>> tonight, t stoes ith special edition frontline... >> 9-1-1. >> first... >> she's not breathing. >> since his 2003 conviction.. >> she was limp, she was blue around the lips. >> ...ernie lopez has served almost nine years of a 60-year sentence. >> they had a dead baby. somebody was going to get convicted. >> aftefrontline's original broadcast of this story, the texas court overturned his conviction. the prosecution plans to retry the case. tonight,orrespondent a.c.

thompson of propublica, together with npr, reopen "t chi cas." >> just because there were bruises doesn't mean that the child was ever hit. >> and raise serious questions about the state of pediatric forensics and the justice system. >> there are people out there that have been wrongly convicted. >> and in our second story tonight... >> you're going to get a free education. >> have some for-profit colleges exploited the generous gi bill? >> there's so much money at stake that they have hired substantial numbers of recruiters to go after these vets. >> these people are putting their lives on the line. they shouldn't be treated like this. >> these two stors onhis special edition frontline. >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting.

major funding is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. and by reva & david logan. coitteto investiti journali as thgudian of the public interest. additional funding is provided by the park foundation. dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. and by tfrontline journalism fund, supporting investigative reporting and enterprise journalism. additional funding for this program and for frontline's expanded broadcast season is provided by the bill and melinda gates foundation. >> thompson: i'm heading to amarillo, texas, to investigate a case that began 11 years ago.

it was a saturday morning, and a mechanic named ernie lopez was babysitting the children of a local doctor at his home. the youngest was six-month-old isis vas. >> i fed the kids breakfast. i had them on the kitchen table, and i had isis in her swing. she had her bottle but she wasn't eating it. so i got her out of the swing, and i went to go put her in the crib. and i went to the kitchen. i left her in the crib, and whenever i went back in there, i noticed that isis-- she was limp. she was just there, and her lips were blue. >> what's going on? >> is she breathing right now?

>> okay, i need you to keep doing cpr. >> thompson: ernie lopez's mother, rosa lopez, lived across the street. >> we started hearing sirens. that sticks in my mind, you know, that that was the beginning of the nightmare-- the sirens, the fire trucks, and then later on, the ambulance. ( sirens wailing) >> i hit her on her thigh, on her leg, trying to get her attention. and i shook her a little bit. i jiggled her a little bit. i put my ear to her chest, and i heard her heart, just beating, just racing. >> thompson: ernie's brother eddie was called in. >> my mom came over, talked to me, and told me, "hey, could you go up to the hospital?" and i said, okay, so i drove on to the hospital. >> thompson: but at the hospital, doctors and nurses were alarmed. they found bruising and vaginal bleeding. and the last person alone with the child was ernie lopez. >> so ernie was calling me from the hospital. he called me one or two times,

telling me that they were asking him lots of questions. >> i said, "ernie, what's going on?" he goes, "bro, they're trying to accuse me of killing the baby and raping the baby." i was, like, "what?" >> he told me that he was trying to tell them, you know, that the baby had been sick for days. and they didn't want to hear that. they wanted to know just what was going on within the last 30 minutes or so. >> detective moore would come in and ask me, you know, different questions, and then he said he wanted a statement from me. and i was so upset, i was crying. >> eddie called me and he told me that they had arrested ernie. >> they handcuffed him and put him in the police car. and we're, like, "where is the jail at?" because we've never been in trouble. >> thompson: isis died the next day. medical examiner joni mcclain would perform the autopsy. to mcclain, the evidence pointed to sexual assault and murder. she found bruising on isis's

head and body, hemorrhaging in the brain, and a laceration at thentrance to thvagi. in her final report, she called it homicide by multiple blunt force injuries. ernie lopez was charged with aggravated sexual assault. and, after a short trial, he was found guilty. before sentencing, medical examiner joni mcclain testified that the baby died from this violent assault. lopez was sentenced to 60 years in prison. >> you know, sometimes, it just hits me: "man, i'm in prison." i never thought that i would be in prison, never in a hundred years. >> thompson: for the past two years, frontline, propublica and npr have been

investigating medical examiners and the field of forensic pathology. we found a broken system in which the most basic principles of science and investigation are ofn ignored, with no national standards of any kind. >> it amazes me that such an important aspect of our government as medical legal death investigation doesn't have to have accreditation. i mean, everything else is accredited-- hospitals are accredited, barbers are accredited. >> thompson: we were told that some of the most difficult cases to investigate are those involving young children. here, sudden deaths are often assumed to be murder, and the caregivers are frequently the accused. we decided to take a closer look. dr. jon thogmartin is chief medical examiner for st. petersburg, florida. tell me about the challenges that child autopsy cases pose. >> well, they're hard because of the emotional content that comes with them, the anger and despair

that you'll experience on your own and others. they'll come in with a lot of expectations, and so you have to shield yourself from that. you have to objectify the kid and just find out what happened to them. >> thompson: but finding out what happens in child cases is especially complicated. >> it's going to take less disease to kl a d thant es an adult, and whateve you're looking for is going to be smaller and less. >> thompson: thogmartin has seen this firsthand. when he became chief medical examiner, he reversed two child death cases handled by his predecessor. >> i told them that there's... basically, the injuries that are described here aren't here. they imagined the retinal hemorrhages on the eyes. >> thompson: they imagined injuries that weren't there? >> they imagined injuries that weren't there. the mindset is prosecutorial-- homicide until proven otherwise. they get caught up in the anger, the emotion, t despair, and you can't do that. >> thompson: the problem thogmartin was talking about actually blew up into a national scandal a few years ago in canada.

a rash of wrongful convictions led to a high-profile inquiry and a new set of standards. but in the u.s., few are talking about these solutions. let me know if these are nationally required. >> okay. >> thompson: are you required, in child death cases, to be a board-certified forensic pathologist in the u.s.? >> no. >> thompson: are you required to have any peer review of child death cases? >> no. >> thompson: are you required to review the medical records in child death cases before or after doing your autopsy? >> no. >> thompson: are you required to consult with specialists in the field on difficult child death cases? >> no. >> thompson: after combing through court records, frontlinpropublica and npr found nearly two dozen cases in the u.s. and canada where people were prosecuted for killing children based on questionable autopsies and testimony.

all of them were eventually cleared of wrongdoing. we found one of these cases just a day's drive from ernie lopez in el paso. >> hurry up and get my own place, and get a car and everything... >> thompson: monea tyson spent nearly two years in lockdown in the county jail before being acquitted of the murder of her two-year-old son, jayceon. >> that last thing i seen was my son not breathing, you know, and i seen his face turning pale and everything. >> thompson: the case was based largely on the findings of the medical examiner. >> it was kind of hard to comprehend that somebody would charge you with something like that. i knew me and i knew what i didn't do, and it was hard to go through that. >> thompson: the autopsy on tyson's infant son was performed by dr. paul shrode. he found the case a homicide based on blunt force trauma to the head. but that's not what the forensic pathologist for the defense found. >> looking at the kind of force

you need to create that kind of injury to the brain-- there was no skull fracture, there was no other inry to the brain any other location. so it seemed to her that the injury described as blunt force trauma really didn't exist. >> thompson: in the end, the defense expert argued jayceon died of an infection. she also testified that some of the bruises dr. shrode saw as signs of abuse were likely birthmarks. the defense attorneys made a point of dr. shrode's lack of board certification, and challenged his truthfulness. >> he had falsified his résumé in the first place. we had also discovered that he was involved in another capital case where a man was apparently on death row, due in large part to dr. shrode's testimony and his findings in another autopsy, which were apparently debunked, unfounded. >> thompson: dr. shrode declined our repeated requests for an interview.

>> anybody who's doing an autopsy on a kid that's not board certified in the field, they should be blown out of the water. i don't know how they make it when they're not. anyone who's not consulting the specialists, not getting the medical rerds, i don't see how they makit oa dato-day basis. i don't see how they're not run out of town on a rail. >> thompson: dr. shrode's background came under review by the county commissioners. they fired him just months before monea tyson's trial, but did not specify why. >> only kfox cameras were rolling as monea tyson heard the words "not guilty." >> at the end of this trial, the jurors asked to see monea tyson. in all the years that i've been doing this, i've never heard of that before. the jurors hugged her, they ied th her, they asked her when she was going to see her kids again. >> thompson: another problem in the child cases that we uncovered-- there is little agreement among medical experts

on what causes children to die unexpectedly. pediatric science has undergone a revolution in recent years. one diagnosis, in particular, has come under fire-- shaken baby syndrome. take this case from decatur, georgia. i came here to meet melonie ware. ♪ ware was a daycare provider convicted of shaking a nine-month-old baby to death. she was sentenced to life in prison, but in 2009, at a retrial, the medical examiner's findings were called into question, and she was acquitted. >> all my life, i've loved children, just playing with children, being on their level. that's what i like to do. >> thompson: it all began when ware, a certified childcare provider, was watching jaden paige at her home daycare center.

the baby became unresponsive. she was taken in for questioning and arrested that night. >> i was being taken away from my family, my husband, my kids, my parents. and there wasn't anything that i could do to stop it. >> thompson: the medical examiner, gerald gowitt, found three nearly identical half-inch bruises beneath baby jaden's scalp. he argued at trial that melonie shoothe baby violently, hitting the baby's head three times, causing the bleeding and swelling that added up to classic shaken baby syndrome. >> i was just in shock, because i never thought that they would actually come back and say that i did that. i couldn't believe it. >> in baby cases, they approach a problem differently. if the caregiver says she did not injure this child, and we have no way to prove this child's death, then the caregiver must be the murderer.

