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tv   PBS News Hour  PBS  August 13, 2019 6:00pm-7:01pm PDT

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ioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> nawaz: goodi'vening. amna nawaz. judy woodruff is away. on the newshour tonight:a. fallout in rus fear lingers after nuclear engineers are killed in a mysterious rocket explosion. what it means for the country's weapons program, and for vladimir putin's hold on power. then, the artistic world is rocked as legendary eropic tenor placido domingo is accused by multiple women of sexual harassment. and, digital casinoswhere you can't win, but you can lose everything. an inside look at how gambling companies target vulnerable users who play online-- where there's zero chance of reward and every chance of financial ruin. >> you don't know this until you play this game, but you've got a problem. if you have an addiction, you're
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screwed. >> nawaz: all that and more onni toght's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: life well-planned. learn more at raymondjames.com. >> text night and day. >> catch it on replay. >> burning some fat. >> sharing the latest viral cat! o you can do the things yu like to do with a wireless plan designed for you. with talk, text and data. consumer cellular. learn more at consumercellar.tv
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>> babbel. a language program that teaches real-life conversations in a new language, like spanish, french, german, italian, and more. babbel's 10-15 minute lessons are available . an app, or re information on babbel.com. >> and with the ongoing support 6of these institutions: anindividuals. >> this program was made possible by thcorporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> nawaz: clashes tocked hong koay, as anti-government demonstrations crippled the busy international airport for a second day. scuffles broke out when riot police armed with pepper spy and batons confronted pro-democracy protesters inside the terminal. jonathan miller of "independenti teon news" has our report. >> reporter: midnight hong kong time, and the proteshotors forced the cancellation of all outbound flights for the second day running,
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became suddenly agitated as a thin blue lineentatively entered the arrivals hall, terminal one. laser pens blinded the officer who were immediately forced to retreat. the blackshirts thought for a moment they'd seenf.he police of then the riot police arrived. initially they picked off individuals. some were beaten, then cuffed omene riot policeman be immediately trapped inside the doors to the terminal. you see him attempting an arrest, then he's set upon. he loses, th is beaten with his own baton. the intensy of the mistrust and hatred that habuilt up, exploding. the cop pulls a hand gun but nshows restraint; he does fire. he's finally rescued.rh beijing'etoric of "no leniency, no mercy" still echoing round hong kong, a city in the throes of chaos and escalating violence and now
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gripped by fear of what china might do. at 12:40am, the protestors surrootund her suspected police spy and cuff him with plastic cable ties the editor of a chinese communt party paper, the english-language "global times," tweeted that fu geo is one of his hong kong-base reporters. there is an ugly mmetry to all this. it followed other violent incidents on sunday in which hong kong police fired tear gas into underground stations, chased and beat fleeing protestors, and, across the harbor, shot a young female protestor in the eye with a baton round. carrie lam, the pro-beijingpo tical leader of the semi-autonomous territory, held a news conference this morning.
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>> ( translated ): hong kong hau becomeafe and unstable, "violence, not matter who commits it, is pushing hong kong onto a road of no return." >> reporter: this is china's counter-terrorism force and tellingly, the protests kong were yesterday described by beijing as "emerging terrorism." hong kongers watch anxiously; as srrie lam sticks to her g, they know it's big brother beijing who's calling the shots. >> nawaz: that repor mt from jonathler of "independent television news." also tay, the u.s. announced it's delaying tariffs on some chinese goods until december 15th while removing other items from its tariff list altogether. oe duties had been set to into effect next month on products including laptops, cell phones, and video game nsoles. president trump was asked about the timing of the delay beforepa ing for an event in pennsylvania. >> we're doing this for christmas season, just in case some of the tariffs would have an impact on u.s. customers.so
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buar they've had virtually none. >> nawaz: planned 10% tariffs on about $3 billion in other chinese goods will still be imposed. word of the tariff decision sent stocks soaring on wall street today. the dow jones industrial average gained 372 points to close at nearly 26,280. the nasdaq rose 153 points and the s&p-500 added 42. scrutiny intensified today of thmanhattan jail where acced sex trafficker jeffrey epstein was found deadn saturday. the justice department said the two guards assigned to watch epstein have now been placed on administrative leave. the jail's warden was also temporarily reassigned, pending the outcome of both the f.b.i. d justice department investigations into epstein's death. a coalition of 29 states and cies filed a lawsuit again the trump administration today to stop a ruleioasing restri on coal-burning power plants. the trump rule rolled back an obama-era regulation that set limits on carbon dioxide
