under attack. you may have noticed this already this morning. social networking site goes down for at least 90 minutes. and new evidence says more on the man who shot and killed three women at a pittsburgh area health club. what his online diary and a new video he recently made reveals about him. also, a city council in california under fire for invoking jesus in their opening prayerers. are they being true to their faith or is it a violation of chuchb and state? hey, you know, it's friday eve. i'm so glad you're with us. i'm christi paul. thank you for being here. we do have breaking news we want to get to you first and foremost here. a probably have noticed this if

you're member. hackers brought down the networking site twitter with a denial of service attack. this website was down for two hours this morning. a message posted on twitter's home page says the site is still under attack. now, a denial of service attack is when hackers try to overwhelm the website and tie up its server. shutting down the site. facebook representatives also say they're looking into the problem on their web scythe as well. we're going to bring you more details as they become available. meanwhile, three women who died in the shooting rampage of the pennsylvania gym have been identified now. and some newly discovered youtube videos are shedding light into the shooter's home life and his everyday routine. susan candiotti is in pennsylvania. she has all the new developments for us here. the videos just seem so bizarre. >> reporter: well, it's also unusual and very eerie to now see this person walking and talking as compared to just a still photo of him. so these two videos presumably

made by the gunman in this case were posted on youtube, presumably, back in june of 2008 and february of that very same year. in the one from june 2008 you hear him looking and seeing him looking directly into the camera. and it kind of illustrates this apparent ongoing sense of loneliness and dispond dense si that he has been battling for years. take a look. >> it is easy for me to hide from my emotions for one more day. take a long drive in a car, listen to some music, day dream or just do some mundane task around the house that really doesn't need to be done that's not too important. and there you go. one more day. and one more day turns into one more year. >> reporter: and in another video that he made back in february of 2008, he's giving you a tour of his house. and it seems to show this -- what we keep hearing about, his

attempt to impress women. and as we all know and have heard about now through his blog, he had a hatred for women. so he's trying to impress them for taking you on a tour through his house, look, the chair and the house match each other. you hear him say this will really impress the women. he shows some reading material on his desk and it shows "dating advice for men over the age of 35." he shows you his bedroom and he says, look how clean it is. that will really impress the women. so again, it's another window into what was going on in what apparently is a very twisted mind. george sodini, 48, the guy with a bright smile had a good job but couldn't get a girlfriend. it was one of the things that seemed to push him over the edge. >> clearly he was full of blanks. he blamed everything for his problems. >> reporter: in an internet blog that started last november, sodini rails against his mother, his family, and women for making him miserable.

an entry dated last december reads, no girlfriend since 1984, who knows why. i'm not ugly or too weird. sodini was a computer specialist for a pittsburgh law firm. at home he kept to himself. >> he came, you know, went to work, came back, and hardly ever see him around. >> very quiet. >> reporter: inside, he appears to be sooeting. in his blog he singles out a preacher at a church he used to attend. this guy teaches and convinced me you can commit mass murder and still go to heaven. he joined the gym. >> all these young, beautiful, attractive, healthy, fit women at the health club. and so he specifically chose to help of not just some random spot, to go after the people he blamed. >> reporter: he devices what he calls his exit plan but backs out last january. i chickened out. i brought the loaded guns, everything.

hell. over the next several months, sodini's rants continue about women and the jgym. at home he circles the gym's aerobics class on the schedule. >> he just had a lot of hatred in him and he was hell-bent on committing this act and nobody was going to stop him. >> reporter: tuesday he goes to the gym twice, makes a phone call and returns a final time. >> he's a mad man. >> reporter: 36 rounds, 3 women dead, and a shot to his head. again, police say that sodini went into this gym at least twice on tuesday, but then before going back in, he also made a mystery call to someone. we don't know who that someone is. before he went in for a final time, killed the women, wounded several others and took his own life. as you can see out here, outside the gym today, people continue to come by leaving flowers in the memory of those who died. >> obviously trying to give a lot of support to the folks there.

i wanted to ask you, we talk about how people really didn't know how to describe him. what was his family? did he have family nearby? >> reporter: he does. and we've been unsuccessful. his mother has not wanted to speak with the media so far. however, the family did issue a statement yesterday. and in it, they issue a prayer. they offer prayers for both the victims and the survivors. so far, that's all we have heard from them. clearly, from the showing of support here and this community, there is a huge sense of loss here. tragic. >> i read that it really just rocked that whole community. thank you so much. always good to see you. thanks. the father of missing florida girl haley cummings has been arrested and charged with burglary and assault. ronald cummings is set to appear in court today. he was arrested after a fight with his wife's brother. they haven't said what the argument was about. but cummings, wife misty, was

reportedly the last one to see 5-year-old haley cummings on february 9th. she said the little girl vanished after being tucked into bed outside her father's mobile home. the senate is expected to vote to confirm judge sonia sotomayor as the supreme court justice this afternoon around 3:00 p.m. she has overwhelming support from democrats. the republican lawmakers believe sotomayor will bring liberal biased to her decisions. live pictures coming to you from the senate right now as they go over there. eight republican senators have said that they will vote for sotomayor, as well. looks as though you're going to get another chance to make a deal on your gas guzzler. senate democrats cia they have enough votes to add 2 billion more dollars to the cash for clunkers program. the vote is expected this afternoon after the sotomayor vote. it's going to be busy today. it will extend the program through labor day, they believe. they approved more money.

most of the original billion dollars, as you know, was spent in less than a week. aerosmith's front man steven tyler may have been living it up too much when he was going down on the concert stage. ironically, he had been singing those lyrics from "love in an elevator" when he fell. this was at the sturgis motorcycle rally in south dakota. he was airlifted to the hospital with minor head, neck, and shoulder injuries. it's not clear how serious they are. a security adviser though says the 61-year-old was dancing, fell backward off the stage and fell on to a couple of fans, apparently. john edwards' former mistress is testifying before a grand jury today in north carolina. federal investigators are looking into the campaign finances of the former senator and two-time presidential candidate. edwards had admitted having an of pe affair with her. his political action committee paid her for photography work.

she arrived today, carrying a young child. edwards has denied that he is the father of that child. if it's freedom of speech or a violation of church and state ? how one name in a city council invocation resulted in some heated words.

. the city council of california has an unexpected item on its agenda. >> go to your church. talk to your pastor. ask for forgiveness for your blasphemy. >> the council is being criticized for religious invocations that specifically reference jesus before the meeting. the group that favors administration of church and state says an anonymous resident complained and the invocations are illegal. but they say the prayers are appropriate. the mayor contends it's up to

the residents and the council whether they stay, abolished, or replaced with a moment of silence. what do you think? should jesus or any other religious figure be part of an official government event? give us a call at 1-877-tell-hln or e-mail us cnn.com/hln and click under your views or text the word views, your comments, your name to hlntv. standard text rates apply. this segment is all about you. we're grateful that you take part in it. thank you. there is a twist in the case of british girl madeleine mccann who disappeared more than two years ago now. mccann family spokesman confirms a new witness has stepped forward claiming he spoke with a woman who gave him clues in mccann's disappearance. he told investigators he spoke with her outside a bar in spain and she resembles victoria beckham, other than wise known as posh spice, and wive of david

beckham. madeleine was 3 when she disappeared in may of 2007. her parents were initially named as suspects by portuguese authorities but they deny any involvement in her disappearance, we want to point out. police in texas are searching for a man caught on camera who they believe is the hair glue bandit. that's some of what one victim had to cut out of her head thereafter an attack. >> there's this man standing about a foot, foot and half beside me. he said, excuse me. i said, it's okay. i felt felt, i don't know, it was like a warm -- warm thing on the back of my head. there was this white substance, clear substance on my hand. and it dried instantly. >> the glue attacks have happened at a number of stores apparently and theaters near houston. unlike other victims, that woman was able to use her cell phone to capture an image of her attacker. police are comparing that to the

surveillance video from another gluing. one victim said she's still in pain after having to use pliers to pry her hair apart. retiring at the beach it was dream. the reality though is very different. >> it's eerie. it's like a scary movie. >> why one family is living in luxury and fear.

president obama's approval rating has dropped. new cnn opinion research corporation poll shows 56% of those surveyed approve of how he's doing. but that's down seven points from april, his first 100 days mark. it also shows that 54% have a favorable opinion of him. 34% do not. now, the president and congressional democrats are pledging to finish overhauling the health care system this year, with or without republican help. so far the minority party has opposed all the proposals approved bihouse and senate committees. six members of the senate finance committee are still trying to hammer out a bipartisan plan. they're meeting with the president, in fact, right now. activists who oppose health care reform promise they'll continue confronting democratic members of congress during their august speeches and recess. you see this here. republican party officials deny those, that they're organizing the protests which have disrupted several town hall style meetings across the country. the white house, too, is

asking people to send in chain e-mails and internet links that contain what it calls misinformation about health care reform. republicans accuse the white house of turning americans into informants. so it can compile an enemy's list. republican senator john cornyn of texas, in fact, demanding the white house take down a blog post. he claims there's an effort to monitor the political speech of americans. the white house dismisses the complaint saying it's trying to determine if reform opponents are spreading falsehoods about the plan. an excongressman has been convicted of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including the $90,000 found in his freezer. remember this? a federal jury found former louisiana congressman william jefferson guilty on 11 of 16 corruption charges yesterday. prosecutors said jefferson sold out his seat in congress when he selected cash to promote businesses in africa. >> the citizens need to have confidence in their government. and when someone sells their office, it replaces that

confidence in their public officials with cynicism. $90,000 in a freezer is not a gray area. it's a violation. he sold his office for the least common denominator of what public service is about, and that's personal wealth and greed. >> the jurors saw this video from a 2006 sting operation. that's when feds found the money in jefferson's freezer. the 62-year-old could get up to 150 years behind bars. lynette "squeaky" fromme is about to be released from prison. she was convicted in 1975 from pointing a loaded gun at him but agents kept her from firing. she was a follower of charles manson. so imagine you buy a great condo in a high rise in florida, but out of the 32 floors, you are the only tenant. that's what happened to one couple in ft. myers.

most of the units in the building weren't sold when it was sold. it left them very lonely. >> i tell people at home and they just say, it's your own building. sounds great, but, you know, it can be eerie at night. it's almost like a horror movie. >> some have been able to move into the sister tower next door, but victor's lender won't agree to let him swap out his unit. they're working on it apparently. securing those so he checks the locks on the front door of the building every night himself. initial jobless claims fell more than expected last week. 550,000 people are added to the rolls. 30,000 less than analysts predicted. the number of feel filing continuing claims rose again. bigger news is expected tomorrow when the monthly jobless report may show unemployment rose from 9 1/2% to 9.6%, at least that's what's being expected.

you know if you open bills you may not want to pick up your phone. i know people are complaining about debt collectors calling and being aggressive here. hln money expert clark howard warns some collector rsz just taking it too far. >> you know what? if you have a debt that you haven't paid, i want you to pay it as soon as you're back on your feet. right now a lot of people can't pay all their bills. they just don't have the money. and collection agencies have become far more aggressive. so aggressive that there was a bust by the attorney general in the state of new york of a number of collection agencies doing business all over the country that were, get this, impersonating police officers and they were saying, if you didn't pay your bill that day, they were coming to arrest you, to lock you up and throw the key away. i want you to know this. you cannot go to prison because you didn't pay a bill. we don't have debtors prison in the u.s. but if you do owe money and you can pay a portion of it, and the

collector agrees to that, don't send them a penny until you have in writing that the payment you're making is payment in full. and if you don't have any money at all, you don't have to talk to a collector. you can write them and tell them, go away. i'm clark howard. for more ideas for you to protect yourself, go to cnn.com/clarkhoward. get more great consumer advice from clark howard every saturday and sunday at noon and 4:00 p.m. eastern right here on hln. he's going to help you save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. a powerful hurricane is churning across the pacific ocean. it isn't posing any immediate threat to land. but look at that. the hurricane is a category 4 storm with maximum winds approaching 140 miles per hour. the eye of the storm is about halfway between baja, california, and hawaii. forecasters do expect her to lose strength as it moves over cooler water.

it could be targeting hawaii. look at this bizarre video. have you seen this yet? this is a woman, uh-huh, doing a tango with a horse. why, you ask? and why are other people doing it?

we have breaking news for you here. if you had a hard time sending tweet to your friends this morning. you're not alone. twitter says it was hit with a denial of service attack a few hours ago. a message posted on twitter's home page says the site is still under attack. as of about an hour ago the status log said it was active again. hackers use denial of service attacks to overwhelm websites and freeze them up. twitter might not be the only target today, though. people have been having trouble logging on to facebook as well. i had the same problem this morning on facebook. officials say they're looking into the problem and we're going to bring you details as soon as they become available. busy day in washington today. later, judge sonia sotomayor should be confirmed as the first

latino justice on the u.s. supreme court. the senate is wrapping up debate on her nomination, in fact, right now. you can see that. there is the senate. the final vote should come within the next three hours. yes, three hours. live pictures. republicans did not try to filibuster, we should point out, the nomination. democrats have more than enough votes to confirm her. a few republicans said they will defect from the party line and vote for sotomayor. she will succeed retiring justice david suitor on the high court. your going to get to another chance to make a deal on your gas guzzler. they have enough votes to add 2 billion more dollars for the cash for clunkers program. the vote is expected this afternoon after the sotomayor vote. it will extend the program through labor day, they believe. the house has already approved morme money but most of the original billion dollars has already been spent. boy, it really kind of flew by in less than a week. police say the man who went

on a shooting rampage in a pennsylvania gym was hell-bent on enacting -- exacting, rather, his revenge on women who he thought ignored him. today we're getting a bit of a closer look at george sodini's home life and everyday routine. this is all in his own words here. people say an online diary chronicle the plan nine months in the making. sodini wrote that he hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984, hadn't slept with a woman in 19 years. also, he had bitter words for his mother and called his father a useless sperm donor. now, two undated youtube videos have surfaced. and up with of them apparently narrated by sodini shows the inside of his two-bedroom home. at one point he talks about a matching sofa and chair and says, quote, women will really be impressed. as he scans the room, a book titled "date young women" can be seen on a table. at one point sodini turns the camera on himself to describe how he's able to emotionally disconnect.

