captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: the jobs picture in the u.s. saw strong growth last month. employers added almost 290,000 people to their payrolls, and drove the unemployment rate to its lowest point in six years. good evening, i'm judy woodruff. gwen ifill is away. also ahead this thursday, airports in europe and the middle east tighten security for some flights headed to the u.s. amid concerns that terrorists are developing new types of bombs that could go undetected. plus, from rural bangladesh, a development program for women entrepreneurs is opening up a new market for sundries and cosmetics. >> the saleswomen would earn

the buyers to have access to soap and other higenic products. what products should be sold alongside with knowsties like soap have been considered. >> woodruff: that's what we're covering on tonight's pbs "nehour". >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

bae systems. inspired work. >> and the william and flora hewlett foundation, helping people build immeasurably better lives. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions 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. the dow jones industrial average passed a new milestone. closing above 17000 for the first time. it gained 92 points in a shortened trading day ahead of july 4 to finish at 17,068.

the nasdaq rose 28 points to close near 44.86. and the the nasdaq rose 28 points to close near 4,486; and the s&p 500 added more than 10 points, to 1,985. hurricane "arthur" powered up today as it headed toward the outer banks of north carolina. by late this afternoon, the storm had sustained winds of 90 miles an hour and was less than 200 miles from cape hatteras. its approach prompted evacuations and canceled fourth of july plans for some. others stayed put, amid indications the storm would brush past hatteras without making a direct hit. either way, governor pat mccrory urged people to leave, and he promised emergency crews would be ready. >> we're already taking action in preparation to have a very quick recovery and ensuring we can get back on line as quick as possible regarding utility service, water services, roads, transportation, and anything else that needs to be repaired or fixed within a very short period of time. >> woodruff: the hurricane also

roiled holiday weekend plans farther north. the fourth of july boston pops concert and fireworks were moved up to tonight. tropical storm warnings for nantucket and the cape cod. the top u.s. military commander played down prospects today for major american action in iraq. several hundred u.s. advisers have deployed to help iraqi forces fight sunni militants of the islamic state or isil. but the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, army general martin dempsey, said he does not see the need for an industrial- strength force for now. >> assessing and advising and enabling are very different words than attacking, defeating and disrupting. we may get to that point if our national interests drive us there, if isil becomes such a threat to the homeland that the president of the united states with our advice decides that we have to take direct action. i'm just suggesting to you we're not there yet.

isil has declared an islamic caliphate, and today, its fighters extended their grip on eastern syria. they seized more towns, plus the country's largest oil field after winning the allegiance of local tribes. meanwhile, saudi arabia deployed 30,000 troops to its border with iraq amid reports that iraqi forces had withdrawn. baghdad denied it. the united nations warned today that the syrian refugee crisis may destabilize the entire region. the u.n. high commissioner for refugees appealed for donor nations to make good on promised aid. he estimated at least 2.9 million syrians are now in neighboring states and 100,000 more are joining them each month. tensions were on the rise along the israeli border with gaza today, after a night of rocket fire and air strikes. it follows the deaths of three israeli teenagers and the apparent revenge killing of a palestinian teen. israel bolstered its forces and

moved more equipment near gaza, while street clashes intensified in jerusalem between police and palestinian youths. each side criticized the other. >> it's time now to do only two things: to respect the law and to avoid incitement. >> ( translated ): the israeli occupation is responsible for this escalation. the palestinian people are acting in self-defense. >> woodruff: israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu tried to calm the situation today, vowing to find the attackers responsible for the palestinian teen's death. earlier in the week, he pledged to make hamas pay. the latest major auto safety recall came today from subaru. the company announced it's calling in more than 600,000 cars and suv's with brake lines that may be prone to rust. the recall affects certain model years of the legacy, outback, impreza and forester. it's mainly for cars sold in cold weather states where salt is used to treat roads in

winter. still ahead on the newshour: good jobs news from the month of june. increased airport security and screening. the backlash against common core education standards. consumerism in rural bangladesh. a reporter and his son embed with u.s. troops in afghanistan. and, the case for a new interpretation of the declaration of independence. >> woodruff: the unemployment >> woodruff: the unemployment rate in the u.s. dropped to 6.1% in june, its lowest point since just before the financial crisis of 2008. that news came along with a strong hiring report, 288,000 more jobs last month. well above most expectations and stirring hopes, yet again, that the momentum in the jobs market is here to stay for a while. the newshour's economics

