captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> brown: tensions between the u.s. and afghanistan ratcheted up today, as afghan president karzai said nato troops must pull out of rural villages. good evening, i'm jeffrey brown. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. on the "newshour" tonight, we have the latest on the continued fallout from the weekend killings of civilians allegedly by a u.s. soldier. >> brown: then, we assess the accusations of a toxic culture on wall street, after the very public resignation of a goldman sachs executive. >> woodruff: paul solman talks with author robert harris about his new novel which highlights the very real dangers of high frequency trading in the stock market.

>> we live in an age in the financial markets and there's no doubt at all, i think, that the if the volume of computer-traded stocks has helped contribute to that. >> brown: from west africa, special correspondent steve sapienza follows two journalists, as they investigate shortages of clean, safe drinking water. >> people were actually scooping water from the river which is massively polluted and there are people dying of cholera, falling terribly sick from dysentery, typhoid fever. >> woodruff: and we close with another in our "daily download" series. tonight, how the candidates and the campaigns use facebook. >> brown: that's all ahead on tonight's "newshour." major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: and the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations.

this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> brown: the u.s. mission in afghanistan ran into yet more trouble today. afghan president hamid karzai announced he wants american forces to pull back to their bases, after mass killings last weekend. karzai's call was the most direct fallout from sunday's massacre of 16 afghans, allegedly by an american soldier stationed at a small outpost near kandahar. in a statement, he said, "international security forces have to be taken out of afghan village outposts and return to bases" immediately. the afghan president also said he wants nato to hand over all

security duties to afghan forces in 2013-- a year early. that came just a day after president obama and british prime minister cameron had reaffirmed the existing timetable. >> i don't anticipate, at this stage, that we're going to be making any sudden additional changes to the plan that we currently have. >> brown: karzai issued his statement after a meeting with u.s. defense secretary leon panetta, who ended a two-day trip to afghanistan. later, a spokesman for panetta played down karzai's comments. he said they were consistent with plans to withdraw most foreign troops by the end of 2014, after the transfer of panetta characterized his meeting with the afghan leader, this way. >> in discussions that i just completed with karzai and also with other afghan leaders we really did focus on the strategy

for the future and what needs to be accomplished as we move towards the end of 2014 and then beyond 2014, the missions that we need to focus on to maintain enduring presence. >> reporter: meanwhile, there was more on the afghan who stole a truck and breached security yesterday as panetta arrived. pentagon officials now believe the incident was more serious than first thought, and directed at high-level officials greeting panetta on an airport ramp. it remains unclear if panetta himself was a target. the driver died today of burns suffered when he tried to ignite gasoline in the vehicle. before leaving the country, the secretary also said he promised a full investigation of sunday's massacre. but afghan lawmakers voiced outrage, after the accused staff sergeant-- still not publicly identified-- was flown out of afghanistan.

>> ( translated ): this killer has been taken to kuwait, it is not acceptable for us and we condemn this. america has not done the right thing. he should have been put in prison in here and put on trial here in afghanistan. >> brown: also today, the taliban announced it was pulling out of talks with the united states. the militant group blamed shaky, erratic and vague statements from american officials. in washington, white house spokesman jay carney denied there had been inconsistent american statements. carney and other american officials stressed again today that ultimately, any reconciliation process must be an afghan-led and completed project. >> woodruff: still to come on the "newshour": questions of greed and corruption on wall street; a financial thriller; water worries in west africa and social media in the presidential campaign. but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: large crowds

rallied in the capital of syria today. this time, it was a show of support for the government, on the first anniversary of the uprising. we have a report narrated by jonathan rugman of "independent television news." >> reporter: in damascus today, thousands of people were waving the syrian flag. one year on, and thanks to a mix of fear, loyalty and violence, president assad has survived when leaders of tunisia, egpyt, libya and yemen have not. moscow and beijing have blocked un action against syria's leader. while these people may feel that and in a sign of a leak from within the president's inner circle, the guardian has published emails it claims are from the inboxes of president assad and his wife, asma. the president uses the pseudonym sam; his wife is known as ak. and they picture lives lived in a bubble, rarely punctured by reality. at the end of december, while tanks were on the streets of homs, the president sent an advisor this youtube video of a toy car with a gun shooting at a

pile of biscuits. the video is a joke at the expense of arab league monitors visiting homs that week, who failed to stop the violence. two days after the violence in homs intensified last month, assad sent his wife an itunes file of a country and western song called "god gave me you." the song and emails revealing >> sreenivasan: amid the ongoing violence, officials in turkey reported more than 1,000 syrians crossed the border, seeking refuge, in just the last 24 hours.