>> it is easy for me to hide from my emotions for one more day. take a long drive in a car, listen to some music, day dream, or just do some mundane task around the house that really doesn't need to be done that's not too important. and there you go. one more day. and one more day turns into one more year. >> the women who sodini killed have been identified as 46-year-old heidi overmier, 49-year-old elizabeth gannon, and 38-year-old jody billingsley. the father of missing florida girl hallie cummings has been arrested and charge with burglary and assault. he will appear in court today. putnam county officials say he was arrested after a fight with his wife's brother if they haven't said what the argument was about. cullings' wife misty was reportedly the last one to see 5-year-old haleigh cummings on february th. she said the little girl

vanished after being tucked into bed in her father's mobile home. police in idaho say the death of robert man well is being investigated as a homicide. they go on to say there's no evidence the 8-year-old was abducted by a stranger. >> the body of the boy found in the new york canal on monday has been positively identified this afternoon as that of 8-year-old robert manwell. preliminary results from the autopsy give us reason to believe that 8-year-old robert manwell's death was not an accident. >> now, a 7-year-old neighbor girl says she and robert played on the swing set on july 24th. that's the night he vanished. her parents say she came home around 7:30 which is the same time the girl said robert headed to his mom's house. they're being questioned by the fbi now. john edwards' ex-mistress is testifying before the grand jury. her appearance comes as federal investigators probe into the

two-time presidential candidate's finances. you can see she arrived carrying her young daughter rumored to be their love child. edwards admits to having an affair with hunter that ended in 2006 during his second bid for the white house. but he adamantly denies that the child is his and has offered to undergo paternity tests. his political action committee paid hunter's video production $100,000 for her work. aerosmith's front man steven tyler may have been living it up too much when he was going down on the concert stage. ironically, he had been singing those very lyrics from "love in an elevator" when he fell. this was at the sturgis motorcycle rally in south dakota. he was airlifted to the hospital with minor head, neck, and shoulder injuries. it's not clear how serious they are. the 61-year-old was dancing, twirled around, stepped backward off the stage and fell on to a couple of fans. no word of the fans being hurt, though.

she disappeared more than two years ago. now there may finally be a break in the case of british girl madeleine mccann. the new witness that stepped forward with some surprising information.

well, the honeymoon is definitely over for a pair of florida newlyweds. 26-year-old dallia is charged with trying to hire a man to kill her husband. she married michael just six months ago. police say the woman approached a would be hit man who turned out to be an undercover police officer. imagine the groom still can't believe what police are saying about his bride. police say she paid $1200 to have her husband killed.

there is a twist now in the case of british girl madeleine mccann who disappeared two years ago. a mccann family spokesman confirms a new witness steps forward claiming he spoke with a woman who gave him clues in mccann's disappears. he said he spoke with her outside a bar in spain. and that she resembled victoria beckham, otherwise known, of course, as posh spice, the wife of superstar david beckham. madeleine was 3 when she disappeared in may of 2007. remember her parents at one point were named as suspects by portuguese authorities, but they deny any involvement in her disappearance. i'm jane velez mitchell. double lives and toxic se yeses. this week, two people who seem to lead normal lives hit some very dark skeletons in their closet. first, a picture perfect soccer mom crashes her van going the wrong way after a family camping trip. killing eight people, including

lots of kids. turns out, mom was very drunk and high on pot. now a man who worked at a law firm for more than a decade goes on a shooting rampage at a fitness gym. slaughters three women and injuries another nine. this guy seemed like the average joe, but now we know he was a cold-blooded killer hell-bent on getting revenge for supposedly being rejected by women. these tragedies are proof that we should not use appearances and stereotypes to dictate our views of people. as you can see, the consequences can be deadly. i'm jane velez-mitchell, and that's my issue. >> find out what else jane has mind at 7:00 every night right here on hln. initial jobless claims fell more than expected last week. 550,000 people were added to the roll but that's 30,000 less than analysts predicted. however, the number of people

filing continuing claims rose again. it's expected tomorrow when the 9.6%. well, when she found a foreclosure, one new jersey woman decided to head into the kitchen to try to save her home. allan chernoff has her story in this edition of "money and main street". >> reporter: actress angela logan has played many roles as a living, teacher, model, hairdresser and is studying to be a nurse. when she recently fell into foreclosure on her new jersey home, she turned to baking. >> it was a flash of desperation. i thought, wow, we could sell these cakes, they're so good. >> reporter: she fell into a cash squeeze because two years ago she rented a contractor to renovate the house. he took her money but only did a portion of the work. to save her home, angela set a

goal of selling 100 mortgage apple cakes in ten days, $40 each. she asked everyone she knew to buy a cake. >> the hardest part is to say can you buy my cake, this is my problem. >> reporter: the local hilton hotel offered the kitchen so angela could bake faster. angela said she baked about 200 cakes, double her goal. and by qualifying for the federal make home affordable program, her monthly mortgage payment is dropping by nearly 20%. other americans in a financial bind, she says, can also find creative answers to their cash crunch. >> find your talent. find something that you can do that will help, i can paint fences, you know, who needs one? >> reporter: almost any talent can generate extra cash. playing a skill, home repairs for those who are handy, even dog walking or pet sitting for animal lovers. >> wow, this is incredible. >> reporter: internet retailer bake me a wish got a whiff of the mortgage apple cake and is

now greasing pans to mass produce it and share the proceeds with angela. a whole line of angela logan cakes is planned. escaping foreclosure could propel angela logan to a new career as the queen of cakes. but back in her kitchen, she still studies nursing. depend upon just one role. allan chernoff, cnn, new jersey. >> all righty. got to get our creative juices flowing. obviously she's an example of people who are doing it. for more on our service, watch our sister network cnn tonight at 8:00 eastern. is it freedom of speech or a violation of separation of church and state? how one name in a city council invocation resulted in some heated words.

president obama's approval rating has dropped. a new cnn opinion research corporation poll shows 56% of those surveyed approve of how he's doing. but that's down seven points from april. in his first 100 days mark. it also, however, shows 64% have a favorable opinion of him. 34% do not. now, president obama and congressional democrats meanwhile are pledging to finish overhauling the health care this year with or without republican help. so far the minority party have proposed the proposals approved by the house and committees and six members are still trying to hammer out a bipartisan plan. they're meeting with the president right now. >> new orleans, ito, it's not w obama wants. >> yes, it is. >> town hall meetings across the country are getting dicey, activists who oppose health care reform, continue concerning democratic members of congress. republican party officials deny

though that they're organizing these protests which have disrupted several town hall style meetings across the country. a senate panel is holding a hearing right now, live pictures coming to you from that, regarding what changes are needed to keep the post office afloat. this includes the postmaster general, several union leaders representing postal employees. those are live pictures for you. according to the postal service, mail volume was down more than 14% compared to this time last year. year. senator john mccain says the post office kind of needs to change with the times. >> just as we went with horses and buggies to automobiles we have gone from hand-delivered mail to the internet and text messaging and e-mail and twitter and all of the other new means of communications. post office has got to adjust to it or they will go the way of the horse and buggy and the bridles. and so far, we have not seen

either from the administration or from you, mr. potter, who i understand are well compensated for your work, a specific concrete proposal as to bring the situation under control. >> experts say if things don't change, the post office could lose a record $7.1 billion by the end of the fiscal year. that hearing, by the way, is streaming live on our website. if you would like to watch more, go to cnn.com/live. ex-congressman is being convicted of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes including $90,000 found in his freezer. a federal jury found former louisiana congressman william jefferson gullity on 11 of 16 corruption charges yesterday. prosecutors say jefferson sold out his seat in congress when he collected cash to promote businesses in africa. >> the citizens need to have confidence in their government. when someone sells their office, it replaces that confidence in

their public officials with cynicism. $90,000 in a freezer is not a gray area. it's a violation. he sold his office for the least common denominator of what public service is about, and that's personal wealth and greed. >> jurors saw this video from a 2006 sting operation. that's when feds found the money in jefferson's freezer. the 62-year-old could get up to 150 years behind bars. the city council of california has an unexpected item on its agenda. >> go to your church. talk to your pastor. ask for forgiveness for your blasphemy. >> the council is being criticized for allowing religious invocations that specifically reference jesus before the meeting. the group that favors administration of church and state says an anonymous resident complained and the invocations are illegal. some residents say the prayers are appropriate.

as for the mayor, he says he feels caught in the middle. >> i try to be respectful of people's beliefs and and i think as a council member you have to. >> the mayor says it will be up to the residents and the council whether they stay or abolished or replace would a moment of silence. now that you heard this story, i am wondering what your thoughts on it are. should jesus or any religious figure be part of an official government event? call us at 1-877-tell-hln. 835-5456. or e-mail us, cnn.com/hln and click under your views so we make sure we get it. you can text us, too. the word views, comments, name to hlntv. standard text rates do apply but thank you for being part of our discussion here. police in texas are searching for a man caught on

camera who they believe is the hair glue bandit. that is just some of what one victim had to cut out of her head after an attack. >> there was a man standing there a foot, foot and a half beside me and he said, excuse me. i felt, i don't know, it was like a warm, warm in the back of my head there was this white substance, clear substance on my hand and that dried instantly. >> now the glue attacks have happened at a number of stores, apparently, near stores and theaters near houston. this woman was able to use a cell phone to capture an image of her attacker. one victim said she's still in pain having to use pliers to pry her hair apart. why would anybody do that? you know some people say they have two left feet. one lady will still dance with you. in fact, she'd love it if you

had two right feet, too. >> hard to resist a tango. >> hear exactly why it is she's tangoing with horses.

if you twitter you know thumbes have gone from tweet to twindling. judging sonia sotomayor. senators take sides poised to make history voting on the woman who could be our first latina supreme court justice. using jesus name at city council meeting. your views on using religious figures at community event. thousands of twitter fans may need a fix today after a denial of service attack. all the problems began around 9:30 eastern today.

twitter status blog says it's active again, although it's still under attack. hackers overwhelmed sites with requests that prevents legitimate users from accessing them. another popular site may be in the same boat as facebook says it's looking at problems after users reported having trouble logging in. the fed will vote to confirm judge sonia sotomayor as the associate justice today around 3:00 eastern time. she has overwhelming support from democrats, although some republican lawmakers believe sotomayor will bring liberal bias to her decisions. eight republican senators have said they will vote for the nominee. and it looks like they get another chance to make a deal on that old gas guzzler because senate democrats say today they have the votes to add $2 billion more to the cash for clunkers program. the vote is expected to vote today after the sotomayor confirmation vote. it would extend the vote through labor day. most of the original $1 billion has already been depleted.

nearly 185,000 cars have been sold under cash for clunkers, but a dealership in austin, texas, is asking customers to bring their new cars back temporarily. one customer says the dealer told her it couldn't get any of its federal rebates approved. >> i'm driving it around for a week, you know, you kind of get attached to it and then, boom, bring the car back and blame it on the bureaucracy at the federal government. i mean, to me, it seems like a relatively simple program and, you know, they should have known that it would be very popular. >> our austin affiliate tells us the woman will get her old car back in the meantime. a dealership across town says it had no problem getting its paperwork approved. if the forms are filled out correctly, it's a smooth experience. today's arraignments have been delayed for four of the eight suspects killed in the florida couple with 17 children. they want a grand jury to indict seven suspects for first degree

murder in the shooting deaths of byrd and melanie billings. the eighth suspect, a woman, is charged as an accessory. the couple was killed in the bedroom while nine of the children were in other parts of the sprawling home. 13 of the kids were adopted and have a variety of disabilities, including autism and down syndrome. a source close to the investigation tells cnn the state attorney's office believes there are two possible motives. a contract hit and robbery. the father of missing florida girl haleigh cummings has been charged with burglary and assault. putnam county official os say he was arrested after a fight with his wife's brother. they have not said what the argument was about. cummings wife, misty, was the last one to see haleigh cummings on february 9th. the little girl vanished after being tuck under to bed outside her father's mobile home. the man who went on a shooting rampage at a pittsburgh

area gym was bent on getting revenge on woman, he thought, ignored him. a closer look at his home life and his everyday routine. police say an online diary chronicled the plan nine months in the making' sodini wrote that he hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984 and hadn't slept with a woman in 19 years and called his father a useless sperm donor. two undated youtube videos have now popped up and one narrated by sodini shows the inside of his two bedroom home and at one point he talks about a matching sofa and chair and then says "women will really be impressed." a book titled "date young women" is seen on the table. he turns the camera on himself to describe how he is able to emotionally disconnect. >> it is easy for me to hide from my emotions for one more day. take a long drive in the car,

listen to some music, day dream or just do some mundane task around the house that really doesn't need to be done that's not too important. and there you go, one more day and one more day turns into one more year. >> the women who sodini killed is elizabeth gannon and jody billingsley. john edwards' former mistress is testifying before a grand jury in north carolina. federal investigators are looking into the campaign finances of the former senator and two-time presidential candidate. edwards has admitted having an affair with hunter. his action committee paid her $100,000 in 2006 for photography work and gave her another $14,000 in 2007. some critics have speculated the payments were hush money to keep her quiet about their pregnancy and their affair. hunter arrived today carrying her daughter. john edwards has denied he is the baby's father. president obama and

congressional democrats are pledging to finish overhauling the health care system this year with or without republican help. so far the republican party has proposed all approvals by the house and senate committee. six members of the senate finance committee are still hammering out a bipartisan plan and they're meeting with the president right now. >> no, it's not what president obama wants. >> yes, it is! >> activists who oppose health care reform promise thal rrn continue confronting democrats and republican officials deny they're organizing anything. these protests have disrupted many town hall-style meetings across the country. barack obama has been president now for 200 days. that's not usually a milestone anybody notices but then, again, paul steinhauser isn't anyone, our political deputy director and joins us from washington with brand-new sample numbers. how is he doing? >> that is the big question, chuck. take a look at this, our

brand-new cnn national poll. we asked just that. do you approve or disapprove of how barack obama is handling his duties in the white house? chuck, 56% of americans are giving him a thumbs up. that's a pretty good number in line with other national polls. 4 in 10 say they don't like what he's doing. take a look at that 56 pr approval, though. down from june. 61% in late june and if you go all the way back, chuck, to april, late april when he was marking 100 days in april, he was at 56%. >> do americans think he's doing too much? >> you know, a lot of people are saying that, you're hearing that a lot in the media. well, is it true? we asked that question and we found that about two out of three americans say, yeah, they think he's juggling too many things right now. 3 in 10 said, no, they think he's doing just fine. >> i'm sorry we don't have the graphics ready or we can't call them up which supports the pole numbers you are references. how do americans feel about the economy? >> only about 20% right now, 2

in 10 say they think things are good and that's not a surprise considering the recession right now. about 35%, chuck, say things are very, very poor and what's interesting is that number is at its lowest mark at in about a year and a half. maybe there's some optimism there. as for specifically, barack obama, are his policies helping the economy? we asked that and 44%, chuck, said, yes, his policies are helping right now. another 11% said what he's doing isn't helping now but it will and 4 in 10 americans said, nope, not helping. >> paul steinhauser with the latest readings. thank you. aerosmith lead singer takes a nasty fall how he is doing and what song he was singing when he tumbled down.

a fight over separation of church and state versus freedom of expression is center stage in lodi, california.