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pollutios.from power pla the outcome of the case could set a precedenfor how future administrations can fight climate change by restricting pollutants. most of the southern u.s. and parts of the midwest were under heat advisories and warnings today, from texas to south carolina. the triple-digit heat wave was most intense across arkansas, tennese, mississippi, louisiana and alabama. but some relief is o the way. the national weather service said an approaching cool front will help reduce the hean and humidityme areas tomorrow. cbs and viacom have agreed to reunite. they'll merge their networks and the paraount movie studio in the face of growing competition from streaming services like tflix. the combined company is mated to have $28 billi in revenue. the merger is expected to be completed by year's end. and, new report out today finds child care costs in most states exceed federal subsidies
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for low-income parents. that's according to the inspector general for the department of health and human services, or h.h.s.ec each statees how to allocate funds from an $8 billion national block grant, meant to offset child care costs for over a million children.ta but manys set their payment rates much lower than recommended. h.h.s. has now put 33 states on watch to ensure they comply with equal access requires.ment still to come on the nshour: what we know and what remains hidden about the shadowy russian haclear program. the multiple sexuassment allegations against celebrated operatic tenor placido domingo. how online casinos target gambling addicts andhe devastation it wreaks on their lives. plus much more. >> nawaz: an explosion at a remote site. shifting stories fm the
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russian government and nuclear officials. public concern about radiation exposure. we're not talking about chernobyl 33 years ago. we're talking about two russian litary accidents near the arctic circle, one just last week. our william brangham has the details. >> reporter: somber crowds lined the streets of sarov today,wi beariness to funerals cloaked in mystery after a nuclear reactor explosion at a nearby missile tting site killed at least seven scientists. owe final death toll is un. harussian nuclear official been slow to disclose details. but with lg faces, they admitted thursday's blast at the sa testing site was a tragedy. >> ( translated ): a chain of tragic incidental events and uncertainties led to this happenin although, after a preliminary analysis, we have seen the testers were fighting to get t situation under cont succeed.ely, they did not
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authorities say they will evacuated the town. gamma radiation there is four no 16 times greater than background levels. analysts believe the accident involved a near nucle powered cruise missile, the kind russian >> ( translated ): a real technologic breakthrugh is the creation of the advanced strategic missilsystem with a totally new combat equipment, programming cruise unit, its testing was completed successfully.
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>> reporter: moscow's push for new missile technology is aimed at outsmarting defense systems the u.s. is building, and this resurgent arms race has cost other lives. just last month 14 russian sailors died after an explosion on one of their nuclea submarines. >> the people who were killed were all very high ranking, and that'sl ot typica have so many high-ranking officers on a submarine. as relations between the united states a russia get worse, the russians are stepping up all these kind of traditional cold war behaviors. a so, we're seei kinds of new systems and new systems often have problems. so it's-- it's sad that these people keep dying, but this is kind of what an arms race looks like. >> reporter: these developments come as a major u.s.-russia arms control treaty is seto expire in 2021, and after the u.s.dr wi from the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty, saying tharussia was in violation of that agreement. on top of that, with western sanctions mounting, the russian economy and putin's approval ratings are both declining. moscow has also been erupting in enormous protests, as russians
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took to the streets to compin about the kremlin's tight grip on destic politics. police turned violent as theyed arrestore than a thousandis demonstrators eekend who were out demanding more open elections. >> brangham: for more on what these military mishaps and protests mean, we turn to angela stent. she directs the center for eurasian, russian and east european studies at georgetown university's schsel of foreign ice. nsr latest book is "putin's world: russia ag the west, and with the rest." angela stent, welcome back to the newshour. i wonder if you could... iths e anything else that you can tell us about russia's testing or this accident that neap around this missile? >> i think no more than what we already heard on the broadcast, whicinis they really are g the minimum amount of information, but because of chernobyl and because of what happened 33ears agthe russian people are very suspicious when they heard about
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this. this is why there waa run on a dine immediateer they heard rumors. i think most american specialists wl say the u.s. tried to develop a nuclear powered cruise missile and gave it up in the 1960s.n it's just ot practical. it's, as we heard, lying a flying chernobyl, a so we don't really know what the russians do or don't have. we do know that last year vladimir putin, as you said, demonstrated a picture, a video of this missile, which can evadm u.sile defenses andna y landed in florida and dropped something on why at suspiciousoked like mar-a-lago. the russians are trying to develop weapons that cn totally evade the elaborate missile defense systems that the u.s. has been creating. >> brangham: with this secretive shifting story,