wall street rallied again, on the latest encouraging news about the economy. first-time jobless claims fell back to a four-year low and, inflation at the wholesale level remained under control. in response, the dow jones industrial average gained more than 58 points to close at 13,252. the nasdaq rose more than 15 points to close at 3,056. the standard and poor's 500 index closed above 1,400 for the first time since june of 2008. the u.s. agriculture department will let schools opt out of using a ground beef filler dubbed "pink slime" by its critics. the move was announced today. the low-cost ingredient is made from fatty bits of meat. it is heated to remove most of the fat, and exposed to an ammonia gas treatment to kill bacteria. the filler has been widely used for years. but a growing social media campaign has demanded it be taken out of school lunches. the fight over gas prices and energy policy heated up today in the presidential campaign. in largo, maryland, president obama ridiculed, but did not name the republicans vying for his job.

he said they have dismissed alternative energy sources and refused to face reality. >> we've heard this kind of thinking before let me tell you something: if some of these folks were around when columbus set sail... (laughter) ... they must have been founding members of the flat-earth society. they would not have believed that the world was round. (applause) >> sreenivasan: hours later, republican newt gingrich rejected the criticism. gingrich said again, the president is far too optimistic about the potential of alternative energy to replace fossil fuels anytime soon. he spoke in carpentersville, illinois. >> i don't ridicule biofuels. i support biofuels. i've supported ethanol, for example, which is a biofuel. i've supported cellulose, which is a biofuel. i have friends at texas a&m who are working on algae. the idea that algae is a

solution this summer is a fantasy and he knows it's a fantasy. >> sreenivasan: meanwhile, the price of gas rose again today. the american automobile association a.a.a said it topped $3.80 a gallon. that's 51 cents higher than a month ago. former illinois governor rod blagojevich headed to federal prison today to begin a 14-year term for corruption. he left his home in chicago early this morning surrounded by a throng of media. by day's end he had reported to a minimum security facility in englewood, colorado outside denver. blagojevich was convicted on charges that, as governor, he tried to sell or trade an appointment to president obama's old u.s. senate seat. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to judy. >> woodruff: the investment bank goldman sachs is back at the center of public attention again over questions about its culture and business practices and whether it and other firms are too focused on their own profits. as the new york stock exchange opened this morning, the financial world was still buzzing about an op-ed article

in yesterday's "new york times." greg smith, a vice president at goldman sachs in europe, resigned with a series of broadsides aimed at the bank. he wrote that the firm cares about money, not about its customers. "i attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients," he said. "it's purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them." smith did not accuse goldman of anything illegal, but he said c.e.o. lloyd blankfein and president gary cohn had lost hold of the firm's culture on their watch. and he warned that the decline in the firm's moral fiber is the single biggest threat to its survival. in response, blankfein and cohn issued a public letter to employees, saying, "we are far from perfect, but where the firm has seen a problem, we've responded to it seriously and

substantively. and we have demonstrated that fact." but former federal reserve chairman paul volcker said yesterday that goldman's character changed after it went public in 1999. >> like other investment banks they became a trading operation rather than a largely customer oriented underwriting operation. when that changed the mentality and i'm afraid it's a business that leads to a lot of conflicts of interest. >> woodruff: goldman sachs had already come under fire, after the 2008 financial meltdown. at a hearing in 2010, senator carl levin charged the company had deceived clients. >> you are betting against the very security that you're selling to them. you don't disclose that. that's worse. that's worse than not being a fiduciary. that's being in a conflict of interest situation. >> we don't... we don't-- i

don't think our clients care or they should care. >> woodruff: anger at goldman and other big banks sparked democrats to push through the dodd-frank financial regulatory reform act. but battles over its implementation continue. the financial industry was also targeted in last fall's occupy wall street movement. we get two takes now on the criticism of goldman sachs and the larger picture surrounding the industry with james angel, a professor at georgetown university's mcdonough school of business. he focuses on the structure and regulation of financial markets and has served on advisory boards to major stock indexes. and michael greenberger, a former regulator who was director of trading and markets at the commodity futures trading commission. he's now a professor of law at the university of maryland. thank you both for being with us. michael greenberger, i'm going to begin with you. is goldman sachs as bad as greg

smith says in this article? >> i'm sorry to say i think there's no doubt that that's the case. i mean, in your lead-in, you got senator levin who's given the justice department several hundred pages of investigative files. he believed that they not only deceived their customers but deceived congress by not telling congress the truth. paul volcker, former fed chair, reaches that result. frankly, many people have said about mr. smith's op-ed that this is like telling you that the sun rises in the east in the morning about goldman. and far matter the ethics on wall street in general. but it's still-- as this uproar demonstrates-- it's a terrific sore, not only with people who are involved with wall street but with the american public as a whole who spend trillions bailing these companies out and continues to find out that there is conduct here that really

