this year's winning pooch is right here in our studio. we'll meet yoda, the world's ugliest dog, today wednesday, june 29th, 2011. captions paid for by nbc-universal television and good morning. welcome to "today" on a wednesday morning. i'm matt lauer. >> and i'm ann curry. we want to go to this dramatic scene in athens where thousands of protesters are venting their anger to avoid a bailout and avoid a crippling debt. >> michelle, i know this vote in parliament is scheduled for any moment right now, probably between 7:00 and 10:00 here in the united states. what do the police there -- what does the government there expect to happen if that austerity package passes? >> reporter: i think you're going to see more of the same, matt. all the local political analysts believe that this is going to pass. probably a lot of protesters know that, but they are so angry. they do not want this bill to pass. they don't like the fact that this is a budget loaded with deep cuts in spending, many, many government workers are going to lose their jobs. they're going to have lower pensions. a lot of the assets owned by the government are going to be sold, and taxes are going up dramatically, all for them to pay their bills. and they are very, very angry about it. i think you will see this throughout the day, this kind of movement with the tear gas being thrown and the riot police pushing the protesters away and back away from parliament. we've seen this for the last 48 hours. this is a two-day strike that's been called because of this vote. >> michelle, though, the people in the streets there, they have been reading the headlines. they know the financial shape that their country has been in now for the past couple of years. what do they see as the option to this austerity package? >> reporter: yeah, that isn't clear. when a country loses its ability to borrow just like a person loses its ability to borrow, austerity gets imposed one way or the other. they can either choose to do it themselves. the vote passes. they get help to get through some of their problems for the next several years, or if they don't get any money, it will be very, very messy. they'll have all kinds of cash flow problems. it's a really wonky way to say social security payments will not happen. all kinds of social security nets will disappear almost instantly because the government just won't have the money. so the austerity is coming one way or the other. they don't seem to understand that. >> all right, michelle caruso-cabrera live in athens this morning as protesters take to the streets outside the greek parliament. michelle, thank you very much. it's three minutes after the hour. here's ann. >> matt, thanks. here at home, the wildfire in los alamos, new mexico, has grown to more than 60,000 acres in just 48 hours. as those flames move closer to the city's nuclear weapons lab. nbc's janet is there. >> reporter: this is a fire with just 3% containment but a bit of a break for firefighters. the fire has slowed down and has not advanced any closer to the los alamos national lab. that said, there's growing concern about the safety of that lab and the hazardous materials stored inside. this is the out-of-control fire lapping at the border of the los alamos national laboratory. and this is the front line of the fight. hundreds of firefighters battling a blaze that went from small to life threatening in a matter of days. it is now extremely close to the lab where dangerous radioactive material is stockpiled and where officials insist those materials are safe and secure. >> our facilities and nuclear materials are protected and safe. >> reporter: but they offered no details. the sprawling nuclear lab remains shrouded in secrecy. authorities did admit there is fire all around it. and all around the city of los alamos, under a mandatory evacuation, many say they would have left anyway. >> the smoke was coming in, it became basically just too much. we were having trouble breathing. >> reporter: thousands went to stay with friends and family. hundreds are in shelters like this one inside a casino. >> actual stress of getting out of los alamos. >> reporter: it is full of people and anxiety. as many here know this could be home for a while. >> i learned that through the last fire, that you don't put your hopes up too high. >> reporter: every tool has been brought in in a battle against a blaze that could triple in size. >> this is the highest-priority fire in the united states right now. >> reporter: having already scorched the fringe of los alamos, officials say the winds could carry it in any direction at any time. a big response to this fire, more than 800 firefighters are on the scene. the national guard is here protecting people's homes. people have left for shelters or staying with friends and family. and ann, people who haven't left may reconsider doing so today. the smoke that blankets this city is as thick as it's been since the fire started on sunday. back to you. >> thanks for that warning, janet shamlian, thank you. it is 7:06. we're only halfway through 2011, but the 2012 presidential race is already intensifying. and some key players have been focusing a lot of their attention on the key battleground state of iowa this week. nbc's kelly o'donnell's in pella with the latest. kelly, good morning to you. >> reporter: good morning, matt. we've been talking to voters here around the state who say this is really an ideal time for them to get to see and size up a number of candidates and would-be candidates. that's sure happening among republicans. but another candidate who knows how valuable iowa can be to a white house run was back, and that's the president of the united states. >> hello, iowa! >> reporter: iowans expect to hear plenty of this. >> you know, i know you've been seeing a lot of politicians around lately. >> reporter: warmly courted by the president tuesday who stopped at an aluminum manufacturer to talk jobs. >> iowa, you and i, we go a long way back. >> reporter: a few hours away, sarah palin brought her brand of celebrity to a movie premiere attended by about 300 iowans. >> it is a wonderful story about american values. >> reporter: shot documentary style, the movie depicts palin favorably as a tough reformer in alaska. >> sarah had the courage to try. she had taken on the system already. >> reporter: made by conservative filmmaker steven bannan who says palin cooperated but had no control over the film's content. >> i think this film plays to the core value of the tea party and tea party movement and i hope it energizes people to get actively engaged. sfwh >> we're still thinking about that. >> reporter: palin was asked about bristol's comments that mom has already decided. >> she gedefinitely knows. we've talked about it before but some things just need to stay in the family. >> what's said on the fishing boat stays on the fishing boat. >> reporter: just-declared candidate michele bachmann -- >> you are the first people in the united states to see the bachmann for president bus! >> reporter: who made stops in new hampshire and south carolina tuesday faces new candidate scrutiny including financial records for a family business. >> i'd like you to meet my husband, marcus bachmann! >> reporter: the couple owns bachmann & associates, a minnesota mental health clinic run by the congresswoman's husband who is a clinical therapist. while bachmann campaigns for less government spending and opposes an expansion of medicaid, nbc news obtained state records that show the bachmann's clinic received government funds. $137,000 in federal and state medicaid payments since 2005. that money considered reimbursement for treatment provided to low-income patients. and that's the kind of thing that many health clinics do do, and there's no suggestion that there's anything improper about that. we reached out to the bachmann campaign for specific comment. we did not hear back. but michele bachmann will be coming back to iowa for her first bus tour as a candidate officially in just a couple of days. ann? >> kelly o'donnell, thank you very much. rachle mel maddow joins us . good morning. >> hi. >> sarah palin, how much longer can she wait? >> i think a long time. i think what the candidates are doing right now is essentially introducing themselves to a public who may not remember who rick santorum is or who michele bachmann is for that matter. sarah palin does not have that problem. nobody in america doesn't know who she is. i think she can wait a long time. we're a half year away from the iowa caucus. >> so if she waits that long or not, how will that change the republican race? >> well, i think that as long as mitt romney is the unquestionable front-runner, there is going to be some hunger among a significant number of republican activists, in particular for somebody else with a big name to get in. there's dissatisfaction with mitt romney as the front-runner. and so as long as there's nobody challenging him, and it looks like tim pawlenty does not pose any threat of doing that, i think that the race is going to remain quite wide open. >> michele bachmann seems to be considered right now a front-runner. i'm wondering, it seems to me it might be argued that she's taking some of the support that sarah palin would want from the tea party. so one might argue -- and there are those who are arguing that those two are going to have to confront each other at some point. do you agree with that? >> i don't think there's any reason to think of sarah palin and michele bachmann competing for the same voters any more than there is to see that sort of competition between herman cain and rick santorum or between jon huntsman and tim pawlenty. i think we're sort of past that. there's a lot of competition for that. i mean, tim pawlenty wants to be seen as a tea party favorite. we just heard in that report michele bachmann tried to make the case that she's a purist tea party candidate despite the fact she has this hypocrisy program with having been fitted herself with so much government spending. >> i want to get your take on something chris christie said. let's take a listen. >> i think he's so concerned about making sure everybody likes him that he's paralyzed to be able to make decisions. and i think that's what it does when you're worried about being liked. you don't want to decide anything because you know you're going to aggravate somebody. >> does the new jersey governor have a point that the president is making mistakes because he wants too much to be liked? >> i think chris christie is really good at polishing his own brand. and his brand at this point is i'm the guy who screams at my own constituents. when he was asked recently by a constituent whether or not there was an issue of fairness with him sending his kids to private school when he was cutting public education so drastically, he screamed back at that constituent, that's none of your business. that's his brand. >> let's talk about, though, obama specifically. do you think he's trying too hard to be liked? >> chris christie is auditioning for vice president. he would like to be taken seriously on the national stage. that's why he's embarrassing himself in his own state, taking a state helicopter away if his son's baseball games so he can go meet with iowa republican donors. he is auditioning. and his brand is i will be rude. and rudeness is actually what he's trying to sell as a form of political authenticity. so to attack the president on that ground is to invite a favorable comparison with his own style. >> you're saying he doesn't have a point, okay. >> well, he has a point for himself. >> there also seems to be, however, growing discontent in the left at president obama, a discontent over his position on libya, afghanistan, the bunltdg. is this something his campaign needs to worry about as we move towards the election? >> we'll see some of it today, the president hosting a gay rights reception at the white house, still sitting uncomfortably on his assertion that he does not support same-sex marriage. the gay community very excited about same-sex marriage rights having been extended in new york and that tension between the president's position and what the community sees as a victory. i think the president's going to have to worry about the left when it comes time to rubber meeting the road and organizational enthusiasm on the part of the democratic base being important to get out the vote. it may be too early for him to really be courting the left, but we'll see it in terms of his strategy. >> rachel maddow, thank you so much. sorry to spring the latin on you, but i knew you could handle it. you can catch "the rachel maddow show" weeknights on msnbc. let's head over to the news desk where natalie morales has a check of the morning's top stories. >> good morning. a standoff at a hotel in kabul has left at least ten civilians dead. a team of heavily armed taliban fighters stormed the intercontinental tuesday night and battled with security forces for several hours. nato helicopters took down three gunmen on the roof. and afghan security forces ended the standoff on the ground. meanwhile, clashes have erupted in cairo for a second day as the families of