welcome to al jazeera america. i'm del walters. these are the stories that we are following for you. the way forward after the government shutdown. lawmakers getting back to the business of the budget. about an hour from now we're expecting an announcement from the white house, the president set to name a new head of homeland security. and some lebanese citizens say they are losing their jobs to the syrians fleeing the fighting. ♪ the federal government has

reopened and the nation can continue borrowing money to pay its bills. now congress and the white house are looking ahead. the house and senate are trying to come up with a plan while the president is pushing forward on other parts of his agenda. libby easier said than done. >> that's right. but we heard cautious optimism from center patry murray, and congressman paul ryan. congressman ryan laid pretty low over the last couple of weeks, but emerged in the final few days as someone who was talking and trying to find some negotiation point. here is how they described their starting points. >> chairman ryan knows i'm not going to vote for his budget. i know that he's not going to vote for mine. we're going to find the common

ground between our two budgets that we both can vote on and that's our goal. >> we want to look for ways to find a common ground. our goal is for the good of american people to get the debt under control, get smart deficit reduction and do things to grow the economy and get back towork. >> they are hoping to find common ground to deal with these sequester cuts that came in this past year. they were designed to be arbitrary so their work is to try to replace them with something else. whether they can do it, though, is going to be the big question, one of the other members of this panel of maryland says talking doesn't guarantee success, dell. >> what is a realistic expectation of avoiding another shutdown. >> we hear from the white house a clear message that president obama feels like he was able to hold his ground and not

negotiate over the debt limit. we also heard from the top republican in the senate, senator mitch mcconnell this week said this will not be something that republicans go to the mat over in the coming round of negotiations. however, there's a wild-card in here, senator ted cruz. he was on abc news just yesterday, and said he is going to try to fight against the president's health care law and he is not ruling anything out. >> what i intend to do is continue standing with the american to work to stop obamacare because it isn't working it is costing people their jobs and taking away their health care. >> again, we see scheduled on the calendar later on this month, the iowa g.o.p. reagan dinner with special guest senator cruz.

>> never too soon to talk about 2016. libby everybody agrees the president won this latest standoff, but did he make friends this congress? he >> he made friends among democrats, because they were afraid he was going to start to negotiate. however, republicans not so much. and there's a real question about whether they will be able to bargain or negotiate. republicans do hold one card. they are less concerned about these sequestration cuts than the democrats are, so that may be something they may be able to come to the table with. but we heard a lot of admonishment about criticism about republicans, so we're not entering this next round with a lot of happy feelings. dell. >> libby thank you very much. the deadline for the budget

agreement is friday december 13th, so stay tuned. investors have moved their focus away from washington and back to the corporate headlines and while the dow can't seem to get a steady rally going, the same can't be said for the s&p, and nasdaq. and the debt deal didn't just reopen the government it also authorized nearly $3 billion for a controversial dam project on the ohio river. critics are condemning the project as pork. jonathan martin has the stories. >> reporter: the u.s. army corps of engineers is in the middle of one of its busier projects. replacing locks and dams on the ohio river that were built ne nearly 90 years ago.

>> it is literally falling apart. >> reporter: and if it does shippers will have to find a move the nearly $90 billion tons of goods. the project was first approved by congress back in 1988, expected to cost just under $800 million. now it's years behind and tens of millions over budget. the lead engineer says funding is the greatest challenge. half of the money comes from the government, the rest from the inland waterway trust fund. >> if the economy is bad, there's not going to be a lot of money in the trust fund. that will impact our construction. >> reporter: come conservatives are blaming mitch mcconnell for

slipping the project into a bill. a local action group called it a kentucky kickback, but mcconnell's say it wasn't his request. senator john mccain says he is not to blame, but he is still critical, telling "the daily beast" . . . republican senator lamar alexander of tennessee says he and democratic senator diane feinstein asked for the extra money. nay are concerned if there is not enough money to keep the project going, the government will have to cancel existing contracts. while the vote raises the spending limit for the project, congress would have to vote again to actually allocate the money. and this wasn't the first

time senator mcconnell tried to get funding for the project. he toured the project back in 2009. former house speaker tom foley has died. he also -- he was 84 years of age. president obama is set to announce his choice to be the nation's next secretary of homeland security. the president is expected to nominate jeh johnson later on this afternoon. he played a key role on lifting the ban on gays and lesbians who serve in the military. if confirmed, he will succeed janet napolitano. we will have the president's

announcement at about 2:00. some lebanese are getting weary of the influx of syrian refugees. as andrew simmons reports the new challenge is just to coexist peacefully. >> reporter: anyone had a doubt about the suffering for syrian refugees, take a look at this. garbage all over the place, and no sanitation. this is a makeshift camp, and these are very common, and so many syrians all over the valley and the rest of this small country outnumbering in some town the lebanese, and i'll show you this, look. boxes stored in almond trees. a washing on the line because it was raining earlier.

