both of you. >> thank you, kyra. we start in texas. exhausted fire crews are battling an enemy is astonishing and relentless wildfires burning somewhere in the state for nearly ten months without any break. today is the 296th consecutive day of work for those firefighters. just in the last week, 120,000 acres have burned. more than 700 homes have burned since sunday and then near austin, a blaze has killed two more people raising the overall death toll to four. jim spelman is in bsatrop near the largest fire in the state. are crews making any progress at this hour? >> good morning. shift change here. the day crews are ready to head on into the fire. they took advantage yesterday of low winds and cooler temperatures to get in there and get 30% containment on that fire. i thought that was really an incredible amount of progress that they made yesterday, considering how intense this fire was, that it took out 500 homes in about 48 hours of burning time that they were able to make that kind of progress. they want to do that again while winds remain low. warmer today. not good but the low winds should allow them to make more progress. they are in there on the ground creating fire lines and using bulldozers and hand tools to get rid of the fuel between the active fire and the homes and other stuff that is in the way and they will get up in the air again with helicopters and planes and drop water and retardant on it. they know that with the severe drought conditions, that they have to be super aggressive against these fires because just one spark, one ember flying up, if the winds pick up again could start a new fire and the whole circle begins over again. >> jim, we will be talking more, obviously, in the next couple of hours. let's go ahead and check more on the outlook for those fire conditions. we turn to rob marciano. he has been following it for us throughout the country. >> no rain. over 290 days consecutive fires. zoom in quickly to the austin fire. the largest one, 30,000 acres now and counting. the satellite picture of where the smoke and ash pushed away from austin that is good but if you're down wind of that you're certainly bad air quality. even you can see the outline of the scar this thing has produced. also some impressive footage. this shot from the northwest side of austin and you can see the smoke and ash being blown away from the city itself. high pressure is the reason we don't have rain there and also keeping a lot of the debris from the fire close to the ground. going to be warm today but not as hot as it has been. 95 austin and 89 degrees in dallas. and relatively light winds again today so it will be decent. not looking for any sort of rainfall and wind should be relatively light but warm going forward. as far as what is going on across parts of the gulf of mexico, this disturbance may turn into something. we are not sure where it's going to go. it probably won't help the fires in texas. we are sure where katia go, a category 1 storm and continue its track and veer off out to sea but big waves and dangerous rip currents a problem along the east coast. >> rob, thanks. we want to turn to the economy. the president's all important speech on creating jobs. this morning, we have new details of the plan he is going to unveil before the joint session of congress. brianna keilar is at the white house. what exactly do we know this morning? >> reporter: here is what is new. we know that there is, according to democratic sources in discussions with the white house there will be 300 billion dollars in new spending that the president will be proposing and according to these sources that will be offset by 300 billion in tax cuts. or in cuts, i should say. we know some of the tax cuts already that the president will be proposing. the payroll tax cut rye right now is in effect in part for employees. the president would like to extend that to employers and continue to allow to have employees have that tax cut. also extending unemployment benefits so that the long-term unemployed have additional help. we know education is going to be a priority when he gives his address tomorrow night. there will be money, we are expecting, for techsers who have been laid off to rehire them and money to renovate schools. the idea here is this will be part of that infrastructure spending that the president has been behind as part of a jobs plan that the idea being renovating schools would be a shovel-ready project. we heard yesterday jay carney, the white house press secretary, saying there will be new proposals in what the president lays out, proposals we haven't heard about and proposals that are beyond a what i've just laid out here. >> and, no formal republican response to this speech, right? >> reporter: no. you know, sometimes if you see a state of the union, which this address to joint session of congress is going to look like, you might see a republican response. an official response from one person who kind of speaks for, in this case, house republicans, will you not be seeing that. there is some uncertainty what the president may say. that may be in part but not that you won't hear from republicans at all. expect to hear from the speaker and top republicans. many republicans who will be doing television interviews and certainly getting their point of view out there as they do respond to the president, but not just having one person do it. >> brianna keilar at the white house, thanks. tune in to cnn for the president' speech to the joint session of congress. live coverage tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. eastern. the president's speech was moved back for tonight's republican presidential debate and our mark preston has a preview of that. >> reporter: we will see eight candidates out in california at the ronald reagan library this evening. taking part in the nbc politico debate. a couple of things we will look for is mitt romney stay laser focused on president obama or will he perhaps attack some of the other candidates such as rick perry who is the new front-runner in this race and the new kid in the race will he attack mitt romney personally some we have seen his campaign doing that in press releases including just yesterday when mitt romney released his own jobs plan. what will happen to michele bachmann some she has fall precipitously even after the iowa straw poll and dropped since recognize perry entered the race. what will she do tonight and rick santorum and jon huntsman and matt cain are so low in the polls and need a breakthrough. some interesting things we might see tonight. what we probably won't see is