. captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: a second american journalist appears to have been executed by islamic state militants, who threatened more to come if the u.s. doesn't back off. good evening, i'm judy woodruff. gwen ifill is away. also ahead this tuesday, are health care workers losing the battle to stop the spread of ebola in west africa? we talk to the head of the u.s. centers for disease control who says the outbreak is "spiraling out of control." then, the cyber-theft of celebrities' private photos prompts questions over just how secure personal information is online. plus, a woman's mission to give china's abandoned and often neglected orphans a sense of family life once again.

>> it doesn't mean that they have to be back with their birth families or permanently adopted or anything, they just need to have the love that a family gives naturally to a child. >> woodruff: those are some of the stories we're covering on tonight's pbs "newshour." >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> at bae systems, our pride and dedication show in everything we do; from electronics systems to intelligence analysis and cyber- operations; from combat vehicles and weapons to the maintenance and modernization of ships, aircraft, and critical infrastructure. knowing our work makes a difference inspires us everyday. that's bae systems. that's inspired work. >> 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 aspect of their lives. >> 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.

>> woodruff: "islamic state" radicals declared today they've killed a second american hostage in syria. the announcement came hours after u.s. air-strikes aimed at the head of another major militant group in somalia. more about that later, in the news summary. first, the gruesome new video that purports to show a reporter being beheaded. >> woodruff: for the second time in two weeks, a chilling message preceded the murder of an american journalist. the victim this time: steven sotloff, a 31-year-old freelancer for "time" and foreign policy magazines. he went missing in syria last year. on the video, a hooded man with a british accent directs a message to president obama before killing sotloff. >> i'm back obama and i'm back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards islamic state, because of your insistence at continuing your bombings. you, obama, have yet again, through your actions, killed yet

another american citizen. >> woodruff: the august 19th video that showed the beheading of james foley also briefly showed sotloff. the "islamic state" warned he would suffer the same fate as foley if u.s. air strikes continued in iraq. they did, as recently as this weekend, when american planes blasted targets around the mosul dam and helped relieve the besieged town of amerli. this, as sotloff's mother pleaded last week for her son's release. >> steven has no control over the actions of the u.s. government. he is an innocent journalist. i've also learned that you, the caliph, can grant amnesty. i ask you to please release my child. >> woodruff: today, a spokesman said the sotloff family is in shock. in washington, president obama did not comment, as he left for an overseas trip.

but the state department condemned the killing. >> if the video is genuine, we are sickened by this brutal act taking the life of another innocent american citizen. our hearts go out to the sotloff family and we will provide more information as it becomes available. >> woodruff: pentagon officials have said the u.s. military tried to rescue sotloff, foley and other hostages earlier this summer, but the captives were gone when the troops arrived. and now, a third hostage is under threat. today's video warned that david cawthorne haines, a british aid worker, will be next. >> woodruff: joining me now for reaction to the reported execution of steven sotloff, is charlie sennott, co-founder of global post, where he worked with slain journalist james foley. he's now executive director of the groundtruth project. charlie sennott, you joined us two weeks ago to talk about james foley, and i know steven

sotloff didn't report for you, but you have been working with the foley family, and what have you learned about steven sotloff in the course of this? >> well, steven, like jim foley, was just a great journalist, someone who really wanted to be on the ground, telling the stories that matter. he took risks doing that, but he did it knowing what he was doing, and both families share the sense that their sons were passionate about their work and i think both families understand that it's work that really mattered. i think the only time i intercepted with steven was in egypt when our paths crossed inside the mosque where the muslim brotherhood was holed up in the summer past, a year and a half ago, i believe it was june and july and august of 2013. you know, he was there working then, and he was inside the muslim brotherhood and reporting on it and did so for world

affairs journal. if you read that reporting and looked at how open he was and trying to get inside the story and understand it, you say the same reporting in syria, and i think steven and jim were alike in how they approached their reporting. >> woodruff: what do you know about the efforts made by the sotloff as well as foley family to get their sons released? >> well, you know, the information of the families is very closely guarded. our c.e.o. at globalpost, my co-founder, was very much involved in the details and i was not. what i know is through understanding what's been reported, what's been shared publicly. we have a lot of information we have to be very careful with, but i can definitely share with you that all these families hae worked so hard and their representatives have worked so hard to try to secure the release. it's really one of the greatest and most difficult and troubling moral questions of our time --

