♪ >> good evening. >> on the newshour tonight, civilians in gaza get another day of reprieve from war. we speak to the head of unicef about the urgent humanitarian needs of the war's youngest victims and the risks should fighting resume. >> the latest united nations climate conference opens in dubai amid global tensions and skepticism that the world will move away from fossil fuels. >> a masterful diplomat or an

instigator of vast human suffering. the controversial former secretary of state henry kissinger dies at age 100. >> i think henry will stand out as one of the most important international figures in the last 100 years. ♪ >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by. >> consumer cellular. this is sam. how can i help you? >> this is a pocket dial. >> with consumer cellular coming you get nationwide coverage with no contract. that's our thing. have a nice day. ♪ >> the the kendeda fund. committed to restorative justice and meaningful work through investments in transformative leaders and idea. more at kendedafund.org

carnegie corporation of new york, supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security at carnegie.org. and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. ♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ >> welcome to the newshour. hamas has released more is really hostages after an 11th

hour deal extended the temporary gaza cease-fire through tonight. mediators are working to extend it for two additional days. >> two women were the first hostages to be handed over today. they were you -- reunited later with their families. this evening, six more released into egypt in exchange for 30 palestinians held by israel. secretary of state antony blinken returned to the region. he pressed israel to protect civilians and fighting resumes. >> israel has the most sophisticated militaries in the world. it is capable of neutralizing the threat posed by hamas while minimizing harm to innocent men, women, children. it has an obligation to do so. >> amid the efforts to prolong the calm, there was no violence inside israel. two palestinian gunmen killed three people at a bus station outside of jerusalem before being killed. hamas said it was retaliation

for israeli actions in gaza. the prime minister said it shows israel is justified in trying to root out hamas. >> we swore to eliminate hamas. nothing will stop us. we will continue this war until we treat the three goals. to release all our abductees, to eliminate hamas completely, to ensure that gaza will never again face such a threat. >> the war in gaza has had a devastating impact on children in particular. unicef says more than 5300 kids have been reportedly killed. that means more than 115 children have died every single day of the war. during the october 7 hamas attacks, 35 israeli children were killed and more than 30 were abducted. to discuss the brutal toll on the war's youngest victims, we turn to the executive director of unicef who is back in new york after visiting gaza in recent weeks. i want to begin with this pause

we are in right now. fighting has been on a temporary cease-fire since last friday. in that time, how many age trucks have been able to make it into gaza? what kind of difference can they make? >> the pause has been a godsend for us. a ray of hope for the people who live there. it really varies. a couple hundred trucks have gone in. i was there. i started at the border and the crossing is an amazing thing to see with all these trucks lined up. a lot of them are egyptian government and red crescent. u.n. trucks. bilateral partners sending in trucks. there's a huge effort to try to get resources in there. for a while, that was very challenging. before this started, they would get about 500 per day into gaza. those were commercial trucks, different things, not really age trucks in the same way. it gives you an idea of the knees. now even though we are making

some progress in getting more trucks in, we are not getting close to the resources that we need to get in there. >> we are nearing eight weeks of war. over 5300 children killed in gaza. countless videos like this one. this is a man who is mourning the death of his grandson and his three-year-old granddaughter . he calls her in this video the soul of my soul. he said, they shared the same birthday. he wears her earring as a badge. unicef has called gaza a graveyard for children. can you help us understand, what is the context for this loss of life in this amount of time? >> let me say this first. it's always the case that war and conflict are terrible for children. in every situation that i've every seen. what we've seen here, the scale has been in our midst. also the pace of the bombings and attacks early on were really quite dramatic.

