now, that's what we'd do if we were a serious country. >> gop candidates trying to show they have the foreign policy chops to be commander in chief. we'll have all of the highlights just ahead. american students arrested in egypt facing more interrogation today. they're families now speaking as cairo erupts for a fifth day. and tailspin. incredible video of the chopper crash and the more amazing pictures of the pilot walking away from it on this "american morning." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com and good morning to you. happy pre-thanksgiving day. i can smell the turkey now. can't you? >> so can i. >> can't wait. >> food, football, family. three fs what could be better? >> and then food coma. sleeping afterwards. >> at least you fall asleep and aren't suffering through the feeling of you're going to croak. anyway, ali and christine are off, obviously. i'm carol costello along side alina cho. >> last night's republican debate. disagreeing on just about everything. the best political team on television is live from washington. cnn senior political editor mark preston has the post-debate buzz. first to jill dougherty. good morning to you. this debate seemed to highlight the big differences between the candidates. didn't it? >> it did. interesting debate. wasn't it? the dynamics for the debate shifted. every we're seem there's another leader in the polls meaning all of the candidates were trying to distinguish him or herself from the pack. with eight republicans onstage, president barack obama got a few nicks. >> if you like what barack obama has done to our economy, you'll love what he's done to our national security. >> reporter: but these candidates had the knives out for each other. >> are you suggesting, governor, we just take all our troops out next week? what's your -- >> did you hear what i just said? draw down from 100,000. we don't need 100,000 troops. >> reporter: heated debate whether the 9/11 patriot act should be extended. >> all of us will be in danger for the rest of our lives. this is not going to end in the short run. we need to be prepared to protect ourselves. >> you can still provide security without sacrificing our bill of rights. >> i think we have to be very careful in protecting our individual liberties. we forget sometimes that we have a name brand in this world. >> reporter: should specific ethnic or religious groups in america be profiled for security screens? >> who would be? >> muslims would be someone you'd look like. the muslims committing these crimes. >> digging a hole for ourselves. what if they look like timothy mcveigh? he was a pretty tough criminal. >> reporter: in the midst of a heavy debate, a light moment. >> is it okay for muslim-americans to get more intensive pat-downs or security when he go through airports than christian or jewish americans? >> no, blitz. that's oversimplifying it. i happen to believe that if you allow our intelligence agencies to do their job, they can come up with an approach -- i'm sorry, blitz. i meant wolf. okay? blitz -- wolf. >> and what about aid to pakistan? >> i also think that pakistan is a nation that it's kind of like too nuclear to fail. >> until pakistan clearly shows that they have america's best interests in mind, i would not send them one penny, period. >> with all due respect to the governor, i think that's highly naive. >> reporter: and other top moments, like when newt gingrich made a plea for what he called more humane enforcement of immigration laws so they won't separate families and mitt romney shot back amnesty is a magnet that only encourages more people to come here illegally. >> live in washington, jill dougherty. thank you. the major gas of last night's debate, no painfully long pauses. so who came out on top? let's go to the sport card, and mark preston. good morning. >> good morning. >> talk about newt gingrich first. he took the immigration issue head-on and it was kind of surprising. listen to what he said first. >> he did. >> the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century and i'm prepared to take the heat for saying, let's be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create legality so they are not separated from their families. >> governor perry -- >> some republicans might say he's talking amnesty. something the conservative base is totally against. how do you think this played with that conservative part of the republican party? >> carol, he certainly ran into the wall with that answer. newt gingrich was very strong throughout this whole debate, and this might have been his big gaffe of the night. especially when looking at the republican presidential primary. the answer he gave last night is the answer you would give in a general election race, because want to reach out to independents, perhaps some disaffected democrats. newt gingrich last night by giving that is going to put himself in peril with voters in iowa, in south carolina. really conservative voters who don't like the idea of amnesty. in fact, two of his rivals last night onstage, michele bachmann and mitt romney, indicated that in fact it was amnesty and we're going to see mitt romney today, carol in iowa. he's giving a speech. it will be interesting to see now if mitt romney latches on to that and tries to take out newt gingrich on this issue for the mere fact that they are the two leading candidates right now for the nomination. >> it was interesting how he put it, gingrich i'm talking about. he said, if we are the party of family. he didn't say heart. rick perry said if you had a heart you wouldn't throw them out of the count. newt gingrich tried to put it in conservative language? >> he did. language we saw during the eight years of the bush administration. at this point in time with the economy so bad, unemployment so high, when he used the word amnesty you're saying to these voters across the country, these republican primary voters sshs that these are people who are taking your jobs. that's what we're hearing last night from some of newt gingrich's rivals, carol. >> also