Super Bowl XLVII Live Blog: Niners Get on the Board

7:12  p.m. ET: Fumble recovered by Ravens. First down for Baltimore.

7:12  p.m. ET: Another first down for the Niners.

7:11  p.m. ET: Another first down on gain of eleven with reception by Davis. Another another small scuffle breaks out. Teams clearly (obviously) passionate.

7:10  p.m. ET: Looks like Davis is okay – gain of 29 yards on great throw from Kaepernick.

7:08  p.m. ET: First Harbaugh parent sightings of the night! They’ve said tonight will be really bittersweet for them.

7:08  p.m. ET: They may be brothers, but side-by-side comparison of the Harbaugh brothers’ reactions to last play show totally different styles.

7:05  p.m. ET: Flacco sacked with 12 seconds left in quarter.

7:04  p.m. ET: Incomplete throw by Flacco with 17 seconds left in the 1st quarter.

7:03  p.m. ET: Unbelievable throw and catch by Boldin for 31-yards.

7:02  p.m. ET: 3rd and 7 for Ravens after incomplete pass by Flacco.

7:00  p.m. ET: 9-yard gain for the Ravens. Ed Reed in locker room for evaluation.

6:57  p.m. ET: Jacoby Jones returns kick to the 22-yard line. Ravens’ Ed Reed and 49ers’ Vernon Davis both apparently being checked out after Reed hit Davis on previous drive.

6:55  p.m. ET: And to the relief of 49ers fans, David Akers field goal attempt is good. 7-3 Ravens.

6:54  p.m. ET: Kaepernick sacked. 49ers going for field goal.

6:53  p.m. ET: Davis out and being worked on by trainers. Second and goal, incomplete in the end zone, off of Crabtree’s hands.

6:52  p.m. ET: Vernon Davis, a super speedy tight end, with another first down on a 24-yard reception from Kaepernick. 1st and goal.

6:51 p.m. ET: And Gore with another first down.

6:50 p.m. ET: Kaepernick scrambles for a gain of seven, 2nd and 3.

6:50 p.m. ET: Kaepernick, who shocked the league with his legs when he took over from Alex Smith, gets a 1st down and then some.

6:49 p.m. ET: Gore gains nine, after having a rough few carries early.

6:48 p.m. ET: Huge, 19-yard game for Michael Crabtree, who broke out this season once Kaepernick took over the starting QB job.

6:46 p.m. ET: Already looking to be a really physical game as scuffle between players breaks out after 49ers loss of two yards.

6:45 p.m. ET: And here’s the GoDaddy commercial everybody has already been talking about – supermodel makes out with Hollywood’s favorite extra.

6:44 p.m. ET: Penalties already hurting the 49ers – big game jitters?

6:41 p.m. ET: And the extra point is good. 7-0 Ravens

6:40 p.m. ET: TOUCHDOWN BALTIMORE. Ravens take an early lead with a reception by Anquan Boldin.

6:39 p.m. ET: On 3rd and 9, same thing happens, but flag is down for defensive offsides – five yard penalty and replay of 3rd down.

6:39 p.m. ET: Given some time, Flacco throws ball beyond end zone for an incompletion on 2nd and 9.

6:38 p.m. ET: Ravens QB, Joe Flacco, known for his exceptionally strong arm, gets the ball to Torrey Jones at the SF 19.

6:37 p.m. ET: And a first down for the Ravens from SF 39.

6:36 p.m. ET: Better start for the Ravens, who pick up eight yards on their first down of the game.

6:36 p.m. ET: And the first drive of the game goes nowhere; Andy Lee punts on 4th down, and Jacoby Jones returns to near the 50-yard line.

6:34 p.m. ET: On first and 15, no gain for 49ers all-time leading rusher, Frank Gore.

6:33 p.m. ET: Five yard penalty for the 49ers for illegal formation.

6:32 p.m. ET: Kaepernick connects with Vernon Davis for a gain of 20, but a flag is down.

6:31 p.m. ET: Here we go – 49ers start the first drive at the 20-yard line.

6:28 p.m. ET: Ravens chose heads, and elected to defer their choice until the second half. 49ers to receive at kickoff.

6:27 p.m. ET: Newest members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame join the team captains for the coin toss.