so it was very hard to see these numbers of children who were dying every day. that comes on top of the children from israel who are killed as well. children who are inducted. -- abductive. in every aspect of the situation, children are the ones who are really suffering. i think it's incumbent upon the adults in the room to protect these children. >> do you believe that israel is abiding by international law? >> those are legal determinations that get made. what we would say is that all parties have these obligations to minimize the impact of these conflict on children. ideally, there would be no conflict in the world. that's never been the case. that's why there are rules of law that say, you have to minimize the impact on civilians. i think everyone has a story and decide to their argument. at the end of the day, everyone of us has an obligation to do everything we possibly can to protect the people who are most innocent here, who have no

responsibility for this conflict and no ability to stop it. they are the ones who are suffering. the videos that eat -- you showed demonstrate the incredible loss that people feel. i think for all people, we have children in our lives who we love so much. we can hardly imagine what people are going through, either having children abductive for months or children who are killed or buried in the rubble. it's all horrendous. >> those dozens of children who were abducted, they've been prioritize for release as part of the exchange of people held during this pause in fighting. we know the story of this one little girl in particular. you marked her fourth birthday as a hostage in gaza. she's now an orphan. her parents were killed in that hamas attack. what can you tell us about those children? have you had any access to them? >> it's just got awful for these children. so traumatizing. it's one of the things that we

are very worried about. obviously, we have the immediate impact on children. the long-term impact, the stress, the strain of living through situations like this. children who have been abducted, living in situations that we don't have full visibility into yet, or children who have parents who they've lost. when i was in gaza, one of the staff people was there, proudly telling me about this water sanitation project that she worked on. then she says as an aside, i've lost 17 members of my extended family. i couldn't believe it. just the scale of the loss and the trauma. the fact that these people are still trying so hard to go on and make a life for themselves and their community was striking to me. >> that's the executive director of unicef joining us today. thank you so much. always good to see you. >> thanks. nice to see you too. ♪

>> newshour west. here are the latest headlines. former president trump is on the right gag order again in his civil fraud trial in new york. a state appeals court reinstated the ban on his criticizing court staffers. it had been on hold pending the ruling. trial drudge imposed the order after mr. trump posted derogatory comments about the judge clerk. court officials said the comments sparked hundreds of threats. tommy tuberville is signaling he is ready to end his blockade of hundreds of high-level military nominations. the alabama republican has been holding up promotions for nearly a year. he's trying to force an end to paying for u.s. troops to travel for abortions. today at the capitol, he said he would like to get some of the promotions moving in the next week or so. >> real good discussions about

this, about the proper way to do this. we do want to stand up for life and taxpayers not having to pay for anything to do with abortion. and get these people that need to be promoted promoted. >> he spoke as democrats and a number of republicans are working on a way to get around the promotion freeze. social media giant metta says it has eliminated a network of fake facebook accounts designed to increase political divisions in the u.s. in all, close to 4800 accounts were reposting polarizing messages from x. metta says the accounts came from americans but they originated in china. russia's supreme court banned what it called the international lgbtq movement in a long-running crackdown on gay, lesbian, and transgender rights. a judge in moscow read the ruling. human rights advocates said it effectively bans lgbtq activism in russia. >> the justice ministry demanded

that the court label a nonexistent organization, the international lgbt news -- movement as a stream is. it could happen that the russian authorities will enforce it against ultra beauty groups that work with in russia, considering them a part of this international movement. >> the russian orthodox church praised the action. back in this country, a federal judge blocked montana's ban of the social media app tiktok, saying it's unconstitutional. the first in the nation law would have completely barred tiktok statewide starting in january. the ban could still be reinstated as the case proceeds. new data shed more light on the state of the economy. the congress -- commerce department reported that prices were unchanged from september to october. year-over-year, prices up 3%, the slowest pace in two years. the labor department said the number of people collecting jobless benefits hit a two-year high in mid-november at nearly 2

million. the holiday season has officially arrived in washington, d.c. with the lighting of the national christmas tree. president biden with the 40 foot tall norway spruce this evening in a tradition that began 100 years ago. crews righted the tree after high winds toppled it on tuesday. still to come on the newshour, elon musk lashes out at advertisers, leaving his social media platforms over a in hate speech. an artist gives space to underrepresented people with her work. ♪ >> this is the pbs newshour from w eta studios in washington and in the west from the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. >> the united nations climate conference cop 28 began today in

