on the broadcast tonight, a way out possibly in the works for gadhafi. tonight the latest from tripoli on a possible deal to get him out of there, and the shifting u.s. role there fighting now on a third front. by the numbers. some apparent good news tonight on the jobs front, and we'll explain where they're getting all these numbers. making a difference in young lives. the people who step up to send young people on their way and on the right course. also tonight, the u.s. army announcing a bold new look for its 1.1 million members. "nightly news" begins now.

captions paid for by nbc-universal television good evening. it is the third front americans are fighting tonight, and tonight the libya story is on the move. there have been some important developments during the day today. first, reports of some sort of a deal possibly in the works to get gadhafi out of there, but his army is still fighting hard, still not letting those rebels advance. despite the u.s. having fired off 227 cruise missiles and flying all those countless air missions. and tonight with nato now in charge of the fight, the air war, the no-fly zone, the u.s. has announced it will no longer fly combat air missions over libya starting tomorrow. we want to begin tonight with nbc's jim maceda who remains inside tripoli for us. jim, good evening. >> reporter: hi, brian. even as moammar gadhafi's forces gain the upper hand against the

rebels on the battlefield, his regime is beginning to show signs of collapse from within. these rebels have come full circle. their drive towards tripoli began here in ajdabiya a week ago but they have been driven all the way back to where they started. outgunned and outsoldiered they still dream of taking sirte, gadhafi's hometown, hundreds of miles away. i tell you by 6:00 p.m. we'll be in sirte, says this rebel, but not tonight. instead the opposition's governing council offered a cease-fire if gadhafi stepped down and pulled his forces back from all of libya's cities. gadhafi, who hasn't been seen in ten days, rejected the cease-fire terms. still, political pressure on the regime is mounting. today another high-profile defection rocked tripoli. libya's new u.n. ambassador quit, saying too much blood had been spilled in libya. that on the heels of moussa koussa's defection, gadhafi's

foreign minister and key adviser who is now in great britain being debriefed by british intelligence. and even members of gadhafi's family, including his son, may be seeking a way out as well. publicly defiant as in this recent interview with nbc news -- >> this is our country. we live here and we die here. >> reporter: but british media speak of secret meetings in london between his top aide and british officials. and just how spooked is gadhafi about a possible flood of defections? well, the government has now assigned security guards to shadow each and every major government official just in case. brian. >> jim maceda inside tripoli. jim, thanks for your reporting tonight. for more on all of this, we're happy to be joined tonight by retired u.s. army four-star general, barry mccaffrey, who is, of course, an nbc news military analyst. general, first off, where do you see the momentum right now tonight? and if i can ask, how do you think this ends? >> well, brian, to some extent

this is bizarroland. we've got nato announcing they'll strike either side if they're attacking civilians. gadhafi is now putting his forces understandably in civilian clothes, in civilian vehicles. the u.s. is withdrawing its combat power from supporting this effort. it's hard to imagine why this will turn out well. >> now, we call this a nato-led fight and yet you and i both know there's components of this that are purely a u.s.-run show. no one else is refueling aircraft, electronic jamming, surveillance, things like that. i want to put a graphic up on the screen, what you commanding general types call the tempo of battle currently for our company. you know about the multiple deployments. right now we've got 100,000 in afghanistan, 48,000 people in uniform in iraq, 55,000 in the area of operations around japan, and here we are taking part in

this third combat front. what's it doing to the armed forces? how much thinner can they get? >> of course in the short run we can easily do, this but there are some aspects of this military force, brian, that are under intense pressure. special operations units, air force refueling assets, air force c-17, c-130 lift were 800 miles from the sea in afghanistan. if not for the u.s. air force we couldn't stay there. so i think it is the case, and notwithstanding 2.4 men and women in the armed forces and the department of defense, when it comes to the fighting elements, they are really pushed to the wall. >> and generally, finally, what do you have your eye on next in this region where it just seems to change every day? >> well, i think right now our essentially our strategy in libya is based on hope, which doesn't work very well in either birth control or military operations.

somehow we have to end up with the gadhafi regime out, which means taking obvious military measures, arm the rebels, use the agency or foreign forces to do it, but the whole notion that nato is now neutral and will bomb either side strikes me as if we might have lost our way. >> general barry mccaffrey with us from our washington bureau. general, a pleasure, as always. thank you very much for being with us tonight. >> good to be with you, brian. a new wave of protests swept other nations in the middle east today and in this era, as we say, of big, fast changes and foreign policy that can change on the spot, by the day, the u.s. is watching all of it very closely. so is nbc's ron allen, who is watching it from amman, jordan, tonight. ron, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. pro-democracy activists in this part of the world wanted to make friday a big day. they were hoping to generate some momentum. but they met fierce resistance everywhere. entrenched leaders fighting back and showing little interest in compromise or concessions.

