tv PBS News Hour PBS April 11, 2016 6:00pm-7:01pm PDT
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captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff.ju gwen ifill is away this week. on the newshour tonight: presidential contenders try to make it in new york, as bernie sanders wins his seventh straight match-up over hillary clinton. then, inside kenya, and the country's rampant corruption, where police bribe instead of patrol and nearly a billion dollars of government money goes missing. >> woodruff: and, the legacy of jackie robinson. a new ken burns pbs documentary tracks the icon's journey from baseball hero to civil rights champion.yy all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour.
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>> woodruff: this is a rare week without any primary voting, anywhere, in the 2016 presidential race, but the campaigning grinds on. and as the day's developments show, the talk is getting testier, especially over the all-important delegate numbers game. john yang has our report. >> reporter: for the two democratic contenders and the three republicans, the campaign is now dominated by delegate wars. g.o.p. frontrunner donald trump leads by about 200 delegates. but he phoned into fox news this morning to complain he should be getting even more. >> for example, i won south carolina by a landslide, ana massive landslide. and now they're trying to pick off those delegates one by one. that's not the way democracy is supposed to work. n what kind of a system is this? now, i'm an outsider, and i came into the system, and i'm winning the votes, by millions of votes. but the system is rigged. it's crooked. >> reporter: adding to trump's frustration, rival ted cruz's sweep of colorado's 34 delegates
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over the weekend.s today, the texas senator turnedd to california.or its june 7th primary is suddenly vital in the race, offering the single biggest delegate prize for republicans: 172. >> california is going to decidd president. and if we continue to unite, we will win the generalñrñçó electc this country around.ñré@ñi+n0ñi >> reporter: tensions are also rising on the democratic side, now that bernie sanders has won seven of the last eight contests. in binghamton, new york today, he went after hillary clinton on oil and gas drilling. >> on this issue of fracking, secretary clinton and i havean some very strong differences of opinion.st in my view, if we are serious combating climate change, we need to put an end to fracking, not only in new york andne vermont, but all over this country.
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>> reporter: people in the sanders crowd booed the mention of clinton's name. she took her own shots, at a stop in queens. n >> i've noticed that under the bright spotlight and scrutiny of new york, senator sanders has had trouble answering questions. he's had trouble answering questions about his core issue, namely, dealing with the banks. he's had trouble answering foreign policy questions. >> reporter: clinton still enjoys a wide lead in delegates, but sanders insists he can narrow the gap. for the pbs newshour, i'm johnr, yang. >> woodruff: in the day's other news, british prime minister david cameron rejected criticism of his family's finances and offshore holdings. he's come under fire after the "panama papers" leak detailed his late father's investments. but in parliament today, cameron said his father's investment fund was designed to help investors, not to dodge taxes. >> we should differentiate between schemes designed to artificially reduce tax and those that are encouraging investment.
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mr. speaker, this is a government and this should be a country that believes in aspiration and wealth creation, so we should, we should defend the right of every british citizen to make money lawfully. aspiration and wealth creation are not somehow dirty words. >> woodruff: cameron initially refused to say if he had a stake in his father's business, but he now acknowledges selling his shares before his election in 2010. in syria, a surge in fightingin now threatens to derail a month- old cease-fire. it's focused around aleppo, the country's largest city, half of it is held by rebels. syrian army video showed artillery firing on rebel positions on sunday. there's also word that government reinforcements are moving in to counter a buildup of islamist militants linked to al-qaeda. a fragile truce also hung in the balance in yemen today, amid sporadic violations. the cease-fire took hold last
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night between shiite rebels and a saudi-led coalition that backs the government. the year-long conflict has killed more than 9,000 people, and forced nearly 2.5 million to flee. investigators in southern india are hunting suspects after an illegal fireworks display setsp off a deadly fire. at least 110 people died and another 380 were hurt in sunday's blaze at a hindu temple. amateur video captured explosions that rocked the village of paravoor, as revelers celebrated the hindu new year. thousands of people were packed inside the complex.p john kerry became the first u.s. secretary of state to visit hiroshima, japan, where the u.s. dropped an atomic bomb in 1945. kerry toured the hiroshima peace museum and memorial as he attended a group of seven conference. he spoke to reporters afterward.
