American Morning
TV series follows real-life search for runaways
(CNN) – The numbers are staggering. Each year, between one-and-a-half and three million young kids run away from home.
A former New York police detective has made it his job to track them down and his investigations are now the subject of a new TV series called "The Runaway Squad."
Joe Mazzilli, the founder and team leader of "The Runaway Squad," joined us on Friday's American Morning, along with with Vinny Lopez, who was rescued by the runaway squad, and Vinny's father, Israel Lopez.
Is Apple's new gadget a game-changer?
(CNN) – There's just one day now until Apple's iPad is released, but the reviews are already in. The Wall Street Journal is calling it a "wicked fast" "lap-top killer."
The New York Times is not too happy with its touch-screen keyboard or lack of a camera, but still calls it "deeply satisfying" and "goof-proof."
We got a preview of Apples iPad on Friday's American Morning with Arik Hesseldahl, senior technology reporter for businessweek.com.
Read more: iPad meets its critics
Mixed messages from climate review panel
(CNN) – They were the e-mails read around the globe, leaked communications from a scientist. Skeptics called them proof of a conspiracy to mislead the public into believing in global warming.
Now, the first formal investigation into Climate-gate is over. To break down these developments we were joined on Friday's American Morning by Michael MacCracken, chief scientist for climate change programs at the Climate Institute, and Stephen Mcintyre, editor of climateaudit.org.
Health concerns during flood cleanup in RI
(CNN) – Parts of Rhode Island are still very dangerous today. The water is finally beginning to go down after three days of torrential rain and record flooding, but health officials are warning that the filth left behind could make people sick.
Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano will visit the state today to survey the flood damage and talk to local leaders. Our Allan Chernoff has the report from Warwick, Rhode Island.
Once a rising star, chef now feeds hungry
By Danielle Berger, CNN
Madurai, India (CNN) - Naryanan Krishnan was a bright, young, award-winning chef with a five-star hotel group, short-listed for an elite job in Switzerland. But a quick family visit home before heading to Europe changed everything.
"I saw a very old man [eating] his own human waste for hunger," Krishnan said. "It really hurt me so much. I was literally shocked for a second. After that, I started feeding that man and decided this is what I should do the rest of my lifetime."
Krishnan was visiting a temple in the south Indian city of Madurai in 2002 when he saw the man under a bridge. Haunted by the image, Krishnan quit his job within the week and returned home for good, convinced of his new destiny.
"That spark and that inspiration is a driving force still inside me as a flame - to serve all the mentally ill destitutes and people who cannot take care of themselves," Krishnan said.
Krishnan founded his nonprofit Akshaya Trust in 2003. Now 29, he has served more than 1.2 million meals - breakfast, lunch and dinner - to India's homeless and destitute, mostly elderly people abandoned by their families and often abused. FULL STORY
Do you know a hero? Nominations are open for 2010 CNN Heroes
Avlon: Militia arrests raise questions about political landscape
Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is a senior political columnist for The Daily Beast and author of the new book "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America." Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/13/john.avlon.art.jpg caption="CNN Independent analyst John Avlon says the arrest of the Hutaree militia group raises new questions about the fear-fueled fringes of the political landscape."]
By John Avlon, Special to CNN
We’ve seen a ratcheting up of violent rhetoric and even violent plots in recent weeks. This edition of Wingnuts of the Week takes a look at a new Code Pink “citizen’s arrest” of Karl Rove and the real arrest of the Hutaree militia.
Militia movements exist well off the grid when it comes to conventional domestic politics. But the arrest of the Michigan-based Hutaree anti-government militia group raised new questions about the increasingly ugly and fear-fueled fringes of the political landscape.
The small, self-style Christian militia group (members say “Hutaree” means “Christian warrior”), led by father David Stone, was arrested by the FBI early this week on charges that they plotted to murder a local law enforcement officer and then bomb his funeral procession to up the body count in an attempt to spur a civil war in the United States.
This is the latest sign of the estimated 300% increase in militia groups – as detailed by the Southern Poverty Law Center – that we’ve seen in America during the first year of the Obama administration. Not all militia groups can be classified as violent extremists, but this rapid growth indicates an unwelcome return to the heated atmosphere of the mid-1990s, when militia movements proliferated in the wake of Bill Clinton’s election and incidents at Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The era ended after Timothy McVeigh destroyed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing more than 160 innocent men, women and children.
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