captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, protecting the investigators-- republican senators defy majo push a bill to protect special counsel robert mueller. then, cuba prepares har a historice in leadership: what the future may hold for the island after the castros and back to the farm: inside the private sector effort e india's young people back to the countryside and a rural way of life. all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

>> babbel. a language app that teaches real-life conversations in a new language, like spanish, french, german, italian, and more. babbel's 10-15 minute lessons are available as an app, or online. more information on babbel.com. >> financial services firm raymond james. >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundangon. supporcience, technology, and improved economic performance and financialra li in the 21st century. >> carnegie corporation of new york. supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the ntvancement ofnational peace and security. at carnegie.org. >> and with the ongoing supportu of these insons:

and individuals. or this program was made possible by the coion for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: there's word that north korean leader kim jong un may be willing to drop a key condition for giving up his nuclear program. south korea's president moon jae-in said today the north wants to all nuclear weapons out of korea, but is no longer insisting u.s. troops withdraw first. in geneva, though, today the u.s. ambassador for disarmament said the north must turn words into actio i.

takes two to tango, and the north s to be willing to take steps that the north itself has said in the past it was willing to take. so, we'll have to see what keppens. these are high-s discussions, assuming they take place >> woodruff: last night, president trump said he'd walk away from a planned summit with ki if it's not "fruitful." c.i.a. director mike pompeo wis already me kim, to discuss the potential summit. orday, pompeo's nomination secretary of state got a boost. democratic senator heiit mp said she'll vote for him. that could be just enough for pompeo to be confirmed. the u.s. state department charged today it has "credible information" that russia is working to "sanitize" the si a uspected chemical attack in syria. a spokeswoman gave no details, but said efforts are clearly under way to remove incriminating evidence. the police commissioner of

philadelphia had apologized to two black men arrested at a starbucks last week. they'd been waiting for a business meeting, when the store called police. the incident sparked protests over racial profiling. commissioner richard ross initially defended the action. today, he said he y"ailed miseran handling the situation. >> i should not at all be the person that is a party to makinn hing worse relative to race relations. shame on mif in any way that i've done that.>> oodruff: the men who were arrested said today there were moments that they wondered if they'd survive the incident. no criminal charges will be filed in the drug overdose death of prince, in april 2016. a minnota prosecutor announced today there's no clear evidence of how princobtained the pill that killed him. inere is evidence that he thought he was tthe painkiller vicodin.

instead, the pill contaid fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that's 50 times more powerful than heroin. in poland, church bells sounded and sirens waid today, marking 75 years since the warsaw ghetto uprising. in april 1943, jewish fighters held out for a month against nazi troops, before being crushed. today, the polish president visited the grave of the uprising's commander and paid tribute to the thousands killed. he also defended a new ban on saying poland was complicit in the holocaust. >> ( translated ): i am sure that whenever anyone talks about the responsibility or the co- responsibility of the polish state for the holocaust that person hurts the feelings of poles and also hurts the feelings of jews who are polish m woodruff: more than three million of the 3lion jews in pre-war poland died in the holocaust. g californernor jerry brown says he's reached a deal toon

deploy more na guard units to the mexican border. last night, he annouederal funding will pay for 400 troops to fight gangs and drugot smugglin for immigration enforcement. president trump disputed the claim today. he tweet: "the federal government will not be paying for governor brown's charade. we need border surity and action, not words!" nasa's new planet-hunting spacecraft is shooting toward the stars, on a search worlds that might support life. it's named tess, for "transiting exo-planet survey satellite." the satellite blasted off last night from cape canaveral, riding a space-x rocket. it will spend two years identifying planets around nearby stars with potentiay livable temperatures. s the u.ate narrowly confirmed a new administrator of nasa today. republican congressman jim bridenstine won on a party-line

vote of 50 to 49. democrats challenged his non- space background and questioning of climate science. and in a historic first, illinois senator tammy duckworth, in a wheelchair, held her newborn daughter as she voted "no."na rules changed last night to permit babies on the floor. the "new york times" reports wells fargo will likely be find $1 billi for a series of infractions, including making customers buy auto inspourance cies that they did not need. stocks closed lower on wall street tay, dragged down by the dow jones industrial average tumbled 83 points to close at nearly 24,665. the nasdaq fell 57 points, and the s&p 500 dropped 15. still to come on the newshour: the end of the castro era in cuba. an island-wide power outage underscores puerto rico's fragile recovery. how a trade battle with china