this place will be a quagmire in the winter. it will be very cold. look at the children. they can't wash. there's no running water. the mothers are doing their best to get buy. there's no schooling. it's an appalling situation. they try to smile, but that doesn't really tell the picture. not only that there is social tension. a tension getting bigger by the day. we went out to take a look and started our report at the place where they register as refugees. this is where syrians now in some town outnumber the lebanese. at first these people were welcome but not anymore. sit down and give them all of your lies a lebanese taxi driver

tells this woman. >> translator: when they come here they insult us. someone told me we deserve worse than chemical weapons. >> reporter: and nearer the border another queue. it's the end of the eid holidays when families should be together in an atmosphere different to this. no dignity here and a desperate situation. a passport, an id can mean a bag of fresh meat. but a growing number of people no longer qualify for food handouts. >> translator: i have been standing here for hours trying to get a peace of meat. touch my child. she has a fever. >> reporter: then a lebanese man represents his anger at the roadblock. there is still some sympathy for

syrians, though, by the end of the day this donated meat will feed around 4,000 families, but it isn't enough. >> we try our best. we told these people to wait until the end of the day, if we have meat left, we'll give it. >> reporter: most of these people return to buildings without running water with rents they can't afford. >> translator: her and her daughter are sick. i forced her to get up today. if she is sick, we all have a problem. we're the only ones who can take care of the children. >> reporter: but at least they have a roof over their heads unlike hundreds of thousands in these makeshift settlements. they are helpfully inadequate, and winter will soon decent on the valley. it's a place that once had promise for those escaping war,

but it is becoming a living hell. every day the numbers increase, along with the resentment of the lebane lebanese. and how can anyone find any hope in such a forlorn situation. when you look at the children, a generation lost, as they say, with very little to look forward to. and let me take you past this tree where there's remnants of a suitcase, and here we'll take a look. doing their best to try to live some sort of normal existence. the trail leads this way into what is living accomodation, would you believe it, a family of more than six trying to sleep in this space. they try to keep it orderly,

there is even a television set for some level of normality, not just for entertainment, but definitely to keep in touch with what is going on back home. but unless something is done very soon in lebanon, this situation with the onset of winter, will take things, well, near catastrophic for these people. andrew simmons thank you very much. still to come a different story of a dream of living, an american dream of owning a home. coming up, the bizarre credit problem one man has that has turned his dream into a nightmare. they spread throughout the west. >> there's a thick, acrid smoke smell in the air and we're following a strike team now to the top of the mountains where the fire line begins. (vo) it's a war being fought by air and on land costing millions of dollars every year. >> you will make an individual decision to build a home there, but what's the cost to the rest of us?

(vo) what's going wrong with the war on wildfires and what are the true costs of putting them out?

(vo) al jazeera america we understand that every news story begins and ends with people. >> the efforts are focused on rescuing stranded residents. (vo) we pursue that story beyond the headline, past the spokesperson, to the streets. >> thousands of riot police deployed across the capitol. (vo) we put all of our global resources behind every story. >> it is a scene of utter devastation. (vo) and follow it no matter where it leads, all the way to you. al jazeera america. take a new look at news. everyone is now back to work at the centers for disease control, but two-thirds of the staff had been furloughed for 17 days. earlier i talked to the director, and asked him if the country was in any danger while

9,000 of his 13,000 employees were off of the job. >> what i can tell you is we are always allowed to bring people in to address eminent threats to health, but we couldn't track things as intensively as we usually do -- >> is a salmonella outbreak not considered to be critical to people's health. >> when we realized the shutdown was continuing we brought more people in. >> so was it a mistake to layoff those people and consider them to be nonessential in the first place? should they have been sent home, knowing now adays with terrorism being a major concern it may have been something worse than a salmonella outbreak? >> it was a mistake to shut the government. once that mistake was made, we did everything we could to protect the public's health

legally, and that's what he did, and i think we kept things going as best we could. but it was not ideal. microbes and other threats didn't shutdown, so our ability to track them and prevent them was undermined. >> and flu season do we have a handle on how bad the flu season is this year? >> we are tracking the flu season. and will have information coming out in a few days. that was the head of the centers for disease control, tom friedman. google is now worth a grand. google shares broke the thousand dollars market this morning. the stock is soaring after it posted strong earnings that blew

