where science meets humanity. >> this is some of the best driving i've every done, even though i can't see. >> tech know. >> we're here in the vortex. >> monday, 5:30 eastern. only on al jazeera america. >> this is aljazeera america live from new york city. and i'm tony. >> heartbreaking and anger. >> kayla has touched the heart of the world. >> america confirmed that an american hostage by isil is dead. but how and when is a mystery. >> isil, the cause of death is responsible. >> the white house promised justice for her family and said isil will be stopped.

>> kayla mueler's family said that they received the devastating news this past weekend. the 27-year-old is the fourth american idol to die while being held by isil. and jamie, what do which know about how the obama administration plans it respond? >> well, today president obama labeled isil a hateful and abrent terrorist group and said that the united states will do whatever it takes to bring those responsible to justice. >> the white house confirmed that a jordanian f-16 bomb bombed the facility last friday, but cast down the isil assertion that the airstrike is what killed the 26-year-old captive, kayla mueler. >> there's no evidence of civilians in the target area

prior to the coalition strike taking place. and that would call into question the claims made by isil >> reporter: the family received photographic evidence by isil that after intelligence by the u.s. community confirmed kayla's death, but not how she died. the pentagon won't be conducting the usual investigation into the casualties because they don't consider the isil claim to be legitimate. >> we don't have a credible alleges now that there were any civilian casualties because of the strike, and let's not forget in whose hands this woman died and who is ultimately responsible for her isil. >> in a statement, president obama said that mueller was all that is in in the world. and she she was a constit went of

john mccain who eulogized her on the senate floor. >> on behave of the united states, i want to give the deepest condolences to kayla's parents. >> at least one captive in syria, austin tice, his parents have gone public, and said that the u.s. has clear guidelines for bringing hostages home safely. as a backdrop to all of this, the president is working with congress on authorization of military force that would authorize the campaign against isil in iraq and syria and one thing that it does not contemplate, any u.s. troops on the ground aside from any special forces mission like the kind that tried to rescue some of these hostages unsuccessfully. >> jamie, thank you and president obama is speaking out this evening about the long-standing u.s. policy to

not pay ransom to free hostages. jonathan betts is here. >> isil has released hostages, but not americans partly because the u.s. law prevents the government from paying ransoms, and it's hard for families to hear. >> it's as tough as anything that i do, to understandably want bring any means necessary want their children to be safe. and as a general rule, for american citizens to be targets for organizations like this. >> he says that he doesn't want to make other americans ripe for targets and strict u.s. policies follow, even if families don't have the homecomings to show for it.

it's kayla mueller's words that her family turns to now. >> she wrote i've come to see that there's good in every situation, and sometimes you have to look for it, and right now, that's what we're all trying to do. >> today's news answered america's worst fears and why so few american hostages make it out of syria alive. >> kayla and our son were held for nearly two years and there were many opportunities along the way and yet nothing was done to save our young americans. >> her son james foley was among the several isil hostages killed last year, and the group is said to be holding 20 other people including a british journalist. but the u.s. has a no ransom policy. >> we don't make concessions to terrorists and hostage takers,

we don't pay ransom. >> but many other countries do, including several european countries, who reportedly paid to free their journalist to isil. the $120 million was paid to armed groups between 2004 and 2012 including $45 million to isil money that only helps and encourages hostage takers. >> you're only generating greater incentives for additional acts of hostage taking, and you're providing sources to fuel those continued operations in horrific attacks. >> reporter: the u.s. does launch rescue attempts, yet many fail, including one last july 4th in syria when u.s. special operations forces reportedly mixed the hostages by just two days. next month isil would begin executing americans.

kayla's death now removes the last known american from isil's grasp. her family hopes their pain is one that no other will have to feel. >> she had an incredible 26 years, than most people can ever imagine doing in their lifetime. my daughter said to me, things that were important to kayla are finally getting the attention they deserve. >> the white house said that it will review its hostage policy to better communicate with families, and the u.s. will not change its ban. >> planes from the united arab emeritas today carried out strikes against isil and syria and returned safely to an air base in jordan. they started conducting airstrikes after a jordanian's plane crashed and he was later captured by isil and later