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>> it is a gut-wrenching display. it tugs at all of your sensibilities as a human being. it reminds everybody of the extraordinary complexity of choices in war, and of what war does to people-- to communities, to countries, to the world. >> woodruff: kerry did not say whether president obama will visit hiroshima when he travels to japan in late may. a sign today that the flow of migrants from turkey into greece is finally slowing. greek officials say only 18 people landed on outlying islands in the last 24 hours. meanwhile, thousands remain camped near the border with macedonia. a tense calm returned there today, after police tear-gassed crowds trying to storm a crossing on sunday. and wall street started off with a rally, but could not hold on. the dow jones industrial average
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lost 20 points to close at 17,556. the nasdaq fell 17 points, and the s&p 500 slipped five. still to come on the newshour: a closer look at the candidates' scramble for votes in new york. how corruption hurts a country's citizens. we go inside kenya. the paper trail that connects syria's president to torture, and much more. >> woodruff: with eight days to go until vote-rich new york weighs in on the high-stakes contests for the republican and democratic nominations for president, candidates stepped up their criticisms of each other and made their best cases for more delegates today. the perfect moment to turn to politics monday with tamara keith of npr, and amy walter of
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the "cook political report." and we welcome both of you. so as we said, no voting this week, but delegate selection goes on and we're hearing a lot of complaining, amy, from donald trump. we just heard him say the process is crooked. what is ted cruz doing donaldg trump isn't? >> there is a process that involves rules and donald trump seems to have forgotten the rules were setth a long time ag. two ways to win the nomination as a republican.li you either come into the convention with 1237 delegates where trump is ahead and could conceivably, by june. then there is winning the convention at the floor, winning by what we're calling a contested convention. that's where ted cruz is doing better. what ted cruz is doing is he understands the rules and nuances of how the game is played and that is, when you win a state, you win more than just the votes, you win actual human
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beings, del vote on the floor. they are bound to voting for who won the state on the first round. but once you get into the secondnd and third rounds of voting, most are free agents. ted cruz is making sure many of his supporters are getting picked at places like colorado and in some other states, north dakota, et cetera, evenñin south carolina to make sure that when we get to the second and third ballot, they will vote for ted cruz and not donald trump.tr >> woodruff: tamara, if it's a process that's been written about and in the books for some time, why has it taken so longi for donald trump to focus on it? >> because he was focused on winning. (laughter) >> woodruff: but this is all about winning. >> yes, this is a different kind of winning and this is sort of the more complicated, procedural rule-type winning. you know, at this convention in colorado, donald trump showed up with a gloss glossy flyer that d here's my slate of delegates,
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vote for them. it include add number of peoplee that were not on the ballot for people to vote. >> woodruff: ooh... my colleagues showed me a copy of his slate that he had taken notes on, and three-quarters of the people on there, you couldn't vote for them in the way that trump's people said to vote for them. >> woodruff: amy, is it too late for trump to catch up? he hired a veteran political operative who said, oh, yes, we'll catch up. can they catch up? >> they may be able to, but it's really a question about -- you know, they've already lost in so many of these places and it's hard to catch up. what we're hearing in state afterñi state is that the cruz campaign has been there for months, they have been doing the groundwork, and they have the people there who are able to go and get on these ballots or make sure that they pick the right people to get on these ballots. one thing i want to mention is
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here's the difficult part about this as we're predicting and projecting what's going to happen. 2500 people or so are delegates, they're all individual human beings that all will feel incredible pressure.re there are rules they have to follow, but once the voting opens and they're n no longer bound by the rules, they're going to get precious from the carnghts their families, their colleagues, and these people will have to go home after this convention and explain their vote to their friends and family and that will be something none of us can predict. >> woodruff: clearly, tam remarks sounds like donald trump east best hope is to get to 1237 before they go to cleveland. >> absolutely. by far, if he can have this done in one ballot, that is much better solution. >> woodruff: and that's mathematically possible.e. >> it is mathematically possible. by ourçópo calculation at this point, he would need to get about 58% of the remaining, unbound -- there are bound and unbound delegates, so somewhere
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between 58% and 70% of the remaining delegates that he needs to get. it's possible. there are a bunch of winner-take-all contests. but here's an indication of the challenge he faces -- in new york, his children cannot vote for him because they missed the deadline to register as reps to vote.to >> woodruff: which was last fall, wasn't it? >> more like three weeks ago.. >> woodruff: okay. so there are all kinds of small details, and trump has been working on the bigger stuff, on the big message, on getting this title wave of support, and that is different from what happens at a convention, which is why donald trump really wants to win before a convention.nt >> woodruff:çó so, amy, quickly on this, when he says it's crooked and his delegate hunteru says they're using gues gist g e
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tactics -- >> you can't woo a delegate or give them cash, there are bribery stamps, and some are going, well, i dobgu know, if they're not an elected officiala is it a bribe to give them a tripe on a nice airplane with the name trump on the side. >> andñr gold-plated seat belts? >> woodruff: let's move on. tam remarks does the words of war between hillary clinton andd bernie sanders seems to have cooled down but they're still taking shots. >> i don't know if it cooled down. >> woodruff: maybe itle hasn't. yeah. >> woodruff: she's ahead inuf the polls in new york, but he said i've won the last umpteen contests. >> and heen has won the last umpteen contests and he has momentum. one interesting thing about the momentum is, in wyoming, which held its caucuses over the weekend, he won and fairly
