American Morning
SeaWorld keeping killer whale
Orlando, Florida (CNN) - SeaWorld has scheduled a news conference Friday to discuss an accident that left a trainer dead after she was attacked by a whale, a spokesman said.
Dawn Brancheau, 40, died Wednesday from multiple injuries and drowning after a 12,000-pound whale grabbed her ponytail and pulled her underwater in front of shocked onlookers at Shamu Stadium, the Orange County Sheriff's office said Thursday.
She was "pulled underwater for an extended period of time," Chuck Tompkins, SeaWorld's curator of zoological operations, told CNN's "American Morning."
SeaWorld said the 1 p.m. ET news conference will give more details. Watch the news conference live on CNN.com and on your iPhone.
Read more: Details coming in whale trainer's death
Building Up America: Program teaches troubled kids construction
All this week, we've been bringing you stories about how people are building up America. Today's is really a great example of building from the ground up.
It's a program teaching troubled kids the basics of construction so they have a good foundation. Our Tom Foreman has the story from Austin, Texas.
Broken Government: Town says chemicals sicken
Editor's Note: All this week in our special series "Broken Government," CNN is taking a hard look at our nation's government; the frustrating problems and the potential solutions. Today, our Dr. Sanjay Gupta heads to a small community, now surrounded by 14 chemical plants spewing cancer-causing waste. Why has it taken the government's environmental watchdog a decade to get involved?
(CNN) – All week long, we have been investigating our broken government. Today, we focus on the environment. Specifically, one town's fears that pollution from nearby chemical plants is making them sick.
Our chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has the story of Mossville, Louisiana, and the government's failure to respond to their cries for help.
Read more: Toxic town 'like an experiment'
Broken Government: Cheap care for uninsured
Right now, lawmakers in Washington are spinning their wheels while health care costs sky-rocket. Millions of people are living without insurance. And it's not just the unemployed.
There's a growing number of working Americans who can't afford to be insured. Our David Mattingly has this AM original report about some people in New Orleans who are finding creative ways to get medical help – without paying hefty premiums.
Haiti emergency over?
Six weeks after the earthquake in Haiti, thousands are still starving and living in tent cities. Thousands of the dead still don't have their own graves. But the government there has declared the emergency over.
That decision is stopping even more people from getting the food, water and medicine they need; people who clearly don't agree that things are back to normal. Our Soledad O'Brien has the story from Port-au-Prince.
Full coverage: Haiti Earthquake
Avlon: Blame poisonous politics for broken government
Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is a senior political columnist for The Daily Beast and author of "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 any hope of changing the partisan culture of Washington is a long way away."]
By John Avlon, Special to CNN
Government seems broken. Congress is more polarized than at any time in recent history. Patriotism is confused with partisanship.
How did we get here? It requires a look at the past year to see how wingnuts hijacked our politics.
“I hope he fails.” With those four words, Rush Limbaugh coined what would become Republican strategy. It’s a telling sign of the times when professional polarizers in talk radio give talking points to party leadership, instead of vice versa.
But of course, it takes two to have bipartisanship and neither party has a monopoly on virtue or vice. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deserves her share of the blame. After President Obama delegated what would become the $787 billion stimulus bill, Republicans were shut out of the negotiating process, undercutting President Obama’s claims to represent bipartisanship. She ultimately gained no Republican votes and lost the support of eleven centrist Democrats.
As Blue Dog Congressman Jim Cooper from Tennessee said at the time, while summing up the perspective of the liberal House leadership aligned with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying, “They don’t mind the partisan fighting ‘cause that’s what they are used to. In fact, they’re really good at it. And they’re a little bit worried about what a post-partisan future might look like.” The Progressive Change Campaign Committee started running attack ads against centrist Democrats who voted with their districts rather than with the party line.
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