captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, december 2: the republican-held senate passes a nearly $1.5 trillion bill that rewrites the nation's tax codes; from cyprus, the search for missing family members more than 40 years after the war; and, changing the way classical music is heard. 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, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening, and thank you for joining us. the u.s. senate has passed one of the most sweeping overhauls to the u.s. tax code in more than 30 years. >> the tax cuts and jobs act, as amended, is passed. ( gavel bangs ) ( applause ) >> sreenivasan: just before 2:00 a.m. this morning, with vice president mike pence presiding, the u.s. senate narrowly passed a nearly $1.5 trillion tax bill by a vote of 51-49.

after last-minute negotiations on the floor of the senate, the final text of the nearly 500- page bill was released just hours before the vote. the senate bill permanently reduces the corporate tax rate from 35%-20% starting in 2019; reduces some personal income tax rates, including the top bracket, but only through 2025; it ends the deduction for state and local income taxes but allows for the deduction of up to $10,000 in property taxes; and repeals the affordable care act mandate requiring individuals to have health insurance. at a fundraiser today in new york city, president trump touted the senate's passage of the tax bill. >> we're going to grow the country, we're going to grow jobs, we're going to be growing everything. we have companies now that are pouring back into our country, even before this. >> sreenivasan: senate majority leader mitch mcconnell said the overhaul would spur economic growth.

>> i'm totally convinced this is a revenue neutral bill, actually a revenue producer bill that's going to get america moving again. >> sreenivasan: but despite that claim, the joint committee on taxation estimates the bill will still add about $1 trillion to the deficit even after factoring in an economic boost from tax cuts. the lone republican to vote against the measure was retiring senator bob corker of tennessee, who objected to the long-term cost. no democrats voted for the legislation. they blasted the bill's benefits to corporations and high earners. democrats also objected to the lack of time to review last minute changes. >> there is a trail of broken promises, broken promises to working families in the mad dash to pass this bill. and the american people understand this is the first step of continuing attacks on medicare and medicaid and social security. this vote will not be forgotten. >> sreenivasan: for more i'm joined by the newshour's lisa

desjardins. what kinds of last-minute changes were necessary to get this legislation across the finish line? >> there are so many ways to look at this bill. i think if you look at the personalities, who won out, who lost out, and those also correspond to the issues that one and lost, probably the biggest losener this was the deficit and the deficit hawks who felt like this bill is spending too much at the risk for future generations. and bob corker was the leader of that group. in the end, he could not get any changes to the bill. -- he could not get the trigger that he wanted. the cost of the bill remained the same and bob corker, harry, remained the only republican no vote. who did get changes? i think the big winners were susan collins of maine and ted cruz of texas. susan collins was able to get into the bill a change that brought back a property tax deduction. the senate bill completely wiped out all deductions for state and local taxes. now, the house had included a $10,000 deduction for property

taxes. susan collins negotiated that back into the senate bill. she also was able to get an increase in expansion, temporarily, on the medical expensing deduction, something that will especially help people in her state. she has kind of more health problems than average in the state of maine. all right, so ted cruz, what did he get? he was able to keep that deficit trigger out of the bill. he was able to keep the tax structure more or less the same, which is what he wanted, and, hari, late last night, ted cruz got through one of the final amendments to the bill this was something that will allow parents of kids k-12 to use kind of a tax-incentive shelter for 529, which right now is only for college savings. now in this bill, parents who want to send kids to private high schools could use 529s to save at a tax-deductible rate. same for home schooling. >> sreenivasan: the democrats were complaining last night, that the final bill was reslied just hours before the vote.

is that normal? >> i worry it's the new normal, to be honest. this is not what happened with the affordable care act. there were some late changes to the affordable care act, but not this late. the text of the affordable care act had been seen for weeks in the bulk of it. in this case, we got a 479-page amendment to the bill, which was in fact the bill itself. it substitutedly the previous version. we got that publicly at about 9:00 eastern time. the vote was just five hours later. some senators got it a couple of hours earlier, but the version they got, hari, was filled with handwriting, things were "xed" out. it was not clear to read. that was still just six, seven hours before the vote. this is not the way the senate or house used to run it butt it has become more normal in recent years. >> sreenivasan: this is not the point where it actually goes to the president's desk. that's a wreck reconciliation between the house and 98 versions. are we likely to see tensions

