captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill.oo >> woodruff: on the newshour tonight, as hillary clinton heads back to the campaign trail, we talk with ohio voters in a key republican county about the election. >> we need a bull in a china shop to break things up. the economy's bad. i'm very worried about iran and north korea. i feel like he will do what he needs to do to keep us safe. >> ifill: also ahead this thursday, the age of hacking: why information feels less safe than ever, and how it couldss affect this year's election. >> woodruff: and, the second part of our forced marriage series takes on the frightening reality of american women andn girls being offered as brides in another country. >> i was a kid and i really hadn't grown that much so i was really scared.

>> ifill: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> lincoln financial-- committed to helping you take charge of your financial futuren >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation.fr supporting science, technology, and improved economic, performance and financialc literacy in the 21st century.

>> supported by the rockefeller foundation. promoting the well-being ofro humanity around the world by building resilience and inclusive economies.e more at rockefellerfoundation.org >> carnegie corporation of new york. supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security. at carnegie.org.ovra, er >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions: and individuals. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.wae ad

>> ifill: for hillary clinton, it's the first day back. the democratic presidential nominee returned to campaigning today after recuperating from illness.re she looked rested and recovered, as she boarded her flight toli north carolina, and headed >> welcome back to 'stronger together'. >> how are you doing? >> i am doing great, thank you so much. >> ifill: clinton had last been seen sunday in new york, nearly collapsing from pneumonia in nep york. today, she appeared back in the with an event in greensboro. >> i'm not great at taking eight easy even under ordinary circumstances, but with just two months to go until election day. sitting at home was pretty much the last placech i want toan >> ifill: clinton's aides released a letter from her h doctor on wednesday.

it rated the 68-year-old candidate healthy and "fit toar serve" as president. she explained later to reporters. >> i'm going to close my campaign focused on opportunities for kids and fairness for families that'sie been the cause of my life, itt will be the passion of my presidency. we're offering ideas, not insults. >> ifill: republican donald trump, who is 70, publicly released this letter today from his longtime doctor. it said trump is also healthy, that he takes cholesterol medication and a low dose of aspirin. trump discussed his medicalp status in an interview, airing today on the "dr. oz show". >> if elected at age 70, you would be oldest person to ever enter the oval office. >> yeah, just about the same age as ronald reagan and hillary is a year behind me. i would say just based on my

life, i feel as good today as i did when i was 30. >> ifill: the g.o.p. nominee also talked today of cutting greatly improved growth, at the economic club of new york. >> over the next 10 years, our economic team estimates thatth under our plan, the economy will average 3.5% growth and created a total of 25 million new jobs.h you can visit our website. just look at the math. it works. >> ifill: meanwhile, more evidence the race is tightening, with a cbs news-"new york times" poll giving clinton just a two point lead.le it also suggests an enthusiasm gap: 51% of trump supporters say they're very enthusiastic about voting. while only 43% of clinton supporters say the same. as of today, the candidates have 54 days until election day, and just 11 days until their first, scheduled debate. we'll look at how the presidential race is shaping up

in the critical state of ohio,ng later in the program. >> woodruff: in the day's other news, the united nations blamed syrian president bashar al-assad for delays in getting humanitarian aid into the a country, despite the new cease- fire. u.n. officials want to send convoys into aleppo from turkey, but they say syria isn't providing permits. in geneva today, u.n. specialia envoy steffan de mistura complained that valuable time is being wasted. >> these are days which we should have used for convoys to move with the permit to go because there is no fighting. the russian federation is agreeing with us about this. this is something that requires to take place immediately. >> woodruff: meanwhile, in syria, amateur video purported to show government air strikes on rebel groups in homs and idlib, in violation of the cease-fire. syria's main ally, russia,

reported 45 rebel violations, in the last 24 hours. >> ifill: a self-described hit man in the philippines now says president rodrigo duterte personally ordered killings by death squads. edgar matobato says it happened when duterte was mayor of the southern city of davao. he testified today at a senate investigation. it's looking into killings of 3,000 drug suspects, since duterte became president. >> woodruff: back in this country, president obama todayy, created the first national sanctuary in the atlantic ocean the marine monument encompasses 5,000 square miles off new england, and includes underwater canyons and mountains. the designation means a ban on commercial fishing, mining andn drilling. >> ifill: the head of the i.r.s. will avoid a congressional impeachment vote, for now. instead, john koskinen has agreed to testify at a house hearing next week. republican conservatives accuses him of impeding an investigatioi into tax treatment of tea party

groups. koskinen has denied it. >> woodruff: and, wall street headed back up, with tech companies leading the way. the dow jones industrial average gained 177 points to close at 18,212. the nasdaq rose nearly 76 points, and the s&p 500 added 21. >> ifill: still to come on thee newshour, the rise in computer hacks against political playersa a g.o.p. stronghold in ohio up for grabs. the changing economy, where big businesses employ far fewer people, and much more. >> woodruff: this year's political campaign has a new and different wrinkle: cyber hacking has led to regular public releases of documents and private e-mails involving the political parties and key players.maca democrats are the most frequent

