captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. gwen ifill is away. on the newshour tonight: gunfire and explosions hit the indonesian capital of jakarta, leaving at least two civilians and five attackers dead. the islamic state claims responsibility. then, a family's journey from syria to canada. the story beyond the image that went viral, sparked outrage and tore apart a family. >> all of a sudden, whatever you have in your life, for your own family. and one day, you have to leave everything behind and flee. >> woodruff: and, it's oscar time! we review this year's nominations looking at what's in and what's out.

all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. >> carnegie corporation of new york. supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security. at carnegie.org. >> and with the ongoing support

of these institutions and individuals. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: wall street mounted a comeback today-- one day after its worst losses since september. a rebound in crude oil prices sent energy shares higher, and the broader market followed suit. the dow jones industrial average gained 227 points to close near 16,380. the nasdaq rose almost 89 points. and the s&p 500 added 31. >> woodruff: goldman sachs agreed to settle long-running federal and state investigations for $5.1 billion. it stems from the company's mortgage practices leading up to the market meltdown in 2008.

about $1.8 billion of the total will go toward consumer relief. most other big banks have already reached similar settlements. ten more detainees have been released from the u.s. military prison at guantanamo bay, cuba. the prisoners were all from yemen. they were transferred tuesday night to oman, reducing the population at guantanamo to 93 inmates. in miami today, defense secretary ash carter said some of the rest might end up on the u.s. mainland. >> not everyone in gitmo can be safely transferred to another country. so we need an alternative. i therefore framed for the president a proposal to establish an alternative location. that plan will propose bringing those detainees to an appropriate secure location in the united states. >> woodruff: up until now, congress has blocked any such move, and even passed a law to

that effect. secretary carter also said today it does appear that u.s. navy sailors made a navigational mistake, causing their boats to stray into iranian waters this week. the ten sailors on board the two boats were detained tuesday in the persian gulf, by iran's revolutionary guard. they were let go yesterday after a flurry of diplomatic contacts. iran meanwhile, announced a key step today toward complying with its nuclear deal with world powers. state tv reported technicians finished removing the core of the arak nuclear reactor. the agreement calls for ensuring that the site can produce only tiny amounts of plutonium-- potential fuel for a nuclear weapon. the work must be verified by outside experts. turkey is claiming its military killed nearly 200 "islamic state" fighters-- iraq and syria-- just in the last 48

hours. the prime minister said that tanks and artillery blasted targets after tuesday's suicide bombing in istanbul. meanwhile, people continued to gather at the site of the bombing that killed ten tourists. authorities said they've detained seven people in the investigation. the ebola epidemic in west africa is officially over. that word today, from the world health organization. the outbreak killed 11,315 people-- mostly in guinea, sierra leone, liberia-- over nearly two years. in geneva, the head of the who's ebola response effort hailed the news, but also sounded a note of caution. >> this is a very important milestone and a very important step forward. we have to say that the job is still not done. that's because there is still ongoing risk of the re-emergence of the disease because of the persistence of the virus in a

proportion of survivors. >> woodruff: the epidemic is believed to have begun in rural guinea in december of 2013. for the second time this week, relief has reached starving civilians in syria, caught up in that country's civil war. the world food program and the red cross and red crescent delivered more food, medicine and other supplies to the town of madaya today. the area has been cut off by government troops for months. two villages surrounded by rebel forces in the north also received aid. back in this country, the republican presidential candidates are squaring off this evening, in their latest debate- - and their first of the new year. the event in north charleston, south carolina, features the top seven contenders according to national polls, and the stakes are high, with the iowa caucuses just two and a half weeks away. and, the great powerball craze is over-- for now.

there were three winning tickets last night for the jackpot that ballooned to a record $1.6 billion. one was sold at a 7-eleven in chino hills, california, outside los angeles, and hundreds crowded there, cheering. the other winning tickets were sold in tennessee and florida. still to come on the newshour: isis claims today's attack in indonesia, hope and loss in a family's journey from syria to canada, is president obama's pledge to cure cancer realistic? and much more. >> woodruff: now, to today's attacks in jakarta, indonesia, claimed by the islamic state group in the world's most- populous muslim majority nation. chief foreign affairs correspondent margaret warner begins our coverage.

