Preschool programs, go to programs that arent good. The standards are so low, its questionable whether you should call it a preschool education. Ifill those are just some of the stories were covering on tonights pbs newshour. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by at bae systems, our pride and dedication show in everything we do; from Electronics Systems to intelligence analysis and cyber operations; from combat vehicles and weapons to the maintenance and modernization of ships, aircraft, and critical infrastructure. Knowing our work makes a difference inspires us everyday. Thats bae systems. Thats inspired work. Ive been around long enough to recognize the people who are out there owning it. The ones getting involved, staying engaged. They are not afraid to question the path theyre on. Because the one question they never want to ask is, how did i end up here . I started schwab with those people. People who want to take ownership of their investments, like they do in every other aspect of their lives. And the william and flora hewlett foundation, helping people build immeasurably better lives. 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 station from viewers like you. Thank you. Woodruff president obama announced this afternoon that 7. 1 Million People signed up for Health Insurance, before last nights deadline. That tops the administrations original goal, and it came despite glitches on the healthcare. Gov website. The president marked the achievement with an event in the white house rose garden. Millions of our fellow citizens know the Economic Security of Health Insurance who didnt just a few years ago. And thats something to be proud of. Regardless of your politics or your feelings about me or your feelings about this law, thats something thats good for our economy. Its good for our country. Theres no good reason to go back. Woodruff there was no immediate word on how many of the enrollees were previously uninsured, or how many have paid their premiums. And beyond those questions, republicans charged again the Health Care Law is doing more harm than good. Senate minority leader mitch mcconnell. All across the country our constituents are having an unpleasant interaction with obamacare whether they can sign up for a policy or not. What theyre discovering is of course higher premiums, higher deductibles. Many of them are losing their jobs and so, it is really a catastrophe for the country, both for the Health Care Providers and the consumers. Woodruff the total number of 2014 enrollees is expected to go higher still. Officials have said applicants who began the enrollment process but werent able to complete it, will likely qualify for an extension. For the first time in more than seven years, no american troops died in afghanistan during an entire month. Casualties have been declining as the size of the u. S. Force dwindles to 33,000 the pentagon said today the last month with no u. S. Fatalities in the afghan war was january of 2007. The official death toll from the Washington State mudslide reached 27 today, while the number of people missing was lowered to 22. Meanwhile, governor jay inslee reported that damage from the slide has reached 10 million. He asked for a federal disaster declaration. Bad weather again hindered the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight. Eleven planes returned to their base in perth, australia without finding anything. And the head of the search effort warned, it could, drag on for a long time. John sparks of independent Television News went out with one of the planes, and filed this report. Reporter personnel and planes from five nations have gathered here. And the recovery of the stricken jetliner, now their collective responsibility. But theyve made little progress still, nobodys giving up. Crew members from this australian orion have already made eight attempts to find debris from flight 370. Yet all theyve found so far is bad weather and plenty of false leads. Theres been multiple sightings of objects, its just, the problem is they havent been able to confirm whether or not theyre related to the aircraft. And thats the difficulty we have. Reporter Flight Lieutenant dawson provided an example, they saw this yesterday. No neither can i. Youve got to try an id them, but its a trade off between identifying something and continuing with the search as well. Reporter these are not ideal conditions to conduct a search operation. In fact, the pilots just called the weather shocking. The visibility is poor. The swell is high. And that doesnt make it easy to find debris. Its a pretty bumpy ride, as well. The aircraft bounced around 350 feet above the water, and the crew did their best, trying to pick out objects on the surface, but they didnt see much, a few fishing buoys, and a pod of whales, once again, there was no sign of mh370. Their work was painstaking and professional but 10 squardrons latest mission offered little in return. No debris no evidence of a boeing triple seven thats disappeared without a trace. Still, the australians and their orion will be back up there tomorrow. For the first time, evacuees from the Fukushima Nuclear disaster in japan will be allowed to live in their former homes. More than 100,000 people fled the 12mile hot zone around the plant after an earthquake and tsunami wrecked three Nuclear Reactors in march of 2011. As of today, 357 people were allowed to go back, to an area where radiation levels are deemed safe. It was unclear how many would decide to make the move. N. A. T. O. Member countries ordered a halt today to all civilian and military cooperation with russia. They also agreed to consider sending more arms and troops to parts of eastern europe. Its a reaction to russias annexation of crimea and troop buildup near eastern