captioning sponsored by wnet >> thompson: on this edition for saturday, november 25: the trump administration appoints budget director mick mulvaney to oversee the consumer financial protection bureau, but is the position open?; a year after fidel castro's death, a look at his decades in power through the lens of one american cameraman; and rohingya refugees recount the horrors experienced in myanmar that sent them fleeing into bangladesh. next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.b.p. foundation.

the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter, in memory of abby m. o'neill. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, megan thompson. >> thompson: good evening, and thank you for joining us. there's confusion tonight over who's in charge of a federal agency created to protect americans in their banking and financial dealings. the consumer financial protection bureau was created by president obama and congress after the 2008 financial crisis. the uncertainty began yesterday when the agency's director, richard cordray, an obama

appointee, officially resigned and immediately promoted his chief of staff, leandra english, to deputy director. that means, under the law, she would be acting director until a permanent replacement is nominated and approved by the senate. but hours after cordray resigned, the trump administration named its budget director, mick mulvaney, as acting director of the bureau. today, the white house said it has the legal authority to appoint mulvaney and that he'll take over monday morning while keeping his budget job. it cited the federal vacancies act, which lets a president name an acting head of any agency who's been approved by the senate, like mulvaney, for another post. in the past, mulvaney called the agency "a sick, sad" joke, adding it had too much authority to regulate the financial industry and too little accountability. massachusetts democratic senator elizabeth warren, who proposed the creation of the agency, said today on twitter the law is clear, leandra english is acting

director and president trump can't override that. the dispute could end up in court." time" magazine is disputing president trump's characterization of how it chooses its "person of the year." president trump, last year's person of the year, said on twitter yesterday that "time" had called him to say "i was probably going to be named" and would he agree to an interview and photoshoot? mr. trump claims he turned the magazine down, saying," 'probably' is no good. thanks anyway." responding on twitter, "time's" chief content officer, alan murray, said, "amazing. not a speck of truth here."" time" will unveil its person of the year on december 6 and says it does not comment on its choice or process before then. the trump administration is walking back its decision to force the closure of a palestinian diplomatic mission in washington, d.c. just a week ago, the state department announced the mission would need to close because palestinian president mahmoud abbas had called for the international criminal court to

prosecute israelis for building new settlements in territory claimed by palestinians. a u.s. law requires the mission to close if palestinians ask the i.c.c. to prosecute israelis. a state department spokesman says the palestinian office should "limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the israelis and palestinians," and that restriction could be lifted in 90 days. overseas, egyptian officials say yesterday's mosque attack in the northern sinai region killed at least 305 people, including 27 children, and wounded approximately 130. officials said today 25 to 30 militants, who arrived in five s.u.v.s armed with automatic rifles, carried out the attack, and at least one attacker carried an isis flag. the mosque is used by sufis, a mystic islamic movement whose members have been attacked by isis in the past. today, egypt said warplanes struck and destroyed the vehicles used in the attack and killed whoever was in them.

yemen is now receiving humanitarian aid that had been blocked for three weeks by saudi arabia. two red cross planes and one unicef plane brought the first shipments of food and medical supplies from amman, jordan, to the yemeni capital of sanaa today. the medical supplies included polio vaccines. yemen also needs water pumps to stem its growing cholera epidemic. yemen's 2.5-year-old civil war pits iran-backed rebels against yemen's internationally- recognized government, which is supported by saudi arabia. which unsafe toys should be avoided this holiday season? read a report from a consumer watchdog group at www.pbs.org/newshour. >> thompson: an article in this weekend's "new york times" magazine describes tough tactics being used with greater frequency by the u.s. military to stop drug trafficking around the world." the coast guard's floating guantanamos" reports on how

suspected drug smugglers are being detained at sea for weeks or months before they are charged with a crime or appear in an american court. this happened 700 times between last september and this september." new york times" reporter seth freed wessler wrote the story in partnership with the investigative fund at the nation institute, and he joins me now from boston. so, first, seth, i wanted you to just describe to us what exactly the coast guard is doing. and you also feature the story of a gentleman named johnny. you can tell us a little bit about what he experienced? >> well, the u.s. coast guard has been deployed deep into the pacific ocean, sometimes as many as 3,000 miles away from the nearest u.s. port, to pick up shipments of cocaine moved between south america-- colombia and ecuador-- and central america. and they're picking up suspected smugglers aboard small speed boats in the ocean. and i write about a number of

men who were detained by the coast guard aboard u.s. ships in international waters and held there for weeks or months at a time in a kind of detention that's expanding rapidly in the sort of maritime war on drugs. >> thompson: talk a little bit more about the conditions that these men were held in. >> they describe condition where's they were-- they were-- they were shackled, often very tightly in tight quarters, unshackled only to be allowed to use the bathroom, which often was only a plastic bucket on the deck of the ship, and held day after day. in the case of johnny, who i write about, an ecuador an fisherman, he was held with a group of other men for 70 days aboard a series of coast guard cutters. and he really believed that he might disappear. he had no idea where he was being taken. he was simply being held as the coast guard cutters were moving around the pacific, picking up

more suspected smugglers and detaining them aboard the ships. >> thompson: so where do these people end up? >> well, in years past, when the coast guard has picked up drugs in the ocean, it's very often sent the smugglers on board those boats back to their cotries, back to countries nearby. but since 2012, when the department of defense launchedy a program called "operation mrtia" which has focused on trying to interdict drugs, cocaine mostly, in and near transit zones when they leave south america, smugglers, suspected smugglers have been brought back to the united states in huge numbers to face prosecution here. >> thompson: can you talk a little bit more about what the coast guard said to you during your reporting of the story? i mean, what's their response? >> well, again you know the coast guard-- the coast guard says that it's logistically difficult to operate in the high seas of the pacific, very far away from the united states.

