captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight: in the hot seat, f.b.i. director james comey defends his decision to re-open an investigation into hillary clinton's emails, days before last year's presidential election. then, bridging the health care divide. republicans try to win over "no" votes in their own ranks, by putting more money on the table to cover those with pre-existing conditions. and, in our final report from south sudan, how violence against women is being used as a weapon of war. >> they told me that, "we long for peace. we want to be able to walk freely and farm and feed our families." but the solution lies in resolving the conflict.

>> woodruff: all that and more, on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> supporting social entrepreneurs and their solutions to the world's most pressing problems--

skollfoundation.org. >> the lemelson foundation. committed to improving lives through invention, in the u.s. and developing countries. on the web at lemelson.org. >> supported by the rockefeller >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions: >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: a tense time today for the man who runs the federal bureau of investigation. james comey spent hours before the senate judiciary committee, rejecting criticism that he has

mishandled investigations of hillary clinton or donald trump. lisa desjardins has the story. >> i've lived my entire career by the tradition of that, if you can possibly avoid it, you avoid any action in the run-up to an election that could have an impact. whether it's a dog-catcher election or president of the united states. >> reporter: but today, f.b.i. director james comey faced the charges that he did impact the 2016 presidential election, when he sent this letter to congress on october 28, 11 days before election day, revealing new steps in an investigation into hillary clinton's email practices. >> i have one question, and i view it as a most important question. >> reporter: ranking democrat dianne feinstein asked today why he broke normal f.b.i. protocol. >> i could see two doors, and they were both actions. one was labeled "speak," and the other was labeled "conceal." look, this was terrible. it makes me mildly nauseous to think that we have had some impact on the election. but honestly, it wouldn't change the decision.

everybody who disagrees with me has to come back to october 28 with me, and stare at this and tell me what you would do. >> you took an enormous gamble. the gamble was that there was something there that would invalidate her candidacy, and there wasn't. >> reporter: democrats also pointed out that comey had been silent at the time about the ongoing investigation into trump campaign ties to russia. he argued there was a difference: that he had previously told congress the clinton probe was closed and needed to reverse that. and, he insisted to hawaii democrat mazie hirono, he was impartial: >> i wasn't thinking of what effect it would have on political campaigns. >> i find that hard to believe, that you did not think there would be ramifications. >> i knew there would be ramifications, i just tried not to care about them.

>> reporter: texas republican john cornyn defended comey and pointed back at clinton: >> you were not the one who decided to handle classified information on a private email server. >> reporter: the hearing was full of other news as well: lindsey graham of south carolina pressed comey on russia, which the f.b.i. is also probing. >> is it fair to say the russian government is still involved in american politics? >> yes. well, certainly, in my view, the greatest threat of any nation on earth, given their intention and their capability. >> reporter: and on issues of privacy, comey said encryption has blocked the f.b.i. from getting data off devices in nearly half its cases. >> none of us want backdoors. we don't want access built in, in some way. we want to work with manufacturers on how we can address all concerns. >> reporter: one more hot topic? president trump's proposed ban on immigrants from some muslim countries. vermont democrat patrick leahy: >> does that make america less safe? >> senator, thank you. i'm not going to comment on the particular statement, but i do agree that a perception or

reality of hostility towards any community, but in this particular case the muslim american community, makes our jobs harder. >> reporter: as for his own job, comey's ten-year term runs out in 2023. for the pbs newshour, i'm lisa desjardins at the u.s. capitol. >> woodruff: in the day's other news, the u.s. house easily approved a compromise bill to fund the government through september, the end of the fiscal year. it totals $1.1 trillion, and includes an increase in defense spending, but ignores several other of president trump's priorities, including money for a border wall. leaders on both sides praised the rare example of cooperation between republicans and democrats. >> this is a bipartisan piece of legislation. and so each side doesn't get everything they want, but we are able to come together and find a package that advances many of our important goals. >> democratic members' participation is absolutely

essential if we're going to pass fiscal bills and appropriation bills. and i'm glad that the republican leadership and negotiators came to the conclusion and worked with us to advance this omnibus to the floor. >> woodruff: the legislation now heads to the senate for approval before this week is out. a revised republican plan to repeal and replace obamacare gained key endorsements in the house today. moderate republican fred upton and conservative billy long said they will support the bill. they spoke after meeting with president trump on their amendment to help cover people with pre-existing conditions. >> he said that this bill would be just as strong on pre- existing illnesses as obamacare. i want him to keep that pledge. this amendment allows that to happen, and cover those that otherwise might have been excluded. >> woodruff: the amendment adds $8 billion to the bill over five years. leaders of the house

conservative freedom caucus endorsed the proposal, and said the "vast majority" of their members will support it. but as of the time we went on the air, no vote has been scheduled. in eastern missouri, another wave of heavy rain is adding to a flood emergency that's already claimed five lives. the swollen meramec river neared an all-time high in suburban st. louis today, damaging 200 homes and threatening some 1,500 more. parts of two interstate highways are also under water, and a section of the mississippi river is closed. the u.s. justice department confirmed today it will not charge two white policemen in the killing of a black man in baton rouge, louisiana. cell phone video from last july showed alton sterling pinned, but struggling. one officer yelled that he was reaching for a gun, then shot him. in baton rouge today, u.s. attorney corey amundson said there are no solid grounds for a civil rights violation.

