on this edition for sunday, april 20th. new violence erupts in eastern ukraine. in our signature segment, the high cost of negative comments online. it's more than a matter of rudeness. >> i figure the site has gotten more off-hands or inappropriate comments have come through. >> the free samples you're getting from your doctor may actually cost you in the long run. next on pbs "newshour weekend." >> "pbs newshour weekend" made possible by lewis b. and louise hirsch feld. judy and josh westin. joyce v. hale. the wallich family.

the cheryl and philip millstein family. bernard and eileen schwartz. roslyn p. walter. corporate funding provided by mutual of america. designing customized, individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support is provided by -- and by the corporation for public broadcasting and contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tish wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari . renewed violence in eastern ukraine days after diplomats reached international agreement in geneva to defuse the crisis. five people were killed including three pro-russian separatists during a shoot-out at a checkpoint the separatists had set up. russia accused ukraine of failing to protect russian speakers in the area. russian president putin acknowledged the possibility of

russian military intervention in the region. during a television interview, when asked whether moscow would press armed pro-russian separatists in eastern ukraine to pull back, the russian ambassador to the united states called for the disarming of ukrainian militias in the western part of that country. >> we have signed the geneva agreement. that's a message in itself. but what is important, that all provided in the geneva statement is equally applied in ukraine. >> though the ambassador said his country has no intention of reclaiming parts of the ukraine that were once part of the soviet union. the ukrainian prime minister expressed his doubt. >> president putin has a dream to restore the soviet union. and every day, he goes further and further. and god knows where is the final destination. >> there reportedly has been significant progress in talks designed to curtail iran's

nuclear program. in what was described as a major concession, iran has agreed to slash the amount of plutonium it will produce at its iraq heavy water reactor by 80%. the work done there had raised concerns iran was developing a nuclear weapon. the news was reported this weekend by the official iranian news agency. western powers had no comment but the head of iran's atomic energy agency had this to say. >> translator: the issue of heavy water reactor has been virtually resolved and we have no problem with that. divers continue to search for hundreds believed dead in the ferry that sank last wednesday. the death count rose to 58 but could exceed 300 once those still missing are accounted for. transcripts of conversations released show even as the ferry listed dangerously, a member of the ferry's crew asked at least three times if passengers would be picked up if they abandoned ship and how long it would take. the captain eventually took 30 minutes to issue an evacuation order, an order several survivors said they never heard.

it is easter sunday. in front of a throng of 150,000 people who filled st. peter's square, pope francis urged the faithful to care for the sick, the elderly and needy. he called for an end to terror attacks against christians in nigeria and an end to violence in ukraine and syria. in syria during a rare public appearance, president bashar al assad marked easter by visiting an ancient mostly christian villa village, promising to protect churches there which he described as part of the nation's heritage. there are method to be at least 1 million christians in syria. the visit was seen as an effort to persuade minorities assad's government is their best protection against islamist extremists. these images were posted on assad's facebook and instagram pages. for the second time in two days there's been an american drone attack in yemen against suspected members of al qaeda. u.s. officials had no comment but security officials in yemen say about 25 suspected terrorists were killed today.

approximately ten others were killed yesterday. this video which started appearing on jihadist websites recently reportedly shows a gathering of more than 100 al qaeda fighters in yemen. the branch, known as al qaeda in the arabian pen minutes lashes is considered among the most dangerous in the world. newly released government documents show general motors waited seven years before recalling more than 300,000 saturn ions. this despite thousands of complaints that the car's power steering system was not working properly. the problem reportedly contributed to at least 12 crashes, nonfate. the cars were finally recalled three weeks ago. the government once again will start mailing benefit statements to workers informing them what to expect when they qualify for social security benefits. the practice stopped in 2011 because of budget cuts. starting this september, those in the workforce will receive a statement in the mail starting at 25 and continuing every five

years until they turn 60. the practice is meant to reach workers who don't go online to check. the mail action are expected to cost the government $70 million a year. astronauts at the international space station got a big easter delivery this morning. an unmanned spacecraft carrying 5,000 pounds of equipment docked with the space station. the cargo includes a space suit, materials used for scientific experiments, food and care acknowledges, delivered by the dragon spacecraft operated by the private company space-x. the former prize fighter ruben "hurricane" carter has died, he was 76. he first achieved fame when he fought for a world title in 1964. two years later he was wrongfully imprisoned for alleged involvement in a triple murder in paterson, new jersey. after serving 19 years in 1985, a federal judge ordered him free saying carter's conviction was predicated on an appeal to racism rather than reason. his story was immortalized by

