on our broadcast tonight, ready or not. we're now within 72 hours of those drastic budget cuts across the american economy, and the question tonight is if it's as dire as the white house says it is, why isn't more being done to stop it? and now tempers are starting to flare here in washington. blizzard warnings as we storm on the move across the country. they're now using words like crippling and historic to describe it. there's news tonight in the alarming rise in the number of younger women being diagnosed with advanced stage met static breast cancer. it's a bad trend that has doctors concerned. and is it an invasion of privacy? police using modern technology to solve cold cases. but if you've done nothing

wrong, is it going too far? "nightly news" begins now. >> announcer: this is "nightly news with brian williams," reporting tonight from washington. good evening, and we are now within 72 hours until those forced budget cuts are imposed on the u.s. economy, and the federal government, again, while they have nothing to do with a jury, they are called the sequester, and americans get to judge for themselves who is telling the truth here. the obama administration is close to running out of dire ways to warn of the consequences. the attorney general of the united states actually said today our country is going to be less safe because of these budget cuts. so, if that's the case, why doesn't it feel more urgent amid all the noise here in washington? it's where we begin tonight with our chief white house correspondent chuck todd. chuck, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. you know, we have a new poll out, and it has a simple and

clear message -- the american public's patience is wearing thin with washington as it stumbles into yet another manufactured budget crisis. as republicans continue to say he's playing politics, the president was in newport news, virginia, today, a shipbuilding town heavily dependent on military spending. >> these cuts are wrong. they're not smart, they're not fair. >> reporter: the virginia economy and newport news in particular would be among the hardest hit in the country if the automatic cuts to defense kick in. those fears have workers at the naval shipyard on edge about themselves and washington. >> i'm worried, but i'm hopeful thinking it's going to be averted. >> if they don't vote to stop the sequester, then a lot of people are going home without a paycheck. >> we did not elect them to go up there to point fingers. we elected them to be responsible. >> reporter: the president has used every political weapon in his arsenal to raise public fears over the sequester. for the second day in a row, his

homeland security secretary expressed concern about safety. >> i've been in government and public service a long time, a long time, 20 years almost. i have never seen anything like this. >> reporter: attorney general eric holder was equally pessimistic. >> there is going to be harm, there is going to be pain, and the american people are going to be less safe. >> reporter: the president's pr offensive is not playing well among republicans on capitol hill, where tempers flared again today. >> we have moved the bill in the house twice. we should not have to move a third bill before the senate gets off their ass and begins to do something. >> reporter: as for what's sinking in with the public, a nbc news/"wall street journal" poll shows growing concern about the sequester. 52% call it a bad idea. just 20% believe it's a good one. but overall, cutting spending is a popular idea. we asked how congress should deal with the deficit, and a majority, 53%, favor the current automatic cuts known as sequester or a plan with even more cuts. just 37% want fewer cuts.

this is the fifth budget showdown between the president and congress in the past two years, and it's taken its toll. a majority, 51%, say these washington clashes make them less confident that the economy can get better. and of course, brian, the immediate problem is nobody really knows the impact of this sequester. you only have the word of the white house or the word of congress on exactly what the impact is going to be, but i can tell you, it feels a lot like political posturing, because they have that big budget showdown at the end of march where all these things could get wrapped up. >> chuck todd across town for us at the white house. chuck, thanks. and after a bruising confirmation fight and some ugly hearings on the hill, the president's choice for defense, chuck hagel, was confirmed today by a 58-41 vote in the senate. he's a former republican senator from nebraska, though some of his roughest treatment was at the hands of fellow republicans. when he walks into the pentagon as the new secretary of defense, he will be the first vietnam

veteran to have that job. he still carries shrapnel with him from combat, where he earned two purple hearts. now to the weather, as another big storm pounds the plains and the midwest. you can see it is a huge system, as it sweeps across the country now from west to east. it has dumped more than two feet of snow outside denver. it's caused blizzard conditions through kansas, missouri, oklahoma, and they're having a genuine, classic winter evening in chicago. that's where we find weather channel meteorologist eric fisher on michigan avenue tonight. eric, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. we're not seeing those up to hurricane-force gusts that we had across the plains that wreaked havoc yesterday, but we are seeing that same heavy, wet snow that's left over 100,000 people without electricity. in wichita this morning, they were digging out from the snowiest february on record. >> that's a lot of snow. i'm not used to this. >> reporter: while aerials from oklahoma reveal the landscape of stranded cars as some drivers

