>> axelrod: tonight, the powerball jackpot. the top prize hits record territory, attracting hopeful ticket buyers, despite the astronom call odds. train collision in connecticut. a busy section of the northeast corridor is brought to a standstill after two commuter trains collide, injuring dozens, and frightening many more. >> i thought this is the end. brace yourself. >> axelrod: a threat of more tornadoes this weekend across the nation's heartland. meteorologist david bernard has the forecast while anna werner looks at how one warning system saved lives. and meet our latest young innovator. at just 16 years of age, he's taken on cancer diagnosis singlehandedly. >> i created a new way to test for pancreatic, ovarian and lung cancer that costs three cents

and takes five minutes to run. captioning sponsored by cbs this is the "cbs evening news." >> axelrod: good evening. >> axelrod: gfs, i'm jim axelrod with a special west coast edition. as the clock ticks down for tonight's pow ll drawing, both the excitement and the projected size of the jackpot keeps going up. the pot is now at least $600 million. california is the newest player in the multi-state lottery, and, just like many other americans, californians are taking full advantage. carter evans has more. >> $10. >> reporter: the powerball layersic is so intense, players are buying $22 million worth of tickets every hour. >> crazy busy, crazy busy. craeporter: how busy? lines are stretching for hours, with the jackpot nearly doubling just since wednesday. the frenzy is especially big in california, which became a cali powerball player only last month and is now selling $10,000 in tickets every minute. how much of a factor is

california in these huge rnia its? >> it's gigantic. >> reporter: jeff bermont is a sales manager with the california lottery. ter: jifornia has been sositioning ourselves, waiting for the tile right time to get in, positioning ourselves so in,re in the right spot at the right time, and we joined at the perfect time. >> reporter: from rest stops in exass to convenience stores in dreago, millions like dana cooksey are dreaming big. >> we like to think that we've tot the same shot as everybody else, so we'd kind of be fools not to try. >> might get lucky, you know. that's all we hope for, a little bit of luck. bi >> reporter: the chances of winning are 175 million to 1. university of southern california mathematician kenneth heexander crunches the numbers. >> if you've been buying 100 tickets a week ever since the ofe of jesus, there's a better than even chance that you wouldn't have won. ha >> reporter: the pot will keep growing until ticket sales close tonight, and, jim, on the off hat ne that no one picks the

winning numbers, the powerball jackpot will be in unchartered territory, perhaps reaching $1 billion. >> axelrod: carter evans, thank you. on the east coast, train service on part of the busiest rale line in america is shut down tonight. two commuter trains collided during last night's rush hour 22 miles south of new haven, connecticut. 72 passengers were hospitalized, two are in critical condition. amtrak service between new york and boston is now suspended. don dahler is in bridgeport, connecticut, where n.t.s.b. investigators are on the scene. don? >> reporter: yeah, jim, the two trains remain on the tracks here that carry millions of passengers and tons of freight every year. investigators did find the data recorders, and they're now poring over the information on them, trying to understand exactly what happened here yesterday evening. for the next 7-10 days, these tracks will remain closed as investigators pore over every

trac clo of damaged train and track, looking for the cause of the derailment. the national transportation safety board's earl weiner: >> we'll be looking at the braking performance of the train, the condition of the wheels, the condition of the car. we'll be looking at the general condition of the track and the ckil bed. termsms of the train operation, we'll be looking at how the crew behaved and how the crew operated the train. >> reporter: this is what investigators know so far: the eastbound metro north train left grand central terminal in new york at around 4:40, heading towards new haven, connecticut. it had roughly 300 people onboard. the westbound train, also a metro north, left new haven en route to new york around 5:30 with about 400 people on board. shortly after 6:00 p.m., the eastbound train derailed and swung to the left, striking the sstbound train. westengers had no warning. >> everything just came to a sudden stop, and we went flying. >> i thought, "this is the end. erace yourself." theeporter: eyewitnesses described train walls that were completely sheered off, exposing mangled seats and jagged metal.

