captioning sponsored by wnet on this edition for sunday, september, 28th: house speaker john boehner says america might have no choice but to send ground troops to fight isis. india's new prime minister is in the united states. what's next for u.s./india relations? and in our signature segment: jeff greenfield reports from kansas on the race that will help determine which party controls the united states senate. >> so if someone had told you, up till say eight months ago, that you would be seeing the race for both senator and governor develop the way it has, what would you have told them? >> that they're smoking something that's legal in colorado but not in kansas. next on pbs newshour weekend

>> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group rirement 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 wnet studios in lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. this is pbs newshour weekend. >> stewart: good evening, thanks for joining us. i'm alison stewart. hari sreenivasan is off. the united states and its allies took new steps today to try to limit the islamic state's ability to fund itself. reportedly carrying out air strikes against refineries that

the jihadists control in northeastern syria, near the city of raqqa. this, as a top obama administration official appeared on the sunday talk shows to explain the administration's approach toward defeating the militant islamic group. >> what we're not going to do is fall into the al-qaeda trap of sending hundreds of thousands of americans back. that's exactly what they want. they want to bog us down, tie us down, and bleed us. but house speaker john boehner insisted today that air power alone could not defeat these extremists. >> if nobody else will step up, would you recommend putting american boots on the ground? >> we have no choice. these are barbarians. they intend to kill us, and if we don't destroy them first, we're gonna pay the price. >> stewart: according to a new "wall street journal"/nbc news and annenberg poll, americans overwhelmingly believe u.s. ground troops ultimately will be sent to take on islamic state fighters. a decision they would now support by a slender 45-to-37% margin. iran reportedly has developed a new cruise missile said to be

able to hit targets more than twice the distance as the previous version. this, according to the iranian news agency, "fars." the new missile, with a range of approximately 435 miles, reportedly can be fired from ground launchers or from fighter jets. a top iranian military official hailed the development as a significant boost to iran's military defenses. authorities in hong kong are cracking down on the pro- democracy demonstrations that have been going on for several days now. police today fired tear gas on thousands of protesters who had gathered outside the headquarters of the city government. the protests are over new rules that would allow the central government in beijing to screen all candidates hoping to lead hong kong before their names can appear on the ballot. the volcano that erupted without warning in japan yesterday, was far more deadly than originally thought. despite rescue efforts, authorities now say 31 people are believed to have been killed. the death toll had been put at seven yesterday. the volcano was still erupting

today, pouring smoke and ash into the sky. back in this country, authorities in ferguson missouri are investigating the shooting of a police officer last night. the officer reportedly was chasing two suspects when one of the men turned around and shot him in the arm. the officer returned fire, but apparently did not hit either of the suspects. the incident is not believed to be connected to the recent racial unrest in that st. louis suburb, unrest sparked by the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer. promising medical news tonight. women suffering from metastatic breast cancer, who were given the roche drug perjetta during clinical trials, typically lived 16 months longer than those who didn't get the drug. this, according to data released today. the drug is used in conjunction with herceptin, another roche drug that also blocks the action of a protein linked to some breast tumors. taken together, they cost just more than $11,000 a month, according to a company spokesman. in the aftermath of a major

security breach at the white house earlier this month, word of another incident three years ago that reportedly angered the president and the first lady. in an article published today, the "washington post" said the secret service mistakenly concluded that gunfire heard on november 11th of 2011 was not aimed at the white house. agents stood down, but in fact, one of the bullets fired from a semiautomatic rifle had smashed a window steps from the first family formal living room. the president's younger daughter, sasha, and his mother- in-law were home at the time. the damage to the building was only discovered four days later. >> stewart: during a speech attended by thousands, today, at madison square garden in new york, the new indian prime minister, narendra modi, predicted that india is entering a new age of achievement. he meets with appointment tomorrow. for more about the man and his plans we are joined now by

alyssa ayres, a fellow at the council of form relations. >> the indian community's welcome reception for the indian prime minister. the entire arena was excited. there was a pent up excitement of the indian american community, to welcome him here as the new indian prime minister. and hear what he had to say. >> he was elected last spring in a landslide. tell us why he was elected with such a decisive victory and a little bit more about him. >> he campaigned very specifically on a campaign of good government, plagued by corruption scandals so the good