burned to death. president obama talked on the phone today with valid vad, and he warned him to take peace talks seriously or face the cost. delegations from ukraine and france and were germany have arrived finish the talks and separatists are taking talk too. but on the ground, they show no signs of letting up. and charles stratford is there. >> reporter: destroying tanks, and heavy weapons abandoned in the snow. this town is virtually deserted. fighters with the self proclaimed army of the people's took control here a few days ago, and they say they are advancing, tightening the noose around the strategically important town. >> it's important because it's a railway junction, and we want to liberate it. we want to liberate all of the territory of donetsk. the people here believe in us, and they voted us? in a referendum, because they trust us, and we want to bring

them freedom. >> it's not known how many civilians were killed here. this is the town that as the crow flies, it was taken over by the separatists a few days ago, and hearing a lot of outgoing shelling here, and the rebels say that they have it completely surrounded. we saw the ukrainian tanks digging in close to the only route in and out of deb else vit. they were driving toward the front. in the ukrainian controlled military city, 50 kilometers away the rebels hit the military base. >> we were feeding the kids, they were sitting at the table. and the kids started screaming

and the shells started to explode. it was judgment day. we started to roundup the kids in groups and tell them fairytales. it's in the middle of winter. summer is coming soon, and that's just thunder. >> the missiles have been fired from the separatetivity town. >> in front of you now is where the weapons landed. the long distance weapon from the art tellry machine. it flew from a southern direction. >> the attacks are deeply significant because it's home to the ukrainian military's eastern command. and the separatists denied the attacks. the separatists are fighting in the region, in a separatist base we find this ukrainian army prisoner, bandages cover his face, and his tank was hit in the battle. outside hang the pictures of dead separatists and fighters.

apheter grieves for his dead son. >> of course, he's defending his motherland and his people, his family. >> yet another attempt at ceasefire talks scheduled for wednesday. sons and daughters continue to be killed in the be violence every day. charles stratford aljazeera eastern ukraine. >> there are reports this evening that the u.s. plans to close it's embassy in yemen less than a week after the rebels staged a coup. the state department is the confirming it, and it was staged in november when the houthi rebels began to take control. but the grip on power is not absolute. >> it's in the capital. and the u.s. embassy previously reported in the siege in the past few days, and now the u.s. has decided to close it for the

foreseeable future. the ambassador telling the staff that things will be shut down and he himself is expected to leave yemen on wednesday. we understand that either serbia or algeria will be tasked with looking after the u.s. consulate after the u.s. embassy is closed. it's important to know that the u.s. embassy itself has -- there's a lot of negative sentiment toward it, mainly because of the drone strikes here killed many people. and it's targeting suspected fighters and the u.s. drone strikes have increased. and haddie was forced to resign that have the fighters controlled the capital. and there of been several conducted things by the houthis themselves. obviously, not only the government in yemen is unable to maintain or to work properly under the circumstances but

also foreign governments are finding it more difficult for them to conduct business as usual in light of the coup that has taken place here in yemen. >> australia's counter terrorism police have arrested two men that they say were planning an attack in sydney. they found a homemade isil flag and a machete and they found a video showing a man discussing his plans. cyber hackers took aim today. and the group briefly took over the magazine's twitter feed. they claim to be working for isil. several attacks have hit. and even central command. libby casey has more on this in washington. >> reporter: tony, the twitter feed was taken over earlier today for about 15 minutes, and the group claiming to be the cyber state said that they were posting information that they said was confidential

u.s. information and they said it was a threat against the first family, saying, we're watching you. josh earnest said that the fbi is now investigating. >> i don't have any response to the claims that are made by these hackers. i can tell you that we have seen a number of high-profile incidents in recent months, where media organizations and other important institutions have been compromised in some way, or at least their computer systems have been compromised in some way. >> this is similar in nature to the attack on sentcom twitter feed last month tony, but it's very important to note that a twitter feed is different than getting into the guts of the website or centcom the military command. >> coincidently, libby this

happened on the same that i that the white house announced a new agency to protect against cyber threats. >> yes this new agency would bring together and essentially coordinate all of the intelligence out there that's being gathered by different branches of government. it would be similar in nature to the national counter terrorism center that was created after the september 11th 2001 attack, when siloing of information was criticized after the fact that people couldn't put the puzzle pieces together. the white house plans to avoid that with the major cyber security breach and the attack, and they're trying to create a central clearing house to bring the intelligence information into one place. now, president obama is trying to make cyber security a priority. he heads to california later this week to host a cyber security day at stanford university. politicians will sit down with ceos and that's significant because there has been conflict between the companies and the

