The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then the living will issue raised by the Terri Schiavo case; the latest on the bloody rampage in rural Minnesota; a look at the whys and therefores of rising oil prices; a Paul Solman report on how raising the retirement age might affect Social Security; and a trip around America with R.W. Johnny Apple.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: A federal judge in Florida refused to order Terri Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted today. The parents of the brain-damaged woman filed the request, over the objections of her husband. They acted under a law Congress passed early Monday. Today, the judge said he would not intervene. He ruled ultimately, the parents did not show a "substantial likelihood of success" for their case. He also found Schiavo's interests were "adequately protected by the extensive process provided in the state courts." The parents immediately went to a federal appeals court in Atlanta. It was unclear when that panel might rule. But whatever the result, an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was certain. We'll have more on this story right after this News Summary. Investigators in Minnesota searched for answers today after a school shooting left ten dead. It happened yesterday at Red Lake High School, on the Red Lake Indian reservation. The FBI said the gunman was a 16-year-old student, Jeff Weise, shown here in an undated photo. They said he first killed his grandfather and the grandfather's girlfriend. Later, at the school, he gunned down five students, a security guard, and a teacher. He wounded seven others before killing himself. Today in St. Paul, Gov. Tim Pawlenty called it a "senseless tragedy."

GOV. TIM PAWLENTY: It looks like the school had very rigorous security procedures in place, including cameras and metal detectors and security guards. What it probably says at the end of the day is if you have a deeply disturbed individual who is intent on doing damage, they probably have got a pretty good chance of succeeding.

JIM LEHRER: Two of the wounded remained in critical condition today. We'll have more on this story later in the program. The Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate today, for the seventh time since last June. It added a quarter-point to the Federal Funds rate, to make it 2.75 percent. Banks use the rate on loans to each other. In a statement, the Fed also noted "pressures on inflation have picked up" with the surge in oil prices. New government figures on inflation reinforced those concerns today. The Labor Department reported wholesale prices rose 0.4 percent last month. That was the most in three months, and higher energy and food costs led the way. On Wall Street today, stocks fell on concerns about inflation and interest rates. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 94 points to close at 10,470. The NASDAQ fell 18 points to close at 1,989. In Iraq, government troops killed at least 17 insurgents last night. The fighting erupted in Mosul after gunmen ambushed a convoy. Later, a roadside bomb in Mosul killed four civilians. To the South, the bodies of six Iraqi soldiers were found. They'd been shot execution- style. Also today, the U.S. Military announced another U.S. Marine was killed in western Iraq. Israel turned over a second West Bank town to Palestinian control overnight. Tulkarem was one of five Palestinian towns Israel has agreed to return. Jericho was transferred last week. We have a report from Julian Manyon of Independent Television News. ( Gunfire )

JULIAN MANYON: Last night, gunmen celebrated as Israel handed over responsibility for another town to the Palestinian police. ( Sirens ) this is Tulkarem, for years a hotbed of the intifada. This morning, Israeli soldiers opened the padlocked security gate which had barred a main road linking Tulkarem to other Palestinian areas. The importance of opening this gate is perhaps more symbolic than real, for the Israelis can close this road any time they want to. Under the new agreement, the Israeli army will not enter Tulkarem, but it will retain key positions all around it.

MAN: We have been locked here for ...for years by now, and so we were trapped in a cage. So to have the cage open is important and very helpful. Except that we are fearful that we could not.

JULIAN MANYON: Inside Tulkarem, the refugee camp bears the marks of conflict. The red crosses were daubed by the Israeli army on houses they searched. Posters commemorate the Palestinian dead, including two boys who lived in this breeze block shack. Their mother told me that bloodshed serves no purpose. What she wants now is peace. In a nearby safe house, we met two Palestinian fighters, who have spent years on the run. They told me that the agreement with the Israelis has brought relief from the fear of attack. They said they are ready to give peace a chance. There may now be relative calm, but an end to the occupation and real peace are still far off.

JIM LEHRER: There were new complaints today about Israeli settlement activity. Israeli news reports on Monday said government plans to add 3,500 homes to a settlement outside Jerusalem. Palestinians condemned the plan. And in Washington today, State Department Spokesman Adam Ereli called again for an end to settlement activity. He said the U.S. wants an explanation from the Israelis.

ADAM ERELI: There is information, there are facts, there are confirmations, there are affirmations that we need to hear directly from the Israeli government, not through press reports, not through what other people say but what they tell us directly and within the context of a discussion of what our, when I say our, I mean parties in the region, overall interests and objectives are.

JIM LEHRER: Israel has said it reserves the right to enlarge existing settlements, to accommodate the growth of families. One of Egypt's leading opposition figures was charged with forgery today. Ayman Nour was accused of faking signatures to register his political party. He's running for president this fall in Egypt's first presidential election with multiple candidates. Today, he denied the forgery charges, and he said, "The regime will stand trial in this court. They are the real forgers who stand behind making up this case." Earlier this year, Nour spent 42 days in prison without being charged. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: The living wills issue; the Minnesota shooting; the high fuel prices; the retirement age; and Apple's America.