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tight-lipped response from variousrussian officialsis that what we're just supposed to expect when this kind of military mishap occurs? >> well, we have never seen anything else from the russians. when the kursk submarine sank, there was a total blackout on r a long time. they are not good about giving out accurate information or at least enough information to try and save their population from needless radiation and other effects. i myself was in moscow during the chernobyl explosion, ani know how frightening it was fo f everyone ure out what was happening, where the radiation was, and ths pattern doesn't teem to have changed. >> brangham: amidst these two different accidents that have happened, you are also seeing this seeming escalation in the arms race between russia and the u.s. can you give us a sense of the lay of the land with regard to arms control and armlos deent between the two nations? >> certainly. so as you said,the treaty on
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intermediate range nuclear forces is dead since august 2nd of this month. so neither the united states nor russia abound by that, and we will both now be developing new classes of intermediate range missiles. our defense secretary has said that we will. place theypcould be deployed i. that's if we'll have any akallis or them. the russians have also said they're developing a new class eapons. i think the real thing to watch is the new sta treaty regulating strategic nuke lower weapons. it's set to expiren 2021. it could be extended for five years just by mutual, agreement but our national security advisor john bolton says he regards these kinds arms control agreements as antiquated and useless and, in fact, he said in a speech two weeks ago that he didn't really see anyo reasontend this new start agreement. so what we're talking about is in 21 we could be in the situation, if this new start
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agreement isn't extended, where for the first time since 1972, since president nixon went to scow and signed a similar agreement with boston brezhnev,s will be the first time we won't have any agreement that regulates the nuclear arsenals of the world's two nuclear superpowers who between them control 9% of t world's nuclear weapons. > brangham: shifting gears a tiny bit,we saw these protests erupting in moscow over what seemed like somewhat provincial local elections. does this crack down a this response by the russian citizenry in moscow say anything broader about putin and his hold on power? >> i think it does. i think this is more than just a swawbl about who will it is on a 45-person municipal council and regulate taxi lenses i think younger russians who have been out on the seotreet,
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50,000e on saturday, realize looking ahead that they have ry little controer their political system. they have very little choice. they understand that even though president putin's term doesn'tpi until 2024, this interagency and the rivalry for power and the questioning about succession, this is already going on, and they would like to have a different syste they would like to be able to have, again, more choice in the isystem. so inot just about a municipal election. it's about the principle of having people who are not af member o the official united russia party and who have independesa views have somy in this system. >> brangham: we've certainly seen here in the u.s. a lot of discussion about russia's interference in our last election. we've also seen russia trying to flex its muscles in europe and the middle east, in syria, and in turkey. you wrote a recent piece where you were trying to get americans to rognize that judo is
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putin's sport of choice, nos t chas a game. what did you mean by that? >> so what i meant by it, and vladimir putin became a judo champion as a young man. he said in an essay it helped himo get out of the rut and the hardscrabble background he had. what i meant by that was tt in judo, even if you are maybe weaker than your opponent, iyof sense their own distraction, if you sense their own weakness, if you can distract them, you can in fact prevail over what would appear to be a stronger opponent. and i think what putin has don very effectively is to take advantage o the opportunities presented to him by distraction in theest by the divisions and by the polarization and by the fact, i would argue, thatunthe ed states did not have a very coherent idea about what it wanted to do after the soviet ion collapsed. when putin came to power in
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2000, he had a good idea he wanted to restore russia as a great power. he's managed to restore russia as ar. global pla when you look at the fundamentals in russia, g.d.p.m. which is the size of that of italy, a declining popation, an economy that's overwhelmingly dependent on raw materials revenue, he's played a weak hand quite effectively. 0nd he's been in power for years now, and he's seen american presidents and other leaders come and h, and e feels that he has the upper hand in many ways, despitee all thse problems.>> brangham: all right, angela stent of georgetown university, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> nawaz: with more performances than any other opera singer in history, placido domingo holds a special place in the performing arts.
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domingo is not just one of the ces after aizable career that's lasted nearly five decades. he's also a leader and performer witheal power. but in the wake of "me too," there are now a series of utvelations by the a.p. ab his alleged personal behavior. allegations that raise disturbing questions about the use of that por. s, ♪ >> nawaz: for decalacido domingo has been one of the biggest names in opera. ♪ ♪ a multi-grammy award winner and one of the iconic "three tenors", his star power and industry status are beyond compare-y. the 78r-old spaniard currently conducts and directs the los angeles opera, and he still attracts sell-out crow across the globe. but a new "associated press" report out today says that rise xu fame was littered with misconduct.