the united arab emirates. negotiators from nearly 200 countries are hoping to hammer out agreements to limit the pollution that's warming the planet and agree on aid for the nation's most impacted by climate change. we have a preview of what's to come now. good to see you. so this is the 28th such climate summit posted -- hosted by the u.n.. what are negotiators hoping to work out in dubai? >> the backdrop for all of this is that we are living through the hottest year ever in recorded human history. that warmer world creates havoc all over the planet. in a stream events, drought, fire, floods. that cost aliens of dollars and that kills people. so the whole goal of the summit is to stop that damage. there's a new focus that's been happening in recent years which is, what is the responsibility that the developed world, principally responsible for climate change, what does the developed world odor the developing world that is

suffering the impact of climate change who did nothing to cause this? there was news today. there was a fun for the first time established to try to offer aid to those nations. that's a start. >> we know we can't meaningfully address climate change without reducing fossil fuel use, with out moving towards renewable energy. pledges have been made at previous summits. how are the nations doing on those? >> in short, not great. the u.n. secretary has been very harsh about wealthy nations that talk a good game and failed to deliver. the fact is, progress is not happening nearly quickly enough. the hard part is that we live in a fossil fuel world. every single thing around us. lights, table, concrete on the floor, how we got to work, all powered by fossil fuels. transitioning away from that is costly and complicated. it's a hard thing to do. that transition is happening.

renewable energy is coming on like gangbusters, like my mom likes to say. but it's not happening nearly fast enough. critics contend that this cost of inaction is an unacceptable cost to pay. >> this one summit was also the set by controversy before it even began. what happened? >> people argue, why are you having a climate change conference in a state, nation known for exporting oil and gas? the president of the current cop is an oil executive in the uae. so people argue this is a classic example of the fox guarding the hen house. the bbc reported that he was found trying to make oil and gas deals in the lead up to this event. so people are dubious of what might come out of this. earlier this week, i tried to get some context for all of this. i spoke to a veteran of these prior u.n. climate talks. we began talking about this

controversy about the cop president. >> caught red handed the cop presidency has frankly no other option but to unequivocally step up its transparency, its responsibility, and its accountability with which they are leading this process. now from a planetary perspective, frankly we cannot afford for them not to do so. that's where we are. >> he says that he appreciates that there has to be a transition away from fossil fuels, that we have to cut emissions drastically, 50% in the next few years. he seems to argue that he is uniquely positioned to help lead this cop and the world in those emissions reductions. >> and we need him to do that. that's exactly right. we all need him to do that. no one can afford for him to waver on that.

so yes, i would totally agree that that is his job. that's his responsibility. and if he really sets his head to it, he can do it. he's a very intelligent person. >> you and others have argued that if we continue on our current path, we are condemning current and future generations to increasingly unlivable planet. famine, disease, conflict. do you worry that the sense of urgency on that front is diminishing? >> you know, we humans have a very interesting, contrasting reaction to acute and chronic situations. we react pretty well when there's an acute threat. it hits us, hits us really hard,

and then we address it and then we pass. a pandemic being a pretty good case in point. we are absolutely terrible about dealing with chronic threats. despite the fact that they may be life-threatening. but if they are chronic and sustained over time, and gradually hitting us, we are just terrible at that. we can't deal with it. so the new muscle that we have to exercise here is, how do we deploy those measures and that commitment that we bring to acute threats to get through acute threats? how do we deploy it for chronic threats?

that's the lesson that we have to learn. >> the war in ukraine certainly sentiment credible shockwave through the energy industry. there's concern that what's happening in the middle east right now could also spread wider. do you share the concern that the time all in the energy market pushes the commitment to renewables and green energy transition to the side or to the back burner? >> no. to the contrary. william, i thought you were going to end that sentence in the opposite direction. the worry about energy dependence pushes countries toward domestic energy production. by and large, it's actually renewable energy direction. that we've seen since the war in ukraine. we've seen investment into renewable energies worldwide go up. two years ago, we had $1

