nbc's kerry sanders has that story. >> reporter: in tiny dearborn, missouri, where just about everyone knows everyone, the question is was it one of their own that bought the winning powerball ticket at the local trex mart? >> it's exciting. very exciting. we never, ever thought that we would sell the winning ticket and here it is, we did. >> reporter: folks in this farming community just off interstate 70 are now trying to figure out if the winning numbers were chosen with meaning. dearborn is but 35 miles north of kansas city, home of the royals baseball team. those winning lottery numbers, they match royals hall-of-famers, brett, gubiza, jackson, leonard, quisenberry, the powerball was wilson. the one outlier, bo jackson. while not a baseball hall-of-famer, he was the first athlete to be named an all-star in two major american sports, baseball and football. number 23, gubiza, now a major league announcer, has heard the theory all day. >> i hope it's because they really liked us six the most in kansas city history. >> and while it's an odd coincidence, the baseball team's spring trai

nbc's kerry sanders has our report from miami. >> reporter: as if the lines were not long ough, it took florida four days to count the more than 8 million votes. it was a squeaker. if only the ballots cast here had mattered. >> we are an american family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people. >> reporter: president obama had already won re-election without this state's prized 29 electoral votes. >> president obama didn't need to carry the state but the fact that two political armies of democrats and republicans fully mobilized and have a difference of only 74,000 votes tells you how competitive our politics will be for years to come. republicans will have to raise their game though in a state that once was theirs. >> reporter: while florida didn't delay the nation like it did in 2000 with its hanging chads, the state again had problems. one big complaint, florida governor rick scott would not extend early voting from eight days to the usual 14. the governor here, popular with the tea party, told reporters, what i'm trying to do is improve the way government works.

nbc's kerry sanders has that story. >> reporter: in tiny dearborn, missouri, where just about everyone knows everyone, the question is was it one of their own who bought a winning powerball ticket? >> it's exciting, very exciting. we never, ever thought that we would sell the winning ticket, and here it is. we did. >> reporter: folks in this farming community just off interstate 70 are now trying to figure out if the winning numbers were chosen with meaning. dearborn is but 35 miles north of kansas city, home of the royals baseball team. those winning lottery numbers? they match royals' hall of famers, brett, gubiza, jackson, leonard, quizenbury. the one outlier, bo jackson. while not a hall of famer, he was the first athlete to be named all-star in two american sports, baseball and football. number 23, gubicza, now a major league announcer, has heard the theory all day. >> i hope it's because they liked 6 the most in kansas city history. >> reporter: while it's an odd coincidence spring training is in arizona where the other winning lottery ticket was sold at this chevron station in f

>> kerry sanders in miami, thank you.ow to the painfully slow recovery in the northeast for families left struggling after the superstorm. tonight tensions are boiling over as hundreds of thousands remain without power, in the dark and the cold nearly two weeks after the storm came ashore. meantime some families got a chance to return home for the first time today. their first look at what was left. nbc's michelle franzen is in toms river, new jersey, tonight with more. michelle, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, lester. this is still the scene for many people. damaged homes like the one behind me. but power is still out in this section. you can hear the hum of generators from block the block. residents here in this section of toms river are considered lucky. they can stay overnight, repair by day. for thousands of others living along the shore and also in sandy's path, the return to home is not yet an option. in seaside heights, new jersey, long lines and a flood of emotions for people brought in by bus to grab wh

here is nbc's kerry sanders with a look at what is wrong with florida when it comes to voting. >> yes, florida has been here before. in 2000 we had the hanging chads. in 2004, problem with the then new and improved touch screen system. and this year, the supposedly simple paper ballot. but each page had to be fed into a scanner and as it turns out, with multiple pages, the equipment couldn't keep up. >> waited in line for a very long time. >> even the president noted problems. >> by the way, we have to fix that. >> from south florida to the state capital, florida voters say they are embarrassed. >> they don't call it flori-duh for nothing. >> it can't be this hard. >> it makes you think that your vote doesn't count because here we already have a president, we're already moving on. >> the problem brought one county supervisor of elections to tears. >> i will do whatever it takes to ensure that this does not happen again in lee county. >> and for late-night comics, it's material. >> some people had to wait five or six hours to vote there. what goes on in florida? and four years to fix t

let's go straight to nbc news correspondent kerry sanders from miami. the election is finally put to rest. >> folks in florida have been wondering what is going on. the numbers show that the state did tilt to obama. he got 50% of the vote. romney took 49.1% of the vote. clearly, florida remains a battleground state. the question is, why did this take so long? part of the fact is that early voting was cut back by the republican governor rick scott. if you take a look at the newspaper here, this is the tampa bay times headlines. it says, no apology from scott. he went on to say, what i'm trying to do is improve the way government works. i believe in efficiency. i believe every vote has to count. i want to have a good process that people feel good about. well, the people are not feeling good because in many cases they felt that the governor made the decision to push back the number of days from 14 to 8, meaning that there were fewer days for early voting, meaning that people couldn't get to the polls ahead of the official election day and so it backed them

