texas, oklahoma, freezing temperatures in the morning and we'll see drying and clearing behind. >> welcome to al jazeera america. i'm john siegenthaler. here are the top stories. the transit strike in san francisco is now in its second day. both sides made offers friday night but reached no deal. 200,000 commuter rail riders are dealing with the second strike since july. saudi arabia has made an unprecedented move. the country was elected to serve a two year term on the u.n. security council but the country later rejected the offer. google's value is now at $340 billion. google now worth more than some

countries including denmark and malaysia. >> the new jersey supreme court clears the way for vaim sex couples to marry. rejected chris christie's request on hold. america tonight is next on al jazeera, you can always get the latest in news on aljazeera.com. >> on america tonight, the stumbling start. glitchy websites, frustrated signups, even without the tea party, is obamacare headed for

failure. >> i'm able to view a button view your eligibility results. i can't get past that button right now. >> also tonight, return of the native, where the buffalo roam. >> something that pulls at my heart. >> and how's the weather up there? climate science takes wing in an airborne lab. >> good evening, thanks for being with us, i'm joie chen. if you thought reopening the government and not bumping our heads on the debt ceiling was the end of it, think again.

almost as soon as the presidential signed that deal, the issues are back on the table. increasing reports that the launch of the signature feature of obamacare is been disastrous. the early returns on obamacare enrollment and by considering how a few faulty clicks could doom its future. clicking away in the background over the 16 days of shutdown, the start of enrollment in the affordable care act center piece, the online marketplace for health care coverage. the government aims to get 7 million people to buy insurance through the exchanges, and interest in the website, healthcare.gov was high, but officials won't say how many folks have actually signed up. and opponents have quickly moved in to condemn obamacare as a failure already. >> what i intend to do is continue dang with the american

people -- costing people's jobs and it's taking away their health care. >> it's hard to measure how well the marketplaces are working in part because there are so many variations. 36 states signed on with the federal exchanges but 15 states opened their own health care exchanges using other software. early adopters like california had more chances to work out bugs and are on track towards a goal of signing up a million golden state residents in the first year. >> do the numbers and when you go on to coveredca.com and you put in the shop and compare and you do your information and you realize this is going to be good. >> found a fast-track work around and some creative outreach. and by this week oregon reported 56,000 signups, cutting the state's uninsured rolls by 10%.

♪ >> but in states like georgia which pushed back against federal support, would be implicatapplicants face uncertan results. >> i can see a certain area but can't get past it right now. >> do you see assistance in navigating past that? >> in reality, no. >> the online mark plate healthcare goff last been full of glitches. >> those challenges are being addressed and progress is being made and people are enrolling across the country. >> so we've all had troubling with trying to order or sign up for something online but why is this so crucial for obamacare

and why is it so difficult so far? america tonight's dlirgt producer azmat khan is with us and luke chung, with a firm that specializes in building online rintmpletenrollment sites. >> such a politically charged climate when opponents who are so vociferous about this they will immediately seize upon letting flaws in order to fight it. so it matters in that respect but i think you can kind of take a step back and look down the line as to whether or not this will doom it. and one sort of experience that many defenders of the law point to is medicare part d. and online portal that launched

in 2005 for online shopping for prescription drugs for seniors. at the time it plawmped it was a -- launched it was a disaster, people hated it. but now it's a success. second factor many young people feel this way, is that when websites launched or when there are redesigns people may hate them, there may be letting flaws but over time there is an attitude that can change. there is hope down the line. >> luke, your company is in the business of building online databases. how bad is it? >> it's pretty bad. it's written as if it were created by people who had never created a commercial database before. >> what's the problem with it? stuff crashes. >> but there are crashes and then there are ways it crashes and reasons why it crashes.

people will expect legitimized crashes because of too many users. but to ship something on the first day with typos, grammatical errors instructions that aren't clear that is just outright bad testing bad design bad review. >> but in your particular case you as an example went on and tried oregister yourself how did you get? >> i went on myself, i own asmall business, i pay for insurance for both my family and the other people in my company. so i wanted to compare the price i'm paying currently which is unsubsidized to -- >> so you tried? >> i went online and tried it. and i was just shocked by the process. i could just tell as soon as i started it that it was asking for too many questions for me to browse to understand what my options were. >> this is actually one of the issues that has been raised. that the registration process is