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the story cites nine women, eight singers and one dancer,sa who y domingo harassed them and tried to pressure them into sexual relationshipsver 30 years, often at venues where he held a managerial position. all but one requested anonymity. patriciaulf sang at the washington national opera in the late 1990's and 2000's. domingo was the artistic director there and later the general director. >> he would come up to me this close and he would say, "patricia, do you have to go me tonight?" and it was arresting, it was very difficult. >> nawaz: wulf said she started hidingrom domingo. >> i don't know how it could have been shoved under the rug as long as it has been it's gone on long enough. it needs to stop. >> nawaz: the women's stories
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followed a patrn. they say domingo would push for private meetings, under the guise of offering professional advice. that domingo offered them jobs and then sometimes punished t professionalse who refused his advances. seven of the nine said they felt their careers were negatively impacted wn they told him o." three said he forcibly kissed them and one said he put his hand down her skirt. in a statement, domingo called the allegations "deeply troubling, and aacpresented, rate. i believed that all of myra inions and relationships were always welcomed and consensual. however, i recognize that the >> when someone comes this close and kind of smiles in a wry smile and says "do you have to go home?" i think that was pretty clear. there were no misconceptions in my mind. >> nawaz: none of the women had oncumentation of domingo's actions such as messages. but the a.p. talked to
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three dozen singers, dancers musicians and others who said they had witnessed domingo acting in a sexually inappropriate way. >> nawaz: let's further exploo the reactionis news and wider questions about this abuse of power in the field. peggy mcglone has written about this issue extensively for the washington post. peggy, welcome to the news hour. now, the story broke just today, but tell me, what has been the broader reaction within the opera and the classical music world? >> well, there was swift reaction tod. the los angeles opera announced an outside investigatioand then several organizations, the philadelphia orchestra and the san ansco er canceled upcoming performances with placido. >> woodruff: there's been some reactioacn anons already taken. one of the commonalities i've taken away was this idea of a whisper network when it came to
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placiddomingo, that it was an open secret among women, he was someone to be avoided. you've reported in this space for a while is. that anything that had ever come up before. >> right that is a common thread that we've heard. my colleague and i did a big report last year. we talked with more than 50 musicians about others, not placido domingo, but that was a common thing that we hear that women would help each other b sharing what they thought with rumors or other, you know, firsthand experiences, don't be alone with him, don't ride the w elevath him, don't let him walk you to your car, have an escape pn. it was a myriad examples of how to deal with these kinds of people. >> nawaz: one of the allegations is that he retaliated against women who refused his advances. help us understand a little bit about how power is distributed. placido domingo held a number of
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top managerial positions at a number of organizations. what kind of influence did he exert? >> these top people have control for reasons like casting, fdaor recommons, especially with young artists who are starting out, and we heard this a lot last year, ann and i, where you woulbu't want to f someone who could give you tia recommen or sign you up for an audition or get you into the next trainingwo program that d be the next step in your career. and so part of it wa thathere were these choices that had to be made that, you know, that these young women, many of them starting our didn't want to ruin thingsefore they even go going. ed matt: peggy, you report put that domingo was invested and active in a lot of those yog g artist traininograms. you spoke to a woman who participated in one of those. what did she havell you? >> yes, she was not to targeted
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herself, but she said it was well-known. it's again that open secret in the community. you know, yogu just o about your day knowing that he was going ta unwanted advances or in the story she was telling me, have a very open, everybody knows about it, sexipual relationith a young artist. and no one knew what to do about id. and then she hat that sort of creates a culture where people feel like this behavior is acceptable or thereill be no consequences, and then others, maybe people who are not superstar status, then have the opportunity or take advantage of that to do tee things themselves. and she also talked about how that power dynamic, who is going to believe a youngrtist over, you know marriage superstar, sot also part of this equation. >> woodruff: you mentioned obviously l.a. they're investigating. dphiladelphia has rescin an invitation for domingo to perform there in september. but salzburg austria said he
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will still be performing there later in august. peggy, i want to ask you, because y have written about a number of other high-profile eigures in this world, who hav faced similar allegations. what have you learned from their caseshat tell y ou howthese kinds of allegations can be handled in this w >> you know, it does matter, and it is different organization to organization. last year the cleveland orchestra also investigatewith an outside company, and they posted their findingn their website, and not only dithey confirm the allegations that were in our story about william prusel, but they found another musician who was also accused. they fired both of them. but james levine sued after he was fired from the metropolitan opera last yearsuthe of similar sexual harassment allegation, and they settlered ntly. neither side will say what the agreement was.
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so it's hard to say what the aftermath of these things are. >> woodruff: still remns to be seen. peggy mcglone of the "washington post," thank you so much. >> thank you. >> nawaz: stay with us. u comion the newshour: democratic presidential candidate mayor bille blasio of new york on why he's running for the white house.dd and a history of theft. how one million black farmers in the u.s. were robbed of their land. every year, re people are playing games on their phones. and one category, called social casinos, has quickly become a multi-billion dollar industry. but new evidence shows game developers are targeting vulnerable users, all with the help of facebook and its massive trove of personal data. for the record, pbs newshour t as part ofe conten
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a business relationship with facebook. from "reveal" at the center for investigative report nate halverson has the story. >> reporter: suzie kelly is a grandmother from suburban dallas. five years ago, she and her husband were thinking about retirement. but, all that changed one when she sat down to watch tv. >> there was a commercial for big fish casino. i thought it was a casino-casino at first, and then i realized it was a game. >> big fish casino. play for fun. ay for free. >> reporter: the game she downloaded is part of a rapidly- growing industry called social casinos that launched on facebook about ten years ago. these apps bundle together games like poker, roulette and slot machines. s( slot machine sound ) kelly's slot machine game was free to play, at first. but, once her free chips ran out, she had to buy more to keep playing. >> i would say that my spending increased to hundreds of dollars and thousands of dollars within the first month.
