on"america tonight" - a critical health alert for millions of american women. a routine surgical procedure that 100,000 have each year, and a warning that it could spread cancer. >> the magnitude of this is not small. this is probably going to be a global epidemic na statement of claiming 4 cancers of -- of stage 4 cancer of women caused by doctors. a beginning with a simply diagnosis of common fibroid.

how did it become a cancer. gaza under siege - israel delivers a steady barrage. and the first signs of israeli troops at the border. how will they step that crisis down? and the great garbage glut swirling across the pacific, right up to the smothers of an island shores of an island paradise. more to it - an update on how much is out there. good evening, thanks for joining us, i'm julie chen. at this hour there's more fear about a rapidly ratcheting up crisis in the middle east as rockets and missiles fly back and forth across israel and the gaza strip. israel appears to prepare for a

ground invasion of gaza. thousands of troops are being sent to the border. the united states is calling on both sides to dial back essentials. secretary of state john kerry spoke with israel's binyamin netanyahu. and is reaching out to palestinian leader mahmoud abbas as well. israeli officials say that three rockets launched from gaza targeted a nuclear reactor in the southern israeli town. one rocket was intercepted, two fell without causing damage or injury. sheila macvicar brings us the latest. >> reporter: israel calls this operation protective edge. it's intensifying air and sea launch defensive against targets in the gaza strip. in 48 hours israeli military launched hundreds of strikes with tonnes of munitions. more in this short period than in the eight day offensive against hamas fighters in 2012. as reservists and equipment including tanks position on the

border, israeli officials threaten there'll be more. >> we will not stop. they'll receive a hard blow from the air and the see. if a ground invasion is needed there'll be a ground invasion. >> israel's defence ministry released the pictures, showing israeli air force attacks on what they say were arms cashes and rocket launch sites. some strikes have targeted the tunnels that run from southern gaza under the border into egypt, extensive and illicit life lines used to smuggle goods, people and weapons. the focus of the attacks, say israeli officials, is the group hamas, and its military operatives. the palestinian president says these are attacks against all. >> translation: this war is not against hamas or any faction, but it is against the palestinian people. >> for the first time israel's defence ministry released

surveillance pictures, trying to bolster their claims to attempt to avoid civilian casualties. targeted homes are hit with a loud but not damaging munition. a warning shot called a knock on the roof. to encourage people to flee. but dozens have been kill. among them children. al jazeera correspondent stefanie dekker is in gaza. this is the scene at one of the areas major hospitals. this devastation is the result of an israeli air strike, and there are more cases here in gaza hospital. eight members of this man's family are injured. >> translation: there were 22 in the house. they bombed behind my house, and mine collapsed. those that are doing this are not human being, why are you doing this? >> israel says it's targetting

those responsible for launching strikes. we seeing civilians here. >> translation: i left the mosque with two of my friends, a rocket landed in front of us. my friend killed, another injured. i'm in a little pain, nothing compared to what happened to them. >> reporter: the shops -- the hospital is instructing to cope. elsewhere hospitals are overwhelmed, the medical system on the verge of collapse. there's no sign na israel is prepared -- that israel is prepared to stop and palestinians worry there'll be more violence. >> we tried to de-escalate, messages were sent. we told hamas to stop the fire. they continued. now we are acting. >> it will be very bad, harsh for us. but what we can do? what we can do? >> reporter: on the other side of the border in israel people are asking the same thing.

[ siren ] >> reporter: sirens wail, signalling the launch of rockets from gaza. fighters continuing to attack israeli cities. when the sirens go, people old and young have just a few seconds. maybe as much as a minute to find shelter and avoid the incoming rockets. >> we are trying to function and lead normal lives. it's not easy for us. the city is prepared for this. our spirits are not. >> in earlier conflicts armed palestinian groups had short-ranged missiles, many home made, targetting communities nearby. in the past few days longer range rock eds made in syria and -- rockets made in syria and smuggled to gaza lit up systems from jerusalem to hadara and haifa. there has been no casualties reported due to the intercept system called iron dome,