targets. but it's not only them. o the list of election-season cyber-attacks is growing. the latest target: former secretary of state colin powell. a trove of his e-mails appeared online this week after his personal account was hacked. in one referring to g.o.p. nominee donald trump and blacke voters, powell wrote, "he takes us for idiots." another referred to democrat hillary clinton as "greedy, not transformational." the messages were posted on a site that's reportedly an outley for hackers tied to russia. clinton, today, did blame the russians. the white house wasn't saying: >> we don't necessarily want to reveal sources and methods that the fbi uses to conduct these kinds of investigations. >> woodruff: all of this follows the july release of thousands of democratic national committee e- mails. they were published on wikileaks just before the democratic convention.

wikileaks tweeted a link to more d.n.c. files. the web site's founder julian assange, claimed in an interview with the newshour last month, that it's done in the public interest. >> and that performs an ongoing role leading to great works in investigative journalism,ea successful court cases, civil, litigation, criminal process, and, of course, also contributes to public understanding during >> woodruff: meanwhile, "politico" reports hackers are also targeting state democratic officials. r and congressman michael mccaul, chair of the house homeland h security committee, says republican operatives have been hacked as well.om still, in washington yesterday, the president's homeland security advisor, lisa monaco, played down any threat to the integrity of the election. but added: >> but the efforts of malicious actors to intrude upon voter-ou registration databases and other elements of our critical

infrastructure, as well as our voting infrastructure, is of concern. >> woodruff: the white house says if there is a response to the hacking, it may not be announced in advance, or ever. for a deeper look at the actors and the politics behind the hacks, we turn to dmitri alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer atch crowdstrike, the cyber securityr firm that investigated online breaches of the democratic partt over the summer, and david sanger, chief washington correspondent for the new yorker times. and we welcome both of you to the program. dimitri, let me start with you. how does this cyber hacking of the democrats and others this year compared to what we've seen in previous elections? >> well, it's really fascinating right now not in the sense that election officials are getting hacked, election officials are getting hacked we've seen it in other countries over the course

of the last couple years in ukraine where the russians have been aggressive in trying to disrupt the presidentialdi election if parliament tree elections in ukraine.on what's important is it's happening in the united states. that we've never seen before and speaks frankly to the boldness of these adversary easies are dg this to all advocates. >> woodruff: the administration is not naming th russians so how strong is the evidence is that who is it, the russians. >> the likes like we're the ones brought in to investigate the dnc and the democratic congressional contain committee hacks and protecting a number of organizations across the political spectrum.li now i can tell you based on our investigations we're very confident russian intelligencege operatives were behind thosee intrusions. >> woodruff: david sanger,f: what is known about the motivehe of the russians? >> it's not entirely clear, judy, what their motives are, may be.be this could have started as a

generalist peen ahmadinejad operation and of course -- espionage operation and it'ser considered fair game by espionage by foreign intelligence groups, includinglu by the nsa and the cia. we do this in our efforts to understand what's happening in russia, china and other places. but what is different as dimitri said is taking that information and in the lingo of the industry, weaponnizing it.ng in other words releasing this in public. and that is something we haven'e seen much against american officials. we got a first taste of it when phone conversations betweenen victoria muland, a senior state department official and an american embass du dur in ukraie were material was stolenl probably a long ago up to a year ago perhaps earlier this yearis and then released this summer

just before as you said the democratic national convention.n so the timing seemed designed to disturb the election. the big fear of course, and we wrote about this in the timess this morning, is that we're only at the beginning end of this and the next step might be the election vote itself.el >> woodruff: how much damage, before we talk about what's ahead, dimitri, how much damageg has been done snls it possible to quantity and what's coming. >> certainly the impact of various official not just at the presidential level but at the sort of local and state levels whose private dossiers and other campaign information is being released. it's hard to tell whether it'set going to impact specifically but there's no question it's impacting this race and we've already seen some resignation of senior democratic party officials as a result of these leak. >> woodruff: back to you david, we heard julian awe assae

in this case there's no question he carries a series hard strong feelings against hillary clinton because she's critical of him during that huge dump of state department cables back in 2010. do we believe that it is between the russians and julian assange and anybody else involved, wikiw leak that the democrats are going to continue to be the main target here? >> they could well be, though the leaks from secretary powell's e-mails were obviously highly critical of donald trump as well. so that doesn't quite fit the narrative. but julian assange has made no secretsecret of his distaste of hillary clinton and neither is vladimir putin.vl it's important to remember, judy, in putin's mind and

