fountains have been sealed to prevent possible led poisoning from old pipes. even though the state spends millions to update schools each year. >> we have a school system that has a tremendous backlog due to neglect over the centuries. we're trying to give our kids great science labs, great media labs. >> this fourth grade teacher sees students struggle with a lack of ac. >> it's hard to keep them focussed and sometimes you see them, and they're just starting to slump on the desk because they're hot. >> reporter: but while the need may be clear, there's debate over whether this kind of spending creates jobs. t >> the repair costs are tremendous. so getting an infusion of money from the federal government

could put people to work. >> but critics say federal spending infrastructure has a minimal affect on job creation. >> i think if the federal government could create jobs we wouldn't see this new jobs report coming out. >> with congressional approval needed for any boost in instructure spending, it's a debate that's unlikely to go away. athena jones, cnn, washington. top of the hour, 4:00 on the east coast, you're in the cnn newsroom, hi, everybody, thank you for joining us. i'm alena cho, fredericka whitfield as the day off. take a look at these pictures one week after hurricane irene slammed the east coast, it's now the gulf coast's turn. lee is lashing the coast of louisiana and mississippi. power is out to thousands in both states, louisiana's

jefferson parish ordered a mandatory evacuation and while we watch lee, we are still keeping a close eye on what's happening with hurricane katia. nearly 700 vermont homes and businesses were still without power as of this morning. 35 ground searchers along with six canine teams continue to look for a vermont man missing since sunday, he's believed to have been swept away by raging floodwaters. and take a look at this map, the green lines show vermont roads that are now open, pretty good, but many of the roads and bridges marked in red were simply washed away. and the dots indicate power outages. another story we're watching developing this hour is dominique strauss-kahn leaving his new york apartment with his wife ann sinclaire, we showed you the pictures just a moment ago. is there you see them, dominique strauss-kahn is obviously the

imf chief accused of sexual assaulting a hotel maid in new york. those charges were dropped this week after the prosecutor said he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime occurred. we're now expecting that dominique strauss-kahn will be heading back to his home country of france, we are monitoring this story very closely and bring you more details as they come into our newsroom. we want to head to the gulf coast where tropical storm lee is threatening louisiana and mississippi. ed lavender are is in bay st. louis, mississippi. we're hearing about some breaks in the storm but the mayor of new orleans just held a news briefing warning people not to be fooled by this. what kind of rain are you expecting there? bar you hearing? what are you seeing? >> this is, i think the mayor described it as unpredictable and it is acting rather bizarre. a lot of the storm is still offshore, a lot of the heavy rains, there are severe weather warnings and tornado warnings in

place for much of louisiana and mississippi until 10:00 tonight central time. so there's still a lot to come, but it's also kind of hard to figure out. we came to bay st. louis because we have been hearing a lot of reports of flooding. this morning there was thigh-high water here. but look at how quickly it's already moved away and washed away already. this is great news actually because this just kind of tells you that in these areas, this water comes in, these flash floods. but if this storm continues to sit over this area, a lot of this ground becomes saturated and that leaves to further potential worsening flooding, so we'll continue to monitor that, but the rain has really eased up and the winds are minimal here in bay st. louis, but it kind of depends on where you go and where the bands are at any given moment, it kind of tells you where the worst of the storm is at any given moment. >> we're looking at some of the

pictures now, and i don't think you can see them of a boat being tossed around there in mississippi. you know, i have to ask you, i know the rain has subsided since we last talked, that's good news for you, good news for residents, but clearly the worst of it has not passed. so what are residents doing there to prepare for the storm? >> reporter: i think they have gone through what they basically do for this level of storm. wherever you go here, you know this area we have devastated by hurricane katrina, so it's hard to get people overly excited by what damage this storm is going to do. people around here probably consider that just a simple puddle, but they kind of do what they normally do to kind of get ready for these types of things. but as we have driven around town, you really see people going about their business, and restaurants are open, gas stations are open, grocery stores, that sort of thing and a lot of activity. it is, the water and we're very

close to the gulf of mexico, about 10 miles away, driving out here we passed by one of the bays, but the water is extremely choppy, and i was surprised to see two men riding around an wave runners. i was surprised to see that because that looked incredibly dangerous. >> around here, it might look relatively calm and peaceful, but out there on the water, it's definitely churned up very strongly. >> ed lavender are live for us in bay st. louis, mississippi. ed, thank you very much. obviously we're tracking this storm very closely, tropical storm lee, jacqui jeras in the severe weather center for us, they can get a lot of rain, but they just need to spread it out over a long period of time, this storm is moving very slowly, so do you think that's going to happen? >> it depends on how they get in

on some of these heavier bands as they push on through, but i think flooding is going to be a major issue across much of the mississippi river valley and the worst has been over into southern parts of mississippi and alabama and also towards mobile that's how we have that threat of tornado, we do have one warning for jackson county, which includes pascagoula, mississippi. so you guys need to get under shelter. it's 60 miles an hour. there's nothing to pick this thing up and move it along. we're waiting for a cold front way up into the midwest today to start to steer this thing to the north and east. it's lingering just off the coast, right in this area, it's only about 40 miles away from the shore at best. so we are expecting it to move in, landfall is even possible later today, but landfall not as important here as the lingering effect which is just going to bring in that heavy rain, you can see the forecast really keeping it in the area through the weekend into monday before it starts to pick up a little bit of forward speed.