could shift the u. economy, and much more. n >> woodruff:e latest twist in the russia investigation, former new york city mayor rudy giuliani is joining president trump's legal defense team. the move comes amid bipartisan calls in the senate to pass aec bill to prspecial counsel robert mueller. a short time ago, i spoke with the vice chairman of the intelligence committee, democratic senor mark warner of virginia and began by asking about the addition of giuliani. >> well, the president's legal team seems to expand and contract on almost weekly i had a lot of respect for mr. giuliani when i was a prosecutor and mayor of new york. i didn't kn aow tively

practiced law. but mr. trump has the ability to hire whoever he wants. at the end of the day, i hope this will also meamr. trump will also allow the mueller investigation to continueun peded because, at the end of the day, americans deserve the answer from his investigation and, frankly, from our senate intelligence investigation as g ll. >> reporter: speak the mueller investigation, you and other bipartisan senators are supporting legislation to protect robert mueller's job. wh >> well, judy, over the last year, we've seen this prede turn his ire on anybody that crosses him. we've seen him attack comey mueller. his own original attorney general mr. sessions had to recuse himself because he was involved with some of these ssian activities, and we set up this special prosecutor to be overseen by a long-term career

individual republican rod rosenstein, and the president says there's nothing yet, yet he continues to think on press reports thrink of fiing mueller, may have tried to pull the trigger a couple of tes. on top of that you have the president making attacks against the integrity of evrybody at the f.b.i. and the justice department. that gets us into very scary times iny mind when people start choosing which laws they want to follow. my republican colleagues have said if mr. mueller was fired, b that wouthe end of the trump presidency. i think we ought to go ahead and reinforce that by passing this legislation. >> woodruff: i'm sure you know, senator, when that law came before committee last fall and scholars were divided over whether it'sonstitutional for the congress to dong somet like that, you have a number ofi republicans sa it's not necessary because the president himself says he doesn't plan to fire robert mueller. >> there is one thing we've found from this president is

he's unpredictable and saying one thing on one day doesn't mean it will be his position the next day and, over the last months, he's clearly tweeted against mr. mueller's investigation a number of times, his allies have gone out and attacked the justice department and mr. eller, so i wou rather be safe than sorry. the fact is while there would be this legislation, the ability, even if mr. mueller was fired, have him take it to court ten days, let's just preisude all nd put something on the books that will protect this individual and investigation. >> woodruff: but the majority leader in the senate who controlshat comes to the floor mitch mcconnell says he doesn't plan to bring this to the floor. >> i'm disappointed in a time where there appears to be broad bipartisan support, and i knowe ewrkd committee was going to mark up this legislation, i would hope the majority leader would reconsider that if it comes with a mig majority out of

the judiciary committee. we're in unprecedented times. even during theatergate era, i don't remember a president so broadly attacking the f.b.i., the whole justice department in these unprecedented ways, reicenf bid alrice and certain news networks where i think peoplee arting to question whether rule of law is going to stand at this point in time. that's why i think this investigation, regardless of where it ends up, is so important to bect pro. >> woodruff: and, in fact, the "newshour" in clab ighs with npr the marist college has done a poll coming out just nowt saying thae public's confident in the f.b.i. is starting to slip. what i wa to ask yo, though, is about the deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein there is been speculation about whether his job is safe. >> right. >> woodruff: republican congressmen have gone to see him if recent days saying he may face impeachment proceedings if

he doesn't turn over documents relating to the origin of the mueller investigation. is he safe in his jo? >> well, judy, i believe firing mueller or rosenstein would create a constitutional crisis. i think history would then judge all of us. believe some of the president's allies are frankly trying tsimply intimidate deputy attorney general rosenstein, a career professional, politically a republican just as mr. mueller. and this is part of what appears to me at least as someone who follows this very closely a campaign wherever it's orchestrated to undermine rosenstein, undermine mueller, undermine the f.b.i. and tha puts us in uncharted territories. >> woodruff: finally ati qu or two about mike mike pompey. you have not said whether you

will vote for him. do you think he will be confirmed? >> that's actively discussed but i feel no presre to rush to decision at this point of time choosing a new secretary of state. acknowledging a new secretary oe state ha approved is a really weighty decision. >> woodruff: senator mark mark warner. thank you very much. >> thank you, judy. >> woodruff: now, to cuba. today marked the end era: the rule of the castro brothers. ththe late fidel castro an his younger brother raul controlled cuba for nearly 60 years. now, as william branghamre rts, a younger generation takes the helm amid re-ignited tensions with the united states. >> brangham: applause echoed throughout cuba's national

assembly, as 86-year-old rau castro handed the presidency to his hand-picked successor. after six decades of rule over the island nation, today marked the end of cubstro era, but not its legacy. in his first speech as cuba's new head of state, miguel diaz- canel pledged to carry on the socialist revolution led by his predecessors. >> ( translated ): socialist nation, we will be faiemful to the ary legacy of the commander in chief fidel castro ruz, historic leader of our revolution and also to the e, the value and teachin of armed force general raul castro ruz. >> brangham: though raul castro will remain head of the communist party, the island's most powerful post, 57-year-olde diaz-canel reps a new generation of cuban leaders.ra its a geon that wasn't fen alive during the 1959 cuban revolution, led byel castro which ousted the u.s.-backed government of fulgencio batista, and instituted a socialist state of his own.