it's opposite with all legal theory. >> thompson: attorney tony axam would later handle melonie ware's retrial. >> because we're more sensitive to the death of children, we have to say... it doesn't go unexplained. we say there must have been some violence involved. >> thompson: documents we found in the files of the medical examiner, gerald gowitt, raised questions about his independence from law enforcement. before doing the autopsy, dr. gowitt met with two prosecutors and four different detectives, all members of the county child abuse task force. >> they're supposed to be an unbiased entity of dekalb county. they are supposed to be totally unbiased. i don't think they should have met at all. >> thompson: we tried repeatedly to speak with dr. gowitt about the ware case, but he declined our requests. with his wife in prison, reggie ware didn't give up. >> i sold this house right here about six months later... >> thompson: one by one, he began selling houses he'd

acquired over years as part of his real estate business. it would cost him more than $700,000 to challenge his wife's conviction. >> this house right here was melonie's grandmother's house. they kind of got upset when i sold it. >> thompson: and reggie spent countless hours studying the case. >> i did, like, a crash course in college, i guess, of trying to learn about medical science, the new science that was coming out. then, i started trying to find information about shaken baby syndrome. >> thompson: in recent years, pediatric science has been changing. >> between the time of the first trial and the second tal, the sciencof sken by changed. they don't like to refer to it as shaken baby syndrome anymore. >> for 20 years, we were implicating shaking for just about every injury that we are seeing, particularly in the young infants. >> thompson: pediatric radiologist patrick barnes was a key prosecution witness in the

most famous shaken baby case of all, the trial of louise woodward. woodward was a 19-year-old nanny charged in 1997 with shaking an eight-month-old baby to death, hitting his head, and causing fatal bleeding. with barnes' help, woodward was found guilty of second-degree murder. >> ( cryi)g >> thompson: the case would be a turning point for barnes. >> i was really affected by all of that, and began to question my role as a pediatric radiologist and a neuroradiologist, as part of the child abuse team in these particular cases. shaking was irrelevant in that case, in retrospect. >> thompson: but it was clear that sometng h happened to the child. >> the child had an impact injury. you can't get a skull fracture from shaking. you can't get a wrist fracture from shaking. >> thompson: but the prosecution's theory was this

child was shaken. >> that's correct, and at that time, that was my theory, going into that case based on my previous 20 years of experience in child abuse, and accepting shaken baby syndrome. >> thompson: for decades, when barnes and others saw bleeding the eyes,nd bedinand swelling on the brain, they assumed it was shaken baby syndrome. many doctors still stand by the diagnosis. but now, barnes says, science is proving the old assumptions wrong. >> when we started using more advanced imaging techniques such as mri, we started realizing there were a number of medical conditions that can affect a baby's brain and look like the findings that we used to attribute to shaken baby syndrome or child abuse. >> thompso if you were called to tesfy in the woodrd case today, what would you say? >> i would say that this is most

likely a traumatic impact injury, that i would not be considering shaking, that this could be accidental, just as it could be non-accidental or abusive. and i would say that you cannot select out, accuse, indict or convict any particular caretaker based on the medical evidence that we have. >> thompson: in melonie ware's case, the shaken baby theory seemed to come apart under scrutiny. it seems those near-identical bruises under baby jaden's scalp were actually caused by doctors at the hospital. three times, they tried to save his life by inserting needles into his head.

jaden was born with sickle cell anemia, and top sickle cell experts testified that he died of the disease. before all this came out in the second trial, melonie ware had been in prison for 13 months. >> it was horrible. when you are in prison and they think that you harmed a child, it's not a place that you want to be. we had to move in with my parents, all of us together to make things work, so we could pay bills. even ii go to lo for job, and they pull my record and it says that i was found not guilty, they still don't call me back. it's just messed us up totally. >> thompson: in the case of ernie lopez, it's been 11 years since six-month-old isis vas stopped breathing that saturday morning at the lopez home. >> ( cryi)g

>> no, don't give me that. eat the cookie. >> thompson: ernie lopez was the father of three children. he worked as a mechanic and, to make extra money, his wife babysat for her doctor, an ob-gyn named veronica vas. three days before that saturday, dr. vas had brought her three children to stay with the lopez family. lopez remembers noticing that baby isis had a number of unusual marks or bites on her head, which her mother acknowledged. >> dr. vas said they were flea bites, and i've never seen flea bites like that. maybe around here, here, on her foreheadnd se oner nk. they were black. >> thompson: people at work later recalled his concern about the baby's condition. >> there was one episode where she had woken up, and she was crying and she was, like, gasping for air while she was crying. >> thompson: the lopezes were also concerned about the color of her stool.

>> it had turned black. it was a tarry, almost sticky substance, and it was really hard to clean her, you know. >> thompson: ernie lopez said he asked dr. vas for a note to take isis to the doctor just before she went out of town. >> i ran out the door and i asked her... i said we need a note, just in case something happens. and she said, "isis will be fine." >> okay, i need you to keep doing cpr. >> thompson: that evening, after isis was rushed to the hospital and staff began to suspect abuse, ernie lopez was arrested and charged with sexual assault of a minor. the trial would take place some three years later. his defense team called no expert witnesses to challenge

the prosecution's case. >> one side, you had everybody, all the experts, all... whatever they wanted they got. and on ernie's side, nothing. they didn't have any experts. i was, like, "how is that fair?" >> i was just waiting to be called, and i never heard anything. >> thompson: after ernie lopez was arrested, child protective services asked psychologist edwin basham to evaluate whether he posed a threat to his own children. basham has done over 4,000 of these evaluations. if you had been called on ernie's behalf, what would you have said? >> i would have said that there wasn't a basis to suggest that he would be someone likely to have harmed a child, and it would be extremely out of character to imagine that he did that. anthat would be... that's the results of the psychological exam. >> the defense does not present

any opposing medical testimony, nor do they cross-examine the experts in any meaningful way. >> thompson: what did that do to his chances for being acquitted? >> i think they decreased his chances of being acquitted to zero. >> thompson: heather kirkwood is a pro bonoattorney who is trying to overturn the lopez conviction. >> there's no evidence that she was sexually assaulted at all. there is evidence that she was ill and was essentially crashing in the days before her death. >> thompson: kirkwood uncovered a stack of hospital records that the original medical examiner paid little attention to. then she assembled a team of pro bono experts to study the evidence. one of them, dr. michael laposata, oversees six million blood tests a year at vanderbilt university. he's an expert on bleeding disorders, and published an article on diseases that mimic the symptoms of child abuse. >> in this particular slide, you

see bruises on the legs, and over on the right side in this other child, similar bruises. well, it turns out that only the child on the right has the bruises associated with child abuse. so, as you can see, if you are just allowing yourself to look at a bruise and saying, "is that child abuse?" you can't do it. this one has a disorder where he got the flu and his platelet count went down, and that makes you bruise easily, and they can even be spontaneous bruises. but you can see how somebody like this might be considered a victim of abuse, and that's why the lab tests are so important. >> thompson: in the case of isis vas, the medical examiner, joni mcclain, recently said she didn't recall looking at the baby's lab tests. she came into the hospital and had a whole battery of tests done on her before she passed on. >> there were clear abnormalities, even in the routine lab tests, in this case. the tests called pt and ptt were

markedly abnormal. the platelet count was low. >> thompson: the labs showed isis hadlood in her stool, an elevated white blood count, and abnormal liver function. and that her ptt result, a test that measures the time it takes blood to clot, was literally off the charts. >> it was a classic picture, as you're putting this puzzle together, of a disorder called dic, disseminated intravascular coagulation, and you can bleed from that. when your blood is so thin, when you're so unable to make a clot, you can just develop bruises and they can be spontaneous. so just because there were brses esn't mean that the child was ever hit. >> thompson: mcclain, who wouldn't give us an interview, said in recent testimony she didn't need the test results because this was such a "clear" case of blunt force injury. she said, "i don't get into ptt. i'm a forensic pathologist and all my people are dead. we don't run ptts." >> you have to put the whole

picture together to be able to get to a diagnosis. it's a 500-piece puzzle. and sometimes, that 500-piece puzzle is a snowstorm. >> thompson: the state's experts in this case, they'll say, "dr. laposata, you got it wrong. en a childr andultas head trauma, they can get a blood clotting disorder. so, you know, that must be what happened-- that the child was beaten and got this clotting disorder. you got it wrong." what do you say to them? >> if you look at how long it takes to elevate your white count, to get dark tarry stools, to turn your liver function tests abnormal, something had to be going on for days-- days. >> thompson: laposata also says isis's blood disorder might explain the vaginal bleeding prosecutors said was a sign of sexual abuse. >> so, when you have rampant dic, you can just bleed from everywhere. so i think that to conclude that that was sexual abuse is an overstatement, given what we know about the whole picture in

this case. >> the puzzling part of this is that the hymen was intact. and so, when we got the autopsy slide, it did not show a laceration, and that was the prosecution's expert as well as our experts. >> thompson: at the trial, the prosecution focused almost exclusivy the 4minutes before the 9-1-1 call, when ernie lopez was home alone with the baby. but little attention was paid to the behavior of isis's mother, who had said at the trial that isis was only suffering from a cold when she dropped her off at the lopez home. dr. vas also testified that, in the months before isis died, she had come to rely on the lopez family to help take care of her children. >> i won't even say "baby-sit," because they were basically living with us. when she would bring the children to the house, 99% of the times, they were in diapers, and we had to clothe them. >> thompson: so the doctor would bring over her children for you

