tom costello on the mall tonight. m, thanks. >>> we now go overseas to libya where the people are running the country. they're still struggling to find gadhafi and get control of two stubborn holdout cities. one of them is bani walid where the fighting has been fierce. nbc's mike taibbi has seen it from the front lines. >> reporter: it's become the morning routine, to see if the gadhafi loyalist resistance has weakened. it had not. an explosion just as we arrived scattered us toward the fighters hunched against the wall. today's front line, a housing cluster on the edge of town. anti-gadhafi assault teams advanced about 1,000 yards in front of us, trading rifle fire for heavy artillery pouring from the town. it went on for hours. ten days of these exchanges in and near bani walid. with the same scenario repeating day after day, most of the families and non-combatants that could leave bani walid did so. most, but not all. their orders are to hold off using the big guns, no all out assault, as long as it's believed there

nbc's tom costello has our report. >> reporter: the latest snapshot of america shows a population thats quickly becoming much more multi racial with the percentage of nonhispanic whites declining in 15 states from 75% of the population in 2000 to 72% in 2010. >> we are finding tremendous diversity within the united states. >> reporter: there is even more evidence that strict racial lines are blurring. the mixed race white population rose by 2 million or 37%. people identifying themselves as mixed race, black and white, more than doubled, up 133% in ten years from 785,000 people in 2000 to 1.8 million in 2010. for proof that the country is far more comfortable with interracial marriages and families, look no further than power couples heidi klum and seal, david bowie and iman, william and janet cohen. heidi durro is the product of a mixed race family and talks about it on her award-winning podcast. >> it not only shows that we are stronger as human beings, but as a society. that the fabric of our culture holds itself together better. >> reporter: sociologists say what's striking is how

tom costello, nbc news, washington. >> we hope you are all in for the night. that's our broadcast for this monday evening. thank you for being here with us as we begin a new week. i'm brian williams. we hope to see you right back here tomorrow evening. we hope to see you right back here tomorrow evening. good night. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com >>> good evening. thanks for joining us on this monday. i'm raj mathai. >> and i'm jessica aguirre. we want to take you here live to the east bay. fire fighters are working to control flames burning at the edge of lake shaboe. al meeta county fire still trying to figure out exactly how to get the ground crews through what is very rugged terrain there. u

the story tonight from nbc's tom costello. >> reebok easy tone shoes -- >> reporter: those reebok ads on tv certainly promised good results. >> they will help make your legs and butt look great, too. >> reporter: just by walking in their toning shoes, customers would see 11% improved muscle tone in the calves and hamstrings, 28% in the buttocks. but today the federal trade commission said that was never proven and the ads were deceptive. >> reebok's claims didn't withstand scrutiny. their consumers expected to get a workout, not to get worked over. >> reporter: the models include the easy tone walking shoes, the run tone running shoes and easy tone flip-flops with customers paying $60 to $100 per pair. now reebok will pay $25 million in refunds to customers who bought the shoes. >> reebok invited us to their secret testing lab to show us the science behind their design. >> reporter: on "today" in 2009 janice lieberman reported that reebok uses balance ball technology to make its shoes. >> air pods under the ball of the shoe. >> reporter: the american council on exercise studied the sh

our report tonight from nbc's tom costello. >> reporter: if you feel like you're getting nickelled and dimed every time you fly, it turns out it's a lot more than pocket change. >> blankets, pillows, everything. it's become an a la carte system that makes it so hard to budget. >> reporter: it's been adding up for years. fees for buying your ticket over the phone rather than online, fees for extra leg room, fees for aisle seats, not to mention a boxed lunch. >> the reasonability of the fees has gone through the roof. >> reporter: usa today has surveyed the airlines and crunched the numbers. that first checked bag can cost you as much as $43. but an overweight international bag can run you up to $400 on continental and united, $450 on american. changing a ticket can now cost you $250 depending on the carrier. even booking frequent flyer award travel can cost you up to $90. spirit airlines charges 30 to 40 dollars for carry-on bags. >> travelers are feeling a huge level of rage. they're wary, angry, strained in their personal lives, and certainly in their finances. >> reporter: after losi

