wow, you get to watch all your favorite stuff. it's to die for. now you won't mi a thing. this is the way. the xfinity 10g network. made for streaming. ♪ geoff: good evening. i'm geoff bennett. amna: and i'm amna nawaz. on "the newshour" tonight -- how israel's decision to use artificial intelligence and loosen restrictions on civilian casualties has made its campaign in gaza so destructive. geoff: pressure rises on college leaders after their

widely-criticized congressional testimonies about rising anti-semitism on campus. amna: and researchers gather growing evidence that climate change is already putting people's health at risk. >> there is a direct impact on health. heat waves will lead to heat illness and heat exhaustion and heat stroke. ♪ >> major funding for "the pbs newshour" has been provided by -- ♪ the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions, and friends of "the newshour," including -- leonard and norma klorfine, and koo and patricia yuan. >> actually, you don't need vision to do most things in life. yes, i am legally blind and yes, i am responsible for the user

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this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. amna: welcome to "the newshour." israeli officials today said they're prepared for a long fight in gaza, lasting months, or longer. this as international criticism over israel's war with hamas grows. geoff: meantime, on the ground, the heavy fighting continues, as nearly two million gazans await lifesaving aid. [explosions] on the border between gaza and southern israel, hamas rockets meet the iron dome defense system. further north, some strikes slip through the net near tel aviv. as israeli defense forces push their ground offensive further south. today the idf released video of a mosque in jabalia, where they say they found an explosives lab.

soldier: this is what is in the mosques here. geoff: the idf say they've forced hamas to the "breaking point" in northern gaza, and they say militants in the field must "surrender or be killed." in a briefing today, the israeli defense minister said israel would not remain in gaza after the war. min. gallant: israel will take any measures in order to destroy hamas, but we have no intention to stay permanently in the gaza strip. we only take care of our security and the security of our citizens alongside the border with gaza and elsewhere. geoff: across gaza, a widening israeli offensive is leading to a growing humanitarian crisis. khan younis in the south has become the latest battlefield with displaced palestinians caught in the middle. hisham: the area was classified as safe, there was no announcement or declaration to leave the area. geoff: in the maghazi refugee camp, palestinians dig out from

the remnants of another air strike. mohammad: we were sitting at home quietly and then we heard the sounds of intense bombing and the windows blew out on top of our heads and the doors came off their hinges and then we left the house and saw the bombed building. we came here and you see it, it's a massacre. geoff: at the al aqsa hospital, the doctors who remain in gaza treat survivors on the floor. aid trickles in through the rafah crossing with egypt, but it's not enough to meet the immense need. nearly 85% of gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced within gaza, where u.n. agencies say there is no safe place to flee. um nidal: we packed our things and moved to khan younis. in khan younis we ran, left our things and stayed there for around 15 days but then they started dropping flyers telling us to go south, but where in the south are we supposed to go? geoff: tents have gone up at the border, and those in the camp face long lines for any basic necessities, leading to pleas

for world leaders to take action. alia: every time the security council takes a decision to stop the war, the united states stands against us, they veto the decision. we urged the united states to stand with us and end the war. three months are enough, we are tired, very tired. look at us with mercy, for our children, our women, our elderly. bring us back to our life. geoff: as israel's bombardment of gaza continues, businesses are closed and streets are empty in the west bank. palestinians here and in jerusalem say they've gone on strike in solidarity with palestinians in the gaza strip. wassem: we are ready to strike every day to stand by our people in gaza, despite the financial conditions we are going through. we are with them with our hearts and souls. geoff: as another night falls in gaza, the war moves on under the light of flares and rockets. geoff: israel has launched over 22,000 military strikes into

gaza since the hamas terrorist attacks of october 7th with a death toll of more than 18,000. that's according to the gaza health ministry. a recent investigative report finds that israel is deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure in gaza with the goal of ramping up civilian pressure on hamas. that's one of the many takeaways in reporting by the independent, nonpartisan israeli publication plus 972 magazine and the hebrew language outlet local call. it also includes interviews with several current and former sources in israel's intelligence community. the lead reporter, investigative journalist yuval abraham, joins us now from jerusalem. thank you for being with us. your reporting focuses on how the idf selects military targets and how it determines the number of civilian deaths that are acceptable. what did you find? yuval: the military has this term called collateral damage degrees, which dictates how many