mangled, too, is commuter and freight travel on the east coast. almost 11 million people a year take amtrak between washington takeboston, and right now this accident scene has put the brakes on that. connecticut senator richard nt scethal: >> this bottleneck will give >> gridlock a new meaning when it comes to traffic on our roads, as well as potential stoppage of stoppt and commuter transport. commuliterally going to be paralyzing for several days, if not longer. >> reporter: the senator says atore are no alternative train lines to be used to circumvent this bottleneck. there are plans in place to move pese trains from this location, fromake them someplace else using a large crane, but they still have to repair the tracks underneath. and, jim, no one is making any thediction on how long that will jim. >> axelrod: don dahler, thank tou. in virginia, as many as 60 people were hurt today in damascus near the tennessee inte line when a car drove into a crowd of people who had turned out for a parade. witnesses say the car went more

witn 100 feet through the crowd before coming to a stop. a u.s. airways flight had to make a belly landing at newark's liberty airport early this morning. hisch the sparks inside the rkscle as flight 4560 from ed dowelphia touched down with the captain unable to deploy the landing gear. 34 people were on board, no one nos hurt. yoneyone escaped safely as well earmoscow when the landing gear on a boeing 737 caught fire as it touched down in russia. firefighters sprayed a burning wheel while more than 130 people evacuated any way they could. parts of the plains and the midwest are under the threat of severe weather this weekend, nd,luding possible tornadoes. there was more trouble in texas last night. last ippedornadoes ripped up rural young county, about 100 miles west of the fort worth. no one was hurt. homme was destroyed. cbs news weather consultant david bernard is tracking the bad weather. david, what can we expect in the next 24 hours?

ne rs?jim, the tornado season got off to a slow start, but it's sything but slow now. fact,t, this evening, we have the threat of tornadoes from texas all the way to nebraska and even into south dakota. o sout through this evening. venilooking ahead into the next 24 hours, that severe weather threat is going to shift east on today, and the highest probability of large and ndmaging tornadoes tomorrow will be from kansas city right into ntoahoma city. so, eastern kansas and into intral portions of oklahoma. large hail and damaging winds, , asibly in excess of 80 miles per hour, are going to be possible tonight and again for tomorrow. >> axelrod: david bernard, thank ernard on wednesday, when 16 tornadoes esre through north texas, many people got more warning than l about about what was coming. the town of granbury, 40 miles southwest of fort worth, was hardest hit. is anna werner is there. >> reporter: residents headed in today for their first look at in their devastated neighborhood. 97 of the 110 homes in the

rancho brazos subdivision were damaged by the tornado. six people died, but officials clieve the city's warning system, called code red, saved many lives. the same system is in place in cleburne, 30 miles away, where no one died. scott cain is mayor. >> people call us a miracle pley, but there was a lot of e was ng that went into it. wedneorter: wednesday night at 7:59 p.m., the first code red alert went out to nearly 2,000 residents warning of a severe residerstorm. evereis is an automated code red weather warning. >> it's an automated system that ystemautomatically go out with robocalls, home phones, cell phones, whatever we have in the data. >> reporter: so, that night, before the ef-3 tornado hit cleburne, that first call was followed up by two more. >> a tornado warning has been erk aed for your area. h reporter: and the city activated outdoor sirens three times. s> it means the difference hetween life and death, minutes and even seconds. >> reporter: but even with the warnings, not everyone knew what was coming.

soments before a tornado sheared off the second floor of their house, alton and carol flynn were sitting at home reading. >> we did not hear the siren go wf until we were kind of... >> we didn't know anything. ere kah, we just knew it was etormy and there was a big wind. >> reporter: this weekend, they, along with many others, are >> r trying to get back to life as usual. >> get it back downfield. >> reporter: back in granbury bturday afternoon, a soccer team made up of third through sixth graders played their final radersf the season. half the children on the team live in homes struck by the tornado. >> they're excited by it. it does help them get back to hrmal. >> reporter: they won, 4-0. ten years ago, these cities would not have had much in the way of any warnings. an the code red warning system was th adopted here in granbury in 2004, and, in cleburne, just three years ago. >> axelrod: thank you, anna. now, to the i.r.s. scandal. there are new questions tonight ndal,rning if anyone in the

