deborah feyerick on the scene for us. thank you.weet from con edison, the power company in new york city. con edison says restored over 65,000 customers on the lower east side and east village areas of manhattan. that's the official con edison account retweeted by the new york city mayor's office as well. about almost 250,000 customers were without power in the lower part of manhattan. this is a good start. 65,000 customers lower east side, east village areas of lower manhattan are now getting power at least according to this con edison tweet. we're about to hear from a cnn crew that accompanied a search and rescue team to a section of the new jersey coast that until now has been inaccessible. [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus presents the cold truth. i have a cold... i took dayquil, but i still have a runny nose. [ male announcer ] truth is, dayquil doesn't work on runny noses. what? [ male announcer ] it doesn't have an antihistamine. really? [ male announcer ] really. alka-seltzer plus cold and cough fights your worst cold sym

i'm zoraida sambolin. >> and i'm deborah feyerick in for john berman.tes past the hour. >>> well, five weeks until we hit the fiscal cliff and one by one top republicans are stepping up to say they're ready to break their no-tax pledge and to get a spending plan passed. something that's not sitting too well with the man they made that pledge to, conservative lobbyist grover norquist. listen to norquist getting personal and lashing out at republicans on cnn's "piers morgan tonight." >> the pledge is not for life. but everybody who signed the pledge, including peter king, who tried to weasel out of it, shame on him, as the new york sun said today, i hope his wife understands that commitments last a little longer than two years or something. but you don't tell the bank, oh the mortgage, wasn't that a long time ago? if you make a commitment, you keep it. >> cnn political director mark preston joins us live from washington. boy, mark, i just have so many questions. we were saying it's five weeks until we hit the fiscal cliff, or as i like to call it, the new

i'm deborah feyerick in for brooke baldwin. and we begin with the escalating crisis in the middle east as violence rages between israel and militants in gaza. more casualties, more deaths, fatalities doubling over the last day. gaza's rocket strikes which hit israel's two largest cities, jerusalem and tel aviv, have brought a swift and powerful response. israel is focused on taking out hamas' iranian supplied rockets which can travel up to 45 miles, the farthest ever. hamas has been firing rockets for years as a way to end israel's blockade of supplies into gaza. terms of a potential cease-fire are being brokered by egypt, turkey and qatari officials. israeli defense forces targeted a media building in gaza, aiming at four senior hamas operatives they believed were inside. and two people died. it is not clear if they were the ones designated as the hamas targets. hamas, which grew out of the muslim brotherhood, seized in our gaza in 2007. since then, the group has become increasingly militarized. the death toll stands at 100 in

i'm deborah feyerick in for carol costello. thanks for joining me. we begin in washington where those hopes for compromise may be on the back burner as democrats and republicans dig in and ramp up the rhetoric on the fiscal cliff. house speaker john boehner and senate majority leader harry reid trading jabs before the cameras on capitol hill. >> going over the fiscal cliff is serious business. and i'm here seriously trying to resolve it. and i would hope the white house would get serious as well. >> speaker boehner made very clear at his press conference that he thinks the ball is in your court and the president's court. he says democrats have got to get series about spending cuts. where is the disconnect? >> i don't understand his brain so you should ask him. okay? >> reid making those comments to our own kate bolduan. i'm joined by dan lothian. dan, we're learning more about the white house plan to deal with the fiscal cliff. break it down for us. >> reporter: right. this is the plan that secretary -- treasury secretary timot

cnn's deborah feyerick is working that part of the story for us this evening.hear right now. what is the latest? >> no, absolutely not. in all the hard-hit areas, this is the time of night that everybody begins to dread. the temperatures are dropping. that means it's simply getting colder and the natural light that they're able to use to kind of get around and navigate, well, that's disappearing. so, those who are in their apartments who are effectively sort of stuck there because they can't go anywhere or they don't have anywhere else to go, right now they're hunkering down for the evening. here's what we found. in a scene that repeated itself in the hardest hit areas. grocery stores like western beef in lower manhattan had to throw out massive quantities of spoiling food. >> you have beef and pork. >> everything had to be thrown away. >> all the chickpen. you don't want to take a chance. >> they say they had to throw out upwards of 20,000 pounds of milk, meat, fish and other perishables like ice cream. we see a lot of empty shelves here. >> company wise we bl