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>> reporter: how much could you win playing big fish casino? >> real money? zero. nothing at a. >> reporter: why? >> because they don't pay real money. they only take money, to give you virtual chips to continue t. play on their >> reporter: fully aware she could never cashut her chips, that first month, kelly still spent nearly $8,000. >> i just couldn't stop. you know, it's like, holy c, what the hell have i done? >> reporter: nine months after downloading the "free" game, kelly had spent more than $40,000. >> i have an addiction. i needed out. >> reporter: she decided to quit, and emailed the game company. hlly showed me hundreds of messages betweenr and big fish casino. and you write to them-- in the i subject lis all caps-- "cancel account." >> right. i wrote, "i just can't do this anymore. i've maxed out my amex twice." >> reporter: did they close the account? >> no, sir.
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>> reporter: kelly asked big fish casino to delete or permanently n her from playing, nearly a dozen times. the company never did. she continued spending, hiding it from her husband. in total, kelly would lose more than $400,000. >> you know, i had to come clean with my husband.ok i breath, i remember this, and i said, its like i said, i'm sorry, chuck. i id, i think we might losi n't want to lose everything. >> i mean, it's absolutely predatory. and it shoulbe unacceptable. >> reporter: keith whyte is the executive director of the national council on prblem gambling. he said real casinos would be required to cut her off, or face big fines.t ere are no regulations on social casino games. >> those peoe who, like suzie, appear to have very severe gambling problems, or gambling- blems, they can't just walk away. >> reporter: whyte said their helpline is increasingly filled
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with people addicted to social casinos, and they've lost serious money. he said social casino games appear to be five times more dictive than traditional casinos. >> in the u.s. alone, you're talking well over 100 million people who report playing somewhat regularly on social casino apps and again, no one's tracking this, because it's not being regulated. >> reporter: last year, social casino companies earned more than $5 billion, nearly as much as all the casinos on the las vegas strip. but companies like big claim their games are just entertainment, and have avoided y gambling regulations. >> it's a very highly lucrative but somewhat secretive industry that has exploded across the united states in the past decade. r >>eporter: big fish declined our request for an interview, but sent a written statemepa saying the cny is "dedicated to delivering great entertainment experiences," and that "we strive to ensure that our social games comply with all applicable standards, rules and requirents."
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i spoke to former employees of these social casinos. none wanted to go on camera, but described a darker side, saying it was widely known some playere were add and their warnings to management went ignored. one player spent so much on the game, e couldn't afford her prescription medicine, and they told me another's home was in foreclosure. suzie kelly said thfirst time she tried to quit, big fish called her on the phone, not to cancel her account, but to assign her a personal v.i.p. host, byron scott, who gave her free chips to keep her from leaving. where would this relationship with byron scott go? at did it become? >> this was a daily thing, back and forth. it was like a friendship. and you know, my mother passed away in 2016. they sent me flowers. and they also sent, of course, chips.u ow, to keep me playing. >> hi, guys. >> reporter: we tracked down footagtefrom a 2013 conference of jose brotons, who helped pioneer the v.i.p. system
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for social casinos. he is speaking on stage to a roomful of game developers. >> reporter: brotons worked for aristocrat, the same company that owns big fish casino. he designed the v.i.p. system to target the tiny fraction of players who will actually pay to play the games. you've got to think that about 3% of your users are goi to be generating 80% to 90% of the value for the company. >> reporter: we obtaed leaked company documents that show how his v.i.p. system tracks players by their facebook i.d.s, closely monitors their gameplay, and then prods people to keep them spending. they refer to their v.i.p.s as "whales," a term taken from e casino industry to describe big spenders.os social casow use behavioral analysis software to ickly identify people who are likely to become big spenders. behaviors like increasinyour bet, or playing frequently, are signals to the companies, and they target these players with heavy marketing, and label them,
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proto-whales, as brotons explained to a roomful of game developers back in 2015. >> we are nocapable of predicting proto-whales within their first gaming ssion, so we can assign a very high likelihood that a person's going to be a proto-whale. >> reporter: i show kelly documents outlining the creation of the v.i.p. program, >> yeah, bgo. for me, that's like, let's find the weakest person and destroy .heir life >> reporter: does it feel like they're targeting your addiction? >> absolutely. >> reporter: there is another company profiting from these games. facebook makes hundreds of millions of dollars selling virtual chips to playe like kelly. julien codorniou, a facebook executive, spoke at a game conference in 2014 about social casinos. >> it's the number one cegory on facebook. it's a category that never stops growing. every year, we see newnies coming up with amazing games, launching on facebook, launching on mobile, making significant money. >> reporter: facebook's website shows how it tracks people online, and can predict who is
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likely to spd big by analyzing user data. facebook helps sial casinos find those potential whales. it charges a premium to nudge players to spend more, to target peoplehose online behavior might be a sign of addiction. >> it's very good for gamingan cos because they can decide to target on facebook, or on mobile, you know, specific users, or just the whales. >> reporter: facebook declined to sak on camera, but sent a written statement saying that while they "don't build ad s produccific to social casinos," they "understand that certain games or procts can impact some people differently," and they are working "to understand the long term impact of certain kinds of content." i sam lessa former top executive at facebook. he now runs his own vent capital firm. i but ba2012, he wrote an email to his then-boss and close friend, mark zuckerberleg. in wrote that he wasn't proud of their work with slot machine companies. "i'm fine with it," he wrote.
