[John Roberts, Cnn Anchor:] Half past the hour. Your top stories now. Internal government e-mails providing new details about the hasty firing of agricultural official Shirley Sherrod. You'll recall that she was working for the USDA in Georgia when a conservative blogger posted a portion of a speech she gave painting her as a racist. Sherrod was quickly vindicated and the Obama administration apologized after the full video was released.
[Kiran Chetry, Cnn Anchor:] The toxic red sludge is now spreading, the spill that burst out of a Hungarian factory reservoir is now making its way down the Danube. It's the second largest river in Europe. At least four people have died. Officials are calling it an ecological disaster.
[Roberts:] A jailed Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel committee in Oslo citing his long and nonviolent struggle for human rights in China. The Chinese government is not happy about it. The foreign ministry says the decision could harm China's relations with Norway.
[Chetry:] And Christine Romans joins us now. So this is very interesting. You've covered a lot about China and about their influence in the world economically. What does this do?
[Christine Romans, Cnn Business Correspondent:] It's no surprise that the Chinese are so upset about this. Because the Chinese find this man who is being awarded a peace prize as a threat to peace and stability in the country. And it raises a lot of questions for a lot of human rights activists and a lot of people who say the relationship between the United States and China is the United States' business relationship between the United States and China. It's the United States' business relationship with China that has allowed the government to really solidify its power through the pocketbook. It is American consumers who have managed to put trillions of dollars into the hands of the Chinese and for years we were told that this business relationship between the U.S. and China, the trading relationship would be something that would bring democracy to China, but, in fact, others say perhaps it has just meant the Chinese have been able to keep a tighter grip on free speech and peace activists. Interesting.
[Roberts:] Big news for us here at home. About an hour from now we get the September unemployment numbers. What are we expecting?
[Romans:] We're expecting maybe the unemployment rate to tick up to 9.7 percent. We're expecting maybe 75,000 private sector jobs to be created. We won't know until we get the number in about an hour's time. We do know that some of the stimulus-related jobs have been rolling off. So you could see that affect this number. It's an important number, it's the last big economic number before the midterm elections. And if you see a jobless rate ticking up, you could have people who are challenging incumbents say, look, what's going on here? We still have way too many people unemployed in this country. I'll be looking at a lot of different numbers, including how long people have been unemployed. 33.6 weeks was the last big reading on that one. And we'll also be looking at I want to show you quickly where some of the jobs are. Computer systems and designers, biomedical engineers, nurses and home health aides. This is where we have been seeing jobs created. But for the people who don't have jobs, as I was just mentioning, it's well over half a year that they're out of work. The number 33.6 weeks. You can see what it looks like over the summer. We made a graphic for you for that. That number is unsustainable. That's a number that graph that you're seeing there, that's something that's going to resonate in the ballot box and the voting booth next month. So last big read on this before
[Roberts:] And coming up in our next hour, we're going to talk to the CEO of Panera Bread and the CEO of Green Leaf Books. One whom is hiring and the other is not. And figure out why is the economy working for some people but not for others.
[Romans:] And ask them too if the president's initiatives and small business tax cuts and the like if that's going to make a difference for them in hiring. That's what we want to know if what the government's doing is enough and what it will take to turn the page.
[Chetry:] All right. Christine Romans, we look forward to all of that.
[Romans:] Sure.
[Chetry:] Thanks so much for being with us.
[Roberts:] Still to come this morning, Sarah Palin may be a Tea Party favorite, but may not have a lot of support if she decides to run for president. This morning's political ticker is straight ahead.