captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> sreenivasan: good evening, i'm hari sreenivasan. gwen ifill and judy woodruff are away. on the newshour tonight: a british report points the finger at russian president vladimir putin for the radioactive poisoning of a former kgb agent. also ahead, what republican presidential candidate rand paul says are the differences between him and frontrunner donald trump. >> trump wants power. he thinks he's so smart he can fix everything in the country, just give him power, and i understand the corrupting influence of power. >> sreenivasan: and, how a place can inspire genius in its people. >> genius is not really about individuals, it's really about a collective, it's about a community of practice. >> sreenivasan: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour.

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>> sreenivasan: the mid-atlantic and northeast braced today for a blizzard that could affect 50 million people. the storm is set to start tomorrow afternoon and continue into sunday. forecasts call for up to two feet of snow in the washington, d.c. area. that has sent people rushing to grocery stores, as road crews ready their equipment. and governors in virginia, north carolina and maryland have declared emergencies. >> our focus will be on clearing all of the main state highways, but a great deal will also be demanded of local authorities in the coming days. they will almost certainly be overwhelmed by the amount of snow and the effects of this storm. it could take days, or even up to a week, for them to dig out all local roads.

>> sreenivasan: even before the blizzard, the washington, d.c. area was crippled overnight when a dusting of snow turned to ice on untreated roads. thousands of commuters, including president obama's motorcade, were stuck in long backups. secretary of state john kerry acknowledged today that iran may use money from sanctions relief to support terror. the country is receiving billions of dollars in newly un- frozen assets, in exchange for curbing its nuclear program. on cnbc today, kerry said there's no way to stop funds flowing to the hard-line iran revolutionary guard corps for example. >> i think that some of it will end up in the hands of the irgc or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists. i'm not going to sit here and tell you that every component of that can be prevented. but i can tell you this right now we are not seeing the early

delivery of funds going to that kind of endeavor at this point in time. >> sreenivasan: kerry was in davos, switzerland at the world economic summit. he said he hopes iran will put sanctions money into rebuilding its economy. but several senate republicans said it was always obvious that terror groups would benefit. meanwhile, in iran, president hassan rouhani appealed for free and fair elections next month. thousands of moderate candidates, who would support rouhani's reform agenda, have been disqualified by the guardian council, made up of islamic clerics and jurists. the council ruled they were not loyal enough to the ruling system. pakistan observed a nationwide day of mourning today for 21 people killed at a university by taliban attackers. students held a protest and vigil in islamabad, urging the government to do more to fight extremism. they carried signs and lit candles to honor the dead. >> the fact that such incidents continue to happen and that these terror groups continue to act with such impunity is clear

evidence of the fact that this state is willfully being negligent of its duties. >> sreenivasan: pakistani army officials say yesterday's attack was orchestrated from inside neighboring afghanistan. israel confirmed today that it plans to appropriate 380 acres of land in the occupied west bank. it is the largest such action since 2014, and it's already being denounced by palestinian officials. the tract is located near jericho at the northern tip of the dead sea. israeli authorities say the site is already under israeli control, and no palestinians live there. back in this country, the obama administration is dialing back new rules that required visas for european travelers, if they had been to iran, iraq, syria or sudan in the last five years. an announcement today said journalists, aid workers and others may still be allowed to enter the u.s. without visas. the new requirements had prompted objections from european states.

on wall street today, stocks managed a rebound as oil prices surged higher, and the european central bank raised hopes for additional stimulus efforts. the dow jones industrial average gained nearly 116 points to close at 15,882. the nasdaq rose a fraction of a point, and the s&p 500 added nine. still to come on the newshour: could russian president vladimir putin be on the hook for a poisoning? presidential candidate rand paul on the race and the n.s.a. the first female to be hired as a full-time nfl coach, and much more. >> sreenivasan: the death-by- poisoning of a former russian spy in london was thrust back into the headlines today, as a british inquiry into his killing released its report. alexander litvinenko fled russia nearly 20 years ago and accused

the former chief of russia's spy agency, now-president vladimir putin, of corruption. in 2006 he met two russian spies at a london hotel, and three weeks later he was dead. chris ship of independent television news begins our coverage. >> reporter: we were reminded today that the radioactive poison inside alexander litvinenko's body was so strong he had to be buried in a lead- lined coffin. today, the russian security service the fsb was blamed for his killing. and the orders concluded the man who led the inquiry most likely came from the top. the very top he said. >> the operation to kill mr. litvinenko was probably approved by mr. pechc ef then head of the f.s.b. and also by president putin. >> taghts did it by pouring a deadly >> reporter: the fsb agents did it by pouring a deadly substance-- polonium 210-- into this teapot from which mr litvenenko was drinking. >> reporter: this was him in a