and what's clear is that the infrastructure to move people more quickly off the boats is not kept up at all. coast guard officers i spoke to, current and former coast guard officers, they're really uncomfortable about these practices. they know-- and the coast guard says-- these ships are not equipped as detention centers. so instead, they're holding people in conditions that, for the detainees, are really-- are terrifying. >> thompson: and is there any evidence that this practice is stopping the flow of drugs into the u.s.? >> we can't really draw a line ard is doing and drug use in the iewts. cocaine use in particular, and we're really talking about cocaine here. it goes up and down. even as the number of people being detained each year in recent years has been going up and up and. >> thompson: all right, seth freed wessler, thank you so much for your reporting. >> thank you.

>> thompson: bangladesh and myanmar have said they will let the united nations help implement their new agreement to start repatriating thousands of muslim rohingya refugees in the next two months. since august, 600,000 rohingya have fled mostly buddhist myanmar into neighboring bangladesh after myanmar soldiers carried out a brutal campaign burning villages, shooting civilians and committing mass rape. jonathan miller from independent television news has this report from bangladesh on what some of the refugees have endured. >> reporter: kutupalong is claustrophobic and congests, and for some, overwhelming. nor bahar, collapsed at noon. no one rushed to help her. men nearby wouldn't touch her. it's culturally tabu.

in her delirious state, nor was left to lie in the blistering sun until two women who didn't know her came to her aid. we would later learn of some of the terrible things she had suffered and seen. her brother and in-laws, all killed by the myanmar military. her sister-in-law raped, then murdered. nor had been among the first to arrive exactly two months ago. inside a small clinic, she collapsed again, and then slowly recovered and rehydrated. clearance operations against both government of suu kyi calls terrorist extremists, have no driven more than 600,000 unwanted stateless rohingya civilians into exile. the reality is that they faced a blitzkrieg of terror, burning, mass murder, and mass rape. while the myanmar military

denies that its soldiers are doing this, the use of rape by the burmese army has been documented over generations against rohingya women, and in the current ethnic cleansing campaign, reports of rape are legion. there's powerful stigma attached to rape in this conservative muslim society. the humiliatingly intimate nature of it means rape often goes unreported. but one womanmented to tell us her devastating story. >> ( translated ): four soldiers gang raped me. it was so painful. i begged them to release me, but they kicked me instead. i was bleeding. when they stopped, i just lay there, and they moved on to the next house, where there was a young girl and a mother of three. i saw three soldiers take the young girl inside and rape her. i don't know what happened to the mother.

there were a lot of soldiers, more than 50. it was disastrous for the women in our village. our children were terrified of the soldiers. i used to keep my baby on my lap as i thought they might spare me if they saw this, but the soldiers would grab the baby, throw her on the floor, and stomp on her, then they would rape me. they did whatever they wanted. >> reporter: many of those who have survived rape have ended up in these camps, but the camps were not designed with women in mind. they've not really been designed at all. it's just a hurriedly built refugee city. there are no segregated toilets or washing facilities for women. there is no privacy. maury specializes in women's hygiene but says she doubles as a therapist, building their

trust, listening to their experiences, listening to what they say they need. >> when we even establish a latrine, we talk to the women separately. we ask where we can make it. what area will be accessible for you? we identify pregnant women, elderly women, and, also, children. >> reporter: as the light faded tonight, we went back to see nor bahar. she said that being seven months pregnant, he often felt nauseous stand, waiting for hours, and yesterday wasn't the first time she'd fainted. there's no option, though, she said. we have to get food. as to the camp toilet issue, it's a nightmare, she says. the nearest one's miles away. "i often faint and fall over." it's bad. bit it's nowhere near as bad as it got back in burma, and having literally run for their lives, none of the women we spoke to

had any desire to go back. >> thompson: today marks one year since former cuban dictator fidel castro died after having ruled his island nation for nearly 50 years. now, a new documentary available on netflix chronicles the lives of three families during that period of history. it's called "cuba and the cameraman," and newshour weekend's christopher booker recently spoke to the director, jon alpert. this segment is part of newshour weekend's ongoing series of conversations with documentary filmmakers. >> reporter: jon alpert's first rip to cuba in 1974 was a quick one. defying the american embargo, he and a friend sailed into the country illegally, where they were briefly detained. their trip ended hours later after a rushed, chaperoned drive through havana by cuban authorities. >> they showed up with these two

