captioning sponsored by wnet >> thompson: on this edition for sunday, december 27: iraqi forces retake the isis stronghold of ramadi; deadly tornadoes strike texas overnight; and, the evolution of mongolian rock and roll, 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: the tisch wnet stt lincoln center in new york, this is pbs newshour weekend. >> thompson: good evening. thanks for joining us. i'm megan thompson, in for hari sreenivasan. the iraqi army claimed a major victory today over islamic state militants. the army said it has defeated isis fighters in the city of ramadi, about 80 miles west of baghdad, after a week of heavy fighting. an iraqi military spokesman said the u.s.-trained troops have retaken a complex isis was using as a headquarters and are now focusing on clearing out pockets of resistance. the iraqi government plans to hold a flag raising ceremony over the complex on monday. ramadi was captured by isis in may, in what was seen as an

embarrassing defeat for the iraqi army. at the time, u.s. defense secretary ash carter said iraqi forces had shown, "no will to fight." cleanup and recovery efforts are underway in the suburbs of dallas, texas today, after tornadoes and powerful storms ripped through the region last night, killing at least eleven people. dozens were injured in a group of storms that swept through a forty-mile long area around dallas. powerful winds blasted roofs off homes, pulverized trees and power-lines, and hurled cars off the interstate. sections of the dallas suburbs are under a 24-hour curfew. national weather service officials are still investigating the magnitude of last night's storms-- the latest in a string of severe weather across the country in the past week that's claimed over 30 lives. in south america, heavy rains have triggered the worst flooding in half a century, forcing more than 150,000 people to evacuate their homes. large areas of paraguay, argentina, uruguay, and brazil

are under water after days of torrential storms, caused by the el nino weather phenomenon. three major rivers in the region have swollen beyond their banks. officials say at least six people are dead. paraguay, hardest hit by the storms, is under a state of emergency-- water levels in that country and in argentina are expected to rise. chicago police are saying the shooting death of a 55-year-old woman by an officer early saturday morning was an accident. police fatally shot bettie jones as they responded to a disturbance call on the city's west side-- during which 19-year-old quintonio legrier also was shot and killed. jones was legrier's downstairs neighbor. legrier's father had called police, saying his son was threatening him with a baseball bat. relatives said legrier had struggled with mental health problems. witnesses reported seeing jones open the door for police and legrier wielding the bat. the officer who shot jones and legrier, who were both black, has not been identified.

police announced a change in policy that will place all officers involved in shootings on administrative leave for 30 days, instead of the current three-day period. the practices of the chicago police department are already being reviewed by the justice department. a year-long investigation published by "the washington post" this weekend, takes an in-depth look at the nearly 1,000 people fatally shot by police in 2015. among the findings: mental illness played a role in 25% of the killings; in 75% of the fatal shootings, police were under attack or defending someone who was; and one in ten people shot and killed by police were unarmed. for more insight, we are joined by kimbriell kelly of "the washington post." >> kimbriell your report puts shootings by police officers into three main categories. can you tell us about those? >> yes. one of the biggest categories is people who are mentally ill and then also, those who are unarmed which is a small percentage but there's some disparity there when it comes to race.

and the mentally ill one of the big problems as you said the number was one in four and officers and police experts will agree that there's not enough training among plois, a vast major of -- police officers, a vast majorities was in chases and they were around. training is definitely necessary. >> i'm going to quote from the report, in the majority of cases in which police shot and killed a person who had attacked, the person who was shot was white. that only tells part of the story, right? >> correct, that is part of the story. we know the vast majority of the people in the country are white. african american men make up about 6% of the population and when it comes to unarmed suspects black men make up about 40% of both members. so there is a disproportionate number there in terms of unarmed african american men that were killed by police. >> can you talk a little bit about the role that video last played in these shootings.