correspondent, paul solman, has the story part of his ongoing reporting, making sense of financial news. >> reporter: whopping job gains, upping the average of the last five months to more than 200,000 a record last seen in the tech boom of the late '90s. on a visit to a tech startup hub in washington, president obama accentuated the positive. >> it should be a useful reminder to people all across the country that given where we started back in 2008, we have made enormous strides thanks to the hard work of the american people and businesses. >> reporter: economists like boston college's matthew rutledge were taken by surprise. >> a lot more positive than i would have figured. you know, we're expecting our usual 200,000 extra jobs and it actually came out more like 300,000 jobs and this is great news. but the latest report on the

economy as a whole, on g.d.p., was that g.d.p. actually shrank. this is the exact opposite of what we were getting earlier in the recovery, where we were getting g.d.p. growth, but no job growth. now we're getting job growth, but it's not exactly clear why. it doesn't seem like people are producing anymore. maybe they're just finally getting around to hiring people back. >> reporter: indeed the employment picture seemed bright, right across the board. more jobs at restaurants and bars, in business services, manufacturing, healthcare, architecture. our own inclusive u7 and underemployment number was the lowest since we began calculating it at the start of 2011. any clouds? well, most of the new jobs seemed to be part-time. and the percentage of the population officially in the workforce remained at a low 60% for the third straight month. >> particularly striking to me reading this morning's numbers

was that the population grew the usual 200,000 but the civilian labor force didn't grow at all. >> well, we know that the baby boom is just reaching that magic retirement age, 62, 65, 66. and so we're seeing some of those people drop out. we're seeing them retire on schedule. but a lot of people have not really been able to afford to retire. some of them are finding jobs. some of them are sticking with their job search longer than they would have in the past. >> reporter: how did age affect job growth in last month's report? >> so we saw huge job growth among younger workers. 25-54 went up to something like 500,000 to 600,000 extra jobs. among people 55 and older it barely went up less than 100,000 jobs. and the unemployment rate for men 55 and older actually went up a little bit. >> reporter: that rate went up to 4.9% in june while the number of unemployed men over 55 rose to nearly 900,000. >> what that could reflect is

that people with the best job prospects have been able to take that financial portfolio, they've been able to take their more valuable house, they've been able to take that pension coverage and walk away. whereas the people that are left, the people that are still looking for a job 65 and older, are the people that have to continue to look because they don't have the option to drop out. and so that's why the unemployment rate is a little higher than it would have been otherwise. >> reporter: research by professor rutledge and others has shown that unemployed older workers remain jobless for longer than their younger counterparts scarred by having been laid off at a later age. as a result when they do find work, it tends to be for a lot less money. >> they're going to be especially worse off relative to younger workers who are able to bounce back a little bit better. so not only are older workers looking for a job for longer, but they have more difficulty even finding that job. the job they find won't necessarily be as good as the one they just left.

>> reporter: why? >> it might just be that there's a lot of people out there. you don't have to hire an older worker if there's a younger worker that's cheaper and maybe, at least you can perceive to be more adjustable, more trainable. >> reporter: if the economy continues to add more jobs at this pace, though, the so-called reserve army of the unemployed will continue to thin, providing hope even for those most scarred by the great recession. >> woodruff: additional security measures, a response to goverment concerns over new terrorist threats. officials to take additional safety measurers at a number of airports in europe, middle east and africa that have flights directly to the u.s. airports on both sides of the atlantic ramped up security after american officials warned of potential plots to smuggle bombs on flights to the u.s.

they said al qaeda affiliates in yemen and syria are trying to make bombs that current security measures won't detect. the secretary of homeland security jeh johnson appeared last night on msnbc. >> people should not overreact to it or over-speculate about what's going on. but there clearly are concerns centered around aviation security that we need to be vigilant about. there is a terrorist threat to this country that remains, and i believe that counter terrorism needs to be the cornerstone of our mission, our vast mission. >> woodruff: al-qaeda's yemen branch, known as a.q.a.p. was behind the so called underwear bomber on christmas day 2009. a nigerian man tried and failed to set off plastic explosives inside his underwear on a flight to detroit. the following year, a.q.a.p. tried again, placing bombs in printer cartridges on cargo planes bound for the u.s. they were intercepted and disarmed. now, the department of homeland security is asking for expanded

