captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> brown: good evening. i'm jeffrey brown. president obama said today the u.s. won't miss a beat in the afghan war effort after the ouster of commanding general stanley mcchrystal. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. on the "newshour" tonight: afghan and other allies embraced mcchrystal's replacement, general david petraeus, and the senate set confirmation hearings for tuesday.

we get three views on what will be different with petraeus in charge. >> brown: then, marcia coyle of the "national law journal" walks us through today's supreme court rulings narrowing the scope of a law used to convict prominent white-collar criminals. >> woodruff: we tell the tale of the longest match in tennis history, finally won by american john isner at wimbledon after 11 hours of play over three days. >> brown: paul solman has a very different kind of sports story: basketball star lebron james' economic impact on the city of cleveland. >> no one really knew where cleveland was. maybe is it close to new york? is it close to chicago? now lebron james gets on the team. "where you from?" "i'm from cleveland. you ever hear of cleveland?" "come on man, i know cleveland-- lebron james!" >> woodruff: and a conversation with scientist francis collins about cracking the human genetic code 10 years later. >> it is just the foundation of everything with do and we have that information now.

so for a scientist, this is incredibly empowering. >> brown: that's all ahead on tonight's "newshour." major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> this is the engine that connects abundant grain from the american heartland to haran's best selling whole wheat, while keeping 60 billion pounds of carbon out of the atmosphere every year. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

>> and by the bill and melinda gates foundation. dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live a healthy productive life. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: reaction rolled in today after the abrupt change of u.s. commanders in afghanistan. american and afghan leaders promised the new commander general david petraeus would represent a change in personnel, not war policy. from the commander-in-chief on

down, the refrain was the same-- president obama spoke after meeting with his russian counterpart. >> we are in the mid-point of implementing the strategy that we came up with last year. we'll do a review at the end of this year. general petraeus understands that strategy because he helped shape it. and my expectation is that he will be outstanding in implementing it and we will not miss a beat. >> reporter: 24 hours earlier, mr. obama fired general stanley mcchrystal for publicly criticizing u.s. civilian leaders. but he suggested today the rest of his national security team is staying put. >> i am confident that we've got a team in place that can execute >> woodruff: for his part, general petraeus thread 2007 troop surge in iraq. he currently commands all u.s. forces across the middle east and central asia. pending senate confirmation,

he'll inherit 120,000 nato troops in afghanistan where he visited last april. >> as we learned in iraq, as we have relearned in afghanistan, when you fight to take away the momentum and the sanctuaries and safe havens of the enemy, the enemy fights back . and that can be a difficult and tough fight . >> woodruff: at a pentagon briefing, defense secretary robert gait said the incoming commander has the latitude to revise the afghan war plan. >> the president has established the strategy, but from my perspective, general petraeus will have the flexibility to look at the campaign plan and the approach and all manner of things when he gets to afghanistan. >> woodruff: the u.s. ambassador to kabul, karl eikenberry, had sharply disagreed with general

mcchrystal's call for more troops last year. but today he told afghan recorders: that mission has been especially costly this month. with 80 international troops killed, the most of any month in the eight-year war. but secretary gates and the chairman of the joint chiefs, admiral mike mullen, defended the war effort. >> i do not believe we are bogged down. i believe we are making some progress. it is slower and harder than we anticipated. but for all the reasons the chairman just articulated, i think we are moving forward. >> woodruff: gates said petraeus was the natural choice for afghanistan because he already know it is players and the plan. afghan president hamid karzai

had argued that the surest way to make progress was to keep general mcchrystal on the job. but a karzai spokesman today voiced confidence in petraeus. >> we hear from lots of sources so that he is one of the senior most generals in the u.s. army so it is a show of respect to what's happening here in afghanistan. >> reporter: around kabul, ordinary afghans praised mcchrystal for cutting civilian casualties . >> (translated): when mcchrystal was not yet in afghanistan, there were lots of civilian killings here. but after mcchrystal came to afghanistan, killings of civilians decreased. >> woodruff: others said they knew little about the new american commander but they voiced hope. >> (translated): we don't have any information about petraeus, but he may do a good job as well >> woodruff: the general met today with senators at the u.s. capitol in washington. his confirmation hearing is set to begin next tuesday. >> woodruff: for more on the changes general petraeus might

make in prosecuting the afghanistan war, we get three views by people who have worked with or have covered him. retired army colonel peter mansoor was his executive officer in 2007 and 2008 during the surge in iraq. he's now professor of military history at ohio state university. kimberly kagan is the president of the institute for the study of war, a washington think tank. she was last in afghanistan in march. and greg jaffe is a military reporter for the "washington post." he's also co-author a book that profiled general petraeus: "the fourth star: four generals and the epic struggle for the future of the united states army." thank you all three for being with us. greg jaffe, to you first. remind us what general petraeus' leadership style is. >> well, you know, he's very good politically. i mean, one of the things i think he did a great job with and i think pete mansoor can talk about this in depth is