hotel lobby a few moments before the meeting-- he took just three or four sips of tea he later told police, but after he'd left the hotel the radiation had already started to spread through his body. the poisoning in the meeting room of the hotel was referred to as a mini active nuclear terrorism on the streets of london and because the orders likely came from the kremlin, mr. litvinenko demanded the strongest possible response from the british government. >> it's time for david cameron, i'm calling immediately for expulsion from the u.k. of all russian intelligence operatives. >> later she told me she hopes justice would catch up with president put up. >> not all dictators exist forever and one day you need to answer for everything you did. >> this was a blatant and unacceptable breech of the most fundamental tenants of law and

civilized behavior. >> if there was any doubt litvinenko was altarget of the russian state, watch this video of russian special forces in training, their target, alexander litvinenko. but the man accused of the poisoning, andrei lugovoy, now by the way a senior russian politician, said today "the accusations against me are absurd and once again confirm london's anti-russian stance." nothing from president putin himself today, but britain's reliance on him in the fight against i.s. in syria may limited the u.k.'s response for a murder which turned this man into this one days before his death. >> sreenivasan: we dig deeper into the story with michael mcfaul, u.s. ambassador to russia from 2012 to 2014. he's now a professor at stanford university. and steven lee myers, he covers foreign affairs and national security at the "new york times." he was based in russia from 2002 to 2007. he's also the author of "the new tsar: the rise and reign of vladimir putin."

steven lee myers, i want to ask you first, who was this individual that was killed? >> alexander litvinenko was a fairly obscure intelligence officer i kgb and later f.s.b. n the '90s and wasn't well known until he came forward with accusations that the unit he worked for was involved in corrupt activities and in fact an assassination plot. when he came forward in 1998, the director of the f.s.b. at the time, the federal security service, was vladimir putin. >> sreenivasan: so staying with you, stephen, in your reporting at the time, a lot of people suspected this. what did we learn today from this report? >> you know, people who followed this inquiry which really was an extraordinary process might not be that surprised by the conclusions that were in it, but i think the tone of it and the accusation linking it, though, with a caveat to the kremlin and putin himself is really what was

so striking, to see all these facts laid out, a lot of what was known about this case dates back to the investigation that happened in 2006 and 2007, and when the british originally charged the two suspects. you know, many to have the details were -- you know, many of the details were already known at that time, but i think there was an eagerness inside the u.k. especially to learn more about this case and who did order it and, you know, the judge's report today took that to the top to have the kremlin. >> sreenivasan: michael mcfaul, does this change your understanding of the events? >> no. i, too, like steven, have followed this case for a long time both as an academic and then in the government. i've only had a chance to skim the entire report. i haven't read everything but i've read their conclusions closely, and i want to applaud them for doing this. i think it's very important, even if nothing more comes of

it, that somebody went to the trouble to document all this for history and this has been recorded. having looked at it, there is no new smoking gun. there is no secret tape that recorded putin giving the order or mr. potrochev getting the order, but was to put together the circle evidence that these two agents came from mos corks had polonium, something you can't buy on the streets, poisoned him, we want back to moscow and have been protected by the russian state ever since. mr. putin has given mr. lugavoy a state award and it's based on that they come to their conclusions and pretty damning conclusions therefore for both president putin and at the time the head of the f.s.b. mr. petrochev. >> sreenivasan: does this almost bolster poobt's image as a tough guy, getting things done, even having this out there? >> i don't think anybody inside

the kremlin welcomes this attention or accusations which have been out there the last ten years. they vying rowlesly fought them. putin does not want to be portrayed as somebody who would carry out this kind of attack and ordering this kind of assassination. that said, litvinenko was reviled in the russian leigh especially in the security services and even in the testimony in the report one to have the suspects said the killing was meant to send a message to others who might betray their oath to the state in russia. >> sreenivasan: this was meant to send a message by this slow, painful death? >> absolutely. i mean, he was a traitor. he worked for the kgb, the f.s.b., the same org zigs mr. putin and petrechev worked for. he then defected and made claims in the report again that the f.s.b. orchestrated terrorist attacks against russian citizens

in the fall of 1989 as a way to rally russians around the flag and support ultimately president putin, that was the first time he ran for president. so there was no doubt they hated him, they made that clear and were sending a signal. i want to point out, there is been a lot of assassinations and killings. just last year the leading figure of the opposition, boris nemtsov, was murdered, assassinated just a few feet from the kremlin walls. again, with all this ambiguous notion, actually who ordered it, who didn't, but it's a pattern, not just a one-off. last thing i want to remind you of, even if they didn't make these calls, right, even if somehow this was a rogue operation, that's also pretty damning. that means that president putin is not in charge of his state and that people within the regime can carry out assassinations without his blessing, that's also not a very good message about his control