governance message was a very important one. voters were hearing that and saying you know what? let's vote for a change. and most importantly his message on economic growth at a time when indian growth rates had dipped blow 5% from peaks of around 10%, in 2010. citizens heard the modi message, the promise of greater jobs and opportunities. i think that was the secret of the success of his party. >> there has been a series of irritations between the indian government and the united states over the past few years. what are those irritations and what do you think the president and the prime minister will discuss because of throws? >> it certainly has been -- those,. >> it is certainly the case, that was exacerbated by the fact that indian growth rate slowed which made the business environment a lot more challenging for a lot of american companies that had previously been big champions of

the indian story. areas of trade, areas where we don't see eye to eye, india recently decided not to ratify a very important agreement reached under the wto, trade fasks agreement, i'm-d facilitation agreement. possibility of the civil nuclear initiative move into a commercial operation that's another irritant that's been of long standing. >> and finally what is his stance, his approach to pakistan? >> he has an approach to pakistan that seems premised on the idea that outreach and communication can try to help bridge their divide very early on. the prime minister invited all the heads of government from the surrounding countries in south asia to attend his inauguration. but among the meetings he held with heads of government, his

meeting with noaz sharif has been paid most interest to. a planned meeting between indian and pakistani foreign secretaries was cancelled because the pakistani high commissioner had met with kashmiri separatists. a call for more dialogue with pakistan but this is very firm that had can't take place. he is looking more for pakistan do more to rein in the are threat of terrorists so they ask normalize their relations. >> alyssa ayres, thank you so much for having us. and now to our signature segment. our original in department reports

in-depth reports from around the nation and the world. tonight, the mid-term elections. voters across the nation go to polls less than six weeks from now, and the biggest question heading into election day is whether the g.o.p. will regain control of the united states senate. one race that will help determine that is being fought in kansas, a reliably republican state where the state's longtime republican senator and its republican governor are both, perhaps unexpectedly, in trouble. why? newshour special correspondent jeff greenfield traveled there recently and has our report. >> reporter: this is what you'll see just about any autumn in kansas: fields of corn that await the harvest, the search for food at a farmer's market or at oklahoma joe's always crowed barbecue. and this is what you'll hear: the roar of the crowds and the motorcycles at a kansas state football game. but for all that is familiar in this place, in this season, there is one thing happening here that is almost totally unprecedented, something so surprising, almost shocking, that it has republicans from maine to hawaii asking, "what's the matter with kansas?" in what is surely the biggest

surprise of the 2014 midterms, both republican senator pat roberts and republican governor sam brownback find themselves in serious political peril in this most republican of states, two races that were on no one's radar a few months ago, one of which may decide who controls the united states senate. it's enough to make an observer like the kansas city star's dave helling, who's covered politics for almost 35 years, to feel as if he's not in kansas anymore, where every statewide official and every member of congress is republican. so if someone had told you up till say eight months ago that you would be seeing the race for both senator and governor develop the way it has, what would you have told them? >> that they're smoking something that's legal in colorado but not in kansas. kansas may be, jeff, one of the most republican states in the country. so i don't think anyone a year ago would have thought at any level that either sam brownback and certainly pat roberts would be in any major trouble. they are.

>> reporter: for the 78-year-old roberts, political vulnerability is an unwelcome stranger. first elected to the house 34 years ago, roberts is finishing his third term in the senate, continuing a string of g.o.p. victories that stretches back to 1938. but roberts has been hit by the same crosswinds that have buffeted other veteran republicans: the sense that he's "gone washington." in february, the new york times revealed that roberts has no home in kansas, that he rents out a room in a supporter's house on a golf course and has rarely been seen back in the state. and roberts is fighting another perception: that he's too much part of the system, a symbol of the older order, and out of step with tea party conservatives, something that may be reflected by how he describes himself. >> people used to ask me all the time what kind of republican i was, i'm just a republican. but i would say probably an eisenhower republican. i know bob dole. he's a very dear friend. he just cut an ad for me.