government when it comes to determining how much information companies should make public or share when they have data breaches, and tony, just today a security researcher in a display of how insecure the internet is, put online 10 million user i.d.s and passwords of americans showing that this is not a secure zone. he did that to push for better cyber security prevention efforts. tony? >> that's pretty dramatic stuff. libby casey in washington, and ashton carter is one step closer to becoming defense secretary. the full senate is expected to vote tomorrow. and carter is poised to replace chuck hagel to plans to step down once the senate signs off on his replacement. how low can they go? another drop in oil appliances argelles and ali velshi, plus, the big screen to the

courtroom. the american sniper.

>> opening statements are expected tomorrow in the trial of the man accused of killing the deadliest sniper in u.s. military history. ed key ray allegedly shot chris kyle and another vet in 2013. kyle is known to moviegoers as the american sniper. in texas heidi could the movie actually impact this case? >> reporter: hey tony, there has been speculation that it would be difficult to get a jury given the tremendous play of the movie. the movie is playing just two miles away from the courthouse, and texas celebrated chris kyle day a weeks ago but however it took just three days to seat this jury of three women and ten men. me didn't have to know chris kyle's story but they had to answer questions about mental

illness. ralph's attorneys are planning an be insanity defense, and they were unsuccessful in moving this trial to another venue >> so eddie ray ralph has claimed to suffer from ptsd at the time of the shooting. >> the immediate family is under a gag order but i talked to his aunt, who ralph lived with in high school. and she said that he was a fun loving kid with no propensity to violence. and he went on to serve two years in iraq and was deployed to haiti for disaster relief. according to his aunt, it was the experience of removing bodies from the earthquake rubble in haiti that changed routh, and after coming home, he developed behavior that was incoherent and skittish. his mother tried to reach out for help. and she called the police to

report his son's behavior, and removed guns from the home secretly and reached out to the va for help. >> i did everything that i could, and unfortunately the va takes him in, and gives him a little 15 minutes and turns around and gives him drugs and ships him out. she tried to get them to hold him, and they wouldn't. >> reporter: now routh's foreign said that the dallas hospital released routh just two days after he was committed against the family's wishes, and meanwhile the widow of chris kyle said that holy ptsd is no excuse for committing murder. >> accused of deserting his post during the iraq war

corporal hassoun was kidnapped by insurgents and he turned up unharmed in lebanon. prosecutors said that he was unhappy with his deployment. and he faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted. >> has oil reached it's bottom? maybe not. after three days of steady gains, oil dropped $2 a barrel today. ali velshi is here with the oil story, and explain it all ali. >> i can tell you that the $2.48 was a 5% decline but what 5% in the drop of the price of oil shows you is that the talk about the bottom might be premature and this drop today comes as traders sorted through two very very important reports. one is from the international energy agency, the iea. and the other one complicated enough is from the energy

information administration, or the eia. and to make it simpler, it's the department of agency, and the eia is the pair-based organization. so the paris organization warned that even though oil will recover from the oil supply glut, prices will remain below the high for the last three years. to get a sense of that, before this drop in the oil prices began, oil was $107 a barrel in june. and the same paris based organization said that the prices will be 50 through 2016 and 62 through 2016. so not bad. they said that the u.s. oil production, based on fracking and shale, is going to grind to a halt in the second half of 2015, and by the way halliburton said that it's getting rid of about 6,000 workers. let me tell you about america.

the energy department has a similar forecast. $55 a barrel this year, but $71 next year, and $9 higher than the paris-based organization. so bottom line, everybody thinks it's going up, but not all that much over the course of the next two years. >> woah, woah, i have a couple of questions if my mind. fracking could grind to a halt. and what does this mean for gas prices? >> they will remain proportionately quite low. and that's the great partly. if you are russia or iran or venezuela, this is terrible for your economy and it's pretty hard for canceled canned's economy too. but in the united states, the net gain to consumers who have all of this extra money that they're not spending on gasoline, outweighs the loss of jobs that we're going to see. but we're going to see big losses of jobs. since the recession tony, energy has been one of the biggest creators of jobs in the united states, so bottom line,

