>> couric: tonight, the recall goes wordwide but toyota has no fix for gas pedals that stick, leaving millions of potentially dangerous cars on the road. i'm katie couric. also tonight, he was required reading for generations of american teenagers. j.d. salinger, author of "the catcher in the rye," has died. and where america stands in the battle against cancer. >> they tell you you have six months and what are you going to do in six months? >> couric: finding hope and cracking the genetic code. captioning sponsored by cbs from cbs news world headquarters in new york, this is the "cbs evening news" with katie couric. >> couric: good evening, everyone. millions of vehicles recalled, sales suspended, production stopped, and just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for toyota, it has. the recall for defective gas pedals has spread to china and europe, and in this country, jeff glor tells us, another million-plus toyota cares and s.u.v.s were added to the recall list. >> reporter: for the world's biggest automaker, the problem seems to get bigger every day. as millions of toyota owners wonder if the vehicles they're driving are safe. >> i would really hate to be on the highway and then just be anything at a top-rate speed and not be able to control the vehicle. >> reporter: the latest recall involves five models. toyota said today they're closing in on solutions to a gas pedal problem that now affects more than 2.4 million vehicles, and that today spread beyond the united states to chine and europe. but they still have no details on exactly when drivers will see repairs or how. at issue in part is a problem with the accelerator, which in rare cases gets stuck, possibly because of a conden saigdz buildup that makes it unable to spring back properly. one consumer group says that has led to more than 2,000 insdens since 1999, including at least 275 crashes and 18 deaths. >> the tires were smoke, the brakes were smoking from riding the brakes for about five miles. >> reporter: toyota point to the the make effort accelerator, cts, which says it has ramped up production of redesigned pedals but that still leaves current drivers in limbo-- what to do with their vehicles. >> my wife freaked out this morning and feels it's very unsafe to drive the car and said, "we can't drive the car." >> reporter: for toyota, a still-developing business embarrassment. >> i think in the short term it's going to be very damaging for toyota and the toyota fans and loyalists. >> reporter: and for millions of drivers, a continuing life-and-death concern. jeff glor, cbs news, new york. >> couric: in other news, a man on trial in kansas for shooting an abortion doctor to death took the stand today and admitted he did it. the defense argues the crime amounts to involuntary manslaughter, but late today in a surprise ruling, the judge said the jury may only consider first-degree murder. here's national correspondent dean reynolds. >> reporter: it's his trial today, 51-year-old scott roeder calmly admitted what he's never denied: >> on may 31, 2009, did you go to the reformation lutheran church and shoot and kill george tiller? >> yes. >> reporter: nor did roeder dispute any of the evidence in the slaying of dr. george tiller, the late-term abortion provider in wichita. roeder said he once thought of chopping off tiller's hands with a sword or ramming his car but eventually chose to shoot him in the forehead. >> i did what i thought was needed to be done to protect the children. i shot him. >> where's the gun! >> reporter: roeder, who stopped for a pizza after the shooting, told the court he views abortion as murder. >> it is not man's job to take life or-- it is our heavenly father's. >> reporter: roeder tried repeatedly to testify about abortion and various procedures. >> really going to tear the baby limb from limb-- >> objection, your honor! >> reporter: roeder called the shooting his mission yet he has pleaded not guilty to murder. the defense is trying to get the charge reduced to voluntary manslaughter, defined as an unreasonable but honest belief that force was justified. legal experts say that's a long shot. >> maybe he'll be-- feel vindicated by his ability to publicize his views on abortion. >> reporter: after listening to testimony all day, district judge warren wilbert denied the motion to reduce the charge and called for closing arguments friday. if convicted of first-degree murder, roeder could get life in prison. ren rep, cbs news, chicago. >> couric: turning now to the economy, america's top banker is staying on the job. the senate today confirmed ben bernanke to serve a second term as chairman of the federal reserve. the vote was 70-30, the closest ever for a fed chairman. meanwhile, the line for unemployment benefits is growing. the government said today another 470,000 americans put in their first claims last week. unemployment was, of course, the main focus of the state of the union address, and today, chip reid tells us the president took his plan for dealing with it on the road. >> reporter: the president joined vice president biden in