♪ ♪ ♪ on this edition for sunday december 22nd, israeli officials condemn american spying. and a bomb explodes on a bus near tel aviv. a rare looka the iran through its arts and flying coach, there may be a powerful personal story sitting right next to you. >> my grandfather saw that as sucha i powerful moment in history that he wanted to have his family carry the name refer to a new dawn and from the firstborn the family received the name normandy, next on the pbs "news hour weekend." the pbs news hour weekend is made possible by louisefeld

coleman, joutdy and josh westin. joyce, b. hail. the wallick family. the cheryl and philip millstein family. bernard and irene schwartz. roselyn p. walter. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america designing customized, individual, and group retirement products and that's why we are your retirement company. additional support is provided by -- and by, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions by your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york this is pbs "news hour weekend." good evening. thanks for joining us. i'm john larson. will be back next weekend. for the first time in 13 months there's been a bomb explosion on know israeli bus. authorities blame palestinian militants for what they call a terror attack. the bomb went off near till

aviv, shattering windows and causing no injuries. everyone had been evacuated prior to the blast after a passenger warned the bus driver about a suspicious package. no one claimed responsiblity for planting the bomb. after an israeli cabinet meeting today, several high-level officials condemned the united states for spying on israel. one cabinet minister called it unacceptable. documents leaked by edward snowden that were made public friday showed that the united states spied on then israeli prime minister olmert and defense minister ehud barack in 2009. a number of israeli officials today called for the release from a u.s. prison of israeli spy jonathan pollard. he was sentenced to life in 1987 for spying on the united states for israel. in neighboring syria today, dozens were killed in another major government bombing attack on rebels in and around the northern city of aleppo.

an activist group said at least 32 people died during the bombardment of the rebel-held section of the city. it was the eighth consecutive day of government bombing there that has caused at least 200 deaths. reuters released these pictures taken from a social media website said to show the aftermath of the attack. in london today, outrage over the death of a british orthopedic surgeon who went to syria to help victims of the civil war there. dr. abbas khan died in a syrian jail under mysterious circumstances just days before he was to be set free. his family insists he was starved and beaten while being held, itv news reports. >> dr. kahn's family fought for 13 months for him to be released by the syrian regime, but not like this. his body arriving in lebanon in the back of an ambulance. his heart broken mother promised

by the syrians this was the weekend she'd be reunited with her son instead has only his coffin. the syrian authorities claim he hung himself four days before he was to be freed, an allegation received with contempt by his mother. >> they're murderers! they're murderers! >> dr. kahn, a british orthopedic surgeon was arrested after traveling to syria to treat the victims of his war. he was imprisoned, tortured and starved. his mother was told of one of assad's advisers that he was murdered because he was a terrorist. >> he told me that yes, we killed your son because your son came to kill my son. i said my son's profession is to give life not to take life. he came to give life to your son in case he was injured. he said no, your son is a criminal. he was a terrorist so we killed him.

who cannot differentiate between a life-giving person and a life-taking person? a terrorist and a humanitarian aid worker. they can't differentiate? >> this was dr. kahn preparing for his aid mission over a year ago. his mother went to damascus to plead for her son's life. they are pressing for answers about what happened. dr. kahn's two young children thought their father would be coming home for christmas. they'd already made his welcome home cards. romely week, itv news. in germany today the former tycoon said vladimir putin's decision to free him from the russian prison camp near the arctic circle does not mean the end of political oppression in that country. he said other political prisoners are still being held. once russia's richest man was

arrested in 2003 and convicted on fraud and tax evasion charges, charges he insists were trumped up. from cuba, conciliatory language towards the united states from president raul castro. the 82-year-old cuban leader said a civilized relationship is what cuban people desire. castro spoke two weeks after he and president obama shook hands at the memorial service for nelson mandela. in bangladesh today, the owner of a garment factory and 11 others were charged with negligent homicide, this following the fire that killed 112 workers in november of last year. the factory had no emergency fire exits. an estimated 4 million bangladeshis work in garment factories that supply clothes to western retailers. the. the high school student who was shot in colorado nine days ago has died. claire davis had been in a coma for several days.