and a warning, some of the images may be disturbing. >> warner: it is a moment of cold-blooded calculation as gunfire cracks, two suicide bombers crouch, make ready, and then... [explosion] in all, five attackers and two civilians died when multiple gunmen and suicide bombers struck the center of jakarta this morning. >> ( translated ): at first i thought it was the explosion of car tire, but then i realized that it was bomb explosion after i saw smoke and people fell down to ground. then i saw the motorcyclers, all wearing black clothes. they pulled out long guns. >> warner: the attackers hit a police booth at a busy intersection with guns and grenades. another target was a nearby starbucks. police say one bomber blew himself up inside, and waiting gunmen tried to shoot the survivors as they fled. after hours of gunfire, investigators found more undetonated bombs in a neighboring building, and they took four militants into custody. the islamic state group quickly

claimed responsibility. its statement read: jakarta's police chief offered a slightly different account: he pointed to an extremist group based in southeast asia with ties to isis. >> ( translated ): there's a militant named bahrun naim who wants to be the leader of the region. all leaders of i.s. in southeast asia are competing to be the chief. that's why bahrun naim plotted this attack. >> warner: naim is believed to be in the islamic state's de facto capital raqaa, syria, according to police. but they warned today that his group has also expanded its efforts across indonesia, malaysia, the philippines and thailand. just last month, police arrested more than a dozen people on the indonesian island of java on charges of planning attacks on christmas and new years eve. they said some received funding from bahrun naim. still, there were questions

today about the level of sophistication in the jakarta attacks. >> according to terrorism analysts who i spoke to today, they did not think much of the actual tactics of this group or the attackers who were involved today based on the fact that they didn't really kill anybody. >> warner: joe cochrane is the indonesia correspondent for the "international new york times", based in jakarta, where he spoke via skype. >> a number of these people's colleagues had been arrested over the last three or four weeks in various parts of indonesia, so the feeling was these guys were about to be picked up and they were just trying some sort of last gasp effort at glory or revenge against the police. >> warner: indonesia has long been a target of violent islamist extremism. the most notorious incident came in 2002, when the al-qaeda linked "jemmeh islamiya"

attacked nightclubs on the island of bali, killing 202 people. and in 2009, the same group struck two hotels in jakarta, leaving eight dead. since then, the government has led a massive effort to dismantle jemmeh islamiyah, but there are concerns of a resurgence. meanwhile, jakarta and its ten million people are now on high alert, as the investigation begins. for the pbs newshour, i'm margaret warner. >> woodruff: and for more on how isis inspires and influences militant islamist groups around the world, i'm joined by joby warrick. he is a national security reporter at "the washington post" and author of the book "black flags: the rise of isis." joby warrick welcome back to the program. >> thank you. >> woodruff: help us first, though, understand who is this group claiming responsibility? it sounds like there are different groups operating around that part of asia. >> yeah, but there are a number of these southeast asians in isis proper and working out of

syria. there's a battalion there and they have been successful in attacking kurdish targets, gone on the internet claiming credit, claiming they're strong and trying to drive other recruits to them. once again, the model we have seen in other places, belgians and french and germans and others kind of calling out in a nationalistic way for people to come from the region and help the isis cause. >> woodruff: is there firm connection between jakarta and what's going on in syria and iraq? >> i think there is in the sense there is this common effort by isis to try to create these cells all over the world. we've sign it in all kinds of places, certainly north africa, yemen, pakistan, afghanistan. but they really, really want to start a cell in southeast asia. they have been looking at over a year to try to start something in indonesia, particularly. there are groups who are there. there are groups allied with them at least ideologically allied with them. >> woodruff: how do we distinguish between groups that

are truly allyd and taking orders from isis central, whatever that is, and groups that are just wanting to do-- wanting to carry out attacks because they admire what isis stands for? >> sometimes it's very hard to tell. i think in this case, there's been enough messaging from isis' headquarters in raqqa saying, "we want to do this. we want to start something in that part of the world." and it's easy to see, at least the outlines of a plan, some kind of reaching out to a region and trying to get people to do something locally, just to establish a presence, just to show that they're there. and so this might be what we're looking at in this case. >> woodruff: so just how well organize read they in southeast asia? what does it look like? >> this is new because isis hasn't really done anything there before but they do have at least 600 southeast asians in syria that we know of. lots of people have come come to that region to train. there are lots of other alliances they could make with local groups, ones that have done the attacks in the 2000s and horrific ones as we've seen.

this is potentially the start of something new and dangerous. >> woodruff: so they go to syria and train and most of them don't stay. they stay long enough to learn whatever tactics they need and then they're going back? i mean, has that been documented? >> it has been documented. it's kind of one leverage point that local governments have that they can try to stop these people when they come back. it's not always possible. the borders are sometimes more porous than we like to think. but this is really something that people in the region are very concerned about, and they're starting to see evidence it is happening. >> woodruff: we've pointed out that indonesia has the largest muslim population in the world in any single country. should we be surprised there haven't been more isis recruits from there? >> yeah, you would think so. there are 210 million muslim mun indneighbor. only. 500, experts say, have gone to syria to join the fight. that's perhaps partly a reflection of the fact that it's far, it's distant. but it's also the fact that the