6:22 p.m. ET: Alicia Keys performs the Star Spangled Banner, wearing a red dress and playing a white piano at the 50-yard line.

6:21 p.m. ET: Joint Armed Forces Color Guard present the flags.

6:20 p.m. ET: Hudson wearing a green ribbon in honor of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting while performing with the students.

Jamie Squire/Getty Images

6:19 p.m. ET: In a touching performance, Sandy Hook Elementary School students perform “America the Beautiful,” with Jennifer Hudson.

6:18 p.m. ET: Jason Witten wins the 2012 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award.

6:12 p.m. ET: And out come the 49ers.

6:11 p.m. ET: The Ravens players are introduced in the stadium to a raucous crowd.

6:09 p.m. ET: And another historic first tonight – the two head coaches are brothers, born just 15 months apart. John Harbaugh, 50, is in his fifth season as the Baltimore Ravens head coach, and has won playoff games in each of his previous seasons. Jim Harbaugh, 49, is in his second season as head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, leading his team to the playoffs both seasons.

6:05 p.m. ET: The San Francisco 49ers are going for their 6th Lombardi trophy, which would tie them for the most championships ever with the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Baltimore Ravens are trying for their second Super Bowl victory. Neither team has ever lost a Super Bowl game – and at the end of the night, there will only be one team left in the NFL to have never lost a Super Bowl game.

6:00 p.m. ET: It’s here – the biggest spectacle in American sports, the Super Bowl. We’ll be covering the game, performances and, of course, the commercials right here.

It’s been an incredible season so far, and everything has led up to tonight’s game in New Orleans, where the NFC Champion San Francisco 49ers face the AFC Champion Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl XLVII. Keep refreshing for the latest updates throughout what promises to be a great game.

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Turkey says tests confirm leftist bombed U.S. embassy

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A member of a Turkish leftist group that accuses Washington of using Turkey as its "slave" carried out a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy, the Ankara governor's office cited DNA tests as showing on Saturday.

Ecevit Sanli, a member of the leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C), blew himself up in a perimeter gatehouse on Friday as he tried to enter the embassy, also killing a Turkish security guard.

The DHKP-C, virulently anti-American and listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and Turkey, claimed responsibility in a statement on the internet in which it said Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was a U.S. "puppet".

"Murderer America! You will not run away from people's rage," the statement on "The People's Cry" website said, next to a picture of Sanli wearing a black beret and military-style clothes and with an explosives belt around his waist.

It warned Erdogan that he too was a target.

Turkey is an important U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism. Leftist groups including the DHKP-C strongly oppose what they see as imperialist U.S. influence over their nation.

DNA tests confirmed that Sanli was the bomber, the Ankara governor's office said. It said he had fled Turkey a decade ago and was wanted by the authorities.

Born in 1973 in the Black Sea port city of Ordu, Sanli was jailed in 1997 for attacks on a police station and a military staff college in Istanbul, but his sentence was deferred after he fell sick during a hunger strike. He was never re-jailed.

Condemned to life in prison in 2002, he fled the country a year later, officials said. Interior Minister Muammer Guler said he had re-entered Turkey using false documents.

Erdogan, who said hours after the attack that the DHKP-C were responsible, met his interior and foreign ministers as well as the head of the army and state security service in Istanbul on Saturday to discuss the bombing.

Three people were detained in Istanbul and Ankara in connection with the attack, state broadcaster TRT said.

The White House condemned the bombing as an "act of terror", while the U.N. Security Council described it as a heinous act. U.S. officials said on Friday the DHKP-C were the main suspects but did not exclude other possibilities.

Islamist radicals, extreme left-wing groups, ultra-nationalists and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past.

SYRIA

The DHKP-C statement called on Washington to remove Patriot missiles, due to go operational on Monday as part of a NATO defense system, from Turkish soil.

The missiles are being deployed alongside systems from Germany and the Netherlands to guard Turkey, a NATO member, against a spillover of the war in neighboring Syria.

"Our action is for the independence of our country, which has become a new slave of America," the statement said.

Turkey has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the civil war in Syria and has become one of President Bashar al-Assad's harshest critics, a stance groups such as the DHKP-C view as submission to an imperialist agenda.

"Organizations of the sectarian sort like the DHKP-C have been gaining ground as a result of circumstances surrounding the Syrian civil war," security analyst Nihat Ali Ozcan wrote in a column in Turkey's Daily News.

