area transit a >> pelley: tonight, the school girls held hostage. more violence in nigeria today as more than 200 teenagers remain in the hands of terrorists. debora patta is in nigeria. margaret brennan on u.s. help on the way. and michelle miller on how social media made the crime a worldwide cause. a surprising report card today on how many high school or are proficient in math and reading. ben tracy has the numbers. the feds take action after a series of explosions on crude oil trains. jeff pegues with today's developments. and a slam dunk for mother's day. >> you sacrificed for us. you're the real m.v.p. >> pelley: james brown with kevin durant and the woman who made him a star. captioning sponsored by cbs

this is the "cbs evening news" with scott pelley. >> pelley: good evening. this is our western edition. the crime sparked outrage all over the world-- the kidnapping in nigeria of hundreds of school girls by islamic militants. today, first lady michelle obama joined an internet campaign to bring the girls home. protesters filled the streets in nigeria demanding that the government hunt down the kidnappers. a $300,000 reward was offered, and there has been more violence. the group holding the girls boko haram has attacked a town in the northeast. debora patta joins us now from nigeria's capital, abuja. patta joins us now from nigeria's capital, abuja. >> reporter: well, the latest attack by boko haram took place in a very remote village scott, on the border of cameroon, which makes it extremely difficult to get reliable information but we understand that militants opened fire with automatic weapons in a

crowded marketplace and killed at least 100 people. but i should stress that that's number is very difficult to verify. >> bring back our girls! >> reporter: nigerian police appealed for help for the first time since the mass kidnapping of the teenaged girls more than three weeks ago. >> ♪ all we are saying... >> reporter: after news of a second kidnapping of eight more girls, public anger boiled over. criticized worldwide for a slow and inept response, the nigerian government has been deeply embarrassed, just as world leaders arrived in the capital for a meeting designed to attract foreign investment. parents of the missing girls believe the tight security arrangements for the conference have overshadowed the rescue effort. >> the hope of finding my daughter, or our daughters, lies in the hands of the government. >> reporter: the radical islamic group has a stranglehold over northern nigeria where they are trying to overthrow the christian government. more than 1,500 have died in the

violence this year. schools are a frequent target. in chibok, one of the girls who managed to escape, said armed men in uniform burst into their rooms while they slept. at first, they mistook them for nigerian soldiers, but she quickly realized they were wrong when they set fire to the school and stole all their food. "they told to us get in the truck," she said. "but my friends and i jumped out and ran back home because we realized they didn't look innocent." anguished parents believe the girls are being held in the dense forests northeast of the village. kidnappings have now become a global concern. the united states, britain, and france are all sending teams and resources to help the nigerian government in their search-and- rescue operations. >> pelley: debora patta in nigeria for us tonight. the u.s. is sending advisers to help the nigerian government, and margaret brennan has been looking into this.

>> reporter: the pentagon will send a small team, fewer than ten people, with expertise in communications, logistics, and intelligence. they will not be part of a rescue operation. the justice department and f.b.i. will provide forensic experts and hostage negotiators, and the state department will send counselors to help victims and their families. the military teams are expected to arrive friday or saturday but it's unclear what nigeria will allow them to do when they get there. today, the u.s. ambassador met with the nigerian national security adviser to try to figure that out. but, scott, there is concern in the u.s. that nigerian forces may not have the capability to carry out a hostage rescue operation. >> pelley: margaret brennan at the state department. margaret, thank you. the village where the girls were taken is incredibly remote. michelle miller has been looking into how their plight became a global cause.

>> reporter: the school color is blue but many of the students at the all-girl school in new rochelle, new york, wore red today. >> we're not there in nigeria with them but we're marching, too. >> reporter: red is the color of protest in nigeria. show of hands-- how many of you first heard the news on twitter? so all of you. the abductions in nigeria were on april 15, but the story did not gain traction online until april 23 when two nigerians tweeted #bringbackourdaughters. it this time-lapse of twitter message traffic shows how within days a new slogan #bringbackourgirls was being shared around the world. the messages skyrocketed from a couple thousand to a quarter million on april 30, the day the kidnappers threatened to marry off their hostages or sell them. activists and celebrities joined the online movement, including singer mary j. blige and hillary clinton posted demands for action.