gorgeous cadillac convertibles with the big fins and stuff like that, took us on a three-hour trip around havana and said, "okay, you've seen cuba, time to go home," and... and kicked us out. >> reporter: if the cuban authorities had hoped to diminish alpert's interest in their country, it didn't work. the 24-year-old new york city filmmaker, intrigued by the communist revolution, was only just getting started. >> i want free good health care for everybody in the united states. i really want it. i want free good schools for everybody in the united states. i want decent housing. i want equal opportunity. and they were... they were going for it down there in cuba, so i sure wanted to see for myself. >> reporter: for the next 45 years, alpert made regular trips to the island just south of florida, focusing on three families as they grew and struggled along with the cuban experiment. now, for the first time, he's assembled his hundreds of hours of footage into a single film, "cuba and the cameraman." as you filmed through the '70s, was there a moment where you said, "i'm just going to stick

with this story before i actually start cutting something, before i start making a... a film out of this"? >> well, i would like to be able to tell you that... that i was smart enough and perceptive enough and artistic enough to know that this was the film that we were going to be making, but i wasn't. it was in the second decade that i realized that i want to tell the story by following people over a long period of time, because time is a very, very important character in this movie. we meet my friends, we meet fidel, but tick, tick, tick, tick. the revolution over time and these people's lives over time, maybe it's the most important element. >> reporter: but as alpert shows, their stories, like the story of cuba, can't escape the realities of the cold war. cuba made its way through the u.s. embargo with its dependence on sugar exports and subsidies from the russians, only to see food shortages and empty shelves after the 1991 collapse of the soviet union. >> you know, if this film would have stopped in 1977, we'd all

be headed down to cuba right now based on where the revolution was at that particular point. but, the united states says, "you know, we know how to fix this," and we dumped our sugar reserves on the open market. we crash the sugar price. that, like, shot two tires out from the revolution. the cubans, the way they were managing the country, we shot a tire themselves. and when the soviet union collapsed, this was a car that wasn't getting any place any more, economically. fidel, i broke the blockade. i brought you the best beer from the united states. >> reporter: interwoven into the film are alpert's e meeting just before he died last year. how do you describe your feelings for fidel castro? >> he's in... in a tippy top group of people, certainly in

our lifetimes, who had an extraordinary impact on the world. they absolutely impacted every single cuban, whether people in their own personal cases feel it's for good or for bad. >> reporter: while castro worked to expand access to education and medical care in cuba, he was a dictator who denied his country political freedom, a free press, and jailed his political enemies. how do you think about or even reconcile some of the realities of the... of the revolution and some of the realities of the castro regimes? >> i'm not trying to reconcile anything. i'm basically trying to help the viewer understand what's been going on in cuba for the past 50 years. i'm not there to make excuses. i'm not there to misrepresent anything. i'm there to present to you what's been going on in front of my camera, what's happened in the lives of my people, and to allow you to... to make up your own conclusions. >> reporter: 45 years of footage

captures the long, slow and diminishing promise of the revolution while his characters offer a window into the resilience of the cuban people. the young girl who hoped to become a nurse leaves for the united states to work as a janitor. the street hustler spends time in jail for selling items on the black market. the peasant brothers working five years to replace a prized ox stolen during the food shortages of the 1990s. >> as much as i love cuba, i'm also sad because i would have liked for everything to have succeeded down there, and it... it didn't. >> reporter: and what of that romanticism that first drew you to cuba and drew you to look at the revolution the way you have? >> so, my naivete was blown out. i... i realized in my first week in cuba that not everybody in cuba is thinking about the other person, not everybody is altruistic, that you got selfish s.o.b.s in cuba just like you have here in new york city.

we don't... we all don't have to do great things, but we should all try to do something to make the world a better place than the world we came into. and this looks at that quest over 45 years in cuba and tries to evaluate the attempts of people to make the world a better place. >> reporter: what change do you see in yourself as you watch these tapes and then as you watch this cohesive narrative? >> i wish that i was the young, energetic, vibrant person that started this film, but nobody lives a life like that. and you hope that you have fought for... for whatever you lose over those years; that... that what's nice about filmmaking is that you haven't really lost it because we get to put all those little moments in a bottle. and at the end of 45 years, we

got a bottle of wine that's been aging for 45 years that i get to offer to you. i've been given birth to this film for 45 years, and i'm really happy that it's out. i'm proud of my little baby. took a long time. >> thompson: the u.s. navy today identified the three sailors killed when their transport plane crashed in the philippine sea this week as it aproasmed the aircraft carrier "ronald reagan." the eight other people on the plane were rescued. and finally, on this international day for the elimination of violence against women, french president emanuel machron, announced measures making it easier to report sexual assault claims to police. hundreds marched through paris to demand his government spend more to carry out the initiatives, including teaching

school kids about sexism and violence against women. that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm megan thompson. good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter, in memory of abby m. o'neill. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by:

and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

celebrating easter steves: all across europe.s, easter is the most thoughtful and sacred of christian holidays. it's a time of quiet reflection and passionate ritual, swinging from great sorrow to great joy. across generations and across cultures, easter celebrates both resurrection and the promise of new life. ♪ across europe, easter is steeped in history and tradition,