defies common sense and good ethics. and with goldman, it's especially troublesome because goldman had its famous 14 basic principles of business. principle number one was the.... >> woodruff: let me just stop you there and i want to pick up on your first basic point and turn to jim angel. just on this essential criticism from greg smith in that piece yesterday that the moral fiber as deteriorated. >> there have always been conflicts of interests in financial markets and charges of these conflicts are really not new even at goldman sachs, whether it was the i.p.o. spinning scandal of the late '90s or the excesses of the 1920s. if you go back in financial history, you'll see that there have been plenty of these kind of allegations. >> woodruff: what about goldman itself? he makes terrible charges. he talks about a toxic atmosphere focused only on profits at the expense of what's in the client's best interest.

>> and unfortunately you can make the same charge against many businesses. >> woodruff: so you're saying there's either nothing to these chargings or everybody does it. >> i'm saying it's commonly widespread. on the one hand, we expect companies to work on behalf or their shareholders and try to be making money for their customer bus we also expect intelligent companies to understand that if they don't provide a good service and good product the customers won't come back. >> woodruff: michael greenberger i think you were getting to the point about the culture changing at goldman, that it was one kind of company and that it's changed in some way. >> yes, absolutely. really it's good will was built on its number one principle of doing business. we act on our customers' interest, if we follow our customers' interests, profits will follow. and goldman was sort of a beacon of that kind of ethical conduct

and i think as former fed chair volcker said, when they moved from a partnership to a corporation it's more difficult to instill the ethical culture that really made them so prominent on wall street and really put them at the front of all these investment banks. right now this is a huge black eye not only for goldman but for wall street as a whole and what is happening is not all of goldman's customers are widows and orphans. there are a lot of very sophisticated pension funds, very big hedge funds and basically i've been at meetings with those people and they're saying, look, if this is the way business is being done we're going to stop trading in these products. they don't have to trade in these products to make money and the markets are just going to become dysfunctional. >> woodruff: professor angel, let me come back to you on this question that we heard from paul volcker, the former fed chairman. that when it became principally a trading institution, when it

went public and did more trading starting in 1999, was that some sort of turning point for the company? i don't think it's the turning point some people say it is. as i mentioned in the 1920s goldman was roundly criticized for many of the activities they engaged in then which sound a lot like the current allegations. >> so you're saying you don't see that much of a change. in what about comparing goldman sachs to the rest of sweet in >> i see them as pretty similar. whenever there's big money there's big temptation and yet they operate in a very competitive business. people don't have to do business with goldman sachs. if their customers don't trust them, they will take their business somewhere else so even though they may be very competitive and profit driven, if they're not providing services their customers want,

if their customers don't trust them they're going to lose that business. >> woodruff: so it's sort of a "buyer beware" philosophy. so is it, michael green everything? >> well, if everybody does it it's hard to take your business somewhere else and that's leading to withdrawing through some of these markets and therefore shrinking these t economy. dodd-frank... this man was a derivatives trader. derivatives are widely believed to be the cause of the meltdown. there were toxic bets that were undercapitalized. in this derivatives market, congress and dodd-frank said that the big dealers like goldman must abide by business conduct rules of good faith and fair dealing. unfortunately in the implementation process goldman and the trade association for wall street have watered this down so their that their customers can sign standardized documents that wave their right to good faith and fair dealing. the american people, really,

this has been a catastrophe for the american people. they've had to bail these companies out. this kind of conduct leads to further systemic risk and unless the american public and most especially our prosecutors, the justice department get on top of these issues we're going to destroy our economy again. >> woodruff: do you see it as a catastrophe mr. greenberger is describing? >> well, we certainly have just been through a financial catastrophe but the real question is what do we do about it? wall street serves an essential economic purpose. it helps to allocate capital. when a company needs to raise money, to expand their business they go to the financial markets to get it from investors. when companies need risk management solutions, things like derivatives, they go to the financial markets to get them these are essential tools in our complex economy. so the real question is what do we do about it? how do we make sure that we have the right incentives in place

and the right kind of regulation? >> woodruff: and are you saying that's in place now or needs to be put in place? >> it needs to be put in place. dodd-frank dumped a bunch of new rules on an already dysfunctional regulatory structure. it's not a question of more or less regulation. it's not like there's a regulation thermostat you can turn up or down a degree. instead we need more intelligent regulation. >> woodruff: finally, michael greenberger, in brief, what's the message the public should take away from this article? this... as you said, latest furor about wall street and the way it works? >> this goes to the core of the way vast amounts of money, trillions of dollars, are traded back and forth and besides the lack of ethics, this leads to catastrophe and we've been through one and if we're not to go through another one where we, the taxpayers, have to bail these guys out, we've got to support our federal regulators and our prosecutors.