civilians it is allowing soldiers to kill through strike. so even if the civilians are not the targets, the amount that is allowed to be killed is known beforehand. and what i found is that according to sources in this operation, the military has largely abandoned previous protocols and now it is allowing soldiers, according to sources, to knowingly kill hundreds, several hundred palestinian civilians in an attempt to assassinate one senior hamas member. geoff: how has that changed post october 7? the u.s. military has a has a similar process, a cd as collateral damage estimate, and the laws of war dictate that the military advantage has to be proportionate to the civilian, the impact on civilian casualties. how does israel make that assessment, that determination? yuval: so in the past, according to sources, for a single assassination attempt, dozens of palestinian civilians would be allowed to be killed. this has become 10 times or 20 times the number that was

allowed in the past after october 7th. also, with regards to a particular category of targets that are called power targets, that's according to sources in the past, as you've said in the introduction, were bombs in order to create this civilian pressure on hamas. nine power targets were bombed in 2021. and in this operation, we know that more than a thousand power targets were already bombed. so we are seeing a lot of criteria that was already in place in previous operations dramatically changing. geoff: you also report extensively about the role of artificial intelligence in all of this, that the idf has an ai target creation platform called the gospel, which has significantly accelerated the identification of military targets. how does it work and what's the impact on the ground? yuval: now, sources have described the gospel as essentially a target machine. so while a human is in the loop somewhere, they are spending much less time per target actually analyzing the target.

one source, for example, told me that they were being judged not by the quality of the targets they were creating, but by the quantity of the targets that were being created using these ai powered systems and this process of automation. the result is that according to military sources, israel has bombed really an unprecedented amount of targets in gaza. and i think we are seeing the results on the ground in gaza. geoff: the idf did not immediately respond to our request for comment. does the idf deny or dispute anything in your reporting? yuval: not directly. i mean, we asked a lot of questions and we didn't get specific responses. the idf says that it is abiding by international law that it is doing everything in its power to protect palestinian civilians in gaza. again, according to sources from within the military, from within the intelligence community, this is just not true. they've spoken about completely disproportionate strikes, knowingly killing hundreds of civilians, a general atmosphere

that they felt was partially motivated by revenge for the horrors of october 7. as a matter of fact, one source said that the only thing that he felt was actually limiting the death of civilians in gaza was international pressure and specifically u.s. pressure. geoff: give us a sense, without obviously revealing your sources, who did you talk to in this reporting and walk us through the process of how you pieced all of this together. yuval: yeah, so the investigation is based on conversations i've had with seven sources from israel's intelligence community. some of them are current sources that are still actively taking part in this operation. some of them former sources that have taken part in previous operations. these are whistleblowers. so essentially, they're not going to be willing to reveal their identities. i feel part of the reason why some of them spoke was that they were shocked by some of the things that they were asked to do. one source described how previously, for example, protocols in the military would

say that before carrying out a strike, you would have to have a very precise pinpointing of where the target is. after october 7, the source said they were actually carrying out strikes based on a wider approximation and bombed a very wide radius, again, knowingly killing civilians. these are sources that are in the military. they obviously care about the security of israelis, but they felt that what was going on was unjustifiable in gaza. and i think this is part of the reason why they were willing to speak out against it. geoff: thank you for sharing your reporting with us. yuval: thank you very much. ♪ vanessa: i'm vanessa ruiz in for stephanie sy with "newshour west." here are the latest headlines. the u.s. supreme court has agreed to decide quickly on whether to hear the case over former president trump's claim of legal immunity.

that came after special counsel jack smith filed a request, saying, "it is of imperative public importance that claims of immunity be resolved and that trial proceed as promptly as possible." mr. trump argues he is shielded from charges of trying to subvert the 2020 election results. the court ordered trump's lawyers to respond by december 20th. smith hopes to keep a march 4th trial date. also today, mr. trump opted not to return to the witness stand, in the civil fraud trial against his family business. he had already testified in his own defense, in early november. the trial is set to wrap up in a few days, with a decision expected in january. trial began today on how much rudy giuliani must pay two georgia election workers for falsely accusing them of fraud in the 2020 election. giuliani arrived at the federal courthouse in washington this morning. the former trump lawyer has already been found liable for defamation.

