ray suarez has the story. >> suarez: again and again today, tanker planes swooped over the mountains of eastern arizona, dropping clouds of reddish-orange retardant, and hoping to tamp down the so- called "wallow" fire. the massive blaze has burned an area comparable in size to phoenix and threatens several small towns in its path. fire information officer jim whittington. >> we're a long ways from talking about containment. we're just trying to check the spread right now and we're doing the best we can on that. >> suarez: as the fire advanced, authorities forced a mandatory evacuation of the nearly 7,000 residents of springerville and eagar. >> is anybody in here? >> suarez: and there was the smoke, an acrid haze that blanketed the region and made breathing difficult. some of those who fled springerville took to nearby shelters. >> and i still smell smoke. i still smell that smoke. my eyes are still itchy and burny, but not as bad. >> suarez: high winds full of burning embers also carried the threat of flames and smoke far from the main body of the fire. crews worked overtime to smo

ray suarez has our report. >> suarez: it started in the spring of 1981. reports of young gay men in new york and california sickened by rare forms of pneumonia and cancer. by summer june 5 the first federal announcement from the centers for disease control. it concerns five young gay men in los angeles with a me moan i can't almost exclusively limited to patients with severely compromised immune systems. within months it became clear the underlying illness was neither pneumonia nor cancer but a sexually transmitted disease that damaged the immune system. initially called gay related immune dedeficiency or gay cancer before being renamed aids in 1982 it went on to become a pandemic infecting more than 60 million people worldwide. it would take another two years to identify h.i.v., the virus that causes aids, and epidemiologists quickly discovered that h.i.v. could be transmitted with heterosexual sex from infected women to new borns in blood transfusions and via contaminated needles especially among i.v.drug users. the discovery of the virus that caused ai

ray suarez begins our coverage. >> suarez: the president's brief visit-- just a few hours long-- is the first official trip to puerto rico by a sitting president since john f. kennedy's in 1961. mr. obama was keeping a promise he made when he visited the island in 2008 as a candidate. >> when i ran for president, i promised to include puerto rico, not just on my itinerary, but also in my vision of where country needs to go. i'm proud to say we've kept that promise, too. >> suarez: puerto ricans are u.s. citizens, but pay commonwealth taxes to run their own government. and while they don't pay u.s. federal taxes, residents do serve in high numbers in the military and participate in some federal programs, including food stamps and welfare. those programs have been important in recent years, as the territory was particularly hard hit by the recession with unemployment at nearly 17%. the president has promised help. >> we've been trying to make sure that every family can find work, make a living and provide for their children. that's why our economic plan and our health care reform included

ray suarez has the story. >> suarez: scientists in this german laboratory worked today to find out more deadly form of e. coli that's afflicting europe. >> ( translated ): we were able to determine that this is a new strain, a version of the pathogen not seen before. >> suarez: preliminary testing indicates it may be a mutated form of two e. coli bacteria, which may explain why this outbreak is so widespread and dangerous. at least 18 people are dead so far; 1,600 people are sick. cucumbers, raw lettuce, and tomatoes are the prime suspects, but the source of the outbreak has yet to be identified. the illness has spread to at least ten european countries, and russia today banned the importation of all vegetables from the european union. the move was praiseby russians. >> ( translated ): concerning the ban on importing vegetables from europe, it's absolutely the right decision. as if we didn't have our own. we need to support our own producers. >> suarez: but e.u. leaders said the russian action was disproportionate. overall, germany has been hardest hit, with nearly all the victims eithe

ray suarez has that story. >> suarez: the german chancellor's red carpet visit to the white house came at a critical time for the european power. angela merkel's country, the biggest and richest in europe, is dealing with the european debt crisis that threatens the very future of the common currency, as well as a deadly e. coli outbreak and conflict with its european and u.s. partners over action in libya. and while president obama gave the chancellor a warm welcome, he also delivered blunt words at a joint news conference about the european economy, mindful that the greek debt crisis last spring helped stall the u.s. economic recovery. >> what we've done is to say to germany and other countries that are involved: we will be there for you; we are interested in being supportive; we think that america's economic growth depends on a sensible resolution of this issue; we think it would be disastrous for us to see an uncontrolled spiral and default in europe because that could trigger a whole range of other events. and i think angela shares that same view. >> suarez: but merkel has her own

they can see what you're doing online. >> suarez: i know young people. i'm not going to use any names. they have a lot stuff on their hard drives that they didn't necessarily come to have in the most conventional ways. music. pieces of television shows. images. movies. if you put that kind of stuff on the cloud, are there rights issues? are there copyright issues? are there purchase issues? can somebody say, you know, that doesn't really belong to you. and purge what doesn't belong in your memory? >> it's a great question, ray. things that concern some people about this announcement is that apple has decided with i-match, one of the services announced today, is to allow you to actually upload some of the content that you already have to match to what is available on i-tunes. that could include pirated music and pirated videos perhaps. there's no way to really tell how people got it. so there is a question as to whether this can expediate in some ways piracy. perhaps not. that's one thing that has held up the music industry from going full force into goin

