captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> ifill: ukraine could be on the verge of a split. lawmakers in crimea called for a vote to join russia, but president obama declared the move illegal and invoked sanctions against those driving the crisis. we talk with the u.s. ambassador to the u.n., samantha power. good evening, i'm gwen ifill. judy woodruff is off tonight. also ahead. promising new approaches in the fight against aids. from gene therapy to news of a second baby born with h.i.v now free of the disease. plus, we're drowning in economic data-- g.d.p, housing starts, jobs numbers-- what do they really tell us about the state of the economy?

>> jerpthe question we should e asking is, is our complicated reality well served by these simple statistical wonders. >> ifill: those are just some of the stories we're covering on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> i've been around long enough to recognize the people who are out there owning it. the ones getting involved, staying engaged. they are not afraid to question the path they're on. because the one question they never want to ask is, "how did i end up here?" i started schwab with those people. people who want to take ownership of their investments, like they do in every other aspect of their lives.

>> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. >> and the william and flora hewlett foundation, helping people build immeasurably better >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> ifill: the breakup of ukraine moved a step closer to reality today. the parliament in crimea scheduled a vote on whether it will stay part of ukraine or return to russia. that action drew a swift response as the u.s. and its european partners announced sanctions against russia. hari sreenivasan begins our coverage. >> sreenivasan: at midday, the president discussed the visa restrictions and financial sanctions announced early this morning on russians behind the

ukraine invasion. >> this morning i signed an executive order that authorizes sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of ukraine for stealing the assets of the ukrainian people. >> sreenivasan: the president also voiced strong opposition to the crimean parliament's vote to leave ukraine. it announced a march 16th referendum to let its citizens decide on whether to join russia or remain part of ukraine. >> the proposed referendum on the future of crimea would violate the ukrainian constitution and violate international law. any discussion about the future of ukraine must include the legitimate government of ukraine. in 2014, we are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders. >> sreenivasan: that sentiment was echoed in brussels, as european leaders met to impose the e.u.'s own set of visa bans, and a suspension of trade talks. french president francois hollande.

>> ( translated ): if there is an attempt at splitting, dividing or even worse of capturing crimea, it would not be in line with international law. ukraine is ukraine, it is all of ukraine. >> sreenivasan: the pro-moscow parliament set a march 16th date for the vote just ten days off. but the government in kiev pushed back, blocking the referendum. acting ukrainian president, oleksander turchinov: >> ( translated ): it is not a referendum, it is a farce, a fake and a crime against the state which is organized by the russian federation's military. >> sreenivasan: meanwhile, the international police agency interpol said it was reviewing a request by ukrainian authorities to arrest ousted president viktor yanukovich. the red notice called for the former leader to be held on charges including abuse of power and murder. back in washington, the house foreign affairs committee held the first congressional hearing devoted solely to ukraine, with talk swirling in some quarter of capitol hill of a new cold war. republican michael mccaul of texas warned the state

department's eric rubin that the administration's sanctions may not be enough to stop what he called a russian act of war. >> does this administration believe that the russian invasion of ukraine is an act of war? >> well congressman, we've said very clearly that we know what we have seen, which is military aggression intervention in the affairs of a sovereign country, a violation of legal commitments, a violation of international law, that is what we see that is what we're calling it. >> sreenivasan: and as the u.s. continues to discuss financial support for ukraine, the house voted today to provide loan guarantees to the new ukrainian government. elsewhere on capitol hill, secretary of defense chuck hagel spoke of military moves in states closest to russia. >> these include stepping up our joint training through our aviation detachment in poland and i was advised this morning that continues to move forward. >> sreenivasan: reports from poland said the u.s. military is sending 12 f-16 fighter jets

there for a training exercise in light of the crisis in ukraine. and the u.s.s truxton-- a navy warship-- is scheduled to pass through the bosphorous tomorrow, en route to the black sea. that move is part of a previously-scheduled port call in romania. on the diplomatic front, secretary of state john kerry was in rome today, and met with his russian counterpart, sergei lavrov. no tangible progress was made toward a resolution. kerry said further penalties against russia are an option, but. >> our preference is to get back to a normality and get back to a place where the rights of the people of ukraine will be respected and the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the nation will be respected >> sreenivasan: p.b.s frontline's james jones has been there on assignment, most