>> go to your church, talk to your pastor. ask for forgiveness. >> the city council is being blasted for allowing religious invocations that specifically reference jesus before every meeting. an anonymous resident complained that invocations like that are unconstitutional, but some lodi residents say the prayers are appropriate. as for the mayor, he says he's caught in the middle. >> i try to be respectful of people's beliefs and feelings and i think as the council member you have to. >> the mayor says it will be up to the residents and the council whether they stay or abolished or replaced with a simple moment of silence. what are your thoughts on this? should jesus or any other religious figure be part of an official government event like a meeting? call us now toll free 1-877-835-5456. e-mail us at cnn.com/hln and click under your views and don't

forget that standard text rates apply. you text views plus your comment and name to hlntv. we'll air your responses in ten minutes and all afternoon. stick around. >> please help me welcome home euna lee and laura ling. that was the scene about 27 hours ago. a storybook moment that could only happen in the backyard of hollywood. highly choreographed. but journalists coming home after they were pardoned by north korea's leader kim jong-il. well, it took a visit from former president clinton to pull it off, but the ending could not have been scripted better. i-reporter julie managed to get in among all the major media outlets and the invited friends and family and pretty rare chance to access one of the biggest stories in a long time. julie, how did you get by the

secret service without a pass? >> well, it was a pretty incrediblesearching everybody, so getting in wasn't a problem, they knew that i was a serious photographer freelancing. >> and did you introduce yourself as an i-reporter? >> i did. >> what was it like? could you overhear the friends and family talking before they deplaned, what were they saying? >> you actually couldn't hear. they came out right before they were going to deplane. it was incredible experience. it was incredible to watch them see the doors open and the girls come out. it was amazing. >> we're looking at 4-year-old hannah clinging to her -- there she is with her mom. that's quite, you can't take your eyes off that shot, can you? >> i'm not sure hannah prior to knew what was about to happen. i'm sure they told her, but i don't think a child that young

can really understand her mom had been gone, what exactly was happening next. >> did you get know impressions of the bond between former president clinton and al gore? >> oh, it was, what you see is true. they were so happy to see one another. al gore was absolutely appreciative of what clinton went out and did. it was really amazing. it was all quite genuine. >> euna and laura did something amazing. do you ever ask yourself, well, i'm sorry, i have to cut it off right now, but, thank you, julie. i have to go to a news conference in westchester county, new york, involving the husband of the woman, diane schuller, who police say was on a booze and marijuana binge before running the wrong way on the parkway killing several people. here's the lawyer for the husband. >> and i'll tell you quite candidly that i didn't see any

real benefit except my client wants to talk about his wife. and of the events. i can tell you in the 38 years of practicing law this case has captured me and just devastated my understanding of what life should be. on the day in question, on the day in question, they were not getting divorced. they were not in marital counseling, they had no marital problems. she was not an alcoholic, she rarely had a drink. she got in the van with the children, nine witnesses saw her that day not drunk.

with no alcohol breath. no pot breath. what should have taken a 35-minute drive took almost four hours. prior to getting to that problems. one of them was an abscess that was 2 months old that she would not go to the dentist for there was swelling and pain on the left side. >> i believe it was, yes. >> she had diabetes at various levels. excuse me -- remember the rule, if you want a question, raise your hand. if not, i'll never point to you, okay. she also had a lump on her leg

and a lump on the leg, we're not sure what it was, but it was moving. we had not yet decided to have an autopsy. now, my client is a public safety officer, national county under the police department. i will not allow any questions about marijuana use at all. marijuana use is not a crime any more. it's a public health violation, but i don't want that answered. and he will not, if you ask it, i will stop the question. he will talk to you, what i think you all should want to know about, his wife, the child

he lost, the niece and nephews and the child that survived and the relationship with the wife. first question, please. >> mr. schuller, why did you not accompany your wife and why did you take two cars back? why did you have no kids with you? >> i went up there a day earlier to open up the camper and to get a little fishing in by myself before all the kids came up. >> did you talk about, can you talk about the range of emotions that you've gone through over the last couple days? >> sad. very sad. i'm sad. i lost my daughter, i lost my wife. all i have is my son.

>> how is your son doing now? >> he's going to be good, better, getting the. >> are you angry at your wife? >> no, i'm not angry at her. >> i'm sorry. >> you mean before he got -- >> before and after your conversations with her, take us through that morning. >> normal. she was fine. cup of coffee in the morning, packed the cars up like we always do and we headed out. just like every other weekend or every other weekend we go up there. >> my investigators have already interviewed people at the camp site, no one saw her that morning with alcohol, drunk, acting strange. the opposite. she was happy, talking to

people. gave a kiss good-bye to the owner of the cap and that person spleled her breath. it was definitely no alcohol when she left that camp site. >> well, that is the attorney and the grieving husband in defense of diane schuler who was behind the wheel of a minivan full of kids when she veer under to oncoming traffic on a busy freeway and killed eight people, including herself and four of the youngsters and state police said she was drunk. that her blood alcohol level was 0.19. the is roughly the equivalent of ten drinks and about twice or maybe more than twice the legal limit of the state of new york and a shattered bottle of absolute vodka was said to be found in the wreckage. but according to the lawyer, daniel barbara and daniel schuler, the husband, she was acting normally. she was perhaps in some pain and she was diabetic, but they can't

account for what happened on that deadly, deadly day in westchester county. well, the honeymoon is definitely over for a pair of florida newlyweds. she is charged with trying to hire a man to kill her husband. she married michael six months ago and police say the woman approached a would-be hit man who turned out to be an undercover officer. the recent groom can't believe what police are saying about his bride. >> there was a lot of funny stuff going on, i overlooked a lot of things and you try to look and see the best in people, not the worst. just divorce me and take everything, so i don't understand. >> daniela paid $12,000 to have her husband killed. imagine being the only family living in a 32-story luxury condo. sounds appealing. one family in florida says it's not all it's cracked up to be. not long ago, this man had limited mobility.

last month, this woman wasn't even able to get around inside of her own home. they chose mobility. and they chose the scooter store! if you or a loved one live with limited mobility call the scooter store! no other company will work harder to make you mobile or do more to guarantee your complete satisfaction. if we pre-qualify you for a new power chair or scooter and your claim isn't approved, the scooter store will give you your power chair or scooter free. that's our guarantee. they were so helpful and nice. they filed all the paperwork, and medicare and my insurance covered the cost. we can work directly with medicare or with your insurance company. we can even help with financing. if there's a way, we'll find it! so don't wait any longer, call the scooter store today.

thousands of twitter fans were jonesing for a fit after the service crashed big time because of a denial of service attack. the problem business gan around 9:30 eastern and lasted two hours. they are not fully back up and operational. it's active, although it's still under attack. hackers used an attack to overwhelm a site with requests that prevent legitimate users from accessing the site. facebook also reported trouble with people logging in. facebook said there was a short period of what it called degraded site experience for its users. but it says no data was at risk and the problem has been resolved. we have a lot more on this apparent cyberattack on social networking sites, twitter and facebook in a couple minutes. we'll talk to a producer and

tech writer from cnn.com. tick stick around for that. the senate is expected today to confirm judge sonia sotomayor about 3:00 eastern. there's massachusetts democrat john kerry speaking on the floor. she has overwhelming support from fellow democrats, though republican lawmakers, some of them, believe sotomayor will bring liberal bias to her decisions. eight republican senators have announced they will vote for sotomayor. looks like you could get another chance to make a deal on your old gas guzzler. they have the votes to add $2 billion more for the cash for clunkers program. the votes expected today after the sotomayor vote. it would extend the program through labor day. in other words, about a month. the house has already approved more money. most of the original billion dollars has already been spent. nearly 185,000 cars have been sold under cash for clunkers, but a dealership in austin, texas, is asking customers to bring some of their new cars back temporarily.

one customer told the dealer he couldn't get any of the federal rebates approved. >> i'm driving it around for a whi week, you know, you kind of get attached to it. boom, bring the car back and blame it on the bureaucracy at the federal government. to me, it seems like a relatively simple program. and, you know, they should have known that it was going to be very popular. >> our austin affiliate tells us the woman, in fact, will get her old car back in the meantime. just across town a dealership said it had no problem getting government paperwork approved. if the forms are filled out correctly, it's a smoolth experience. a senate panel is holding a hearing today on what changes are needed to keep the post office afloat. witnesses include the post master general and several union leaders representing postal employees. according to the postal service, mail volume was down more than 14% compared to this time last year and it's lost $4.7 billion so far this year. senator john mccain says the post office needs to change with the times.

>> just as we went from horses and buggies to automobiles, we have gone from hand delivered mail to the internet and text messaging and e-mails and twitter and all of the other new means of communications. post offices got to adjust to it or they will go the way of the horse and buggy and the bridles and so far we have not seen either from the administration or from you, mr. potter, who i understand are well compensated for your work, a specific concrete proposal to bring the situation under control. >> if things don't change, the postal service could lose $1.7 billion by the end of the fiscal year. president obama's approval rating has declined further. a new cnn opinion research corporation poll says 56% surveyed approve of how he'sers are handling his job.

his first 100-day mark. 56% have a favorable opinion of him. today's arraignments have been delayed for four of the eight suspects charged in the killing of the florida panhandle couple with 17 children. the states attorney's office wants to indict seven suspects in the deaths of byrd and melanie billings. the couple was killed in the bedroom of their home while nine of their children were in other parts of the house. 13 of the kids were adopted and had a variety of disabilities including autism and down syndrome. a source close to the investigation tells cnn the state's attorney office thinks there's two possible motives. robbery and a contract hit. the father of missing florida girl haleigh cummings has been arrested and charged with burglary and assault. ronald cummings will appear in court today. he was arrested after fighting

with his wife's brother. they have not said what the argument is about. cummings' wife, misty, was the last one to see 5-year-old haleigh cummings on february 9th. the little girl vanished after being tucked into bed outside her dad's mobile home. forecasters are keeping a close eye on hurricane felicia out in the pacific. it's now a category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds at 140 miles an hour. the current storm track has felicia heading towards the island of hawaii. so, should residents and tourists be concerned? let's check in with chad myers. meteorologist chad myers. chad? >> chuck a little bit. you shouldn't be category 4 concerned, but you should be category 1 concerned, i think. forecast for this storm has it down almost all the way down to 30 miles per hour as it makes its way along here and then towards the island of hawaii chain right there. now, the isis not the direction of a big storm. this storm could change. let's go back to '92.

aneki was a giant storm. stayed south in the warm water and then it turned to hit kaui. that's how big storms hit hawaii. staying down and then turning. the problem with going to the north, as this one is forecast to do, is that when it goes to the north, it gets into cooler water. it also gets into this wind here are the trade winds that will sheer the storm apart. sheer tears apart a hurricane. sheer in an airplane term will crash airplanes. sheer in a severe thunderstorm could make tornadoes. sheer in a hurricane killed it. so, that's what we're looking at right now. here's the latest on the storm, it is going to turn. it's category 4, 3, 2, 1 and all the way down to a tropical depression 35, 45 miles per hour as it makes landfall. that's the series, that's the good news. we'll see if that happens. we'll see if it stays on this

current track. if it does, one thing could still happen, chuck. and i'm concerned about this. even if it's a 35-mile-per-hour slump, it has a lot of omomentum. it has been a big storm out here and it still could bring an awful lot of wind and wave action to hemo if the storm travels somewhere down here across parts of the southern part of the big island. that wind and also that water piling up could fill up the hilo basin and that's a very low town very close to the water. that's if the storm travels here. if the storm is north, all bets are off. if it travels south, all bets are off. it's still not done yet. this is still a big storm hundreds of thousands of miles away from the islands. if you're going there or live there, it's a good time to pay attention. >> enrique is gone, no problem with that? >> it basically got absorbed by this, although they don't really do this. this is just such a big storm, i want all the energy, you get nothing. >> chad, well done.

thank you very much. aerosmith lead singer steven tyler takes a nasty fall and the song he was singing when he went down.

a fight over separation of church and state versus freedom of expression taking center stage in lodi, california, just south of sacramento near stockton. >> talk to your pastor. ask for forgiveness! >> the council clintonicized for allowing religious invocations that reference only jesus before meetings. favors church and state says an anonymous resident in lodi complained and that invocations like that are unconstitutional

but some say the prayers are appropriate. as for the mayor, he says he's caught in the middle. >> i try to be respectful of people's beliefs and feelings and i think as a council member you have to. >> the mayor says it will be up to residents and the council whether invocations stay or abolished or are replaced with a moment of silence. what do you think? should jesus alone or any other religious figure alone be part of a religious event and invocation, for example. e-mail address cnn.com/hln. click under your views or you can text views plus your comment and name to hlntv, you can pick up the text rates, of course, just standard rates. we'll air your responses throughout the day. the internet is under attack today. hackers have brought twitter to its knees, knocking out service to this massively popular site. facebook is also fending off an attack with millions of user

getting error messages still. as you might imagine, getting a lot of attention at cnn.com and let's go to the source and talk to cnn.com tech writer and producer john suder. dark day for social networking sites, huh? >> it is. a lot of panic online surrounding this, one of the most interesting things about this story. twitter went down at 9:30, they said they were under a cyberattack and they posted that to their blog. all these people commenting online on our technology blog and our stuff and facebook pages saying i don't know what to do without this service. i post to it so regularly and it's how i get my information and how i'm connected to the world. i think part of the interesting piece of the story is the social aspect and it shows how reliant, at least some groups of people are on social networks. >> my producer reminds me an ongoing hacker convention going on at the time. is that just a coincidence? >> i think it's too early to say

what was causing this or what the motive may have been. denial of service for attack and that's a type of web attack where a hacker will use a bunch of infected computers basically to overwhelm a site and they were all visited simultaneously or send something to it simultaneously and slow it down or take it out. so, that's what is behind this. it's really unclear what the motive may have been? sometimes hackers do these things for financial reasons, it's unclear. >> is the user data destroyed? when the site comes back up, is your data still in there? >> i think we'll have to wait and see, but there hasn't been much speculation on that kind of thing. facebook had some problems, too, and they put out a statement saying user data was not compromised. i think that is unlikely in thestance of twitter, i think this was a site maintenance thing, but i guess we'll have to wait and see. the site, supposedly, has been

reposted about noon eastern twitter posted on its blog that they resolved part of the issue but still fending off this attack. if you go to the site, every time i tried to go back to it since then, i still haven't been able to. >> it's very slow. >> it's still having trouble. >> a way to defend it? a good way for twitter or facebook to defend themselves against this? >> there's not a good way for them to defend themselves. more the computers they use, personal computers like the ones you or i would use installing anti-virus software and those sorts of things would prevent a hacker from compromising your computer. >> a potential for hacking is still out there and it's kind of scary. john sutter, thank you. >> facebook released a statement about the problem. earlier this morning we encountered issues within our network that resulted in a short period of degraded site experience for some visitors. no user data was at risk and the matter is now resolved for the majority of users. steven tyler may have been

living it up too much when he was going down off a concert stage. ironically he was singing those lyrics from "love in an elevator." he was airlifted to the hospital with minor head, neck and shoulder injuries. not clear how serious they are. the 61-year-old was dancing, twirled around and stepped backward off the stage and then plunge under to a couple fans. a little girl with dreams of going to disneyland opened a lemonade stand but then things went sour when the city shut her down. hear what happens when she takes on city hall.

