♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ on this edition for sunday, april 27th, russian separatists in ukraine parade their hostages as president obama calls for international backing on new sanctions against the kremlin. in our signature segment,ic maing sense of the showdown between russia and ukraine. the long, complicated history you might not have heard and the housing recovery slows. what it means for the economy next on pbs "news hour weekend". >> pbs "news hour weekend" is made possible by louis b. and hirschfeld coleman. judy and josh westin. joyce b. hale. the wallick family in memory of miriam and ira d. wallick and

the cheryl milstein family. bernard and irene schwartz. rosalynn p. walter and corporate funding is provided by mutual of america, designing customized, individual and group retirement products. that's why we are 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. from the tisch wnetcenters in new york this is pbs news hour weekend. >> good evening. i'm allison stewart. the pro-russian separatist displayed ukrainians had his men recently took hostage. seven of those being held are european observers who the separatists claim, are a charge refuted today. all appear in good condition, however an eighth hostage was released on medical grounds late

in the day. in addition, three ukrainian security officers being held by separatists were also put on display. they were blindfold, bloodied and stripped of their shoes. the men traveled from crimea. the separatists seized control of the office of regional state television in oorn ukraine. three weeks ago they seized government buildings in ten cities in eastern ukraine and have held them ever since. today while in malaysia, president obama urged international backing for additional sanks against the kremlin which the obama administration believes is supporting the separatists. >> so long as russia continues down the path of provocation rather than trying to resolve this issue peacefully and deescalating, there will be consequences and those consequences will continue to grow. >> during his talks in malaysia today, president obama urged malaysian leaders to respect human rights and the president chose not to meet with an opposition leader convicted on

what they say was trumped up charges. they concluded the trip with a visit to the philippines tomorrow, there he's expected to announce a new ten-year security pact. the deal will allow for greater military presence in the country and there are increasing tensions between china and the philippines. elsewhere in asia, the prime minister of south korea has resigned accepting responsibility for what the critics say was the government's slow response to the ferry disaster. the death count is 147 and more than a hundred others are missing and presumed dead. he said, quoting now, the cries of the families of those missing still keep me up at night. in south korea the role of the prime minister is largely ceremonial. it was a hftorric day at the vatican, for the first time two popes were canonized as saints together and two living popes were there for the occasion. the extraordinary event was celebrated by hundreds of thousands who crammed into the square.

kordellia reports from vatican city. ♪ ♪ >> solemnity and sainthood as history is made. in st. peter's square. it was the first time two popes have been canonized together, carrying figures of the 20th century church celebrated by half a million pilgrims. >> for years pope john paul ii took the church to the ends of the earth and today the ends of the earth will come back here. >> they understand how great this is to recognize two men in the church and two great popes and the contribution to the life of the church. >> this was an unusual, if not political union, john 23rd was the reformist. john paul ii, the conservative. some view that elevated status as an attempt to unite two camps. >> some view pope francis as skillfully balancing the papacies of past and present. the mass saw him embrace pope

benedict xvi and he retired last year and has rarely been seen in public. >> pope francis blessed his two fr predecessors before praising them as men of courage. one the globe-trotting traditionalists and crediting him to bring down communism and the other associated with '60s liberalism. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> such is the popularity of john xxiii, the church dropped the requirement for two miracles and settled for one. john paul ii's relic was carried by a costa rican woman who claims he saved her from a brain aneurism. >> pope francis, deep amongst

the crowd is perhaps encouraging a new chapter in the church by forcing the faithful to share their joy for two very different and divisive legacies. >> today is the start of israel's annual hol wauft commemoration and to mark the occasion the palestinian leader mahmoud abbas called the holocaust the most heinous crime against humanity in the modern era. it was interpreted as a gesture to israel, but israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu accused abbas of being with holocaust deniedeniers. they announced nigh new alliance with hamas. elsewhere in the middle east the head of the group monitoring syria's compliance to destroy the chemical weapons stockpile said today more than 90% of the weapons have been destroyed. under terms of the agreement the deadlines of the complete elimination of the weapons is june 30th. international inspectors still have not been given access to 12

