Woodruff then, Margaret Warner updates the president s push to curb gun violence as he takes his case to his hometown of chicago. Brown mark shields and Michael Gerson analyze the weeks news. Woodruff and ray suarez talks with Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano about combating the growing threat of cyber attacks. To the extent that some are seeking to infiltrate our network, steal that information, not have to invest in the research and development that goes into innovation, thats a really big deal. Woodruff thats all ahead on tonights newshour. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by bnsf railway. Support also comes from Carnegie Corporation of new york, a foundation created to do what Andrew Carnegie called real and permanent good. Celebrating 100 years of philanthropy at carnegie. Org. And with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. And friends of the newshour. And. This program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Woodruff it looked like a scene from a movie, but it was all too real. A meteor came crashing down to earth today, triggered a fireball over russia, and sent people running for cover. Parts of the meteor fell on the city of chelyabinsk population over a million about a thousand miles due west of moscow on the edge of the ural mountains. The strike shocked and stunned the world. More than 1,000 people were injured. Paul davies of independent Television News begins our coverage. Reporter emerging from the russian sky, a giant ball of flame, a meteorite providing a spectacular show until it suddenly explodes 30 miles above the earth. The city of chelyabinsk was unlucky to be beneath the meteorites flight path and was showered with debris dropping from the sky. Thousands of windows were smashed, shocked workers evacuated their offices. This school class is about to be interrupted by the shock wave. Here the windows come crashing in, and a National Judo squad runs for cover. Canadian ice hockey star Michael Garnett plays for the chelyabinsk team and lives in the city. I was awakened by this loud bang, crash and shaking in my apartment that, you know, literally shook me out of bed. I kind of gathered myself and looked out the window and i saw this giant streak across the sky that was the tail of the meteor. Reporter the last minutes of the meteorites journey were captured by hundreds of cameras as it crossed central russia at a speed of around 20 miles a second, briefly casting a shadow over communities below before passing on. Cctv in this office recorded the moment its journey ended. People on the ground have been injured, most cut by flying glass. Russian Authorities Say there is no lasting danger radiation levels in the area are normal. But no one who witnessed this visitor from space in its final moments is ever likely to forget it. Brown Scientists Say the meteor weighed about ten tons. And in whats being seen as a cosmic coincidence, it came on the same day as an asteroid that came exceedingly close to earth, at least in space terms. As this nasa animation shows, the asteroid was just over 17,000 miles away from earth, traveling at about eight miles per second, actually inside a ring of television and weather satellites that surround the planet. Named da14, the asteroid was half the size of a football field. It passed, we can happily report, without incident. Here to tell us about both events is astrophysicist and author Neil Degrasse tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in new york city. Lets start with what happened in russia. How unusual was that in terms of size and impact . Well, we couldnt know precisely how common that would be. All we can do is sort of look back at other sort of reported such events. For example, there was an air blast that happened in the airspace over india and pakistan back in 1990s. Which happened to occur while they were in intense conversations about their Nuclear Buildup of arm ament. And so such a blast mimics greatly what would happened with the nuclear blast. It is an instant deposit of energy in the atmosphere. And so forth nationally we were able to tell them, we, i mean people, my scientific brethren who study this, were able to tell them no, that was not somebodys first strike it was actually a cosmic event. So that was in the 1990s. And if this had happened over the pas civic, nobody would have noticed. Is it, in fact happening all the time . This kind of thing. Yes, so something of this magnitude we might imagine is perhaps once a decade. I mean if one happened in the 90s and one happened now and you fill in for the areas of the earth it would not have been noticed f it did. For example the north pole or antarctica or Northern Canada where hardly anybody lives. You could easily sort of hide one of these from anybodys view simply because of the large swathes of area on earths surface where nobody inhabits it. So i could imagine it would be once every five to ten years. And what exactly is it . What is a meteor and what is an asteroid for that matter . Yeah, well, we can go back, asteroid 101, actually i have the solar system, my tie t this is not drawn to scale but you have your sequence of planets going from mercury all the way out to neptune. And between mars and jupiter theres a swathe of countless chunks of craggy rock which we call the asteroid belt. Now a subset of these have wandered from their belt. We call that the main belt and have orbits that bring them dangerously close to earth. And we have collectively described them as near earth objects. You can call them near earth asteroids as well but we want to include in there comets that might come near us that perhaps dont begin their journey from the built. And so there is tens of thousands of objects that are dangerous, as dangerous as what we saw this morning in russia that whose orbit crosses the orbit of the earth. Now we cross the street all the time, the same street that trucks drive on but were not hit by trucks because were not