ing. >> one-man race. primaries in five states today will push mitt romney closer to the gop nomination, and with little competition, he's focusing on president obama. >> so he's out of ideas, and he's out of excuses. and in 2012 we've got to make sure and put him out of office. going broke. a new report shows just how fast social security and medicare are running out of money. and mining the skies. the well known name's backup plan to retrieve precious metals from out of space. captioning funded by cbs good morning. thanking for joining us.

i'm michelle miller. well, the presumed republican presidential nominee mitt romney is hoping for a big day. they go to the polls today. some 200 delegates are up for grabs. meanwhile romney is up finance the student loan proposal championed by president obama. susan mcginnis has more. good morning, susan. >> good morning. he's been out there campaigning with florida senator marco rubio and that's raising speculation about a running mate. mitt romney campaigned throughout pennsylvania, focusing on his matchup with president obama in november. >> i'd like you to go out and vote in your primary and give me your support and show that we're ready and willing to take on president obama. >> pennsylvania is one of five primaries today. romney is expected to win them all and bring him closer to the 1,144 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination. >> the next president of the

united states. >> monday romney campaigned with florida senator marco rubio leading many to speculate he might end up on the ticket. the former massachusetts governor says not so fast. the latest polls show mitt romney and president obama in a dead heat. president obama kicks off a two-day three-state tour of college campuses with a stop at unc chapel hill this afternoon. students there started lining up for tickets over the weekend. >> really, what he has to say, we're ready to hear. >> the president is pushing for an extension of low interest rates for student loans. >> once we graduate, we have ridiculous amounts of loans and it's hard to pay them off because a lot of times you end up getting a job in retail or as a waitress because it's hard to find professional work. >> mitt romney says he supports the extension as well. >> in part because of the poor

conditions in the job market. >> the job market and the kpli are expected to be the key issues in november. now, as this race turning to the general election it's expected to be as nasty as the primaries have been. each side is expected to raise upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars. well, john edwards' trial resumes today in greensboro, north carolina, with the government's key witness returning to the stand. the former presidential candidate is charged with using finance campaign funds. he used the funds to hide the secret pregnant mistress. one of the donors provided much of the money at issue. now to the secret service prostitution scandal. a 12th member of the military has been linked to the incident in colombia prior to the president's visit earlier this month. secretary of defense leon panetta arrived in colombia

yesterday. he said the pentagon has suspended the security clearance of all the security personnel allegedly involved. >> my biggest concern is the issue of security and what could possibly have been jeopardized by virtue of this kind of behavior. >> 12 secret service employees have been implicated. six have lost their jobs. george zimmerman, who admits shooting and killing florida teenager trayvon martin, is next due in court on may 8. zimmerman is in hiding this morning and not being protected by police. meanwhile the police chief who allowed zimmerman to remain free tried to resign. >> reporter: sanford florida police chief bill lee tried to quit his job but city leaders won't let him. at a special meeting sanford commission rejected his

resignation by a vote. he is said so to have allowed george zimmerman to walk free after shooting and killing trayvon martin. a month later he resigned. city leaders say he will remain on administrative lead until an outside investigation is completed. state investigators took over the case and eventually charged zimmerman with second-degree murder. the neighborhood watch volunteer was released from jail after posting bail. his attorney is not revealing where his client is staying over fears for his safety. >> now that he's out, he's out and exposed. but i'm just hopeful we can keep him safe and truly hopeful that people will just let it work and let it find out what exactly happens. >> reporter: there are reports zimmerman was allowed to leave the state of florida. authorities say that he's wearing a gps monitoring device and they can track his every

move. >> his attorney filed a not guilty plea days ago. during his pretrial, he apologized to martin's parents. they say his apology was not sincere. if convicted of second-degree murder, zimmerman could face life in prison. randa randall pinkston, cbs news. millions of americans are running out of money. in an audacious plan to align objects in outer space. ashley morrison is here with more on that. good morning. >> good morning to you, michelle. the trustees in charge of social security and medicare say the benefit programs are closer to going broke than previously thought and they are placing a blame on a surge of retires, a weak economy, and a lack of reform from washington. the trustees are reporting social security trust funds will likely run dry in 2033, three

years earlier than previously expected. they could run out by 2016 and medicare's hocht fund will be out of money by 2024. back overseas we're mostly low e. tokyo's nikkei fell losing more than half a percent while hong kong's hang seng roiz about a quarter percent. the dow drops 102 points while the nasdaq lost 30. gas prices continue to inch back down, according to aaa. the average cost of a gallon of regular is now $3.85. that's down 5 cents from a week ago and is about the same price from exactly one year ago. industry analysts say prices should hover there until about summer but he warns lower prices are not necessarily a positive sign. >> it's kind of like rooting for a recession. if you really want to see

