Food, Medicine, Scarce in Philippines; Extreme Bullying; 500 Both Close At New Record
ZORAIDA SAMBOLIN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): A Texas road. Seriously? Yesterday was alligators, today is kangaroos.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Kangaroos on the lam.</s>SAMBOLIN (on-camera): Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Zoraida Sambolin.</s>BERMAN (on-camera): And I'm John Berman. Thirty minutes past the hour right now.</s>SAMBOLIN: Nice to have you with us this morning. In the Philippines this morning, tragedy is turning to frustration and desperate pleas for help. Aid is arriving in the nation devastated by one of the most powerful typhoons on record. Haiyan decimated huge parts of the Philippines, leaving tens of thousands homeless and more than 2,300 people dead. But the relief efforts are said to be moving slowly. Hospitals are overwhelmed and residents simply are not getting the help they need. Nick Paton Walsh is live in Tacloban this morning. Nick, what is the latest there?</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Which for dusk fell (ph) which you can see behind me has turned the city really into a ghost town in many ways. No real sources of light even for people remaining there -- they make themselves. We drove through and I did see, for the first time, actual palpable signs of the government intervening. A truck giving out food to people. Long queues behind that filling the street, blocking traffic, a sign I think of, perhaps, how desperately that contribution was needed. I think many observing the streets there for the last few days have been waiting to see as well signs the government are finally going about the task of collecting the corpses littering the sides of the streets. Now, they say they've been doing it for days and people keep putting</s>SAMBOLIN: Nick, what about evacuations? Because as we look at all of this devastation, you know, we think that people just need to get out of that area in order to get the help that they need. How is that moving along?</s>WALSH: Well, it's interesting to note we've seen a number of trucks, buses seemingly there to take people away. The airport where we've been for the last few days always there's a cue of people trying to get out, trembling -- with their suitcases and getting one of the planes would take them away from here. Because frankly, there's not much left in that city to support life. You can see, there's nothing you can see this on a day or night -- lightning far away illuminates eerily what's behind me. But the question, of course, is how badly devastates. It is the rest of the area. We drove south a little bit yesterday. So, the neighboring town of Palo (ph) who'd been quite badly hit, but then it started to soften out. This seems to be in the epicenter of the worst hit area and people really struggling to find anything to begin their life again within here.</s>SAMBOLIN: So, as you've been traveling through and I know that, you know, it's taking you some time to get through all of the debris also, we keep on hearing about this number of people that have died. Do we think that number is going to continue to increase, that they still haven't reached some of the harder hit areas?</s>WALSH: I think now people are getting a broader sense of exactly how badly whatever areas were hit. We seem to feel, as you drove away from here, that the damage is getting less. Of course, there will be pockets around the area which people will get to and maybe cause the death toll to rise. There are suggestions (ph) that could be thousands of people not quite accounted for at this point, but that not so say this is a scientific act. I mean, looking at simply Tacloban itself, they're struggling to even get trucks in the government here to really get their aid effort mounting. The only thing they would have an accurate measure on -- people are missing. It's complicated. It's come down from 10,000, just over 2,000 as you said and may go up a little again fractionally but the real emphasis here is just trying to get people enough to get to their daily lives, Zoraida.</s>SAMBOLIN: All right. Nick Paton Walsh live for us. Thank you so much. And of course, if you would like to help, go to CNN.com/impact. We have a list of groups working in the Philippines helping people that are hurt by the typhoon.</s>BERMAN: So many good resources. So many good ways to reach out and help.</s>SAMBOLIN: No. Absolutely. All right. Back here in the U.S., a very, very rough first month for the president's health care overhaul. The numbers beyond disappointing. The administration says only about a hundred thousand people signed up for coverage under the insurance exchanges in October. That was the first month they were offered. Less than a quarter of those sign-ups were through the much maligned healthcare.gov site. The White House is promising to fix the problems with the site and the enrollment process, but Democrats in Congress are now threatening something of a -- want to pass some bills to allow Americans to keep some of their plans that have been dropped over the last month. Of course, the president promised that everyone with a plan could keep it. Meanwhile, Republicans are asking if we've already spent millions on a website that does not work, should we spend even more to fix it?</s>SEN. MARY LANDRIEU, (D) LOUISIANA: If this were easy, it would have been done before. So, not only is this part of the bill something that needs to be changed, we've already changed a couple of other smaller things that needed to be fixed and we'll continue to work on it.</s>REP. JOHN DUNCAN, (R) TENNESSEE: Does anybody have how much all of this is going to cost us in the end? Nobody knows?</s>BERMAN: Again, some of the biggest heat and friction right now is between the White House and Congressional Democrats and key White House officials are expected to go to Capitol Hill today with some of their Democratic allies about revisions in the law. Again, many Democrats in Congress now want to pass something that would allow Americans to keep their health care plans.</s>SAMBOLIN: I find it remarkable that it's really kind of borderline threats at this stage of the game saying, fix this or else we are going to side with the Republicans.