kerry sanders, thank you. dearborn, missouri on the interstate, thank you, kerry. >>> and up next here, a big discovery from a place far, far away. [ laughter ] [ girl ] wow, you guys have it easy. i wish i had u-verse when i was your age. in my day, we didn't have these fancy wireless receivers. blah blah blah. if i had a sleepover, i couldn't just move the tv into the playroom. no. we had to watch movies in the den because that's where the tv outlet was. and if dad was snoring on the couch, we muscled through it. is she for real? your generation has it made. [ male announcer ] the wireless receiver only from at&t u-verse. get a free wireless receiver with a qualifying u-verse plan. rethink possible. counterproducti >>> back with the news from mars, and it is a bit of a disappointment. as we told you last night, one guy at the jet propulsion laboratory where they had that big announcement, had all of our hopes up. sounded like something big. but they say today, so far they found no signs of life, any organic m

kerry sanders, thank you, sir.u get back to work. >>> time for the news nation gut check. our first read team notes our current congress is about to make mystery but for the wrong reason. they are about to become the least productive in more than 60 years. this congress has only passed 196 new bills into law. many of them were simply ceremonial pieces of legislation like naming courthouses. in order to avoid the title of least productive congress, the house and the senate would need to pass another 138 bills before the session ends next month. something that doesn't seem very likely. right? this news comes as only 18% of americans approve of the way congress is doing its job. a record low 10% approval rating was reported just this august. what does your gut tell you? do you believe the new congress will be more productive? you can go to facebook.com/newsnation. cast your vote there. >>> that's going to do it for this edition of news nation. i'm thomas roberts. thanks for joining me. the cycle comes your way next. t

nbc's kerry sanders is there live with more on this. what have you been able to dig up about these people, the winners? >> reporter: oh, you know what? it's really exciting. i'm right now in the north platte high school gymnasium. and usually what they're celebrating here is the girls district champion basketball team because they've won so many champions. but today the real celebration is going to be for cindy and mark hill. those are the two here who won that lucky incredible amount of money in the lottery here. you can see the area here has been set up for the powerball presentation. they're going to come out and talk to us. we know that mark is 52. his wife is 51. we also know that when they present them, it likely will be cindy and mark, not mark and cindy. that's because cindy's the one who bought the ticket. she spent $10 on a quick pick and actually when she got the numbers, she went back and didn't even look that night when they pulled the numbers. and it was the next day, she was dropping off her 6-year-old adopted child who s

>> i think this is in a sense, the new normal. >> we're going to get to kerry sanders above breezy point: let me take you outside and look down here. and what we're looking at here is sort of a combination of that incredible storm surge that came in and rearranged the geography here. such a wall of water built up by this tremendous arrival of sandy. but at the same time, an additional complication here. some of the communities that were preparing for the storm along the coast actually cut electricity off. but here they left the electricity on. and it's still uncertain what caused this fire. but as you see right in there, about 80 homes that were caught on fire because the fire ignited one and then it began to spread. and of course in the middle of the storm, there was no way to fight that fire. some people decided to ride this storm out in their homes and then had to deal with the fire and were able to evacuate. one of the things that's interested today versus yesterday is that we see some more standing water that has made its way into this community. so while the waters are receding, we

john yang, i'll take it, and we want to head now to florida and nbc's kerry sanders in orlando along e all-important i-4 corridor, an area expected to determine who wins the state. kerry, good morning to you. >> reporter: good morning, savannah. polls open here at 7:00 a.m. don't forget there are two time zones in florida. supervisors of election in the state say anyone in line at 7:00 p.m. and who has not yet voted will still be allowed to cast their vote. so far because of early voting there's been a tremendous turnout already in the state, 4.5 million people have voted in the state. here's the breakdown. 1.9 million registered democrats. 1.7 million registered republicans, but remember, of course, that doesn't mean they necessarily voted the party ticket. one issue that resonates, especially in south florida is the question of israel. jewish voters traditionally are registered as democrats, but rabbis have been asking questions it their congregations about the president's commitment to israel. florida has the second largest jewish population outside of new york. there are 12 millio

kerry sanders, good morning. >> reporter: this case has had a strange twist.ials say the fbi agent first contacted about these harassing e-mails sent a picture of themselves without a shirt on to the woman complaining about the e-mails, that was jill kelley and now the kelley's charity sunday the microscope. jill kelley, the woman whose complaint inadvertently led the fbi to david petraeus' extramarital affair is not talking but not hiding. the appearance of jill kelley and her twin sister natalie in a food network tv show nearly a decade ago is an example, say friends, of an effort to put themselves in the spotlight. >> olive oil, peppers and artichokes, normal staple food at some. >> reporter: some even call them the kardashians of tampa bay. >> taste that. >> what does it need? >> fix it. >> reporter: jill and her husband, an oncologist, were very close to petraeus. the general even posed in a family photo album with their children. the investigation has now revealed e-mails from jill kelley to another general, john allen, e-mails her brother says were neit