tracking palestinian missiles in the sky, destroying them before they hit their targets. foreign leaders are supporting israel and its response, arguing that it is intolerable for people to live under the threat of missile attacks. the u.s. is urging deescalation from both sides. >> we don't want to see civilian casualties. that is a prominent reason why it's important to move forward in de-escalate the situation on the ground. >> there's no negotiations and no mediator as palestinians and israelies continue to threaten more violence. "america tonight" sheila macvicar joins us here. you know, to some casual observers it may seem that this trouble came from what started with the tensions over the last of the three israeli boys and eventually their deaths. is that what it is, or is it a broader series of event that all conspire to happen at the moment? >> it's a broader series of events. the ag jobby in israel -- agony

in israel over the kidnap and murder of the three israeli teens deepened tensions. that is not the reason or the only reason why this is happening now at this time. hamas, in fact, is operating from a position of grave weakness. it's lost support in egypt. under abdul fatah al-sisi, it cut it off. it's not getting money or supplies. it closed the tunnels. it has no way of resupplying things which could be bout on the black market and smuggled through gaza hamas needs to get back to where it was before, which is to take the strikes, knowing there's be a response. >> everybody would like to find a way out. who are the inter-lockettures.

the israelis have been talking to the egyptians, they are not in a big hurry to act. that leaves the americans. secretary of state john kerry is on the phone and is speaking to mahmoud abbas. he talked to prime minister binyamin netanyahu. again, how do you get both sides to de-escalate to calm down and get back to where they were. >> "america tonight"s sheila macvicar, thank you very much. when we return - a health alert for millions of american women. first diagnosed with common fibroids, a boston physician found herself facing a devastating diagnosis. the routine treatment spread a raging cancer in her body. >> i learnt my chance of recurrents, the disease coming back, was in the ballpark of 80% because of how they handled the tumor inside of me. >> reporter: 80%. >> 8-0. if it comes back i have a life

expect si of two years an important warning for every woman facing this treatment. sara hoy looks at minimally invasive hysterectomy and why the government is taking a second look at it also ahead - plastic in paradise. there's more to it. a story we brought you weeks ago, and a follow up about how concerned we should be about the great pacific garbage patch.

for millions of american women, here is a story that raises alarm. as many as three out of four women will have uterine fibroids at some time. a full hysterectomy can involve a recovering taking six weeks, a newer remedy, minimally invasive surgery can cut recovery

to days. we hear about a hidden danger to this approach, one with deadly consequences. "america tonight"s sara hoy was given xs clues access to a patient braving a fight after the procedure that was supposed to help her. >> reporter: it's the last place amy reed, a boston anna thesiologist and mother of six expected to be, in a hospital ward as a cancer patient, accompanied by her husband, a boston heart surgeon. they received the devastating news last fall. amy had a rare and deadly form of cancer, stage 4. >> it was a complete shock. when they called me a week later and said "are you home alone or is someone with you?" i knew that that was not a good thing. i - i didn't - it was not even on the radar screen. >> walking in you felt

confident. >> i didn't have cancer walking in. how could it be possible. i had been screened. i had tests and spoken to all the right people. >> reporter: but amy did have cancer, an aggressive and hard to detect cars oma with a survival rate of 3-5 years. her cancer was discovered after under going a hysterectomy to remove what she thought was benign fibroids or masses growing in her uterus. the couple have been waging war against the disease and a routine gina cological procedure performed on women, they believed it upstaged her cancer. >> when i found it was a routine standard of care, i knew we were dealing with a public health hazard. >> the couple discovered that during amy's surgery, her surgeon used a device called an morsilator to mince the fibroids into smaller pieces.

the procedure spread the hidden cancer cells. >> you can see tissue, chunks, dripping down. it's not a refined procedure. amy was never informed or consulted about the the use of morsilation. had she known, she would not have allowed it. >> i did not know, it's not something they tell you when they say your surgery went well. they didn't say it went well. i learnt we had been morsilated and my chaps of recurrents was somewhere in the ballpark of 80% because of how they handled the tumor. >> reporter: 80%. >> 8-0. if it came backing i knew i had a life expect si of two years. >> reporter: amy under went chemotherapy and surgery to remove cancerous tissue. >> my wife was hit, in a way as a surgeon, as a catastrophic

hit. if you disrupt a cancer, you upstage it from a stage 1 to stage 4. we were flying at 30,000 feet and we were torpedos. >> reporter: overless than one in 10,000 women are struck by this. for women that suffer fibroids it goes up to 1 in 350. for those women morsilation is a risk. this man is channelling his grief into a campaign, telling anyone that will listen that there's no place for morsilation during a hysterectomy, and it can be deadly for women. the couple took their concerns to administrators at the hospital where amy had her surgery and her husband worked. the recovery and campaign has taken its toll. >> my husband has put a lot of effort into the campaign,

