captioning sponsored by wnet >> mitchell: on this edition for sunday, december 29: a deadly shooting at a texas church. the latest on the attack in new york targeting orthodox jews attending a hanukkah celebration.at and a look bacome of our stories from this year. next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. iisue and edgar wachenheim the cheryl and philip milstein family. rolind p. walter, in memor of george o'neil. barbara ho zuckerberg. charles rosenblum. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in

front of us. at mutual of america, believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and vestments. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, karina mitchell. >> mitchell: good evening and ing us.ou for jo a gunman opened fire in a texas church this morning. he killed one person, wounded another, and was killed whenpo ce say, parishioners returnes fire. servic were in progress at the west freeway church of christ in the town owhite settlement, about eight miles west of fort worth when the shooting happened. the church live streams its services.

o cal television station wfaa reported that viom the live stream showed aerson in the church stand un, pull out a nd fire twice before anotr person shot back. a texas law allowing worshippers to carry guns places of worship wentnto effect on september 1 of this year. this afternoon, texas governor greg abbott issued a statement that said in part "places of worship are meant toe sacred, and i am grateful for the church members who acted quickly to take down the shooter and help prevent further loss o." there was no word on motive. the other shooting victim remained in critical condition late this afternoon. a knife attack in a jesh community just outside new york city has left five people wounded, an act new york's governor is calling "domestic terrorism."re the attack occd around 10:00 last night at a rabbi's home in monsey, new york, an area with a large ultra-orthodox jewish population.vi thims were gathering to celebrate hanukkah at the time. as of this afternoon, one person

remains in critical condition.th morning, police arrested grafton thomas, a 37-year old man from greenwood lake, new york, located about 14 miles northwest of monsey. he is charged th five counts of attempted murder and is being held on five million dollars e il. tack occurred amidst a string of antisemetic incidents toin the region. y, in response to this fotest attack, new york governor andrew cuomo callea new domestic terrorism law in th state. he also linked the incent to a larger pattern of hate crimes throughout the country >> once we become intoenrant of diffs, then we are intolerant with erica because america is all about differences. >> mitchell: the u.s. carried out military strikes in iraq and syria against an iranian-backed militia group blamed for an attack that killed an american contractor on friday. in a statement, the defense department said u.s foes

carried out "precision defensive strikes" against five sites-- three in iraq and two in syria. the contractor was killed at a military compound in kirkuk, iraq in a rocket attack.fo u.s. service members and two iraqi troops were injured. a defense department spokesman said the strikes will limit the militia group's ability to carry out future attacks on americans and iraqi allies. national security advisor robert o'brien said today that the u.s. af still monitoring north korea r it threatened a "christmas gift." o'brien would not speculate about the possibility north korea plans to launch a long- range missile or nuclear test. on abc this morning, o'brien said the administration continues to believes resident trumlks with north korn leader kim jong un will be successful. >> kim jong-un promi denuclearize the korean peninsula. we want to hold himeto that comm. and we hope he follows through with the commitment that he made in singapore. but, if he doesn't, we have other tools in the toolkit, as the united states, and we will

usthose as necessary. >> mitchell: on this final weekend of 2019, we're taking a look b some of the stories newshour weekend producers and reporters covered is year. the team of ivet feliciano and zachary green joined anchor hari sreenivasan to talk about what went into their reporting and what they are working on for 2020. >> sreenivasan: you guys tooa trip to haiti this year. it was a verproductive one. you came back with a bunch oft differories. what did you find interesting? >> reporter: so, that's right. we went on the ninth anniversary of the devastating earthquake in haiti, and we dia three-part series, which i think allowed us to delve into a lot of issues that aren't mainstream media. one piece that we did was about