her story now from nbc's kerry sanders. >> at this time, would you guys please bring up the letters that of letters to the military serving in afghanistan. >> and thanks to schools like you guys, we can do this amazing thing to support our soldiers and our military. >> reporter: it all began a year ago when savannah's best friend told savannah her dad was being deployed to afghanistan. >> and it was kind of like, whoa, what? because i didn't think for an entire year, i can't imagine my parents going away for that long. that would just crush me. ♪ how do you make it through the day ♪ >> so savannah wrote a song for her best friend. >> we sat and thought about it and i said, well, we need to do more than this. is there anything we can do? and we came up with savannah's soldiers. >> reporter: she started a letter writing campaign for soldiers being deployed with wilson's dad. >> i thought, oh, how are we going to send 700 letters to afghanistan? she would get kids over and they would start writing letters and sit around the table and it would be 30, 40 letters they would come up with, in a

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kerry sanders decided to find out. >> reporter: in rural tennessee, where holding on to old time values is treasure, larry singleton's treasure is finding value in a piece of the old times. >> this is one i just picked up here recently. i don't think i've ever seen one. it was for roy acuff's own flour. >> reporter: larry is unlike most collectors. not because his living room looks like a museum. >> it's a 1930s coca-cola sign. >> reporter: rather because he gets paid to collect american memorabilia. >> i believe i really do have the best job in the world. >> reporter: larry inherited this job from his parents, who were hired by a man with a dream. 43 years ago, dan evans wanted to turn a gas station into a general store. it would be called cracker barrel. >> got the hamburger platter right here. >> reporter: today, with 620 stores in 42 states, this restaurant chain from tennessee fills each location with pieces of americana. >> i'm sure i'm not alone. most people probably think that stuff is a replica. it's real? >> yeah, it's all authentic. since the beginning, cracker barrel started

kerry sanders is at ft. laweder ft.hollywood airport. >> reporter: if that's your life strategy, sometimes it pays off. trust me, i know. but this year that's not the case. the travel deals are gone. paul cross is heading home for thanksgiving. the turkey meal with family is costing him close to $400 in airfare. his flight from miami to chicago and back is a deal when you consider that same ticket if bought online today would cost him $8 60. >> after i come home this thanksgiving i'll start looking for next thanksgiving. >> reporter: airlines have sold 51% more christmas season tickets than they had this time a year ago which means the old supply and demand rule applies, fewer seats, higher prices. experts say if you want a deal you may have to settle on an you go ly date flight, a ticket on thanksgiving or christmas day. >> you'll usually save money but you might anger your relatives. >> when is the worst time to travel? usually the wednesday before thanksgiving and the sunday afterwards. >> reporter: and it's not just

. >>> let us start this morning with nbc's kerry sanders, high above one of the traffic jams here in the outxoifrts new york. kerry, good morning. >> reporter: good morning. every direction you look is a traffic jam because if you're coming in through a tim like this here, coming into the lincoln tunnel or taking a bridge, you're going through a checkpoint and you can see the officers there. they are looking in to make sure that there are upwards of three people or more in a car. and if they respect, they are turning them around. and that is, in part, backing it up. the idea was to have three people in a car to reduce the amount of cars in manhattan. as you can see it has also had an impact of just miles upon miles of traffic. and complicating this is folks are running low on gas. and because there were so many areas with electricity still out, gas stations have incredibly long lines. some lines are more than a mile long, people waiting an hour. earlier this morning, folks got rather frustrated, they waited very patiently and then the gas station ran out of gas and that was one of the

kerry sanders joins us live from a polling location in orlando. what's the word on the ground there? >> reporter: the word on the ground is it's very busy, as you know, for that 9 million, about 4.5 million voted early voting, that's absent tees or going to the polls early. look at the pictures here there. these are lines in and around orange county in orlando, florida. when you look at the line, you may say, what's taking so long? in addition to the presidential election, there are 11 constitutional amendment and questions on the ballot, and it's slow going because you may or may not know, sometimes people when they write to write constitutional amendments put it in extremely confusing language and double negatives and it's hard to understand. one of the amendments is 640 words. the ballot -- if you take a ballot in dade county and printed out a sample ballot, it's 12 pages long. so you can imagine even though people are arriving and maye made up their minds on the presidential race, there are other issues and other minor problems with when their

nbc's kerry sanders live on his way to the winning store in missouri.how excited are people in missouri to know that it's been at least pinpointed to their state and that city of dearborn? >> everybody wants to know is it their neighbor. dearborn, missouri. never heard of it, but now you have. and for the next few hours, maybe the next few days, that will be the most famous place in this state as we a wait to find out who that winner or the winners are. now, this is what the tickets look like here in the state. yesterday, nationwide, they were selling 130,000 of these power ball tickets an hour. 160 million sold just yesterday. this is mine. worth nothing as you now know. but that winner is somewhere out there with this incredible sum of money. the largest ever in this type of lottery. and it will be split two ways. but you're probably wondering, because you didn't win and you kind of want to know, who gets a cut of what. the government's actually reach out and take a portion of this and so the winners wiped out really with about 25% at the end of the d

