captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, august 3: multiple fatalities after a mass shooting in el pas texas. next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the cheryl and philip milstein family the j.p.b. foundation. irosalind p. walteremory of george o'neil. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized indivgrual anp retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been ovided by:

and by the corporation for public broadcasting. a private corporion funded by the american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. ank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening and thanks for jning us a gunman opened fire at a shopping center in el paso, texas today, killing multiple people and sending others to local hospits. police responded within minutes after 9-1-1 calls began at aut ten this morning, many from a walmart near the cielo vista mall. the waart and the mall are a few miles east of downtown el paso, just off interstate 10. by early afternoon police said they had one mann custody and that there was no imminent danger to the public as a search of the area continued.at photographs irculated on social media showed one white male with what appears to be a rifle entering the w. there were initial reports of multiple shooters. police would confirm only that

the suspect in custody is male. >> at this time, we do have one rerson in custody. we don't believe ts anyone outstanding. we are advising to stay away from the scene. the scene is starting ome secure. we can confirm there were multiple victims. i can't confirm their status or their numbers. >> sreenivasan: joining me now from el paso, dennis woo, from ktep. first, for people who don't vow the arery well, how central is this mall? how many people are usually there on a weekend? >> on the weekend, you can usually count on at the walmart, usually per hour, maybe about 1500 t 1600 people in and around the store because it's also parts of the complex to sam's club. >> sreenivasan: in th area now, we're talking about just a few weeks away from back-to-school season, or at least people might be doing that kind of shog this weekend. >> right, exactly. as a matter of fact, i think

this is our tax-free weekend so you have tons nof parents loog for great bargains. the store is going to be packed. >> sreenivasanu now, i know ve had reporters making phone calls and so forth. what have you heard and seen from witnses around there? >> well, so far, witnesses that our news partners have talked to over a period of time, say there were rapid shots fired, and multiple people that were gunned down in front of the counters leading out of the store. >> sreenivasay. in this climate where we have now almost becomeze normato mass shootings, how is that community positioned? meaning, are people there immune to this? i plmean, are p shocked that this hammond in their community? >>bsolutely shocked here. now, el paso is supposed to be a safe city. it's one of thefe cities in want country. it's been like that for several years. the ratings that we've had, have

always put el paso at e top 10%. al to have this happen in our own backyard is a shock. >> sreenivasan: what are the officials there trying to do now? i know that they've established a famitoly relocation cente try to make sure the people who might have been evacuated, separated from their famies, can get together in the same place. but are there any other plansy that the c has announced so far? >> so far, things ar in preliminary stages for the time being. yes, we do have an elementary school that's the staging area for loved ones to try to catch up with other loved ones that were in the store. you know, the cielo vista mall, which has 123 stores, that was also evacuated as well. so the enre complexhat runs maybe about 22 acres is completely deserted, except with nothing but lawn eforcement officials and people trying to latch up with one another. so tho preliminary plans of trying to heal, if you will still in the first stages.

but i can ll you by day's end, we'll wind up with some kind of candlelight vigil, if not mor h thinpening for the weekend. >> sreenivasan: you've lived there for a long time, decades. you've been in the news business for a long time. how doou feel just as an el pasoan? >> you know, after all these years not having to deal with anything on this magnitude, not since 1961 when we had the first air hijacking at our internional airport, we haven't run into something like this. and so the shock of having this in our own community is not going to wear away any time soon. and being a journalist in this area, all we can do is try to comfort by telling the right story. >> sreenivasan: and in tht process, we've almost got a formula now for what happens on day one, what happens on day three.y how do you keep from making sure that it doe'tecome something

personal? boy, that's a tough question to answer, because that's such n pe thing for all the journalists that are working a is story today, including myself, and student that i just sent to the scene. it's one of those things where yojust havto separate your personal life from your personal-- your professional life. you tell strt. e who want toou run into peo tell the story. you comfort them. and after them you process isfr later away the cameras, away from the microphones, and hopefully 'll all be good at the end. >> sreenivasan: you know, some of the initial images sawa basically very heavily ar officers approaching the scene. itybe they were swat teams going in. eemed that there were quite a few different law enforcement agencies converging in a veyr short period of time for this tragedy.t' >> you know, tone of the things that we're very proud of here in oha community is

the law enforcement agencies ar quick to respo matter where they are. and since this was in the central part of el paso, everyone converged because of the proximity. it was easy to get to from central commd for p.d., for sheriffs that's out in the perimer of the county, and, quite frankly, the texas rangear also alzheimer's in this area anyway watching out for motorists and whatnot that might break theaw. >> sreenivasan: all right, dennis woo, operations director at the npr affiliate ktep join us via skype tonk ight. u so much. >> thank you so much for having me. >> sreenivasan: tear gas filled hong kong's streets agn today and into the night as police confronted tens of thousands of- prdemocracy protesters. marching on a major street where shopkeepers had boarded windows; the demonstrators removed a chinese flag from a pole and threw it into the city'sbo victoria har they also vandalized a police station where they lit fires. rs blocked streets using makeshift barricades madeo of umbrellas, barriers, and public trash bins.

