British Papers Blast Mitt Romney; Games On!
ZORAIDA SAMBOLIN, CNN ANCHOR: How many hours away are we? The final countdown. We are just hours away from the opening ceremonies for the London Olympic Games.</s>MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The attacks that come by people that are trying to knock down my business career or my Olympic experience, or our success, those attacks are not going to be successful.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Mitt Romney talking to our Piers Morgan and trying to hang tough amid a rocky trip overseas.</s>SAMBOLIN: Dangerous at any speed. Take a look -- a driver caught on camera getting trigger happy with a tailgater. It's actually very scary video. We're going to share that with you. In the meantime, good morning to you on this Friday morning. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Zoraida Sambolin.</s>BERMAN: And I'm John Berman. Happy Friday. It is 5:00 a.m. in the East. Also, this morning, you know, we had some crazy weather here in New York overnight. Maybe some tornadoes upstate. We're going to have the latest on that from our own Rob Marciano in just a few minutes.</s>SAMBOLIN: Plus, the doctor convicted in the Michael Jackson's dad, Dr. Conrad Murray, is reaching out to the late King of Pop's mother now. You're going to find out why, coming up.</s>BERMAN: But first, we're going to talk about politics and Mitt Romney's rocky start in London. You know, this was a trip intended to charm the Brits, to show off Romney's statesmanship and raise some cash along the way. But he is facing some tough headlines across the pond. You know, one in "The Sun" this morning said, "Mitt the Twit." In his two days in London so far, Romney's been forced to explain a rogue comment by someone claiming to be an adviser, that he questioned security and British enthusiasm for the 2012 Summer Games which officially begin in a few hours. Romney and also first lady Michelle Obama will both be on hand when the Olympic torch is lit tonight. The first lady is leading the presidential delegation to the Games. Our Jim Acosta -- CNN's Jim Acosta is live in London right now. Jim, you got through the traffic. It's great to see you.</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I did, yes. The traffic is brutal here, John and Zoraida. You know, I don't if our folks at home know this, but London has done something kind of interesting and move the traffic along for the Olympic athletes and for the media. They basically shut down some of the lanes for everybody else. So if you're in a taxi, you're with everybody else. So, it's not easy to make the live shot when that happens. But happy to make it. Yes, Mitt Romney is waking up to pretty brutal headlines this morning. You were just talking about that, John and Zoraida moments ago. John, I know you're a big Beatles fan, or at least I think you are. The latest headline right here, nowhere man Romney loses his way with gaffe about the games. That's one of the headlines here. That's in "The Times." This other one, I hope we can say this it on American television, "Who invited party pooper Romney?" That is the headline in the "Daily Mail." So it just goes on and on like that. So a tough 24 hours for the GOP contender. You know, all of this started when he gave the interview to NBC when he said we don't know how the games will it turn out, some of the problems have been disconcerting. David Cameron, the primary minister here, took issue with those comments, said some brutal things of his own in response to those comments, and then Romney came out of his meeting with Cameron praising the preparations for the Olympic Games. So whatever the British word is for woodshed is, that might have been where Romney was taken yesterday during his meeting with David Cameron. But an interview with Piers Morgan, he also talked about how he thinks the games will be a success here. Here's what he had to say.</s>PIERS MORGAN, CNN HOST: You've been slightly criticized for knocking the British enthusiasm. As if you haven't picked up much enthusiasm. You feeling it now?</s>ROMNEY: Well, I'm delighted to see the kind of support that has been around the torch for instance. I watched last night on BBC an entire program about the torch being run across Great Britain. And the kind of crowds -- I guess millions of people that turned out to see the torch. That's what you hope to see.</s>ACOSTA: And the word on the street here in London was not pretty. Boris Johnson, who is the mayor of London, was appearing at a rally yesterday of 60,000 Londoners and Britons here to celebrate the opening of the Olympic Games, which will start tonight, the opening ceremonies are tonight. And here's what he had to say about what Romney had to say about the Olympics in London.</s>BORIS JOHNSON, LONDON MAYOR: I hear there's a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we're ready. He wants to know whether we're ready. Are we ready? Are we ready? Yes, we are.