secretary clinton personally intervened in the 2011 parliamentary election. mrs. clinton denounced as a rigged election. and putin believes that encouraged three protests against him and his party. so he protested that at the time and in his mind, this may simply be returning a favor. >> woodruff: well i'm going to ask both of you about something and david you wrote w about this today, you just raised it. dimitri, how vulnerable are u.s. election systems, how possible is it, how likely is it that outside actors could interferen with voting the election in november. >> there's certainly no question there are vulnerabilities in our election system. we have electronic votingin machines in certain counties that don't use paper ballots. so if they're hacked, there's actually no way to tell what the original vote intention would have been.ha if there's a back up paper ballot that's printed out thene you can always go back and

recount the vote manually. in though cases it would certainly be safe against hacking. i think it depends how close the election's going to be. if it's going to comeel down lie 2000 to a few hundred votes and certain counties there's certainly potential for manipulation that could occur. if it's not even close and it's a land slide it's not going to have any effect. what i worry more than the manipulation of the vote is the shadow cast on the integrity of the process. even if there is proclamations by the attackers that they attacked the election or manipulated the vote whethere they had actually done it or not, let's going to convince some voters if their cam date lost that their -- candidate lost that their election was rigged and the person they were voting for should have won.. >> woodruff: david you did a great deal of reporting on thiss what did you find. >> judy, the voting machines themselves are pretty hard to hack because they are off line. as dimitri points out in five states, there's basically no

paper trail, and i think that's' pretty dangerous. secondly, while they may not be able to manipulate the vote itself, it could cause a lot of disruption that could make the clearings in 2000 hanging in florida look like a comparatively small problem. they could, for example, alter data on voter registration rolls so people can show up to vote and their names would be missing. they probably do a provisional ballot but it would take a while to sort that out. there's question about the safety of the systems in which their votes once tallied on election eve are once transmitted in the state once that's encrypted or not. several states do it differentle and the fact they do it differently is a little source of protection. finally judy there's the system we all use to report the election results. r so you know, when the newshour

and others report results on election night, you'll be getting early tallies from the ap. if somebody got into that reporting system and you had false numbers or slightly altered numbers, then there would be a discu discrepancy ben what we heard on tv at night and the numbers as they came in for the actual vote count. and that would also as dimitri points out, create some doubts about the system. even if it's only the real vote count that matters. >> woodruff: disturbing and i know it merits furthermore reporting on it.rt dimitri alperovitch, david sanger, thank you both. >> thank you. >> thank you.bo >> ifill: in ohio, donald trump and hillary clinton appear to bl in a dead heat. but the stakes are higher for trump. the buckeye state has voted for the winning candidate in every

election since 1964, and no republican has ever won the white house without it. tonight, we begin a two-part look at two counties that tell the tale.e john yang starts our reportingar in a suburb outside of columbus. >> yang: september in delaware, ohio, means the annual all-horse parade, the biggest event of itf kind east of the mississippi.is among those gathered along the parade route, we found enthusiastic supporters on both sides in the presidential horser race. retired educator gail carpenter is voting for donald trump. >> we need a bull in a china shop to break things up. it's not working. the economy's bad. i'm very worried about iran and north korea.a. i feel like he will do what he needs to do to keep us safe. >> yang: jen villanueva henkle,u who works with children, backs hillary clinton. >> she's done a lot for women and children and people living in poverty for the entire history of her career. we support her and we're excited to see her be our nextnd president. >> yang: but there were also folks like julie lamb. t l

>> it's been a crazy ride for the last year. i'm republican, so that's probably the way i'm gonna go,o, but not necessarily that crazy about that candidate. >> yang: and here in the most republican county in ohio, that could spell trouble for trump. polls in the state show him locked in a tight contest with clinton. no republican has won the white house without winning this state.wi both campaigns have opened field offices here within the pastfi week. this is ohio's wealthiest and fastest-growing county. farmland is quickly giving way to manicured lawns and big houses. republican presidential candidates have won this county every election, since before this diner opened in 1932. that's where we met kyle kondikh

of the university of virginia center for politics. he's written a book on ohio's role in picking presidents, "the bellwether." >> what a republican needs to do is run up the score in ohio in the conservative rural counties and the high-income, highly educated suburban counties that are typically very republicanub >> yang: like delaware county. >> like delaware county. and that's the path to victory. and i think we saw that with george w. bush in 2000 and 2004. >> yang: if trump isn't doing quite as well as republicans typically do in some of those places, that might be a problem for him and he'll have to make up the votes elsewhere. which is why voters like john stark, who owns a construction company, are a threat to trump's chances. your first election, presidential election, what year?le >> 1984. >> yang: and you voted for? >> for reagan. >> yang: and which party's candidate have you voted for ever since? >> the republicans. >> yang: until now? >> yeah, i think this is the first time not to, honestly.