learned the hard way. >> don't drive when they tell you to tnot to. when they say conditions are going to be bad, they're bad. >> reporter: and they're bad across a wide swath of the country. 19 inches in amarillo, 21 in follette, texas, nearly 7 in wichita and 11 in kansas city. three deaths have been blamed on the storm, two from traffic accidents. but roof collapses also pose a danger. heavy, wet snow brought down this roof on a horse arena in shawnee, kansas. fortunately, no people or horses were injured. in amarillo, texas, truckers don't know when it will be safe to get back on the roads. >> i'm feeling a lot of frustration. i've got a high-dollar load that has to go out. >> reporter: kansas city is still recovering from last week's storm. and with even snow plows stuck, there may be a lot more scenes like this pickup truck towing a kansas city bus to safety. as the storm moves north, detroit struggles to keep 2,000 miles of road clear, while officials in nearby macomb

county are worried about keeping the power on. >> with this wet snow, it concerns us, so we are concentrating on some of the questionable trees that might fall across the roadway. >> reporter: at chicago's o'hare airport, as the snow piles up, so do the cancellations. hundreds of flights canceled already, and the snow has just begun. no rest for the weary here. we track the storm over the next couple of days. snow lingers around the great lakes tomorrow, moves into the interior northeast. more of the same as we head into thursday. and then after that, a huge arctic blast which will be the big story as we head into the weekend. brian? >> eric fisher in chicago for us tonight. eric, thanks. back to the national economy for a moment. the latest numbers on the another big jump in new home ow sales, welcome news for the home construction industry that's been struggling since the big meltdown in '08. the real estate market overall has been warming this winter, and nbc's stephanie gosk reports on what's driving it all. >> welcome to century glen town home. >> reporter: at a condominium plex in los angeles, the 2008

housing crash feels like a distant memory. >> newer appliances. >> reporter: real estate agent craig whitlock puts this two-bedroom on the market friday. >> we're taking over 20 calls, everybody wanting to see it either that afternoon or the very next day. >> reporter: national housing prices jumped higher in the last year than they have since 2006. economists looked at 20 cities. 19 of them showed price hikes. the top three -- detroit up 13.6%, san francisco 14.4%, and phoenix's prices skyrocketed 23%. >> phoenix and detroit saw home sales and housing starts positively plummet as well as prices. what happened after that is investors swarmed in. >> reporter: in many cases, buying up cheap foreclosed homes that flooded the market after 2008. those good deals are drying up, and overall supply is dwindling. right now if there were no new listings, all the homes on the market would sell in just over four months. that's the shortest time frame

since 2005. the other factor fueling the market is record-low interest rates. the average rate for a 30-year, fixed mortgage hovered around 5% in 2010. today it is just 3.56%. the housing numbers are good news, but a word of caution. prices have not rebounded to where they were and these gains might not last. >> a lot of media accounts suggest that we're off to the races again, but i think buyers are wary. they've just been burned. we still have an unemployment rate almost 8%. >> reporter: but at least for now, the country can enjoy a flicker of light in a sector of the economy that had all but flat-lined. stephanie gosk, nbc news, new york. now to the attention surrounding the vatican. with the catholic church currently rocked by new scandal as the church's cardinals get ready to gather to elect the new pope, we learn today that the outgoing pope benedict will be called -- what he will be called after he is pope and what life

will be like for him, because after all, remember, an abdicating pope is all new territory for the catholic church. nbc's anne thompson remains at the vatican for us tonight. anne, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. they are already closing off the streets around st. peter's square in anticipation of the huge crowds for pope benedict's final audience tomorrow. the cardinals who will elect his successor have started to arrive, including controversial american cardinal roger mahoney, who is here despite calls for him to stay home because of his role in shielding sexually abusive priests in los angeles. these final days for benedict have been very difficult. he's seen a cardinal forced to resign, intense speculation over an internal investigation into leaked documents. but today the news was all about his new life. in retirement, he will be called pope emeritus. he will still wear white, just a simple catholic and not the cape we're used to seeing. his red shoes will be traded in for a pair of brown loafers.