past expectations. google making almost $3 billion in the quarter, and said clicks on its advertisements jumped 27%. jcpenney says it will open their doors at 8:00 in the evening to kick off the holiday season. macy's too announced it will open on thanksgiving day. do you know what your credit score is? it's something we don't think about until it's too late, trying to buy a home or car. stacey tisdale found one man who couldn't buy a house because his unpaid parking tickets hurt his credit score. >> reporter: about two years ago he would park his car here every thursday. he said the traffic cops were brutal when it came to the meters. >> my time would expire at 7:00

pm and at 7:02, i would come out and he had written me a ticket at 7:01. and it was always the same nigh. >> reporter: he racked up more than a thousand dollars in citations. he contested one alleged violation and lost, and he had had a enough. >> i thought worse case scenario, i would have trouble registering my car in d.c., which i wasn't planning on doing at that moment. and i was wrong. >> omar was wrong because registering his car was the least of his problems. last year he applied for a mortgage. >> my credit score dropped over 100 points -- it was like 105 points because of the parking tickets. >> reporter: unpaid parking tickets are considered debts by

the county or government that receives them. when they can't collect on the debt, they turn it over to a collection agency. >> it is typically three to six months before it would even appear on a report. at that point it's the presence of that unpaid collection that really has an impact. >> one single late payment can effect your credit score as 50 to 100 points. i know that comes to a shock to a lot of people. so that's why even small bills like library bills or park tickets really need to be handled promptly and on time. >> due to this experience i definitely pay more attention to everything that has to do with my credit. the neighborhood where i was originally looking at, the prices went up significantly for three months.

and i think that's the reason i don't have a house right now. >> reporter: stacey tisdale, al jazeera, washington, dc. ouch. the belongings of one of america's most beloved president are going up for auction.

welcome back to al jazeera america. i'm del walters. here are your headlines. the federal government back up and running. some lawmakers are now looking ahead at the budget. a panel started discussing federal spending on thursday. president obama is expected to name a new head of homeland security today, his pick is said to be jeh johnson. and the european union says it will give $95 million to

lebanon to help with the syrian refugees. the online hacker group, anonymous is getting involved in an alleged rape case that rocked a small town in missouri. two teenage girls were threatened after telling police they were sexually assaulted by high school football players at a party. >> greetings, world, we are depreciation maryville, two young girls have been raped in the town of maryville. >> i hope people see through all of the small town stuff that they really see the story for what it is, instead of everyone's opinions. >> reporter: daisy coleman says she has been repeatedly threatened since when went to the authorities aledging she had

been raped by a football star. he is and her friend to a party after they had been drinking. there both were raped. prosecutors say the charges were dropped when neither victim would cooperate with investigation. the townhall has been swamped with calls from people angry at what has hand. >> certainly it's devastating for a community to receive this many violent posts that we have. >> reporter: the other alleged victim that night says the increased support is very welcome. >> we didn't have this kind of support when everything happened, but now that we have people listening, it's like a miracle. it feels really good that it is finally getting spoken about. we have waited for this day for a very long time. the case has drawn

comparison with stewbanville, ohio. in maryville, the local sheriff say there's no cover up or conspiracy. >> if you look at the past history of these young men, they have previously been prosecuted by our current prosecuting attorney for other crimes. >> reporter: the special prosecutor will examine all aspects of the case. the two males say they are innocent. while social media has brought the investigation to a wide audience, the biggest change is the victims are now willing to give testimony.

i'm meteorologists dave warren. we have typhoon francisco and it has really intensified. clearly seeing the center of the storm surrounded by a solid area of thunderstorms. winds at under 45 miles an hour, moving northwest at 12 miles an hour. wider view shows the pacific ocean and there is japan. and it will weaken just a bit, but winds still at 85 miles an hour. they are still cleaning up from the previous storm. temperatures are getting colder here. 33 degrees in denver, and that also came with some snow. light snow in colorado, and into kansas and of oklahoma.

look where the temperatures are headed overnight tonight, hour by hour, the temperatures drop quickly down to the 30s and below freezing in many locations. the temperature only climbing into the 50s and 60s saturday afternoon. there is that hard freeze warning for texas and freeze watches and warnings in effect for oklahoma and kansas as well. so the cold air is here. over the weekend, a low of 30, then the warm air comes back monday and tuesday. new yorkers get to see some of jfk's processions that are going on auction. you can view the items at

heritage auction house in new york city. "techknow" is next. for more news 24 hours a day, check us out at aljazeera.com. >> undercover and now she's taking us to new york city where some of the toughest put it to the test. >> the engineer who designed the bionic eye. he takes us to colorado to meet the man who created the 3d bionic hand.