getting the world out and trying to change the surgical practice. we initially went to the hospital and said "this is happening, this is going on, what are you going to do about it?" and they basically shut us out and shut him down told him "don't come back to work." >> reporter: he has been relieved of surgical duties, and spends most time rallying his wife's story. why did you care to do this? >> the overwhelming magnitude of the truth of what we confronted. they are doing this to 100,000 women a year in the united states alone. this happens in europe and south america. and other places in the world. so the magnitude is not small. this is probably going to be a global epidemic in stage 4 cancers of women. >> the hospital declined the

interview request. however, they confirmed in writing that they have stopped using power morselation during a hister ebbing tommy -- hister ebbing tommy. many surgeons stand by the procedure. >> it's cutting through the tissue as we are pulling the tish ou ute. >> dr cathy huang is a director at new york's school of university medicine and specialises in minimally invasive surgery, performing 300 robotic procedures and says morsalition is a valid approach of. >> it has a role in the appropriate patients. it's not for everything. everything has benefits and we must weigh the wisdom and benefits versus surgery and open surgery. we cannot take the choice away from women. it should be up to the patient and the woman. her right to choose whether or

not she's going to go through it with minimally invasive surgery. >> major gina cological associations are yet to put a ban but are asking for data. amy and her husband have taken the fight to the media and washington d.c., including the food and drug administration, which responded with an alert in april to the medical community. the f.d.a. declined our interview request, referring us to a written statement reading: the f.d.a. warning did not go far enough. >> if i told you campbell soup was causing cancer at a rate of 1 in 350. the f.d.a. would pull it off the shelves in the supermarket. that's a no-brainer. n.y.u.'s david says banning it would be a mistake.

>> we have 15 years experience with mursalation. alternatives is an experiment. we are happy to look into alternative experiments. it's an experiment. that's the way medicine is. we don't know if the solution is worse than the problem. hence the decision not to remove it. these are human beings, not soup cans. each is different. each one has a different set of issues and challenges. >> you may have the one person that says listen, you may do 1500, 1600 of these a year. i'm the one, and i now have such and such cancer. i'm the one who is sick. i'm the one who is dying. what do you tell me when i say i'm that few who is the rare case? >> i would be with them every step of the way. that is the hor junior of medicine -- horror of medicine, is people get sick, the surgeon stays and works with them.

same thing can be argued on the other side. take the morse lator off the table. openeder hup. had a -- opened her up. had a small legion, blood clot on the lungs, and kills hundreds of thousands because of bed rest required by an open procedure. what about her. what do you say to her? >> an f.d.a. hearing is scheduled this week to determine whether morse illation should be banned. >> for amy and her husband, it can't come soon enough. >> we hope the government says you as a specialty is failing to regulate yourself. we need to do so. until then individual patients will have to step up and say this is unsafe, i don't want it. >> they are doing their best to make sure others have the chance to do that. "america tonight" sara hoy joins us on the set. it's not just brigaham women's

looking at this but others. >> yes, other hospitals are taking note. until the f.d.a. ruling comes out. what about amy, we have seen here through this, through the keam therapy ni -- chemotherapy, how is she doing? >> she's a tough woman. chemotherapy is done. she finished her last day of work and are moving to pennsylvania, closer to family. >> and hopefully other work as well. >> absolutely. questions about this procedures raised other issues with the device and other technologies used on millions of patients. dr david chalenner is a former chair looking into the process that f.d.a. uses to clear medical product for the marketplace. >> we appreciate you being here. your committee did not look at the morse illators, but you see

it as a procedure that maybe should have raised flags. >> yes, i do. >> this was sort of below the radar at the time of our study. we looked at the experience of the proceeding decade and decade and a half in the country with devices that had been cleared under the 510k process. we recommended to the f.d.a. that they reconversation it and look more carefully. >> there are 10, 20, 30 devices that kill people because of unexpected complications. this appears now to be one of the current examples. >> how does that happen? the f.d.a. takes a lot of time to look at things. how do these products get to the market? >> this has historic legs. prior to the early 19 '70s,