this is... could be prosecutorial y'all offense. certainly senator levin said so. the justice department hasn't done anything. we've got to move on it. >> woodruff: michael greenberger james angel, thank you both very much. >> brown: and speaking of the markets: we turn to a very different, fictional take on wall street in the form of thriller with a plot line drawn from real life. that's the subject of newshour economics correspondent paul solman's conversation. part of his ongoing reporting: "making sense of financial news." >> reporter: not every novel gets its own trailer, especially not novels about the world economy. but then again, few novelists have a track record like robert harris'. >> this is what it's like being on the campaign trail with the prime minister in 1983. >> reporter: after years as a british journalist, robert harris turned to speculative thrillers, so popular, they've consistently reached a mass audience.

"fatherland," an hbo movie; "archangel," a bbc mini series; and "the ghost"-- renamed "the ghost writer" when filmed by roman polanski. but harris latest book, "the fear index," stars a hedge fund driven by an algorithm run wild and the more harris researched its plot, the more plausible it seemed to become. >> i had never heard about algorithmic trading. i went to see a hedge fund in london. they showed me a room full of computers. and in the course of the 20 minutes that i watched this machine made one and a half million dollars without any human intervention. >> reporter: what did you come to understand that these machines were doing? >> what the machines essentially do is take millions of pairs of data, you know if the price of copper is here and the german stock exchange is there, and the price of oil is here, and ibm is there, then tomorrow the price of tin will be here. it's not always right by any

means but they only have to be right 55% of the time and then they're going to make an awful lot of money. >> reporter: now computer trading has been around for years, and stock exchanges have instituted various safeguards to keep it from getting out of hand. but the new game in town is high frequency trading, with computers and their algorithms moving in and out of stocks as many as tens of thousands of times a day. >> and what they've done in my book is they've developed an algorithm that can predict the markets by analyzing the incidence of fear-related words on the internet, trends on facebook, twitter, the sense of a mood. i thought i was making this all up, but of course i then discover that this is yesterdays news, they've been doing this for years! there's nothing you can invent that these guys, very clever, haven't thought of before you! bloomberg news feeds are digitized and go straight into the machine and buzz words are picked out: panic, rumor, fear, slump.

and you know, you just get a few milliseconds maybe advantage if the machine can work out what this news story is going to do to the markets in the next few minutes. >> reporter: and that's what your novel gets at, the ability of an algorithm to exploit that anxiety. >> that we are the victims of some sort of gigantic h.g. wells-like science fiction creation, which is the markets so huge in the, in the numbers of shares and the vast values of transactions every day, so fast with the speed, that it somehow slipped the control of human beings and almost is itself a kind of frankenstein's monster run amok in the world. >> suddenly it's down 300 points from when i sat down here. >> reporter: on the afternoon of may 6, 2010, reality overtook the fiction harris had just begun. the dow, already down 300 points for the day on greek debt jitters, plunged another 600 points within five minutes. >> when i ask them what the heck

is going on down here, i don't know, there is fear, this is classic capitulation, really, it is classic capitulation, there is fear in this market. >> and i remember watching that happening live. and it was that uncanny feeling that your fiction was coming true in front of your eyes because it was very much algorithmic trading that caused that flash crash. >> reporter: in the u.s., high frequency firms represent only 2% of the 20,000 or so trading firms operating today, but they now account for nearly three- quarters of all trades. and the average time a stock investment is held these days is 22 seconds. if time is money, microseconds are now millions. in a recent so-called "ted talk on cutting-edge technology, tech whiz kevin slavin wowed the audience by describing buildings now being hollowed out in lower manhattan.

why? so that high frequency trading firms can move in and get as close as possible to new york's point of entry for the internet at a so-called carrier hotel in tribeca. >> and this is really where the wires come right up into the city. and the further away you are from that you're a few microseconds behind every time. these guys down on wall street, marco polo and cherokee nation, they're eight microseconds behind all these guys going into the empty buildings being hollowed out up around the carrier hotel. and just to give you a sense of what microseconds are, it takes you 500,000 microseconds just to click a mouse. but if you're a wall street algorithm and you're five microseconds behind, you're a loser. >> reporter: who are these people? >> they don't hire anyone to work who has less than a ph.d in the natural sciences or mathematics and that weren't peer-reviewed in the top 15. they don't even want someone to