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significantly but, in the end, the delegates were a tie. they both got seven delegates, seven pledged delegates, which means that he didn't eat into her delegate leadñr any -- at a. and he still needs to win about 57.5% of the remaining delegates. totally possible. not easy.s >> woodruff: and quickly, amy, delegates' numbers, very different from the republicans where you've got the so-called superdelegates and she, hillary clinton is doing -- d >> way ahead with the super delegates but also significantly ahead with delegates, even further ahead today than barack obama was ahead of her at this pointpoint in 2008. her argument is i want to switch now, this race is,0ñd8?c mathematically over, i want to get to the general election, but primary votessers aren't there yet and want to see this continue. she has to do both, show graciousness as the frontrunner
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and likely nominee while also being a general election candidate. >> woodruff: and is running ads on donald trump at the samee time she's having to beat off the criticisms from sanders. >> yeah, and what she said today is she can walk and comiew gumw at the same time. she can fight bernie sanders and donald trump at the same time.im sanders is out with an ad todayi about fracking wig will be more ofçó an issue in pennsylvania. he's getting that out there, in hopes of it coming up at the debate. >> woodruff: there is so much. with we love having both of you. tamera keith, amy walter.r. thank you both. >> you're welcome, judy. >> woodruff: now, we continue our series: "inside kenya." the world bank says kenya is growing faster than any other
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sub-saharan african country. but there is one major impediment to the country's continued growth.th tonight, in partnership with the pulitzer center on crisis reporting, special correspondent nick schifrin and producer zach fannin examine the world of kenyan corruption. >> reporter: in kenya, even the world's fastest men can't outrun corruption. the rift valley is known as the valley of champions. the best marathon runners are born here, and train here. hilary kiplimo runs three times a day. he is tireless, and fast. he averages about 4.5 minutes ai mile. it's tough to keep up. woah. he's good. and that's slow for him. after years of training, he finally broke through. he finished third in last year's nairobi marathon.d >> this is for position.
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>> reporter: so it says number 3. r because you came in third. >> yes. >> reporter: he and his wife thought he'd finally fulfilled his dream of running his way out of poverty. but his dream's been denied. you got your medal, you got this number 3, you got the jersey and you got this-but you never got a cent.th >> i never got a cent. >> reporter: on the results website, his name was replaced. and his $3,500 winningsin vanished. so where's the money going? >> i think those people, they kept the money. i >> reporter: athletics kenya, the race organizers.te >> yeah. >> reporter: last november dozens of runners protested at athletics kenya. the group has exclusive oversight of all kenyan athletes. kenyans hold records in nearly every distance. they say as they run faster, athletics kenya is stealingi more. athletics kenya did not respond to a half-dozen emails from pbs newshour.
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hilary suspects there's only ony way to get their attention.he >> when you go to explain, they ask you for something. >> reporter: they're asking you to give them some money?tee >> yeah. >> reporter: the problem extends far beyond athletics. there's a saying here: kenya is the homeland of the bribe. and in the mostly muslim neighborhood of eastleigh, nairobi, the victims of those bribes point their finger at one perpetrator. >> if you look at the police who are meant to protect them, they just arrest them to extort cash. >> reporter: abdullahi mohamed and most of this community is ethnic somali. he says police come here not toc patrol, but to get rich. >> you see cars from all police stations in nairobi converging here. >> reporter: they refer to this neighborhood as what?te >> an a.t.m. machine. >> reporter: an a.t.m. machine. because they take so much moneym >> they take so much money. >> reporter: police officers, when promised anonymity, admit they're more focused on keeping the cash than keeping the peace. how were police officers extorting people in eastleigh?
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>> the little amount that you are paid as salary can not getan up for you and your family. so, if somebody gives you some amount, somewhere, you have to take the money and then yound forget about work. >> reporter: is this corruption being practiced by so many police officers in so many different areas? o >> of course, of course. it's right from the junior officer to the higher-most. >> reporter: and the problem is that when the police are for sale, criminals buy their freedom. >> a criminal can come, do anything that they want, they go free. w you'll pay and you go free. >> reporter: and while police let criminals free, they arrest anti-corruption campaigners like 32-year-old boniface mwangi. in a country where activist is a dirty word, mwangi is a fearless, relentless firebrand. >> the corruption in this country starts from the presidency to the judiciary to the legislature.
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so all arms of the government are rotten. t we are here today because the people we elected are thieves. (crowd cheers) >> reporter: he is a former journalist whose political activism is often a performance. he covered pigs with fake blood outside parliament. >> pigs are selfish. and members of parliament are like pigs.f if you steal a lot of money, you go into politics and buy yourself immunity. you can get away with anything in this country, provided you have the money to buy your way off. he might be considered over the top, except what he's fightinga is so outrageous. last year, school kids protested when a landowner confiscated their playground, to build a parking lot. >> they tear gassed innocent kids who only wanted to access their playground. other countries have mafia. in kenya the mafia have a country.
