captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, april 8: dozens are dead and hundredsd injurellowing a suspected poison gas attack in syria. and, in our signature segment, 20 years after the good friday agreement in northern ireland, the work to maintain peace continue next on pbs newshour weekend. >> "pbs newshour weekend" is de possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. os and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's w we're your retirement company.

additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs rstation from vieike 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. there are disturbing reports of a possible chemical attack last night outside of damascus, just days after president trump spoke about pulling u.s. troops out of syria. the opposition-linked syriavi defense known as the white helmets reports at least 70 people died, most of them women and children. a warning that some of the video contains graphic images. this video uploaded by the white helmets shows the immediate aftermath of airhi striketting the rebel helda. area of do white helmets on the ground say survivors smelled strongly of chlorine. videos showed childreniteing doused wwater and given oxygen and inhalers.

the syrian government es apthat it used chemical weons. syrian state media claims that the syrian army used conventional artillery and air strikes to liberate the region from terrorists. foreign ministes from both russia and iran deny the reports of a chemical attack.id on twitter, prt trump called the offensive in douma "" mindless chemical attack." de also blamed russian pre vladimir putin, and iran, for backing syrian president bashars al, who he called an" animal". this is the first time he ncriticized putin by name twitter. president trump also warned thaye is a "big price t" republican senator lindsey graham of south carolina urg e president to turn those words into action. >> if he doesn't follow through and live up to that tweet, he's going to look weak in the eyes of russia and iran. so this is a defining moment, mr. president. you need to follow through with that tweet. >> sreenivasan: senator graham went on to suggest that pulling u.s. troops out of syria would be a "complete utter disaster." white house homeland security

advisor tom bossert was asked if the administration would respond militarily. >> so is it possible they-- there will be another e attack? >> i wouldn't take anything off the table. these are horrible photos. we're looking into the attack at this point.e ate department put out a stat president's senior national security cabinet have been talking with him and with each other all thughout the evening and this morning, and myself included. te sreenivasan: police in the german city of muesay there is still no clear motive for yesterday's van attack that killed two people and .jured 20 othe police are not yet releasing the name othe driver who died of a cted gunshot wound at the scene. they say the 48-year old german had previous run-ins with the law and a history of mental health problems, but n to terror groups and likely acted alone. elsewhere in europe, hunodrian voters sn long lines to vote in today's parliamentary elections. more than 60% of the electorate showed up to the polls to weighu in on whether ent-prime minister viktor orban's far- right nationalist party will retain its overwhelming majority.

brazil's former president luiz inacio lula da silva is now in policeustody ending a two day standoff. he begins a 12-year prison sentence. 72-year-old lula took rege in a steelworkers' union building afteskipping a court appoint deadline to turn himself in. lula was convicted of bribery, but he claims the conviction was designed to keep him from running for president again.st lula was the feft-wing leader to become president of brazil in nearly half a century and was the frontrunner inoc tober's election. fire investigators say they still don't know what caused yesterday's deadly fire at trump tower. 67-year-old todd brassner died and four firefigers suffered minor injuries.co new york fire issioner daniel nigro said when firefighrs arrived, the apartment was engulfed in flames. nigro also noted there are no sprinklers on the residential floors of the building and they were not required when trump tower was constructed in 1983.

>> sreenivasan: 20 years ago this week, an extraordinary "eace pact was signed. northern ireland'sgood friday agreement" brought an end to three decades of violent conflict between catholic and protestant factions, and it maintained northern ireland as a rt of the united kingdom. for many, though, it remains an uneasy peace. newshour weekend special correspondent kira kay begins her report in londonderry. >> reporter: once a month, an civics classnorthern ireland breaks new ground. visiting students arbussed across town from st. mary's and st. cecilia's, which are catholic schools. the host school, lisneal, has a predominantly protesta student body. >> what's this? >> oh, that's irish, isn't it? reporter: this two-hour session uses religious, cultural and political symbols toal