come and work for them who's got a degree in economics, it's too soft. >> reporter: the algorithms are actually the brainchildren of top flight physicists, forced to migrate to wall st. in the early '90s, when congress killed the $12 billion, 54-mile circumference supercollider, for which land outside dallas was already excavated. >> there were going to be 2,000 scientific posts at this desertron as they called it. and this coincided, were talking here of 1993, with the rise in wall street of computers and of pricing risk and bringing in mathematicians, and hundreds moved into wall street. we're talking about the influence of physicists and mathematicians, and the speed and power of computers and of the internet and the web have utterly changed everything. >> reporter: now the traditional argument for high frequency trading is that it promotes liquidity-- making it easier for

the normal investor because there are so many more big buyers and sellers willing to make trades quickly and cheaply. but many market observers are skeptical. count robert harris among them. >> we live in an age of great jitteriness in the financial markets and there's no doubt in my mind at all i think that the volume of computer-traded stock has helped contribute to that. one of the great moments for me in researching the novel was to listen to the audio commentary that was broadcast live from the pit of the chicago market as the whole market started to collapse. ( screaming ) and you can hear people screaming in the background, and the guys voice is as if he's seen the monster coming towards him.

it's a most extraordinary piece of soundtrack. >> i think that we've had the most exciting 15 minutes in street signs in history. >> reporter: by the end of the day, the market had recouped the 600 points it lost during the flash crash. but nobody can guarantee that it wont happen again. >> that is what is worrying i think about this high frequency trading. and we wont know its disastrous until the disaster has occurred. >> reporter: a disaster like the one imagined in harris book. or real life. >> woodruff: next tonight, from west africa: a look at the challenges of getting the most basic resource -- water -- to people who need it. special correspondent steve sapienza partnered with investigative journalists in two nations, ghana and nigeria, as they searched for what's behind the water shortages. his story is part of a collaboration with the pulitzer

center on crisis reporting. >> reporter: every day, millions of people across a wide swath of west africa struggle to get access to clean and safe drinking water. the world health organization estimates more than 1,000 people in the region die each day from illnesses related to unsafe water. the shortage is also hampering development here. in two of the biggest and richest nations of the region, nigeria and ghana, pollution, political unrest, and corruption have contributed to water shortages for decades. what's different today, is that a new generation of west african journalists is trying to hold government officials accountable for the failures. we followed two of them, nigeria's ameto akpe and ghana's samuel agyeman, as they did their jobs. as a reporter for nigeria's "businessday" newspaper, ametos stories target the contradiction of a country with immense oil wealth and great water resources that are not reaching their citizens. we met in abuja, and traveled six hours by car to makurdi, the capitol of benue state in north- central nigeria. >> the river benue, which is one

of the major rivers of nigeria, runs through the town. the town practically sits on the banks of this major resource, however, the town brings to life a common proverb, which says you sit by the riverside, yet you wash your hands with spittle. >> reporter: ameto chose to focus her reporting here on the greater makurdi water works project. it's the latest government attempt to expand delivery of treated water from the benue river to 600,000 residents, the majority of whom have waited decades to receive water from city pipes. the previous attempt to build a water treatment plant ended in scandal in 2008, with an unfinished treatment facility, and city officials unable to account for $6 million. this failure impacts the hundreds of thousands of residents outside the reach of the city's old pipe network, who now pay high prices for water delivery from tanker trucks and water pump operators. and those who can't afford water delivery collect untreated water from the benue river. >> i visited here and i was shocked by what i saw.

people were actually scooping water from the benue river, which is massively polluted. and there are several occurrences every year of people dying of cholera, terribly sick from dysentery, typhoid fever, >> reporter: the water minister of benue state says the remedy is finishing the greater makurdi water works. >> so in other words, this is an answer to problem of water. >> this is the answer to the problems of water in makurdi now that we have built the water works, this water has to be sent out to the people. >> reporter: but to do that, makurdi needs a larger pipe network, and one that is in good condition. >> these pipes have corroded and so they cannot withstand any pressure of water coming out of the new treatment plant so you'll have them busting all over the place. >> reporter: former coca-cola executive, nat apir, is now an independent water engineer. he says the new water treatment plant will produce enough water, but it will have nowhere to go. >> the coverage of the pipes that were laid about 30 years ago was just about 25-30% of the

metropolis and its environs. hence, the need to lay new pipe networks. >> reporter: facing public criticism about the aging pipes, the government has asked contractors to submit proposals to expand the pipe network. >> is there any timeframe? people are waiting, people are expectant. >> don't worry, don't worry, in the next, six months, 12 months. it's far, it's far. we are expecting that by the time we start pumping the water out. >> experts say it may blow and... >> pipes busting? i want to see that, want to see that. >> okay, you want to see that before you intervene? it brings to mind an occurrence which in the early '90s, another locality very close to makurdi, this great water project was commissioned. however, the day it was test run, the whole city, the whole town was flooded because the pipe busted, because some people say faulty technical work.

