captioning sponsored by wnet >> thompson: on this edition for saturday, december 26: the death toll rises, following severe weather in the southern united states, as forecasters warn of more bad weather to come. in our signature segment, los angeles tries to end homelessness among veterans by >> our policy was very lazy. it admirably-- dealt with the crisis of people potentially dying on our streets, but it never turned their lives around permanently. >> thompson: and the life and influence of war photographer dickey chapelle; next, on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: lewis b. and louise hirschfeld cullman. bernard and irene schwartz.

judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the citi foundation. supporting innovation and enabling urban progress. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. 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 has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by conributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, megan thompson. >> thompson: good evening. thanks for joining us. i'm megan thompson, in for hari sreenivasan. officials now say at least 17 people are dead after a string of deadly storms and tornadoes ripped through the south earlier this week. last night, families near birmingham, alabama were left to sort through what was left of their homes after a tornado

touched down christmas day. two hundred roads in alabama are still closed and flood warnings are still in effect. in tennessee and mississippi, recovery crews and utility workers continued to clean up after a tornado tore a 100-mile path through those states this week, demolishing dozens of homes and buildings. unseasonably warm temperatures spurred the severe weather. more rainfall is expected through monday. meanwhile, oklahoma and texas are preparing for what the national weather service says could be a "historic blizzard," with six to 15 inches of snow forecast to begin falling this evening. in southern california today, wildfires swept through 1,200 acres of land in ventura county, with hundreds of firefighters deployed to control the blaze. parts of major highway 101 in the state were shut down. no injuries or major damage have been reported, but the fire has yet to be contained. the blaze broke out late last night. officials say high winds mean they're not sure how long it will take to get the flames

under control. the solimar beach community of about 30 homes is under a mandatory evacuation order. and wildfires continued to smolder in australia today, after more than 100 homes burned down on christmas-- and officials expect more blazes to come later this season. no one was killed or injured in the fires that scorched a coastline popular with tourists in the australian state of victoria. 1,600 residents and tourists were evacuated. cooler temperatures and rain are expected to keep the wildfires at bay, though officials say the blazes could continue burning for weeks. across northern england today, heavy rains triggered more floods in a region already drenched by a series of storms this month. rivers flowed over their banks and floodwaters coursed through city streets. officials ordered evacuations and issued hundreds of storm warnings across england, scotland and wales. meteorologists say this december has been the rainiest on record in the united kingdom.

germany's foreign minister told reporters today, europe needs to strengthen its borders. germany has taken in more than a million asylum seekers this year alone, but there are concerns islamist militants may have joined the flow of migrants. foreign minister frank walter steinmeier warned against lumping refugees into the same group as terrorists, but said the european union needed to have "more control again over who is entering and leaving europe." those remarks come just days after a regional official said refugees with fake syrian passports have disappeared in germany. >> thompson: this year, the dow jones industrial average is down almost three percent-- reflecting the loss of billions of dollars in stock value in u.s. companies. around the world, companies have defaulted on at least $95 billion worth of debt-- in the highest number of business defaults since 2009, according

to standard and poor's. some companies encountered scandals, while others simply under-performed. for perspective into some of the events of 2015 and what may lie ahead in 2016, hari sreenivasan spoke earlier with "financial times" reporter eric platt. >> sreenivasan: so this is such an enormous number. it's hard for people to get their minds around. why are these companies defaulting? or what's the primary reason? ear if there's a particular sector? >> sure, so one of the big thiks that companies were able to do over the past few years was take advantage of cheap financing and cheap debt with the federal reserve keeping the rate at zero, it wasn't hard for an energy company to get a 3% or 5% alone and commodity prices have tumbled. >> sreenivasan: the price of oil is a lot cheaper now than a year ago. >> exactly, and it's copper and iron and affecting much more than the traditional oil and gas companies drilling in the u.s. >> sreenivasan: so they borrowed from their creditors saying, "listen, we're going to