>> video is very interesting because ten years ago, you at any time have people taking pictures on cell phone cams cam last and now you do. that is actually one of the primary reasons in the increase in indictments from officers because there is evidence. people are starting to question the word of not all police officers but some police officers in this case. and there is evidence to prosecute. what you are seeing is an uptick in the number of indictments. this year two or three times more indictments of officers than there have been in years past. prior there have been four every year, four or five a year in the last decade and now you see in the last year about 18. but the difference that we see even though weers e-we're seeing more -- we're seeing more indictments more charges of officers you're actually seeing the outcomes are a little less severe because most of those officers are either being acquitted, their cases are dismissed or the charges are dropped. >> and i understand that statistics about these fatal shootings are not particularly well kept at least by law

enforcement. can you talk a little bit about that? >> yes, in documenting tall fatal police shoot -- all the fatal police shootings at the washington post we use primary sources, news articles, online databases and the number you included earlier, nearly a thousand this year as of december 24th. and that number is usually kept by the fbi and the bureau of justice statistics. and what we found at the washington post is that our number is nearly twice that of the number that's actually put out by the fbi. so the fbi and bjs are now undertaking a good look at how they have been tracking that and making efforts to do a better job. >> okay, kimbriell kelly from the washington post, thank you so much for joining us. >> thompson: authorities are now investigating a fire that broke out in a houston mosque on christmas day as arson. federal law enforcement officials said the fire was suspicious because of the multiple points of origin, and

are now combing through security footage. 200 people were inside the mosque when the fire started. no one was hurt. one of the most influential psychiatrists of our time, robert spitzer, died friday in seattle. in 1973, spitzer engineered a landmark vote by the american psychiatric association, to stop treating homosexuality as an illness. and later, in editing the profession's diagnostic manual, he applied the first clear criteria to describe and diagnose mental disorders. he coined names for conditions that are household words today, like anorexia, bipolar and panic disorders, and post traumatic stress disorder. but in 2001, spitzer caused a storm with a study seeming to support therapies to "cure" homosexuals. he retracted the study in 2012, admitting it was flawed. robert spitzer was 83 years old. >> thompson: can you imagine

living on only two dollars a day? here in new york city, that wouldn't even buy you a single ride on the subway. yet, millions of americans spend a portion of the year surviving on less. the book "two dollars a day: living on almost nothing in america," explores the 1.5 million american households scraping by for extended periods of time with practically no cash income. hari sreenivasan spoke with the book's co-author, kathryn edin, a sociologist at johns hopkins university. their conversation is part of our coverage of poverty and opportunity in america, called" chasing the dream." >> sreenivasan: so how is it possible that you can actually get by on less than $2 a day in america? >> well, as it turns out it's not possible. we live in the most advanced capitalist society in the world, and a lot of countries that use this $2 a day rubric to measure extreme poverty, there is a rich barter economy. so you don't in some senses need cash, but in the us you really do need cash. >> sreenivasan: i am assuming

that the food must be coming from pantries? >> about a half of the $2 a day poor do get food-stamps, that's a resource that people in the developing world of course don't have. it's a vital resource, but the sad thing about snap is that when you have absolutely no cash and your kids need socks and underwear for school or that backpack or the protractor for math class, you are going to trade in your food-stamps for cash, and that's the kind of barter that we most commonly see. people feel badly about it. they feel that it's actually a criminal thing to do, and actually it is punishable by law at quite a severe degree, but yet when it comes to your kids you are going to do what you have to do. >> sreenivasan: now americans watching this are going to say, listen, we might not be as big a safety net as some of the nordic countries but we've got welfare, we have got food-stamps, we are doing so much, how is it that there are still this many people that are slipping through the

cracks? >> so this is the real story here, right? in 1996 we had about five million adults and about 10 million children on welfare. we reformed welfare in 1996. we replaced it with a program called temporary assistance to needy families. we only have now a million adults left on the rolls, half of them are in just two states e rest of the states witheaving virtually no functioning safety net for families when they fall. food stamps is important, medicaid is vital, these are things that separate us from the developing world. >> sreenivasan: if someone was going to look at those numbers and say, listen, isn't that a sign of success? didn't we-- getting people off the welfare rolls, isn't that the end goal? and if we have fewer people on welfare than we have today, aren't we better off as a country? >> so yes, if those people went to work. that was the goal of the personal responsibility and work opportunity act of 1996-- the welfare reform bill, that people would take personal

responsibility and go to work. and we do see a lot of work activity among the two dollar a day poor. if you look at children in that category, 70% of them have a worker in the household at some point during the year. so these are families hanging on to the ragged end of work. only 10% claim even a dime from our welfare program, so they're not a dependent class of people. what's striking is that these folks really see themselves as workers and they feel very proud of that designation. but we can't deny that at the bottom of the labor market there simply aren't enough jobs, much less good jobs to go around. >> sreenivasan: so did the welfare reform that we tried to do in '96 had any positive benefits? >> it did, and in fact i think there is something to celebrate. prior to welfare reform, we passed something called the e.i.t.c., this is a wage subsidy for low-wage workers, that ensures... >> sreenivasan: the earned income tax credit?