nge these students from different backgrounds to find common interests. i >> ruga brilliant one for the both because ireland have one team, you know northern ireland and the south of ireland, everybody supports ireland. ch good, well done. >> reporter: the sls are in the city officially known as londonderry, but called just" derry" by cathol northern ireland's conflict, deown as the troubles, exp here 50 years ago as catholic civil rights protests spiraled into violence across the region and the british army responded with force. the conflict ultimately became a struggle over keeping northe t ireland with united kingdom or unifying it with ireland. society was split tween protestant, pro-united kingdom loyalists and paramilitaries on the one hand and catholic pro- irish nationalists and their armed groups on the other. this included the provisional irish republican army, or i.r.a. between 1969 and 1998, more than 3,500 people were killed. haday, londonderry's stark murals memorializehistory

and the foyle river still divides the city's catholics from protestants. >> initially at the start, we whad people, we had paren were worried. >> reporter: martine mulhern, principal of catholic st. cecilia's, says 90% of northern ireland's students study exclusively with members of their own community. >> it is possible to grow up on the west bank of the city, and not meet a protestant, or not have a protestant in the streett and y have been growing up in a house where people have spoken aut protestants or other faiths in a particular way, then they may have developed a perception of that commuty. that is where the shared education program comes into its own. >> reporter: michael allen, principal of protestant lisneal, admits he didn't always support shared education. >> there is a fear that culture, particularly within unionist and protestant culture that it's being diminished over a period of time. but i could see how the children worked with one another, how they interacted.me that thowed that they had

no fear, so really we shouldn't have any fear of it ther. >> reporter: originally supported by an american foundation, this program is now being administered by the government, which plans to replicate it in more than half of northern ireland's schools by 2021. acing 7th graders are em the program and their new classmates. >> they have sisters, they have brothers, they have pets. they have the same life as us basically. >> difference good. you don't need to be like not be theifriend because they are that different religion as long as you two get along. r orter: programs like this are only possible because of the peace agreement that ended northern ireland'sonflict, signed 20 years ago this week. society had become weary of violence, and a cease-firego allowed neators to come to the table. >> at a leadership level there was an appreciation that neither side could be defeated and neither side could win.ep >>ter: lord john alderdice represented a non-sectarian party at the peace talks. included in the discussion was sinn fein, the irish nationalist

party associated with the i.r.ah united kingdom considered the i.r.a. a terrorist organization.>> t was against the widespread international view that you don't negotiate with terrorists. and there was a huge sense here for many people that the i.r.a. on the one hand and loyalist paramilitaries on the other hand, many people had suffered, and died, and had injuries, and families destroyed and so on by these very people and their colleagues. and so it was a huge step for all of us. >> reporter: the peace agreement inintained northern ireland as part of the unitedom, but brought sinn fein into government with its former enemies, the protestant loyalists. it was a power-sharing arrangement that was once unimaginable. and for 20 years that peace has held. the downtown of northern ireland's capital belfast was once cordoned off by security fences and army checkpoints but ngw hosts bustling streets and cafes, and a growiourist industry. a popular museum about the titanic, built in belfast, opened in 2012. but true reconciliation la,

says lord alderdice. l >> even 20 yeaer, when we've done all these different things, institutional change,ha constitutionale, administration of justice, new policing, social and economic development, all of these kinds of things you still have a problem of attitudes not having changed. >> reporter: this is most evident in the patchwork quilt of catholic and protesta neighborhoods that alternate every few blocks in belfast, sometimes dramatically separated by so-called peace walls. st were built during the troubles but some have gone up oven since the peace agreement. it is unlikely thenment will meet its goal of removing them by 2023. community activist alan waite says bfast's divisions combine most starkly with other social ills in the city's public housing complexes on both sidese of talls. >> the issues young people face in tea is issues like you know unemployment, drugs, alcohol, in fact where we stand now is one of the most underachieving areas in all of the country.