passenger screening with special emphasis on smart phones and shoes. british prime minister david cameron pledged his support today. this is something we've discussed with the americans and what we've done is put in place some extra precautions and extra checks. the safety of the travelling public must come first. we mustn't take any risks with that, i hope this won't lead to unnecessary delays, but it's very important that we always put safety first and we do. >> woodruff: also today, the u.s. embassy in uganda warned of a threat to attack entebbe international aport, tonight. u.s. officials said the information came from ugandan police. for more on this threat warning i'm joined now by richard barrett, he ran the united nation's al qaeda monitoring team for nearly a decade. unitil he stepped down. he is a former member of the british secret intelligence service. richard barrett, we welcome you. first of all, do we know exactly what caused authorities to be concerned? >> no, but as a coincidence of things going on here, as your report said, archiving the

arabian peninsula which is known for making these sort of bombs, being in discussions and moving personnel up to northern syria where the al quaida fillia is on this front is also threatening to amoun mount attacks as well. in addition to that, i think al quaida thinks its credibility is at stake because the israeli extent has taken over glory if you like and gotten all the attention of the current terrorist group at the moment and al quaida probably feels they may need to do something to recapture the lost ground. >> woodruff: do we know if there was a specific threat or just a general piecing of different threads of information together? >> well, that i don't know. but clearly, it is a time when people need to be alert. it's a holiday period coming up, of course, and many people traveling around, and i guess that there's no harm in

reminding people that these checks are for a purpose and reminding the people who carry out the checks that their work is very serious and needs to be done properly. so there may have been some sort of indications of a possibility of increased threat, but i think, generally speaking, it's considered a good time just to get people back on their toes. >> woodruff: why, richard barrett, is al quaida in the arabian peninsula of particular concern? >> well, there's a man called al-siri who is active in creating the bombs, a saudi chemist who's been active for some time and sent his brother in 2009 to try to kill the deputy interior ministry in charge of the al quaida account, and that guy apparently had a bomb which evaded theirs detecting mechanisms and almost killed the prince. so beyond that, when there was omar mu tall lab, in christmas

of 2009, and then the printer bombs, this guy has techniques that are difficult to detect. >> woodruff: is anything publicly known about what kinds of bombs they mae be ex measurementing with? is the intelligence that good? >> the intelligence is not too bad. the christmas day bomber was analyzed and so, too, were the bombs in the printers and more recently, they made the mistake of giving a bomb to somebody who was prepared to hand it over to the saudi authorities, so that bomb is also being examined. so there's quite a lot of knowledge about what they're trying to do, but the tendency they are working with emits very little vapor to be detected by

current machinery. >> woodruff: the assumption is these folks are working all the time to try to come up with something that can get through security. >> exactly right, and they probably know a certain amount of the capacity of the machines being used at airports and, therefore, they have a bar that they have to cross and they know what the bar is and they only have to cross it once to cause everybody a considerable upset. >> woodruff: you mentioned earlier al quaida feeling that its credibility may be at risk, and there was reporting a few weeks ago with the advances of i.s.i.l. in iraq, there was reporting about previously the two having been split and now that we see i.s.i.l. making these advances, i mean, could that literally be what's driving al quaida to want to do something dramatic because they see i.s.i.l. getting all this attention? >> i think so, yes. i think you're right on that. i think that al quaida will not want to be driven by other people's timetables, but, at the same time, they really need to

do something because, really, since the july 2005 bombings in london, they haven't achieved very much except giving out statements and threatening people, and that only lasts so long when you've got another rival group like i.s.i.l. attracting a lot of recruits and money. so i think they're going to do something because they have to balance the down side of a botched attempt with doing something that has an effect and shows they're still powerful. >> woodruff: give us a sense of what more can be done because, you know, there are times when many americans feel there's already so much security that's in place, how much more can be done overseas at these airports to ensure that flights are as safe as possible? >> yeah, i think you make a very good point there. there's only so much security that you can impose on people, a lot of security has to come from the people themselves. so there's questions that you're