>> reporter: in the neighboring country of ghana, residents of the capital, accra, are frustrated with the government's failure to provide a reliable supply of piped fresh water. this despite ghana's ample water resources and a steady flow of foreign aid for water projects. about four years ago, when accra experienced severe water shortages, the public named these containers "coo-four gallons" after the sitting president. water access has since improved, but reporter samuel agyeman is asking why the yellow containers are still used in neighborhoods here. samuel agyeman is an award- winning reporter who anchors the national evening news for metro tv. his investigation into illegal nighttime water tapping led him to pursue the much bigger problem of gaps in water access citywide. the story starts right in his own backyard, the seaside enclave known as teshie. >> teshie is about, has a huge population, close to 200,000. very diverse as well. it has a very poor community, it has the middle income folks, and then it also has the extreme rich. >> reporter: samuel's

neighborhood is fairly new and receives water from a city pipeline. the water supply is erratic, however, because the city has not kept up with the water demand of all the households and businesses in this growing city of nearly two million people. >> anytime we get the water like on saturdays and sundays, i store some of them in these bottles and then i boil them anytime i want to use them to cook or to drink. and this is also another bucket where i have water in there, you can see the water inside, so i can like a bucket or two of these and then i use them to bathe and in the bathroom. >> reporter: a short drive from samuel's home sit the poorer, ramshackle seaside areas of teshie. when samuel arrives residents, crowded around a newly-installed water tap outside a private home, tell him they've waited 15 years for piped water. that meant walking to the nearest fresh water supply with buckets. >> if you want to walk, how many minutes? >> about one hour. >> about one hour before you get water to take a bath and go to school?

>> yes. >> reporter: city taps that were once a faint promise are now a source of fresh income in this part of teshie. those lucky enough to have a tap on their property charge a small fee to their neighbors for a bucket of water. still most of this community remains underserved by the ghana water company, a state-run entity that samuel discovered has been more successful at raking in foreign investment dollars than supplying water. >> we are attracting a lot of investment like nobody's business. >> how do we close this gap, you know, considering the sort of investments we are attracting like nobody's business? >> there's a lot of... there's a lot of work being done... a lot of projects. there are a lot of projects that are ongoing which can be delivered in the next two, three, four years. >> so what happens to a community like teshie that has been in existence for a long, long time, that haven't had water for 20 years? >> it is not true. >> reporter: the reality on the ground is otherwise. samuel says the problem is officials are not accountable to the underserved communities. >> you go around talking to people on the ground, these people don't have any sense of

what the money is being used for, they don't know when a project is supposed to come to them, they don't see people who are responsible. >> reporter: according to a 2010 study by the world health organization and unicef, eight out of every $10 in the water- sector budget here are from foreign donors, who are not interested in building water pipelines in accra. alban bagbin, is the minister of water, resources, works and housing. >> many of our development partners are interested in developing treatment plants and not in supporting the expansion of our distribution network. >> reporter: nonetheless, bagbin predicts the country will reach 100% coverage by 2025. >> one would only hope that with confession and admission of the fact that investments are coming into the water sector authorities would be up for

doing and make sure that in the very shortest possible time we get 100% coverage of water supply. >> reporter: faced with the daily struggle to conserve water at home, reporter samuel agyeman has vowed to keep up the pressure on authorities until he and everyone living in neighborhoods across accra have access to safe, clean water 24 hours a day, seven days a week. >> brown: on friday, nigeria's president officially commissioned the macurdi water works. but according to journalist ameto ahpa.. there's been no change in water quality or supply for local residents, because a pipe network remains to be built. >> woodruff: we'll be back shortly with a look at how the presidential candidates are using facebook. but first: this is pledge week on pbs. this break allows your public television station to ask for your support. and that support helps keep programs like ours on the air.

>> brown: for those stations not taking a pledge break: we take a second look at china's newest english language sensation-- jessica beinecke a teacher of american slang. hari sreenivasan has the story. >> reporter: millions of chinese are picking up american slang thanks to what's happening in this washington d.c. apartment. meet jessica beinecke, china's newest english-language star. five days a week-- from the comfort of her dining table on capitol hill-- the 25-year-old writes, hosts and produces a show called "o.m.g. meiyu," or "oh, my gosh, american english." ♪ in it, she explains idioms and slang to her chinese viewers. beinecke began studying mandarin as an undergraduate. in 2006, she enrolled in middlebury college's intensive

language program, and spent the first half of 2007 studying in beijing and hong go, near shanghai. >> i had the best experience studying mandarin in mainland china, and studying the culture and everything. i feel like it was always me talking to young chinese people and i-- that was my big goal when i was in china was to make as many friends as i could. >> reporter: she didn't become a star in china until last august, when she produced a video called "yucky gunk." >> it was about all the gunk that comes out of your face. and we talked about eye gunk and ear wax and boogers. ( laughs ) >> reporter: that video went viral, and has since picked up more than one and a half million times.

