to the international game association to be sure. as for the fish, it is history. they ate it. all 58 pounds. >> are not you supposed to hang that up on the wall on our broadcast here tonight, what gives? should retirement age get moved back, should you get fewer health care benefits? it's got to come from somewhere. tonight, the folks who were asked by the presint to find where to cut are out with their answers. what was it? they still don't know what it was that lit up the skies over california. a missile or an airplane? the military says it doesn't know. not adding up. disheartening news tonight abo american kids and math. back to basics. you lose your job in middle age, how tough is it, really, to reinvent yourself? also tonight, see if you can stand to watch the newest thrill sport among some teenagers. "nightly news" begins now. captions paid for by nbc-universal television

good evening. it's goto come from somewhere. millions of peopleust days ago turned out at the polls telling us they were fed up with government spending. most of the candidates who won on election night said they were heading to washington to cut government spending. so what would you cut? that's the question the president asked a special commission to consider, and tonight, they are t with their list. it's not going to be popular, but, again, it's got to come from somewhere, and the question again is, where would you cut? we begin our reporting tonight with nbc's lisa meyers in washington. >> reporter: the dramatic proposal would tou every american. and alter two economic corner stones. the mortgage interest deduction and soci security. the plan would reducfuture cost of living adjustments for social security, and gradually raise the retirement age to 68.

reign in health care spending and make medicare recipients pay more. and cut $200 billion from a broad array of government programs, half from defense. the co-chairs of the commission who drafted the recoendation acknowledged they are highly controversia former senator alan simpson. >> it's all there. we have harpooned every whale in the ocean, and some of the minnows. and no one has ever done that before. >> reporter: on the tax side, the plan calls for eliminating or scaling back the home mortgage deduction, and most other popular writeoffs. those tax increases would partly offsety lower tax rates. also proposed, a 15 cent gallon increase in the gasoline tax to fund highway spending. almost all of t proposals would be phased in gradually, beginning in the next few years. they were immediately denounced by the right as an excuse to raise net taxes on the american

people, and by the left as an attack on the middle class. >> while the chairman of the deficit commission, just told working people to drop dead. that they're the losers and wall street and the rich are the winners. >> reporter: the co-chairman argued that something has to be done, and soon. >> this debt is like a ccer that will truly destroy this country from within if we don't fix it. >> reporter: these men are washington veterans and acknowledge some of these proposals won't fly. t they believe the proposals are in part shock therapy drive home the magnitude of what's required to bring deficits under control before they cause another economic crisis. lisa myers, nbc news, washington. these proposals are so explosive, former senator simpson said he's going to have to enter the witness protection program when people see the details of what they're proposing.

with us tonight, the moderator of "meet the press" david gregory, who is in town from washington. where is the will going -- how are you going to do any of this? >> it's very difficult. what former senator simpson went on to say, this has never been done before. there's a reasonhy it hasn't be done before, because so few want to do it. look at all the response slamming the proposals. who didn't respond? the white house. the white house were surprised they put this out there today. the fling is, they want to put it out there, see what might stick. remember that numb, 14. they've got to get 14 members of the commission to agree to somethg before it can get taken up in congress. it gets to the point where are the painful choices going tbe made? to your point at the top of the broadcast, are they going to be held to account for their promises in the campaign? >> yeah, nobody wins. and yet there's that question, where is it going to come from? david gregory, nice to have you in town in new york tonight. while all this happened today, president obama is out of town. more than that, he's on this long asia trip.

today, seo, south korea, for the meeting of g-20 economic powers. while in london, students took to the streets there to protest, what else? government proposals for deep cuts to education, big tuition increases and the protest turned violent. thousands descended on conservative party headquarters, smashing windows, throwing objects from the roof. police were clearly outnumbered early on. eight people, including several police officers, were among the injured. back in this country, more on a story we hold you about last night, that mysterious vapor trail high in the sky over southern california that looked to a lot of people awfully like a large missile had been launched. the pentagon has concluded it wasn't a missile but the explanation may not satisfy everybody. our own jim miklaszewski from the pentagon tonight. jim, good evening. >> reporter: it took the pentagon and military more than a day and a half to come uwith that explanation.