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>> reporter: the wealth gap here makes the corruption more egregious.r: c according to one study, kenyans pay on average 16 bribes every month. and in a city where the bus fare is less than a dollar a ride, members of parliament here makes 188 times the average salary. which is the equivalent of a member of the u.s. congress making $8.5 million every year. >> the moral authority of this regime to do anything about corruption is zero. we've never had that before.s >> reporter: what do people know you as? >> the anti-corruption guy! >> reporter: john githongo knows better than anyone how a government becomes corrupt. he was the former government's anti-corruption czar who became a whistleblower. he says today's corruption is getting worse.s tt >> the corruption we have now poses an existential risk to kenya. before, we stole from ourselves. now, with the eurobond, we are mortgaging the futures of our children. >> the alleged missing eurobond funds.he >> the eurobond money had been
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misused.ob >> we are in the middle of ahe great con-game. >> reporter: what's missing? >> 999 million u.s. dollars. >> reporter: so $999 million are missing? >> i would prefer the word unaccounted for.re >> reporter: alex owino used to work at the national treasury. last year he blew the whistle on eurobond.he he calls it a scheme to steal a billion dollars. a billion dollars goes missing. i mean, how is that even possible? >> it's almost brazen. if you look at it, it's almostmo like a smash and grab heist. >> reporter: in 2014 the kenyan government issued a bond on the irish stock exchange they called eurobond. $2.85 billion invested by j.p. morgan chase and citibank. >> by accessing these external funds we will spur economic growth, and provide more employment opportunities to our people. >> reporter: was the pitch a lie?or >> as it turned out now, the pitch and what exactly transpired are very different. >> reporter: what transpired was
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violent protests, because the treasury was so empty, thee government couldn't issue student loans or pay teachers' salaries.en >> if you just borrowed $2 billion why are we in this problem?on >> reporter: late last year the treasury released documents it called proof the money arrived in kenya, according to kenya's top anti-corruption officer, ha'la'khe waqo. >> all the money that was intended to be brought to kenya has been brought back to kenya. >> reporter: but owino says those documents are fake. the invoice numbers seem falsified. >> for instance, start at number 25, the second one is going the wrong way and the third one is number 25, which is the same as the first one. >> reporter: and another document is redacted, hiding the recipient of the money. >> it definitely casts doubt immediately on whether they're authentic or not.el >> reporter: how do you investigate the government when it is the government that is allowing you to keep your job and that is funding this organization?nd >> thank you very much. we are investigating government
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projects on daily basis. it is our responsibility to investigate the government.r >> reporter: president uhuru kenyatta has denied wrongdoing. and he threatens anyone who a accuses him of corruption without proof.m >> if you make accusations, andn fail to prove them, you too will also be held accountable.e >> reporter: the threats are effective.te when average kenyans stand up to corruption, they often lose everything. what happens to people in kenya who try and fight corruption? >> you will be targeted and you will be unfairly treated. >> reporter: 15 years ago daniel mwirigi investigated fraud at a kenya's post bank. he discovered bank officers were stealing western union transactions. when he reported the crime, he says his bosses colluded to frame him with the very crimes he had exposed.he >> the fraudsters were within. >> reporter: you found these y fraudulent transactions? >> yes. i investigated them. >> reporter: and eventually thee would charge you--
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>> with the same. >> reporter: with the same exact thing. >> reporter: it took him nearly two years to clear his name. by then, he'd lost his job, health, and reputation for good. >> my father was alive that time. he has died thinking i am a thief.d my mother was alive. she has died thinking i'm a thief.h there's no point of doing a good job in this country. the future generations are doomed.re >> reporter: kenyans refer to stealing, as eating. today, kenyans say they watch the rich and the powerful get fat, while the people starve. for the pbs newshour, i'm nickh schifrin in nairobi. >> woodruff: stay with us, coming up on the newshour: the complex link between income and life expectancy.