white house was aware of the targeting of conservative groups. more congressional hearings are grouduled for next week. here's margaret brennan with the 's mst. >> reporter: inspector general pectell george said he informed a deputy at the treasury a department in june of 2012 about the probe into the i.r.s. targeting of conservative political groups. >> did you find any evidence of political motivation in the selection of the tax exemption applications? >> we did not, sir. >> reporter: the treasury department confirmed the timeline but said they did not know the details of the uvestigation until last week. it's the first evidence that someone within the obama administration knew about the practice during the presidential campaign. isis unknown whether anyone in the white house was told of the federal investigation. republican congressman aaron schock serves on the house ways and means committee, which sversees the i.r.s. >> we don't have any reason to .s.ieve at this point that it son anybody outside the i.r.s. directing them to do this.

obviously, there's been claims that the white house might have been involved and other groups. i don't have any reason to believe that. e thaporter: he says the i.r.s.' behavior was criminal, claiming or hurt the ability of conservative groups to fundraise, and that limited their influence. >> until we know who was wasonsible for the activities, we need to continue to investigate. >> reporter: a six-month-long investigation by the inspector lederal failed to pinpoint exactly who made the decision to subject some applications to tora scrutiny. marcus owens ran the tax exempt division at the i.r.s. for ten tars. is it that hard to figure out who is doing what at the i.r.s.? hawell, no, it isn't, but i think the issue here is, it was ell,one person. it was a number of people who developed the criteria. wa peoplorter: owens said it ria.ars the errors are the symptoms of an over-burdened bureaucracy, not a political conspiracy. >> i think there was miscommunication, i think there was careless attention to some details, but i would not call it callpetence.

>> reporter: treasury secretary ork lew ordered the i.r.s. to tod staff accountable for any wrongdoing. fo oe also tasked the i.r.s. to iview whether this is a system- wide issue. they'll deliver that report to president obama in 30 days. >> axelrod: margaret brennan in aret bgton, thank you. later, are triple crown dreams alive or dashed at the e croness? three years in an eight-by-ten cell, one former inmate's case for ending solitary confinement. and remembering golfing legend ken venturi. those stories when the "cbs evening news" continues. inement. inement. and remembering golfing legend ken venturi. but with copd making it hard to breathe, so my doctor prescribed symbicort. it helps significantly improve my lung function starting within five minutes. symbicort doesn't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden symptoms. with symbicort, today i'm breathing better. and that means...fish on!

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>> reporter: parchman, in the heart of the mississippi delta, is a sprawling 1800-acre prison. its unit 32 once housed 1,000 inmates in solitary confinement, each prisoner crammed into an eight by 10 foot cell 23 hours a day. inmates got out one hour a day for exercise and a shower. >> it's torture. it's the worst kind of torture. i'd rather be beaten or burned. >> reporter: kirby tate, who served nine years on a nonviolent drug charge spent three of those years in solitary confinement, mostly in unit 32. >> you pray to god. you lay in bed every day and pray, "please, let this be the last day." if you're not a psychopathic maniac, they have no business putting you in solitary confinement. >> we should be looking at those individuals that we're afraid of. >> reporter: chris epps opened unit 32 in 1990 when was parchman's second in command, but in 2010, as the state commissioner of the corrections, he decided to close it. >> it has not affected public safety, as far as the citizens

of the state. it has not affected our staff. no one has gotten hurt. >> reporter: you've been quoted as saying if you treat somebody like an animal. >> that's exactly the way they behave, and we learned that firsthand. >> reporter: firsthand in 2007 when there were three murders and one suicide inside unit 32. the a.c.l.u. sued epps over what it called inhumane conditions. >> it's my belief it affected them mentally. >> reporter: you think it triggered psychiatric problems that they may not have had beforehand? >> that's correct or made it worse. >> reporter: after a series of reforms, the number of mississippi inmates in solitary confinement is down 75% from 1300 in 2007 to just over 300 today. >> about 200 of them are involved in meaningful programs -- mental health programs, anger management, basic education, trying to get a g.e.d., alcohol and drug. and because they are coming back to you in my neighborhood whether we want them or not.