guys to baby-sit, and she wouldn't bring clothes for them, is that what you're telling me? >> yes, sir. did i feel like it was odd? yes, i did. >> thompson: the lopezes were not the first people to take care of the children. lorrie word was dr. vas's live-in nanny at this home for nearly a year. in a 2006 affidavit, word said she feared that veronica vas put the children at risk. and she said the doctor drank heavily ile pregnant with isis. >> well, the day that she went into labor, veronica and her friend had cracked open a bottle of wine, drank the whole bottle, and then we went to the hospital, and i drove. when we got home from the hospital, she was gone within five minutes. >> thompson: did it make you worried about her as a parent? >> i have always worried about her as a parent. >> thompson: one night stands out most for lorrie word. she had arranged for a night off, and ss dr. vas was

supposed to be watching isis. but when she returned, dr. vas wasn't at home. >> there was blankets and stuff started moving around on the bed. and i just thought it was my cat. and i moved the sheets, and isis was there alone. there was a couple of bottles around her and she was soaking wet. they had leaked. her diaper was full. >> thompson: how old was the baby? >> three months. >> thompson: how long do you think that she had been abandoned for? >> hours. >> thompson: dr. vas would later say she left the child alone for just ten minutes. >> she told me that she would go home and get a bottle of vodka and go sit in the garage. >> thompson: dena ammons is a nurse who worked with dr. vas. in an affidavit, she said vas became unreliable at work and grew unable to care for herself or her children. >> i always considered dr. vas a friend. you get to know your doctors pretty closely. she started to change, though.

during the last year of her residency, especially when she was pregnant, she became very disorganized, her behavior was very strange, very bizarre. i told her i was concerned about her and the baby. and... and she just said, "don't worry, i'm a doctor, i know what i'm doing." >> thompson: dr. vas recently had her medical license suspended for alcohol abuse. frontlinpropublica, and npr contacted dr. vas several times, but she declined to comment. ernie lopez has now been in prison for nearly nine years. nce his conviction, his lawyers have put all this new evidence in front of a judge at a hearing to ask for a new trial. but all attempts to overturn the verdict have been fought hard by prosecutors. >> i wasn't the d.a. when this got tried, but i know who they were and they were good prosecutors. >> thompson: randall sims, the current district attorney, would not comment directly on the

case. and he discouraged state witnesses, including the medical examiner, from speaking with us. in your filings, your office, your prosecutors are saying, "we believe this man is guilty. we believe this was a just trl." is that...? >> yes, and the jury found him guilty. and we were defending that conviction. cases that involve certain things, a lot of times, cause us to have to rely on expert witnesses. we're not the expert witnesses, and you rely on those witnesses that you believe to tell you the truth. and that's what you have to rely on. and obviously, the jury in this case did find him guilty at one point, so we're locked in on following through with that. >> thompson: for ernie lopez, it's been 11 years since that saturday morning when baby isis stopped breathing. >> if you had told me that friday, "tomorrow, you'll be in a jail for the worst crime that

somebody could commit-- sexual assault on a six-month-old baby-- and capital murder?" ( crying) never would i have thought that. >> thompson: the lopezes were set to take a family picture the day isis collapsed, but they never did. they photoshopped him in the next year. >> it's been real hard for him because he's missed so much of his children's life. >> thompson: his daughter nikki is saving pictures for him of the events he's miss. >> this is a picture of easter. >> you know, every morning when i go to work, i have got his car

in front of my driveway, and it just reminds me of where he's at right now. >> thompson: in september 2010, the judge hearing lopez's appeal concluded that he had received ineffective counsel at the original trial. last month, in a rare move, the texas court of criminal appeals overturned the conviction. ernie lopez will be coming back to amarillo, where the district attorney plans to retry the case. if he makes bond, he'll soon be home with his family to await a new trial. >> coming up next on this encore edition of frontline... >> i do want to get my bachelor's before i get out. >> have some for-profit colles exploited a generous gi bill?

>> these veterans get this benefit one time, and if they don't get a quality education and something that can really help them with their lives, they'll never get it again. >> "educating sergeant pantzk" is next. >> smith: covering the wars in afghanistan and iraq, you spend a lot of time with young soldiers, barely out of high school, who are asked to do the toughest work the country asks of them. there are so many of them now fighting two wars, back to back. >> you guys have fun. ( gunfire ) >> smith: for most, this job is not so much a career as it is a tour of duty. they just hope to survive, make it back home, and begin the next chapter in their lives.

back on base, they prepare for a transition to civilian life. a generous gi bill with billions of dollars for education is designed to ease their way. here, soldiers take college courses from a variety of schools, earning credits towards a hoped-for degree. >> i do want to get my bachelors before i get out. that's one of my long-term goals. >> right now, i'm working on my associates degree with ctc, and then i'm going to transfer to umuc and get my four-year. >> i'm going to transfer over to strayer. >> smith: "strayer." that caught my attention. it's one of those for-profit, mostly online colleges. were there other schools that you were looking at at the same time you were looking at strayer? >> yes, i was looking at university of phoenix. >> smith: last year, i investigated the for-profit sector, including the industry giant, university of phoenix. at that time, it was $6-billion-

a-year industry with little government oversight. this is an online university. this is what it looks like. our report focused on the lengths schools go to attract students... >> are you thinking about going back to school? >> smith: ...the accreditation problems, and the staggering amounts of student debt. >> are the students and the u.s. taxpayers getting a good value? >> smith: soon after our report, congress held hearings to investigate. quickly, they became alarmed by how much gi bill money was going to for-profit colleges. >> all of a sudden, we found that there was a huge spike up in the amount of military money going to these schools-- 600% increase in just a couple of years. huge increase. and so, we started looking at that, and what we found is just really disrbing. >> smith: what disturbs harkin and other critics is that more than a third of all gi bill dollars are ending up at for-profit colleges. it's a disproportionate share, and it appears to be growing.

>> overall spending on veterans' education went from less than $5 billion in 2009 to nearly $10 billion in 2010, and a lot of that is driven by for-profit colleges and their wooing of veterans. >> smith: veterans like mike digiacomo, w dreamed of pursuing a career in computer animation when he left the army. he had learned about a for-profit school, gibbs college in boston, from a tv ad. when he spoke to a recruiter there, he was told they had connections to some of the biggest hollywood studios. >> they did say they had connections to get into pixar. pixar was pretty much the stereotypical dream of all the animation students. so i thought that i would be able to live comfortably and support a family and... and do what i loved. >> smith: the school refutes it, but digiacomo claims gibbs never proved proper computer animation training.y >> nobody in my family had gone to college. we didn't know that there was bad colleges out there.

we didn't know there was... you know, that if it advertised on tv that it wasn't a good school. we didn't know that kind of stuff. >> smith: digiacomo enrolled at another for-profit school, but soon realized he had run through much of his gi benefits and tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to make ends meet. he dropped out before he got the degree he was after. >> i joined the milita, i en risked my life jumping o of planes, d i wantedo go to college. honestly, i regret going to college for the rest of my life. >> it's an honor to serve those who serve our country. >> smith: the average veteran is bombarded with for-profit college ads. >> i wasn't sure, coming out of the military, what my plans would be. >> smith: a google search for "gi bill" turns up gibill.com, a site which directs soldiers only to for-profit schools. even organizations like amvets, one of the nation's oldest vetera associations, is plastered with for-profit

college ads. >> what's happened here is that there's so much money at stake for the for-profit schools that they have hired on substantial numbers of recruiters to go after these vets. so, you find many of these schools-- kaplan, university of phoenix-- with hundreds, literally hundreds, of recruiters going right after these veterans. >> they want you to look for the individual's pain, and then you paint the picture of how much better their life can be because they've actually gone to ashford to get a degree. >> smith: a former marine, wade cutler, was red as a recruiter at the for-profit college ashford university. ashford has over 9,000 military students enrolled today. that's a 2,000% increase in the last three years. they hire veterans like cutler to gain the trust of gis over the phone. >> if a military person is actually speaking with someone that's actually been in the military, there's a certain lingo or a certain slang that they're associated with that's very common with them. >> smith: give me an example of that. >> well, i mean, if it's a marine, then, of course, i would immediately say to them

"hoo-rah, marine," or i would say "semper fi." and they would readily know that you were in the military and you had prior service. and, so, it's easy to establish that trust. >> i mean, if you wanted to keep your job, you had a certain number of students you needed to enroll. >> smith: brad seliga, a former national guardsman, also recruited for ashford. >> you'd have these meetings, maybe on monday and say, "what's your projected number for this week?" you know, everybody goes around the table, "i think i can enroll 'x' amount of students"-- maybe three students or five students. and then, at the end of the week, you went over-- did you make that number? did you exceed that number? if you didn't make that number, what was the reason? >> i was only an enrollment advisor for a short period of time. >> smith: cutler said he tried to make his numbers until one day he became disillusioned by how many vets he would sign up only to see them drop out. some of those people, they don't have the regimen, they don't have the discipline, they don't have the ability to actually go forward. >> smith: was there any time that the university said, "look, if you think that the soldier is not ready for this kind of study, don't sign them up"? >> no, they don't say that. >> smith: what do they say?