fidel's alliance with the soviet anunion quickly made the ian epicenter of cold war tensions. for the next five decaidel expanded state control over cuban life and cracked down on political dissent. as shortages grew on the island, fidel blamed the u.s. trade embargo. then in 2008, an ailing fidel officiallyanded the presidency to brother raul. aw a dramatic turn in u.s.-cuban relations: the two nations announced the re- establishment of diplomatic ties. in march 2016, then-president obama became the first president in nearly 90 years to visit the island. months after fidel's death in november 2016, president trump rolled back some obama-era efforts to ease restrictions on u.s. businesses and travel to cuba. then-first vice president diaz- canel shot back, echoing fidel's defiance in a speech, saying, "cuba will not make concessions to its sovereignty and independence, nor negotiate its principles or accept the imposition of conditions."

the trump administration also expelled 15 cuban diplomats, ant cuf at the u.s. embassy in havana by more than half. this, after 24 americans, including many diplomats, were stricken today, raul blamed the trump administration for deterioratinb u.s. relations. meanwhile in washington,in officialhe administration and on capitol hill said they don't expect cuban citizens will har any greater freedoms un their new leader. che "new york time's" azzam ahmed has been wg these developments from cuba, and he joins me now from havana. azam, this is obvusly an enormous day, the end of the castro era. i think for so many americans castro and cuba have been synthymous. what imood like there? what is the feel like in cuba today?a >> it's sort otrange dynamic because as you said, cuba's been synonymous wieh th castros for the last 60 years, yet on the streets there's not d aroundathe television or talking about it

in the streets, it's almost layers of apathy that have ki of taken over and it seems almost as it's been this very managed process. it happened in the national assembly, on national television, but it's almost as continuation of stability, passing on tthe new leader. >> brangham: who is the new leaderf >> the peoplom the u.s. embassy have not met with him. he worked in a province about 3.5 hours outside of havana and the people there largely responded well to him. he was a relatively modern thinker. he was for instance a major advocate of one of the first sort of gay clubs to open up in the communy even at a tie when people were protesting it. he road his bike to work, an anecdote that gets shared, when

he cou i have riddenn an air conditioned car around his province. his jobs are sort of governors in some way aaind stran entire area which gives them a lot of autonomy, like a governor in thn ed states, awe ton pi of sense of how to govern. and he was a minister of higher education, after which he became rauúl castro's hand-picked successor. >> brangham: what is yur sense overwhat cubans want out of a new president? >> i tnk they want mor private sector, more investment, more opportunity on the street. if you think about it, the last ten years have been ths incredible amount of historic change. fidel castro stepped down, rau came into place. he put in changes, creation of private sector, foreign investment, the opportunity for cubans to leave and come to the island. it doeesn't l so historic to the people.

it's people talking about this dn big ways but they don't feel it in the day in aday out. >> brangham: do you have a sensof what this newresident and his emgence in power might mean foru.s.-cuba relations? >> president trump has taken a different stance from his predecessor about how to act and talk about cuba. this is a president who never fought in a revolution, was born a year after the revolution ended, so he's someone who foughtor the these are and the ideals of the revolution wiho the heritage of having been a guerilla, so i think he will have the less space to do the things hs predecessor did who bore the name of castro and wasa harder to pusk against. even rauúl castro had pushback o some of the reforms he wanted to make. not everyone was happy about opening relations with the united states.ne so somho is his hand-picked successor, who

doesn't have his historic legitimacy but has it because rauúl castro says he does, has less flexibility to enabout the changes that a lot of cubans want. >> brangham: azam ahmed, thank y >> woodruff: we keep our focus on the caribbean. seven months after hur maria devastated puerto rico and its power grid, the entire island lost power yesterday. in fact, crews are still working to restorelectricity to the full island today. amna nawaz explores how it'sg raisestions once again about the adequacy of those efforts.e >> nawaz: whe latest blackout affecting more than tthree million residents biggest since september, there have been periodic problems with , ectricity on the island. less than a week are than 850,000 people lost power. yeerday's hit came after a subcontractor removing a tower got too close to a high voltage line. it went out of service and triggered a shutdown. but even as most streets and