recently in the eastern city of kharkiv-- he obtained cell phone footage shot by russian activists. it shows supporters of maidan uprising being beaten by pro- russian, fellow ukrainians and russian citizens who were bused one more sign of the challenges of keeping the country together. >> ifill: the senate blocked a bipartisan bill on military sexual assaults today. it would have removed commanders from decisions about prosecuting sexual assault cases. supporters of the measure, sponsored by new york democrat kirsten gillibrand, argued far- reaching changes are needed to curb the number of rapes and sexual assaults. hawaii senator mazie hirono. >> this bill has nothing to do with taking commanders and telling commanders they are fired or that they are morally bankrupt. they should continue to be held accountable for creating a command climate where sexual assaults do not occur. or certainly not occur by the tens of thousands. >> ifill: the legislation was strongly opposed by the top brass at the pentagon. senators like south carolina's

lindsey graham agreed with the military leaders that they should have more, not less, responsibility for the conduct of their troops. >> the person we choose as a nation to run the finest military in the world-- the commander-- has the absolute authority to maintain that unit for readiness and if you don't give that commander the tools and hold them accountable that unit will fall apart right in front of her eyes because some lawyer somewhere is no substitute for the commander who is there every day. >> ifill: a majority of senators supported the measure, but it fell five votes short of the 60 needed to advance. another bill that would impose automatic reviews of a commander's decision not to prosecute, pass. a final vote is slated for monday. meanwhile at fort bragg in north carolina, the most senior military member ever to face trial for sexual assault, pleaded guilty on three counts today. army brigadier general jeffrey sinclair still faces five

additional, more serious charges, including sexual assault. a jury of five generals presiding over the court martial will decide his fate. if convicted, he could face life in prison. a nato airstrike killed five afghan soldiers today. coalition officials, who said their deaths were accidental, offered their condolences. the incident happened early this morning in eastern logar province. afghan president hamid karzai said a probe is underway to determine why the soldiers were targeted. he spoke during a visit to sri lanka. >> we are investigating the nature of this attack on afghan troops where unfortunately five of our soldiers lost their lives. this attack nato has admitted to and has said that they did it mistakenly, we will investigate the issue and then speak about it. >> ifill: the strike comes as the u.s. and afghanistan are

negotiating a bilateral security agreement to keep limited u.s. forces in the country beyond 2014. bombs ripped through four cities in iraq today, killing at least 42 people. most were explosive devices in parked cars. they went off in commercial areas, including an outdoor market. bombings have been on the rise across iraq since last year, as al qaeda and sunni insurgents have upped their battle to undermine the shi-ite led government. moammar gadhafi's son, saadi, arrived in libya today after being extradited from niger. he'd been under house arrest in the west african nation since his father's regime collapsed in 2011. libyan government officials said saadi is now being held at this prison in tripoli, where a group of libyans gathered to celebrate today. libya wants to try the 40-year- old for using force against protesters opposing his father's rule. more than half of american public schools need repairs or modernization.

the price tag: nearly $200 billion. that's according to a new survey out today from the department of education's national center for education statistics. many school districts, laboring under slashed budgets during the recession have been forced to delay building improvements. president obama's my brother's keeper initiative to help young men of color got a major boost today with a billion dollar investment. it comes from the opportunity finance network, a national group of community development financial institutions. the pledge is to originate a billion dollars a year in new financing to benefit young people of color across the u.s. the office supply chain staples is closing 225 of its stores in north america by the end of next year. the closings will affect more than 10% of its 1,500 stores in the u.s. staples now makes about half of its overall sales online. the move is designed to save

$500 million. there was upbeat data today about the state of the nation's labor market. the number of people filing for jobless benefits dropps lowest level in three months. stocks on wall street reacted mostly favorably. the dow jones industrial average gained 61 points to close at 16,421. the nasdaq fell five points to close at 4,352. the standard and poor's had its third all-time high this week, rising three points to close at 1,877. still to come on the newshour, u.n. ambassador samantha power on the crisis in ukraine, promising new approaches in the fight against h.i.v/aids, judging the value of economic indicators, one woman's candid guide to coping with cancer and surprising findings-- alzheimer's is the third leading cause of death in the u.s.