syrian weapons production facilities. there have been reports of chlorine gas attacks between the assad regime and the rebels sierking to oust him. there is severe weather this evening in the central united states. high winds toppled a semi traveling along i-70 about 35 miles east of kansas city missouri and a tornado touched down in south central nebraska. over the next couple of days the weather channel forecast and an outbreak of severe storms from the plains down to east texas and further east in portions of mississippi and ohio valleys. earlier today a marathon at oklahoma city dedicated the victims of the 1995 bombing was delayed due to hail and high winds. the owner of the los angeles clippers basketball team did not attend the play ahh game as they attributed racist comments attributed to him and a statement reportedly made by donald sterling was made by the website tmz.

most of the players and the clippers are african-americans as is the coach. the clippers players gathered at midcourt and moved their clippers warm-up jerseys and practiced without displaying the team logo. ♪ ♪ > . for a few years now we've been hearing a great deal about the nation's housing recovery and recent reports that trend might be slowing and if it is it could have a significant impact on the nation's overall economic health. for more about this we are joined by michelle conlin, a senior correspondent with reuters. michelle, the reports everyone is sort of taking a look at they say that existing home sales are at their lowest in 18 months of july 2012 and new home sales are down about 14% as compared with this time last year. so what's happened in the last 12 to 18 months? >> one thing that's happening that in order to have a healthy housing market you have to have a healthy first-time buyer group. first-time buyers are the engine

of the housing market and they've been locked out of this market by various things and one thing they've been locked out is by a tight lending standard and we're hearing about credit easing and it's still pretty darn tough to get one. also, they're being locked out by high prices and inventories are pretty low so prices are getting bid up. a lot of buyers are millennials and if you're paying off student debt that's vifrpa you willy the equivalent of a mortgage payment and so it's hard to take on another mortgage payment. >> the disappearing buyer. economists like to call them missing ho households because these are households that would be going off and buying homes and starting off their families and what they're doing is they're renting for longer and many of them are still living with mom and dad. >> so this brings up the interesting question. it's the chicken and egg question. which comes first? the stable economy and people who don't have to live at home with mom and dad because they can afford to have a house and

that would introduce the third factor, you can't have a healthy job market and healthy wage growth and even though we're seeing job creations these are largely service job, no benefits, stagnating wages and not the kind of jobs that you need become a member of the home buying class. >> necessity is the mother of invention. there's a new kind of home being presented for folks like this. this is so interesting. it's called the express home. >> that's right, the express home. d.r. horton is the country's largest home builder and to address the problem of the first-time buyer being locked out they created a new product called the express home. this is a low-priced home and the entire home was designed for the first-time home buyer, designed for the parents to help their kids get out of the house and to provide entry to the class of buyers. >> we should mention this is a bifurcated market and in parts of the country the real estate

market is through the roof. i like to refer to the housing market and people would like to say what's going on with the housing market. there's not one. there's a million of them that goes zip code by zip code and if you live on one of the coasts chances are you're in a housing market that's going nuts. you're seeing foreign investors scoop up inventories. >> cash buyers. >> cash is the new finance. it's hard to compete with a cash buyer if you're coming in with a mortgage. >> michelle conlin from reuters, thanks for the insight. >> thanks for having me. ♪ ♪ and now to our signature segment. tonight in an effort to provide more context to you about the current crisis, we look into the long, complicated relationship between russia and ukraine. it's one that goes back 1,000 years. for shared histories especially

relevant because vladimir putin noted ukraine used to be part of rausch and because of that, russia might take part of it back. we asked news hour karen thompson to untangle this complex relationship and one that sometimes has been close and other times stranged, but rarely equal. >> as the accusations and warnings from both east and westmount, as the pace of violence in ukraine intensified and the prospects of war grow, people live in what is now ukraine find themeses in a familiar, uncomfortable position, seemingly at the mercy of a much more powerful neighbor. in this case, the russians. theirs is a tangled relationship, sometimes close, other times strained, but rarely equal. in fact, the connections between the two countries run deep, through marriage, religion, culture and language. >> can you just walk me through all of the things that have bound ukraine and russia together throughout history?

