David Goldman/AP

Atlanta Public Schools defendant Sandra Ward, right, turns herself in at the Fulton County Jail accompanied by her attorney Robbin Shipp on April 2 in Atlanta.

By David Beasley, Reuters

Former educators indicted in a cheating scandal that has rocked Atlanta's public school system began turning themselves in to authorities on Tuesday, ahead of a deadline to surrender voluntarily.

At least three of the 35 former Atlanta public school educators indicted by a grand jury last week had reported to the Fulton County jail by mid-morning, according to jail records.

RELATED: School cheating investigation puts Atlanta teachers, principals at center of scandal

They face charges including racketeering and making false statements for allegedly conspiring to alter and improve standardized test scores to obtain cash bonuses, according to prosecutors.

Former Atlanta School Superintendent Beverly Hall was among the former teachers, principals and administrators named in the 65-count indictment returned on Friday. She was not among the first defendants who turned themselves in.

All of the defendants have been given a Tuesday deadline by the Fulton County district attorney's office to surrender or face arrest in their homes or workplaces.

Hall was named National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators in 2009, the same year prosecutors contend widespread cheating took place.

She received a $78,000 bonus that year from the school system for improving its test scores, prosecutors said.

"The money she received, we are alleging, was ill gotten and it was theft," Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said at a news conference on Friday.

RELATED:

By Mary Kozelka
Rock Center

In January 2012, the Carnival owned Costa Concordia capsized off the coast of Italy, taking the lives of 32 people.  Earlier this year, an engine fire left the passengers on the Carnival Triumph stranded for almost five days in the Gulf of Mexico. And three other Carnival ships had problems in March. News crews, government officials and concerned family members flocked to many of these locations to offer support and inspect damage. However, during the wall-to-wall coverage, one person was noticeably absent: Micky Arison, Chairman and CEO of Carnival Corporation.

Critics say Arison has distanced himself from Carnival’s problems, opting to sit courtside at a Miami Heat basketball game rather than go where his cruise liners were in trouble. Arison is the owner of the Heat.

But it is not Arison's public relations strategies that have garnered the wrath of Sen.  Jay Rockefeller. He is outraged by what he sees as Carnival’s abuse of the loopholes in the tax system. However, Carnival has said they pay all the taxes they are required to.

Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, told Rock Center's Harry Smith that he regards Carnival “very poorly” as a corporate citizen. Rock Center commissioned S&P Capital IQ to look into Carnival’s taxes and their team found that on billions of dollars in profits over five years, Carnival paid only .6 percent taxes.

In her first interview since her father’s trial for campaign finance fraud, Cate Edwards, 31, told Savannah Guthrie on TODAY that she was angry and “devastated’’ about John Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter.

But the former presidential candidate's eldest daughter chose to stand by him while he faced charges of using campaign contributions to cover up the affair.

“He's my dad, you know?’’ Edwards told Guthrie. “We love each other and we support each other. That's just how our family is."

The trial publicly revealed the sordid details of the fallen political star's relationship with Hunter. During the affair, his wife, author and healthcare activist Elizabeth Edwards, was battling the breast cancer that ultimately took her life in 2010.

“I did not fault my dad for the trial,’’ Edwards said. “He made those mistakes, there's no question, but I never, never thought he did anything illegal. So I didn't think (the trial) was right.

TODAY

Cate stood by her dad through his campaign finance-fraud trial.

“It was difficult for our family to see this very private, very difficult part of our lives rehashed in front of everyone, but there was nowhere else I would have rather been at the time.”

Cate maintains a relationship with Frances Quinn, her father's daughter with Hunter. 

“She's my sister, and she’s just a really sweet, innocent little girl,’’ she said. “I certainly think of her as part of our family.”

John Edwards' eldest daughter: I was mad, 'devastated' about affair

Edwards had already endured the death of her brother Wade in a car accident when she was 14. Her world was turned upside down when her father confessed to the affair.