there? what are the big differences still out there? >> there are big differences. for instance, in the house bill billthey cut the individual tax rates, what you and pay, from seven different rates to four. the senate keeps the seven rates. in addition, the senate cuts the top tax rate for the wealthiest. the house doesn't do that. so they've got to fig that you are out. there are also some differences in when the individual tax rate would apply. for the senate it's just a temporary individual cut that expires in 2025. also, the senate brought back something called the alternative minimum tax last night, and that's going to be a real problem for the house, so they have to work that out among other things. hari, i think this deal is going to get done rather quickly. >> sreenivasan: all right lisa desjardins joining us from washington today. thank you so much for your time. >> oh, thanks for having me. you're welcome. >> sreenivasan: president trump responded for the first time publicly today after his former national security advisor, michael flynn, pleaded guilty for lying to the f.b.i. about his interactions with the russians. mr. trump once again insisted that his team did not collude

with russia. >> what has been shown is no collusion, no collusion. there's been absolutely... there's been absolutely no collusion. so, we're very happy. >> sreenivasan: trump later tweeted that lying to the vice president and the f.b.i. forced flynn's departure, but added:" it is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. there was nothing to hide!" as part of flynn's plea deal, he has agreed to cooperate with the probe into russia's involvement in the 2016 election. special counsel robert mueller relieved a top f.b.i. agent from the investigation into russian election meddling this past summer. this follows a justice department inspector general investigation into whether or not agent peter strzok sent text messages expressing anti-trump views. a spokesman for mueller said the agent was removed from the tea"" immediately upon learning of the allegations." he has since been reassigned to the f.b.i.'s human resources llowing allegations of sexual

misconduct. in an article published by buzzfeed news on friday, the 37- year-old democrat is accused by his former finance director of making repeated unwanted sexual advances toward her during his 2016 congressional campaign. in a statement released today, losi called the woman'sancy account of events "convincing" and urged kihuen to step down. kihuen has apologized in a statement but says he does not remember the incidents. retired veteran public radio host john hockenberry has been accused of sexual harassment. three of hockenberry's former female co-hosts and other female colleagues allegedly filed complaints about unwanted sexual advances, bullying behavior and harassing emails. in a statement, hockenberry apologized for his actions, saying in part: "it horrifies me that i made the talented and driven people i worked with feel uncomfortable," adding "i have no excuses." read more of lisa desjardins' analysis of the senate

republican's tax bill. visit www.pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: cyprus, an island in the eastern part of the mediterranean sea, gained its independence from british in 1960. but it's been divided since the mid-1970s when war broke out between the island's two main ethnic groups, greeks and turks. the continued tensions on the island have almost brought the two nato member nations, greece and turkey, to war. there have been talks to try to bring the two sides of the island back together, but they haven't worked. there is one hopeful spot for reconciliation in cyprus. it's taking place in a lab with a small group of scientists. newshour weekend's christopher livesay has the story. >> reporter: since 1974, cyprus has been a country divided between the ethnically greek south and turkish north. even today, one of the most painful aspects of the war that split the country in two is the fate of the hundreds of people on both sides who disappeared in the violence decades ago and were never found.

>> this is our anthropological laboratory. >> reporter: that's where florian von koenig and his team come in. these are remains of how many people? >> 30-plus remains on the tables. >> reporter: von koenig is the united nations' permanent secretary to the committee on missing persons in cyprus. its mission is to find and identify the remains of those missing brothers, sons and fathers-- more than 2,000 people in all, from the very old to the very young. this was an infant. >> yeah. >> reporter: approximately how old? >> three to six months. >> reporter: three to six months. >> the trauma on the right hip. >> reporter: the committee on missing persons does not attempt to assign blame or establish the cause of death, although sometimes it's obvious. so, the hip was broken? >> yes. and we are thinking it was a gunshot wound. >> reporter: there was a gunshot wound here, a probable gunshot wound. >> yeah. >> reporter: the committee is using science to bring closure to families of the missing and possibly bring the country closer to reunification.