>> ifill: threats, sanctions and dire predictions moved to center stage today as the crisis in ukraine showed no sign of abating. for more on what the u.s., the u.n. and their european partners can do to prevent the country from splitting apart. i'm joined by samantha power, the u.s. ambassador to the united nations. ambassador power, thank you for joining us. the administration has been talking about economic isolation when it comes to russia as a response to what's happening in crimea. could you give us a sense of what that really means? >> well, russia has made clear in recent years how much it is interested in economic integration with the west and enhanced commercial ties. as a result of its military maneuvers and its illegal actions in crimea, ukraine, that entire process, the possibilities have been

suspended pending a decision by them to bull back from the brink -- pull back from the birching. brink. our goal is to get them to pull back and our leverage made clear what matters to them. >> ifill: you talked about pulling back from ukraine and deescalation. it's a word you and secretary of state john kerry and president obama have all used. why do you think you have the leverage to make them deescalate and take several troops back to their barracks. >> again, russia said it wants enhanced economic ties. putin pride himself on steps he's taken to shore up the russian economy. he's not doing that well. the ruble depreciated substantially in recent months. a lot of russia's export market goes west to europe and ukraine are very important markets for it, but also visa bans and

economic sanctions where u.s. persons are prohibited from doing business with certain individuals in russia, we think this can have a deterrent effect. but we don't know. i mean, at this point, we are putting in place a set of measures in the hopes that he pulls back from the brink, in the hopes that we don't have to go all the way to full-on political and economic isolation because the goal here, again, is to preserve the territorial integrity of ukraine. but we think that we have a series of leverage, particularly when we enforced by our european partners that will very much get his attention. >> ifill: if there is a vote for crimea to go back to russia, if that referendum were to come to pass, what would be the penalty in international law? >> well, first, you would see the broad, i think, condemnation and establishment to have the illegality and ill legitimacy of such a vote by the international community. i've just come from the security council and with the deposition of russia where all council

members made clear this is inappropriate and you have to operate in accordance with the ukrainian constitution which would require any referendum to affect the territorial ukraine to carry out across ukraine and not just one sub-region. so i think you would see condemnation and the kind of costs president obama laid out today would be the kinds other countries would like to bring to bear. our hope so to lay down sanctions as president obama did today in the hopes of getting putin to pull back. >> ifill: another off ramp you suggested is sending in international monitors. if you had an envoy in crimea yesterday, robert, who was forced to leave, why do you think these monitors would be allowed in or allowed to stay? >> well, this again is an off-ramp. both the un and eeoc made clear they're happy to go and address the allegations russia made about the treatment of ethnic russians, again, allegations we

believe on basis that we have seen no evidence of and it's clear, i think, on the basis of russian behavior and the behavior of russian-speaking thugs in crimea that russia doesn't want monitors in, that they don't want to actually expose the baselessness of their allegations. so, of course, this is very disturbing, the treatment of a u.n. enjoy sent by the entire international community, sent by the secretary general on behalf of all the member states of the u.n. to be treated like that is just deplorable. and the sea monitor also faced similar obstructions as in crimea. >> ifill: so you don't have hopes international monitors is a real offramp? >> well, it is in the sense it is available. right now there are two pathways. russia is looking at the path of political and economical isolation we spoke about including a series of economic sanctions where individuals will be named and penalized severely. that's one pathway. the other pathway is to allow monitors in, to allow mediation.

