the mid-70s and little bit cooler next week. >> perfect. >> thanks for joining us here at 5:00, we hope to see you at 6:00. the debacle, an apology from the president's health secretary over the botched rollout of the health care website and tough new questions about hiprivacy. dangerous games. >> and the hug that is warming hearts around the world, a pope like we've never seen before and a little boy who did something we've never seen before. and a crash at a major airport that went undiscovered for hours. nightly news begins now. from nbc news headquarters.

good evening. this was the day congress got to ask the health secretary some questions about how it is the rollout of the health care website went so wrong. she said the buck stops with her, but that may not be enough for everybody. with each new day we learn of new frustrations with the system and americans are learning what it really means for them. we're going to begin with two reports, including our national correspondent over concerns of the security. >> reporter: this was a day of aggressive questioning. the president's top official for the rollout of the health care law vowed to get it right and said in just another 30 days, the persistent problems we've seen will be fixed. secretary sebelius says no need for an extension. there will be plenty of time for people to sign up for coverage.

a crisis on her watch, as the secretary at the center of the problem prone health care website drew a crush of media attention. and even a long line for spectators who came to learn what has gone wrong. >> you deserve better. i apologize. i'm accountable to you for fixing these problems. and i'm committed to earning your confidence back by fixing the site. >> reporter: hammered by questions, sebelius continually took the blame for a rollout she even called a debacle. she admitted her department failed to do enough testing to catch and fix flaws notice enrollment website before the launch. >> do you believe that two weeks was enough time to complete testing of the entire system? >> clearly not. >> reporter: confusion over a

promise made bit president. >> the president said if you like your health care plan you can keep it. so is he keeping his promise? >> yes, he is. >> reporter: they say people without employer programs have their programs hiked. >> they don't offer the minimum essential benefits, is that correct? >> that is correct. >> reporter: sebelius responded that only affects a small number of americans who can now look for a better deal. >> consumers have a right to shop anywhere and they have choices they never had before. >> reporter: after almost four hours on the hot seat, republicans say they still have questions. >> she has provided some clarity, not enough. not enough detail. >> reporter: sebelius said she will come back in december with a progress report. kelly o'donnell, nbc news, the capitol. >> reporter: some of the

toughest questions today were about security on healthcare.gov. >> don't you think you have an obligation to tell the american people that we're going to put new this system, but beware, your information is likely to be vulnerable? would you commit, today, to shut down the system and do an end to end security test? >> no, sir. if you read the memo -- >> oh, i have read it. >> reporter: that internal government memo warned that testing of the site was not finished, exposing a level of uncertainty that can be deemed as a high risk. sebelius said that hhs officials were taking steps to tighten security. >> it is under way right now. but daily and weekly monitoring and testing is under way. >> i was very alarmed. >> reporter: privacy was a subject of heated debate before the site launched. he was chief of the social security administration under both presidents bush and obama until last february and tells nbc news he protested.

that officials were carving out exemptions from the privacy act. >> i was extremely upset. it would be real world consequences for americans. i did not discuss this specifically with secretary sebelius. >> reporter: her top aides. >> absolutely. >> reporter: and their reaction was? >> a shrug. we're going to hit october 1. that was the mantra. >> reporter: the exceptions which do appear allow personal data such as social security numbers and financial information to be shared with local governments, private contractors, even the department of homeland security. they say it's essential to determine whether people qualify for health insurance subsidies. but privacy advocates are concerned that so much personal information is being shared among so many. >> there's a hidden army of government and industry and corporations that are going to also be accessing and using our

data. and that is scary. we don't know who they are. we need to, at a minimum, be able to have real time lists of who's looking at our information. >> reporter: we asked hhs for comment tonight, and they told us that consumer ks trust that the information they're providing is protected by stringent security standards. >> thanks. the problems with this rollout of the president's health care plan as you might expect are having a real political impact for this white house. we're seeing it now in our brand new nbc news wall street journal poll, our political director, chuck todd at the white house with more on that tonight. good evening. >> reporter: good evening. you know the expression. during the shutdown the public pointed the finger at one proverbial house, the republicans. but the pox has spread, thanks

to health care, to the doorstep of this place, the white house. president obama who has been battling numerous trop trproblr months. the last thing the president thought he would be doing -- using boston as a backdrop to do something he struggled to do for years -- sell the public on health reform. >> all this is in place right now. >> reporter: but this is the latest debacle in leadership struggles that have dogged his presidency. his 52% in january was an all-time high. but it didn't take long for things to go south. it began with benghazi investigations in capitol hill. and then the edward snowden nsa leaks, raising questions about how much the president may or may not have known.

