captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, january 16: the u.n. says iran has complied with last year's nuclear disarmament deal as that nation frees "washington post" reporter jason rezaian and four other americans; how one new york city prosecutor is taking action to reduce the number of outstanding arrest warrants for low level crimes; and what american technology companies like google are doing to make their workforces more diverse. 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 contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening, and thanks for joining us. today is "implementation day" for iran's nuclear disarmament deal with the united states and other world powers. diplomats meeting in vienna, austria, worked well into the night to certify that iran has met the terms of last year's landmark deal to shut down its plutonium reactor and ship out its stockpile of enriched uranium. tonight, the international atomic energy agency announced iran has carried out all required measures.

secretary of state john kerry led last-minute talks with iranian foreign minister javad zarif. certification has prompted the u.s. and the european union to lift long-standing economic sanctions against iran, allowing iran to gain access to $100 billion in frozen assets. with sanctions lifted, iran's government says within weeks it will boost oil exports by 500,000 barrels a day, and it will immediately buy 114 passenger jets from airbus. >> today marks the moment that the iran nuclear agreement transitions from an ambitious set of promises on paper to measurable action in progress. >> reporter: in the hours leading up to certification, >> sreenivasan: in the hours leading up to certification, iran freed five americans, including "washington post" reporter jason rezaian, who had been jailed 18 months on espionage charges that his newspaper called "trumped up." the post said it "couldn't be happier" about his release.

rezaian and three other men freed-- including a former marine and a pastor-- are dual u.s. and iranian citizens. iran also released an american college student in its custody. in exchange, the u.s. granted clemency to seven iranians imprisoned or charged with violating u.s. sanctions, and dropped charges against 14 others. joining me now for more analysis on today's developments is emad kiyaei, the executive director of the american iranian council, a nonprofit, educational organization. he's also a researcher at princeton university. happened today? >> first of all, thanks for having me. this is a major breakthrough. to first of all, have this return of iranian americans who were held in jail in iran, and of course, vice versa in the united states. of course, the latest announcements of the i.a.e.a., ushering in implementation for a nuclear deal so a very good day for the iranians and the international community as a whole

>> sreenivasan: there were two traction, as secretary kerry mentioned, one the prison swap or humanitarian gesture, whatever you want to call it. he said these things merge expected accelerated because the relations were getting stronger over the two and a half years they worked together. >> i totally agree with his assessment. especially because if you look at the two and a half years of negotiationes, they were not only just intense. for the first time the united states and iran engaged directly with one another after 36 years of non-relations. so you have a direct channel between iran and the united states. of course, that helps in this case, and in previous cases, we have seen, in the case of the marinees, the navy, the 10 sailors released within 24 hours, this also came about because of the good relationship between john kerry and his counterpart >> sreenivasan: they could have been used as pawns in a much longer chess game. >> exactly.

this wouldn't have happened a year ago. especially the revolutionary guard thenselves had taken the sailors captives >> sreenivasan: does this change the international community's perception of iran like iran wants it to be? they want to be at this stage, they want to be engaged in trade with the world. >> this is how rohani came into power on the back of trying to remove iran's isolation from international community, resolve the nuclear issue, and, of course, revamp the iranian economy that has been under so much pressure because of sanctions. so, yiran wants to rejoin the international community. and i think this image of iran, this trend is going in the right direction to bring about a new assessment from the american side on who they're dealing with in the iranian leadership. and i hope that this nuclear deal, the prison exchange swap, and the release of the sailors is just one step towards opening

up the relationship between the two countries on more pressing issues that they see eye to eye, whether than stability in afghanistan, iraq, and energy security. there's lots at state here and a lot on the table they can still discuss >> sreenivasan: what about the issues inside iranian society that we as americans would still have serious problems with? >> i mean, it depends on which ones. obviously, in my opinion, the isolation of iran did not help the human rights conditions of iranians within the country. through engagement, through diplomacy, and through opening of iran and engaging with the international community, we will see also within the country a more space for liberties, for human rights conditions improving, and when we close off a country,ob, this becomes much more difficult to press a country to evolve or change its

condition on such matters as you mentioned in crit >> sreenivasan: all right emad kiyaei, thank you so much for joining us. >> my pleasure, thank you. >> sreenivasan: for people who cannot afford fines, court fees or bail money, even small brushes with the law can lead to an arrest and jail time. here in america's most populous city, new york, the police issue hundreds of summonses for low level offenses every day, but folks who don't appear in court when they're supposed to or pay the required fine can find themselves on the receiving end of an arrest warrant, which can show up on a background check when applying for a job or a place to live. in tonight's signature segment, the newshour's megan thompson reports on an effort led by a prosecutor to reduce outstanding warrants for low level crimes. >> reporter: on a saturday morning in december, a crowd waits outside the mount lebanon baptist church in brooklyn, new