within russia. >> sreenivasan: steven, what's the response been from russia today is this. >> you know, as you would expect and as it has been from the very beginning, they denounced this investigation, they say the accusations that the russian state was involved at all is part of a politically motivated smear campaign against russia and putin himself. so, you know, it's hard for them, i think, in russia to understand this or accept this as an independent inquiry. they say the whole thing was politicized to come to a pre-determined conclusion. >> sreenivasan: finally, michael mcfaul, what about the diplomatic consequences of this? the u.k. and the u.s. are kind of in a delicate dance with russia right now, especially when it comes to syria. >> well, i think for prime minister cameron, it's going to be very difficult because they took years to get over this big interruption in their bilateral relationship and they were just

slowly creeping towards a better relationship when i was ambassador, and then the invasion of ukraine set that back. we're now in the moment, as you just noted, of trying to cooperate with russia on syria both on a political solution but also on the fight against i.s.i.s., and, therefore, i think they're going to try to do damage control. that would be my prediction. >> sreenivasan: michael mcfaul, steven lee myers, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: the crowded republican field running for president faces the first real test in less than two weeks, when voting begins in iowa and new hampshire. senator rand paul of kentucky is hoping young people show up in big numbers and help him stand out. gwen ifill sat down with him earlier today as part of our running series.

seems like the longest race ever. here we are two weeks out after the first in iowa and new hampshire. donald trump and ted cruz is surging, how do you assess the race today? >> i think a lot will be told in the night of the election. this is the first election i think i've seen led so much by position. polling is getting more and more inaccurate because more people are in cell phones and not included. a lot of our support comes from college' age voters and i've yet to meet a college student ever included in a poll. so i think we have to wait and see how the voters vote. we have a really good ground game. our goal is to get 10,000 students to vote in iowa. they're in school for the first time and several presidential election cycles, so we think we have a real shot. >> ifill: explain how you do that in iowa and duplicate that if you need to in new hampshire. >> president obama did well with students, earned the student vote 3 to 1 and energized them

and got them out. we have been doing the same thing, trying to organize dorm by dorm, get the kids out. we think all the students aren't wedded to one party, but they're interested in being left alone. part of my theme of the campaign is the government ought to be leaving people alone, shouldn't be collecting everyone's phone records. young people, their life revolves around the phone. sometimes i have to text my kids to talk to them if they're in the basement. i think they urns more than anyone else the government shouldn't have access to all their records. >> if they want to look up political news on their phones, yesterday they only read about sarah palin and donald trump. how do you break through that? >> maybe not quite as bad as you think because young people really aren't watching the traditional. they're getting things from friends, things passed around that are funny and humorous and aren't wedded to the cable news so much. i think also a disservice,

though, that the news, i think, has really dumbed the whole thing down, because it's been a non-stop trump circus for months and months now. if you add up all the coverage of other candidates, he's getting 25% more. which came first, was he leading in the polls or the coverage? a little both. it's a disservice to the country and to getting a serious debate. i think it's important to know who's going to be in charge of the nuclear weapons. trump, in the cnn debate, didn't seem to understand what the nuclear triad was, that we have land, missiles, sea and air. a week after the debate his campaign was asked and they said, yes, we knew about nuclear weapons and our problem is we haven't been willing enough to use nuclear weapons. that's a pretty profound and scary thought that we have someone running that thinks we need to use our nuclear weapons more. >> which used to be a disqualifying thing yet doesn't seem like that this year.

it seems you have said donald trump would destroy the party, you have said ted cruz is not authentic, yet none of those criticisms, at least for you, seem to grab on. >> i think we've simplified the debate too much and made it all about, well, we're just going to show -- i bet you of the eight or ten hours hath that people were awake yesterday they could watch the news that trump was on the majority of the time, maybe 80% to 90% of the news cycle all day, repeated over and over again. as a consequence, we're not breaking through to think about. the difference between trump and myself, trump want power and he thinks he's so smart he'll fix everything in the country, just give him power. i understand the corrupting influence of power and it is an american tradition to worry about too much power to gravitate to any person and i want more power dispersed between the states and people and i want the power in washington to be constrained by the constitution. that's a completely different