be good for it. the price of oil is going to go up and the price of commodities will go up, and it didn't." >> exactly, with oil at about $35 a barrel now, they're settling making huge losses and the question is how long can they keep going before they have to make payments they can't afford. >> sreenivasan: the creditors are saying,iment" my money back." >> exactly, creddors are saying, "we're not lending to you anymore." and we're going to want either asset sales or take control of the business,ul see restructuring, and almost every analyst at the major credit rating agencies like the standard & poors, expect the default rate to increase. >> sreenivasan: are junk bonds worth junk now? >> the lowest rated companies, rated triple "c," the lowest tier on the scale, and the yields on those companies have shot up to 18%. if you are holding it, you are clipping a very nice coupon. 18% a year is very attractive, but you have that risk of

default. and i think the thing that surprised investors most this year were the companies rated investment grade, rated strong "a" ratings and they saw their downgraze and cut. >> sreenivasan: it's interesting you mentioned the downgrade, i saw recently "the big short" one of these holiday movies and is it similar to the last crisis? have we learned lessons? are the ratings agencies being more aggressive saying not everyone is going to be triple "a" or rank or rating? >> i think you have seen more caution from the rating agencies. one of the things we've seen some issues that year with companies like valiant or volkswagen with the emission scandal, people wonder the last are these more systemic risksn or are these just company-specific issues? so that's a fear for a lot of investors. >> sreenivasan: you mentioned volkswagen, that was a company that people thought was stable mabel, rock solid. and now you have to wonder you know given how deep this behavior was, are there other

shoes to drop? >> exactly. if i'm an automotive executive at another company and i see volkswagen has these great test results and i'm trying to compete with them, at some point there's got to be some triggers like maybe volkswagen isn't doing this with just pure mechanics. you saw german regulators open investigations into other diesel producers like ford and daimler. >> sreenivasan: there are scandals that have weighed heavily on companies as well. what about young brans? they have household names, k.f.c., taco bell. what happened to them? >> they've had a few scandals in china, not necessarily their own doing, but avian flu and some products found in their food that you wouldn't expect in a k.f.c. meal. and what they decided to dos split the company into two and with some of that cash pay back shareholders. if i'm a bondholder i'm suddenly dealt with the less-profitable slower growth company and

suddenly i have a lot more roisk my plate than when i invested four years ago and i thought this is a stellar growth story in china. >> sreenivasan: and there were also movements in the retail sector, neiman marcus went public this year, but there were some troubles with macy's, nordstrom, et cetera. >> neemans filed to go public and suddenly you saw nordstrom same-store sales drop, macy's' same-store sales drop. as soon as you saw nordstrom hit, you saw the same concerns flash toeiman marcus because they've got a lot of debt. and if same-store sales are slowing how are they going to service that debt? how are they going to pay bond holders. >> sreenivasan: what are you looking forward to in 2016? >> one thing when we talk to investors they say a lot is priced into the market already. you see a a steep sell-off. people are expecting defaults to increase. maybe we're at the bottom. we've seen a few mondz meant to price this year get postponed to

next year because investors aren't coming to the tawbl. that said, you will see defaults increase. most people, like the rating industries what when you talk to them, say the it starts in 2018 and 2019. hundreds of billions of dollars in debt that's due. and the question is can these companies continue to roll them over? like you could refinance your mortgage? or are they going to be stuck paying the bills? and if they don't have the cash around, will we see defaults? >> sreenivasan: eric platt from "financial times." thanks so much for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> thompson: and now to our signature segment. our focus: the persistent problem of homelessness among america's veterans. the government estimates that nearly 50,000 vets are homeless today. that number represents a major improvement from a decade ago. but solving the problem altogether has proven difficult, in part because veterans suffer

mental health problems at a higher rate than those who have not served. the issue is especially acute in los angeles, which has more homeless veterans than anywhere else in the nation. tonight, newshour special correspondent john carlos fray brings us this updated report on l.a.'s ambitious plan to end homelessness among veterans. >> reporter: 57-year old lendell seay proudly shows off his tidy one-bedroom apartment, which overlooks the 5 freeway in east los angeles. the unit's bathroom is so big, he keeps his bike in it, and there's plenty of room for his collection of hats, many of which tout his military service. >> my primary job was in motor t, transportation. >> reporter: seay served in the marines for more than 21 years, including desert storm in iraq, before retiring in 1998. but despite his successful military career, after his fiancé passed away from a stroke in 2004, seay found himself in a downward spiral.

