on the "newshour" tonight, we go inside the town of houla with alex thomson of "independent television news," the first journalist to report from there. >> brown: then, we turn to the 2012 presidential match-up on track to be the most expensive contest ever. >> woodruff: we examine the internet virus known as "the flame" that may be able to snatch data and eavesdrop on computer users. >> brown: in the first of two reports, paul solman assesses the true cost of student-loan

violence rather than the maintenance of what is laughingly known as a cease-fire here. >> suarez: alex thomson from itn joining us from homs, syria. alex, good to talk to you. stay safe. >> thank you very much. good night. for more on syria, and the threat to the r widegion from the fighting there, visit us online, where we have a report from "time" magazine's rania abouzeid in beirut. >> woodruff: now, a butler, a banker and a growing scandal at the vatican. margaret warner has the story. >> warner: the cloud has been gathering over st. peter's square for months, ever since january, when vatican documents began leaking, showing infighting over allegations of corruption and even descriptions of private papal meetings. then late last week, the scandal dubbed "vati-leaks" suddenly widened. the president of the vatican bank was ousted and the pope's personal butler paolo gabriele was arrested for allegedly having confidential documents in his apartment. today, the butler's lawyers said he will cooperate with the vatican's criminal investigation of the leaks. adding to the feverish speculation: ne

. >>> as we mentioned alex thomson of britain's channel 4 was in houla talking to survivors of the massacre. he joins us by phone. from damascus. alex, i know you spoke to one man in particular in great detail what happened on that day. what did he tell you? >> he told me what a number of different people, in fact scores of different people in different times and different places around the town, all said, so i rather used him to recharacterize what everybody in the town is saying. they say that after the initial shelling on friday at mid-afternoon at 3:00 p.m., a group of around 100 men came from different villages that surround this area. they are villages that surround the town of hula which is itself sunni. about 100 of these men came in, he says everybody else they were wearing military-style uniforms, but were civilians. civilian militia. they had a well-known local slogan written in pen on their forehead or written on bandanas tied around their forehead, and that is how they were identified as shiia. they went literally from house-to-house and building-to-building slaughtering people

on the "newshour" tonight, we go inside the town of houla with alex thomson of "independent television news," the first journalist to report from there. >> brown: then, we turn to the 2012 presidential match-up on track to be the most expensive contest ever. >> woodruff: we examine the internet virus known as "the flame" that may be able to snatch data and eavesdrop on computer users. >> brown: in the first of two reports, paul solman assesses the true cost of student-loan debt, now topping $1 trillion. >> reporter: beth hansen has just started making loan payments: $468 a month. will she ever pay off her loans? >> i may die first. so. in which case, they would need a copy of my death certificate to finally cancel my loan. >> woodruff: ray suarez talks with dolores huerta, honored with the presidential medal of freedom for her efforts to secure higher wages and better working conditions for farm laborers. >> i came to the homes of some of these farm workers. their furniture was orange crates and their children were barefooted and i thought, "this is wrong." >> brown: and we remember fo

you also heard alex thomson. want to talk about it with fran townsend and fouad ajami. fouad, you and i were on the border just a couple weeks ago. i mean, the world cannot say they didn't know that this was happening. everybody is shocked at the death toll over the weekend, this massacre of children. but we have seen children killed now for 14 months. >> you were in the tents and you talked to people. you talked to children, one boy. i'll never forget him who said we can't live like this. we want our freedom. so these people want their freedom. but i'll tell you one thing. this is now, this massacre, the hula massacre is a turning point in a fight we never thought would have a turning point. >> you believe it's a turning point? >> it's a turning point for the syriaens. i'll tell you why. because the murders were down surrounding hula. here you have hula, a very quaint place in my childhood. we thought of hula as a place of no significance. in fact, it wasn't just the army. it wasn't the forces, it was the surrounding villages that did most of the killing face to face.

we begin with a report from alex thomson of independent television news. >> reporter: this has to stop. kofi annan's central message to president assad today. but worldwide governments are not using words, they're taking action, diplomats expelled, the french government describing president assad today simply as a murderer. kofi annan would not use such language, of course, but told the syrian president to be bold in stopping this war. >> i shared with president assad my assessment, the 6-point plan is not being implemented as it must. we are at the tipping point. the syrian people do not want a future, their future to be one of bloodshed and division. yet the killings continue, and the abuses after today. >> reporter: according to the united nations fewer than 20 died in the initial government shelling, after rebels clashed with soldiers on friday. another 88 mostly women and children were executed according to u. n. monitors who visited the town. people there insist it was shabir government backed armed civilians who slaughtered people house to house, family to family. >> a small num

. >> alex thomson, thank you. >>> i want to turn next to thomas friedman who has decades of experiencen and reporting about the middle east. he's been awarded two pulitzer prizes for his middle east work and "the new york times" and one recently from commentary. he's a foreign affairs column innist at the paper. we have been watching children being killed for 15 months and this began with the arrest of the children who had spray painted anti-government graffiti. yet people talk about what happened in hula as a turning point. do you think it's a turning point and if so, how so? >> it feels like it is, anderson. because the russians and the chinese who have been serving as president assad's lawyer defending the regime feels like they no longer want to be playing quite that role. and that could be an opening i think for some kind of move to a transition government. i hope. >> although we heard i think yesterday being described as a disco party, what was happening in syria. a bizarre turn of phrase. >> i don't expect much, you know, sympathy from putin, but it feels like they do understand