trillion invested in fossil fuels still, my god. this year, we still have $1 trillion invested into oil and gas. 1.7 trillion into renewables. why? because that actually strengthens energy independence. that strengthens security. strategic national security. and so the invasion of ukraine is a tragedy, and completely cannot be justified under any account. absolutely. and it has had a very interesting accelerating of fact -- effect on the energy system of the world. it has accelerated the decarbonization of the energy system. >> on that revolution in renewable angry green energy

that's underway, what is it that most gives you hope when you look at that industry? prices are dropping and production is going up. what gives you the most hope when you look at that field? >> the fact that this is no longer linear. the fact that we see the exponential curves of all of those solution technologies. wind is definitely on and financial curve. solar definitely. batteries definitely. ev's, getting there very quickly. already showing that initial indication of being on that curve. so what gives me hope is the fact that the technologies that can help us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are on an

exponential curve of improvement, development, and deployment. of course, that means that we are frankly on a race here between two x financial curves. the exponential curve of solutions, which i've just described, but also the exponential curve of the negative effects that we are seeing. so we are seeing two x financial curves that in my book are racing against each other. when they are going to intersect, we don't know. but we do know which of those exponential curves has to win the race. >> thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us. >> thank you william. good to see you. ♪ >> henry kissinger, america's most consequential and controversial secretary of state

, died last night at the age of 100. he reached the peak of his power in the 1970's. he remained highly influential until the very end. >> he was a titan of american foreign policy. and american immigrant who became an american original. >> america has never been true to itself unless it meant something beyond itself. >> from china. >> the closest cooperation between china and the united states. it's essential. >> to chile. from vietnam to the middle east. >> the united states is committed to bring about a just and lasting peace. >>'s impact on american policy is measured in decades. to his supporters, a. >> i think he will stand out as one of the most important international figures in the last 100 years. >> to his detractors, a billion. >> it would be hard to find

somebody else as comp ago in terms of the damage that they've done. >> he was born in germany in 1923 to a jewish family. when he was 15, they fled nazi germany for new york. he was drafted into the american military and deployed to his home country to help with denazification. he taught at harvard, giving him access to elite foreign policy until richard nixon named tim national security advisor and secretary of state. >> there's no country in the world where it is conceivable that a man of my origins could be standing here next to the president of the united states. >> the moment that would make him famous lead to what nixon called the week to change the world. a secret 1971 trip to beijing, ending more than two decades of mutual hostility. the next year, nixon made his own trip, setting a path to u.s. china normalization. kissinger aide and later

ambassador to china winston lord. >> it would've happened at some point but it was still a very courageous and controversial move in the early 1970's. this meeting set the stage for the subsequent discussions and the opening up of the relationship which had a major impact immediately including relations with the soviets. it helped us and the vietnam war. it restored morale in the united states. it restored american credibility. >> but before he could end the vietnam war, kissinger had expanded it. beginning in 1969, the u.s. secretly bombed cambodia to try to disrupt north vietnamese roots. the campaign is estimated to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians. >> he had a remarkable indifference to human suffering. >> professor of history at yale.

he argues kissinger and nixon unnecessarily extended the vietnam war by four years. >> how many thousands of u.s. soldiers died as a result of that? how many of thousands of vietnamese soldiers died of that? his secret and illegal bombing of cambodia resulted in 100,000 civilian deaths. more than that, it radicalized what had been a small nucleus of extremely militant communists. that led to the killing fields and the millions dead. he does have an inordinate amount of blood on his hands. >> by 1973, he and his team negotiated an end to the vietnam war in paris where winston lord was again by his side. >> henry and i went out in the garden and we shook hands. he looked me in the eye and said, we've done it. this had poignancy because i almost quit over our cambodia

related policy to vietnam a couple years earlier on that very subject. so after all we had been through, this was a major moment. >> it allowed kissinger to share the nobel peace prize with his north vietnamese counterpart. two years later, the u.s. fled saigon and north vietnam and viacom troops conquered u.s. allies in south vietnam. >> the withdraw from vietnam was an american tragedy. >> kissinger never expressed regret over vietnam or any decision. in 2003, he told jim lehrer, the priority was to put the amount aside so we could focus elsewhere. >> all you could try to do is preserve a minimum of dignity and save as many lives as you could. >> kissinger's peace efforts extended to the middle east. in october 1973, egypt and syria attacked israel on yom kippur. kissinger held so many meetings, he helped create the term subtle