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a ken burns documentary on the legacy of baseball hero jackie robinson. and a new drama from the playwright of august osage county. but first, we turn to the effort to catalog war crimes in real time during the ongoing syrian civil war. hari sreenivasan has that story. >> sreenivasan: five years of war have killed hundreds of thousands of people in syria in this many sided and brutald conflict. but there's now a project underway that's trying to document the principle role of the bashar al-assad regime in the killing and its systematic campaign of detention, torture and murder. the story of this remarkable forensic effort and the appalling acts in catalogs is told in this week's "new yorker" by reporter ben taub in his piece called "the assad files." and ben taub joins me now. so what is this organization? it's not the united nations. it's not the international criminal court.he but it seems almost more effective in the amount of
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evidence that it's gathered oned what's happening in syria. >> right. so it's an independent agency called the commission for international justice and accountability and because they're independent they don't, they have a, they can operate with a very high risk tolerance and outside of the geopolitics that usually govern permissionsi for such as investigation. >> sreenivasan: what's the type of evidence that they have now and how do we know that assad is responsible for some of these acts? >> so they've collected documentation evidence from alle over the country. they've smuggled about 600,000 pages out of syria at very high risk. they've had, one courier was killed, two have been wounded. but in recent years they've gotten much better withen operational security. and they've also- >> sreenivasan: so these areen people who decided to leak documents and somehow get it in the hands of the cija. >> so there is a leaker fromea damascus. he was, he worked within assad's innermost security committee as a, as a mole essentially. he was hired basically to process all the paperwork for assad's innermost security
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committee and he was a member of the opposition from the beginning.f so it's from his testimony thatt he know a lot of how that committee worked.lo and he basically saw that every single night, assad's crisis cell which he formed in response to the syrian crisis in 2011. and they would demand security reports from all over the country and this young man named abdul majid baraka would collect all of the reports, read them and draft a summary for them to look at as they had theiras meetings. after their meetings when they've decided how to handle each security issue they would send a list of recommendations to assad through a courier and he would then review them, sometimes cross things out, sometimes add- >> sreenivasan: president assad would actually read these reports? >> absolutely. >> sreenivasan: edit them, sign them.y. >> and then return them to the crisis cell. and once they had clear instructions they would then send them through their individual chains of command to the distant provinces where the security agencies on the ground actually you know implementing
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them and to put down the revolution.pu in practice, the policy itself while repressive is not inherently criminal necessarily. but in its implantation tens of thousands of syrians were detained for months or even years, tortured into false confessions. >> sreenivasan: so tell me the story of mazen al-hamada, a character that you use to do detail some of the atrocities that are happening in syria. >> yeah, so hamada he was an activist in deir al-zor came from the middle class family, worked for an oil company. so when he was arrested in early 2012, he was dragged into the air force intelligence branch in al-mazzeh military airport and he was after a couple of months in detention, no idea where he was at this point, he was taken into an interrogation room and he was first tortured by they burned out cigarettes on his body, they beat him, they strung him up by his wrists so that his feet were off the ground and he felt his wrists were going to
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get cut off.st all the while they were interrogating him with the same questions that the crisis cell had devised in its plan to put down the revolution. >> sreenivasan: at one point he's so injured from this process that they move him to what they call a hospital. >> so mazen was sent to hospital 601, which was a military hospital and this turned out tot be the place where they processed the bodies of detainees who had been killed in security branches. he was brought there and on his first night he had to go to the bathroom.fi and a guard dragged him to the bathroom door and let him in and when he opened the first bathroom stall he saw a pile of bodies and he started to feel like this was, like he was in a nightmare. w and he went to the second stall and opened that and there weree two more bodies with their eyes gouged out.es and there was another body by the sink.e and he felt like he was losing his grip on reality. he walked out to the guard and said you know where am i supposed to pee? and the guard told him to pee on top of the bodies.gu >> sreenivasan: how do we verify
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his version of events is true? >> so after he was released he spoke to a group of activists and gave his full testimony in detail with a published dateline back in october 2013 in arabic. a few months after that a military police photographer who had defected, he spoke to investigators and forensic analysts and a report was leaked and he had this collection of 55,000 pictures with 11,000 bodies in it and he was photographing at the hospital where mazen was staying and mazen's testimony came out first. and so his account lines up with, it was later corroborated by a huge quantity of material. >> sreenivasan: it seems like they have all the necessary information to prosecute assad if he ever gets into a court.r >> exactly. so they have the chain of command. their thought it that eventualla