asked, did you pack your bags yourself, did you accept anything from somebody else that you brought with you in your luggage? so it's a sensible question and should be taken seriously by the people who answer them. but beyond that, i think we may need protection against attacks will be coming from the community, and the closer authorities can work with communities from which the vulnerable people may be recruited to terrorist activity, may be easier to spot them in advance rather than screening everybody. >> woodruff: richard barrett, we thank you. a time for vigilance. we appreciate it. >> thank you. >> woodruff: students and teachers may be enjoying their summer vacation from the classroom. but that hasn't stopped the red- hot debate over the so called common core education standards,

and new tests that go along with them. the battle is picking up momentum on a number of fronts. jeffrey brown has our update. >> reporter: one major battleground: a growing list of states that are dropping the common core standards. indiana, oklahoma and south carolina have done so. louisiana governor bobby jindal has issued an order for his state to join them. but now, even places committed to keeping the guidelines are deciding to slow things down. at least seven states and washington d.c., have postponed tying teacher and school evaluations to student scores on common core-based tests. for a breakdown of what's going on, we check in with carmel martin, executive vice president of the "center for american progress" and former assistant secretary of education. and rick hess, director of education policy studies for the american enterprise institute. welcome to both of you. >> thanks. >> brown: carmel martin, you backed the common core idea. remind us of the essence and why

it would be useful. >> the essence is a group of state actors got together, a bunch of governors and chief state school officers on a bipartisan basis got together and said our current system of patchwork of standards isn't working. we have one in four students going to college and are showing up, they're not ready for college-level work. only a third of our eighth graders are proficient in math and reading. so the state leaders said one of the things we need to do to fix the problem is to have a new set of standards aligned to what the core set of content and skills that students need to be successful in college and career, and they got together and developed the common core and we believe very strongly that that's a very important foundation upon which to build our education system. >> brown: rick hess, what are the downsides, the concerns? >> we talk a lot about the

common core standards. standards are a lot like the mission statement in mcdonald's when you walk in. you like the service to be quick and prompt. doesn't actually mean much. the reality is the significance of the common core has been dramatically overblown by both sides. it's common core, which are standards and tests. the standards don't matter much. what matters are the tests and that's the thing that's falling apart. third, if it had truly been a bipartisan group of governors doing this, the reality as it has played out, there has been dramatic intervention by the obama administration and that politicized an issue that doesn't need to be politicized. >> brown: address the states that are pushing back and dropping it because of what they're basically saying it's a local issue and the federal government should be out of this. >> well, it is a local issue, and these standards were developed by local and state leaders. they brought in experts from around the country. they brought in teachers to come in and ask their opinion. they brought people from the

business sector, the military, the postsecondary sector, and it was a locally-driven thing. what the obama administration did was backed the play of a lot of state and local leaders and i don't think that was inappropriate for them to do so. i mean, we have seen efforts in the past where the federal government tried to develop a national set of standards. that's not what this is. i think it's appropriate -- an appropriate act of federalism for the president and the secretary of education to say you've got a great idea here, we think it offers a tremendous amount of prospects for our children, we're going to support you in what you're doing, and i think that's the opposite of federal overreach. i think what's happening in a lot of the states that are backing off is there are some folks on the right who are using this as a political football. we see within the republican party an extreme wing that's pushing their leaders to take what i think are nonsensical

stances. governor jindal got attacked politically and backed away. what we need to do to say to the state leaders is if they want to turn away from common core, they need to make sure they do it because they don't believe the standards are good but not for political reasons. >> brown: is politics driving this? >> public schools spend $6 billion a year of public funds. we make decisions through the political process, so this should be a political conversation. >> brown: should be. nothing wrong with it. >> nothing wrong wit. the fact that 40-odd states signed on to the common core essentially in the dark of night in 2009 and 2010 with little discussion and media coverage should give us pause. we're supposed to debate these kinds of things in america. the reality is president obama and secretary duncan rewarded states for adopting common core through the top program and encouraged them toa don't

through the elementary and secondary education waivers. they put $350 million into the tests. the 2012 democratic platform credited president obama with getting states to adopt the common core. unfortunately, the obama administration, for whatever reason, decided that it wants to be driving this train, and i think it's unsurprising that republican governors are worried about state prerogatives are pushing back. >> brown: what about moves to slow things down french -- slows down even from proponents. >> these standards didn't happen overnight. the group of state leaders that developed the standards, democrats and republicans took years, they built stakeholder support and also built a process that brought in a tremendous amount of stakeholder input including hundreds of teachers. i think the cause for the pause is because, on the implementation side -- i mean, i think one thing that rick and i can agree about is that