how much rain are we talking about? we have already seen some incredinkre incredible numbers and you may see 10 to 20 inches total. i want to show you some of the numbers we have been seeing already, carolton in the new orleans area, has had almost nine inches of rain, slidell city. we're also keeping our eye on katia, it's a hurricane, we're still watching u.s. interests on this one, the middle, latter part of the week, just hard to say what kind of mess katia could be rolling in here. >> nobody is going to accuse you of being lazy around this time. jacqui jeras, thank you very much i appreciate it. it's a very busy week as candidates court voters in key states like iowa and new hampshire.

governor rick perry is trying to shore up the granite state, typically the first state to hold a primary. the texas governor attacked president obama's economic policies. >> when it comes to economic growth, i know that the answer is not forcing government stimulus, poured through some massive bureaucracy to a handful of hand picked industries to create temporary jobs. i know that's not the answer. mr. president, you cannot spend your way to prosperity. it doesn't work. it has never worked. i'm tired of liberals who only care about jobs, just to staff up more government programs. we want to free it up so that families can have more income so that families can live free. also a potential -- sarah palin who took on president obama and republican presidential candidates during a

tea party rally in iowa. peter hamby is there, palin has not announced her candidacy, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, isn't it a duck? >> she's the only one that could actually not be a candidate and command in kind of attention. she went after barack obama out here in iowa, the first caucus state of the presidential nominating process. she made clear that she was criticizing governor rick perry, she attacked crony capitalism and the permanent political class, now perry, the republican front-runner has long been criticized by his political foes for delivering plum jobs and government contracts to his political allies and donors. palin knows she needs to kind of carve out a space, a niche for

herself in the republican primary if she does run, so you saw her try to draw a line between herself and some other potential gop candidates today. >> peter, thank you. the united states and libya at odds over pretty much everything, right? not so fast. once secret details about the bush era -- cnn correspondents are reading those documents right now and we're live from tripoli next. exclusive to the military. and commitment is not limited to one's military oath. the same set of values that drive our nation's military are the ones we used to build usaa bank. from free checking to credit cards to loans, our commitment to the military, veterans, and their families is without equal. ♪ visit us online to learn what makes our bank so different.

usaa. we know what it means to serve. that's how it is with alzheimer's disease. she needs help from me. and her medication. the exelon patch -- it releases medication continuously for twenty-four hours. she uses one exelon patch daily for the treatment of mild to moderate alzheimer's symptoms. [ female announcer ] it cannot change the course of the disease. hospitalization and rarely death have been reported in patients who wore more than one patch at a time. the most common side effects of exelon patch

are nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. the likelihood and severity of these side effects may increase as the dose increases. patients may experience loss of appetite or weight. patients who weigh less than 110 pounds may experience more side effects. people at risk for stomach ulcers who take certain other medicines should talk to their doctor because serious stomach problems such as bleeding may worsen. people with certain heart conditions may experience slow heart rate. [ woman ] whenever i needed her, she was there for me. now i'm here for her. [ female announcer ] ask the doctor about your loved one trying the exelon patch. visit exelonpatch.com to learn more.

the libyan government did business including those secret deals allegedly made with the uk and the united states. i'm talking about a treasure trove of documents that were left behind when libyan officials were forced from tripoli. our senior international corporate ben wedeman read some of these papers, what did you find? >> reporter: what we found was in the basement of the internal security agency, that's basically the libyan cia, we found hundreds and hundreds of documents detailing the emerging relationship between the intelligence agencies of libya and the united states, the uk, switzerland, canada, many other countries. this was at a time when in early 2004, libya has announced that it would renounce it's program for the production of weapons of mass destruction, and that this cooperation began and developed quite rapidly.