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when the international community catches up and there is a resolution to the crisis in syria, that some way or another, they will be able to hand over their evidence to a court that can prosecute it.en >> sreenivasan: the report is called "the assad files" by ben taub in this week's "new yorker."n er thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> woodruff: now, the connections between income,on geography, and life expectancy. it's a sobering fact that the poorest citizens have shorter lifespans than wealthier americans. but new research published finds that the gap in life expectancy is growing. since 2000, the wealthiest five percent of americans can now expect to live an additional three years. for the very poorest, there's been almost no change. yet, research also found that the poorest who live in affluent and highly educated cities live longer than other poor americans. raj chetty is the co-author and
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an economist at stanford university. raj chetty, welcome to the program. why is this gap in life spans getting longer for so many people? >> well, judy,op what we're seee is that there is a really dramatic increase in life spans for the very highest incomenc americans throughout the country. what's interesting is that correct for the low-income persons, say in the bottom 20%, we find the story very heterogeneous across places in. birmingham, alabama, the poor are gaining as much in life expectancy as the rich, but in tampa, florida, and places like that, the poor are living shorter lives today than in the begin overthis millennium. in terms of why we're seeing the increase in gap, i think the story is not just one at the national level, it's one thatth will force us to look at the local level to understand why
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the trend looks so positive in birmingham, yet so negative in other places like tampa. >> woodruff: and are there clues now as to why that is? >> the places with the highest levels of life expectancy for the poor tend to have better health behaviors, perhaps not surprisingly these are places with lowerhe levels of obesity, higher levels of exercise, lower levels of smoking. they also tend to be cities like new york and san francisco, more affluent, highly educated, high-cost of living cities where the poor seem to be doing better. we don't know exactly why. one potential hypothesis is these types of cities invest a lot in public health. they're often the first cities to enact smoking bans or bans on transfats which could end up improving the health of not just the rich but the poor and that remains to be explored further.r >> woodruff: it's not just the big cities, the new yorks and san franciscos, you say it's the. >> brangham:s, the
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medium-sized cities as well. c >> that's right. it's really remarkable how diverse the patterns are around the country. there isry no systematic block f cities where you find clear gains. the general patterns are affluent, educated cities, but it includes places like cincinnati, ohio, where we're seeing very positive trends, birmingham, alabama. in general, levels of life expecty are highest on thee coasts for low-income people, california and the northeast,rt and they tend to be the lowest in nevada and the geographic belt running through the middle of theng country, including stas like oklahoma and detroit, michigan, and so forth. >> woodruff: what did you find in regard to gender, in terms of women at both ends of the income scale, and then. >> we find large gaps in life expecty in the u.s. as a whole, between the highest and lowest income americans, for both men and women. for men, being in the top 1% of
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the income distribution gives you a life that's about 15 years longer, on average, than men in the bottom 1% of the income distribution. for women, the gap is ten years. still large but not quite as large. what's interesting, judy, about the gender difference is that it's well known that women tend to live longer than men, on average, but we find that's much more true at low-income levels. among low-income families, women live about six or seven years longer than men. at the highest income levels, women live only about one year longer than men. >> woodruff: and just quickly, whatñr questions does this lead you to? what do you want to know next in order to understand this better? >> well, what this research shows us is that there is a great deal of inequality in life expectancy in america, but it's not inevitable.v there are some places in america where gaps in health outcomes and life expecty are much -- expectancy are much smaller, and that shows us we can learn from
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places like new york and san francisco and places like on a positive trajectory likey birmingham and cincinnati learn what those places are doing right and hopefully translate those lessons to other areas to help outcomes moreñvó broadly. the question is what is the recipe to do that and our hope is these data we've put out in this study will be useful in helping researchessers and policymakers to figure that out. >> woodruff: raj chetty, economics professor at stanford university, thank you. >> thank you. >> woodruff: you cann hear more from raj chetty about the >> woodruff: you can hear more from raj chetty about the long-- term implications of disparities: both racial and economic by watching his interview with charlayne hunter- gaulton our website.to it's part of our ongoing series "race matters."t that's at pbs.org/newshour.s. >> woodruff: now, the legacy of
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jackie robinson, on and off the field.i it's the focus of a new documentary that begins on pbs tonight. john yang has our look. >> yang: the four-hour program was produced by ken burns and airs over two nights, concludinw tomorrow night. it's narrated by keith david, with jamie foxx reading jackie robinson's words. it seeks to show a deeper and fuller view of robinson's achievements and challenges. here's a short excerpt about how jackie was treated after brooklyn dodgers president rickey selected him to breakec the color barrier. a warning: the documentary is explicit about the epithets and racist language that robinson endured and some of that is inat this clip. >> robinson faced everythingg rickey said he would. pitchers threw at his head.ñi more than once, runners sprinting towards first base spiked robinson with their cleats, and a hard slide by