the process starts when investigators, often retired police officers, get a tip about a possible secret, unmarked burial site. they call archeologists to start digging-- nine teams equally divided between greek and turkish cypriots. sometimes they find the remains of one body; other times, the remains of many in a mass grave. >> the more complicated things are graves like these. you have no idea how many people are here. we've had graves where we've found, you know, basically only small finger bones and... and... and knee caps, and they turned out to belong to 68 people. >> reporter: remains are brought here to labs in the neutral, united nations-controlled green zone in cyprus, to be cleaned and organized so identification can begin. it's a process that can take months. >> the remains come here with chain of custody and with archeological reports and recovery logs, so they show us what was exhumed in each burial. >> reporter: including belongings, clothing? >> exactly. including non-biological

artifacts. >> reporter: so, that includes in this case the soles of shoes, a house key? >> exactly. >> reporter: some spare change. personal items, like rings, can be clues to identifying the victims. the lab also relies on victims' dental records and d.n.a. to compare with samples donated by relatives of the missing. the lab staff is a reflection of the island's political division and personal loss. greek cypriot theodora eleftheriou and turkish cypriot emine cetinsel both have missing relatives. two years ago, cetinsel discovered one of the skeletons she was analyzing belonged to her own grandfather. so, you found your own grandfather's remains by chance? >> yes, because we work blindly. i mean, we don't know who they are. and once the d.n.a. results came, it was my grandfather. >> reporter: so, this is your grandfather? >> yes. and he was 34 years old when he got missing. >> reporter: her grandfather was

a turkish cypriot civil servant who disappeared on his way home from work at a time of heightened tensions before the 1974 war. his body, found more than 50 years later, showed signs of multiple gunshot wounds. was it emotional? >> not while i was analyzing. after i found out that it is him, the emotional part was to tell my parents about it. >> reporter: what was that like? >> they were finally happy that he was found and final acceptance that he is actually dead. >> reporter: it's one of the most important parts of the process-- reuniting families with the remains of their loved ones so they can have a proper burial, whether it be christian or muslim or non-religious. since 2006, the committee has identified 847 people, fewer than half of the missing. and the work being done here could help families in other conflicts around the world. how cutting edge is the work that you're doing? >> so, right now, we are, i

believe, the biggest lab in the world that deals with skeletal remains of missing persons and does the anthropological analysis on it. we've started to train others. we focus on the middle east region, so we've trained scientists from iraq, where there's more than 500,000 people missing. we have trained scientists from lebanon. we'll soon will be training syrians. so, there is a lot of interest, because the expertise you see here is very, very specific. >> reporter: these cypriots know their work will never be complete. do you think you will recover all of them? >> no. we know that we will not, because we... we know that many burials are already under roads, under buildings. so, okay, the committee tries to do the best, but we know that some remains are lost forever. >> reporter: nevertheless, they are not giving up. is this a healthy process for a country that's trying to reunify, or does it actually have a negative effect

sometimes? >> no. i mean, we strongly believe we in... in... in a number of ways, we contribute to reconciliation or we remove an obstacle to reconciliation, because there are thousands of families that are directly or indirectly affected, and case by case we allow these families to find closure. >> reporter: so, you are not just putting the bodies back together? you are putting the country back together? >> that's how we feel here, and that's why we are proud about our work. >> sreenivasan: when you think of classically-trained cellists, you probably don't think of rock 'n' roll, packed concert halls and millions of views on youtube. but, as newshour weekend's phil hirschkorn reports, the musical duo known as 2 cellos has changed that. he caught up with them on a recent tour stop here in new york. >> good evening, new york!

( cheers and applause ) >> reporter: 2 cellos don't deliver a typical cello concert. their instruments are electric and loud. they break bows. they play more rock ¡n' roll than classical music, and writhe around the stage. the two are stjepan hauser, 31, pfrom croatia; and luka sulic, 30, from slovenia. they've been cello rivals since they were childhood prodigies, but they started playing together as students at the royal academy of music in london, training as classical musicians. >> the problem with classical music are the performers that are not really delivering it in the right way. they don't connect with the audience. too many rules, too dry, too... too many walls between artist and the audience. >> reporter: playing with passion and adrenaline, their tastes turned to more contemporary compositions. the tracklist on their first three albums tapped a who's who

of rock ¡n' roll-- u2, sting, coldplay, mumford and sons, nirvana. nirvana's "smells like teen spirit" was on the setlist of their recent sold-out concert at radio city music hall in new york city. ♪ you guys are almost young enough to be the baby on the cover of "nevermind." how did you get exposed to that music in croatia and in slovenia? >> when we were teenagers we started watching mtv, you know, all the... nirvana playing unplugged. then, later on, we started... we were listening to michael jackson a lot. ( laughs ) ♪ >> reporter: a michael jackson song became their breakout video when they posted this recording of "smooth criminal" to youtube six years ago. ♪ >> it has this rhythmic...