what do you do to save a life? do you pay the ransom which they are demanding, or do you have live up to the u.s. government's policy, which is to say we never pay ransom? it's one of the most complex moral questions we could face. i don't know the answer but i know the system as it is now where european governments do pay and where the u.s. government insists no families will pay, you can't help but understand the emotion of a family as is expressed in the vid by steven's mother, they just want to save their son. they just want him home. it's a very human emotion. we need to get together and re-think this policy in a way that's collective. i don't know what the answer is but it needs to be sorted out. >> woodruff: are you saying the families believe that the u.s. government should have done more to win their release? >> i think none of the families have gone there and i think they do that for a reason. when trauma happens inside a family or a news organization,

kit create a lot of divisions. there are trip wires everywhere if you look at the effect of trauma. everyone involved in this from the concentric circle of the family to the wider circle of the news organization, everyone's experiencing trauma, and the divisions could be everywhere. the key is to remember who did this. this was done by i.s.i.s. this was done by a really dark force that it really is that clear an issue and we can't forget to keep looking at them. the policy question is how do you approach them? what do you do to shut them down and put them out of business? those are enormously complex questions. but i think the families are trying to stay away from those divisions. they want answers to questions, and i think that's fair and i hope they get the answers, but i think they're wise to stay together and keep focused on the evil that has presented itself to us and work hard to save lives that still hang in the balance. >> woodruff: charlie sennott, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: for more on what

this latest killing means for u.s. policy toward the islamic state, we get three views. daniel benjamin was u.s. ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism during the first term of the obama administration. he's now a professor at dartmouth college. anne-marie slaughter was the director of policy planning at the state department also during the first term of the obama administration. she's now president and c.e.o. of the new america foundation. and retired army lieutenant colonel douglas ollivant had two tours in iraq. he was also the director for iraq on the national security council staff during the presidencies of george w. bush and barack obama. he's now a managing partner in a consulting company which does business in iraq. we thank you all for being here. colonel ol ollivant, what do you make of the statement by this i.s.i.s. militant before this apparent execution, that this was being done, this killing, in response to u.s. continuing

attacks on i.s.i.s.? >> oh, i'm sure that's their perspective, but the fact is these attacks had nothing to do with these hostages. the united states was conducting these air strikes to protect the mosul dam, to protect u.s. citizens in erbil and most recently to rescue these shia in the village of amerli who are under threat of genocide, no other word for it, but i.s.i.s. so this isn't about our hostages. this is about us attacking i.s.i.s. for very real, both political and humanitarian reasons. >> woodruff: how do you see what's behind this, anne-marie slaughter? >> well, i agree that this is, in some ways, evidence that our bombings are, in fact, affecting i.s.i.s. we're hurting them. they are trying to get us to stop and they're using the weapons they have at their disposal, which also serve as recruiting videos for them and

for angry, radicalized young men who want to join the fight, the decapitation, as horrible as it is, of an american is a recruiting video. but this is not about whether we paid ransom or not. this is terribly the weapons they have at their disposal to try to hit back. >> woodruff: daniel benjamin, do you see what happened, what the video purported to show today as a result of what the u.s. is doing? >> well, i think there certainly was the desire on the part of i.s.i.s. to hit back. this is, in fact, a retaliation for the bombing runs, and this is also to elaborate on what anne-marie slaughter was saying, another way for them to underscore their reputation as the most brutal terrorist group that we have seen yet, and the

many, many killings that we have heard about in prisons of syrian troops, the crucifixions, the slaughter of the yazidis, all of this goes together, in their minds, to strengthen their reputation as a truly fearsome group that will stop at nothing. >> woodruff: is i.s.i.s. a worse threat than was already believed? >> i don't think we have any new information. our hearts go out to the sotloff family, and we saw the earlier execution and the second one tells us nothing new about the group. it's a death cult, a group that buries children alive, that sells young girls as sex slaves, that performance crucifixions. nothing's beyond this group, so i don't think we learned anything particularly new today. >> woodruff: that raises the question yet again, anne-marie slaughter, what should u.s. policy be? we heard president obama say

last week that the administration's strategy toward i.s.i.s. is still being developed. what should that strategy be? >> well, i think there are two questions there -- one is what should our policy be with respect to ransoms and hostages, and as much as all our hearts go out to the families of the journalists, i think our policy is the right one, not to pay ransom. ransom funds this group to do more killing and, of course, also encourages kidnapping. the larger question is what do we do about i.s.i.s. as a whole and, here, this threat has been growing for certainly 18 months to two years, through the continuation of the syrian civil war now spilled into iraq. i think a comprehensive strategy to do more than to contain i.s.i.s., to actually eliminate

