sharyn alfonsi finds love of lipstick could revive the economy. and we read some of your ideas about creating jobs in america. >>> good evening. it's only october 1st and already a big stretch of the country is wading through a month's worth of rain. torrents up and down the east coast. more than a foot in some places. 150 rescues in north carolina alone. and at least six deaths blamed on the massive storm. travel on the ground and in the air has been a complete nightmare for millions, and david muir is here on the wild washout. >> reporter: so much of the east coast today under water and under siege from what was tropical storm nicole, from north carolina up through pennsylvania, all the way up to new england. the rescues today, far too many to count. this school bus on long island, new york, the children carefully taken off. >> probably about 20 calls for people stuck in water up to their windows. >> reporter: in north carolina, senior citizens picked up from their homes, carried to dry land this woman, and her cane, lifted out of the raft. and

here's sharyn alfonsi. >> reporter: this was the scene near austin, texas. daughter gracie to the 50 yard line, where she was crowned homecoming queen. >> the woman said she had won in a landslide. to me, i was -- i was on the field with her and i said, i kept whispering, i said, gracie, you know i'm so proud of you. >> reporter: she was just 2 when she was diagnosed with leukemia. during chemotherapy, she suffered brain damage, and today, cannot speak. but homecoming night, she didn't need to. >> as soon as everybody starts clapping, she gets it. she's like, "yes!" she understands it, right? >> reporter: and it's that smile that won over her classmates. the smile her mother says she thanks god for every day. >> her smile is a gift because she was not supposed to live. >> reporter: but gracie needed a king. enter jared. born with down syndrome, he was crowned king that same night. >> they called him name. he jumped up, waved, just took off running. >> reporter: across the country, similar endings have played out this fall. in new mexico, illinois, kansas. sp

but michelle obama prefers a different title, and sharyn alfonsi spent the day on the campaign trailith the first lady. >> reporter: in milwaukee today, no mud slinging. instead, a focus on her role as the self-described mom in chief. >> my children are at the center of my world. >> reporter: the first lady counseling patience to voters who wanted change. >> many of us came into this expecting to see all the change we talked about happen all at once. right away. but the truth is, it is going to take a longer time to dig ourselves out of this hole than any of us would like. >> reporter: the white house is now dispatching michelle obama to help candidates in eight key states over the next three weeks. >> i've heard people say, the one i want to meet is michelle obama. >> reporter: today, she was in wisconsin with senator russ feingold. do you think she's a greater asset than the president? >> no, the president is number one. but she's a close second. >> reporter: but the numbers tell a different story. the first lady's favorability rating -- 68%. and in a more recent poll, her husband'

sharyn alfonsi, abc news, new york. >> and again, dr. lesser was 4. tomorrow and a good night tonight. good night. hey ove, i'm gonna need a bank. any ideas? capital one bank. they're everywhere. yeah, you're right! ♪ [ male announcer ] capital one banks are everywhere. [ clang! ] with hundreds of branches and atms, they're hard to miss. hey, there's one right up the street. [ male announcer ] capital one bank. the most branches and atms in the dc area. what's in your wallet? ove, go long! because life takes wendy places. and life takes her family places. hi, mom. [ female announcer ] so knowing she can find in network doctors and pharmacies whenever or wherever she needs them directly from her mobile phone is important to wendy. ♪ where to next, wendy? ♪ know more. get better. get a smarter health plan, aetna.com. four years ago, bob ehrlich got fired as governor of maryland.

sharyn alfonsi, abc news, new york. >> and, again, thanks to all of you for the great ideas. coming up, our ancient ocean neighbors being counted. desperate for nighttime heartburn relief? for many, nexium helps relieve heartburn symptoms caused by acid reflux disease. and for the majority of patients with prescription coverage for nexium, it can cost $30 or less per month. headache, diarrhea, and abdominal pain are possible side effects of nexium. other serious stomach conditions may still exist. ask your doctor if nexium can help relieve your heartburn symptoms. if you can't afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. what? where? don't freak, it's gone. how? who did it? i did. with one of these. this is a mouse trap? yeah. it's a different kind of mouse trap from ortho home defense max. it's guaranteed to kill the mouse. just push down this little lever right here and it does the rest. nothing to see, nothing to touch. you just throw it away. no mess, no drama. we can do without drama. ♪ excuse me? ortho home defense max. defend what's yours. o!tho home defens