establish a relationship with p.m. maliki that wasn't always a comfortable and happy relationship. but i think he was able to push maliki, along with the u.s. ambassador there, ryan rocker, to really do things that were both in the iraqis interest and in the broader u.s. interest. so that's critical. he's also very good at getting a few big ideas out to the troops. getting their sort of buy-in and getting this kind of sprawling force moving in the same direction. >> woodruff: kimberly kagan, what would you too old that? what will he bring that's different? >> he's also an energetic commander like general mcchrystal was. the headquarters a year ago was energized by general mcchrystal. i think general petraeus will bring that. but he will also bring a fount of experience from his time in iraq, including how to oversea a counterinsurgency fight which involves improving the government, the economics and the social structure which in afghanistan is so fragmented. in iraq... >> couric: pulling... >> woodruff: pulling it

together? >> pulling it together, synthesizing it and seeing to it that securing the people is but one element of a larger strategy to see to it that the afghan government gets built in a way that endures over time rather than collapsing again and again into civil war. >> woodruff: colonel peter mansoor, ely elaborate on that. you did work closely with him in iraq. >> well, what i would too old what greg had to say, besides a relationship that i'm injury general petraeus will attempt to forge with president karzai is he will attempt to forge a better relationship with ambassador eikenberry. he had a very successful team relationship with ambassador crocker in iraq and it was one of the reasons why we had unity of effort during the surge in 2007, 2008. so far we haven't had that kind of unity in afghanistan and i think that will be a job number one when he gets there, to form the team both with ambassador eikenberry and with president karzai. and one of the things he did in

iraq, for instance, whenever he saw prime minister maliki, he would always go together with ambassador crocker. there was never playing one off against the other. >> woodruff: what can you tell us at this point, greg jaffe, about his relationships with some of these key players in afghanistan? >> well, you know, he's clearly known ambassador eikenberry for a long time. both of them are infantry officers in the army. they both kind of grew up together around the same tile. they had different career paths. but it's clearly someone he knows and as pete suggested, i'm sure he will go out of his way to forge a close relationship with. despite the fact that they may have some differences on how best to sort of prosecute the campaign. he's clearly spent time with karzai. mcchrystal had the main relationship there and mcchrystal and karzai had a very warm relationship. you know, the petraeus/karzai relationship may not be as warm. i think petraeus may use his influence to push karzai to do things that may not be as comfortable for him. i think... you know, petraeus is

very savvy in managing that relationship. so it may not be as smooth from the outside but it may be more productive . >> woodruff: kimberly kagan, picking up on what you started to bring up a moment ago, the skills that served him well in iraq. because people look at the two wars and say they aren't necessarily at all the same kind of war. so what skills that were useful in iraq do transfer to afghanistan? >> although afghanistan and iraq are different conflicts, the truth is that counterinsurgency fight has certain shapes. you have to take care of the problem in a very specific way. as general petraeus was quoted as saying in the opening segment, you actually have to defeat the enemy in the sanctuaries and safe havens he has established. you have to work to establish government that is viewed as legitimate in the eyes of the people. and you have to mediate between the people and the government when there is a dispute between them. and then in addition to that,

you have the challenge of building host nation security forces to make sure that over time the country can defend itself, but not push those forces out too far too fast without u.s. or coalition partners to help them really get to the level of quality that they need to be at in order to protect and defend their country >> woodruff: peter mansoor, colonel mansoor, do you have a sense of how general petraeus sees the similarities between the two countries, the two wars? >> well, i think we'd all agree that there's differences in terms of the people, the cultural aspects, the terrain, the climate. but there are some similarities as well. we are fighting an insurgency and all insurgencies... there are certain principles that can be used against them. one is that you have to... that war is fought and won or lost among the people. and that's something that general petraeus will transfer with him from iraq to afghanistan.

i think it's what everyone knew, but it's how you go about executing that that matters. i think one of the things he'll look at right away, for instance, is the rules of engagement and whether they're being applied correctly by the troops at the lower levels. there's a lot of concern among the troops in afghanistan that their hands are being tied and what we found in iraq early in 2007 where are where there was the same sort of sense among the troops is that the rules of engagement were okay but there were a lot of risk-averse commanders applying them incorrectly down at the lower level. so i think general petraeus will look at that and that's one example of how he'll transfer things he did in iraq to afghanistan. >> woodruff: when you refer to rules of engagement, this is having a concern about civilian casualties. so are you saying that... are you referring to the concern that that's been too much of a concern in afghanistan ? >> the concern among the troops right now is that they can't fight the enemy. that their hands are being tied. that even when they're in clear