this historically very tumultuous relationship betweeni haiti and the can republic. and severayears ago, theve dominican ment decided to strip the citizenship of tens of thousands of haitian migrants. and not only them, but people of coitian descent who were born and raised in thtry. and this has caused a huge problem of statelessneng the border of haiti and the dominican republic. but what initially brought us to haiti was that one of our wonderful video editors, judith wolfe, came to us and told us about this story that she'd heard, about this incredible door who's based in port-a prince. he runs an oanization called gheskio, which is the second oldest research institution dedicated to the fight against h.i.v. and aids. he and his team have provided thousands of haitians with free health care and other types of supports, and not only that, but they have really, greatly

influenced the global idelines for treating h.i.v. and aids in low resource settings. in the early 2000s, gheskio began providing life-saving anti-retroviral medicine to haitians for free, with support from the global fund and the u.s. pre's emergency plan for aids relief, or pepfar. today, the world health organization implements gheskio's treatment guidelines for h.i.v. in low-resource settings around the globe. but not long after gheskio'sat aids tnt took off, things literally came crashing down. the 2010 earthquake destroyed or badly damaged half of its buildings, four aff members died, and nearly everyone lost a loved one. >> i must say the earthqke was the ughest blow that we had. and at encouraged me is that the next day, 60% of our staff was here.

so i assembled them in a room. and i said, "look, ware the first black country to become independent. we've had major calamities before. we overcame them. and we will overcome this one." >> reporter: it was really wonderful for us to be able to highlight this unique resilience of this group, because so much of what we hear out of haiti is about political unrest, or deadly epidecs, or poverty and devastation. so to be able to cover this was really special. >> sreenivasan: what was the feedback after you did that story in the hospital? >> rorter: dr. pape's team at gheskio notified us that after our piece aired, they received ,000 in unsolicited donations. so, while we're-- that wasn't our initial intention going out there, it's really great to hear that the pieces that wproduceve direct impact. >> sreenivasan: and you've been covering different layers of tho

kind of immigrconversation in america and different stories, and one of the fascinating pieces that yowahad this yeaabout venezuelan migrants, but in the united states. si reporter: yes, as we all know, there is a cin venezuela right now, and venezuelans are fling the country in droves. they're seeking refuge in neighborg countries, and a lot of them are coming here to the u.s., where there are venezuelan communities. and one of the biggest communities is in the houston area.ha there been long-standing ties between houston and venezuela because of their shared interests in the oil industry. and so, venezuelans have been coming to houston and working for years, and so there's already this sort of homegrown place for a lot of them to come to. >> ( translated ): they came to our business and totally destyed it. they looted it, they broke the glass, they stole absolutely all the material, years of work. they drew graffiti of weapons on the walls that said, "we're coming for you, we're coming for your family, we want you dead and that's it."t i knew tcouldn't stay in

the country with my wife and chilen anymore. >> reporter: in 2016, lozano, his wife, and two children walked nearly 150 miles to cross over into neighboring colombia. two days later, they boarded a flight to houston, texas. >> ( translated ): we left all usour family, we left our our apartment, we left our friends and the belongings that ur still had left. they remained inouse. everything. >> reporter: lozano says they decided to come to the houston heea at the urging of a family friend who lived. >> ( translated ): he told us that there was a hpanic and venezuelan community here, that venezuelans had been coming to houston and have been living here for years. >> reporter: so this population tends to be highly eductted. they're s, they're engineers. anthey're coming to the country with basically nothing. a lot of people in the community are hoping that the u.s. government will grant them temporary or protective status, as it's been granted to other countries. in times of crisis, it was

really heartbreaking look at these folkwho are just trying to find somewhere safe to be, after esping what are very, very dire straits right now in their home country. >> sreenivasan: and this past year was also a year after the tree of life shootin, which you two scrambled to, right when it happened. but a lot of times in these kind of stoes, we don't get an opportunity to go back and see what's happened to the comnity after that tragedy. so what did you find? >> reporter: well, we went to pittsburgh the day after the shooting last year. and so this year, we wanted to go back and we wanted to see how the community was faring. we spoke with a mental health while we were there, an one of the things that he said was that there's no way to t return to the "normal" ts your life before this event happened. what the community is trying to do now is to integrate that experience and dysine positive f healing. t >> i... i ough these scenarios in my mind, as i think a lot of the other victims dokn too, about, yo, i could have done more, i could have