>> after an exhaustive, almost year-long investigation, all of the prosecutors and agents involved in this case have come to the conclusion that insufficient evidence exists to charge either officer with a federal crime in connection with this incident. >> woodruff: the attorney general of louisiana says he will now investigate whether state criminal charges should be filed against the officers. north korea confirmed today that it has detained another american citizen. state tv said kim sang-dok, an instructor at pyongyang university, was picked up on last month as he tried to leave the country. he is accused of acts aimed at overthrowing the government. kim is now one of three americans being held by the north. human rights will not determine u.s. relations with foreign governments, under president trump. secretary of state rex tillerson took that message to his department's employees today.

he said that in some cases, "if you condition our national security efforts on someone adopting our values, it really does create obstacles." at the same time, he said the president trump hosted palestinian leader mahmoud abbas today, and vowed to "do whatever is necessary" to make peace in the middle east. the white house meeting was their first, and over lunch in the cabinet room, mr. trump said there's a "very, very good chance" of getting a peace deal. >> it's something that i think is, frankly, maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years. but we need two willing parties. we believe israel is willing. we believe you're willing. and if you both are willing, we're going to make a deal. >> woodruff: president trump met with the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu in february. former president obama's foundation has unveiled the plans for his presidential library and civic center in chicago. the site would cover 225,000 square feet along lake michigan, on chicago's south side.

it includes a tower-like museum, and other buildings, and it's expected to cost at least $500 million. wall street made little headway today. the dow jones industrial average gained eight points to close near 20,958. the nasdaq fell almost 23 points, and the s&p 500 gave up three. and, boston baseball fans are trying to make amends to an opposing player who had faced racist taunts. adam jones of the baltimore orioles spoke out after monday's game with the red sox. last night, jones got an extended, standing ovation, when he came to the plate at fenway park for his first at-bat. the two teams play again tonight. still to come on the newshour: the latest push by republicans to win support for a replacement to obamacare. in south sudan, rape used as a weapon of war. a free press under threat worldwide, and much more.

>> woodruff: after fits, starts and failure, republicans in congress hope a new amendment will win over enough votes to repeal and replace the affordable care act. we get two takes now this latest legislative back and forth, from both sides of the aisle. we start with representative mark sanford, republican from south carolina. congressman sanford, thank you very much for joining us. so you oppose the first version of obamacare replacement back in march. i believe your argument was that it left too much of the original obamacare in place. you apparently have come around now to this new version. why? >> it-- it-- in essence split things. it-- it-- it left open the possibility of federalism, which is to say, we've historically

had a patchwork of different states and different remedies. our founding fathers were so intent on this idea of letting states try different things that they built it in, though we had a population of about four million people when our country started. what i think it does is allows vermont to go to a single pair system if vermont wanted to do so, and south carolina can go to a more market-based system if it chooses to do so. >> woodruff: fred upton and others worked on an amendment, a proposal to further change this new version that would add more money to cover those people with so-called pre-existing conditions. are you confident from what you know, though, that this is going to guarantee everybody with pre-existing conditions coverage? >> built into the base bill is this issue of guarantee issue so that you cannot be denied, based on a pre-existing condition. the question all along has been if a state opted out and they chose to, again, make alterations on that front--

which this bill does allow-- what happens to them? and that's why it's been important that this issue of a risk pool, as maine has done, was built into the bill. there is about $130 billion built into the bill to that very effect, and what has been talked about here in the 11th hour is an additional $8 billion based on fred upton and a couple of other folks' insistence, that a little bit more money be built in as a cushion on this front. you're talking over $100 billion being built into the high-risk pool to cover somebody in the event the state opted out of this issue of not pre-existing condition but the idea of somebody being able to be charged more based on a pre-existing condition. >> woodruff: i know this can get really complicated and i'm going to try to keep my question as basic as possible. congressman, i'm sure you know the american medical association has come out today saying they are still opposed. they are worried that millions of people are going to be left out with pre-existing conditions. the a.a.r.p. , retired persons association, says they're still

