Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning actor Jimmy Smits returns to host the biggest and brightest birthday party in the country, featuring, for the first time ever, Barry Manilow, who will both open and close the broadcast with a stirring medley of hits and patriotic classics along with the National Symphony Orchestra and the Choral Arts Society of Washington. Joining him are the “Queen of Soul,” Aretha Franklin; international pop sensation Natasha Bedingfield; the Tony and Grammy Award-winning cast of Jersey Boys ; multi-Grammy Award nominee Michael Feinstein; and acclaimed classical pianist Andrew von Oeyen. This star-studded cast will light up the stage on the West Lawn of the United States Capitol for the 29th annual A CAPITOL FOURTH celebration, featuring unrivaled musical performances with the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of America’s prince of pops Erich Kunzel. As a special treat for the entire family, Elmo, Big Bird, Coookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch and more of the SESAME STREET gang will be on hand to celebrate America’s 233rd birthday. The Muppets will perform a medley of patriotic favorites, as well as iconic songs that everyone knows and loves from 40 years of the breakthrough children’s television series, celebrating 40 years of fun and learning. The multi-award winning A CAPITOL FOURTH, featuring the most spectacular fireworks display anywhere in the nation, will be broadcast live in high definition before a concert audience of hundreds of thousands, millions more at home, on National Public Radio and around the world to American troops on the American Forces Radio and Television Network.

When Miss Marple learns of the deaths of businessman Rex Fortescue, his young wife, Adele, and their housemaid, Gladys, the circumstances vividly recall the nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence.” Since Miss Marple had trained Gladys herself, she has a personal reason to investigate. Will her reasoning and deduction make sense of the rhyme and at last reveal the culprit?

For more than a thousand years, the samurai sword has dominated the battlefields of Japan, instilled fear and terror into every enemy it faced and evoked a spiritual way of life that continues even today. With unparalleled access, NOVA travels deep into Japan’s ancient foundries, follows the craft of the traditional swordsmiths and attends samurai fighting school to reveal the art and science behind making what many call the perfect sword.

In 2004, Jason Crigler’s life was taking off. He was one of New York’s hottest young guitarists, his new CD was due for release and his wife, Monica, was pregnant with their first child. Then, at a gig in Manhattan, Jason suffered a near-fatal brain hemorrhage. His doctors doubted he could ever emerge from his near-vegetative state. The astonishing journey that followed, documented by filmmaker and friend Eric Daniel Metzgar (P.O.V. “The Chances of the World Changing,” 2007), is a stirring family saga and a portrait of creative struggle in the face of overwhelming tragedy.

When a 12-year-old Palestinian boy was killed in the West Bank city of Jenin by Israeli soldiers who mistook his toy gun for the real thing, something extraordinary happened that turned Ahmed Khatib’s tragic 2005 death into a gift of hope for six Israeli children whose lives were on the line: while overwhelmed with grief, Ahmed’s parents consented to donating their son’s organs.