for what everyone thought they saw in the skies over los angeles on monday night. but there's one gaping hole in their story. they still can't say exactly what it s. it's the shot seen around the world. caught by a traffic chopper, it appears to show a missile streaking across the skies near los angeles. but the pentagon's efforts today to entirely sht down that theory may have come up short. a terse statement from a pentagon spokesman says, "there is no evidence to suggest this anything else other than a condensation trail from an aircraft." the pentagon ruled out this was anything launched by the u.s. military or government. but even now could not offer any hard evidence that it is in fact a plane. even though many missile experts are already convinced. >> all of the characteristics of this make it look like a jet contrail, doesn't look like anything like a rocket. airplanes go slow, rockets go fast. and this is going slow. >> reporter: some websites have ev tentavely identified the

plane. a daily us airways flight 808 from hawaii to phoenix. us airways officials say they could not confirm it's their plane. all that has done little to put an end to the conspiracy theories, that this was part of some top secret military program. >> we have a place called a skunk works out there on the west coast. that's where we developed the u-2, the fr-71, the stealth bomber. all those kinds of projects. >> reporter: or that the penton's version of the story is nothing more than a coverup. >> i'm left with one conclusion, which would be some sort of a missile. pefully a u.s. missile, not a foreign missile. and something that is not going to explode. >> reporter: pentagon and military officials worry they'll never be able to knock dowall those conspiracy theories. according to one senior pentagon official, we started 36 hours late and will never catch up.

brian? >> jim miklaszewski at the pentagon tonight. the mystery continues. news tonight about that planned cargo bomb attack on the u.s. by al qaeda in yemen last month. scotland yard says the timer on the bomb intercepted in england the one that was in a toner cartridge, was set to go off in miair at 5:30 in the morning eastern time, octob 29th, the day the bomb was discovered. one calculation says that would most likely put the bomb over the eastern seaboard in canadian air space. > we told you last night about the giant carnival cruise ship "splendor" stuck in the pacific ocean, dead in the water after an engine fire. it's now being towed to shore, slowly and the passengers found their cell phone service came back to life. one of those passengers who happens to be a technician for our denver tv station kusa, phoned in an eyewitness report from onboard ship. here's how david zambrano descrid the situation. >> everything is shut down,

although the bars are closed, the casino is closed. people are doing their best to stay in good spirits. they're singing. the musicians are coming up to play to keep everybody calm. there's no power on the ship whatsoever. they have no food. they have nothing to cook with it's almost like a diet cruise. because we've been eating salads and fruit and small sandwiches. the only thing that made it tough is when all the bathrooms weren't working and people were starting to get uncomftable. there are still people in the dark here. there are the inward cabins that have no windows, so they have to prop their drs open. in order to see and breathe because there isn't any air. so they have three tug boating out here towing us to san diego. many of the people that i talked to said that they will never take another cruise again. >> again, that eyewitness report from onboard ship, the "splendor" is expected to dock san diego tomorrow, three days after the fire that set it adrift. now we turn to "education nation," and a snapshot of how erica's young people are doing

for global competition for high-skilled jobs that pay well. a report out tonight ss the number of american high school students with top-lel math skills is dangerously low. our education correspondent rehema ellis has our report. >> reporter: american students ranked shockingly below other industrialized nations in math skills. that from a new harvard university report which compares advanced math scores of the graduating class of 2009 with scores from students in other countries. the findings, the united states ranks 31st out of 56 countries. and only 6% of all american high school students in both public and private schools, have advanced math skills. >> just because you send your child to a private school doesn't mean that you're caping this reality that math instruction isn't what it is in other countries. >> reporter: among the states, massachusetts students do the best, with 11% ranked advanced.

but even they fall behind 14 other countries. the lowest ranking states, west virginia, new mexico, and mississippi. researchers wanted to know if the diversity of america's population affected the student's scores. so they coared just white students to students in other countries. american students still faired badly, with only 8% of white students performing at the ghest levels. researchersay that has implications beyond the classroom. the competition in the workplace. >> if we aren't traing our young people in mathematics, we have a real problem as a country in the years to come. >> i'll come around to check homework. >> repter: but there are success stories. westin high school in boston i ranked among the best public schools in the nation. they have all class size, highly trained faculty, and strong parent involvement. still, officials say there's work to do. >> we continuously have to look at our teaching and our instruction d make sure we're

meeting their needs, no matter what their color or demographic background is. >> reporter: every expert we talked to says if america wants better math test results, there has to be better math teachers, but they're in high demand. even with smaller classes and new innovations, to get the best person at the head of the clas it's no surprise, schools will have to make the financial vestments in those teachers. >> there's no shortage of evidence out there. rehema ellis, always a pleasure. thanks. news tonight abo children's health. the centers for disease control is out with a new survey that shows 5.4 million schoolchildren have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, adhd. that's 1 in 10. two-thirds of them are taking medications to control it. from 2003 to 2007, the number of kids between 4 and 17 with adhd jumped by 1 million. that's a 22% crease. ers perts say the increase may