>> they say, "everybody is a good fit. the military is a perfect fit." >> smith: ashford's parent company, bridgepoint education, says cutler and seliga's remarks run contrary to the school's policy, but they declined our request for an interview. ( phone rings ) >> hello? >> hi. is steven there? >> yeah, this is him. >> smith: frontline acquired telephone recordings of recruiters from westwood college, a for-profit school based in denver, colorado. >> i get excited when i have military students because, you know, they have the discipline, they have the drive, they have the motivation. >> smith: the recruiters tell the military applicants they'll receive special treatment... >> oh, yeah, we're on military.com as a military-friendly school. >> smith: ...instruct them how to maximize their gi bill nefits... >> the gi was actually bued up weave our n litary departme here that works with our military students. >> smith: ...and share job and salary prospects. >> right out of the gate, it looks like you have the ability to make anywhere between $72,000 to $82,000. >> what do you want to do?

what color is that? >> smith: it was a westwood recruiter who told jason longmore, a navy vet, that he could earn a bachelors degree in just three years. after his wife's ms caused her to lose her job, longmore needed to get one quickly. >> it felt like this w the right path, especially with my situation with my wife and my babyand a wholnew fe... a whole w life srting. this was going to be the right foot to set on and... and continue. >> smith: but six months into his program, he learned from a prospective employer that his westwood degree wasn't worth much. >> so if i was applying for a jobs and i went against somebody with a construction management degree from colorado state university and i had my degree from westwood college, i wouldn't be on par with that same person, although that's what i felt i was supposed to be getting through the education that they giving me. >> smith: and when longmore went to transfer to a state school, he hit another snag. his credits were no good. we asked westwood about this, and they told us they never made any promises about credits.

they pointed out longmore had initialed a box that read, "westwood college makes no guarantee of credit transfer." longmore says he was fooled. >> me and my wife both asked multiple times, "does that mean that their credits don't transfer?" and he said, "don't worry, everything will transfer. we had to put that in there because every college has credits that won't transfer, so it has to be in there. it's fine." if they would have told me dictly that it wouldn't trsfer, i would not have gone to westwood college. >> too often at for-profit colleges, the emphasis is on recruiting the student, bringing them in the front door, getting the access to the federal money, and then leaving them to fend for themselves. >> smith: dan golden, an investigative reporter for bloomberg news, has written extensively about some of the most extreme military recruiting efforts at for-profit colleges. >> i went to a marine base in north carolina, and i found that one of the for-profit colleges was sending a recruiter to the wounded warriors' barracks, where she was signing up

brain-injured marines who even had difficulty remembering what courses they were taking. and it's quite a widespread phenomenon. >> smith: take the case of sergeant chris pantzke. he always planned to return to college after he came home from iraq. he had joined the army in 2003. two years later, he was promoted to sergeant and became a squad leader charged with protecting fuel trucks driving through battle zones west of baghdad. heerved there for nine months unl one day a r bomb attack inflicd traumatic brain injury, or tbi. >> i started getting moody, angry. i was so depressed that i did become suicidal. i was hospitalized, and they diagnosed me with ptsd. >> smith: pantzke's story was first reported by dan golden in bloomberg news. pantzke had been drawn to the

for-profit school art institutes. >> creativity is a powerful thing. >> smith: art institutes has over 5,000 vets currently enrolled. pantzke says he was attracted by all the possibilities, but was worried he wouldn't cut it. >> one of the very first things, i told them that i had ptsd. and she said, "oh, you'll do fine. we'll take care of you. you're... no... not a problem." you know, "you're good. don't worry about it. we'll take care of you." i looked at what they had. they had a really good online photography course. it was a bachelor of science. so, i said, "degree, photography, okay." d about a day later, iet a phone call "you' approve you're in school." it's like, "okay." >> smith: the school would collect over $70,000 of pantzke's gi bill money and other federal funds, but he was struggling to keep up with his coursework. >> after getting into the class, there wasn't a whole lot of help. even though he would email them it would take them, you know,

days, maybe even a week, before they got back to him. >> smith: then, the school flunked him. >> it just didn't work. it wasn't working right. >> i went to see him in his home in... in southern virginia. and i'll never forget, he showed me some holes in the wall near the computer that he did his course on. he explained that he had gotten so frustrated that with his inability to deal with the courses that he had punched those holes in the wall. here was a veteran who had given his health in the defense of his country, and the taxpayers were footing the bill for him to go to college. and yet, the money was not serving any noticeable purpose except to distress him. >> smith: the arinstitutes say they offeredantz extsive tutong sviceat nchar, but they declined our request for an interview. veterans have been a growth market for your schools. >> they've been a growth market for all of higher education. >> smith: we brought our concerns to harris miller, until

recently the industry's chief washington representative. the for-profits spend more on marketing... >> yes, they do. >> smith: ...and outreach. >> yes. >> smith: how does that contribute to the fact that they're signing up at a greater rate than they are to the other schools? >> we believe, based on conversations we've had with the various veterans' organizations, that they believe that their members are very well-equipped to understand all their options. >> smith: you're saying the veterans are well advised? >> absolutely. >> smith: they know what they're getting into? >> absolutely. >> smith: they're not subject to sales pitches that come too fast and furious and misinform them? >> they are not allowed to be misinformed. it's against the law. in addition, they... >> smith: it's against the law. that doesn't mean that it doesn't get done. >> i'm saying it's against the law. >> smith: the agency that helps enforce that law is the department of veterans affairs. the va's keith wilson oversees the gi bill. have you tak action against any school for over-aggressive pursuit of veterans? >> we do. it's... it's not... it doesn't

happen a lot, i guess, is what i would say. but there are situations where that does occur, and we do have the authority to do that and we've done it. >> smith: the va couldn't tell us how often; we could only find one recent example. are you worried that veterans are not fully informed about what choice they're making? >> no, i believe veterans are informed about the decisions they're making. and we're alwaysorki to get them better information. >> smith: but if a veteran goes to your site, will they find rankings and comparisons and the kind of information that the fda publishes, for instance, on food packaging about content? >> not on the gi bill site. yeah, we're working in that direction, but right now we don't have that, no. >> smith: this interview was conducted in late january. do you think there's some urgency here about getting more information out there to veterans? >> there is. >> smith: then, this spring, as we were finishing this segment, the va finally launched a new feature on its web site, providing the ki of information we were asking

abt, including this statistic that shows graduation rates at for-profit schools stand at just 28%, half of what they are at traditional schools. >> we said to the va, "is it working? is the money we're putting in the gi bill that's going to schools-- for-profit schools as well as public schools-- is that money really working to put these people to work, to give them the jobs that they need?" and, unfortunately, the results were discouraging. >> they just basically give the money to the student and say good-bye. they don't care where they go or what school they attend to. they do no accounting on that, theyo noupervisionf that, and they don't tra it. >> smith: tracking what happens to veterans going to for-profit schools isn't easy, but one important measure is jobs. some for-profit graduates compete well on the job market, but, according to a company called payscale, graduates from the for-profit colleges we covered earn, on average, 12% to 15% less than graduates at public state schools. >> these people that are putting their lives on the line to

defend our values and defend the way our country exists, they shouldn't be treated like this. th should be treated better. >> smith: ted daywalt, a navy vet, is the president of vet jobs, the largest job listing site for veterans. daywalt recently polled employers on how they value for-profit degrees. >> human resource managers were telling me that if they have two people of similar work backgrounds, and one had a degree from an online school versus a well-known brick and mortar school, they'll go with the brick and mortar school. >> smith: how many human resource folks have told you that? in the last week, because i've been calling a bunch of them, probably about 30. >> smith: you run into any who say, "no, i don't make any distinction." >> no. >> smith: today, mike digiacomo is working at a retail copy center. his wages have been garnished, and he's having trouble paying

back his private student loans, which he says have carried interest rates as high as 18%. >> look, these veterans get this benefit one time. it's a one-time shot. and if they don't get a quality education and something that can really help them with their lives, they'll never get it again. >> smith: shortly before this broadcast, the art institutes wrote to frontline to say they've readmitted sergeant pantzke. but he's already run through more than half of his gi bill benefits and has had to borrow another $15,000 to make ends meet. he says he worries it won't be enough to finish the $82,000 program and get his degree. and jason longmore? he's now enrolled at the university of colorado as a civil engineering student. tuition costs half of what he was paying at westwood, but he's had to start over. none of his 52 credits from westwood was accepted. >> from spending my gi bill money that i worked hard for in the beginning to get without thinking that i was on a track

to be successful, and then finding out that with all the money i had spent and all the time i had spent was all for naught was pretty depressing. >> smith: longmore says all that has made it impossible to afford his home. he's fixing it up to sell. >> i feel like i upheld up my end of the bargain. i don't feel it was upheld on the other end. >> next timfrontline... inside the worst nuclear disaster of the century. told by the people who were there. for the first time, the whole story. "inside japan's nuclear meltdown," a frontline investigation. >> frontline continues online with an update on ernie lopez's

ongoing legal battle and the reexamination of shaken baby syndrome. explore the reporting of our partners, propublica and npr, on the child cases. then learn more about the legislation to close the for-profit gi bill loophole. watch "college, inc.," our 2010 investigation of the for-profit industry, then follow frontline on facebook and twitter or join the discussion at: >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major funding is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. and by reva & david logan. committed to investigative journalism as the guardian of the public interest. additional funding is provided by the park foundation. dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues.