opposed. and the american cancer society says they've taken a look at this, and they say every bit of history for anything that looks anything like this high-risk pool arrangement that congressman upton has included is going to be unaffordable, is still going to leave too many people out. so they can't support it, either? >> well, one, i would expect them to say that as advocates. that is what they're supposed to do. i think that what we're trying to include is that vast, unspoken group out there that maybe hadn't gotten the degree of media coverage-- small business people across the state of south carolina or other states in this country, that have been really struggling with the limitation of coverage and the increase in premiums. in south carolina last year, premiums went up by about 30%. so what we're trying to do is let insurance be insurance for the preponderance of folks in the individual marketplace who have seen their premiums rise dramatically, while at the same

time, covering folks that indeed have a pre-existing condition or have been-- seen the consequence of a horrendous accident. and i think that's what this bill does. fp tries to cover both. it does so imperfectly as any bill does, but i think it's the best we'll see out of this house at this particular moment in time. >> woodruff: you say it does so imperfectly. doubters out there say it still leaves too many people with pre-existing conditions who can't afford coverage uncovered and people-- when people who would then be in a vulnerable position, not able to access health care. >> what i would say to that is that is not the experience of what we saw in maine. and i would ask people to look at the risk pool that took place in maine and the degree of coverage it afford people with pre-existing conditions while simultaneously bringing down the rates of premiums for the small business folks that don't have, again, the kind of health challenges that we see there in the risk pool in maine, or frankly, other states.

>> woodruff: congressman, is it the government's responsibility to make sure everybody has health care coverage? >> i think that that's a debate that will be ongoing. -- i-- i-- i think-- you know, i guess part and parcel to any open and free society is this debate between freedom on one side and security on the other. and i think that there are a vital tension between those two. so even if this bill makes its way to the senate and passes there, even if it comes back and is signed by the president, based on the conference report that got signed off on, in this house, even that happens, this is a debate that is going to be ongoing, because i think that that tension between security and freedom is one that fits in this debate as it does in so many others here on capitol hill. >> woodruff: congressman mark sanford, thank you very much. >> my pleasure, thank you. >> woodruff: for a democrat's perspective we are joined by representative kathy castor. i think you were able to hear what congressman sanford was

saying. do you believe that what the republicans are coming together on does now cover enough americans? >> no. and the next 24 hours are going to be very important for families all across the country that are concerned about their health coverage. because what we know about the republican bill is that it will rip coverage away from millions of americans, raise costs, impose a huge age tax on our neighbors who are 50, 55, and older, and not yet in medicare. and then it weakens the life of the medicare tust fund, just at a time we have more baby boomers retiring and going into medicare. but here's the kicker for the vote that could come up in the next 24 hours is the bill has gotten even worse. to round up the votes of the tea party caucus, speaker ryan and want white house agreed to go to the heart of the affordable care act, which was a guarantee that no american could be discriminated against because they have a pre-existing

condition, like cancer or diabetes. >> woodruff: right. >> so, apparently, this is going to be a close vote tomorrow. the phones are ringing off the hook all across the capitol because families understand what is at risk-- higher costs and a fundamental return to the bad old days where insurance companies could charge you anything. and if you had a pre-existing condition, it was very difficult to get coverage. >> woodruff: well, let me ask you about what congressman sanford just said. he said there are examples-- he kept citing the state of maine-- where they created these so-called high-risk pools that allow money to be put into one pool that people who can't afford coverage, who have preexefting conditions, would be able to access that and get coverage. >> well, it's very inefficient and very costly, and this so-called upton amendment that has been floated today to provide $8 billion to states that go that direction is-- would be wholly inadequate. and in fact, in my home state of

florida, we've tried high-risk pools in the past, and the state never stepped up to their responsibility to fund them. the feds here, i would be very skeptical that under a republican congress and this white house they would say, "yes, it's important to provide billions of dollars for that." at the same time, remember, under this bill, they decimate medicaid services. those are the services for our neighbors suffering from alzheimer's that need nursing care, and children, and the disabled. so it's very difficult to see how this is going anywhere. in fact, you mentioned the opposition from the a.m.a., and the a.a.r.p. when you have america's doctors, america's nurses, a.a.r.p., the american cancer society opposed to it, i'm surprised it's even close right now. >> woodruff: at the same time, congresswoman, you know, elections have consequences. republicans control the house. they control the senate. they, obviously, control the white house now. what the republicans are looking

at-- putting before the house for a vote now has made accommodation towards the democrats. it does preserve some of obamacare, unlike what the most conservative members of the house want. doesn't there have to be some sort of compromise? and are democrats not willing to move at all on your own as republicans have been willing to do? >> no, the republican bill goes to the heart of the affordable care act repeal now. they could make that argument before. before they were talking about gutting the protection for pre-existing conditions and essential health benefits. i mean, what good is an insurance policy if you buy it and you can't go to the emergency room and be covered. but, yes, democrats we're willing to work on the high cost of pharmaceuticals. i would really like to get to the heart of the matter of how we encourage greater competition in areas of the country that do not have competition. there are a lot of great ideas, and hopefully, this will-- this

