all right. first, though, big news today. the trial of the accused underwear bomber begins this morning with earnest with opens statements at the federal courthouse in droit. umar farouk abdulmutallab is charged with trying to blow up a flight on christmas day 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underwear. the defendant is acting as his own attorney. cnn s deb feyerick in live in detroit, where you were the night this all developed and christmas day 2009. deb, what is the situation? reporter: well, ali, christine and carol, we can tell you that he is facing eight charges today. it carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. the charges against him, attempted murder, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and also conspiracy toy commit terrorism. the nigerian grat witt student turned accused suits bomber is acteding as his own attorney and umar farouk abdulmutallab shown he is defind. during jury selection he invoked his meant, jihad mentor, recently killed in an air
defended a controversial $535 million government loan to a california solar panel company that eventually went belly up. the solyndra drama continues. reporter: continues, and will for some time. the president when asked about that, jonathan silver, the man who has been heading up the loan program, which, of course, is the controversial part of this program, because of a guaranteed loan that was given to that solar panel company that president obama visited, and that went belly up in august, that s really what all of this stems around. well, he has resigned, and to listen to the department of energy we re hearing from secretary steven chu, he s saying jonathan silver, the man who testified before congress about this controversy recently. he was already leaving, had been told in july before news broke of solyndra filing for bankruptcy that he would be going into the private sector. so you re hearing from sort of the executive branch this was already going to happen, but you