diplomacy. it led to is really egypt negotiations and edge the soviet union out of the middle east. >> [speaking another language] >> kissinger's concern over communism peaked in chile. the u.s. helped the military overthrow the democratically elected socialist government and installed a general. his military dictatorship caused the death, disappearance, and torture of more than 40,000 chileans. but kissinger's priority was preventing communist dominoes from falling, as he choose elizabeth far more than thousand one. >> human rights are not an international issue at the time the way they become sins. we believe that the establishment in chile would create a sequence of events in latin america that would be extremely amicable to the

instruments -- strengths -- interests of the united states. >>'s cold war strategy called for detente with the you -- soviet union. the soviet premier signed salt, the first limits on soviet and u.s. ballistic missiles and ballistic missile defense. it opened decades of arms control agreements. >> the benefits that accrue to the united states are benefits that will accrue to all participants in the international system. from an improvement in the prospects of peace. >> kissinger had reached his popular and policy peak. he was charming, funny, craved proximity to power, and was a steady steward of american interests and his supporters eyes. after this things -- nixon's resignation, he remained secretary of state. >>'s most significant achievement was holding together america and its foreign policy

in the wake of watergate and the ending of the vietnam war. kissinger remained untainted by the scandals, pursued remarkable diplomacy out of the circumstances, and maintained america's position in the world as well as restoring some morale in the united states itself. it was a remarkable achievement. >> to his critics, kissinger symbolize the pursuit of order over justice and the kind of preemptive action that paves the way for continuous war. >> i think he was indispensable in creating a sense of keeping the united states on a permanent war footing. you know, there's war without end in which everything is self-defense. every drone attack can be justified. >>'s influence board until the end. dozens of books, hundreds of speeches, consultations to 12 presidents. perhaps no single individual before or since has exercised so much control over u.s. policy.

henry kissinger was 100 years old. for the pbs newshour, i'm nick schifrin. ♪ >> elon musk, the owner of x formerly known as twitter, is dialing up the pressure on his own company even more. after cursing advertisers who pause dads on the social media platforms. the advertising frees from major companies like disney and apple came after mosque endorsed an anti-semitic conspiracy theory on at earlier this month. in an interview yesterday, he denied the accusation of anti-semitism and told companies not to advertise. he even called out the ceo of disney bob iger who was at the event. >> you don't want them to advertise? >> no. >> what do you mean? >> if somebody will try to blackmail me with advertising

and money, go [beep] yourself. >> but -- >> go[beep] yourself. is that clear? hey bob. >> the mpr tech reporter joins us now. there's no possible business benefit that i can think of to elon musk sitting on stage, cursing out the advertisers whom he needs to buy ads on x to keep that company afloat. it raises the question, what does elon musk want with x right now? is he intentionally trying to take this company? >> it seems like it. this is an active peer self sabotage. remember, 90% of x's revenue comes from advertisers. since elon musk made waves by endorsing an anti-semitic conspiracy theory, there has been an exodus of major copper -- corporations away from x.

the new ceo has been trying to court some of those fleeing advertisers back to the platform . now we have the world's richest man who runs x literally telling the brands to go f themselves, cursing them out. i can't imagine this does anything but make the problem much worse. musk even said himself from that very stage that advertisers are going to kill the company. he seems even to be saying what many outside observers have been saying for a while which is, it seems like bankruptcy, it's not a matter of if but when they file for bank of c. >> the new york times reported that they could you -- lose as much as $75 million by the end of the year as these advertisers walk away from the company. you mentioned linda yaccarino who was brought on to bring advertisers back to x after elon musk took it over in 2023. what does this mean for her and the job she was hired to do?