brand of islam in indonesia tends to be more moderate so you don't see as many radicals but there are some and the ones that are there are willing to do very brutal things. >> woodruff: and you were telling us that isis has had a pretty sophisticated effort to recruit, that they're using social media and so forth, which we're seeing them use around the world. >> yeah, but the wrinkle on it is they use local people to apeople to people in their homelands, using the common tongue, the common language, and appealing to national pride and islamic pride. "come, represent the cause in syria or fight for us in other parts of the world." so this is really the isis model these days. >> woodruff: and authorities are on top of this? i mean if the media is aware of it, we have to assume authorities are? >> absolutely worried about it. they're tracking it very closely. it looks like the indonesian police or government there has been very aggressive in trying to find these people and root them out. it's not always possible to get all of them because they're pretty good at keeping a low

profile. >> woodruff: joby warrick of the "washington post," thank you. >> thank you. >> woodruff: you've seen the heartbreaking picture of alan kurdi, he's the syrian refugee boy who drowned off the coast of turkey this summer, but what became of the rest of his family? their story runs as wide and far as the millions of syrians who have now fled the war. william brangham reports. >> reporter: it was one image that devastated onlookers across the world. a three-year-old syrian refugee, drowned and lifeless, lying facedown on the beach. alan kurdi was just one of hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled the middle east last year, and one of many children who've drowned on the perilous sea voyage, but his death seemed to cut deeper. from front pages the world over, the picture hammered a global conscience, international actions were staged in response.

and artists around the world responded with their own touching imagery. >> i remember seeing it and thinking that this is a really heartbreaking one, it's hard to say exactly why that one is the one that went so viral. but it did. >> reporter: "new york times" beirut bureau chief anne barnard set out to tell the deeper story behind this image. what she found was an ocean of stories-- of a boy and his extended family-- stories that spanned multiple continents, and told of horrible violence and struggles. >> the kurdis, like many, many syrians had essentially as a family, accepted the deal that existed under syria's police state. you have a relatively decent modest living in exchange for staying out of politics. and like many other millions that's what they were doing. they raised six children in damascus. barbering was the family business. and they were just living their life there when the war and conflict began. >> reporter: after protests against president bashar al

assad led to civil war within the country, the kurdis found themselves caught in harm's way. >> their neighborhood was so close to the government artillery bases that the outgoing blasts put cracks in some of the walls of the family houses. at the same time, the police were increasingly stopping people on the streets. one child in the family witnessed the death of the school mate who was killed by security forces while at a protest, outside of school. there was a suicide bomb that went off near the same kid randomly. a very frightening experience. and there were people that they knew who were arrested just for no reason and disappeared. so conflict was getting closer. >> reporter: aware of the dangers they faced, alan's family members were determined to find a new home, and a new life-- even if it meant leaving syria. one of alan's aunts, tried three times to cross the sea from turkey. >> each attempt was scarier than

the last, and they all failed. and the last one ended with them getting scooped up out of the water by the turkish coast guard. and hivrun said, "i'm not doing it again. i'm not risking my kids." she had a big fight with her husband, because he insisted on going on to germany and she stayed in istanbul with the kids who were angry and wanted to actually keep trying. well, a week later abdullah's family died and they said, "all right we did the right thing. thank god we didn't go." it felt really horrible for abdullah. but guess what? within a few weeks, they tried again. >> you own your house. you live your life, happy, peaceful." >> reporter: alan's aunt fatima, tima for short, has lived in canada for more than 20 years, where she continued the family business, opening a hair salon near vancouver. she maintained contact with her brother-- alan's father-- as they undertook their fateful voyage. she said that like most syrian families, the kurdis were aware of the grave dangers of the journey, but they ultimately decided they had no choice. >> all of a sudden, whatever you

have in your life, for your own family. and one day, you have to leave everything behind and flee. there is nobody who will like to do this just by choice. >> the thing is, one million people have gone to europe. 800,000 of them this year on boats. and in a strange way it can be a rational choice when you consider what people are running from. >> ( translated ): can you imagine, as a father, seeing your child die before your eyes? >> reporter: mohammad kurdi, an uncle of alan's, saw his share of horrors in syria. after fleeing damascus for the northern city of kobani, he and his son were trapped and threatened by isis fighters. mohammad was beaten. his son shergo, 15-years-old, was given a gun and instructed to shoot his father. luckily, they both escaped, but mohammad decided it was time for his family to leave syria.

>> ( translated ): imagine the buildings being blown up. the corpses of children and women. they are all innocent. >> reporter: abdullah kurdi, mohammad's brother and the father of three-year-old alan, lost his entire family at sea. he became a symbol of the plight of refugees across the middle east. he returned to his homeland, kobani, where he laid his wife and children to rest. >> ( translated ): my entire family passed away, they are martyrs now, but i hope they can help who are still in need. enough with this war. i don't know what to say more. i am so tired; just leave me alone for the quran's sake. >> reporter: today, he lives alone in iraqi kurdistan, his extended family now spread throughout the world. but fortunately, the kurdis' story does not end there. alan's uncle mohammad finally arrived in canada with his wife and five children, as some of the 10,000 refugees welcomed by the canadian government last year. it was a bittersweet arrival.