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captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> brown: george zimmerman appeared in court today after being charged yesterday with second degree murder for the killing of trayvon martin. good evening. i'm jeffrey brown. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, we get analysis on the legal challenges ahead for both the prosecution and the defense. >> brown: then, margaret warner updates the crisis in syria as the government's guns appear to quiet. >> woodruff: from the pacific northwest, tom bearden reports on efforts to ready the region for the next big earthquake.

>> on the average, they occur about every 300 years. the last one was 312 years ago. >> do the math. >> exactly. >> brown: we examine the world of e-books after the justice department charged publishers and apple with price-fixing. >> woodruff: ray suarez talks to political editor christina bellantoni about six "must- watch" senate races this election year. >> brown: and we close with a profile of award-winning poet naomi shihab nye, whose family stories shape her work. >> the minute i could write when i was six years old i wanted to start writing little poems of my own. it seemed that telling a story helped us figure out who we were anyway, where we were in the world. >> brown: that's all ahead on tonight's newshour. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> citi turns 200 this year. in that time, there have been some good days and some difficult ones. but through it all, we

persevered. supporting some of the biggest ideas in modern history. so why should our anniversary matter to you? because for 200 years, we've been helping ideas from ambition to achievement. and the next great idea could be yours. >> bnsf railway. >> the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: the florida killing that became a national cause

moved into court today. the man accused in the shooting death of trayvon martin had his initial hearing. >> he is coming before the court, or will be here soon, i understand. >> woodruff: the scene was the seminole county jail in florida, and the judge began by reminding george zimmerman of his legal protections. >> remember your right to remain silent, all your other rights that he has told you about, and we'll go forward on some procedural measures here at this time. >> woodruff: there was no plea, and no bail was set. instead, the appearance lasted about five minutes, just long enough for the judge to set a formal arraignment for may 29. the 28-year-old zimmerman had turned himself in wednesday, after he was charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of trayvon martin. after today's hearing, assistant state attorney bernie de la rionda dismissed claims that the charge is not justified. >> we charged what we felt was

appropriate and that's what we're going to rely on and we'll leave it at that. again, we look forward to presenting this case in a courtroom of law. we appreciate that you're all here but let us do our jobs. let the defense and the state do their jobs. >> woodruff: but defense lawyer mark o'mara voiced concerns that zimmerman might be convicted by public opinion, not by the evidence. >> let the system work. it works. and now that we have focus on it, it's going to work even better because i'm sure you'll tell us if it's not working properly. >> woodruff: last night's arrest came 45 days after the martin shooting and the ensuing national outcry over the role of race in the criminal justice system. on february 26, zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, had called 9-1-1 to report a suspicious looking individual,

the 17-yr-olmartin dpite dispatcher's rning, zimmerman followed martin. a struggle ensued and zimmerman shot the unarmed teenager in the chest. police decided not to charge zimmerman after he said he acted in self-defense, under florida's "stand your ground" law. martin's parents disputed that account, and maintained their son had been targeted because he was black. they voiced relief last night, after a special prosecutor announced the decision to press charges after all. >> we simply wanted an arrest. we wanted nothing more, nothing less. we just wanted an arrest and we got it and i say thank you. thank you, lord. thank you, jesus. >> this is just the beginning. we've got a long way to go. and we have faith. >> woodruff: it is still possible a judge could dismiss the case against zimmerman before it goes to trial.

for now, he remains behind bars, pending a decision on bail. we get analysis of some legal considerations surrounding the pending trial and the potential issues connected with the national attention it's drawing. lynn whitfield is the city attorney for hallandale beach, florida. she's a former assistant state's attorney for miami-dade county, and has also practiced as a criminal defender. and scott sundby. he teaches criminal law at the university of miami school of law. he has served as a special assistant united states attorney for the southern district of florida. and we thank you both for being with us. lynn whitfield, to you first. we have heard so much already about george zimmerman. we saw him today for the first time standing there looking at the judge, listening. he didn't speak very much. but did we learn anything new or important about him just by watch what we saw? >> i don't think so. i don't think you can really learn about a lot about this case from just looking at a person. i think this is really a case where we're going to have to hear the evidence that's going to be presented during the

trial. >> woodruff: and scott sundby, what about you, just by looking at george zimmerman? i'd agree with ms. whitfield. there's not a lot that you can tell other than you've got somebody who's obviously very nervous and probably very scared of what lies ahead. >> woodruff: well, let me ask you, scott sundby, the orlando sentinel today reported that it had obtained a copy of an affidavit of probable cause it said prepared by the prosecutors which it said contends that zimmerman followed trayvon martin, confronted him and then it goes on to say that his mother identified the screams on the 911 tape as screams of her son. is that significant information? >> well, it certainly helps to explain why the special prosecutor decided to bring charges, whereas before she took over there obviously was a

reluctance on the part of the sanford police and state attorney's office to move forward. that is, of course, the evidence which the state is putting forward. the defense is likely to contest it. i'm sure they're going to be doing forensic analysis of that have 911 call to try to see if they can further identify the screams. but it gives us at least an outline of why the state is suggesting that this deserves second degree murder charges. >> woodruff: lynn whitfield, do you make anything special or important out of what is in this affidavit? >> yes. i think it shows us that the special prosecutor took her time and really reviewed the evidence. some of the evidence that's very important, i think, to be considered in this case are the 911 calls. the fact that the dispatcher told him not to follow, that it's clearly evident that he did follow trayvon and did catch up

with him. the fact that you could hear the screams even in the neighbor's homes. of course, voice analysis will probably have to be done and that, as a defense attorney, would be one of the things that you would be looking to challenge at trial. >> pelley: lynn whitfield, staying with you, so is that the sort of solid evidence that you would expect the prosecutor would have had to have had to have brought the charge of second degree murder? >> i would expect that the 911 tapes would have been very important to the prosecutor because that's something that no one can change. that's already been recorded, it's a part of the record for the police department. they haven't been altered to the best of our knowledge. so i believe that is solid evidence going forth in this case. >> woodruff: and scott sundby, in connection with the second degree murder charge, how solid, how... how firm, how solid does

the evidee need to be for a prosecutor to do what the prosecutor in this case did? >> well, so the standard for bringing the charges is relatively low. it's essentially probable cause to believe that they can prove those charges in court. but any prosecutor worth her salt-- and i'm sure this special prosecutor is quite good-- is going to not want to bring charges which she doesn't believe that she can prove beyond a reasonable doubt before a jury. and so she's ging have to be pretty confident that this evidence is going to stand up in court and meet the pretty high standard for the mental state that they're going to have to show in order to get a second degree murder conviction, which is that george zimmerman in florida's terminology had a depraved mind. that is that he was acting in such a reckless fashion toward trayvon martin that it

manifested in extreme indifference to the value of trayvon's life. and that's a pretty high charge. the lesser charge-- which many thought would be brought and which is still a possibility at trial-- would be something like involuntary manslaughter. so she'd have to have a lot of confidence in that evidence. >> woodruff: lynn whitfield, we did hear martin's attorney... i should say... and his maim is mark o'mara. he told reporters today that a high percentage of murder cases in his experience don't go to trial. that suggests that there's plea bargaining. so how does that statistics... does that statistics... does that sound accurate to you and do you think there's a good chance this may not go to trial? >> well, i've been doing criminal law for over 20 years and i would say that not only for murder cases but most criminal cases don't go to a full jury trial.

but it does not mean that it necessarily pleads. there's going to be motions that will be heard by the judge which could result in a dismissal of the charges or it could ultimately plead to something of a lesser charge. you have not only the involuntary manslaughter but you also have aggravated manslaughter of a child for a child under the age of 18, which we all know trayvon was only 17. or you could have voluntary manslaughter. so it could either plea or be dismissed by the court. if the court finds that the affirmative defense of justifiable homicide may be valid. >> woodruff: what about the police investigation here? there's been a lot of comment about that. what role do you see that playing in this case? >> well, it's interesting, because it could go in sort of both directions. i'm sure that the defense is...

while the criticism of the police was that their failure to engage in certain types of investigation led to a reluctance to charge george zimmerman that kind of becomes a defense argument now which is how much can we rely on this evidence is not all of the "t"s were crossed and the "is" dotted. so if you remember the o.j. simpson case, there was all sorts of arguments about how the blood was accurately collected. there may be similar types of arguments underlying the defense here. i think it's one reason why ms. whitfield is quite correct that the 911 tapes are probably going to play a critical role here because it's the one piece of evidence which isn't going to be altered. but it is going to be... it could play a role in the case in terms of the defense saying that they did not do... lay the proper ground work so how can we cept much of the evidence later brought in, especially interviews with witnesses where they may have made inconsistent

statements on what the police said they said and they're saying. >> woodruff: finally, lynn whitfield, this case has received so much public attention. how do you see that affecting trayvon martin's... the case against george zimmerman and his killing and zimmerman's ability to get a fair trial? >> well, i think the fact that it's received so much public attention will play a part as it relates to jury selection because you're going to have to try to find six people who have not heard about this case or who have not made a fair... up their mind about what the result in this case should be. and i think the fact that we have so much social media... networking now is going to play a part because everybody's all over facebook, all over the country expressing their views on this case. so i think it relates to jury selection. it will play a part as it relates to the evidence being presented in court. it will not play a part.