“I was devastated, and I was disappointed,’’ she said. “I mean, these are my parents.  I had grown up with a lot of love in my family, and it was hard to see them go through this.”

Edwards ultimately forgave her dad.

“I don't think we ever went through (not speaking to one another),’’ she said. “We're a family of talkers, so we try to talk through and get through things. There was a time I was angry with him, of course, but we worked through it.

“I think it's easier to stay angry than it is to forgive someone. Forgiveness is the tough thing. Yes, it was hard but we worked through it.”

At the end of Elizabeth's life, John Edwards called to ask the family if he could come to her bedside. She said yes.

Read more: Cate Edwards on late mom: 'Everyone deserves an Elizabeth'

“It was important for him to be there, and he came to the hospital room,’’ Edwards said. “The three of us, especially, have been through so much together, so we garner a lot of strength from one another. I think that being together during that time, and also for the kids to have their family together during that time, it's incredibly important.”

Cate met Hunter early in her father’s presidential campaign but has not spoken to her since. In Hunter's book, she wrote some unpleasant things about Elizabeth Edwards.

TODAY

Cate Edwards at her 2011 marriage.

“I thought it was a poor choice, I guess, is all I can say,’’ Edwards said.

John Edwards is raising his younger children, Emma Claire, 14, and Jack, 12, as a single father. She told Guthrie she highly doubts her father will run for office again.

“I think there is still good that he can do, but as a private citizen,’’ she said.

In October 2011, Cate married college sweetheart Trevor Upham, a surgery resident and cancer researcher. She is now hard at work on the law practice she started in Washington, D.C., and on the Elizabeth Edwards Foundation in Raleigh, where she's launched a program to pursue her mother's passion of helping underprivileged students.

"She really was in all facets of her life, starting at home, a great encourager, a great mentor,'' Edwards said. "I think that this really encapsulates who she was as a human being throughout her entire life, really encouraging people to reach their full potential.

TODAY

Cate and her late mom, Elizabeth.

"I miss her in sort of big ways and small ways,'' she said. "It's big things that go by, like my wedding. She wasn't able to be there. And then there are small things.  I mean, I get away with bad grammar. I never used to get away with bad grammar.

"I really miss her during March Madness, because she loved college basketball, and we were very superstitious. She would call me and say, 'Are you sitting in your living room, the kitchen? We're not playing well."

Family is still the most important important thing to Edwards. 

"It's not that complicated,'' she said. "I love my family and I'm loyal to them and I care about them. Their pain is my pain, and that's as complicated as it gets." 

By Rick Schindler and Laura T. Coffey
TODAY

Cate Edwards, the eldest daughter of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and author and health-care activist Elizabeth Edwards, speaks to Savannah Guthrie in an exclusive interview that will air Friday on TODAY and “Rock Center with Brian Williams.” 

In the interview — her first since her father's trial for alleged violations of campaign laws — Edwards opens up about her family, her late mother's legacy and Rielle Hunter. She reveals that her father first broke the news to her that he was having an affair with Hunter.

"He told me," the 31-year-old attorney and author said. "I guess he and my mom decided that that was, you know, how it needed to be done. So yeah, I was devastated. And I was disappointed. I mean, these are my parents. I had grown up with a lot of love in my family. And it was hard to see them go through this."

Amy Sancetta / AP

Cate Edwards (left) with her father, John Edwards, and mother, the late Elizabeth Edwards, in November 2004.

"Were you mad (about the affair)?" Guthrie asked.

"Yeah, yeah, of course," Edwards replied. 

John Edwards was elected a U.S. senator from North Carolina in 1998 and served one term. In 2004 he became Sen. John Kerry's White House running mate in the unsuccessful Democratic presidential campaign. He also made an unsuccessful bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

In 2011, he was indicted on six felony charges of violating federal campaign contribution laws to conceal an extramarital affair. He was found not guilty on one count, and a mistrial was declared on the other five charges. 