situations, they're allowing the enemy to escape or they can't keep them in detention due to overly restrictive rules rules t they can't use the types of weapons they need to even in clear situations where they're fighting against taliban. so i think this is something that will be looked at. i think it will be communicated in a very clear and forthright manner to the troops so that they understand the rules of engagement and they understand how and why they have to be applied and i think that... what that article showed was that the troops right now don't understand that. so general petraeus, you know, he's a master communicator and he will get out among the troops and get that message out. >> woodruff: and in fact, greg jaffe, what we heard defense secretary gates say and we saw this in the clip a minute ago today is that while general petraeus won't have the ability to change the basic strategy, he will be able to look at the approach and make some changes. >> yeah. and i think there will be changes. i think, as pete suggested, he

is very good at communicate ago few big ideas to troops. kind of getting folks on the same page. so i can imagine that will happen. you know, he's also a risk-taker, as he proved in iraq during the surge in terms of reaching out to the sunnis, kind of trying to... the sunni insurgent population particularly in that country and reaching out to enemies. so i would expect there to be an aggressive push to reach out to some of the more reconcilable elements of the insurgency in afghanistan. >> woodruff: how do you see that? do you expect to see visible changes? >> i think every general makes adjustments when he gets on the ground. things about how we're conducting the operations in kandahar or in helmand, how to balance forces. and whether we are doing all of the things that we need to be doing to succeed. this conflict is complicated but the united states can achieve its objectives. what general petraeus needs to

do is figure out how to apply our forces better and how to use the political leverage that the united states and the international community have to facilitate president karzai doing some things that may not be in his personal interest but are in the interests of the country. creating of time statesman that he can be. >> woodruff: all the reports coming in so far on general petraeus, at least in the last day or so, the reviews have been very positive, glowing. kimberly kagan, just quickly, is there anything we need to know about him that's less than perfect? >> well, i have great respect for him. he's a terrific commander. he comes in and he gets ahold of a problem set, he thinks it through and he comes to a clear solution about it. does he adjust time and time again after that? sometimes. but it takes a lot to persuade him to adjust. so that mean there is will be a lot of forward momentum after six or eight weeks and it will be harder to correct his course

six months out. >> woodruff: peter mansoor, any tarnish on this general? h. >> well, i would agree with kim in that one of the hardest things for general petraeus to do is to admit failure. he's a man that hasn't failed very much, if at all, in his life and i remember flying across the atlantic with him on the way to iraq and i remember telling him that the hardest thing for him to do should it come to that is to tell the president that the strategy isn't working. and so it will be very... you know, he is going to give his all to this mission. and if anyone can get this mission accomplished and turn this war around and get it spiraling upward again, it will be general petraeus. the other thing is... >> woodruff: i think we're going to have to leave it there. my apology. we'll come back to you soon to let you fin their thought. colonel peter mansoor, kimberly kagan, greg jaffe, thank you

all. >> thanks. >> brown: still to come on the "newshour": limits on prosecuting white collar crimes; dollars and dunks in cleveland; the longest match ever and the promise and limits of genome research. but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan in our newsroom. >> sreenivasan: the cap on that ruptured oil well in the gulf of mexico was back in action today. it had to be removed for ten hours yesterday after being struck by a remote-controlled submarine. that, in turn, allowed more oil to gush into the sea. but today, the cap was again collecting thousands of gallons of crude. b.p. said it would take some time for the system to get ramped back up to full operation. meanwhile, a federal judge refused to delay his ruling against a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. wall street had a down day. it was driven in part by concerns about the financial reform bill being finalized in congress. the dow jones industrial average lost more than 145 points to close at 10,152. the nasdaq fell more than 36 points to close at 2,217. president obama welcomed russian president dmitry medvedev to

washington today. the low-key summit lasted for several hours, but there were no major agreements announced. the leaders got to showcase their new warmer relations, even breaking bread over burgers in arlington, virginia. afterward, they returned to the white house for further talks across a modest agenda. >> when i came into office, the relationship between the united states and russia had drifted perhaps to its lowest point since the cold war. there was too much mistrust and too little real work on issues of common concern. that did not serve the interests of either country or the world . >> (translated): we made our world safer, i must say this. but this is not enough for bilateral economic ties to change. and this visit is generally mostly aimed at achieving these goals. we are ready for that now. our american partners are ready for the same thing. >> sreenivasan: underscoring that point, president obama

announced the u.s. will support mass cow's entry into the world trade organization without conditions. >> russia belongs in the w.t.o. that's good for russia, it's good for america, and it's good for the world economy. >> (translated): we hope and we have stated this that the work will be finalized by the end of september this year . >> sreenivasan: it was the latest sign that tensions have eased since the obama administration initiated its so-called resenate relations. in april, russia and the u.s. signed a new strategic arms treaty to draw down nuclear arsenals by about a third. russia also joined in speaking out against north korea's nuclear threat and last month it supported further u.n. sanctions against iran's disputed nuclear program. the two leaders still have some disputes to resolve over america's missile defense plans and russia's support of two breakaway provinces in georgia. the u.s. senate today approved new sanctions aimed at iran. they target foreign companies that do business with the

