Flag Raised To Honor Slain Texas D.A.; Hepatitis Scare
SAMBOLIN: Welcome back to STARTING POINT. I'm Zoraida Sambolin. Some stories we're watching for you this morning. Even as police search for his killer, an honor flag will be raised today for murdered Kaufman County D.A. Mike McLelland. Organizers say it will fly at the top of the pole because McLelland would not want it at half-staff. And more than 200 people who had dessert at a New York City restaurant are now receiving vaccines for Hepatitis A. The city's Department of Health says as many as 450 patrons of the restaurant, Alta, may have been exposed to the virus by a worker. So far there are no reported cases of the illness. And Beyonce and Jay-Z's Cuban holiday to celebrate their fifth anniversary has raised some eyebrows in Congress. Most travel for Americans to the communist island has been banned unless there is a religious, cultural or academic reason. Now Republicans Eliana Ross Litman and Mario Diaz Ballart want to know who approved the trip and for what reason. They have written a joint letter to the government agency responsible for the ban. A little bit of trouble. You can go for cultural reasons but --</s>ROMANS: Cultural fifth wedding anniversary? I don't know. We'll see what they come up with there. Thanks, Zoraida. All right, fans have come to know Jeremy Wade and his scary fish tails on the popular Animal Planet series "River Monsters."</s>BERMAN: Now back for a fifth season, Wade is upping the ante in his mission to find the world's most mysterious and dangerous fish. This includes a search for a mutant fish in Chernobyl's nuclear waste lands. Take a look.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Suddenly I'm hooking something and it was big and pulling me closer and closer to the radioactive water, came off the hook.</s>BERMAN: All right, so that was just a little crazy. Jeremy Wade joins us. It's nice to see you. Thanks for coming in. Jeremy, I think I heard the radiation detector going off there as you were fishing. That's Chernobyl. God knows what's in it. How concerned were you about the radiation?</s>JEREMY WADE, HOST, "RIVER MONSTERS": Very concerned, which is why we can't go in to it blindly. We consulted radiation experts beforehand. There was a total limit that we mustn't exceed. We were limited to five consecutive days there. I had a thing on my belt that I wore all the time, the radiation is quite patchy, so there are some places where if I had an alarm that told me if it was particularly high. Some places if I stood there for an hour, I would have exceeded my dose. I'll have to go out. So can't see radiation. That's the thing.</s>ROMANS: Let me quickly ask you about you went in with Ukrainian scientists. Thirty years on, this is still kind of a scientific mystery, isn't? Tell us a little bit about the region and what you expected to find there.</s>WADE: Well, it's still an excluded zone. You have to get permission to get in. So it was unlike anywhere that I'd ever been. In terms of a backdrop, I'm normally fishing jungles. So scientists wanted a fish that key study because it hasn't been done and it's very important in the likes of Fukushima, what effect does it have to underwater life.</s>BERMAN: This is season five coming up. What's in store? I understand you're tackling kind of like the biggest fish story of them all, the lockness monster.</s>WADE: Absolutely. That's the season finale.</s>BERMAN: Did you find it?</s>WADE: We found something. We have a very dramatic ending to the program. I obviously can't say too much.</s>ROMANS: Are you surprised at the popularity of the series and are you surprised that the range of viewers that you're getting?</s>WADE: Absolutely. I think children like the fact that a lot of the creatures look ugly, they're strange, they are potentially dangerous to people, but they're sort of misunderstood. Normally they don't know it's somebody's foot they're grabbing. They just see a splash in the water and think it's a small fish. So I show them and generally put them back is very important.</s>BERMAN: All right, Jeremy Wade, the host of "River Monsters," now entering your fifth season. Congratulations. Thanks so much for being here. We really appreciate it.</s>ROMANS: All right, we're following some breaking news for you right now. We've confirmed that Margaret Thatcher has died.</s>BERMAN: Lady Thatcher, of course, the leader of Great Britain, the prime minister for so long, the iron lady as she was called, led that nation through a very difficult period. She was in charge when the economy had a big turnaround there and also through Falk Islands War. Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister, Lady Thatcher had died. We are getting our reporters up ready to talk to us and we will bring you that information when we come back. Stay with us.