saved people. why did this person choose to do x, y, and z? why dithey turn the other way? and... it's part of the trauma, y know? it's part of being human. >> reporter: as the community entered the first new year since the attack, stephen cohen, co-president of new light congregation, said he was feeling anxious. what's on your mind? what are you thinking right now? >> i'm afraid. i'm afraid because the high holidays are a time of reflection, of introspection, of asking god for forgiveness, and to write us in the book of life. how do you relate that to what happened last october? how do you think about your inture when you have a past

haover you? >> reporter: one thing that we saw while we were there is that we spoke with a board member from tree of life and she showed us all of this artwork that had been sent in by students from all over the country, including a artwork from parkland high school in florida, which suffered its own shooting a few months before the one at tree of life t and they'd this artwork and they've blown it u they've blown up very large prints of it. and they put it all around the fencing, around the building, that housed tree of life. it was very sad, but it was also life-affirming, in a way, to see that ts community is finding a way to kind of bind themselves together again after this. >> reporte and i remember something that she told us, which just sticks in my mind, is that they had been, you know, involuntarily inducted into this club that nobody wants to be a part of, but that they fnd thathat network, that community of people who have also, you know, been through tragic events like this, it's a real, tangible network of people. and actually, one woman who we spoke to, michelle rosenthal, who lost two brothers inhe

attack, said that she's met with parkland families and that it's an instant connection. and that when similar tragedies happen, like in el paso or dayton, ohio, they get in touch with each other. they know how triggering these events can be. and it's the type of support that only people who have been through something like that can provide each other so that really sticks wi me. >> sreenivasan: zach green, ivette feliciano. thank you both. >> reporter: thank you. >> mitchell: in our next convsation about the stories we covered in 2019, sreenivasan sat down with reporter christopher booker and senior produm casciato. >>idreenivasan: chris, you d a sty this year that's not traditionally a tv story, about a concept, an idea: masculinity. how did we get there? >> reporter: i had become obsessed with this briunk band cled idles. and of the many reasons i like them is that they were actually singing about things you

wouldn't necessarily atiociate with b punk bands. namely, they were holding a mirror to traditional ideas of masculinity. so i waselling tom, i was like, "god, this album, it's called 'joy,' it's an act of resistance and i love it." ♪ ♪ ♪ they laugh at me when run i waste away for fun♪ >> reporter: so it turns out they had really tapped into a conversation that's happening really all around the world, as it relates to the behavior and the traditional ideas of how we socialize men. with idles, they're talking about the influences of their irthers, how they have always suppressed tmotions. joe talbot is the lead singer, and band's principalist. >> it's a purposeful journey we're going on. >> reporter: what is the pue? >> to start a conversation, i think. >> reerporter: the cotion idles is looking to start is a complicated one, but at its core, they are asking the audience-- particularly, the men in the crowd-- to reconsider how

they treat one another, how they treat women, and how they treat thselves. >> if you share your feelings, your load gets lighter and you will have a better outcome. >> repter: so just as idles is releasing this album, the american pchological associat ever, released a landmark paper thatooked at the traditial s ways that we socialize bd men, and how this may be nnecd to some rather unhealthy outcomes. men are 3.5 times more likely to commit suici. they die from cancer and heart disease at a disproportionately high rate. and, much of the research is pointing to, it can't just be explained by our y chromosome. psychologist christopher liang is the chairperson of lehigh university's college of education, and was a co-author of the a.p.a. guidines. >> when boys are not allowed to express their sadness, their hurts, when they're growing up, they're essentially taught that they shouldn't have pain. and what that does over time is