omg is becoming a hit in china. on the chinese equivalent of you-tube, omg's garnered more than seven million views. and on wei-bo, the chinese equivalent of twitter, the program is now followed by more than 200,000 people. beinecke's bosses are taking notice. she works at v.o.a., voice of america, the 70-year-old u.s. government-funded broadcaster with programs in more than 40 languages around the world. so why is this working? >> she talks to them on their level. and i think that's something we need to replicate around v.o.a. >> reporter: david ensor is voice of america's director. he says while o.m.g. may not fall within the traditional idea of what v.o.a. does, the show helps the chinese further understand american culture. >> we are a communications company. multimedia. on many platforms. we're reaching out to various peoples around the world and our mission is to report the news, yes, but also to explain america and american values to people around the world. what jessica is doing is something you will see more

people doing here, which is reaching out the younger generations in different countries around the world and communicating with them. >> reporter: but why does it resonate with chinese audiences? for some ideas, we visited nearby georgetown university. there, we asked a group of chinese nationals and ph.d candidates in the linguistics department why beinecke's show strikes a chord. >> so first of all, the girl is very cute. >> reporter: huang hai moved to the u.s. in september. >> one of my friends sent a link to me through weibo, which is china's counterpart of twitter. yeah, so i know that this video got very popular in china, especially among the teenagers. >> reporter: huang lihong has studied and taught in the u.s. for eight years. she hadn't heard of o.m.g. but as a teacher could immediately see its value. >> my first impression about her is that she's very energetic and enthusiastic in teaching english. she uses a lot of facial

expressions and body language to help the learners learn the language that she is teaching. >> reporter: her colleague, luke amoroso, studies english language instruction in china and sees obvious benefits of focusing on american slang. >> when you learn slang, people like that because now you're part of the group that knows those things. and that separates you from older people or people that aren't in your group. and that's definitely attractive. >> her teaching is very interactive and communicative. and it can be a good compliment for traditional textbooks, especially for naturalistic learners. >> reporter: chinese education has traditionally relied heavily on instructive teaching-- lectures and rote memorization. but until recently, the country's closed history has meant it has lacked foreign-born teachers who could add context and authenticity. >> we chinese often learn

english from very formal classes and its very far from our everyday life. >> the idioms, expressions, slang that she teaches are not easy to find in traditional textbooks, and i think those expressions are very useful in our daily lives. >> reporter: so what's next for beinecke, and for o.m.g.? >> it would be ideal if we can start this year inspiring more people to break out of the online community, which is thriving and its really exciting, and to go and meet in person, and to be leaders in the community and to further the discussion with their friends. whether that's in a classroom or that's just with their friends at a kfc around the corner or something like that, i think that would be another dream come true. >> reporter: her other dream already came true: in december

she returned to beijing to meet her fan club, which includes more than 4,000 members, some of whom traveled four hours by train just to meet her. those passionate fans also voluntarily built apps for smartphones so o.m.g. can be seen on iphones and android devices in china and around the world. for now, beinecke continues her conversation with chinese admirers and pupils half a world away. >> woodruff: on our website, jessica beinecke explains how her chinese audience helps her choose the daily slang words. >> brown: and finally tonight: ray suarez continues our regular look at the presidential campaign as it plays out in

social media and on the web. >> suarez: in a move symbolizing the new way of campaigning on the internet, president obama's reelection team has bypassed television ads to release a documentary film online. "the road we've traveled" will be screened for the president's supporters tonight. let's take a look. >> his advisors would ask where to begin. which urgent need would he put first? >> which is one, which is two, which is three, which is four, which is five? where do you start? >> if we don't do this now, it will be a generation before 30 million people have health insurance. >> suarez: and with more on how campaigns are evolving on the web, we're joined by two journalists from the web site daily download. lauren ashburn is the site's editor in chief and formerly with "u.s.a. today" and howard

kurtz is host of cnn's "reliable sources." so bypass buying national airtime. bypass making deals with networks and television stations just make it available to watch wherever. a big deal? >> to everyone. it is a big deal. this is primary way the obama campaign is communicating with people. they feel like if they can put in the a place on youtube or facebook where you have similar people who like obama who then forward it to their friends and so on and so on that they will get more traction that way. >> suarez: this is a classic case-- although the campaign is billing this as a documentary film-- it's here is prop gahn dachlt even if it is produced by an oscar-winning picture. it's the stirring story of a brave president who overcame a fiscal calamity. it became effective and people can watch it and they don't have to depend networks showing 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds. people watch the whole thing. >> and it's a great tool for fund-raising for them because if you go to obama's web site where