so i'm a bob dole republican. but i'm also the fourth most conservative senator in the senate. >> reporter: this august, roberts narrowly survived a primary against a tea party opponent. until a few weeks ago, roberts' best asset may have been the divided opposition. he faced both a democrat and an independent. then, democrat chad taylor dropped out of the race, leaving roberts to face 45-year-old greg orman, a businessman and co- founder of a private equity firm with the wealth to fund his own campaign. he also has a past that includes membership in both major political parties, both of which he now disavows. >> both parties take extreme positions. you know the way harry reid is running the senate, he's running the senate like a dictatorship. he's not allowing compromise, he's not allowing debate. and we've got the same problem in the house with the republicans so i think both parties are really to blame for

the dysfunction that we have in washington today. >> reporter: the race has drawn intense national attention because of simple arithmetic: with republicans needing six seats to take the senate, a roberts loss would make that number much tougher to reach. that, orman says, would give him a lot of leverage should he be elected. perhaps to capitalize on that, orman is not saying which party he'd align himself with, or, as they say in washington, caucus. it falls upon you, mr. orman, to decide who governs the senate for the next two years. that's a decision you will have to make. are the voters of kansas entitled to know before they vote for you what that decision is? >> we will caucus with whichever parties will be willing to promote a pro-problem-solving nonpartisan agenda. and if they're not willing to do that then we're not going to work with them. >> reporter: if the senate race here has national implications, the governor's race seems to illustrate an old political adage, that all or at least a lot of politics is local. governor brownback's problem stems not from democrats but

overwhelmingly from kansas republicans, who are a special breed. the 58-year-old brownback was elected governor four years ago, after two terms in the u.s. senate. he brought with him a strongly conservative agenda, both on social issues like abortion and with historically large tax cuts, an experiment, brownback said, in supply-side economics. for national republicans, tax- cuts are an unalloyed good. but kansas republicans? well... >> they like their senators to have a strong republican point of view. the demands of being governor are quite different. and when he came back, he sort of pursued what was very, very obviously a strongly conservative agenda. >> reporter: when those cuts opened up a projected budget shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars and threatened the level of school funding, that unsettled moderate kansas republicans and widened a rift between them and conservatives that had been around for years. two years ago, brownback led successful primary campaigns against moderate legislators.

but this past july, those republicans retaliated against brownback by joining 100 fellow republicans in endorsing the democratic opponent, state legislator paul davis. davis has seized on brownback's experiment label. is this a state that isn't particularly fond of experiments in politics? >> well, i would say yes. it is definitely a state that is not particularly fond of experiments. they don't want a governor who's going to turn their state into a science laboratory. >> people, i don't think they don't like change. i don't think they trust change. so i came out here and said, "look we haven't been growing. we've got to get our tax rates down so we can grow." >> reporter: and about that experiment word? >> yeah, i shouldn't have used that word.

but the good news is it's working well. we're growing. we've got record employment in kansas. >> reporter: then, after a brief discussion with an aide... >> reporter: the things we're doing are not anything new. going to... getting your incomes taxes down, we got nine states without an income tax. that's not new. so nothing we're doing is new. now it's new that we're doing it but nothing that we're doing is different than what's done before. >> reporter: the race for senator and the race for governor obviously have different dynamics, but here's what they have in common: the political survival of senator roberts and governor brownback depends on their ability to define their opponents with exactly the same label. >> just another vote for barack obama. >> davis, don't delegate kansas to an obama liberal. >> like obama, greg orman will say anything to >> he is a liberal democrat and that's why you have jeb bush, and you have john mccain, you have rand paul... you got about everybody in the party coming-- conservative, i don't say moderate-- regular republicans

knowing how important this race is because they know greg is a liberal democrat. and we don't need any more of those folks. >> reporter: it's a label orman is determined not to wear. >> the kansas electorate is very complex. they're also very independent. you look at people like ross perot and ross perot significantly outperformed in kansas. >> reporter: in fact, independent perot got nearly 27% of the kansas popular vote when he ran for president in 1992. and if you ask paul davis if he's campaigning with his fellow democrats, his answer tells you everything you need to know about his strategy. are there any national democrats that you would like to campaign for you in the next several weeks here in kansas? >> well i'm doing something different. i'm actually campaigning with a lot of republicans. you know governor brownback's bringing in the likes of rick perry and chris christie and what i like to say is he's out campaigning with republican from across the country and i'm out campaigning with republicans from kansas. >> reporter: as in every campaign, the outcome could

