lisa: tonight on pbs news weekend, how one country is tamping methane emissions. and conserved about safety after leaks showing staff mismanaged in cases at amazons one medical.

and another impact of climate change is forcing some countries to focus more on preserving their history. >> we have a responsibility to save our collections, our cultural history. it is more important than ever. >> major funding for the "pbs news weeke" has been provided by. >> consumer cellular, how may i help you? this is a pocket dial. with consumer cellular, you get nationwide coverage with no contracts. that 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 toour pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ lisa: go to sunday ening. i'm lisa desjardins, john yang is away. president biden is looking for a comeback on the campaign trail, as democrats debate if he should stay in the race for the presidency. earlier a member of the , democratic national committee

, a convention delegate, became another one to call on biden to end his campaign. the president was in pennsylvania, including stops at a church and a campaign office to rally his base. but even staunch supporters of the president say he needs to do more to convince voters. >> i think that he's got to go out there this week and show the american public that he is still that joe biden that they have come to know and love. i take him at his word, i believe that he can do it, but i think that this is a really critical week. i do think the clock is ticking. lisa: congress is back in session starting tomorrow. five democrats in the house of representatives have already called for president biden to step aside from the presidential ticket. in israel, prime minister benjamin netanyahu is still a no to a potential ceasefire deal in gaza , saying today that he wants leeway to keep fighting, until israel decides its goals are met. that, in contrast with protester

calls earlier today, hundreds of people marked nine months since the october 7 attacks with marches and by blocking highways in tel aviv. they called for netanyahu to agree to a cease fire deal or resign. hamas says it is waiting for netanyahu to officially respond to its latest position after it reportedly dropped a major demand yesterday and is on board with key parts of a u.s. backed cease-fire. the prime minister of france, appointed by emmanuel macron a few months ago, says he will resign following the country's second round of election. the polls are closed and ballot counting is underway. early exit polls show leftist candidates might win the most seats but the lack of a majority party might cause deadlock in parliament. turn out is estimated to be the highest in over 40 years. some voters say they want most is unity.

>> we are here and it is important to send a message to france of unity. lisa: final results are expected as early as tomorrow. a nasa crew is sharing their experience of being on an outer space mission for a year without leaving earth. they exited their simulated mars mission saturday after 378 days locked in a 3d printed space in houston. they conducted experiments as if they were living on mars. the next crew begins their mission in 2025. still to come, concerns about how amazon is handling some patient calls at the primary care company. and why preserving history is getting tougher.

>> this is "pbs news weekend" from weta studios in washington, d.c. lisa: methane is more harmful in terms of trapping heat with times more of an effect than co2 in the first decades after it is released. one country is teeing up a controversial approach to reducing emissions. allie rogan has more. reporter: last week denmark's coalition government announced it will introduce an annual tax on livestock greenhouse emissions. it is $100 per cow in an effort

to curb climate change. then is there deck -- the director of rural strategies and climate change at the institute for agriculture and trade policy . how big of a problem is methane and why doesn't get the attention put on carbon dioxide? >> it's a huge problem and an opportunity for us to impact climate change faster. methane is in the atmosphere for 12 years and is 80 times the potency of carbon dioxide over 20 years so as a result if you reduce methane, you can get more near term results and allow us to have a longer window to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. reporter: why do cows at livestock produce so much methane? >> cows and sheep and it has to do with their stomachs and how they work.

they have multiple stomachs and they belch out the methane and can also produce it through manure depending on how it is stored but in the u.s. and also denmark as we talk about the cows themselves are a major source of methane. reporter: what is the goal behind the tax denmark is putting in place? is it to get farmers to reduce their herds? >> they have multiple parts of the policy, the tax is only one part of it but yes the biggest part of the agriculture sector is dairy and all that production so they are trying to address that -- and hog production so they are trying to address that. they are trying to get farmers to transfer to rio for station to install wetlands, which are also major sources of greenhouse