good for gas prices and good for consumers and bad if you're in energy. >> what else do you have on the program tonight. >> we have a great show tonight. a real discussion about the increasing pressure to arm ukrainians and give them real weapon versus if you do that, you could trigger a more serious war between the world's big super powers. >> ali can't wait. you can watch "real money" with ali velshi, 10:30 p.m. eastern time on aljazeera america. no rest for the weary. and the state is calling up the national guard 5 feet of snow in massachusetts, they have brought in two huge snow melters, and i would like to see what those things look like to help with the process. the forecast calls for more snow to hit the new england area in the coming days. in new jersey, the problem was ice, and this was the scene on the new jersey turnpike.

40 miles south of new york city a series of crashes involving 40 vehicles, and one person was actually killed in all of this, one hurt and the highway was shut down for hours. it is a dark stain on american history. now we're finding out the extent of racial lynches in the south. and taking action against the unions in illinois. a big fight.

>> another state government is squaring off against organized labor, and this time its illinois where the new governor has banned unions from collecting dues from some state employees. he said that the unions are violate be the u.s. constitution, and diane, this is the latest move to reform unions by the governor, who has been in office less than a month. >> reporter: just about a month, tony, and this executive order that he announced yesterday would not ban union

dues for all public employees just those who opt out of joining a union. the state police are among the roughly 45,000 state employees who belong to a union and pay dues. but under an executive order governor bruce rounder said that they don't have to pay anything though they receive benefits of union contracts. >> if they don't want to be a member of the union and don't agree with the union's positions, they should not be forced to pay for those provisions. >> the provisions paid for by the illinois labor hang violent the freedom of speech and association. as spokesman for the american federation of state and county and municipal employees fair hair is the law and the governor can't unilaterally abolish it. >> as a public official, he has the duty to uphold the laws, and he can't shred them with the stroke of the pen.

he's clearly trying to do this as a political power grab. >> 6500 illinois public employees don't belong to a union, but until this week, they paid the costs to cover them. but governor said that they may be financing a political activity that they don't support. labor professor said that the laws protect fair share but there may be reports in the u.s. supreme court to strike it down. >> make no mistake about it. the actions of this governor and any decision that comes out of the court would be a serious assault to the institutional livelihood much the unions and collective bargaining >> so far the unions having filed suit against the governor. it's weighing it's ongs. >> actually, illinois is not alone on this. there's a similar case in

california that could go before the supreme court later this year, so these cases could have far-reaching impact on other states across the country. >> diane, thank you. and tom bellinoff is president of the council of the international union and i asked if the illinois governor had made his views clear before the election. >> in this state those rabid anti-union views don't work well. and he downplayed them. but if you look at his business practices and things that he said in the past, no one should be surprised by what he has done. >> what do you say to a state worker who for whatever reason decided not to join a union but still has to pay their $500 in fair share? what do you say to those workers today? >> we have to understand how the labor laws work in this country. states can have right to work laws and they can have workers

that don't join the unions, and they can have union shops. and if the workers don't agree with the union's political views, they don't have to pay dues but they pay fair share and whether members or not they're protected by the union contract and they have a legal obligation to protect them. >> how can unions overturn this action? and what can senate democrats in your state do? >> well, i think there are two things to do. one, a labor movement is going to challenge his actions legally. and i think that governor rounder knows that this is not legal. but more importantly we're going to coordinate our efforts to the political issues around this governor, and what he said to get elected and what he's now doing. what bruce is doing is creating a giant smoke screen, and what his real designs are are to lower the rages for all

workers. union and mon union workers. and what he talks about in illinois he wants a more competitive environment and more friendly environment for businesses, he wants one that lowers the wages. >> tom the big issue in the country continues to be wage stagnation, isn't it? >> that's exactly right. and the wages have been stagnating for 40 years. if you look at what happened, ever since the 80s when the economy was industrialized. and tony, we used to have centralized bargaining for steel and auto, but we don't have that anymore. the wages have been flat. and we see rauner pushing austerity. and if you look at what he's saying he's pushing the austerity program. so create huge income inequity and do away with the social

