captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, july 8: dangerous rescue: the first meers of the trapped thai youth soccer team emerge. also, a living legacy of war: bosnia's children of rape and, how the battle for contr t of congress midterms begins with the pick to fill the supreme court vacancy. next on pbs newshour weekend. >> "pbs newshr weekend" is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the sue and edgar wachenheim the cheryl and philip milstein family. the j.p.b. foundation. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your

retirement company. ditional support has bee 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. four of the boys trapped in a caveomplex in northern thailand are out and being treated at a nearby hospital night, after a dangerous and complicated mission to rescue them started early totr a r tn twwe the first group was brought out atfollowing a nine hour opn. >> ( onanslated ): the opera today has been more successful than we expected. >> sreenivasan: a multinational moam of divers helped the boys navigate through three miles of narrow passageways in the flooded caves. eight more boys, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year old coach

remain trapped in the cave. rescuers are racing against continued monsoon rains that will incase the risks. a thai diver was killed as partp of the rescue eration on idfr. thai officials said the operation is expected to resume on monday, after supplies along the route are replenished. the rescue could take another two to four days. tomorrow night, in a prime-ti pe addressident trump is scheduled to reveal hise candidr the supreme court. it's a choice that is widely expected to move ice court signtly to the right. it's also a decision that will mark the start of an intense political fight that could help decide which party prevails in the november midterms. but, as special correspondent jeff greenfield notes, the sueme court as a political battlefield is relatively new. he joins me now from santa barbara. >> jeff, in recent history we think of the court no, ma'am theys pitched political battle bus you are looking at the longer arc of this. >yes. it seems almost impossible to

contemplate but while 18 '94 to 196 oight only one supreme urt nominee was rejected, they were anlatively noncontroversial even when controversy did begin to erupt they weren't partisan rttles issues ricnixon lost two of his nominees in those fight 17 democratsrdered four nominees, 13 republicans voted against him and the real surprise to a lot of people is the most contentious battle over nomination in memory was clarence thomas in 1991. >> he is on the court because 11 democrats voted for his confirmation. >> sreenivasan: so what changed? >> in a word, polarittion. you doave any liberal republicans in the senate, you,u don't have any conservative democrats. they are in the d, becomes most all-encompassing in terms of how you will vote and what the base wants to consider, and that is why principles in most recent nominations, for instance, no republican voted against neil gorsuch, i think only four democrats voted for

him, kagan, obama'sast nominee, only one democrat voted against her andewer thn half a dozen republicans voted for her, it is parts san in a way it never was before. >> sreenivasan: was there a nomination in particular? >> yes. i thk history is going to look back and say that the nomination of david sout in 1990 by the first real estate bush was the tipping point, for decades republican presidents nominated justices that turned out to be very liberal, earl warren, len than, black man, john paul stevens, but when souter who was called a home run for conservatives by bush's chief of staff went liberal, that was kind of it, the conservative base said that's it. th a rallying cry, no more souters, from there on in they demanded any republican president who nominated a justice who had been vetted by reliably conservative outfits like the heritage foundation and that's been the case i think and will be the case certainly with this president. >> sreenivasan: so let's talk a little bit about t political

implications of whoever gets nominated now. >> well, righnow, there are five democratic senators up for reelection, they come from states that trump won by landslide majorities, the president has been campaigning ally toe states specif put pressure on those democrats to either vote for his nominee or suffer at the polls f and what is interesting is thatbe use the supreme court was so much bigger an issue for conservative who felt betrayed their presidents than liberals who are perfectly content to see them nominate liberals and moderates, among those who picked the court as the key voting issue in the last presidential electioey broke heavily for trump, in fact you could argue that's why trump is in the white house, and one of the things we are going to see is that the prospect of a very conservative supreme court, we will find out whether that is going to make democrats make t supreme court as big a voting issue as it has been for republicans, so there is an enormous amount at sta, whoever the president decides to

nominate tomorrow. >> sre greenfield joining us from california, thanks a so much. >> thank you. >> read how and -- >> sreenivasan: read how and why there are fewer zika virus infections, and how it may come orck. visit pb/newshour. >> sreenivasan: the bosnian war of the early 1990's drew the world's attention to the term" etic cleansing." e also brought to light the practice of mass r a weapon of war. a u.s. intelligence assessment after the war concluded that all sides, including ethnic croats and bosnian muslims, did it, but that the vast majority of the atrocities were carried out by serbian forces. newsho weekend special correspondent malcolm brabant has the story of some young adults, born as a resultf rape, who are now emerging to candaign for support a understanding. >> reporter: close to sarajevo's wartime sniper alley is a small park containing military museum

