on the broadcast tonight, air scare -- more inspections now ordered, more flights cancelled, more problems detected on southwest airline's 737. change of plan -- a big reversal on one of the president's biggest pledges. it has to do with bringing a 9/11 terrorist to justice. hostile environment -- serious charges about how women are treated at one of america's oldest and most prestigious schools. and making a difference -- do you ever think about what happens to all the leftover food after the concert and the big game is over? harvesting one man's great idea. game is over? harvesting one man's great idea. "nightly news" begins now.

captions paid for by nbc-universal television good evening. while they are fortunate to have avoided a disaster in the air, tonight southwest airlines has a big problem. so does the maker of the 737. so do thousands of people with plans to fly. the issue is cracks in the fuselage of some boeing 737s. most of the cracks too small to see, but one of them grew large enough to open up a hole in the roof of a southwest jet a few days back. that incident has now triggered the inspection of more 737s across the country. this is going to bring new attention to our short haul aircraft in this country. in the air for multiple flights per day and carrying a lot of the passenger load. nbc's tom costello who covers aviation for us, starts us off from washington tonight. tom, good evening. >> reporter: hi, brian. the faa is talking about more frequent inspections for these flights. meanwhile, southwest says of the

79 planes it grounded over the weekend, three were found to have small cracks while 64 have been returned to service. nearly 72 hours after southwest flight 812 made the emergency landing in yuma, arizona, the faa is ordering checks on specific groups of the 737 300s, 400s and 500s with at least 30,000 cycles or takeoffs and landings. the plane involved in friday's emergency had nearly 40,000 cycles on it, and say they were surprised to find signs of pre-existing cracking under a lap joint and along a rivet line. a large chunk of the fuselage will undergo metal fatigue tests at the ntsb lab in washington. >> it was not believed that this was an area that could fail until we see it now. >> reporter: today's faa inspection order affects 175 planes worldwide. 80 in the u.s. the vast majority at southwest. investigators are wondering whether planes used on short haul flights with multiple

takeoffs and landings like southwest routes incur greater metal fatigue as the skin of the plane expands and contracts. >> i think part of this is not only inspecting the plane but looking at how often the planes are used, how often they take off, how often they land. >> reporter: the 737 involved had a 14-year maintenance overhaul in march of 2010. those overhauls involve stripping the plane to its frame and going over every centimeter with specialized tools looking for corrosion or cracks but inspectors rarely look under the lap joints where this crack was found. a former accidents investigations chief for the faa says it's stunning how quickly this crack turned into a true in-flight emergency. >> this is like the worst case explosive decompression that pilots train for routinely. getting the plane down from maximum altitude as quickly as you can. >> reporter: after cancelling several hundred flights over the weekend, southwest cancelled another 70 today as it continued

inspecting its planes. southwest says it hopes to be back to normal service by tomorrow and says the planes the faa ordered to be inspected are the planes it has been inspecting, no more. brian? >> tom costello starting us off in washington tonight, tom, thanks. we are joined now by the rob urt sumwalt, the national transportation safety board member, who we just saw in the story heading up the investigation. he was a commercial pilot for 32 years, a veteran of 14,000 flight hours. with us tonight from yuma, arizona where the southwest jet made the emergency landing on friday. mr. sumwalt, when you consider the fact that no one saw the crack in advance and also that southwest brags within the industry about their quick turnaround, how many flights per day they get out of the aircraft, are they more susceptible for this kind of thing? >> good evening, brian. it's important to understand that aircraft cycles -- takeoffs and landings -- are what determines the maintenance

intervals, not necessarily how long a particular airplane flies. just because a particular aircraft is doing more takeoffs and landings that in itself doesn't make it more susceptible to damage. >> so there is nothing about their schedule of maintenance. when people hear that the cracks are impossible to see most of the time, it doesn't exactly fill the flying public with confidence, especially considering that these 737s are the workhorses of so many domestic fleets. >> well, brian, again, as long as the airplane is properly maintained and inspected, it should not matter how many takeoffs and landings it has. it might be that an airline that operates with frequent takeoffs and landings has to do these inspections more frequently in terms of calendar time, but as long as the inspections are done when they should be, the airplane should be safe for flying. >> there is nothing about a frequency of an airline, a commuter short haul airline that makes it any more susceptible to this than long haul aircraft?