in the modern church, this is the first time there will be two living popes. it's a potentially awkward situation, but few expect benedict to interfere with his successor. brian? >> anne thompson at the vatican in rome for us tonight. anne, thanks. the first video is now emerging from a terrifying moment today in egypt. the fatal incident involving a hot air balloon. 19 tourists were killed when the balloon caught fire over the ancient city of luktor, plunged 1,000 feet to the ground. two people survived, including the pilot, who was badly burned. it's another blow to the egyptian tourist industry, which has taken a big hit after two years of unrest already in that country. now to what was described today by supreme court justice samuel alito as the most important criminal procedure case this court has taken on in decades. it involves the use of dna, which has become a powerful tool in criminal cases, both to find the guilty and to free the innocent, but the big question

before the court -- can the police gather dna samples from people who have not been convicted of any crime just to see if they might have committed a crime? a report tonight from our justice correspondent pete williams. ♪ >> reporter: it's a staple of police drama. >> cold case in sacramento and new york. ran dna from rape kits ten years ago. >> reporter: four years ago, maryland police took a dna sample from alonzo king when they arrested him on a gun charge, rubbing a cotton swab inside his cheek like this, then submitting his dna profile to a national database. it found a match with dna from an unsolved rape and robbery six years earlier. every state now gathers dna from anyone convicted of serious crimes. half the states do it with people arrested, too, but defense lawyers say that's just phishing with no grounds to think that some other crime was committed. >> in the dna sample, there's a lot of medical information

concerning the individual, about the individual's genetic heritage, about the people that they are related to. >> reporter: but the mother of katie ceviche, a college student raped and murdered in 2003, says her daughter's killer could have been caught sooner if police had put his dna on file when he was arrested for an earlier crime. >> we needed justice and we needed to know what happened, and we had to wait for an additional three years for that. >> reporter: some justices today seem to side with the police. justice alito said dna taken from someone arrested is merely the fingerprint of the 21st century. just breyer said dna is more accurate and it's less intrusive to swap a cheek than to roll all ten fingers for a set of prints. but others, including chief justice roberts asked, what are the limits? could you get dna from anybody pulled over for a traffic stop? and justice kagan asked, if police can use dna to check for past crimes, can the state go search your house, too? it's worth noting that all 50

states are in agreement about this case, and that's very unusual. they want the supreme court to uphold this expanded use of dna testing. they say, brian, that it helps solve crimes. >> a whole new set of challenges since our framers set out to decide on our freedoms. pete williams, thanks, as always. 20 years ago today, our nation entered a new era of terrorism on u.s. soil, yet, that realization took a while to sink in at first. a truck bomb went off in the basement parking garage of the old world trade center in new york, a place we now call ground zero after those buildings were taken down by terrorists on 9/11. the attack 20 years ago killed six people, injured 1,000 more. americans were glued to the tv coverage that day showing the coughing victims emerging in the light snowfall, many people covered in soot. still ahead for us, as our broadcast continues, we'll talk about this alarming trend, an increase in advanced breast cancer cases among young women. and later, a pair of trailblazing brothers making

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miralax. we mentioned this earlier. there are some alarming headlines out tonight about breast cancer in younger women. a new analysis shows advanced breast cancer cases are up among women ages 25 to 39. our chief medical editor, dr. nancy snyderman, is in our new york studios with more on this tonight. >> good evening, brian. a key thing to remember is that breast cancer is rare in young women, although it's aggressive, and the united states has made progress in the war against cancer. this is the first major study to show a slight but significant increase in breast cancer in young women, particularly the aggressive met static breast cancer, which has, by definition, already spread to other organs in the body. published today in the journal of the american medical association, researchers found the increase in women 25 to 39