pieces from former yugoslavia. it's here we meet ajna jusic, a 25-year-old psychology student speaking on camera for the fst time about being a living legacy of war. anslated ): for a lon time, other children were laughing at me because i never knew my father's name when they asked primary school. or in >> reporter: ajna is the product of rape. her mother was raped by a serb soldier who was a family acquaintance. afterwards her mother she made a decision that many other pregnt rape victims found impossible. she chose to keep her child. >> ( translated ): i am now living live to the full. but just two years ago i was literally struggling to survive; erocessing everything aft discovered who am i and what am i and how i came to this world. i was seeing a psychologist for a long time. i went to various experts who

worked with me on empowerment, but as i got older i began to empower myself and accept the facts. >> reporter: it takes courage to break cover and reveal yourself as a product of wtime rape. a bosnian rape survivo' non profit organization estimates there are about 60 such young people. this male nurse makes no attempt to hide. his name is alen muhic and he was born in gorazde, a town 60 miles from sarajevo that was besieged for much of the war. >> ( translated ): i knew that i was a war baby but i didn't imagine my life and my past to be what they are, that i was adopted and that my parents are not my biological parents. >> reporter: alen's muslim mother became pregnant after being raped several times by a serb man she knew before the war. aumatized, she abandoned baby alen in the hospital where she gave birth.

and that's where he was spotted ho was workingic at the hospital during the si (ege. >> translated ): we brought him home for two or three months while was at the hospital. we played with him. we simply loved him and couldn't be separated from him. orter: muharem and his wife decided to adopt alen. >> ( tran wated ): i juted to get alen out of the hospital so he could be with us, and to educate him properly.af we werid what will happen to him if the red cross put him up for adoption. who would take him? what would happen to him? >> reporter: gorazde is not big place and gossip gets around. after some playground cruelty alen's adoptive parents were forced to tell him about his background earlier than they had wanted. in 2007, this serb man, radmilo vukovic, was tried for the rape of alen's mother.sa

les of alen's d.n.a. were used as evidence. vukovic admied committing the rape and was convicted by bosnia's national war crimes tribunal. initially he was jailed, but was freed after the bosnian appeals chamber overturned the conviction, citing vukovic's pre-war relationship with alen's mother as a mitigating circumstance. >> ( translated ): when he opened the door, to 30 years in the future. same physical appearance, same she of the head. identical. it was like copy. paste. we introduced ourselat down in the garden, and started talking. i was so furious with his nswers to my questions. i wanted to know whe admitted everything at the trial, but never got in touch with me after his release. he said he had never known my mother, he didn't commit a crime. i became so angry when he said the d.n.a. alysis was fake and

was planted on him. i realized then that there wasn nothing hu him and i just turned around and left without saying goodbye, without anything. reporter: as for ajna jsic,ar of therapy have allowed her to come to terms with her roots. >> ( translated ): when somebody asks me what my most important identity is, i say that i am a daughter of a lioness mother, a mother who ia fighter. >> reporter: bakira hasecic, is a another survivor of warte rape. >> ( translated ): that image, even when am talking, i see it. it's always there in the shadows. it never goes away. medicine hasn't yet come up with an eraser to get ridese memories. i will live with them until the day i die >> reporter: hasecic campaigns on behalf of fellow victims.ru sh a nonprofit that gathers evidence and tries to bring wartime rapists justice. in her office this picte

depicts a woman enduring rape but ultimately regaining happiness. the reality is noto simple. >> ( translated ): it's very hard to talk about it, even after 26 years. three times i was taken to three different locations and raped. sometimes i ignore what happeneo me, especially when i think of my child being tortured and not being able to help her. >> reporter: this is her daughter amela. too was raped by serb soldiers in front of her parents. visegrad is where the lives of hasecic and her daughter were torn apart. today this predominantly serb town in eastern bosnia markets itself as a tourist destination0 but in 1992, 3muslims were murdered and their bodies hurled from the bridge into the river drina. 70 people were burned alive in a this cella hasecic is fighting to preserve this house as a museum and memorial to savagery.rk

her s not limited to helping rape survivors. she has an even broader goa >> ( translated ): people are still looking for the bones of their loved ones sthey can ngry them with dignity. i have been thinbout these people, dreaming about them for years. they were my neighbors living two to three kilometers from me. one whole village, koritnik, wad bulive in this house. the youngest victim was a t day old baby who didn't even have a name.te >> repor besima catic suljevic is a psychotherapist working with hasecicit non pr she says people in conflict zones like syria, iraq, and afghanistan must learn froiam bond avoid stigmatizing rape victims. >> ( translated ): the majority of us realize that the woman was the victim and she d have the possibility to defend ierself. but there are couns where it is important to work with the community and send a clear message: it is not your fault, you e the victims, and you