By Kate Snow
Rock Center Correspondent

First, a confession: I haven’t filed my taxes yet this year.  My husband and I are procrastinators. 

After working on this story, I’m more than a little worried about what we might find out when we do try to file.

For many months, Rock Center has been investigating an underworld of crime involving something that sounds really boring-- tax refund fraud.  But when you see the money these criminals are raking in and the luxury cars they drive, you’ll understand why it’s one of the fastest growing crimes in America.

It’s very simple.  Thieves steal your identity.  Somehow they get a hold of your name, Social Security number and date of birth.  (You can buy data like that on the street for $10).  Then they file a fake tax return electronically using invented numbers for your income and deductions.  Because the IRS often doesn’t verify those numbers until summertime, the thief gets a refund before anyone is the wiser.

Now you understand my fear.  Imagine you’re a procrastinator like me.  You go to file your tax return and discover that someone else has already filed in your name and received a refund from Uncle Sam.  The IRS doesn’t know who to believe.  So now the burden is on you, the victim, to prove you are the legitimate taxpayer.

It happened to Sheila Vosdoganes.  The past four years, she said, have been nothing short of “hell."

When her accountant went to file her 2009 tax return, it bounced back with a message telling her to call the IRS.  Someone had filed pretending to be Vosdoganes.  She called the IRS to try and sort it out.

“They didn't really seem interested at all in my case,” Vosdoganes said. 

“I was furious from the beginning because I felt like I had no outlet that was gonna give me a defined answer,” she said.  “I was constantly on the phone here at work, at home.  Constantly following up on it-- trying senators, representatives, anybody I could find that would lead me to a solution.  And I didn't see one happening.”

Vosdoganes did eventually receive the $5700 refund she was due, but it took months.  And even then it wasn’t over.  The very next year, someone used her information to receive a refund again.  She believes it was the same criminal two years in a row.

The IRS has made changes in an effort to help people like Vosdoganes.

In an interview with Rock Center, IRS Deputy Commissioner of Operations Support Beth Tucker said the agency has added new screening filters in its computers to flag when something might be fishy on a tax return.  And despite budget cuts, the IRS has beefed up staff in the identity theft section to deal with the increasing number of victims and tripled the number of criminal investigations over the past year.

IRS agents are also trying to cooperate more closely with local law enforcement in hard hit places.  In January, a nationwide sweep netted 389 people in 32 states. 

But Vosdognaes isn’t satisfied.  She’s nervous that her information may be used again and again to commit tax fraud.

“It's frightening because I don't know how long it will continue, when it will come back at me.  And that is something you lose sleep over,” she said.

The advice from the IRS for legitimate taxpayers?  File early.

I’ll have to try that… next year.

Editor's Note: Kate Snow's full report airs Friday, March 29 at 10pm/9c on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.

From a brawl breaking out in the Ukrainian parliament, to shamrocks in Britain for St. Patty's Day, to a daring urban wingsuit flight in Rio de Janeiro, to reading dogs' minds – Brian Williams catches up on the news you may have missed.

And about those wingsuit flyers, watch the full video after the jump. (Pun intended)

Rock Center

Teens held in adult jails and prisons are often kept in solitary confinement for their own protection. On Friday’s edition of Rock Center, Ted Koppel investigated the mental health risks of solitary confinement on teenagers.

Ted Koppel sat down with Kevin DeMott who ended up in adult prison for an attempted armed robbery he committed when he was 13. Kevin was held in solitary confinement for much of the time he says he was locked up. Now 21 years old, he is out on parole and is working with his mother Lois DeMott to advocate for prison reform in Michigan.

You can learn more about Kevin and his mother Lois DeMott’s advocacy work through Citizens for Prison Reform.

By Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News, and Deirdre Cohen and Sarah Koch, Rock Center

Courtesy of the Stewart family

James Stewart, who was arrested after being charged with vehicular homicide when he was 17, is seen in an undated school photo.