years of age. and it's alarming because we don't know exactly why this is happening. it could be rising obesity rates, early menstrual periods, even environmental factors that we don't have pinned down. scientist raze still unsure. but it is not a reason to rush out and get a mammogram if you are a young woman. for most women, you should start getting mammograms around the age of 50. and in the meantime, you can keep up with your self-examinations, watch your weight, stop smoking, and of course, if you find anything that strays from the norm, that's when you check in with your doctor. brian? >> nancy snyderman back at home base in new york tonight with today's medical story. nancy, thanks. we're back in a moment with the end of an era in hollywood, coming off a big role in this year's best picture at oscars. i had enough of feeling embarrassed about my skin. [ designer ] enough of just covering up my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. i decided enough is enough. ♪ [ spa lady ] i started enbrel. it's clinically proven to provide clearer skin.

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for 108 years. weekly "variety" will keep going and they'll remain on the web. "variety" played a role in "argo," this year's best picture. the real producers of the fake movie at the crux of the real movie, "argo," take out an ad in "variety" to make it all look real. because very little in the dploeysy business goes as planned, it turns out the first american with a real shot to meet with the north korean leader kim jong-un may be dennis rodman. it's part of a so-called basketball diplomacy trip with the harlem globetrotters being filmed for a tv special. the state department has no official position on the trip. they do love basketball in north korea. secretary of state madeleine albright once brought a michael jordan-signed basketball to the senior kim jong-il. and "the new york times" has uncovered a story we'll just call piggate. it was a viral video back in september that purported to show a pig rescuing a goat from a pond, and it rocketed all over the world at the time on a ton

of websites. a lot of different broadcasts, including this one. and while we said at the time we had no way of knowing it was real, despite checking, we now know it wasn't. we can all thank comedy central for the hard work of a crew of 20 people, including scuba divers, animal trainers and humane officers. so, well done there. when we come back, two chicago brothers delivering something in short supply these days, and that's inspiration. ♪ my wife takes centrum silver. i've been on the fence about it.

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finally tonight, most mentions of the city of chicago of late have, sadly, concerned gun violence, but tonight we have a story about two brothers enjoying a lot of success and showing some kids something they never thought possible. the mcgill brothers are among a group of 100 african-americans featured on our nbc news website, thegrio.com, and tonight ron allen has their story. ♪ >> reporter: passion and artistry lift the mcgill brothers to lofty heights. demarre plays lead flute with the seattle symphony. kid brother anthony is the principal clarinettist for the

world-renowned new york metropolitan opera. rising stars in the rarefied world of classical music, where just 4% of the musicians in national orchestras are african-american or latino. why classical music? >> i was drawn to the stories that i heard as a kid, musical stories, and my imagination would just go wild. >> when i was listening to an orchestra or i was playing the clarinet, somehow, it got deeper into my soul. >> reporter: they started on the south side of chicago, known for its urban problems, not the classics. >> hi, sweetheart! >> reporter: parents ira, a retired teacher, and demarre sr., a former firefighter, say they mortgaged the house five times to pay for lessons. >> the pads look good. >> reporter: they still have demarre's first flute and a little something he scribbled down when he was just 15. >> "goals for the future, to be the best artist in the world ♪

>> wlfer they perform on stage, it's almost like you forget to breathe. >> reporter: they attribute their success to a chicago non-profit that's been offering free lessons to inner city kids after school since 1979, the merit school, where they're now treated like rock stars. >> they provided us a community of people that look like us doing the same thing. >> reporter: they won competitions, scholarships to prestigious schools, and at age 14 and 18, performed in a very special neighborhood. >> bravo, gentlemen. >> reporter: where's the rivalry? all siblings have rivalries. who got better grades in school? >> oh, see, well, there you go. >> you probably did. >> me. >> reporter: now their goal is to inspire. and share their love of music. ♪ >> it brings feelings to you and it helps you express yourself. >> reporter: while taking their place among the great musicians

of their time. ♪ ron allen, nbc news, chicago. >> a great note to end on on a tuesday night. thank you for being here with us. i'm brian williams. we hope to see you back home in our new york studios tomorrow evening. goodnight.