florida to announce the administration's biggest stimulus project of all. >> right here in tampa, we are gonna start building a new high-speed rail line. >> reporter: $8 billion to begin a european-style, clean-energy, high-speed rail system. planners hope it will eventually connect cities across the country, the largest infrastructure project since the interstate highway system. the white house claims it will create tens of thousands of jobs. the announcement is one of many planned in coming months to convince americans-- >> jobs must be our number one focus in 2010. >> reporter: ...that the president was dead serious last night when he said he's pivoting to jobs. >> it was rhetoric about a pivot but no privot at all. >> reporter: but republican critics say despite all the post-speech fanfare, the president spent only about five minutes of a 70-minute speech on specific proposals to create jobs in the short term. and republicans say, the centerpiece of the plan, a second stimulus expected to cost about $80 billion, is a nonstarter. >> one more so-called stimulus bill built on the same failed policies of the last stimulus bill. >> reporter: the president also proposed tax breaks for small business to encourage job creation but critics say they are too narrow to do much good. >> i think they could be much, much better, and i think the net job creation from these tax cuts is going to be relatively small. >> reporter: the president is not entirely pivoting to jobs. today in tampa, he repeatedly prawt up health care reform, and his intention to keep fighting until it's law. katie. >> couric: chip reid at the white house. during his speech last night, the president did something unusual-- publicking criticizing a supreme court decision, and as he did, one of the justices displayed a dissenting opinion. jan crawford is our chief legal correspondent, and, jan, we haven't seen a president take on the court like this since f.d.r >> reporter: katie, it was really an incredible scene with six of the nine justices sitting directly in front of him, the president just laid into the supreme court in its recent campaign finance decision. >> with all due deference to separation of powers, last week the supreme court reversed a century of law that i believe will open the floodgates for special interest. including foreign corporations ( applause ) to spend without limit in our elections. >> reporter: now, the justices always sit silent and stone-faced through these speeches but last night the president's slap at the court was apparently too much for conservative justice samuel alito. he can be seen shaking his heads and mouthing the words, "simply not true." let white house kept at it today releasing a fact sheet insisting the president was right to criticize the court and it was justice alito who had it wrong. katie. >> couric: so who is right, jan? >> reporter: the president clearly overstated what the court did in that decision, katie. it wasn't quite as radical as he suggest, but he also didn't like what the court did. but as you know, katie, the court has the final word. they say what the law is and there's not a lot that the president or congress can do to get around that. >> couric: chief legal correspondent jan crawford in washington. thanks, jan. while the president was taking on one branch of the government last night, nancy cordes tells us, he was playing peacemaker with another. >> reporter: last night, the president practically pleaded with both parties to find some common ground. >> but what frustrates the american people is a washington where every kay is election day. but it's precisely such politics that has stopped either party from helping the american people. >> reporter: any spirit of bipartisanship inspired by his words... dissipated within minutes. >> we're not going to do it. >> that's not fair. that statement, dick, that's unfair. we put -- >> reporter: on a cbs news webcast right after the speech, katie couric asked democrat dick durbin and republican eric cantor if they could work together with the president. >> katie, look, i think where the american people are is they are frustrated with the direction of this president's agenda. >> reporter: the search for common ground continued. how about the president's proposal to give community banks $30 billion so they can extend credit to struggling small businesses? >> we don't need to create a washington program to show a small business how to hire people. >> katie, my colleague from virginia voted twice to give a bailout to the biggest banks. now when we want to take the money and give it to community banks to help small business he says no, it's not an emergency. we're not going to do it. >> that's unfair! >> couric: guys i'm so encouraged by how much progress we seem to be making. >> reporter: part of it is a genuine difference in philosophy but democrats complain republicans reflexively say no even to proposals that are g.o.p. mainstays while republicans argue they haven't been given a true seat at the table. >> we want to work with them but there's been no outreach all year. >> reporter: that doesn't help, they say, that the president called for bipartisanship last night while at the same time taking several swiems at their party saying all those no votes constituted a lack of leadership. katie. >> couric: all right, nancy cordes on capitol hill. nancy, thank you. coming up next, where mesh stands on cancer. mapping genes to find a cure. 