elon musk is not making her job any easier. >> not at all. today, she tried to play cleanup. she's in crisis control mode. remember, her main job has been tried to bring some of the skittish advertisers back to the platform. she issued a statement today saying that they are at a unique and amazing position of main street and free speech. she's trying to spin her bosses comments in the most positive way possible. think about it. if you are someone whose job it is to bring corporations to this platform and try to place ads on this platform, and the person who leads it is basically cursing you out and saying he has absolutely no respect for your concerns, that's going to be a really hard business case. it's going to be hard to be a salesperson in the wake of these comments. elon musk does seem to be trying to drive his company directly

into the ground. i can't imagine any other outcome but that. like i said, he said in no uncertain terms that this advertiser boycott will likely decline the company into bankruptcy. >> big picture, the u.s. government can't seem to quit elon musk even if it wanted to. the pentagon needs his satellites. nasa needs his rockets. the biden white house needs his electric vehicles as a key come -- account -- component. how is the government contending with the fact that so many of his companies are woven into the fabric of american culture. next difficultly linked to national security interests. >> the new yorker has called this elon musk shadow rule. elon musk has a tremendous amount of power. whether it's with his star link satellites in ukraine, whether

it's the ev charging stations, tesla controls 60% of the ev charging stations around the country. the biden administration can't push its green energy policies without working with elon musk. we can send astronauts from american soil to the international space station unless we work with spacex. so the government has no choice but to play nice and to do business with this very material erratic business leader who is becoming increasingly unhitched by the day. some u.s. government officials say it's just too late. we wish we could've done something sooner. this occupant nor just has so many deep inroads into the federal government at this point. >> thanks again. good to see you. >> thank you. ♪

>> last year, artists -- an artist represented the u.s. at the world's most important exhibition of contemporary art. she was the first black woman to have that honor. now there's a chance to see her work in a retrospective touring this country. jeffrey brown meets the artist for our arts and culture series campus. >> outside the museum in washington, d.c., a monumental bronze sculpture. a 24 foot female form titled satellite. inside, smaller but no less striking works in which artist some only export the representation of black women by pulling together different materials and forms and pulling from different traditions. >> something new. sometimes it collapses time. sometimes it makes similarities that may have happened over millennia more obvious.

it's just one of the joys of sculpture. >> lee went big in her work and the attention it gained in 2019 with brickhouse. towering over new york's highline park. the exhibition now in washington, 29 works spanning 20 years, mostly sculptures but also several videos, was organized by the institute of contemporary art in boston. it includes major works that were part of her acclaimed venice product and a few new ones. heady stuff but at 56, she is hardly an overnight success. >> i was told i wasn't going to make it 1000 times. >> you smiled as you said that. >> yeah. there's an idea that art can be anything. i was being told, but it can't be that. >> ceramics, works made of clay and glazes. usually shaped by hand and fired enormous kilns.

it wasn't seen as high art by many when she was starting out, she says. but she loved the labor that went into it. the control and lack of it. >> the inexhaustible ability ceramics. even next week, i don't know what's going to come out of the kiln. there's a lot of i enjoy that. there are still questions that i have that are unanswered. >> lee was born in raised in chicago southside. her father immigrated from jamaica. caribbean motifs run through her sculptures, sometimes in the form of plan taints. she also looks to africa including nigerian pottery she studied long ago as an intern at the national museum of african art. now such forms become part of a human figure, as in this sculpture. she combines a cow -- a shell

with the fiber from a type of palm tree. >> this also refers to makeshift building and dwelling. >> the hut becomes a skirt. >> the hut also becomes a skirt. i like that combination. i like all the different histories that come together. they are carried both by the material itself and also the forms referenced. >> so each different kind of material here is also carrying -- >> histories, yes. >> many of her women lack eyes. she says they are figurative and abstractions. her work always begins with ideas. how we value craft and labor versus art. how black women have been represented, misrepresented, or simply ignored including in popular culture. some of her early work roughened -- referenced herrera. -- uhura.