something different than going online and pick out what clothes i want and then give you my credit card right? >> which is opposite, they have to create a user profile before they can go ahead and shop. >> you get a lot of data in that. >> a lot of very sensitive data, personally identifiable information which is secure information. >> like social security umentsdz numbers? >> social numbers not only for yourself but with everyone in your family. >> why would the government want you to do that? >> they assumed that people would go through this process, go through all this information, and click on something and buy it all in this one big transaction which is unbelievable. >> in this case, some of the reports that people have been responding with to say, i have to fill out exactly what my relationship is to this member of my family to that member of my family and in many ways i

think in this sort of environment where people feel like giving their data cannen monetized, can be used in different ways they probably get suspicious if that isn't the case. >> we have been discouraged from giving away ou our social secury number online. more specific luke's plan, azmat's plan if you give all the information up front. >> i think they wanted as much information as possible to calculate the exact subsidy that you would be eligible for. >> does this add to the bulkiness. >> absolutes. it requires more bandwidth for the processers to save that. >> how costly would that be to fix? >> that's the unbelievable thing, they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build

this and this system is not health care. this doesn't even provide health insurance. this system just replicates a paper form into a computer system that gives you the ability to apply for health care. >> well, hopefully we'll look at this all as a beta test that improves over the next few months as the open enrollment continues. up next, the great plains and the immigrate beasts, the black hills where the bison got back. >> 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?

>> every morning from 6 to 10am al jazeera america brings you more us and global news than any other american news channel. find out what happened and what to expect. >> start every morning, every day, 6am to 10 eastern with al jazeera america. >> just a few weeks ago i saw my self in the ba badlands in south dakota, i stopped and took a picture with my phone. took a picture of the north american bison, native to the american plains. the bison has a difficult history, it was hunted almost to extinction. america tonight sent chris bury to the black hills to find out

how the bison found its home. >> in the black hills of south dakota these cowboys and girls are preparing for work the way they did a century ago. >> lord we ask that no harm come to man or beast. >> but the dawn light reveals a thoroughly modern caravan winding through the are area. braving a damp bone chilling went to experience a spectacle only seen in the movies. >> this is probably as close to the old west as you're going to get. >> for 43 years cowboy bob lantis, works, a wild herd of more than 1200 plains bison, big and tough, weighing as much as

2,000 pounds. their lineage stretches back tens of thousands of years before history was ever ridden. >> as long as i can keep riding a horse i'm going to be here. >> on this morning more than 14,000 visitors from all over the world come to watch. the kyder family come here. >> i love to bring my kids out here just to experience the natural history to see the things awe've read about. >> for the three kyder children the buffalo become more of a dusty speck of a history lesson. >> i would have liked to see them run by the millions, i think that would be pretty amazing but just to be able to see them at all, it's pretty cool. >> and for mary ann ettinger, proud of her lakota heritage.

>> almost made me cry when i saw them run past, there is something that pulls at my heart. >> soon over a ridge top the first buffalo break the horizon, barely visible at first but then the whips crack. and the cowboys holler is the way they always have. >> ah get up there! get up there! come on. come on. >> and the vast empty plains come to life. the ground itself shaking from the thundering hooives. hooves. a sound so ominous it terrifies a herd of elk and sends them scattering. if the scene seems familiar, no wonder, it was here in the very valley where the star studded

cast filmed how the west was won. and for these modern cowboys even with some modern help trying to herd the buffalo on their native turf and not always getting their way. >> head them out head 'em out,. >> get out at a here. >> was a heart-pounding thrill. buffalo are fears and fast, able to outrun a man in short bursts. >> this is terry sorenson's first time in the roundup. >> what is it like? >> very exciting, race along, wind flying, buffalo, everything like that, it was a lot of fun. >> and after participating in more than 40 roundups, bob landis knows why the crowds are have grown, from a few hundred to thousands of spectators. >> they are running as fast as they can run. there's cracking of whips.

you kind of get into it, they are rooting basically for the buffalo. >> and it is no wonder that crowds today root for the buffalo. considering its tortured past in this country. the buffalo here are direct descendants of five wild calves saved by a south dakota rancher in 1883. by then buffalo were this close to extinction. in one of the more shameful episodes of american history, a combination of greed and government policy nearly wiped out these magnificent creatures. in nearby rapid city we found amuseum dedicated to telling that terrible teal. tale. inside susan are ricci shows us.