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sharyn alfonsi, abc news, new york. >>> and still ahead on "world news" tonight, what helps? a message from the caregivers, reaching out to each other from the front lines of alzheimer's. >>> and we say farewell to the man who led us through some of our happiest days. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] every day thousands of people are switching from tylenol® to advil. to learn more and get your special offer, go to takeadvil.com. take action. take advil®. go to takeadvil.com. how can you transform tonight's dinner from same old, same old into oh la la? just cook with campbell's. our soups contain surprising ingredients like a splash of sauterne wine, a drizzle of fresh cream, or a sprinkle of lower sodium sea salt. we put great ingredients in our soups, to help you put meals on the table, that put smiles on the faces of the ones you love. campbell's.® it's amazing what soup can do.™ until the combination of three good probiotics in phillips' colon health defended against the bad gas, diarrhea and constipation. ...and? it helped balance her colon. oh, now that's the best part. i love

thank you, sharyn alfonsi. good to see you tonight. >>> time is getting short on the campaign trail, as you know. just 13 days until the elections. and for the next few days, president obama is going to be pouring it on. starting in oregon tonight, he'll go 7,200 miles in four days. at the same time, as you know, the candidates have been facing off in debate after debate, and our jon karl has been traveling the country, as well. and he seems some patterns. we ask for his take on those debates tonight. jon? >> reporter: diane, there is yet another debate here tonight in philadelphia. but i can tell you, i have been listening to hours and hours of stump speeches and debates in races all across the country, and it often sounds like you're listening to one big debate. it has become the catchphrase of the campaign. "man up." >> some of you need to man up. >> reporter: uttered mostly by women associated with the tea party. >> man up, harry reid. >> reporter: the concept, if not the exact phrase, began with none other

sharyn alfonsi, abc news, new york. >> just great.e'll see you again tomorrow night from california. >>> the giants get a world series workout at at and t park. tonight's memorabilia sales, and disappointment at the ticket window. >> first lady michelle obama comes to the bay area to rally support for democrats. why she's here tonight and her husband isn't? >> pg&e meets a late deadline on the san bruno pipeline explosion z a neighborhood concern following a weekend of wet weather. >> not all web sites are created equal head. on 7 on your side, web sites can save you money. >> good evening, people are out of their minds with excitement tonight. giants start the world series here at home on wednesday. >> yeah. it's the hottest ticket in town z getting into the game will cost thousands. we've seen seats listed as much as 20,000s oodz if you can believe that. and don, it all begins in two days. >> indeed. you might want to

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here is sharyn alfonsi. >> hurry up, boys. you're going to be late for school. >> reporter: she was the original supermom barbara billingsley as june cleaver, the ever ways supportive mother of wal >> you feel all right? >> oh, sure, mom. >> reporter: june cleaver exemplified the perfect pearl wearing stay-at-home mom, a postwar cultural standard. >> dear, this coffee is cold. >> i don't know why. i just poured it 20 minutes ago when you said you'd be right down. >> reporter: and while she and the cleaver family became a generation's ideal, even billingsley had a hard time living up to it. she was married three times and spent part of her career not baking cookies but working as a single mom to two boys. >> well, how do you do? >> reporter: decades later celebrating the the show's 50th anniversary she told abc's tom bergeron why she was such a glamorous housewife. the heels were an attempt to stay taller than the growing boys and the pearls? >> i always had something around my neck because i have a hole there and it was hard i

here is sharyn alfonsi on the loss of a tv icon. >> hurry up, boys, you are going to be late for school. >> reporter: she was the original super mom, barbara billingsley, as june cleaver, the ever sweet and always supportive mother of wally and the beaver. >> will you be all right? >> sure, mom. >> reporter: june cleaver, exemplified the perfect pearl-wearing, stay-at-home mom, a post-war cultural standard. >> dear, this coffee is cold. >> i don't know why. i poured it 20 minutes ago when you said you would be right down. >> reporter: while she and the cleaver family became a generation's ideal, even billingsley had a hard time living up to it. she was married three times. and spent part of her career not baking cookies, but working as a single mom to two boys. >> well, how do you do? >> reporter: decades later celebrating the show's 50th anniversary, she told abc about why she was such a glamorous housewife. the heels, they were an attempt to stay taller than the growing boys. and the pearls? >> i always had something around my neck, because i have a hollow there. it was hard in those

sharyn alfonsi has the story. >> reporter: for a decade, juan williams has weighed in on everything ononal public radio, rape, religion, politics. and now juan williams is learning one thing he wasn't supposed to talk about. his feelings about muslims. williams who often appears on fox news was asked to comment on bill o'reilly's heated conversation on "the view." >> no! >> reporter: o'reilly angered whoopi and joy so much, they walked off the set. >> when i get on a plane, i've got to tell you, when i see people who are in muslim garb and i think they're identifying themselves first and foremost as muslims, i get worried, i get nervous. >> reporter: on wednesday williams' boss at npr called him. >> she said, what did you say? what did you mean to say? i said what i meant to say. >> reporter: williams was fired but his comments to o'reilly weren't just about his fears, they were more nuance than that. >> but there are good muslims. i think that's the point. >> reporter: npr's chief executive said williams is a news analyst and shouldn't take any controversial position. she said the fir