homes went without, some used backup generors, and there were generators for a special baseball game last night between the cleveland indians and the minnesota twins. the latest episode raises many questions again, and our special correspondent, monica villamizar who has coved the problems there, joins us once again. monica, welcome. >> thanks. would have been reporting on this painfully slow pace recovery ever since hurricane maria hit. how does this keep happening, everyone wonders. >> that's a great question. puerto ricans are being asked to sort of be patient andle understand at by the power utility company, they keep on asking everybody, be patient and understand, but generating rlectricity and distributing it to everybody is vdifficult and our infrastructure was december made by maria. but if you stop to think, puerto ricans are sayg how can be patient after, you know, not having electricity forhs mon end?ma ny people still today do not have power and how can it be so

complicated? the truth of the matter is, in all fairness, it is complicated and the grid was very poorly damaged but also if very bad conditions. they have a massiveransmission problem right now which means it's really fragile and unstable. so if u will, if you're knock down a tower, how can it throw a whole island into darkness. that's not normal in other countries. in puerto rico it's hapusning bethat was the system put in place and the powerrer grid is observes read and this is their situation. so a bad problem decimated and made worse by a category 5 storm months ago. who has the authority to fix it? >> that's a great question and what we have been seeing, a political blame game. the power utility company blames fema. fema blames the corps of engineers. puerto ricans blame the trump administration. everybody is going to blame everybody, but in the end, the

island is ban nupt, there iso money and to fix this enormous probm is going toake billions and billions of dollars that the island does not have. so theye facing a vey serious situation which is fixing a massive problem, fixinit soon because, remember, hurricane season is going to start againea and in theime all the local authorities and politicians throwing blame around. in the end, everybody is tobl e in a way, but what they have to do and what a lot of people are telling me now is th want to look at loal authorities and pass that to try to sort of own the situation, you say, and, you know, make something better for the island, coally. try to, you knowstruct the future themselves. >> and what about people on ther nd, what are they telling you? how do theyeel about all this time and where they are today? >> in the beginning when we first reported in puerto rico, the generalized feeling was we are american citizens and being treated as second-hand citizens by the trump administration, effectively, because the response to our hurricane wasn't

the same as we saw in florida oi texas, ftance, and thrfs no sense of urgency, but we were, you know, here dying and hungry and being affected. it's sort of slightly shifted now, and i think they're looking to their local authoritie to the governor, to the mayor, et cetera, like, what are you going to do to fix our problems because, you know what? in the end, they say they don't have education because of all the restructuring and thef consolidationshools, et cetera, they don't have education, they don't have power and they don't have health, so when a government is not priding that, it's somewhat failing and raw and that's when people ae going to start asking more of their local authorities and local leade becau they really need solutions to urgent problems, and the situaon they're facing right now is we veay here and make things better or we have to leto the mainland. >> and with hurricane season around the corner they need thossolutions fast. monica villamizar, thanks for being here. thanks for ving me.

now, america's gring trade deficit. it's one of president trump's main arguments for imposing tariffs on china but what about the argument that the trade deficit benefits our economy? our correspondent paul solman explains, part of his series, "making sense," which airs every thursday on the newshour. >> so all we're doing is imposing tariffs, not to punish china, but to recover, let me be clear about this, but to recover the $50 billion a year in damages they inflict upon this country by engaging in these practices. >> reporter: that was peter navarro, president trump's economic advisor, insisting to judy woodruff recently that the threat of tariffs, taxes on chinese imports, is meant to discourage china from cheating on trade by subsidizing their companies, for example, stealing our intellectual property. the point is, if they were to

knuckle under and stop cheating, china's products should be pricier and our economy should grow, says navarro. how? >> alright, paul, the growth of any nation is simply four things. >> reporter: it's been more than a year and a half since navarro first tried to walk you and me through the economic logic. but economists keep berating ust for never givi mainstream rebuttal. so here's a reprise,g navarro won't mind my stealing s intellectual property. g.d.p.s the total size of the economy in a given year. by definition, that has to equal total "c" for that year's consumption, what we citizens spent here in the u.s.; "g" for what our government spent here; i for total investment in america, and finally x minus m: x for what foreigners pay us for our exports, minus m, what we pay them for what we import from them. the bigger the total, the bigger

the annual economy or g.d.p. but the economy will shrink if there is a trade deficit, if more imports than exports, more m than x. so here's the big idea: tax the imports with tariffs and they'll become more expensive compareddu to homegrown ps. then more of us should buy american. that would mean more u.s. jobs,i the trade t would shrivel, the economy would thrive.so doesn'd crazy. and yet many economists, if not most, would agree instead with e doctrine of trade deficits argued so forcibly by conservative economist milton friedman. o e jabbed his finger at me, decrying the newshour's penchant for pitting just one free trade economist against one protectionist, when wi the discipline the ratio was 10 to one in favor of free trade.ci of course polis were no better, thinking a favorable balance meant a trade surplus,