tradition. but i think there could be a debate about what is the better proposition, give one person all the power and let them fix the country or acknowledge that maybe power has a corrupting influence. >> an intellectual debate sometimes in if next two weeks. depending on the turnout of the young people who don't know if they would turn out for something like the iowa caucus. sounds like a tough proposition. >> it may be. we're working hard. we have a thousand precinct chairs in iowa, more than anyone else announced. last week we made 500,000 phone calls. we put a lot of work and effort in it. we'll know february 1 whether it works or not. what's disappointing is people think the election is already over, predecided. we haven't even had one vote yet. >> that's been written about your campaign and you weren't on the debate stage last week to raise the question. but i do wonder what your grand plan is, especially, you have a lot of endorsements in

new hampshire. you have a lot of endorsements in iowa. one endorsement by somebody like sarah palin seems to blow that out of the water. >> i think there is a question whether donald trump is a conservative. he spent most of his life as a progressive democrat. he was pro-choice the vast majority of his life and says now he's pro-life. when the tea party things that arose we were annoyed with bailing out the big banks, that the middle class shouldn't have to bail out the big banks in new york, yet donald trump supported that. most of us were opposed to centralizing the control of health insurance and health in our country and the idea there would be a single payer was something that really was the opposite of what we believed in, and he's been for that as well. so really there are a lot of things about donald trump that aren't conservative. his belief in imminent domain, that the government should take private property from one property owner and give it to donald trump, basically for a

casino. that goes against what most conservatives believe. >> ifill: let's talk ability what you believe. you are not pro war. you are anti-war, in a libertarian sense. >> right. >> ifill: you also believe -- you advocate for privacy, as you alluded to. is this the year where that debate is actually happening, where people are listening to that debate? >> i think very much so. i think the n.s.a., when it was discovered that the n.s.a. was collecting all our phone records, i think people responded and the vast majority of particularly young people were opposed to it. there was a poll of those taken under 40. 83% of those under 40 thought the government went too far in collecting all our phone records. it also hasn't worked. two bipartisan commissions said we haven't stopped any terrorist attacks by doing this. i think since the recent terror attacks people are wonder hough we'll protect ourselves, but there is a significant amount of people in our party that says

the answer isn't to trade liberty for a false sense of security. so i think we are still winning that debate, but it is a more difficult environment because people are fearful. >> you were rung for the senate seat at the same time. you're running to be an insider again which is not going over well so far and also some people say you're trying to have your cake and eat it, too. >> wouldn't be the first. paul rhine ran for last -- paull ryan ran last year, joe lieberman, a list of people ran, and that's the only way for me to come and put the message forward and become a part of the national debate. to have a unique voice in the republican party. ted cruz will make the sand glow. he's trying to one-up trump on how tough he's going to be. we should think through the ramification of what happens in the middle east because so often our interventions in the middle

east have led to unintended consequences but have made us less safe. >> ifill: senator rand paul, good luck on the campaign trail. >> thanks. >> sreenivasan: stay with us, coming up on the newshour: what does a city need to promote genius within its community? the challenges migrant women face making the journey to safety. and, an anti-smoking campaign that's using real people and their stories. next, a bit of nfl history was made this week, and not the usual records-book statistic that sports announcers spout on sunday yesterday the buffalo bills announced they'd hired the league's first full-time female coach. katheryn smith is the team's new special teams quality control coach. she comes to the job with 13 years of nfl experience, first with the new york jets, then the

bills. for more on the move and its implications, i spoke a short time ago to sports writer christine brennan of "usa today." christine, it seems strange to have this conversation in 2016, but the first full-time n.f.l. coach position going to a woman. why is this so significant besides what i just said? >> yeah, well, i think that's it and, also, i think it's the beginning of what we're going to see, hari, as a big trend over the next 10, 15, 20 years. this is title 9 in all of its manifestations and it's not just about girls playing sports and women playing sports, but it's about that neighborhood girl who you watched play sports who grows up loving sports and goes to college as katherine smith did and work for the men's basketball team at st. john's as she did and wants to have a career in sports so she's working at the n.f.l. for the jets as an intern. she has over 10, 12 years

experience and rex ryan hires her to be a coach and this is her career, her life, she loves sports that much. well, there are millions of girls and women like that in this country who are playing sports and loving it and wanting to have a career in some form in the sports world or at least nearby and i think this shows the beginning of what i think will be a significant trend moving forward. >> sreenivasan: tell me about her job. there are several titches of coaches in the n.f.l. doesn't mean she's h ted coach wearing the stuff on the sidelines. what is she going to do? >> she's in quality control with the special teams. people are saying, what? there are a lot of assistant coaches on the sideline, in the booth, and even maybe more important the practices and working with the players and bind the scenes. so while it's a little unclear exactly where she will be on game day, my sense is she probably will be on the field, but she will be working with the special teams assistant coach, probably looking at film, looking at all kinds of patterns and schemes and figuring out what they're doing well on