>> woodruff lynn whitfield and scott sundby, we thank you both. >> brown: still to come on the newshour: the first day of a fragile cease-fire in syria; oregon prepares for the big one; pricing e-books; six senate races to watch; and poet naomi shihab nye. but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: wall street scored a second day of gains today. stocks advanced on upbeat economic data out of china and a strong government bond sale in italy. the dow jones industrial average gained 181 points to close at 12,986. the nasdaq rose 39 points to close at 3,055. the obama campaign opened a new line of attack today on republican mitt romney over tax fairness. vice-president biden criticized romney's opposition to the so-called "buffett rule" to impose higher taxes on the wealthiest americans. in exeter, new hampshire, biden said romney has his own rule-- to give the rich more money in tax cuts than middle-class families make in a year.

>> the "romney rule" says "let's double down on the tax cuts for the wealthy." look, folks, this is not about class warfare. this is about math. this is about math and people's lives. >> sreenivasan: romney had no public events today and did not respond to biden's charge. but his wife, ann, challenged a democratic consultant's criticism of her status as a stay-at-home mother. on wednesday, hilary rosen had said mrs. romney should not be talking about women and the economy because "she hasn't worked a day in her life." ann romney responded today on fox news. >> my career choice was to be a mother, and i think all of us need to know that we need to respect choices that women make. other women make other choices to have a career and raise a family, which i think hilary rosen has actually done herself. i respect that. that's wonderful. >> sreenivasan: the obama campaign and democratic leaders disavowed the criticism of mrs. romney. and first lady michelle obama tweeted that "every mother works hard, and every woman

deserves to be respected." later, rosen issued an apology, saying her words were "poorly chosen". the presidential battle in egypt has taken a new turn. islamists in parliament pushed through a bill today to ban officials who served under ousted president hosni mubarak from seeking the office. it was aimed mainly at former vice president omar suleiman. he announced he's running in the may election after the muslim brotherhood fielded a candidate. egypt's ruling military council would still have to approve the ban. the president of afghanistan, hamid karzai, said today he's considering holding presidential elections a year early. the vote is currently set for 2014, when most nato combat forces are scheduled to hand over security to the afghans and withdraw. karzai said it might be better to schedule one or the other for 2013, instead. he discussed the situation with nato secretary general anders fogh rasmussen during a meeting in kabul. >> this is something that i have been thinking about. i have had some consultations. there are favorables to both the

ideas. i have not had a final decision yet and it will not be soon, so... but i am thinking about this and i will do what is good for this country in either case. >> sreenivasan: for his part, rasmussen said nato is still on track to hand over security in afghanistan in 2014. pakistan's parliament moved today to put relations with the u.s. back on track. lawmakers approved guidelines for reopening supply lines to u.s. and nato forces in afghanistan, but with increased fees. pakistan closed those lines in november after u.s. air strikes that killed two dozen soldiers along the afghan border. the new guidelines also call for an end to attacks by u.s. drone aircraft. death penalty opponents marked a victory today in connecticut. the state house voted last night to abolish capital punishment in all future cases. the state senate had already approved the repeal. the bill now heads to the desk

of governor daniel malloy, who says he will sign it into law. connecticut would become the 17th u.s. state to end the punishment. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to jeff. >> brown: next tonight, a cease- fire begins in syria. we start our coverage with a report from neil connery of independent television news. >> reporter: the syrian army has not gone away, but since dawn, its guns have largely been silent. these images are said to show the battered city of derah, tanks dug in, but in the absence of gunfire, early signs of people returning to the streets. this is idlib, scene of a ferocious bombardment. the shelling has stopped but the government armor remains. it is a similar picture in homs. this opposition fighter says that all is quiet now, but points down to the tanks and other army vehicles that have

not been withdrawn as they should under the annan peace plan the u.n. has acknowledged a significant improvement on the ground, but remains skeptical. >> as of this moment, the situation looks calmer. we are following it very closely. the world is, however, watching with skeptical eyes since many promises previously made by the government of syria have not been kept. >> reporter: this isolated and unexplained explosion said to have occurrein homs this afternoon appears to bear out those suspicions. as does this incident which the opposition claims shows a gathering of civilians coming under fire in allepo. most of the evidence though seems to point to a fragile peace. with tanks still encircling main centers of protest and army

snipers on the rooftops, it is hardly a return to normality. but at least, for many for a while, there has been an opportunity to bury their dead with less fear of becoming victims themselves. >> brown: on the diplomatic front, russia and china joined the u.s. in urging a speedy dispatch of u.n. observers to monitor the cease-fire on both sides. in washington, secretary of state hillary clinton said the assad government must comply with all elements of the peace plan, not just the cease-fire. >> the regime's troops and tanks have not pulled back from population centers and it remains to be seen if the regime will keep its pledge to permit peaceful demonstrations, opening a sisz for humanitarian aid and journalists and begin a political transition. the annan plan is not a menu of options, it is a set of obligations. the burden of fully and visibly

meeting all of these obligations continues to rest with the regime. they cannot pick and choose. >> brown: moments ago, margaret warner got an update from "time" magazine correspondent rania abouzeid in beirut. >> warner: rania abouzeid, thank you for joining us. what's been the reaction on the ground inside syria from people you've talked to today. do they say they feel freer to go out? >> well, much skepticism. i talked to some people in homs and in the northern idlib region and they say things have been much quieter than they were in previous days but in homs they say there were still snipers that were active in their area as well as tanks and troops on the streets hower th said it was much, much quieter than it was but nobody i've been talked to expect this is cease-fire to hold. you know, they say just look at previous agreements of the assad government and then sort of

broken, if it's even applied any of cof t components of the plans. for example, like the arab league plan back in january. you know, even the kofi annan plan, they say it's not really a smorgasbord that the assad government can choose which elements of it it wants to apy. the cease-fire is only just one element of this. the tanks and troops are also supposed to be withdrawn from the cities and towns. peaceful protests are also supposed to be permitted and there are other conditions as well. >> warner: now, what about the people who were at the heart of these protests back in the days when peaceful protests did take place. what are they saying snowed do they plan the return to the streets? >> well, certainly if we look back at the 13th month uprising, there have been protests after friday prayers every week and during the muslim holy moh of ramadan there was protests everyday so certainly we're

expecting large numbers of people to take to the streets on friday just based on what activists are saying and, you know, this is always the concern that the assad government had if we look back at the arab league monitoring mission in january, for example, we saw many, many more people take to the streets because they felt that perhaps with the presence of these monitors in their mid-it is security forces might not be as brutal as they have been in the past. the syrian national council, which is is de facto plital oppotionro, has called on people to take to the streets in syria to test the cease-fire and to see if assad will keep his guns as silent as they have been today. >> warner: has the assad government given any indication as to whether it will allow those protests to go forward? >> the interior ministry has said that protests... peaceful protests are part of a constitutional right of every syrian and it said that president bashar al-assad signed a decree as part of this reform

package that he has plemted lately giving people the right to peacefully protest however the interior ministry said protesters must seek permission and that certainly a lot of the people they have been talking to are saying they're not going to happen, they're not going to seek permission which raises the question whether or not these quote/unquote illegal protests will be considered a pretext by the assad regime to perhaps... for security forces to try and stop them. >> warner: now, what about the armed opposition fighters inside syria? havetheyaid anythinoda either publicly or to you about whether they, too, will honor the cease-fire. >> we have heard from several different elements within the free syrian army that they intend to honor this cease-fire however some of the men that i've been speaking to are extremely skeptical and they're certainly not going to be laying down their weapons. there was a report on the syrian

national news agency today that said about 160 men had handed themselves and their weapons in to theovernment becauseust the day bore e syrian government said that anybody who hands themselves in who "doesn't have blood on their hands" will be released and set free and they can "return to their normal lives." but certainly none of the men that i've been talking to have who have taken up arms against the syrian regime are prepared to lay them down. >> warner: well, rania abouzeid, thank you very much. it will be fascinating to see what happens tomorrow. >> woodruff: next, how scientists are preparing for the dangers of an earthquake in oregon. yesterday, a quake with a 5.9 magnitude struck about 160 miles offshore, with no real impact. but increasingly, researchers are worried about specific and lesser-known risks of a major tremor there.

newshour correspondent tom bearden reports. >> reporter: yesterday's quake off of the oregon coast caused no damage. but historically, the pacific northwest has experienced quakes as powerful as the one that devastatejapan; they just don't happen as oen. scott ashford is the interim dean of engineering at oregon state university. >> on the average, they occur about every 300 years. the last one was 312 years ago. >> reporter: do the math. >> exactly. >> reporter: the national science foundation dispatched an american team to japan shortly after the disaster. ashford went along to study a lesser known earthquake effect-- how sandy soils actually liquefy when the earth shakes, and what happens to structures built on that soil. mar cities like portland and seattle are built on similar soils. >> we saw many buildings that just settled and just kept settling. so with... once the ground liquefied, it lost the

foundation support, and then with the continued shaking, they just continued to sink into the ground. >> reporter: while surface structures settle, underground utilities tend to rise out of the ground. >> the ground turns into almost a viscous fluid, and when that takes place, a lot of our utilities like manholes, like sewer lines-- will tend to float up out of the ground, and when something floats like that that's the ground, it tends to break. >> reporter: ashford says all this can be mitigated if stronger soils are mixed into the sand and different construction techniques are used. >> if you're able to go in and densify them before you build something on top of it, you can mitigate the liquefaction hazard. there's also methods of ground improvement-- stone columns, deep cement mixing-- all are methods to also mitigate that liquefaction hazard if you don't have the opportunity to densify the soils ahead of time. ( explosions ) >> reporter: scientists also replicate liquefaction by setting off explosives underground, like this test on an island in san francisco bay.