deborah feyerick is live for us in staten island.eb, good morning. >> reporter: good morning, brooke. you know, if you can't go to thanksgiving, the idea is to bring thanksgiving to the people. about 800, 900 volunteers will be gathering here over the course of the morning. they're from the liquid church out of new jersey. and the goal of all these volunteers who are giving up their morning is to basically go into about them different communities here in staten island and basically just help people, feed them, and also dig them out. we are joined by pastor tim lucas, who's the founder of the church. you have put this all together. you're basically creating block parties throughout staten island and giving them a little bit of taste of thanksgiving where they don't have to worry about anything. >> a little slice of heaven on thanksgiving morning. that's the whole idea, deb. and i've got to say, the staten island churches, new open, oasis, salem church, they've been here since day one, but we are blessed to lock arms with them and muck

>> reporter: deborah feyerick, new york. >>> the borough of queens was hit hard when superstorm sandystorm swiftly followed. but some good samaritans are pitching in to help. take a look. >> we need generators. if anybody can help us and donate generators, it would be so sweet of y'all. >> we need power in our houses. it's a shame what happened here. we need power. >> we all have a bunch of friends that live out here. a lot of people who are running this operation actually live out here and run these businesses. and a lot of us are really close to those people. so during the storm i was trying to call them, after the storm trying to call them. i finally got in touch wednesday and they said it was really bad, a lot worse than we all thought. so i packed up my car full of supplies and drove out thinking i would just come for a day. just trying to get food and water out to people. nobody knew what was going on. then i decided to come back the next day and the next day and it just started growing. now we have a little operation that we're running, what we're kind of calling the commissary

today deborah feyerick went to lipa headquarters and tried to talk to mike hervey, the man who is resigning here's what deb found. >> reporter: people on long island are tired of the cold, the dark and the run-around from the power company out here known as lipa. is it fair to say that lipa wasn't giving anybody answers because they themselves didn't have the answers? >> quite possibly. >> reporter: kate murray is the supervisor of the town of hempstead on long island, new york. she says the long island power authority, lipa, has changed their story virtually every day. even refusing to set up an emergency hotline. is it fair to say lipa almost went into hiding in terms of dealing with its customers? >> well, yes, that's -- i think that's a fair and accurate portrayal, sadly enough. >> reporter: we tried to get answer from lipa's chief operating officer, michael hervey, the man currently in charge. so this says the office is temporarily closed, all employees usually assigned are assisting with storm restoration efforts. the business card i left did get a response. so the security guard call

deborah feyerick joins me from staten island which took a huge hit from the storm. you have been in some of the most devastated parts of new york state today. how is it ever going to help victims especially as thousands are homeless and temperatures are really plummeting and you have this other storm on the way. >> reporter: that is really the big question. because we were driving all along part of staten island. we can tell you that home after home, it's completely ruined. they are being gutted now. that's the only thing residents can do. imagine losing the entire first floor of all your possessions, all your belongings, not just the couches, not just the rugs and clothing and shoes but also the floorboards and the walls. people are gutting it because for three days they had water that was really over my head in their homes and there is so much -- mold will be such a problem that all they can do is gut it. volunteers are coming to help people basically clear out their homes. i want to tell you something. sanitation trucks, garbage trucks from new york city actually

deborah feyerick, thank you so much. >>> turning now overseas.exchange for ending the civil war. the head of the international red cross today said it is unable to cope with the deteriorating humanitarian situation there. at least 64 people died today alone and the numbers continue, continue to rise. >>> and with president obama now set for another four years, a top israeli official put to rest any talk of differences between the u.s. and israel over iran. deputy foreign minister danny ialon spoke with cnn's chris . e >> we trust the leadership of the united states and the leadership of president obama. >> if i'm not mistaken, a ringing endorsement of the obama administration towards iran? >> yes, absolutely. the view from, rets let's say kansas city or tel aviv about the threats from iran is different. by the nature of the proximity, but, at the end of the day, we will continue and hope together. yes, there were differences about some timelines and about what is exactly the goal, whether to prevent iran acquiring nuclear capabilities or actually