FOCUS - LIVING WILLS

JIM LEHRER: The Schiavo case and a new interest in living wills. Much has been said that the absence of such a document from Terri Schiavo has been at the heart of the legal dispute, one that remains unresolved tonight, 15 years after she suffered brain damage. We look at the living wills issue now with a doctor and a lawyer. Dr. Linda Emanuel is a professor of geriatric medicine at Northwest University Medical School. Charles Sabatino is an official of the American Bar Association's Commission on Law and Aging. Mr. Sabatino, let's first, some basics: What exactly is a living will?

CHARLES SABATINO: Well, a living will is one version of what we call most generally a healthcare advance directive. A healthcare advance directive is any instruction or wish that you put in writing, and it comes mainly in two flavors. One is the living will, which is an instruction about what you want or don't want when you're seriously ill. The other flavor is the durable power of attorney for health care which names somebody who has the legal authority to speak for you when you cannot.

JIM LEHRER: The living will is literally a piece of paper?

CHARLES SABATINO: It is in its legal format a piece of paper, but it should be part of a process that we call advanced planning that involves two things: The form and talking. And the talking part of it is usually the harder part for people.

JIM LEHRER: Talking part meaning you tell somebody what you wish to be done to you in case certain things happen?

CHARLES SABATINO: Yes, when you spell out your wishes in an advance directive, it is hard to be specific, particularly well ahead of time because you don't have a crystal ball to know what you want. And expressing your wishes on paper, it is really important to talk to the person who you want to be your healthcare agent or proxy under your power of attorney, and to your doctor and to your loved ones who are all going to be close by, those who are going to be close by when a decision needs to be made. I've never seen a living will that didn't need some interpretation. It is not self effectuating. And decisions are complex. So filling in....

JIM LEHRER: A form.

CHARLES SABATINO: Filling in the form and then talking to your family members so they understand what you are thinking and talking to your doctor about that is essential to making the form have effect when decisions need to be made.

JIM LEHRER: Dr. Emanuel, from a doctor's point of view, what would you add to what Mr. Sabatino's definition of what in the world we're talking about here?

DR. LINDA EMANUEL: Right. Well, I'd endorse everything that he said. In addition, I think that it is important to see this form as something more like a worksheet. So ideally what happens is that the discussion between the patient and the patient's family and the care team, the doctor, the nurse or whoever else in the care team is relevant. And that discussion centers around this worksheet. By the time the worksheet has taken the people through thinking about various scenarios and what their goals for care would be if they were in that scenario then you can turn that worksheet into a form. And that form can, if the person is ready, become part of the medical record. But it can also be updated. It should be a living document. It should be something that reflects an ongoing discussion. And it certainly is binding when it is properly filled out and it should be. But it should also be something that can be updated so that it doesn't feel overly irrevocable when a person has filled out such a form.

JIM LEHRER: So when you say it becomes part of the medical record, let's say somebody has not been in an accident, somebody is perfectly healthy, no illness or whatever -

DR. LINDA EMANUEL: Right.

JIM LEHRER: -- but you are suggesting everybody has a doctor or a medical person that they see. This document would just be part of that record. They could be 21 years old. They could be 121 years old, right?

DR. LINDA EMANUEL: Very often it's the young and healthy who stand to benefit from such planning processes and such forms the most. It's the young and healthy who are robust enough to go on for a long time after a serious illness or accident as we've seen in the current situation with Terri Schiavo. So living wills are for everyone. They are analogous in many ways to a safety belt. They don't solve everything but they certainly minimize the damage if something dreadful does happen to someone, at least in potential.

JIM LEHRER: Do doctors view these as binding on them?

DR. LINDA EMANUEL: I think doctors are still in the process of making optimum use of them. And if the doctor has been part of the discussion process, that's when the doctor feels most comfortable. The real goal of the advanced care planning process is to bring people together as a team to have a chance... it's sort of like preventive medicine, to have a chance to iron out any differences, to see things the same way if possible, and if there are any differences to figure out how to work with those to make sure that the right person has been appointed as a proxy and mainly to bring everybody to a state of what we might think of as existential maturity, getting ready for a stage in life that comes to all of us at some point, namely having a serious illness that takes us away.

JIM LEHRER: Sure. Mr. Sabatino, as a practical matter, up to this point what has been the attitude of courts around the country toward a living will? How much status do they have in the average courtroom around the country?

CHARLES SABATINO: They will have very strong status. Most of the case law in this area involved cases where there was no living will. And I think that is indicative of the fact --

JIM LEHRER: The Schiavo case we will get to in a minute.

CHARLES SABATINO: Exactly. If there is, they will be very powerful pieces of evidence. In fact, most of the time it avoids the need of ever having to go to court. But you can be sure that....

JIM LEHRER: Why is that? Because everybody is in agreement?

CHARLES SABATINO: Because your wishes, if they're spelled out and your healthcare proxy whom you have named has the legal authority to make the decision. So they stand in the same shoes as you would. And it usually avoids the need to go to court.