plaintiffs wandrea "shaye" moss and her mother ruby freeman were threatened and harassed over false claims by trump allies. the texas supreme court overturned today a lower court ruling that would have allowed a pregnant woman to have an emergency abortion. kate cox says her fetus has a likely fatal condition that could jeopardize her own health. she sued to get a medical exemption of the state's near-total ban. the supreme court wrote cox's doctors would need reasonable medical judgment that her condition was life threatening to legally perform the procedure. prior to today's ruling, cox left texas for an abortion. on ukraine, president volodymyr zelenskyy appealed today for an end to the stalemate over american aid. he spoke in washington, where a battle over border security and immigration policy has blocked action on $61 billion dollars. pres. zelenskyy: the whole world is watching us, observing what

destiny other free nations could face, to live freely or to be subjugated. you can cot on ukraine, we hope just as much to be able to count on you. vanessa: zelenskyy will make his case directly to president biden and members of congress tomorrow. the jailed russian opposition leader alexei navalny is missing. a spokeswoman says he's been transferred to a special security prison and has not been in touch for six days. the spokeswoman posted today on social media, saying, "where they have taken him, they refuse to say." local elections in hong kong have wiped away the last vestige of democratic rule. mainland china loyalists dominated sunday's races after opposition candidates were barred. only about 27% of 4.3 million registered voters cast ballots. that's down from 71% in the last such elections, in 2019.

the un climate conference neared an end today into by as criticism mounted that a draft agreement is too weak. this follows calls to phase out fossil fuels. it was said that the text fall short of addressing the problem. still to come, ethnic minorities in russia disproportionally scripted for the war in ukraine. also, tamra keith and amy walter break down the latest political headlines. and director baz lurhman on making one of his movies a tv miniseries. and much more. >> this is "the pbs newshour" from weta studios in washington, and in the west from the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. geoff: the president of harvard university still in her job at

this hour but there has been a real debate over whether she should be allowed to stay. there are dueling letters from harvard's broader community, one calling on the university's governing board to force her out, and one asking the university to support her. one of those governing boards has reportedly been meeting about that today. it comes in response to last week's congressional hearing about a rise in anti-semitism on some college campuses. laura: at harvard university, turmoil over the fate of the school's president, claudine gay. gay, m.i.t. president sally kornbluth, and now-outgoing university of pennsylvania president liz magill came under fire last week for their testimony in a house hearing on rising antisemitism on their campuses. on friday, gay apologized for her remarks to the harvard crimson, saying, "calls for violence or genocide against the jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at harvard, and those who threaten our jewish students will be held to account."

the flash-point of last tuesday's hearing, a heated line of questiong from republican representative elise stefanik, who herself has been criticized for not calling out antisemitism in her own party. rep. stefanik: dr. gay, at harvard, does calling for the genocide of jews violate harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no? dr. gay: it can be, depending on the context. laura: stefanik was referring to slogans that have been chanted at pro-palestinian rallies on campus, such as "from the river to the sea, palestine will be free." that phrase, adopted by hamas, is seen by some as a call for the destruction israel and the killing of jewish people. others say it's a decades-old rallying call for a state where all palestinians can live freely alongside israelis. rep. stefanik: i will ask you one more time. does calling for the genocide of jews violate harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? yes or no?

dr. gay: antisemitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct and we do take action. rep. stefanik: so the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of jews violates harvard code of conduct, correct? dr. gay: again, it depends on the context. laura: the day after the hearing, rabbi david wolpe stepped down from the university's antisemitism advisory committee. rabbi wolpe: i felt as though there was a profound disconnect between the attitude of the president's and my perception of the seriousness of the situation. laura: wolpe -- a visiting scholar at harvard's divinity school -- resigned dover what he considers inaction bby the university to confront aantisemitism. rabbi wolpe: some of the things that it seemed to me harvard needed to do almost immediately were to enforce the existing rules against harassment and

bullying and so on more expeditiously. that is, more immediately that they were doing it, to undertake a major education campaign about judaism, anti-semitism, jewish history, the long history of prejudice. laura: even as pressure mounts for gay's resignation, more than 600 faculty signed a letter saying harvard should not cave to political pressure. steven pinker, a professor of psychology, didn't sign the letter but said gay's firing would not solve the problem. prof. pinker: the reason that i don't think should be called on to resign is that i think the problems run much deeper and they should be addressed directly rather than through a sacrificial scapegoat. i think that harvard and american universities in general need a clear and conspicuous policy on free speech so they don't selectively squelch speech . reprehensible speech should be answered by more speech, by being refuted, not by crime being criminalized. ,laura: at university of