network, and we're all going to thrive and it's ridiculous. >> also, is it an attempt to chip away at a very solid democratic voting block in this country? >> i think maybe yes i'm not sure about that, but i don't think that most working people, whether union or not think that the actions that bruce rauner took were right. you have to remember, our economy for the most part is driven by consumption. and if you start dropping wages, it's going to have the opposite east coast. we saw what happened with those programs in europe. >> he's the center reporter for the center of public internet. and dave, you heard it there tom wasn't surprised by this move from this governor. and i understand you're not either. and tell me why. >> i'm not surprised at all. in fact, the prologue to all of this is what happened in

wisconsin, what happened in indiana, what happened in ohio, which has been really just a drumbeat of republican administrations, republican governors going after unions. they articulated their positions clearly. and they do believe that it's an economic issue but make no mistake about it, there are political overtones to all of this. and in a way, it's a fight among conservatives and liberals, as to who is going to be the dominate force in these states and in a way the dominate force in the nation at the federal level. >> tom said that he believes that the ultimate goal here by illinois' governor rauner is to lower rages for all workers but that's the goal. to lower wages public sector workers and private sector workers, and the goal overall is to lower wages and do you buy that? >> in a way yes. what you see at the federal

level is a whole a lot of inaction when it comes to wages. such as minimum wages and that's the topic in washington. non-starter and congress won't take it up. and you're not going to have congress deal with it. but at the state level, this is a huge issue and if you look at the map of the united states tony, you'll see a map of washington, with pockets of where the minimum wage is incredibly high. twice what the federal wage is. and you have brewing between the state administrations and back and liberal forces, and people who believe that jobs in the economy should be number one, and other people who believe that workers' rights should be number one. a lot of politics in this. >> what about the argument for the middle class unions are chiefly responsible for working conditions and hours and wage

growth in the country from the mid 1930s on? >> if you are a student of history. and even if you're not you know that the labor unions play an incredibly crucial role in the history of 20th century america, particularly in terms of who works and how many hours they work and how much they get paid, et cetera. but unions have been in klein over the past 20, 30 years and the number of people who are union members are down. and if you look at the numbers of how much unions spend on things like lobbying or certain types of campaign contributions, that also is down too. so they're not in the position of strength the way they may have been a couple of generations ago or even a single generation ago. so republicans view this as an opportunity to get the political upper hand. but the unions are going to fight. and you can expect in decision to be battled in court. and i would be very surprised if there wasn't litigation going forward that dealt

directly with this, and something that was very protracted too. >> so last one for your day. is rauner really spoiling for a court battle here? get this to the supreme court however he can? and perhaps a 5-4 decision from a conservative court a court that might consider anti-labor? >> having a conversation in the relatively near future about this very topic at the supreme court level. and i wouldn't be shocked at all. is it going to gets very far? it's unclear now but i wouldn't think that anyone knowledgeable about this is worried. >> the reporter from the center. joining us from washington. jeb bush, the republican frontrunner for the 2016 election released an archive a trove of private emails today.

and david schuster is here. and what is he doing? >> want hundreds of thousands of emails that span mr. bush's eight years as governor of florida. and most of the messages are mundane. and so far the biggest controversy involves the failure to edit out some of the citizen's private information including their social security numbers. and we'll keep going through the online documents to find what they say about mr. bush, and there are growing sentiments that he will make education reform his key topic and it's controversial. >> if we were designing our school systems from scratch what would they look like? >> in 2007, education reform, more than any other issue has become jeb bush's signature effort. >> it's going to require a big

political fight. monopolies don't go quietly into the nighttime and in the fight to take education out of the hands of government, bush started a non-profit foundation and created a national initiative and brought together education officials and an advocacy group. they supported education budgets to privately run schools, and offering students more choices through digital and online learning, but critics say that it's a boon for education companies looking to cash in on the taxpayer dollars for education. a figure up to $789 billion a year. >> what bush has done is combine both business and politics in pushing education reforms that benefit a small number of for profit education firms. some of these firms are some of the worst out there in education today. underperforming some of the

worst public schools. >> bush and his foundation sit at the center of a complicated web of policy. take privately run virtual schools in 2011. companies like k12 funneled favorable policy to the then state education committee steve bowen a member of the change group. and k12 and bowen were members of the legislative exchange council, or alec, and it's a controversial corporation that units officials to produce pledge. and alec adopted bush's education in 2011. and that same year, several alec bills to allow publicly run schools passed in the statehouse. >> it's a joy to be here with alec and it is the place of a