hinge on the unanticipated. just in the last week, paul davis has had to explain how he was caught up in a police raid at a strip club 16 years ago. and some republicans have begun to hint that senate candidate orman's wall street ties may be as big a problem for him as they were for mitt romney in 2012. but what we're already seeing is the unanticipated on steroids: the possibility that america's reddest state might go blue this year. >> stewart: the debate over personal privacy versus national security took a new turn thursday when the director of the f.b.i. criticized apple and google for developing encrypted smart phones, devices, he says would allow people to place themselves beyond the law. for more about this, we are joined now by julia angwin. she is a senior reporter at "pro publica." julia what is it these companies are doing that has the fbi so

concerned? >> to think about this they are allowing you to encrypt the exiive equivalent of your hard drive. you can encrypt your hard drive so you can encrypt that. what you have on your smartphone would be secure and not available to anybody who doesn't have your pass code. almost every bit of data i have on my smartphone might be duplicated somewhere else. photos might be backed up on icloud. if it's stored somewhere else it most likely is available to the fbi. >> why is the fbi so upset? >> they want their job to be as easy as possible. slightly sympathetic tot idea that we want law enforcement to have as many tools as possible but in this particular case we are talking about a very small subset of their data which is the physical device. they have to get the actual

device from you but in the end they are going to get that information and they have not yet presented an actual case where they would have failed to complete their investigation without this information. >> what is its for these silicon valley giants to up their game on privacy at this point? >> in the post-snowden era they realize they can use this as a marketing tool. this is the first time we've seen kind of a privacy war. apple came out with its encrypted default setting for your phone and immediately google came out and said we're doing the same thing. it would be fair that google offered the options before but not as default. we're seeing it on camera revolution and now on privacy so that might usher in an era where people might compete on privacy features. >> apple ceo saying we sell devices not your data.

>> that's his differentiating point. not selling it direct lir but selling the advertisers the ability to access information about you. you don't pay google anything the way i'm paying it seems ungodly amounts to apple all the time. >> tell me a little bit about why this is different than any encryption we've done before? >> we've always had the idea that the information at home is secure, if you want it you are going to have to get that device and break into it. so it's not that different. but the items we call around with us, they get seized in arrests and police would like to thumb through them and they can get almost all that information the other ways. they can go to the cell phone carrier. if they want to know who you're calling the nsa has handy logs of all that but let's say the police don't have access to nsa

logs, they can go to at&t or verizon with a search warrant and get it from them. >> julia angwin, thank you so much. >> stewart: next saturday, pbs premieres "america by the numbers with maria hinojosa." the eight part series focuses on the dramatic demographic shifts underway throughout the united states. here's an excerpt from one episode "island of warriors." >> it's a pleasure and honor to be here especially as we lead up to the liberation day festivities. >> coming from outside i don't think people realize how much this community resolves around the service to the community, the aunts and uncles and brothers, it's just amazing. >> the men and women of guam are u.s. citizens and serving the american military at a rate that is three times higher than the

rest of the country. in the wars in iraq and afghanistan, pacific islanders have the highest rate per capi capita, of personal sacrifice. >> just as a result of some forecast -- folks who have put on a uniform to sacrifice everything, everything that we are going today. >> i came here to find out why so many of guam's people have chosen to become warriors for a country half a world away and some say get too little in return. >> according to guam's office of veteran affairs, one in 8 guamanians is a veterans, highest in all u.s. states and territories. but in 2012, guam ranked dead last on medical care in u.s. department of veterans affairs

or va. at a time when many are returning with physical and mental health challenges. >> some more news before we leave you. in a 60 minutes interview airing tonight, president obama acknowledges that american intelligence underestimated i.s.i.s. but insists he won't put american troops on the ground to fies fight extremists. and the man known as israel's james bond has died, he huchted down and killed those who killed at the olympics. he was 80. i'm alison stewart, have a good night.

captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: 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.

announcer: "truly california" is a kqed production presented in association with... next on "truly california"... long before marijuana became big business... syreeta: people have moved into the emerald triangle just to grow marijuana and make as much money as they possibly can and they don't really care about anything else. announcer: ...a group of farmers headed to humboldt county in search of community and a slower pace of life. syreeta: just the culture of homesteading is so rare in america now.