>> i would agree with that as long as the airplane is properly maintained and inspected. the fact that you have a short haul operation versus a long haul operation, it really should not matter. >> robert sumwalt of the ntsb, thank you very much for being with us tonight from yuma, arizona. in other news, the obama administration has pulled the plug tonight on one of its signature efforts. it now says it's given up on a courtroom trial for the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks here inside the united states. instead khalid sheikh mohammed and others will be tried before military commissions at the u.s. military base in guantanamo bay, cuba. nbc news justice correspondent pete williams has our report. >> reporter: a year and a half after announcing that the men accused of the 9/11 attacks would be put on trial in new york, attorney general eric holder said today they will now be tried where they have been held since 2006 -- at guantanamo. >> we simply cannot allow a trial to be delayed any longer for the victims of the 9/11

attacks or for their family members who have waited for nearly a decade for justice. >> reporter: that means no civilian courtroom for khalid sheikh mohammed, said to have been the mastermind, and four others accused of helping him. it's a complete turnaround for the obama administration, after the president vowed on his first day in office to shut gitmo down within a year. new york's mayor and police chief fought against bringing the terror trials there and congress rebelled, blocking detainee moves to the u.s. in an interview with nbc the attorney general said he had no choice because congress put federal courts off limits. >> i only come to this decision reluctantly after congress has passed statutes that ultimately tie my hands. >> reporter: what of those who would say the attorney general should have seen this coming, that he should have seen that he could never sell the idea of these trials in the u.s.? >> it was always my belief that the american people, if they had an opportunity to look at these cases and hear both sides would

have made the determination that the best thing is to go with the tried and true, to go with the system that has served us well and distinguishes us as a nation. >> reporter: republicans in congress today called it the right thing to do. >> the american people realized how wrong it was to hold a civilian trial anywhere in new york or anywhere on the continental united states. >> reporter: so did family members of the 9/11 victims. >> the man was caught in a military environment, in a war environment and should be tried in a military tribunal. >> reporter: tonight, military officials say they hope to have pretrial hearings under way in guantanamo by the tenth anniversary of the attacks this september with trials starting sometime later. brian? >> pete williams at the justice department tonight. pete, thanks. now we turn to libya and the news from there tonight. after a two-day extension over the weekend, u.s. military officials now tell nbc news american war planes tonight are really going to end their air strike mission against moammar

gadhafi's military targets, but they will continue to fly what they call support missions for nato aircraft. meanwhile, libyan rebels and gadhafi's forces are in a standoff tonight in the strategic oil town of brega today. our chief foreign correspondent richard engel traveled there today and back. he's now back in benghazi where he joins us tonight. richard, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. that support mission remains very significant here. it means that u.s. aircraft will be refuelling other jets, collecting intelligence and if specifically requested by another nato partner, flying combat missions as well. the front line on the desert highway outside brega can change in seconds. gunfire by gadhafi's troops forces the rebels into a rapid retreat. but later the rebels return, launching surface-to-surface rockets.

here on the front lines, the rebels and gadhafi's forces, separated by a few miles, have reached a stalemate. for the last several days, neither has advanced or retreated more than a couple hundred yards. the stalemate is frustrating to the rebels. the nato air strikes aren't as frequent as before. >> why slow, slow be no help for me any? why? >> reporter: so the rebels are getting creative about boosting their own firepower, even attaching soviet-era aircraft rocket launchers to pickups. "if it doesn't fire, we'll club gadhafi over the head with the rockets," a rebel said. nato is allowing aid to reach the libyan people. two relief ships ferried hundreds of wounded to turkey and tunisia. nearly all are from misrata in western libya. misrata remains surrounded by gadhafi's troops who are allegedly brutalizing people. >> there is rape. there is beating. >> reporter: but in benghazi,