ray suarez has the story. >> suarez: the numbers are astounding. companies and individual investors are paying billions of dollars for the next generation of tech enterprises, and often, the valuations dwarf the revenues. microsoft bought skype, for $8.5 billion earlier this year. skype's revenues are less than a billion dollars annually. when linked-in went public, it was initially valued at $9 billion. its current profit: just $12 million a year. there's talk of facebook selling for more than $75 billion next year. along with the excitement, there are cautionary tales, too. myspace, the social networking site, sold yesterday for just $35 million, after it was expected to fetch $100 million at auction. six years ago, newscorp bought it for $580 million. we look more closely at all this with jessi hempel who follows the tech world for "fortune" magazine. and josh bernoff, a senior vice president at forrester research and the author of two books on social media. josh bernoff, let's start with you. are we watching the inflation of tech bubble 2? >> i

ray suarez begins with some background.nd a warning: some of the documentary material includes disturbing images. >> suarez: it's been just two years since some semblance of peace returned to sri lanka, once famed for its tea and beaches. for more than 25 years, beginning in 1983, a civil war raged in the north and east of the tropical island nation off southern india. militant members of the tamil minority, the so-called "tamil tigers," fought a guerrilla war for independence against a government run by the sinhalese majority. the tigers were accused of dozens of suicide bombings in the capital, colombo, during the 1990s, and human rights groups reported atrocities by both sides during the conflict. the u.n. has reported at least 40,000 civilians-- more than half the toll for the entire war-- died in the final months of the fighting in late 2008 and 2009. now, britain's independent television news has charged that sri lankan government forces herded thousands of tamil civilians into a "no fire zone" and then opened fire on

ray suarez has that story. >> suarez: a former top official with the national security agency pleadedlty today to unauthorized use of a government computer, a misdemeanor. thas drake had been charged with ten felony counts related to leaking of classifies information. the government alleged he was a source for a series of "baltimore sun" stories in 2006 and 2007 looking at the nsa. to walk us through the plea and what it means for the obama administration's efforts to crack down on leaks, we're joined by josh gerstein, who has been reporting the story for politico and was in the courtroom today. aye thomas drake was charged, josh, with some very serious crimes, onethat threatened very severe penalties. what did the government say he had leaked and what information was he accused of having taken out of the n.s.a.? >> well, he had access to a lot of very sensitive information at the n.s.a. a a senior manager there and he was believe by the government to have leaked information to a reporter at the "baltimore sun" about a dispute going on in the agency over two different types of essenti

ray suarez reports. and a warning: some of the images in this story are graphic. . >> suarez: it was apparently a navigational error that lead to the death of one of the fbi's most wanted terrorist. fazu abdullah mohammed also known as harun fazul was in this suv when they got lost and accidentally came upon a security check point in mogadishu. a gun fight ensued and both men in the suv were killed. dna tests later confirmed one was fazul mohammed who had a $5 million fbi bounty on his head. mohammed spent 13 years on the agency's most wanted list for orchestrating the 1998 u.s. embassy bombings in kenya and tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 americans. he was also one of the founders of al shabbate, the al qaeda affiliate in somalia and his death is considered a significant blow to its operations in east africa. >> a person that was causing death and destruction to the people in somalia and the world. >> suarez: fazul mohammed is the third major al qaeda leader to be killed in the last six we

suarez: the officl first day of summer still a couple of weeks ay. budoes it look like it's ing to be a tough smer forhe uited states? well, really all dends on whe yoare. across t carolinasdown into the southeast a across the gulfcoast and then back in the southwtern states and up throughhe inne mount takewe it lks like a hot andry suer but it looks moister an oler ross thepper midwest and ntral mississippi valley >>suarez: the sohwest he those wdfires he en sard to cntain has been labori uer a drought for some ti. in the nearerm is there any good news on the way the fm of moister air, camer winds, maybe even a littleai >> well, there's couplef this. for at leasthrough the weekend it look like the wis will bealmer and that is cerinly good news. the monsoon season which is the seasonal rain that set in uly and augu and sometimes ely as the rly part or middle part of jue, theoisture that com out of the gulof mecoup the rio grand valley to the sthwest there ino sign tha that is gng toappen any time soon phoenix, arizona, has only ad 1 in of rain so far

. >> brown: and ray suarez has a book conversation with pulitzer prize winning author oscar hijuelos about his new memoir, and how early success changed his life. >> sort of almost becoming a carnival act. you know, i sometimes felt like a freak. >> lehrer: that's all ahead on tonight's newshour. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> well, the best companies are driven by new ideas. >> our future depends on new ideas. we spend billions on advanced technologies. >> it's all about investing in the future. >> we can find new energy-- more cleaner, safer and smarter. >> collaborating with the best in the field. >> chevron works with the smartest people at leading universities and tech companies. >> and yet, it's really basic. >> it's paying off every day. and the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. 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 statio