revolutionary guard or contribute to iran's energy industry. the house also moved to approve the bill. in pakistan, a court convicted five young american muslims on terror charges. the men were all from the washington, d.c. area. they've been in custody since last december. today, they were sentenced to ten years in jail for plotting attacks inside pakistan. defense lawyers vowed to appeal. australia now has a new prime minister-- julia gillard, the first woman to hold the position. she was sworn into office today, after ousting prime minister kevin rudd. the vote by the ruling labor party was uncontested. >> i asked my colleagues to make a leadership change, a change because i believed that a good government was losing its way. and because i believe fundamentally that the basic education and health services that australians rely on, and their decent treatment at work, is at risk at the next election. rudd had been prime minister

since 2007, but his support had fallen sharply with another election just a few months off. he championed climate change legislation, but the australian senate rejected a tax on polluters for carbon emissions. rudd shelved the plan last april. a new bid for campaign finance reform advanced in the u.s. congress today. house democrats pushed through a bill to disclose who pays for political ads by outside groups. republicans said it would hinder free speech. last winter, the u.s. supreme court threw out a long-standing ban on direct political activity by corporations and unions. the bill goes next to the senate. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to jeff. >> brown: and we turn to the supreme court, which issued a series of rulings today, including dramatically narrowing the scope of a fraud law used by federal prosecutors in some very high-profile cases of white- collar crime. marcia coyle of the "national law journal" was in the courtroom, as always, and she joins us now. welcome back. >> thanks, jeff. >> brown: some very prominent convictions were involved.

>> there were three cases before the court, enron's chief, jeffrey skilling. he had challenged his conviction he was charged by the government and convict of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, among other charges, basically in connection with an accounting scheme and false and misleading statements about enron's financial health led to the collapse and, according to... >> brown: one recovered a long, long time here. >> absolutely. and according to the government enriched him in the form of salary, bonuses, okay stopgss and other benefits. the second case involved newspaper magnate conrad black. he also was convicted of honest services fraud and obstruction of justice in connection with an unusual corporate compensation scheme, according to the government. he said it wasn't an illegal scheme, it had to do with noncompetition fees. and finally, the third case involved an alaska state legislator, bruce why rock.

he hasn't been convicted. he's scheduled to go on trial. a lower court said his trial could go forward on a charge of honest services fraud because he failed to disclose the government charges that he was looking for work from an oil company that at the same time was lobbying him in the state legislature on tax policy. >> brown: all right. now you used the key phrase there three times "honest services fraud." now, we're going to put up the... it's a short law and it says "for the purposes of this term, scheme, or artifice to defraud includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the spwapbgable right of honest services." what does that mean or is that what the supreme court had to decide here? >> actually, that's part of what the court had to decide. justice ginsburg wrote the main opinion and it came in the skilling case and i think she gave perhaps the best way to explain honest services fraud. she read a summary from the

bench and she said here's an example. a mayor takes a bribe in return for awarding a contract to a party. the bribe is from that party who wants the contract. the contract's terms are the same as if they had been negotiated at arm's length. the city and its citizens have not lost anything tangible in terms of property or money. the citizens have lost something intangible: the right to the honest services of the mayor. >> brown: but in the cases of these very high-profile corporate folks-- skilling and conrad black in particular-- prosecutors were using this... that law to get at them. right? >> exactly. mr. skilling brought a two-pronged challenge to the law. he said... or to his conviction, actually. he said first he did not get a fair trial because of pretrial publicity and community prejudice. but the core of the case here

had to do with this law. he said it was unconstitutionally vague. it didn't define the behavior it prohibited. justice ginsburg writing for the majority on the court said, well, we're not going to condemn congress' act if we can construe this in a constitutional way. and so she looked at the law and what congress intended in 1988 when it was enacted and she said the core of this law gets at bribery and kickbacks taken by people who have some type of fiduciary duty or duty of loyalty. and that's how the law is going to be narrowed and confined. >> brown: she's essentially saying federal prosecutors have overstretched in the use of it. >> in fact, the government in this case urged the court to go further than bribery and kickbacks to include self-dealing and conflicts of interest. it's been a powerful widely used tool, successfully, by the prosecution. >> brown: and three justices

wanted to go even further, right? and just get rid of the law all together? >> justice scalia, kennedy, and thomas would have struck down the entire law as unconstitutional. justice scalia said the majority here was basically writing the terms of a new federal crime and it should not that. >> brown: so what happens next in these convictions? >> well, the court made it... the majority made it very clear that mr. skilling was improperly convicted of honest services fraud so his case will go back to the lower court. he was convicted of, i believe, 19 other counts, so the lower court will have to decide if this count, honest services fraud, the error, infected all those other counts and charges. mr. black's case also goes back because, as the court... since the court found that the honest services fraud here only applies to bribery and kickbacks it infected the jury instructions in his case and he... the low -r court will have l also have to

