captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight:gh takes debate. six democratic rivals, with a first-timer on the sge, face off in las vegas tonight, before the nevada caucuses. a look at the billel bloomberg? businessman disrupting the decratic presidential race and, warnings from antarctica. the melting florida-sized block of ice that scientists are calling the "doomsday glacier." >> change happens, and this looks like a pottial case for change going forward that coul be quite impactful. te>> woodruff: plus, despe journey. the horrific living conditns refugees face as they wait for europe to open its doors. >> ( translated ): we don't have

sotimes it's go, and we cannotnd take shower, actually. >> woodruff: all that and more,s on tonight's newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ my moving our econoor 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> fidelity investments.

>> consumer cellular. >> american cruise lines. >> collette. >> supporting social entrepreneurs and their solutions to the world's most presng problems-- skollfoundation.org. >> the lemelson foundation.te cod to improving lives through invention, in the u.s. and develong countries. on the web at lemelson.org. >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. commted to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions: >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting.

and by contributions t pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. presidential candidatesatic face off tonight in las vegas, and for the first time, michael bloomberg will be on ththdebate stage. former new york city mayor is not officially competing in a,turday's caucuses in nev but he has been surging in tional polls. we will have a report from las vegas, after thee ews summary. s. justice department is denying reports that attorney general william barr might quit over frustration with president trump. the president has nored barr's plea to stop tweeting about ongoing investigations and court cases. but, a spokesman at justice said last night that barr has noig plans to r and a white house spokesman said much the same today. a >> the preside the attorney general actually do agree that there have been some federal government.roughout e attorney general barr will do

what's right to make sure that justice is served. >> woodruff: the president said tuesday that he will go on speaking his mind, and using social media to do it. a top pentagon official is resigning-- the latest to be purged since president trump's impeachment trial. john rood issued a certificati last year to allow the release of military aid to ukraine. but, mr. tru's delay in sending the aid triggered the impeachment inquiry. in his resignationetter, rood said that he is leaving at thet' presidrequest. former illinois governor rod blagojevich was back home today after presidump commuted his prison sentence. supporters cheered as walked out of his home in chicago, with f s wife and daughters. he declared himsfreed political prisoner, and a "trumpcrat." >> how do you properly thank someone who's given you back a freedom that was stolen from you? he didn't have to do this.

he's a republican president. i was democratic governor. help his politics.s nothing to >> woodruff: blagojevich served eight years of a 14-year sentence. he had been convicted of trying to sell an appointment to the u.s. senate seat vacated by president obama.hi inna, health inspectors finished door-to-door spections in wuhan, the epicenter of a coronavirus tbreak.'s the ospitals are still full of patients, with china nationwide, and 2,aths. but, the number of new cases has fallen. and in japan, officials ended a two-week quarantine of a cruise ship, while confirming 79 more cases. we will return to this story, turkey issued a new warning to syria today, to stop attacks that are drivingophousands of toward the turkish border.

it followed failed talh russia. moscow is backfeg the syrian ive in idlib province, the last rebel-held stronghold in syria. in ankara, turkish president recep tayyip erdogan said time is running out for the syrians to stop. >> ( translated ): we areas entering thedays for the syrian regime to end its offensive in idlib and retreat to the boundaries of the existing agreement. we are delivering our final warnings. the operation in idlib is imminent.to he regime and those who encourage it, who haven't this subject: we wt leaveion on idlib. some 900,000 syrians have fled to meshift camps at the turkish border, in bitter cold. u.n. officials said today that scores are being killed byru ian and syrian air strikes. back in this country, a federal appeals court found today that florida has wrongly barred former felons from voting unless they pay their court fees.