new repeal effort will fail tomorrow, and we can get down to brass tacks to improving what works and fixing what doesn't. >> woodruff: but you're prepared, with the idea that it may pass, that the republicans may now have enough votes among themselves to get this through the house? >> boy, they're really trying to ram it through. the white house and speaker ryan have really been twisting arms. that's what i'm hearing from my colleagues here in the capitol. but we have the american people on our side, in addition to america's doctors, nurses, so many advocates, but this next 24 hours will be critical. and there's no other issue that touches every american family, every small business owner. so this is critical. and time is of the essence. >> woodruff: you're absolutely right about it touching everybody. congresswoman kathy castor, thank you very much. >> thank you.

>> woodruff: this week, we have reported on the civil war in south sudan, and the famine it has partly caused. tonight, a brutal, often unseen side of this conflict: an epidemic of rape, used as a weapon of war against south sudan's women and girls. with the partnership of the pulitzer center on crisis reporting, here again is special correspondent jane ferguson. and a warning: parts of this story are disturbing. >> reporter: the women gathering in this small building all have one thing in common: a brutal experience that binds them together. >> ( translated ): when i got off the bus, they grabbed me and took me to a small house by the side of the road. then ten of them raped me. >> reporter: linda-- not her real name-- was kidnapped, beaten, and raped last year by government soldiers on the streets of south sudan's capital, juba. at this international rescue committee support center, she meets with others like her. were they wearing uniforms? >> ( translated ): yes.

>> reporter: all of them? >> ( translated ): yes. >> reporter: were they carrying weapons? >> ( translated ): yes. at first, they told us they were going to shoot us and kill us, so we were afraid. then they beat us and raped us. >> reporter: she was taken with six other women. two of them were never seen again. she lives with around 30,000 others in this cramped camp for people fleeing ethnic violence. it's a huge, fortified slum in juba where u.n. peacekeeping soldiers provide a little security. when south sudan's civil war broke out in 2013, it quickly became fueled by tribal divisions. president salva kiir, of the dinka tribe, pitted against his vice president riak machar, from the nuer tribe. dinka government soldiers have been fighting rebels, led mostly by the nuer tribe, all across the country. both sides are accused of taking part in war crimes.

one of those crimes: rape. it has become a tool of war here, used with barbaric consistency. a ruthless form of collective punishment against rival tribes, gang-raped by soldiers. this young mother of four is now eight months' pregnant. >> ( translated ): this is the result of tribalism. if it wasn't, then the fight would be between soldier and soldier. but now they do this to women. they are raping women because our husbands are not here. they are rebels, away fighting. when they were raping me, they kept calling me a nuer and a rebel. >> reporter: soon, she will have yet another child to care for, in this desperate poverty. the international rescue committee helps these women, assigning social workers to keep them going long after the physical scars fade. yet even here, there is no guarantee of safety.

in a war where sexual violence is so endemic, camps like this provide some sort of protection for hundreds of thousands of women. but it's still not enough. most of them can never leave here without the risk of being raped. last july, fighting broke out in the capital between government troops and rebels, and very little food was making it into the camp. in desperation, mothers were forced to venture out, searching for something to feed their families. just a few yards from the camp gates, this woman was grabbed, tied up, and violently assaulted. >> ( translated ): the children didn't have anything to eat for four days. so i decided to go outside and look for food. i at least had a small amount of money to go outside and buy something. i went to the market, but when i was coming back they grabbed me. they tied my hands with a piece of cloth, then they raped me. >> reporter: according to these women, rape here is often committed by gangs of government soldiers.

>> ( translated ): six of them raped me and then i lost consciousness. they left me by the road, and some people came and found me and carried me back to the camp. >> reporter: it is an astounding fact that most of the women in this camp have been raped-- the u.n. says 70%, the majority by government soldiers and police. none of the women we spoke to for this story has dared leave the camp since their assault. >> women who step out to look for food for their children get assaulted and raped. so they can't step out. they told me that "we long for peace. we want to be able to walk freely and farm and feed our families." but the solution lies in resolving the conflict. >> reporter: the rape crisis in south sudan is one that often gets lost in the other, more visible disasters of famine and civil war tearing this country apart. country-wide, it is not known

how many have been raped. women here often bear the burden of their enormous, collective suffering silently. for the pbs newshour, i'm jane ferguson, in juba, south sudan. >> woodruff: tomorrow, our focus on south sudan continues with a look at what life is like for refugees fleeing the violence into neighboring uganda. >> woodruff: stay with us. coming up on the newshour: is mountaintop mining sacrificing coal country's environment? and, how facebook has beat its competitors by copying their ideas. but first, sometimes searching for the truth is dangerous work. journalists around the world at times risk death or imprisonment to inform the public. 24 years ago, the u.n. general

