Elizabeth Edwards Battling Cancer Once Again; Will a South Carolina Mother Lose Custody of Her Obese Son?
VERONICA DE LA CRUZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Eating healthy is something many of us try to do. But understanding portions and calories can be very confusing. CNN.com has a few pointers to help you stay on the right track. The Centers for Disease Control says that the average American does not eat the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables per day. You can find out just how much you should be eating by checking out this gallery highlighting the recommended daily intake of all the food groups. And do you even know how to create a well-balanced meal? Well, this interactive plate can help guide you in making the best food choices for each meal in the day. For example, choosing a ham and cheese sandwich and an apple for lunch is 500 calories, while a burger and fries is double that amount. Also, test your food knowledge and see how portion sizes for many of our favorite foods have changed over the years. You can find it all online at CNN.com/healthybodies. For the Dot-Com Desk, I'm Veronica De La Cruz.</s>DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. I'm Don Lemon, live at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.</s>BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Brianna Keilar, in for Kyra Phillips. Living with cancer -- more and more Americans are doing it. And now that's Elizabeth Edwards' path yet again. We're going to talk about the medical realities. But we will also get the personal side from cancer survivor and CNN correspondent Jill Dougherty. You are in the NEWSROOM. Family comes first, but the campaign will continue. Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, today shared some difficult and personal news. Mrs. Edwards' cancer, which first appeared in 2004, has returned. A tumor was found this week on a rib on her right side. It's described as treatable, but not curable. And the couple says that they are determined to move forward.</s>ELIZABETH EDWARDS, WIFE OF JOHN EDWARDS: This is what happens to every cancer survivor, not that you ultimately get a bad diagnosis, but, every time you get something suspicious, you go into alarm mode. And that's all -- every cancer survivor that you know personally has exactly that experience of knowing that the pain they feel in their side, the ache they feel someplace could be the sign of something worse. This turned out to be.</s>JOHN EDWARDS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The campaign goes on. The campaign goes on strongly. Elizabeth and I have talked at length about this already; talked with our children about it. Basically, as I mentioned earlier, we have been confronted with -- with these kind of traumas and struggles already in our lives. And we know from our previous experience that, when this happens, you have a choice: You can go cower in the corner and hide, or you can be tough and go out there and stand up for what you believe in.</s>KEILAR: CNN's Mary Snow was standing by there as they made this announcement. Let's go to her live now. She's in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Hi, Mary.</s>MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Brianna. And the Edwards said they are optimistic. And one of the reasons they are optimistic, they say, is because the cancer is confined to Elizabeth Edwards' bones. Also, Elizabeth Edwards said that she is ready to hit the campaign trail, saying that's one of the reasons why she had a press conference, rather than release the news in a press release, because she wanted people to see that she's not showing any symptoms, that she doesn't look sickly; she doesn't feel sickly. And, in terms of going ahead with the campaign, she said she is ready. Former Senator John Edwards was asked about staying focused and how he deals with this mentally as he goes forward. This is what he had to say.</s>J. EDWARDS: Anyone who wants to be president of the United States needs to understand and recognize that there will be very difficult, intense, high-pressure times when judgments have to be made. And, if you're not able to, in a focused, thoughtful way, to deal with this kind of pressure, you're not ready to be president.</s>M. SNOW: And the Democratic presidential hopeful said he wanted to be clear that, any time or any place his wife needed him, that he would be there -- no discussion of that. And, after they did speak with the press, the Edwards left, and they said they are pressing ahead with their campaign schedule. John Edwards is heading to New York for a fund-raiser. Elizabeth Edwards, an aide says, is going to be meeting with her oldest daughter. And the two are expected to go to California tomorrow and resume their campaign schedule -- Brianna.</s>KEILAR: You know, Mary, I thought that she looked even maybe healthier than she did in 2004. I mean, from your vantage point there, not far from her at all, she looked very well, didn't she?</s>M. SNOW: She did. And that is what she is also crediting. Because she's feeling so well, saying that she doesn't have symptoms, she says that she is very lucky. And the doctor who is treating her here also said that that is a good sign, that she is not showing these symptoms. But, if you didn't know what was behind the story, you wouldn't have been able to tell that anything was wrong just by looking at her.