wow, you get to watch all your favorite stuff. it's to die for. now you won't miss a thing. this is the way. the xfinity 10g network. made for streaming. john: tonight on pbs news weekend, with vaination rates for covid, flu, and other illnesses lagging, what you need to know to stay healthy this winter. then, what the black-footed ferret's survival story can tell us about saving other species. >> they're a flagship north

american carnivore species. they absolutely have a critical role to helping maintain the balance of the ecosystem. john: and a queer, black feminist's brief but spectacular take on legacy and poetry. >> major funding pbs weekend has been provided by -- >> consumer cellular. this is sam. how can i help you? this is a pocket dial. i thought i would let you know that with consumer cellular, you get nationwide coverage with no contract. th is kind of our thing. have a nice day. >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions.

and friends of the newshour. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like yo thank you. john: good evening. i'm john yang. emergency responders have spent today frantically searching for survivors across tennessee, after deadly tornadoes tore through parts of the state on saturday. six people were killed, including a child. two dozen more were sent to local hospitals. the storms left tens of thousands of people without power. eyewitnesses captured a tornado in nashville ripping power lines, and causing a massive explosion. nashville and clarksville, along the kentucky border, have declared states of emergency.

the same cross-country storm system is hammering the east coast today. from maine to florida, heavy rain and high winds are expected. millions are under flood watches from the mid-atlantic to the northeast. millions more may get snow in and around upstate new york, down to central appalachia. more heavy fighting across gaza today, as the death toll climbs. the hamas-run health ministry in gaza says the number of palestinians killed since fighting began has now surpassed 18,000. the ministry does not distinguish between civilians and hamas fighters. on cnn 's "state of the union," -- on cnn's "state of the union," secretary of state antony blinken said israel's actions sometimes fall short of their commitments to protect civilians. secretary blinken: we think there needs to be a premium put on protecting civilians and making sure that humanitarian assistance can get to everyone who needs it. and, as i said, i think the intent is there, but the results are not always manifesting themselves. and we see that both in terms of civilian protection and

humanitarian assistance. john: on abc's "this week," blinken acknowledged that the administration is using an emergency provision in the law to sell israel nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition without the required congressional review. the university of pennsylvania is facing a leadership crisis. both president elizabeth magill and board chairman scott bok resigned last night. the departures follow intense criticism over magill's equivocation at a congressional hearing last week when asked if penn would discipline students who called for the genocide of jewish people. magill was aleady dealing with the fallout from her handling of a palestinian literary conference. the heads of harvard and m.i.t. are also facing criticism over their testimony that day. harvard president claudine gray has apologized and m.i.t.'s board is supporting that

school's president, sally kornbluth. and, elon musk has restored the account of conspiracy theorist and radio host alex jones on x, the social media platform formerly known as twitter. musk posted a poll asking if jones should be allowed to return and 70% of those who responded said yes. jones was banned in 2018 for abusive behavior. jones has repeatedly said that the 2012 sandy hook school massacre was staged. he's been ordered to pay families of victims nearly $1.5 billion after losing lawsuits they filed against him. jones is appealing the judgements. musk said restoring jones' account was about protecting free speech rights. still to come on "pbs news weekend", how the black-footed ferret was saved from extinction. and a brief but spectacular take on legacy and poetry. >> this is pbs news weekend from weta studios in washington, weeknights on pbs. john: it's almost become a holiday tradition.

temperatures go down, decorations go up, and so do covid cases. for a look at the current state of affairs, not just with covid, but also with rsv and seasonal flu, we turn again to kaitlin jetelina, publisher of the popular newsletter "your local epidemiologist." katelyn, what is the situation right now with these three respiratory conditions or diseas, and how does it compare to previous years? katelyn: yeah, it's a good question. so unfortunatelywe are in the smack middle of respiratory season and that means that rsv , flu, and covid-19 are exponentially increasing really across the nation right now. we hope that rsv may be peaking soon in the south, but i would not be surprised if a lot of your family and friends are feeling a lot of different symptoms right now. john: the last time we talked, it was just before the federal health emergency ended and the government was getting out of the business of buying the vaccines and distributing them.