our report tonight from nbc's tom costello. >>> on the indiana/kentucky border, frustration. >> wherehe public officials going to assume the responsibility of their elected office. >> reporter: after engineers found cracks in steel support beams on the sherman minten bridge over the ohio river, the governors of both states shut it down. >> we are convinced it is the only responsible decision to make. >> reporter: the latest sign of an underfunded, undermaintained infrastructure. >> one in nine bridges is deficient. every second of every day an american driver crosses a deficient bridge that is in bad need of repair. >> reporter: transportation for america reports that 11.5% of the nation's bridges, more than 69,000, are now structurally deficient, requiring repair or replacement. pennsylvania has the most, 5900 bridges in need of repair. >> there are private construction companies all across america just waiting to get to work. there is a bridge that needs repair between ohio and kentucky that is on one of the busiest trucking routes in north america. >> reporter: that's the brent spe

our report from nbc's tom costello. >> reporter: for all the attention given to captain sully's expert landed his plane on the hudson river in 2009, there are also cases of pilot who is seem to have forgotten basic piloting skills. the pilot of an airfrance a-330, stalled the plane by pulling the nose up when they should have maintained altitude or lowered the nose. 228 people died. the pilot of a continental connection flight near buffalo made the same mistake in 2009, 50 people died. aviation safety experts call it automation safety addiction. aviation consultant former captain john cox. >> the challenge is to find the balance between the appropriate use of automation and maintaining the manual flying skills necessary. >> reporter: the concern, pilots who suddenly learn autopilot and then don't know how to react. a draft report by the faa and industry professionals found that 60% of the accidents and 30% of major incidents studied involved pilots who struggled to manually fly the plane or made mistakes with the automated systems. but dethis delta captain says pilots don't rely on aut

tom costello with that.he film black swan and gives us the lowdown on the highest paid ladies on and a creepy sequence for a terrifying series about all that. let's get the scoop from today.com's columnist. interns. >> i'm not sure what your internships entailed exactly when you were doing that. most end up involving coffee and lunch orders and things like that vial two interns on the movie black swan are suing fox like the production and asked to go beyond that and do things that they just shouldn't have been asked to do like taking out the trash and collecting receipts to be used for expense reports and that sort of thing vial a statement from one of the interns said when i started looking for opportunities, i saw most people accept an ugly trade off. if you want your foot in the door, they have to do an unpaid internship. what the guys are saying is on behalf of all interns out there who are oppressed and not paid. that's kind of how it is. they are looking for unpaid wages and we just learned of the liti

nbc's tom costello is live with details on this. >> this is a list of 252 maim processing facilities that the post office is going to start looking at to determine whether they should be either consolidated or closed. and the reason is they have a very serious budget short fall. we've been talking about this for months now, looking at $10 billion in financial losses by the end of the month. that's the post master general there this morning talking about the plan here to do a couple of things. first of all, they are going to look at closing or consolidating 252 processing centers nationwide. that could mean 35,000 fewer jobs. the ultimate goal here is to save $3 billion. to do that they are also planning to change how they actually deliver the mail. we're talking about first class mail. right now there's a requirement that first class mail be delivered the next day. they want to change that or propose changing it to delivery in two to three days. we're not talking about priority mail. we're talking about first class mail. again the topic here is to change how quickly that could be del

nbc's tom costello has more. >> reporter: for nearly 2 million passengers every day, the tsa and itsare the most visible reminder of 9/11. and the threat says the tsa chief, hasn't changed much. >> those who are able to design and construct and conceal bombs that simply don't look like bombs -- >> reporter: since 9/11 there have been serious attempts to bring down planes. the 2001 shoe bomb attempt, the 2006, the christmas day underwear bomber in 2009 and last year's cargo bomb plot. from undercover air marshals to armed pilots, 40,000 tsa screeners, bans on liquids and gels, shoes off, laptops out, a watch list, controversies over full-body imageers and those personal patdowns, flying is nothing like it was ten years ago. >> what brings you to the airport today? >> reporter: in miami, mobile police checkpoints and hardened barriers protection the airfield while a heavily armed tactical police and canine unisit always on patrol inside. at a 24/7 airport where tens of thousands of people work in and around the airport, vigilance is constant and evolving. >> reporter: anyone who wears