the city saved by western intervention, today a rally to complain that nato isn't doing enough to help the rebels defeat gadhafi. demonstrators here in benghazi said they are not interested in a political compromise being floated in tripoli in which gadhafi's sons would take over and then transition to democracy. people here think it's simply not credible, brian. >> richard engel back in benghazi, libya, for us. richard, thanks. meanwhile, again today there were angry anti-american protests in afghanistan over something that happened two weeks ago here in the u.s. that got very little attention, if any at all, until the lid blew off overseas and people were killed in the violence because of it. the incident here was a koran burning by an anti-muslim pastor in florida, but how word spread overseas and how that violence erupted is a story in itself.

joining us tonight with that part of the story is atia abawi, our correspondent who is usually in afghanistan but is instead in our washington bureau tonight. and atia, how did this incident -- which no one in this country knew about. we didn't know the koran had been lit, maybe a few people. how did it then explode into violence overseas? >> brian, we in america sometimes underestimate the intelligence mechanism among the insurgency in afghanistan and pakistan and their use of new media including the internet. this pastor's tactics in burning the holy koran in that small church, as you mentioned, barely made any kind of news in america, until we saw the protest taking place in afghanistan. this is primarily because there are very educated afghans and pakistanis among the insurgency who are monitoring us and monitoring what's going on in america, and what they use is they use these events to fan the flames of hate and cause outrage among the afghans so they can attack these foreigners, in the end killing some of them as well

as killing afghans. it's actually very frightening to see the attitudes that have changed among afghans to the americans. in 2001, america for the most part was welcomed with open arms. in 2000 2011, we are seeing a growing anti-american sentiment and it is very frightening. brian? >> atiya abawi, normally posted in afghanistan with us tonight from the washington bureau. thanks for that. news from the western coast of africa tonight, the ivory coast is in crisis. france is telling its remaining citizens in the ivory coast to go to their embassy for safety. the fighting there has killed an estimated 800 people in the past few days. the battle is between forces of the former president and the newly elected president. among those 800 dead, four u.n. peacekeepers. u.n. helicopters are firing on a compound controlled by the former president who was defeated in elections in november but refuses to release his grip on power. updating the radiation situation in japan.

despite the announcement over the weekend of new trace amounts of radiation being found in several locations in this country, public health experts continue to assure us it's within healthy norms. in japan there at the plant workers are dumping storage tanks full of radioactive water directly into the pacific ocean in order to make room for even more highly radioactive water leaking from a crack in a maintenance pit as the photos from there show. they don't know why all that water is leaking and various fixes like filling the cracked pit with concrete have not worked. now the plant's owner is dumping more than 11,000 tons of radioactive water right into the sea where the experts tell us it will dissipate. when we come back in just a moment, one of the top universities in this country under investigation and the students making accusations of sexual misconduct. and later tonight, making a difference by making sure something great doesn't entirely go to waste.

tonight, yale university is in the news for all the wrong reasons. yale is being accused of tolerating an environment of sexual hostility against female students on campus. here is nbc news education correspondent rahema ellis in new haven, connecticut. >> reporter: founded more than 300 years ago as an all-male institution, today women slightly outnumber men at yale, but some here claim this prestigious university has allowed a hostile sexual environment to persist on campus. >> to find out that they still weren't really concerned for women on the same level that they were for men was really disturbing. >> reporter: alexandra brodsky is one of 16 students, both men and women, who filed a 26-page complaint with the department of education civil rights office claiming the university violated title ix which mandates any school that receives federal funds must have equality on

campus. the complaint cites several incidents including october 2010, a group of fraternity pledges marched, shouting "no means question" in the area where most freshmen women live. september 2009 a widely circulated e-mail details what was called a preseason scouting report, rating incoming female students by their attractiveness and how drunk someone would need to be to want to have sex with them. january 2008 pledges from a different fraternity yelled outside the women's center and held up a sign saying "we love yale sluts." yale says it's cooperating with the federal investigation adding, it does not tolerate sexual harassment and has convened numerous forums and working groups to study the incidents. >> i think that yale is sending a message that this really isn't