>> one of the things that we learned in the treasure island experiments was that the resistance of the soil was much different than what we learned from the small-scale experiments in the laboratory. ( explosions ) >> reporter: a much larger test in japan showed how an earthquake can spawn sand boils, a miniature volcano of sand and water, that can spread huge quantities of sand on the surface, making an area impassable. such experiments also showed how liquefaction can cause the ground to shift sideways, a real problem if there's a bridge on top. >> when we're looking at liquefaction and the subsequent lateral spreading, we typically see that along riverbanks. where there's enough of a slope that, when the ground liquefies, you essentially have a slope failure. and you can have several meters of movement of the ground toward the river. now, when that ground moves, it tends to bring the bridge

foundation with . and that can esseially rip apart the bridge. >> reporter: the oregon department of transportation has spent more than 20 years working on ways to minimize earthquake damage and damage from the tsunami that will follow. but they've only managed to retrofit about 100 out of 1,100 bridges at risk. highway division administrator paul mather. >> virtually every bridge in western oregon is at risk. that's the i-5 corridor, that's all of 101, and every bridge that connects those corridors in the state highway system, but there's also the local system as well as private bridges that we have in western oregon. so it's virtually every structure in western oregon. >> reporter: mather says if those bridges go down, the entire coast will be cut off from outside help and people won't be able to evacuate, either. mather says the state is focusing on shoring up the bridges along several lifeline routes to have a better chance of keeping them open. but even that will take years. and mather says at the current

rate of bridge replacement, it will be 100 years before every bridge in oregon is earthquake- resistive. but the lifeline routes will only be useful if people on the coast actually survive the tsunami. pat corcoran's job is to preach the gospel of earthquake and tsunami preparedness. he's a hazardous outreach specialist with oregon state's extension service. he's skeptical of purely engineering solutions. >> so in japan, technology and engineering was a two-edged sword. it was very positive in the structural developments of the roads and infrastructure so people could evacuate effectively. and 90% of the affected population did evacuate effectively. the other edge of the sword of technology is the seawalls lulled people into complacency and to develop in places they probably shouldn't have. >> reporter: he says people on the coast will be on their own when the earthquake strikes, and have just minutes to get to higher ground before the tsunami roars ashore. corcoran says coastal towns must be persuaded to hold regular evacuation drills. >> i think it's true to say that

not everybody will be as enthusiastic about preparing for tsunamis as some. it's against human nature, really, to spend a lot of time worrying about these things, even though we know it's going to happen. agai it's a matter of bringing alignment with what o heads know and how our feet act on the coast. >> reporter: but after japan, corcoran says more oregonians are finally starting to listen. >> brown: on our web site, it's science thursday. and on our science page, tom has more about how engineers in oregon are preparing for the worst-case earthquake. also there, a story about green burials, using biodegradable caskets and urns and no embalming fluids. >> brown: next, how much for that electronic book? we look at the fallout from a price-fixing suit in the publishing world. >> good afternoon. >> brown: the announcement in washington yesterday rippled

across the booming e-book market. >> as a result of this alleged conspiracy, we believe that consumers paid millions of dollars more for some of the most popular titles. >> brown: the justice department accused apple and five major publishers-- harper-collins, simon and schuster, macmillan, hachette, and penguin-- of colluding to raise prices. the target of the alleged conspiracy was online giant amazon. it introduced the kindle e-reader in 2007 and quickly became and has remained the dominant player in the market, often charging just $9.99 for an e-book, while fighting off challenges from barnes and noble's e-reader "the nook" and apple's ipad. but the lawsuit alleges that starting two years ago, the publishers and apple sought to break amazon's hold using a so- called "agency model," whereby the publishers set the prices of a book rather than the retailer. >> during regular, near- quarterly meetings, we allege that publishing company

executives discussed confidential business and competitive matters, including amazons e-book retailing practices. our investigation even revealed that one c.e.o. allegedly went so far as to encourage an e-book retailer to punish another publisher for not engaging in these illegal practices. >> brown: three of the publishers harper-collins, simon and shuster,nd hachette have already agre to settlement. th lawsuit against apple, penguin and macmillan will go forward. soon after the lawsuit was announced, amazon said it would lower its e-book prices. and we debate the issue now with becky anderson, president of the american booksellers association and co-owner of three independent bookstores in the chicago area. and steve berman, a seattle- based lawyer who's leading a separate class-action suit against apple and the same group of publishers for their e-book pricing model. becky anderson, before we get to the fallout of this new lawsuit,

step back in time a lite and first set some context to help us out here. how much did the e-book, beginning with the kindle, rock and change your world of publishing and book selling? >> well, i think digital books have been on the market for maybe... been in existence for maybe ten years and it probably wasn't until 2007 when amazon got into it and then other big players got into it, borders and then the nook and barnes & noble. and then independent bookstores t into this maret, too. wa't til 20 at the end of that year that we really got into the market and then the formation of the agency model made it very possible for us to compete on a level playing field with the other big players in the e-book market. >> brown: so steve berman, explain that agency model and the case against apple and the publishers. what is it that they did in 2010? >> well, in 2009, the publishers

began meeting with each other to discuss their dissatisfaction with the fact that amonas selingookst $9.99. major stream books by well-known authors. and they were not happy with this and they were afraid that it would erode hard cover sales, which is where they were making most of their money. at the same time, apple wanted to enter the market but they didn't want to compete with the amazon based on price. so we allege that apple and the publishers got together and they agreed to shift from what was called the retail way of selling books where amazon would set the price to an agency model where applor aazon or anoer retailer would be acting as the agent and publishers would set the price. so they all agreed to enter into a dramatic business shift in their model and they also agreed if anyone sold their books at a

lower price, than the price apple is selling at than apple would also sell at that lower price. so that in effect set prices because there's no reason to compete based on price if apple an amzon a aaysocked into the same pricing structure and what happened next was books that were $9.99 went up to $14.99 and will has been no price competition since that's happened. we're all paying more for e-books than we should be. >> brown: becky anderson, what's the response to that? that and the justice department says that this is... their suit is intended to make the marketplace more competitive >> i think by them saying it's not true because in t guise ofof what the government is doing by saying they're making it more competitive but they're making the appearance more competitive because by creating the agency model it created a more diverse

marketplace. so many more people were able to be in the e-book business. and by creating the agency model and setting the price like that it made so many more players able to be in a diverse marketplace, many people selling them, many people talking about books and getting the word out about books and actually price might have been set but actually prices of many ebooks went own. the ba list of these major publishers that are not books that la r brand new on the market, those prices went down. and there are many offers and promotions put out by the major publishers, those five included in this, that they set some great pricing that put it out there from 25 cents to $1.99, $2.99, $3.99 because they wanted to get the marketplace diverse, get many players into it, make books available at great places for a lot of readers. >> brown: mr. berman, that's the argunt again the gernme case and your lawsuit, i guess is that this lawsuit will just help one company, that's amazon.

it will make the environment less diverse and the end hurt consumers. >> well, there's a number of answers to that. number one, there's no evidence that the environment will be less diverse. and number two the antitrust laws are there to protect consumers of the end product. they're not there to protect competitors. so if seone ca'tompe wh amazon caus amazon h a good device and they offer a low price then they're just out of luck and apple and others will find a way to compete with amazon, the market is too big and there's too many players interested in getting into it. so the bottom line is that you cannot get together and fix prices in order to compete and that's what they did here, plain and simple. >> brown: becky anderson, what is it that you're worried about? what do you think might be the impact? specifically in your area on

independent bookstores. what's the fallout? >> well, before the agency model took effect, amazon had at least 90% of the e-book market. so that's consider play monopoly of what's out there. after it took effect they might have 50%... between 50% and 60% of the market which shows that much of the market has gone to a diverse amount of sellers and what it has done is that it's allowed readers a wide variety of choice where they purchased their e-books. with... taking the agency away and if they go back to that icing it will go back to a monopoly typofthing. ththinis, supreme to realize that amazon is using e books because they know readers are great consumers and also that books are one of the consumer products that it bought at least by most people, a lot of consumers once in a calendar year that once they get that person and using books at the cost at which the publisher is selling, that's basically net pricing or even below net

pricing that they're using that as a lost leader to get consumers to their web site to buy a multitude of oth prodts, not just books. so i think what's happening here is that when one player is controlling the market it hurts. it hurts literature, it hurts our culture. >> brown: brief last word from you, mr. berman? do you see the stakes that way for the book, the world of books as well as the industry? >> well, people have more choice and amazon's market share has gone down because there's no price competition. so, yes, if there's no price competition there will be more players out tre but there's nohingrong with being a monopolist and if amazon could gain a monopoly share by offering the lowest price and consumers want the lowest price they're allowed under the law to do so. if they abuse that monopoly share and drive everyone out of the market-- which is one of the threats people claim our lawsuit is overlooking-- and they drive