be due in part to more awareness of the disorder and better screening. if you'ra parent of a child diagnosed with adhd or want to know more about the subject, we have posted an extended question and answer session with our chief science correspondent robert bazell on our website, nightly.nbc.com. when our broadcast continues here in just a moment, new warning labelsor cigarettes. some of them are brutally graphic. the question is, will they work? and later, our series "back to basics." changing gears at mid life and ending up better off for it. changing gears at mid life and ending up better off for it. ifou have migraines, you know pain.

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mostly those warnings on the side of cigarette packages. now a new law requires stronger, much more graphic warnings taking up about half the pack. the problem is, will the warnings make smers think twice? and a warning of our own here, some of these images are indeed graphic and that's the point. our report from nbc's tom costello. >> reporter: if the fda gets its way, smokers will soon be confronted with the most graphic and direct warnings yet of the dangers of smoking. closeups of cancerous lungs, a cancerous mouth, dying patients, dead bodies with toe tags, tombstones and children in a cloud of smoke >> in effect, every cigarette pack will be aini billboard, warning people aut the serious life-threatening risks of smoking. >> i smoke camels regularly because they're mild. and they agree with me.

>> reporter: 40 and 50 years ago, cigarettes were seen as cool. captured in the hit tv series "mad men" set in the 1960s when 42% of the population smoked. today that's down to 21%. but smoking remains the leading cause of preventable deaths with 443,000 americans dying from smoking related illness each year. and costing $100 billi. >> we want to make sure that every person who picks up a pack of cigarettes is going to know exactly what the risk is they're taking. >> reporter: the new warnings targets smokers who want to quit and teens who might still think smoking is cool. if approved, they could come to cigarette packin about two years. but will they work? >> it's scary stuff. >> reporter: jerry has spent 35 years in advertising. >> i don't think it's going to work, because they make one mistake, they don't realize they're dealing with addicts. when you talk about reaching younger people, younr people think they'll never die. >> reporter: reynolds tobacco says it's challenging the

labeling in court and phillip morris says it's working with the fda, which hopes the new warnings will help cut smoking rates nearly in half within ten years. tom costello, nbc news, washington. up next, the momenwhen something unplanned broke out on board an airplane. did you know problem in your heart can cause a stroke in your brain? it's true. an irregular heartbeat, called atrial fibrillation, or afib, can make a blood clot form, here, in your heart, that can break free and go straight to your brain where it can cause a serious stroke. having atrial fibrillaon gives you a 5 times greater risk of stroke than if you didn't have it. strokes thatre twice as likely to be dely or severely disabling as other typ of strokes. if you, or someone you care for, have atrial fibrillation, even if you' already taking medication, there are stilimportant ings you'll want to know.

for a free interactive book call 1-877-afib-stroke, or log onto afibstrokeom. learn more about the connection between atrial fibrillation and strokes, and get advice on how to live with afib. and with this valuable information in your hand, talk to your doctor. call 1-877-afib-stroke today. [ male announcer ] at ge capital, we're out there every day with clients like jetblue -- financing their fleet, sharing our expeise, and working with people who are changing the face of business in america. after 25 years in the aviation business, i kind of feel like if you're not having fun at what you do, then you've got the wrong job. my landing was better than yours. no, it wasn't. yes, it was. was not. yes, it was. what do you think? take one of the big ones out? nah.

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two viral videos we put on our website tonight, but you've got to see at least a little bit of both of them. first, for anyone that's ever dreamed of this, a tip of the hat to the passengers on board a continental flight out of phoenix. the billow fight start in coach and as it should, spread quickly to first class. this next one is not for the faint of heart. makes you was whoozy to watch. some russian teenagers have taken to walking out on steel beams 900 ft up. no harnesses, no apparent concerns of any kind. i'm just saying neighborhood boys and girls club might be a good idea. at 88 years old, betty white has finally realized adream, not hosting "snl."