those killed during the uprising against the former egyptian president called for swift prosecution of officers believed to be responsible for the violence. riot police used tear gas against protesters who responded with fire bombs and rocks. a senate panel has voted to give the president limited authority to continue the opation in libya without the use of u.s. ground forces. this after the house rejected a similar resolution last friday. and a federal panel votes today on whether or not to revoke approval of the top-selling cancer drug avastin. recent studies show the drug is ineffective despite impassioned pleas from breast cancer patients who says the drug keeps them alive. to another developing story in the world of medicine and reports now that the surgeons conducting clinical trials of medtronic's bone growth protein used in spine surgery did not report serious complications and some reportedly received payments. our chief science correspondent robert bazell joins us live. good morning. >> good morning. this is a big battle today. a prominent group of spine surgeons is charging another group of spine surgeons wrote research papers that hid serious side effects of this drug. the drug is called infuse, and it is made by the medtronic corporation. according to the current issue of the journal "spine surgery," the doctors writing the papers got payments from medtronic as high as $23.5 million and as little as a half million dollars. infuse is used during some spine surgery to make bone growth. side effects include male sterility, pain and death. a doctor at the university of wisconsin said that much of that money came from medtronic for patents on devices he developed, but it did not influence the papers he wrote or edits. other doctors say the same. medtronic says it told the fda about the side effects and warned them on the label. the doctors writing about this say it reveals how much money can be paid to doctors who write about certain drugs and devices. natalie? >> we'll be hearing much more on this story on "nightly news." johnson & johnson is recalling more than 60,000 bottles of tylenol extra-strength caplets due to a moldy odor. the smell is caused by trace amounts of a chemical that can cause stomach upset. an update on a warm and fuzzy story we brought you earlier this week. the polar bear has now arrived at her new home in louisville, kentucky. she was found after being abandoned by her mother on an alaskan oil field. she'll be living at the glacier exhibit where she's expected to thrive in a chilly state-of-the-art facility. looks like she's enjoying herself already. she's made herself quite at home. 7:16. we'll turn it back to matt, ann and al. >> what do you think? let's go see that bear. >> road trip! >> let's go. i want to see that little bear. >> that moldy odor with the tylenol. >> we have one of those on the set. >> we might have to recall this whole studio. mr. roker is here after a day off with a check of the weather. >> we've got our first atlantic tropical storm of the season. tropical storm arlene is going to be causing some problems for mexico. but not so much for us. in fact, as we take a look, we'll sho look, we've got this system now about 190 miles east of mexico. 40 mile p-mile-per-hour winds. the path that brings it into southern and central mexico, no rain to speak of four friends in southern texas who could use the rain, makes landfall tomorrow. as we look at the country, we are expecting a risk of strong storms, heat through the southwest. beautiful day in the east. that's what's going on in the country. here's what's happening in your neck of the woods. >> bright sun, blue skisy, lowe humidity. low and mid-70s throughout the region. 76 at reagan national. humid in southern maryland around the bay and eastern shore. should be less humid there, too, as the day progresses. highs into the 80s today and tomorrow, low humidity, sunshine. friday, hotter, still not too humid but getting hot and humid over the weekend. saturday, sunday, and the and that's your latest weather. matt? >> al, thank you very much. a piece of debris led to tense moments on tuesday for the international space station. this after an asteroid zipped by earth at what's being called relatively close range. nbc's jeff rossen watching all this. good morning to you. >> most of us were eating lunch monday at 1:00 p.m. or working, but at that exact moment, an asteroid whizzed by. chances are you didn't see it, but it was close for an asteroid. then on tuesday, another near-miss as one nasa engineer put it, it's like a game of dodgeball up there. >> reporter: there it is, the asteroid appear toured on home video streaking across the sky. experts say it was the size of a small house. and this week, it passed within 7,600 miles of earth. in the vast universe, that's closer than it sounds. >> if you think of the earth as your house and the moon as your garage, this object same so close it knocked a flower pot off your back porch. >> reporter: experts say we were never in danger. the asteroid was close but still a safe distance away. nasa says this is the largest asteroid to be tracked this close to earth ever. >> this object that we found, we determined that it would pass closer to the earth than our communications or weather satellites. >> go ahead. >> reporter: the drama wasn't over yet. the very next day, tuesday, space junk was on a collision course with the international space station. spotted so late, there was no time to move out of the way. instead, the six astronauts including two americans got the order from mission control, climb into the escape capsules. >> the probabilities are still in the red threshold. and we are still planning to have you shelter in place. >> reporter: space junk is manmade debris like pieces of satellite orbiting the earth. some of it passed within 1,100 feet of the space station. that's around three football fields away. the closest encounter ever tracked. >> this was really an emergency situation because the object was following an erratic flight path. so the crew had to take shelter. >> we've got debris. >> reporter: feels like the movie "armageddon" around here. space junk, asteroids, what a week. >> the value of seeing these things in advance is that you can at least give warning because an object of this size, the size of a house, could have been an explosion as big as a military bombing attack on a county. >> there is a scary new reality here as well. nasa is closing up shop on the shuttle program. the final mission is scheduled next month. if space junk or an asteroid were to hit the interna