gas emissions when you drain the wetlands and deforestation can help pull carbon dioxide out of the air. it is helping them transition out of so much animal production, they will still produce meat and dairy and so many animals but maybe not as much and baby scale back and have some land transition to climate beneficial land practices. reporter: do you think this will be effective? >> we will have to see. what is really exciting about it is this plan came together when farmers sat down with food system workers and climate advocates and put the plan together. this starts in 2030 and amps up even more in 2035 so it is a strategy that is sending signals to farmers in the marketplace that we will have to see how it

turns out but i think most importantly they have a plan to reduce big sources of greenhouse gas including methane. reporter: there are other ways to address, including changing the feed. how to those efforts factor into the broader conversation? >> it's a rising source of debate. it is still unclear how the feed additives will work and how will they work overtime, do the cows systems make adjustments or do they go back to reducing as much methane as before and what of the impacts on the health of the animals? it also requires a compliance system. a lo of farmers have animals out to pasture so this will not be as applicable to them. those systems emit less because

of how they management or. reporter: this is tax is the first of its kind. new zealand propose something similar but scrapped it. how likely will this be replicated outside of denmark, especially here in the united states? >> i think around the world they have started down the path that denmark has. for the u.s. agriculture is a smaller part of our overall admissions but we do have a problem with the large-scale dairies, hog operations, and it has to do with how the manure is managed. in giant manure lagoons where it is liquefied and that creates a lot of methane. we have not really gotten to the point where we are ready to have different parties sit down in the way they did in denmark and really hammer out a compromise

proposal but we need to start thinking about it. we have a lot of public programs, conservation programs in huge demand in the u.s., two thirds of farmers that apply for the programs get closed out, so that tells you how big the demand is and that has to do with all types of farming systems but including animal agriculture so the carrots part has not worked well in terms of reducing the output and agriculture so we will have to think about what other types of regulatory tools can be applied. every country is different, every context is different around climate change but what would work in the u.s. and we just start that can't -- and we need to art that conversation right now. reporter: thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you for having me.

♪ lisa: serious questions are rising over a new player in american health care. amazon. the online giant has been moving more aggressively into hands-on medicine, including last year when it bought “one medical”, a business providing primary care, with scores of clinics across the country. but recent reporting from the washington post is highlighting new concerns about patient safety. leaked documents show more than a dozen patients' safety was put at risk when their care was handled by call center staffers with little to no medical training. caroline o'donovan is a tech reporter covering amazon for the washington post. i want to start with the big picture. can you talk about how significant you think this move is by amazon in general, and how significant for health care in america is it that amazon is looking to get into this market?

>> absolutely. amazon is the second largest employer in the united states, it's an absolutely massive company. it has an entire cloud computing company inside of it. it's one of the biggest retail companies in the country. one medical, the primary care clinic they bought is sort of a drop in the bucket of the overall, american health care system. recently, amazon has been sort of completing its plan, if you they opened up a discount for will. one medical to all amazon prime subscribers, which would take, the number of people who are currently using one medical and potentially increase that to the millions of people who have amazon prime. they're also increasing their telehealth offerings, that u can access it has the potential not only to without insurance. impact a large number of patients if all prime members were to sign up for it, but also to kind of lead the market. you can see other companies following what amazon's doing here. lisa: so let's talk about your reporting about what we know so

far a little bit about one medical now that companies promoted itself is very patient centered. however your reporting found out that they outsourced a key part of the medical process for their patients, that initial call that someone might make to express a medical concern. what did that mean for patients exactly, what did you find out? caroline: so many one medical patients, the primary way that they're, accustomed to interacting with the with their health providers is through an app. but what a lot of people didn't know and what i didn't know when i started reporting this story, is that before amazon acquired one medical, one medical had acquired a company called aura, which is a senior health care company. and that company was all about providing people the most engaged, the most frankly expensive and intensive care that they could up front in hopes of keeping people and medicare out of the hospital over the years to come. those patients were obviously accustomed to being able to text with physicians assistants, call the doctor's office and get someone on the phone right away. in the year following amazon's acquisition of one medical, though, they made the decision to shift those phone calls to a call center in tempe, arizona, which they referred to