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(announcer) don't wait. talk to your doctor about aricept. diarrhea, constipation, gas, bloating. that's me! can i tell you what a difference phillips' colon health has made? it's the probiotics. the good bacteria. that gets your colon back in balance. i'm good to go! phillips' colon health. for joint pain. for joint pain. maybe one of the most important is centrum silver ultra women's. the complete multivitamin for women over 50. it has vitamin d, which emerging science suggests supports breast health, and more calcium for bone health. centrum silver ultra women's >> couric: just the word "cancer" can be terrifying, but at the start of this new decade, many americans are hopeful as well. just over half, according to a cbs news poll are, optimistic a cure will come in their lifetime. and there's reason to believe. a half century ago the most common form of leukemia was a virtual death sentence for children. today, 85% survive five years or more. but less encouraging has been the progress in treating adults with cancer, but tonight we show you how researchers are trying to change that as cbs reports: where america stands. ( applause ) with a stroke of president nixon's pen, the national cancer act of 1971 elevated the conquest of cancer to a national crusade. >> we may look back on this day and this action as being the most significant action taken during this administration. >> couric: but almost 40 years later, america's so-called war on cancer drags on. the top five cancer killers account for nearly 13% of all deaths nationwide, and although the number of new cancer cases has been cropping by 1% a year and cancer deaths have been falling by more than 1.5%, cancer still claims more than 500,000 american lives annually. that's 1500 people every single day. >> that's about one every minu minute. that's like three jumbo jets crashing every day. >> reporter: dr. francis collins is the director of the national institutes of health and oversees the national cancer constitute. n.c.i.'s budget this year is $5.1 billion. dr. collins says if that sounds adequate we better wake up and smell the coffee. >> over the last 30 years we as a nation have spent $9 per american per year on cancer research, enough to buy you a couple of lattes. >> couric: still, there have been strides. in the 1970s, only half of those diagnosed with any form of cancer lived longer than five years. now, about two-third do. clearly, that still leaves america's report card with plenty of room for improvement. >> i'd give the country an "a" for effort in terms of research. but i'd not really give us much better than about a "c" in terms of implementation of that into radical new therapies that are both effective and low in toxicity. >> couric: and that's the problem facing today's scientific community. how to move cancer treatment beyond the carpet-bombing approach of standard chemotherapy into an era of smart bombs, using targeted therapies that destroy only the cancer. >> you can raise your legs up. >> reporter: 71-year-old beverly sotere was diagnosed with lung cancer three years ago. you are one of the 20% of patients diagnosed with lung cancer who never smoked. >> right. one cigarette i smoked. >> couric: at 16. >> at 16, right. >> couric: that was little consolation when this active mother of eight and grandmother of 14 was told her cancer was stage four in both lungs. >> they tell you have six months and what are you going to do in six months? >> couric: beverly was first treated with standard chemotherapy. along with a somewhat off-the-wall form of therapy all her own. you hung your lung scans in your bathroom. why? >> because when i came out of the shower, i wanted to see th them, and i swear at them everyone morning. >> couric: but doctors at the dana-farber institute in boston had yet another approach in mind. early last year, they screened beverly's tumors for a specific gene called alk, an abnormality found in about 5% of lung cancers and also common in a time of lymphoma. >> and we have a truck that happened to be on the shelf for this particular genetic alteration that we can now simply apply to those 5% of lung cancers with that genetic alteration. >> couric: beverly's now participating in a clinical trial using that drug which targets the defective gene and turns it off. in the last six months, some of her tumors have shrunk by more than 50%. others have disappeared. >> the know of those genes and the genetic alterations that occur in cancer will provide us with new ways of attacking this most-dreaded enemy. >>ní8 the director of the beveler institute for cancer science at dana-farber, is working on a solution, the worldwide initiative called the