>> i remember playing star trek with my friends. there was only one black girl character. we would fight over who got to be her. it's always been something, even subconsciously, that i was aware of. >> it plays off the racist imagery of mammy's. captured in the 1941 photo by edward weston. >> i hope that my work shows more nuanced or subtle, more bold, more complicated, more varied representations of black women. >> lee reframes colonial imagery. she covered the u.s. pavilion with a hut like facade, and a code to a 1931 international colonial exhibition in paris. in the run-up to the venice exhibition, much attention focused on her as the flak woman -- first black woman to represent the u.s.. she says that was important to her.

but as part of a larger community and deeper history. >> there were many artists before me. it would have shown in the venice biannual. we had a different history. i've been thinking about the metaphor of the relay race. i've had the baton more recently. >> her exhibition is here until march. it will show at the los angeles county museum of art and the california african-american museum. ♪ >> we will be back shortly with the story from our student reporting labs about how young people in hawaii are working to address inequalities and girls health. >> take a moment to hear from your local pbs station.

it's a chance to offer your support with helps keeps programs like ours on the air. ♪ for those of you staying with us, we take a second look at ghost gear. fishing gear that's lost or abandoned in the ocean. our science correspondent reports, there's a growing effort to remove the debris including off the coast of the u.s.. >> hard island is a tiny rugged spit of land about a mile off the coast of maine. it's uninhabited, natural refuge for seabirds. but humans are spoiling the landscape with an unending title wave of lost, abandoned, and dumped fishing gear. >> it's incredibly overwhelming. the fact is, it keeps coming.

it still has use of that. it hasn't been trapped there very long. >> linda is a wildlife biologist for the u.s. fish and wildlife service. it manages the maine coastal islands national wildlife refuge . 73 islands that are home to thousands of nesting seabirds. some of them endangered or threatened. >> i don't think there's another industry that would be allowed that type of behavior. where trash from your industry accumulates on public land and you have no responsibility to clean it up. >> chicks seeking shelter from predators crawl into washed up lobster traps, confining them inside. >> it looks like it has a piece of the rope line in the trap around its foot. it died because it wasn't able to get free from that marine debris. >> the tangled mangled traps way at least 50 pounds apiece. the refuge islands have no harbors, docs, or boat ramps. >> so we have to come ashore in

small skips, carry the traps into those boats. those boats shuttled the gear to offshore boats. then those boats transported back to the mainland. it's incredibly time-consuming. >> the cleanup is largely left to volunteers, coordinated by nonprofits. >> you get an appreciation for how these things are made. >> laura ludwick is a manager of the marine to re-and plastic program at the center for coastal studies. i caught up with her on a foggy morning in massachusetts. >> at its peak, there were 3.2 million trap tax sold annually. that could be two to 300,000 traps lost annually. >> this lobster man has been fishing at the gulf of maine for more than 40 years. >> last year, we had a few storms and i lost 30 traps.

that was a record for me. boats cut them off. ships cut them off. it's not trash. >> right about the time he began fishing, the industry started using steel traps coated with plastic and plastic lines. they replaced wood and size that degrades naturally. this gear lasts forever. for buzz scott, the bigger problem is out of sight but not out of mind. traps that pileup on the seafloor. so-called ghost gear. >> they are ghost gear because we've lost them. they are gone. they are ghosts to us. they are ghost gear because those traps are still fishing if they catch one animal a year that's eaten by another animal that's in the trap. we are wasting a lot of resources. >> scott is founder and president of oceans wide, a nonprofit that educates students about the gulf of maine. >> we can have 100 divers, 20

boats, and five rov's working in the gulf of maine constantly. it's taken 40 years to fill the ocean up. so it will take us a lot longer to find all these traps. >> the problem is not limited to lobster traps in the gulf of maine. all over the planet, the seas are littered with abandoned nets , lines, buoys, and traps. death traps for all kinds of marine life like these desperate crabs. >> fishing gear is the most harmful form of plastic marine debris in the ocean. >> the ocean conservancy is seeking solutions to this burgeoning problem. part of the plastic onslaught on the oceans. so pound for pound, is this more lethal for marine light -- life? >> animals can get entangled. they can ingest it. it can break down. the reason for that is because fishing gear can be incredibly