standards don't have a lot of meaning if you don't do the hard work translating the standard into teaching. it takes work and resources and there have been concerns about the implementation efforts being uneven. we can't pause. kids can't wait. they only have one chance of an education so we can't pause in terms of implementing the standards and modifying teaching to meet the standards because all our kids deserve higher expectations. >> brown: are you afraid a pows might lose more momentum to the common core role? >> they need to be careful to distinguish between a pause with respect to implementing the standards and moving forward with developing and implementing high-quality assessments aligned to the standards as well as textbooks and curriculum and having a pause on how test results are used. i think it is fair to teachers and to schools and students to say it's a whole new set of standards, it's a brand-new test. we're going to give you an opportunity to adjust to those

things before we hold you to high stakes attached to just a test score. >> brown: the last word, rick hess, do you see the opposition continuing to grow is this. >> i think so. what's important to keep in mind is we had a healthy bipartisan agreement on school reform in this country for a four or five-year stretch. one of the unfortunate things is by pushing common core in this way you see a frag men administration of partisan bush around teaching evaluation, around efforts to reward great teachers. i think common core is a lot about pluming in your house, it's designed to touch everything. it's the standards teachers are teaching to, the tests teachers and schools are being judged on. unfortunately, once you tinker with the plumbing, if you don't get it just right, you get a lot of leaks that touch a lot of rooms and that's where we are. >> brown: we will continue to fall low this. carmel martin and rick hess, thank you very much. >> thanks for having us.

>> woodruff: next, bringing cosmetics, consumerism, and a little controversy to women in rural bangladesh. special correspondent fred de sam lazaro has this report as part of his series agents for change. selling products in a new consumer culture among some of the world's poorest people. >> our husbands are not always around, so it is difficult to go to the market. it's much easier to way.

we can get our daily necessities, like soap and shampoo here. >> it's a partnership between a social business society up by the charity care and some large multi-national and national companies. most commercial products don't reach rural communities. they're too isolated or poor to be part of the normal distribution and sales network. the dutch multi-national that sells everything from soap to lipton tea claims 2 billion people use its products every day but the company struggles to reach people in these remote parts of south asia. >> there are a number, it's very difficult. in this part of the organization, we can reach our own houses directly.

>> while sales women go village to village or door to door, outreach workers trained by care better known for better family planning and immunization dispense wafers and feminine pads. it was a major shift in mindset for the development agency. >> we never talked of a private sector. we see them as an evil to the society. >> reporter: but he says the thinking has shifted to promoting entrepreneurship. what if they could create an a-von-type force targeting other consumers inside their homes, women often prevented from going to market themselves because of cultural prohibitions. the women would earn money and the buyers would have access to soap and other higenic products. but what products should be sold

alongside necessities like soap has been controversial. >> thank you all for coming to this training today. i know you've all traveled a long way to get here. >> reporter: the women here are being briefed and trained on a new product to add to the basket, a pre-paid cell phone card. one of the hottest sellers, fair and lovely, a skin whitening cream, widely advertised across this region and popular for the corporation. >> beauty is created with fair skin, and this has had a terrible impact on young girls. >> reporter: the professor writes about women's issues. she and other protested skin lighteners saying it reinforces age-old biases. >> i am a teacher and i know girls really suffer if they are dark. traditionally they suffer because they weren't considered eligible in the marriage market, today they're not considered beautiful. people do all kinds of things to

their skin to become fairer. to push this and for a development organization to endorse this is something that i would be very critical of. >> reporter: there's also the concern of the spread of consumerism. >> it walks hand in hand together. >> reporter: in all cases, he says the company must walk a fine line between protecting the interest of walk a fine line between protecting the interests of the women they want to help and paternalism. >> who are we to judge whether or not a woman in the village, it is up to the discretion of the girl that using fair and lovely is giving her the aspiration, the self-confidence then i don't see as to why we should throw it away, immediately. >> reporter: one thing seems certain: the product-long and widely advertised is very