>> and-- that's when the drinkin' and everything really, really kicked in. >> reporter: for you? >> yes. and i just-- just fell apart and lost everything. >> reporter: so you found yourself where? >> i found myself in the-- in the streets around culver city and santa monica. >> reporter: from one day to the next, you were homeless? >> yes. >> reporter: before he moved into this apartment in october of 2014, seay had been homeless, off and on, for a decade. >> everything that i-- made was-- mostly spent drinkin'. >> reporter: famously sunny los angeles has long been known as the homeless capital of america, from beachy communities like santa monica and venice to skid row downtown. there are about 45,000 homeless people in l.a. county, about 4,000 of whom are veterans. the number of homeless vets in the city of la has fallen by about one third since 2009. and last year the city joined an ambitious national effort

already underway to completely end veteran homelessness by the end of this year. l.a.'s commitment coincided with an event in july 2014 attended by first lady michelle obama, who has championed veterans initiatives for the obama administration. >> and make no mistake it is an aggressive goal. but we have seen time and time again, that if you break these numbers down, then this problem becomes eminently solvable. >> i don't think anybody's had the confidence, that we'd ever be able to make a dent in homelessness. we've just come to accept that we manage homelessness, that we try to make it less bad, but we never make it better. >> reporter: los angeles mayor eric garcetti is a former navy reservist himself. he says the city's effort to end homelessness among veterans is different than how things used to be in la. >> our policy was very lazy. "i just do housing;" "i just feed them;" "i'm a free health clinic;" and it r-- and it admirably-- dealt with the crisis of people potentially dying on our streets, but it never turned their lives around permanently.

that's what's changed now. >> reporter: the first step of this new model is a permanent house, funded mostly at government expense, with services then added around the resident. it's called permanent supportive housing. and that's what lendell seay found himself in. seay lives in this complex that houses only formerly homeless veterans. while there is no firm program that he has to follow, he has access to support services, including onsite case managers, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment, and even a community garden. officials in l.a. point to research showing nearly 90% of chronically homeless people remained housed after five years using this model. for seay, who has been sober for more than two years, it's more than he had hoped for. >> it feels good. sometimes, i walk around the apartment and no-- no tv or nothin' on, and just singin' for no reason at all. and then i catch myself doin' it and i start to laugh and i say, "you must be goin' crazy now." but i'm just happy, it feel-- >> reporter: a good crazy. >> it feels good. >> reporter: there is no time limit on staying in the

apartment. residents generally pay 30% of their income in rent-- for seay that's $470 from his pension. the rest is subsidized with a federal voucher specifically for homeless veterans. since 2008, nearly 80,000 of these vouchers for homeless vets have been awarded around the country. >> i'll sign it, thanks. >> reporter: christine margiotta runs home for good for the united way of greater los angeles, which has coordinated the efforts of hundreds of service providers working to help homeless vets. she says housing for the homeless-- including veterans-- is less expensive than trying to care for people on the street, which costs nearly $1 billion annually in l.a. >> because that person is using the emergency rooms for their primary health care, they may be cycling in and out of jail or prison, they're-- they're really suffering, out on our streets. what we know is that permanent, supportive housing is actually 40% cheaper than leaving someone on the streets and-- and, in our minds, doing nothing. >> reporter: but despite the