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"just not proud of it." lessin won't discuss his time at facebook, but agreed to speak generally about h are targeting people like suzie kelly. she ended up spending over $400,000 playing a slot machine game. >> yeah. i mean, it sounds disgusting. right.go you know, we'rg to have to live in a world where both very, very good people, and very, very bad people have better tools. >> reporter: do we want hyper- targeted ads from beer companies to alcoholics? we want hyper-targeted ads from casinos to gambling addicts? in no, of course we don't want those . right. like, no thinking person is like, "that's great."bu then the question is, okay, let's be really clear, what rule do you want to write? right, and how are you going to enforce that rule? >> reporter: suzie kelly joined a lawsuit la year in the state of washington, where big fish casino is based, arguing that the game constitutes illegal gambling, and she is asking for her money back. she is now getting help for her
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gambling addiction, and says she no longer spends money on big fish.st but, she il dealing with near financial ruin from the game. if you could go back in time to that moment when you were about to download the app, what would you te yourself? >> don't do it. you don't know this until you play this game, but you've got a pr.lem if you have an addiction, you're screwed. >> reporter: and there is nothing stopping companies from ntinuing to target people's addictions. for pbs newshour, i'm nate halverson with reveal, in plano, texas. >> nawaz: if you have spent hundreds or ousands of dollars playing a social casino game on arcebook or a mobile device, "reveal" wants to rom you. to share your story, go to revealnews.org/whale. >> nawaz: we continue our series of conversations with 2020
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presidential candates. last week, judy woodruff sat down with new rk city mayor bill de blasio to talk about his run for the democratic nomination. >> woodruff: mayor bill de blasio, thank you for being here. >> thank you, judy. >> woodruff: why are you running? i ask because there already some 20 people in the race when reu announced that you we going to jump in. and frankly you already got a big, complicated job. >> i do havejo a bi that's one of the reasons why i'm running. to take on the role of president, byou bett ready for it. i have what has often berien ded as the second toughest job in america. it's a big place, a tough place, the most diverse place on earth. we got pre-k done. we lowered crime while getting rid of things like stop and frisk that were dividing us. we did the $15 minium wage, a lot of fundamental wages. i know i can make change. and i'em running beca have
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this fundamental belief that hat's happened over the last years since the election of road rage is the country is less and less servg working americans more and more serving the very few, the wealthy and the big corporations. we have to fix it. we have to put working people first again. i can do it. d i hae it in new york. i want to do it for the whole country. >> woodruff: you clearly are a candidate with progressive ideas. there are already two other prominent progressives, bernie sanders a elizabeth warren. they are running well ahead of you in terms of recognition and support. i why not lea to them? >> judy, i think very highly o both bernie sanders and elizabeth warren, but i remind you it's six months until anyone even starts voting. we ve a long way to. and what i bring to the table is something different. both of them are ry fine legislators. i'm someone who is running one of the biggest,t mosmplex places on earth and has been able to make real change for everyday people. that experience, that ability is different from other candidates.
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t people.esp you can share values with them but still bring something different to the t ile. whm concerned about is the democratic party, at this poinst there big debate, what's the heart and soul of our party? i say we need to be a no -- we need to be a progressive party. we need to show people we're not about the status quo. i think folks are mteore sted in action than words. i'm able to say, look, you want to know who i am? look at what i've done for 88.6 million people. >> woodruff: you mentioned a minimum wage. yobrought that up in the debate the other night. we noticed that the governor, andrew cuomo's aid, one of them eeted after you said that that you had zero to do with the statewide $15 minimum wage. an you raised the minimum wage for new york city workers only after workers in other parts of the state of new yk -- >> that's not accurate with all due respect to that.