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robinson would not go unnoticed bioposing infielders. before brooklyn played ben chapman's phillies in philadelphia, branch rickey received a call from the president of the team. don't bring the nigger here, he said, we're just not ready for that sort of thing yet. >> rickey said, well, he's a member in good standing of the national league and if you don'n want to play us, we'll accept the forfeit to have the game. g >> you thought of philadelphia as the city of brotherly love, yet when you went to philadelphia, you couldn't stay in the sameul hotel. you had to find your own accommodations, and then there was ben chapman and some of the other phillies who were vicious and uncalled for. >> during one game, cubs shortstoplin kicked jackie as they untangled themselves after
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a close play at second. as the brooklyn bench should at marulo, jackie angrily picked himself up but didn't strike back. >> the documentary lays >> yang: the documentary laysen out what robinson went through as a player, a leader and a civil rights figure long after his baseball career ended. let's get some personal insight into his legacy. dusty baker was a player for 19 years, including with the atlanta braves and los angeles dodgers. he's been a manager for two decades and is now the managerr of the washington nationals. he joins from his office at nationals park. so much of the focus about jackie robinson is about that one year, the year he broke the color barrier, but i don't think a lot of people realize the influence he had on players long after his playing career had ended. talkde about the direct link between jackie robinson and you through hank aaron. >> well, actually, it started with my parents and, you know,
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at that time, most african-american parents, iff they were baseball fans, they t were dodger fans because of jackie robinson. so, you know, my dad used to tell me all the time, you know, what would jackie do in that situation if i was fighting or something, and i was fortunate enough to have played with hank aaron with the atlanta braves and hank told me he went to see jackie when he was a youngster and how much influence he had on him. you know, i was close to hank.. i was with hank, you know, most days from 19 to 25 or 24 years old, and, you know, hank -- i got to meet most of the civic leaders of our time at that time. you know, maynard jackson, andrew young, jesse jackson, i got to meet all those through hank. jackie robinson meant a lot to me because of my dad and because of, you know, hank aaron, and my mom was an african studies teacher, so we knew all about
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jackie robinson.bi >> do you think young african-american players today appreciate the legacy of jackie robinson? >> probably not. i don't think it's the african-american players' fault, necessarily, of not appreciatini jackie robinson. i don't think we've done a very good job of, you know, passing along history, not only of jackie robinson but the fact of, you know, in america seems like that's what people like -- spend the least amount of time studying is history. so, you know, some of us have made a conscientious effort to try to pass along that history because if we don't pass along that history, you know, it's going to die. i pass it on to my son. my son comes in my office in the weight room at the house and he sees, you know, differentre players. he told me, heay said, dad, i didn't know jackie played ball in cuba. i took my family to cuba a few years ago, so there was a lot that people don't know about jackie.
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they don't know he went to the military. you know, there is a whole bunch of things. i asked jim gillian, one of the first questions i asked him is why did he die and how did he die so young, and jim gillian told me at that time that he thought jackie died of a broken heart. i really didn't understand it, but the longer i live, you know, the more it's understandable. >> what do you think jackie robinson would think of thehi situation today? you have got 8% of major league baseball players areea african-american. you're one of a very small number of african-american managers, you're the second winningest active manager but still almost didn't have a job going into this season. what do you think of the state of diversity in baseball today? >> you know, when i first came into the game, i was on the braves, we had, i think, a combination of, i don't know, eight to ten african-americans-a and latin players when i first came into the game.
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so it's definitely gotten worse. it hasn't gotten better. but, at the same time, you know, we have time to do somethingng about it. you know, i had spoken to the commissioner. you know, he's very aware of it. you know, he doesn't like it. he told me that he's glad that i've got a job because at the time this would have been thee first time in 27 years when there wasn't an african-american manager, and seems like, you know, we have to do twice as good to accomplish the same thing. you know, the scrutiny of being one of the few black, african-american managers, you know, is tremendous. sometimes you feel like you're carrying the weight of, you know, the whole race sometimes, personally on this side. but, on the other hand, that's what i feel that i was chosen, you know, for god to do becausee you know, here i am in the
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nation's capital with an outstanding team, the best team i've had to start with and i feel that, you know, great things are ahead for us on the nationals and hopefully us in america. >> very good. dusty baker, congratulationons the fast stamplet good luck the rest of the way and thanks for being with us. >> allbe right, you're welcome. >> woodruff: finally, a new pla by one of the nation's leading playwrights who's known for his domestic dramas asks the question-- what makes us, us?us jeffrey brown went to chicago where his latest play openeds this weekend to find out. >> brown: eleven scenes that tell the life of a woman, from infancy to age 69. but, out of chronological order. and she's played by sixy different actresses.