assembly proclaimed may 3rd "press freedom day," so we mark this moment by assessing where things stand. william brangham has the story. >> brangham: it's often where you report that determines the level of threat a journalist faces: in mexico, dozens have been killed by cartels while reporting on the drug trade; in turkey, it's the government that's been cracking down, closing newspapers and locking up reporters. and here in the u.s., it's a rhetorical attack, with accusations of fake news, and the president questioning the motives and honesty of the press. we look at this global landscape now with joel simon, executive director of the committee to protect journalists. welcome to the newshour, joel. let's go through some of these global hot spots that we've been talking about. your organization just put out a report about mexico and some of the violence directed at journalists there. what's going on? >> what's going on is you have a country where the government is effectively unable to assert control because violent forces

are dominant. and they are determining through violence what the people can and can't know. they're killing journalists. they're suppressing information, and they often operate with the complicity of the police and local authorities. >> brangham: in a circumstance like that when you're talking about basically criminal organizations killing journalists, what can we as the journalistic community do to protect people in that environment? >> well, i think first of all, we have to call on the mexican government. they have a constitutional obligation to ensure that mexicans are able to exercise free expression, that the press can operate freely. in fact, we've confirmed a meeting tomorrow with the president of mexico. we released a report this week. we met with journalists in one of the more violent states in the country and we are going to call on the president to do all within his power to ensure that

those responsible for these crimes are brought to justice and not protected and are not able to operate with impunity. >> brangham: i mean, murdering journalists is, obviously, one end of a very awful spectrum. at the other end of the spectrum we have other nations like turkey trying to suppress journalism in a very different way. >> if in mexico the problem is you have a very weak state that is unable to assert authority and protect the rights of its citizens, in turkey you have the opposite problem. you have a state that's becoming increasingly autocratic, led by a leader who has launched a consolidated crackdown on all of civil society, including the media, following an aborted coup, but this is a long-term trend in turkey, the consolidation and strengthening of state power and the suppression of critical voices. and turkey is actually the world's leading jailer of journalists. there were 81 journalists in

jail when we completed our annual census at the end of last year. >> brangham: again, in that circumstance, when you have a very strong government doing this, is this the role of other western pro journalistic governments to put pressure on turkey to stop this kind of behavior? >> absolutely. i think a very critical voice is miss, and that's the united states. that's-- that's president trump. and certainly the u.s. press freedom record has not been perfect, and certainly they have not exercised this influence as fully as they might, and we've been critical of that. but we think theyhave tremendous influence. the u.s. has been a defender of these values because they represent values that are so deeply essential to our political system. but president trump has welcomed to the white house president elsisi of egypt. he said he was doing a fantastic job, when in fact he's jailing journalists, 25 journalists in prison in egypt. he's rolled up on the the red

carpet for president xi of china, dozens of journalists in jail there. and he has failed coconfront president erdogan. in fact, he's been quite complimentary of erdogan. this is a key voice on behalf of journalists and press freedom that's missing right now. >> brangham: let's talk a little bit about president trump in this country. obviously, we still have a very strong, a very free and vibrant press in the united states. but the president, as you will know, constantly is hurling this accusation of fake news. he's accused journalists of being enemies of the people. what do you make of all that rhetoric? >> well, i think-- i think there are so many ways to put this. this has been a big topic of discussion, and there are so many things that i think president trump is trying to achieve. one is changing the subject sometimes when there's an uncomfortable story. one is sort of rallying a base that's-- that's-- that has a

very low-- low view of the role of the media and they might be responsive to that kind of criminal. criticism. journalists themselves, if you talk to journalists in washington, they really don't like this kind of language. they're threatened by it and are not at all sanguined. but they're able to do their job. they're able to resist this kind of pressure. i think where the damage is most acute is actually in the rest of the world, where autocratic leaders like err juan in turkey, or sisein egypt, feel emboldened by this kind of framing, that journalists are enemies. that journalists provide fake news. i mean, really, that's not the way the leader of the democratic world talks. that's the kind of rhetoric you hear from repressive leaders so it's very disturb. >> brangham: so do you think in the end that this may be a galvanizing moment for the american press to have-- to have this sort of very aggressive attack from the highest office in the land? >> well, it's galvanizing for

the moment, but i don't think we should declare victory. i think we have to be very cognizant. you know, it's a war of words now, and the words, you know, can be resisted. and journalists certainly feel, you know, they have a critical role. they feel there's more public support. ironically, every time the president attacks the media, you see subscriptions rise in the media outlets he's attacking. he's also obsess with the media. so journalists, biswrairl, ironically, feel they have more influence in a certain way because the president is watching or reading everything they say. you know, journalists don't yet feel chilled by this kind of speech, but i think there's a real danger that this chilling speech leads to policies, and that those policies have a real impact on the ability of journalists to do their job, and that's why we need to be vigilant. >> brangham: all right, joel simon, committee to protect journalists, thank you very much. >> thank you.