the honeymoon is over for a pair of florida newlyweds. she's charged with trying to hire a man to kill her husband. she married michael dippelito six months ago. the woman approached a would-be hitman who was really an undercover police officer. the recent groom still can't believe what police are saying about his bride. >> there was a lot of funny stuff going on. i overlooked a lot of things and, you know, you try to see the best in people, not the worst. just divorce me and take everything, that's the best way,

right? i don't understand. >> it was an elaborate sting. police say she paid $1,200 to have her husband killed. in idaho, police say the death of robert manwill is being investigated as a homicide and there is no evidence the 8-year-old was abducted by a stranger. >> the body of the boy found in the new york canal on monday has been positivity identified this afternoon as that of 8-year-old robert manwill. preliminary results from the autopsy give us reason to believe that 8-year-old robert manwill's death was not an accident. >> a 7-year-old neighbor girl said she and robert played on a swingset on july 24th, the day he vanished. her parents say she came home about 7:30 in the evening about the time robert headed to his mom's house. they are being questioned boo ithe fbi. in texas police are searching for a man caught on camera who they believe is the hair glue bandit. that's some of what one victim

had to cut out of her head after an attack. >> there was a man standing about a foot, foot and a half beside me and he says, excuse me. i said, it's okay. i felt, i don't know, it was like a warm, like a warm in the back of my head, there was this white substance, clear substance on my hand and it dried instantly. >> the glue attacks have happened at a number of stores and theaters near houston, unlike other victims, that woman was able to use her cell phone to capture an image of her attacker and police are comparing it to the surveilliance video of another gluing. one woman is still in pain after using pliers to pry her hair apart. a pregnant british woman is now in british custody. 20-year-old samantha was arrested after being caught with 1.5 pounds of heroin at the airport. she avoided the mandatory death sentence because of her

pregnancy, but how she got pregnant in jail remains a mystery. she reportedly told her mom she wasn't raped and the father isn't a jail offense. laos reports she impregnated herself with sperm from another prisoner. she'll now serve out her life prison in britain. chris brown will have to wait to find out what his punishment will be for assaulting rihanna. yesterday a judge in california put off sentencing until august 27th. brown was expected to receive five years probation and 1400 hours of community service. the judge said she'll still wait for documents about his proposed community service plan in virginia. that's where it will be served apparently. therapists could cause serious harm by trying to turn gay and lesbian patients into heterosexuals. that's from the american psychological association. it reviewed 87 studies done since 1960 and found no evidence therapy could change sexual orientation. patients said it caused

emotional problems. those who support such theirs say it has worked for that yous of gays and lesbians. initial jobless claims fell more than expected last week. 550,000 people were added to the rolls. that's 30,000 less than analysts predicted, but the number of people filing continuing claims rose again. bigger news is expected tomorrow when the monthly jobless report may show unemployment rose from 9.5 to 9.6%. if you want to send your kid to the best college, check out west point. it tops the list. forbes magazine's list of best colleges. princeton ranked two followed by cal tech, williams college, and harvard. others in the top ten, wellesley, air force academacad yale, and stanford. how would you like to live in a luxury condo with a beautiful pool, great view,

on-site health club. sounds great, right? so why are the people who live there so unhappy?

well, if you use twitter, you probably noticed your thumbs have gone from tweet to twiddle. why other social networking sites might be at risk. judging supreme court nominee sonia sotomayor. senators take sides. they're posed to make history here. voting on the woman who could be our first latina supreme court justice. and is jesus leaving lodi, california? controversy erupts over using jesus' name in city council meetings. your view on using religious figures at government events. a lot of you have been sounding off on that, and we appreciate it. welcome to hln "news and views" on friday eve. i'm christi paul. thanks for being with us.

we have this just into hln. the husband of the woman who drove the wrong way on a new york highway killing seven people and herself insists she was not an alcoholic. daniel schuyler says he never saw his wife drunk. police claim diane schuyler drank at least ten vodkas and smoked marijuana before driving her minivan into an suv killing the three men inside. schuyler's daughter, her three nieces also died. the family's attorney says the woman had several medical conditions and may have suffered a stroke while driving. >> they had no marital problems. she was not an alcoholic. she rarely had a drink. she got in the van with the children. nine witnesses saw her that day not drunk, with no alcohol breath, no pot breath. >> she was a perfect wife, an

outstanding mother, hard worker. reliable person, trustworthy. i would marry her again tomorrow. she's awesome. she's the best. >> reporter: and your daughter. tell us about your daughter. >> it's my little girl. she's gone. i don't have nothing to say about that. >> obviously, very hard for him. shuler's 5-year-old son did survive the wreck. thousands of twitter fans, yes, if you're one of them, you're probably jonesing for a fix today, aren't you? after the service crashed because of a denial of service attack. that's what's going on. the problems began around 9:30 eastern this morning, and they lasted for about two hours. twitter status blog says its active again although it says it is still under attack. just so you're aware here. hackers used denial of service attacks basically to overwhelm sites with requests preventing legitimate users from accessing them.

so facebook users, you probably have been seeing some trouble logging in today as well. facebook says there was a short peered of what they call degraded site experience for its users, but it says no data on the site was at risk and the problem has been apparently resolved. initial jobless claims fell more than expected last week. 550,000 people though still added to the rolls, but that's 30,000 less than analysts predicted. however, the number of people filing continuing claims rose yet again. now, the monthly jobless report may show unplimeemployment rose 9.5% to 9.6%. the senate is expected to vote to confirm judge sonia sotomayor as the newest supreme court justice this afternoon. it's supposed to happen about 3:00 eastern. here are some live pictures as that debate goes on. some republican lawmakers, however, believe sotomayor will bring liberal bias to her

decision even though some democrats say they have overwhelming support. eight republican s'morenators h said they will vote for sotomayor. senate democrats say they do have enough votes to add $2 billion more to the cash for clunkers program. the vote is expected this afternoon after the sotomayor vote. now, it would extend the program through labor day. the house, as you know, has already approved more money, but most of the original $1 billion was spent in less than a week. president obama's approval rating has dropped. a new cnn/opinion research corporation poll shows 56% of those surveyed approve of how he's doing, about you that's down 7 points since april. it also, however, shows 64% have a favorable opinion of him. 34% did not. look at this powerful

hurricane that's churning across the pacific ocean right now. at the moment it isn't posing any immediate threat to land. you can see hawaii right there. hurricane felicia is what it's called. it's a category 4 storm with maximum winds approaching 140 miles per hour. the eye of the storm is halfway between baja, california, and hawaii. so folks in hawaii obviously are kind of preparing just in case. forecasters expect felicia to lose strength as it moves over cooler water in the next few days. police say the man who went on a shooting spree at a peninsula gym was hell bent on exacting his revenge on women that he thought ignored him. and today we're getting a closer look at george so di ni's home life and his everyday routine. this is coming to us in his own words. police say an online diary chronicled a plan 90s months in the making. he wrote he hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984.

sodini also had bitter words for his mother and called his father a useless sperm donor. now, two undated youtube videos have surfaced now as well. one of them apparently narrated by sodini shows the inside of his two-bedroom home. at one time he talks about a matching sofa and chair. he says women will really be impressed. as he scans the room, a book titled "date young women" can be seen. at up with point he turns the camera on himself while he describes how he's able to emotional disconnect. >> it's easy to hide from my emotions for one more day. take a long drive in the car, listen to some music, day dream, or just do some mundane task around the house that really doesn't need to be done that's not too important and there you go. one more day, and one more day turns into one more year. >> now, the women who sodini killed have been kidded as

46-year-old heidi overmyer, 49-year-old elizabeth gannon, and 38-year-old jody billingsley. in just six months a florida woman went from blushing bride to murder suspect. hear what her new husband has to say about the allegations she was planning to have him killed.

billions of people around the world have cell phones obviously. whenever a new nmodel is in people throw the old one out creating a lot of waste. one japanese company extracts precious metals from them. >> reporter: it's one face of technology we simply can't live

without. every second person around the world has a mobile phone, and by the end of the year providers believe 4 billion people will own a hand set. here on the streets in japan, the mecca of everything electronic, everyone has a phone and not surprisingly, they're fashionably one step ahead. even if it's not working, i change it for a new model every year. >> i'm the kind of person who likes to change phones when the contract finishes. if you use the same phone for more than two years, it gets old. >> reporter: the problem with gadgets is what to do with them once we're no longer using them. e-waste is a huge probably around the world. it can be both harmful to the environment and to human health. and with the sheer volume of gadgets, the turnover is high. nestled among the hills 150 kilometers north of tokyo is a recycling plant that is literally turning e-waste into

gold. so this used to be what, mobile phones, computers? >> translator: mobile phones and computers contain precious metals. it also contains nickel, copper, zinc, and lead. we separate and collect every one of those. >> reporter: he runs nippon mining and metals. they recycle 4.5 tons of e-waste each month. extracting precious metals such as gold, silver, and copper from old mobile phones, pcs, fax machines, anything electronic. how much gold will you get out of this? >> 20 kilograms. >> reporter: 20 kilograms. if you're not aware of how much valuable metal is in your mobile phone, take a look. tell us what can be recycles in a mobile phone?

>> translator: in a mobile phone, this part of the battery is made of gold. this is gold, too. there is a lot of gold used in mobile phones. in there is a print circuit, and this is also partly made of gold. >> reporter: the transformation process from electronic scraps to precious metals takes up to three months. while this plant has set to sell the end product, other factories can produce the same output as a small gold mine. >> translator: what's significant about our plant is we recycle everything. we don't produce any garbage. >> reporter: the next time you decide to throw away your old mobile phone or any other electrical damage jet for that matter, think again. by recycling it you can play your part in improving the environment. cnn, japan. president obama's closing in on a big milestone here.

200 days in office, and it's up to you to decide how the president is doing so far. cnnmoney.com writers and editors though have their own opinions and they're sharing them. poppy harlow is in new york. hey there, poppy, are your colleagues rating the president? >> rating obama's money moves. if you take a look at the interactive tool that's only on cnnmoney.com, you'll see many different economic policy initiative that is have come in place under the obama administration. and we graded them on air balls and slam dunks because we all know president obama likes to shoot hoops from time to time. so let's start out with the slam dunk. according to our editorial team, the auto brankruptcies were actually a slam dunk. there were very few people who thought it was a viable option to let gm and chrysler fall into bankruptcy, restructure, and come out as more successful companies, but that's what happened. obama reassuring people they will have the warranty guarantees, pushing hard on the creditors. really pushing forward to make

that happen. you can actually play a video of what our team had to say. take a quick look at that video. >> in a way it was like what nobody predicted. >> i think there was a lot of doubt that you could have -- be in and out of bankruptcy as quick as they were. >> it was really unprecedented for a company that size to go through a bankruptcy in 30 days. >> obama pushed it through. he nailed it. >> all right. so as you can see, our team thinks he nailed it. so a slam dunk on that one, christi. >> cnnmoney.com rating that a big success. the administration though, as i understand it, has also thrown up some air balls. >> just a few. take a look at the bottom. from the beginning of the year through now, the first 200 days, a number of air balls. i want to start with one that our editors deemed a big one. that is job creation. we've heard the president say so many times my administration will save or create 3.5 million jobs. well, you know, they say they've done that with about 750,000

jobs, but you can't just see the numbers. this year alone we have shed, this economy has lost 3.4 million more jobs. so that's an issue. i want to point to a few others you can check out yourself. we have the aig bonus rage. not much action in terms of the government stepping in. we've got executive compensation, the pay czar, new rules there. also rating agency reform. those are some issues. you can look for yourself. this tool is only on cnnmoney.com. quick facebook comment from brandon. he wrote obama's spending policies are wrong. he was right to save gm, however. i live in the midwest. it would have been a catastrophe if they went into liquidation. john says i give him a c minus. i feel his first 100 days were very good. the last 100 i think he has overspent. >> i hope people go there. poppy, thank you so much. >> you're welcome. the honeymoon is definitely over for a pair of florida newlyweds.

26-year-old dalia is charged with trying to hire a man to kill her husband. she married michael six months ago. police say the woman approached a would-be hit man two turned out to be an undercover police officer. the recent groom can't believe what police are saying about his bride. >> there was a lot of funny stuff going on. i overlooked a lot of things. you know, you try to see the best in people, not the worst. just divorce me and take everything. i mean, that's the best way, right? yonds. >> police say she paid $1,200 to have her husband killed. paula abdul will not be returning to "american idol." there will be a special guest though, and you have probably seen her before.

well, aerosmith's front man steven tyler may have been living it up too much when he was going down off a concert stage. ironically he had just been singing those very lyrics from "love in an elevator" when he fell. this is at the sturgis motorcycle rally in south dakota. he was air lifted to a hospital with miner head, neck, and shoulder injuries. we say minor but we're really not sure how serious they are. a security adviser says that the 61-year-old was dancing, twilled around, stepped backstage off the stage and then apparently fell into a couple fans, but we haven't had any word the fans

were hurt. when paula abdul made the big announcement that she was leaving "american adoll," i know a lot of you were thinking, all right s this some kind of "sho' is in new york. how do we know for sure? >> we know the choice was hers. this is according to the folks at fox entertainment. they're saying paula is the one who decided to move on. the chairman of fox entertainment just spoke at the summer press tour. he said they're going to be bringing in some guest judges. he also added we don't have a big announcement on what we're going to do but for the past 24 hours we're focusing on addit n additio additions, meaning the contestants. between now and january we will find a permanent solution, but there is no expectation that these guest judges will be long term for us. all of them have successful careers so they will not be available to serve as a judge. among the judges, posh spice,

wife of david beckham, the soccer star. she, i think, would be a terrific choice. of course, she had her big pop experience with the spice girls. she has a lot of personality. could bring a lot of fun to the panel. the chairman added they are sad paula is not coming back. they did offer her what they felt was a fair deal. now they feel they can inject some new personality to the show. there was a lot of developments at the tca. rice is the chairman of fox entertainment adding that while it's not definite that paula abdul will be relaced at this point, he did say it is probable. this is as legit as it gets. >> so it's not like they're just going to leave her chair vacant so to speak. what about these rumors we're hearing she's going to dance over to "so you think you can dance?" >> nigel lit go is the executive producer, he was with "american idol." he always said he would love to have paula on the show. he did say that he is not

convinced that paula won't return to "idol." he said until the show is on the air there's always the opportunity for renegotiation. he said i don't know anybody who has had her experience as a performer, dancer, choreographer. i'd been trying to get her since season one. the show will go on it looks like without paula, but paula i think is going to be just fine being as confident as she is. of course, we have plenty to talk about as far as paula abdul leaving "idol" tonight on "showbiz tonight." and we also have brad pitt's major confessions. what brad is now saying about his sex life with angelina, why he won't marry angelina, and the huge stance he's taking in the fight against gay marriage. that's coming up tonight at 11:00 p.m. you're not going to want to miss this.

it is brad unlieashed. >> tmi maybe. >> no, we all want to know, don't we? >> we do. calling me to the carpet. stay with us. we're back in just a moment.