James Stewart, a 17-year-old from Denver who committed suicide while in solitary confinement, had never been to jail before August of 2008. That was when, under the influence of alcohol and marijuana, Stewart had gotten into a head-on car collision, killing a 32-year-old man.

Because of the severity of his crime, Stewart was charged with vehicular homicide – and charged as an adult. His family couldn’t make bail, so Stewart was placed in the Denver County Jail while he awaited his sentence.

There was just one problem: Since he was a minor, Stewart was ordered to be put in protective custody, separate from the adult prisoners— and the best protection the jail had to offer was solitary confinement.

Weeks later, the psychological impact was too much. After a brief reprieve from solitary to be in a shared cell with another juvenile offender, Stewart was sent back to isolation after a minor argument with his cellmate.  According to his older sister, Nicole Miera, Stewart took his own life after less than 10 minutes of being back in what inmates called "the hole."

"It was stated that that when he got in there, he was pretty upset," Miera told NBC's Ted Koppel, her eyes filling with tears. "He had taken a sheet and he had wrapped around his neck and just twisted until he couldn't twist anymore."

Stewart was one of many juveniles who are in adult jails and prisons across America. Not all of their stories end as tragically as his, but the increasingly blurry line between juvenile offenders and adult correctional facilities have made many wonder if better solutions are needed for this growing population.

For each of the past five years, roughly 100,000 juveniles have been held in adult jails and prisons, according to data from the Department of Justice.

Defense attorney Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Montgomery, Ala.-based Equal Justice Initiative, told NBC these youths are getting unfairly harsh treatment for the crimes they commit.

"Ninety-one percent of the children who are serving time in adult jails and prisons are serving time in jails and prisons for crimes that are not murder, crimes that are not sex crimes," he said. "Solitary confinement is pretty horrible for anybody, but it's especially horrible for a child. It is psychological torture."

At Castle Heights Elementary School in Lebanon, Tenn., an unusual number of the kids come in pairs. The student body of 611 has 15 sets of twins, eight pairs alone in the first grade. 

Teachers are adjusting to seeing double.

By Ami Schmitz and Stacey Naggiar
Rock Center

This is an update to a previous report from June 13, 2012:

UPDATE: Jordan Flynn is doing well ten months after her bone marrow transplant. The 14-year-old has been back at school for a few months and is making the honors list.  Her eight-year-old sister Julia is healthy, according to her mother Doreen, but her twin Jorja’s blood counts are dropping. Her doctors say a transplant may be necessary. 

Jordan and her two sisters all suffer from Fanconi Anemia, an incurable blood disorder. Their mother, Doreen Flynn, recently waged a high-profile, legal battle to make it possible for bone marrow donors to be compensated.  Flynn thinks compensation will help her girls and the 16,000 people searching for bone marrow matches. Doreen and her lawyer, Jeff Rowes of the Institute for Justice, won their court battle.  It is now legal for bone marrow donors to receive compensation – not in the form of cash, but  rather coupons and goods for as much as $3000.  

This compensation would be awarded to donors from a fund.  Individuals receiving the bone marrow would not be paying their donors directly.  There is one requirement – that the bone marrow is extracted  from the patient’s blood, rather than from the  hip, which is more painful and time-consuming.  In our original report, Debbie Warren donated marrow this way at the University of Pennsylvania for her brother.  Today, she says he is doing well.   

In the wake of the legal victory, Shaka Mitchell, co-founder of moremarrowdonors.org is developing a pilot program to compensate bone marrow donors.   Mitchell is collaborating with researchers, both domestic and international, to determine the incentives for donors and how to distribute them.  The  compensation could be given in the form of tuition payments, housing allowances or general stipends.  The goal is to make sure people who promise to donate actually follow through.   Experts say many people who sign up to donate don’t show up if they’re found to be a match with someone.  Mitchell says he recently got a call from a gentleman in need of a transplant who had five matches and already three backed out.  For this reason, Mitchell’s legal team is exploring ways to get access to the names of matches who decide not to donate.  If this can be done in a way that adheres with patient privacy laws, moremarrowdonors.org could offer compensation packages and perhaps save lives.  They are currently in the process of raising money that will specifically go into a scholarship fund.   