decide whether it can go forward there. and mr. weyhrauch is probably the luckiest of the three. i don't think his case will go forward unless the prosecution has other cases to charge him. >> brown: what are the wider implications here? as we started by saying, federal prosecutors have used this quite widely. >> there are other prominent names. right now in chicago former governor blagojevich is on trial and this honest services fraud is one of the charges against him. the health south c.e.o., richard s krushy and a former governor have been convicted and part of their conviction rests on honest services fraud. all those cases-- and i'm sure there are many others-- will have to be reexamined. >> brown: and advocate groups for good governance in public and private sector, they're already sending... we got many press releases today saying this will make it much harder to go after officials.

>> absolutely, jeff. because it was a widely used and very successful tool in white-collar crime and public corruption cases. >> brown: before we, go we're near the end of the tomorrow, right? >> monday. four more decisions are expected to come down and right after that will be the start of the senate hearings on elena kagan's nomination. >> brown: marcia coyle, we'll turn back to you on monday. marcia coyle of the "national law journal." thanks again. >> my pleasure. >> woodruff: the longest tennis match in history concluded today at wimbledon in england. american john isner beat frenchman nicolas mahut, after a match that lasted three days. richard pallot of "independent television news" begins our coverage. >> reporter: it began as an ordinary first-round match. 11:05 later, it had become extraordinary.

john isner and nicholas mahut were near unknowns before but record breakers now . big embraced little with whatever strength they could still summon. the final said finished 70 games to 68. a basketball score, not a tennis one. isner the winner, but a moment both will surely remember forever. >> i honestly when i... when i left the match yesterday i really thought it was a dream. i didn't think that was... t type of match was possible and so i was really expecting to wake up in all seriousness. >> reporter: it began on tuesday evening, by wednesday tea time they were five hours in and not even halfway through. standards never dropped. even if heads did occasionally. at 47 all, the scoreboard had had enough. it had to be reprogrammed. as it's a small court,less than a thousand could watch. but they stayed until late into last night when the lights and

the legs began to fail. both returned refreshed for a third installment today. a contest they would take 183 games to decide. >> my coach actually believe it or not said jokingly before the tournament started that i'll be able to play ten hours. (laughter) that's the truth. >> woodruff: john isner fought through an 11th hour and we get some thoughts now on the match from a close observer of the game, he's peter bodo, senior columnist at "tennis" magazine and tennis.com. peter bodo, have you ever seen anything like this? >> not in my all years covering tennis and that goes back a pretty long way. >> woodruff: we should clarify for viewers who don't follow tennis. why was it possible it could go so long? there's a rule, i guess, at wimbledon and some of the other major tourments about a tiebreaker. >> yes, wimbledon and the french open don't use a fifth-set tiebreaker. they use a tiebreaker going up to the fifth set but come the fifth set, that i play it out in

what you call advantage set which is means you have to win by two games just like you would... by two points in a regular game. so, you know, it opens a door to these kinds of matches. everyone thought at the beginning of the tiebreaker era that that all these records for these longest matches are going to stand forever because now we have a tiebreaker but wimbledon and french open have held out, no fifth-set tiebreaker, air go today. ... ergo today. >> tell us more about who these two players are, isner and mahut. >> well, one of the charming aspects of the story is these are not two usual suspects. you think of federer and nadal, like that great final they had or known quantities like an andy roddick or something. but mahut, he... wonderful story at wimbledon. he won the junior championship there is. he's ranked 147 in the world. a lot of guys feel he never lived up to his potential. he had to get into the tournament qualifying. he had a heck of a long qualifying match. i think it was 20-18 in the third set just to get into the tournament. first round he plays john isner,

an american kid, as everyone saw a very lay connick casual kid who'd gotten in basically only the second wimbledon he played. h he missed last year with mono, the year before he lost in the first round. >> woodruff: how did they manage to do this? 11 hours of play over three days. >> well, you know, you have to factor in that it was on grass. i think the longest rally, i believe, was 17 strokes. the next-longest was 12 strokes and we're going back to that 17-stroke rally, we're going back to sometime 3:00 yesterday afternoon. it was like 38 all or something. so grass is fairly forgiving. you don't have those really, really long points. on the other hand, there's a lot of stress because there's a lot of stretching and straining. i think these two guys got in a rhythm, they got sort of entranced by what was going on and they just got carried along on sort of a wave. >> woodruff: and the crowd stayed with them and the press stayed with them. >> their crowd and the press stayed with them and i think that really helps. you talk about athletes reaching down deep to find something they didn't think they had.