could not defend yourself because in this kind of i situation impossible for a woman to defend herself. >> reporter: some politicians wanted to set up a fund so thata rape victi the children who were born as a result couldo receive monthlensation of about $280 as well as additional benefits. and this package would include men as wel because male rape was used as a weapon of war. but the legislation was thwarted. it was blocked by serb lawmakers.cr anics see this as one of the failings of the bosnia peace agreement, because as the country is currently constuted, any ethnic group can block any law that it doesn't like. peter van der auweraert works for the united nationd and has stude impact of rape in bosnia's former battle grounds. he believes in prosecung perpetratorsbut says there are key lessons to learn from bosnia's post war experience. >> there was a total imbalance in the investment of resourcan energy in focusing

everything on criminal justice and noputting enough resources into softer measures if i could put it in that way to provide victims with reparations, to provide victims with aess to mental health care, to give those people the tools, to givet the suphey need to rebuild their lives. >> reporter: if she wanted to, ajna jusic could provide a sample of d.n.a. and allow bosnian precutors to open a case against her biological ther. but she's unwilling to do so. >> ( translated ): when i turned 18, i had the right to initiate a complaint against him. then, i was in a difficult process of trying to grasp and accept what happened, not to mention trying to survive. but now at this stage of my life after so many years of effort and us working togr et overcome all of this. i really don't want to meet him. >> reporter: in gorazde the circle of life has rotated. alen muhic is now a father andmu he promises tote his adoptive father, the man he calls dad.

>> ( translated ): i want my son to learn all the things my father taught me. to be righteous, realistic, not to judge people no matter how igthey appear, or what reln they follow because i also don't judge people. this injustice is the only thing that hurts me. >> sreenivasan: about 40 miles south of palm springs, california's salton sea was once hailed as a miracle in the desert.ft formed the colorado river breached its dike in the early 20th century, the state's largest inland body of water was a haven for fishing and recreation. today, the sea itself struggles to survive, and has beme a haven of an entirely different sort. newshour weekend's chris oker reports. >> reporter: the sunset paints the sky in a tie-dyed fire of red and orange. but it is the silence on the water that tells the real story.

life is leaving the salton sea. ter is evaporating, fish are dying and the lakeside retreats are shells of what they ce were. califoia's largest lake, now a portrait of abandonment. but some believe this emptiness can be filled. >> this piece here it has an interesting history too. >> reporter: to hedlar brian tell it, the open air desert museum of east jesus is a living, breathing, experiment in free expression. just off tlt shore of the sa sea, it's a commune that allows painters, sculptors and conceptual artists to th battle he sand, the sun and the wind. lt this is el brino, the lt dinosaur of the sa sea. touch part of it because it's, like, powder, it gopo back to wder. >> reporter: it disingrates. >> ah. totally disintegrates. >> reporter: is that part of aat's going on, disintegration, the idea that thin temporary in this environment? >> that is the message i'm getting th nothing on thi level, on this plane is really

worth clinging to 'cause it's just stuff. it's all just stuff. >> reporter: the brain child of late artist charles rusell, east jesus began the dump site of slab city, a squatters camp on an abandoned military base, just tside of niland, california and the location of leonard knight's famed salvation mountain. >> as soon as charlie russel hearabout his adventure out here in the desert using trash to build a temple to god, he said he wanted to be a part of that because he was always yearning to make something out of nothing.ha in the yearsfollowed, russell invited more and more artists to east jesus, to come and build, create, and watch what happens to the work as th sert takes hold. >> reporter: this one here? >> i have to demonstrate it to you because it's really not about the tin cans in there. it's all about this. making sound out of just pebbles and empty cans.

>> reporter: oh, that's great. >> it can sound like the rain. >> reporter: after russell passed away in 2011, the growino rostartists in east jesus formed the tax-exempt chasterus foundation to protect th project. >> his friends rallied around and said, "look, we don't want th idea to die. we've all had such a great time contributing and inspiring one another." and so they formed a 501.3c to preserve his memory. >> reporter: in 2013, the foundation purchased the 30 acres of lan that surround the collection, and three years later, east jesus became an accredited member of the california museum association. >> moving right along. this is our tvall. one of the most photographed and shared pieces, i think, of east jesus online because people love it. it says so many different things to so many different people. >> reporter: but this isn't the only artists' haven along the salton sea. if east jesus was builhet on discarded, the works of bombay beach spring from the yet to be hauled away.

at one time the 1,000 lot community offered access to the water at an affordle price. but as the sea started to die, so to did the town. >> i fell in love with bombay beach from the begning because of-- its so different from the-- everything else in-- that you see in american life. and i just think it inspires artists. >> reporter: for the last threee s, tao ruspoli and his two partners have been using the nearly abandoned town as aor staging groundrt installations, lectures and performances. >> every time i would come here for the last ten years i'd see people shooting music videos, doing fashion shoots. like, really kind of capitalizing on how strange and removed it was.ow and yet, thehad nothing to show for it. rt reporter: in 2015, ruspoli and his partners s, buying up homes and lots for as little as $5,000 and invited artists from around the world to come to and start creating. two years ago, they ed the bombay beach biennale, a three day gathering billed as celebration of art, music and philosophy.