pennsylvania, the consequences were swift. on saturday, university president liz magill announced her resignation after donors, politicians and some students called for her ouster. days before, she issued a public apology. ms. magill: i want to be clear, a call for genocide of jewish people is threatening -- deeply so. in my view, it would be harassment or intimidation. laura: magill's testimony last week was similar to gay's. claire finkelstine is a professor of law and philosophy at upenn. she said while magill is a brilliant person, her testimony was disastrous. prof. finkelstein: i'm not calling for a restriction of criticisms of israel or criticisms of hamas or what have you, political speech and the ability to engage. but what has gotten out of hand is the idea that free speech on campus has to include such a level of openness to any kind of

speech that even the worst threats and harassment should be protected. laura: before magill's resignation, more than 70 members of congress -- all but three of whom were republican -- signed a letter demanding the three presidents step aside. they said the testimony lacked moral clarity and illuminated the problematic double standards and dehumanization of jewish communities. meanwhile, some progressive members, including the only palestinian-american in congress, rashida tlaib, say allegations of antisemitism are being weaponized to silence legitimate criticisms of israel. rep. tlaib: americans have a right to speak up, americans have a right to the institutions they work at or the people that represent them to say, "look, this is my opinion, you should support x, y and z." laura: house republicans have opened an investigation into the three universities and more than a dozen democratic lawmakers asked schools to review and update their policies.

and at m.i.t., president sally kornbluth has not apologized, receiving support from her university's governing board. for the pbs newshour, i am laura baron-lopez. ♪ amna: in the nearly two years since russia invaded ukraine, 300,000 russian soldiers have died or been injured, many of them conscripts. and as nick schifrin and producer sarah cutler report, for soldiers from siberia and russia's far east which is home , to many ethnic minorities, the price has been overwhelming. nick: in russia's far east, the funerals of two common. the widows so distraught they have to be carried by an honor guard. and the cemeteries are filled with soldiers, many graves

freshly dug. since russia's full-scale invasion of ukraine, men from this part of russia, remote, poor and home to many minority groups, have borne the brunt of the war and died disproportionately. >> a lot of people have been sent there. it looks like russia is trying to eliminate our ethnic groups. nick: 31-year-old alex, who asked we hide his identity, is from an area the size of india, many of whose one million residents are ethnically turkish. >> it seems they are only mobilizing our ethnic people, as if they were trying to kill some people. nick: his social media for the invasion shows a normal life, a new job, spending time with loved ones. his world was lost when he was suddenly conscripted last september during a wave of mobilization in flown from his

hometown to a military base a few hours away. he was shocked by what he saw. >> normally it stands to show who is on duty, but there were only photos of dead ukrainian soldiers and description was they should be killed. i believe they were preparing us for what would happen. >> it's easier to take those who know less. usually these are remote places. nick: natalia is from the free russia foundation. she says vladimir putin's war machine considers ethnic minorities cadden -- cannon fodder. >> the less information they have and less human rights organizations advocating for their rights. nick: the bbc found six of the tent russian regions with the highest mortality rates in ukraine are in siberia and the far east, and a russian republic

whose residence are dissented from mongols are seven times more likely to die. >> there is definitely an attempted genocide of ukrainians and also an attempted ethnic side. nick: she says this is after decades of discrimination. >> it is impossible to learn my own language in schools. when i moved to moscow, i could not allow my son to go to the school, it was dangerous. i can relate to these ethnic groups. it is not our war. you're not treating us as normal citizens of russia and we can't even be safe in the capital. nick: a handful of the group have risked certain arrest to pro taste -- protest the war.

some advocates are helping others avoid the draft or leave the country. >> indigenous peoples are needed for only one purpose, to die for the sake of the empire. vladimir putin is acting consistently in this regard. nick: alexandra is the founder of a foundation that receives daily calls and texts from new conscripts and their families. >> need a lawyer's phone number. someone i know was mobilized two weeks ago and tricked into signing a contract for a year. >> my son is writing a letter to officials refusing to serve but we are afraid they will deny him. how can we get him out of the situation? >> what will happen to a mobilized person on leave if he doesn't return to ukraine? >> we explain to military personnel how to terminate their contracts. we are doing what the kremlin considers most dangerous, we explained to people what their rights are. one of the official reasons for russia's invasion of ukraine,

the kremlin said it was the de-nazification of ukraine, but we have encountered xenophobia from russia itself. nick: this year, moscow raised the maximum age and restricted the ability to access government services until you report for duty. the government lost a campaign to try to convince more russians to sign up, including ads on tv that suggest soldiers, not civilians, are the real threat, and they raised soldier pay. as for alex, days after he was mobilized and arrived on base, he crawled under a hole in the fence and into a taxi. he got on the first flight he could to cause extent -- kazakhstan, where he lives today. he lives incognito with a russian criminal case for desertion hanging over his head. >> i don't do anything, i don't