or decimate i.s.i.s. has to be a regional strategy that addresses the syrian civil war as well as what's happening in iraq and among the kurds, and that's a longer-term strategy, at least four to six months. it has to include multiple countries in the region, including iran, and, thus far, we have not been willing to take on that broader strategy that is, as i said, has to include syria as well as iraq. >> woodruff: in what form, daniel benjamin, do you see that strategy taking? how much more aggressive or not should the u.s. be at this point? >> well, this execution is, of course, going to raise the pressure on the president enormously to do something in the near term, but i think that a rush to action, at this point, would be unwise until we can make sure that action is really effective. so bombing strikes, for example, in syria could very well

undermine our efforts because it would alienate all the countries we need to have in the partnership anne-marie slaughter was discussing. i do think at the end of the day that the united states will be deeply involved in supporting an alliance of regional countries who will be involved on the ground with the iraqis themselves in the forefront, and we may well be providing intelligence as well as arms, and we very well may have a drum campaign to take away i.s.i.s.'s leadership. but i think that the key thing right now is not to react instantly to try to get some retaliation for this really barbaric attack, but rather to get the strategy right, to get the partners brought in, and to ensure, of course, that the iraqis themselves continue to move towards inclusiveness and towards working together against a common thread. i don't think the united states should be on the ground in this

one. >> woodruff: so douglas ollivant, what about that? do you agree it would be a mistake for the u.s. to do something now that would be seen as retaliation? >> i think that's exactly right. in the military we talk about tactical patience. you have to wait till the conditions are right to perform the right military action and get the best effect. >> woodruff: wait for what? first, we need reliable partners on the ground. putting u.s. boots on the ground is a non-starter both here and in the region, so we need reliable partners there. the next step is to get a government formed in iraq that we can work with, and we are waiting for them to go through their long, drawn-out government formation process with a reliable partner, at least on the one side of the border. the syrian side will be much harder. >> woodruff: anne-marie slaughter, do i hear you saying waiting for a government to be formed, waiting for a coalition is the right thing to do? >> well, yes, actually. i mean, i have been a strong

supporter of using force in syria for a couple of years, now. but here, i do think there has to be a comprehensive solution. we can contain i.s.i.s. and we are going to continue using drone strikes to prevent i.s.i.s. from expanding the ground it covers, from threatening baghdad, the proposal dam, we're going to continue doing that. i think that's the right thing to do. but the longer term strategy, as i said, to actually eliminate i.s.i.s., certainly to recapture the territory it holds, it does take a regional coalition and we can't act without governments to engage with and, as i said, ultimately, that's going to have to include turkey and probably also iran. >> woodruff: so, daniel benjamin, that means wait, even if it means months? >> well, i don't think that it will be months, and i wouldn't rule out doing the kind of

targeted strikes that we've seen in the last month because they're vitally important for the morale of the kurds, of the iraqis on the ground and for others, as well, who are in the region watching this spectacle unfold. but the fact is at the moment, i.s.i.s. is a limited threat to the united states at home. upthe greatest threat -- the greatest threat is from potential sympathizers appearing and carrying something out. this is a group that has not carried out a terrorist attack of an international nature over long distances in its history. so while people in the region are very much in peril, i think we ought to get this right and construct the relationships, construct the alliance that will contain and diminish this group. >> woodruff: a lot of tough questions today and we thank you alall three. we hear you three, benjamin danl

benjamin, colonel douglas ollivant and anne-marie slaughter. >> thank you. >> woodruff: turning now to today's other news. the u.s. military was waiting for confirmation that it had killed the leader of an al-qaeda group in somalia. air-strikes overnight hit a vehicle carrying ahmed abdi godane. they also struck a base of his al-shabaab militia. a pentagon spokesman said warplanes and drones carried out the attacks against godane, about 100 miles south of mogadishu. >> he is the recognized, appointed leader of the al shabaab network in somalia. if he was killed, this is a very significant blow to their network, to their organization. and we believe to their ability to continue to conduct terrorist attacks. >> woodruff: the al-shabaab leader was the alleged mastermind of the attack on a kenyan shopping mall that killed