</s>KEILAR: All right, Mary Snow live for us from Chapel Hill -- thanks, Mary. And coming up, we're going to hear from a breast cancer survivor right here in the CNN family, our very own Jill Dougherty. And she's going to share her struggle and that of her mother, who has faced cancer twice, just like Elizabeth Edwards.</s>LEMON: We want to update you now on that terror plot, the arrest in the terror plot, London 2005, July. Many called it 7/7. Let's go to CNN's Paula Newton, who is in London to give us the very latest on that. Paula, what do you have for us?</s>PAULA NEWTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Hello there, Don. Well, three suspects were picked up, two on -- at an airport. They were getting ready to board a flight to Pakistan. They were arrested -- another man arrested in Leeds. That is north of London. They have now been transferred here to a London police station, where they will be questioned. In the meantime, authorities searched properties in Leeds, and two, we're told here, in East London, looking for more evidence. This really has come as a major shock to people in this city, most specifically, the victims and their families. While they always suspected that there was more to 7/7 that they knew about, authorities said it was an open question. Were other people involved that day in blowing up the three trains and the one bus? In terms of the actual cell itself, the cell that these men had created, police were fairly satisfied that they were able to determine exactly along the timeline that they were the only four intended suicide bombers. But, on everything else, it's been really so obscure. And they have been able to tell authorities here -- I mean, I can tell you, we are outside 10 Downing Street, and security sources have told us that, every time Tony Blair has been briefed on this topic, he's asked again, can we be sure that this was an intact cell, that there aren't others out there? Authorities have consistently come back to tell him, we just don't know. We're told this was a very extensive and sophisticated surveillance operation. And, from what I know of these operations, they try and have them go on as long as possible to try and gather as much evidence as possible. I suppose, with these two suspects going to the airport, ready to board a flight to Pakistan, they felt they just couldn't wait any longer. Again, under laws here in Britain, they are only under arrest, so far, not charged. Authorities here have about 28 days to hold them, and then they can either release them or charge them -- Don.</s>LEMON: All right, Paula Newton, thank you so much for that report.</s>KEILAR: Somewhat lost in the shuffle, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as head of the Justice Department -- Gonzales, of course, is under attack over the prosecutor firings and other recent controversies. But, today, in Saint Louis, he signaled again that he's not backing down.</s>ALBERTO GONZALES, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I'm not going to resign. I'm going to stay focused on protecting our kids. There's a lot of work that needs to be done around the country. The department is responsible for protecting our kids, from -- making our neighborhoods safe, for protecting our country against attacks of terrorism, to going after gangs, going after drug dealers. I'm staying focused on that. At the end of the day, we have a situation where the president of the United States has the authority to hire and to fire United States attorneys. I am going to be going up to the Congress and providing further clarification about what happened here. We are working with Congress voluntarily. No United States attorney was fired for improper reasons. And that's the message that I'm going to deliver to the United States Congress. Thank you very much.</s>KEILAR: The Justice Department says Gonzales is reaching out to U.S. attorneys, after receiving a vote of confidence from President Bush.</s>LEMON: Well, the White House proposes an unsworn conversation behind closed doors with the aides in question and no official record. Spokesman Tony Snow defended the offer today, suggesting Democrats favor a circus. (</s>BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "AMERICAN MORNING") TONY SNOW, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: What you don't want is a situation where you create this "Perry Mason" or "Law & Order" atmosphere, where people are grilling aides. Soledad, people would...</s>SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: How does a transcript do that? Isn't a transcript just a record of the conversation, that the American people can say, wow, that was what was actually said?</s>T. SNOW: We're making available all the facts. What we are not going to do is create a show -- look, I got the "Financial Times" here. There's a big old picture of Karl Rove. One of the sub texts here is all these people are talking, get Karl Rove. Well, you know what? Wait a minute. What the White House does is we're going to make available every fact and every individual. And you probably know -- a lot of people don't, though -- is, if they go up and talk to Congress, they're going to have to tell the truth. And, if they don't, they go to jail.</s>LEMON: We will have more later on the White House position from CNN's Ed Henry.