After the jump, read Rock Center’s previous report on Doreen Flynn and her family’s fight.

Dr. Cynthia Stonnington is the Chair of Psychiatry and Psychology at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona:  

1. ROCK CENTER: How prevalent are panic attacks?

DR. CYNTHIA STONNINGTON: So panic attacks are very common.  Actually, probably one in four people might have a panic attack in their lifetime.  Now that’s separate from having a panic disorder, where people have recurrent episodes of panic attacks … But anxiety, in general, is extremely common.  We need anxiety just to live and to function.  And so it's not surprising that anxiety disorders can occur frequently.

2. ROCK CENTER: Can you explain what happens in the brain during a panic attack?

DR. STONNINGTON: It's a primitive part of the brain. Obviously back in the day, when you might come across a tiger, you had to be alert to get yourself out of there. It’s a survival mechanism we still have and it’s still something we use to focus our attention and alert us to things we need to do. But today there might be a lot of false alarms.

3. ROCK CENTER: How much control do you have when a panic attack occurs?

DR. STONNINGTON: So when you first experience a panic attack there's nothing much you can do to stop it from coming on. It comes on.  And it goes into motion. You've got your heart rate going fast. You've got all the blood rushing from your head. You're breathing fast.  All those kinds of things are happening before you can even think of anything to do about it.

4. ROCK CENTER: So even though a panic attack is an event that happens in the brain, it’s not imaginary, right? The symptoms are very real, correct?

DR. STONNINGTON: It is definitely not imaginary, but if it's coming out of the blue, it’s pretty understandable why people might think they're having a heart attack or going crazy or something really pretty ominous. Because it's this rush of adrenaline, and all sorts of physical symptoms are happening at once.  And it's very scary.

5. ROCK CENTER: As significant, or perhaps more significant, is what’s going on inside someone’s mind during a panic attack …

DR. STONNINGTON: We jump to conclusions. And we can create this whole worldview that is based on a sort of primitive reaction. Part of it is probably because we are wired to respond to and believe whatever our body is telling us. So, if mentally you are experiencing extreme anxiety, if you're experiencing the physical sensations of anxiety, then it must be in response to something. Because you know you're not crazy, right?  So therefore it must be attached to something absolutely real.

By Kate Snow
Rock Center

Kate Snow and the Rock Center team pose for a picture with Rick Springfield

I left the last show sometime around 1:30 a.m.—still wide awake from the rush that comes from seeing live music, really great live music. A couple of hours later my alarm went off. I’ve been living in an alternate universe known as South by Southwest or SXSW. Now, it’s time for re-entry, time to fly back to New York and tell a story.

But how can I explain what this whirlwind has been like? At its core, SXSW is an arts and technology festival -- simple as that. Except it’s not simple at all.

South by Southwest is an assault on the senses. You can walk down the street and hear a new band playing literally every 50 feet. You can smell the Korean BBQ tacos. And you can see… well, you name it: celebrities, musicians, fans, and a whole lot of people trying to get your attention because they are convinced they have the “next big thing” and you need to know about it. It might be a new app, a film, or a band. Doesn't matter. They want you to know about it.

"Keep Austin Weird," the slogan adopted by the Austin Independent Business Alliance to promote small businesses in the city, couldn't be more accurate.

Example: On Sixth Street, I see guys dressed up as NASA astronauts in orange spacesuits. They’re in a band.

Example: A guy put a bed in the middle of the street and is lying in it bare-chested, inviting others to join him. He’s plugging a film.

Example: At the concierge desk at the Driskill Hotel I see two giant furry creatures, neon green and purple, trying to book a room. It was a publicity stunt for some new idea. I never did find out what.