67 people, one year ago. another al-qaeda affiliate, in syria, has named its conditions for releasing 45 u.n. peacekeepers from fiji. the "al-nusra front" rebels abducted the peacekeepers last thursday, on the golan heights. today, the group demanded to be taken off the u.n.'s terror list. it also called for compensation for the deaths of three fighters. in saudi arabia, authorities say they've rounded up 88 people on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks. the saudi interior ministry announced today that some of the suspects have links to the "islamic state" or to al-qaeda groups. officials said many of them may have been planning assassinations, inside saudi arabia and abroad. european union diplomats laid out plans today for expanding sanctions against russia, over its actions in ukraine. as they did so, russian president vladimir putin stirred new outrage when he was quoted as saying: "if i want to, i can take kiev in two weeks."

the kremlin complained putin was taken out of context. meanwhile, fighting continued in eastern ukraine, and the united nations reported a new exodus from the region. >> the number of people displaced inside ukraine has more than doubled in the past month, as of september first, unhcr estimates that 260,000 people were displaced, compared to 117,000 in early august. most of the displaced are from eastern ukraine and are remaining in the donetsk, kharkiv and kiev regions. unhcr believes the actual number of people displaced is much higher. >> woodruff: talks to reach some kind of accord among ukraine, russia and the pro-russian rebels have adjourned until friday, when a cease-fire discussion may be back on the table. president obama headed for the baltic region of europe today, with tensions running high over russian intentions in ukraine. he'll stop in estonia before attending a nato summit in wales

later in the week. ahead of his arrival, the president of estonia called for permanent nato bases in his country, as a safeguard against the russians. >> woodruff: in nigeria, boko haram militants seized most of a northeastern town overnight after battling government forces. there was word of heavy casualties, and up to 5,000 people were forced to flee. the town, bama, is just 45 miles away from the capital of borno state, where the militants abducted more than 200 school girls last april. >> woodruff: pakistan's parliament rallied today behind the country's embattled prime minister, nawaz sharif. the body convened after a weekend of violent protests by thousands of people. but a string of pakistani lawmakers voiced their support for sharif. >> ( translated ): today, when the entire parliament and the entire nation is standing on one side and an armed mob is on the other, i think no one should have any doubts about who the

nation will support. the nation is with their elected representatives. >> woodruff: outside the parliament building, thousands of demonstrators camped on the lawn, but there were no reports of any new violence. the parliament session could last all week. back in the u.s., the oil field services giant halliburton will pay more than $1 billion to settle claims from the gulf of mexico oil spill. the company was cement contractor on the well site that exploded in 2010 and caused the largest spill in u.s. history. b.p. operated the well. it's already reached a $9 billion settlement. on wall street today, the dow jones industrial average lost nearly 31 points to close at 17,067. the nasdaq rose almost 18 points to close at 4,598. and the s-and-p 500 slipped one point, to 2,002. still to come on the newshour, the ebola outbreak is described as spiraling out of control;

stolen celebrities' private photos reveal gaps in securing personal information online; and, providing china's orphans with their first experiences of family life. >> woodruff: public health officials sounded the alarm today about the growing ebola outbreak in west africa, saying it could destabilize countries there, and warned "the window is closing" to keep it from spreading to other regions. jeffrey brown has our coverage. >> six months into the worst ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it. >> brown: that stark warning today, from the international head of "doctors without borders." at the united nations, joanne liu charged many of the efforts to curtail the outbreak have actually made it worse. >> coercive measures, such as laws criminalizing the failure to report suspected cases,

forced quarantines, are driving people underground. this is leading to the concealment of cases and is pushing the sick away from health systems. these measures have only served to breed fear and unrest, rather than contain the virus. >> brown: doctors without borders is calling for another 800 beds just in the liberian capital, monrovia. but today, health care workers at monrovia's main hospital walked off the job, striking, they said, over unpaid wages. and a missionary group, s.i.m.u.s.a., reported another of its american doctors in monrovia has tested positive for the virus. so far, there've been well over 3,000 cases, and more than 1,500 deaths, primarily in guinea, liberia and sierra leone. but the outbreak has spread to nigeria and senegal as well. and as of today, in the democratic republic of the congo, an unrelated outbreak of ebola has killed 31 people. meanwhile, another danger now