ukraine. Meanwhile, moscow sharply increased Natural Gas Prices for ukraine. The move puts new pressure on the financially struggling nation. In economic news, u. S. Auto sales picked up last month. Chrysler reported a 13 increase in sales. Ford, toyota and nissan all reported singledigit gains. General motors was up 4 , despite a series of safety recalls. On wall street today, the Dow Jones Industrial average gained nearly 75 points to close at 16,532. The nasdaq rose 69 points to close at 4,268. The sandp 500 added 13, to finish at 1,885. Still to come on the newshour g. M. s c. E. O. Faces questions over deadly defects; allegations the cia hid facts about its harsh Interrogation Program; the push for quality preschool programs; a look inside syrias civil war; plus, new hurdles to a mideast peace deal. Ifill General Motors c. E. O. Mary barra appeared before a Congressional Committee today for the first time to answer some of the many questions about a series of major recalls. She faced a grilling at times. One congressman even told her, we dont trust the company right now. Between 2003 and 2014, gm learned hundreds of reports of ignition switch problems through customer complaints, warranty claims, lawsuits, press coverage, field reports, and even more internal investigations. With all that information available, why did it take so long to issue the recall . Ifill senior lawmakers from both parties made clear, they want answers. At issue why g. M. Took so long, years, to fix vehicles with faulty ignition switches. Theyre now linked to air bag failures and at least 13 deaths. G. M. s c. E. O. , mary barra, has been on the job just since january. Sitting here today, i cannot tell you why it took years for a safety defect to be announced in that program, but i can tell you that we will find out, as soon as learned about the problem, we acted without hesitation. We told the world we had a problem that needed to be fixed. We did so because whatever mistakes were made in the past, we will not shirk from our responsibilities now and in the future. Ifill g. M. Company documents indicate the automaker knew of the problem as far back as 2001, in chevrolet cobalts, saturn ions and other models. Recalls finally began in february, and the total number of affected vehicles has now reached 2. 6 million. Even more recalls are underway for other defects. But barra acknowledged, thats far too late for some. Todays g. M. Will do the right thing. That begins with my sincere apologies to everyone who has been affected by this recall especially to the families and friends of those who lost their lives or were injured. I am deeply sorry. Ifill barra vowed that an internal investigation will find the facts, but Committee Members pressed for details. As far back as 2004, g. M. Conducted problem resolution tracking inquiry after it learned of incident that key moved out of run condition, is that correct . Yes. Thank you, now after the prts inquiry one engineer advised against further action because there was quote no acceptable Business Case to provide resolution at p. R. T. S. Was closed. Is that correct . If that is true that is a very disturbing fact. That is not the way we make decisions. Ifill congresswoman degette said g. M. s own documents showed a defective spring in the ignition assemblies would have cost 57 cents. The Committee Also called David Friedman, acting head of the national highway Traffic Safety administration. The agency first heard complaints about the g. M. Vehicles in 2005. Some of that information did raise concerns about air bag nondeployments. So in 2007, we convened an expert panel to review the data. Our Consumer Complaint data on injury crashes with air bag nondenoiments showed neither the cobalt nor the ion stood out when compared to other vehicles. Ifill friedman pointed the finger at gm, saying it withheld significant details for years. But his testimony drew fire. What specifically did n. H. T. S. A. Ask g. M. Did you ask why would an air bag not deploy in your car . I dont have a record of that. I know our team brought it up but not that specific question. Ifill the questions and answers played out before family members of the 13 victims. They had earlier pushed for answers on the steps of capitol. Ken reimer and his wife jane lost their daughter natasha in a 2005 chevy cobalt accident. The accident report shows that speed was not a factor. Weather was not a factor. Nor Road Conditions or traffic. The ignition system was found in the accessory position by accident investigators. None of this ever had to happen. It could have been easily addressed and corrected. Ifill Laura Christians 16 year old daughter Amber Marie Rose also died in a 2005 crash. Our daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, wives and husbands are gone because they were a cost of doing business g. M. s style. Corporate executives made a decision that fighting the problem was cheaper and easier than fixing the problem. Ifill g. M. s barra met with the families yesterday, and after the hearing, she promised again the auto maker will meet its obligations. We were definitely moving to a culture focused on the consumer, focused on the customer, focused on high quality and safety and thats my direction and thats what were doing today. Ifill barra did not say when g. M. s internal probe will conclude. Its been reported the Justice Department is also looking into the matter. Both mary barra and David Friedman will testify before a Senate Committee tomorrow. For more on what came out of todays hearing, we turn again to David Shepardson, who covers the Automotive Industry for the detroit news. And Joan Claybrook, the president emeritus of public citizen, whos been working with some of the victims families. Shes also a former administrator of the national