former minister said he is going to take some of these back to putin and we believe in the cost analysis that the cost of going down the path putin is going, denying monitors and denying mediation and refusing authorities is more costly than allowing the spirit of compromise to prevail. >> ifill: let's talk about what you had to say this week to the security council. you said there were troop and shift movements that put russians in crimea, blocked cell phone service, that there were russian jets in ukrainian airspace, these are all the things you listed as proof russia overstepped its bound. has anything changed between the time you said that and today which leads you to believe there is tom sort of movement or compromise? >> other than the high-level diplomatic engagement between secretary kerry and foreign minister lavrov and there are

discussions of an international contact group, no, the situation in crimea, if anything, has deteriorated in the sense that you now see the so-called deputy prime minister of crimea referring to ukrainian forces as "occupying troops" which, of course, is not true is an illegitimate claim and you see the crimea department acting as it did today. so we're very worried and this is a moment in history that could turn south in a hurry and could escalate in a huery, which is why we're trying to give the russians the offramp and encourage them and have the entire international community speak in one voice to get them to take the path of deescalation. >> ifill: henry kissen jeer former secretary of state was quoted in an op ed in "the washington post" is the test is

how it ends. >> russia needs to make clear to the world and to the people of you korean that it is prepared to work with the international community, with monitors who are independent and credible in order to pursue its legitimate interests both in crimea and ukraine proper. that is what needs to happen, and if that doesn't happen, unfortunately, we'll need to continue to move down the path of political and economic isolation. >> ifill: united states ambassador to thatio the uniteds samantha power thanks very much. >> ifill: for all of the progress made in the fight against aids, it still takes a terrible toll. more than 35 million people are infected with h.i.v around the world, more than two million people are newly infected each year and well over a million die from it annually. but research released at an aids conference this week is raising hope about new inroads into

treating it and preventing infections. jeffrey brown has the story. >> brown: three reports attracted attention, one involved injections of drugs into monkeys that helped stop infections, the second revealed promising news of a baby born with the virus and given aggressive treatment, the third concerned so-called gene editing, altering cells to resist hiv. n.i.h.'s institute of allergy and infectious diseases has been funding much of this work. dr. anthony fauci is its longtime director and joins me now. welcome back. let's walk through some of this. first the injections of long-lasting drugs into monkeys. explain the work and why it's so important. >> well, the reason the work is important is that we know, in human studies, several human studies, that if you give a drug to an uninfected person who's practicingriesing behavior, we call it preexposure prophylaxis, that if they take the drug every

day, it absolutely works and prevents infection in over 90% of the people. the problem with the approach is that people don't like to take medicine every day or before or after a sexual encounter. so a modality of prevention that you know works 90-plus percent doesn't work that well purely because people don't add here. the experiments that have been reported recently know show that, in a monkey model, if you take a long-acting drug, a drug that's used in a different form to treat hiv infection, in the monkey model, and give an injection every so often -- like every couple of months -- you can actually prevent challenging that monkey with infection with the monkey version of hiv by exposing the rectum vaginally. it works in a highly effective way. the extrapolation is if you move that into human studies, we can take prevention in a way that

people adhere to it because they don't have to come for maybe three or so injections a year and then be protected throughout the year. so this addresses the real stumbling block of adherence in people with a drug that you know works. it's really quite an important study. >> brown: i know we've talked about this several times over the years about this problem of people taking the drugs regularly enough. the key question, moving from monkeys to humans, where are we on that continuum? >> well, they're going to go right into studies now, in phase one studies in humans to determine if it works, and the data in the monkey, jeff, strongly suggests that it's going to work in humans, but the proof of the pudding will be to do it and to see, in fact, if it does. so we're right now gearing up to go into human studies. >> brown: the second report, a lot of attention, a second case with a baby born with hiv given aggressive treatment right away with great impact.