>> ( translated ): i am very happy and excited, but at the same time i'm very sad about my cousins. >> reporter: during their trip, the family had been separated from their father mohammad. they met in germany, in december, just before flying west. it was the first time he met his five-month old son, sherwan. >> ( translated ): there were days i thought i would never see my family again, but thank god the nightmare is over. >> it was a beautiful moment that those kids, they are going to begin a new life and now going to school, rebuild their life. >> reporter: now, mohammad and his family are staying with his sister tima. he is working in her hair salon- - the family business, and his children are quickly learning english. >> sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday. friday, saturday.

>> ( translated ): thank god i have arrived here with my family, after this long journey and great tragedy. my children and i are just starting to feel safe. there is a life here for us. >> reporter: for anne barnard who spent months reporting on the kurdi family, this family saga is a reminder that the syrian civil war is about more than just assad, the islamic state, and american interests in the region. it's about millions of real, families left with nowhere to turn in hopes of a better future. >> this story reminds us that each one of these stories is an individual tale and each-- even this one family. that incredibly tragic picture of alan on the beach was only a tiny piece of what they had been through. what happened to alan is only a fraction of what happened to them. and what happened to them is just one story out of many

millions of stories. half of the syrian population has been displaced in this conflict. so i think we just have to remember that each one of the stories is a real person with real family, with family dynamics like of those that we have in our own families. >> reporter: and for tima kurdi, the story is far from over. >> of course the sad part, you always think about the rest of the family. about the million of those refugees. they are still, have a little bit of hope one day they will be somewhere safe. >> reporter: after her nephew's tragic death, tima has become an outspoken activist and advocate for the plight of refugees around the world. >> people have to open their heart and their door and help them. and that's why i said, if i have a chance to bring my voice to the world, i'm willing to do it. it's not something i choose, i just-- it just happened. and it's not an easy thing to do

really. >> reporter: a dire challenge, now faced by the u.s., european and middle eastern nations alike. for the pbs newshour, i'm william brangham. >> woodruff: stay with us. coming up on the newshour: examining why the oscar nominees still lack diversity, the tough job market for women over 50, and what it takes to make a great photograph. but first, what the white house is calling the "moonshot to cure cancer." one unexpected announcement in president obama's state of the union address came when he tapped vice president joe biden to lead an effort to boost and streamline cancer research across the country. >> tonight i'm announcing a new national effort to get it done, and because he's gone to the mat

for all of us on so many issues over the past 40 years, i'm putting joe in charge of mission control. ( cheers and applause ) for the loved ones we've all lost, for the families that we can still save, let's make merica the country that cures cancer once and for all. what do you say, joe? >> woodruff: for a look at what an initiative like this might look like, who would be involved, and how it might go forward, we turn to three people with long ties to cancer research. dr. otis brawley is chief medical officer at the american cancer society, dr. francis collins is the director of the national institutes of health, and katie couric in addition to being the well-known journalist and author is co-founder of stand up to cancer, an education and charitable advocacy group. and we welcome all three of you to the program. dr. brawley, let me start with you. is it realistic for the president to say "let's cure cancer once and for all?"

>> well, i think the cure analogy is fine. what's really going to happen is some cancers, if we intensify our efforts, will be cured. many cancers are going to be stalled out to where they become very chronic diseases, like diabetes. but the end result is people are going to be better for it. >> woodruff: francis collins, dr. collins, do you agree? i mean, we know there are, what over 100-- maybe hundreds of types of cancer? what are people to think about this? well, i hope they'll be inspired and excited about this. yes, there are hundreds of types of cancer, but we are at an inflection point in terms of things we are learning about what causes this disease where good cells go bad, and what could we do about it, and by bringing together immunotherapy, the new way of activating the immune system to tackle cancel, genomics, and making sure that everybody is sharing the data they're developing in those kinds of studies, the vice president, a man of great passion and principle, is determined that this is not

going to be a tweak on the system. this is going to be a major acceleration of the effort to discover how to treat and cure in many instances cancer. and goodness knows, we can all get excited about that outcome. >> woodruff: and katie couric, as somebody who has been on the advocacy side of this for years, having lost your first husband and your sister to cancer, how do you see the challenge? >> well, i think it's so exciting, judy, when i heard this announcement at the state of the union. and i think we are, as dr. collins said, at a really inflection point, and things are happening so much when it comes to immunotherapy, as he said, genomics, the basic science. and, you know, as somebody who has lost people near and dear to my heart, i-- when vice president biden lost beau, i literally felt his pain and frustration. and that's the way i felt when jay and emily died. why couldn't there be better treatments? i remember, jude i, the first-line treatment for metastatic colon cancer for jay