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kerry sanders in new jersey. tom costello on the ground alt truck stop. >> reporter: the vince lombardi truck stop. we have quite a bit of cars backed up. that's not the real story though. here is the real story. the police are having to watch this closely and managing traffic here because this line goes all the way up and around the service center, up onto the freeway. i had to walk in a mile and a half this morning because there simply is no way to drive in, and i can tell you if you're trying to get into new york city, the order stands, you have to have at least three people in the car. in a region where people are already tired, hungry and fed up, no electricity, no subways, no water, this has got them fuming. commuters standing in line for hours to catch a bus. on the roads, mass gridlock, and no gas. >> i hope i don't have to push to the gas station. >> reporter: as many as 80% of the gas stations have no gas or power to pump gas. those with power are running out fast. the lines stretching for miles. >> her

for more on the gridlock in the street and anger over shortages of gas line we turn to nbc's kerry sanders high below bloomfield, new jersey, where drivers are lined up waiting for a chance to fill up. kerry, good morning to you. >> reporter: and it is a very long wait. good morning, matt. let me take you outside here. we're right off the garden state parkway, and can you see the folks who are line here at this gas station, but look how long that line snakes back. now, there are reports of some people in lines for three, four hours. there's one station where people started lining up at 5:00 p.m. yesterday and are still in line, but look at this. this line goes all the way down the garden state parkway. people waiting to get in to get gas line, so it is one heck of a long line. there has been frustration at some of the gas stations, as you can see. at this station they have police officers that are here to keep order. it is a very slow go, and many of the gas stations when people pull up are not allowing them to completely top off. they are restricting the amount of fuel that they can put o

thank you so much, kerry sanders as always good to see you. >>> well, let's go from florida now to california about to take a bigger hit in their paychecks. and the majority of them seem to be happy about it. on tuesday, california voters passed proposition 30. that is the sales and income tax initiative championed by governor jerry brown. the measure raises income taxes for those making over 250,000 per year, and it raises the state sales tax a quarter of a%. joining me now is former california governor gray davis. nice to see you again. >> good to see you, alex. >> let's talk about proposition 30. is this the key to solving california's budget crisis? >> this will go a long ways to help. governor brown and the legislature cut $11 billion out of the budget last year. but i think the public decided that the path to prosperity is not through cuts alone. and they were convinced that there is a direct relationship between education and good jobs and a direct relationship between higher education and keeping innovative companies like apple, google, twitter, facebook, intel, qualcomm, i could go o

nbc kerry sanders in dearborn, missouri. we will learn the identity of the state's multimillionaire in a number of hours. good morning. >> reporter: good morning, savannah. actually, the officials have now told me the name, it is out there, 51-year-old cindy hill and her 52-year-old husband, mark. her name precedes his because she is the one that bought the ticket, but there's no question they're going to share the money, say they're going to share it with their three adult children, with their nieces and nephews, and going to share it with their six-year-old adopted daughter a china. she already has one request. she would like a pony. the winning numbers were on a $10 ticket. dearborn is the small town where everyone knows everyone. and where this woman who asked we not use her last name told us her daughter-in-law bought five tickets for ten dollars, waited until late thursday morning to check the numbers. >> she goes out to the car. says i guess we'll check it. she was looking at it. and she says is that a five or a six?

nbc's kerry sanders is out in washington, missouri, with that story. morning, matt. this is an amazing story of unexpected crossed paths. two strangers, really, boys at the swimming pool doing what boys sometimes do, horseplaying around when one of their friends said you two are fighting like brothers. that's when isaac and dakota wondered, might it be true? >> reporter: at first glance, who would guess these siblings had not grown up together? they like the same sports, love the same video games, even dress alike. but until recently, the brothers wither strangers. >> my name is isaac and i'm 12. >> i'm dakota and i'm 13. >> and my brother is dakota. >> my brother is isaac. >> that isaac from rural washington, missouri, and dakota from augusta, only 12 miles away met is one of those chance events in life that makes you wonder if fate really exists. for ten years, isaac who didn't know he was adopted and dakota who was being raised by his grandmother lived oh so close, but never crossed paths. one day at the community swimming pool, they started splashi