in this case it was almost like something came up to grab them and just kind of guided them along. you watch these guys, you know, you look at mahut, he's serving a down game and isner's always ahead 35-34, 48-47. and he's staying... he's playing to stay alive. every player oner will tell you that serving from behind is a really, really difficult thing. yet he goes and serves... got, i don't know, 48 games, 58 games in a row without being broken. it was extraordinary. >> woodruff: so does this have an affect on the game of tennis? are more people going to start watching now? >> well, some people are going to start screaming for a tiebreaker, there's no question about that. but i hope more people start watching. it's a wonderful game. we saw today the kind of performance it's capable of producing. both of these guys left everything out there. unfortunately, i think there the were a couple of other events in world sports yesterday that blunted the impact maybe a little bit. but i think this is one of those things grow to starbucks, people are talking about it. >> woodruff: you're right, you

may be referring to the wao *up. peter bodo of tennis.com and "tennis" magazine. thanks so much. next, another sport stories of why the economic hopes of a midwestern city are tied to the fortune and decision of a basketball superstar, a guy by the name of lebron james. economics correspondent paul zoll monohas the story as part of his series on making sense of financial news. >> reporter: the cavaliers. leading the charge, local high school phenom, now league m.v.p. lebron james . the treason cavs sell 20,000 seats a game at on average $80 each. some million and a half dollars a night. in a global economy, james is a global draw.

the baryshnikov of buckets, houdini of hoops, rembrandt of the rim. but the king of the courts' contract is up july 1. freeing them to sign with any team in the league for millions of dollars and the brighter lights of a bigger city and thus, the economic question that's put cleveland on hold has become the talk of the sports world. will lebron go or stay put? set cleveland back or help restore something of its glorious past. a great lakes port on the cuyahoga river, cleveland was once home to steel mills and car plants, its art museum still boats splendors from the fat years, monet's water lilies, frederick church's twilight in the wilderness . cleveland's twilight came in the 1960s. kicked off by an oil and debris fire on the cuyahoga river which

became a parody pop hit making cleveland a national joke . as ohio lost out to industry elsewhere, so did cleveland's sports teams. then 2003, along came james who grew up in akron 30 miles south of cleveland and is now a potential selling point for region in an increasingly service driven global economy . team president len komoroski says he's helped turn the cleveland cavaliers into an international brand. >> we have fans who come here and make the sojourn from all over the world. we are one of the most heavily televised teams in our league but nationally as well as internationally. and even in china we were on 34 times in china . >> reporter: with a t.v. audience in china of 100 million a game. restaurant owner terry tarantino recalls his travels to turkey eight years ago. >> no one knew where cleveland was. they knew it was maybe close to

new york, is it close to chicago now lebron james gets on the team, "where you from?" "i'm from cleveland, you ever here of cleveland?" "come on, man, i know cleveland. lebron james." >> reporter: prelebron, the cavs sold less than 12,000 seats a night. now almost double that. throw in the extras you buy when you spend hours at the arena, the now-soaring t.v. revenues, suites for the high rollers. and how much if my company buys one of these for a year? >> between $300 and $400,000 a year. >> reporter: it makes james worth for more than the $16 million a year the cavs pay him and even more still to cleveland, ohio. >> lebron brings a different crowd down here, a good crowd. >> reporter: good? >> a good spending crowd. >> reporter: doug petkovic co-owns upscale lola, a minute from the cavs arena on a street that's now hopping. >> would we be hurt if lebron is not playing and those people are coming?

we'd certainly feel that impact. >> reporter: just up the block, flannerys. so prelebron, lebron. >> wow, big difference. we weren't a basketball town, flannery's would get four to six tables in here, sometimees 20, big night. when lebron came, we went to an hour wait for a 7:00 game doing 400 to 600 dinners. so huge. >> reporter: soccer plans packed flannery's when we were there but lebron anxiety was still in the air. how much of a difference does it make economically to cleveland if lebron leaves? >> it just has a huge, huge difference in the way people feel. >> i think it would be a tremendous steal. i think everyone knows it's a huge economic loss, i think, for the whole city of cleveland if he leaves. >> reporter: consider the t.v. audience says the cavs president. >> people have never been to cleveland before, this is what they see. and they see these beautiful shots of a city.

you can tune on any game that we have and you're going to find examples of this. >> reporter: the value of the imagery? priceless says cleveland mayor frank jackson. >> there's no way you can pay for that kind of marketing in china or in europe. >> reporter: or anywhere in america. >> anywhere in america you couldn't pay for that. >> reporter: no wonder local cleveland officials and celebs actually made a "we are lebron" internet video pleading with their 26-year-old meal ticket. ♪ please stay, lebron, we really need you. ♪ no bigger market's gonna love you half as much. ♪ as we do >> reporter: copyright issues have since removed the video from most web site, but clevelanders refused to be silenced. >> lebron, you should stay because we love you and you love the city. hands down, that's it. end of story. >> stay, baby. we love you, man. we love you. >> reporter: and you need him? >> and we definitely need him.