in 1997 had been around since the 1950s. and it just made me furious. and that was really the impetus for strand up to cancer. we said, you know, these researchers, these scientists, they have to collaborate instead of compete. and we started it in 2008, and now eight years later, we have-- we have 1,000 scientists. we have 130 researcher institutions involved. they're working on 18 different dream teams where they're collaborating on pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, with the american scaerns society, childhood cancers. and already two f.d.a.-approved treatments have stemmed from that kind of research for pancreatic cancer and lung cancer. so i think collaboration really is the key. >> woodruff: what about that, dr. brawley? what would constitute a breakthrough here? >> well, i agree that we need sustained funding and sustained support for the scientists, especially the folks at the

national cancer institute, who have been wonderful at this. i do believe that we are at an inflection point. we have learned a lot about what goes on in the cancer cell, a lot of targets that are druggable are being developed. we actually need some command and control of the oncology research network in order to advance it further and faster. >> woodruff: what do you mean "command and control?" >> well, we coneed people to say, "this is a project that needs funding and needs funding urgently. this is a project that's repetitive and need not be funded. " we need people to say, you, as an investigator, need to start talking and collaborating with others investigators. we need to bring industry into this. we need to bring far more than just government and academics. i would also say the advocacy community needs to be involved. so there needs to be some collaboration amongst numerous individuals and numerous

organizations. but i actually am very optimistic that we can do some very positive work here. >> woodruff: but, dr. collins, how much of this is money? we know something like $265 million more dollars went to the national cancer institute over the last few years. you were responsible for a lot of that. is money the whole story here? >> it's not the whole story, but it sure is helpful. investigators who are pursuing really creative ideas in cancer research still have only about one chance in five that their ideas are going to get funded because although we have now turned the corner-- and much credit to the congress for making that happen a month ago-- we still have a long way to go to catch up on the resources we've lost and if we're really going to jump start this kind of opportunity for moving cancer research forward at an accelerated pace, resources are going to be critical. we are not lacking for ideas. we're not lacking for talent. there are all kinds of things happening in this field. resources are critical to make

it move forward at the rate i know we can. take immunotherapy, we have seen how the immune system, probably in all of us, is searching out and taking care of small numbers of cancer cells every day and we never even know we had them, but sometimes the cancer cells are clever enough to elude that. we have seen dramatic results in melanoma. president carter with his metastatic melanoma. apparently those brain metz haveelt immediate away. we need to move that into other areas like pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, where the immune system is having a harder time finding them. they should be approachable. we need to teach the immune system, take it to college, take it to graduate school, figure out how we can activate what our own mechanisms might be able to do for us. >> woodruff: and katie couric, from why whereyou stand, that money, do you look to congress? i mean, what are we talking about here? >> well, of course, we need a bigger-- i think we need more

sustained and-- funding for government and from congress and for the n.i.h., for the n.c.i., but i think to dr. brawley's point we also need the private sector involved. we have railed close to $360 million has been pledged to stand up to cancer through corporate and private and individual donors. so we need to come together as a country and say, you know, this has got to be where the end of cancer begins. that's our motto at stand up to cancer, and really get everyone involved. and i think under vice president biden's leadership, he'll be able to galvanize the community that can be as political at times, judy, as tv news, if you can imagine that. with a lot of overlapping and competing interests. so we really do need to come together as a country and i think eelbe able to accomplish incredible things, and especially if we have a more coordinated, sustained effort. >> woodruff: just quickly from all three of you.

dr. brawley, first. what's the message people out there right now who either have cancer or have a lovedded with cancer. how much hope should they have right now? >> well, i do want to give everyone who has cancer some hope. i do think that we need to be much more organized. i do think that command and control, where there's actually a strategic plan, by someone who's in government, the vice president is ideal because he understands politics. there's great scientists already to advise him. but we need actually someone to do organization and leadership. so i want to give everyone some hope. i'm very excited about this plan. >> woodruff: dr. collins. >> i'm excited, too, and i think we are getting the real understanding of cancer that we've needed all along, and that's translating into ideas about prevention and treatment. so anybody listening to this, i think should feel a sense of hope, a sense of inspiration, a sense we're on the right track, and we've got the right people and the right smart and now maybe some more resources, this is a problem we can eventually

solve. >> woodruff: and just quickly, katie couric, write a check? >> yeah, write a check. you know, if only one in five promising research proposals is funded, that's four great ideas that are left literally, judy, on the cutting room floor. so we need to support our scientists. they're the real here expose heroines, i think, of our society. we need to give them the money they need to do the work that will help us all. >> woodruff: katie couric, dr. francis collins, dr. otis brawley, we thank you all three. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thanks, judy. >> woodruff: next, the motion picture academy today named its top picks for the best performances and films of 2015. jeffrey brown has our look at who's in this year's field, and- - getting just as much attention-- who's not.