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we proved the wage for city workers and for non-profit organizations that were funded by thcity before the state of new york acted. that was one of the things that spurred the state of new rk to act. i stand by that statement. we did it on a very big scale. when the $15 minimum wage idea first came out and got currency, i supported it from thbee nning. a lot of other democrats hell back and said it wasn't realistic . i fought f from the beginning and helped to achieve it. >> woodruff: anotherer economted question. you delivered what many people would say is a memorable line at the debate. at one point you said you planned to tax the hell out of the wealthy. >> yes. >> woodruff: what exactly does that domean? wher it start? >> look, the reason i was dro atic about it isy, we near a dramatic problem where the rich have gotten richer to such a pointnow that the top 1% have more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. it keeps getting worse. in fact, the last big action on taxes was a huge giveaway to the wealthy and corporations. so i said tax the hell, because i want to make it very clear, we can't just do this
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incrementally. we need to go back to the tax levels associated with those ll-known radicals, j.f.k. and dwight d. eisenhower. the plan i put out, and you can go to taxthehell.com, the plan makes very clear, we should ha a 70% income tax rate for the wealthiest individuals. >> woodruff: starting at whatco ? >> at $2 million. and we should -- we should peal the trump x cuts. we should repeal the loss of state and local tack deductibility. at needs to go back to the way it was for 100 years. it was fair, we need to put it back. for the wealthiest americans who have benefited for four decades from favorable tax policies and all sorts of othe benefits, we have to rebalance things. i can tell you, you talk to folks all over amerhea, that society is not fair, that's dangerous reality we have to solve. >> woodruff: we're not worried that people in the middle class, he says he's only going to tax the werich, bu know what that
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means. >> i would say look at what i have done i've worked very consistently on behalf of working and middle-class peoplth the fact i stat tuts kwo, i think you'll find this all over this country. folks look at the status quo. they know it's brokenwe. ill not fix it with half measures. we have to do something really strong to rebalance e equatio many this country. >> you've had an up-and-down ip with the new york city police. and you're now -- >> with the unions. i want to be clear. the rank and file are 36,000 people with all sorts of different views, but wit som of the unions. true statement. >> woodruff: you have not called for the firing of officer pantaleo, who was responsible in the chokehold death of erirnc r. what do you say to those people? >> so one, the cy of new york was told by the federal justice department soon after the tragedy of eric garner, and i know the family. they've gone thrgh hell. it's a horrible tragedy. it how old not have happened. we can't let it happen again we're focused on making sure there never is such a tragedy again in new york city.
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we have changed the way we police profoundly. implicit bias training, deescalation, all sorts of things to make sure it never happens again. but the federal justice department told us, do not proceed with a departmental trial, because the justice department wanted to do it way they wanted to do it regarding criminal charges. i will tell you in retrospectthi ght i was dealing with an honest broker in the justice departmented. that pronot to be true. five years passed. i said we would never make that mistake again, and god forbid there is another tragedy, but here's why i do not issue an opinion. a police department judghi this is som you wouldn't have assumed in the history of new york city, under today's nypd, a police department judge said officer pantaleo st be terminated. we have two weeks now just predurally it goes to the police commissioner. i believe this has been a fair, open, transparent process that will yield justice. my voicing nof an opin only complicates it and prolongs it because that culled lead the a ndurt case arolong this case for a long time. we got to close this capture for thgarner family and our city
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and our nation. we have to close this chapter with justice. >> woodruff: mayor bill de blasio from new york city, thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you very much. >> nawaz: when it comes tors unnding financial inequality in this country, economists often point to e absence of african-american generational wealth as a principal factor-- resources passed from parent to child. as john yang reports, for many african-amerans, one source of the problem goes back decades. >> yang: over the past cenamtur, africaicans have lost millions of acres of farms they owned across the sout it's a trend propelled not just by economic forces, but by white racism and local white political and economic power. it's not just a legacy of the jim crow south, either. most of the losses have occurred
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since the 1950s. that history and its lasting effects are the subjects of the cover story of the september issue of the "atlantic" magazine. it's written by vann newkirk, who's a staff writer at the magazine. van, thanks for joining us tonight. what is important about this story? why did you want to tell this story? what is important, you think, that people should know from itw >> well, rightthe country is in the middle of a lot of debates-- over the racial wealth gap, over the status and economic prosperity or lack thereof of african-americans here, and also abouton repara perhaps. and i wanted to, with this piece, re-center the conversation on the south, on n ack folks in the south who often get left outis conversation. on one of the places where the deficit has be the most extreme. and that's in farming, and then the ownership of land.an >> you call this, as the headline, is "the great land robbery." what happened? give us an idea of what happened. >> so, what happened was, during-- pretty much after the
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middle of the 20th century, federally-funded farm programse, theyput out there to give small and middle-sized farmers loans to support farms, to keep them going through bad ecomic times. they systematically disenfrancsed and also discriminated against black farmers. so they didn't get the loan amounts. they were denied loans that they were entitled to. and often, theseocal u.s.d.a. programs were used as bully- pulpits, or forces tually push black farmers off their land. >> yang: some of this was actually accelerated or exacerbad as a result of the civil rights movement, that this was a reaction to the civil rights movement.ig >> rht. so, most of the u.s.d.a. funding was actually leveraged through locallelected boards. and guess who could not vote in