not a deficit. but a surplus isnfavorable, he argued in old, grainy video. >> that means we're sending out more goods and getti fewer in. each of you in your private household would know better than that. you don't regard it as a favorable balance, when you have to send out more goods tget less coming in. >> reporter: so by trading dollars for goods, we, as consumers, benefit from a trade deficit. and there's another way we benefit. the chinese and others lend us money to help buy chinese stuff. remember, we don't just run a trade deficit, but also a budget deficit, uncle sam spending more than he takes in, year after year. the latest projection is that by 2020, it will top a trillion dollars. ficit, cover the budget sam borrows, giving investors""n exchange for cash. but since american investorsn'

save enough to buy all thefo treasuriesigners do much of the lending, to the point that they now own about a third of our $21 trillion cumulative debt. china has been the main buyer of late. so when we run a tradeit with china, they accumulate dollars. they don't just stuff them under the ttress. they lend them back to us, in exchange for our treasuries. and that's the second reason a trade deficit benefits us: chinese doars help keep our taxes down. so we can keep consuming on credit-- consuming, among other things, chinese goods. for the pbs newshour, making sense correspondent paul sman. >> woodruff: now the pilot in charge of that emergency landing

of a southwest airlines jet this week. southwest flight 1380, traveling from new york city to dallas on tuesday, had to land in philadelphia 20 minuter takeoff. one of the engines had exploded in mid-air, sending metal fragments into the wing and cabin. passenger jennifer riordan died after a nearby window shattered and s pulled halfway out the opening while otherge pass tried to save her. most of the 148 other people on the plane were not hurt, and pilot tammie jo shults, a former naw pilot, was praised for she handled the emergency. here is some of shults' communication with air traffic control.

>> woodruff: and our sciencepo corrent, who is also an aviation expert, miles o'brien joins me now. so, miles, i think everybody who was on that plane who has been talking to the prenss has bee saying how grateful they are to the pilot tammie jo shults. i mean, remarkable calm. just how difficult is it toly a plane under those circumstances? >> judy, the flight crew had an

awful lot going on at one, two major emergencies simultaneous, a presumed engine fire, the loss of an engine, all that goes along with that, and explosive rapid decompression, all that goes along with tha those are two emergencies that flight crews train for and learn by memor, what to do and they had to sort through those checklists simultaneously while, all at once, the aircraft steeply banking to the left 45 degrees because to have the loss of thrust and the extr drag caused by the explosion in the engine, and on top of that having to get down as quickly a possible altitude of 10,000 feet where the air is thick enough for peoe to breathe and, yet, what you hear on the radio on the other side t t cockpit door was as routine as it gets -- calm, cool, collected tammie jo shult proved what a great pilot she is. i suspect, given her navy background, she's been in some tight situations.

landing an f-18 on an air carrier at night in bad weather is not for faint of heart, but this was certainly no walk in the park and she did it perfectly. >> woodruff: well, a lot of people are enormously grateful to her. miles, that navy training really can make a difrence for a pilot, can't it? >> yeah, a lot of people have been making comparisons to sully sullenberger and his landing a sew years back. both theilots were trained by the military, the sullenberger's case the air s'rce, in tammie jo shuase the naviy. for years airlines have benefited by essentially free training by the military, andt matters when the chips are down as we saw the other yn philadelphia. as time goes on, fewer pilots e moving into the airline world, fewer in general and fewer pitts in the military. e military is hanging on to them longer because it's

expensive to lose them. the civilian training doesn't quite match the military training in some respects and you hae tonder, as we look toward the future of airlineng flif the civilian training may want to up its game a >>bit. erdruff: miles, the faa is saying it's ordg inspections of engines looking for metal fatigue, talk about the significance of that. >> what's most significant is there is a hauntingly parallel incident, same rlines, same aircraft in august 2016, theen only diff is nobody got hurt. the aircraft got on the ground safely but exactly the same thing happened with metal fatie as the cause and that fan blade being spit out like a hot, fast piece of shrapnel.th subsequent tt, the manufacture of the engine cfm which is a joi venture between g.e. and safran sent out a service bulletin to the airli

who had these engines and said you probably should coultrasound testing of the fan blades to make sure there are acks because they're not necessarily visible. southwest was among the alines who said they resisted that call and said they needed more time to do it and hadn't done the inspections. if truth is, if the faa and n.t.s.b. had acted quickly after the first eventn august 2016, this event may not have happened. >>oodruff: you're sayin southwest and other airlines resisted? >> they did. you know, the airline business is a profit-making business and the fact of the mater is safety always costs money, and thpais icular event, as troubling as it should have beenen its own in august 2016, was not treated with the urgency i think it should have. >> woodrf: well now it is certainly getting more attention, a lot more attention. miles o'brien, wethank you as always. >> you're welcome, judy.