The Ankara attack was the second on a U.S. mission in four months. On September 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American personnel were killed in an Islamist militant attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The DHKP-C was responsible for the assassination of two U.S. military contractors in the early 1990s in protest against the first Gulf War, and it fired rockets at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul in 1992, according to the U.S. State Department.

It has been blamed for previous suicide attacks, including one in 2001 that killed two police officers and a tourist in Istanbul's central Taksim Square. It has carried out a series of deadly attacks on police stations in the last six months.

Friday's attack may have come in retaliation for an operation against the DHKP-C last month in which Turkish police detained 85 people. A court subsequently remanded 38 of them in custody over links to the group.

(Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Three injured as plane veers off Rome runway

ROME: A Romanian plane carrying 50 passengers veered off the runway while landing at Rome's Fiumicino airport on Saturday, injuring three people who were rushed to hospital, authorities said.

The ATR 72 turboprop plane of the Romanian airline Carpatair arriving from Pisa finished up at an angle on grass with its landing gear damaged, emergency services and airport officials said.

One of the three people hospitalised, a Romanian flight crew member, was said to have suffered spinal injuries but his condition was not life-threatening.

Another of those hurt had pelvic injuries.

Investigators were attempting to establish the cause of the accident, with bad weather -- winds and rain may have made the landing difficult -- or pilot error suspected.

A passenger on the plane told Ansa that the plane had touched down twice. "The second time the landing gear was bent out of shape and we ended up off the runway."

He described scenes of panic and screaming.

The Rome airport remained open though one of its runways was closed.

According to Italian media, several recent incidents have shed an unfavourable light on the partnership between Alitalia and Carpatair.

The Carpatair plane involved in Saturday's accident was carrying out an Alitalia flight.

In a statement Alitalia said that "strong winds" had forced the plane off the runway and announced the suspension of all its flights operated by Carpatair from Pisa and Bologna.

Last month, a Carpatair flight between Ancona and Rome made an emergency landing soon after take-off.

Earlier in January, another of the Romanian company's planes was forced to make a U-turn following cabin pressure problems which obliged passengers to use oxygen masks.

On January 10 the company issued a statement, denying any reliability problems and denouncing a "media campaign" against it fuelled by "Italian trade unions and pilots" unhappy with Carpatair's partnership with Alitalia.

Carpatair signed the flight-sharing deal with Alitalia last September.

-AFP/ac

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Apple updates Java for Snow Leopard following blockage

Following another recent security issue with Java, Apple issued an update that added the latest versions to the system's browser plug-in blacklist to protect users from any potential threats; however, in doing so it silently blocked a number of people from accessing required Java content, such as banking and financial Web sites.

To manage this problem, if you need Java, then the latest version from Oracle (version 1.7.0_13) that was released yesterday should have addressed the security holes and get your system back up and running. You can download it for OS X Lion or Mountain Lion from Oracle at its Java Downloads page.

Unfortunately the Java 7 runtime is not available for those using
Snow Leopard, for which the latest version is Java 6. However, Apple has issued its own separate update to Java 6 for Snow Leopard to address the vulnerabilities in this version. The update, which should be available through its Software Update service, should run automatically or can be invoked by going to the Apple menu.

Given the stream of recent security issues with Java, if you don't need Java, then you might consider avoiding using it on your system, or at least be sure to disable the Web plug-in for it. While Java is a powerful and useful runtime that a number of programs use, the avenue for exploiting it is almost exclusively through the Web plug-in component of the runtime, so if you find you do need it installed, then you might at least consider disabling the plug-in in the Java Control Panel (or in Apple's Java Preferences utility for Java SE 6).

---

Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or !
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.

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Al Qaeda-linked militants free 2 Filipino hostages

MANILA, Philippines Abu Sayyaf gunmen have freed two Filipino members of a Jordanian TV journalist's crew believed to have been kidnapped by the al Qaeda-linked militants in June as they set out to interview the extremists in their jungle lairs in the southern Philippines, police said Sunday.

Policemen found frail-looking cameraman Ramel Vela and audio technician Roland Letriro late Saturday and brought them to a hospital in southern Sulu province, where they were kidnapped in June along with Jordanian Baker Abdulla Atyani, provincial police chief Senior Superintendent Antonio Freyra said. Atyani is believed to still be held by the gunmen.