progress made, there's no shortage of homeless people, including veterans, on the streets of los angeles. early one morning this past march, we went to skid row in downtown l.a. with outreach workers from u.s. vets, a non- profit veteran support group. there we met benjamin barraza jr. >> reporter: can i ask you how long you've been on the streets? >> how long? right now, it's-- it's-- since i've been-- out of prison? two years ago. >> reporter: you've been on the street for two years? >> yeah. >> reporter: barraza is an army veteran who served from 1971 to 1974. but he told us that he'd also spent time in prison. since he's been out, he's been staying in skid row shelters. he showed us the few essentials that he keeps with him. >> i got it all here, man. you know, this is my little kit, you know. you gotta keep clean, smell clean, you know. >> reporter: despite qualifying for a federal housing voucher, when we met him, barraza had not been able to find a permanent house. for him and many others on the street, finding an affordable

apartment or placement in a facility with services, isn't easy. >> reporter: is it frustrating? >> oh man, it's-- it's-- it's-- gives me-- right now, i'm-- gettin' a headache right now, just thinking about it. >> reporter: all the things you have to deal with just to get a place. >> well, because i can't even get around. i mean, i'm obese. i put weight on, you know, when i was in prison, my mother died on me. >> reporter: wow, i'm so sorry. >> you know-- i caught hepatitis c. >> reporter: even with the focus of the federal government and local officials on veteran homelessness, barraza and thousands of other tough cases are still on l.a. streets. >> reporter: i was on the street this morning. >> uh-huh. >> reporter: and we ran into some veterans. >> yeah. >> reporter: from my eyes, it looks like an impossible task. >> yeah. >> reporter: these are people who are in dire straits. how do you deal with that population? >> the more you go into the population, the tougher it is to achieve that goal. because towards the end, it is the people who are the most service-resistant who most-- deeply experience mental health challenges when people have

p.t.s.d., substance abuse issues, which often intermingle with each other. some will take more time, but i'm confident we can make sure that each one of them has a pathway off our streets. >> reporter: the state of connecticut, as well as some cities, including phoenix, salt lake city, new orleans, and houston, have said they've been able to house their entire populations of chronically homeless vets with permanent supportive housing. but los angeles will not be able to reach that goal by the end of the year. data released in may showed that there was actually a small increase in the number of homeless vets in the city of los angeles since 2013. and in august, mayor garcetti backed away from his pledge to house all homeless vets by the end of the year. in a statement to pbs newshour weekend, the mayor's office said in part, in september, mayor garcetti

allocated an additional $13 million in city funds to expand subsidies for homeless people. and in november, the l.a. city council declared a "shelter crisis," which provides expanded access to temporary shelters as the weather gets colder and with the onset of the rainy "el-niño" season. the city council also pledged to spend $100 million on helping l.a.'s tens of thousands of homeless, but it's not clear where or when the money will be available. >> thompson: see our report from florida on how the city of sarasota has found itself in the middle of a debate-- and a lawsuit-- over its response to a growing homeless population. watch online, at www.pbs.org/newshour. >> thompson: writer and photographer dickey chapelle was the first female war correspondent from the united states to be killed on the job. she died in vietnam 50 years ago, and now a new book celebrates her life and career. earlier, i spoke with the book's author, john garofolo, about chapelle's pioneering career and

her mission to expose the consequences of war through photography. >> reporter: dickey chapelle was one of america's first female phot journalists to go to war zones from panama to vietnam. "life" magazine, "national geographic "and reader's digest all published her work. her first combat assignment was during world war ii. she covered the battles of iwoe jeem and okinawa. this photo of an injured soldier waiting for medical treatment was one of her most widely published. >> dickey was definitely a feisty personality. >> reporter: john garofolo is the author of the new book "dickey chapelle under fire, "the first compilation of her work. >> as a reporter, she felt she needed to go where the story was in spite of what might be the consequences to herself. >> reporter: in okinawa, cumenting the horrors of oneal