everyone out of the market by raising prices people will enter and compete if apple raises prices too high. if they raise prices too high they can be sued for abusing the monopoly power. so the answer is not simply to alw apple d the plishers to f prices, that's just not allowed under the law and it hurts consumers paying for books. that's the bottom line the other side can't answer. >> pelley: steve berman and becky anderson. thanks so much. >> woodruff: and we turn to politics, but not the presidential campaign. instead, we focus on what we're calling the "senate six." ray suarez has that. >> suarez: if republicans capture four senatseats, they'll gain control of the chamber. so, the newshour hachosen six key races to follow in the coming months, ones we think will serve as a guide to the battle for the majority this fall. and political editor christina bellantoni is here to explain which contests we've selected

and why. why, christina, we should remind people that in every two-year cycle a third of the senate comes up. so out of these 33 seats coming up in the fall, how many are held by democrat and how many by republicans? >> republicans are only defending ten seats and the democrats are defending 23 seats. s which is what happens in the cycle six years after you've won a giant wave election year. in 2006 the democrats took over the senate in part because of races in some of the more traditional red states-- montana virginia, et cetera. so a lot of those seats are on defense plus you have a lot of retirements which are shaking up the map so one of the reasons we laid out the senate six on our web site today was just take a look at where we're going to see this battle play out over the fall. how it's going to tell the story about the national picture. the republicans, as you know, you've got nebraska and north dakota that could very well flip to the republicans, either democrats are retiring from

those seats, they're trending to be more conservative states so that's already two seats down. missouri is a very tough state for senator claire mccaskell, a democrat who won in 2006 defending there. so we picked these races to really look at where we're going to be able to tell if senate control is up for grabs in the fall. >> so we'll take a quick run through the senate six going from west to east and starting in nevada. tell us about it. >> so in nevada you had senator john ensign step down from his seat after a host of ethics issues there and he's a republican and he was replaced by senator dean heller, a member of congress. this is always going to be a seat that ensign was going to just retire so heller had his sights on that seat. shelley berkeley, also a member of congress, is running as the democrat there. what's interesting about nevada is this is a presidential battleground state and particularly the obama campaign has put in a lot of resources to make sure they have the get out the vote operation, the make sure they can target latino

voters and to activate the harry reid machine. this is harry reid's home state and he's going to be going after this seat. >> suarez: next, montana where incumbent john tester took the seat in a squeaker of an election in '06. what's the dynamic there? >> well, tester has only served for one term and he's running against a congress member named denny rheeburg. they run at large in montana and denny rheeburg has been winning statewide for a decade so this is going to be a very competitive race lockd from the beginning to tend. it's a state where it cheap to buy aertising so pect t see ads there. >> reporter: new mexico and open seat with the retirement of jeff ling man. a purple state, they elected a republican government in 2010 but went for obama by 15 points in '08. >> this is a better seat for the democrats. they are probably going to hold it but there is a competitive democratic primary for the nomination there and heather wilson, a former member of

congress from new mexico is running for the republican nomination and at first people thought she would be challenged from the right and dispatched because that's what happened. but she wants to be the nominee and republicans are very confident that she can do well this fall. >> suarez: another open seat in wisconsin the retirement of veteran herb coal. >> so tommy thompson, s likely to get that g.o.p. nomination, they haven't selected that yet and he's likely to face congresswoman tammy baldwin running to be the first openly lesbian senator in the country. so that will be a very close race. this is a very important battleground state in the presidential election and obviously there's a lot of attention because of the governor's recall that's going to bth sumr with govnor ott walke there, a repuican >> sarez: virginia, one of the longest of the long nights in 2006 jim webb decided not to fight to keep his seat. another open one. >> and virginia always takes on national implications in part because it's in washington, d.c.'s backyard but also because you've got big personalities there and you've got tim kaine,

former governor, former democratic national committee chairman, one of barack obama's best friends running for the democratic ticket there and george alan, the former senator, who jim web unseated in 2006 wants his seat back. he obviously still has national ambitions. this is a lot of money is going to be involved in this race and it's a very important battleground state for the obama campaign, president obama needs to win virginia to win reelection so they're pouring a lot of resources there and it's one of those states where mr. obama does well you're going to see tim kaine probably do well but it will be very close. >> suarez: if you want to continue to talk about money, massachusetts is next. outside money is pouring into that state, isn't it? >> yes, there's another one with national implications. senator scott brown won the surprise special election after senator ted kennedy passed away and he was really the vote against health care reform and looked at as this republican savior, the new face of the party. but he's also voted along the lines of massachusetts. he's been a little bit more independent, he voted for the repeal of "don't ask, don't

tell." so he's remained pretty popular there but democrats very much like their chances with elizabeth warren, harvard law school professor who worked with president obama, they think she can raise a lot of money. she's got more than $7 million in the bank. this is a big deal there. anditis state where democrats have an advantage. so president obama does well there, you've got probably a good night for her which means the democrats are taking over a seat in that case. >> suarez: but seesawing opinion polls early, right? >> and they're fairly close. you've seen a lot of change here. warren was leading, now they're closely plached. >>. >> suarez: we've got time for a bonus state! maine which came as a surprise that it was even going to be in play but olympia snowe retired. >> yes, so olympia snowe was known as a moderate independent type republican but this is a republican seat so the democrats were very excited hoping their candidate would run. they didn't really get anyone marquee so what happened instead was former two-term governor angus king is running there and he's being very coy about what whether he caucus with the

republicans or democrats because if you have a split chamber he could be a king makeer in party control so we'll watch this as a bonus race. king said he vote for president obama in the fall so that gives you one indication of where he's headed. >> suarez: christina bellantoni, thanks a lot. >> thank you. there's another senate race we'll examine-- veteran republican dick lugar is facing a challenge from the right. gwen ifill reports on that primary fight tomorrow night. >> woodruff: finally tonight, another in our occasional series on poets and poetry. naomi shihab nye is author of more than 25 volumes and winner of numerous awards. she was recently elected to the board of chancellors of the academy of american poets and, as we'll hear, regularly conducts writing workshops around the country for young people. >> my name is naomi shihab nye. i live in san antonio, texas.

i have been wking with tudents of all ages for 38 years, encouring th to write their own poems and stories and discover how much material they have. i took the title for my recent book "transfer" from an actual airlines baggage tag, but i was thinking about all the different kinds of transfers we make in our lives from one stage of our lives to another. my mother, miriam shihab, exposed her children to art and culture as much as she could, and our father aziz shihab was an immigrant from palestine, a refugee. i was lucky to be told stories as a little child. our father brought tales out of this palestinian background to our bedsides. and the minute i could write when i was six years old, i wanted to start writing little detailed stories, poems of my own. it seemed that telling a story helped us focus, helped us figure out who we were anyway, where were we in the world.

"story ller" where is thdoor to the story? is the door left open? when he sat by our beds, the days rushed past like water. driftwood, bricks, heavy cargoes disappearing downstream, no matter, no matter, even the trees outside our screens tipped their cooling leaves to listen. my father was very disappointed by war and fighting, and he thought language could help us out of cycles of revenge and animosity. and so, as a journalist, he always found himself asking lots of questions and trying to gather information. he always very clear to underscore the fact that jewish people and arab people were brother and sister. that was in every story that he told. he would say this conflict came about because of political decisions or decisions made by

powers in different countries, and it's not the fault of jewish people and arab people. he was convinced all through his life that resolution was possible. "many aed me not to forget them where do you keep all these pele? the shoemaker with his rumpled cough. the man who twisted straws into brooms. my teacher, oh, my teacher. i will always cry when i think of my teacher. the olive farmer who lost every inch of ground, every tree, who sat with head in his hands in his sons' living room for years after." in the poem "many asked me not to forget them," i found the line that actual line in my fathers notebooks after he died, and then the poem i wrote came out in his voice. when he died and i really couldn't imagine how i would continue to live without this

voice until i realized i would always have that voice in my days. it was in my dna, it was in my memory. "i tucked them into my drawer with cuff links and bow ties. touched them each evening before i slept. wished them happiness and peace. peace in the heart. no wonder we all got heart trouble." i do think that all of us think in poems. i think of a poem as being deeper than headline news. you know how they talk about breaking news all the time that if too much breaking news, trying to absorb all the breaking news, you start feeling really broken. and you need something that takes you to a place that's a little more timeless, that kind of gives you a place to stand, to look out at all these things. otherwise, you just feel assaulted by all of the tragedy in the world.

>> we swam so easily to the stone village, women in thick dresses, men with smoky breath, we sat around the fire pitching in our own twigs, the world curled around us sizzled and popped. we dropped our troubles into the lap of the storyteller and they turned into someone else's." >> brown: again, the major developments of the day: the man accused in the florida killing that became a national furor appeared in court for the first time. george zimmerman is charged in the shooting death of trayvon martin. wall street advanced strongly on upbeat economic news out of europe and china. the dow industrials gained 181 points. and syrian government forces halted their assaults on rebel

areas, observing a u.n.-bkered cease-re onle, we've scheduled a le twitter discussion. hari sreenivasan explains when and how to join in. hari. >> sreenivasan: it's tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. eastern. christina bellantoni will lead the chat about politics in virginia, maryland and beyond. find out how to participate on our homepage. on the "rundown," judy writes about the first-ever discussion featuring all four female supreme court justices. plus, we have more on the e-books price-fixing allegations in an interview with andrew albanese of "publishers weekly." all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. jeff. >> brown: and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm jeffrey bro. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. we'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and david brooks, among others. thank you and good night. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

supporting progress for 200 >> ti. supporting progress for 200 years. >> and by the bill and melinda gates foundation. dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live a healthy, productive life. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank yo caponing spsoreby macneil/lehrer productions captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org