tell us about that. >> well, everyone remembers the story around the mississippi baby from a few years ago where a baby came in with a mother who was infected but not treated during pregnancy, and the pediatricians immediately treated the baby within 30 hours, then the baby was treated for months but the mother stopped therapy because she was lost to follow-up and when the baby came back, the baby had been off therapy for many months and there was no evidence at all of virus, which would indicate the baby was cured. what's recently reported now is a second baby that again came from an infected mother but did not have any anti-hiv treatment during pregnancy. the pediatricians treated the baby within the first four hours of birth and, now, eight or nine months later, there's no indication of infection in the baby by trying to examine the cells. what the investigators haven't done is they haven't discontinued the drug yet, so it hasn't been proven that the

baby's cured, but it's highly suggestive that you now have a second baby because, even though the baby's still on therapy, there's no way of looking for the virus. it's just not there. they've looked in the cells and they can't find it. strongly suggests that the baby is cured. >> brown: i understand, in this case, there's going to be a new trial that will determine whether and how to apply this to all babies born with hiv? >> exactly. exactly. in order to have a real wide-spread utilization of this approach, you've got to prove its safety and the fact that it's effective in a large number of babies, and the trial that will start in april or the beginning of may is going to do just that, look at babies who were born of infected mothers who aren't treated and, immediately within the period of 48 hours, to treat them aggressively with anti-hiv drugs and to see if you can duplicate what we've seen in these two children. >> brown: finally, and i think i'm right, but this one sounds a

little further away scientifically, but explain gene editing. the idea is to make cells resistant to the hiv virus, right? >> exactly. you have someone who's hiv- hiv-infected, on therapy suppressing the virus well, and the question is can you get the person off therapy or cure the person. one to have the ways that's been tried in 12 patients is to take the blood out of the patient, take their cells and in the test tube modify it, genetically manipulate it so that it cannot be infected with hiv. grow it up in large amounts and reinfuse it back into the person with the hope that those modified cells will ultimately replace the normal, unmodified cells, and the body will be left with cells that are incapable of being infected with hiv. so they've shown, now, that, a, it's safe, b, they've

successfully modified the cells and infused them and the cells seem to be surviving. we haven't gotten to the end game of showing you actually cured the person, but it's a very important incremental step in that attempts to ultimately be able to protect people from the virus that's in them so that you don't have to treat them with anti-retroviral drug. an important proof of concept. >> brown: an exciting week in research. dr. anthony fauci. thanks so much. >> good to be with you. >> ifill: every month, we bring you news of the latest jobs report, generally interpreted as a sign of economic health or woe. we'll tell you about the latest one tomorrow, but how useful are these numbers, really? newshour economics correspondent paul solman wondered that too. the answer is part of paul's ongoing reporting, "making sense" of financial news.

reat news. we have a new jobs report that missed expectations by quite a lot -- >> reporter: the monthly jobs report, it's released by the bureau of labor statistics the first friday of every month is big news. >> the market took off after a far better april jobs report than expected. >> reporter: the report moves financial markets, prompts instant analysis -- >> it was not a great but not a terrible report. >> reporter: and it's spin from the right and left. >> these job thurms are pathetic and, you know, the american people really deserve better. >> we welcome today's news that our businesses created another 121,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate ticked down. >> reporter: the mutual numbers so sought after, bos economists like karen are quarantined in the days and hours leading up to the friday 8:30 a.m. release. >> we're in a secure location. different parts to have the office are physically isolated while production is involved.

the suites are locked. there's no trash collection or recycling that occurs during that time. the economists have to take out their own trash and access to work areas are limited to people with a definitely need to get in. >> reporter: but economic analyst and money manager zach ricarabel has a question, should these number matter so much or matter at all? >> we have an understandable desire to understand us, understand the world. numbers are convenient peg to hang our understanding. the question we should be asking is, these are complicated realities well served by simple, statistical numbers? >> reporter: in a new book "believing indicators," carabel argues we overrely on official data, like the gdb, inflation and overall jobs figure. >> the unemployment number is a synthetic average that treats the nation as yiewn tear so it acts like we have one unemployment rate in california and it's the same in nebraska and massachusetts, and it's not.