a feisty exchange between jon huntsman and mitt romney over troop levels in afghanistan. let's listen. >> we haven't done a very good job defining and articulating what the end point is in afghanistan. i think the american people are getting very tired about where we find ourselves today. >> let me let governor romney respond. >> let me respond. are you suggesting, governor, we just take all of our troops out next week? >> did you hear what i just said? i said we should draw down from 100,000. we don't need 100,000 troops. we need a presence on the ground that is more akin to 10,000 or 15,000 nap will serve our interests as far as intelligence gathering. >> jon huntsman really needed to do well in this particular debate and this is his thing. national security. so did he put on a performance that he needed to? >> reporter: he absolutely did. the question, is it a little too late at this point? we are just -- a little more than a month out before the iowa caucuses and the new hampshire primary. that exchange last night. look at it from two different angles. that was a new hampshire primary exchange. jon huntsman, for him to survive, go on and win the nomination has to win new hampshire. a state newt gingrich is putting a lot of time and energy and money into. look at them talking back at each other, clear they don't like each other personally. not only a political exchange also a personal exchange last night, carol. >> mark preston, thanks. appreciate it. well, as you heard, jon huntsman sparked lively debate last night when he talked about the need to pull out troops from afghanistan right away. we're going to ask the former utah governor about that plan and how he thinks he fared in last night's debate when he join us live at 8:10 a.m. eastern time. and just in case you can't get enough, we're here to help you out. the next live debate by cnn co-sponsored by the southern republican leadership conference will be held on january 19th in charleston, south carolina. mark your calendars. >> it's marked. angry protesters mobbing cairo's tahrir square for a tiffth straight day. three american college students arrested during the uprising in egypt expected to face more questions with u.s. representatives on hand nap will happen today. the students shown on egyptian state tv are accused of lobbing molotov cocktails at police and now hearing from one of the mothers. she says her son is the type of one that would get involved, but not one who would get violent. >> he is a very passionate person. he believes in democracy. he believes in standing up for what you believe in, standing up for what you feel is right, and that's the kind of person he is. so are we surprised that he would go down there and stand up for what he believed in? no. >> ivan watson, live in cairo for us this morning. are the protests still going on, ivan? >> reporter: absolutely. there are tens of thousands of people in the square behind me. a quick update on the three american students. we just got off the phone with general prosecutors office here who says they're still in police custody, these three american, and they will be transferred to the prosecutor's office as soon as there is some legal representation from the u.s. embassy. we'll keep on talking about that. meantime, there were hundreds of thousands of people at the very least into the early pre-dawn hours here in the square. none of them seemed to be satisfied with the speech given to the nation on egyptian television last night from field marshal mohammed, the general in charge of the supreme military council ruling this country for the past nine months. he made some concessions, said he accepted the resignation of the civilian government here, that he would push up the time for presidential elections until june or july of this summer, but that doesn't seem to satisfy the crowd here. i think he is underestimating how much of a symbol of hatred he and the other ruling generals have become. take a listen to what one of the protesters here had to say to us. >> for the people, but the council is a council of puppets with the old regime and do not necessarily have our best interests in heart. they have their best interests in heart and only want money and positions and everything else. >> reporter: now, carol, the makeup of the protesters, these are not organized political parties. these are egyptian youths. many of them appear to be teenagers, and they are continuously attacking riot police in the direction ever the interior ministry just beyond this square, only, like, two blocks, really, in that direction. we actually saw a brief cease-fire when i actually saw riot police officer, probably the same age as the kids attacking him, kissing one of the demonstrators on the cheeks, embracing him and moments later, they were throwing rocks again. tear gas canisters in the air and that constant sound of ambulances carrying wounded away. 33 people killed according to the ministry of health since these protests began last saturday. carol. >> and many, many more injured. reporting live from egypt this morning. thanks. and ahead on "american morning," new allegations against former penn state football coach jerry sandusky and reports say that two new accusers are still minors. and his chopper went down, but amazingly, a helicopter pilot in new zealand somehow managed to walk away from that. that mangled wreckage. and later, unlocking the mysteries of the universe. nasa says its new project will give us a glimpse into the dawn of time. cnn sat down with the scientists who are working on it. 14 minutes after the hour. ♪ [ electronic beeping ] [ male announcer ] still getting dandruff? 