bob dylan in the song "hurricane" and the 1999 movie starring denzel washington. if you ever felt lucky that you got a free sample of a prescription drug from a doctor, it may actually be costing you in the long run. a new study from stanford university school of medicine found that doctors who are allowed to hand out free samples often prescribe those expensive drugs versus doctors who don't have access to free samples. we're joined from california by professor lane who teaches pediatrics and dermatology at stanford and is a senior author of the study. so you looked specifically at the practice of dermatology. what did you find? >> yes, we found that those physicians across the united states who use samples are much more likely to write for higher prescriptions. the average cost of a first visit for acne or row sash sha was over $450 for medication for

the physicians that used samples. we compared it to our clinic where we have no samples, where the average cost was only $200. so at least twice more expensive were the prescription costs from the physicians who used samples. >> and this was focused on dermatologists and these particular types of medicines but how does this translate out? this is a wider practice that's happening in different fields as well? >> well, the reason for the study is i noticed in my practice, once we did not have samples, that i was writing for more generics and the patients referred from dermatologists were on more expensive medications. so we tried to look at it. in the data, we found that it is true that dermatologists are using samples more than other specialties over the last ten years. and a lot of that has to do with the use of what's called bran s generics, generics under brand name, very expensive. >> the drug companies would say,

don't these free samples help the poor who might not be able to afford the medications or help them get immediately on the drug? >> that's what dermatologists and fits will often say. but the data is very clear. that the poor patients are not the ones who usually get the samples. we didn't look at that in our study but that's been shown in other studies. >> so is there a connection between the amount of money that drug companies now spend? is this basically our free samples the marketing write-off? >> yes. so it looks like there's at least over $6 billion a year spent by pharmaceutical companies in sampling. and so that cost eventually has to be paid by someone. and the price of the generic drug may be quite a bit less than the price of a brand name or branded generic. and it's only the branded generics or the branded drugs that are sampled. so those are the ones that the dermatologists are channeled into writing prescriptions for. >> and what about the argument that this is -- the samples are

also a way to get the most recent medications into the hands of doctors? >> sometimes that's not the best thing. there are studies with cardiovascular disease that sometimes the recent medications are not studied as well and the risk of death or dying from the use of samples can be there. and dermatologists, we don't see that, but the other problem is that the recent medications have not been proven better than generic in most situations. >> so the $6.3 billion, those are costs passed on to the consumer? >> that's exactly right. one of the focuses of our study was for the dermatologist to realize that although they think they're helping the patients, they are really being manipulated to write for more expensive medications with no proven benefit of those medications over the generic drugs. >> all right. professor alfred lane from stanford, thanks very much. >> thank you.

our signature segment. if you visit the website tonight, chans are you'll find comments on our stories. some kind, others not so much. in some ways that's the nature of the internet. people can get very worked up about even the most seemingly innocuous subjects. what might surprise you is that negative comments can affect the way you think about the story in ways you don't even realize. we asked a few of our producers to read some of the comments we found as we researched this story. feel free to add your comments. >> if you read about politics on the internet, then you've probably read comments like this. >> can you imagine what the bill of rights would look like had liberals written it? >> hey, genius. liberals did write the bill of rights and you knuckle-draggers should be thankful they did. >> why is it that duke gets all the best white basketball

players? >> why do you post something so stupid and pointless? >> movies, stupid. the actress is ugly and boring. >> you are obviously deaf if you really think taylor swift, who cannot hold a note, can sing better than carrie underwood. >> peer review should not mean statistical morons. >> it's comments like these that have turned the internet into a veritable wild west of rudeness. with abracive and often completely anonymous commenters hijacking online conversations. even a cooking blog like deb's smitten kitchen is not immune. she has 5 million to 6 million visit areas month. not all of them polite. >> thanks to following this i totally wrecked my eggs. needless to say i won't be back. the bigger the site has gotten the more offhand or inappropriate comments have come through. >> reporter: comments have become a staple of the internet. they're used almost everywhere, from newspaper articles to