it creates a condition where boys who are becoming men stuff their pain. s sreenivasan: now, you g both love music. you sit not too far from each other. you're talking about this every once in a whil but you did a piece that i thiy you've probawanted to do for a very long time. you got to hang out with carlos santana.>> eporter: about 50 years in the making, that piece. it was for the 50th anniversary of woodstock. and we knew that carlos was going to do press for that, and that everyone was going to want to hear about his hallucinogenic -fueled legendary performance as woodstocwe wanted to go in a different direction and talk about the road that led him ther >> well, tom, what happened was that my father's a musician, and when i saw how people-- aecifically, women-- look my dad when he played the violin and when he sang, i looked at them and i looked at him and i was like "whoa." my dad wld draft me once in a while. he'd say, you know, "so and so is not agood. put on this mariachi suit and--" but i couldn't get a sound on the olin. i didn'tike the way i sounded.

i didn't like the way the violin smelled, and i didn't like the way it felt. but i try to please my dad as ch as i could. and i won a two, three contest in the fairs playing "fascination"-- ( singing ) doo doo doo doo doo. >> they gave me the trophy, you know. eporter: that's not bad for a guy who didn't like the smell of the violin. >> exactly.d but i do it to please my dad. >> sreenivasan: one of the stories that wasnteresting this year is about college, our algher education and who's going these days, and , our traditional notion of what we think about college, you know,wa the ivy-coveres and mom and dad dropping the kids off in the station wagon or the minivan-- that's really not who's going to school. >> reporter: yeah, it's really changed. it turns out, 22% of all college students in the u.s. arent pa >> i'm the youngest of eight, d i'm the first in my entire family to step foot on a college campus. i mean, i grew up with not ving anybody go to college. and so, if you grow up, or youe ople around you that never look like you do something like this, you don't ever see it for yourself. >> reporter: to describe angel's path to her bachelors's degree

as a journey driven by grit and determination uld be an understatement. >> i'm graduatin >> reporter: but she says it actually started unexpectedly, when her first daughtejust two years old. >> i was working at baby gap, because i got a really good discount on the clothes. ughs ) and just kind of making ends meet. and then i realized i needed wo do somethih my life to provide for my daughter. and just by accident, ed valley college and pulled in. this was 8.5 years ago. >> reporter: as an enrolled student in the los angeles valley college, a two-year public college in the san fernando valley, angel was able to send her daughter to the on-campus licensed cldcare facility, for free. what she didn't know at the time was, this was only part of what was on offer for parents attending l.a. valley college, and the other part would play a pivotal role in helping to keep her in school when she gave h birth second child. >> i came back, my daughter was 13 days old. and marni roosevelt, who's the director of the family resourcef center, was ony professors. and so, marni approached me and

sa, "we have a lactation room urwith a refrigerator for breastmilk. we have parenting playgroups where you can come with her, and stet with a therapist," and this whole program foent parents. >> reporter: you know, if you are trying to cobble together a list of classes and a degree, you know, any parents out there know, one little thing goes wrong, you're not making it to0: your a.m. class. you've got to get to a study group at 4:00 p.m. and maybe your kid has the flu and the doctor's appointment is at 3:30? you're not going to make it there. but this group has developed a foprogram that offers care, counseling. and their graduation rates have gone up substantially. after she complete dher associatree at l.a. valley college, she was hired by the family resource center.he she transferrecredits to california state university northridgewhere tomorrow, may 20, she will graduate with a bachelor's degree incience. >> it's likethe representation of everything i have done has mattered. >> reporter: eight years is a long time. >> eight years is a long time. >> reporter: and you did it. >> and i did i

i'm sorry, i'm, like... >> sreenivasan: there's a-- there's an example of very concrete story, and then you take the absolute opposite of the most abstract idea. sean carroll conversation, why quantum physics, why quaum mechanics, and w on tv? >> reporter: well i was a kid who never took science classes, never understood scien i convinced myself i had no aptitude for science. d a couple of years ago, i started thinking about, "gee, i'd kind of like to know what reality is." i'm getting a little old now. and seanarroll is really one of our great science communicators. he's a physicist at caltech. and sean carroll is a proponent of a controversial theory called the many worlds theory, which suggests that there ariple universes. for example, when a scientist is observing a tiny particle, like an electron, another copy of the universe is created, including o another coyourself. so, he would say-- y sreenivasan: so there's infinite copies rself in all of these different universes right now. >> reporter: there are haris