popular. >> how many of you use fair and lovely? all of us! i use it to make my skin fairer and to treat pimples. i have used it for years to treat pimples and also to remove dark spots. >> reporter: for their part, cosmetic companies say they're only meeting consumer demand. when i asked unilever's islam if his company creates that demand with its ads, he said the question was above his pay grade. he said only that fair and lovely works. >> it really creates fairness. >> it does what it promises? >> it does. jita officials say the program has three categories of product. first the desirable: health and hygiene items, seeds for planting, or solar lamps, for example. there are the unacceptable:

cigarettes, say. in the middle are items called acceptable. that's where fair and lovely fits >> its required for the sustainability of the channel. the women cannot have enough income without selling these fast moving consumer goods. >> reporter: among these fast moving consumer goods, jita saif rashid says the skin cream has the highest profit margin. >> we're looking to develop alternatives, which will not promote fairness but will promote needs in terms of skin care >> reporter: thanks to pressure from jita's board among others, it has set a 2015 deadline to make a change. >> so by 2015 you will have replaced fair and lovely with an alternative product that will hopefully not diminish the women's income? >> yes. >> reporter: but retaining women has been a challenge: about one in five drop out; they don't feel cut out for sales or

migrate to urban areas in search of more income. the sales jobs pay anywhere from 12.5o for those starting out to $46 a month for experienced sellers-not much even by bangladesh's low wage standards. but jita officials say their sales jobs are part time-aimed at married women and provide critical supplemental income. they say it can mean a better diet, or children's education sound-up: i'm poor. i have not been able to dream a lot... >> reporter: for her part, shireen akhtar, whose husband works in bangladesh's capital as a laborer, says her job has brought improvements. a larger home, a tube well that has brings safe water into it, and a change to dream for her 11 year old son. >> i want him to grow from a boy into a big man. after seventh grade, i want him to go to cadet school. after that he will be able to do anything he wants. >> reporter: jita officials say the program is expected to grow to 12,000 women. its one of several attempts to attack poverty entrenched in some of the most difficult to

reach and remote areas. and a trial run they hope for more alliances that link aid charities with consumer-oriented businesses. >> woodruff: fred's reporting is a partnership with the under- told stories project at st. mary's university of minnesota. >> woodruff: a number of reporters over the past decade have covered the war in afghanistan. but there has been only one father and son team. abc news producer and veteran war correspondent michael boettcher and his son carlos spent over two years with various army and marine corps units as they went out on patrol and battled the taliban. besides producing news reports, they also made a feature length film. "the hornet's nest" which was recently released. and micheal boettcher joins me now. mike, at the beginning of this film, you say the idea grew out

of your long, many years you spent on the road covering wars as a foreign correspondent. tell our audience where the idea came from. >> well, judy, as you know, i have been kicking around doing this a long time, over three decades, and, for me, this was a line in the sand. i am no longer what i -- no longer will i parachute in somewhere, be there a few days and try to tell the stories of the soldiers and marines. i felt we had to go to old traditions, traditions of my hero, ernie pyle, the famous world war ii correspondent. if we as a nation are going to commit soldiers for 13 years, we doggone better be there to tell their stories day in and day out and you can't send them off and forget about it. i felt we needed to be there every day so that i could be there telling their stories, what they were enduring over long periods of time. >> woodruff: and your son said

i'm coming with you, and you originally didn't think it was a great idea. >> no, no, not really. i mean, i was concerned because, you know, we've lost a lot of friends covering many different wars and this war as well, and i knew what the consequence of that could be. i mean, this is my son. but i started to realize that he was the same age as those young men and women who raised their hand and said, i will go to afghanistan, i will go to iraq to serve my nation, and this was his way to serve. he was bound and determined to do it, and that's what he did. you know, we are so close now because of this. we made it through it, and i really love my son, and i'm glad we came out of there. >> woodruff: that comes through in the film. you did start out saying you had been away from him when he was growing up and this was part of an attempt to be close to him. i want to show our audience, mike, and i think you know what excerpt we're going to show,

some of the film. this is a scene in afghanistan, you're out on patrol. set the scene and the circumstances for us and what we're going to see. >> this was operation strongeagle 3. we had landed at 3:00 in the morning on a mountain top just right on the pakistan border. there was snow on the ground. we made our way down and the mission on this big operation was to really hit the taliban command and control in that part of afghanistan, so as we were moving down the mountains, we're finding mortars, rpgs, one of the rockets they found was made in china. they found dozens of rifles. then, all of a sudden, as we moved down the mountain, we were hit from all sides. this was supposed to be a three-day mission that we were surrounded. every unit that was out there with us, the battalion of the 101st airborne was fair taking fire from 360 degrees.