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deborah feyerick on staten island.ou. >>> meanwhile, last-minute travel changes on the campaign trail. will it work? our "strategy session" is next. up. a short word that's a tall order. up your game. up the ante. and if you stumble, you get back up. up isn't easy, and we ought to know. we're in the business of up. everyday delta flies a quarter of million people while investing billions improving everything from booking to baggage claim. we're raising the bar on flying and tomorrow we will up it yet again. >>> let's get right to our "strategy session." joining us are two cnn political contributors. the democratic strategist, hilary rosen, and ari fleischer. travel for the two candidates, the president of the united states going to wisconsin, to ohio. you see he'll wrap it up in iowa before he spends the night in his home state of chicago, illinois. romney started florida, virginia, ohio. he's wrapping it up in new hampshire. but tomorrow, they announced he's going to pennsylvania and ohio again on election day. do the

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i'm deborah feyerick in for brooke baldwin. and we are beginning with breaking news. officials are not calling it a truce, but they're not calling it a cease-fire either. it appears that israel and hamas are on the verge of agreeing to a time-out. standing down on attacks that have bloodied the region for the last six days. the latest technology toll, 118 people, 114 of them palestinian have been killed as rockets and missiles crisscrossed the skies over hamas-controlled gaza. amidst the shelling, the sound everyone wanted to hear, egypt's president mohamed morsi suggesting progress in attempts at brokering a cease-fire. and backing hamas, released a statement saying, the travesty of the israel aggression on gaza will end in a few hours. we're going to get to the details of all of this and the apparent pause in fighting in just a moment. but first, we want to look at the united states role and all the various players that are involved in this. and in about an hour, secretary of state hillary clinton is to meet with israel prime minister benjamin netanyahu. tomorrow, s

deborah feyerick here, covering the recovery from sandy. >> it's very, very slow recovery. that it got 90% of the power restored yesterday to homes able to receive power. those in the flood zone are going to be out for a very, very long time. this is a state-run company that's plagued by $7 billion in debt. the debt has delayed krushlg updates from infrastructure to incorporating new technology to improved response time. basic maintenance like trimming tree branches away from wires and preplacing old utility poles. people on long island and queens desperate for information, instead feel they got the run around. people on long island are tired of the cold, the dark, and the runaround from the power company out here, known as lipa. is it fair to say that lipa wasn't giving anybody answers because they themselves didn't have the answers? >> quite possibly. >> reporter: kate murray is the supervisor of the town of hempstead on long island, new york. she said the long island power authority has changed their story virtually every day. even refusing to set up an emergency hotline

here is deborah feyerick. >> you want to hear what i have to say? >> anger, frustration, and despair, and people demand to know why their neighborhood remains dark more than 12 days after superstorm sandy hit this boardwalk community. >> i can't get light on, i can't get power, heat, garbage pickup, nothing? >> workers from long island power authority known as lipa are visible but still can't seem to get the electricity back in the homes in the flood zone. new york's governor has threatened to pull the company's operating license. >> we paid them and gave them a franchise because they represented themselves as experts at doing this. and they failed. and they should be held accountable for their failure. >> i don't know -- >> at the mt. caramel baptist church next to a housing complex, volunteers worked hard to serve hot meals and keep up morale. the trains are still not running this far out. one woman told us it feels like martial law here with people bolted inside their homes after dark. >> no power, no light. you can barely see in front of you. it