looms, food shortages. u.n. officials said 1.3 million people in west africa may need food assistance in the coming months, as quarantines cut farmers off from their fields and suspensions of air traffic curtails imports. back at today's u.n. briefing, the head of the world health organization, margaret chan, painted a bleak picture of the immediate future. >> second point: the outbreak will get worse before it gets better. and it requires a well- coordinated, big surge and huge scale-up of outbreak response urgently. and it requires creativity and culturally appropriate actions. >> brown: the director of the centers for disease control and prevention, tom frieden, just returned from west africa. he warned today the outbreak threatens the very stability of affected countries and their neighbor states. >> brown: the difficulty of figuring out how to contain the

outbreak was captured on video in a chaotic scene in monrovia yesterday. it involved a man who fled from a hospital's quarantine center. the hospital was so crowded last month it had to turn away ebola patients. jonathan miller of independent television news fills in the picture. >> reporter: the man in the red shirt has ebola and he's just escaped from a quarantine center. a liberian doctor tries to remonstrate, but the patient is hungry; he's looking for food. the ebola cops arrive in protective suits. fear of infection is spreading even faster than the virulent virus itself in this, west africa's hardest-hit country. panic has now gripped the monrovia market. >> the patients are hungry, they are starving. no food. no water. the government needs to do more. >> we told the liberian government from the beginning, we do not want ebola camp here. >> reporter: today makes it the fifth ebola patient coming outside vomiting and defecating. a doctor from medicins sans frontieres tries to hold back the crowd, then seeks to convince the sick man to get into an ambulance, but he's

having none of it. a catastrophe is unfolding in west africa; a transnational crisis born of poverty and highly infectious disease in a deeply impoverished country. the man in the red shirt finally manhandled into the back of a pickup. this region is reeling in terror of contagion; the crisis made worse by a disastrously inadequate response from the rich world. >> brown: the director of the u.s. centers for disease control just returned from surveying the situation in west africa. and in a press conference this afternoon he too added strong words and warnings. dr. tom frieden joins us now from atlanta.

what's really important to understand is we know how to control it, and there is this window of opportunity that's closing but it's not too late. we have to act now. urgency couldn't be higher. speed is of the essence. >> brown: you use the language, the window of opportunity is closing, the challenge is so great, you said today the epidemic is so overwhelming that it now requires an overwhelming response. what specifically did you see on your trip and in talking with officials around the world that is so alarming now? >> well, i'll tell you an example. doctors without borders is doing

phenomenal work. they're working an extraordinarily difficult situation and trying to do whatever they can to help patients and stop the outbreak, but they're overwhelmed by the number of patients, so they're opening new hospital beds as fast as they can but only safety, to have a terrific track record of safety of people working in the ema treatment units. but in order to do that, they can't open them as fast as the patients are requesting hospitalization. what that means is that patients are not being hospitalized and they are spreading ebola in communities, including in urban communities where it can spread quite widely. >> brown: you said today and just said to us again, in essence, we know how to contain ebola, but then why the lack of success? what are the greatest empedments and what do you mostly need now? >> it's fundamentally about speed and scale. every day we delay in getting the proven treatments and

prevention out there, it spreads more widely and we have more of it. one of the encouraging things i did see was people throughout the rage willing to help, willing to really work to make a difference. 90% of the staff at the doctors without borders hospitals are local staff who have been rigorously trained and are working hard to stop the outbreak and care for patients, but the challenges really are enormous, and the urgency is so great. the sooner we increase beds, the sooner we make burials safer, the sooner we make healthcare workers be safer from infection, we will be better off in terms of beginning to turn the outbreak around. time is lives here. >> brown: one of the things you said today really jumped out at me. you were talking about as the world isolates itself from these countries, it is having an adverse effect. it's harmful to the countries and ultimately harmful to the rest of the world, including us, and you said, like it or not, we

are connected. so explain that. should we not be isolating those countries? >> the fact is people are going to move around the world, and the only way to really protect ourselves from this is to stop it at the source. it's not dissimilar to the dynamic that's happened within these countries. frankly, against the advice of many, some of the countries enforced quarantines in some areas and, as dr. lew from m.s.f. said earlier on your program, that's counterproductive because it drives patients underground, increases hostility. it's not a help. we need to get patients to services and families in to care quicker so they stop spreading disease and have a better chance of survival because early treatment improvements survival. >> brown: given the interconnectedness, what about the potential for the spread in the u.s. and given this new

alarm of how quickly this is spreading, what do you tell people d tonight who are afraidn this country? >> given the large increases we're seeing and will likely see in the coming weeks, i would be surprised if we didn't see other cases in other parts of africa. for the u.s., it's certainly possible we'll get someone here who develops symptoms of ebola and may have ebola, that's a possibility. that's why we've asked doctor working in emergency departments and elsewhere to be on the lookout for people who have been in an area with ebola in the past three weeks and if they have fever or other symptoms consistent with ebola to isolate and test them. that's why we've worked with about ten states around the country to have tests for ebola up and available so they could be tested in a regional approach. so we're prepared in this country. ebola doesn't spread through casual contact. it doesn't spread through the air naturally.