town of ideas. >> jeb bush stepped down this year to focus on his political run, and steven bowen also declined comment. still analysts say that the expanding corporate front schools could prompt some voters to give him a failing grade. >> this is something that could hurt him in the general election but in the republican primary, the bigger issue would be the steeld fast support for common core standards. and most hate t this could be a big issue for the former governor in this campaign. >> and david late breaking political news one of the most influential voices in the country is making a change. >> jon stewart the host of the daily show, who provides more information to younger americans than any other so, he announced tony, he's stepping down as the host of

the daley show this year. and they will look for somebody else. but again, jon stewart is one of these figures who perhaps has more information over the young people in terms of politics and media than any other figure, so his stepping down is a big transition. >> david schuster with politics for us, and there's still confusion this evening in alabama. when a majority of probate judges refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. and 48 counties are refusing to abide by a federal ruling. one minister was arrested for refusing to marry a couple inside of a probate office. they are trying to force local officials to issue licenses, and learning more this evening about a dark part of its history. racial lynchings a new report reports thousands of killings in the deep south. and robert reyes has more.

>> reporter: tony t. good evening, another sobering vigil for everyone to think about. here in montgomery, alabama court street. and behind me, two blocks that way, in the 1800s over 50,000 african-american slaves, chained up in small little huts here as the slave trade occurred at the epicenter here in montgomery, alabama. the irony about all of that is, the people who put out the sobering report on lynchings today, their office is just half a block away. five years of research in america's deep south yielded an inventory of nearly 4,000 victims of racial lynchings. >> the street, commerce street is where tens of thousands of enslaved people would be chained. >> reporter: in montgomery, alabama, brian stevenson and his colleagues initiated and investigating more than 160

sites in 12 states, locating places where hangs mob violence and lynchings occurred from 1877 to 1950. >> the report i think has a tremendous potential to open the eyes of the nation to the lingering impact of that era of terror in our country. >> for stevenson the lynchings and inequality of america's past still lingers. >> the failure of our society to deal more honestly with that history, that's my burden, frankly, because i see evidence of that terror and trauma in the communities where i work. >> in order to preserve the history in the deep south the equal jill initiative wants to put markers in areas where lynchings have occurred. but some landowners and it states don't want that kind of history remembered. >> it's going to take sustained effort to get people to open their eyes.

i think that people turn away from bad news very very quickly. and that's why i think that the markers are important for a permanent reminder of what happened. >> in alabama's capital city of montgomery, nearly everywhere a person looks is a monument or marker honoring the civil warcon fed see. >> i want to mark the spaces because i think that we can advance in our effort to achieve greater equality, if we're more attentive to the areas where these lynchings took place. >> around the country, there are only a few markers marking the sites of lynchings and stevenson said that marking the others will not only be a social and economic challenge but many americans don't want the reminder of the violence that occurred in the deep south. >> tony, brian said with the equal justice initiative also made a comment during our long interview this afternoon on the streets here. and he was talking about some older african-americans that he

talks to regularly here in the city and the state. and those that lived anywhere between the 1930s to the 1960s. and in his words, a lot of them frustrated when they hear some of our government officials say that america is fighting a war on terror. they sometimes are aggravated with that, thinking that the history that african-americans many of them went through their relatives in the slave trade, in places here like in montgomery and then being sold and many of them being lynched and murdered, they feel that that already was a terror that occurred here in the u.s., tony. >> robert ray in alabama. in tennessee a school board has approved a plan to segregate some of its elementary schools and just last week, they were resisting pressure from patients. and jonathan joins us from new orleans. >> reporter: tony, this is a story that we have been following for a while now and

the federal government was clear in this school had failed segregation 45 years ago and now they're taking big steps in making it right. after months of scrutiny from the department of justice the school board in robinson county tennessee approved a controversial rezoning plan, aimed at finally desegregating it's schools. >> the issue was brown versus the board of education and constitutional rights being prohibited. >> they found that they never implemented an integration plan and all white schools and disproportionately overcrowded schools in portable classrooms. >> they do have an actual classroom. our kids are either too cold to learn or too hot to learn.