>> yang: was that a difficult decision for you? >> no. when i first saw trump, i knew i couldn't vote for him. (laughs) >> yang: nothing trump has said or done since has swayed him. >> the republican party to me i a party of small government, low regulations, low taxes. we're not really sure what hee stands for-- except himself!xc he likes to talk about himself a lot. >> yang: trump's economic message doesn't resonate with voters in this prosperous county, like stark: he says business is good, and his son got a job as an audio engineer a within a week of graduating college. voting for clinton was never an option. his candidate: libertarian gary johnson. do you worry that voting for johnson would, could help clinton? >> i guess i don't care!>> you know, i gotta, you gotta have principles, right? >> yang: but it's not as if>> clinton's having an easy ride

here, even though she holds a cathy okunlola was an enthusiastic barack obaman supporter in 2008 and 2012. this time, she's backing clinton-- but without that same excitement. >> she's not gonna get up and have those huge inspiring rallies that obama did, you know? hid (laughs) it's not like a big party when you walk in the room forro hillary, but she gets the job done. and she really wants to help people, i think-- like she's doing it for the right reasons,i i think. >> yang: a stay-at-home mother of two young daughters, okunlola said her main goal on election day is to beat trump. t >> i really dislike trump. i never really believed he would be the nominee, but hey, here we are.r so i'm voting for hillary. >> yang: she struggled to put her feelings about clinton into words. >> there's that kid in yourr class, that just plugs away at everything, you know? they're not a, exactly the popular kid, and they're not exactly super talented at musici or anything, but they just, they

study hard, and they show up, obama would have been the prom king and everybody would've loved him.wo e everybody went to school with somebody like that, you know? that everybody wanted to be around. and she's not that person, butso she is somebody where if you were in trouble, that's who you wanted. (laughs)e you know? >> yang: voters like stark and okunlola could well decide who wins ohio and, perhaps, the presidency. analyst kyle kondick: >> i would suspect the margin between trump and clinton in delaware county will be smalleru than they typical margin between a republican and democrat inin this county and that could be very helpful to clinton, but trump may have opportunities to make that up in some more traditionally democratic places that might be a little bit more republican this time.cr >> yang: as voters face very unpopular choices and try the to pick a winner in theic presidential horse race. for the pbs newshour, i'm john yang in delaware county, ohio.ti >> ifill: tomorrow, john yang

crosses the state to report from a traditional democratic stronghold, where donald trump is hoping to make inroads.mo >> woodruff: but first, big companies today are not creatin nearly as many middle-class jobs as they once did, and that'sare- been one of the concerns in thih campaign. economics correspondent paul solman went to detroit where ideas for spurring a new era of local manufacturing are taking shape. it's part of his weekly series, "making sense." >> reporter: a must-see stop on the grand tour of decaying detroit: the plant that, for decades, clanked out auto chassis for g.m. >> general motors at its height had 900,000 employees, career ladders galore, they were providing a lot of benefits, creating good middle-class jobs. g.m. today has about 220,000 employees around the world. it's about as many as it had ino 1928. >> reporter: but sociologist jerry davis says the g.m.'s of yesteryear, though models of

productivity and even economic equality, are history. >> what happened to general motors didn't just happen to general motors. there are about half as many public corporations today, as they were 20 years ago. >> reporter: so instead of general motors, u.s. steel, eastman kodak and i could go ono and on, what have we got? >> the big corporations today don't really have that manys employees. they're not providing careere ladders, they're not creating middle-class jobs. blockbuster had 80,000 employees and 9,000 stores across the country, netflix does the same thing with fewer than 4,000 people. if anybody tells you they workto at facebook, probably they mean they are a contractor because only about 12,000 people00 actually work at facebook. they are worth $300 billion but very few people actually work there.30 >> reporter: in a new book davis calls it "the vanishing american corporation" and poses a pivotao question: what will rise from the wreckage? mega-firms that hire relatively few workers?

made-anywhere product peddlers like nike? >> they're the biggest sneaker and sporting goods company in the world but they don't actually make most of the stuff with their name brand on it. they design it, they market it from oregon but the productionon is done by contractors all around the world. and that model is spread widely, it's not just sneakers, it's not just garments, electronics,st pharmaceuticals, pet food, you name the product and you can find somebody to manufacture it and put your name on it. >> reporter: "nike-ification,"ca davis has dubbed it, exemplified by another multinational with a detroit foothold: ikea. >> the ikea model is you manufacture it somewhere, you ship it out around the world, so this model might be a very good model for customers because it's very inexpensive. it's not the world's best furniture but you can live with it. >> reporter: and you do have to assemble yourself. or hire someone to do it for you. indeed, these days, a world of temps is only a moment away. >> a business like upwork allow you to find contractors to do