in syria these internet images carry the crackle of gunfire and scenes of protesters overcome with tear gas. reports say as many as seven more people died just days after president bashar al assad dismissed immediate reforms as a sign of weakness. there was good news for two americans being held by syria. tik root and mohammed radwan both were set free. they had been jailed for alleged involvement in the uprising. in yemen, the largest crowds yet, hundreds of thousands. president ali abdullah saleh still refusing to step down. that as opponents backed by military and tribal leaders demand his immediate resignation. dwie dividing a volatile country where al qaeda looks to gain from the chaos. and egypt, where victory seemed

won. thousands returned to liberation square, worried leaders from the old mubarak regime are hijacking the revolution. the crowds demanding investigations, accountability, true reforms and freedoms now. and there were demonstrations for and against the government here in jordan today, but no confrontations. police were out in big numbers keeping things under control. another example of how leaders in this part of the world are making compromise -- are making revolution and reform a very tough thing to accomplish. brian. >> all right, nbc's ron allen in amman, jordan, tonight. ron, thanks. in northern afghanistan today in a city considered at one time one of the safest in that country, violence erupted outside a u.n. office. 12 people, including eight foreigners, were killed in a protest over the burning of the koran last month by a pastor in florida. many in the crowd carried signs, chanting slogans condemning america.

as one dispatch put it, unable to find americans upon whom to venting their anger, the mob turned on the next best symbol of western occupation, the united nations headquarters. now domestically the red-hot issue of jobs across this country. the labor department says the economy added 216,000 jobs in march, the sixth straight month of job growth. the unemployment rate ticked down from 8.9 to 8.8, the lowest it's been in two years. it sure looks like good news, but as you know even the experts say the numbers don't really reflect reality in america, and many of you have asked us often to explain how the government does the math. nbc's john yang is here in the studio with us having dug into these numbers. john, good evening. >> reporter: that's right. every month when we report these numbers we get lots of e-mails. the question you most often ask is among the 13 1/2 million officially unemployed, who's included and who's not included? so we went to find the answer.

to calculate the unemployment rate, the government interviewed 60,000 households by phone or in person during the same week each month. they asked are you working or not? if you're not, are you looking for work? it has nothing to do with how many people collect unemployment benefits. >> people whose unemployment insurance has been exhausted are still counted as unemployed as long as they're actively looking for work. >> reporter: not counted as unemployed, people who haven't looked in four weeks n march they were 1.5 million. and people who have given up looking altogether because they don't think they can find work. last month, nearly one million. plus the survey asks part-time workers if they want a full-time job but can't find one. last month, 8.4 million said yes. add them all together and you get what some call the real unemployment rate, in march, 15.7%. that survey tracks people, who's working and who's not. an entirely different survey

tracks jobs, how many are gained, how many are lost, and who's hiring and who's not. for that the labor department asks about 400,000 businesses how many people they had on the payroll the second week of the month. but those numbers can be slow to come in so the figures are revised the next month, sometimes losing jobs, sometimes adding them. officials also estimate the number of jobs added by start-ups. >> every month new businesses are being created, but we can't get them on the list quick enough to sample them for that month. >> reporter: the unemployment rate and the jobs number may get the headlines, but economists say they only tell part of the story. they look at another number the labor department calculates, something called the labor force participation rate. it's the percentage of adults who have jobs or are looking for one. and it's been stuck at the lowest rate in more than a quarter century. >> it's been low for a very long time because people didn't have much hope in the economy. by this stage that we're creating jobs, you would think you would see more people throwing their hat in the ring to look for a job.

>> as ed mcmahon used to say, everything you'd ever want to know about the numbers and we finally have explained it. one disconnect left in american life where people are working and yet can't really support their family and put food on the table financially. what's that about? >> brian, it's all about the kind of jobs being created. last month 45% of the new jobs came in restaurants and bars. health care, which usually means a nurse's aide or home health care worker and temporary office workers, jobs that typically don't pay very much and typically don't have benefits. >> john yang, awfully good to have you on this topic here in the studio with us tonight. thanks. we told you earlier this week about a promising new drug called makena that helps prevent premature births, the leading cause of infant death around the world. the outrage as we reported to you was over the cost of this, $1500 per dose. the manufacturer agreed to reconsider. today they have, lowering the cost to $690.

that was not nearly enough for many critics, including the march of dimes, which today ended its relationship with that drug company. there's news tonight that deaths on the road in this country are at their lowest level since 1949. in 2010, traffic fatalities dropped 3%. an impressive 25% over the past five-year period. the experts say it's thanks to fundamentally safer cars, highway engineering that's better and the drunk driving crackdown across the united states. we'll take a break here. up next, as we continue on a friday night, in japan the u.s. military joins the heavy lifting in one of the most intensive recovery missions ever launched. and a survivor of a different sort. this long after the quake in japan. radiating pain everywhere... and i wondered what it was. i found out that connected to our muscles are nerves that send messages through the body. my doctor diagnosed it as fibromyalgia, thought to be the result of overactive nerves

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followed that. tonight here are the latest numbers. morehan 11,000 are dead, more than 16,000 still officially listed as missing. today the u.s. military was enlisted in what's being called one of the largest recovery missions ever launched on the planet. an urgent three-day effort to find thousands still unaccounted for who may never be found. nbc's lee cowan is in tokyo for us tonight with more. >> reporter: it's a grim turning point. the u.s. military marked three weeks since japan's disaster by helping in a final sweep for the missing. it's a massive effort. more than 100 helicopters, 65 ships, some 25,000 personnel, all searching for bodies washed ashore on coastlines previously inaccessible. for people like makiko, she fears it's her last hope. she's been scouring lists of evacuees looking for her parents, but to no avail.