that upholds a lower court's ruling against a law pby the republican-controlled legislature. but, the republican go plans to appeal. a state referendum in 2018 to 1.6 million ex-convicts.ights on wall street today, stocks again shook off worriet the virus outbreak in china.w the nes industrial average gained 115 points to close at 29,348. the nasdaq rose 84 points, to a nerecord high. and, the s&p 500 added 15 points, also hitting a new high. and, today marked 75 years since the battle of iwo jima began, in world war ii. u.s. marines landed on the pacific island, touched off 36 days of savage fighting. nearly 7,000 americans and 22,000 japanese troops were killed. the battle is best known for the

image of victorious manes raising the u.s. flag on mount suribachi. still to come on the newshour: a look at the high stakes that candidates face tonight on the debate stage.wh is michael bloomberg? the billionaire businessman and former new york city mayorg shakinup the democratic race. e latest on the world-wide spread of the deadly coronavirus. and, much more. >> woodruff:ix democrats, vying for their party's presidential nomination, areto seace off tonight in las vegas. former n york city mayor chael bloomberg will make his debate stage debut, afterre qualifying as lt of the latest pbs newshour/npr/marist

poll. with just three days to go before the nevada caucuses, amna nawaz joins me now from las vegas for a preview. hello to you, amna. so this is the third contest in the season. this is the most diverse group of voters yet to be w.ighing what are they saying on the ground there? >> well, judy, you know, the candidate so far has been disproportionally focused on iowa and new hampshiich are two small white states. for the first time, they havto address a state and voters in the state that looks more likeca what ameis becoming. you look at the democratic caucus electorate from 2016, 19o la13% black, 4% asian. non-whites made up 41% of that electorate. so you're hearing from the tailor their message from before and garner the message.

ne are room by room hand salt lakg politicking. ey have to deliver a bigger message to some of the communities. from what we saw, my colleagues have been following some of the candidates on the ground, andey e having voter events to target the communities. for example mayor buttigieg spoke specifically ta black student group yesterday. former vice president biden spoke to an asian-american pacific islander group, and irly voting is going o some of the communities. so you see some of the events set up next to the early voting locations, trying to get some of the diverse ters out early. right now what you're hearing from the candidates is a much b bigger messacause they know to show and prove they can compete in other placein america, t can do it in nevada first. >> woodruff: about the caucuses this weekendhe national poll that we mentioned earlier,

"newshour"/npr/marist, 72% of the eople say they think caucus process will be fair and but there were prowith the iowa caucuses days ago. what are democrats in nevada saying is their level ofb confidencet what will happen this saturday? high but, again, the proof is going to be in the actual caucus tally results. there are a lot of firsts unfolding in this caucus process. it's the first time they're trying to incorporate early voting into the process. the early voting wrapped yesterday. so for the first time they're using this one specific tol, which is a pre-loaded secure form on ipad that's handed out to all the precinct chairs. they developed that in response to what happened in iowa because they were supposed to use the exact same appw the ioa caucuses used, they scrapped that plan after ey saw the chaos there. but they have high confidence in that they're running train also, there are more trainings available for people who feel they're not comfortable with the tool they're using now.sp

ke with d.n.c. chair tom perez and asked him about the message he had to voters who might feel uneasy about theoc s, he said we took less sons learn from iowa, applied them here and have every confidence the process will go smoothly. >> woodruff: tonight's debate is the ninth presidential debate. for the first time formerluding new york sta bloomberg.ichael what is their team saying is their expectation and what do we think the other candidates may do because he's there? >> we know the official from the bloomberg camp is basically connect more with the audience, something he hasn't had to do before. right now he's sort of messaging through his ads and surrogates across the country, but i think he should be prepared for a the president's former mayor bloomberg is aneasy foil for senator sanders who long railed against the disproportionate power that billionaires in amica v but he

could also take fire from moderates, people like biden, ttigieg and klobuchar because he's basically fighting forin supremache same moderate lane they all currently occupy. so a lot to w ftor on the debate stage tonight. >> woodruff: a lot to watch for. amna, u and the team will be there. we'll be talking to you later in the week. thank you, amna nawaz. >> thanks, judy. >> woodruff: and now, lisa desjardins dives into bloomberg's complicated-- and at times controversial-- record. >> desjardins: activt, billionaire, big city mayor, g d occasional subway rider, michael bloomber many things at once-- including, now, both disrupter and established politician. >> the momentum in this city is the legacy we're really leaving. >> desjardins: bloomberg began his 12 years as new york city