has there been any change or any effect of that change? katelyn: there's actually then a very dramatic effect, particularly around vaccine disparities. like you said, the funding is gone, which means campaigns, education, pop up clinics, partnerships, incentives. those are all gone as well. and there's additional layer of barriers to access due to cost or just availability. for example, some local health clinics, the vaccine costs more than they can afford or are willing to risk financially. so, for example, the gap between latina x and white residents is more than twice what it was last year in covid-19 vaccination coverage. same with african american black residents, same with residents of low income. and so, unfortunately, we are seeing that the marketplace in our regular health care system, regular public health system, not during an emergency, is really not fairly distributed to those who need it the most. john: family, friends, and coworkers. this is the time of year.

there are a lot of office parties. a lot of people are traveling. they'll be gathering with their families for holiday celebrations. what advice do you have for these people that they don't take away from these celebrations, a case of covid or rsv or the flu? katelyn: yeah, i think the most important thing, at least what i'm laser focused on, is i don't want to miss that party. i do not want to have disruptions because i'm sick. and so what i'm doing is i'm wearing a mask in very crowded areas like traveling, for example. and then, of course, keeping up to date with those vaccines, even though we are in the middle of respiratory season, it's still not too late to get your covid 19 vaccine, your flu vaccine, or even your rsv vaccine if you're over 60. so there's a lot of measures that can put in place to maximize our fun for these holidays and ensure that we minimize our sickness. john: we asked viewers what was on their mind, what they wanted

to know about. and that's a lot about what we're talking about here. kent in north carolina asks, "does the booster shot cover all variants?" katelyn: yeah. so the importance of this flu vaccine is that it is updated with xp, which is the newest variant that has been circulating around this fall. there are other variants coming down the pipeline just because that's what viruses do and we are paying attention to them. but the latest data from the lab shows that, you know, this updated vaccine is still a great match, particularly against severe disease and death. john: a lot of interest about long covid. what are the latest statistics on long covid? katelyn: there are millions of people suffering right now, and we are working very hard in public health to try to figure out the patterns and the treatments for it. thankfully, though, that the risk of long covid is declining over time, thanks to immunity, thanks to vaccines, and thanks to also the virus just changing.

american, for example, is less prevalent with long covid than delta was a few years ago. so it is still a risk and it is, i think, here to stay as long as the virus is here to stay and we need to figure out solutions for it. john: you also got a question about the rsv vaccine and its availability. sylvia in pennsylvania asks, when will the rsv vaccine be available for those under the age of 65 and for those who are young with chronic lung disease? katelyn: that's a really great question. so right now, the rsv vaccine is available for those over 60 and as well as pregnant people. we also have a monoclonal antibody, which is basically a shot of antibodies for very young kids. the rest are being tested in clinical trials. i hope that rsv vaccine comes

later down the pipeline. but at least right now we know that the highest of highest risk for rsv are somewhat protected through these prevention strategies. john: we were talking earlier about the price now that the government has gotten out of the business of buying and distributing the covid vaccine. lezlie in maine asks if there's a program for free or reduced cost vaccine shots for someone who is unemployed. katelyn jetelina: so there is a unique and very new program by the federal government. it's called the bridge program, and it's just for covid-19 vaccines, but it provides free shots this fall to under and uninsured people. and there's three places you can really kind of find these free shots is one, health care providers, two local health

centers and three. and probably most popular is pharmacies like cvs and walgreens. john: katelyn jetelina of the newsletter "your local epidemiologist." thank you very much. katelyn: thanks for having me, john. john: you can read more about how uninsured adults can get covid vaccines at our website , just.org/newshour -- pbs.org/newshour. ♪ john: 50 years ago this month, president richard nixon signed the endangered species act into law. one of the first on the endangered list, the black-footed ferret, north america's rarest animal. they were once thought to be extinct, but thanks to the work of dedicated conservationists, they're making their way back. we went to see some of that work for this report, part of our ongoing series, "saving species."