>> when it comes to oscar nominations this year, it is a very cruel world, indeed. "the revenant," a revenge tale set in the american wilderness in the 1800s, ghaind the most nominations, 12 in all, including for best picture, best director alejandro g. inarritu, who won last year for "birdman," and in the leading actor category for leonardo dicaprio, a megastar who famously has never won an oscar. the second most honored film with 10 nominations portrayed a different kind of struggle for survival. "mad max: fury road" is set in a not-so-distant future that we can all only hope to avoid. it's a sequel to the popular trilogy that began in 1979. director george miller, who also created and directed the earlier series, gained a nomination for the new film. this time using a female lead.

>> this is the best shot i'll ever have. >> they're both definitely about survival, but they both are taking, in many ways, simple stories and just telling them really well. "mad max" is essentially one long chase film but it's shot and staged and mounted in a way no one's ever seen. >> that's tracking right towards us. >> unlike many other years, though, the races in this and other key categories are considered up for grabs. six other films joining "the revenant" and "mad max" "the big short," "bridge of spies" "brooklyn" "the martian," "room" and "spotlight." there were some familiar names in the acting categories. among the men, in addition to dicaprio, matt damon in "the martian," and last year's winner, eddie redmayne. among women former winner cate blanchett for "carol," and jennifer lawrence for "joy."

but a relative newcomer seems to be the odds-on favorite as a woman in "room" held captive in years with her young son now adjusting to the outside world "slate film critic" dana steven. >>s canular wonderful in "room" and a breakthrough performance. she is not a known name, and suddenly she's burst into stardom and greater visibility with this role. >> most notably missing again for the second straight year, act orlz of color, an issue that's put it the own spotlight on hollywood for its lack of diversity at every level. >> and while i think the headline of the academy has made great strides in the last couple of years to include more people of color, more women, more people under a certain age in the academy, it still is dominated, primarily, by men, primarily by white men over 60, 65, and the choices of films and

actors often reflect a sensibility. and maybe lease looet just say a sensibility that's times, perhaps has come and gone. >> among those left off was idris elbafor "beast of no nation" the film "straight outta compton" had been wildly praised but was shut out of major nominations. >> i always sort think it's earlier up the pipeline that things should have been fixed. the problem is there aren't people of color and women out there make movies and getting the directing and acting jobs and if they were there they would have more choices to pick from. how much, there are exceptions to that, even this year, the director of "creed "african american director, and a great performance by michael b. jordan in that role but neither of them was recognized. instead it was white supporting act orp sylvester stallone who got recognize forward "creed." >> "star wars" won nominations

in several technical categories. just how important are these nom nominations for these films? >> all films benefit from getting nominated, especially the oscars. there's something they call the "oscar bump" and i think we're going to see these films make at least 20% more than they would have if they didn't get nominated. >> the academy awards ceremony itself remains a very big deal, one of the most watched programs of the year. but after last year's 15% drop in viewership, from 43 million to 37 million, producers are aiming fair bit of a reboot. chris rock will host the oscar broadcast on february 28. there was also sad news in the film world today with the passing of alan rickman. a classically trained british actor who performed with the royal shakespeare company and earned two tony award nominations, and who often showcased that pedigree in film roles, such as "sense and sensibility." >> i have described mr. wilbee as the worst of libertines, but

i have since learned from lady alan that he did mean to propose that day. >> it was hard for me to pay attention to those breaking oscar nominations this morning after hearing the news that alan rickman had died because to me that's such a blow for the world of cinema. he was such a great performer with incredible range. >> get them back! >> rick man became best known for his roles as the villain, playing german psychopath hans gruber in "die hard." he was the dastardly sheriff of nottingham in "robin hood, prince of thieves." >> and call off christmas! >> for which he won a british academy and film award. and, of course, for a new generation he was master of dark magic in the "harry potter" franchise. >> should anyone, student or staff, attempt to aid mr. potter, they will be punished.

>> in another vain, in the christmas favorite "love actually" rick man was a husband to emma thompson, pathetically flirting with adultery. >> i'm sorry. a classic fool. >> during his 30-year career, rick man never won a oscar but once said, "parts win prize, not actors." alan rickman's family announced today that he died from a battle with cancer. he was 69 years old. for the pbs newshour, i'm jeffrey brown. >> woodruff: now, do women really face a tougher time of it in the job market then men do as they age? our economics correspondent paul solman recently looked into just that question. it's part of our weekly segment "making sense", which airs every thursday on the newshour.