"They really lost weight because they were constantly under stress each day," Freyra told The Associated Press.

It was not immediately clear who worked for their release or whether ransom was paid to the kidnappers.

Military officials have said Abu Sayyaf militants have demanded 130 million pesos ($3.1 million) for the release of Atyani and his two Filipino crew members. Hundreds of rebels of the Moro National Liberation Front, which signed a 1996 autonomy deal with the government, have also been negotiating with the Abu Sayyaf for the release of Atyani and other foreign hostages, including two European bird watchers who were abducted last February.

Moro commander Khabir Malik said his group had taken the initiative to seek the freedom of the hostages to help the government clean up the image of Sulu, a predominantly Muslim province where the Abu Sayyaf has carried out deadly bombings, kidnappings for ransom and beheadings, primarily in the early 2000s.

U.S.-backed military offensives have crippled the Abu Sayyaf in recent years, but it remains a national security threat. Washington has listed the Abu Sayyaf as a terrorist organization.

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Body of Missing Mom Reportedly Found in Turkey

The body of an American woman who went missing while on a solo trip to Turkey has been pulled from a bay in Istanbul, and nine people have been held for questioning, according to local media.

Sarai Sierra, 33, was last heard from on Jan. 21, the day she was due to board a flight home to New York City.

The state-run Andolu Agency reported that residents found a woman's body today near the ruins of some ancient city walls in a low-income district, and police identified the body as Sierra.

Rep. Michael Grimm, R-NY, who with his staff had been assisting the Sierra family in the search, said he was "deeply saddened" to hear the news of her death.

"I urge Turkish officials to move quickly to identify whomever is responsible for her tragic death and ensure that any guilty parties are punished to the fullest extent of the law," he said in a statement.

Courtesy Sarai Sierra's family

Footage Shows Missing New York Mom in Turkish Mall Watch Video

NYC Woman Goes Missing While Traveling In Turkey Watch Video

New York Mother Goes Missing on Turkish Vacation Watch Video

The New York City mother, who has two young boys, traveled to Turkey alone on Jan. 7 after a friend had to cancel. Sierra, who is an avid photographer with a popular Instagram stream, planned to document her dream vacation with her camera.

"It was her first time outside of the United States, and every day while she was there she pretty much kept in contact with us, letting us know what she was up to, where she was going, whether it be through texting or whether it be through video chat, she was touching base with us," Steven Sierra told ABC News before he departed for Istanbul last Sunday to aid in the search.

Steven Sierra has been in the country, meeting with U.S. officials and local authorities, as they searched for his wife.

On Friday, Turkish authorities detained a man who had spoken with Sierra online before her disappearance. The identity of the man and the details of his arrest were not disclosed, The Associated Press reported.

The family said it is completely out of character for the happily married mother, who met her husband in church youth group, to disappear.

She took two side trips, to Amsterdam and Munich, before returning to Turkey, but kept in contact with her family the entire time, a family friend told ABC News.

Further investigation revealed she had left her passport, clothes, phone chargers and medical cards in her room at a hostel in Beyoglu, Turkey.

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Suicide bomber kills guard at U.S. embassy in Turkey

ANKARA (Reuters) - A far-leftist suicide bomber killed a Turkish security guard at the U.S. embassy in Ankara on Friday, officials said, blowing open an entrance and sending debris flying through the air.

The attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body after entering an embassy gatehouse. The blast could be heard a mile away. A lower leg and other human remains lay on the street.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said the bomber was a member of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), a far-left group which is virulently anti-U.S. and anti-NATO and is listed as a terrorist organisation by Washington.

The White House said the suicide attack was an "act of terror" but that the motivation was unclear. U.S. officials said the DHKP-C were the main suspects but did not exclude other possibilities.

Islamist radicals, extreme left-wing groups, ultra-nationalists and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past. There was no claim of responsibility.

"The suicide bomber was ripped apart and one or two citizens from the special security team passed away," said Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

"This event shows that we need to fight together everywhere in the world against these terrorist elements," he said.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council strongly condemned the attack as a heinous act.

Turkish media reports identified the bomber as DHKP-C member Ecevit Sanli, who was involved in attacks on a police station and a military staff college in Istanbul in 1997.

