the five took off in an e-2-c hawkeye aircraft from the aircraft carrier uss carl vincent. there is your crew. the navy says this is a significant achievement given that the number of female pilots in the fleet, less than 5%. though the number of female officers is growing. >>> the greatest show on earth taking place in the northern sky every night this week. this is what it looks like in norway. the aurora borealis, visible from europe on over to new england, canada, the northern u.s., all a result of the intense solar flare activity lately. this is the beautiful part of that solar storm. it has also, of course, impacted communications and aviation. just gorgeous. >>> up next tonight, thousands of uninvited guests keeping the folks in one small town up all night. >>> finally tonight, we'll take you to a town with a big problem in northern kentucky, where about people live and these days they live with a lot of birds. they weren't looking for birds. they like birds enough, but there's birds and there's the birds that have moved into this town along with everything birds bri

said it would one carrier just passed through the gulf and is to be replaced in the region by the carl vincent. how will washington respond and what happens if iran does try to close the strait and cut off the persian gulf? here to answer those questions is alireza naider. welcome. >> thank you. >> so let's start off, why has iran decided to so dramatically escalate the rhetoric, what does it hope to accomplish and how much is internal consumption? >> there are two things going on that the regime is very worried about. number one, the u.s. sanctions on the central bank, specifically iran relies on the central bank as a clearinghouse for all oil purchases. so big countries like china, japan, south korea could potentially comply with these sanctions and either stop buying iranian oil or reduce their consumption of iranian oil. the chinese are already negotiating with iran in order to reduce prices. so this is a big worry for the regime in iran. it could really impact iran's economic health. so iran is being very aggressive in the persian gulf as basically a warning to the united states. but also

is no connection between the fleet movement and threats from iran, but the arrival of the uss carl vincentormuz a major oil shipping route. the vincent is the same ship that dumped osama bin laden's body in the sea. >>> even though florida's presidential primary is january 31, absentee is underway. mitt romney and ron paul getting a jump on the other candidates. aggressively reaching out to voters who requested ballots. >>> katy perry and harry potter dominating at the 38th annual people's choice awards last night. another highlight of the show, was faith hill performing her new single "come home." ♪ come home ♪ ♪ come home ♪ we're waiting for you ♪ so long ♪ so long ♪ . >> alisyn: now katy perry was a no show. but she picked up the most wins, five, including favorite song of the year for "e.t.". harry potter followed with four wins. those are your headlines. >> steve: joining us live, the people's choice, how are you, sir? >> i'm great. how are you? >> steve: great to have you. at the end of next week, south carolina is going to have their primary. you were in it last time. people are say

the arrival of the uss carl vincent comes on the heels of iranian military exercises in the persian gulfearby the strait of hormuz. iran has threatened to chose that key oil route if west places more sanctions on its oil exports. we will have more in our next hour. ♪ >>> it has become the hottest political story of the republican primary, mitt romney and bain capital. so much of what voters are learning about romney's time as head of the investment firm has been through attack ads and from the democratic national committee. so we did our own digging about governor romney's years as bain, its successes, its failures and how the business of private equity actually works. for a look at the facts, we're joined now by fox business network's stu varney who's anchor of fbn's very think and company. let's separate the fact from the fiction. most people don't even know what private equity firms do, but they essentially swoop in with big, big dollars and invest in companies and see if they can make money, correct? >> that's what they do. it's private money which goes into a company which may be tr