new york university professor beth noveck follows social media's impact on government. >> what this has done is brought it to popular attention by using essentially a bumper sticker, a hashtag, that gets people talking and that gets people sharing the idea with one another. >> reporter: it's a lesson the students at ursuline are learning. veronique ntumba is about to graduate. without social media, would you have even known about this? >> probably not, which is really sad. as the days went on, like, you see more and more people tweeting about it. >> reporter: as of today, the slogan "bring back our girls" has been tweeted more than 1.3 million times, and, scott, what really seemed to hit home for these students, the students we met, was that the kidnap victims are their own age. >> pelley: michelle, thanks. in another major story tonight, the secretary of veterans affairs eric shinseki is defending his record and his job. he is under fire. there are calls for him to resign amid claims that 40

patients died at the v.a. hospital in phoenix because of delays in their care. here's wyatt andrews. >> reporter: debbie allen believes that her husband, mel, a vietnam veteran, died of bladder cancer after the v.a. delayed his tests and diagnosis for six months. he had been a patient at the v.a. hospital in phoenix. >> it's sad. it's disgusting. it's a betrayal to somebody who was willing to serve his country, and then when mel needed the v.a. and needed his country to help him in his time of need, they turned their back on him. >> reporter: secretary of veteran affairs eric shinseki told us when he first heard the charges in phoenix, he sent inspectors immediately. >> i take every one of these incidents and allegations seriously, and we are going to go and investigate. the most serious of these were in phoenix. >> reporter: but the phoenix

investigation is not the only one. at least five other v.a. hospitals have been accused of mismanagement and preventable deaths, and at two of those, v.a. officials in charge got large bonus checks just after the deaths were revealed. daniel dellinger is the national commander of the american legion, which called this week for eric shinseki to resign. >> if this is private sector, you would be fired. if it was military you would be relieved of duty and he's done neither. >> reporter: the secretary told us disciplinary action is pending in pittsburgh and atlanta but the specifics are not yet public. shinseki also says he will not resign. instead he will work to repair what's gone wrong. is there any one thing that you are angry about that you most want to fix? >> yeah, all of this makes me angry. i mean, whenever we allegations like this, even until they're founded, i didn't come here to

watch things happen this way. i came here to make things better. and in the main, we've done that. >> reporter: despite the break with the american legion, almost every other veterans organization still supports eric shinseki for managing the explosive growth of the v.a. shinseki got his strongest endorsement where it counts, scott, full backing from the president. >> pelley: wyatt, thanks very much. in an emergency order today, the transportation department told railroads that haul crude oil from the bakken oil fields in north dakota that they must inform states before those trains pass through. there is a lot of concern after several serious accidents, and transportation correspondent jeff pegues has been following this for us. jeff, how is this order going to help? >> reporter: well, scott, bakken crude oil has transported along 140,000 miles of rain rale in this country and it's going through cities and towns. this emergency order is designed to help first responders prepare

for any potential derailments. >> pelley: and what's the concern over the bakken oil in particular? >> reporter: well, scott, bakken crude comes from parts of north dakota and montana. it is considered highly volatile and flammable, and some of the older tank cars, as we saw last week in lynchburg, virginia, have ruptured. and so now federal regulators are asking that carriers use newer tank cars that have a tougher outer shell. >> pelley: jeff pegues reporting from washington. jeff, thank you. today, russian president vladimir putin says he has pulled back his troops from the ukrainian border although the pentagon tells us this evening there is no evidence that happened. in eastern ukraine, government troops and pro-russian militias are battling for control in several towns and clarissa ward was right in the middle of it. >> reporter: we arrived in the city of mariupol to find a furious, pro-russian crowd assaulting a man they accused of stealing. as the ukrainian police feebly tried to protect him. emotions were already running high.