>> one is ukrainian and russian languages are quite similar. many ukrainians are bilingual, television programs and contemporary ukraine often switch back and forth depending how ukrainian and russia. >> timothy frye is from columbia university, it's one of the leading russian study centers in the nation. >> there's lots of ukrainians who speak russian as their first language and in lesser case there are many russians who also speak ukrainian and language is an important part of the equation. >> the ties between the two date back to the establishment of a state before the year 1 those. the area extended all of the way to moscow. >> in its heyday it was one of the most important, if not the most important state in europe. >> he is a science professor at rutgers university. >> both nations refer to kiev and ruth as the place where they

were born and it existed for about 200, 300 years, give or take. sort of in the middle of the 13th century with the mono goal attack which fell apart. >> once that happened for the next several century, parts of the area now known as ukraine was overrun with foreign powers and the lithuanians and the ottomans and the russians. >> since 1700, give or talk a few years, the consensus again is that ukraine has been part of the russian empire to put a specific date on it it was in 1709 with the repeater of the great defeated charles 12th of sweden who was aligned with the ukrainian leader and it's from that moment, approximately that ukraine's virtually total incorporation into the russian

empire occurs and it's at that mole, as well that the consensus view is that ukraine became the esh give lent of a colony. >> in the late 1700s the southern and eastern portions of ukraine was taken by the rugs. it's called the new russia putin referred to recently and it stayed in russian control until the russian revolution in 1914. that was the first time that part of the area now ukraine tried to declare independence. historians still argue over the details. but in the early 1920s the ukrainian socialist republic was formed as part of the new soviet union where it remained side by side with russia for the next 70 years. even there, relations were often fraught. stalin's collectivization of uks cranian farms in the 1930s led to a great famine and millions of deaths. this is an area that has long

been known as the bread basket of the region and during world war irk i, many in western ukraine side the with the nazis, not the kremlin. >> a lot of people are anti-russian, anti-soviets and because stallen starved the ukranians and they never forgot. >> germany in 1941 occupied entire ukraine. they immediately enslaved large portions of the population with the help of ukraine it was the entire jewish population of ukraine and a lot of forced labor backed germany to help work in the war industry. after the war, ukraine, the second most populist soviet republic enjoyed an almost special status within the 15 republics of the u.s.s.r. >> the relationship between the russians and ukranians was much closer than any other nick group. >> nikita kruschev ceded crimea

to ukraine. during the next on 40 years, people in the ukraine were represented in the soviet elite. and breshnev, who presided over the soviet union for two decades was actually born in ukraine. kimberly martin was a political science professor at columbia university and barnard college. >> if you go through who the personnel were in top-ranking positions in both of the politics of the communist party and also in terms of who were the the industrial leaders, who were the military leaders and who were the leaders in the arts, and people who came from slavic backgrounds so russians, ukrainians certain looky had a disproportionate level of being favored at the top. >> frye said this was particularly true when it came to culture. ukranian high culture was something that was prized in the

soviet period. it was a mix between russians kind of looking down on the ukrainians as their little brothers and at the same time celebrating the high culture particularly in the soviet period. >> when the soviet union came apart in the '90s ukraine became an independent country. by then the ties between the ukrainians and russians had onlien doened. in the soviet period lots of people studied in moscow and then were sent to other republics and they met spouses there and put down roots and this was a common way for russians and ukrainians given the similarities in the language to intermarry and to have lets of familial ties. >> many russians and ukrainians share a faith in orthodox christianity. many read each other's literature as well. in fact, a 2001 census showed russian was a native lauage for a majority of people in crimea, luhansk and donetsk