in a separate rally today, thousands of other hong kong resides dressed in white gathered to show support for tha tevernmentnd the police. there are more pros planned for tomorrow and leaders of the pro-democracy movement are calling for a general strike on monday. in moscow today, police arrested more than 600 people as demonstrations over the upcoming moscow city council election continued for a second straight weekend. riotolice wearing helmets grabbed demonstrators and shoved them into vans. protestersay that some independent and opposition candidates are being excluded from running forffice. rested 1400 people were last weekend at a similar protest. the 45 seat moscow city council is currently controlled by the pro-kremlin united russia party. iran's foreign minister mohammad zarif said today that iran will further reduce its compliance with the 2015 nuclear according to a government-run news agency. without providing details, zarif was quoted as saying "the third step in reducing commitments to the deal will be implemented."

last month iran threatened to gestart deactivated centri and increase enrichment of uranium to 20% purity. on wednesday the united states placed personal sanctions on zarif, blocking access to any interests he has in u.s. zarif responded that he hapeno personal py or interests here. north korean state media claimed that the country's leader kim jong un personally superviseds and eatly satisfied with another set of rocket launches yesterday, the third round of tests in about a week. state media said it was of a quote newly developed "large- l caliber multipnch guided rocket system." south korean officials confirmed that at least two short-range d projectiles were launchefriday morning, travelling about 137 miles, making them capable of reaching south korea'sal of seoul. yesterday president trump twted that tests of short range missiles "...are not a violation of our sigred singapore ent, nor was there discussion of short range missiles when shook hands." 19 democrats running for their

party's nomination for president appeared in las vegas today, all seeking the backing of 1.6 million public employee union members at an annual forum. the american federation of state, county and municipal employees union is known as a-f- s-c-m-e. both democrats and republicans consider nevada a key battlegroundtate in the upcoming election. hillary clinton carried the state in 2016 by 2% of the popular vote. for more on the fatal shooting in el paso texas, visit pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: this week, a cold war-era pact, the intermediate range nuclear forces-- or i.n.f.-- treaty between the u.s. and russia expired. th countries accused eac other of violating the agreement for years. it was supposed to ban land- based missiles with ranges between 310 and 3,410 miles. joining me now from washington, d.c. for more on what this may i mejon wolfstahl, director of the nuclear crisis group, a nonpartisan group dedicated to

preventing the use of nuclear weapons. heas formerly a senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the national security council in the obama administration. john, in some ways, this is a long time coming. even the obama administration wascomplaining that russia violating this treaty as far back as five, six years ago.>> hat's true. veis has been a long fought battle with russiathe future of the treaty. i would say that botrussia and the united states had some reasons to want to get out of it, but, unfortunately, neither the united states or russia is really thinking about whatn t's losing wis treaty goes away. >> sreenivasan: one of the reasons that people find thi.. john bolton and others say, "hey, this is less relevant today," because the landscape has changed since when the treaty was written. you've got dronethat are technologies that weren't included in the treaty in the first place. d you've gferent world powers now that have nuclear weapons. is that fair? >> well, i mean, the world changes every day. the question is whether or not a safer or less safe without a treaty that bans these land-based missiles in europe.

the reality is that now russia is fe, legally, to keep deploying what had been an illegal system. it makes it easi for them to move them around and test them. the united states is about tote staring its own version of these missiles and going to try and deploy them in europe. and leaders in russia, in europe, and in the united states are going to have less time to make decisions in a crisis or ii there's tary incident with these short-flying or short flight-time fast-flying missiles in and around europe. >> sreenivasan: so, if we, the united states, helps, say, for example, nato countries arm thselves, now what? that raises the potential threat because everyone's on a hair igger and everyone's got missiles right on the border? >> well, actually, european countries were free to build and deploy these missiles on their tn if they wanted to. they are not parthe i.n.f. treaty. this was a bilateral agreement between the uned states and the soviet union, then some other parties joined when the soviet union fell apart. so, if france or poland or germany wanted to build these missiles, they could have. the reality is, the united states and nato don't need these