KEY ALLY

Turkey is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism and has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the conflict in neighboring Syria.

Around 400 U.S. soldiers have arrived in Turkey over the past few weeks to operate Patriot anti-missile batteries meant to defend against any spillover of Syria's civil war, part of a NATO deployment due to be fully operational in the coming days.

The DHKP-C was responsible for the assassination of two U.S. military contractors in the early 1990s in protest against the first Gulf War and launched rockets at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul in 1992, according to the U.S. State Department.

Deemed a terrorist organisation by both the United States and Turkey, the DHKP-C has been blamed for suicide attacks in the past, including one in 2001 that killed two police officers and a tourist in Istanbul's central Taksim Square.

The group, formed in 1978, has carried out a series of deadly attacks on police stations in the last six months.

The attack may have come in retaliation for an operation against the DHKP-C last month in which Turkish police detained 85 people. A court subsequently remanded 38 of them in custody over links to the group.

"HUGE EXPLOSION"

U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone emerged through the main gate of the embassy shortly after the explosion to address reporters, flanked by a security detail as a Turkish police helicopter hovered overhead.

"We're very sad of course that we lost one of our Turkish guards at the gate," Ricciardone said, describing the victim as a "hero" and thanking Turkish authorities for a prompt response.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned the attack on the checkpoint on the perimeter of the embassy and said several U.S. and Turkish staff were injured by debris.

"The level of security protection at our facility in Ankara ensured that there were not significantly more deaths and injuries than there could have been," she told reporters.

It was the second attack on a U.S. mission in four months. On September 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American personnel were killed in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The attack in Benghazi, blamed on al Qaeda-affiliated militants, sparked a political furore in Washington over accusations that U.S. missions were not adequately safeguarded.

A well-known Turkish journalist, Didem Tuncay, who was on her way in to the embassy to meet Ricciardone when the attack took place, was in a critical condition in hospital.

"It was a huge explosion. I was sitting in my shop when it happened. I saw what looked like a body part on the ground," said travel agent Kamiyar Barnos, whose shop window was shattered around 100 meters away from the blast.

CALL FOR VIGILANCE

The U.S. consulate in Istanbul warned its citizens to be vigilant and to avoid large gatherings, while the British mission in Istanbul called on British businesses to tighten security after what it called a "suspected terrorist attack".

In 2008, Turkish gunmen with suspected links to al Qaeda, opened fire on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, killing three Turkish policemen. The gunmen died in the subsequent firefight.

The most serious bombings in Turkey occurred in November 2003, when car bombs shattered two synagogues, killing 30 people and wounding 146. Part of the HSBC Bank headquarters was destroyed and the British consulate was damaged in two more explosions that killed 32 people less than a week later. Authorities said those attacks bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul, Mohammed Arshad and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Stephen Powell and Sandra Maler)

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Australian PM Gillard reshuffles cabinet ahead of poll

SYDNEY: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard Saturday denied that her government was in chaos, after the resignation of two of her most senior ministers prompted a cabinet reshuffle ahead of a national election.

Saturday's announcement that the two ministers had quit came only three days after the Labor leader said elections would be held in September, an unusual step in Australia where polls are usually only called a few weeks in advance.

Gillard said Attorney General Nicola Roxon, the first woman in the job and a staunch supporter of the prime minister, and Senate leader Chris Evans, who has at times been acting prime minister, were leaving the cabinet immediately.

But she denied that the move had thrown her coalition government into chaos.

"Why on earth would anybody say that?" Gillard said.

"Number one, I've named the election date, giving people more stability and certainty than they've ever had before," she told reporters in Canberra.

"Number two, I'm here today making what is a very long-planned announcement, having had the opportunity to discuss with both Chris and Nicola their views about their futures during the course of last year."

Gillard said she had known for a year that Evans, who is Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research, and Roxon did not want to stand for re-election and she had waited for the best time to announce this.

"This is the right time to announce this change moving as we are into the parliamentary week," Gillard said.

The reshuffle means former senior barrister Mark Dreyfus will become the next attorney general and current Immigration Minister Chris Bowen will take on Evans' portfolio.

Gillard said Bowen had wanted a new challenge from the demanding immigration role, set to be a key election issue as Australia struggles to stem a record influx of boat people seeking asylum, which will now fall to Brendan O'Connor.