mayor as a republican in january, 2002... >> so help me, god. thank you. >> desjardins: ...mere months shook the city's heart.s >> he is definitely what new york needs, as far as after september 11th, we need more business, me commerce >> desjardins: 18 years later, that image of a deliverer is one bloomberg's running on. >> rebuild america. he took charge, becoming a three-term mayor who brought a city back from the ashes. >> desjardins: by the end of the bloomberg era, more th half of new yorkers polled saithe city's economy was doing "good," an "quality of life" was better. there was wide approval of some of his initiatives, like banning smoking in restaurants, and adding miles of bike lanes. but other bloomberg policies stirrediscontent, or outright protest-- things like his failed proposalo ban large sodas. his extension of "stop and frisk" police ctics, which targeted mostly black and latino

me was deeply divisive, bo then and now. bloomberg renounced "stop d frisk" late last fall, but just five years ago defended his approach as appropriate. >> 95% of your murders-- murderers and murder victims-- fit one m.o. you can just take the description, xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. they are male, minorities, 16 to 25.s: >> desjardupporters point out that bloomberg has spent millions aiming to lift upmu marginalizednities, but critics say words like those belie a deeper problem. and yesterday, buzzfeed news reported that last year, bloomberg seemed to scold democrats who campaigned for transgender rights. he said, "ifour conversation during a presidential electionbo is a some guy wearing a dress, that's not a winning formula for most people." above all, bloomberg s messes he is a who knows how to get things done-- one of the world's

most successful businessmen. but, here too are questions. multiple news stories, including a recent "washington post" report, have highlighted" profane, sexist comments" he made while leading his namesakea ial data company, oomberg l.p. bloomberg denies that, and told the hosts of abc's "lathe view"" month, women thrive in his workplace overall. >> you talk most women in the company, they would say: equal pay, equal promotion, equal opportunity. it's a great place to work. did i ever tell a bawdy joke? yeah, sure i did. and do i regret it? yes, it's embarrassing. but, you know-- that's the way i grew up. >> desjardins: his company is also under scrutiny because the bloomberg l.p. news operation has a policy of blocking any in-depthnvestigations of bloomberg or his primary rivals. he told cbs this: people have said to me, how can you investigate yourself? and i've said, i don't think you can.n >> but eur own news reporters have complained. they think it's unfairhey

can't investigate other democratic candidates, because their boss is in the race. >> you just have to learn to live with some things >> desjardins: bloomberg's primary rivals have not held back theirriticisms. >> well, i've got news for mr. bloomberg, and that is, the american people are sick and tired of billionecres buying ons. >> desjardins: bloomberg's team rejectand defends him as someone doing the hard work. he's visited 25 states so far, and 60 cities, and he is campaigning on his past, national activism, especially on ns and climate chae. his biggest pitch? maybe the biggest question for democric voters-- does past accomplishment guarantee success in november? for a closer look at the man shaking up the race for the white house, i'm joined by eleanor randolph, whcovered bloomberg's mayoral career as a member of the "new york times" editorial board, and is the

author of "the many lives of chael bloomberg." thank you for joining us, eleanor. i'll just ask you right away, why do you think michael bloomberg is running? >> well, he's always wanting to be president and he even talkedu running for president when he was in college and looked at the races, 2016, he loed very seriously at the race, and then he didn't run, and i think, tually, in march, he decided he wasn't going to run. he decided thaet, you know, t numbers weren't there. and then his people came back tn hisaid, you know, what's the blue states, you know,wall, michigan, wisconsin pennsylvania? trump is winning. so why don't we get out there and go afterim. so bloomberg decided that he should be the one to do that. >> l's ta about how michael bloomberg is running. he spent a lot of money. i spoke to hi campaign and they