systems because we have air- launched and sea-launched missiles and long-range ballistic missiles that can target what we need to target in russia. the problem was that russia no longer saw value in this treaty and cheated on it. the question is whether or not we did a good enough job trying to bring them back intoli coce, or whether the united states under john bolton-- who doesn't really care about arms control-- said, " wu knt? this is a great excuse to get out of this treaty, and we can some damage to the arms control regime which we really don't care for anyway." >> sreenivasan: and the united s stats, "listen, we also need to include china in this conversation." china wrote back yesterday, saying, "you know what? you guys are in a different seague. doesn't make any s i mean, does the united states cont to... will the united states and russi down to china's level of weapons? unlikely. cd do they want to sit there and allow china e up to our level of weapons? probably not. >> right. ll, china has had a very small nuclear arsenal for decades, ano they so... shoigns of trying to race to catch up to the united states or russia. both the united states and russia have about 4,000 nuclear weapons each. china has less than 400. so, we're ten times the size of

china. they do have intermediate-range missiles because their issues, their curity is related to their near-abroad. the chairman... oranhe vice chaif the joint chiefs of staff has said we don't need land-based misles in east asia because we have ship-based and air-based systems. so, the push tpull out of this treaty and to develop some of these systems are not driven by military requirements. they're being driven more by ideology and a "gee, they have them, so we need them, too." it doesn't make a whole lot ofry miliense. >> sreenivasan: finally, what's the ripple effect of this treat on the ng one that's coming up in a couple of years? >> well, this is, i think, why most people are sort of saving their ammunition over the death of the i.n.f. treaty.ee we're sad tot go, but the real target for john bolton and nald trump is the 2010 new start arms control treaty that limits both u.s. and russian strategic nuclear weapons to no more than 1,550. john bolton hated this treaty. donald trump doesn't like it because it was negotiated by obama. basically, the double kiss of death for this administration.

the treaty can be extended for five years, but john bolton recently said he sees no reason to extend it.s and thergood chance that donald trump will try to withdraw from the agreement hilss congress can restric freedom to do so. >> sreenivasan: all right. jon wolfstahl, director of the nuclear crisis group, joining us from washington. thanks so much. >> sure. thank you. >> sreenivasan: this week marked the one-year anniversary of the on-going ebola outbreain the congo. so far more than 2600 cases have been reported d 1700 deaths. i recently s down with richard preston, his latest book, crisis in the red zone, reports on the ebola epidemic and how our interconnected world, making it difficult to contain. >> well, it's really because of mother nature. ebola is a kind of warning shot across our bw. it's an example of what are known as emerging viruses, which are viruses that are essentially

leaking out of troubled ecosystem of the planet and getting into humans. we don't have any immunity to these emerging viruses. so they can be extremely deadly, highly infectious, and we really don't have good medical defenses against them. >> sreenivasan: where do stthey t from? >> well, they start from animals, wildnimals, typically. now, a virus is a tiny parasite that needs to have a host. it can only make copies of itself inside the cel sls ofe host. and one of the biggest potential hosts on theig planet now is the human species. we are-- there are 7.5 billion of us, and increasingly in history, humans are gathering into tse gigantic urban megaoplises, centercities. ar give you an example, new york supercity, where w, is about 20 million people. now, that's about the population of floridaf sou take everybody in

florida and you cram them into one city, and everybody is breathing one another'sr aid touching one another, and if an emerging virus from a rainm forest organts into a human population like that, and there's no immunity to the thing, and it's extremely infectious and has a high yrtality rate, then wha're going to see is an immense challenge to the medical system and to everything. >> sreenivasan: the good news about ebola is that there seems to be a vacine that is working and is pretty effective. why can't we get that vaccine tp all of theces that are having these outbreaks? >> well, you know, 's crazy. so there is this big outbreak of ebola g ooi in eastern congo right now, and 160,000 or more vaccinations have been made. people are getting the vaccine, but the virus continues to spread. and the doctors and medical workers can't trace the cases. a lot of cases that up are brand new.