>> reporter: several of these neighborhoods are still controlled by local paramilitaries, some the very heme groups created during troubles. they no longer fight each other but victimize their own communities wi so-called punishment attacks on young residents they accuse of crimes like dealing drugs. these attacks have surged in recent years. >> they're taking the power into their own hands and in a roundabout way they're trying to take over the role of the police within their own communities by laying down their law, which is not the way forward. >> reporter: the government isup ading some public housing and they are turning a handful of these sites into efforts at integration too. five mixed communityde lopments are open and another five are underway. >> 90% of social housing is single identity and indeed niusing in general is around 70% either one com or the other. >> reporter: tim o'malley says the 2015 start up of this community, called felden, war a

challenge s public housing management company. >> people were suspicious about wat this new concept was about. they thought the going to be something that imposed something, as opposed to something th supported people who wanted to live in a shared neighborhood. >> reporter: these developments aim to have more than 70% of either catholics or protestants. nicola o'neill came to felden from a staunchly catholic area divided by peace walls. >> coming from the area i came from, i wanted a betfuture for my children because i want them to know that everybody's the same, that nobody's fferent, regardless religion, color. now i couldn't see me living anywhere else. >> reporter: felden's management company has put in the effort to harmonize the communities it oversees, offering employmentpr and educatiorams and bringing residents together over shared projects like a community garden. >> felden alone is 97 homes, you know, a few hundred people. it's not the solution, but it shows people that it's possible, and i think that's the biggest story that we can share. >> reporter: but shared housing hasn't worked as smohly everywhere.

catholic families fled this complex last fall following threats from a local protestant paramilitary that didn't want a shared site on its streets. police came at midnight to alert this resident that the paramilitary had issued anm. ultima >> they knocked the door and they said, "i'm sorry have you? anywhere to you are being threatened because atu have to leave the area." and i says, "why, id we do?" and he says it's all down to your religion. >> reporter: the polic you it was because of your religion? >> religion. >> reporter: they were that >> yeah. that's, that's the way it was put. if we didn't leave there they were, there was other people that were going to do it >> if you're asking me is this a normal city, that's not normal. >> reporter: sinn fein politician mairtin o'muilleoir helped resettle threatened residents. er this was a feature of our past that peopleordered out of their homes because of their religion andt was deeply depressing and distressing for me to see it happening again in 2017. >> reporter: as much as many people are ready to move on, some still grapple with the

legacy of past violence. many crimes by state forces as well as paramilitaries on both sides remain unsolved or unprosecuted. in february, thousands of marchers took to the streets to demand resolution, including catholic sinn fein politician emma rogan, whose father was killed by a protestant paramilitary. >> some of these families are waiting over 46 years for an inquest. people need to know what has happened to thei loved ones and the circumstances surrounding their deaths. i think it's easier for the british government to deny and delay truth for families than it is to open the can of worms if they were to deal with the legacy of the conflict here. >> reporter: and there are protestants who feel just as kagrieved. >> ofolks, it's one of the most bombed roads northern ireland. >>rneporter: in rural northe ireland, this group organizes bus tours to the sites of attacks against mainly protestant were ethnically cleansed by the

i.r.a. victims advocate kenny donaldson says having former i.r.a. members in government is keeping more people from seeing justice. >> if that's one of yo partners in northern ireland who are going to establish scalled power sharing in this country, they're not going to dig very deeply into those individuals are they, to actually hold them accountable for what they've done in the past. isit's almost as if justiche price to keep this place from spiraling into terror once again. >> reporter: 20 years of peace hasn't been enough to unite t communities, bt doesn't mean there's no trust to be found. the bustling r-city coffee shop says it provides a place to socialize free from cultural identity, and it sit most unlikely location, right on a notoriously volatile crossroads between catholic and protestant lfast. it has one door on the catholic side, another on the protestant side. it was started by protestant community worker alan waite, in partnership with catholic colleague thomas turley. >> we could never have dreamt or imagined a unique lo like this, where you can enter from