the night before, ukrainian security forces launched an offensive to take back control from pro-russian separatists. the police finally rushed the man away. looking for a new target, the crowd began moving towards the town hall. the ukrainian military took back this town hall that was under the control of pro-russian militants and now a large crowd of locals has gathered here and they're shouting at the police, "why don't you support the people?" many in the city want closer ties with russia and view the government in kiev as hostile. "these are normal people standing here. look, look" this resident told us. "and they send mercenaries to attack us." >> reporter: many believe the u.s. support for the government in kiev is responsible for the violence here. "we have to drop a bomb on the white house," this woman shouted. as the crowd grew more agitated,

the ukrainian forces suddenly and without explanation turned on their heels and walked away. ( cheers and applause ) the crowd erupted with joy. "russia, russia!" they chanted. in this conflict, success is measured by who controls the town hall. a man took down the ukrainian flag, replacing it with the regional flag, a symbol here of independence. ( applause ) victory, if only for today. ukraine's defense ministry says it is in control of the city of mariupol, but, clearly, it's a very fluid situation and certainly what we saw today, scott, really calls into question the effectiveness and even the very objective of the ukrainian military strategy here. >> pelley: clarissa ward, covering eastern ukraine for us tonight, clarissa thank you. today we saw what may be a turning point in the world's most vicious war.

the syrian dictatorship retook the city of homs, the birth place of the rebellion that started three years ago. in a negotiated deal, the last of the rebels in homs, more than 1,000 of them, boarded buses out of the city, evacuating to rebel-held territory in northern syria. the city of one million was blasted to rubble by government heavy artillery. the dictatorship has been gaining the upper hand lately after the deaths of an estimated 150,000. the report card is in for american high school students. and the government decides whether to force g.m. to take cars with a deadly defect off the road when the "cbs evening news" continues. it's how i look at life. especially now that i live with a higher risk of stroke due to afib, a type of irregular heartbeat

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better, so that the country could compete internationally, i would want to see improvement year after year, and we're not seeing that. so it is very disappointing. >> reporter: 13 states released their results. connecticut did the best. but even there, only half of the students were proficient or above in reading, and just 32% in math. west virginia was at the bottom with 28% proficient or above in reading and 14% in math. there also remains a significant gap in the test results between different racial groups. 47% of asian students were proficient in math. it was 33% of white students, but just 12% of hispanic and 7% of black students met the standard. >> we haven't seen the gains that we really want to see. you have the algebra, you plug in the point, you graph it. >> reporter: daniel gettinger teaches math at a high school near los angeles. he was named a teacher of the year and is coaching other educators to make sure their students are proficient in the basics of reading and math. in california, statewide tests

show proficiency slipped after a decade of improvement. >> i hope that teachers, too, measure their success by student success, that they're willing to take risks to try new things, and to adapt their instruction to the needs of the students because that's what really makes a difference. >> reporter: now, a national test is also given to fourth and eighth graders and they seem to be doing better. scott, over the past years, since the early 1990s, they've shown slow but steady improvement, especially when it comes to math. >> pelley: ben tracy, in our los angeles newsroom. ben, thank you. what did the government know about a deadly defect in g.m. cars? and when did it know it? that's next. i'm l-i-s-a and i have copd, but i don't want my breathing problems to get in the way of hosting my book club. that's why i asked my doctor about b-r-e-o. once-daily breo ellipta helps increase airflow from the lungs

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at kaiser permanente, we want you to choose the doctor that's right for you. find your perfect match at kp.org and thrive. >> pelley: we learned today the transportation department will not order g.m. cars with an ignition switch defect off the road. the defect has been linked to 13 deaths. the department faced tough questions today on capitol hill about its role in the delayed g.m. recall. here's jeff glor. >> reporter: for months the national highway traffic safety administration, or n.h.t.s.a., has said g.m. didn't give them enough information to order a recall over faulty ignition switches. today, senator ed markey said that is wrong. >> if this information had been made public we could have avoided this entire mess that g.m. is going through right now. >> reporter: this document, released for the first time today, showed g.m. reported to n.h.t.s.a. in 2007 that airbags

were not deploying after this crash killed two teenage girls in wisconsin. n.h.t.s.a. didn't release the information. g.m. did not order a recall. >> general motors and n.h.t.s.a. kept the information secret and away from american families. >> reporter: markey and senator richard blumenthal want a new law that would require car companies to submit information on all deadly accidents, and they want that information made public right away. secretary of transportation anthony foxx was noncommittal. >> i think it's a laudable goal. i look forward to taking a look at the bill. >> reporter: n.h.t.s.a. falls under the department of transportation and secretary foxx did say he does want the maximum fine for car companies to be raised from $35 million to $300 million. scott, g.m. today had no comment on the hearing. >> pelley: jeff, thank you very much. tonight a predator is back on the prowl after a standoff that lasted nearly five hours. last night police responded

to calls of a mountain lion roaming the streets of a san francisco suburbs. the big cat was cornered beneath a car in a parking garage an tranquilized. it was later returned to the wild. we'll meet the nba's top player and the person without got him there when we come back. ...with non-insulin victoza. for a while, i took a pill to lower my blood sugar, but it didn't get me to my goal. so i asked my doctor about victoza. he said victoza works differently than pills, and comes in a pen. and the needle is thin. victoza is an injectable prescription medicine that may improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes when used with diet and exercise. it is not recommended as the first medication to treat diabetes and should not be used in