have official employment right now. there are 17 people like me with criminal cases opened and all of us we are hoping some country will give us asylum. nick: until then, he waits, knowing he has at least avoided the fate of so many fellow minorities who fought ukraine could for the pbs newshour, i am nick schifrin. ♪ geoff: as republican presidential contenders courted early-state voters and wall street donors, we learned today that one candidate faced threats of violence. lisa desjardins has more. lisa: in new hampshire, troubling signs as vivek ramaswamy's campaign announced police arrested a man for making specific death threats at the candidate and supporters. those threats mentioned at an event held today. in a statement, the campaign

blamed the left as demonizing republicans. police have not disclosed any motive for the suspect. this after a busy campaign weekend. swanky jazz played at a saturday's young republican gala in manhattan, a room filled with former president donald trump's staunchest supporters. >> this campaign is a righteous crusade to rescue our nation from a very corrupt political class. lisa: trump doubled down on comments he made last week about taking on a dictator role if reelected. >> i didn't say that. i said i want to be a dictator for one day. but the new york times said -- you know why i wanted to be a dictator? because i want a wall, i want a wall and i want to drill, drill, drill. lisa: despite his legal troubles, a new iowa poll shows trump is gaining support there, now the top pick for president for 51 percent of republican caucus goers, up from 43 percent in october. that means, in iowa, republicans

who aren't trump are fighting for second place. >> what a great crowd we have. lisa: at a town hall event on sunday, former south carolina governor nikki haley carefully contrasted herself with trump, warning voters of a tumultuous future if they choose him. >> i think president trump was right president at the right time. but rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him. chaos follows him. you know i am right. and we can't have a country in disarray and a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. we won't survive it. lisa: florida governor ron desantis, who has a slight lead over haley in the state, stressed his commitment to religious freedom at a faith and family forum in rural northwest iowa. >> in florida, we believe as the founding fathers believe, your right to practice your faith is not something given to you by

government, it has been granted to you by god. government cannot infringe your free exercise. lisa: a right to practice, but the largely evangelical crowd raised questions about voting for someone, vivek ramaswamy of hindu faith. >> i'm not running for pastor, i wouldn't be qualified to be pastor, but i am running to be the commander in chief and to be president. lisa: the candidates were cordial and poised on stage but campaigns know time is running out to make the gop race competitive. for the pbs newshour i'm lisa desjardins. geoff: for more on the presidential race and the potential effect of president zelenskyy's trip to washington, it's time for politics monday with: amy walter of the cook political report with amy walter. we just heard all about the republicans, let's talk about the democrats. you were in new hampshire, and dean phillips with his longshot merry challenge in my he is saying joe biden presents a

threat to democracy? amy: the threat is that joe biden could lose to donald trump. he says that trump is a uniquely dangerous figure in our history. it's a secondary argument, or two steps from him kind of argument. phillips is saying a sickly joe biden's poll numbers are not great, which is true. and that somehow he is the solution. what he says is, in the polling, donald trump versus a generic democrat performs -- the generic democrat performs better than joe biden. dean phillips then says, you could call me generic if you want to. [laughter] his argument is basically that in a race between a ham sandwich and donald trump, a ham sandwich

could do well, and he is happy to be the ham sandwich. but it's not clear that is an argument that would hold up beyond new hampshire. the thing with new hampshire, joe biden is not on the ballot in new hampshire. on election night when the results come in, dean phillips, his theory is he will win new hampshire. but what is winning if the incumbent president is on the ballot? i asked him what do you expect the headline to be? he said wow. geoff: president biden increasingly calling out donald trump by name and i am told by democratic officials we should expect more of that, that president biden should not just target donald trump by name but what he sees as extremist policies on abortion, for instance. amy: it's true that joe biden is in a world of hurt going into an election year.