there at the same time and the same place. If you do the math, it turns out that eventually earth and anything that crosses our orbit will collide with one another eventually. So these are the ones we want to keep track of. The problem is the little ones, the one in russia was a little one by cosmic standards. Theyre so tiny you cant see them until its too late. Brown that brings us to that asteroid 17,000 mile away, that was how unusual is Something Like that. How much in your team of dangers, how dangerous is Something Like that . Well, in the past decades weve gotten better and better at monitoring asteroids that kind of invade our space, if you will. And up until today we would, you know, the invaded space criterion was does it come closer to us than the moon. The military now calls that lunar space it was a new word to me, even just a few years ago. Sis hundred or space is the region between us and the circle that is the orbit of the moon. So weve been monitoring asteroids that have sort of been wizing by in that zone for at least 10 or 15 years. This is the first one that has come so close that it is in fact 5,000 miles closer than our orbiting communications satellites, the geo stationery region around which perhaps even this television signal is being sent around the world. So that would, that is cause to sit up straight and raise your eyebrow and say now wait a minute, now add that to the russian air plast this morning and youve got a situation whereas tron mers have been the asteroid community has been telling people about this for decades. And maybe it takes an actual event. Fortunately from what we hear, i dont know that anyone died in that event, just a lot of damage and cut faces and hands. But if it takes such an event to wake people up that earth moves in what is indistinguishable from a shooting gallery in the solar system. These are debris of rocks left over from the formation of the solar system. And it used to be go on. Brown i was just going to ask you, as a wakeup, then what . I mean what would be possible to do . Create a warning system. Yeah, exactly. So this is really a shot across our bow. Both of them were. One of them actually hit us. At least burst into the atmosphere. The other one is like a buzz cut to earth. And you can say well wa, do you do about it . Well, if you live in a World Without scientists and engineers, the first thing you do is you say lets run or hide or buy water and dig holes and live in them. But we live in a technologically fluent culture. Whether or not everyone shares in that fluency. And among those who know, we have ways, on paper, to deflect asteroids. If we find them early enough before they come in. None of those plans are funded by any agency anywhere in the world. So thats a whole other cultural political challenge that would need to be overcome. For the moment, all were doing is the meager funds that hasa nasa has to do so combined with some other funds around the world is to find the asteroids and track them. Now this one that hit russia, yeah it tore up the town a bit but its not disrupting civilization. If you get asteroids about a kill meet never size, those are large kilometre in size those are large enough to disrupt transportation, communication, the food chains and that can be really bad day on earth. And so we set up a criterion to find all kilometer class asteroids whose orbit crossed earth and we did a really good job at it. We said okay, lets go a little smaller. How about, how about 100 meter asteroids. Lets map them. Now we know when theyre coming but we still have no means to do anything about it. Brown all right. Now the little once, the one that hits russia, those will show up hours before they hit and that one showed up just in the image. Maybe the military had a slightly earlier beat on it. But nothing that, are you not going to evacuate a town in the time available. Brown and of course there were early and obvious questions whether about whether there was a link between what happened in russia and the asteroid that passed by it just looks like a strange coincidence . Yeah, just a cosmic coincidence but sure thats your first thought. Until you notice that they had completely different trajectories through the solar system. And there is a chance they could have have had the same trajectory and if they did then you would worry about if there would be other meteors in between that would come in line. No such thing happened. Just a cosmic coincidence and we should be glad for that. A big day in space. And allots to think about. Neil degrass tyson, thanks some of. Thanks for having me on. Woodruff you can see the spectacular video of the meteor falling from russian skies, and learn more about the science of meteors and meteorites. You can find a link to that on our home page. And still to come on the newshour gun violence in the president s hometown; shields and gerson; and Homeland Security secretary napolitano. But first, the other news of the day. Heres hari sreenivasan. Sreenivasan former congressman Jesse Jackson junior was charged today with diverting 750,000 in Campaign Funds to personal use. The illinois democrat resigned from Congress Last november after being treated for bipolar disorder. He responded to the federal charges today, saying i offer no excuses for my conduct and i fully accept my responsibility. In a related case, his wife pleaded guilty to a single count of tax fraud. The people who endured long days on a disabled cruise ship were headed home today. Their ordeal in the gulf of mexico came to an end when the crippled craft pulled into port. Cheers erupted from carnival cruises triumph as it finally docked in mobile, alabama, late last night, five days after an engine room fire left the ship dead in the water. Over the next four hours, more than 3,100 weary passengers streamed ashore. I mean, im speechless. Its just really great to finally be back in america and on land. Sreenivasan many took buses to new orleans to catch flights home