a lot of attacking going on because ronald reagan is known for the 11th commandment, thou will not speak ill. >> rudy giuliani this quote is classic. if you're desperate i might jump in and help run for president. >> reporter: yeah. a lot of talk what is rudy going to do? run for president again or kind of tease us with these types of comments? well, he had a little fun with it yesterday. he was here in washington for a speech. listen to what he had to say in his own words. >> if i think we are truly desperate, then i may run, which is the way i got elected to mayor of new york city. do you know what my slogan was? you can't do any worse! >> there is rudy giuliani in washington yesterday. probably throwing more cold water on the idea he is probably going to run for president. the fact he was seriously running for president. he has not ruled it out. but he does acknowledge he would have a tough time in a republican primary which is dominated by social conservatives. we know rudy is a centrist republican. >> mark, thanks. your next political update in an hour. always get all of the political news 24/7 at cnn/politics.com. italy, attorneys for amanda knox are making progress in appealing her murder conviction in the death of her late roommate. our zain verjee is monitoring the latest from london. i understand more questions about the dna evidence? >> reporter: yeah. a couple of significant developments. this is a really pivotal week in amanda knox's appeal trial. the first thing is that a judge just a short while ago told prosecutors no, they cannot have any new dna assessments. they cannot call forward any new witnesses and they can't bring in some of the original dna evidence that was used to convict amanda knox in the earlier trial. the other thing that happened that is really crucial is there is this leading italian forensic expert. he came on the stand and had a technical explanation but essentially what he said was the amount of dna in the groove of the knife that allegedly was used to murder meredith kercher was not blood. these are pretty significant things. what is happened is the two xes fed evidence, a knife, as well as a bra clasp, there has been enough doubt that has been cast on those two pieces of evidence to raise a lot of questions. amanda knox's dad says he is pretty optimistic she may be released. kyra, we will find out what the verdict is at the end of the month likely. >> we will be following it until then. zain, thanks. coming up, crime pays. or at least the arizona department of corrections hope it does. if you want to visit someone behind bars? you have to shell out the cash. also ahead, 30 years in prison for sending a tweet. two people in mexico are facing just that. we will explain. [ man ] natural gas vehicles are used somewhere... but not in my neighborhood. ♪ [ female announcer ] we're throwing away misperceptions about natural gas vehicles. more of the vehicles that fuel our lives use clean american natural gas today. it costs about 40 percent less than gasoline, so why aren't we using it even more? start a conversation about using more natural gas vehicles in your community. checking stories across the country. carson city, nevada, a fourth person died from yesterday's shooting rampage at ihop restaurant. three national guard members. 11 people shot. police say the suspect later turned the gun on himself. and, all of a sudden, we heard a bunch of fire, we heard a bunch of shots going off. loud shots. it was crazy. we seen people running out of the building. >> you just started hearing what sounded like machine guns or firecrackers or something. it was loud. >> family of annie le filed a wrongful death lawsuit against yale, university alleging the school did little to protect women on its campus. she was killed in a research lab in 2009. the university says the lawsuit has no merit. senior legal analyst for cnn, jeff toobin will join us next hour to talk more about this case. parts of new york and new jersey hit hard by hurricane irene changes to the start of the school year. in new york, there's some delays and newark, new jersey, concerns over mold at one school. means a temporary reassignment of kids to other schools. the arizona department of corrections is cashing in on crime. if you want to visit someone behind bars, it's going to cost you 25 bucks. a fee that has angered not only family members but prison advocacy groups. david fate calls it mind boggli boggling. you believe this could ultimately have a negative effect on public safety. why? >> well, research tells us that one of the very best predictors of whether someone is going to go straight and lead a law abiding life after prison is whether he has been able to maintain family contact while incarcerated, and visitation is an essential part of that. so if we care about public safety, if we care about crime prevention, we should be doing everything we can to encourage and facilitate and promote prison visitation. >> for the family members and families with a number of children, a 25 dollar fee is a lot of money. most of them liver in poverty, correct? >> absolutely. this really is trying to get blood from a stone. prisoner's families are overwhelmingly poor. they are poor to start with and then they are almost always made poorer by the incarceration of a spouse or parent or other bread winner. so these are really the last people on whose back arizona should be trying to balance its budget. >> david, a lot of back and forth on what exactly is this fee. the arizona department of corrections gave us a statement saying this is a background check fee and i've also read that the same doc director refers to it as a visitation fee and others say it will not be used for background checks but maintenance and repairs to prisons. what do you say to the critic out there who say these are prisoners. we have got no sympathy. pay the 25 bucks. >> let's remember that the fee is paid not by the prisoners but by their family members who haven't done anything wrong. and i think we need to focus on what is best for public safety. other states have taken a very different approach from arizona. other states actually subsidize prison visiting because they know that every dollar they spend will be repaid many times over in successful reintegration and decreased crime in the future. unfortunately, arizona has taken the exact opposite direction and it's a direction that is bad for public safety. >> david, thank you for joining us. we will follow the lawsuit. >> you bet. mexico takes a tough stand on two people accused of sparking terror by using twitter. some call