>> reporter: closing unit 32 saved mississippi $6 million a year. now, as head of the american correctional association, epps is encouraging other states to reduce solitary confinement. rangal pinkston, cbs news, parchman, mississippi. >> axelrod: three people were killed overnight in three separate shootings in chicago. at least eight others were hurt. so far this year, at least 503 people have been shot in chicago. at least 95 are reported to have died. there will be much more on the epidemic of gang violence in chicago later tonight on a special edition of fre-- "the war in chicago" at 10 p.m., 9:00 central. next up, a fair well to one of central. next up, a fair well to one of our own, ken venturi from cbs sports.

on a bayer aspirin regim. to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. go talk to your doctor. you're not indestructible anymore. >> axeds of an oxbow win, 15-1. one of the great names in golf and a former colleague of ours at cbs sports has passed away. ken venturi was a champion on and off the course. the most cos

performances in golf history, he won the 1964 u.s. open in the brutal summer heat of washington, d.c., overcoming dei dehydration, and ignoring a doctor's warning that continuing to play could be fatal. after his playing career was over, he spent 35 years broadcasting golf for cbs. >> what a round. what a player. >> axelrod: quite something for someone whose stuttering was so bad as a boy a teacher once told his mother, "your son will never be able to speak." ken venturi was inducted into golf's hall of fame 12 days ago. he was 82. still ahead, a 16-year-old with an innovative cancer test to his credit.

>> axelrod: we end tonight with a look at another young innovator. we've been featuring young people trying to change the world. tonight, jack andraka who started googling ways to prevent cancer after losing a friend to the disease and look where it took him. jack andraka's science project doesn't sound like a high school

sophomore's crowning acheesmed. it sounds more like a nobel prize winner. >> pancreatic, ovarian, and lung, but also-- >> axelrod: costs how much. >> three cent. >> axelrod: three cents and takes how long? >> five minute to run. >> axelrod: that's right. after a close friend died from pancreatic cancer, this 16-year-old from crownsville, maryland unleeshed his hyperdrive intellect on preventing more cancer deaths. >> it's 168 times faster over 26,000 times less expensive and over 400 times more sensitive than the current methods of diagnosis. >> axelrod: he tinkered in his room and using information readily available on line, he came up with a new way to detect cancer. >> all pancreatic cancers are diagnosed late when someone has less than a 2% chance of survival and our current test costs $800 per test and misses

30% of all pancreatic cancers. >> axelrod: his innovative mind got him a shout-out at the white house science fair. president obama was impressed by this young innovator's tenacity. >> jack "space from research labs to pursue his work nearly 200 times. 200 times he asked. 200 times he was turned down. finally, with the help of some folks at johns hopkins, he got research facilities that he needed. >> axelrod: did it sting when you would get rejections? >> it definitely did sting because i kind of knew that a lot of them were just kind of being a bit discriminatory because they were like this is a 15-year-old. he can't possibly be doing this. >> axelrod: dismissive. >> yes, very dismissive. >> in the category of medicine-- >> axelrod: when may explain the overwhelming emotion he felt when he won last year's intel international science and engineering fair. the sweet validation came with $100,000 in scholarships. but jack andraka has got his eye

on even bigger things. >> the name of the competition is called the tricorder xprize. it's a $10 million prize. >> axelrod: did you say $10 million? >> yes, $10 million. essentially, what you have to do is develop something the size of smartphone that you scan over your skin and it will diagnose any disease instantly. >> axelrod: jack is fielding a team of other hoolers to compete against three other teams of adult scientist scientists and n in addition want xprize competition. he said youth is an advantage, that new eyes are more likely to solve old problems. and that's the cbs evening news for tonight. later on cbs, "48 hours." for now, i'm jim axelrod in new york. for all of us here at cbs news, thanks for joining us. and good night. captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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