sharply lower prices you need to root for a recession or you need to root for a technological breakthrough, which isn't out there right now. >> as tensions with iran has eased, so have tensions about lower prices. metlife has agreed to pay nearly half billion dollars to settle claims it did not provide life insurance benefits to some customers. an investigation revealed metlife had information on the deaths of some policyholders but did pay what it owed. it will pay out $188 million this year and the remaining sum over the next 17 years. and imagine the gold rush in outer space. that's a plan a group of high-tech moguls are outlining today. google executives along with film maker james cameron are backing a project aimed at tracking minerals and astroided close to earth. the project called planetary resources says it could add a

trillion to gdp and ensure humanity's. others are those with google and ross perot. can you imagine what they might find? >> truly it's one of those outer space phenomenon. >> count me in. >> ashley morrison here in new york. thank you. coming up on the "cbs morning news" sticker shock for medical care as some patients get stuck with medical bills. first, thoerks scott pelley has the latest. real estate investors who were profiting by fixing up and sellsing distressed homes. is this a sign that the housing industry is turning around? we'll have that stornt tonight on the "cbs evening news." right now, get up to 20% off kenmore appliances. plus, an extra 15% off all appliance brands with your sears card. or get 50% off all kenmore wall ovens with your sears card.

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the last week of april, more than a month into spring. folkings in johnstown, pennsylvania and folks in communties in western maryland got socked by a foot and a half of heavy wet snow. it buried flowering plants, knocked down tree limbs and left at least 50,000 customers without power. in health news more than a quarter million emergency appendectomies are performed every year in this country but huge studied found that hospitals vary in what they charge for that surgery. jamie was still in college when she was rushed to the hospital withappendicitis. >> we have pretty good insurance and i thought everything would be covered. >> but it wasn't. the hospital charged $1,300 for the one-day stay. the insurance picked up most of the charges but two years later she's paying $1,100. >> there are three different

payments we had to keep track of. >> it turns out she was on the low sight. it turnses out hospitals in california hospitaled, there was a wide variation in costs from $1,500 to nearly $183,000. the middle ground was nearly $33,000. rene shaw says it adds up to complete confusion for the patient. >> the hospitals can change whatever they want because there's no guideline on how hospitals coming'd up with what a charge is. >> that's because hospitals provide long itemized bills for each service during the stay. she was charged $4,500 for cat scans and $6,800 for anesthesia. the total, $53,000. so how much should an appendectomy cost? around $7,000. one puts the cost at $8,000 to

$10,000. >> that's one of the main problems with our industry is there's no way to know what you get and how much it should cost. >> if you go to the grocery store and a loaf of bread cost $5/,000, you're going to walk across the street. if you roll into the emergency room with a heart attack, you have no choice. that's the same thing with a procedure. that's why parents need a more standardized and transparent way of figuring out how much things cost. dr. jon lapook, cbs news, new york. straight ahead your tuesday morning weather and in sports the nets play a good-bye guy in new jersey but they get no last hurrah from the governor. sorbing the calcium they take because they don't take it with food. switch to citracal maximum plus d. it's the only calcium supplement that can be taken with or without food. that's why my doctor recommends citracal maximum. it's all about absorption.

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you should not start humira if you have any kind of infection. ask your rheumatologist how you can defend against... ...and help stop further joint damage with humira. here's a look at today's forecast in some cities around the country. new york, cloudy, 60, miami, sunny, 75. chicago, partly cloudy, 61, dallas, sunny, 86, and los angeles, mostly cloudy and 68. now for a check of today's national forecast. showers will linger over pennsylvania, western new york, and new england with some snow in higher elevations. showers and thunderstorms, some severe, will develop over the tennessee, ohio, and mid-mississippi valleys. there will be scattered thunderstorms in the northwest. in sports now, the 76 6erse in the nba playoffs.

before moving on to brooklyn, new york, but they spoiled any chance of a going away part to nail down the final playoff berth in the eastern conference. earlier new jersey governor chris christie was asked about the nets' departure and he didn't mince words. >> i'm not going to the nets good-bye. you don't want to stay, with don't want you. >> say what you really feel. he added another nba team will look to relocate to the garden state. now to the nhl, it's phoenix and chicago. a pair by joe bear brule. phoenix won it 4-0 to take the sears but there will be a seventh game between new york and ottawa.

brad richards scored a power-play goal en route. game seven is thursday night. now to baseball and a good night for chicago. first, cardinals and cubs and bottom of the ninth. cubs down by one with two men on base, two outs and two strikes on joe mather who wraps one up the middle for a walk-off 3-2 win. and then in oklahoma adam done and paul konerko hit back-to-back homers in the fourth inning and right-hander jake peavy through a three-hitter as they beat the a's, 4-0. when we come back, another look at this morning's top stories and a teenage girl discovers the pitfalls of walking on the sidewalk. when these come together, and these come together, one thing you can depend on is that these will come together. delicious and wholesome. some combinations were just meant to be. tomato soup from campbell's. it's amazing what soup can do.