it infringement on free speech. also ahead, what a way to go. fired over the phone. exactly what happened to the ceo of one of the most recognizable tech companies. eetener with b vitamins, the first and only one to help support a healthy metabolism. three smart new ways to sweeten. same great taste. new splenda® essentials™. [ male announcer ] each of these photos was taken by someone on the first morning of their retirement. it's the first of more than 6,000 sunrises the average retiree will see. ♪ as we're living longer than ever before, prudential's challenge is to help everyone have the retirement income they'll need to enjoy every one of their days. ♪ prudential. bring your challenges. apparently a commercial aircraft has crashed in russia. about 155 miles northeast of the capital we are told. 36 people are confirmed dead. russia state run news agency says the plane was carrying members of a hockey team. we are going to bring you more details as soon as we get them. ♪ shows biz haents. celine dion is the victim of a bizarre break-in. police say a man slipped into her montreal home and of all things raided the fridge. he tripped the alarm. police showed up and he was drawing a bath. neither deion or her husband were home. >> fox will still air quarterly specials of "america's most wanted." the host john hall sh say they have captured more than a thousand fugitives. items that belonged to john wayne will soon be auctioned off. maybe you want some of these items. 400 john wayne items go up for sale next month. potentially land mark legal case in mexico. two people could face up to 30 years in prison for creating public panic using twitter. zain verjee is live with us from london with more on this controversial case. zain? >> reporter: hi, kyra. four posts were put up online and it triggered complete chaos. parents were stressed out and major traffic jams, car crashes. it really unleashed havoc. basically, what happened was two guys were putting up false information suggesting that children had been kidnapped. they said there were bomb threats, helicopters, fired gunshots and kidnapping situation was happening. let me give you a flavor of one of the tweets that was put out. one reads my sister-in-law just called me all upset. she just kidnapped them. here is another one. this was just lies. they made this stuff up. investigators are saying the two people behind this could face terrorism charges and up to 30 years in jail. now, their lawyer is saying, well, they have freedom of speech, they can say this kind of stuff. it's disturbing to put the stuff out there and trigger this kind of chaos. >> i will follow the case. it's definitely interesting. zain, thanks. fired over the phone. that's what happened to the ceo of yahoo!. alison kosik is at the new york stock exchange with details. what was her response? >> reporter: you can only guess what her response was. getting fired, kyra, it's just not easy obviously. no easy way to do it but over the phone? come on. right? carol bartz after the phone call she blasted out an e-mail to all yahoo! employees saying i'm very sad to tell you i've just been fired over the phone by yahoo!'s chairman of the board. it has been my pleasure to work with you all and i wish you only the best going forward. you have to remember her two and a half years at yahoo! was not easy. she cut costs but failed to boost revenue and yahoo! has been losing online ad revenue to facebook and google and it stock price hasn't moved much under her leadership. despite the problems, yahoo! still has 600 million users. still to the noo bad. >> how is wall street taking the news? >> reporter: yahoo! shares up about 6% before we start the opening today. analysts say the way per departure was handled could signal there is more drama to come at yahoo!. the borderer market looks like opening higher after three straight days of selling. looks like the bargain hunters are out in full force. hopes pinned on the big speech from president obama happening tomorrow at 7:00. he is giving this big speech on jobs. so wall street is certainly hopeful that something new, different, and wonderful will come out of that. >> we will follow it. thanks. texas governor rick perry is leading the republican field and will stand front and center at tonight's gop debate. expect some of the feistiness on display here. >> i mean, it really wears me out that we got two people on the stage here that want to tear texas down when the fact is everybody understands, this is a state you want to live in. we want to come here. >> you might be surprised that this is a rare test for the lifelong politician who has long avoided debates. we will take a closer look after the break. plus, at least one political expert says the answer to putting young people to work is a program sitting right under the president's nose. ♪ [ male announcer ] each of these photos was taken by someone on the first morning of their retirement. it's the first of more than 6,000 sunrises the average retiree will see. ♪ as we're living longer than ever before, prudential's challenge is to help everyone have the retirement income they'll need to enjoy every one of their days. ♪ prudential. bring your challenges. reuters has just released home video of moammar gadhafi with his family members. unclear when exactly it was shot. gadha gadhafi's whereabouts are still not known. at least 11 people were killed and 61 wounded when a bomb went off outside a court in new delhi today. the second explosion outside of that indian court in four months. largest of texas wildfires has burned 33,000 acres near austin and blamed on two deaths and the evacuations of 5,000 people. texas governor rick perry says he will not miss tonight's republican debate. he bowed out on monday with the wildfires back home. today is a crucial test for the front-runner and a forum he has largely avoided. in ten years as governor he has taken part in only four debates. >> i'm telling you that we created more jobs -- i don't know -- i don't know how to explain this to you any simpler. >> governor, you're using the numbers from '07 and -- >> i'm talking about 2008. >> let's talk about '09. >> and in '0, we are creating jobs in october and in november. there was not a state in the nation. name me one state in the nation, senator, or mrs. medina, that were creating jobs. i mean, it really wears me out that we got two people on the stage here that want to tear texas down when the fact is everybody understands, this is a state you want to live in. we want to come here. this state is growing by a thousand people a day and not becau