light and floats within the water where the marine animals live and play >>. the nonprofit leaves the global ghost gear initiative, fostering recycling projects that lead to consumer products. recycling any kind of plastic is problematic. most fishing ports don't even have a place for fishermen to recycle their old gear. >> all the gear that i have here comes from different fishermen in massachusetts. >> caitlin townsend trying to make it easier for fishermen to recycle the plastic ear. she wors mostly alone with her dog in a warehouse near the most lucrative fishing for -- port in the u.s.. >> i take these nets and i will lay it out and i will essentially go through and separate it into the different types of plastic. >> they have recycling sites in alaska, washington state california, and maine as well as

this one. >> what's the big problem in your view? >> it would be to have an operation like this in every major fishing port in the united states. >> but she has to send the sorted plastic to europe because there are no recycling facilities here that will accept it. back down east, buzz scott employs a hydraulic pressure to make it easier to recycle the lobster traps. to get the melted down, he must truck them across the border into canada. about a month after our visit to hard island, linda welch led a cleanup effort. volunteers gathered and crushed more than 200 traps. a chartered barge is set to haul it away. but the derelict fishing gear just keeps coming. for the pbs newshour, i'm miles o'brien along the gulf of maine. ♪

>> it took years of effort by students and advocates but hawaii is now one of nine states requiring public and charter schools to provide free menstrual products for students. kate nakamura from our student reporting labs has that story. >> all the public places that we have access to as citizens, if there, to me there should also be. products stopped. >> not being able to afford menstrual products is an issue of inequity that's familiar to teachers like sarah kern who witnessed the issue while teaching at a middle school. >> i saw a lot of period poverty at the school. there's a lot of students who would go to the health room to get their products and that resulted in missing class time. i personally and a lot of teachers would provide products

to students. i would always keep some in my desk. >> estate representative has been advocating for period poverty since her former days of taking. >> when we talk about hawaii public schools, the vast majority of varmints traders -- our men straight -- menstruators live in poverty. >> a victory in june 2020 two when legislation requiring the department of education to provide free menstrual products in charter schools was signed by the governor. hawaii is among nine states in the u.s. to do so. it's already making a difference to students who attend school. >> the first time i saw was in pe. i was like, great. i don't have to carry my big period back everywhere. i can just grab it from the wall. >> she serves as the

representative for the movement, a nonprofit organization working to eliminate period poverty in hawaii. in addition to teaching, she says expansion of access to free menstrual products and other spaces in the community, such as university campuses, will benefit locals. >> one of the next steps to getting period products more accessible is getting them free and accessible in the uh system. the community colleges, all of those campuses. >> representative caruso knows that there are many challenges that come along with creating change. >> i think that the most difficult obstacle is education. sometimes, not always but sometimes, legislators live in their own bubbles.

and that can affect quality of their policymaking. if they are not actively seeking out young people and trying to identify the concerns of young people, and working to address them, then they are never going to be engaging young people. >> for the pbs newshour, i'm kate naka murray -- nakamura. ♪ >> there's more coverage online including a look at a controversial execution that took place in oklahoma today as advocates are calling for all death row cases to be reviewed. you can learn more at pbs.org/newshour. >> that's the newshour for tonight. >> thanks for spending part of your evening with us. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by --

♪ the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. and friends of the newshour including patricia yuen. >> architect, beekeeper, mentor. raymond james financial advisor. advice to help you live your life. life well planned. ♪ >> actually, you don't need vision to do most things in life. yes, i'm legally blind and yes, i'm responsible for the user interface. data visualization. if i can see it and understand it quickly, anyone can. it's excitinto be part of a team driving the technology forward. i think that's the most rewarding thing. >> people who know no bdo.

♪ >> the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. and with the ongoing support of these institutions. ♪ and friends of the newshour. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. this is pbs newshour west from w eta studios in washington and from our bureau at the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute,

which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.] ♪

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