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. here's a look at today's forecast in some cities around the country. washington, d.c. is cloudy and 60. atlanta, partly sunny and 68. st. louis, partly cloudy and 72.

denver, partly sunny,le 7, and seattle, mostly cloudy and 65. here's another look at this morning's top stories. mitt romney is expected to win in five states that hold primaries today. some 200 delegates are at stake, and a strong showing would allow a presumptive republican nominee to switch more of his focus on president obama. and a 12th member of the military has been implicated in the secret service colombian prostitution scandal. all of them have had their security clearance lifted. students are back in class at a california college where a gunman killed seven people and wounded three others earlier this month. the christian school in oakland reopened yesterday for one language class. the building has been cleaned and repaired, but a makeshift memorial remains in place. police say the murder suspect,

won go is on a hunger strike and has lost 20 pounds. in chicago singer and actress jennifer hudson testified. she was the first witness in the trial of william balfour, her former brother-in-law charged in the killings. she broke down and wept on the stand and described how the murders in 2008 of her family shook her family. surveillance video showed a teenager walking, then suddenly falled straight through the sidewalk down 20 feet. a nearby cab driver jumped out of his car and went in after her. the sidewalk had apparently been eroded by undergroundwater. firefighters rushed to the scene and used a ladder to get both the girl and the man out. well, coming up after your local new news the link between a cold. i'm michelle miller and this is the "cbs morning news." [ male announcer ] if you have yet to master the quiet sneeze...

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. good monk. welcome to 9news now. i'm andrea roane. today is tuesday, april 24.

good morning, dad. i'm mike hydeck. we don't have any rain or snow to talk about. that's an improvement over yesterday. of the mountains of pennsylvania had 5, 6 inches. we'll show you the day planner. 44 right now in washington under mostly cloudy skies. we'll become mostly cloudy later on. highs should make the low 60s with a breeze out of the west, southwest at 20 miles an hour. gusty at times from that. we are looking at that storm system spinning over western new york, northwestern pennsylvania. there's still blue on the map. snow still flying up here. the clouds will break up some as we get later on into the morning and before we turn mostly cloudy this afternoon. 39 in culpeper, martinsburg,

hagerstown. 43 in cumberland. 38 in gaithersburg. annapolis is 45. we're at 44 so windchills this morning down in the 30s with afternoon highs today anywhere from the upper 50s north to the low 60s d.c. and points south. monika santami, tuesday morning looking pretty light so far. nothing like yesterday no repeats of yesterday with that accident on the outer loop north of town. this morning you basically just got construction all over the place, especially in virginia. if you're planning to head on the westbound side of i-66 between fairfax drive and sycamore street, you can go no further than the beltway. you'll be diverted to the inloop of the beltway. northbound on i-95 in springfield no problems to report from dale city to this point and on to 395. back over to the map, another construction spot i want to tell you about. this time it's the inner loop

of the beltway. three lanes closed as you approach kenilworth avenue. keep that in mind that should be cleared up within the next 20 to 30 minutes. a live look at 270 southbound at falls road, no issues to report coming down from frederick to the point where the lanes divide. another look around the area in my next report in a few minutes. back to you. >> thank you, monika. the next round of republican presidential primaries is today. five states are up for grabs, including pennsylvania, new york, and connecticut. >> presumptive nominee mitt romney is expected to win every one of those contests helping him to inch closer to that number of 1144 delegates which he needs to officially clinch the republican nomination. susan mcginnis has more. mitt romney campaigned throughout pennsylvania focusing on his matchup with president obama in november. >> i'd like you to go out and vote in your primary and give me your support and show you're ready and willing to take on president obama. >> reporter: pennsylvania is one of five primaries today. romney is expected to win them all and bring him closer to the

1144 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination. >> the next president of the united states. >> reporter: monday romney campaigned with florida senator marco rubio leading many to speculate he might end up on the ticket. the former massachusetts governor says not so fast. >> the process for selecting a vice presidential running mate is just beginning. >> reporter: the latest national polls show mitt romney and president obama in a dead heat. the president is trying to rally young voters this week. president obama kicks off a two- day, three-state tour of college campuses with a stop the unc chapel hill this afternoon. students there started lining up for tickets over the weekend. >> whatever he has to say we're ready to hear. >> reporter: the president is pushing for an expense of low interest rates for student loans. >> once we graduate, we have ridiculous amounts of loans. it's hard to pay them off because a lot of times you end up getting a job in retail or as a way street because it's