>> woodruff: now, the first of a two-part series looking at the world's soon-to-be most populous country and the challenges of food production.wi with a g migration to cities, there is concern indiae might not be a produce enough food to feed its people. special correspondent fred de sam lazaro reports on one group's effort to restore rural land and communities.of it's paris series, agents for change >> reporter: on a hoaf on the far parthibaraj says nothing quenches your thirst more than fresh coconut water. this 26-year-old was on a path most rural iian parents dream for their children: an education and an i.t. job in the city, far more lucrative than most farming in iia. first class. but despite earning a master's degree, parthibaraj came back to his family fm in rural tamil

nadu about six months ago. the office cubicle life in information technology became unbearable, he says. slatedr): i worked si days a week, 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., there was a lot of pressure, very little respect. >> reporter: i had a six pack, s he says, but tentary job and poor diet turned it into a... >> family pack. y coming back home, he's an outlier in a country that's seen robust alonomic growth, but almos of it in urban areas.di will soon become the world's most populous country but you wouldn't know it walking in the rural areas, which have been emptying out in a rapid urbanization.ve sothough this country's population overall is young, average age just 29, the average age of an indian farmer today is 50. >> i think even without climate change, india faces a great challenge because of t increasing population and limited nd available for agriculture.

>> reporter: jagannathan srinivasan is a climate scientist at the indian institute of scien in the booming high tech capital, bangalore. >> all of us have seen ithe last 50 years in bangalore large damount of agricultural l becoming apartments. yeah, that is a serious concern >> reporter: indian cities continue to spread into e countryside, with high-rise apartments for the growing new middle class. but the majority of urban migration is into urban slums, by subsistence farmers unable to make a living on land degraded by years of neglect and misuse-- the overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and deforestation that causes erosion. >> about 50 years, no public investment went into restoring these landscapes. that is a serious, serious harm or neglect. >> reporter: jagdeesh rao started a group called foundation for ecological security, which has worked to fix that neglect.ug

he bro me to an area about two hours outside bangalore thar had languishedears, says farmer t.v. srinivasa. >> ( translated ): there was no water in the tanks, there was no water for livestock, no fodder in the commons lands we'd work here in the rainy season but when it didout rain or in t we had to go to bangalore. c we went to theity for at least six mohs of the year. >> reporter: rao's group, supported by corporate,om foundation andgovernment grants, began organizing farm communities. groups of ighboring villages negotiated with government authorities to replant public forestlands felled for timbe and commons areas-- land not titled to anyone but technically in government control. acss rural india, rao says millions of acres of these commons lands have been classified as wasteland and neglected. rao's organization foundation for ecological security arranged to use a government employment

program intended to relieve rural suffering to restore infrastructure, mostly to clear canals and ponds that had long dried up as silt from deforested land flowed down. w we would have come here five, 10 years ago, whld this landscape look like? >> there wouldn't have been any water here. those trees that you see there uld have been stunted saplings because there's no effective governance. there's fodder, whic or seven years ago there wouldn't have been anything. >> reporter: with reforestation, now when it rains water flows from the hills, instead of sand or silt. the resu actually hold water year round. athat serves livestock ao replenishes surrounding soil, rao says, producing br th or vegetatit can feed larger animal herds in the commons land. water left over is distributed and shared by consensus. the fountion also brings communities together in exercises to plan ahead: how

much water is available and can it cover the crops individua farmers want to plant. if not, they must reach harder decisions; plant less thirsty crops or jt plant less. >> the crux is in actually er so theyeople toge manage the land together so that they develop their own rules, regulations, responsibilities, punishments, rewards. you just have to rely on nature's potential to heal itself, the second thing y need to rely on is the power of people to collaborate. r >>orter: so far rao's foundation has worked in some 13,000 villages across india, affecting about eight million people. he says in time, government officials who may have been wary at first, have come to see the group as an ally: one that helps them deliver results, such as there are concerns about equity, whether larger growers will take here than a fair share but farmers say they're not worried.