confirmed he has 2400 campaign staffers in 43 states, spent upat least $400 million accoing to the recent analysis, likely a good deal more than that, and that in a handful of months that he's actually had a presidential campaign. can you talk about how bloomberg rev rajs his resources, money and personal alliances from being ea hop dmocratic donor? >> first of all, he's worth over $60 billion. many of the ads that people have seen have been anti-trump ads, and what bloomberg is trying to do is sofn trump up for whoever is the democratic nomie to run against him in november. >> reporter: i'm curious, what do you think he thinks of the optics of him running asa new york billionaire at a time when democrats are tryg to take out another wealthy man from new york and him criticizing president trump as being out of touch because he i a man of such wealth, how do yol

bloomberg regard those optics as he sees himself? >> he sees himself as a fferent kind of billionaire and businessman. also, he's brome ised that he'sw going to givy his money ldfore he dies. i don't think dorump has come anywhere near that. so, i mean, bloberg's philanthropy has been vast, and it's bee very pointed, even more than the political money that we've started to see now. so i think blomberg sees this money as a way -- as a way to deal with some of the problems of the world, like climate change and gun control, an nald trump. so, you know, he's spendng whatever he can to try to get trump defeated, and hed, sai no matter who on that stage ends up support him.minee, he's going to

>> reporter: what do you think is michael bberg's biggest challenge? >> he's not a great speaker, he's probably not going to do exceptionally well in this debate tonight, and there are some other ones. there's one in south carolina. and he doesn't, unlike trump or bernie sanders, he doesn't connect withn audience. he haso sort of explain to people that he's mr. fix-it. he likes toget things done. if he were i president would be a quieter presidency, and opmaybe there's some pe that want that. he doesn't -- he's an ex-engineer -- well, you know, he's trained as an gineer. he doesn't show his emotions don't see him hammering the you podium, you don't see him sort he raising his voice to the crowd. l never be that person.

>> eleanor randolph, biographer, urnalist, thank you fo joining us. >> thank you. >> woodruff: stay with us. coming up on the newshour: a greek migrant camp where inhune conditions are growing bleaker by the day. the "doomsday glacier." a melting block of ice the size of florida that's threatening the world's sea levels. and, novelist kevin wilson's satirical look at the complicated relationships between parents and their children. as we reported earlier, china is still struggling to contain the coronavirus, officially known as covid-19. the virus has now killed more an 2,000 people worldwid william brangham has the latest. >> brangham: there are still many, many questions researchers have about this viral outbreak. but, we do have new information from thehinese government

about the virus' mortality rate, and other important concerns.th dr. y fauci is the director of the national institute for allergy andis infectiousses at the .ii.h., and he joins me again tonight from the. campus.

in a case they will go down, so myself and other of my colleagues are figuring that it is likel1% or less when you and do a calculation for a fatality rate. >> we also know that thiss a fairly contagious virus but there has been some question as to whether or not people e contagious before they show symptoms. what do we know about that? >> well, we certainly know that there are a lot of people who are infected without symptoms. there have been anecdotal cases that i think are pretty solid,

that there has bisen tranon from a person who has no symptoms to another person. i think that's going to turn ou to be a real phenomenon. the question that still mains unanered is at is the ent of that asymptomatican smission? is it a minor component of the outbreak? or is it a substantial component. if it is a substantial component, that thn becomes problematic because that would mean that, when you do screening for people, you cn't rey just on whether or not their symptomatic, you have to do a test so that's the big question that we're pursuing right now. what is the degree of asymptomatic transmission. >> reporter: on this isue of contagiousness, there's a term that people might have heardti fl around, a super spreader, someone who's particularly contagis that a real phenomenon? >> it is a real phenomenon. we saw it verthy clearly ie sars outbreak in 2002, and there

are a number of episodes now that have been reported that indicate that a given individuar "super spreader" is used and lethat kind of confuses pe what you mean by that. it means that a person has such a high lel of virus that they're shedding that when they of people that the odds of their infecting more than just one of themmaybe several people at a shot, those are the ones that we're calling su we've seen it within family hits and we've seen it particularly amoalthcare providers, where you have one person might infect five, sixor seve even ten healthcare providers, hence the designation of a super spreader. so the answer to your question is that it isa al phenomenon. >> reporter: dr. anthony fauci, the uate.very much for >> good to be with you.