JIM LEHRER: What is the legal history on when there has been disagreement of some kind between - among members of the family or doctors or whatever, and a living will had to go before a court? What is the history? Is there one?

CHARLES SABATINO: Well, I can probably count the cases on one hand that have had that scenario.

JIM LEHRER: Is that right?

CHARLES SABATINO: Yes. Generally, where everyone is acting in good faith, the courts will bend over backwards to give providers the benefit of the doubt. But what the issue will --

JIM LEHRER: Medical providers?

CHARLES SABATINO: Medical providers.

JIM LEHRER: I see.

CHARLES SABATINO: -- to respect their good faith efforts in providing care. But it also points out the fact that a living will is going to need some interpretation so there is still room for people to have a difference of opinion about what it means. Someone who is 18, doing a living will, it's impossible to predict years down the road what you are going to be facing. Someone who is in their '80s or 90s and is already experiencing the chronic conditions that will eventually lead to their death is looking the devil in the eyes and they may have very specific wishes about what they want and don't want. It is a progressive kind of thing. And it's hard to make generalizations for everybody.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Dr. Emanuel, of course, it's the Schiavo case that has brought us here to talk about this tonight and the whole nation interested in this issue. If Terri Schiavo had had a living will, would there still have been this problem that has become such a big deal?

DR. LINDA EMANUEL: I think it would have been considerably easier. It is always impossible to say what would have happened if things had been different. But it's hard to imagine that it would have reached this level if there had been a living will in place. One of the other things that a living will does is it makes it so much easier for the team to at least come together somewhat, so in the first place, the proxy who has a very difficult role. No one should underestimate how difficult it is to be a proxy implementing decisions....

JIM LEHRER: Now a proxy -- excuse me. Before we... let's define proxy. A proxy could be anybody that any individual chooses to handle the end for them, right, to make the decisions at the end? That could be a lawyer.

DR. LINDA EMANUEL: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: That could be a brother. That could be the next door neighbor. It could be anybody, right?

DR. LINDA EMANUEL: You can name anyone who is in the age of majority to be a healthcare proxy or durable power of attorney. And it is sometimes better to name someone other than your most beloved because it is a burdensome task. Sometimes it's better to name the closest person to you and sometimes it's not. That's part of the idea behind having this as a discussive process so that the person who is chosen as a proxy has a sense as to how that role will go, what their role is, and they can handle it. So with --

JIM LEHRER: Go ahead. I'm sorry.

DR. LINDA EMANUEL: With that in mind, the whole process goes more easily so that ideally what would have happened in Terri Schiavo's case is the authority would have been clearly given by the document and by the document to the husband. The two would have been in concert, the entire team could have come around to that, and even if other members of the family didn't like what they saw, it would be clear in black and white and they would have been able to reconcile to it as clearly as, Terri Schiavo's wishes.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Mr. Sabatino? That a living will in the Schiavo case specifically would have made it easier?

CHARLES SABATINO: If someone in the condition of Terri Schiavo, had she named her husband as a proxy under the healthcare power of attorney, it would be very difficult for someone to challenge their decision making short of that proxy acting in bad faith or ignoring their responsibility under the law. Under these documents as a proxy you have a responsibility to try to act as the person would have acted or if you can't... if that is unknown, in their best interest. So it would be very hard to challenge that decision unless it was clearly abusive of their responsibility.

JIM LEHRER: But one of the issues in the Schiavo case, as I'm sure you know, Mr. Sabatino, is the issue of what Terri Schiavo's wishes would have been. And because there was no living will, it was left under the, at least Florida courts, have ruled up to now and it hasn't been overruled yet by the federal courts, that that decision was made by the husband. And he says he thinks this is what Terri Schiavo herself would have wanted. If there had been a document that said exactly what she wanted, would that have changed anything? We still would have had seven years in the court?

CHARLES SABATINO: Certainly having the document that said I wouldn't want nutrition or hydration would make a big difference in situations like hers. Coupling that with naming a proxy who has authority is the strongest twosome you can do to make sure your wishes are fulfilled. But many people are not quite sure what they would want, and just naming someone whom you trust to be your decision maker is a big first step and would solve most of the cases in itself.

JIM LEHRER: And most-- the law -- most cases have been resolved the judges have stuck with the proxy's decision? In other words, if I choose you as my proxy, you make a decision. And somebody in my family doesn't like it; the courts will go with you?

CHARLES SABATINO: They'll look at your document to find out how much, what you said and what authority you've given your proxy. And as long as the proxy is acting in accordance with what you've directed, it's virtually impossible to stop that.

JIM LEHRER: Dr. Emanuel, before we go, is this whole spotlight that has been put on this issue by the Schiavo case welcomed by folks in the medical community because it's out on top, out in the open and being discussed? Or this something, oh, my God, this is a terrible, terrible thing going on right now?

DR. LINDA EMANUEL: Well, I think every professional would wish that people weren't suffering so extremely badly. But there is a silver lining. If people will start to make out medical directors more often, that would be a silver lining because that is helpful. And I think the other take home message from all of this is that a well designed and well written document will help the person, the patient, him or herself, to understand his or her wishes for various different scenarios as they work through it, so that hopefully they will be able to make a clear statement and one that provides a sort of accurate portrait of how they think and what their values are and what their own personal threshold is for intervention versus not intervention.