erola has been in the human population of ea congo now for more than a year, and i think the'sa question-- so the vaccination strategy just isn't work, even though it's a great sely mor and more rooted in the human population. anoni think there is a ques as to whether ebola could change, and eventuay become established as a permanent human disease. >> sreenivasan: wow. what-- that's startling. what other sort of culra impediments now to trying to treat ebola? i mean, whether it's civilr was or whether it's social media. we'rere the challeng facing in trying to get a population armed with the information to be able to say, "here's what you should do. here's what you shld look fo. here's where you should go." >> let's talk about the amerin population. let's talk abok ut new yty, because the problem of education is just as deep here in w york

as it is anywhere else on the planet. so i did ae itrvey, and i found out that in the new york city hospithtalse are a total of eight so-called "red zone beds" for patients who are infected with a highly infectious, lethal virus for which there is no cure and no vaine. only eig beds. and there are not enoh traed hospital personnel to handle patientn about eight when there was one patient with ebola at bellevue hospital in new york city, there was a huge team that treated the individual. they spent millions of dollars saving that patient's life. now, what if an emerging virus-- i'm not necessarily talking about ebola, but something ebola-like, and there are many other kinds of viruses that are out thnere lurking nature that are making these so-called "cross-species jumps." they're coming out of ecosyem

and getting into humanity. so what if we had 1,000 patients in new york city with a reay hot virus? what if we had 10,000 patients? what you would see in a city like new york in the developed world is exactly what happened in, you know, cities in west africa when ebla got into them. you would see medical personnel risking their lives and sacrificing their lives, a thin line ofefense. the million people, the doctors, eye nurses, would really be dying. ould be going into horrific conditions to try to save patients, juseas was d in africa. and then you would have-- you can just imagine the possibilities. in a way, they're sort of hard to imagine. but would have people tryg to leave the city in large numbers. you would have people fleeing from hospitals, as happened in africa.

nobody would want to go to theu hospitals bese they would be hot. so people would beying in apartments. and the way it works in new york city is that the fire dartment has special haz-tag teamshat are trained to go in and bring out a biohazardous patient or a biohazardous corpse and deliver it properly. >> sreenivasan: what about the miseducation and the rumors, the conspiracies that kind of impede that education for the rest of us, the consumer class? and we're we're seeing these challenges on muh moreasic vaccinations towards children. but when you add that layer of ar, "oh, my gosh, this is a deadly virus. it's affecting adults ofll types and shapes and sizes," it can be worse. >> yes, it is. and, unfortunately, soial media has played a-- i think a veryng damaole in these situations. just to give you an example. in the congo outbreak of ebola, which is going on now, people there are very well-educated

o ople. they have accesse internet. they read "la monde" the med from paris, and they use a lot of social media, and a lot of rumor goes around on social media that are not correct about ect yourselfpro against ebola or paranoid rumors about the doctors that are treating ebola s and i fear opect that the same thing would be going on in the united states if a bio-safety level-four hot virus got going in the population. >> "frontline" physiciansi pansd aid workers that are in the field, oftentimes, especially i arke africa, the narrative is the americans or the europeans come innd they're saving all the africans. but really, in your books, whato you'reng also is that it's

frican doctors that are doing the harrrible work, right? >> absolutely. you know, there's this cliche that, you know, the people from the developed world, the white people, come into africa and they save hapless africans. but "crisis in the red e" is about something different. i take ain magniclass and put it on a small, forgotten hospital in africa that was devastated by ebola. and in that hospital, you had american doctors and medical people, scientists and african scientists, doctors and medical peop fighting this dreadful virus in the hospital, which killed a lot of the steyff. ere putting their lives on the line, often sacrificing their lives, going into situations where they knew theyl were pro going to die, in an effort to save a patient's life. >> sreenivasan: is there a lesson we can learn from what haens, i mean some of the ethical dilemmas and challenges? if you've got a vaccine, doou

save a doctor? do you save a patient? >> in the faceave crisis, the medical people atthis little hospital faced terrible ethical choice, cices thano doctor should ever have to make, choices in which, you know, the hippocratic oath says, "first, do no harm," but these w choices where the doctors, no matter what they dthey were going to cause harm, and it was a life-or-death crisis. >> srenivasan: richard preston is the author. the book is called "crisis in the red zone." g with us.for be >> great to be with you. >> sreenivasan: finally tonight, multiple peoplwere killed today in a mass shooting in el paso, texas.25 police, as of .m. eastern, have not released a number of fatalities or injuries. one man is in custody.pl 22 pwere admitted to hospitals, 12 with traumatic injuries were rushed to the m

universiical center of el paso. a spokesman there said one of the injured died late this afternoon. o will have more updates website pbs.org/newshour and tomorrow on our broadcast. 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 acce group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. sue and edgar wachenheim iii.er

the and philip milstein family. the j.p.b. foundation. rosalind p. walter, in memory of george o'neil. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for publicroadcasting. private corporation funded by the american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

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