</s>BERMAN: By Friday. There's a Republican plane (ph) in the House that will come up for both, and Democrats say to the White House, if you don't give us something to vote for before that, we will vote for the Republican plan.</s>SAMBOLIN: All right. Thirty-six minutes past the hour.</s>SAMBOLIN (voice-over): A frightening seen at a Pittsburgh high school when minutes after the final bell, shots rang out. Four teenage boys were ambushed right outside the school. Three of them were shot. They staggered back inside and the school was put on lockdown. S.W.A.T. and police swarmed the scene and a 16-year-old was arrested and charged as an adult with four counts of attempted homicide. Police say he targeted the victims in retaliation for a drug-related assault last month. The victims are expected to be OK.</s>BERMAN (voice-over): We have an outrageous story to tell you about in South Florida, really extremely bullying where two teenage girls were accused of robbing, ransacking and then setting fire to the home of a classmate. The teens are charged as adults and are being held in Palm Beach County Jail. A family friend of the victim says the girls went way too far.</s>STELLA PENROD, FAMILY FRIEND: Not only did they steal their belongings and their electronics and then had the audacity to burn down the house to where it's not even livable? That's really mean.</s>BERMAN: Police say one of the suspects was seen wearing jewelry that belonged to the victim and she allegedly told friends she set the fire and sold some of the stolen items. When confronted at school, investigators say, she just said, she thought it was funny.</s>SAMBOLIN: Oh, my goodness. Thirty-seven minutes past the hour. It is sentencing day for convicted mobster, James Whitey Bulger. The 84-year-old is facing a mandatory life term after being convicted of dozens of counts, including a role in nearly a dozen murders. Relatives of Bulger's victims gave their side at a hearing in Boston yesterday, calling him names like coward and Satan. They spoke from behind Bulger and he spent the entire hearing with his back to them.</s>WILLIAM O'BRIEN, JR., SON OF WILLIAM O'BRIEN: I think he was scared. I think he was afraid to turn around and see the massive people and all of those families he affected. I think he was scared. I think he was scared to face up.</s>SAMBOLIN: Prosecutors want Bulger sentenced to two life terms guaranteeing he will die in prison.</s>BERMAN: He's not getting out. Gay marriage now the law in Hawaii. The governor signing a bill -- excuse me, Peter Brady here.</s>BERMAN: The governor signed a bill making the Aloha State the 15th state plus the District of Columbia to allow same-sex marriage. You remember, it was Hawaii that really began the national debate over gay marriage some two decades ago when the state Supreme Court there ruled that gay Americans should have the right to marry. That led to a national backlash in the passage of the Federal Defensive Marriage Act which was struck down earlier this year.</s>SAMBOLIN: All right. A very strange site in the western part of Texas. It is a kangaroo on the loose near midland. Even police did not believe their eyes.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were questioning the call, you know, kangaroo in Midland, Texas? There are no kangaroos out here. it must be something different. Then they thought the dispatcher was crazy so they went out there and, sure enough, they found him.</s>SAMBOLIN: Sure enough it's the kangaroo. It winds up that joey had escaped from its owner and was -- look at him -- hopping down the highway. Deputies eventually cornered the animal while the owner used treats to distract the kangaroo and snatched him up. Officials are looking whether the owner violated an exotic animal ordinance.</s>BERMAN: Kangaroo on the lam!</s>SAMBOLIN: That is such --</s>BERMAN: That's an amazing picture.</s>SAMBOLIN: It really is. Can you imagine the phone call, too? There's a kangaroo.</s>BERMAN: They took care -- those law enforcement in Midland, Texas, they took care of the whole thing and offering treats to the kangaroo. They have a stash of kangaroo treats just in case.</s>SAMBOLIN: What do you give them?</s>SAMBOLIN (on-camera): All right. It's another cold morning for much of the nation, but some help and heat on the horizon, we understand. Miss Indra Petersons --</s>INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know it's a little chilly when we're actually colder in the Minneapolis this morning. We're talking about --</s>SAMBOLIN: That's nasty.</s>PETERSONS: Boston freezing. We're talking about Chicago just barely above freezing. Minneapolis not much better but either way they're warmer at 36 degrees. Look at the 20s out there. Pittsburgh 28 and Charleston this morning at 23 degrees. Now, here's the real strange thing this time of year. We're talking about this cold air having gone all the way down to the south. So, they're dealing with it as well. Jackson 27 and Atlanta currently below freezing at 31. So, with that, yes, freeze warnings this morning into the south. Really all up and down around the gulf extending all the way in through Georgia this morning. It should be the last day they see this. That's the good piece of news here. We're going to be warming up, thanks to the moisture coming out of the gulf. And let's talk about the temperature change today. Here's the good stuff. New York City, you're warming 12 degrees, Pittsburgh 12 degrees, and even Raleigh warming 12 degrees. So, we're all warming up and that's going to feel so much better where yesterday highs were just in the 30s, for many of us maybe some low 40s. Today, you can see a lot more 50s up are going to be on the map, even Charlotte trying to get near that 60-degree mark. So, hopefully, it'll be just a distant memory by the time we go to the weekend more importantly.</s>BERMAN: Clawing its way to warmth here.</s>PETERSONS: Yes.</s>SAMBOLIN: Indra, thank you.</s>PETERSONS: Thanks so much.</s>BERMAN: We got some really disturbing to show you after the break. A terrifying 911 call for help when a cougar attacks.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my God, Renee! Oh, my God!</s>SAMBOLIN: Oh gosh.</s>BERMAN: We'll have this for you when we come back.