JIM LEHRER: All right.

DR. LINDA EMANUEL: With that, the clinicians can make some clear and very easy decisions.

JIM LEHRER: All right. I thank you both very much.

CHARLES SABATINO: Thank you.

DR. LINDA EMANUEL: Thank you.

FOCUS - SCHOOL SHOOTING

JIM LEHRER: Now, the deadly school shooting in Minnesota. Kwame Holman narrates our report.

KWAME HOLMAN: Gunfire rocked Red Lake High School at around 3:00 P.M. yesterday. That's when 16-year-old Jeff Weise reportedly went on a shooting rampage on this sprawling Indian reservation of some 5,000 residents in rural northern Minnesota. FBI officials in charge of the investigation said Weise killed his grandfather, who was a tribal police officer, and his girlfriend at their home, then took the grandfather's squad car and weapons for the attack at the school.

MICHAEL TABMAN, FBI: Mr. Weise then, we believe, took the police bulletproof vest and gun belt from his grandfather, donned those, got into the police vehicle his grandfather had, and drove to the school, driving up right to the door. As he got out of the car, entered the school, he was confronted by an unarmed security guard, Derek Brun, age 28. At that time Mr. Weise, it is believed, shot and killed security guard Brun. We believe then that Mr. Weise proceeded down the hall of the school, and down the hall he saw a teacher and some students. The teacher, Ms. Neva Rogers, is 52. He fired some shots in their direction. Understandably, they fled and ran to a classroom. Mr. Weise continued to pursue them into the classroom. It was there that he opened fire, killing a number of students and the teacher. Shortly after that, Mr. Weise continued to roam through the school, firing randomly.

KWAME HOLMAN: Teachers and students said they dove for cover under desks and called for help on cell phones.

LEAHNA BARRETT, Student: He just got out the cop car and just stood right in front of the high school front entrance and started shooting.

KWAME HOLMAN: This man's younger brother was wounded during the shooting.

ANDREW ANGUINASH: Well, my brother was in class and heard some commotion outside, and it sounded like somebody banging on the lockers real loud. I don't know what happened. His friend happened to walk out into the hallway, and he stepped out after him, and the shooter came around the corner and pointed a gun at him and shot him. He didn't know he was shot until he went back into the classroom and he looked down and he saw blood on his shirt.

KWAME HOLMAN: Some among the 330 students at Red Lake High said Weise may have planned the attack.

STUDENT: A couple kids told me that he planned this last year, that he was going to come up here and shoot the school.

KWAME HOLMAN: Others said they never expected something like this.

ALICIA NEADEU, Student: He seemed like a pretty cool guy from what I know, from whenever I talked with him. He seemed all friendly. Never thought that anything like that would come of him.

KWAME HOLMAN: Authorities said it appeared that Weise acted alone, and that a videotape had recorded the teen's movements in the school's hallways, but not in any classrooms, one of which was the site of most of the killings.

MICHAEL TABMAN: The videotape, as I understand it, is him in the hallway. None of the shootings were caught on the videotape.

KWAME HOLMAN: After Weise got into a fire fight with police officers, officials say, he retreated to a classroom and killed himself. The Red Lake attack was the deadliest school shooting since 1999, when teen gunmen killed 13 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Today, officials at North Country Regional Hospital in central Minnesota said at least three of the victims at Red Lake High School were shot at close range.

TIM HALL, North County Regional Hospital: We had a couple of head injuries, close range. The shooter was intent on something.

REPORTER: What does that tell you, those kinds of injuries?

TIM HALL: What does that tell me? I think there was an intent to kill.

KWAME HOLMAN: Five students remained hospitalized today, including two with critical injuries. Floyd Jourdain, chairman of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, said his community was deeply shaken.

FLOYD JOURDAIN, JR.: Our community is devastated by this event. We have never seen anything like this in the history of our tribe, and without doubt this is the darkest days in the history of our people. And right now we are in utter disbelief and shock.

KWAME HOLMAN: FBI and local law enforcement officials said they were working with local tribal authorities to find a motive.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Rising fuel prices; raising the retirement age; and Apple's America.

FOCUS - OIL - FUELING INFLATION?

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez has our oil and gas story.

RAY SUAREZ: Energy prices continue to rise. Inflation was up again today, due partially to higher energy costs. At the pump, gas prices reached a national average of $2.10 a gallon yesterday. Meanwhile, crude oil now costs more than $55 a barrel.

For more about these increases and their impact on both the global and U.S. economy I'm joined by Vijay Vaitheeswaran, the author of a book on the future of energy, "Power to the People." He is also the environment and energy columnist for the Economist Magazine. Nariman Behravesh is the chief global economist at Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm. And Neal Elliott is with the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, a nonprofit think tank that studies energy use and prices.

