Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Underway; American Students Arrested in Egypt for Protesting; No Credible Holiday Terror Threat; Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; American Students about to Be Freed
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Thanksgiving overseas. We'll take you to the front lines where U.S. troops are celebrating this holiday.</s>ALINA CHO, CNN ANCHOR: Snoopy is ready, so is Julius the Monkey. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade only hours away, and we're live along the parade route.</s>COSTELLO: Hey, bargain hunters. It's almost time for the Black Friday blitz. How to snag the best deals and steals?</s>CHO: And a century old tradition comes to an end in Texas. Why some football fans are calling this Thanksgiving meal the last supper, on this</s>AMERICAN MORNING. COSTELLO: Good morning to you and happy Thanksgiving. It is Thursday, November 24th. Ali and Christine are off somewhere on this holiday soon to eat turkey. I'm Carol Costello along with Alina Cho on this</s>AMERICAN MORNING. CHO: Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Celebrating 85 years, the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade is a favorite holiday tradition, and it's only hours away. You can expect to see some new faces floating above Manhattan, line Sonic the Hedgehog. Our Jason Carroll is live along the parade route for us this morning. It's a tradition to see you there. Good morning.</s>JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning. You caught me off guard. You can see Tom the turkey there at the start of the parade. The parade now just about two hours away. As you guys know, I did this parade last year, and what I'm already seeing is how huge the crowds are already out here already at this point because the weather is expected to be so nice. I want to introduce you to these guys. I was walking by. They shouted out my name. And we have four generations of your family here. Four generations of the Brendell (ph) family. They are from long island. You do this every year, yes?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For the last 35 years at least.</s>CARROLL: So Frank, I want you to widen out a bit to show how many are here. This is all one big extended family out here. How many of you guys are out here?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Twenty-five.</s>CARROLL: Is that an accurate count? You didn't lose anybody on the way, did you?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. We're keeping count.</s>CARROLL: Obviously this is Thanksgiving. What are you guys thankful for on a day like today?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The family able to be together is great.</s>CARROLL: Thank you so much. We appreciate you guys having you here.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Happy Thanksgiving.</s>CARROLL: Glad we were able to have you. This is an international thing that's going on here as well. We've got people from Venezuela down there. We've got -- I said I would get Holland on, Holland over here. But we also have a few people here from Georgia. Where else do we have? Where else? New Jersey. We always get New Jersey. Tennessee, I promised Tennessee. Virginia. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Michigan. Michigan is here representing as well. It's always good to have a lot of people here. Actually 3.5 million people are expected to line the parade route this year. Weather making it better, 50 million people expected to tune in. As you said Sonic the Hedgehog one of the new balloons that we'll be seeing again, making a debut after an 18-year absence. So once again the parade will get started just about two hours from now. We're going to bring it to you live. Back to you.</s>COSTELLO: And Snoopy, your favorite, too, Jason. Thank you.</s>CARROLL: Yes, of course, Snoopy.</s>COSTELLO: We'll talk to you later.</s>CHO: Snoopy, Jason is old school, a Snoopy lover. One thing we are very thankful for, our brave men and women in the military serving here and overseas. We still have about 20,000 troops in Iraq right now. But the forces are flooding out as the December deadline for withdrawal fast approaches. Thousands have been sent to Kuwait waiting to be reassigned or sent back home. CNN's Martin Savidge is at Camp Virginia right now celebrating the holiday there with troops. Good morning.</s>MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. It's a little after 3:00 in the afternoon here, which means that the meal service is pretty much wound down. We started at 11:30, so we've been up about three-and-a-half serving what was a fabulous turkey dinner. Here's the menu. They had roast turkey. They had carved smoked ham. They had roast beef, all of the trimmings. We're down to the last few. But everybody left with a full stomach and empty plate. And if they were giving out medals for the best turkey meals, then the young lady who is with me here, Sergeant First Class Susan Porter with the Minnesota National Guard who was responsible along with her crew, and that's a crew, of putting together this fabulous meal. How do you think it went?</s>SGT. SUE PORTER, FOOD SERVICE SUPERVISOR: Actually, I think it went pretty smoothly. Everybody came in and things went pretty well.