>> slawd erd by trappers and tourists and hunters often with the support of the u.s. government. >> as the real road forged its way west and settleers rode the planes, bison were in the way and so they were shot and exterminated to make way for western settlement. >> the railroads promoted buffalo shooting excursions, where buffalo were shot not for their meat or hides but merely for sport. >> it was such a glorious event and so sporting and exciting to be in the american west and shooting these large animals and there was nothing sporting about it. >> then the army hired hunters to kill millions more knowing the indians considered the enemy back then, depended on the buffalo for food and clothing.

in 1875 general philipp sheridan, send them powder and lead, for the sake of lasting peace, let them kill and skin until the buffaloes are exterminated. >> the army did more than the indians could have done, causing them to go on to reservations by cimg off their food source. >> by the 1880s only a few hundred survived. these vast plains once home to thundering herds, fell silent. a death wind for the sioux. >> you can read the accounts and see pictures of thousands and thousands of buffalo skulls

stacked high at the skinning yards. slaughtered for their tongues or their hides, or simply for pleasure. it makes me ashamed. >> we should be ashamed that human beings did this to the buffalo. >> but slowly and surely thanks to careful management the buffalo are coming back. at custer state park, the herd has grown so it must be culled every year. the buffalo inspected and innoculated against infectious diseases. then branded. so the animals can be tracked over time. craig pugsley helps coordinate the annual roundup now in its 48th year. >> for us it's a management tool. we would do the roundup whether

anybody came or not. we need to bring in the herd and get an accurate count. we vaccinate the heifer calves for brucellosis and we cull out the ones we want to sell at the fall auction. >> so it's more than a spectator sport, it's a way to cultivate and protect the buffalo. >> how long do you want to keep coming? >> until i die, falling off dead chasing the buffalo. >> nearly 400,000 it has taken 100 years but the species is secure no longer in danger. the majestic animals here a vivid reminder of what the country came so close to losing and a stunning example of how the efforts to save an enduring symbol of the west last survived

despite a scandal that passed. >> beautiful, our report from chris bury. coming up next, a lab in the sky, what this ordinary thing can tell us about our changing climate.

(vo) next: faultlines chases the flames as 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? >> finally tonight, a ride you won't soon forget. won't soon forget. >> finally tonight, a ride you won't soon forget. at least we won't. techknow's phil, found out it took a solid stomach and a lot of imuts to travel like this. >> from a distance our plane looks like any other. but close up, you could see it's anything but. i'm minutes away from boarding this plane with nasa

experiments. it's a three pronged attack prospect signs the dc 8, nasa launches a lear jet, and a u-2 modeled after the spy plane. the men and women are learning more about the climate change and the role humans play in it. >> all right roger ready for taxi. >> 40 pounds sta starboard. >> 9:00 a.m., everyone's seated and it's wheels up. we are flying right into clouds and storms. it's a bumpy ride with lots of turbulence. >> everybody grab a seat, looks like there's some clouds coming up ahead. >> just took off an hour ago but scientists went right to work,

all sorts of instruments that are doing some really incredible science. we have several missions today. one of the first things we're doing is flying over the gulf of mexico, measuring clouds and pollution. >> another thing that makes this flight different, the passengers are in charge. >> we would really like to go to the west of that. >> they tell crew where to go and at what altitude sometimes flying over several times. >> an air craift is steerable. we fly it manually, really get to know a microlevel over a broad area of ground of what's happening. >> we are flying right into clouds and storms. it's a bumpy ride with lots of turbulence. >> everybody grab a seat for the next couple of minutes. looks like clouds and fog coming up ahead. but if there's little puffy clouds around it it would be great to fly through those.

>> the first person to gain our attention is principal investigator jack dibb. >> it's a especially designed inlet where it's expands to come through the wall of the airplane. >> what are you collecting there? >> we're collecting any particle that's bigger than a 1005 my microns. they tell us about pollution or sea salt or dust. >> and dibb doesn't like what he's finding. >> the results you're getting does it make you concerned about the future of our climate. >> i'm not hugely optimistic. >> perhaps the most important piece of equipment on this flight is the laser. sayd ismail.

>> what you are seeing is the distribution of the ozone. >> take a look. purple is the lowest intensity and it gradually increases with green blue and red. red is the highest intensity of these gases. >> what are we learning about the climate change? >> the amount of co2 hiflt is verhistoricalis very high. >> when phil torrez reports on techknow. 7:30 eastern. if you would like to comment on anything you've seen here tonight, log on to aljazeera.com, tell us what you want to see, in a nightly current affairs program. please join the conversation with us on twitter or at our facebook page.

we'll have more of america tonight, tomorrow. >> every summer in america, a force of nature becomes a man-made disaster. some call it a war, millions of acres, billions of dollars. no end in sight. >> in this episode of fault lines, we follow the 2013 wildfire season and ask - with more homes than ever now under threat, what are the real costs of putting them out? >> the fire took a breath and we got our foot on the throat of it and we're going to keep choking it out.