the way it spreads is by physical contact with a sick person or their body fluids or someone who's died from ebola with their body fluids. standard infection control in hospitals has prevented spread of five case cans of hemorrhagic fevers that have been in the u.s. in the past decade. >> brown: i want to is you in the last minute about one other frightening scenario you raised today which is the possibility that ebola might become easier to spread through genetic mutation. you said you didn't see signs of it yet, but it's possible it's not zero, is the way you put it. explain that. that would be a quite frightening new step. >> well, the genetic material of the virus has been quite stable for 40 years. so we don't think of this as a virus that changes much. but the longer it spreads and the more people it spreads to, the more what's called selective prier that might -- pressure that might favor strains that spread more easily, and that's a concern we'll be tracking for.

the bottom line here is we have to surge a response and act now by bringing down the number of cases. we'll protect ourselves, protect west africa, reduce the humanitarian crisis, the insecurity that's there, and make it less likely there are patients traveling to other parts to have the world and less likely we could get that kind of mutation. >> brown: dr. tom frieden of the c.d.c., thank you so much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: the latest internet data breach, this time of intimate celebrity photos, is setting off concerns once again, now involving popular online storage systems known as the "cloud." a cache of nude photos, including of actress jennifer lawrence and others, were posted to online bulletin boards over the weekend. it's not clear who hacked the photos or who posted them. today, apple said the attacks were not from a general breach of its cloud or phone systems.

>> celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions. >> woodruff: instead, "celebrity for more on all this, we turn to, dmitri alperovitch co- founder and chief technology officer of crowdstrike, a cyber security firm. and sean gallagher. he is the internet technology editor at a.r.s. technical, a website for tech news and information. we welcome you both to the program. dmitri alperovitch first. what do you think happened in this instance? >> we know a couple things. we know the celebrities were taking pictures and videos with their iphones and using icloud to back up the data through apple serve servers. we know someone was able to breech the accounts and download all the inmat photos and the other information stored on the

accounts which may also include text messages, e-mails, contact information, voice mails and lots of other data. >> woodruff: sean gallagher, what would you add to that in terms of how this was pulled off? >> this is the same sort of hack that's happened frequently with celebrities' devices. there have been a number of attacks over the last few years including one in 2011 when scarlet johansson's phone was hacked where the attacker has used personal information to sort of get accesso the security questions that are associated with the account so that they can take over the account and get access to the contents of it. >> woodruff: staying with you, sean gallagher, what questions does this raise about the so-called cloud. and remind everybody what the cloud is. >> cloud is computers in a data center attached to the internet. in this case, they were computers at a data center owned by apple. also, data was stolen from devices that were on google's

cloud. and they are basically connected to your device through the internet, shielded from direct access from the internet other than through specific application bases. so they're basically just computers sitting in a data center that are accessible from the internet from your device. >> woodruff: and dmitri alperovitch, should we have expected that whatever's in the cloud is secure or can't be reached by somebody else? >> the problem really is the password you use to protect theda at that. in the case of the celebrities, we know that the passwords they use sometimes make you wonder what they're thinking. it's the names of their dogs they reveal in their interviews, their birthdays, things that are easy to guess. once you have the password, you can access the data and download it. >> woodruff: so what does that mean for everybody else? we're all downloading and storing things -- not all but many of us -- storing things in

the cloud. does this mean nothing is secure? >> depends on how you use it. what's important about the hack is the information leaked is about the 100 celebrities. but in realty we know for several months you have individuals on forums trading information about other individuals, ex-wives and girlfriends that stalkers may want to get access to their data. we know if you're not using a secret password, someone can get access to the data. >> woodruff: sean gallagher, what are some of the lessons for the rest of us? today another data breech, home depot announced it was seeing a credit card breech. last week one of the major banks announce add breech. what are we seeing? this is becoming a rego corns. >> well, these are two different types of things happening for essentially the same reason. the attacks on home depot and jp morgan were very sophisticated