there was basically no regulation of devices and bringing them to the market. then some things happened, like the dal con shield, which was producing pelvic abscesses in women using it. the shily heart valve, which was embollizes unexpectedly to the periphery after being implanted. so the f.d.a., the government, the public, the legislature said we need to look at devices as they come out of the modern device industry and find a way to do this safely. >> you think there needs to be greater scrutiny. i have to ask you - aren't there some products that no amount of beta testing will uncover the potential risks, maybe you need to get to the point where it's used widely in the market before you see problems. >> if you are going to do that,

you need a strong signal desection mechanism in the marketplace feeding back early. right now the systems do not do that. >> everybody in the reporting chain can find a reason not to report. and, therefore, the signal by the time it gets to the f.d.a. is weak. what we need is a signal detection system of problems that gets stronger. >> and not wait for individuals to tell their own stories to get the word out. forker chairman of the institute of medicine. thank you for being was. >> you're welcome. ahead on the programme - front line iraq. correspondent croft of putt zel back from the center of a country in crisis, where he found fear in many communities. >> you can see the car covered

in shrapnel. it would have been a bad place to be. >> correspondent joins us with his reporters notebook on frontline iraq and what lies ahead. later in the hour, zooming in on the fight for chicago. day. >> night with the photo journalist, a front line witness into shootings as the city faces a hot summer of gun violence. stuart! stuart! stuart! stuart! ♪

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now a snapshot of stories making headlines on "america tonight". a san francisco giants fan beaten into a coma outside dodgers stadium in 2011 has won an $18 million lawsuit against the dodgers. they'll pay a quarter of the sum, the rest split between the two men that beat him. ships are changing their schedules on the mississippi river because of high water levels, causing flooding, closing roads. spurred by a heavy rain fall, it has risen at an alarming rate over the last few days. president obama will consider how to deploy the national guard to the u.s. border to control the rapid influx of migrant children crossing the border.

>> the president says it will be a temporary not a permanent solution. 50,000 schig have been picked -- children have been picked up at the border. >> violence in iraq is escalating. iraqi security officials say more than 50 unidentified bodies, including those of two children were found in a shia village. iraqi special forces carried out door to door raids in search of fighters from the islamic state. we spent the last few weeks reporting on the crisis much here is what was found, beginning in the capital of the kurdish region. >> reporter: it started with an attack by a shadowy enemy. now, four weeks later, a full-blown war has erupted. what that looks like depend on where you go. i'm here in front of the citadel. how do you feel about the

possibility of kurdistan gaping independence. >> america put this, we want independ. >> erbil is peaceful. the effects of war are felt every day. >> how long have you been waiting for gas? >> eight. >> reporter: you've been waitingate hours, since 3am. >> 3am. >> reporter: lines of cars stretch for hours as people wait for gasoline in an oil-rich region of the world. we have been talking to people say they can only fill up about half of their tanks, so they are going to go home, park the cars and come back and do this all again tomorrow. some people don't have gas left, and have to push the cars the entire way through the line.

there are high hopes among the kurds that this will be over soon. during the turmoil kurdistan peshmerga seized control of kirkuk. we went to see how the kurdish fighters are digging into the territory, and have no plans to let it go. we passed the security line which, for years, separated the kurdish region from the rest of iraq. we are on our way to kirkuk, which was in the hands of iraqi army up until a few weeks ago. this looks like part of an iraqi army uniform that a soldier stripped off whilst fleeing from the i.s.i.l. it's in front of a humvee that looked like they destroyed on the way as they escaped. this is one of many given to them by the americans. less than half a kilometre council the road lies the last i.s.i.l. checkpoint before reaching the city. has the i.s.i.l. tried to attack

this area at all? >> translation: yes. they have tried hard to break the front lines and get closer to kirkukment the kurdish forces stood strong. >> reporter: everything on this side of the security line is in control of peshmerga and on in side in control of i.s.i.l. the solder tells us as long -- soldier tells us as long as the i.s.i.l. stays over there, they are not going to engage them. caught admit middle of the fighting is refuges. in family arrived from mosul. they have piled as many people in, i'm counting six people in the back seat. shi'as fleeing the rebels, sunnis fleeing the air strikes, and christians fearing attacks against minorities. we are heading into the village, they are not allowing a lot of people in. we have a military escort. it looks pretty much abandoned.