evywhere. ( laughter ) >> the people in other worlds aren't me. th might have come from th same youngster as i did-- >> reporter: they might have-- >> --but they're a different person. >> reporter: slow, slow, slow, slow down.u what do an they might have come from the same youngster that you were? >> so in other words, in many worlds, there was a youngster. there was a person who i have descended from over the last some number of years. and the world has branched many, many times since then, and so there are other people in these other worlds who were me, back then, but now they're different people, because the world has branched since then. >> reporter: is the a person who used to be me, who is the point guard for e portland trail blazers? >> there is, yes. >> reporter: at my height? >> and you won the n.b.a.. championsh >> reporter: of course, we have no way of accessing these other universes. what he says is that the physicists who... who agree with him on this, see these universes not inheir microscopes, but in their mathematics. it's their equations that tell them this. it's a very controversial theory, but he's far from the only person who's a proponent of

it, and he's very conv about it. >> mitchell: for morur producer favorites watch here or visit pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: you just started shooting some stories. what are you working on? >> reporter: i have a few jories coming up. my colleague andt filmed a story in wisconsin, and this relates to care of elderly individuals with developmental pd intellectual disabilities. turns out, a larcentage actually still lives at home with elderly parents. so we went twisconsin and met with this really sweet family. a couple, they're 84, and their son, an intellectuallyabled avult, is 51. and they're reallyg to make some hard choices about like, forfuture look them, and for their son after they're gone. >> reporter: i have a couple ngher good music pieces co up, with two great vocalists. one of them is shemekia copeland who grew up up the street here in harlem, during the hip hop era, surrounded by blues music. ♪ ♪ ♪ i'm in the blood of the blues ♪ >> it was about second grade when i realized i wasn't like

the other children. because i had this one teacher that hosted a talent day. and she would have all the kids get up and-- and do something in front of the class. i got up there, and i said, ♪ "i'm a woman. ♪ "i can make love to crocodile." ♪ you know, it was an old koko taylor song. ( laughs ) and i got myselfn a lot of trouble. >> reporter: another is a woman called concha buika. ♪ ♪ asunderstand that in las v you were a tina turner impersonator? >> yes, sir. ( laughs ) >> reporter: what was that like? >> ( laughs ) cool. ( laughs ) >> reporter: yeah? but did you ever say to yourself, "damn, i have this great voice, why am i impersonating another great singer when i'm a great singer"? 't well, because, when you sing for someone, doeatter if you are in a big stage, in a i small staga wedding, in your home singing for your family, or singing f someone who's ill because you want to make him feel good. that is big stage. >> reporter: so, those will be up soon. >> sreenivasan: all right, christopher booker, tom casciato, thank you bo.

>> reporter: tha you, hari. >> mitchell: tomorrow on pbs newshour, there will be continuing coverage of today's events. and finally, it's our last weekend broadcast for 2019. so happy new year, and happy new decade! we'll see you again in 2020. that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm karina mitchell. thanks for watching. have a great night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.g >> pbs newshour weekend is made possle by: bernard and irene schwartz.

e and edgar wachenheim iii. the cheryl and philip milstein family. rosalind p. walter, in memoryo' of georgil. barbara hope zuckerberg. charles rosenblum. we try to live in the moment, miss what's right in front of us. at mutual of america, we om believe taking care ofrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retement services and investments. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the american people.an by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. icly m

(lively jazz music) - my name is laura wilhelm, and i am the props master at chanhassen dinner theater. and this is my eleventh season. -pe was dropped in as a don fiddler on the roof, and that was three fiddler's ago. - i started here, as a child actor, when i was nine.