york. hundreds more pack the sanctuary inside. they're seeking forgiveness not from a higher power but from new york city's criminal justice system. the event is called "begin again." the purpose: to clear arrest warrants stemming from low-level crimes. >> i'm here to clear up a past warrant that i had for trespassing. >> there's nothing worse than walking around the city and having a cloud hanging over your head. >> reporter: new york city has 1.4 million open arrest warrants dating back to the 1980s. none are for serious or violent crimes. they're for "quality of life" offenses like loitering, public urination, walking a dog without a leash or being in a park after dark. brooklyn district attorney kenneth thompson-- no relation to this reporter-- started" begin again" last year to reduce the public's distrust and fear of law enforcement, and to ease the punitive burden these warrants can have. >> warrants never go away, so,

when people apply for jobs, they come up in background checks. it could affect someone's application for citizenship. it could affect someone's ability to get housing. so, there are real consequences to outstanding warrants. we need to deal with this crisis, this staggering number of outstanding summons warrants. we have to deal with that now. >> reporter: between 2003 and 2013, new york city police issued more than six million summonses for low level crimes in a city of about 8.4 million people. when issued a summons, a person must appear in court on a specific day and time, and usually ends up paying a fine ranging from $25 to $250. but nearly 40% of people issued a summons fail to appear in court, resulting in a judge automatically issuing an arrest warrant. thompson says that doesn't make sense for low-level crimes. >> once a bench warrant is issued for someone's arrest, that police officer who comes

into contact with the person who has the warrant has no discretion. that officer must arrest that person and put them through the system. the person who's stopped may resist arrest or flee because of that outstanding warrant, and, so, we are unnecessarily putting our police officers in peril. >> reporter: 27-year-old malcolm richards came to "begin again" to clear a warrant for an unpaid open container summons he received for drinking a beer in a park. >> and i don't want to call my job and tell them i'm in jail for this. >> reporter: the first stop: the church basement, filled with attorneys and paralegals from the legal aid society in a makeshift courtroom in the church attic. a judge hears the from the prosecutors and defendants' attorneys. in just a few minutes, defendants like richards may learn whether their warrants are cleared. programs like "begin again" have

sprung up in recent years across the u.s., from tulsa to st. louis to atlanta, clearing tens of thousands of warrants and helping ease the burden on the courts. in new york, critics say the summonses that lead to warrants disproportionately affect poor and minority communities, which are often also the most heavily policed. a new york civil liberties union analysis found more than 80% of summonses went to blacks and hispanics. malcolm richards grew up in brownsville, one of brooklyn's poorest neighborhoods. he got his first summons at 16, when, he says, he was unlocking his bicycle one evening after leaving an after-school program. >> i got on my bike and a cop came out of nowhere, and he was like, "hey, you can't be in here after dark." >> reporter: the officer issued him a summons that carried a fine. >> my mom is a single mom, so she can't really just say, "hey, here's money, go pay it." so, i didn't have the money to go pay the ticket, so that's why

it turned into a warrant. and then i forgot about it. >> reporter: three years later, richards snuck his brother through a subway turnstile with him, without paying the fare. an officer caught them and ran richards' name through a police database. >> and the next thing you know, a cop car pulled up, and he was like, "hey, you're going to have to go down with us." and i was like, "what for?" and he said, "you have a warrant for your arrest." and my brother was crying outside the police car while i'm sitting behind there. i'm crying, too. >> reporter: richards spent 24 hours in jail. >> the experience was horrible. i would never want to go through it again. >> reporter: but it did almost happen again. in 2014, a police officer issued him that open container summons. richards says he was unemployed at the time and couldn't afford the $25 fine. you did know, though, that you were breaking the law by drinking in a park, right? >> yeah. >> reporter: even though you'd had this pretty terrible experience when you were 19, being put into central booking

for 24 hours, you still did't take care of the ticket this time around. >> no. >> reporter: did you consider going down and just explaining to the court, "hey, i can't pay right now?" >> i thought about it, but i'm like, if i do that, i feel like i'm going to get booked. >> reporter: police reform advocates allege the large number of open arrest warrants may stem in part from quotas for summonses, tickets and arrests. such quotas are illegal in new york state, but some new york city police officers say they still exist. >> at the end of the day, it's quota, numbers, quota. >> reporter: adhyl polanco, in his 11th year on the force, is one of a dozen officers who have filed a lawsuit alleging the n.y.p.d. uses a quota system for arrests and summonses. the lawsuit alleges officers have been subjected for years to quotas such as "20 and 1"-- 20 summonses and one arrest per month-- for years. polanco says the pressure to