attacks. they took a very long period of time to carry out and they were targeting where the money was. in the case of home depot, it's similar to what happened with target, they went after their point of sale systems to get access to credit card information. the similar later between these two things is that both these systems have unexpected connections to the internet. people who use their cell phones then expect necessarily for the data on their cell phones to be replicated up to an internet-connected device. it's something a lot of people don't think about when they use these things. with point of sale systems, you don't expect them to be connected to the internet either, but those systems hit on -- they're all connected to the internet. >> woodruff: this is something we're learning. dmitri alperovitch, apple says it's sixth in weakness in security. does that mean people should be reassured? we've talked about google's cloud. what are we really dealing with here in terms of how much more conscious all of us need to be

about what we put online? >> it's important to understand that what apple fixed is the ability for someone to try as many passwords as they wanted to for an individual account randomly and then ultimately guess the right password so now you can only try a few before you lock down the account and can't find anymore. but if you use a weak password because it's your dog's name or birthday and someone can get on the first try, you want a secure password. >> woodruff: meaning what? a long, random password. you store it in a secure location and use a different one for every service. >> woodruff: what is a secure location to store it? >> there are free password systems where you can randomly enter a long password and have it encrypted and stored on your

machine. >> woodruff: is that what you would say, sean gallagher? >> don't use dictionary words even when obscured using numbers substituted for letters. those things are in databases of passwords hackers have to try and guess your password. i would also recommend using two-factor authentication which is a service available for most to have the cloud services where you need to have physical access to your device to gain access to your account. we'll send a pass code to you and you need to enter that to prove you're who you claim you are or if you use your device you need to use a recovery key. that's what apple is pushing people to do now. >> woodruff: dmitri, how would that work? >> use on two-factor authentication, a setting on icloud, when you try to log in, it asks you for a password and texts you a code to enter.

>> woodruff: this is going to require spending time when people put in their information. >> that's true. another thing, if you're not using two-factor authentication now, apple as three day delay on activating two-factor authentication to prevent people from taking over your account, you need change your security question to something that isn't easily attainable from your personal information. you may want to lie about those questions, easy to remember by you. >> in other words, your ex-boyfriend probably knows your mother's maiden name. >> woodruff: we thank you both. >> thank you. >> woodruff: finally tonight, one woman's efforts to transform the way orphans are cared for in china. newshour correspondent fred de sam lazaro reports as part of his "agents for change" series.

a version of fred's story aired on the p.b.s. program, "religion and ethics newsweekly." and a warning: this piece contains some disturbing images. >> reporter: for the bowen family, this was a huge day. >> she got the international baccalaureate diploma, and then she got the bi-literacy medal, as opposed to bi-lingual. she can read and write and talk. >> reporter: that 18-year-old maya bowen can talk let alone graduate with honors seems both natural and unlikely, given her early childhood in a distant orphanage. richard and jenny bowen adopted her when she was two. >> no one had ever talked to her and you know language develops when people talk to you. that's how you learn to speak, so she had no language at all. >> reporter: jenny bowen recently published a book called, "wish you happy

forever," chronicling how maya, and later anya, came to be part of the family. the california couple were already in their fifties, with grown children but they were moved by reports of child neglect on a vast scale in china. >> reporter: this 1995 film, shot undercover, called the dying rooms, showed orphanages filled with girls, abandoned in a country that had begun restricting families to one child in a culture that traditionally favored boy children. >> so we, we thought the thing we could do is save one life. so, that's what we did. we went to china to save a life. >> reporter: but jenny bowen says she found it impossible to ignore the conditions maya would escape. millions of others still languished-in the custody of indifferent or untrained workers, invisible in a nation focused on industrializing its way out of third world poverty.