tom costello has the details.eard plenty of post master generals make these threats before and somehow at the end of the day, congress stops the u.s. postal service from trying to make reforms like this. >> yeah, i think this may be the witching hour, though. on these particular proposals the postal service it doesn't need congressional approval. here's what we're looking at. this is a list right now of every one of the postal processing centers, not post offices but processor centers nationwide that the postal service is going to look at to seriously consider either closing or consolidating within the next three months. to the start the process. there's 252 ultimately, the postal service would like to get from a number right now about 500 processing centers to drop that down to 185. the problem is that snail mail right now is -- has gotten to the point where people simply aren't using it. they are paying their bills online and postal service is looking at a $10 billion financial hole at the end of this month. it'

nbc's tom costello has more from washington. >> reporter: nasa's reputation is built on precision butn satellite might crash to earth isn't a precise science. nasa is guessing friday or it could be thursday or saturday. >> it's difficult to be precise when the object is not behaving. it's tumbling in ways we can't control. >> reporter: climbing to space aboard the shuttle "discovery" in 1991 the ur satellite studied the atmosphere and climate change. engineers expect it will break into 100 pieces on re-entry, a quarter could make it to earth. nasa is sure that any surviving pieces of the satellite will fall somewhere between 57 degrees north and 57 degrees south. that's essentially between new finland and argentina. and that means that only the 1,000 people or so who live innant arcty ka are absolutely safe. the odds of getting hit by space debris since 75% of the earth is covered by water, nasa says the chances are 1 in 3200 some human somewhere will be hit. with 7 billion humans on the planet the chance you'll be hit is 1 in 21 trillion. the chance you'll get hit by lightning this y

tom costello joins us live from washington.ovie with bruce willis and ben affleck was with it too. that was an asteriod. i got that all wrong. >> do you have a hard hat? >> i have a hard head. >> six tons, the size of a school bus was launched by the space shuttle discovery in 1991. the ur's satellite designed to study the o zone and the atmosphere. it did that for a number of years and now at the end of life expectancy and plunges back to work. it looks like friday they think, it could be thursday or saturday, but friday at this point. here are the odds. the odd that is a human being will be hit is one in 3200. there 7 billion human beings on the planet. the oughts that you will be hit is 1 in 21 trillion. >> those are too close for me. what day is this again in saturday? too close. >> call in sick. it's supposed to be friday. >> you may say hey, didn't this happen before? you would be right. space debris falls regularly. this is the biggest piece from nasa since sky lab. tameron, you are only 23, but i remember sky lab fallin

. >> tom costello is joining me. does this mean that reebok lied about the benefits of these shoes? they're not the only company that has made similar claims about these types of shoes. >> reebok says absolutely not. it stands by the product. it continues to say the product works and it will continue to sell those. nonetheless it has entered into a $25 million agreement with the federal trade commission and under the agreement it is going to pay $25 million so that customers can get a refund if they so desire. they will not make the same claims in advertisements. they've told them to pull downny advertisements in the store. the claim was 11% improved muscle tone. and 28% in the buttocks area and claims they never backed that up with scientific hard data. >> tom cost tello, thank you ve much. >>> one of the nation's top high schools is being rocked by an s.a.t. cheating scandal. a former student at the school of new york's long island is accused of taking the s.a.t. not for himself but for at least six others and charging them up to $2,500 a piece. not smart enough to not get caught.

nbc's tom costello has more. >> reporter: good afternoon. when we talk about gas prices we've seen a bit of a drop at the pump down 30 cents from their high in may. still up dramatically from a year ago. you look as well at the rough economy and at the recovery from hurricane irene and a lot of americans are simply staying close to home. much of the south end of the outer banks has been cut off by hurricane irene, on the north end they've been in full clean up mode before this last full weekend of the summer to lure the tourists back to the town of duck, the sander ling resort and spa offered a hurricane deal. >> when guests come in to duck and the northern outer banks they're going to see that we're ready for business and ready to take care of them. >> reporter: message received. the half off rooms were sold out in a heartbeat. >> we brought lots of reading material. we're going to relax, sit on the beach and eat. >> reporter: on this last long summer weekend of the year, the great escape is on. of the 31.5 million americans traveling this