>> woodruff: president trump has pledged to revive the coal industry, and has already begun to roll back some government regulations. in one case, that means boosting so-called mountaintop mining. but even as many in coal country applaud those moves, there's concern over what it means for the environmental, too. that is the focus of this week's report from miles o'brien, part of our weekly series on "the leading edge" of science and technology. >> reporter: rocky hackworth is a coal miner, who makes a surprising claim. >> i'm a true environmentalist. i work in it and live in it. >> reporter: and he reshapes it. he manages the 1,600 acre, four- mile fork surface mine, 30 miles south of charleston, west virginia. this is a state where the thick, deep layers, or seams, of coal are all but gone after 200 years of relentless underground mining. >> now, you got a lot more of the smaller, thinner seams that are on top of these mountains.

those areas have already been mined out. so, the surface mine was just a natural progression. >> reporter: with a mother lode of unnatural consequences. in the hills of west virginia, surface mining carries a huge cost-- nothing less than mountains themselves; the icons of this beautiful state. >> they had everything here. they had two or three post offices, i think. >> reporter: clay mullins is a former underground miner who lives near a mountaintop removal mine in pax. he endures the sound of daily explosions, and the destruction of woods where he once hunted and fished. >> i think west virginians are sacrificing too much of our mountains, our wildlife. our wildlife really suffers. i just don't like looking out and seeing the mountains get torn out the way they are. >> reporter: 10% of the land in central appalachia is now either active or reclaimed surface mines.

>> the central appalachian landscape has been fundamentally changed, and it's been changed in a way that it's not going to recover from. those mountains are not going to grow back. >> reporter: emily bernhardt is a professor of biogeochemistry at duke university. she's been researching the decapitation of mountains for seven years, trying to understand how it affects the rivers and streams below. >> the problem is that for every, about a meter of coal, you have about 99 meters of rock that you have to put somewhere during this process. and, when you're in a landscape like appalachia, the place that most of that rock ends up being put is in river valleys. >> reporter: when the rock is pulverized in the mining process, toxic chemicals and minerals locked inside for millennia are released, and exposed to the air, creating two areas of concern. >> one, that the water coming out of these mines is salty, it's full of rock-derived salts, and that by itself is stressful to many freshwater organisms. and the sort of subsidiary

problem is that, that salt contains lots of elevated levels of trace metals, which have known toxicity to organisms. >> reporter: but the mining industry believes that concern is overstated. >> this is a good example of a ditch that we have to build on top of a valley field. >> reporter: rocky hackworth showed me the trenches and retention ponds designed to capture runoff, and protect the surrounding environment. >> that way, you don't have anything that leaving the property. downstream, there are no consequences. we've had samples taken out for eight years and we've never had a water issue. >> reporter: the coal industry says it tests water continuously. chris hamilton is the senior vice president of the west virginia coal association. >> it's not something that's done haphazardously. there's a very, very high premium placed on that, and it's a very important aspect, just like personal and individual mine health and safety. >> reporter: but the data tells

a different story. we joined emily bernhardt's colleague, eric moore, as he did some fieldwork near the largest surface mine in central appalachia. active for more than 40 years, the hobet mine has transformed about 10,000 acres of natural mountain peaks into manmade mesas. the duke team presides over 14 different monitoring sites, in what appear to be clean mountain streams. they measure temperature, oxygen levels and acidity, and they also test the conductivity of the water-- a good indication of the health of the stream. in this case, the number is more than 1,900 micro-siemens per centimeter. what does that mean? >> well, compared to our natural watersheds, they run around 150. >> reporter: in this mountain stream, the conductivity is similar to an urban waterway filled with road salt and other pollutants. the only possible source here:

the chemicals unleashed when the mountaintops are destroyed. this is not a healthy stream? >> correct, not at all. >> reporter: it looks good. >> yeah, looks fine. >> reporter: but it's not. >> not at all. >> reporter: in the final days of the obama administration, the federal office of surface mining reclamation and enforcement published a new rule designed to protect streams like this. it would have prevented mining companies from impacting the hydrologic balance, forced them to monitor the water during mining, and mandated streams be restored to their natural state after the mining was over. >> we saw signs of every agency that had any responsibility over mining, proposed onerous rule after onerous rule, which really served to restrict, if not close down a number of mining operations here. >> reporter: but president trump has made some big promises to help the coal mining industry.

