this case, a case that honestly, obsessed the nation and when you think about it, this is a little boy, 6 years old, who walked to school, for the first time allowed to walk to the bus stop. because of this case, another case
the truth if that s a promise he can keep or whether it s his version of read my lips or i ll close gitmo. this evening with presidential politic, and a focus on key battleground states. president obama is in iowa tonight. six electoral votes but a hotly contested tossup state at a wind turbine plant in newton, iowa, the president said he understood times are tough but he argues the republican agenda isn t the answer. when you hear somebody say, we should cut more taxes, especially for the wealthiest americans, well, newton, you ve been there and you ve done that. we did that. 2000, 2001, 2003. when you hear people say that we should cut back more on the rules we put in place for banks and financial institutions to avoid another taxpayer bailout. well, we tried that. that s the president in iowa just moments ago. republican challenger mitt romney has his eyes today on pennsylvania s 20 electoral college votes, encountering some democratic protests as he made his case on
couple of broken ribs. the 90-year-old former first lady fell at her l.a. home about six weeks ago. she was advised not to attend large events. so she had to skip congressman paul ryan s speech yesterday at the reagan library. [ male announcer ] great tasting tap water can come from any faucet anywhere. the brita bottle with the filter inside. [ male announcer ] great tasting tap water can come from any faucet anywhere. we have product x and we have product y. we are going to start with product x. the only thing i ll let you know is that it is an, affordable product. oh, i like that. let s move on to product y, which is a far more expensive product. whoaaa. i don t care for that at all. yuck. you picked x and it was geico car insurance and y was the competitor. is that something you would pay for year after year? i, i like soda a lot but for a change of pace.
we begin with the latest on an in-flight scare that forced a u.s. jet to make emergency landing by fighter jet. it raises fresh concerns for security for airliners headed to the states from africa and europe. u.s. airways flight 787 from paris to charlotte diverted to bangor s maine after a passenger s note warned she had a surgically implanted device. the plane with 188 people on board landed safely and the woman else courted off in handcuffs. officials determined she didn t have a device after all but that leaves plenty of questions. fran townsend is with us, a member of the external advisory committee for the cia and department of homeland security. fran, this is something people have been worried about, somebody with an implant device, perhaps a bomb. we saw an aggressive response because what we ve heard for months from intelligence and law enforcement sources that they re really worried about this because they heard this threat stream. this goes back to yemen, the al