Well, Vijay Vaitheeswaran, even though the taps seem to be open all over the world and everybody says they're pumping as much oil as they can, prices continue to rise. Is there enough oil for all the people who want to buy it, for all the things they want to buy it for?

VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN: I think there is, Ray. I think there is enough oil. But we are going to find some great volatility and some nervous times as we go into America's driving season, into the summertime. The reason is because the markets are tight. The demand picture is very strong globally and supply is just at the edge of where we need to worry about it.

RAY SUAREZ: Are these record prices totally justified by, as you say, demand? Or is there also a little premium built into that per barrel price by worries about Russia, worries about Venezuela, and so on?

VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN: You raise a very good point. There is certainly reason if you look at the fundamentals. Demand is very strong. It grew at the highest pace in 25 years last year, especially thanks to China. And supply is tight. But most people that look at the markets would argue that there is something on top. There is maybe a speculative froth, a fear premium as people in the marketplace call it. The main reason is in addition to the usual tightness of the market, we have al-Qaida, for example, issuing explicit threats against the Saudi oil infrastructure. We have terrorist attacks in Iraq. We have political problems in Venezuela, in Russia, in Nigeria; the market is on a knife's edge with very little spare capacity. And any one of these disturbances could be strong enough to push the oil prices much higher. So there is something in addition to the fundamental supply-demand balance going on.

RAY SUAREZ: Nariman Behravesh, what kind of information, what kind of impulse does that latest oil news, these spiking prices send into the world economy?

NARIMAN BEHRAVESH: Well, that's a good question. Basically the world economy so far seems to have shrugged off this oil price hike. And just to pick up on what was said earlier -- it is a very different environment than let's say the oil shocks of the mid 70s and the 80s. It is a demand-driven price increase; it's because the U.S. is growing strongly, China is growing strongly. So the impact of that is somewhat less. It is in a way a more benign price increase than when you have a supply disruption, for example, as we had in the early '80s because of the Iran-Iraq War and the revolution in Iran. In those days, about 8 million barrels a day went off the market, basically. That would be the equivalent of about 12 million barrels a day today. If that were to happen today, oil prices would be at $100 a barrel. So we are not there. It's a very different kind of situation. So that's one of the reasons why the world economy basically shrugged off this event.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, help me understand how it is possible for the world to shrug off record prices when oil is in so many things: Asphalt for roads, paint, plastics, fertilizer for the growing food needs around the world. If oil is in so many of these products, how can the world just shrug off $57 a barrel?

NARIMAN BEHRAVESH: Well, there's basically two reasons. One is that we are actually using less oil per unit of output than we did let's say in the early '80s we are using half as; that is to say the U.S. and other industrialized economies. So we are using about half as much oil of GDP or per unit of output. So in that sense, the vulnerability is less than it used to be. The second point to be made is even though oil prices are high, they actually haven't kept up with inflation. To put things in perspective, gasoline prices as you were saying earlier now around a little over $2 a barrel, $2.10, if gasoline prices had kept on inflation, they would be probably closer to $3 a barrel right now. So actually our incomes and other prices have risen faster than gasoline and oil prices. So in that sense, even though there are record prices, they're not that high relative to how other prices have moved.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Neal Elliott, have American drivers joined the rest of the world in shrugging off that rising oil price?

NEAL ELLIOTT: In a large part, yes. What we have not seen a change in driving behavior over the last six months, since the prices did go up. We are starting, however, to see some significant changes, however, in some of their purchase decisions related to their cars. We saw the price of SUV's last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics fall 2.8 percent. We've seen a shift in consumer preference toward the so-called crossover SUV's and away from truck-based SUV's. So yes, they have made some choices. It's also not been uniform across the economy. The people who tend to have been most significantly impacted by this, have tended to be the low income, fixed income parts of the society, in addition to many of the energy intensive manufacturing companies that you mentioned who make the products like the fertilizers and chemicals and plastics we use. The high income parts of the economy have largely shrugged this off because energy costs are, in general, a fairly small part of their overall energy budget; the average household spends or spent about $3,000 a year on energy; about half for their car and about half for their house in 2002. Today that number is probably closer to $4600 with a disproportionately greater share being borne by the gasoline.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, wait a minute. That's a 50 percent increase over the course of a very short number of years. Do we have any evidence that people are not buying other things because they are buying gas and home heating oil and natural gas?

NEAL ELLIOTT: We certainly saw that last Christmas season. And if you look at the retail data out there, retailers like Wal-mart who tend to target more of the lower socioeconomic groups did have a soft Christmas. On the other hand, groups like Neiman Marcus in the luxury category had a very robust Christmas season. So we do see some disproportionate impacts in consumer behavior.

RAY SUAREZ: Nariman Behravesh, is there any evidence that developing economies are going to make different choices and perhaps develop different industries, different ways of life because they are becoming wealthier at a time when gas is expensive?