>> reporter: major jackson, now in his second term, has resolved to revive a city riddled with subprime foreclosures. james taking the cavs to the playoffs five straight years has been a real help. >> the average person on the street is still suffering and as a result of that, the cities are still in financial situations that are not too healthy for us. so to have this kind of pride and to have this kind of success, it really in many cases helps people in cities and institutions get past the moment. >> reporter: kent state professor mark lyberger has put a number on the team's value to the city. >> look at 98. something million the cavaliers generate in revenue and plug those into the equation. when we look at everything across the board, there is a significant economic impact. it's about $140 million.

>> reporter: a year. but beyond the immediate cash boost to cleveland, the cavaliers franchise has grown by more than $200 million in value since james arrived. and then there's the psychological lift the mayor mentioned which by itself can lead to more spending, more investing, and a higher quality of life. >> unless we did a survey to interview consumers on the street and ask that specific question, it would really be difficult to quantify that. >> reporter: so we did a survey, collecting anecdata. how much would random clevelanders be willing to pay if that would somehow keep lebron. >> i don't think i would pay anything. >> probably zero. >> reporter: eavesdropping, restaurateur tarantino thought these customers were nuts. how much would you pay out of your pocket? >> probably a thousand dollars. i don't know. >> reporter: and he wasn't the only big spender. >> i would go $5,000 for lebron. >> reporter: now, league rules

athrow cavs to offer lebron $30 million more than any other team. so as another cleveland icon might now be wondering, will he or won't he? sports writer brian windhorst. >>. you wrote a book about him. you know him. what's he going do? >> i think he'll make a lot of people sweat. he'll give other cities hope but i think ultimately he stays home because it is home. >> reporter: lebron's hometown of akron, struggling economically as well. the rubber city has also put on a full-court press and last week threw its own lebron appreciation day. >> lebron, you have to stay here. you're our king. you're our hero. bring that ring to cleveland. >> reporter: it will be a banner day for the northeast ohio economy if he sticks around to give cleveland a shot. >> woodruff: are you listening lebron? the city anxiously awaits a deadline one week from today,

that's when lebron james' contract expires and he can begin negotiating with any team. >> brown: finally tonight: a revolution in genetic science, ten years later. it was a teddy time then, the reality now a big more sobering. >> with this profound new knowledge, humankind is on the verge of gaining immense new power to heal. >> brown: it was a landmark moment in science-- celebrated at the white house in 2000: the decoding of the first draft of the human genome, the cracking of the genetic code. >> genome science will have a real impact on all our lives and even more on the lives of our children. it will revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of most, if not all, human diseases. >> brown: the project-- completed simultaneously in both the public and private sectors-- raised the prospect of

pinpointing the root causes of illnesses, eventually leading to so-called designer drugs and other therapies. the decade since has seen a number of advances, and hundreds of sites on the human genome have been linked with diseases, including various kinds of cancer. but developing cures has proven difficult, and some researchers now believe that genetic mutations-- or changes in our d.n.a.-- may not have a direct cause-and-effect relationship with disease. i talked about all this recently with one of the leaders of the original decoding effort, dr. francis collins, then head of the government's human genome project. he's now director of the national institutes of health. francis collins, welcome. >> nice to be with you. >> brown: so ten years later, give me an overview, how far have we come? >> we've learned a prodigious amount about our own d.n.a. instruction book, the human genome. after revealing in the draft form in 2000, getting a

completed form in 2003, and then applying some of the best and brightest minds on the planet to try to figure out how it works. we know about the variation in the genome, that half a percent that makes you different from me. we've cataloged most of that. >> brown: half a percent? >> half a percent. that's all. and we've actually learned how a lot of those variations play a role in risks of disease. almost a thousand of them that you can pinpoint and say that one increases your diabetes risk. that one increases your cancer risk. the risks are modest, but those are really important insights. >> brown: let's try to break it down a little bit. you wrote in a recent article "genome research has already had a profound impact on scientific progress." now what does that mean? in what ways? >> a graduate student working in biology today cannot imagine how you did research without having access to the sequence of the human genome. it is so fundamental. it's something you're looking at on your computer many times a

day to guide your experiments. it is just the foundation of everything we do. and we have that information now. so for a scientist, this is incredibly empowering. >> brown: in what way? give me an example. >> okay. let's suppose i'm interested in trying to understand autism. we know that autism has hereditary contributions. if a family has a child with that disease, the risk that the next child will have it goes up by almost a factor of a hundred. so there's something really significant going on there. but how would you approach that? without having the genome to sift through, to look for those places that might correlate with the illness, you really couldn't even start to ask that question. now with sequencing technologies that allow you to sequence an entire genome for $10,000 in less than a week, you can really begin to see what's there. >> brown: in the same recent article you wrote "but it's fair to say that the human genome project has not yet directly affected the health care of most individuals." why not?