produce them has eased since mayor bill de blasio took office two years ago and appointed bill bratton as commissioner, but he feels judged on numbers and little else. >> you cannot say that you ran to the hospital with a kid that was not breathing and... and that you separated a fight here, and you helped this person there. that doesn't cut it. they need summonses. they need arrests. >> reporter: city attorneys have filed a motion to dismiss the suit because they say it is" devoid of factual allegations." >> there's no quota system in the n.y.p.d. is there an expectation, as a new york city police officer, that you take summary action when you need to? absolutely. >> reporter: james o'neill is the n.y.p.d.'s chief of department, the highest ranking uniformed position under commissioner bratton. he points out the number of citywide summonses has declined. between 2013 and 2014, they dropped from 439,000 to 369,000, or about 16%.

summonses declined another 17.5% last year. o'neill says that's because the department now emphasizes officers using more discretion. >> it's not about quantity, it's about quality. we were for many years, a numbers-driven organization. we still have to be driven by some numbers, and those are the crime numbers. so, if we're out there locking up people not involved, or giving summonses to people not involved, that does cause resentment. >> reporter: o'neill says the police department is talking with city council members about possibly decriminalizing some low-level offenses, but he says the ability to issue a summons for quality of life violations is still an important tool. >> i think it's important to have the option. sometimes when you're dealing with a situation, you need to have that tool available to make sure that people understand that if this behavior does not get better, if it's not corrected, that you could end up in criminal court with a summons or

even possibly arrest them. >> reporter: brooklyn district attorney kenneth thompson says he's not focusing on n.y.p.d. tactics, but why more than a million summonses have lapsed into warrants. >> so, if you have a childcare issue-- let's say one of your children is sick, or you can't take off from work because you'll lose your job, or someone in your family passed away the night before-- if you don't show up for any reason, a bench warrant is issued for your arrest. and i believe a warrant should be issued for someone who refuses to come to court, not someone who can't come to court. >> reporter: reforms are on the way. the city will soon allow people to appear any time a week in advance of their summons court appearance, and keep some courts open until 8:00 p.m. a redesigned summons form will highlight a person's assigned court date and time more clearly, as well as the consequences for not showing up. thompson wants all of new york city to hold "begin again" events. he says they hold people accountable even though most

fines are forgiven when an arrest warrant is cleared. >> it's not a blanket amnesty program. you don't go to bed one night with a warrant and wake up and the warrant is gone. you have to show up. you have to go before a judge. >> reporter: so far, the district attorney has cleared more than 1,600 warrants. malcolm richards' case was one of them. >> both of these matters are dismissed at this time. your two warrants are vacated. good luck to you, sir. >> i feel good that i don't have these warrants over my head. >> reporter: malcolm richards is thankful he can move forward with a clean slate. he recently started working at a hospital doing building maintenance and pledges that if he ever gets a summons again, he'll take care of it right away. >> sreenivasan: american technology companies like apple, facebook and google are striving

to improve gender and racial diversity in their workforce. having revealed their staffs are predominantly white men, the companies are spending furiously to recruit and keep people who aren't. last night on the "newshour," we reported steps that startup companies in california's silicon valley are taking to diversify. tonight, we look specifically at the effort inside tech giant g fat guy with a ponytail, some guy with crazy facial hair. >> sreenivasan: ...google executive brian welle saw an opportunity. >> so, this is the world's view of silicon valley, and there is some truth to it. >> sreenivasan: welle conducts what is called "unconscious bias training" for tens of thousands of google employees. it's a key component of the company's diversity strategy. >> so, what we want to do is understand what role do we play in making this happen? >> sreenivasan: ever since the

tech giant publicized its gender and ethnic makeup in 2014, it has been under pressure to add more women and minorities to its workforce. nancy lee is google's vice president of people operations. >> we were just merely trying to shine a light on what was going on in our own company, and in this sector because we really did want to catalyze the conversation and hold ourselves accountable, because once we exposed it, we can't just go silent. >> sreenivasan: but after spending almost two years and $265 million on the effort, google's workforce looks virtually the same: 70% men, and 60 percent white; 31% of employees are asian, but only 3% are latino; and only 2% are black. for a company with nearly 60,000 employees, change will probably be subtle and slow. >> there's no silver bullet here, we're not going to see this massive shift. frankly, it'd probably look unnatural for that to happen. >> sreenivasan: one small change is the number of women in senior