cancer genome atlas, a federally funded project that aims to build a complete catalog of all the genetic glitches that make good cells go bad. cancer occurs when basically the genes go haywire. >> that's correct. >> couric: are sending wrong signals to the cells? >> correct. and if we can identify those special elements driving the cancer process and direct our therapies squarely against those mission-critical genetic elements, then we're going to have far more effective treatments to the disease. >> up here on the screen... >> couric: this past fall, president obama announced the n.i.h. will spend $275 million to expantd genome project from studying just three types of cancer to more than 20. >> that will give us, for the first time, a comprehensive look at the landscape of what is wrong in the cancer cell. >> couric: it could be five to 10 years before the cancer genome atlas is complete. so the n.c.i. has made two other areas of research major priorities. one is nanotechnology, which uses tiny toxic particles just one-billth of a meter to hit cancer cells like a million silver bulletes. the other is immunotherapy which harnesses the body's own white blood cells to fight cancer just as they would an infection. >> all of these things together will give us that norm andy invasion that we need and it will come. >> reporter: in the meantime, people like beverly sotere are learning to fight cancer-- >> get out! >> couric: ...whatever way they can. for more on this series and partnership with "usa today" and to learn about clinical trials in i was always going having to go in the middle of traffic and just starting and stopping. having to go in the middle of a ballgame and then not being able to go once i got there. and going at night. i thought i had a going problem. my doctor said i had a growing problem. it wasn't my bladder. my prostate was growing. i had an enlarging prostate that was causing my urinary symptoms. my doctor prescribed avodart. 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(announcer) 36-hour cialis. or cialis for daily use. ask your doctor about cialis today, so when the moment is right, you can be ready. i just want fewer pills and relief that lasts all day. take 2 extra strength tylenol every 4 to 6 hours?!? taking 8 pills a day... and if i take it for 10 days -- that's 80 pills. just 2 aleve can last all day. perfect. choose aleve and you can be taking four times... fewer pills than extra strength tylenol. just 2 aleve have the strength to relieve arthritis pain all day. >> couric: it's one of the best-selling novels of all time, "the catcher in the rye." estimated sales, 60 million and counting. today jeff greenfield teelz us word came that the reclusive author of this tale of teenaged rebellion j.d. salinger has died at 91. >> reporter: from its very opening, the book's plainspoken, sometimes profane words hit mid-century america like a boaltd of lightning. if you really want to hear about it the first thing you'll probably want to know is where i was born and what my lousy childhood was right. j.d. salinger's catcher in the rye was a literary sensation from its first appearance. the centra figure, 16-year-old n caufield, is one of the most recognizable figures in 20th century american fiction. the story isn't much, call spends a long weekend in new york wondering through central park visiting other haunts. it's not what he does. it's how hoe thinks and expresses those thoughts that has made "catcher in the rye" so compelling for so many for so long. in his feelings of isolation and awkwardness he was an early version of the postwar disaffected young. james dean in "rebel without a cause." dustin hoffman a decade later in "the graduate." let character was embraced by millions from artists and writers to the deeply troubled mark david chapman, who said he killed john lennon in 1980 to promote the book. the rough language in holden's brooding thoughts also made "the catcher in the rye" very controversial. at one point in the 1980s it was the most censored and second most assigned book in public high schools. after "catcher" salinger published a series in the "new yorker" but nothing since 1965. he lived the last half century in cornish, new hampshire, shunning all interviews, plaiked by intrusive fans as his neighbor recounts. >> he'd open the drapes and thereby would be people looking in and sometimes stealing his t-shirts and underaware off the clothes line. >> reporter: it just may be that with his death, salinger's unique voice will once again be heard. jeff greenfield, cbs news, new york. >> couric: and that is the cbs evening news. i'm katie couric. thanks for watching. good night. not friday night and saturday, but just saturday. look at where it is now. just a ton of snow, 6 to 10 inches in the panhandle of texas, northern oklahoma, stretching into kansas. that's our storm, still almost 2,000 miles away. we'll watch it as it tracks off to the east. the cold air, oh, it's here. 11 in chicago, 4 in minneapolis. we're down to 45 after the high of 54. and we're going to go down more than that for all said an