online retailers. in part because they help keep people on those sites longer. and increased ad revenue and product sales. but being able to say whatever you want has left web publishers and bloggers wondering what to do about offensive comments on their site. for deb perlman's blog there's a simple solution. what do you do when you get a horrible comment? >> delete it, don't think twice. >> reporter: for some sites like reddit it's more complicated. one of the biggest sites on the internet, reddit is a sprawling network of online communities that's comment-fueled. users post articles, photos, links they find online, then create giant discussions around them. eric martin is general manager. >> i think we had 120 million unique visitors, and we do about 1 million comments per day. >> so comments are fairly integral to reddit's infrastructure. how does reddit manage 1 million

comments a day? >> we don't. we can't. we couldn't possibly manage a million comments per day. we step in as little as possible. >> reporter: it's not just about being rude. comments can affect how you think about what you're reading. last year, researchers released findings from a study on what they called the nasty effect. two groups of people were shown a web article about nanotechnology. basically, tiny machines. it's not something you'd expect people to feel strongly about. at the end of one version of the article, the researchers made up civil, polite comments. and at the end of the other, angry and insulting comments. the researchers found that the group that had read the version with negative comments came away with very strong, polarized feelings about nanotechnology after reading it. regardless of whether or not they knew much about it in the first place. so what are the solutions? some sites like popular science are removing comments altogether. others, like espn.com, are only allowing people to comment with their real names. through sites like facebook.

the idea is that people are less likely to be rude if their real name and photo are attached to what they say. but eric martin of reddit says anonymity has value. >> what are some examples of anonymity helping a discussion? >> a 15-year-old kid in a family that is not very open-minded, about your sexuality, or someone who's trying to figure out a difficult health situation. if you're thinking about switching careers. it's very dangerous sometimes for you to comment with your real name. >> reporter: the solution may lie somewhere in between total anonymity and real identity. with commenters who consistently use a nickname or pseudonym. roe is the vice president of business development at discuss, a commenting service used by more than 3 million websites, including "the newshour's"

discuss compared three gripes. anonymous commenters, commenters with consistent nicknames, and comment hoarse used their real names. then measured how often those groups posted comments and how well other commenters reacted to them. >> the conventional wisdom was real names is going to probably win in terms of quality. and that anonymous would probably win in terms of quantity. turns out actually that middle group of pseudonym commenters scored higher than both. >> what is it about anonymous commenting? >> one of the reasons completely anonymous commenting can be an issue is that it's just not tied to a sense of community norms or standards in any way. >> so that seems to be the grand bargain that facebook came with is it's verified, i know who you are, i know who your friends are, and you're going to be more civil if this is connected to your reputation. >> i think there's a place for

that. we're not saying it's a bad thing to be able to use real names or identities. it's just that giving users that choice turns out to be very important for getting the highest-quality discussions. >> reporter: in addition to identity choice, discuss offers tools to screen and flag offensive words and allows users to vote comments up or down. but it leaves it up to individual website managers to use that information in moderating discussions. and it's that element of human engagement that experts like eric martin say software can never replace. >> no one says you have to have comments. i think if you are going to have comments, you should care about them. you should be active in them. and you should invest time and resources and people in making them the communities you want. >> although reddit tries to avoid overseeing the comments on its side, it's posted guidelines on commenting etiquette and allows users to moderate the discussions they're involved in. an activity which has become a

daily routine for deb perlman. every day she reads every new comment that's come in from readers of smitten kitchen. in some cases responds to them. >> i try to read everything that's come in and that won't just be on the new articles, that will be on anything that anybody's commented on, on any one of the 850 recipe in the archives. >> so i could comment on something you wrote about four years ago? >> and it will probably start with, you probably aren't going to read this. but i do. i think they think they're speaking to a corporate wall, then when a human being is like, hey, i'm so sorry, let's walk through this, all of a sudden it totally softens the conversation. >> if you want to weigh in about online comments, please leave your comments. at newshour.pbs.org. on easter we look at an unprecedented event happening at the vatican next weekend, a double canonization, when two former popes will be made

saints. here to tell us more is rachel from the associated press. we don't see canonizations very often but two at a time? >> this is a first. pope francis obviously approved and wanted to put into effect and did it as part of his breaking with vatican protocol and tradition as he's done throughout his first year in the papacy. >> who are the two popes? they seem to represent very different parts of the church. >> there's pope john xxiii who was in office from 1958 to 1963. and he's known for modernizing reforms that really brought the church into the new century and out into the world more. and he's kind of a hero for the more liberal wing of the catholic church. the other is pope john paul ii, who served from 1978 to 2005 when he died. and he is seen as the kind of hero for more conservative-leaning catholics, partly because he thought the changes john xxiii put into