NARIMAN BEHRAVESH: It's hard to see that right now. I think there are sort of some predictable paths of development that you see for a lot of economies. They tend to start off as agrarian economies and then move to manufacturing and then to services, although there are some variations around that. But the probably the biggest economy right now or the one that's having the biggest impact on energy markets other than the U.S. is China. China is now the second largest importer of petroleum. And it's really China that in some sense is setting the pace here. So China and China's developments and China's industrialization are clearly one of the biggest drivers of this picture at this point in time. That's really not going to change that much in the next few years. So I don't really see the picture changing dramatically, at least for a while.

RAY SUAREZ: Vijay Vaitheeswaran, one of the most common headlines in the last couple of years has been for oil companies to report, oh, well, never mind what we were telling you in the '90s, it turns out we have fewer reserves than we thought we did. Is there a crunch coming in the future as we're not finding oil as fast as we used to find it, new sources?

VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN: There's two things happening with reserve, Ray. And the headlines are in part because there is a discrepancy between what official rules from the SEC, theSecurities and Exchange Commission and some very technical details on how to report how much oil you have that's considered crude. That's an arcane debate that most people probably wouldn't want to get involved with, and it's really a financial accounting issue. The company Royal Dutch Shell, which is one of the world's biggest, fell foul of that and it sacked its chairman in part because of a scandal that it missed booking reserves. But the question you ask is actually more profound and that's really looking at: are the big oil companies having a problem replacing their reserves, whatever the financial reporting says, and the answer is yes. What we are finding is that the great wave of exploration that happened about 30 years ago that brought Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, these great oceans of oil, of non-OPEC oil that propped up the Exxons and the Mobils and the BP's for the last 30 years, well, these great fields are in rapid decline and quite frankly, big oil is in big trouble. The companies are not able to replace those very lucrative reserves very easily in part because the countries that have the rest of the oil or a lot of it anyway, countries in the Middle East, Russia, increasingly they're saying no, thank you. We don't need your help. We can do it ourselves.

RAY SUAREZ: And Neal Elliott quickly before we go, is there a point in which it becomes harder for American consumers to so-called shrug off the price? Is there is a wall that the market will hit?

NEAL ELLIOTT: We don't really know what the wall is. I mean we're hearing now forecasts of $2.50 a gallon for the average gasoline prices -- summer that means probably $3 plus in California. That is going to have some real economic impacts, particularly in the lower socioeconomic levels. And so I think you are going to see some changes in terms of consumer preferences. They may be slow but I think they are going to be real.

RAY SUAREZ: Neal Elliott, gentlemen, thank you all.

FOCUS - A WORKING LIFE

JIM LEHRER: Now, we continue our ongoing look at changing Social Security. Tonight: The idea of raising the retirement age. Our business correspondent, Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston, reports.

PAUL SOLMAN: How many of you are expecting when you retire to get some Social Security benefits?

PAUL SOLMAN: A student poll we took recently at Boston's Bunker Hill Community College.

PAUL SOLMAN: Any of you expecting to get no Social Security benefits? One, two, three, four people who don't even think they're going to get any Social Security benefits.

PAUL SOLMAN: In their mid-20s, on average, almost all the students here work and pay into the Social Security system, in which they don't seem to have the greatest confidence.

STUDENT: As I see it, it's going to be broke, totally broke.

PAUL SOLMAN: Let me ask one more question of all of you. How many of you think you will get as much money in retirement as I'm going to get? How many of you think you're going to get less than I get? Everybody. So that's the context

PAUL SOLMAN: The context, that is, for economist Alicia Munnell, an expert on retirement issues, whom we'd brought to this class to explain one of the proposed changes in Social Security benefits: Raising the retirement age. What did she think of the students' predictions?

ALICIA MUNNELL: I think the notion that they're going to get less than you is probably realistic. The idea that you're going to get none is not very realistic.

PAUL SOLMAN: Munnell then summarized why Social Security may well pay less to these folks than to current retirees. But if they'd been listening to President Bush's state of the union address, they'd have heard the same thing. When Social Security was adopted in the 1930s, he explained...

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: About 16 workers paid into the system for each person drawing benefits. In today's world, people are living longer, and therefore drawing benefits longer, and those benefits are scheduled to rise dramatically over the next few decades. And instead of sixteen workers paying in for every beneficiary, right now it's only about three workers-- and over the next few decades, that number will fall to just two workers per beneficiary.

PAUL SOLMAN: Retirees are living longer, and, the president might have added, fewer kids are being born and entering the work force to support retirees.

ALICIA MUNNELL: So we're going to have a lot of people who are going to be getting benefits and fewer people who are going to be paying taxes into the program.

PAUL SOLMAN: When Social Security was enacted in 1935, the retirement age was set at 65, the prevailing age used by pension systems at the time. Back then, a man aged 65 was expected to live another dozen years till age 77, and a woman till age 79. But today, a 65-year-old man can be expected to live another 16 years into his early 80s, and a woman to make it another 19, to age 84. That's a huge increase. Small wonder, then, that some are proposing to raise the retirement age-- beyond, that is, what's already been done.

ALICIA MUNNELL: What we have is changes that were enacted in 1983 being phased in, so that the age at which you get full benefits is moving from 65 to 67. It already is going to be 66, I think, by the time Paul retires.

PAUL SOLMAN: Right.