. >> sharyn alfonsi, abc 2 news, new york. for >>> stem cell donor program, families all cross the world are getting a second chance at life. one family knows all about them. archbishop edwin o'brien joined play son shaver to celebrate their first public umbilical cord program. he was diagnosed with malignant infan tile osteoporosis. mason is a happy, healthy, baby today. >> our doctor went through an mdp to get him matched with a cord, they came back with three perfect blood core matches and selected which one was the best match of the three. >> uh-huh. >> after they chose which cord they were gonna use we were admitted into ai endorsement upon the hospital in delaware and went through our high-does chemotherapy treatment and had this transplant. >> this program is considered a medical breakthrough since umbilical cord blood contains adult, gotten bree i don't knowic stem cells, which can be used to treat blood disorders. starting next month, women giving birth at mercy medical center will be able to donate their baby's umbil

here's sharyn alfonsi. >> reporter: americans are getting, well, wider.toilet paper, it turns out, is getting smaller. part of an ever-growing list of incredible shrinking products. look at scotts 1,000 sheets toilet paper. well, originally, it had four-and-a-half inch by four-and-a-half inch squares, the company says because of rising manufacturing costs they've been forced to this shrink it. they're about four by three and a half inches. and other toilet brand makers have already made similar cuts. >> price increase, in this economy, is the kiss of death. and, so they'd rather kind of play a shell game with consumers, a little bit of trickery, and hopefully the consumer won't notice that the product is, in fact, shrinking. >> reporter: when the price of pork went up, hormel shrunk its 16 ounce package of bacon to 12 ounces. and look at this orange juice. still in the build container, but it's not 64 ounces anymore. it's 59. five ounces less. about a cup of joyce. and look at this new dawn liquid soap package. it advertising a new ten-ounce size. well, w

here's sharyn alfonsi. >> reporter: the testimony lasted seven long hours, anita hill, an oklahoma lawging the lurid details about her time working for clarence thomas. >> he spoke about act he's seen in porn graphic films involving women having sex with animals. >> reporter: a cringe-worthy moment in american politics. >> thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess. >> reporter: that put a bright spot on sexual harassment in the workplace. thomas angry denied the allegations, said they amounted to a high tesh lynching, but two decades later his wife ginni rekindled the story with that call to anita, 7:30 on a saturday morning, leaving that message. i would love for to you consider an apology some time and some full explanation of why did you what did you with my husband. and ending the call with, have a good day. hill, now a professor in boston, wouldn't talk about the call. >> i don't have any comment right now. >> reporter: but in a 2007 interview the thomases did talk about anita hill. >> i think she owes us an apology and i look forward to receiving that phone call or tha

sharyn alfonsi in for juju. >>> good morning, george. good morning, robin. we're going to begin with breaking news. reports of a new message from osama bin laden. on a just-released audiotape, binn cr gov in o sp more on theesha their citizens. it's believed to be a reference to pakistan's much criticized flood relief effort. >>> the other breaking story this morning is also in pakistan. overnight, militants set fire to it comes one day after paki overnight, militants set fire to it comes one day after paki crossing used forces for retaliation of air strikes. >>> a stunning admission from johnson & johnson, after a secret recall of effective painkillers. testifying on capitol hill, company executives confessed they hired people to buy up bottles of potentially contaminated motrin last year, rather than issue a formal recall. lawmakers accused the drugmaker of purposely misleading consumers. >>> and in italy, the american student convicted of killing her roommate has retur this time, for a different case. she's facing schar she's faoryon.char >> reporter: sha