And no, we weren’t actually staying at the famous Driskill. We were lucky to get a hotel far away from Sixth Street, the artery where crowds amass every night. 

But that, too, was part of the experience. In the morning, we’d leave our hotel knowing there’d be no way to return before 2 a.m. I hauled around bags filled with phones, chargers, notebooks and lip gloss. We rarely stopped to eat. Yesterday, I got by on a bag of mixed nuts and a Snickers bar. 

And yet I’d do it all again – and I probably will.

We spent a lot of time following 26-year-old Ryan Bort. What a good sport he was to let us tail him with cameras! Ryan writes for Paste Magazine. If he writes about a new band, it just might push others to check them out, which might lead to some record exec sitting in the crowd at a particular show.

Kate Snow / NBC News

Stubbs parking lot is sensory overload- smells and sounds.

Ryan is trying to see as much music as humanly possible in these seven days. There are more than 2,000 bands officially at the festival, and that doesn’t include the unofficial day parties, and showcases, and guys in hot food trucks who roll up the takeout window and start performing (no, seriously, we saw that).

At any given hour, there are hundreds of things you could be doing at SXSW. There are 84 bands playing at 8 p.m. on Thursday in 84 different places. So, Ryan makes a list of the bands he thinks he might want to catch and then runs from venue to venue trying to catch a few minutes of each. 

The bands know that visibility matters here. Yes, they’d love to catch a big break here and get booked on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. But most of the musicians we spoke with were just happy to be a part of a giant gathering of like-minded music fans. 

VIDEO: See Kate Snow sing "Jessie's Girl" with Rick Springfield after the jump.

By Ann Curry, Meghan Frank and Isolde Raftery
NBC News

When young women ask Erin Callan, formerly chief financial officer at Lehman Brothers, for advice, she says she tells them: “Don’t do it like me.”

Callan, 47, was appointed CFO just nine months before the firm filed for bankruptcy in Sept. 2008. She said her life gradually became entirely focused on her work, edging out friends’ birthday parties and time with her husband – and having children.

These were small choices that ballooned into one major life decision, she said, a realization she wrote about for The New York Times’ Op-Ed page on Sunday. Callan sat down for an interview with Ann Curry for Rock Center, explaining why she views herself as a cautionary tale for young, ambitious women.

Since resigning from Lehman Brothers in 2008, she all but vanished from the spotlight – and says for legal reasons she still can’t discuss the collapse of the financial giant. But she says she felt compelled to weigh in on the growing national discussion about women and their work-life balance. Recently, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced employees could no longer work from home, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg released a new book, “Lean In,” which encourages women to stay on the career path.

“I did achieve great success in my career – I’m just trying to provide a bit of what I’ll call a warning label that, hey, there’s something else to think about as you’re ‘leaning in,’ so to speak,” Callan said.  

Callan grew up in Queens, N.Y., the daughter of a police officer and a homemaker. She was driven – a competitive gymnast who practiced so hard her hands bled, and a serious student who secured a spot at Harvard University and later New York University School of Law. After law school, Callan headed to one of the city’s most elite law firms, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where she worked with Wall Street firms, including Lehman Brothers.

By her late 20s, she was working at the global investment banking firm, launching initiatives and working her way up. At 41, she was tapped as CFO.

“I still had things in some kind of reasonable harmony, even in my early 30s,” Callan said. “But little by little, it’s the Blackberry the second you wake up in the morning. It’s checking the Asian markets right before you got to bed at night. It’s making yourself completely available for anything that comes up. I’ve got to fly to Europe tonight … OK, I’ll go tonight.”

Rock Center

Pro golfer Charlie Beljan opens up to NBC's Mary Carillo about having a very public panic attack during a televised PGA golf tournament. Beljan is one of the 65 million American adults who have suffered a panic attack.

Editor's Note: Mary Carillo's full report airs Friday, March 15 at 10pm/9CDT on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.