in september, more of a slide because of the president's indecision on whether to attack syria. and now, between the government shutdown and the bungled health care rollout, he hit an all time low of 42%. getting close to president bush's number. obama buy og refer sees a trend. >> he works at a different timetable than everybody else. sometimes he's ahead of the curve. sometimes he's behind the curve. the question is will he get back up. >> reporter: in the past, even when the president experienced a dip in his job rating his personal likability never took a hit. this time, more folks view him negatively, 45% than positively, 41%. >> david axelrod believes that is due to this appearance of detachment on issues like health care and nsa.

>> he needs to step up his visibility on these questions. i have no doubt he's doing it internally because i know how he operates, but the public needs to see that. and that's what's driving some of those personal ratings down. >> and he keeps saying he's unaware of things. the one that strikes me the most is the health care. because people would ask me what is he going to do in his second term? they would say health care is it. it's his whole thing. >> reporter: all of this washington mess has created a crisis in confidence in the country. 70% believe we're off on the wrong track. those are numbers that we usually see during an economic down turn. this signals a political depression. and congress has grown more unpopular. 74%. only 17% believes that congress works to solve problems. and the idea that people like their own congressman better than all of congress, not in this case.

63% would rather give a chance to someone else over there their own member. in syria, after all the human suffering from this gruesome civil war under way there, something is now happening there that no one anticipated, a polio outbreak. this wasn't supposed to happen anywhere in the modern era. there were only 223 reported cases of polio on the entire globe last year. it had all been eradicated. and now this adding to the misery that is syria. our report tonight from our chief foreign correspondent richard engle. >> reporter: this war is killing with more than just bombs and bullets. there is starvation and disease that now includes polio. doctors say there are tencon firmed cases so far. 20 more suspected. all in children under four. it's a sign of serious increasely desperate situations. hospitals in ruins, without

proper medicine or electricity. and no sanitation, a key factor in polio's spread. infection can cause paralysis, even death. president roosevelt had polio and had to use a wheelchair. vaccines developed in the '50s nearly eradicated it in much of the world. syria's last case was in 1999. this outbreak is clustered in three villages in the border close to iraq. a doctor who helped discover the outbreak told us by skype many syrian newborns aren't getting polio or any other vaccinations. polio is highly contagious and world health officials worry it will spread. >> this virus does move. it will infect anyone who is undervaccinated or not vaccinated and does not know any boundaries. >> reporter: it can easily be spread by refugees. and there are now about 7 million of them in and outside of syria.

many syrians are only now realizing that polio has returned. and the war, the dangers, the same reasons that allowed the disease to reemerge are also preventing medical officials from delivering vaccines. brian? >> richard engle with our report on this disturbing situation in syria. still ahead, sounding the alarm as doctors now look inside the stats on the number of american kids getting concussions. and they don't like what they're finding. and later, the little boy who stole the show from the pope, not that the pope seemed to mind one bit.

we're back with a warning about kids and sports, specifically a major new report from the institute of medicine. it has some sobering findings about a risk we've been talking about a lot here. and that's concussions. more frequent in high school than in college. especially in football and

women's soccer. we get more from dr. nancy sneiderman. new jersey high school seen josh jake has been playing football since third grade. at the age of 17, he's already had two serious concussions. >> when i hit the ground, my head was ringing and it hurt so bad. >> reporter: did you realize in that moment that you were not the same kid you were five minutes before? >> yeah. just didn't have everything there, really couldn't think. had memory loss. didn't really know where i was and what i was doing. >> reporter: the second time his mom rushed him to the emergency room. and even though he was wearing a helmet, the injury was more severe. >> a helmet at this point, that's not going to protect you from a concussion, maybe from a skull fracture, but not from the trauma on the brain. >> reporter: a new report released today by the institute of medicine reaches a startling conclusion. while helmet and mouth guard use is important, there is limited