special teams, deciding if there is a player or two that should be moved to or away from special kings. special teams with kicks, punts. an integral role with any team. more important, he is a full-fledged assistant coach, will be in all meetings with the staff and rex ryan who hired her and i think that in itself is the achievement that she is at that level with all these men who have been doing this for many years as well. >> sreenivasan: and there are many women in high ranking front office positions, just not on the field. >> women have owned teams. georgia frontier comes to mind with the rams. in baseball, the cincinnati reds. that is not so unusual. the difference is this is obviously who grew up playing and loving sports and did not come in via the ownership door or from the board room but the way men have for years by

working up as an intern through the system. when players are injured and you often now see with college games you will see a woman running out as one of the trainers and working to assist the player on the football field, men's basketball, women's basketball, et cetera. again, that should not surprise us. these women are out there doing these jobs. so from that standpoint, yeah, she worked her way up the way so many other people have and legitimately deserves this job. this is not political correctness. rex ryan would not be doing that. this is all about someone who deserves this job. >> gender diversity, racial diversity, it's this time of the year when coaches lose jobs, move teams, and when we see the hashtag on oscars, trending oscars, n.f.l. may have a similar coming up. >> six minority coaches last year and looks like six this year out of 32 teams, not even

20%, hari, and when you think that the league itself is 67%, two-thirds minority players, if that isn't a disparity between the players and the fact there is no trickling up at all to get the opportunity to have the head coaching job. again, what we were taking about a moment ago is smith, working your way up, these players, in my opinion, need to be given the signal that they are wanted in the coaching ranks and they are wanted in administration. often, we see in sports the people doing the hiring are picking those people who look like them and as long as it's white owners, a majority of white owners, and in athletic department it's men picking men to coach college sports, a big deal to losing women coaches in women's sports and that woul shd be unacceptable in 2016. >> sreenivasan: christine

brennan, thanks for joining us. >> thank you, hari. >> sreenivasan: what helps foster genius, particularly geography and the close proximity of other talented minds? our economics correspondent, paul solman, has a look, part of his weekly "making sense" segment, which airs every thursday on the newshour. >> reporter: so we're in the national gallery of art, genius clusters galore, you want to explain some to me? >> sure. >> reporter: that's journalist eric weiner. for his new book, "the geography of genius," he traveled the world and back in time, a museum seemed a fitting backdrop to hear what he found. first stop, ancient athens.>> at global cities in the world and so they would open their doors to foreigners, resident aliens, who even though they knew they posed some sort of national security risk, they invited them in. >> reporter: and became

cosmopolitan, the first necessary ingredient for the genius cluster every place would like to have, says weiner. unsurprisingly, the head of harvard's center for international development agrees. >> i study how places become good at different things, and i focus on how places change the things they're good at, evolve. >> reporter: professor ricardo hausmann. >> and what i find is that they tend to diversify into things that are somewhat related but somewhat more complex or more advanced. and in process of diversifying they rely enormously on talent that came from the outside. >> reporter: although note, says weiner, that these places have to be big and wealthy enough to attract top talent. >> almost all of these genius clusters throughout history have been cities, and athens wasn't a huge city, but it was very dense, there were lots of interactions, and it was an urban life that we may recognize today, people trading and gossiping and getting together

for drunken symposia where they would recite poetry and drink wine. >> reporter: so you believe it takes a socrates to make a plato? >> and a plato to make an aristotle, and an aristotle to make an alexander, if you will. the point is that genius is contagious. >> reporter: professor hausmann's research bears this out. >> genius is not really about individuals, it's really about a collective, it's about a community of practice. >> reporter: to eric weiner, a prime example was renaissance florence. >> it can not be a coincidence that you had not only a leonardo da vinci and michelangelo doing amazing work in florence during this particular time, but you had ghiberti and brunelleschi, and filippo lippi and all of these others. people were living each other's intellectual pockets-- they were sharing ideas. there was enough trust to share your ideas, but enough tension to create some sparks. >> reporter: competition, you mean? >> absolutely.

