damage. reporter: the shards of glass injuring more than 1,000 people, 100 hospitalized. i heard this extremely loud noise that shook my apartment. reporter: canadian hockey player, michael garnett, lives there. we talked to him via skype. it blew the vents out of my bathroom and there was debris on the floor. and i am up on the 23rd floor and i could feel the building swaying. reporter: pieces of the meteor punched a hole in a frozen lake, but missed a town in a nearby nuclear plant. linda specializes in meteorites at the smithsonian. these are the primitive materials left over from when the planets formed and are the basic building blocks of all of our planetary material. it s heavy. reporter: it is indeed heavy. reporter: in an amazing coincidence, an astroid half the size of a football field came whizzing by this afternoon. while the space station orbits 220 miles above the earth, this afternoon s astroid passed 17,000 miles above the earth, much closer
miraculously, the damage to people was minor, mostly cuts from splintered glass. michael garnett, a canadian goalie who plays for chelyabinsk in the russian hockey league hasas felt a few bangs in his time but nothing like this. reporter: 70 miles outside of town a meteor-shaped hole in the ice of a lake indicates the visitor nameless visitor s last resting place. meteorite fragments were sc scattered around likerstellar c interstellar calling cards. as if anyone would ever forget. chelyabinsk has made history before for not being in the news. it was part of the old soviet union s nuclear weapons program and wa and was a closed zone, forbiddenground for ground for foreigners. now it s famous as the place where heaven and earth met withen and e a bang, anthony. mason: mark phillips. thanks, mark. derrick pitts is chief astronomer at the franklin institute in philadelphia. derrick, what caused this huge explosion and sonic boom that s associated with this meteor? asso and w
tell me about this plea deal that s being filed apparently today. well, the sun times is reporting at suntimes.com that the plea deal is going to be made public today. we have a statement from the jackson lawyers where jackson says that he says he offers no excuses and takes responsibility for the improper decisions and mistakes i ve made. we expect this document to be filed in the u.s. attorney in washington d.c. and it has to do with the allegation over misuse of campaign funds. the investigation also takes in his wife sandy in chicago who served as his campaign manager. lynn sweet, thank you very much. much more coming up. also, we ll hear from the president in chicago. i m brooke baldwin. listen to jim acosta in for wolf in washington. hey, jim. thanks, brooke. happening now, look up in the sky. a fireball and a shocking reminder that planet earth is spinning around in a very unpredictable neighborhood. back on dry land and already heading to court, we have details
fans. racked up nearly 7,000 online fans. today, february 16, 2013. captions paid for by nbc-universal television good morning, everyone. welcome to today on a saturday. i m lester holt. i m erica hill. boy, the little pig that could. i think it s adorable. yeah. we ve got the little guy with wheels because he, obviously, can t his back legs don t work. yeah. i don t think anybody will want bacon after seeing this cute guy. i certainly don t. we ll have that coming up. we ll meet him. this morning, we re learning more about what happened aboard the carnival cruise ship. very little of it is good. passengers are waking up glad to be back on solid ground. the conditions on that ship horrible. coming up, a look at what rights you have as a passenger when you re on a cruise. also, the big cleanup has begun now in russia after a space rock exploded there on friday. it happened the same day a different asteroid hit earth. could the two be related? we ll talk t
seeking damages. she accuses carnival cruise lines of negligence and fraud and says that she was injured as a result of the unseaworthy, unsafe, unsanitary, and generally despicable conditions in aboard the triumph. a spokesperson says the company has not seen the lawsuit and cannot comment. meantime, the triumph has been moved to a shipyard in mobile, where extensive repairs and cleanup begin as the official incident investigation also begins. because the ship is registered in the bahamas and the event occurred in international waters, the bahamian authority is the lead investigator. both the u.s. coast guard and the national transportation safety board, the ntsb, are heavily involved, interviewing passengers and crew, trying to determine why the fire broke out and how it was handled and ultimately trying to prevent something like this from ever happening again. lester? thanks. the ordeal on the carnival triumph was difficult for everyone on board. for some, it di