authorities described her as a random target. the gunman, 18-year-old carl pearson committed suicide after the shooting. he apparently meant to shoot a debate team coach who disciplined him. pearson arrived at the suburban denver school will on december 13th, with a shotgun, a mashety and three molotov cocktails. the only surviving son of former president dwight eisenhower has died. john s. eisenhower was 91. he graduated westpoint and held the rank of brigadier general, was ambassador and the author of several military histories and billionaire businessman and philanthropist edgar bron ofman has died and he was 84. during his 26 years as the president of the world jewish congress he successfully lobbied u.s. lawmakers to press the soviet union to allow jews to emigrate. ♪ ♪

>> now to the topic on the minds of many people this time of year. charitable giving. studies show americans are among the most generous in the world, but donations are partially fueled by tax deductions and for some time now there's been talk about capping those deductions. for more about all of this we are joined now by ken berger, he's the ceo of charity navigator which rates how effective charities are at actually getting donations to those in need. thanks very much for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> first of all, the cap on deductions and it's not the law of the land, but if it should become law, what do you anticipate the effect would be. essentially billions of dollars less would be given to the charity most likely. the percent of the overall is in question, but certain he billions of dollars less would be given to charity. we were talking beforehand. you said $300 billion per year americans are giving to charity

in one form or another. >> that also includes foundations and corporations. >> a huge amount of that is happening this weekend or this month. >> yes. by far, the most giving happens the last month of the year and even the last day of the year is by far the day where the most giving occurs and that's the last day before the taxes, you know, the impact of the taxes occur so that indicates that taxes are certainly a factor. so if people are sitting down and trying to make a smart decision about where to give some of the resources. what do you advise them? >> we think there are three critical things to consider. one are the finances of the organization and if it's managed well and second, the governance of the organization and does he have an independent board to lead the organization. it's not just the ceo, you need that board in charge. the results, is it truly meeting its mission and does it have data to show in a measurable way that it's helping people. all of that sounds like a

difficult research project. how can people figure that out. >> that's why it was created through a star rating system reflect back that kind of information because it's true that most americans only give about 15, 20 minutes to their decision making and so to try to have that information available from experts that called the data is the way that we're trying to help with that. >> i was saying in the introduction that americans are among the most charitable. first of all, are we the most or aren't we? if it's just charitable dollars. absolutely, by far, two to three times more generous than any other country, but if you include taxes used for social programs like for the mentally ill and the homeless, there are countries in europe that are more generous. so when you include that, no, we're not. >> and the very wealthy by par give the gift of charitable giving and you were saying

earlier that the poorest among us sort of pound for pound are actually more charitable. >> as a percent of income, the working poor are the most generous. far more than middle class or upper class, but for dollar value, the wealthy give about 70% of all the private contributions. >> ken berger, ceo of charity navigator, thanks so much for joining us today. >> thank you. ♪ ♪ >> following the islamic revolution in 1979 not only did iranian politics take a hard turn, some of iran's most important art work was banned, deemed unsuitable by the new regime. that art work has been largely invisible until now. in an exhibit at the asia society ney new york that runs through january 5th, the art work reveals iran in a way that

had been unseen for more than 30 years. here's another look at the story we brought you back in october. >> through symbolism will and caricatures of people in power, nicky's art work walks a fine line between art and politics. >> i don't have a clear idea. i play with ideas. there are some ambiguity in the art. >> so this is khomeini. >> on one side. >> but that ambiguity didn't prevent him from facing sharp criticism in the homeland of iran. the new khomeini regime began strictly regulating artistic expression. art work like najimi was considered outrageous. >> art was gone for ten years after the revolution. a lot of people went out. a let of people went underground. a lot of people didn't work at all. >> he was exiled from iran after an exhibition of his works in