nebraska has ha hasn't had an unemployment rate above 5% in the entire recession and recover. central california and parts of detroit had employment rate in the teens. so an unemployment rate of 6.5% isn't going to get you to this complicated reality. >> reporter: so one objection is that unemployment varies based on where you are and also on your education. as we found in our own reporting. the job market looked great for college-educated joe gillis whom we met last month in suburban d.c. who was schooled in information security. >> the availability out there, i've had at least ten interviews per date. >> reporter: but employers were blowing off thomas with just a high school diploma when we talked to her last month in inner city boston. >> we don't have the experience, you don't have a degree, you

don't have the tools required to have this job. >> reporter: at the time, economists an drew sum gave us the stunning statistics for thomas' male counterparts. >> took a young, black, high school, dropout, low-income male, we're talking 5% employment. >> reporter: that's a 95% jobless rate. the economist points out the bos produces lots of data. not only is that where an drew sugot his nurmts. >> we prepare a 25 page report with detailed analysis that doesn't make it into a headline. we produce about 30,000 data series that go online, dozens of online tables and a few weeks after the national report comes out, we release a report with state and local area data. >> reporter: yet the monthly national employment number along with the tally of jobs added or lost gets all the attention, for better or worse. bos economist julie hatch ma maxfield. >> it's a frustration for us

because we take time to craft our message and sometimes we are called to validate things that either are not the truth or not out there. >> reporter: the government, under president herbert hoover, began collecting national unemployment data during the great depression. >> the reason we have an unemployment rate is because of 1929 because there was a crisis that was clearly unfolding but no sense of just how bad things were, as hoover himself, kind of an apostle of scientific management of government, said, okay, fine, let's fund the bureau of labor and statistics sufficiently to create a number to give some sense of how bad things are. the number was quite bad and roosevelt used the preliminary numbers to defeat hoover in 1932. >> reporter: quite bad turned out to be an unemployment rate of 25%, which only dropped to single digits with the huge industrial outlays of world war ii. yet today, those surveys have

evolved, essentially the same data guide us. at our peril. >> they're meant to measure industrial labor forces that worked in factories. they're not really well suited to a kind of 21st century, high-service economy, fluid labor force that's moving a lot, that isn't working in large factories for large companies, and even with those numbers, they're the stamp at the time they were invented. >> reporter: but addressing unemployment today carabel says, may require spending in particular ways and places on people with particular backgrounds. that may have been the problem with president obama's 2009 stimulus, for example. >> one of the promises of that bill was that $800 billion of spending would turn into 3.5 million jobs created or saved. to be fair, we may have saved 3.5 million jobs because we'll never know how many jobs would have been lost if we hadn't spent the money, but i think one

of the reasons there was a mismatch between that promise and the outcome is simply that the formulas of macro economics that says if you spend x, companies will hire y, that's clearly breaking down. >> reporter: so your objection is to people who say, hey, all we have to do is pump up aggregate demand, more spending as opposed to specific demand to hire people currently unemployed? >> exactly. >> reporter: it may have been a truly outsourced system where you didn't have outsourced robotics and all of the things where you boosted demand, companies would hire workers. but if all of this is going on globally and part of it's robotics, part is labor, part just changing industries, then those correlations don't need to exist. >> reporter: it's a new world, says carabel, and the longer we obsess over the monthly unemployment rate --

>> it's definitely beaker but not a disaster. >> reporter: the longer it may take to help put millions of americans back to work. >> ifill: a candid guide for patients, friends and caregivers to coping with cancer. judy woodruff has our book conversation. >> woodruff: getting a diagnosis of breast cancer is something no woman wants to hear, but in december 2010, maggie, the executive editor of npr news, became one of the 250,000 american women who, every year, get just that word. her new book "a breast cancer alphabet" is full of personal and practical advice for women with breast cancer and their family and friends. welcome to the program. >> thank you, judy wood with wood you said you were diagnosed just over three years ago. you went through surgery,