>> and for those miners, get ready, because you'll be working your asses off. >> reporter: in february, he signed legislation killing the stream protection rule. and, the president is promising more regulatory relief to bring back mining jobs. are people optimistic now here in coal country in west virginia? >> very much optimistic, 100%. it changed the day after the election. >> reporter: but scientists believe surface mining is taking a big toll, not just to the mountains, and streams, but also to the humans who live nearby. >> if you value a public health, this form of destruction around people's community should stop, and even if that means that the mining companies make less money or the coal stays on the ground forever. >> reporter: michael hendryx is a professor of applied health science at indiana university. he has studied the health effects of mountaintop removal in west virginia for ten years.

he has documented high occurrences of heart, lung, kidney diseases and some forms of cancer among people who live near mines. but the mining industry is skeptical. >> there's a segment of our culture and society here that's had some ill health and some health effects, and most of that has been attributed thus far to lifestyle, diet, smoking and things of that nature. >> reporter: so hendryx is launching a new study designed to factor out those other causes. he and his team will collect detailed health data along with environmental exposures to various toxins. participants will receive passive air sampling devices inside and outside their homes, and on their wrists; silicone wristbands absorb certain toxins. >> we're trying now to try to make those connections more direct between environmental

conditions in these communities and the exposures that individual people are facing, and the health consequences of those. >> reporter: the consequences to the landscape and the environment are more clear-cut. at four-mile fork, and all other mines, federal regulations require them to sculpt and replant the land that is mined out. >> these mountains have natural resources that god put there and they were put here for a reason to be used and we're using them and putting them back in place. >> reporter: but there is no way to recreate what nature made here. but, people who live near a surface mine, like former miner clay mullins, say the landscape is forever altered. >> it all comes back to that almighty dollar. that's what they care about, and that's what they're in business for, is to make money. everybody understands that stuff, but you got to draw a line between what's good for the health of your workers and what's good for the health of the earth.

>> reporter: wherever that line in the sand was before, the trump administration is clearly determined to move mountains for the coal industry, even as it does the same in central appalachia. in kanawha county, west virginia, i'm miles o'brien for the pbs newshour. >> woodruff: now, questions about the ever-growing scope of facebook's empire and social network, and whether the company is embracing enough responsibility for its reach. today, facebook c.e.o. mark zuckerberg announced they will add 3,000 more people to monitor live video, after problems with violence and hate speech. hari sreenivasan takes it from there. >> sreenivasan: the decision comes after a series of cases where people shared live video of murder and suicide. recent examples: a murder in

cleveland last month that was posted live on facebook; and, a man in thailand posted video of him murdering his 11-month-old daughter. it was not removed for 24 hours. once facebook makes these announced hires, there will be 7,500 employees to monitor thousands of hours of videos uploaded constantly. farhad manjoo is a tech columnist for the "new york times," who has been closely covering facebook. he joins me to talk about this issue, and other questions facing the company's role. farhad, so let's first-- today's news. how significant is this? >> i think it's significant. i mean it's a significant sort of step up in their ability to monitor these videos, and it should help. the way it works is there's lots of videos going on, on facebook all the time. if somebody sees something that looks bad, that looks like it may be criminal or some other, you know, terrible thing, they flag it, and the flagged videos go to these reviewerses, and just having more of these reviewerses should make the whole process faster.

it should help. i mean, i think the question is why it took them a year to do this. >> sreenivasan: put the scale in perspective here. if they have 1.2 billion active users a month-- or whatever it is they talk about-- even at one half of 1%, if they wanted to harm themselves and put this on facebook. that's six million people. how do these 7,000 stop that? >> yeah, i mean, the way tech companies generally work, is they manage scale by, you know, leveraging commuters, basically. there's a lot of kind of algorithmic stuff that goes into making sure-- they try to, you know, cut down the pool that the human reviewers have to look at. and there is some experience in this, in the valley. i mean, youtube has had to deal with this sort of thing for years. and the way they've really come around to doing it is a similar process. like, they have thousands and thousands of hours of videos uploaded essentially every minute, and they count on kind of the viewers to flag anything

that's terrible, and then it goes to these human reviewers. so it's a flas can work. about the-- it's a process that can work. the difficult in facebook's case is it's live video so they have to get it down much more quickly. you know, it's possible that they may need more people or some other, you know, algorithmic solution, but i think this is a-- you know, it should be an improvement over what they have now. >> sreenivasan: you mentioned it took them so long to get to this point. why? >> i think this is the real sort of cultural blind spot for facebook in general. oftentimes, they go into these projects, you know, facebook live is an example, but many of the other things they've done with, you know, tremendous optimism, as a company, and mark zuckerberg as a technologist, he has tremendous optimism in technology. and they often fail to see or appreciate the possible kind of down sides of their technology in the ways that it could be