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[♪...] >> announcer: now get a $250 airfare credit, plus save up to 65%. call 1-800-sandals. certain restrictions apply. welcomes back tomrmmrm. it's 16 minutes after the hour. new developments in the penn state sex scandal. two new cases of alleged sex abuse against coach jerry sandusky. two more came forward since sandusky's arrest. joining us from state college, pennsylvania, via skype, sara ganim. good morning. >> reporter: good morning. >> the assumption is that these relatively recent victims because they're -- i should say alleged victims, because they're under the age of 18. do you know exactly when these incidents supposedly occurred? >> reporter: we don't. all we know is that these allegations were brought to the children and youth service agency with the last 60 days. we don't know how long they've been under investigation. in pennsylvania, you only have 60 days to make a finding once a child abuse allegation is brought forward, and because these two have not been completed, these investigations are still ongoing, all we know, they were opened in the last 60 days and have to include current children, because if they were adults who came forward, even if they said this happened while they were children, if they were adults it would only be a police matter and the children's youth agency here, which is the child protective agency here, is involved, gets involved. >> what this main mean is the grand jury, what it took three years to invest gays jerry sandusky before it finally decided to bring charges. could these new cases of alleged abuse have happened during the grand jury investigation? >> reporter: they could have. remember, a child is anybody under the age of 18. so we have to wait and see what the results of that investigation is, or those two investigations are. but that's a possibility, and it's definitely something that the governor, tom corbett, has been getting a lot of questions about, because he was the attorney general at the time that, victim one, the first to come forward, at the time he came forward, tom corbett was the attorney general and it was about half way through the investigation when things started to pick up he was elected governor. it was around the same time he was elected that more investigators were put on the case, that the 1998 report from penn state was found. the graduate witness, he was interviewed was found and when they found the other victims. the governor has been getting a lot of questions about that and whether or not waiting three years instead of arresting jerry sandusky right at the beginning could have put more kids in danger. >> the governor wanted to find this pattern of abuse. he wanted to find more than one alleged victim. does he regret that in any way now? >> reporter: he says, no. he's been -- like i said, he's been asked several times and he says he couldn't reveal there was an investigation, because the grand jury is secret, and because of that, they were hesitant to move forward. i believe his words were, we don't want to reveal our investigation, we didn't want to move forward with just one case until we had more and that's what they did. >> sandusky attorney interviewed on abc believes sandusky may go to jail because of these new charges. what do you think? >> reporter: well, i know this -- these are not the first two new cases that we've heard of. there have been reports of several other cases. other attorneys have said they have victims who say they were abused as far back as the 1970s. it's kind of unclear how many of these have been vetted by police. how many might testify before a grand jury. how many are with the statute of limitations that the cases could be prosecuted. we don't know. if it's ten, if it's less, if it's more. but we do know there have been a lot of people coming forward since jerry sandusky's arrest, and so i think the hearing on december 13th, there could be, as in any case, there could be an issue of bail brought up again by prosecutors. >> we'll have to see. sara ganim via skype. thanks so much. dramatic video of a helicopter crash in new zealand. wait until you hear the rest of the story. the main rotor clipped a cable while trying to land. the chopper practically comes apart, the tail just staping off. miraculously, no one hurt and the pilot even walked away from the wreckage. that is incredible. >> i can't believe he walked away. >> stranger things have happened, i guess, but, yeah, it is pretty amazing. >> giving thanks at thanksgiving. >> yes, he is. coming up, jon corzine silent since stepping down as ceo of mf global, but we may soon hear about the firm's collapse in his own words. have you heard mother nature is not making it easy for holiday travelers? 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"minding your business" this morning, worries about europe's debt crisis as well as the growth of the u.s. economy are pulling stock markets down worldwide again today. u.s. stock futures are pointing to a her open this morning. the u.s. markets all closed lower yesterday. in about two hours from now a fresh report on the number of people who filed unemployment claims for the first time last week. we'll get those numbers to you as soon as they're available. more bad news for netflix. the video streaming and dvd service now expects to be in the red through all of next year. the company has been struggling since the summer when it increased prices and then later flip-flopped on the rebranding of its services. congress wants to talk to jon corzine about $1.2 billion of missing money. members of a house committee are holding a hearing next month to look into the collapse of mf global, the brokerage firm once run by the new jersey governor until he stepped down last month. the firm was forced to file bankruptcy after it made a $6.3 billion bet on european sovereign debt. two mores days until black friday and you're in for a real barge fn you're shopping for an lcd tv this year. experts say prices are expected to drop to record lows. we're talking about 40 to 42-inch sets priced in a range of -- wait for it -- 200 to 400 bucks. why? because manufacturers will be trying to bring in as much business as possible after a weak sales season this fall. as if i needed more reasons to shop. "american morning" will be back after this. ♪ it's easy to see what subaru owners care about. that's why we created the share the love event. get