>> woodruff: when refugees and migrants from countries in crisis come ashore on the greek island of lesbos, their suffering is far from over, as they face hunger and the threat of violence i notorious moria camp. meanwhile, angry lesbos residents are demanding a solution. special correspondent malcolm " abant has this week's second "desperate journport from the island. >> stop the boat. >> reporter: crossing the aegean s a from turkey to the greek islands at nightnerve- wracking experience, especially for the young ones ohythe ding. >> stop the boat. >> reporter: officers fromhe european border force frontex are yelling orders, because they don't want the boat to capsize. the children get another scare as they are transferred to the

police vessel. then they enter the darknesss thatria, and a new kind of fear begins. >> actually here in the night is scary, and don't have security always at night. at night there's fight with knives. they fight with knife. it's so scary. i can't go anywhere at night. >> reporter: sakine moradi is 13 years old. her fami because of threats from the sbliban. they arrived in five months ago. along with other afghans, inside moria, where they sell traditional flat bread for 50 cents apiece. >> i think that here is horrible. here is so bad. i cannot go to the bathroom. we don't have electric. so we don't cook anything because the food here is so bad.

and we don't have water. sometimes water come and sometimes it goes. and we cannot tuke shower, ly. >> the fact that theseowumans, our feumans, are living like this, in absolute desperation five years in, is just shockin i felt ashamed, personally, working there and being there. i felt ashamed of having to send people back to those conditions after i'd seen thein the clinic >> reporter: annie chapman is a british emerncy room doctor o volunteers with a dutch nonprofit. she's just returned home after a stint working night shifts inside moria. >> 42% of the camp now is de up of children. children are coming over, some with pre-esting conditions, but also battling the fact that they're living in tents. there's a new outbreakf meningococcal meningitis in the camp at the moment. and there's an increase in violence in the camp, largely, to my mind, due to the inhumane living conditid the desperation people are feeling. >> reporter: this is what e

means-- a man holds up an official document saying tt he's housed, and this is his shelter, a plastic tarp. moria just has to be the worst place in europe right now. the message that these conditions are sending to people in asia, the middle east, and africa is that you are not welcome here. but nothing seems to deter them. the dream that soo later,en by europe is going to be forced to open its borders. during the night in moria, women are especiallyulnerable. the threat of sexual violence i so sevat rather than venture out, many wear a branded of diaper caampers. leading afghan refugee advocate yonous muhammadi. >> the women, they are wearing these pampers-- which r children-- because there is no acss to toilets. and also there is no security. so theare wearing this because there is no toilets.

the women are dog that. >> reporter: there is a constant stream of mothers taking their children to clinics run by nonprofits. >> it's only getting in the wrong direction. every day it's getti worse. every day, more patients come asking for help, children with more signs of traumas, worse and worse. >> reporter: mie terkelsen is a senior nurse with doctor without borders. >> danielle, to me. danielle, can i get an update on your numbers? 's skin diseases, it's scabies, it's lice, it's area vomiting, it's problems that come from the living conditions mainly. we don't talk about if the child is traumatised. we talk about how traumatised the child is. that's where we're athe moment, and it's every day. we cannot follow with the amount of scabies patients wi amount of lice shampoo. all of these things are just basic things, but it's overwhelming to us. >>eporter: the resilience children is on display as they play marbles. but psychologists are worried about their exposure to adult violence in moria. they see signs of increased