</s>SAMBOLIN: Oh, no.</s>ACOSTA: Yes. So needless to say, they're dubbing this Romney shambles here in London. He'll have a chance to repair some of the damage tonight. He's going to be at the opening ceremonies with his wife Ann and then he heads off to Israel tomorrow -- and something tells me it probably would be a good feeling when he takes off from London tomorrow, John and Zoraida.</s>BERMAN: You know, the Brits, they can't vote in our election, you know? So it's not like he's losing votes in London. But I do not think that these were the headlines he was hoping for. This was supposed to be a lay up for Mitt Romney and when he's waking up to headlines like this, like "Mitt the twit," in "The Sun," that's got to be something that doesn't make the Romney team and the Romney family too happy. All right. Jim Acosta, it is great to see you live in person this morning in London. We'll talk to you again in a little bit.</s>ACOSTA: You bet.</s>SAMBOLIN: All right. It's five minutes past the hour. Security obviously top priority in London right now with thousands of world class athletes and 100 heads of states on hand for the games. Prime Minister David Cameron saying he is confident that the games will be successful and that they will be safe. There are 18,200 troops participating in Olympic security. That's double the British presence in combat in Afghanistan and fighter jets are on standby. The torch is making its final approach toward the Olympic Stadium right now, under heavy guard before the huge opening ceremonies scheduled tonight. CNN's Amanda Davies is live in London. I was listening to an interview where they said there is a no- fly zone over London and if you violate it, they will take you down.</s>AMANDA DAVIES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, welcome to the Olympic park. This is what we've been waiting for, for seven years and there's been seven years of an awful lot of planning for this, hasn't there? But it has to be said, here we are day 70 of 70 of the torch relay, the final countdown. And the mood here really is one of excitement and pride and anticipation. But after the ringing of bells at eight minutes past 12:00, Big Ben was striking and they were encouraging people to ring any bell they could. Bicycle bells, their door bells. We had a bell here on our balcony, just getting involved. Getting excited about what's to come here in London over the next couple of weeks. The torch relay set off from Hampton Court Palace, fantastic setting with Matthew Pinsent, the Olympic champion, Olympic rower, carrying the flame. And then went on to the royal barge that was used during the jubilee celebration, 16 rowers rowing the flame on a caldron down the Thames for its final journey, so close to Tower Bridge, it will then disappear into city hall in London the around lunchtime here and then well not see it again until the big party scheduled here tonight behind me at the Olympic Stadium. And as you would imagine, the papers are getting very excited. This is the front page of "The Guardian": "Time to find out who we are." This is the front page of "The Daily Mirror," "Ring It On," for get the 9.2 billion, talking about the negative things, but now the time to enjoy it. And then "The Sun," "Bond, Becks, Beatles, the Baked Bean, Brilliant." The big question everybody is asking is who is going to light the flame here in the stadium. And, you know, we know so little about the ceremony despite so many people being involved. It's been the most fantastically kept secret.</s>SAMBOLIN: We were hoping that you could shed some light on that little secret. So we're going to continue checking in with you. Thank you so much. Amanda Davies live for us.</s>DAVIES: OK.</s>BERMAN: I can't wait to find out. We'll see it here on tape delay hours after it happens. Meanwhile, it was a tough night here overnight. People from Connecticut to Ohio, cleaning up this morning after a round of strong storms knocked out power to hundreds of customers. A team from the National Weather Services will be on the ground in Elmira, in New York, later today, to try to determine in if a tornado struck there.</s>SAMBOLIN: Wow.</s>BERMAN: Rob Marciano is live fittingly at Olympic Park in Atlanta this morning. Rob, this thing was pretty rough last night.