programming and other tasks available around the world. >> czech republic, u.s.,ub croatia, philippines... >> reporter: but the technology that allows for such wonders,s and the wage exploitation of a global race to the bottom, also suggests a more appealing future for work in america. >> you can go to this website and see these great designs for beds, chairs and tables and so on. the kind of thing that you might buy at ikea. but these are designs that yougn can download and create locally. >> reporter: instead of assembling ikea furniture themselves, that is, why can't americans also make it? to their own specifications? >> this is basically an ikea- like chair that's made out of metal but you could make it out of plastic or wood.wo >> reporter: these are just prototypes or models?ls >> yes. these are the designs online shrunk to a tiny version. but you could make a full sized version of this this afternooner >> reporter: so davis took us to techshop detroit, where vasily

vincent was using a computer controlled cutting machine to cut a table leg based on an online design. m for a monthly fee, techshop members access all manner of gadgetry. faithe olsen was working the water jet cutter. >> it's using steam, it's using water pressure. it's basically using erosion to cut through that's eighth inch aluminum on there right now. >> reporter: wow, so that's cutting through aluminum now. >> yup.. it's just cutting right through it. >> reporter: techshop is for pros and rank amateurs alike. f the manager is will brick. so who is this?is the red baron? >> yeah right! i like to imagine that's me in the cockpit there! >> reporter: brick cooked up this model airplane for a summek camp. >> one of the things we taught kids to do was to build an air frame and then and then uh add a radio control mechanism to actually be able to remotely pilot it.an >> reporter: so, future makers learn how to do it themselves, while entrepreneurs hatch theha products of tomorrow. the "rope runner" was the

brainchild of kevin bingham. >> he came up with this thing that allows you to scale a treea go up and down without changing kit, and be as nimble as say a spider monkey, right? he came into tech shop, drew up some prototypes, made some wooden mockups, and cut out the finished aluminum pieces, assembled all that, and thend engraved his logo and the phrase "made in detroit," which i love, into the powder coating on the sides of the apparatus. l >> reporter: what davis seesr: budding in detroit is an alternative to a world run by nike and ikea: manufacturing brought back to america, made possible by ever-cheaper technology and repurposing the industrial infrastructure of the past. consider the green garage, a socially-conscious business incubator housed in a former model-t showroom. >> we are a diverse community of about 211 locally-owned food businesses >> reporter: devita davison of "foodlab" deploys local kitchens for entrepreneurs baking cakes,c for instance. >> taking advantage of the

underutilized community kitchen space, in churches, daycare centers and head start.ad >> reporter: amany killawi cofounded "launchgood", a crowdfunding site for muslims. >> it can be anything from someone creating their first children's story, to an app, to starting their own business, bur then you also have specific personal causes like helping the first australian hijabi ballerina. i think many times muslims are a seen as a source of problems in the world and we're here to show them as a source of solutions. >> reporter: the businesses here represent jerry davis's dream of a workforce that makes locally, but thinks globally. >> these are businesses that are meant to last a long time. they are part of a broader ecosystem and their goal is really, what can we do to makeo detroit as a community, stronger.. it's a very different modely than, how do we create the most shareholder value, how do i retire before i've reachedlu drinking age? >> reporter: a visit to the "red panda" space, a whole office, gave davis a chance to relive

his days in the college rock band, "ivan pavlov's salivationo army." today, professional groups like wilco and the red hot chili peppers use red panda guitard effects to create new sounds. owner curt malouin designs the pedals himself and has them made within fairly easy reach. >> that allows us to have better control over the quality and more flexibility, so that we can experiment with new products an be on the leading edge of the market, but we can also then ramp up production really easily when we get a hit product. >> reporter: turns out malouin assembled the very first pedal back at techshop, where plentyty of other do-it-your-selfers are inventing things on shared equipment. john osbourne dreamed up a box- making machine. >> it only takes about 15 seconds to change from one box to a completely different box so it's the only machine of its kind in the world. >> reporter: and with so many a folks turning out small runs of bespoke products, you need all

kinds of boxes. and it's now technically feasible, says jerry davis.er >> this is a place where capital equipment is so cheap and so easy to use that children can t learn to use it in two hours and if it's that accessible, why do we need corporations? >> reporter: but if everybody can make everything by themselves there are no more manufacturing jobs! >> why do we need to have jobs if there are other ways to provide those same results, then maybe we could organize our tima differently. maybe we could be a maker on tuesday morning and a farmer on tuesday afternoon and a mash up dj on tuesday evening. and we could all have more rewarding lives with more control over our time. >> reporter: hey, maybe you could all make tv stories like this one. but until then, this is paul solman, economics correspondent every day of the week reporting from detroit.