aggression among children in the camp. but 17-year-old qudrat ullah shafaye from afghanistan is determined to make a difference. he arrived here ve months ago, is now teaching english in a rudimentary school in moria, called wave of hope. >> i want to live in a safe country, in a place where i can study. i know the situation in moria is very bad aga. 80% i agree that i suld not be here in moria, because there are many things that are going on, like killing each other and the bad situation in which we are living. thatporter: he believ education offers the best long-term chance of escape from >> if i know 60% or 70english, i must teach them, that they should learn, this is a positive work. >> repter: other migrants busy

themselves gathering wood for tilding. farmers complainir olive trees are being chopped down, but there is no room for new arrivals inside the official camp, anthey are forced to construct shelters where they can. the migrant crisis has confounded greece for the past five years, and at a protest in athens, vangelis grammatikakis, from the island of crete,it ized the lack of action. >> when the aegean is bleeding, that's how a citiz should think. the migration issue can be solvedn 24 hours, but they don't want to solve it. solved.t that it can't be they don't want to solve it. >> reporter: there's stalemate loover government plans to moria and similar camps on other islands, and replace them with bett facilities. moria and its overspill contains 20,000 people. tiat's two-thirds the popu of lesbos' main town, mytillini. the scale alarms giorgos stantzos, mayor of samos, a nearby island.>> he new camp on samos is

already big-- its capacity is for 1,200 people. we acknowledge the difficulty of the situation, and have accepted it, as long ashe refugees and migrants stay for a limited rariod of time in the camp, and as long as the mon flows stop. even if we accept camps of20 00 people, if the flows do not stop, these camps will easily end up hosting 40,000, 5000, 60,000 people in the whole of the aegean. >> reporter: but refugee leader yonous muhammadi says greeal needs a rey check. >> greece should accept that it is not a passagtry. stay. it is also a destination country. some thousands of people will stay here. it means that integration is the only way. it means that every greek, they should have, they will have migrants beside th at their neighborhood. they have to fd a way how to ve with these pele. >> reporter: back in moria, sakine moradi clings to the hope that her stay in the darkness will soon end and she can findar sancin another country.

>> anywhere that i have a good future, that maybe tr with my family. th i want to go anywhere i don't ha any scared. >> reporter: you don't want to be scared? >> we need-- we need peace. >> reporter: and, say psychologists, that is wt all the children need, if their mental scars are to have a chance to heal. peace is the best antidote to the violence they have witnessed. for the pbs newshour, i'm malcolm brabant in moria. dr >> wf: the thwaites glacier is one of the largest thaciers in antarctica, and it's melting at a rat worries scientists. the world took notice when the

temperature on the continent hit nearly 70 degrees earlier this month. nt, getting a better read what's happening has been a major challenge. our science correspondent miles o'brien gave scientist david holland and his team camera gear to document their mission to thl ier. miles has this dispatch, part of our series, the "leading edge." >> reporter: it's an urgent scientific mission at the far edge of a massive melting to the glacier. it's the largest, most menacing, source of rising sea levels all overhe world. welcome to the thwaites glacier in west antarctica. our guide this journey is david holland, a professor of math and atmosere/ocean science at new yk university. he is a principal investigator on the melproject, part of the international thwaites glacier collaboration. the five-year campaign is funded by the u.k. natural environment research council and the u.s.

national science foundation, a newshour funder as well. why is thwaites so important? >> so, it's the monerablet? place on earth. anisthe curious thing is, ho it that it's so vulnerable and, at the stime, it has warm water in front of it today? is it just two things that may be coincidental? but they're both real and they're happening. >> reporter: for years, scientists have warily watched thwaites from afar, ussa about the size of florida, it is vanishing at an alarming rate, retreating about a half mile, and thinning as much as 15 feet every year. it sits on land below sea level. ther accelerating retreat.s it could melt away in a few decades. some call it the "doomsday" glacier. if thwaites were to melt or drop into the seaomorrow, how much sea level rise would we expect? >> so, it's less than a meter. it's probablon order of, say,