internally as mission control. when you have these 65 and older patients, many of whom have chronic health care issues, who are used to having a very close, intimate relationship with their health care provider, and now they're calling that same exact phone number, and the call is being picked up by someone who might not have all of the details about their chart and health condition, obviously it has been frustrating. lisa: can you help us with some specific examples of what happened to the patients when they called this call center? caroline: what was happening what we found, through the , documents that that i was able to obtain and see is that patients were calling in with what are called red flag symptoms internally. there's 17 of them, you know, things that would suggest, okay, maybe something urgent is going on in about a dozen cases, from what we saw, at least, rather than, coecting those people to a virtual health provider who could answer their questions right away, someone who was medically trained, the call

center employees, they were scheduling appointments for these people same day or the next day, or in some cases a couple days into the future, rather than connecting them by phone withomeone who could help them. there is a period of time, in mid february when this change was initially happening, when it seemed like just in this colorado area alone, this was happening almost every day. someone dealing with symptoms of a blood clot, with sudden rib pain, someone calling with stomach pain, blood in their stool. so in the documents that were leaked to us, that we actually there's a doctor who wrote a note saying, you know, i don't think these call center people even realize that they're triaging patients, which is not something that they're qualified to do. lisa: what does amazon say about it? caroline amazon obviously says : that patient feedback is important to them, and really emphasize the fact that as far as they know, no one was harmed. in a couple of cases, they acknowledged that the process didn't go, as it was supposed to, and they retrained the employees involved, but they said, you know, by and large,

everyone is ok and moreover, one medical is a separate company and no one's medical care is being, is being decided by amazon, is what they said is, you know, one, medical doctors are free to make their own independent decisions. they also said that the call center, you know, is there to increase patient access, which essentially means like you can get your phone call answered faster. but the patients i spoke to, you know, again and again and some of the one medical employees i spoke to said there's a difference between getting a phone call getting answered faster and set an actually getting your -- there is a difference between getting a phone call answered faster and actually having your problem solved. lisa: is it clear this was motivated out of, aren't for increased profits or do we know? caroline: i don't think we necessarily know about profits. you know, amazon famously didn't make profits for a number of years. it's a very data oriented company so things like how many . minutes it takes for someone's phone call to get answered or how much work one individual type of worker is doing in an

amount of time, that's kind of the way amazon approaches these things and thinks about them. and i don't know necessarily if they'll find in the long term that, taking care of these patients who are on medicare, who are 65 and older, who have chronic health condition necessarily gels with their approach to doing business. lisa: is it clear amazon plans to do nothing but expand in this area and to health care? caroline: amazon has a very large ambitions in the health care space and i think we know that because we've seen them experiment with different things and shut them down, but then keep going, which is, you know, another very amazon way of doing business. their ceo, andy jassy, mentions health care every time he talks about the state of the business. they recently started offering discounts on one medical to all prime members. they're trying to get one medical patients to use the amazon pharmacy system, which they say that in some places, you know, you can get your prescriptions delivered in under two hours by drone. so definitely, they see healthcare as fitting into, the amazon way of life. and if you think about what amazon did for the shopping, right, it has something where you want the stuff, but you don't necessarily want to get

off the couch. lisa: caroline, thank you so much. the damage from hurricane beryl, the earliest storm like it in a hundred years, highlights concerns about climate change, especially on vulnerable island nations. beryl is currently heading towards texas, after devastating the grenadines and jamaica. as storms like these have grown stronger and more common, they raise new threats for island nations, not just to infrastructure, but also to artifacts and documents that help define cultures. ali rogin is back with this report on two island nations- in the atlantic and pacific- taking steps to preserve their threatened histories for future generations. >> talofa and warm pacific greetings from tuvalu. reporter: in 2022, tuvalu's foreign affairs minister addressed the cop27 climate conference from the sandy beaches of his tiny island nation. at least, that's what it looks like at but then the camera first, zooms out for an eerie revelation. >> our digital nation will provide an online presence that can replace our physical presence and allow us to