>> ifill: last night we brought you stories of american women forced into marriage in thisca country. tonight, in part two of her exclusive report, special correspondent gayle tzemach lemmon tells us of americansof taken overseas for the same reason, both women and girls,bo who often find themselves beyond the assistance of their own government.nd >> i was a kid, i hadn't really grown that much, so i was really scared. >> reporter: jada was just 12 years old when her father took her from the u.s. to live in saudi arabia. and her future was about to change dramatically. how did you first find out what your father had planned for you? >> ah well, one day we were walking to a store and he told me to stay on his right side, because they do that there, so other men know that the women that they have on their right side is for sale. >> reporter: jada, who's last name we are withholding at the

request of her lawyer, hadn't even started high school when her father, a convert to islam, moved them both to jeddah and began trying to marry her off. >> she's thousands of miles away and there's nothing we can do. >> reporter: jada's family back in new jersey was terrified when they heard what her dad had planned.an jada's mother had died suddenly a few years earlier but her aunt shirley says her sister, mecca, rose up to fill the role.se >> i was at work and i got a text that said help me. you know we didn't like what are you talking about help me and she's like no help me my dad'sat trying to sell me. >> reporter: over the next few months, mecca tried to support her little sister, to plot her return and save her from apl marriage. >> other than texting i neverha got to physically hear her voice. so i didn't know if she was crying at the moment or if she was scared.sc i'm just looking at text messages. >> reporter: the messages grew increasingly desperate. >> i was literally losing sleep

like every day.in depressed. going to work depressed, because i really didn't know what to dow >> reporter: mecca contacted everyone she could think of, including the u.s. government. >> even though the embassy was meant to help americans it was they had to still go through, they had to still use saudi arabia laws.s. >> reporter: in the end, it was up to the family to protect jada. i >> i started to feel like we were exhausting everything 'cause it seemed like everybody was saying, 'well, you know, you know, there's really nothing we can do.' y >> so my aunt started savingd money to get jada home and i started just contactingct everybody and that's when i came in contact with casey. >> reporter: "casey" is caseyep swegman, a counselor at the tahirih justice center, an organization in northernor virginia devoted to protecting immigrant women and girlsim mecca reached her via a human trafficking hotline.in over three months, she gathered

information about jada's case, working with mecca on strategies to get her sister back. >> i think as an advocate if jada hadn't had mecca, it would've been a profoundly different experience." >> reporter: together they succeeded in bringing jada home before any marriage could take place. today she is a star student about to enter high school and dreaming of collegeho at ucla. but not everyone is so lucky. i according to the tahirih justice center thousands of american women are forced into marriages every year. tahirih runs one of the only "forced marriage" programs in the country. 400 girls and women to help them either avoid or escape a forced marriage.rl >> i remember the engagement. i'm in this crazy dress and i'm dressed up.an >> reporter: american citizen lina alahri was 21 when her father took her to his native yemen, amid the ongoing war,

veiled as a visit to her ailing grandmother. once there, the formerre california high school almond blossom queen contestant-- she quickly learned that she was about to marry a man whom she'd never met, forced by her father into a marriage she did not want. f she says she tried everything to avoid it.wa >> the first thing i imagined but i knew that wasn't an option. >> reporter: according to custom, alahri was taken to her new husband's home, where she was expected to consummate the marriage while his whole family waited for proof. >> i remember my father in-law telling me what is the problem? why are you not doing it? the faster you do this the faster you get to go home. the faster that you have intercourse is the faster that you can come home. >> reporter: but alahri was 8,00miles away from her home. and no one, it seemed, could

help her. not even her government. >> you think, i am a u.s. citizen and the one thing that you want to do is you want to take off at the u.s. embassy and then, they are your savior and they'll fly you out. >> reporter: but it wasn't the case.e thth a close friend of alahri's wasie able to contact the u.s. embassy in sana'a, yemen's capital, on her behalf. "tell her that we're unable to intervene directly," their response read. "if she can find her way to the u.s. embassy, we are open." but she couldn't get there because it was too dangerous. and in the end she consummated the marriage. she felt it was her only path to getting home alive. >> sometimes the only way out is through. >> the whole system had failed lina, the world failed lina. >> reporter: casey swegman took on alahri's case after her best friend back in california contacted the group. >> when a women's only option for getting to safety is to s capitulate to rape, into ate

forced marriage, that is a failure of the entire system. >> we failed them by not having mechanisms to prevent them from going overseas and being forced into marriage in the first place.as >> reporter: michelle bernier- toth is the managing director for overseas citizens services in the state department's bureau of consular affairs.ic >> they're being held against their will but in accordance with local law because they've been legally married in thatau country. and their spouse now has legal authority and control over what happens to them. and contrary to a kidnapping or a hostage taking, there is a legal basis for that action that is one of the big deals, a huge, challenge. >> americans usually think that if they're threatened overseas, the state department can swoop in and rescue them, but the reality is much more