all of these golden ages were competitive places. graham greene once famously said about switzerland, "500 years of peace and stability and what have they brought the world? the cuckoo clock." >> reporter: fractious but wealthy florence, by contrast, brought the world a painter we still know by one name, leonardo (the national gallery boasts america's only painting by him), and a rival with whom we're also on a first-name basis: michelangelo. >> michaelangelo and davinci michelangelo was younger and he was the upstart, he was threatening to leonardo but it brought out the best in both men, and that's often the case. >> reporter: i think the first thing i learned about leonardo da vinci is that he was a renaissance man, right? >> he was the original renaissance man, actually, all genius is interdisciplinary, to some degree. they cross boundaries. today we have pigeonholed ourselves so much that it's hard to break out. it's hard for a biologist to write about physics. it's hard for an art historian to talk about aeronautical

engineering. >> reporter: one more stop on the national gallery tour of genius geography: the capital of the austro-hungarian empire, vienna, circa 1900, home to painters like gustav klimt, egon schiele, oskar kokoschka. >> reporter: so this is our proximation of a viennese coffee shop right? >> pretty close. we've got the coffee, we've got the desserts. >> reporter: that's true. so what was it about vienna? >> the viennese coffeehouse is a classic case of what's known as a third place. third places, unlike work or home, second places. third places, like this are places you go where you can converse with friends, and you can converse with strangers, people who may not share your exact political point of view or your exact intellectual point of view and it's this mixing of divergent points of view that came together in the vienna of 1900. >> reporter: for eric weiner, the final ingredients of genius

seem pretty clear: a rich city with bustle, competition, cooperation. and above all, openness to the new, the foreign. >> vienna was a city of immigrants in 1900. lots of immigrants from throughout the austro-hungarian empire, including sigmund freud, who was an immigrant, and they came together and they brought fresh ideas, and they shook up the status quo. it was a demographic earthquake that changed vienna and made it, at the time, the greatest city in the world. >> reporter: much as america, because of our openness to fresh ideas and people, has been called the greatest country. but can we afford to stay so open in an increasingly menacing, terror-mad world? development expert hausmann responded with data. >> in the u.s., 25% of employers are foreign born, in silicon valley, over 50% of startups created by people who were born abroad. >> reporter: as we left harvard's kennedy school of

government, where venezuelan hausmann and so many other immigrants teach, i had one last question: how bad would it be for the economy if america became less open? >> it definitely is going to cost. we should remember that steve jobs parents were syrian. and there are plenty of syrians we're not letting in. >> reporter: well, only the dad was from syria. still, some of those we're not letting in may father or be potential geniuses, others, well, who knows? the fact is, when it comes to cooking up genius clusters anywhere, from ancient greece to renaissance italy to high tech america, there may be key ingredients, but the recipe is awfully hard to follow. economics correspondent paul solman, reporting for the pbs newshour.

>> sreenivasan: now we continue our look at the desperate journey facing refugees seeking safety. about the challenge. the two leaders galvanize support at a conference can in london next month and call for a global refugee summit at the u.n. general assembly in september. this look was recorded at the crisis. >> woodruff: last year saw more than 1 million refugees and migrants enter europe from the middle east from southwest asia and africa, many fleeing brutal wars and violence at hole, and making often perilous journeys in search of safety. there are serious risks along the route, but these are often harsher for women. to explore the challenges and dangerous face bid women, i'm joined by sarah costa, the executive director of the women's refugee commission, a nonprofit advocacy and awareness group that focuses on the needs

of women and children in humanitarian emergencies. she returned from a fact finding mission in greece and macedonia just before the new year. sara costa, welcome. tell us what is known about the women who are making this journey right now. >> well, what we know in all humanitarian crises, and this is no exception, that women face heightened risks of violence and exploitation and heightened risk of all forms of gender-based violence. what we've also seen in our journey, in fact we've been in greece, macedonia, serbia and sloslovenia, we've seen the riss for women and girls are not taken into account. there are not adequate protection services on the ground to identify and prioritize women's needs.

>> woodruff: and is this something that has grown worse during this crisis or been like this all along? >> this is an unprecedented crisis. the magnitude and the speed of the migration, we haven't seen in other times. what's failing here are the services and the countries responsible for those services to put in place the protection pieces that need to be put in place. i mean, what we've seen is that the humanitarian agencies were quite slow to come into this crisis, because i think governments felt they could manage. but they're not managing particularly well. we are failing women and girls on this route, and it is, as you said in your introduction, a very treacherous route. >> how much is known about what portion, what proportion of these refugees are women and where they're coming from? >> well, we do know from the statistics of the international organization on migration that the number of women has been

increasing steadily. i think when we saw those first pictures right at the beginning of the coverage by the media, people were only focused on the men and there were a lot of men. but what we've seen during our assessment is that more and more women are coming and women with families, women traveling alone, women traveling alone with children. so we think it's probably now about 40% of women, and we know that at least 37% are coming directly from syria, which tells us about the worsening conditions in syria and their stories are horrific. >> give us a sense of that. what are they saying? >> what we hear is they basically have had very little food, very little access to water. they are fearful of violence every day. they've seen their families killed around them, and they have made this choice that it would be better to take a rubber