highway Traffic Safety administration. David shepardson, we heard mary barra say not once but several times today that todays g. M. Would not do would do the right thing. What did yesterdays g. M. Do . What was the culture she was talking about which led to this . Well, she found herself in the position of basically disavowing and rejecting many of the decisions g. M. Made, you know, around 2005. She was presented with emails that showed the company had opted not to improve the ignition switches, in one case saying the amount the company would save in warranty costs, only about 10 to 15 cents per switch, was not as much as the 90 cents per switch it would have cost to make the change. She said the new g. M. Does not put a cost on safety, whatever it takes theyre going to fix cars but, you know, in the face of these documents she had really little choice but to say this is not acceptable today. Ifill and she said repeatedly she couldnt answer the question because its still under investigation, right . And that only went so far with the committee and the senate tomorrow is going to push her, too. And part of that is a fair answer, there are a lot of questions they dont know. I mean, g. M. Has amassed about 6 million pages of records in this investigation, but a part of it is still getting to the bottom of how far up the chain do these decisions get made . Was this a lowlevel decision by engineers to not fix this, you know, for what was a very small amount of money . Or did it go much higher than that . Ifill explain one key thing which came up today which is this potential coverup, at least those were words members of congress used, of a safety problem found in 2006. Well, in 2006, the switches that have been recalled or linked to the 13 deaths, the switch was changed to a much improved switch, but the company did not change the part. In fact, it showed in the committee the record from the engineer that signed off on it, they didnt change the part number. Thats very unusual because you would want to change the part, be able to track how the new switch is performing versus the old switch and it wasnt actually till last year that an outside engineer figured out this problem because they couldnt understand why some vehicles were showing much higher failure rates than others, and that is a central question here, why didnt g. M. Change the part number, why didnt they inform n. H. T. S. A. , and was this something that they were eager to hide by not making a change in the part number. Ifill Joan Claybrook as a former head of n. H. T. S. A. And speaking on behalf of the families as the victims families, were you satisfied with the answers you heard . No. I think that mary barra should have been more prepared to give particular answers. General motors has submitted 200,000 pages of documents to the committees in congress, and theyve also submitted a time line, several different versions, three or four of them, i think, to the department of transportation. So she should have been better prepared, in my view, to give answers. I think that she wants to reserve her options for how she frames this when she gets the whole investigation finished inside General Motors. Ifill g. M. Announced today they retained ken feinberg, the compensation specialists, to speak about how to compensate certain victims of the prebankruptcy 2009. So is that what you think . Is that how an internal investigation should look, looking in terms of compensation . Well, thats not the internal investigation i was referring to. Im referring to the hiring of an outside law firm to do an unvarnished evaluation as mary barra said of what happened and why it happened and who was involved. I think its a very positive move to hear that they have hired ken feinberg because consumer groups asked mary barra in a letter to set aside a 1 billion fund to compensate others, people who were injured or killed in crashes that occurred before july 2009, which is the date of the bailout. What happened in the bailout, it was quite unusual, in my view, is that they said any crash that occurred before the bailout is the responsibility of the old General Motors which has no money and, therefore, people are not going to get any money, in i compensation for their injuries. Ifill so theres a liability pre2009, a liability shield . Theres a liability shield, thats right. The fact that shes now talking about having ken feinberg look at this and see if theres a way to compensate these individuals, i think thats a very positive move and i hope that that occurs. Ifill David Shepardson, i want to ask you about the national highway Traffic Safety administration as well, their role, they were also testifying today, they were also pressed on these questions. Did lawmakers seem to believe that they were any way culpable on these . Theyre really bearing down on a decision that n. H. T. S. A. Made in 2007. One of their senior investigators said there were reports of four fatal crashes in these now recalled cobalts and asked his superiors to open a formal investigation. The government did not do that and, unfortunately, in terms of timing, one of these special crash reports came out early the next year which showed that, in fact, the nondeployment of the air bag was tied to the fact the key slipped out of position, but by the time they got that report, the government already decided not to open that investigation. Now, the government says the data was not there and, really, tried to point the finger back at g. M. Saying, if theyd had more information like the part change number, like the fact that, in 2002, the initial part, the switch never met g. M. s own specifications and they told the supplier go ahead and build it anyway. So they argue, the government, if g. M. Had provided more information they could have made a