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well, the husband of the woman who drove the wrong way on a new york highway killing seven people and herself insists that she was not an alcoholic. daniel shuler says he never saw his wife drunk. police claim it she drank at least ten vodkas and smoked marijuana before driving her minivan into an suv killing the three men inside. schuller's daughter and three of her nieces also died. they say the woman had several medical conditions and may have suffered a stroke while driving. >> they had no marital problems. she was not an alcoholic. she rarely had a drink. she got in the van with the

children. nine witnesses saw her that day not drunk, with no alcohol breath, no pot breath. >> she was a perfect wife, outstanding mother, hard worker, reliable person, trustworthy. i would marry her again tomorrow. she's awesome. she's the best. >> reporter: and your daughter. tell us about your daughter. >> that's my little girl. she's gone. i don't know nothing to say about that. >> so hard for him obviously. shuler's 5-year-old son did survive the wreck in westchester county. all right you twitter fans, admit it, you were jonesing for a fix today, weren't you, after the service crashed because of a denial of service attack. the problems began around 9:30 eastern. they lasted for about two hours. twitt twitter's status blog says it's

active again although it says it is still underattack. here is the thing, hackers used denial of service attacks to overwhelm sites with requests which prevents legitimate users from accessing them. facebook users also reported having some trouble logging into today. facebook says there was a short period of what they call degraded site experience for its users, but it says no data on the site was at risk and that problem has been resolved apparently. the senate should vote to confirm judge sonia sotomayor as the newest supreme court justice in about half an hour. here are some live pictures. she has overwhelming support, first of all, from democrats. some republican lawmakers believe sotomayor will bring liberal bias to her decisions. now, eight republican senators have said they will vote for sotomayor. and it looks as though you will get another chance to make a deal on that old gas guzzler you have. senate democrats say they do

have enough votes to add $2 billion more to the cash for clunkers program. this vote is expected this afternoon as well after the sotomayor vote. it would extend the program through labor day. the house has approved more money. the house has again. most of the original $1 billion has been spent. they burned through it in less than a week, i think. police say the man who went on a shooting rampage at a pennsylvania gym, they say he was hell bent on exacting his revenge on women that he thought ignored him. and today we're getting a closer look at george sodini's home life and his everyday routine in his own words. police say an online diary chronicled a plan nine months in the making. he wrote that he hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984, hadn't slept with a women in 19 years. also, he had bitter words for his mother and called his father a useless sperm donor. two undated youtube videos have surfaced now, too. one of them apparently narrated by sodini shows the inside of

his two-bedroom home. now, at one point he talks about a matching sofa and chair and then says, quote, women will be really impressed, unquote. as he scans the room a book entitled "date young women" can be seen on a table. he turns the camera on himself to describe how he's able to emotionally disconnect. >> it is easy for me to hide from my emotions for one more day. take a long drive in the car, listen to some music, day dream, or just do some mundane task around the house that really doesn't need to be done that's not too important. and there you go, one more day, and one more day turns into one more year. >> now, the women who sodini had killed have been identified. 46-year-old heidi overmyer, 49-year-old elizabeth gannon, and 38-year-old jody billingsley. let's get you some numbers here. initial jobless claims fell more than expected last week.

550,000 people were still added to the rolls, but that's 30,000 less than analysts predicted. however, the number of people filing continuing claims rose again. big news is expected tomorrow when the monthly jobless report may show unemployment rose from 9.5% to 9.6%. that's at least what's expected. president obama and congressional democrats are pledging to finish overhauling the health care system this year with or without republican help. so far the minority party has opposed all the proposals approved by house and senate committees. six members of the senate finance committee are still trying to hammer out a bipartisan plan and they met with the president today, in fact. >> that's what obama wants. >> no, it's not what president obama wants. >> yes, it is! >> and here are some of the town hall meetings or at least one of them going on across the country. activist who is oppose health care reform promise that they'll continue confronting democratic members of congress during their

august recess. republican party officials though deny that they're organizing these protests, which as i said have disrupted several town hall-style meetings around the u.s. the white house is asking people to send in chain e-mails and internet links that contain what it calls misinformation about health care reform. republicans accuse the white house of turning americans into informants so it can compile an enemy list. the republican senator john cornyn of texas is demanding the white house take down a blog post he claims is an effort to monitor the political speech of americans. the white house dismisses that complaint. it says it's trying to determine if reform opponents are spreading falsehoods about the plan. john edwards' former mistress is testifying before a grand jury today in north carolina. there she is. federal investigators looking into the campaign finances today of the former senator and two-time presidential candidate. edwards has admitted to having an affair with this woman, riel

hunter. his political action committee paid her for photography work and gave her another $14,000 in 2007. some critics have speculated that payments were hush money to keep her quiet about their affair and her pregnancy. you might have noticed hunter arrived today carrying her daughter. edwards has denied he is the baby's father. the person known as the hair glue bandit strikes again in the houston area. he's targeted several people by pouring glue in their hair then taking off. why his latest victim could turn out to be his last.

well, okay, here is some tape for you of what we hear is

a dolphin that's got noon a bit of a predicament in santa clara, california. officials say this dolphin somehow wandered into coyote creek. this is all happening right in front of the headquarters for the san francisco 49ers football team. the marine mammal center has been called in to help get this animal back to open water where it should be. police in texas are searching for a man caught on camera who they believe is the hair blue bandit. have you heard of this guy yet? what you just saw there was some of what one victim had to cut out of her head after an attack. >> there was this man standing about a foot, foot and a half beside me. he said, excuse me, and i said it's okay. i felt i don't know it was like a warmth on the back of my head. there was this white substance, clear substance on my hand, and it dried instantly.

>> the glue attacks have happened at a number of stores and theaters near houston. unlike other victims, that woman was able to use her cell phone to capture an image of her attacker. police are comparing that to the surveillance video from another gluing. one victim said she's still in pain after having to use pliers to pry her hair apart. well, you know, this is an "idol" story that has nothing to do with paula abdul. it's set halfway around the world from l.a. performers on this talent show are smashing social barriers and risking their lives. this one is grabbing so much attention at cnn.com right now. reggie aqui is going to walk us through. >> and you thought "american idol" was tough. >> i know. >> no kidding. you are absolutely right. these women who are on this show in afghanistan, which is basically the afghan version of "american idol", it's called "afghan star," they are putting

their lives on the line. you did not listen to music under taliban control. there's a person who did a documentary on this show back in 2008, and he says that the women in the show, and there were two of them back in 2008 who made it to the finals, one of them danced, which was very controversial, a and not only that while she was dancing and singing, her head scarf slipped off, and she didn't replace it immediately, and that caused a lot of discussion. and not just discussion. it also caused threats because apparently she faced death threats. she had to go into hiding. so a lot of religious leaders in the country have called this unislamic. they have tried to block the show. their solution is to create their own reality show. it's called "koran star," where contestants are quised on their knowledge of that holy text. the winner of that was 16-year-old.

couldn't be more different than the way "afghan star" is run. she were covered in a veil and she accepted her prize, $3,500. it's interesting to see how these two shows are playing out. they are rating winners. joo >> it's probably shock value, too. >> probably. >> speaking of kids and money, i guess a question comes into play, would you still waste time on their piano lessons or baseball games if you knew it just wasn't in their dna to be any good at it? we spent a lot of money on our kids, obviously, so i understand some parents in china are getting the chance to decide this? >> i have a feeling there will be strong opinions about this one. >> yeah. >> because it's a camp they're sending their kids to. at this camp there are a few things that are done. well, first, they're just watching what they do. are the kids athletic? are they artistic and creative. they keep a journal of each of the kids. but then they're also taking a dna test from each of the kids and they're combining the results from both of those, so

both the scientific evidence they're extracting from the kid but also the observational evidence, and then they're going to try to put those two things together and tell the parent in a report your kid has a great likelihood of being a great gymnast or maybe your kid is predispositioned -- has a predisposition for music or the arts or whatever it is. again, this is all happening when they're very young, as you can see from this video. a u.s. psychologist is among those who are saying, you know what? i'm not so sure about this program. take a listen. >> whether it's really a good thing for a 2 or 3-year-old to be sent off to a camp to be genetically tested and put in this track so early in life, you know, i have some real doubts about whether that's in the child's best interests. it seems to be more in the parents' best interests. >> the price of all that? well, it's costly. it's $880 to send your kid to this camp. they also take some of that medical information and they're able to see if your child is

likely to develop a disease later on in life. just want to quote this really fast a 3-year-old girl at this camp says, quote, i want to be the president of china, then people will be scared of me. i don't know. >> okay. >> i don't know what's going on with that. >> she obviously wants some authority. >> i guess so. at that young of an age. >> what about just letting them do what they love to do? >> thank you. >> that's all i'm saying. thank you, reggie. >> you're welcome. >> when she fell into foreclosure one new jersey woman decided to head into the kitchen to save her home. allan chernoff has her story. >> reporter: angela logan has played many roles to earn a living. she's worked as a teacher, model, hairdresser, and is studying to be a nurse, but when she recently fell into foreclosure on her new jersey home, she turned to baking. >> it was a flash of desperation. i thought, wow, we can sell these cakes. >> reporter: a major reason she fell into a cash squeeze is that

two years ago she hired a contractor to renovate the house. he took his money but he only did a portion of the work. to save her home, angela set a goal of selling 100 mortgage apple cakes in ten days at $40 each. she asked everyone she knew to buy a cake. >> the hardest part was to say can you buy my cakes, this is my problem? >> a local hilton hotel offered its kitchen so she could bake faster. she says she's baked about 200 cakes, double her goal, and by qualifying for the federal make home affordable program, her monthly mortgage payment is dropping by nearly 20%. other americans in a financial bind, she says, can also find creative answers to their cash crunch. >> find your talent. find something that you can do that will help -- i can paint fences, you know. who needs one? >> reporter: almost any talent can generate extra cash.

teaching a skill like playing an instrument, home repairs, even dog walking or pet sitting for animal lovers. >> this is incredible. is. >> reporter: ber ninternet reta make me a wish got a whiff of the apple cake and now wants to mass produce it and share the proceeds with angela. a whole line of angela logan cakes is planned. escaping foreclosure could propel angela logan to a new career as the queen of cakes. but back in her kitchen, she still studies nursing knowing from experience never to depend upon just one role. allan chernoff, cnn, new jersey. boy, how to thrive in a tough economy. obviously she's doing it. hope that inspires your creativity, too. for more of our series watch cnn tonight at 8:00 eastern. we'll be right back.

i'm jane velez-mitchell and here's my issue. double lies and toxic secrets this. week two people who two people to lead normal lives hid some very dark skeletons in their closet. first, a picture perfect soccer mom crashes her van going the wrong way after a family camping trip, killing eight people including lots of kids. turns out mom was very drunk and high on pot. now a man who works in a law firm for more than a decade goes on a shooting rampage at a fitness gym, slaughters three women, and injures another nine. this guy seemed like the average joe, but now we know he was a cold-blooded killer, hell bent on getting revenge for supposedly being rejected by women. these tragedies are proof we should not use appearances and stereotypes to dictate our views of people. as you can see, the consequences can be deadly. i'm jane velez-mitchell, and

that's my issue. >> find out what else jane has on her mind. watch "issues" every night at 7:00 eastern here on hln. you know, therapists could cause serious harm by trying to turn gay and lesbian patients into heterosexuals. this is from the american psychological association that reviewed 83 studies since 1960 and found no evidence that there have been changes to anyone's sexual orientation. plus, patients who had the therapy said it caused major emotional problems. the researchers urged therapists to offer all options when their patient's sexual orientation conflicts. if you want to send your kids to the best college check out west point. it tops "forbes'" magazine list of best colleges. princeton ranks number two followed by the california institute of teng nollology, williams college and harvard. wellesley college, the air force academy, amherst, yale, and

stanford also were on the list. it's a sight becoming more common across urban arab yas. are organic farms sprouting up in chicago? esesesesesesesesesess

if you use twitter you probably noticed your thumbs have gone from tweet to twiddle. what's bringing down the twitter website right now and why other social networking sites may be at risk. judging supreme court nominee sonia sotomayor senators take sides. they are poised to make history this hour voting oing on a woma could be our first latina supreme court justice. controversy erupts over using jesus and only that name at a city council meeting. your view on using religious figures at government meetings. hi everybody. i'm chuck roberts. thousands of twitter phones have been jonesing for a fix today with little success. the service crashed this morning

because of a denial of service attack. problems began around 9:30 eastern and lasted about two hours. twitter's status blog says it's active again but still under attack. hackers used the service attacks to overwhelm sites. facebook users also had trouble logging in. facebook said there was a short period of what it called degraded site experience for users but that no data was at risk and the problem has been resolved. in the next few minutes judge sonia sotomayor will likely be confirmed as the first latina justice on the u.s. supreme court. live pictures from the floor of the senate which is now preparing to vote on her nomination. the last speech made by the majority leader harry reed. the vote is expected to be in the neighborhood of 68-31. republicans did not try to filibuster the nomination. democrats have more than enough votes to confirm her. a few republicans say they will defect from the party line and vote for the nominee. president obama nominated sotomayor to follow retiring

justice david suter on the high court. looks like you'll get another chance to make a deal on your gas guzzler. the senate says they have the votes to add $2 million more to the program. the votes are expected this afternoon after the supreme court nomination vote and would extend the program through labor day. the house has already approved more money. most of the original billion dollars has already been spent. police say the man who went on a shooting rampage in pennsylvania at a gym was hell bent on exacting revenge on women he thought ignored him. today we are getting a closer look at george sodini's home life and every day routine in his own words. police say an online diary chronicled a plan nine months in the making. sodini wrote he hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984, hadn't slept with a woman in 19 years. he also had bitter words for his mother, called his father a useless sperm donor. two undated youtube videos have surfaced, one of them apparently narrated by sodini shows the inside of his two bedroom home.

at one point he talks about a matching sofa and chair and then says women will really be impressed. as he scans the room, a book titled date young women can be seen on a table. at one point sodini turns the camera on himself to describe how he's able to emotionally disconnect. >> it is easy for me to hide from my emotions for one more day, take a long drive in the car, listen to some music, day dream, or just do some mundane task around the house that really doesn't need to be done that's not too important and there you go, one more day, and one more day turns into one more year. >> police say sodini committed suicide after killing three women at an la fitness center near pittsburgh. nine others were wounded, including the pregnant aerobics instructor. doctors say the instructor's baby wasn't harmed. she spoke from her hospital bed. >> i remember thinking i wanted

to hold my breath because i was afraid if he saw that i was breathing he would shoot again. >> jody billingsley and elizabeth gannon were both killed. the third victim heidi overmier, we don't have a picture of her. police say sodini made a cell phone call around the time of the shootings and are looking for the person he killed and anybody who might have known about his blog and said nothing about it. after six months of marriage many newlyweds are still writing thank you notes for wedding gifts. a florida couple has a much bigger problem. murder for hire charges. 26-year-old delia dipilito is accused of trying to hire somebody to kill her husband michael. police say she approached a would be hit man who turned out to be an undercover police officer. the recent groom still can't believe what police are saying about his bride. >> there was a lot of funny stuff going on. i overlooked a loft things and, you know, you try and see the best in people not the worst.

i don't understand. >> police say she paid $1200 to have her husband killed. in idaho police say the death of robert manwill is now being investigated as a homicide and there is no evidence the 8-year-old was abducted by a stranger. >> the body of the boy found in the new york canal on monday has been positively identified this afternoon as that of 8-year-old robert manwill. preliminary results from the autopsy give us reason to believe that 8-year-old robert manwill's death was not an accident. >> a 7-year-old neighbor girl said she and robert played on a swingset on july 24th the night he vanished. her parents say she came around 7:30 in the evening around the time the girl said robert headed to his mom's house. they're being questioned by the fbi. four u.s. marines were killed in a roadside explosion today in western afghanistan. nato says their vehicle blew up when it struck an improvised explosive device. today's casualties raise the u.s. death toll to 11 for the month of august.