ALICIA MUNNELL: And then...

PAUL SOLMAN: And I'm 60 now, so I'll be able to collect full benefits in six years.

ALICIA MUNNELL: And then it stays at 66 for a while, and then it starts moving up two months a year to 67. And there are these proposals floating around to make it 69, 70.

PAUL SOLMAN: Right now, the official retirement age is scheduled to level off at 67 in 2027. But if it were raised faster and further-- say, to 71 by 2040, and 75 a few decades later-- the system would actually save so much money paying lower benefits, the entire Social Security shortfall would be covered. Now, as it happens, most people retire before the official retirement age-- almost half at age 62, when reduced benefits first become available.

ALICIA MUNNELL: A lot of people have very crummy jobs. And as soon as they have some money available, they want to stop working.

PAUL SOLMAN: But if the retirement age were further extended, benefits at age 62 would presumably be reduced or the age of early retirement raised from 62. In either case, you'd still get lower benefits. That said, we put the question to the students.

PAUL SOLMAN: At 2050 when you retire, should... how many people would think it was fair, okay, with them for the retirement age to be older than 67 at that point? How many people -hands up if you would? Is that because your shoulders are broken, or is that... (laughter) How many people think it would not be fair?

PAUL SOLMAN: Every hand went up. So I decided to play devil's advocate and make the case for raising the retirement age.

PAUL SOLMAN: You're going to live longer. That to me means you should take full retirement benefits later. What's wrong? What am I missing? Yeah.

STUDENT: We may be living longer, but not everybody will be healthy enough to keep on working as much as they need to, to make up for the extended years. They're going to be more tired. They're not going to be as energetic as they were a few years before. So if you extend that, how are we going to deal with that?

STUDENT: Right now I can work 40 hours. But later on, maybe I can only work 20 hours. I don't know. Even if I live longer, that doesn't mean I can work harder and longer.

PAUL SOLMAN: But wait a minute. Living longer implies living healthier longer. Social Security's actuaries have done the longevity numbers.

ALICIA MUNNELL: And they think these guys are going to live till they're about 87.

PAUL SOLMAN: According to Richard Suzman at the National Institutes of Health, U.S. life expectancy has been rising.

RICHARD SUZMAN: Three months a year for the last 150, 160 years.

PAUL SOLMAN: Three months a year, and it shows no signs of no signs of stopping.

RICHARD SUZMAN: Nobody knows when the trend is going to level off, and obviously there must be some point at which it levels off and slows down.

PAUL SOLMAN: For example, we haven't yet seen the effects of molecular medicine, stem cell research, or, says Suzman, the possibility...

RICHARD SUZMAN: Of finding mechanisms to slow the aging process.

PAUL SOLMAN: And then all bets would be off.

RICHARD SUZMAN: And then, many, many, many bets are off.

PAUL SOLMAN: In which case, these students could expect to live well into their 90s or beyond. But maybe the perception of increased longevity is what has them worried. What if the government starts raising the age of retirement, and then raises it some more?

STUDENT: And who's to say that they stop, that eventually it's not when you're 120, okay, you can collect full benefits? You know, who's to say that it will never stop, and then they'll, you know, just systematically phase it out, and then nobody collects Social Security?

PAUL SOLMAN: So some fear the precedent of raising the retirement age. But there was also a more basic objection: What good is living longer if you have to keep working?

STUDENT: Obviously, none of us know that, how long we can live. So we work until 62, more than 40 years. And I think that that's the right time to stop working and begin to enjoy our life.

PAUL SOLMAN: And there, in a sound bite, is what seems to be the main problem with making up the Social Security shortfall by raising the retirement age: A seemingly inviolate notion of when the golden years begin.

ALICIA MUNNELL: But if we can get a mindset so that later retirement becomes acceptable, really later retirement, then you could possibly move the retirement age, normal retirement age, the way you want. But right now you can't.

PAUL SOLMAN: Which may help explain why the American public has yet to embrace this and other benefit changes to Social Security as they know it.

JIM LEHRER: Later this week, Paul will look at another "fix-it" proposal, tying Social Security increases to prices instead of wages.

FOCUS - APPLE'S AMERICA

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, a new guidebook to America, from a guide who's seen it all. Jeffrey Brown has our story.

JEFFREY BROWN: Johnny Apple is a man of appetites and opinions.

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: I'm going to have a couple of oysters because it's early in the morning and I haven't had any breakfast, and then a jumbo lump crab cake, the best in the universe.

JEFFREY BROWN: Best in the universe.

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: I'm upgrading it. In the book I say it's the best in the hemisphere, but I've traveled some since then, so I'm going to make it the best in the universe.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now you're sure it's the best in the universe.

JEFFREY BROWN: Two years ago Apple wrote about the crab cakes at Faidley's Seafood for an article in the New York Times, Apple's professional home for more than 40 years. The article, exploring the pleasures of Baltimore, has been expanded into a chapter in a new book, titled "Apple's America," an unusual travel guide to 40 cities in the U.S. and Canada.

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: This is another Baltimore- ism: Rock fish. It is, in fact, striped bass.