it was an horrific experience, and there was no place to run, and the weather was bad and medivacs couldn't come in. so in this battle we lost six really brave guys. for example, the medic, jamison linskog who ran down a mountain side in a hail of gunfire to save his bud as -- his buddies and apologized for dying. you can't tell those from the arm chair, you have to be there. >> woodruff: we'll show our viewers a piece of the film right now. >> over here sch!

what is this? rbg. oh, my god. that thing is straight out of china, like yesterday. >> how did it come out of china? that thing is brand-spanking new. >> i'm down here and the platoon can't get to the building. keep finding more ammunition and mortar pieces and stuff. >> what does that look like? 67 rpgs, probably eight mortars, a couple boxes of fuses. >> definitely caught them by surprise. (sound of explosions) >> hey. what's up?

keep your eyes on the bridge at your 11. (sound of explosions) >> woodruff: there were many more unnerving scenes like this one in the film. did you change the way you did your reporting because your son was with you? >> no, because i wanted him to learn the way i did things, and it was definitely an apprenticeship. i did try to keep him between the point of gunfire, my self between that and him, but he wouldn't have any of that. he's a better storyteller and photographer than i ever will be. that's the way i learned in

el salvador in 1980. it was thrown in there in the early days of cnn and i learned on my own. at least i was with him. i really think we need a new generation of young journalists who are willing to go out there to tell these stories, and it takes great risk and sacrifice, personal sacrifice. you're gone constantly. you know, that was one of the things, at the end of this, i had finally reconnected with my son the hard way. >> woodruff: what does he say that he took away from this experience? i know he's written about it. >> yes, what he took away ishe had no comprehension of the sacrifice that men and women his age had given to their nation. you know, as we approach the fourth of july tomorrow, that's something to think about. he said, now he knows. he knows what that's about.

it's not something far off. it's something very close and personal to him that people raise their hands and say, send me, and that's what he learned. >> woodruff: and you continue to be a correspondent and a producer. what is your son doing? >> as well, i'm teaching as the university of oklahoma, my alma mater at the gaylord college, and carlos is a staff producer for abc in new york and goes out with other correspondents, now he doesn't need to have his old man with him. >> woodruff: quite a stirring story, and we thank you for sharing with us. great to see you again, mike. thank you. >> great to see you, and the dvd of this will be out 9-9 in september right before 9/11. >> woodruff: terrific. thank you again. >> woodruff: finally tonight, a close reading of the document at the heart of tomorrow's holiday.

jeff is back with that. the declaration of independence, >> reporter: we all celebrate the declaration of independence, but how many of us actually read it? and to what extent, over time, has it been in some ways miss- read? a new book, "our declaration", explores the document through a careful look at the words themselves. author danielle allen is a political philosopher at the institute for advanced study in princeton and a scholar of democracy and citizenship from ancient athens to our own time. and for the record, she's a member of the board of directors of the mellon foundation. a newshour underwriter. welcome. >> great to be here. >> brown: you make this part a personal story. it stems from teaching the declaration at an elite university by day and to workers, people without jobs or without much education, perhaps, at night. >> for ten years, in chicago, i did teach a course for low-income adults and one of the key efforts or goals was to give them great material to read, to expand their education, their

own capacities, but they were busy, hard-working people and i found myself gravitating toward the declaration for the pragmatic reason that it's short, and my experience was i was really surprised. none of my students had ever read the declaration and it seemed because they didn't think of it as belonging to them and nobody ever tried to make that case to them. it's an incredibly empowering experience. >> brown: as you write in the book, its develops your own thinking about the declaration and the thesis that documents through is we've lost something in our reading through it and we're focusing on a couple of key words with, liberty and equality. >> we think of liberty and equality as in conflict with each other. that equality requires putting restraints on liberty. but equality is the foundation of liberty. we need the bond among citizens to build the political institution wes use to protect