effect had gone too far. it was kind of a course correction for john paul ii to come in. >> were there political considerations here? it seems pope francis is pleasing both sides by doing this. >> that's how people are reading it, like balancing the ticket. there's a left/right divide in the church and it is very wide. by bringing these two men together for a canonization at the same time, he's saying a lot of different things. he's saying that one isn't -- they're not at odds with each other. that they're more on a continuum of how they led the church. and ought that there's room for everybody. this is a big message of his pontificate, that he wants all people of different views to be welcome in the church. >> so backing up just a second. what does it take to become a saint? >> there's a process that the church goes through that's incredibly lengthy and very intensive. it's first, someone looks through your entire life. your writings. decides whether or not you had exhibited heroic virtue. that's the phrase they use. the pope approves that.

the next step is beatification. that's when a miracle is attributed to your intersession. fy prayed to pope john paul ii and was cured of something, that's a miracle the church would have to certify, then you become beatified. the canonization, usually it's two miracles that have to be proved, but in this case pope john paul ii had two miracles attributed to him and certified. john xxiii only had one. pope francis decided to waive the second miracle requirement. and it's not as unusual as you'd think. it doesn't happen a lot but there is a lot of debate within the catholic church, amongst theologians, whether or not two miracles are required. >> there's a weight period, isn't there? almost like the nba or baseball hall of fame, there has to be a certain number of years that pass. pope john paul ii, did that pass? >> right after he died there was

this incredible outpouring of support for him. the crowds in st. peter's square chanting "santo subato," which means make him a saint immediately. when pope benedict was elected he decided to waive the five-year waiting period that usually is required after a death before you even start looking at whether or not someone should be on track to become a saint. >> so one pope got an exception for the two miracles down to one, one pope got be a interception for the waiting time. we're hearing world leaders, presidents, but this is somewhat different than standard, it's not a huge three-day affair like it becomes? >> that's right. this is the no frills papacy. he's making ate no frills day onization. so it's just going to be the basic ceremony itself in st. peter's square. it's still enormously festive and something that people around the world could be watching but it won't be the three-day extravaganza. >> rachel, associated press, thanks so much for joining us.

>> thank you. >> this is "pbs newshour weekend sunday." with william, kate and prince george making headlines around the world as they travel, the british monarchy is currently riding a wave of popularity. but in spain, the monarchy there is finding public support in shorter supply. itv's matt frey reports. >> reporter: the gold paint on the palace gates may look a little chipped these days. the shutters weather-worn. the royalty looking out from these windows may be gratified by the reassuring sight of a throng of schoolchildren on the dutiful trip round the palace. >> who wants spain to be a republic? that's practically everyone. >> they do not. >> they do nothing? >> they do some things? >> nothing. it is about image for spain. >> reporter: there was plenty to embolden an underage republican in spain.

for instance, the reason why king juan carlos is walking with sticks is that he fell while hunting elephants on safari in botswana in the company of his mistress. and then had to get a hip replacement operation. it wasn't the choice of prey or the infidelity that upset the public, it was the timing. the monarch was on safari while the nation was on its knees economically. the spanish public is cold-eyed about the usefulness of its royalty. 60% want the king to beabdicate weighed down by scandal and old age. this two years ago was widely seen as truth that juan carlos should embrace retirement. the fresh blood is held in higher esteem. prince philip, the heir, enjoys a 70% approval rating. his wedding to a spanish television journalist subjected all the glamor of a british royal wedding. there is one key difference, though. the spanish royals are cheap.

7 million pounds a year of taxpayer money, a fifth of what a british royal costs. join us on air and on-line tomorrow on "the newshour." judy woodruff talks with john paul stevens who lamented the direction of the modern court and wants to change the constitution. that's it for this edition of "pbs newshour weekend." i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching.

>> "pbs newshour weekend" is made possible by lewis b. and louise hirsch feld doman. you'dgy and josh westin. joyce v. hale. the wallich family in memory of mean are miriam and ira d. the cheryl and philip millstein family. bernard and eileen schwartz. roslyn p. walter. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america. designing customized, individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support is provided by -- and by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

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