[kits squeaking] john: there is a lot riding on these squirming, squeaking newborns. they are black footed ferrets, and whether they thrive will go a long way in determining whether their species will survive. >> the black-footed ferret has a lot of pressures out in the wild. they're a flagship north american carnivore species. and they absolutely have a critical role to helping maintain the balance of e ecosystem. >> we try to look at each individual kit every day if we can. >> adrienne crosier is in charge of the breeding program at the smithsonian conservation biology institute. her goal is to produce enough of this rare member of the weasel familyo help stock breeding programs across the country and reintroduce them into the wild. >> every enclosure either has a single adult or a family group. so, for example, there's stink pot, and she has seven babies. >> we visited crosier during birthing or "whelping" season. she introduced us to all ages of baby ferrets, called "kits."

we can see some of the babies peeking out. adrienne: they're peeking out. they're getting really big now. they already look like little adult ferrets. john: and is stinkpot not coming out because she wants to protect the kits? adrienne: so that's her box. that's her territory. she keeps all the kits in there. john: each day, the staff carries out a carefully choreographed routine to separate the kits from their mothers for inspection. after they've been checked out and placed in a fresh, clean box, the kits are returned to their mothers, who sometimes give the caretakers a piece of their mind. [chattering] john: we helped check out ciri's six kits, just a few weeks old. they're unable to see until they're about 35 days old. adrienne: we just look at them each every day to make sure that everything looks normal, their eyes look normal. there's no swelling or or scabbiness or crustiness around the eyes. make sure everybody is nice and vigorous. these guys seem very sleepy. john: yes.

i was just going to say this one is just curling up to go back to sleep. when it was over, this mother quickly moved her kits from one box to another, doing her own maternal headcount. nestled in the foothills of the shenandoah blue ridge mountains, the conservation campus in front royal, virginia, uses reproductive technology to breed species from cheetahs to black-footed ferrets. crosier says the ferret's size requires them to do some improvising. adrienne: because they are so very small, we really have challenges finding tools and instruments that we can use on what may be only a seven or 800 gram female. so we have to get really creative and we've bought some special tools that are actually made for pediatric surgery so that we can try to improve our success in artificial insemination in the species. john: black-footed ferrets were first put on the endangered species list in 1967.

and then in 1979, when the last known member of the species died in captivity, they were declared extinct. but two years later came a surprising discovery made by a wyoming ranch dog named shep. he took a dead black-footed ferret home to his owner. that led to the discovery of 24 black footed ferrets alive and well in northwest wyoming. all members of the species known today are descendants of that group. >> this is one of the kind of historic mementos representing the pedigree of the first couple of years of black footed ferrets in the breeding program. john: paul marinari knows the family tree like the back of h hand, all the way back to the original, "mom". paul actually that is mom right : there. so you can see the reason why she was called mom is because this was a litter that she had in the wild. so when she and her offspring were captured om the wild, we had to make certain assumptions of who the dad was.

that male is scarface. he was actually the last black footed ferret to be captured. he was quite prolific when it came to breeding, very overrepresented in the population. john: marinari is the keeper of the smithsonian's black-footed ferret "stud book". paul: you and overall bodycheck. john: -- you can do an overall bodycheck. jo: most of his career has been spent studying the species. for 16 years, he was director of the u.s. fish and wildlife service's black-footed ferret conservation center in colorado . paul: we have a very stable breeding population that we oversee and manage very carefully. and that population isround 300 individuals. the wild population is is precarious in places. there are several populations that are doing really well, and westimate that there's between and 400 black footed ferrets 300 living in the wild, currently. it's kind of the perfect species to deal with, with a breeding program and a reintroduction

program because they don't live that long. they are very quick to produce offspring. they produce a fair number of offspring. and that's the simple version. saving the species is much more complex. john: that complexity comes in part from the black-footed ferret's relationship with prairie dogs, which make up 90% of their diet. adrienne: they require prairie dogs to thrive. they require prairie dogs for their burrows, for their homes, and also it's their primary prey source. the prairie dogs are not very popular with the farmers, especially because they do so much damage to the farmland. and so the prairie dogs are actively removed from farmland, which means the ferrets don't have a home. the ferrets don't have prey. john: prairie dogs are a keystone species, the glue that holds a habitat together. but many ranchers and farmers in the west consider prairie dogs pests to be eliminated. in the early 1900's, widespread poisonings were commonplace. john: -- >> if you don't have prairie dogs, you won't have ferrets.