misused. i mean, i think that what we've seen with live-- with the live video is a small example. the way that facebook has sort of affected elections, the way that, you know, the fake news problem we saw in the u.s. election. the way it's been used as a tool for propaganda in various other parts of the world. you know, those are huge examples of, you know, what looked like a fairly simple solution technologically, like we're going to get everyone connected and have them share the news. you know, it brings some real deep, like, social questions that they are only lately beginning to confront in a serious way. >> sreenivasan: so, this combination of i guess an optimism in the technology and design, and a faith in users are ultimately good and will make the right choice. i mean, is that the sort of core cultural concern or problem that ceems the company making these sorts of decisions? >> that's part of it. and the other thing to remember is, you know, theris, you know,a technology company and speepped

is of the utmost concern for them. one of the things happening in the tech industry last year, is a whole bunch of other companies were rolling out live video systems, and facebook didn't want to be left behind. and so they created their live video system, and it became, you know, the biggest because they're the biggest social network. but with that sort of size comes, you know, an increased opportunity for misuse and more power, right, like a video on facebook that can be seen by, you know, potentially much more people has a lot more potential for being misused. and i think they-- it's not right to say that they don't drr those things. but it seems like it's on a back burner for them. and i think what's happening at facebook is a shift toward thinking about these issues at an earlier stage. and we've really seen this more recently in their work with the news industry. i mean, after the-- after what

happened-- after what happened in the election and the kind of controversy about fake news, they've started to-- they've rolled out a bunch of initiatives to do stuff to improve how news is seen on facebook. they've added fact checkers and other things. so i think their attitude is change, but it may be changing too slowly compared to how quick the technology they're rolling out is change. >> woodruff: all right, farhad manjoo of the "new york times," thanks so much. >> all right, great, thanks so much. >> woodruff: now to our newshour shares, something that caught our eye that may be of interest to you, too. it's springtime, and that means it's peak tornado season in the nation's central plains. we recently spoke with one wisconsin researcher who thinks modeling massive twisters with super-computers could help save lives. >> my name is leigh orf, and i am a scientist at the university

of wisconsin. i study thunderstorms. specifically, i study the super-cell thunderstorms that produce the most powerful tornadoes using computers to simulate them. only a small fraction of super-cells produce tornadoes, and only a small fraction of that fraction produce the kind of tornado that we're trying to study. but the reason we are studying it is because when you think of 2011 with joplin, missouri; tuscaloosa, alabama; el reno, oklahoma; these were the big, long-track ef-5 tornadoes that just do incredible amounts of damage. and if people can't get out of the way of those storms, a lot of fatalities. a computer model like the one we're using essentially emulates or simulates the real atmosphere as faithfully as we scientists know how to make it work. we use the equations of physics to essentially grow a cloud in a what goes into the model are the atmospheric conditions of winds,

temperature, pressure and humidity, and from there on, the model just integrates forward in time. this sequence is designed to give you a sense of the scale of the storm, and what's really striking about this is you can see how small the tornado is, at least with respect to the full storm. but the reason i do this is to give people an understanding of how-- why we need super-computers to study this because we need the whole storm to be at this very high resolution in order to capture the tornado. this highlights the stream-wise vorticity current which is a feature we've identified in these simulations that seems to be important to maintaining the strength of the storm and, therefore, the tornado. they are just massless-- we call them parcels, air parcels in meteorology. if you are hanging out in the stream-wise vorticity area where those yellow parcels are, the tornado is coming right at you. they take a horizontal path where they are rotating along a horizontal axis, and then they go tilted upward into the storm's updraft. depending one where you put these source regions, you can see the air is doing very different things.

the red region is the stream-wise vorticity current. the darker green region, this is air that's in the cold pool of the super-cell, and it seems to be directly feeding the tornado. the whole reason we do this kind of research is to essentially produce better forecasts of when these things are going to happen. too many people still die from tornadoes in the-- around the world, but in the united states, too. we have a false alarm problem where we issue a warning when the tornado is not happening. and then we have the problem where the tornado is already happening, but we haven't issued a warning. so the challenge is to do a much better job at producing these warnings even before the storm has formed, and the first step is to first understand the storm. you can't forecast a storm until you understand it, and we're just getting to the point where we're better understanding what's going on. >> woodruff: on the newshour online right now: medicare does not help to pay for home-based care, unless requested by a

physician as medically necessary. but even for people who qualify, it can be a struggle to get those benefits, according to our medicare expert. learn more at our website, www.pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. on thursday: we head to janesville, wisconsin, to see how house speaker paul ryan's hometown is doing, after its largest employer moved out. i'm judy woodruff. join us online, and again right here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, and we'll see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> bnsf railway. >> supported by the rockefeller foundation. promoting the wellbeing of humanity around the world, by building resilience and inclusive economies. more at www.rockefellerfoundation.org.

>> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and individuals. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> you're watching pbs.

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