the tehran museum of contemporary art in 1980. >> they labeled me anti-revolution, antikhomeini and anti-regime. i got a call, don't talk to anyone. if you can, get out of the country. >> and you left? >> and you left. >> i left the painting. >> all of them were in the museum. >> where are they now? >> good question. >> he is not sure he'll ever be able to go back to iran, let alone show his work there, but here in the u.s. he continues to paint and his work from before the revolution is garnering new attention for a time when art in iran was not censored, but encouraged. his work from that period is part of an exhibit of 26 iranian artives at new york's asia society with more than 100 sculpture, paintings and photographs and it's the largest exhibition of its kind outside of iran. in the 1950s, '60s and '70s,

modern art in iran is thriving. it combined artistic traditions with avant garde style. they exchanged techniques. the modern art scene was so significant that tehran had its own biennale every two years. >> it was modernizing and so the artists were also modernizing their work in many different ways and it became a real kind of culturing flowering of iks rainian art during this time. >> marisa chu is the director of the art society in new york. she hopes the exhibit sheds a different light on iran's history. >> the exhibition is about a period when iran and the u.s. were quite close politically and there was a lot more back and forth and closer communications than we have now with the political situation.

>> and chu notes that contemporary artists continue to face censorship in iran. >> what is it about art that is so dangerous to regimes. >> well, i think art is often the voice of criticality. they critique issues of power. they critique things that they see around them, and i think that can sometimes make it difficult for those in power. >> but art is almost impossible to suppress. the contemporary art scene has been gaining strength in iran in recent years, particularly in animation, film and photography. artists from iran have won world press photo awards and last year the iranian film, "a separation" won the oscar for best foreign film, the first one ever for iran and there are hopes that under the new government in tehran there will be some relaxation of iran's international relationships and with it, relaxation of

restrictions on artistic expression this could allow najimi's work to be seen in his homeland again. ♪ >> get a closer look at his art work. visit newshour.pbs.org. on the news hour tomorrow you will hear from two members of the independent panel advising the president on changes to govern the surveillance. and now to our signature segment, there are nearly 29,000 commercial flights every day in this country and an estimated 5.5 million of you will take to the skies during this holiday season and while you often hear about how dissatisfied customers are with the airlines, that's not the only story. >> as a correspondent i've traveled more than 2 million miles on assignment, usually in a hurry. >> rushing to one story after

another. >> along the way, i noticed that the most powerful stories often work where i was heading to or coming from at all. but in between and usually sitting right next to me. >> for example. i was flying american airlines flight 2473, boston to dallas, and i was in 21c, next to me in 21b was normandy villa. as we headed south across the ski across pennsylvania and west virginia, normandy shared such a story with me that when his family invited me to join him six weeks later near their home in new jersey i gladly accepted. ♪ ♪ to understand what's going on here, you should know two things. first, even though this family comes from colombia, normandy is named after one of the most important moments in american history.

>> the battle of normandy in france is the liberation of the earth and my grandfather saw that as such a powerful moment in history that he wanted to have his family carry a name that referred to a new dawn, and so the firstborn in the family received the name normandy. >> that firstborn was this man normandy, senior. >> which brings us to the second thing, senior would also hear something american that would inspire him. >> ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. [ cheers and applause ] >> it was a call to service, to make your society be better than it is and leave it better than it was after you're gone. >> he never really forgot that. >> he never forgot that. it stuck in his head. it was stuck with him forever. >> as we flew towards texas, normandy told me how his parents had been comfortably middle

class in colombia when the drug cartels there began destroying what they valued most, respect for public education. jfk's speech struck a nerve in his father who that day began the process of bringing his family to america. >> alba was a little girl when they arrived in new jersey. >> we slept on cots in the living room, depending on the circumstances. normandy's mother, a literature teacher would spend the next 25 years in america working at near-minimum wage as a day care assistant. here, she remembers saying good-bye to her mother. >> i remember she said are you sure you can move over there? are you sure you're going to be okay? >> normandy's father, a college-educated chemist and statistician wound up laboring 25 years in america as a stock