chemotherapy and now leading as busy a life as you ever did. >> i am. and you don't think that that can happen when you first get diagnosed, but for a lot of women, that does happen. >> woodruff: but yous say in the introduction, you say no one told you that it was okay to cry uncontrollably or okay to be angry or even to acknowledge out loud that it's a real bummer. you said, i'm going to quote here, that women with breast cancer are expected to be upbeat but "hard and martial" in their attitude. >> there is something in breast cancer that focuses on that. the implication is if you struggle, and unfortunately don't make it through, that somehow you didn't give it your all and it's your fault and i don't subscribe to that. it's a horrible disease with really horrible treatment and it's okay to say that. >> woodruff: and that's part of the reason you wrote the

book. with all the literature out there about breast cancer, you thought there was a meaning for this? >> i started bringing this for myself. it was sort of cathartic for me to write how i felt. and i talked to other people and friends who had gone through breast cancer and we felt the same about a lot of things and there was camaraderie in being able to share that. it's not a medical book, i'm not a doctor, it's about my real experience that many people i've spoken to have felt. >> woodruff: it's literally a to z. you start with anxiety which turns out is a really big part of this. >> it is, and it starts before you're diagnosed. it starts when you get the call or letter that says come back, let's look at your mammogram again, or other efforts before you get there. anxiety is different from fear. it just lives with you all the time and sometimes it's at the forefront and sometimes it's at the back and you have to calibrate it and sort of figure out how you deal with it at

different terms in your treatment. >> woodruff: b is for breast. you say all of a sudden, you find yourself in matter of fact conversation with your brother, colleague, a neighbor about part of your body you would have never discussed with them before. >> yeah, it's the funny thing about breast cancer, even though in our society breasts not talked about, but here you have a disease that's all about your breast and people know what is going to happen to you. if you are going to have surgery, they know you are going to go through something disfiguring with regard to your breasts. not something i talked a lot about. >> woodruff: there is so much i want to talk to you but about you really are brutally open. i is for indi indignanties, abot what you have to go through. >> there's a lot of women who don't have breast cancer at least have gone through a

mammogram. that's not pleasant. poking, prodding, and when you have surgery, you are disfigured in a painful way, it all hurts and makes you feel angry and upset and it's okay to feel that way. >> woodruff: you're right about the importance of the people around you and what they can do with you, for you and how that makes a difference. >> i wrote k is for kindness because kindness abounds and i think the most important thing to do is, when people ask you what can i do to help, stop and think, not too long and not too hard, figure out what you need and ask them to do it for you. >> woodruff: g for guilt. i guess i was surprised at that one. >> there are multi-facets to guilt. the depressing thing is to think i did this, i did something wrong that caused my breast cancer. most of the time you didn't. you have to work your way through that. so i was surprised that chapter has actually a lot of people

have really reacted strongly to that chapter. >> woodruff: but there is also a lot of humor in here. there are great stories about people who talked about what it meant for your hair, looks, makeup, all the things that are just a very practical part. >> and they are a part of breast cancer in a way that they aren't for other cancers. i have had friends who have gone through cancer and, you know, whether we like it or not, hair, makeup, looks, all those things are for women. >> woodruff: you say even your doctors are thanking you. >> yes, my doctors are amazing and made them think about a few things that they hadn't thought about. i hope it continues to do that. >> woodruff: madhulika sikka, setting a good examples. >> thanks.

>> ifill: a new study ranks alzheimer's disease as the third leading cause of death in the u.s. we'll be back shortly with more on that surprising conclusion. but first, this is

>> ifill: we've reported often on how the number of americans coping with alzheimer's disease will grow in coming years. now, a new study finds alzheimer's may already account for many more deaths than realized. hari sreenivasan, reporting from our new york studio, gets the details. >> sreenivasan: the c.d.c ranks alzheimer's as the sixth-leading killer in the u.s., accounting for nearly 85,000 deaths a year. but the study in the journal neurology puts the annual death

toll around half a million, making it the third-leading cause of death, just behind heart disease and cancer and ahead of chronic lung disease and strokes. doctor bryan james, an epidemiologist with rush university medical center in chicago, led the research. you say half a million. that's a big gap. >> it is a big gap. it's about six times the numbers and the reason for this, it's very well documented that alzheimer's disease is underreported on death certificates. when people are filling out death certificates, they usual focus on the more immediate causes of death, and they have the opportunity to write the underlying causes, but alzheimer's disease is usually left off. >> sreenivasan: so when you look at the research here, how did you find this discrepancy? >> right. so rather than look at what's written on people's death certificates, knowing that it's left off so often, we actually