both sides of the community. our clientele are general, normal, run-of-the-mill people. our staff are 50/50%. half protestant, half catholic. the coffee's brilliant, the foot is brill but it's not about that. it's about here. it's about sitting in this room as woth sides of a community aren't meant to come and sit together it's a shining light, i believe, in one of the most darkest places in the country. >> sreenivasan: explore northern ireland two decades after the troubles with a series of immersive 360 videos. visit pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: retunow to politics, this weekend the temperature in washington heated up on many fnts: from more talk of a trade war with china, to increasingly harsh words about immigration the president was again on the offensive. is there a tme to the president's words? newshour weekend special correspondent jeff greenfield is here with some perspecve.

>> yes, i think you particularly see when it you see the changes in the personnel around the use.e ho one thing trump has been totally consistent about for decad is being ripped, we are being ripped off by foreigners, they archeitherring our lunn every trade deal and they are sending marauding bands of immigrants across our borders to do terrible things. w that is policy. so you have the idea of a trade war, which he says he can win easily coupled with the extremely hear tshc rheto about immigrants and now they are voting illegally all over cali threat is when you look at now who is surrounding the president, gary 0 cone, a free trader is gone as a key economic provider, replaced by larry kudlow who thinks tariffs are particularly, nationalists like rex tillerson as secretary of state, they are gone, replaced by john bolton and probably mike pompeo much more national lis stick in their approach, so the

idea that we heard a couple of years ago at well the gwnups will restrain trump and put him on a more conseventional co no the people around him now, in fact, are reinforcing those very core instincts of the president. nc sreenivasan: what are the political conseq of this for house and senate candidates up for reelection in just a few months >> on the issue of trade, this is really going to cause and has caused an enormous problem wh the republicans, because in the farm states, where farming is equipment, there are, important, there are a lot of democratic senators up for reelection, the idea of a trade war, if it happens, igoing to clobber the agricultural economy and you are talkinabout states like montana, missouri, north dakota, many others, the problem for the republicans is, bro speaking, the president is so popular among republicans that they are caught, they n't attack him, he is the leader of our party, but they don't want to see a tradeçó policy like hes

enunciating become rty. the other thing to remember about this is, one of trump's notions about himself he samas search negotiator, and the art t deal, to quote one of his books, suggest you begin with kind of a maximal list bargaining stance, if that were ultedrk,ñi if his threats res in a deal with china where they trb some of their clearly unfair practicet is going to be a win, but the question is, whether china isen ale to that kind of negotiation, that have very much up in the air and could be a hupolitical problem for the republicans in the fall. >> sreenivasan: so in the topic of immigration, would that now, would his action b's consistent with this sort of thesis that you can read aloud? in his boo >> i think it is more pri than that. this is something that he has talked about fromme the hen he was a feature of the tabloids, and ink thine of the things that we saw this week is the other thing abomp donald ts he is a showman,

right, he plays to the base, so he goes to an event that is supposed to celebrate the tax cuts, and what does he do? he literally throws away the prepared speech, in is boring -- >> that quowrve a little boring. >> a little boring. >> and goes ofere on his harshest rants yet about illegal immigrants, to me it is like he knows what gets the cowd going, you know, what are we going to me? build a wall, who is going to pay for it?ico. and when trump stands up in front of a crowd it is kind of like ahead zeppelinñi moment, yu 0 know you are going to hear stairway to heaven and you are going to hear him barbim grants. >> sreenivasan: while we end up spending attention on this, you point out very important stories that are undercovered. >> i like to remind people there stuff going on behind the headlines. this past week, judge stephen reinhardt died, he is a ninth circuit court of appeals out west, probably the most liberal federal judge in the entire country, and that courtapf als has been the bain of