Mike Kelly, a former Australian Defence Force member, will become minister for defence materiel.

Gillard, whom opinion polls suggest will lose the upcoming election to conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott, said her new team was the one she intended to take to the election.

-AFP/ac

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Powertrekk fuel cell charger to be released in Spring

Along with a fuel cell puck, the PowerTrekk gives your iPhone a bit of juice. Just add water.

(Credit:
Lynn La/CNET)

While it's been circulating around at trade shows for a while, including Mobile World Congress 2011 and CES 2012, the PowerTrekk phone charger is slated to finally come to the U.S. at the end of this quarter.

Although the $229 device is peddled as a charger that can simply juice up your phone on water alone, it's not quite that simple.

To use the PowerTrekk, you also have to purchase a $4 PowerTrekk Pukk. Once you add a small amount of water (about half a shot), and add a one-time-use Pukk, the latter will immediately begin separating the hydrogen from the water, using it as fuel to charge your handset.

Each Pukk will produces 2.5 watts at 5 volts, which is good for about one full iPhone charge. If there is electricity available, however, you can also charge the separate internal battery in the PowerTrekk so it can power your phone later on.

Power your phone in an emergency

When I handled the unit at iWorld in San Francisco, it was indeed very lightweight despite its industrial look, and in a situation where there is no sun, I can see it coming in handy.

However, there is much debate about how useful a product like this can be. Not only is it rather cumbersome in shape, but you'll need to continually buy more Pukks in order to use the device multiple times. Compared to solar chargers and chargers that run on kinetic energy, this can become wasteful and pricey.

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Katrina spurs transformation of New Orleans schools

(CBS News) NEW ORLEANS -- It was August 2005 when New Orleans nearly drowned. Hurricane Katrina broke through levees in 53 places, flooding 80 percent of the city. More than 1,100 people died.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu

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CBS News

But in catastrophe, there was opportunity. One of the biggest was recreating a school system from scratch. We asked Mayor Mitch Landrieu about that Friday.

SCOTT PELLEY: Paint the picture for me. What was the New Orleans school system the day after Katrina?

MITCH LANDRIEU: It was gone. It never existed. Every building was under water. But what also happened was structurally, in terms of governance, it just disappeared. Everybody that worked for the system didn't exist anymore, in terms of the jobs that were there or the schools. And we had to piece it back together.

They pieced it back, not as the traditional school system it was, but as a charter school system with teachers and principals hired, fired and promoted based on merit and parents given the freedom to choose schools they like.

LANDRIEU: One of the things that we had the ability to do was to actually physically rebuild every school with FEMA reimbursements and with other money. Now, we didn't put the school back like it was. We built a 21st century, state-of-the-art, knowledge-based school.

PELLEY: You've been doing this a little over five years. What have you accomplished?

LANDRIEU: What's happening now is the achievement level of the kids in the inner city is now beginning to match the kids on the statewide level in a very, very short period of time. And finally, if you go into any charter school in New Orleans right now, and you ask a kid when is he going to graduate, what he tells you is when he's going to graduate from college. And so they really have their eyes focused on, "I've got a future ahead of me. I intend to finish school. I don't intend to drop out."

Super Bowl hosting "big lift" post-Katrina, mayor says
Restaurant industry boosts New Orleans' economy
"Project Homecoming": Helping Katrina families get home at last

Simone Smith

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CBS News

Simone Smith has applied to 13 universities. She's a senior who chose to go to a high-performing science school called Sci Academy.

SIMONE SMITH: I want to go to Princeton. I very much want to go to Princeton.

PELLEY: What are the dreams?

SMITH: I want to be an actress, an attaché, hopefully one day secretary of defense. Yeah, I've got big dreams.

PELLEY: That's a lot of dreams.

Before Katrina, the graduation rate was less than 50 percent. Now it's more than 75 percent. Test scores are up 33 percent.

PELLEY: What did it mean to you to be able to pick the high school that you went to?

SMITH: It meant everything. I don't think I would be here if I wasn't able to pick the high school that I wanted to go to. Because I don't feel like you can be truly educated without having a choice. I think having a choice is kind of education.

Mayor Landrieu gave great credit to the Teach for America program, which sent 375 teachers from all over the country to New Orleans.

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