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the south? so what would happen is, these boards were dominated by the segregationists, and if you were a black farmer who needed moneyr to grow rops, next year, one of the ways they could ensure you never joined thec. n.a. or never went out to vote or to march against segregation was to hold that money in their hand and say, "you're not getting this mon unless you toe the company line." and so what they did to black farmers who didn't do that, who did go out and join the n.a.a.c.p. and these organizations, they took their money from them. >> yang: and you ao talk about the lasting effects of this, not only the loss of sort of family wealth, but also the political effects. >> right. mississippi, alabama, south carolina, these were states th were, if they weren't majority black going into the great depression and beyond, or close to being about half black. and what you saw, what prompted the "great migration" that saw millions of black people leave the south, was a fact that a lot of them had their landlen maybe, and i think this is probably what happens. if they hold onto that land, if
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they're able to make money in the south and have vote in the fsouth and have some type stake in the future of their kids living in the south, perhaps those three states at least stay majority black. what happens to the electoral college if we have three majority bck states? what happens to the senate? you know, those are big questions. >> yang: you told the story through, in part, through a woman in her 60s. now she's the third generation of her family to be working the same farmland. the family was able to hold onto cois land. her name is lena white, and let's take a listen to a little bit of what she told your >> it's o me that my children know what my ancestors went through, first to be where we are and who we are, because i'm a firm believer that if we don't know our history, then we repeat the mistakes over and over again. >> yang: "knowing your history." says that families were denied their history by having their farm land taken away. talk about that and the other effects of this, the impact it
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has on families. >> well, i talked to dozens of farm families for this story d the reason why lena's particular story and character got to me is because she is a historian. this is in her bones. she was to build a museum in the delta to honor not just her father and grandfather, but all the other farmers who came before her. i think she embodies the idea that what we're talking abouts heret just money, not just the access to land, but the ability to put down cultural roots, to have a place to call your own that's history, right? that's a thing that i do not believe we quite understand p it's lost whple are forced to move, when they are denied the ability to own the land under eir feet. they are denied a bit of their history. these people who live in tla delta now, b folks who live in the deltaow, they are in this place that was built with their hands anwork, that they are part of but not allowed to actually hold any part of.
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>> yang: you're also talking to serve out a lot of this land through various transactions is now held by pension funds by venture capitalists by hedge funds. you seem to hint that you think these transactions were somehow unethical? >> i believe that it's possible through totally ethical means at this point. so many decades away from the yiginal theft, to receive the land legitimatel know, if you buy it from somebody who owned it and they don't have t lineage of the land, they don't know where it came from. that's a legal purchase. what i try to make the point of th the piece is that it probably doesn't matter w an individual company got its land portfolio in a place where predominantly black folks lived and worked and should own the land. doesn't really matter.th
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got it, individual plots of land, ethically or legally. what matters is that at some point, the land was en unethically and was taken away from these black folks illegally. what is our legal, ethical, moral responsibility as a people to rectify that? >> yang: well, i really ask. you talked about reparations earlier. how should we be thinking about rectifying this? >> i do not believthe current reparations debate-- and it is a qull-meaning and well-intended effort to try antify every single thing that was done to black people since slavery. that's an amazing effort, and i believe over the last five to n years, there have been people doing work that folks have not been able to approach. 150 years on quanty, in terms of a dollar amount, i think that approach, though, has lost the focus on land and land ownership and collective land ownership in some ways. and the sentimental and cultural and generational meaning of attachment to a place, and having mobility be by choice instead of by being forced out. i think that's a dimension that
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should be added back to this conversation. the original promise of reparations was a land grant was 40 acres and a mule people didn't love it because it .had certain monetary val they loved it because it gave them a place to call home ngforever, gave them someto give to their children. not just money, but a sense of belonging, a place they can put their namen and that's-- i do believe the current reparations debate isle missing a liit. >> yang: vann newkirk. its cover story, "the great land robbin the september issue of the "atlantic." thanks so much. >> thank you. >> nawaz: on the newshour online right now, the supreme court plans to hear one gun-related case in its new term beginninerg in octbut two pending cases could have far wider impact on the current gun debate if the justices addothem to theiet. learn more on our web site, www.pborg/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight.na i'm awaz. join us online and again here tomorrow evening for all of the
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>> ooh. pati narrates: sometimes when i travel i find the best experiences are the ones i least expected. loreto, baja california sur. it might not be the busiest destination on the baja peninsula, but it is one of the oldest. the spanish built mision loreto here in 1744. for a tiny fishing village, loreto has a lot to offer. i'm getting little history. the clamenhave been made for cturies.is >> before the spg lias a matter of fact the indigenous left their shells. >>.ati: a gigawoah!bur and umething completelynexpected i found the best pizza in all the baja peninsula. mmm! in my kitchen, i'm inspired by the sea of cortez.