of the war's bloodiest battles. >> she really had a mode of trying to do good with her photography, and perhaps say that war is something that we shouldn't do, and she was also very concerned about the consequences on the people who not only fought wars but also the civilians who are very often in the cross-fire. >> reporter: chappelle often wore pearl earrings with her combat fatigues as a visual cue she wasn't one of the boys. >> she wasn't really necessarily welcomed with open arms really throughout her career, but in spite of that, she did persevere. >> reporter: in 1956, chappelle went to hungary during the uprise against soviet rule, and she secretly photographed refugees with a hidden camera for "life" magazine. she was caught, accused of being a spy, and held in solitary confine independent hungary for almost two months. over the next decade she covered conflicts anconflicts and revol.

she wrote about her unconventional career in her autobiography, "what's a woman doing here?" in 1961, she became the first female journalist to parachute jump with u.s. troops in vietnam. this 1962 photo for "national geographic" was the first time a u.s. soldier was shown actively engaged in combat in vietnam. >> apparently, the pentagon kind of pushed back to "national geographic" and said, "we prefer you not run that. to. their credit, "national geographic" ran it any way. >> reporter: in 1965, chappelle returned to vietnam embedded with a marine unit. when a marine triggered a booby trap, shrapnel struck chappelle in the neck and killed her. she was 46. >> there was something that was bigger to that story than just her going out and getting it. it was the importance of what she was telling. the story had a fundamental

righteousness that i think was appealing to her. >> this is pbs newshour weekend, saturday. >> thompson: alaska's bread and butter is oil production, and falling prices have put the state's budget deep in the red. today's new york times reports that to fill the gap, governor bill walker will propose the first state income tax in 35 years. an independent, walker also reportedly wants to scale back the yearly dividend check from oil revenues alaskans have been receiving since 1982. according to alaska officials, crude oil prices have plunged from over 95 dollars a barrel at the beginning of this year, to barely thirty-five dollars a barrel this week. the iraqi army announced progress today in the effort to retake the central city of ramadi. a spokesman said iraqi forces made advances in the neighborhood that houses the local government offices overnight, but were delayed by booby traps and explosives.

ramadi was taken by islamic state militants in may. it is the capital of iraq's mostly sunni anbar province. for the second time in barely a month, a massive landslide in myanmar's jade-mining region has taken a heavy toll. police did not confirm fatalities, but local workers and officials say at least thirty people are missing and feared dead under the rubble. a landslide in the same area last month killed more than one hundred. the region in northern myanmar produces some of world's highest-quality jade. in china's southern city of shenzhen, communist officials and residents stood in silent tribute today to the victims of a landslide there on december 20. and officials made a rare public apology, for the disaster that has left more than seventy people still missing under untold tons of construction waste. the city's communist leaders apologized to all affected family members, and to "the whole society." the sudden landslide buried or damaged more than thirty

buildings. >> thompson: and finally, in a setback for rebels fighting syrian president bashar al-assad, the commander of a leading opposition group was killed in an yair air strike yesterday. he was the leader of the army of islam one of the most powerful rebel groups fighting in the suburbs of damascus. the syrian government released a video claiming to be footage of the airstrikes that killed him and announced his death on state tv. some have criticized the killing noting there was an agreement to participate in the upcoming peace talks and help keep islamic state militants from entering damascus. that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm megan thompson. thanks for watching.

captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: lewis b. and louise hirschfeld cullman. bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the citi foundation. supporting innovation and enabling urban progress. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. 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 has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

(processional music playing) dr. lucy worsley: today it seems that the royal family are being constantly watched by the entire world. no detail of their lives is too tiny to be fascinating. this obsession that we've got with our monarchy is nothing new. but these days we don't get to see inside their bedrooms. it's surprising to learn that it was very different in the past. and the royal bed was a public place. it was like a little stage where the future of the monarchy and the nation was played out. in this program, i'm going to get into bed with kings and queens from history, examine their fabulous beds, and uncover the secrets of the royal bedchamber.