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"mary page marlowe", the new play by tracy letts, is just now opening. >> it sounds different every time you do it. >> brown: but when i visited in early march, rehearsals had just begun.ma and when i said it was odd to be there talking about a play i hadn't seen, he reminded me of something rather important if you happen to be the playwright: >> i haven't seen it either. >> brown: you haven't seen it either. do you know what you have at this point? k >> normally at this point, you have a pretty good sense of what you have.re but "mary page marlowe" is an unusual piece. the non-linear narrative, the different women playing the character. so i think i know what we've got. but until there's an audience in the room, i won't really know. >> brown: letts, now 50, is best known for the tony and pulitzer- prize winning play, "august: osage county," later made into a film.co >> you dragged me into the madhouse of this family. >> brown: it tells of an
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oklahoma family in, as a new york times review put it, "near apocalyptic meltdown" of dysfunctional behavior.m >> brown: letts is also an acclaimed actor.: he won a tony award in 2013 for his role in another famous dysfunctional relationship drama, edward albee's "who's afraid of virginia woolf?" more recently, he's starred in the tv drama, "homeland," and the film, "the big short." >> the housing market is rock solid. >> brown: the new play has its own share of unruly behavior: but it's focus is the deepus subject of identity. >> if you sit at all in the question of what makes you, 'you', and start to ask yourself, is it my parents, my background, my geographical
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background, my age, my gender, what are the things that make you 'you'?at >> we pretend i'm making decisions about my life. i am not. have not. >> brown: letts says he was inspired to write the play after the death of his mother 18 months ago. >> you spend a lot of time and reflection about your parent's life, their journey.on. mary page marlowe is not my mother, though she's inspired by my mother, and she's inspired by the idea that we are different people at different points in our life. in fact, my 17-year-old selfel would not recognize the man i am now.t and i don't recognize him much either. >> brown: so that makes life a constant surprise, right?wn >> maybe it speaks to something in me, some searching in me, i don't know. i know that i'm a hell of a lot more comfortable at 50,
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comfortable with who i am than i was with myself at 30 or at 17. >> the monologue. i'm still working on it. >> brown: some of the comfort clearly comes from his long association with chicago's steppenwolf theater company, a renowned incubator, with an ensemble of writers and actors who've had a major influence on the world of american theater and beyond. >> i can afford to take chances. i can afford to make a fool of myself. >> brown: because they'll keep you around anyway.lf >> they'll keep me around anyway, and they'll tell me, they'll tell me to my face, "you didn't get that right."te >> here are a couple of things that might help.a >> brown: one of those truth- tellers is longtime friend and collaborator, anna shapiro, who's directed numerous plays at steppenwolf and on broadway, and was recently named the company's artistic director. she's now taken on "mary page marlowe." she said the first big challenge of this play was to make sure that a story that jumps around chronologically didn't feel out of order.lo
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>> you just have to kind of expand your definition of what is chronology. i'm not sure life is happening in order anyway. >> brown: the way a life unfolds.: >> the way life feels. i just think when you get older, and tracy and i are getting a little bit older, you do start to understand the kind of inevitable arbitrariness ofri life. it feels unrelentingly arbitrary. >> really? you don't know? >> brown: we watched an early rehearsal, in which mary page at age 36 is talking to herin therapist. she's played by tracy letts' wife, carrie coon. during a key monologue, shapiroh was bothered. >> my ear is jumping at "someone called." >> brown: after some discussion, letts came up with a new line. >> i just found out my college
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girlfriend lorna died from breast cancer last month and i'm sitting here talking about compartments. >> brown: the tweaking, he told me later at his home as he and coon made dinner, would continue. >> every time i write a new play, we read the thing and the fear is that people will say "this is garbage" and they'll throw it away. the hope is they'll carry me out of the theater on their shoulders into the streets saying "he's a genius. he's a genius." but the reality is that good smart people around me say "okay. let's get to work." >> brown: letts and coon met as actors in "who's afraid of virginia woolf." >> it's really hard to find good roles for women and my husband happens to be one of those people who's writing roles that dignify women because he deeply respects them. and everybody in his plays, they're all in there. so i feel like i'm married to a lot of people. it's exciting. never boring. >> brown: a nice domestic scene,
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with a playwright renowned for the very opposite. so where does the dysfunctionoe come from? >> it's drama. if i just wrote about the healthy side of myself it wouldn't be very interesting or dramatic. >> a married couple makes aloo gobi in the kitchen. >> it doesn't make for a great scene.th >> he cuts the potatoes too small. she's irritated but doesn't saying anything. (laughter)e es >> brown: not great theater,r, perhaps. but a fine dinner. from chicago, i'm jeffrey brown for the pbs newshour. >> woodruff: more than 400 protesters were aregsed for demonstrating at the u.s. capitol today. the capitol said the group, democracy spring, said they were protesting the corruption of big money in our politics. most are bning charged with
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unlawful crowding and obstruction. tonight on charlie rose, tonight on charlie rose, rafael correa, president of ecuador.ha and that's the newshour forof tonight. on tuesday, a program that promises to double community college graduation rates. i'm judy woodruff. join us online, and again here tomorrow evening.ne for all of us at the pbsat newshour, thank you and good night.ho >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:d >> lincoln financial-- committed to helping you take charge of your financial future. an l >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial
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literacy in the 21st century.nsy >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.oru >> 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.poor captioning sponsored bypo newshour productions, llc ti captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org
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this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and sue herera. >> big surprise. not many are expecting it, but will earnings be the trigger for a rally in the worst performing sector this year. why investors are watching the ugly and public fight between the founder and ceo of one of this country's largest hold builders. small spaces. the big trend in ultra tiny homes. all that and more on "nightly business report" for monday, l 11th. good evening. welcome. i'm sue herera. tyler mathisen is off this evening. buckle up. earning season has arrived. it's shaping up to be a doozy. expectations are for the w
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