>> ( translated ): the village has hired an irrigator whose job is to make sure that the water is distrib the farms.across all he is paid by all the farmers. >> rorter: and they say havi water year-round and good soil quality has slowed migration to cities and in some cases prompted the reverse for, literally, greener pastures here-- a chance to go beyond subsisnce farming. 28-year-old venkat narayana has a college degree but says he didn't need it to do the math. >> ( translated ): in the city, i could probably make around 20,000 rupees a month re i make about 50 to 60,000 working with animals. i work two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening i'm in my village near my family, i'm free and i don'te to >> reporter: with an income of about $800 a month, many times the rul indian average, he and his newlywed bride, bhagalakshmi say they can live happily ever after, tending a growing hd of 11 holsteins that produce about

50 liters of milk each day. meanwhile, parthibaraj, the software engineer who decided not to join the urban middle class nonetheless hopes to cash in on one of its growing demands: organic food. he's raising fish in this pond and will soon plant rice, beans lentils and some vegetables. >> ( translated ): we have eggs, vegetables for our own use so we don't need to buy those. i've also sold a goat recely and some fish. it will take some time for the business to develop and grow. >> reporter: the income isn't yet what he was making in the city in the lucrative software engineering field, but it's a shot at a lifestyle he's wanted since he was a kid, running arnd on the family farm, pursuing the goats and now, that abdominal six pack. for the pbs newshour, this is fred de sam lazaro in rural tamil nadu, india. >> woodruff: fred's reporting is a partnership with the undertold stories project at the

university of st thomas, in minnesota. >> woodruff: author meg wolitzer has a habit of tapping into the cultural moment. her latest book asks big questions about women's power and feminism in the time of etoo. jeffrey brown has this latest n edition of tewshour bookshelf. >> brown: in her first months of college a young woman has a harrowing encounter with a male student and a life changing one th an older renowned feminist fiter and activist. the new novel "tale persuasion" is about friendship, womanhood, ambition and powerse and addrissues very much of this moment. author meg wolitzer joins me now. welcome to you. >> thank you. >> brown: so right off the bat in this book we have anat encounter ne can't help feel the kind of moment that we're in. but you we writing before all

that. >> wl these old issues. i mean issues around female power misogyny the treatment of women. how do you make meaning in the world these are all issues that i've been thinking about and writing about for a very, ve long time. >> brown: this is a story sang about an educati of a young woman and her peers and also about different generations of women and how they see each other. >> you know there's a second wave feminist and younger women who are feminists. and i was thinking so much about my childhood and my mother who is a novelist named him a waltzer when i was growing up. she hadn't been to college when she was young and her parents didn't encourage her in a big way. she was helped so much by the and i saw that happen a it in my home.d i starconsciousness raising girls part of one and continued it when i was inju or high school and we were so earnest and we wrote away to the national organization for women asking for a list of topics and they gave us a list that included things like sexual fulfillment and you when we wanted things like when your parents won't listen.bu

we were these budding feminists and it was exciting and i thought about the different generations and i'm very moved by how different m people come e that kind of meaning. >> brown: where do you get the ideas inspirations models for people in the things you write about. i mean what these are these are deas that you're that ar in your head that somehow you pull out into a new novel?it >> you kno a strange kind of thing that's so hard to explain. i have a sort of an idea or a problethat i want to kind of work on in a book and in this case some of those issues that i mentioned really srew the issues here first. the idea-- well one main o w i would say is the person you meet who can change your life forever. there's sometimes someone when you're young who sees something in you and that you may not even see in yourself but also around those other issues that i mentioned. but that one in particular occurred to me and i saw this young woman greer who is really hot faced who whenever she tries to sort of speak up her face goes you know really, really red

and hot and she can't articulate what she feels and then there's this older kind of chic renowned feminist who says something in her and sort of taps her and sets her on a path that she never thought she'd be a life >> brown: but you know you know it's interesting in your case because reviewers and literary critics have often noted how you're sort of hitting the zeitge yours is it so.oks of is it intentional or is that just sort of what happens? >> i think that people's you know people say all the time y right wh know but i think that really it's much more like and these are the things that i've been thinkingbout forever. there's one way to really know what obsesses you as a writer just look at everything you've googled for the past 24 hours gich is sort of a horrify idea for most people. in my case it would kind of be a combination of virginia woolf and does tsps mole look ious so i don't think that those are good novels but other things that i've been thinking they are very i can't help you athink about her characte well it's true because i had these ideas and then i saw these