</s>SAVIDGE: You had a lot of people. How many?</s>PORTER: We are still tallying everything up. We're still looking at the numbers and whatever. I'm pretty confident it was around 4,000 people. We prepared for 6,500.</s>SAVIDGE: You did that in three-and-a-half hours?</s>PORTER: Correct.</s>SAVIDGE: Normally you would be the mom at home, right?</s>PORTER: Correct.</s>SAVIDGE: Tell us about what your meal would typically be.</s>PORTER: The trimmings and turkey and ham and pies and all of the good stuff.</s>SAVIDGE: You're not at home. You're here. Who is taking over the chore of running the family and doing the meal?</s>PORTER: That would be my daughter. She'll have Thanksgiving for all of the kids.</s>SAVIDGE: You miss them?</s>PORTER: Yes.</s>SAVIDGE: Well, Happy Thanksgiving. Congratulations to the wonderful job that you have done. Thank you very much on behalf of all of us for all of them, because meals like this are so important to anybody who has been stationed overseas. But I will point out this one thing, Carol. What was different this time and why the faces were so bright is that normally the holidays are a time when you're sad and missing family but for many of these soldiers, they are going home. This is the last stop. They catch the flight and they'll be home in time for Christmas. That's the hope and the plan. We wish them safe travels. Happy Thanksgiving, by the way.</s>COSTELLO: Happy Thanksgiving to you. Great story. I hope they all make it home by Christmas. That would be the best Thanksgiving day ever if they were to get that word. Martin Savidge, thanks so much reporting from Camp Virginia in Kuwait.</s>CHO: In Egypt an uneasy calm this morning in Cairo's Tahrir Square after nearly a week of violent and deadly clashes with protesters demanding the country's military rulers step down. Authorities say three American college students suspected of throwing Molotov cocktails during the demonstrations will be held for power more days as the investigation continues. CNN's Ben Wedeman is live for us in Cairo this morning. Ben, good morning to you.</s>BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alina. These three Americans, young men studying at the American University of Cairo, remain in detention. They were interrogated by the Egyptian police yesterday. However, that was in the presence of the console general from the American embassy. The U.S. embassy here is saying that they are just making sure that the questioning is done in a proper, legal way according to Egyptian law and that these young men do have access to lawyers. But beyond that they really don't have a lot of power to influence the course of the investigation at this time. We're told they are being treated well, being kept in humane conditions, but obviously the standards in Egypt for detention are not necessarily those of the United States. At the moment you may be able to hear chanting down below in Tahrir Square. More people are coming in. This is Thursday, the end of the week. We're expecting another million men march tomorrow in the square. It's more peaceful in the streets to the east of the square where we've seen around the clock clashes going on. We understand that the military has come in with bulldozers to erect dirt mounds to separate the protestors from the police. At this point the death toll from the fighting since Saturday is 38 at least, well over 3,000 injured. Alina?</s>CHO: Ben Wedeman live for us in Cairo. Ben, thank you very much.</s>COSTELLO: Here's something to be thankful for. There are no credible terror threats facing the United States right now. That's according to a notice sent to police departments by the FBI and the department of homeland security. This is the first holiday season since the death of Osama bin Laden. Officials say in the past terror organizations plotted attacks during the holidays because of large crowds.</s>CHO: Occupy Wall Street organizers are planning a Thanksgiving feast for thousands of protesters at New York's Zuccotti Park. Turkey day meals with all the trimmings will be prepared at a nearby kitchen space and served later this afternoon.</s>COSTELLO: Two turkeys getting a new lease on life. The two birds, Liberty and Peace, were pardoned by the president. President Obama did the honors at the White House ceremony yesterday.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: From our family to yours, I want to wish everybody a wonderful and happy and healthy Thanksgiving. And now since Liberty and Peace have been so patient, it is my privilege to grant them the official pardon. I've got to give them a little symbol.</s>OBAMA: All right. What do you think? Are we ready? All right, here we go. All right, are you all right, Liberty? OK.</s>OBAMA: I like doing that. You are hereby pardoned.</s>COSTELLO: It's like the Pope. Liberty and Peace will now retire to the historic home of George Washington in Mt. Vernon to spend the rest of their fat days.</s>COSTELLO: Still to come this morning, how to get the best black Friday bargain without waiting in line for hours or camping out in the cold.</s>CHO: All right, and they're calling it the last supper in the Lone Star state. Why turkey dinners in Texas won't taste the same tonight. We'll explain. You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. It's 13 minutes after the hour.