>> ...yes, the earned income tax credit, that if you work full- time full-year at a low-wage job you won't be poor. and that is a tremendous policy success. it's maybe one of the most successful policies we've ever invented. >> sreenivasan: what do we know- - demographically or geographically this is happening to one group more so than another? >> so about half of the $2 a day poor are white, about a quarter are married couple families, we do see some clustering of the $2 a day poor in the region the census calls the southeast, so this includes appalachia in the deep south, which is why we cited two of our four research sites there, the other two are cleveland, ohio and chicago, and in our big cities, cities like new york, you do also see a clustering of the extreme poor. so it's sort of an equal opportunity condition. >> sreenivasan: when it comes to this kind of poverty, how do we get out of it? >> so the first thing is to figure out ways to expand work opportunity for more americans,

and in doing that, many families in $2 a day poverty do have some fragility, so we are going to have to think about jobs that have a little bit of give. ray mccormick in cleveland, a two-time cashier of the month; in the first six months of her job she accomplished that by memorizing the barcodes of produce items, speaking those barcodes into her phone, this recording device and then putting her phone on continuous play while she slept. yet the first time the gas tank went empty and she couldn't get to work, she was fired. so we need to improve the relationship between employees and employers. >> sreenivasan: kathryn edin thanks so much for joining us. >> my pleasure. >> thompson: a study released earlier this month revealed a striking lack of economic mobility in the united states. watch my interview with the report's authors, online at www.pbs.org/newshour. mongolia is a country of three million people wedged between russia and china, that is also

influenced by both giants culturally and politically. from 1925 until 1990, mongolia was ruled by a communist regime; then came a peaceful revolution and a multi-party system. as part of its turn toward a free market economy and free speech 25 years ago, mongolia also developed its own brand of rock and roll music. filmmaker lauren knapp traveled there to produce a documentary about that nation's evolving rock music culture called "live from u.b.," a nickname for ulaanbaatar, mongolia's capital. here is a portion of the that film, edited and narrated by lauren knapp. >> reporter: mongolia is a vast landscape of just three million people. half its population is spread out across the rural countryside, herders and heirs to a nomadic culture epitomized by 13th century ruler genghis khan. the rest live in mongolia's capital, ulaanbaatar, where a democratic revolution began 25 years ago, and ended seven

decades of soviet-style rule. the first generation to grow up in this new society has come of age, and when i went to mongolia, i wanted to see how their freedom expressed itself in music. one of the first rock bands i met was mohanik, a group of guys in their 20s performing classic rock. but the covers are just a way to make cash. when i visited their practice space, i learned mohanik is more interested in writing and playing their own songs. >> our music sounds like it's, we think, it's youthful, energetic, mongolian-flavored rock and roll. >> we were not searching for mongolian sound, it just came out. >> reporter: that mongolian

sound means traditional instruments like the horsehead fiddle, a small cello with two strings made out of horse tail hair, or a yoochin, a kind of dulcimer played with small hammers. >> we think definitely this part would be a mongolian sound, like this. ♪ that sounds to me like a mongolian melody. and we've got the chorus part. ♪ we know-- it sounds mongolian to us.

♪ ♪ ( cheers and applause ) >> reporter: in mongolian rock, fusion is the operative word, and it started in the early 2000s with this band, altan urag, which electrified traditional mongolian instruments. they've toured all over asia and have played in australia and the u.s. >> if you see the other examples of other countries-- like latina music, african music, turkish music-- they are all based on the traditional musical identity, right? and that's why they are very popular around the world. and that's kind of a no brainer of how to really get famous in the world-- just use the traditional music base.