people i saw this older charismatic woman and she kindof teps up and says i'll take those ideas and that's who you left the book in. >> brown: why is fiction a good way to d beyond that i know i asked some writers and they said well i'm a novelist write fiction. but what's your answer for me? >> look at this moment we're in it's the moment of hot takes and people sort of in a fever about ideas and kind of putting things into the 24 hour news cycle. i kind of think of myself as the master of the warm take. i love the intimacy of a novel kand how it lets you get w people. it doesn't have answers at least my novels don't. i just want to kind of let them unschool and say what is it like. what is it like for women right now what is it like for young women. what is it like for these oldero women who caage in a different world. and my novels i hope just show a little bit of what is it like >> brown: you know in the world literature, especially in discussions of big social novele ofind that you're writing and a lot of the discussion has

been aroe lack of recognition of women writers and you yourselfave participated ntributed to that in your own writings thinking about it. where are we now? >> i wrote an essay in the "new york times" called the second n elf which was kind of a the second sex and i talked about that sort of different levels of recognition thater literary men ly women had received and one of the things that i talked about was book covers and how sometimes and it's sometimes there of course exceptions to this a book by a man might have big boltypeface that said this book is an event and a book by a woman might sometimes have what i jokingly called a cover that you could call a little girl in a fielof wheat and the idea of imagining two men sort of standing on a train platform what's that. what's that. you're getting bill a little rl and feel the weight. i loved it. no that's not going to happene because ok cover seems to suggest that this isn't for one gender and i feel that books are for everyone. >> brown: so that's the world of

literature and then the larger world yo kinds of issues you're writing about in this novel. >> i definitely say it it's all sort of swimming around as i feel like we're in this swirling moment.as an novelist i just want to kind of go into a corner and keep looking at things and it's not a definitive thing. i mean this can't be the novel of the me to movement it can't be. i wantes to. are timeless issues as well as being timely. we've been talking about them foreve >> brown: all right the new novel is "the female persuasion," myo wolitzer, thank u very much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: next, we turn to another episode of our weekly brief buspectacular series where we ask people about their passions. tonight, compor and artist samora abayomi pinderhughes. he has written f such artists he has performed everywherfrom the white house to carnegie hall.

pinderhughes latest project is called "the transformation suite." >> too often for me, music es up being about the show and then people clap and they might talk about it and then they go home that makes no sense to me. i want to ke sure that if somebody is moved by my music, that's going to make them live differently. jazz is protest music, pure and simple. jazz is music that came from the gutter, from the hood. jazz is in and of itself as an improvisatory art form. literally represents the idea of imagination in the moment. i believe that the artist'ssi resplity, like nina simone used to say, is to reflect the times. i movements throughout history, there's always been music for the movement. and those are my favorite artists, harry belafonte, bob

marley, marvin gaye, they capture the essence of the moment. what we do as artists is we move people and so if w ican move peopservice of moving a nation, towards an idea like justice for something or someone, then that is responsibility. harry belafoe talked to me about all the people in the civil rights movement being in their 20s and making all these incredible things happed because that's their energy, they're vitality, their imagination. it's my generation's time to take responsibility, to take ownership of our world. it's very important you know, for me being african-american, mix race artist and person to illuminate the issues that are present in today's world around police brutality, aroundn, incarcerato hopefully be able to move forward in a way that is really equitable and just for all people. the "transformations suite" is a five-part tone poem combining

music, theater and poetry, to examine the history of african protest both in the diaspora and specifically in america. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ w every tiplay the "transformations suite," it's a different performance becausey evty that we go, i ask the members of that community or the members of that school, what are the things that is-- that are going on here that you find problematic.ng what are the tyou're fighting against or for, and then we put that in the music. and i think a lot of people feel like me as far as the urgency of the moment, that we don't have time to waste. so that's what i mean when i say, i don't have time for anything but urgency imy art. we really don't have time for this as a society. my name is samora abayomi pinderhughes, and this my brief but spectacular take on my responsibility as an artist.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> woodruff: you can watch additional brief but spectacular episodes at pbs.org/newshour/brief. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. join us online and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and rer an salam. l of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> kevin. >> kevin! >> kevin. >> advice for life.d. life well-plan learn more at raymondjames.com. >> babbel. a language app that teaches real-life converlations in a new uage, like spanish, french, german, italian, and more. babbel's 10-15 minute lessons are available as an app, or online.

more information on babbel.com. >> and with the ongoing support of these institution >> 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

martha stewart: if you can never get enough cookies, then you won't want to miss thiseason of "martha bakes". i'll be bringing you cookies from all over the world. join me kitchen, each week, where i'll share popular classics from italy, scandinavia, france, the netherlands, eastern europe; even from down under. diover unusual ingredients plus helpful tips for decorating and sharing. welcome to "martha bakes". "martha bakes" is ma possible by... for more than 200 years, domino and c&h sugars me have been used by akers to help bring recipes to life and create memories for each newakeneration ofg enthusiasts. ♪