complicated. both young women in this story reached out seeking help from abroad. but the truth is, americans don't take their laws with them when they travel.h >> reporter: in both cases here, these young women were able to orchestrate trips back to the u.s. then-12-year-old jada's family won custody of her. when she came to the u.s. for a visit with her father. and alahri's plan for freedom was even more intrepid. with the war in yemen pounding outside her windows, she worked with tahirih and her best frienh from home to orchestrate the plan. after marrying the stranger she, then returned to the u.s. on a pledge to acquire visas for heru in-laws. when she landed in the states, tahirih was waiting. it took several agonizing months' for each of them to fin their escape routes. now on american soil, tahirihh has helped them restart their lives and continues to offer counseling and support. but swegman and her colleagues

still feel these are isolated successes, over a problem few americans even know exists: forced marriage in the united states. >> i think the worst outcomes are probably somewhere out there, with a women who maybe only have the 15 minutes to cals but i never heard from her again. and i think, you know the bad endings are the ones we never see.ou >> reporter: pbs newshour attempted to contact both alahri's and jada's fathers and received no reply. today, home once again in california, alahri considers swegman a member of her own family. >> to have that support and have that love from somebody who you've never even met before, it makes a huge difference. tahirih and like casey and i feel lucky to have all that. because if it weren't for those people, you don't know where you'd be.

>> reporter: but now the former miss almond blossom contestant is back. studying and working toward a future she nearly lost. i'm gayle tzemach-lemmon for the pbs newshour in california. >> ifill: online you can watch the first of gayle's reports and a conversation about the series. and tomorrow, join our twitter chat about forced marriage at 1:00 p.m. eastern, with gayle and a number of experts and advocates. find the link on our website, pbs.org/newshour. >> woodruff: now, what specific skills employers want from college graduates, and what a college can do to prove students are ready. hari sreenivasan has the story as part of our special series this week on "rethinking college." >> sreenivasan: graduation day at georgetown university. it takes four years, more thanth $200,000 dollars, and a lot of hard work to get here.

but now more employers are asking, what does a four-years degree really mean? what true marketable skills cana new graduates offer the work force? georgetown university is trying to answer that question. >> we're hearing from employers. how do you differentiate between two graduates?ou >> sreenivasan: professor randall bass leads the college's designing the future initiative. >> if you've got a pile of ten graduates who all have degrees from quality liberal artser schools, and they all look more or less alike in terms of their formal credentials, are there ways to differentiate them?e >> sreenivasan: last semester, bass and colleagues at georgetown offered a free experimental course for students who want to further distinguish themselves.fo instead of receiving ang traditional credit, students who meet the requirements are awarded a digital badge. >> what we see in the badges is a way of trying to help students tell a story about some

dimension of their learning that might otherwise be merely a line of their resume. t >> it's easy with a degree to show what you've learned in biology or in business. but it's not easy to show what you've learned in terms of leadership.u' >> sreenivasan: erika cohen derr, who was part of the georgetown team that designed the new badge, says employers want to know more about as student's disposition. >> these are the soft skills, they are skills like empathy, communication, ethical leadership. the disposition that a student has that they bring to any teame or any group. >> a resume has never been enough, and that's why this concept of badging is appealing to me., >> sreenivasan: job recruiters, like desy osunsade, see digital badges as a way to better define talent.un >> we spend a lot of time and money as recruiters trying to make sure we have the perfect fit, because recruiting is expensive.av >> sreenivasan: osensade recruits for arabella philanthropic investment advisors. she says a degree doesn't say enough about a potential hire.

>> it tells me the person's line of study, it doesn't tell me if they are good at things like critical thinking, problem solving, do they work well in teams, do they have oral communications. a resume, with a degree from anywhere does not tell me that. the digital badge offered by georgetown is called thee catalyst badge. alexis oni-eseleh participated in the pilot.in >> the catalyst badge is just affirming that. we see something that needs to be changed and just go about it. proving that you are an agent of change is accomplishing theen goals that you set for yourself. >> sreenivasan: don fraser, from the education design lab, works with georgetown, george mason university, and university ofsi virginia, as part of a larger effort called the 21st century skill badging challenge. >> sreenivasan: if i'm an employer, i'm going to get a better employee, if they have: badges that say they are a problem solver or critical thinker, good oral communicator? >> if there's rigor in thoseni t badges, and those skills areil

valuable, in the work you're doing, i would say yes. >> sreenivasan: more so if thane if they came out with a specific degree? >> exactly, because they have been working to specificallyif acquire those skills, which is totally different than thell implicit way we believe they are getting right now, hoping thatg by the time they graduate and get these degrees, they'vegr gained these skills in some capacity. >> sreenivasan: anthony carnevale is the director of the georgetown university center ono education and the workforce. >> what's happening is the onpp the job training is no longer sufficient, because employers don't commit to employees for a lifetime the way they used to, so we've got to get our own job training. w >> sreenivasan: in may, alexis oni-eseleh graduated from georgetown with a major in global health and a minor inea women's gender studies. since graduation, she has been helping with her parents' company and will start a more serious job search this fall. >> here it is certification