the military says 44 u.s. troops were killed in july. violence appears to be escalating as western forces push deeper into taliban territory ahead of the august 20th presidential elections. aero smith's lead singer steven tyler takes a nasty fall during a concert in south dakota. ♪ how is he doing? is he back in the saddle again? what was he singing when he took a tumble?

the vote continues in the u.s. senate. historic vote to confirm sonia sotomayor as the newest associate supreme court justice. she would be the first latina to sit on the high bench. several republicans opposed her nomination. john mccain of arizona included. he said she was an activist judge whose decisions reflected her personal views, but we can tell you richard luger, olympia snowe, martinez, collins, graham, alexander, kit bond of

missouri, chet greg and george voinovich are republicans who announced they will support the nomination. she will probably be confirmed with about 68 votes. the voting continues as we speak. a powerful hurricane churning across the pacific ocean, felicia, is a powerful category 4 storm. chad meyers is here to tell us if it's going to hit land and when and where. >> it appears that it will affect hawaii, chuck. now, i don't believe it will affect it as a category anything storm. as you said, a category 4, very dangerous storm, but if i touch on honolulu right here, it's still 1833 miles away from honolulu. this is a website you can get on at home, storm pulse.com. do all kinds of things. it can even tell you how far away it is from salt lake city if you care, which is 2,002 miles. not going to salt lake city so we don't care but just so you get the effect. here is what it looks like right now. the storm circulating out here

1800 miles from hawaii in very warm water. temperatures well above 80. the forecast path, though, chuck, is for it to be up in here. as it gets up north here, up to about 20 degrees north latitude or so, 15 1/2, 17, we start to really lose ocean heat content. we start to really bring that temperature down only into the 80-degree range. that's not high enough to support the category 4 hurricane. that's when it loses its speed and loses its strength. that's when it loses what is right now 140-mile-per-hour storm maybe down to only 50 or 60 miles per hour as it gets close to the hawaiian islands. it is an important location because even with a 50-mile-per-hour wind this has a lot of momentum going for it. there could be a lot of wave action and still coastal flooding on the eastern shores of hawaii. we'll keep watching it, chuck. >> felicia is a rainy day woman. thank you. aero smith front man steven tyler may have been living it up too much when he was going down off a concert stage. he had just been singing the lyrics from "love in an

elevator" when he fell at the sturgis motorcycle rally in south dakota. he was air lifted to a hospital with minor head, neck, and shoulder injuries. not clear how serious they are. a security advisor says the 61-year-old was dancing, twirled around, stepped backward off the stage and landed on a couple fans. a major beef recall to tell you about. beef packers incorporated is recalling more than 825,000 pounds of beef over concerns it may be linked to a salmonella outbreak. the beef was sent to retail distributors in arizona, california, colorado, and utah with the establishment code eft 31913 on labels. it may have been repackaged under different retail names so officials say people should always check with their supermarket to see if they purchased any of the recalled beef. a ground breaking kidney transplant is making headlines on the medical front. cnn's medical correspondent has more on the unprecedented procedure that involved 14

people. >> reporter: seven people, all in desperate need of a new kidney. they all had someone who was willing to donate, a living donor, but none of them were a match. waiting for a kidney from a dead person would have taken five years, time none of them had. so doctors in washington came up with a plan, a kidney exchange, the ultimate matching game. >> the sacrifices that these people made i really believe will never be forgotten because this will forever change our field. >> reporter: here's how it worked. elizabeth gardener needed a new kidney. her husband, larry, wanted to give her his kidney but he wasn't a match. but jordan was a match. that freed up larry's kidney to go to dasha. >> i don't know what to say to larry who is my angel on earth. >> i just want to say it was a

gift for me to give this. >> pinker's brother brian then donated a kidney to jacqueline and so on and so on. doctors hope the megatransplant will encourage other african-americans to donate kidneys. african-americans are more in need of kidneys than whites yet there are fewer donors who match them. plus, african-americans have highly active immune systems that make them more likely to reject kidneys. >> the real heroes here as you know are the donors. any given donor may enable or allow many other people to be transplanted. >> reporter: elizabeth cohen, cnn, atlanta. therapists could cause serious harm trying to turn gay and lesbian patients into heterosexuals. that's from the american psychological association which reviewed 83 studies since 1960 and found no evidence that therapy changed anybody's sexual orientation, plus patients who had the therapy said it caused major emotional problems. the researchers urged therapists

to offer all options when their patients' sexual orientation conflicts with their faith. all right. it's a done deal. the senate has approved sonia sotomayor as the next supreme court justice, the first latina to sit on the high court. the vote has now been confirmed. several republicans opposed her nomination including john mccain of arizona. live pictures now from the senate and the announcement will be made shortly as the roll call -- that looks like al franken the newest senator. it is the minnesota senator al franken had the honor of announcing sonia sotomayor as the newest justice. can we pick up a little audio? >> the ayes are 68 and the nays are 31. the nomination of sonia sotomayor of new york to be an associate justice of the supreme court of the united states is confirmed. >> and there it is. 68 to 31. republicans who voted for her nomination included richard luger, olympia snowe, susan

colins, lindsay graham, lamarr alexander, kit bond, and george voinovich. 68-31, sonia sotomayor, from puerto rico originally, is the newest u.s. supreme court associate justice. is it freedom of speech or a violation of church and state? how a name in a city council invocation resulted in heated words.

we'll take you to just outside of chicago, live coverage of a large fire in a strip mall. this is a walmart/sam's club combo in a strip mall about 18 miles outside of the chicago loop outside of downtown chicago. it is as you can clearly see fully involved. we don't see flames but a lot of smoke and it's been going on quite a while. we don't have any reports yet of injuries. live pictures from affiliate wls of a fire in hodgkins, illinois, the strip mall. president obama's approval rating has dropped. 56% of those surveyed approve of how he's doing, down seven points from april at his first 100-days mark. it also shows 64% have a favorable opinion of him. 34% roughly one-third do not. former louisiana congressman william jefferson is convicted of corruption. a federal jury found him guilty on 11 of 16 counts including taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes including the 90 grand found in his freezer

wrapped in his freezer. prosecutors said he sold out his seat in congress when he collected cash to promote businesses in africa. >> the citizens need to have confidence in their government and when someone sells their office it replaces that confidence in their public officials with cynicism. $90,000 in a freezer is not a gray area. it's a violation. he sold his office for the least common denominator of what public service is about and that's personal wealth and greed. >> jurors saw this video from a 2006 sting operation when the feds found the money in the freezer. the 62-year-old louisianan could get up to 150 years behind bars. lynette froem is about to be released from prison. she served 30 years for trying to assassinate president gerald ford. she was convicted of pointing a loaded gun at him but agents

kept her from firing. she was a follower of charles manson. initial jobless claims fell more than expected last week. 550,000 people were added to the rolls, 30,000 less than predicted, but the number of people filing continuing claims rose again. bigger news is expected tomorrow when the monthly jobless report may show unemployment picked up from 9.5% to 9.6%. if you owe some bills you might not want to pick up your phone. people are complaining about debt collectors calling and being very aggressive. hln money expert clark howard warns some collectors take it too far. >> you know what? if you have a debt that you haven't paid, i want you to pay it as soon as you're back on your feet. right now a lot of people can't pay all their bills. they just don't have the money. and collection agencies have become far more aggressive, so aggressive that there was a bust by the attorney general of the state of new york of a number of collection agencies doing business all over the country

that were, get this, impersonating police officers. they were saying, if you didn't pay your bill that day, they were coming to arrest you, to lock you up and throw the key away. know that you cannot go to prison because you didn't pay a bill. we don't have debtor's prison in the u.s. but if you do owe money, and you can pay a portion of it, and the collector agrees that, don't send him a penny until you have in writing that the payment you're making is payment in full. and if you don't have any money at all, you don't have to talk to a collector. you can write him and tell him, go away. i'm clark howard. for more ideas for you to protect yourself, go to cnn.com/clark howard. get more great consumer advice. clark joins you every weekend saturdays and sundays noon and 4:00 eastern right here on hln. he'll help you save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off. if you want to send your kid to the best college check out west point right on the hudson.

the u.s. military academy at west point tops the "forbes" magazine list of best colleges. princeton ranked number two followed by cal tech, williams college in western massachusetts, and harvard. the others in the top ten, wellesley college, the air force academy at colorado springs, amherst, yale, and stanford. a fight over separation of church and state versus freedom of expression is taking center stage in lodi, california. >> go to your church! talk to your pastor. ask for forgiveness for your blasphemy! >> the council is being criticized for allowing religious invocations that specifically reference jesus and no one else before its meetings. the wisconsin group that favors separation of church and state says an anonymous resident claimed this is unconstitutional. some lodi residents say the prayers are appropriate. >> i try to be respectful of people's beliefs and feelings and i think as a council member

you have to. >> the mayor says it's up to the residents and council whether the invocations stay or are abolished or are replaced with a moment of silence. we'll get your views. is this out of bounds? your expressions on this expression, next.

she's been confirmed. sonia sotomayor the newest justice on the u.s. supreme court. she will succeed david suitor when the court begins its next session at the end of september actually is when they really begin work. the senate has voted to confirm her. she is a new york appellate judge on the second circuit. let's listen. >> on this vote, the ayes are 68 and the nays are 31. the nomination of sonia sotomayor of new york to be an associate justice of the supreme court of the united states is confirmed. >> most republicans did not vote for confirmation. sotomayor becomes the first latina to serve on the high court. president obama is about to make a comment on the vote at the

white house. she'll be sworn in at the supreme court on saturday again succeeding david souter. she'll also take the oath of office at a public ceremony next month. thousands of twitter fans were jonesing for a fix today after the service crashed because of a denial of service attack. problems began around 9:30 eastern and lasted two hours. twitter status log says it's active again though it's still under attack. hackers use denial of service attacks to overwhelm sites with requests which prevents legitimate users from accessing them. facebook users also had trouble logging in. facebook says there was a short period wlaf but says no data on site was at risk. looks like we'll get another chance to make a deal on that gas guzzler you may be driving. the senate says they have the votes to add maybe $2 billion more to the cash for clunkers program. the vote is expected shortly. this would extend the program

through labor day, another month or so. the house has already approved more money. most of the original billion dollars has already been spent. police say the man who went on a shooting rampage in a pittsburgh area gym was hell bent on exacting revenge on women he thought ignored him. today we're getting a closer look at george sodini's home life in his own words. police say an online diary chronicled a plan nine months in the making. he wrote he had not had a girlfriend since 1984, hadn't slept with a woman in 19 years. sodini also had bitter words for his mother, called his dad a useless sperm donor. two undated youtube videos have surfaced now. here is one of them apparently narrated by sodini showing the inside of his two bedroom home. he talks about a matching sofa and chair and says, quote, women will really be impressed. as he scans the room there's a book titled "date young women" seen on the table. at one point sodini turns the camera on himself to describe how he's able to emotionally

disconnect. >> it is easy for me to hide from my emotions for one more day. take a long drive in the car, listen to some music, day dream, or just do some mundane task around the house that really doesn't need to be done that's not too important. and there you go. one more day and one more day turns into one more year. >> police say sodini committed suicide after killing three women at the la fitness center outside pittsburgh. nine others were wounded, including the pregnant aerobics instructor. doctors say her baby wasn't harmed. she spoke from her hospital bed. >> i remember thinking i wanted to hold my breath because i was afraid if he saw that i was breathing he would shoot again. >> jody billingsley, elizabeth gannon were both killed. the third victim, heidi overmier. we don't have a picture of her to show. police say sodini made a cell phone call just before the shootings. in fact, he went in and out of

that la fitness center, made call from the outside, and they're looking for the person he called and anybody who might have known about the video blog. police in idaho say the death of robert manwill is now being investigated as a homicide and that there is no evidence the 8-year-old was abducted by a stranger. >> the body of the boy found in the new york canal on monday has been positively identified this afternoon as that of 8-year-old robert manwill. preliminary results from the autopsy give us reason to believe that 8-year-old robert manwill's death was not an accident. >> a 7-year-old neighbor girl said she and robert played on a swingset july 24th the night he vanished. her parents said she came home around 7:30 in the evening around the time the girl says robert headed to his mom's house. they are both being questioned by the fbi. singer chris brown will have to wait a little while to find out what punishment he'll get for assaulting his former girlfriend rihanna. yesterday a judge in california postponed sentencing until august 27th. brown was expected to receive

five years' probation and 1400 hours of community service, probably to be served in virginia. the judge said she'll wait for documents about that proposed community service plan in virginia. aero smith front man steven tyler may have been living it up too much when he was going down off a concert stage. ironically, he had just been singing those lyrics from "love in an elevator" when he fell at the sturgis motorcycle rally in south dakota. he was airlifted to a hospital with minor head, neck, and shoulder injuries. it's unclear how serious they are. this is the performance right here. the security advisor says the 61-year-old was dancing, twirled around, stepped backward off the stage, and plunged into a couple of fans. in just six months a florida woman went from blushing bride to murder suspect. hear what her new husband has to say about the allegations that she was planning to have him offed.