</s>ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It was. Boy, the line of storms, guys, at one point around 6:00, 7:00 Eastern Time stretched all the way from Hartford, Connecticut, back through Dallas. So, 1,700, 1,800 miles of almost destructive weather. As you mentioned, Elmira got hit likely the hardest. That's the only report actually of a tornado that we had. Most were of damaging winds. But certainly a fair amount of lightning. Here's what it looked like across New York City, Gotham got ugly clouds roll in just around sunset and all broke loose right over Central Park and the Hudson. So everybody getting a piece of it in the tri-state area, thousands of lightning strikes to put a scare into you, as well. Here's a look at the storm reports across the country yesterday. Over 300 wind reports anywhere from 50 to over 70-mile-an-hour wind reports yesterday. Let's look at what we can expect as far as current radar is concerned across just outside of D.C. This is diminishing in strength. But we will see storms refire today. Here's the convective outlook, where we expect to see the strongest storms. Actually New York and Boston, you may see some storms today, but the bulk of the heaviest action will likely be across the Carolinas and the mid-Atlantic, including the Delmarva. D.C. also will be in the line of fire, in the form of maybe some large hail and damaging winds at this pretty strong storm system, guys, for late July comes through and at least breaks some of the heat that the eastern third of the country has been enduring. So I suppose that's some of the good news, but some fireworks in the making, as well. We'll talk more about Olympic Park. Olympics were here in Atlanta back in 1996, so why not broadcast live outside the CNN studios today.</s>BERMAN: It is fitting. Thank you very much, Rob. The tough storms last night, you slept right through them.</s>SAMBOLIN: I didn't hear a they think and I only knew they were coming because you warned me. Thank you very much, Rob. It's ten past the hour. Attorneys for one of jerry Sandusky's victims have released two voice mail recordings they say the convicted predator left on their client's answering machine. CNN cannot independently verify the authenticity of the recordings. However, the attorneys for victim number two claim the calls were made less than two months before the former Penn State assistant coach was arrested in 2011 on child sex abuse charges. Listen.</s>JERRY SANDUSKY: Just calling to see, I don't know whether you had any interest in going to the Penn State game this Saturday. If you could get back to me and let me know, I would appreciate it and when you get this message, give me a call and I hope to talk to you later. Thanks. I love you.</s>SAMBOLIN: Attorneys for victim number two say they intend to file a civil suit against -Penn State. A spokesman for the university wouldn't comment on those voice mails, but did say the school is taking the case very seriously.</s>BERMAN: The federal government is cracking down on the synthetic drug industry. 90 suspects in 30 states arrested yesterday as part of an effort dubbed Operation Logjam. Almost 5 million packets of fake pot and nearly 167,000 packages of bath salts were seized along with $36 million in cash. DEA, FBI, ICE, and IRS agents all took part in the raids.</s>SAMBOLIN: Ford is recalling 421,000 Escape crossover SUVs in the United States. This is part of a worldwide recall totaling 485,000 vehicles. That recall affects 2001 through 2004 model escapes with a V6 engines and cruise control. Ford says it needs to fix a problem with the cruise control cable. The cable can get stuck when the gas pedal is pressed almost all the way down causing unintended acceleration. And listen, it could even happen when the vehicle's cruise control feature is not engaged.</s>BERMAN: The doctor convicted in Michael Jackson's death has offered an invitation to the singer's mother, Katherine Jackson, we heard much of the news lately. Through his lawyers, Murray has invited Mrs. Jackson to visit him in jail to answer any questions she might have. In a statement, Murray said he would be happy to meet with the mother of a man he calls a very dear departed friend. A representative for Katherine Jackson says he doubts she will take Murray up on his offer. She's got a lot going on right now.</s>SAMBOLIN: Yes, she does. A driver with a hair trigger. Police in Ft. Lauderdale releasing will video that shows a driver, gets out of his BMW and starts shooting at the man who was driving the Ford truck behind him. You see that there?</s>BERMAN: Yes, he got out and starts shooting at a guy tailgating.</s>SAMBOLIN: Yes, this was in broad daylight in a residential neighborhood. It was all last month. Police say he was apparently angry of being followed too closely. He gets back in his car, takes off. One bullet did pierce the truck. Luckily no one was shot. Police are now looking for that shooter.</s>BERMAN: That's scary. You always worry about when you upset someone on the road what could happen.</s>SAMBOLIN: Yes, you'd never know.</s>BERMAN: People shake their fist actually and go, little nervous. Don't happen to me very often, I don't think, as far as you know. All right. They said she would never walk again, but they were wrong. Check this out. Coming up, a real life bionic woman who is giving hope to those with paralyzing injuries.