where utsch in of the violence is occurring. despite the references throughout ukraine's independence, there has been strive between ukrainians and russians. >> you have to bear in mind that for all of the cleavages between east and west in ukraine, for 23 years, ukraine managed to govern itself not very well with lots of corruption and very poor, economic performance, but without violence, without separatist movements and it's only in these last three months that we've seen violence on the scale that we are currently seeing. >> first, with the huge, prowestern rally in kiev that sparked the violent crackdown leaving to the ouster of viktor yanukovych followed by russia's seizing of crimea. several weeks later those pro-russian separatists occupied government build and cities in eastern ukraine where they remain today. some of the armed masked men

reportedly have close ties to the russian military and special forces. if putin is behind all of this, what's motivating him? >> to get into putin's mind read what he reads. >> maria is a ph.d candidate in political science. she wrote a piece on how early 20th century, the philosophers may be influencing putin's actions. writing is a sign to russian regional governors to read. they say that russia is a historically, very powerful civilization that has this goal of preserving its traditional value and defining itself against the aggression of the west and russia has to protect the neighboring countries and traditional influence such as ukraine, for example, and we can see putin is following that pretty closely. >> he's offering this new idea that is identified as the

russian language and people with the russian culture and it sounded like he's trying to re-create. >> which is in mind of what president putin told former president george w. bush in 2008. you have to understand, george, ukraine is not even a country. >> that also fits closely with putin's recent remarks in a call-in program. >> translator: i would like to remind you that what was called novorecea, donetsk, and odessa were not part of ukraine back then. these territories were given to u krin crane by the soviet government. new russia toic describe an area that's an arc larging change and that's just one small point in historical background that he's giving up, but it seems to be a justification to the russian people about taking further aggressive actions.

when you start talking about novorecea on top of everything else and it is unclear what putin's next plan is going to be, including the big of the question of all whether those tens of thousands of russian troops masked on the ukrainian board will invade or not, like they have throughout history, ukrainians will have to wait and see what a more powerful nation will do. >> it was always a pawn between great powers throughout its history and that, i think, is something that's not going to go away and now it's sharp between the european union, western europe, nato and russia and it's quite ultimately a question of national identity and where does ukraine belong? >> take an online journey through ukrainian history, viewer slide show at newshour.pbs.org.

>> this is pbs "news hour weekend" sunday. it's one of those stories that comes and goes with little attention paid. we're talking about national park week. it's around this time every year that the department of interior designates new national historic landmarks. there are roughly 2500 of them on the list. buildings, properties and objects that represent important aspects of american history. this past week, four more were added to the list. >> in detroit iconic murals by diego rivera considered some of his finest work, they're called detroit industry and cover four walls of the detroit institute of arts. the murals were commissioned to celebrate detroit's history of manufacturing especially the automobile industry and then there's the 44-acre farm of adelaide stevenson ii located 35 north of chicago. a former illinois governor and

ambassador to the u.n. steven ran twice for president unsuccessfully against dwight eisenhowerer. he lived there most of his adult life. george nabbing shyma was a figure in the american craft movement. many of his pieces showed raw wood with imperfections like cacs and knots. the site of a 1956 plane crash in arizona and two planes collided along a remote part of the grand canyon and it was the deadliest crash in aviation history. in a curious twist, the site's exact location is secret, officially closed for years. the the park service told news hour that's the policy for sensitive sites. unlike the other three new national landmarks it's unlikely the public will ever tote get to visit this one. ♪

>> join us on air and online tomorrow on "the news hour." we'll bring you the latest on the crisis in ukraine. that's it for pbs "news hour weekend." i'm allison stewart. weekend." i'm allison stewart. thanks for watching. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

pbs "news hour weekend" is made possible by judy and josh westin. joyce b. hale. the wallick family in memory of miriam and ira d. wallick bernard and irene schwartz. rosalynn p. walter. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america designing can cut of myselfed, individual and group retirement products. that's why we are 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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