>> sharyn alfonsi, thanks very much. >>> it's time for weather and sam. >> hey, george. big, sloppy, messy storm in the mid-atlantic, northeast, in the next 24 hours. this gets together on the coastline area. then, moves north. washington this morning. new york city, your drive home. boston, overnight. wind and rain, probably lasts a little bit into friday. that's developing. and the deal on paula, which was once a category 2 hurricane. there will be rain from the keys to miami. just not a lot. >>> because it will be a damp and cool thursday with off and on rain showers all day today and it will be heavy as this morning into the midday hours. 55 degrees at reagan national airport. the moderate to heavy rain is yellow and red in culpeper. there is some light rain around springfield and alexandra and arlington. we will have often on trade today with about 1 inch on we will have often on trade today with about 1 inch on another big story is the heat out west. it's slightly cooler today. we'll show you how that breaks. george and robin? >> thank you, sam. >>> coming up, new

for "good morning america," sharyn alfonsi, abc news, new york. >>> and rick sanchez joins us now.this has not been the easiest week for you. but you're still smiling. >> it's tough. i screwed up, george. >> what happened on that radio show? >> i was tired. i'd been working 14-hour days for like 2 1/2 months. i was doing three shows. i was exhausted. it was right after the air. my daughter had a softball game i desperately wanted to go to. and i was a little impatient. and i said some things that i shouldn't have said. and they were wrong. not only were they wrong. they were offensive. and people were offended by it. >> what about they were anti-semitic? >> yeah. first of all, that's not what i meant. and second of all, i apologize and it was wrong for me to be so careful and so inartful. but it happened. and i can't take it back. now, i have to stand up and be responsible for it, just like i teach my kids. >> where does it come from? some people look at this and said there's been a pattern here. ed koch brought up -- put a post on "huffington post" where he brought up an exchange

sharyn alfonsi, thanks very much. >>> it's time for weather and sam. hey, sam. >> hey, good morning, george. big, sloppy, messy storm in the mid-atlantic, northeast in the next 24 hours. this gets together on the coastline area. then moves north. washington this morning. new york city, your drive home.. wind and rain little bit on into fri and the deal on paula, which was once a category 2 hurricane travels almost comple acr there will be rain from the keys to miami. just not a lot. >> another big story is the heat out west. it's slightly cooler today. and we'll show you how that breaks. george and robin? >> thank you, sam. >>> coming up, new information in the case of that missing girl in north carolina. more people coming forward with accusations of abuse. but why didn't someone help little zahra baker? >>> and more of my one-on-one interview with the secretary of state, hillary clinton, here in brussels, belgium. the personal side. she is one of the most traveled people in all the world. that and so much more after your local news and weather from h

sharyn alfonsi, abc news, new york. >> i feel hoodwinked. i'll be honest. >> really? people -- like the bag of chips is always -- the bag is that big and the chips like that. it's been like that for years. >> in addition to that one, something you and i often have, cereal. they're saying cereal is getting smaller. sometimes you do immediately notice something going from regular size to much tinier. but sometimes you don't notice. >> you don't know, really? well, we'll see. >> sometimes we don't have special effects we thought we have, also. >> it's all right. it's almost friday. let's look at the bright side. that is the news for this half hour. check us out on facebook. wnnfans. wnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwb >>> making news some tough questions for the president and sober new assessment from one democrat about the party's chances on tuesday. >>> the destructive storm that has barreled across the midwest, moves on and it's not done yet. >> a giant success in the world series. san francisco batters the rangers best pitcher. >>> good morning. and thanks for being wit

sharyn alfonsi, new york. >> a family affair for the young man.ame is jordan, the mom graduated from the high school and was runner-up her senior year for the homecoming dance. then her son got to become part of that also. >> life comes full circle. giving those kids some nice memories. good news every now and then nice to see. >> coming up a pet project for halloween. >> dancers getting worldwide attention for their appearance. all coming up next in your "morning papers."r their appearan all coming up next in your "morning papers." all coming up next in your "morning papers." if you fight to sleep in the middle of the night why go one more round ? you don't need a rematch but a rethink. with lunesta. lunesta is thought to interact with gaba receptors associated with sleep. lunesta helps you get the restful sleep you need. lunesta has some risk of dependency. when taking lunesta, don't drive or operate machinery until you feel fully awake. walking, eating, driving or engaging in other activities while asleep without remembering it the next day hav

sharyn alfonsi, milwaukee. >>> all 50 states and washington, d.c.g fraud in the mortgage market. the investigation could force mortgage companies to settle allegations that they used flawed paperwork. employees of several major lenders have admit they'd signed foreclosure documents without reading them. >>> the defense department and homeland security are teaming up to fight cyberattacks. the plan aims to streamline response to attacks on government and private networks such as a hacking breach of google servers back in december. however, some privacy experts are concerned because the defense department's spy division, national security agency, will have a lead role. >>> new figures show the crime rate in the country at a record low. the government says violent crime and property crime dropped last year to their lowest levels since 1973. that's when the nation began recordkeeping. and look at the last decade. violent crime is down, 39%. property crime, down 29%. experts attribute smarter policing in high crime areas and targeting of repeat offenders