</s>KEILAR: Welcome to Iraq. Three months into the job, the U.N. secretary-general is in Baghdad, his first trip as the secretary-general. And it didn't take long for a reality check. The too-close-for-comfort explosion happened a few yards from Ban Ki-moon's news conference. It was a mortar rocket -- or rocket, rather, landing inside the Green Zone, which is actually a near-daily occurrence in Baghdad. Nobody was hurt, thankfully. And Ban's host, the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, barely raised an eyebrow. The suspected leaders of one of the boldest and most elaborate attacks on American troops in Iraq are now in custody. Think back to January in Karbala, south of Baghdad. English-speaking gunmen in American-style uniforms ambush a U.S. compound, and they kill five U.S. troops. American forces this week arrested two brothers, one of whom is a former spokesman for the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The military isn't saying much else, other than that their evidence against the brothers is significant.</s>LEMON: And, as we have been reporting here in the CNN NEWSROOM, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential candidate John Edwards, is once again battling cancer. And, for many people, such a struggle is very personal and also very private. But, like Ms. Edwards, our next guest went public with it. At the time, Jill Dougherty was CNN's high-profile Moscow bureau chief.</s>JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN INTERNATIONAL U.S. AFFAIRS EDITOR: One thing that kept me going throughout my struggle with breast cancer was running in the Race for the Cure, sponsored by the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. I didn't care if it took me all day to get to the finish line -- thousands of women, along with their families and friends, celebrating the day when we will cross the finish line against breast cancer.</s>LEMON: And, Jill, I can see you in the preview monitor here. You are smiling when you look at that. And you survived. Is that what that smile is about?</s>DOUGHERTY: Well, you know, I was kind of laughing, because I'm still running.</s>DOUGHERTY: And, yes, I guess it's -- that's good. That's good.</s>LEMON: How did you find out you had breast cancer?</s>DOUGHERTY: You know, it was connected with running, Don. I came back from a run, took a shower, and I noticed what I can only describe as like a dent in my breast. And I always thought that breast cancer was kind of, you know, a swelling of some type. But, in this case, it was a dent. And I remember the cancer booklets that said an indentation or something like that. So, I went to my doctor, and then, eventually, you know, found out that it was cancer.</s>LEMON: Yes. And, you know, you have said that you made a mistake by listening to your first doctor's advice about your lump. Was it difficult figuring out the best course of action to take once you have been diagnosed?</s>DOUGHERTY: You know, the first doctor said, let's watch it. And I don't think that that was a good idea. I think you ought to get on it. I certainly wanted to get on it as quickly as possible. But it's confusing. It's very confusing for people. There's a lot of information on the Internet. There are a lot of books. But, in your individual case, you sometimes have to wonder, where do you begin? And it turned into a full-time occupation just doing the research.</s>LEMON: Yes. So, you are saying, cancer is aggressive, so you have to be aggressive as well, right?</s>DOUGHERTY: Absolutely.</s>LEMON: Yes. So, you have been in remission for several years. You are doing fine now, right?</s>DOUGHERTY: Well, yes. I mean, remission -- this is coming up with Mrs. Edwards. I don't think of it as remission. I don't put a word on it.</s>LEMON: Yes.</s>DOUGHERTY: Statistically, according to the type of cancer I had, the type of treatment that I had, they can say you have X percentage chance of having it come back.</s>LEMON: Right.</s>DOUGHERTY: But I never considered cured. I don't think of cure, because things can come back. My mother had it come back. She had it twice.</s>LEMON: Yes. So, let's listen to Elizabeth Edwards, what she said during her press briefing a little bit ago, and I want to get your response.</s>E. EDWARDS: This is what happens to every cancer survivor. Not that you ultimately get a bad diagnosis, but every time you get something suspicious, you go into alarm mode. And that's all -- every cancer survivor that you know personally has exactly that experience of knowing that the pain they feel in their side, the ache they feel someplace could be the sign of something worse. This turned out to be. This turned out to be.</s>LEMON: You second that, Jill?</s>DOUGHERTY: Yes, I do. Unfortunately, you do kind of flash back to what happened. And the immediate response is, could it be? But I think the only answer is to do exactly what Mrs. Edwards did, which is go to the doctor and find out, you know, what it is.</s>LEMON: Jill Dougherty, from our Washington bureau, thank you so much. Keep running.</s>DOUGHERTY: Yes.</s>DOUGHERTY: I will.</s>LEMON: All right.</s>KEILAR: A South Carolina mother could lose custody of her obese son. The state says he's got to lose weight. That's ahead still in the</s>NEWSROOM. LEMON: Plenty of borrowers are taking it on the chin. They have been taking it right on the chin. Should predatory lenders be held to account as well? Ahead in the</s>CNN NEWSROOM: The Senate Banking Committee wants information on subprime mortgages.</s>KEILAR: And straight ahead: entertainment news with Brooke Anderson. Hey, Brooke. What's going on?</s>BROOKE ANDERSON, CNN CULTURE AND ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Brianna. Well, "The Late Show" says a final farewell to a favorite. Actress Vivica A. Fox makes an unexpected appearance at a police station. And we have got a little Paul McCartney with your java in the morning. That's all ahead in the NEWSROOM.