dinghy across the aegean sea than stay in their hometowns in syria. but we've also heard stories from women who have been in lebanon and jordan that their conditions have deteriorated over time. they're not legally aloud, as you probably know -- allowed, as you probably know, to work and their savings are diminished and they're finding it difficult to survive. at least huge gap in humanitarian aid. they're not able to survive. the children are in school and they're pretty desperate. you'll hear from women that they feel they have no option than to put themselves in harm's way by getting into a rubber dinghy. >> what needs to happen? what do these women need? >> first, we need, you know, safe and legal alternatives. i mean, the fact that people are taking such a treacherous journey, i think there are other ways of addressing this issue. but while they are on the route,

we need to make sure that there are protection services in place. we need to make sure that we do have gender and a gender-based violence experts who can identify those who are most vulnerable, who can try and prioritize service force them and we need to -- prioritize services for them and make sure they have access to most basic services such as reproductive healthcare. a large number of the women we interviewed were pregnant. we know in this kind of crisis, probably one in five could be pregnant, at least 15% are going to have complications during that pregnancy, and what we saw are women giving birth on route, not really being able to stop at a healthcare center, feeling that if they stop and recover from giving birth that they will miss the country to migrate to

the destination countries which, as you know, are germany -- for a lot of people germany and sweden, and they just feel that they cannot, cannot stop, and they will be separated from their family members. but one of the key factors for people is to get the right information. what we see that increases the protection risks for women and children for that matter is that they do not know anything about where they're going, what time are the trains going? what time are the buses taking them over the border are going to arrive, so when there are services available, they're not using them. >> woodruff: it sounds terribly chaotic. i would say all this is happening as european countries are increasingly either closing or tightening their borders because to have the rising fear of terrorism. >> you know, we have to remember, and we must remember in this discussion about terrorism, that refugees are

fleeing violence. they're fleeing the kind of terror we're talking about. and they are the first victims of this violence, and that they are not the source of the violence. so when we talk about security, obviously security is a very, very legitimate concern, we must also think about the safety and the human rights of the refugees. >> woodruff: sara costa, the executive director of the women's refugees commission. we thank you very much. >> well, thank you. >> sreenivasan: next, getting smokers to quit, and the impact of a government campaign against tobacco. five years ago, the centers for disease control launched the first federal education campaign against smoking. that includes an ad campaign called "tips for former smokers." five years later, the government

says it has helped 400,000 smokers quit for good, and led millions of others to try quitting. jeffrey brown spoke with cdc director, doctor thomas frieden, about it and tobacco as a public health problem earlier this week. >> brown: dr. frieden, the tips from former smokers, why do you think this approach, this kind of ad is the way to go? >> most americans who have ever smoked have already quit. most people who still smoke want to quit. hard-hitting ads like these help them quit and, over the past five years, hundreds of thousands of americans have stopped smoking because these courageous people have been willing to share their stories of pain and suffering so other people don't have to go through the same problem that they're going through. >> brown: i want to show one so our audience can get a flavor of what you're talking about. this is a woman from tennessee. let's take a look at that. >> i'm christie. as a truck driver, i had a lot of time to smoke. i also had severe shortness of

breath and a smoker's cough. i knew i had to quit. so for six months, i used e-cigarettes. then i stopped. but the whole time, i kept smoking regular cigarettes, right up until my lung collapsed. my tip is just cutting down on cigarettes isn't enough. >> brown: dr. frieden, what's the argument, that these ads work better than anything else or in conjunction with other things? how much of a factor are you suggesting they are? >> these ads are important. a comprehensive tobacco control program drives smoking rates down the most and protects kids the best, that includes high price force tobacco through tax or minimum price, that includes making public places smoke-free so people don't get exposed to second-hand smoke, that includes helping smokers quit because medications can double or triple your odds of succeeding if you try quit, and hard-hitting ads like this that work, and we've proven time and again that they

work and at an amazing cost effectiveness. >> brown: explain that. how do you measure success because you know there is been a lot of debate about the effectiveness of this kind of advertising. >> this kind of advertising is actually very well proven to work. there is no scientific doubt about it. we have different ways of surveying people, of monitoring behavior. we track the calls to quit lines. every time these ads are on the air, quit line calls skyrocket, and then we've analyzed people who call the quit line and try to quit, people who don't call the quit line and try to quit, when these ads are on and off, and we've shown really definitively in the prior year campaigns that the impact is quite large and life saving. in fact, for every $400 we spend on these ads, we prolong someone's life by at least a year and for every $3,0 we spend on these ads, we save