evidence that current models reduce the risk of concussions. this neurologist has been seeing the results first hand. >> wearing a helmet does not give you immunity from head injury it's just added protection. >> reporter: even though they prevent skull track tours, the brain is floating freely within the skool skull. so serious impacts will create damages. the helmet manufacturer riddell says today's findings can only help the sport to advance and continue to grow. researchers also found that after being injured most young athletes recover within two weeks, but 10 to 20% have concussion symptoms that may last months or years. for jake, it's a lesson learned. >> i feel like no matter what, you're not going to be able to avoid a concussion, no matter what they do, how much they try to fix it.

contact will happen. >> reporter: 40,000 young football players just like jake are rushed to emergency departments with concussions every year. there is a culture of resistance. players not reporting symptoms. parents not reporting changes in their children and stiles coaches putting kids back in the game when they should be sitting it out on the sidelines. and it goes for boys and girls. >> so much to say on this topic and we will as time going by. tonight there are communities in this entire country that are trying to put off halloween, or at least delay trick or treating 24 hours until some very rough weather moves through. it's mostly in parts of indiana, kentucky and ohio. there's a threat of potential tornados into tomorrow night. this stretches into the mississippi valley and includes parts of texas where parents need to be wary for bad weather conditio

conditions. and what we come back, what a spacesuit has to do with with dorothy's ruby slippers.

we're going to make this as non-partisan as possible. tell it right down the middle. but it's possible the boston red sox could win their first world series at home since 1918. this has been a great and unusual series between two great teams. the red sox lead the cardinals 3 games to 2. the cheapest seats in the house, standing room only selling on the web today for $750 a pop. the population of a small town in alaska more than doubled today when a jet bound from tokyo to san francisco was forced down. the population of the aircraft was 178. the airstrip is a full two miles

long. it was built to last as ft. randall army airfield during world war ii. a viewer sent us this photo of the jet sitting there on the tarmac. passengers were allowed to get off the plane. they were allowed to stretch their legs in the community center at the airport while the airline sent a backup plane from seattle. and they're all on their way to san francisco. a tragic and odd story out of nashville. a small plane crashed on the grounds of the international airport there and erupted in fire killing the solo pilot, but it apparently went unnoticed for hours. the crash was just after 3:00. bad visibility, but the wreckage wasn't noticed there on the ground until a departing pilot spotted it adjacent to a runway hours later and notified the tower which had been unaware of this single engine plane crash. and attention history buffs. what might be the ultimate

collection has been unveiled. they call the smithsonian america's attic, this is the best stuff in the attic. they are out with the 101 items that tell the story of the united states. they include neil armstrong's spacesuit, the light bulb and the ruby slippers. we've put the complete list on our website tonight. it is hard to imagine now what it was like when there was only radio, that magical device in american living rooms that families didn't just gather around to listen to. they often stared at it as it spoke to them. 75 years ago tonight, orson wells broke into programming and came on the air with a broadcast as the war of the world. . at 8:50,

good evening. thanks for joining us. >> one of the bay area'sñi busit shopping malls is abouthóñ toçó busier. thing for thousands of commuters. within the hour,i] we've learne the city of san jose has given the valleyi] fair mall the gree light to expand. traffic traffic in that area, in fact, as we speak is already bad. >> you'rexd absolutely right, r. this is especially concerns for the neighbors who live behind valley fair. they say for years they have pu( lots of ci]

traffic, and they say thisq expansion project is only going to make things worse.fáok >> if you struggle to find a parkingw3 spot at valley fairfá jose, more auctions are on the horizon.t( today, san joset;/s approved an extension ]f an already approvd &háhp &hc& near macy's. parking garage.ok douglas warburton says he already has to put uplp witht( much noise and x÷ñraffic. >> this would just create so much more traffic.e1 so much more blight on our community here.jfjf q not -- that's just not right. >> hea3ec not alone. >> traffic ist(çó getting very hectic around here. >> still, some neighbors say they're glad to see the mall is vibrant and always improving. to learn mall owners also got the green light to buimf another 2 million square feet of retail ac