>> the department of justice mandated that the school district must rezone or risk losing $9 million in federal funding. monday night after months of negotiating, the board announced that it had reached a settlement and resigned hundreds of students to address segregation, starting with elementary schools. and as part of the settlement, teachers must now undergo cultural sensitivity training. >> the ed there understand the dynamics of an inner-city kid and work with the kid. >> the reassignment plan had been a divisive issue in this community. school board members publicly criticized the federal government for stepping into the county's affairs and many parents said that rezoning is a huge problem. >> it's not about race, it's about taking the kids out of the school that they're comfortable with. >> the new lines drawn mean

that several students will be reassigned to schools several miles farther from home. but it ensures that the robinson county schools ensure their obligation to all students under the federal civil rights laws. >> and tony, we reached out to every school board member in robinson county and they can't talk to us publicly at this point because they're still negotiating. just the elementary schools are set to be rezoned for the next school year, and after that, resigning the middle and the high schools. >> a new york city police officer has reportedly been indicted for shooting and killing an unarmed man. an indictment for officer peter le an, he killed a girl in a dark stairwell. he said it was an accident, and he had only been on the force for 18 months. next on the program.

apple becomes the first $700 billion country how that stacks up against countries around the world.

>> listen to this. tech giant apple today recorded the largest closing value ever for any u.s. company. apple stock disclosed at just $122 per share raising the company's value to more than $710 billion. apple is now worth twice as much as microsoft, and nearly double the value of gold. get this. apple's worth, more than most countries. it would rank 20th on the list of gdps, bigger than switzerland and just short of saudi arabia. and it's largely due to the success of iphone. they sold 74 million i phones

and earned $18 billion in profit over the holidays. okay, finish a look at what's coming up at the top of the hour, john seigenthaler is here. >> coming up at the broadcast tonight, the death of kayla mueller, confirmed by president obama, and the powerful message that she sent her family before she died. the family released several of letters from kayla and her dedication to children around the world. what she said and what inspired her coming up. and plus, an in-depth look at race in america. the elderly veteran arrested in seattle. and his crime walking down the street using a golf club as a cane. he still remembers his ride to prison. >> it was the worst ride i ever had. i didn't know --. >> william wingate no longer carries his golf club, but

others are using it as a symbol for change. and the new york housing lottery. they're grateful just to live in manhattan. >> it's a long time. >> and annette christopher was one of 48,000 people who applied for just 98 affordable housing units in one building. morgan reports on what new yorkers are doing to get inside of those coveted apartments. and tonight niagara falls. the natural wonder on the border of new york and canada, a man who climbed up the falls those stories coming up in just about 5 minutes. >> see you then. how easily do you think that you could tell a difference between an art or fake? a new exhibit challenging people to do that. >> the picture gallery is one of the world's oldest. filled with hundreds of

paintings, rembrandts and reubens, worth millions, but amongst them lurks a copy. worth $126. the challenge for visitors is to spot among the 172 paintings, which is fake. is it this one? the shading is a bit heavy-handed and the brushstrokes look hurried. this one, is the paint still wet? >> to put the replica in its original frame in the gallery wall, so every picture in the whole place is open to suspicion, and i think that that heightens the scrutiny. >> the gallery sent one of them to china and reproductions any period or style are big business in southern china. the artists are trained and expert at making copies. in one village alone studios

and workshops produce 5 million replicas a year. and that poses interesting questions. like what is art and what gives it it's value? philosophers have been pondering that that centuries. >> the value of art is not just what it looks like, it's not just an appearance, but it's a product of someone's effort and skill and technique and originality. >> it's good to have a show like this, because increasingly, art is becoming an asset in the hands of the world's 1% alongside of their stocks and bonds so a show like this really makes you look at the picture and see it for its beauty, rather than it's price tag. visitors have until the end of april to register the one they think is made in china. after that, the copy&the original will hang side-by-side and the public can decide what is art. >> a discovery for face

fanatics artifacts of neil armstrong's ride to the moon. his widow said that she found it in the closet, including the camera that captured armstrong and buzz.

>> hi, everyone. this is aljazeera america. i'm john seigenthaler. heartbreak. >> the world grieves with us. the bored mourns with us. >> kayla mueller the last known american isle hostage confirmed dead. lynching in america the disturbing new report and a survivor story that you have to hear. >> there were 10, 15 screaming. >> the nation's largest housing