conservatives for years. this is funntdaly dominated by liberals. so there are now eight vacancies on that court, part of 100 federal vacancies he and senate majority mcconnell are determined to fill as qukly as possible. so much so that mcconnell is about to 86, a longstanding tradition in the senate that a home state senator can blo a federal judge from his or her state -- >> a blue slip, ev it is from the other party. now, you know what is coming of those 100 federal vacancies, and unless the democrats take the senate in the fall, they are going to have fundament reshaping of the federal bench, and meanwhile, if one of the liberals supreme court justices were leave, ginsburg, andrew kennedy, trump will reshat tha court will be far be the most consequent july political action he will have taken in his first step. >> sreenivasan: the prnt has also been on the defensive about scott fruit and the challenges sheg ac the epa, this weekend he came out

urth a tweet and read it quickly, while sy spending was somewhat moore than his aredecessor, scott pruitt received the d threats because of his -- while saving billions, travel expses okay, scott is doing a great job. in the length of one tweet, there is at least half dozen inaccuracies there, but doesn't even matter? >> the coduct that scott pruitt is under fire for is exactly the kind of conduct th conservatives say that's what big government swmp by bureaucrats do, tripling the security sta and wanting a bullet proof desk and asking the security detail to run sirens so you can get to restaurant on time and moving that security guy out when he won't do it. s whebody is on your side, the conduct looks much more defensible than than if that guy were on the other side of the political divide and that is true across the board. >> sreenivasan: jeff greenfield, thanks so much. >

>> this is pbs newshour weekend, sunday. >> sreenivasan: it's been almost three weeks since the la w male northete rhino died at an animal conservancy in kenya, and now only two females of thebs cies remain. scientists are looking into the possibility of saving the northern white rhino through in- vitro fertilization. in the meantime, kenyan offials are stepping up actions to preserve the remaining rhino population within itsurorders. newseekend's zachary green has more. >> reporter: this past thursday, kenya's govement expanded the rhino sanctuary in the country's meru national parkhome to 104 black and southern white rhinos. the expansn nearly doubles the sanctuary's size, from 17 to 32 square miles. the kenya wildlife service is also embarking on a two-week,0 $6 project to tag and identify 22 rhinos living in the park. officials and veterinarians are utilizing helicopters and dart guns to find and tranquilize the rhinos.

once sedated, the vets cut unique notches into the rhino's ears, so that they can be easily identified. kenya wildlife services' lead vet, francis gakuya, says this is the most reliable way to monitor the animals in the park. >> ear notches are permanent marks and you can be able to use them for the life of the animal, they are permanent. the horn transmitters which we usually put on animals have a shelf life, they usually take two to three years then the battery goes down. so after that you are not able to track that animal, unless you immobilize it again and put another one, meaning then you have to keep on doing the same. >> reporter: using these methods to monitor and track its small rhino population, kenya hopes it can help save these als from poachers and, hopefully, from the same fate as their northern white cousins.

>> sreenivasan: finally tonight, colorado's most widelyci ulated newspaper, the "denver post," ran a scathing editor owner, new york-based hedge fund, alden global capital. cutbacks at the post reduced its staff from morthan 250 a few years ago to less than a hundred today with more layoffs expected tomorrow. the editorial accuses the paper's owners of lowering the post's journalistic standards even as subscription rates have been going up. 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.

sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter barbara hope zuckerberg. ate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's w 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 fromiewers like you. thank you.

nakul mahendro: it never made sense to me that, like, you walk into this restaurant, everything is super rmal, and then you go and you sit down and you're, like,h, i'll have the 10.99 buffet. okay. 10.99 buffet, you know. so we were just like, you know, let's just scrap everything. let's start fresh. like, what do we want our staurant to look like? arjun mahendro: we want to change the perception of indian culture in america. e how do we push this nee forward and how do we grow? nakul: we're going to serve, like, the most bomb traditional indian food. we're also going to serve really, really, really thoughtful american food with indian flavor. and we're to play notorious b.i.g. kunal nayyer: i loved the .