>> reporter: on comedy central's "inside amy schumer," the aging actress's lament: >> you know how sally field was tom hanks' love interest in "punchline" and then, like, 20 minutes later, she was his mom in "forrest gump"? >> reporter: tina fey is 45; patricia arquette, 47. >> i didn't get this commercial last week for a.a.r.p because the director said i was too old to play larry king's wife. >> reporter: these stars were celebrating 55-year-old julia louis dreyfus' last day playing a love interest, though schumer used a raunchier term. >> but what about men? like, who tells men when it's their last [bleep] day? >> honey, men don't have that day. >> never. >> reporter: turns out it's not just the case in hollywood. jewish vocational services in san francisco is a non-profit that helps older people find jobs. we first visited in 2009, at the height of the great recession, when complaints of age discrimination abounded.

>> i was told during the interview: "as you can see, we're a very young group. and our main concern is that you are overly qualified for this job, and we would be concerned that you wouldn't stay." >> reporter: did you believe them? >> no. i just felt that they didn't think that i would fit in with the younger group. >> reporter: but did patricia wilson have it worse as a woman? we went back to j.v.s last week to focus on females, assembling a cast of so-called "older women." >> i am almost 55. >> i am 58 years old. >> 57. >> 64. >> i count myself as eight plus 50. >> reporter: all of these women have had trouble finding work since 2008. cynthia josayma used to work in international development. >> when the recession went into place, my age community all lost their jobs. and they've found that in general, the middle age american woman is marginalized.

>> high tech firms especially don't want you. >> reporter: former sales rep dana michaels has been looking for a job for two years. >> they have a culture of ping pong and beer fridays. i applied for a place that had "nap thursdays." >> reporter: nap thursdays!? >> yes. and i could just see myself putting the blankets over them! >> reporter: now, wait a second. these young people were taking naps? >> on thursdays! i was at least double their age. and i'm sure they looked at me like, "oh, this old lady's not gonna fit in." >> reporter: though this was high-tech san francisco, the problem extends nationwide. denise carrillo has been unemployed since losing her fashion industry job in new york in 2007. did you feel you were being discriminated against because you were a somewhat older woman? >> yeah, yes, i did. the experience was there, my

confidence was there, the compliments just rolled. but, i was older. and that's when i decided: relocate. >> reporter: but when you came here from new york, two and a half years ago, did you get responses to the resume that you sent out? >> no. none. no responses. >> reporter: the plight of older women looking for work was the buzz at last week's annual meeting of the american economic association, thanks in part to a federal reserve study making headlines: women over 50 now account for half of the long term unemployed. but does that mean they're being discriminated against? more than, say, men over 50? >> this is of course one of the reasons economists step in, you know, 'cause we're always a little, a little skeptical of those interpretations... >> reporter: economist david neumark. >> 'cause we've all not gotten jobs we've applied for, and it doesn't mean we were discriminated against because of whatever feature we have-- age, race, sex, whatever it might be. >> reporter: but economists can

test these interpretations with field experiments, the most famous of which may be the "audit study" summarized in this video, where thousands of made- up resumes were mailed to employers, identical except for the names, half black-sounding, half white. the results? black-sounding names were 50% less likely to get follow-up calls. david neumark used the audit- study approach to study age-ism and sex-ism. he sent out resumes in 12 cities, using women's names for thousands of administrative assistant and retail sales jobs; men's names for custodian and security guard. he also varied the age: a third of the fictional job hunters were around 30, a third, around 50, a final third, in their mid- 60s. the results were dramatically different by age, but just among the women. >> the youngest group, the 30

year olds or so, get about 15% percent callback rates, even higher in sales. the middle age group lower, and the oldest group by far the lowest. there's a hint that older male workers have lower callback rates than younger male workers, but there's much stronger evidence in terms of magnitudes and how robust the finding is, of age discrimination against older women. >> those dark red dots are fixations, that's where the eye is pausing. >> reporter: economist joanna lahey did a similar study, sending out 8,000 made-up resumes for low-skilled jobs in boston and st. petersburg, and more recently an eye-scanning lab experiment studying how long h.r. managers looked at resumes. the red dots tell you where and for how long. >> and we see the years on the employment history, and we see the education and the year. >> reporter: right. >> that they got their education. >> reporter: the managers looked longer at younger resumes, looked longer at the items indicating age. >> this one, for example, says, "i'm willing to embrace change," which is something that the a.a.r.p used to recommend that you put on your resume and then it stopped recommending. >> reporter: because it didn't work?