they are playing the trailer and will ultimately be playing the documentary, you actually have to give your e-mail address before you can watch the trailer. >> suarez: otherwise you can't get anything? >> it's tricky get out of there. i was trying to hold my ipad one way and get out but you can't do it. so they're using this as the one-click way to get your attention. >> suarez: isn't this just a new way of doing a very old thing? party political broadcasts have been around forever. profiles of candidates made by the party apparatus have been around for a very long time we're just trying to catch up with how people consume media, aren't stwhe >> i think it's an interesting point. yes, more people are online. people are going away from traditional media but as you said at the very beginning, this is a very cost effective way for them to get their message out. >> it cost millions of dollars that flow to networks, and they have bells and whistles, the obama reelection campaign does,

for example. if you watch a youtube video of obama about illinois, a list of your facebook friends from illinois pops up and you can click a button and share the video with them. so it's a good organizing tool. >> and fund-raising. they can get your money right out of your pocket with one click. here join, give me $25 or whatever and you can't do that from traditional media. >> suarez: it's so more than passive consumption, it's a way of drawing you into a whole set of relationships, possibility for more content and click through. there's a lot going on. >> sharing: and contributing. >> suarez: another place where there's a lot of activity is on facebook and campaigns i guess are still finding their way but very active in that very popular venue. >> well, not only are the campaigns active but we found people who don't like a particular candidate are also very active. let's look at the pictures. one we found we absolutely love is this anti-romney facebook

group. one million irish seters against mitt romney. and here you have the dog on top of the ints dent that happened 30 years ago. >> it's been a great organizing tool. but there's also groups like mitt romney is a big government rhino. >> pelley: republican in name only. not an african large mammal. >> without the "h." >> and here's the negative newt web site on facebook, the page on facebook. no to newt gingrich and if you look at the little girl in the front she has a big yawn on her face they have a thousand followers. >> and there are less polite ones like "newt gingrich will you please shut up." so it's a way for people who are animated enough by politics that they don't like somebody who's running to share that and then when you turn to president obama there's one group that has the title i hate it when i wake up

in the morning and barack obama is president but there's a group called nobama countdown. 226,000 people liked it and you can buy t-shirts and caps. >> it's commerce. and if you take this out of the realm of people who don't like the candidates and actually take it to people who do and the campaigns themselves and their own web site, president obama is by far ahead of all of the other candidates. he has 26... almost 26 million likes on his facebook page and if you look at the other ones, gingrich is about 300,000, romney not very high. >> a million and a half and santorum is 175,000. of course obama has been president for three years. >> suarez: do we know yet or do we have to live our way into this whether this is more substantial than just clicking on "like" and being one of the nominal members of a site with a

million and a half people? does it turn into anything? >> i feel problem with this kind of advocacy is an a... and journalism is that you only get one side of the story and instead of being able to be presented with both sides of the story it's polarized. fox news on the right, msnbc on the left and it has that same feel that you only get the information online that you want to get. >> i don't know that anti-gingrich or romney or obama group on facebook that has people liking it is going to have a big impact on the campaign but this is how people organize themselves these days on line. they create a sense of community share information, sometimes the information might be slanted or bias ord completely inaccurate but you have to play in this arena. that's why the campaigns are devoting attention to facebook and that's why the opponents are also ginning up these groups. >> suarez: good to talk to you both. to be continued. >> thank you.

>> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day: tensions between the u.s. and afghanistan ratcheted up as afghan president karzai said nato troops must pull out of rural villages immediately. thousands of syrians rallied in damascus, supporting president bashar assad on the first anniversary of the uprising. and wall street rallied again. the s&p 500 closed above 1,400 for the first time since june of 2008. and a question: do you live in a social or cultural bubble? take a test to find out. hari sreenivasan explains. hari. >> sreenivasan: a quiz on our website asks about the beer you drink, your friends' political views and more. the questions are on paul solman's making sense page. also there, we've gathered paul's reporting on goldman sachs and its past practices. on the rundown blog, judy updates technological and policy developments that could make life easier for americans with disabilities.

and it's science thursday. miles o'brien wraps up his series on the anniversary of japan's earthquake with a post exploring uncertainty over the risks of radiation exposure. all that and more is on our web site: newshour.pbs.org. jeff? >> brown: and that's the "newshour" for tonight. i'm jeffrey brown. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and david brooks, among others. thank you and good night. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

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