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or insulin may cause low blood sugar. the most common side effects are nausea, diarrhea, and headache. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney problems. if your pill isn't giving you the control you need... ask your doctor about non-insulin victoza. it's covered by most health plans. when folks think about wthey think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that's not a coincidence. it's one more part of our commitment to america. now has to pay out. next weather talent appears at wx center with generic pinpoint filling monitor then we take special spononononononononon

>> pelley: finally tonight, kevin durant of the oklahoma city thunder may seem a little out of place among top athletes. yesterday, after winning the n.b.a.'s most valuable player award, durant spoke not of himself but about coaches, teammates, and especially the person most responsible for his success. here's james brown. >> when you didn't eat, you made sure we ate. you went to sleep hungry. you sacrificed for us. you're the real m.v.p. ( applause ) >> reporter: wanda pratt raised durant as a single mother of two. when he was 10 years old, durant told her he wanted to play in the pros. wanda's response was pure tough love. >> you would wake me up in the middle of the night in the summer times, make me run up the hills, making me do push-ups, screaming at me from the sideline at my games at eight or nine years old.

>> reporter: we sat down with them for "60 minutes sports" on showtime last fall. >> i remember the looks when he and i would walk in the gym, and he would be like, oh, here she comes. if the coach said, "kevin can do 25 crab walks," i would say, "no, i think you should do 75." if he said 50 runs up hunt's hill, i said, "i think you can do 100." now i'm like, wow, that was cruelty. >> reporter: the cruelty paid off last night. it was durant's first m.v.p., after finishing second to lebron james three times. finishing second has been a frustrating theme for durant. his biggest disappointment was when his team lost the n.b.a. championship in 2012 to james' miami heat. with the world watching, he still needed his mother's shoulder. >> a lot of people got on me for crying in front-- on national tv, but when you want something that bad, it was just like, i didn't care. >> reporter: and he didn't care

who saw last night either. >> i've been through the toughest times with my family. but i'm still standing. ( applause ) >> reporter: he is finally the best in the n.b.a., but he was always m.v.p. in his mother's eyes. james brown, cbs news, new york. >> pelley: and don't miss it. the next edition of "60 minutes sports" premieres tonight on showtime. that's the cbs evening news for tonight, for all of us at cbs news all around the world, good night. a calcium chew this decadent

blah complaints from almost ever in oakland. but tonight, we your realtime captioner is linda macdonald. too much crime, not enough comes. those complaints from almost everyone in oakland but tonight we ask, are tax willing to pay for more cops? >> in an exclusive kpix 5 poll more than three-quarters of people we surveyed say the city does not have enough police officers. there is clearly a need for more so we sent our phil matier to find out who is willing to pay for them. >> reporter: this is a long- standing tug of war here in oakland and you would think the answer would be pretty obvious. so you might be surprised at what we found. here's the story. >> reporter: ask oakland residents what their top concern is and you're likely to hear -- >> crime and violence. >> reporter: but ask voters if they are willing to pay an extra $98 a year on a parcel

tax for more cops and antiviolence programs and they don't. >> uhm, antiviolence programs? sure. >> reporter: but not cops? >> i don't know. i think -- i think a lot of people don't trust police in the first place. >> reporter: that mixed message was driven home by a kpix 5/surveyusa poll that found while most oaklanders want more cops only 41% were ready to pay an extra $98 a year to the existing parcel tax for public safety in order to pay for them. and 77% felt the current puic safety tax money which promised more cops wasn't being spent well. >> we paid the extra and then they got laid off. and we're still paying the extra. >> there's a lack of trust. in the previous efforts, we have said we were going to do all these things and we didn't even come close. >> we have got to create more confidence. >> reporter: plus, asking voters for more money and losing could wind c