and if you don't have ferrets. adrienne: so it's a balance. and they're all occurring naturally and they should all be occurring naturally and keeping each other in balance. but if you take out one piece of that, which is usually caused by humans, then everything falls out of balance and then we have complete loss of species. anytime you have an extinction event like that caused by human intervention, obviously we're doing something really catastrophic to the ecosystem. john: the prairie ecosystem once covered one-third of north america, stretching from canada to texas. but since the late 19th-century, it's shrunk by 62%. paul: if we can save the black footed ferret, our thought and all of our partners thought is that we can save the other 130 unique plants and animals that are native to the north american prairie. and it's a pretty special ecosystem, one that's often overlooked because of the riches we have in our country. john: another threat to the black-footed ferret is a bacterial disease called sylvatic plague. both black-footed ferrets and the prairie dogs they eat are

highly susceptible to it. it's transmitted by fleas and has been known to infect humans. black-footed ferrets are nocturnal, spending daylight hours in burrows dug by prairie dogs. their lives there have largely been a mystery to scientists. but this summer field biologists in montana began the first-ever tests of electronic devices to track prairie dogs underground. they're like "fitbits", mapping their movement, providing researchers with a wealth of data they hope will give them a better understanding of how the two species share the networks of tunnels, called towns. >> for the first time we'll be able to map that and know how deep it is, what are the densities of the animals, what is the space that one black footed ferret is actualing using out of that town and what is the overlap between those ferrets so we could know what would be the carrying capacity of a prairie dog town. john: and cryogenic technology

is allowing scientists to freeze black-footed ferret dna in state-of-the-art genome resource banks. in 2020, researchers used the frozen cells of a black-footed ferret that had been dead for 30 years to produce the first ever cloned member of the species, elizabeth ann. so, adrienne, this is your breeding board? adrienne: yes. john: most of the mating comes naturally, but some ferrets need a little encouragement. adrienne: we try to mix and match younger, naive males with older proven females and vice versa. 27.5. john: as a new neration of black-footed ferrets weighs in, the staff at the smithsonian conservation biology center feels the weight of what's at stake. paul: so you go from a species that's thought to be extinct to all of a sudden, holy cow, we have the species we have to take care of. the fate of the species is in our hands. that's a huge responsibility. people can make a difference. and i think that is something that is important for people to

he. john: exceptional measures to save a small but vital piece of our ecosystem. ♪ anastacia-renee is a writer, educator, and interdisciplinary artist. in collaboration with new york city's lincoln center, she performs pieces from her new book, "side notes from the archivist." the book explores five decades of american history, through her perspective as a black, queer feminist. tonight, she shares her brief but spectacular take on legacy and poetry. anastacia-renee: i want audience members to listen to my work and feel something. ♪ tonight, i am gonna be reading pieces that honor and acknowledge the glory and the legacy and the spirituality, and

also the pain of the black femme, the black woman, the black woman's body, and thinking of the black woman's body as an altar. lay your white flowers on her altar. let them be thorny and thick and full of insects to honor her life. this is my, um, new book that i'm reading pieces from, side notes from the archivists with amistad, harper collins. and the process has been thinking about everything that i've gone through as a person. thinking about legacy, thinking about ancestors, and thinking about future. what does future building look like, even while acknowledging pain or suffering sorrow, guilt and joy. place or put or pour a glass of room temperature water, because the black woman is always seeking balance, ain't she? a woman always told she's too hot or too cold and has to be excellent and never in between. i started writing, yes, a very,

very long time ago. i used to write a lot when i was supposed to be doing math in school, but i was taking copious notes about the world around me, and i've been a constant journaler and observer since i was a young child. your body has poured a chalice d your eyes vibrate, bronzeit and cracked pewter say to each molecule, rocking back and forth and back and forth, rest. i am not the kind of person that's probably gonna be outside with a picket sign. writing is my act of resilience. writing is my way to make change. writing is my way to see the ripples go. in the sunflower centers of every fibroid or jellied cyst. and the alice coltrane of every

tumor's melody, rest, here. thank you. my name is anastasia renee and this is my brief but spectacular take on legacy and poetry. ♪ john: now online, a look at a 300-year-old christmas tradition in louisiana that was imperiled this year by extreme drought conditions. all that and more is on our web site, pbs.org/newshour. and that is pbs news weekend for this sunday. on monday's pbs newshour, why doctors are sounding alarms about the effect climate change has on human health. i'm john yang. for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. have a good week. >> major funding for pbs news

weekend has been provided by -- >> consumer cellular. this is sam. how may help you? that i would let you know that with consumer cellular, you get nationwide coverage with no contract. that is kind of our thing. have a nice day. ♪ >> 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. ♪

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- [announcer] this program was made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. - the first thing i look for when i read a script is does the story move me? the only failure is if you move an audience to nothing, to boredom. if they are indifferent about what they just experienced,