JEFFREY BROWN: Faidley's, a local institution since 1782, is the kind of place Apple loves to write about. Here, he can talk with owner Bill Devine about fish, and learn the art of the crab cake from bill's wife, Nancy, who handmade a mere 54,000 of them last year. Over some of Nancy's creations, Apple told me he seeks out a Faidley's wherever he goes.

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: Why? Because the history of the city or village is often on display there; people have been in this business here for three or four generations, and you have the same thing in other cities.

JEFFREY BROWN: To what extent is it still true that food determines the character of the cities you visit?

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: Unless you're going to haute cuisine restaurants, where the chef is from Italy or France, the food very often is traditional. But far beyond that, for me, personally, I come from a family that owned supermarkets. I was around food. I had a grandmother whom I spent a lot of my time with, who was a fabulous cook. And it's portable. No matter where the New York Times has sent me-- from Africa to Vietnam to China to Utah to wherever-- there's something to eat.

JEFFREY BROWN: R.W. Apple, known as "Johnny," is well known to longtime readers of the Times; he's covered everything from foreign affairs to politics to culture. In his book, in addition to history and politics, he loves to point out hidden treasures in cities not known as art capitals-- the Baltimore Museum of Art, for example.

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: This museum-- not the Metropolitan, not the National Gallery, not MOMA in New York-- has the best Matisse collection in the country, and probably in the world.

JEFFREY BROWN: The reason? A lucky quirk of history: Two Baltimore sisters who befriended Matisse in Paris and bought hundreds of his work.

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: Behind me is a late picture-- very vivid in color, but the earlier ones are equally vivid-- and it's all tied together here, in Baltimore, because the Cone Sisters were from Baltimore. And that exists around the country.

JEFFREY BROWN: Local writers, too, are often mentioned in the book.

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: It's how I began to learn about the country. When I was a kid in Ohio, I read Willa Cather and got some vision of what the Great Plains must be like. I read Theodore Dreiser, and got a very strong vision of what Chicago was like.

JEFFREY BROWN: When you're in this travel writer mode, do you still see yourself as a reporter?

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: Always as a reporter, and as a reporter you are an amateur. If you think you've become a professional, that you can teach lessons to the generals, you can teach lessons to the presidents, you can teach lessons to the museum directors, the chefs, you're in trouble. Your job is to represent your reader-- go and experience it and try to explain it and relate it to that reader.

JEFFREY BROWN: You've done plenty of this serious stuff in journalism: Politics, travel, and war. Some people would think that travel writing, writing about foods, even museums, is not that serious. Are they wrong?

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: Well, I think they are. It depends on your definition of serious. Let's put it this way: Are any of the people in the United States Senate, any of the 100 that are serving there now whose campaigns I might have covered, as interesting and as serious as Matisse? Not for my nickel.

JEFFREY BROWN: "Apple's America" is a decidedly idiosyncratic talk on the pleasures of our country, so we conducted a highly individual travel quiz.

JEFFREY BROWN: What is your favorite hotel?

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: Belair, in the Los Angeles suburbs.

JEFFREY BROWN: Favorite restaurant?

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: Oh, impossible. For what? When? With whom?

JEFFREY BROWN: For your last meal.

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: I would hope to be able to have lots of last meals. I'd like to kind of slip away over a two-week period. But if I had to choose just one, it might be Peter Lugar's in Brooklyn. Or it might well be a really good seafood restaurant like Jasper White's Summer Shack in Boston, because I could eat clams, oysters, lobster, all the things that I love so much.

JEFFREY BROWN: Favorite building-- I mean, in terms of architecture?

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: I'm not sure how much people are aware of it. We're in a very inventive and marvelous period in architecture in this country. I'll give you two, if I may. One: Renzo Piano's Menil collection in Houston, one of the best museums I've ever been in. And another one in a rival city, also in Texas, is Louis Kahn's Kimbel collection in Fort Worth. And let me sneak just one more in, because it's designed by a friend of mine: Jim Polshek's Rose Planetarium in New York, which I think is a marvel.

JEFFREY BROWN: And Johnny Apple's favorite American city?

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: The most characteristically American city, I believe, is Chicago. I'm a Midwestern boy, after all. The most pleasurable, if you define pleasure as hedonism, the most pleasurable American city, I guess, is New Orleans. If history is your game, Charleston. Why Charleston and not Philadelphia or Boston? Because my wife's from Charleston, and she has taught me about it in a way that I will never know any of the others.

JEFFREY BROWN: And that's the personal approach to travel?

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: Indeed. If you don't allow your own experience to inform your traveling, then you bring nothing to it; you're just a passive person.

JEFFREY BROWN: Johnny Apple, thanks for talking to us.

R.W. "JOHNNY" APPLE, JR.: My pleasure. Thank you very much.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: A federal judge in Florida refused to order Terri Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted. The case was expected to go all the way, now, to the U.S. Supreme Court. Investigators in Minnesota searched for answers in a school shooting yesterday. The attack on the Red Lake Indian reservation left ten dead. And the Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate another quarter-point. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.