opinions about his handling of the presidency, very low, i think lower than donald trump, where he was going into 2020 at this point. opinions about who would do a better job on the economy. they are terrible numbers. right now the race is about him. it has to be about what is at stake if donald trump is elected. at the same time, before i got here i was looking through the new wall street journal poll that asks, do you think the policies of trump or biden made you better off? for trump by a 12 point margin, people said they were better off with trump policies, and biden was -30. people feel as if life was better when donald trump was president for them. the challenge for biden and his

campaign is to make the case, much like nikki haley did, that things were not that great. remember the chaos when he was president? and they will not be better because as you point out, on issues like abortion, that wasn't on the ballot in 2020, january 6 hadn't happened. this will be the seminal issue in 2024, is it about things happening to people right now that they are upset about, which they will blame the president for, or things they think will happen in the future with a donald trump who has already been president and they know about what he is not in front of their face every moment? geoff: looking ahead to new hampshire, because president biden has decided to skip the primary, his name isn't on the ballot, which means there is a grassroots effort to mount a write-in campaign. tamara: there's a dispute between the democratic national committee and the state, and in

the end, new hampshire gets snubbed, joe biden isn't on the ballot. but there is a right in biden campaign. extremely grassroots. i was on a call with a democratic party group that was talking to one of the organizers of the effort, they are looking for volunteers to stand outside of every polling place. our 21 candidates for the democratic nomination in new hampshire because new hampshire is quirky and ballot access is pretty easy. they have to convince people, even of the president is on the ballot, go to the trouble of voting. look past all 21 people, look for the empty bubble and write in joe biden. joe biden is easy to spell. geoff: that's true.

tamara: his campaign is very much not involved, this is not their thing. they are happy continuing to keep new hampshire not in the conversation. it's like the democratic establishment of new hampshire that feels snubbed. they are out there to prove new hampshire's value and to try to prove that joe biden does have enthusiasm. because if you were to lose or not perform well, all of the stuff amy just talked about, the narrative would be about weakness. geoff: ever since president biden said last week is not sure if you would be running if donald trump wasn't also in the race, let's say donald trump's candidacy collapses for whatever reason and president biden decides to hang up his cleats. he says the premise for my campaign is not what it used to be, i will pass the torch.

what would that due to to the democratic nominating process? amy: that's an excellent question because right now so many deadlines have passed to get on the ballot in certain states could i guess you can move some of the deadlines. a lot of it depends on the hypothetical win. at the end of the day, it's the delegates at the convention, a convention that ultimately nominates the president and vice president. if that were to come down to that point, i think we are adding to a place now where if you are the democratic party, new hampshire is a test case, they don't want to see biden on the ticket, voters wanted different candidate, will they pick someone they don't know much about to send a message?

will that message be received by joe biden? new hampshire is notorious for taking incumbent presidents and embarrassing them. george h w bush most recent with the challenge against that candidacy from pat buchanan. and obviously lyndon johnson, when he almost lost the primary, announced he wasn't running for reelection. geoff: let's talk about -- didn't get t ttalk about it exty tomorrow. ♪ amna: as theun climate conference nears its end, there is concern about whether countries can meet their climate pledges. if temperatures continue to climb, the impact on human health could be profound.

some doctors say their profession is not prepared. william brangham has the story in collaboration with the global health reporting center and the pulitzer center. william: on a chilly fall day in cambridge, massachusetts, the conversation here at harvard is about extreme heat and how in south asia alone, it kills tens of thousands of people every year. >> the water, the portable water, becomes so hot, they can't drink it. william: dr. satchit balsari is an er doctor and co-director of the crisisready initiative at harvard. he's part of a movement to get doctors focused on how climate change impacts human health, and how to respond. you're an emergency room physician. how is it that you are talking so much about climate change? dr. balsari: i mean there is a direct impact on health. heat waves will lead to heat illness and heat exhaustion and heat stroke. people present to the emergency room when there are wildfires and there is smoke and there's more particulate matter in the air.

but there is also a persistent tale of morbidity and mortality that these extreme weather events are resulting in this day and age. even in the developed world. >> the rickshaw drivers are the first victims of temperature increase. william: today, he and his colleagues are working on a project to try to understand, and hopefully mitigate, some of the impacts of extreme heat in places where millions of the world's poorest people live and work. in india, balsari's team partnered with the self-employed women's association, a union that represents small-scale, independent workers who make up the vast bulk of india's population. by giving them tiny, wearable temperature sensors, they found the women were often experiencing heat extremes well beyond what was officially recorded. dr. balsar: so this is madhuben's house. madhuben works from home. she's a weaver. i'll just show you a couple of graphs. this one for example, the green dots are the satellite

observations. so that's nasa power data. william: but the gold shows the readings from the sensors in the women's homes. dr. balsari: so there is a 10 degree difference between the temperature outside and the temperature in the house. william: so the cruder temperature data might tell you, oh, it's actually not so bad because it's cooling at night. but when you actually look at what her lived experience is, it's much more unpleasant. dr. balsari: it has completely different ramifications. william: living and working in 45 degrees celsius, 130 degrees fahrenheit is more than , unpleasant, it's dangerous. dr. balsari: i think this has massive ramifications for workplace safety as well. to be able to say that when it is only 40 degrees outside, we know that these kinds of workshops actually are at 45 or 48 degrees. william: this kind of fine-grained data points to problems, and solutions, which are barely on people's radar now. >> about local climates, you -- if we had better information about local climates, you could