our safety and happiness and protect our liberty. so those are the things my students and i learned. there are people who are stuck in their lives and it calls to people to consider their circumstances, you know, where in the course of human events and how to set their course in a better direction. >> brown: even with all the contradictions of the time -- >> right. >> brown: -- slavery, you know, being the most notable one of this call for equality, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. >> that's right, and that's what my students really gave me. i think the text had been not give ton them, not shared with them partly because there is this idea that since so many of the founders were slave holders, it's sort of a falsehood and a lie in the declaration. but when i read it with the students who were trying to change their lives and discorpsing how empowering it was for them to discover their political agency, i realized it has a coherent philosophical

equality to the argument and worth investigating again. >> brown: you were also just making a call for very close reading. >> that's right. >> brown: and one example and we have a graphic i want to show because it goes to the thesis here is an actual question of topography, a very famous line, whether what is often seen as a period, and we have it here, is actually a comma. >> that's right. >> brown:ics pipeline whey that matters. >> the second sentence of the declaration is probably the most important sentence and document in american history. it's an incredibly long sentence, it's a mouthful. we all know the beginning by heart, we hold these truths to be self-evident. that's followed by five clauses each which starts with that. that all mean are created equal and endid by the creator with unalieuninalienable rights. whenever government is destructive of these ends, it is right of the people to abolish them and introduce new

government and introduce principles as seems to them to most likely affect their safety and happiness. >> brown: it is a law. at this point it's burned into my heart but you've got to make the circuit from individual rights to what we do collectively, and that period of pursuit of happiness breaks up the arc of argument. >> brown: so if it's a comma, the original idea was to carry through. >> and the original transtripts punctuate with semicolons and it's evident it goes throughout the end. it's written in the "corrected record" it's called. >> brown: to the extent this is an argument pore the power of words and the power of understanding of language, you've dean this from ancient -- you've come to this from the study of classics. >> that's right. >> brown: how does that study

apply? >> well, that's one of the jokes, i think, is people have been working on ancient greek texts for centuries and we have these special skills where you dig into the different versions of a text to figure out what the original was and what version flowed from it. i have training as a classist, and we have history of our own texts for which the schools are relevt. >> brown: what's the add vance vice, thinking -- what's the advice, thinking about the students you're teaching? what does it suggest we do in terms of loading or how we're leading. >> so i think there are two pieces of advice to offer. one of theme is go ahead and read the whole thing. it's only 1,337 words, which is, you know, two op-eds at most, so

read the whole thing because it makes a coherent argument. i think that way of seeing the argument is by starting at the end. start with the resolution where they unanimously declare they're free and independent states with rights to make treatises and alliances and so forth because at the end of the day the point of the document is to make a decision to declare independence. then justify the. everything that's before is justifying. when we start that way we get a beautiful example of the standard we all use when we make a decision and then explain the justification. >> brown: start at the end and then build the argument. >> exactly. >> brown: in this case, build a country. >> exactly. >> brown: "our declaration," danielle allen. thank you so much. >> my pleasure, thank you. >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day. the economy turned in strong

jobs numbers for june, adding 288,000 new positions. the unemployment rate dropped to 6.1%. hurricane arthur intensified as it headed toward a close pass of north carolina's outer banks. the storm forced evacuations and roiled fourth of july plans. and airports across europe and the u.s. moved to tighten screening of smartphones and shoes after warnings that al- qaeda groups might be trying to get bombs past security. on the newshour online, yesterday on the show, we gave you a look at country legend willie nelson's latest album and his tour. today, we've got more, he told us the story of his first ever performance at the age of six. the young nelson gave a rousing rendition of a traditional hymn at his church. watch him recount that tale, on the rundown. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. and that's the newshour for

and that's the newshour for tonight, on friday we have an update of the ebola outbreak in africa. i'm judy woodruff, we'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening with ruth marcus and michael gerson among others. for all of us here at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> i've been around long enough to recognize the people who are out there owning it. the ones getting involved, staying engaged. they are not afraid to question the path they're on. because the one question they never want to ask is, "how did i end up here?" i started schwab with those people. people who want to take ownership of their investments, like they do in every other

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this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib. >> job blowout, the unemployment te drops as almost 300,000 new jobs were created in june. >> cracking 17,000, the dow powered higher through the psychologically important number, but what should you do with your money now if you're 20, 30, 40 or 50? >> and bright idea, imagine not having to wait to see a doctor. a startup is making that possible and trying to shake up the health care industry in the >> i'm bill griffeth in for tyler mathisen. we have two big stories leading the news and both indicative of a strengthening u.s. economy.