to find them, she says, is my only wish. at the troubled nuclear power plant, radioactive water continues to leak into the ocean. and today it was revealed into the groundwater as well. there are even traces found in beef. vegetable farmers whose spinach and other leafy crops were pulled from the market last week were out today trying to prove to customers that not everything grown near the plant is radioactive. this man has been farming this land for 40 years, but this greenhouse is now barren. >> so this whole thing was spinach. >> reporter: he tilled it under, just as he was told to do. but now he fears for his other crops, like tomatoes and cucumbers, which he insists are fine. so this is safe? [ speaking foreign language ] >> reporter: really good. but reality and perception are two different things. he's already lost 70% of his

business so far. in three weeks, he'll be planting his rice crop in the soil, and that's a crop he fears that could be even further stigma tiesed. it will eventually turn into a life-or-death situation, he says. for he and others like him, three weeks isn't the beginning of the end, it's just the end of the beginning. lee cowan, nbc news, tokyo. and this is an incredible story. hear heart-wrenching as well. a dog discovered alive having survived all alone since these days in the quake in japan, 21 days out in the open water living, surviving somehow adon a floating island made up of the remains of a house and other debris. he was spotted from the air, rescued, treated and will be okay and is a living monument to canine strength and resilience. when we come back here tonight, when was the last time you got a raise? tonight the latest numbers are out on the biggest salaries for

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we were just talking about jobs earlier in the broadcast and the millions of americans who want a job but can't get one. at the same time we learned today from usa today about three-quarters of america's ceos got raises last year and took home paychecks that looked a lot like they did prerecession. here now your top three earners and their companies and the amounts. we're talking tens of millions of dollars for all three at the top. by the way, just a small fraction of that would have been enough to answer the dreams of the howard family of indiana. stan howard has been a letter carrier for 30 years, not earning enough to take his large family to houston this weekend, where his son, matt, will lead the butler bulldogs in college basketball's final four. this week, though, stan got a little something back from his town. donations of the folks along his route to help pay the way. so tomorrow night all the howards will be in the stands for the tipoff at the game. the u.s. army announced a big change today. in a statement from washington

posted on the web, the largest branch of the armed forces said the official head gear of the army will now be the stetson. they say it will replace the now standard black beret and the camouflage cap. the press release says it's a symbolic return to the tumultuous days of the horse cavalry. they feel stetsons will be popular with the troops. they call them functional and downright american. it was only when we noticed this photo on the web and then remembered today's date that we realized we'd been had. it turns out the army has a good sense of humor and celebrates april fool's day. up next, stepping up and stepping into the lives of high school students at a critical time and making a difference that then carries them through life. [ male announcer ] an everyday moment can turn romantic anytime. and when it does, men with erectile dysfunction can be more confident in their ability to be ready with cialis for daily use.

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[ slap! slap! slap! slap! slap! ] [ male announcer ] your favorite foods fighting you? fight back fast with tums. calcium rich tums goes to work in seconds. nothing works faster. ♪ tum ta tum tum tums it's time for our friday "making a difference" report. first the bad news. as you may know too well, many american high schools have a shortage of guidance counselors with a shortage of quality time. that means a lot of students are left in the lurch, especially those who are college ready but

need help with the applications, selection process. the good news, though, is that there's a group of dedicated americans stepping in to fill that gap. the story from our education correspondent, rehema ellis. >> attention! >> reporter: jaquan stover, battalion commander of his high school rotc unit. alicia archie mcmillan, class president and a member of the honor society. these two at west charlotte high in north carolina are high achievers. but like many of their peers, they had no strategy for how to excel beyond high school, until they got help from a unique program that puts young people from low income families on a college track. >> we're going to make sure we get those filled out correctly. >> reporter: portia newman, less than a year out of the university of north carolina, she's back in high school now working as a college counselor. >> i'm trying to figure out a

new way to connect to these young people and it's been -- it's been a journey, but i've loved every bit of it. >> reporter: the need for more full-time counselors in high schools is enormous. according to the department of education, nationwide there is one guidance counselor who every 457 students, which means on average, kids get 20 minutes of counseling a year. newman is giving kids a lot more than that, pulling them aside in the courtyard or the library, helping kids fill out applications, answering questions about campus life. 179 counselors helped 65,000 students in 14 states. >> i think it's really important for a young person to be able to say i know your story, i lived your story, i look like you, i talk like you. if i can do it, you can do it too. >> reporter: that's just what jaquan and alicia were missing. >> she was just there to push me and say this is what you need to

do. >> reporter: life-changing advice. alicia is now the first in her family to be college bound. rehema ellis, nbc news, charlotte, north carolina. and that's our broadcast for this friday night and for this week. thank you for being here with us. i'm brian williams. we hope to see you right back here on monday night. in the meantime, have a good weekend. good night. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com