change school timings, for example. there were a bunch of children of workers that we were working with who stopped going to school because it would get so hot in the afternoon that their feet would burn when they would step on the asphalt. so they just stopped going to school. and unless you're on the field studying this, it wouldn't really occur to any of us that school dropouts is because it's too hot to walk back from school. caroline: trying to do some better models, using microclimate variation. william: balsari's partner in this work is dr. caroline buckee, a harvard professor of epidemiology. caroline: a lot of the ways that we are conceiving of the issues of climate change are from large global models, remote sensing data from satellites and things like this. and the scale of which we're talking about the problem is often too large. so we don't have that granular human scale data to understand the impacts of climate change. william: getting better data is

critical. knowing who is most affected could trigger insurance payments, disaster declarations and more. for balsari, hurricane maria, the storm which devastated puerto rico in 2017 was a crystal clear example of a climate driven disaster impacting human health. >> caroline buckee and i were involved in a study. while the initial government estimates were that about 64 people had died, the study suggested that the true mortality was closer to about 4,000. they didn't die on the day of the landfall. they died for months of disruption to other aspects of their lives. william: disruptions like power outages, shortages of medicine and a loss of access to regular medical care. so i can talk loud, but i can't >> probably talk that loud. william: so how can the medical community help prevent these kinds of deadly disruptions? in a first-of-its kind program run by the university of colorado school of medicine, that's a main focus. these doctors and nurses are working towards a diploma in climate medicine.

it involves five separate courses, from making hospitals more environmentally friendly to this training session, at the aptly named disaster city at the texas a&m engineering and extension service. >> the 911 center will send the liaison. william: dr. terry o'connor from the university of colorado is one of the course directors. some of these events are coming >> more and more with less pre-notification, amplifying faster than ever before. william: the damage caused by weather disasters is on the rise -- not just because of a warming world but also because more people are moving into vulnerable areas. >> when we inquire within our own hospital systems or within our medical staff we find , ourselves still pretty unprepared for the scope and scale of these events. william: jason moats, who is helping to teach the disaster prep course, says america's medical infrastructure is woefully unprepared. take what happened to a major houston hospital during hurricane harvey in 2017.

>> they had put their generator in the basement of the parking garage. ok, there's not a lot of action down there. people won't mess with it. it is secure. but it's also very vulnerable to the floodwater seeping in. well, it knocked the generator out. they lost power. william: they run through tabletop simulations. how to respond to floods or fires, how to deal with extreme cold or extreme heat. >> when you lose power, do not automatically, does not every hospital automatically decide to evacuate? >> no, because you may not have a place to evacuate to. you may not have, if there's flooding, how are you going to move your patients if you can't move vehicles? william: the students come from all over the country -- wilderness medicine experts, oncologists and everything in between. >> there are people who are from the emergency room, family medicine, there are nurses. it makes it a lot more fun to

have different perspectives, it really does broaden the experience for us. >> an experience like this course will allow me to help serve my patients and my community better. william: and this program is part of a bigger movement. since 2019, the number of u.s. medical schools requiring coursework on the effects of climate change, has more than doubled. >> we have a storm on the horizon that's coming in, and if we don't do what we can to avoid that problem, we're in for a world of hurt. >> you want your logistics person and facilities person next to each other. >> to put it bluntly, it's giving these providers hope. that's probably the most important thing. william: o'connor says doctors have to take up the burden together to forge a community, , and a sense of mission. for "the pbs newshour," i'm william brangham. ♪ geoff: the new hulu miniseries,

"faraway downs," is set in australia's far north on the cusp of world war ii and features the star power of nicole kidman and hugh jackman. it's also an unusual instance of one of the world's leading film directors getting a re-do, reworking his own earlier material into something new. jeffrey brown speaks with australian director baz luhrmann for our arts and culture series, "canvas." ♪ jeffrey: in the 2008 film, "australia," nicole kidman plays an english aristocrat who goes down under to sell a ranch she owns but falls in love with the land, and with the man, the rough-living cattle drover played by hugh jackman. it was epic melodrama. nearly three hours long. a big hit in australia and europe, but not so much with critics and not at all at the box office in the u.s. in 2020, when the pandemic shut down production of his film,