>> well, my first study found that it actually hurt older people. >> reporter: because it identified them as card carrying members of a.a.r.p, lahey suspects, and therefore at least 50. so, you had people starting in their mid-30s all the way to the mid-70s. >> yes. >> reporter: and, when does age discrimination start? >> immediately. it starts at age 35. >> reporter: really!? >> yeah. it's a pretty steady process. as you get older, uh, your amount of callbacks decrease >> reporter: and it's women more than men? >> it's definitely women more than men. >> reporter: so the evidence is clear, but what's the explanation? >> the evolutionary biologists bring everything back to you know, reproduction, right? older men can reproduce, older women can't. >> and then we put her in a boat and we push her out into the water and we drink champagne to salute how [bleep] she was for so many years. cheers. >> reporter: so, it could be that it's really something inherent that's passed on from our evolutionary heritage that just says, "mmm, older women,

not so much. older men, doesn't make a difference?" >> it could be. i mean, i think the notion that age signals something, and it's, for some people at least, it's a negative, is not-- is not crazy. >> reporter: no, not crazy, as even our "older women" acknowledged. >> i'm trying to think back to... >> reporter: lisa trogdon is 58. >> what i thought was, when i was younger. and 50, when i was 20, 25 seemed old. and as a young person i didn't have the perspective like i do now to realize, oh, they have valuable experience. >> maybe it's all a fear, a fear of older, more experienced people. >> reporter: but what's crazy is that age signals something so much more negative for women than men. and, says economist teresa ghilarducci. >> it's gonna be a bigger problem, this age discrimination problem, for women as more and more women are having to work longer, because of divorce, or because they have eroded

pensions, or lower pensions because even if they worked their whole life, they were paid less, and so they accumulated less pensions. >> reporter: and, as laura milvy asked at the vocational center: >> if we're all gonna live to a 100 years, and you're trying to make women in their 50s stop working, what are we gonna do for the next 50 years?! >> reporter: good question. this is pbs newshour economics correspondent paul solman, reporting from san francisco. >> woodruff: now another in our brief but spectacular series where we ask interesting people about their passions. for six decades, ken van sickle has been quietly producing photographs in his darkroom located in the center of manhattan. his photos range from documenting the bohemian life of new york and paris in the 1950s and '60s, to pushing the limits of the medium itself.

>> he walked straight across the street, right through my door. then you have to go 91 steps up the stairs, which is really good for me, because it keeps me healthy. i'm 83 years old now. i moved into this building in 1963, and it's rent controld and it's a landmark building, and i'm a senior citizen. so i don't pay much rent. that's the only reason i can live here at all. i don't have a favorite place to take photographs or even a favorite subject. i carry a camera-- if giout into the hallway, i carry a camera with me. when i was in paris, i was 23, i think, and i wanted to shoot everything i saw, but i didn't have enough money to buy more than, like, a roll of film every two weeks, and somebody said jed baker was playing over at the american club, and i went over and i took two pictures, and one of them was out of focus, and the other one a great photo. i'm not a concerned

photographer. i'm not trying to prove anything in any way politically or otherwise. i'm interested in beauty and the sort of subtle moments of everyday life. this picture was called "the regular." the chairs in the photograph are overlapping, overlap planes in parallel recession. the this picture, i just called it "washington square" laboratories tend to print it light but it should be dark like this. grand central station, i don't know why there was only one person walking in there. i called this firemen. the arch had caved in on five firemen. the metropolitan chose this to be in the permanent collection. there are a lot of things that make a good photograph. you have to think about text and jesture and composition, and all the things a painting has in it. technology doesn't change the way photography is. it makes it available to more people, which means there is going to be much, much more really terrible pictures taken or pictures that are totally dependent on subject, which is

all all right. if you were there when the hindenburg caught on fire and you took a picture of it, that's a great photograph. but you're not a great photographer because you can't repeat that in everyday things. what a great photographer does is they are consistently able to make something in a style that's personal to themselves. my pictures don't depend on extreme sharpness. they depend on the composition, and the subject and on the way i see it. my name is ken van sickle. this is my brief but spectacular take on sharing what i see. >> woodruff: you can see more of our brief but spectacular series and hear a lot about many different passions on our facebook page. check it out. also online: nearly two million names populate various u.s. government terrorism watchlists. who are the people on these lists? and are they all potential terrorists? the newshour's p.j. tobia, host of our "shortwave" podcast, continues his series on tracking terrorists. all that and more is on our web site: pbs.org/newshour.

and that's the newshour for tonight. on friday: creating a more diverse workforce in silicon valley. i'm judy woodruff. join us online, and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> the lemelson foundation.

committed to improving lives through invention. in the u.s. and developing countries. on the web at lemelson.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> this is "bbc world news." >> funding of this presentation is made possible by the freeman foundation, newman's own foundation, giving all profits from newman's own to charity and pursuing the common good, kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs, and sony pictures classics, now presenting "the lady in the van." >> just until you sort your self out. >> an educated woman and living like that. >> merry christmas. >> shut the door. i'm a busy woman.