catalyst credential. i had to pass a certain level of criteria, which you can find here, and if you click there, it will take you to this websitw which tells you everything i needed to do to become aer catalyst. the catalyst credential is awarded to a student who embraces challenges, demonstrates initiative, pursues positive social change. >> you host them online andd they're hosted digitally, people have the ability to click on that badge and get at the metadata associated with how the learner, the student, achievedde that particular badge. so if i am so inclined, i can look at assessments that were a part of that badge, i can lookge at the work, the body of work that the student did in order tr earn that badge. >> the same degree from different schools producesdi different workers. >> sreenivasan: some emerging for profit education ventures see a much bigger role for digital badges.anitdg >> a degree doesn't say a lot, a badge or a micro credential, can say a lot more. >> sreenivasan: ryan craig is the author of "college

disrupted: the great unbundling of higher education." >> the primary credential that we use in our labor market is the degree, that's the sort ofee default credential. micro credentials, or badges breaks that down into literally competencies. what microcrendentals are signaling the shift from degree based hiring, to competency d based hiring. >> linkedin, it's not just for top executives, it's for you, and it's a great place to start your professional career.t'es >> sreenivasan: craig points to microsoft and its recent purchase of linkedin as new players in the field of post- secondary education because they offer educational training, certificates, and a marketplacei to display skills. >> competency marketplaces they way in which a decade from now are the way in which a decade from now most post-secondary education will be purchased. >> sreenivasan: but anthony carnevale cautions that commercial badges, micro- credentials, and certificates need more scrutiny.ad >> it's a whole industry where i

there's no transparency and no consumer protection, so let thet buyer beware of what happened to the people who took this course, got this badge. so people can tell if something is worth the money. >> sreenivasan: alexis oni- eseleh says she recently used the catalyst badge in a job interview. >> the interviewer asked me to talk about a time i showed initiative, and i was able to talk about the digital badge and all the steps i had to take ini order to get it to qualify for it, and even encouraged her to go look at it on my linkedin page. >> sreenivasan: this fall, designers of the badge challenge are expanding their reach to colleges with non-traditional students, who often have a harder struggle to find jobs. in washington, d.c., i'm hari sreenivasan for the pbs h newshour. >> woodruff: and a nice postscript to the story: this month, alexis oni-eseleh started a job as a media buyer at an ad agency on madison avenue. a and online, a look at whether remedial classes really help college students succeed. that's at pbs.org/newshour.

>> ifill: and now to another in >> something we thought might be of interest to you.be a town in washington state is home to a group of serve former lab chimpanzees who have been given a second chance to live out their lives in the rural pastures where they are honorary citizens. the story comes to us from television kccs in seattle. >> diane and i have been here now a little over eight years. >> so they are hanna honorary cs

and are known throughout the world. annie is a really sweet chimp and she's best friends with my feet. she adores my feet.e he is spur goofy spu goof supero they are just in love with my -- >> he's the oldest of the group, about to turn 43. foxy is known around the world now for her level of trade offs. she has about 400.00 >> the manner is like watchingt out for everybody. this is the boss of the group. she really likes instagram.ns

>> this area is an open enclosure so it was the first time the chimps were outsidet without something over their heads so they could actually see the sky.y. some of them it was the firsti time they ever stepped on grass actually in their entire lives because many chimps were born in captivity. >> we never go into the enclosure with the chimps.th aggression is a normal part of chimpanzee's life.nz and so it's just not safe. but also we want to respect their space, they are territorial and we want to ass much as we can respect their boundaries and let them be chimps.

>> ifill: and that's the newshour for tonight. on friday, correspondent williae brangham reports on the showdown between the standing rock siouxr tribe and oil companies over th pipeline in north dakota. i'm gwen ifill. >> woodruff: and i'm judy>> woodruff. join us online, and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and david brooks. for all of us at the pbsal newshour, thank you and goodws night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> lincoln financial-- committed to helping you take charge of your financial futuren >> the lemelson foundation. committed to improving lives through invention. in the u.s. and developing countries. on the web at lemelson.org. iv

>> and with the ongoing support of these institutions >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned byca media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> announcer: this is "nightly business with tyler mathisen a herera. triple-digit gains as the odds of an interest rate hike fall. lagging behind. why washington may be america's greatest economic weakness and hampering its ability to compete globally. luxury living. it's not your grandma's retirement home that more affluent americans are moving into these days. those stories and more on "nightly busines" for thursday, september 15th. good evening, everyone, welcome. a triple-digit gain for the dow as investors focused on a series of tepid economic reports, just one week before