after six months of marriage most newlyweds are still writing thank you notes for wedding gifts. a florida couple has a much bigger problem, murder for hire charges. 26-year-old dalia dippolito is accused of trying to hire somebody to kill her husband, michael. police say the woman approached a would-be hitman who turned out to be an undercover police officer. the recent groom still can't believe what police are saying about his bride. >> there was a lot of funny stuff going on. i overlooked a lot of things, you know, you try and see the best in people not the worst. just divorce me and take everything. that's the best way, right? so i mean i don't understand. >> police say dalia dippolito paid $1200 to have her husband killed. a fight over separation of church and state versus freedom of expression taking center

stage in lodi, california. >> go to your church. talk to your pastor. ask for forgiveness for your blasphemy! >> the council is criticized for allowing religious invocations that specifically reference jesus before its meetings. let's get to president obama on the confirmation of sonia sotomayor. the senate has voted to confirm judge sonia sotomayor as our nation's 111th supreme court justice. i want to thank the senate judiciary committee, particularly its chairman, senator leahy, as well as its ranking member senator sessions for giving judge sotomayor a thorough and civil hearing and i thank them for doing so in a timely manner so that she can be fully prepared to take her seat when the court's work begins this september. the members of our supreme court are granted life tenure and are charged with the vital and difficult task of applying

principles set forth. over the past ten weeks members of the senate judiciary committee and the full senate have assessed judge sotomayor's fitness for this work. they've scrutinized her record as a prosecutor, as a litigator, and as a judge. they've gauged her respect for the proper role of each branch of our government, her commitment to faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand, and her determination to protect our core constitutional rights and freedoms. with this historic vote, the senate has affirmed that judge sotomayor has the intellect, the temperament, the history, the integrity, and the independence of mind to ably serve on our nation's highest court. this is a role that the senate has played for more than two centuries, helping to ensure that equal justice under the law is not merely a phrase inscribed above our courthouse door. but a description of what

happens every single day inside the courtroom. it's a promise that whether you're a mighty corporation or an ordinary american you will receive a full and fair hearing. in the end, the outcome of your case will be determined by nothing more or less than the strength of your argument and the dictates of the law. these core american ideals, justice, equality, and opportunity are the very ideals that have made judge sotomayor's own uniquely american journey possible. they're ideals she has fought for throughout her career and the ideals the senate has upheld today in breaking yet another barrier and moving us yet another step closer to a more perfect union. like so many other aspects of this nation, i'm filled with pride in this achievement and great confidence that judge sotomayor will make an outstanding supreme court justice. this is a wonderful day for judge sotomayor and her family

but i also think it's a wonderful day for america. thank you very much, everybody. >> all right. president obama a quick statement on the confirmation vote just occurring in the senate. 68-31 over the objections of many republicans who thought she was a liberal activist and would let her ethnic background dictate or at least heavily influence some of her court decisions. but that was overwhelmed by democratic support and several republicans, of course, as well, voting for confirmation of sonia sotomayor, who will be sworn in saturday morning at the u.s. supreme court, so she is in effect being elevated from the second circuit court of appeals in new york to the u.s. supreme court, the highest court in the land. laura ling and euna lee. >> it's a storybook moment that could only happen in the back yard of hollywood. journalists laura lee and euna

ling returning home after they were pardoned by north korea's leader kim jong-il from a 12-year sentence at hard labor. it took a visit from former president clinton to do it but the ending couldn't have been scripted any better. earlier we talked with the person who shot this video who covered the event shoulder to shoulder with all of the major media outlets. julie, how did you get by the secret service without a pass? >> well, it was a pretty incredible experience. they were searching everybody, so getting in wasn't a problem with -- they knew that i was a serious photographer, freelancing. >> and did you introduce yourself as an i-reporter? >> i did. >> okay. what was it like? could you overhear the friends and family talking before they deplaned? what were they saying? >> you actually couldn't hear. they came out right before they were going to deplane. it was incredible. it was incredible to watch them see the doors open and the girls

come out. it was amazing. >> we're looking at the 4-year-old hannah clinging to her mom -- actually clinging to her dad. there she is with her mom. you can't take your eyes off that shot, can you? >> not at all. i'm not sure hannah prior to knew what was about to happen. i'm sure they told her but i don't think a child that young really can understand. her mom had been gone. what exactly what was happening next. >> did you get any impression of the bond between former president clinton and al gore? >> oh, they were -- it was what you see is true. they were so happy to see one another. al gore was absolutely appreciative of what clinton went out and did. it was really amazing. it was all quite genuine. >> our thanks to julie ellerton, a great i-report she got where a lot of other people could not get. if you have pictures or video of breaking news or great stories from where you are, do like that. go to i-report.com.

look for the upload now link and get the instructions on how to submit your stories.

the husband of the woman who drove the wrong way on a busy new york freeway killing seven people and herself insists she was not an alcoholic. daniel schuler said he never saw his wife drunk. police claim diane schuler drank at least ten vodkas and smoked some marijuana before driving her minivan into an suv, killing three men inside, schuler's daughter, three of her nieces all dead. the family's attorney says the woman had several medical conditions and may have suffered a stroke while driving. >> they had no marital problems. she was not an alcoholic. she rarely had a drink. she got in the van with the children. nine witnesses saw her that day not drunk with no alcohol breath, no pot breath. >> she was a perfect wife and outstanding mother, hard worker,

reliable person, trust worthy. i would marry her again tomorrow. she was awesome. she's the best. >> tell us about your daughter. >> she's my little girl. she's gone. i don't know what else to say about that. >> schulor's 5-year-old son survived the wreck. this was on the state parkway just north of new york and westchester county. president obama is closing in on a big milestone now 200 days in office and it's up to you decide how he's doing so far. cnn money.com writers and editors have their own opinions. poppy harlow is in new york with more. >> reporter: i want to show you this very cool tool only on cnn money.com. of course it's called obama's money moves. you can see a number of different economic policy moves by the administration so far this year in these first 200 days but we rated them in terms of slam dunks and air balls because we know the president likes to shoot hoops sometimes. let's start off with the slam dunk. our editors agree that how the

administration handled the auto bankruptcys was a slam dunk because there were few people who thought it was even a viable option. just thought folks won't buy cars from a bankrupt automaker. obama pressed hard with the warranty guarantees, played hardball with the creditors. we saw a record emergence from bankruptcy as a result really for gm and chrysler. let's play ayou a quick clip of what our writers and editors think. >> in a way it was like what nobody predicted. >> i think there was a lot of doubt you could have them be in and out of bankruptcy as quick as they were. >> it was really our president, for a company that size, the size of general motors, to go through a bankruptcy in what, 40 days? >> obama pushed it through. he nailed it. >> all right. so as you can see they think the president nailed it there. there are also some air balls and we have to show you because there are a number of things that were judged as complete misses for the president. let's look at job creation. there was a bold initiative. we've heard the president say time and time again his administration will save or

create 3.5 million jocks. t the economy continues to shed millions of jobs. few people, a lot of people wonder is that even possible? take a look at other air balls. look at aig bonus rates. what really happened with that? what did the administration actually do? look at executive compensation. look at how the rating agencies were or were not reformed. it is up to you, let us know what you think. people are weighing in on facebook. read you quick facebook comments. brandon writes, obama's spending policies are wrong just like george bush in many ways. he was right to save gm, however. i live in the midwest and it would have been a catastrophe if they went into liquidation. a comment from john, he says i would give him a c-minus. i feel his first 100 days were very good but the last 100 i think he has overspent. logon to cnnmoney.com, play with the tool and let us know what you think on facebook. >> poppy, thank you. a lot more of obama's money moves at cnnmoney.com. don't miss it. collection it out. initial jobless claims fell

more than expected last week. 550,000 people added to the rolls. that's 30,000 fewer than predicted. but the number of people filing continuing claims rose again. bigger news comes out tomorrow morning when the monthly jobless report may show unemployment rose from 9.5% to 9.6%. wall street is cooling off from its hot streak over the past two days. dow struggled to find its footing with investors bailing out of tech issues and consomer stocks. big board showsdown down 28 points just before the close of trading, 9252. if you want to send your kid to the best college, check out west point. u.s. military academy tops fobz magazine's list of best colleges. princeton university ranked number two, followed by cal tech, williams college in the berkshires of massachusetts. then harvard. others in the top ten, wellesley, air force academy, amhurst, jail and stanford. this is a woman actually doing a tango with a horse.

why she's doing it and who else is dancing with horses these days.

the votes are in. will sonia sotomayor be our next supreme court justice? the final senate tally, and also president obama's reaction. if you use twitter, you probably noticed your thumbs went from tweet to twiddle earlier today. what brought down twitter for a while. controversy erupts over using jesus' name at a council meeting. your views on using religious figures at government's vents. the latest from hln "news and views." i'm richelle carey. let's recap the breaking news from the united states senate, the next justice of the u.s. supreme court will be sonia sotomayor. minnesota senator al franken presiding over the vote

announcing the final tally on sotomayor's nomination. 65 ayes, 31 nays. 68 yeses. let me get that right. sotomayor will be sworn in on saturday. succeeding justice david suitor. she'll be the 111th justice to sit on the supreme court. the third woman and the first latina. president obama said he's deeply gratified the senate confirmed sotomayor. he calls it a great day for her family and a great day for america. we'll have more on that in just a bit. it looks like he'll get another chance to make a deal on your old gas guzzler. senate democrats said they have enough votes to add $2 billion more to the cash for clunkers program. the vote is expected some time this afternoon. it would extend the program through labor day. the house has already approved more money. most of the original billion dollars has already been spent. spent very quickly. thousands of twitter fans were jonesing for a fix today.

the service crashed because of a denial of service attack. the problem started at about 9:30 eastern time, lasted for about two hours. twitter's status blog says it is active again, although it says it is still under attack. hacker used denial of service attacks to overwhelm the system. facebook users also reported having some trouble logging in. facebook says there was a short period of time when it called degraded site experience. says that's what was happening for its users but says no data on the site was at risk. it says the problem has been resolved. a strong hurricane is churning across the pacific ocean. it is not posing any immediate threat to land. hurricane felicia is a category 4 storm with maximum winds approaching 140 miles per hour. the eye of the storm is just about half-way between baja, california and hawaii.

forecasters expect felicia to lose strength as it moves over cooler water in the next few days. keeping an eye on that for you. police say the man who went on a shooting rampage at a pennsylvania gym was hell-benten on exacting his revenge on women. today we get a closer look at george sodini's home life in his own words. police say an online diary chronicled a plan nine months in the making. he says he hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984, hadn't slept with a woman in 19 years. he also had bitter word for his mother and called his father a useless sperm donor. two undated youtube videos have now surfaced. one of them apparently narrated by z by sodini. he says "women will really be impressed" when he scans the room. the title "date young women" can be seen on the table.

at one point he turns the camera on his self-talking how he's just able to emotionally disconnect. >> it is easy for me to hide from my emotions for one more day. take a long drive in the car, listen to some music, daydream, or just do some mundane task around the house that really doesn't need to be done, that's not too important. there you go. one more day. one more day turns into one more year. >> the women sodini killed are identified as 46-year-old heidi overmier, 49-year-old elizabeth gannon and 38-year-old jody billingsley. nine people were hurt in that shooting, including a pregnant aerobics instructor. doctors say her baby was not hurt. she spoke from her hospital bed. >> i remember thinking i wanted to hold my breath because i was afraid if he saw that i was breathing he would shoot again.

>> police say sodini made a phone call around the time of the shootings. they are looking for the person that he called. anyone who might have known about his blog. a fight over sprafeparation church and state versus freedom of expression is taking place in lodi, california. the council was criticized for allowing religious invocations and specifically referenced jesus before its meeting. the group from wisconsin that favors separation of church and state says an anonymous resident complained. it says the invocations are illegal but some lodi residents say the prayers are appropriate. as for the mayor, he says he is just caught in the middle. 6. >> i try to be respectful of people's beliefs an feelings. i think as a council member you have to. >> the mayor says it will be up to the residents and the council

whether the invocation stays, is abolished or replaced. maybe with a moment of silence. what do you think? should jesus or any other religious figure be part of an official government's vent? call us right now, 1-877-tell-hln. that's 1-877-tell-hln. you can e-mail us, by going to cnn.com/hln, click under your views. there is also a link there to our facebook page. post your comments there. you can also texted worth views plus your comments and names to text hlntv. president obama's approval rating drops. a new cnn/opinion research corporation poll shows 56% of those surveyed approve of how he's doing. that's down seven points from april at his first 100 days mark. it also shows 54% have a favorable opinion of him.

34% do not. let's get back to the breaking news. out of the senate, judge sonia sotomayor will be the next justice on the u.s. supreme court. dan lothian joins us from washington with details on the vote to confirm the first latina member of the country. highest court. dan, what do you know? >> reporter: this is a big day for this white house. in fact, a few days ago i was talking to a senior administration official trying to get this person's take on what they thought was the most important thing -- or one of the most important things that had happened in this second 100 days. this person thought quickly and said, sotomayor. that gives you a sense of what this means to the white house. the president today added an event late in the day so he could make some comments on the confirmation. the president saying that he was filled with pride that this was not only a wonderful day for justice sotomayor and her family, but also a wonderful day for america. >> with this historic moment, the senate has affirmed that judge sotomayor has the intellect, temperament, the history, the integrity and the

independence of mind to ably serve on our nation's highest court. this is a role that the senate has played for more than two centuries helping ensure that equal justice under the law is not merely a phrase inscribed above our courthouse door, but a description of what happens every single day inside the courtroom. >> reporter: after the president made those short comments, he was asked by a reporter if he was happy with the 68 votes. he said, "i'm very happy." so a handful of republicans did come on-board but certainly the white house would have loved to have had a broader bipartisan effort here. this was mainly along party lines. as for the actual swearing-in ceremony, we're told by the supreme court that this will take place on saturday at 11:00 a.m. at the supreme court. chief justice john roberts will administer the oath. sotomayor's family and friends are expected to be at the swearing-in ceremony. i did ask if president obama would be there. have not gotten an answer yet. can you assume that he will be.

>> you read my mind. that's what i was going to ask you, dan. all right, dan lothian, thank you so much. in just six months, a florida woman went from blushing bride to murder suspect. hear what her new husband had to say about the allegations that she was planning to have him killed. on hln.

a husband of the woman who drove the wrong way on a new york highway killing seven people and herself insists she's not an alcoholic. the man says he never saw his wife drunk. police came the woman drank at least ten vodkas and smoked marijuana before driving her minivan into an suv killing the three men inside. her daughter and three of her nieces also died. the family's attorney says the woman had several medical conditions and may have suffered a stroke while driving.