management positions: 22%, up 1% since 2014. >> that is a function in part of the fact that the pipeline itself, the pool of talent we're drawing from at each level, is getting increasingly male. >> sreenivasan: one way to address the pipeline problem is to challenge stereotypes of engineers, and google has turned to hollywood for help. mariana is a latina teenage computer programmer on the tv drama, "the fosters"; and there's loretta, the smart older sister on the animated disney junior show "miles of tomorrowland." >> my program can detect if anyone else out there is coding right now. >> sreenivasan: google has been advising disney-abc to develop engineering characters that girls can relate to. >> we found that in fact the perception of what it is to be a computer scientist is a really important factor. >> sreenivasan: erica baker overcame stereotypes to become a software engineer and worked at google for nine years, but felt she didn't fit in. >> it was really interesting when i got to google that people thought i was only there because of affirmative action.

it was like, "nope, i'm actually pretty good at my job." >> sreenivasan: baker felt antagonized by messages posted to google's internal communication system like: >> "diversity isn't important.' people would say that and more. >> sreenivasan: so, she left the company last may. >> i decided i didn't want to be a part of it any more. i wanted to go to a place where i didn't have to deal with people questioning my abilities a >> what would the world look like if everyone were aware of the stereotypes that they have >> sreenivasan: ...and offerin"" bias busting workshops" like this one where employees role play. >> i'm sorry, do you know when they're going to be restocking the diet coke in the fridge? >> no, i don't. >> sreenivasan: a similar scenario once happened to her. >> this is something that

actually happened to me once. i was in an office where they have a barista bar, and someone was like, "oh, can you make me, like, a cappuccino or something like that?" >> sreenivasan: jason buberel, who runs some of these workshops, hopes they will encourage underrepresented engineers to stay with the company. >> i think what i would like to see over time occur here at google is to see the attrition rate of women minorities in engineering roles decrease over time. >> sreenivasan: nancy lee says google is in it for the long haul. >> to see something significant where we're actually hitting a market supply of 10% or something like that of hispanic and black googlers, that's going to take several years. >> sreenivasan: learn more about how other silicon valley companies are trying to improve their diversity. watch my report at www.pbs.org/newshour. >> this is pbs newshour weekend, saturday. >> sreenivasan: a terrorist attack on a hotel in africa by islamic extremists linked to al

qaeda has claimed two dozen lives. the attack happened last night in the capital of the west african nation of burkina faso, which lies between ghana and mali. the target, the splendid hotel, is a luxury hotel popular with visitors from western countries. at least four armed attackers stormed the hotel and a nearby restaurant and began shooting. today, government soldiers-- with the help of french troops and u.s. advisors-- retook the hotel and freed about 150 people after a gun battle with the terrorists. officials say at least 23 hotel and cafe guests were killed, and they were from 18 countries but it's not known if any were americans. security forces killed the four attackers. al qaeda in the islamic maghreb claimed responsibility for the attack. that's the same group that carried out an attack on a hotel in mali two months ago. taiwan has elected its first female president. with 56% of the vote, tsai ing- wen will lead the self-governing island. the 59-year-old favors independence for taiwan but promised "consistent,

predictable and sustainable" relations with mainland china. in response to her victory, china said it won't tolerate pro-independence activities in taiwan, an island of 23 million, and reiterated its view that china and taiwan are one nation to be unified eventually. pher win and said it maintains" profound interest" in continuing peace and stability between china and taiwan. high waves are hampering the coast guard and navy search for 12 u.s. marines who were on board two helicopters that collided off hawaii. nobody has been rescued from the water, and debris from the helicopters stretches for seven miles from the island of oahu. the marines were on a routine training mission when their giant "super stallion" helicopters collided thursday night. neither issued a distress call, but the marines have not said what caused the accident. it returning to our top story, the international atomic energy

agency certified iran has complied with last year's deal to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure. the u.s. and european nations immediately lifted economic sanctions against iran. in a related development, iran freed five american prisoners, including "washington post" reporter and the u.s. released or dropped charges against. today marks the first day of a safer world one we hope will remain safer for many years to come. republican presidential candidates who opposed the nuclear deal criticized the prisoner swap. ted cruz called the exchange "obama administration propaganda." while drug enforcement said, it doesn't look quite so good." that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm hari sreenivasan. 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.

hello, i'm greg sherwood and i'm happy to have bob goldman as my guest here in the kqed studio. bob, thanks for joining us. what fun to have you here. >> delighted to be here. >> i can't wait to talk to you more. bob is a bay area financial planner who works with individual investors and he's here to share some of his secrets of successful retirement planning. bob is a member of the garrett planning network and the national association of personal financial advisors, and his work has appeared in the new york times and the wall street journal. you have probably heard him, as i have, as he's a frequent guest on "forum" on