followed, you know, 2500 older adults over time and saw who developed alzheimer's disease and saw the risk of death in the people who developed alzheimer's compared to those who didn't and that's how we developed an estimate of the excess deaths we can attribute to alzheimer's and then extrapolating it to all deaths in the united states and came up with this number of half a million deaths due to alzheimer's disease. >> sreenivasan: so give me an example of how alzheimer's is the underlying cause of death, if a heart attack is what's listed on the death certificate. >> yeah, i think many people don't realize alzheimer's is a fatal disease. it leads to death very slowly over many years. it starts in the part of your brain that controls your memory and your thinking, and we're all pretty much aware of that. what people don't know is over time it slowly spreads to the parts of your brain that control your more basic functions like swallowing and breathing and your heart rate and this can leadle fatal conditions such as

pneumonia and heart failure. >> sreenivasan: how significant is this finding? is this changing the way we're thinking about the burden of the disease? >> i think that's exactly right. we already know that 5 million people are living with this disease in the country and this number is going up and up and up. we're paying over $200 billion a year to care for people with alzheimer's disease and this is a statistic to wake people up and to open their eyes that the burden on society is a lot more than we're giving it credit for and perhaps we need more funding toward research and treatment in this area. >> sreenivasan: is there a difference in how the government say supports funding of alzheimer's versus cancer? >> there is a discrepancy in funding. i would never say cancer should be funded any less than it is, but cancer is funded in about ten times the rate as alzheimer's and that's including the $100 million that the current administration just gave to alzheimer's disease, which is fantastic, but it's just a first

step, and there are three times as many people with cancer as alzheimer's. >> sreenivasan: so is this the type of information that changes policy? >> well, we certainly hope it is. you know, we know that diseases that kill people get a lot of attention, as they should. we want to bring down the amount of suffering that people have while they're living with this disease, but also we want people to acknowledge that this will also lead to people passing away. >> sreenivasan: i'm also thinking, beyond alzheimer's, does this call into question other diseases that death certificates may be underreporting? >> you know, most to have the other major killers we think that the death certificates are pretty accurate. if you die of cancer in this country, for example, it's pretty accurately going to be marked on your death certificate. it's just that alzheimer's takes so long, there's such a long chain of events, a long cascade that can take up to a decade or more for some people, that it's so often left off the death

certificate. >> sreenivasan: so what are the sort of next steps going forward? >> well, the next steps going forward are we need other research, large cohorts of older people to corroborate the findings, support them. but policywise, we think this hopefully can open the eyes of lawmakers and policymakers and private and public funders and just the public in general that this is, you know, a very burdensome disease on our society. >> sreenivasan: already, dr. bryan james from rush university. thanks so much. >> thank you very much. >> ifill: again, the major developments so much his the two leaders spoke by phone for about an hour this afternoon. president obama said there's

still room for a diplomatic solution that includes direct talks between ukraine and russia. on the "newshour" online right now, meet the microscopicphyteo plankton that helps produce oxygen in our atmosphere. they have been around 3 1/2 billion years and are the reason we breathe today, but scientists are still unlocking their secret. you can find all that and more on our web site pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. on friday, we'll have an exclusive interview with general martin dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff on the crisis in ukraine and sexual assaults in the military. i'm gwen ifill, we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and michael gerson. for all of us here at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪

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steves: for a more lively way to enjoy paris and cap an exciting day, steve and i have hired a car and a driver for a blitz of the city's best nighttime views. and this isn't just any car and driver. this company employs a fleet of historic deux chevaux cars, and they're driven by local students. man: the different districts are like a snail, going around the island, the city. steves: the french raise flood lighting to an art form. and with a city as beautiful as paris, it's no wonder.

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