>> reporter: for every mongolian rock band, fusion means something different. in the band nisvanis, you can hear echoes of american grunge. ♪ ♪ bands like these didn't happen overnight. during decades of communist repression, western music was smuggled in. albums by bob dylan, the rolling stones, led zeppelin, the doors, janis joplin and the beatles. to cope with the growing popularity of western music, in the early 1970s, the former communist government equipped some traditional musicians with electric guitars and drums

they called the group soyol erdene, which means cultural jewel. >> this was the government band. it was funded from the government. all the songs were strictly controlled in terms of the meaning. but soyolerdene, i mean they managed to start this modern rock and roll movement here. >> reporter: the movement saw dissidents writing and recording their own rock music and distributing it underground. >> those were songs about reality, unemployment and disparity of living standards- rebellion kind of song songs. >> reporter: this song called" the ringing of the bell," asked the people to be awakened by democracy. it became an anthem of the peaceful 1990 revolution that brought down the communism and ushered in multi-party elections and free market reforms.

>> i grew up standing in line for meat and milk and bread, you know? when i heard about market economy and when i heard about freedom and human rights and all these things, i just thought," this is it." in the communist time, you should say only nice things about your country or about your mother or about your party. but you were not allowed to express other opinions. so that's why the freedom of speech and rock music is very much connected. >> reporter: for mohanik, the goal is making music that is original and authentic. to make their new album connected to mongolia ina more tangible way, they recorded outdoors, in the countryside. ♪ ♪ >> we're not the real nomadic

mongolian people, we're like city people. it's not like we grew up riding horses and doing countryside stuff. >> any country develops, right? and i think after some years we will have a good music industry with good radio stations they will kind of guide their population to the right path. and very talented good artists shall be recognized. >> i don't really care about how many bands are there, i just want the overall general public to have a musical life. because we're making something that will last.

>> this is pbs newshour weekend, sunday. >> thompson: after more than 200 days at sea, a british-born adventurer became the first person to row, solo, nonstop, from north america to australia today. the newshour's stephen fee has the story. >> reporter: for seven months, 53-year old john beeden rowed his 20-foot long boat-- named" socks two"-- up to fifteen hours a day. and today, he set foot on dry land in northeast australia for the first time in 209 days. >> to be the first person to achieve something on this scale is incredible really, and i can't... i haven't processed it yet. >> reporter: he left san francisco june 1-- and covered some 7,400 nautical miles across the pacific ocean, occasionally meeting with re-supply boats along the way. he'd originally hoped to reach australia by mid-november, but

bad weather set him back. >> it's been difficult the whole way, but in fairness that's what i was looking for. i just didn't realize that it was going to be so difficult. >> reporter: beeden's wife and two daughters greeted him in cairns, australia around 10 o'clock this morning, local time; as did australian customs officials. three years ago beeden rowed across the atlantic, but says he was up for a bigger challenge. >> didn't think i could go on and had to dig deep and getting pushed back hundreds of miles that you have already rowed and you have to row it all again. >> reporter: there have been nine other successful rowboat trips across the pacific-- some completed in stages, others leaving from south america rather than north america. beeden says he shed about eleven pounds on the trans-pacific journey. he documented the voyage online with photos and dispatches. >> about 1,450 kilometres-- that's a long way. only ever do it once in your life.

>> thompson: the frenzy over star wars hit china today. the stars of "the force awaken"" greeted exuberant fans at the red carpet opening in beijing. millions of movie-goers in china will only be adding to the film's box office bottom line." the force awakens" soared past the $1 billion mark globally this weekend to almost $1.1 billion. it achieved this milestone in only 12 days. that's the fastest pace ever-- beating out "jurassic world." megan thompson,. >> and that's it for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm megan thompson. hari sreenivasan will be back next week. good night. 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. judy and josh weston. bernard and irene schwartz. 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. -there was a night of tv that was mary tyler moore.

-i watched "the mary tyler moore show." there's not one show that i missed. ♪ fey: that show was big, big deal. yeah. ♪ -♪ who can turn the world on... ♪ -it was second nature to me, i didn't feel that separate from the character i was playing. -♪ who can take a nothing day -she became america's sweetheart very quickly. -♪ well, it's you, girl, and you should know it ♪ -dick van dyke: i mean she was gorgeous, and she had a sensuality about her. -she was an embracer of the world. -♪ love is all around... -betty white: we became very close friends. and that's why it was such fun. -♪ you're gonna make it after all ♪ -gavin macleod: she just had a gift from god. and, for me, she was a gift from god.