somebody's life. >> brown: so the evidence is it lasts long-term? surely some of these people would call the quit line, try to give up and then not succeed and go back to smoking. >> a lot of people don't succeed the first time, so we've looked at long-term quitting. and if you stay off cigarettes for six or twelve months, the likelihood is you will stay off for life and for a much healthier life as well. >> brown: the com woman in the d mentioned e-cigarettes and that's part of it for you as well as more people turn to that. you are also trying to say that is not a solution? >> on e-cigarettes, first off, for kids, no form of tobacco is safe. they shouldn't be using e-cigarettes or any form of tobacco. for adults who try to quit, it will only really make a difference in your health and make you avoid the problems -- allow you to avoid the problems of smoking if you quit completely. the key is to quit completely. if e-cigarettes allow you to quit completely, great for you.

but for most people who are using e-cigarettes, they're still smoking, and that's a problem. >> brown: finally, when you put this in the big picture, the general trends for smoking in the u.s. still heading in the right direction? >> we have made progress, but still more than 40 million americans smoke, and every year 480,000 americans are killed by tobacco, and for everyone who dies, another 30 live with disabling, disfiguring conditions from tobacco, it's the leading cause of death in this country and we can do more to protect our kids. >> brown: dr. thomas frieden, thank you very much. >> thank you very much. >> sreenivasan: and now another in our "brief but spectacular" series, where we ask interesting people to describe their

passion. tonight, we hear from writer a.j. jacobs, an editor at "esquire" and the author of several books including "my life as an experiment: one man's humble quest to improve himself." he explains his unique brand of immersive journalism. one of the secrets i've learned is self-deception. if you pretend to be a little bit of a better pen, you actually become a better person. it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting. i didn't make that up, by the way, but i love it. ♪ i have been called the human guinea pig, and i don't mind. i think it's a fine title. i'm a writer and what i like to do is just dive into my topics, totally immerse myself and change my lifestyle. i have don dozens of experiments over the years. one i've done is called what would george washington do? i followed a list of 110 rules

of life the father of our country wrote when he was a young man. some you might expect like honor your elders, others not expected so. the second rule in this list is do not adjust yr private parts in public. solid rule, i have no problem with the rule, but i would have put it a little bit lower, like 85, 86. i did one experiment called radical honesty, the idea that whatever is on your brain should come out of your mouth. no filter. that was one of the worst months of my life. i feel very lucky i'm still married and i still have a job because you can't believe the number of lies that we tell on a daily basis. i also did an experiment where i tried to follow all the rules of the bible for a year. i had to wear no mixed fibers. i did stone adulterers, though i used small stones like pebble-sized so no one got hurt. my latest project, i'm helping to build a family tree of the

entire world. i've learned about all these distant cousins including barack obama, who is literally my fifth great aunt's husband's brother's wife's seventh great nephew, that is true and verifiable. i actually think everyone should try experimenting with their lives. you don't need to grow a huge beard and live by the rules of the bible. you can try not gossipping for a week, or try a different toothpaste or a new way to get to work. anything to jostle the neurons and create these new pathways and just make your life a little more interesting. my name is a.j. jacobs, and this is my brief but spectacular take on my life as an experiment. >> sreenivasan: you can find more of our >> sreenivasan: you can find more of our "brief but spectacular" episodes on our facebook page: facebook.com/newshour.

>> sreenivasan: the water crisis in flint, michigan forced the regional director of the environmental protection agency to resign. the e.p.a. issued an order to make sure the city and state take actions to protect human health. on the "newshou >> sreenivasan: on the newshour online: najat abdul samad was a young girl in syria when she began writing poems and stories. today, she is one of the literary voices speaking out from the war-torn country about what she calls syria's "threat to existence." you can find an interview with her, and two newly-translated pieces, on our website, pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm hari sreenivasan. join us online, and again here tomorrow evening with ruth marcus and david brooks. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

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♪ >> announcer: this is "nightly business report," with tyler mathisen and sue herera. blue chip blues. american express and boeing both say business isn't shaping up the way they thought it would. >> markets rally, but do the gains have staying power? why there are reasons to be wary of today's surge after the purge. blank canvas. meet the artist who's creating art out of her investments. all that and more tonight on "nightly business report" for thursday january 21s good evening, everyone, and welcome. stocks rallied as oil posted one of its biggest gains in months. but we begin tonight with earnings. late earnings news that could set the tone for trading tomorrow. boeing and american express, two blue chips, both