boy, lifting boxes until one box finally broke his back. >> they sacrificed their own dreams in normandy's other sister, marcela. >> their professional aspirations they put aside for us because they believed that we could do something better here. so in their small two-room apartment in new jersey, their mom emphasized literature. their dad tutored them in math from his colombian college textbooks, what happened? all, but the oldest went to the ivy league's brown university and on to law school. marcela also went to brown and then medical school. third child david, harvard, and while i would like to tell you my seat mate normandy went to college without incident, it didn't happen that way. >> as we flew our last leg into dallas international, i learned one month before his freshman

year in college, nor handes of almost killed in a bicycle accident. >> he was in a coma for day, his brain so damaged that when he finally woke up he couldn't see very well or think clearly, and yet he attacked his rehabilitation with such determination that his father, perhaps the strongest man he knew began calling him el trucador, the fighter. and so he entered college on time, a full year before doctors thought he could do it. >> he's one of the people i most admire in this world. he is just something else. ♪ >> five weeks after i met normandy he graduated from harvard university. the fourth in his family to earn an ivy league education. ed they done it with scholarship, with you when i asked him how his parents could afford the week-long trip to boston, he said some guy sent us

$3,000. when i asked who, he showed me the guy. >> bill gates, he's maried to a colombian. >> normandy is a gates millennium scholar, one of the students who gates will help put through college over the next several years. >> gates' message to all those scholars sounded almost identical to what normandy's father and grandfather had said. live lives of service. >> i hope you will judge yourself not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you, but their human iity. good luck. >> and so that's what normandy ands his siblings will do. serve in public health, medicine and the law, and by the way,

when his father went to harvard for his son's graduation, he visited the kennedy school of government there and found the words that had launched his american dream so many years ago written in stone. >> ask what you can do for your country. >> so you can maybe understand why my seatmate's graduation party was something not to be missed. before i left normandy and his family, was there one more celebration. >> when they took me on a favorite field trip. >> for him it's a symbol of opportunity. >> the statue of liberty, just a couple of miles from their apartment was a yearly destination for this family and it's as good a place as any to end this story. normandy's father set the promise that brought them to america had almost nothing to do with making more money or having a big house. remember, they had that. it had more to do with what his

father had heard in the guns of nor handy and what he had heard in jfk, that americans at their very core are people who serve others. when you meet the villas and understand their sacrifice, you can't help the wonder, is not scanning the horizon for opportunity as many believe, but instead checking to see what we've done with ours. when i arrived in dallas i didn't know that normandy would soon invite me to his harvard graduation, but i did know his story was better than the one i was freewaying home from. that's the thing about flying coach. you don't really find great stories, they find you which i would again learn very soon when i met donna. but she's an entirely other story. normandy is back in grad school, studying public health and hopes to some day become a

surgeon to serve what he calls underserved communities. as for his father, normandy's senior finally got his chance after putting his kids through school he graduated with a b.a. from dickinson university where he also made the dean's list. >> that's it for this pbs news hour weekend. i'm john larson. thanks for watching. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

pbs news hour weekend is made possible by louis b. and louise coleman. joyce b. hail, the wallick family in memory of miriam and ira d. wallick, the milstein family, bernard and irene schwartz, rosalynn p. walter and corporate funding is provided by mutual of america, providing customized group retirement products and that's why we are your retirement company, additional support is provided by -- and by the corporation for public broadcasting and by con from tribugzs from your pbs station for viewers like you. thank you.

narrator: crime dramas remain one of television's most popular genres, retelling age-old stories of good and evil, crime and punishment. connors: the shows that were successful is where the audience really said "get that no good son of a" -- you know, "get him, i can't stand him!" dickinson: a woman? "police woman"? a woman cop? nobody thought it would be a hit. the whole idea was to make it ordinary. the end of the show, the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and the ideal mission was out getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there. bain: we never shot anybody. ever... ever! i admired it and i thought it would be interesting to do all these various characters. powerslittle did i know i was going to make television history. graves: by golly, they were well done. i consider that a very fortunate thing to have done in a career. narrator: together, they took a familiar genre