"elvis," director baz luhrmann decided to go back at his old "australia" footage, so much of it left on the cutting room floor, to see if he could re-fashion it in a new format. baz: i knew that i had all this material. and as i looked at the material, i realized that episodic storytelling really suited the epic nature of it. and i just thought about, i could really lean into the idea, particularly from the indigenous child's point of view, from his telling. jeffrey: the result is "faraway downs," now a miniseries that unfolds over nearly four hours in six separate episodes, with new scenes, even -- spoiler alert -- a completely new ending. baz: it isn't really just "australia" with a bit of extra seasoning. jeffrey: what is it? baz: i think it's of the same

story, but there are different plot points. jeffrey: most important, luhrmann says a greater focus on the indigenous, through new music composed and performed by contemporary musicians and a storyline centered on then-official government policy of separating bi-racial children like nullah, played by brandon walters, from their indigenous families. the practice, impacting what came to be known as the stolen generations, ended only in the 1970s. baz: my idea was to take a very old melodrama form, you know, and put in the middle of this kind of old-fashioned move-telling style, this extremely horrendous and ugly chapter in australian history. jeffrey: a serious subject but, as he says, wrapped within broad strokes, even high comedy, as in a scene left over from "australia" in which kidman watches the well-muscled jackman have an outdoor rinse. luhrmann, who got his start in theater and opera, loves both high and low in art.

baz: shakespeare would use broad comedy to get you kind of discombobulated and then hit you with, you know, the meaty issue. island -- and i do that in faraway downs and australia. now, whether it works or not or whether buy into it, that's up to the audience. but the idea is to sort of disarm with, you know, like katherine hepburn, spencer tracy, kind of broad comedy, and then suddenly, you know, a child is grabbed by the cops and stolen. jeffrey: as much as any director working today, luhrmann has developed a storytelling, visual and aural style all his own, instantly recognizable -- playing with the bard himself in his version of "romeo + juliet" with a young leonardo decaprio and claire danes. the over-the-top spectacle and thrilling energy of moulin rouge, also featuring kidman. the great gatsby.

note the hip hop music grafted around jazz era scenes. >> new york, 1922. jeffrey: another luhrmann signature mash-up, in this case created with jay-z. baz: it's a way of letting you feel the 'modernness' of it. that's an access issue. jeffrey: most recently, the not your ordinary biopic elvis. always, luhrmann says, the look, sound and substance are conceived as one whole. baz: in terms of design, develop meant, script develop meant, i do all the text or three. written word, the visual language, musical language. simultaneously. so it's extremely well involved. they're like three scripts, and then i bring them together. jeffrey: you're orchestrating the three scripts. baz: orchestrating is a good way of thinking of it. they've got to work in concert, but the music metaphor is a good

one because they, i don't look at the visual language as a ground issue or the music as a background issue. they are a language. and i think when you say i have a style, probably a way of saying it is, i have a particular cinematic language that i work in. it's a way of telling. >> this place is so barren. jeffrey: he sees faraway downs as an experiment -- big screen movie house creation, smallscreen episodic experience existing side by side. you still love the big theater experience. baz: i'm devoted to it. i'm devoted to the cinema. and the bigger, the better. jeffrey: but you're open to, clearly in this case, an episodic, i can sit at home and watch. baz: yeah. i look at storytelling architecturally, for the big screen it's horizontal. it's like -- a, b, c, it's flat, horizontal. but in streaming, you can go like this, and go vertical, come back to horizontal, vertical,

come back. so i just, i'm not scared of form. but i am experimenting. i'm not constrained by anything except, do i think that is a legitimate way to tell something? jeffrey: in fact, baz luhrman is so excited by his faraway downs experiment, he's already considering and up the sonic -- episodic re-working of elvis next. for the pbs newshour, i'm jeffrey brown in new york. geoff: join us again here tomorrow night for analysis of ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy's visit to washington with additional funding for the country stalled in congress. that's the newshour for tonight . i'm geoff bennett. amna: and i'm amna nawaz. on behalf of the entire newshour team, thank you for joining us. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by -- ♪

>> architect. beekeeper. mentor. a raymond james financial advisor tailors advice to help you live your life. life, well-planned. >> the kendeda fund, committed to advancing restorative justice and meaningful work through investments in transformative leaders and ideas. more at kendedafund.org. ♪ supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org. and with the ongoing support of these institutions -- ♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs news station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪

>> this is "pbs newshour west" from weta studios in washington and 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.]

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