that big of a deal. >> reporter: women we talked to on campus said they don't think yale is better or worse than other schools when it comes to sexual harassment. >> i as a woman at yale feel safe and feel valued. >> reporter: if found in violation of title ix, yale stands to lose more than $500 million in federal funding and potentially worse, damage a centuries-old reputation. rahema ellis, nbc news, new haven, connecticut. up next here tonight, the staggering news americans heard when they turned on the television 43 years ago tonight.

nbc interrupts its regular program schedule to bring you the following special report. >> martin luther king, jr., was killed tonight in memphis, tennessee, shot in the face as he stood alone on the balcony of his hotel room. >> that's what nbc viewers saw 43 years ago tonight. the announcement by chet huntley, 1968 that the reverend dr. martin luther king, jr., was assassinated in memphis by james earl ray. today, members of the king family gathered at his tomb to sing "we shall overcome." there was a similar gathering in memphis at the lorraine motel, and the attached civil rights museum there. the oil drilling firm transocean apologized for insensitive wording in a securities filing that called last year its best year for safety performance.

transocean owned, you'll recall, the deepwater horizon drilling rig which exploded a year ago, killing 11 workers and leading to the bp oil disaster. a security breach at a marketing firm that serves some of the biggest companies in the country has them warning customers not to respond to e-mails asking for login or account information. citigroup, chase, walmart, walgreens, best buy are among the affected companies. e-mails that appear to be from them that ask you to login to an account could be an attempt to steal your financial information. they should not be answered. up next here tonight, a unique harvest that's making a difference for a lot of folks in need.

>> announcer: making a difference, brought to you by tums. our making a difference report tonight is about the power of leftovers, lots of them. good food and lots of people who get a chance to eat a good meal after the game is over, the music stops and the crowd has gone home. our story tonight from nbc's peter alexander. >> reporter: on hockey nights in boston the action is both on and off the ice.

>> may i help you? >> yeah. can i just get two hot dogs, please? >> reporter: with vendors preparing everything from hot dogs to paninis for more than 17,000 bruins fans with plenty left over. in boston they used to throw away any cooked food that didn't get eaten. that means that in the past, 25 tons each year went to waste. not anymore. at the end of each game, the td garden staff wraps up the leftovers, 165 pounds on this night alone. >> we'll feed a few people tomorrow. >> reporter: then it's stored and the next morning donated to the boston rescue mission where they serve hundreds of people each day. >> i think about why weren't we doing this beforehand? and i think this is great that people will have an opportunity to have a people that would otherwise not have a chance to eat. >> reporter: the entire national hockey league is now on board and major league baseball is considering signing up, too. all this the idea of sid mandelbalm who founded rock and

wrap it up in 1994, to help feed the hungry. mandelbalm's k mandelbalm's crusade is a tribute to his parents who nearly starved to death in a nazi concentration camp. >> i want to change this country so that what my parents went through no one in this country has to go through -- hunger. >> reporter: in 17 years, rock and wrap has fed more than a half billion people. it started at rock concerts with bands like bon jovi and aerosmith donating to local shelters and more recently expanded to hotels gathering unused toiletries for those charities. 770,000 bottles from new york's marriott marquee alone. back at the boston mission, those leftovers never go to waste. >> a little bit of everything that comes from the boston garden will go into various meals throughout the day. >> reporter: one solution to the fight against hunger, where no meal is left behind. peter alexander, nbc news, boston. that is our broadcast for

this monday night as we start off a new week here. thank you for being here with us. i'm brian williams. we hope to see you right back here tomorrow evening. good night. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com right now at 6:00, holes and plane roof, electrical malfunctions and flights canceled across the country. we help you protect your vacation investments. also keeping homes and families safe from dangers buried beneath local neighborhoods. to thet new work to make sure that gas pipelines are in good condition. >> g