you can see looking at the car, it's covered in shrapnel marks the the wall is covered in shrapnel. it could have been a bad place to be. this is a mark here, and then it sprayed the rest of the house. >> yes. >> reporter: couple of glass windows have been hit. you can see it here. >> yes, look here. >> reporter: it got through it gate. >> we don't have water or electricity. we are afraid, but we have faith, of god, that he will save us. he never forgets us. we are proud of being christian. >> reporter: people holding on to their faith is a theme we saw again and again amongst people fleeing for their lives. we are walking through a refugee camp. most here have fled from mosul. it's the second day of rama dam, one of the holiest months in is

lame. people are gathering water. usually it's a time of reapplication and people fast -- reflection and people fast and don't drink. it's difficult under these circumstances. the sun went down, it's time for all the families to break the fast. this one invited us in. we'll join them. i want to thank you for including us. i know that times are hard, and it's incredibly generous of you to invite us in to share the meal with you. "america tonight"s correspondent is here in the studio. you got back this week. are you seeing day do day

changes in iraq? >> i think so. kurdish region is getting closer to declaring full-fledged independence. it looks like they are going for it, which is making baghdad nervous. today nouri al-maliki accused the kurds of having ties to the islamic state, harbouring terrorists. it seemed an act of the desperation. when we were there we didn't see evidence of that. looks like they are going for it and may get it soon. >> is it possible, because the relationship, the energy reserves, they need each other to get through? >> not necessarily. they took control of kirkuk, which is an oil-rich region, and that could allow them to stand on their own feet, and all of the money that they need to support them. i think they don't feel they need baghdad at all. >> appreciate your reporting on the frontline iraq.

after the break, paying the price for the big sleazy. he was a brash, bold hero for new orleans after the storm. why some in the city think his prison sentence isn't long enough. also on corruption, crime and punishment in new orleans, we look ahead to a stunning case of prosecutorial misconduct that led this innocent man to louisiana's death row. >> one thing i do know, i didn't commit the murder or have nothing to do with it. i can say that much the fact is people are allowing the district attorney to do this damage. my whom family was destroyed. >> thursday, correspondent sara hoy brings his story and a closer look at prosecutorial misconduct, a justice gone wrong, thursday on "america tonight".

we can add another name to the list, forker detroit mayor from illinois. governor rob migilawicm, and former new orleans mayor, spectacular down falls led them to prison. new orleans mayor on his pledge to clean up corruption sentence the for a bribery and kickback

scene, sentenced today. the man that left the courthouse, a far cry from the brash, even outrageous voice that spoke for the city in an anguished day after hurricane katrina. this ray nagin stone faced and silent, sentenced to 10 years for his part in a corruption scheme, half of what most legal observers thought he would get under federal sentencing guidelines. he was ordered to pay back less than 20,000 of half a million he owes the government. less than what prosecutors insist he deserved. >> what ray nagin did was sell his office over and over again. >> we were duped. >> the damn that he did, what he ipp flicted on the community, to include you, ma'am. it's incall coolable. >> a stunned prosecution

objected to the sentence, setting up the possibility of an appeal. since his arrest 19 months ago, through his trial, testimony and conviction, on 20 corruption charges dating as far back as a decade ago, nagin insisted he did no wrong. >> well, you know, all of this is pretty surreal to me. you know, i maintain my innocence. we'll appeal this thing. it's something that is it difficult. >> on the witness stand, and steams in glib testimony. he blamed others, insisting his accusers lied and confused facts. after seven days of testimony, the jury convicted him in a scheme that netted him hundreds of house aned in payments and chips, and other gifts, including tonnes of granite. materials delivered to the construction business. in change, subcontractors won

millions of city business contracts, especially valuable in the rebuilding after the storm. at the very point that the nagin was a national figure as a face of new orleans. its laing and brazen -- leading and brazen champion againa government that failed to step in. as most of the city lay submerged by katrina's floodwaters and resident forced to flee to safety, nagin was billed as a hero, unafraid to speak out, in line with an image established before the storm, as an outsider, a reformer that came into office to clean up city hall. >> there are too many people who thought that city should go in a different direction. but the people - the people have said they like the direction we're going in. >> in his first months as mayor,

nagin suspended city departments, pushed a sting operation netting more than 80 arrests and avoided sweat heart deals with contractors. it is not lost on new orleans. long plagued by corruption. in a state well-known for other political scandals. >> and, of course, political resurrection. case in point - former governor edward edwards serving 10 years in prison for racket earring and extortion. he's running for congress. . >> ray nigin is to report to a security prison. others ponder whether the sentence was too harsh or lenient. a columnist for the new york times - in your latest column, jarvis, you say the judge is showing mercy. that usually comes where a defendant is repentant, acknowledges his responsibility