today, while others were bused back to galveston, texas, to retrieve cars left at the ships home port. Some stopped to tell of the drama that began last sunday. People were slamming doors and freaking out. The ships on fire, the ships on fire and then at that point, it kind of sunk in the reality of this is a. You know, a very serious situation. Sreenivasan in the days that followed, they made do with little or no power, or working toilets. Every time the boat listed or leaned, the sewage would spill over. So that was what became the primary problem was this terrible odor, and the sanitation was just out of control. Sreenivasan still, some passengers praised the ships employees during the crisis. It was bad, but we want to be sure that the crew get the credit for all that they did. Sreenivasan carnival c. E. O. Gerry cahill was on hand last night, offering passengers his own apology for all that happened. I know the conditions on board were poor, i know it was very difficult, and i want to apologize again for subjecting our guests to that. Sreenivasan the company promised a full refund, transportation expenses, and a credit for a future cruise. But for some, that wont be enough. Never again in my life will i even walk around a cruise ship. Im done. Never again, its not going to happen. Sreenivasan meanwhile, the ship was towed to a work yard, where safety investigators will take a close look at what happened and why. Starting in march, people arrested in new york city for possession of small quantities of marijuana will no longer be arrested and arraigned. Instead, theyll be issued a ticket and told to appear in court. Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined the change in policy on thursday evening. He said it will allow the city to target police where they are needed most. Today, the mayor said he remains opposed to legalizing marijuana outright. The murder drama surrounding South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius moved to a new stage today, a courtroom in pretoria. We have a report from Rohit Kachroo of independent Television News. Reporter the glare of the flashlights hes used to, but not this. And it showed. Photographers rushed to capture the court appearance. Inside, pistorius seemed confused. He buried his head in his hands at the first mention of the word murder. Occasionally, he acknowledged the magistrate but little else. His lawyer spoke of his traumatized state of mind. Then, he was led to the cells. His friends and family sat behind him could not catch his gaze. His father offered his hand to comfort him, but their eyes never met. Both father and brother left together with other relatives, all unwilling, some unable to speak about what they just witnessed. cheers and applause Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee, became a paralympic star. Then, an olympian, too. His girlfriend, model and law graduate reeva steenkamp, was found dead at his home yesterday morning. Investigators recovered a 9millimeter pistol. Talkmore nyongani was his training partner for four years, sharing a room, traveling the world. He refuses to believe the allegations. It was a shocking incident what happened. I tried at the moment to contact him but i knew it was impossible. Reporter and you dont believe these allegations . No, i dont believe it at all. Reporter you say they cannot be true . Yeah, they cannot be true. Reporter and there are many people here who refuse to believe it, south africas humble hero spending a second night in a prison cell. Sreenivasan pistorius did not enter a plea at the hearing. If convicted on the murder charge, he could face life in prison. In economic news, output at u. S. Auto plants fell in january, and that pushed overall manufacturing down after two months of gains. And on wall street today, the Dow Jones Industrial average gained eight points to close at 13,981. The nasdaq fell six points to close at 3,192. For the week, both the dow and the nasdaq dropped a tenth of a percent. Those are some of the days major stories. Now, back to judy. Woodruff president obama wrapped up his poststate of the union tour with a visit to his hometown today. Margaret warner has the story. Warner the president s trip to chicago came amid the countrys new focus on gun violence. And while he was there to talk about raising the minimum wage and expanding preschool for children, the citys surge of gun killings wasnt far from his mind. Last year, there were 443 murders with a firearm on the streets of this city, and 65 of those victims were 18 and under. So thats the equivalent of a newtown every four months. And thats precisely why the overwhelming majority of americans are asking for some commonsense proposals to make it harder for criminals to get their hands on a gun. Warner those 443 shooting deaths were among more than 500 homicides in chicago last year. And last month, 15yearold hadiya pendleton, who had just performed during president obamas inauguration festivities in washington, was shot dead about a mile from t first familys chicago home. First Lady Michelle obama attended her funeral last weekend, and the president highlighted her death in his appeal for new gun law tuesdays state of the Union Address. Hadiyas parents, nate and cleo, are in this chamber tonight, along with more than two dozen americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence. They deserve a vote. applause they deserve a vote. Gabby giffords deserves a vote. The families of newtown deserve a vote. Warner echoes of the Mass Shootings in newtown also hung over a morning ceremony at the white house today, as mr. Obama awarded president ial citizens medals. Six of the 18 recipients were educators who died trying to protect students at sandy hook elementary school. To help put this in focus, we are joined by lynn sweet. Shes a columnist and Washington Bureau chief for the chicago suntimes, and has covered the windy city for decades. Lynn, welcome back. Watching this event today t seemed a