continue to function as a state. reporter: he was not on the island itself, but rather a copy that only exists in the virtual world, a preview of what he said might soon be the only remaining version of his country. >> we are here talking about the worst case scenario when tuvalu no longer exists. reporter: dr. tapugao falefou is the ambassador and permanent representative of tuvalu to the united nations. he says the worst case scenario is an increasing reality for his countr and its culture. >> tuvalu, within this century will be engulfed by the the the ocean. will be submerged. and so how can we maintain our our statehood? how can we preserve our heritage, our cultural identity? reporter: tuvalu's future now project is intended to not just

preserve the past, but protect the country's future, making sure the nearly 12,000 people can still claim citizensp, and have access to government services, even if the physical so far, 26 countries have recognized this so-called digital statehood. they are not alone other island . other island nations are taking on similar projects even if they aren't in immediate risk of disappearance. >> we have a responsibility to safeguard our collections, our island's history, our cultural history. it's becoming more important than ever. reporter: how does climate change factor into the decision to take on this project? >> we've started digitizing not specifically because of imminent danger but, yeah, with , temperatures also rising, that might be a bigger factor in the future. reporter: aruba's not at risk of imminent disappearance, but past natural disasters underscore the need to protect fragile

documents and objects. the database is filled with maps from aruba's colonial past, 3d artifacts, television shows, as well as documents describing its history and culture. >> countries that are vulnerable to climate change are becoming keenly aware that the physical objects that are in their libraries and archives and museums are vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather, extreme heat. reporter: journalist kate knibbs has written about aruba's digitization project for wired magazine. >> a book that was printed 500 years ago is not going to be in the same condition 500 years from now. so i just think this is a moment where a lot of different institutions are realizinghat getting a digital backup is a smart thing to do. reporter: an ancillary benefit to these digital backups -- easier access worldwide. >> i wish i was younger, 10 years younger, 20 years younger, because there is still a lot of research to be done. reporter: adi martis is an aruban-born historian and author who lives in the netherlands. he frequently searches aruba's digital archive while doing

research on aruba's history - the first draft of which was controlled mainly by colonizers. >> recently the history was written with the european vision, eurocentric vision. i'm interested in how people live and the common people and what they ate, how the food came to aruba, how they work, how mu they earn. i am interested in other things than the european historians who came and wrote about our history. reporter: using aruba's archive, he's been able to tell the stories of enslaved people, and even reunite some of their living relatives. >> you can find a lot of information, when the slave was born, when they sold him or her to someone else, when they moved in another country or same country, when they died. you can even, generate family trees. reporter: aruba is working with the internet archive, a u.s. based non-profit focused on providing free access to information online, and the home of the popular “wayback machine.” >> the internet archive's

overarching goal is just to digitize the entire world. i guess it's similar to wikipedia in how you can end up going down rabbit holes and learning a bunchf information that you never anticipated or never thought you'd be interested in learning. reporter: these virtual archives serve as a rich trove for curious researchers, but at their core they are a response an existential threat, and an international distress signal. >> the pace from which we are going through the impact of climate change and especially sea level rise, is something that is very alarming and that we can only ask the international communitto please pick up speed on how best we can address this. reporter: bringing more awareness to their countries through the digital world, even as their physical one is disappearing. for pbs news weekend, i'm ali rogin.

lisa: we have significant coverage of cultures at risk -- that includes a look at the collaboration between the u.s. army and the smithsonian institution to minimize damage to art and historic sites during wartime. for more, visit pbs.org/news hour. ♪ and that's our program for tonight. i'm lisa desjardins. for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. have a good week. ♪ >> major funding for the "pbs news weekend" has been provided by. 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. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.]

vincent: oh. oh. reporter 1: a dangerous virus is spreading rapidly inside the us. officials are very worried that it could come here. china has more than 200 confirmed cases of coronavirus, it's called, which produces pneumonia-like symptoms. three people have already died... play. [jazz music]