she's an honorary forest rangers. it turns out she's always wanted to be a forest rangers, going back to when she was a young girl. but because girls weren't allowed to serve, she couldn't be a ranger. all that has changed ladies and gentlemen, your newest u.s. forest ranger, betty white. the wreck was a big part of canadian history and for folks that grew up in michigan, and in this country largely it was chiefly known for the song of the same name. the wreck of the fitzgerald was 35 yrs ago today. you know the rest. it was carrying a load of ion ore, 26,000 tons on board. it went down in a terrible november gale on laksuperior, while bound for detroit, michigan, killing all 29 onboard. gordon lightfooticked it up from there. that's how most americans know the sad story. we'll take a quick break here. we're back with reinventing your life. a fing forces you back to basics. [ woman ] you know, as a mom,

i worry about my son playing football. which is why i'm really excited. because toyota developed this software that can simute head injuries and helps make people safer. then they shared this technology with researchers at wake forest to help reduce head injuries on the football eld. so, you know, i can feel a bit better about my son playing football. [ male announcer ] how would you use toyota technology to make a better world? learn how to share your ideas at toyota.com/ideasforgood. you don't get 100% daily value of any vitamins. unless you do this. but total is the cereal that gives you 100% daily value of 11 essential vitamins and minerals and crunchy oat clusters. tota are you getting 100%? [scraping] [piano keys banging] [scring] [horns honking]

with deposits in your engine, it can feel like something's holding yourar back. let me guess, 16. [laughing] yeeah. that's why there's castrol gtx... with our most powerful deposit fighting ingredient ever. castrol gtx exceeds the toughest new indust standard. don't let deposits hold your car back. get castrol gtx. it's more than just oil. it's liquid engineering. [ male announcer ] every day thousands of people are switching from tylenol to advil. tlearn more and get your special offer, go to takeadvil.com. take action. take advil. but with advair, i'm breathing better. so now, i can join the fun and games with my grandchildren. great news! for peop with copd, including chronic bronchitis, emphysema, or both, advair helps significantly improve lung function. while nothing can reverse copd, advair is different from most other copd medications because it contains both an anti-inflammatory

and a long-acting bronchodilator, working together to help you breathe better. advair won't replace fast-acting inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than twice a day. people with copd taking advair may have a higher chce of pneumonia. advair may increase your risk of osteorosis and some eye problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking advair. i had fun today, grandpa. you and me both. if copd is still making it hard to breathe, ask your doctor if including advair will helimprove your lung function for better breathing. get your first full prescription free and save on refills. finally tonight, here our series of reports about getting back to basics.

downsizing by choice in at are tough times any way for a lot of americans. tonight, two workers who faced a scary situation getting laid off in the late stage of their very successful careers. as you'll see, aer that jolt, they both found an upside in a return to basics. nbc's mike taibbi has our report tonight. >> reporter: the older gent serving commuters their coffee was once one of them. he made fat six figures creating commcials like this one. >> a few, the proud, the marines. >> reporter: but michael gates, privileged son of a writer -- >> pretty fancy life. >> repter: will never again live in this 25-room mansion. that new owners are now renovating. >> on the left was a basketball court. >> reporter: because the ad agency fired him. >>hen it happened i thought my life was over. >> reporter: it turned out,

though, that it wasn't over. stripped his life down to a spare apartment a a monthly budget of less than $1,000 at this low-paying coffee shop job could cover d discovered something. >> whether it's sweeping a floor or cleaning a toilet, i began to stand up a little prouder. because at least i was of some value. >> reporter: he wrote a book about his reinvention. like becky of south carolina have had to learn. >> hi, glad you're joining me tonight. >> reporte she had had big jobs in tv and pr. >> nothing in here i needed to keep. >> reporter: and now sells hou content, including her own. >> i can live on less and i can certainly turn a lot of what i have into a job in itself, just selling it. >> reporter: and while at a certain age such optimism is hard to find -- >> for an older worker, it's somewhat more difficult, because they realize that they may not ever work again. >> reporter: maybe the key is to look at work differently. >> if you need health care, there are different companies that provide health care for

what you would think would be a nominal job, like serving coffee, for instance. >> reporter: it works for michael gill who has had health issues and now has health coverage. >> golf was a goodlient sport. >> reporter: and now at 70, his days of cocktail parties and government mostly memories. he says s life has never been better. >> i'm totally surprised how a lack of stuff has given me freedom. i don't feel i'm carrying this big burden. >> reporter: no, doe't seem so. mike taibbi, nbc news, new york. >> you can see extended interviews with both, as well as our full back to basic series on our website, nightly.msnbc.com. and on the "nightly news" facebook page, as well. we would like to hear your stories along these same lines. that is our broadcast for this wednesday night. thank you, as always, for being here with us. i'm brian williams. and we hope to see you right back here tomorrow evening. good night.

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