and admits he did wrong. >> yes, and ray nagin did not show remorse, and maintained his innocence in these matters. so the judge didn't say that she was basing her sentence on anything that he has said or to express remorse or anything like that. what she said was she did not buy the prosecution's theory that he was the leader of a security. all of the members of the conspire ace were coequal, and she was persuaded by some of the letters that he was a good man that did bad crimes. >> is there forgiveness in the community or is new orleans ready to have this over with? >> i won't say that there's a vast willingness to forgive him. there's a lot of hurt feels and anger. in the community there's a thought because the expectation was he would get around 20 years, a lot of people seem

astonished at the judge's finding of 10 years. now, she was working on a different calculation than the prosecution, and apparently than the defense works they saw the minimum to be 20 years, she saw it around 15. it wasn't a dramatic a departure from the sentence as we felt it. it was dramatic nonetheless. >> you know, i have to point out that you have a city and a state this had more of its share of political scandal as we refer to here. when you have something like this, and the sentence is limited in this way, he'll go a minimum security prison, serve 10 years, and we have seen the case of edwin out, forgiven, and running for office. is this what will happen, the association that will always be made to new orleans. >> new orleans long had a reputation, scandal, as you

point out. it's probably the best face of that. that being said, he had a reputation for like ability. nowhere near the level of popularity. i don't think you will see ray nagin on the public stage. >> thank you for being here. >> turning to the fight for chicago. where there's no let up in the gun violence plaguing the city. tuesday chicago law did 200th homicide of the year aring following a holiday weekend during which dozens were shot. it's played out night after night on the streets of the windy city, where we found a video journalist devoting years to the graveyard shift. we spent a day in the night with ken hessleck. >> we are headed to what is left of the low rises. there are multiple shots fired, a lady's car was hit and someone

shot in the head. this could get a bit dicey, by the way, there's a crowd. not safe here. >> stay with me, if you can. i am ken, a video journalist. i shoot news overnight in chicago for all the local television stations. get in, get what you need and get the hell out. don't linger. one to 10, safety. 10 being the least safest, this is a 10. well, first thing i do is turn the radios on, see if i can hear something. i watched the 10 o'clock news to see if there's something i can

follow up on. we'll go to the fire on the south end. we don't know where it is, we know generally, but not exactly. . >> what's the injured? >> larry and i have a history. we go back 25-20 years. we've been at some crazy incidents over the years together. >> spent a lot of time and night together. >> yes, in all the wrong places. >> in all the wrong places. >> we go back to the middle area where i like to sit. if i sit here on the south side. something will happen on the west side. >> this is where i usually sit.

this is a sit down and wait area, definitely. hello. i do shootings every night. we have two very busy neighbours. the west side of chicago, and the south side of chicago. and i spend probably 89% of my time in both of those areas. i did a homicide on that street right there. two months ago. i have been to over 1700 homicides in my career so far. >> in the last couple of years the shootings have been more intense. people are not willing to turn the other check any more. there seems to be a serious problem with anger management going on. i couldn't describe to you how minor some of the infractions might be. all of a sudden a gun comes out and they shoot. they are not necessarily pointing, they shoot sideways,

you can't the hit the side of a barn shooting sideways and incident people are shot. >> i'm pat curry, the managing editor for wgn tv news. it was important for us as a news industry to be aware that there was violence occurring out there. we'd come in, look at the day and wouldn't look at what was behind us. because we weren't there. ken changed all that, because he brought crime into the newsroom in the morning. chicago is a city where if it's not in my backyard, i don't want to be bothered. part of what ken has done, and what we are trying to do is it is in your backyard, even if you live 10 miles from where it's happened. it's in your backyard because we'll all pay the cost of violence, no matter where it

happens >> i still love chicago. i worry for chicago, but i just hope that they can get it under control, i really do, you know. they need to higher a lot more -- hire a lot more cops. you know, it's a good city. four shootings. four shootings and a foot chase. they brought me to tears earlier. we were doing a long interview, and the question was "are you concerned about the city?" a day in the night request photographer ken herself lick. the garbage patch swirling across the pacific trashing the hawaii islands. there's more to it. how much is reaching our shores?