♪ and people are not aware cello can be so powerful, so rhythmical. ♪ >> reporter: elton john noticed and invited them to play on his tour. soon, record labels were calling, and sony signed 2 cellos. ♪ their following soared after they posted this rendition of the ac/dc song, "thunderstruck"" ♪ it's now approaching 95 million views on youtube. ac/dc remains a staple of their concert repertoire, along with classic rock anthems like the rolling stones' "satisfaction." ♪

i've seen yo-yo ma play, and he sweats. but you guys are drenched. >> well, you have to give all you have, because people are there for you. you just need to give all you've got. >> sometimes i feel like our show is really like a boxing match, because it's like 12 rounds of hard, hard work. we are pushing each other to... to limits. >> reporter: 2 cellos has sold or streamed 1.25 million albums, and their talent and novelty has filled concert halls worldwide. at the opera house in sydney, australia, last year, and throughout this tour, they've closed their shows with u2's" with or without you." ♪

when miles davis made albums like "bitches brew" or "in a silent way," it was called fusion, right? a fusion of jazz and rock. is that what you're trying to do here, a fusion of classical and rock? do... do you consider yourselves a crossover artist? >> we... we consider ourselves musicians, primarily, and we don't like to divide music into different genres. for us, music is emotion. >> reporter: their current album adopts a quieter tone, focusing on film scores, from "the godfather..." ♪ ...to "chariots of fire." ♪ >> in a way, it was going back to the roots. it's a more classical style of playing, more melodic. i'm not sure why more symphony orchestras don't play film music. >> it's funny.

four years ago, we were still playing clubs for 200 people. >> reporter: how are the american audiences different from the audiences you play for around europe, all around the world? >> i think they are more... they are louder. they like to scream, they like to stand up, they like to have fun. and that's what we like, too. ♪ ( cheers and applause ) >> sreenivasan: the state of hawaii is responding to increased tensions with north korea. yesterday, officials there ran a drill to alert people in the event of a nuclear attack. the test was the first of its kind since the end of the cold war. but as the sirens sounded, they seemed to have little impact on local tourists and residents who were nearby on waikiki beach. this comes just days after north korea tested a powerful nuclear- capable missile. that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm hari sreenivasan.

thanks for watching. have a 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. rporate 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.

steves: sorrento is the ideal home base for exploring the stunning amalfi coast. tourists line up each morning, packing the buses which make the memorable day trip. but this is a case when i hire a cabbie, like raffaele monetti, to be my driver and guide. time for a trip on the amalfi? -yes. -okay. but, especially for a small group, when you factor in the value of your time and the frustration of trying to explore a congested and expensive bit of italian coastline on your own, a day with your own driver can be a fine value.

the amalfi coast is chaotic, scenic, in-love-with-life italy at its best. with its breathtaking scenery, dramatically perched port towns, and historic ruins, the amalfi is italy's coast with the most. whether you ride the bus or a taxi, the trip south from sorrento is one of the world's great road trips. you'll gain respect for the italian engineers who first built the road and even more respect for the bus drivers who drive it. [ horn honks ] cantilevered hotels and villas cling to the vertical terrain, and beautiful, sandy coves tease from far below. as you hyperventilate, notice how the mediterranean really twinkles.

traffic is so heavy that private tour buses are only allowed to go southbound. even so, because of the narrow roads and tight corners, expect some delays... -[ speaking italian ] steves: and enjoy the show.

♪ superstar tenor andrea bocelli travels to hollywood to perform some of the greatest melodies from the silver screen. ♪ moon river relive oscar-winning songs... ♪ wider than a mile movie musicals... ♪ maria classic themes... [ singing in italian ] and epic songs... [ singing in italian ] join us when the stars come out...