on the part of the united states, they were very interested in libya's help in the war on terror, the libyans were very interested in american help in getting information about opponents to the gadhafi regime many of whom were members of radical islam movements so this relationship developed quite rapidly, we saw from some of this corns threspondence, everything was on a first-name basis. one of the correspondents, was the head of libyan intelligence received thanks from american counterparts for oranges he had sent. so it's really surprising given that year after year, the u.s. state department was putting out reports about human rights abuses by the libyan security services, at the same time, the cia was developing a very warm relationship with those very

same services. >> ben wedeman live from ripley, as always, thanks for your report. many of us love the taste of assault. we'll have details on this latest link just ahead. mom? he'sere. nice wheels. oh, thanks. keeps me young. hello there, handsome. your dinner's in the microwave, dear. ♪ where do you want to go? just drive. [ engine revs, tires screech ] mom? ♪

on behalf of the rotary club, we want to thank you for coming out tonight. tonight we have the midstream band all the way from midland county. >> i came home from korea, and buddy sat on it, we were out drinking and playing so i saved the neck out of it and then i rebuilt the body for it. well, that was back 45 years ago. i built a body and rebuilt it and rebuilt it and rebuilt. it's one of the best instruments i have ever had. i'm 83, i play mandolin, guitar, banjo, harmonica. whatever's left over, i tried to play. ♪

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that's how it is with alzheimer's disease. she needs help from me. and her medication. the exelon patch -- it releases medication continuously for twenty-four hours. she uses one exelon patch daily for the treatment of mild to moderate alzheimer's symptoms. [ female announcer ] it cannot change the course of the disease. hospitalization and rarely death have been reported in patients who wore more than one patch at a time. the most common side effects of exelon patch

are nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. the likelihood and severity of these side effects may increase as the dose increases. patients may experience loss of appetite or weight. patients who weigh less than 110 pounds may experience more side effects. people at risk for stomach ulcers who take certain other medicines should talk to their doctor because serious stomach problems such as bleeding may worsen. people with certain heart conditions may experience slow heart rate. [ woman ] whenever i needed her, she was there for me. now i'm here for her. [ female announcer ] ask the doctor about your loved one trying the exelon patch. visit exelonpatch.com to learn more. a hidden danger of too much sodium in our diets can lead to a number of health problems including heart disease and high blood pressure. now there's new search that suggests a link between high salt intake and dementia. that's the subject of our look this week at hour to get and stay healthy, dr. bill lloyd,

our healthy living expert joins us now from san francisco with more on this. so dr. bill, what exactly are they talking about the link between salt and dementia, how serious is this and at what age do you really need to pay attention to this. >> this study comes out of canada, a large number of adults age 64 and older, they followed them for many years, they tracked many of their lifestyle choices, including diet, their weight and their overall weight condition. at the end of the study they discovered that those adults who ate the most salt and exercised the least had the greatest trouble with early dementia. the point is if you back down on your salt young in life, you not only will have less problems with heart disease, but you may have more brain power. >> obviously the goal is to eat less salt. our bodies need a little bit of salt, how much is too much?

i heard that a teaspoon is too much. >> you're exactly right. here's that teaspoon right here. that's one day's worth of salt that you want to bring into your body. we get 80% of our salt from food that we eat outside of the house. the more often you cook at home and prepare your own foods and the less often you eat processed foods or convenience foods, the word convenience actually means added sal eed salt, you're goin healthier. >> one thing they do personally is i read the labels and i look at the sodium in the ingredients section and i always want it to be low. so what are some other tips, bar some things that people can do that are easy that will help reduce their salt intake? >> i'm going to touch on that quick point you made about reading the labels. this is a canstewed tomatoes

you're going to get a day's worth of salt. and pick your own tomatoes, there are plenty of spices around, tune into one of those cable food net wovworks find ou what people are throwing into their food. wherever it calls for salt, try just using half of what is recommended, you won't notice the difference. most people put salt into food to make it less bitter, you won't recognize it as being salty food if you just cut the amount in half and improve your health while you're doing that. >> i love salt, i eat hard boiled eggs and i pour my salt on the hard boiled eggs. but i'm going to cut back. ahead a slow moving tropical storm lee is inches toward the gulf coast, but some folks are already feeling the effects. we'll have the very latest on the track next. i'm here to pick up helen. ah. mom? he's here. nice wheels. oh, thanks.

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our top story this hour, tropical storm lee is lashing the gulf coast, high winds have knocked out power to thousands in the southern parts of louisiana and mississippi. heavy rains are flooding roads, there are reports of water reaching some homes. a mandatory evacuation has been ordered for parts of louisiana's jefferson parish. vermont is one of the states still cleaning up from irene. nearly 700 -- he's believed to have been swept away by raging floodwaters. after spending months in new york city fighting a sexual assault charge, dominique strauss-kahn the former imf chief is believed to be heading back home to france. this is new video of of him just leaving his apartment in new york a short time ago. strauss-kahn was arrested back in march for allegedly salting a

hotel maid. the charges were dropped last week. and there's a travel all right from washington one week before the anniversary of the september 11th attacks. the state department warns u.s. citizens traveling or living abroad to be aware of the continuing threat posed by al qaeda. right now there are no specific threats, officials just want people to be aware. that will do it for me, i'm alina cho.