>> they had no marital problems. she was not an alcoholic. she rarely had a drink. she got in the van with the children. nine witnesses saw her that day not drunk with no alcohol breath, no pot breath. >> she was a perfect wife, an outstanding mother, hard worker. reliable person, trustworthy. i would marry her again tomorrow if i could. she was awesome. she was the best. >> your daughter. tell us about your daughter. >> she was my little girl. she's gone. i don't know what else to say about that. >> the 5-year-old son survived the wreck in new york's westchester county. after six months of marriage, many newlyweds are still writing notes for their presents. a florida couple has a much

bigger problem, murder for hire charges. 26-year-old dalia dippolito is accused of trying to hire somebody to kill her husband, michael. police say the woman approached a would-be hitman who turned out to be an undercover police officer. the recent groom still can't believe what police are saying about his bride. >> there was a lot of funny stuff going on. i overlooked a lot of things, you know, you try and see the best in people not the worst. just divorce me and take everything. that's the best way, right? so i mean i don't understand. >> police say dalia dippolito paid $1,200 to have her husband killed. police in idaho say the death of robert manwill is now being investigated as a hock side and say there is no evidence the 8-year-old was abducted by a stranger. >> the body of the boy found in the new york canal on monday has been positively identified this afternoon as that of 8-year-old

robert manwill. preliminary results from the autopsy give us reason to believe that 8-year-old robert manwill's death was not an accident. >> a 7-year-old neighbor girl says she and robert played on the swing set on july 24th. that is the night he vanished. her parents say she came home around 7:30, which is the same time the girl says robert headed to his mother's house. they are being questioned by the fbi. the father of a missing florida girl haley cummings has bonded out of jail, arrested on burglary and assault charges. he was in court today where his bond was set at just over $12,000. his wife paid it. putnam county officials say he was arrested after a fight with her brother, but have not said what all this fighting was about. cummings' wife was reportedly the last one to see 5-year-old haley cummings on february 9th. she says the little girl

vanished after being tucked into bed at her father's mobile home just outside the community. detectives have said the arrest is not linked to haleigh's disappearance. nancy grace is investigating and taking your calls tonight at 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. eastern right here on hln. singer chris brown will have to wait to find out what his punishment is for assaulting his girlfriend, rihanna. his former girlfriend. yesterday a california judge postponed his sentencing until august 27th. brown was expected to get five years probation and 1,400 hours of community service. judge says she's still waiting for documents about his proposed community service plan. we'll let you know about that. aerosmith singer steven tyler takes a nasty fall during a concert in south dakota. you know you want to know what song he was singing when he went down.

a pregnant british woman who avoided a sentence of death by firing squad in laos is now in british custody. the woman was arrested after being caught with 1 1/2 pounds of heroin at the airport in the capital of laos. she avoided the country's mandatory death sentence for drug trafficking because of her pregnancy. how she got pregnant in jail, no one really knows. she reportedly told her mother she was not raped and the father is not a jail official. a government-run newspaper in laos reported that she said she

impregnated herself with sperm from another prisoner. she'll now serve out her life sentence in britain. therapists could cause serious harm by trying to turn gay and lesbian patients into heterosexuals. that's from the american psychological association. it reviewed 83 studies since 1960 and found no evidence that therapy changed anyone's sexual orientation. plus, patients who had the therapy said it caused them major emotional problems. the researchers urged therapists to offer all options when their patient's sexual orientation conflicts with their faith. a third grade girl in california fighting city hall to save her lemonade stand. look at her right there. she was trying to earn money to go to disneyland but the city shut her down because she didn't have a permit and they said she was actually selling it at a dangerous intersection. >> well, we were selling

lemonade and a code enforcement person came and tore us down. >> she was near a very busy intersection, one of the most dangerous intersections in our community. it just was not a safe place to be. >> the city says it is trying to work out something. by the way, a radio station gave her those passes to disneyland. if you want to send your kid to the best college, check out west point. u.s. military academy topped forbes's magazine's list of best colleges. princeton university ranked number two, california institute of technology, williams college and harvard. the others at the top ten are wellesley college, air force academy, amhurst, yale and stanford. "forbes" looks at the student satisfaction, graduation rates and salaries of recent graduates. another down day on wall street as investors brace for

tomorrow's monthly jobs report. diane king is at the business desk in new york with today's trading details. do tell, diane. >> hi, richelle. well, investors continue to pull back today, though the losses were modest. this comes in spite of better than expected news on the jobs front. 550,000 americans applied for jobless benefits for the first time last week. that's nearly 40,000 fewer than the week before. but people continuing to collect unemployment benefits for more than one week rose to 6.3 million. investors also got pretty grim retail sales numbers. major retailers like target and costco posted big sales decline signalling a big start to the back-to-school shopping season. on that side, most retail shopping is higher. dow industrials fell 24 points to end at 9256. broader s&p 500 slipped about .5%. investors played it safe though ahead of -- today, rather, ahead

of the labor department's employment report due out tomorrow morning. >> thanks, diane. could posh spice be taking paula abdul's place on "american idol"? fox entertainment chairman says the network is done negotiating with paula. she is not coming back. the program says they're already looking forward to signing her replacement. they've named two guests just to fill in during the seven-week tryout. one is former spice girl victoria beckham. the other is pop singer katy perry. aerosmith's front man steven tyler takes a nasty fall during a concert in south dakota. he had just finished singing the lyrics from "love in an elevator" when he fell. he was airlifted with a shopt with head, neck and shoulder injuries. it is not clear exactly how serious they are. a security advisor says the 61-year-old was dancing, twirled around, stepped backward on the

stage and fell into a couple of fans. esesesesesesesesesesesesess

breaking news. from the united states senate, the next justice of the u.s. supreme court will be sonia sotomayor. the senate has confirmed her nomination to the nation's highest court. 68 senators voted in favor of the first latina justice, nine of them were republicans who broke with their party to support this nomination. the other 31 republicans all voted against her. president obama said he is deeply gratified by this outcome. >> with this historic vote, the senate has affirmed that judge sotomayor has the intellect, temperament, the history, the integrity, and the independence of mind to ably serve on our nation's highest court.

this is a role that the senate has played for more than two centuries helping to ensure equal justice under laut is not merely a phrase inscribed above our courthouse door, but a description of what happens every single day inside a courtroom. >> judge sotomayor will be the 111th justice and the third woman to sit on the high bench. it looks like he'll get another chance to make a deal on that old gas guzzler you've been driving around. the senate is debating right now the cash for clunkers program. senate democrats say they have enough votes to add $2 billion more to the program but it was expected a little later today. it would extend the program through labor day. the house has already approved more money. most of the original $1 billion has already been spent. thousands of twitter fans

were jonesing for a fix today. the service crashed this morning because of a denial of service attack. problems began around 9:30 eastern and lasted about two hours. twitter's status blog says it's active again but still under attack. hackers used denial of service attacks to overwhelm the sites. facebook users also had trouble logging in. facebook said there was a short period of what it called degraded site experience for users but that no data was at risk and the problem has been resolved. the husband of the woman who drove the wrong way down a new york highway. police claimed she drank at least ten vod kaz and also smoked marijuana before driving her minivan into an suv killing

three men inside. her daughter and three of her nieces also died. the family's attorney says the woman had several medical conditions and may have suffered a stroke while driving. >> they had no marital problems. she was not an alcoholic. she rarely had a drink. she got in the van with the children. nine witnesses saw her that day not drunk with no alcohol breath, no pot breath. >> she was a perfect wife and outstanding mother, hard worker, reliable person, trustworthy. i would marry her again tomorrow. she was awesome. she's the best. >> tell us about your daughter. >> she's my little girl. she's gone. i don't know what else to say about that. >> schulor's 5-year-old son

survived the wreck. this was on the state parkway just north of new york and westchester county. a hurricane is churning across the pacific ocean but it isn't posing any immediate threat to land. hurricane plea sh hurricane felicia is a cat 4 storm. eye of the storm is half-way between baja, california and hawaii. forecasters expect felicia to lose strength as it moves over cooler water in the next few days. police say the man who went on the shooting rampage at a gym in pennsylvania was hell-bent on exacting his revenge on women he thought ignored him. today we're getting a closer look at george sodini's home life and also his every day routine in his own words. police say an online diary chronicled a plan nine months in the making. sodini wrote he hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984 and hadn't slept with a woman in 19 years.

sodini also had bitter words for his mother and his father, he referred to his father as a useless sperm donor. the women who sodini killed have been identified as 46-year-old heidi overmier, 49-year-old elizabeth gannon, and 38-year-old jody billingsley. they were taking a dance class at the club when all this happened. doctors say the pregnant instructor's baby was not harmed. she spoke from her hospital bed. >> i remember thinking i wanted to hold my breath because i was afraid if he saw that i was breathing, he would shoot again. >> here are pictures of jody billingsley, and elizabeth gannon. we don't have heidi overmier's picture to show you. police say sodini made a phone call around the time of the shootings. of course, they're looking for the person he called. anyone who might have known about his blog. i want to show you a video that just came in of aerosmith

front man steven tyler living it up too much when he was going down on a concert stage. ironically he had just been singing those lyrics "love in an elevator" when he fell. it was at the sturgis motorcycle rally in south dakota. the 61-year-old was dancing, twirling around. he stepped backward off the stage and fell on to a couple of fans. this is video from tmz. tyler had to be airlifted to the hospital with head, neck and shoulder injuries that are believed to be minor. we hope so. officials in santa clara, california are trying to set up a water rescue of sorts. a marine mammal center has been called in to help get -- you see him in a minute -- this little guy, either a dolphin or porpoise out of a creek and into open water. this is all happening right in front of the headquarters for the san francisco 49ers football team. motorcycle training was being conducted near the creek when officers spotted the mammal.

we'll keep you posted. in just six months a florida woman went from blushing bride to attempted murder suspect. hear what her new husband has to say about allegations she was planning to have him killed.

the honeymoon's definitely over for a pair of newlyweds in florida. 26-year-old dalia dippolito was charged with trying to hire a man to kill her husband. she married michael dippolito six months ago. police say that she approached a would-be hitman who turned out to be an undercover police officer. the recent groom still can't believe what police are saying about his new bride.

>> there was a lot of funny stuff going on. i overlooked a lot of things. you try and see the best in people, not the worst. just divorce me and take everything. i mean that's the best way. right? i mean i don't understand. >> police say dalia dippolito paid $1,200 to have her husband killed. an "idol" story that has nothing to do with paula abdul. in fact, it is half-way around the world. people on this talent show are smashing social barriers and risking their lives. this is grabbing lots of attention at cnn.com. let's check in with dotcom live anchor virginia cha for all the details on this one. this sounds like a fantastic story, virginia. >> this is very interesting on a lot of levels. "afghan star" is hugely popular in afghanistan. yes, it is an "american idol"-style singing contest, but

the reason it is so dramatic that the show is even on there, you have to remember that this is a country where music an tv were banned under the taliban. but probably the most radical part of the show is that women participate, and this is serious business because a director who made a film about the show says any female who participates is genuinely risking her life. in fact, in 2008 there were two women who made it to the finals. one of them while performing her headscarf actually slipped off, and for that she got death threats. she was forced into hiding. now the religious authorities in afghanistan are not too happy about this show. they say it is unislamic, they want to block it. the show's creator met with them and came up with an alternative show called "koran star." contestants are quizzed on their knowledge of holy text. that's actually also a popular show. this very same creator has another show out, it is to coincide with the presidential elections there in afghanistan later this month. if you want to learn more about

that show, just go to cnn.com/world. >> i love that! cnn.com/world. please check that out, people. those are great, great stories. i love that, virginia. all right. i don't know about you, but my parents had me at every lesson known to man. every lesson. if they knew that i wasn't going to be that good at any of it, maybe they wouldn't have wasted their money. there are some parents in china that you've been telling me about who actually had a chance to decide do i want to waste my money. >> yeah, they do. although you turned out okay. so i wouldn't be -- >> there were no anchor lessons though. but there was horseback and everything else. >> exactly. okay, this is still sort of experimental. but here's the deal. about 30 children in china have given up dna samples, swabbed their mouth, and the idea they go to this camp for five days, and they're evaluated. not only is there a genetic code looked at to see what might they be good at, but also their attributes, are they going to be tall, how will they speak, what

will they be like? the goal, trying to figure out what they'll be good at what they grow up. parents can nurture those strengths and not waste their time on something else. scientists involved in this say the genetic code can reveal a lot about a child. they say it can show iq, emotional control and athletic ability. the evaluations done by observers plus the genetic information is combined. they sit down with the parents and advise them on what careers their children should pursue. now, as you can imagine, there are critics. one u.s. psychologist is among those and says why he's concerned about the program. >> whether it is really a good thing for 2 or 3-year-old to be sent off to a camp to be genetically tested and put on this track so early in life, you know, i have some real doubts about whether that's in the child's best interest. it seems to be more in the parents' best interests. >> to find out other concerns, plus the cost, just go to cnn.com/world as well for this

one. >> lots of issues there for sure, thank you, virginia. when she fell into foreclosure, one new jersey woman decided to head into the kitchen to try to save her home. allan chernoff has her story in this edition of "money and main street." >> reporter: actress angela logan has played many roles to earn a living. she's worked at a teacher, model, hair dresser and is studying to be a nurse. but when she recently fell into foreclosure on her new jersey home, she turned to baking. >> it was desperation. i thought, wow! we can sell these cakes, they're so good. >> reporter: the major reason angela fell into a cash squeeze, two years ago she hired a contractor to renovate the house. he took his money, but he only did a portion of the work. to save her home, angela set a goal of selling 100 mortgage apple cakes for ten days at $40 each. she asked everyone she knew to buy a cake. >> the hardest part was to say,

can you buy my cakes? this is my problem. >> reporter: a local hilton hotel offered its kitchen so angela could bake faster. angela says she's baked about 200 cakes. double her goal. and by qualifying for the federal make home affordable program, her monthly mortgage payment is dropping by nearly 20%. other americans in a financial bind, she says, can also find creative answers to their cash crunch. >> find your talent. find something that you can do that will help -- i can pay expenses. you know? who needs one? >> reporter: almost any talent can generate extra cash. teaching an instrument, dog walking or pet sitting for animal lovers. internet retailer make me a wish got a whiff of the mortgage apple cake and now is greasing pans to mass produce it and share the proceeds with angela. a whole line of angela logan cakes is planned.

escaping foreclosure could propel angela logan to a new career as the queen of cakes. but back in her kitchen, she still studies nursing. knowing from experience never to depend upon just one role. allan chernoff, cnn, keyneck, new jersey. how to survive in a tough economy. people are doing it. for more of our stories from our series "money and main street," watch cnn tonight at 8:00 eastern. úxp

"prime news" is coming up in just a few minutes. let's check in with mike to see what's at the top of the agenda. >> so disturbing, it is almost like words from the grave when we talk about hearing from george sodini, the man who killed three women, shot nine others, including himself in that fitness club near pittsburgh. we're going to listen to his youtube postings.

they're disturbing. you get the backdrop, he was despendent, he has no hope, obviously he's angry at women. he shows us his apartment or house and how that should impress a woman. what can we learn from this? we'll delve into all of that for you. call in with your thoughts, 1-877-tell-hln. also this one -- a newlywed under arrest in south florida accused of ordering a hit on her new husband. little did she know, the hitman really was a cop. you're not going to believe the elaborate scene that the police force laid out to nail this woman cold. we'll have her reaction on tape when they tell her "your husband's dead," but really he's alive. you got to stick around for that. also this -- remember the woman who was caught in that verizon wireless cell phone store dragging her kid by the backpack leash? we're hearing from her, getting more details on that. she was charged with felony child cruelty. i thought bad parenting. i didn't see a felony there. as always, call in,

1-877-tell-hln. want to know what you think. e-mail us, cnn.com/primenews, or text us at hlntv. i can coming way in about ten minutes. >> we're going to hear from her? >> her excuses, reasoning. better word. >> that will make people tune in. i'll be there. and i'll pay attention to you. i'll be there a little while, mike. listen to this. a fight over separation of church and state, versus freedom of expression is taking center stage in lo die, california. listen to this. >> talk to your pastor. ask for forgiveness for your blasphemy. >> well, the council has been criticized for reference to jesus before the meetings. a group from wisconsin that favors separation of church and state says an anonymous resident complained and says the invocations are illegal, but some lodi residents say they're appropriate. the mayor says he's just caught

in the middle. >> i try to be respectful of people's beliefs, and feelings. and i think as a council member, you have to. >> the mayor says it will be up to the residents and council whether the invocations stay, abolished or just have a moment of silence. what do you think of jesus or any religious figure being part of an official government event? let's share of some of what we got. greg wrote this. jesus was pretty cool and a righteous dude, but he is not held in high esteem by all religions. so we can't favor one or more religions over the other. laura wrote this. she says, to be fair to everyone, there's a reason for separation of church and state. and this, in no way does using the name of jesus taking religious freedom from people who do not believe. and reggie wrote this. he says, i think jesus should be a part of this government event. people can think, what would jesus do? that way people will always make the right decision.

thank you for all of your posts. we appreciate it. listen to this. "american idol" veteran, paula abdul, will not be returning to the show. there will be a special guest.