16 years later jenny bowen heads a group called half the sky foundation that's helping transform way orphans are cared for across china, with the blessings of and often in partnership with the government. the name derives from a chinese proverb that says women hold up half the sky. the group has so far trained 12,000 teachers and nannies in 27 provinces. we visited in the northeastern city of shenyang >> all these children are abandoned, many of them are abandoned because they have what are called special needs. before half the sky, children were tied to their chairs, they were lying in bed, you could see the tragedy, you walk into a room and you were just confronted with the tragedy. here it's invisible, they're being treated like their lives matter, they know it and they know they're loved, so they thrive. >> reporter: she says children need a sense of being part of a

family, in whatever shape family takes. >> it doesn't mean that they have to be back with their birth families or permanently adopted or anything, they just need to have the love that a family gives naturally to a child. and to me it was like a no brainer. >> reporter: it was not a no- brainer to convince an entrenched state run welfare system. what's more, the publicity about orphanage conditions was deeply insulting to a government highly sensitive about china's image. zhang zhirong works for half the sky's china offices. >> china always wants to tell the world she is the best. everything's perfect. we are serving the people, we are helping the people, that's china politically, at that time

it was difficult to let people, especially foreigners to come in and see some of the problems, to see some of the dark side. >> reporter: zhang was a key early ally. an english professor and official interpreter well-versed in the culture and politics of the bureaucracy, zhang was convinced of bowen's sincerity. >> i really felt she had the heart. she wanted to help. no other intentions. >> reporter: did it help that she had chinese daughters, as well? >> she always says i'm half chinese, my daughters are all chinese. >> i know that resonated, the international criticism certainly let them know that something had to be done, i was probably the least threatening of the options out there. >> reporter: bowen sought guidance from child development experts. she raised funds in hollywood where was a screenwriter and filmmaker and from american couples who'd adopted chinese

daughters. she organized volunteer trips to train caregivers and spruce up the environment in which orphans spent their days. children who once sat impassively are now in busy pre- schools. walls that had generic cartoon images now display the children's own artwork and pictures. >> children in institutions, traditional institutions, they move in packs, they all eat at the same time, they all sleep at the same time, they all pee at the same time and they don't separate themselves from each other. so we use a lot of mirrors, things like this, where they can identify themselves, and that's the beginning of developing curiosity, opinions, i can tell you have opinions. >> reporter: teacher lin lin says half the sky's approach,

called "responsive care," is tailored to children's individual learning interests, a far cry from the previous rote learning. >> kids were asked to recite a lot of things, old poems and literature, which they did not understand, they weren't interested in. now we're doing things that are interesting to them, gradually you build a trust with these children and they begin to consider you as part of their family. >> reporter: that's a key goal: to make such caregivers part of the child's understanding of family. but half the sky is also building so-called family villages, a more traditional setting. couples, most with grown children, like liu peng ying and her husband shen ren chang, are given housing and a small stipend to raise their young orphaned charges. it's an easy sell in a country where large families used to be the tradition.

>> ( translated ): these are like my own children, like my grandchildren. my husband likes children even more than i do. that's why we decided to apply for this program. >> reporter: in today's wealthier, more urbanized china, bowen says fewer healthy female babies are abandoned. about three quarters of a million children are in state custody. they are more likely from impoverished rural areas and more likely to have congenital or medical conditions their families cannot afford to treat. families cannot afford to treat. for them, half the sky runs a care center in beijing with corporate, foundation and government support. it provides care for children as they await or recover from surgery or as in the sad case of four-year-old pin pin, chemotherapy >> reporter: cancer in both eyes? >> yes. and eight times chemotherapy >> reporter: for the weeks or

months pin pin will spend here, a teacher will help her adjust to the loss of her sight: >> you need to have a teacher because you have a lot of things you need to learn. we don't just worry about your eyes. we have to worry about your brain, huh? >> maya bowen! >> reporter: maya bowen plans to become an elementary teacher. she and anya, a high school junior have gone from being thankful to impressed >> i did a paper, we could do it on anything, so i chose my mom, cause i thought that would be an easy topic, so then when i started researching and learning everything she did, i was like wow, like this goes way farther than i thought. she has like a much bigger influence than i ever thought. >> reporter: jenny bowen is now 68, c.e.o. of a now $7 million a year enterprise, hopes to expand its work beyond china to neighboring countries in asia. she has no plans to retire.

>> woodruff: fred's reporting is a partnership with the under- told stories project at st. mary's university of minnesota. >> woodruff: again, the major >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day. islamic state radicals in syria declared they've beheaded a second american journalist, steven sotloff. and the u.s. military awaited confirmation that air strikes last night killed the leader of "al-shabaab," an al-qaeda group in somalia. on the newshour online right now, performing arts students at detroit's cass tech were used to putting on the typical plays that high schools across the country stage. but last fall, inspired by their city's perseverance amid turmoil, they decided to create their own. the result is titled "up from the ashes," and you can watch some of it, on our art beat page. all that and more is on our web

site, newshour.pbs.org. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff, we'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us here at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

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