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finally from us, as toikio faces the -- tokyo faces the heavy rains, we think back to the nuclear problem they had. and the ocean trash being washed ashore on the hawaii islands. there's more to the story, a national academy of science found that there are fewer pieces of smaller plastics in the o than thought. experts estimated a million tonnes, and now between 7,000 and 35,000 tonnes - still a lot. adam may find all the plastic is an ugly visitor in paradise. >> reporter: beautiful beaches, white sands and pristine water. the ocean means everything to hawaii. it attracts surfers from around the world who catch waves on the

north shore. families who save up for the dream vacation and couples seeking the perfect romantic getaway. on a good year the tourism industry brings in well over 10 billion. mark manual grew up on the batches. >> this is my home. i feel a responsibility to do my part to make sure my children and my children's children have clean beaches. >> manual made doing his part a full-time job. he works for noah, and for more than 13 years it has been trying to keep the islands clean. >> there's a constant flux of plastic, a constant battle. >> manual's job got harder. throughout the main hawaii imedz we have been getting pieces of japan's tsunami debris. we positive id'ed two ides, one

a 7 meter fishing boat washing up. >> radiation from the debris is not a major fear, according to most experts. the problem is adding more debris to what is already there. >> i think a misconception is that anything with japanese writing is from the tsunami. we have been finding numerous items with fairs languages, korean, japanese and from the united states as well. >> this beech is cleaned by the city of honolulu, but some of hawaii's remote beaches don't see the same treatment. >> every year or so we get a group together and try to go up into the north-western hawaiian islands. >> the hawaiian islands act as a tooth comb, filtering debris, a system of currents pushing the waters of the pacific and everything in them in a clockwise circle. it creates the great pacific garbage patch, where trash of all shapes and sizes is dense

throughout the water column. close to 90% of the garbage is plastic. it makes for an ugly day at the beach, but it's not mark's only motivation. >> the main thing was to minimise the impact on our wildlife. >> these guys will eat plastic thinking it's food. it will be lodged in the in testinal track. or worse, something leeching out of the plastics. >> jeff works with animals, affected by plastic at hawaii's sea-life park. >> if we don't do something, and we can't treat the environment better with more respect, it will have a significant impact and maybe this guy will be gone. >> this plastic problem isn't always evident. at first glance the beautiful

beach may appear untouched, until you dig in and take a closer look. cyst the sand and you -- cyst the sand and you find pieces of plastic from who knows where. >> we found something staggering in the last year, where a researcher at a local university. he developed a technique where he can ultrasound living birds and found every bird had some degree of plastics ingestion, i couldn't believe it. i was stunned. >> reporter: the irony is the debris and nets act as mobile reefs, attracting fish and the fish attract other wildlife. according to a recent study, plastic absorbs chemicals from the water. fish ingesting the plastic ingest the chemicals, impacting the fish we eat. some like mike get the brunt of the blame.

fishermen get caught up in it too. >> it's a hazard to fishing and drive a boat. i remember an incident where the coast guard sent me an email asking me to go to another vessel that i didn't know was there, because it was folded. it worries me. i make a living off having a clean environment. if i don't have a clean environment, i don't have fish. >> austin does his part, keeping debris out of the ocean both by reusing. this was debris. >> now we use it as a chair. >> and what he doesn't sit on, he recycles. >> whatever we pick up we bring back and deliver to a special bin. >> every day there's more. during a recent clean up, mark's team recovered close to 100 plastic you tense ills. 300 -- you ten sills, 300 toys,

900 flip-flops. more than enough to keep him motivated. >> if you see a piece of trash, pick it up, it will end up in the ocean. >> if it does, mark may pick it up. trashing paradise. that's "america tonight". thursday on our programme - the state of louisiana tried to execute a former death row ipp mate season times, he said he was innocent. no one believed him. the case against him unravelled. how misconduct by prosecutors nearly killed an innocent man. his story on thursday. if you would like to comment on the stories, log on to the website aljazeera.com/americatonight. join the conversation on twitter or google+. we'll have more of "america tonight" tomorrow.

>> consider this: the news of the day plus so much more. >> we begin with the growing controversy. >> answers to the questions no one else will ask. >> real perspective, consider this on al jazeera america president obama goes to texas. but not to the border. as even members of his own party worry the immigration crises could turn into advertise katrina. i'm antonio mora and much more straight ahead. >> president obama is in texas pushing his 3.7 billion plan. >> the challenge, is congress prepared to act? >> he is not vistaing the