the thly agenda: saving " sea." >> i think the job of the artist is to help people see the world through new eyes. and therefore, it's like a sense of, like, discovering something together, unvering something, reinterpreting something and so when an artist does that to a place-- it brings it to life. >> reporte the efforts have sparked a renaissance of sorts, there are now 40 different permanent exhibits in bombay beach. >> so like everything that this place inspires, there's a bit of-- theof's a bit sadness mixed with a bit of humor mixed with a bit of absurdity. >> reporter: perhaps no other installation illustrates this mix better than the bombay beach opera house. ♪ ♪ created by british artist james ostrer, the house is lined with flip-flops collected from the beaches of neria, >> this door opens on-- on-- on hydraulic hinges. and suddenly this is transformed

into one-- into one of the great-- performance spaces, i think, on earth. and jaans was doinher installation with the flip flops in new york a few months ago anp someone came u to him and said, "oh, someone's already done that in bombay beach." so that was the great validation that we have come on to the map. >> reporter: while bombay beach may have arrived in the art world and east jesus might have its creditation, you are nev far from the backdrop that allowed this happen. it's hd not to. have very kind of apocalyptic feelings about all this. i mean, it's a frightening portrait of-- of change, of an environment changing. >> yeah. >> reporter: is that too hyperbolic? >> not at all. it's like the closest thing that i've seeto aenvironmental catastrophe in my lifetime. and it's-- and it's so tangible. it'sight now. you can watch the sea going ay. you can smell the problem. you can see the dead fish on the shore. like, it's just and its all i think that this place embodie a lot of conradictions. and they're all there for people to kind of contemplate.

>> this is pbs newshour weekend, sun >> sreenivasan: the trump t administration announced halting payments for an obamacare program that helps insurers cover costs for sicker patients.es in a statementerday, the centers for medicare and medicaid services said its freezing payments that redistribute more than $10 billion year from insurance companies with healthier patients to insurancen cos with sicker patients. the federal agency said it made e change because of conflicting court rulings in lawsuits filed by smaller .insure the blue cross blue shield association, whose members provide affordable care act coverage, said it was "extremely disappointed" with the decision and warned that prmiums for millions of people not eligible for taxpayer subsidiesill increase significantly. secretary of stateike pompeo dismissed comments from north korea today that the u.s. had

made "gangster-like" demands in its negotiations on denuclearization. in tokyo, pompeo met with japanese and south k e two days of talks wereatedc productive.d >> we tailed and substantial discussions about the next steps towards a fullyri ed and complete denuclearization. >> sreenivasan: the secretary of state is now in vietnam, part of a 13-day overseas tour that includes the nato summit in belgium later this week. in japan, a third day of torrential rain, flooding and landslides pushed the death toll there to more than 80 people. dozens are still missing, mostly near hiroshima, where heavy rain triggered mudslides that swept away cs and homes. in the city of kurashiki, more than 2,000 pple were rescued by military personnel, many of them were elderly patients from a local hospital. japanese officials say three million residents are being urged to move to higher ground and into shelters as the rain contues.

>> sreenivasan: surf guess a british woman expose novichok died late today, 44-year-old stuess ander partner both were hospitalized after coming into contact with the nerve agent. rally remains in critical condition, theormer russian spy skripal and his daughter were sickened by novichok, british investigators sister expect sturgess and rally were expod through a contaminated item left over from the first attack which britain blames on russia has denied the allegation. and tomorrow on the newshour, the latest on president trum's supreme court nominee, that's all for this edition and tomorrow on the newshour,es the latest oident trump's supreme court nominee. that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. have a gghd ni

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. sue and edgar wachenheim the cheryl and philip milstein family. the j.p.b. foundation. rosalind p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. ythat's why we're retirement company. provided by:support has been and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by ocontributions topbs station from viewers like you. thank you. woman: here she is.

now, i sheuld have warned you, tdo mate for life. ed kenney: oh, there she goes. aw, she picked me. ha ha ha! kenney, voice-over: jack johnson's music reflects his homewai'i, but a life-changing road trip up the california coast traces his soul to something much deeper. every dish has a story. food brings people together and has the power to conjure up cherished memories. johnson: ♪ oh, you're such a pretty thing ♪ ♪'ll take you, and i'll make you all mine ♪ kenney: i was born and raised in the hawaiian islands, one of the most diverse communities in the world. johnson: ♪ we will watch you from the clouds ♪ ♪ we can't stop it, anyhow ♪ it's not ours kenney: in this show, we'll meet a guest from hawai'i, learn about their favorite dish, trace it back to its origins, and have some fun along the way. johnson: ♪ oh, you're such a pretty thing ♪