>> most of us going to our regular physician have not yet had the experience of having a recommendation placed in front of us that's a direct consequence of the genome project. although some people have. if you're somebody with a strong history of breast cancer or colon cancer, you probably have had an impact as a result of this. but that's coming. and, frankly, i think predictions made in 2000 that that was going to happen overnight were probably not very realistic. i hope i didn't make too many of those. i think there were some expectations, though, on the part of the public and maybe revved up a bit by efforts in the private sector and a few places to try to improve stock values that made it sound as if it was going to be so easy now. as soon as we've got the genome, we'll cure everything next week. >> brown: as i read the literature, as i read reports about this, there's some sense of disappointment about being able to translate the scientific advances into clinical advances. >> well, i understand that impatience. but this is a long and

complicated pathway, especially if you're talking about therapeutics. it's one thing to scan through the genome and identify a pathway that seems to be involved in cancer. it's another to take that information and come up with a magic bullet that you could give to a patient with leukemia or lung cancer to tie to turn that around . >> brown: what did you and others not quite grasp or understand in terms of how complex or difficult this would all be? >> i think we underestimated the contribution of the parts of the genome that don't code for protein. the part that codes for protein is only about 1.5%, and we figured if we understood that part then we'd be very far along in understanding risks of disease. it turns out, the other 98.5% is incredibly complicated but incredibly important in terms of the way it regulates how those genes function. and we probably should have known that there must be a lot going on there. >> brown: so what's next? do you want to try to predict the next ten years in terms of

making those clinical advances? >> we are still not able to identify the heritability for common diseases like diabetes and heart disease in its entirety. we have now identified a lot of interesting pointers to that. but there's some missing parts here. the dark matter of the genome, as people refer to it is still dark matter. we haven't discovered what is the cause of those risks. if we could do that in the next three to five years, now that we can sequence an entire human genome so quickly and we can do so many of them, i think that will greatly increase the ability to make accurate predictions about individual risks for the future. so that's going to be a growing area over the next ten years. more and more people will have their genomes sequenced, placed in their medical record, have that information available to predict what they might be at risk for and what they can do about it. on top of that, that same information will be very valuable for individual choices about what drug is going to work

for you if you need one for an illness. this variability in drug response. a lot of that comes from your genome. we are learning a lot about that already. about 10% of drug which is which we have good evidence that using genetic information will result in a better outcome. the longest term, but probably the most significant, will be the development of these completely new therapeutics. and that's probably for many diseases another ten years off. for cancer, for heart disease, for alzehimer's disease, for parkinson's, it's going to take a little longer because of those long steps of going from discovery to an idea about a compound that might work to animal testing to clinical trials to approval. >> brown: how close are we to where this is just sort of the norm for people for affordable readily available personal genome sequencing? >> well, the technology for sequencing d.n.a. has just been moving forward at a remarkable pace. people often talk about moore's

law for computers as an example of an unbelievable pace of acceleration where computer power gets better by a factor of two every two years. d.n.a. sequencing is getting much faster than that. we can now see within three to four years the reality your complete genome can be sequenced for less than a thousand dollars. that will become, then, a very appealing opportunity because it is your genome. it's not going to change. for the most part it is what it is so why not get that information once and for all, do it accurately, put it into your medical record and then begin to utilize that for a host of decisions about your medical care. >> brown: of course, that will also raise questions you were talking about ten years ago. about the privacy issues about what we even do with all this information once we have it. >> interpretation is going to be a moving target. if i gave you your complete genome sequence today, would you know exactly what to make of it? well, you'd have some ideas. but a lot of it would still be pretty foggy.

it's going to get stronger over the course of time, which is to say that all of us once we have our genome sequenced are going to want to be connected with the process of interpretation which is going to get gradually better over time. so that if somebody makes a discovery that happens to be relevant to you, you learn about it. >> brown: francis collins, thanks for talking with us. >> great to be here. >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day: president obama vowed the u.s. won't miss a beat as it changes war commanders in afghanistan. b.p. resumed capturing oil from that damaged well in the gulf of mexico. the operation was halted for 10 hours yesterday, after an accident. and wall street had a down day. the dow jones industrial average lost more than 145 points. the "newshour" is always online. hari sreenivasan, in our newsroom, previews what's there. hari? >> sreenivasan: on the change of command in afghanistan, find a compilation of past appearances

by general petraeus on the "newshour." margaret warner filed a blog from rio de janiero about reactions to the gulf oil spill as brazil races to develop its own oil resources. paul solman responds to viewer emails criticizing a recent report showing a man chasing a chicken. that's on his "making sense" page. and on "art beat," jeff talks to dance company directors about the state of ballet in america. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. jeff? >> brown: and that's the "newshour" for tonight. i'm jeffrey brown. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. we'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and david brooks, among others. thank you and good night. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

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