65 centimeters. then the neighboring ice would become unstable. and so, all together, it would be more than three meters of ice, something of the scale of tefeet, globally. so, it's a major changer, a rewriting the coastline. >> reporter: thwaites is like a cork in a bottle. once it is gone, there wilbe nothing to stop a cascading loss of nearly all the glaciers in west antarctica. that is why holland wanted to come to this place: to drill a half-mile hole through the ice, to see what's happening underneath. it's never been done bore, and it very nearly did not happen this antarctic summer. >> the mottoor me is, have no expectations. if you have expectations, you will be deeply disappointed. >> reporter: in november, they flew to christchurch, new zealand. within a few days they were on a u.s. air force air mobility command c-17 stuffed to the gills with scientists, support crews and gear. after a five-hour-long flight due south 2,300 miles, they

landed at mcmurdo station, headquartersor the national ience foundation in antarctica. but they were stil0 more than 1,fficult miles away from their camp on thwaites, s d the weatheterrible, and the airplanes ke breaking down. at was to be a one-week stop at mcmurdo for briefings, training and practice,ecame more than a month. byhe time they got to thwaites, all the weather and mechanical tuble left them barely enough time to do their science. but, safety first. we're out at the grounng zone for this glacier right now. a team led by geophysicist seth campbell of the university of maine survey the area. he explored some nearby caves... >> that thing has never been seen probably. >> reporter: ...and towed a ground-penetrating radar on a sled to identify perilous ses beneath the surface. >> if you zoom in here, we can show you what they look like. the way radar works is, we're

imaging layers in the snow packo us. so, you can see there's a crevasse here. and we can see there'sctually a crevasse here as well. >> reporter: others were more obvious. is dangerous busine of a glacier a wrong step would be tal. i think we will go around this one. iey also looked beneath t using another technique called often used by the oil industry to find places to drill. but in this case, they are makingn underground map to ensure they are where the ice transitions from sitting on the rock to floating in the ocean, the so-called grounding line. they detonated some small buried explosives, akin to fireworks. lizzie clyne is a doctoral caidate at penn state. >> when we set off that explosive charge, that sets off a lot of seismic energy that radiates down through the ice to the bed, to the bottom of your shelf. any sort of change in material will trigger a reflection that

comes backo us. and so this way, we can see whether there's water there's sediment or there's rock beneath the ice. >> reporter: the reflections they recorded showed the ice, the seafloor, and a thin column of water. a bullseye, exactly where the team wanted to drill. they don't use drill bits here, just hot water, nearly boiling. the rig requires several aviation fuel-powered burners, attached to a long spool of hose.th >> we see drill rig and theoe hos down to a hole in the ground here. right there. >> reporter: is it risky, ultimately, to the glacier itself? >> no, because it's such a small fraction of the glacier. we're like, literally touching one millionth of a percent of the glacier. >> reporter: when they finally got started drilling, a bigst orm blew in. >> you really cannot see,si

nothing vie at all. just stay in here for the day. >> reporter: the team had to hunker down for three days. the timing was notooking good. >> if we don't get the drilling rustarted tomorrow, then w into a whole series of problems. basirmlly, there's another sto coming in about three days, but we need three days to get the drilling set up and done. >>eporter: but when the storm passed, the good weather held, and things fell into place quickly. ter 36 hours of hot wate drilling, they broke through the bottom of the ice to the ocean f ile beneath. they lowered in a remotely operated vehicle called icefin, which provided some unprecedented images of the ice- covered shore of a glacier. funded by nasa, the device was built by a team from georgia tech, led by astrobiologistbr itney schmidt. >> one of the things that we don't know very well is exactly how glaciers move and how thee very b the glacier operates.

so when we get to see it rightwh up close, righe it hits the ocean, we are seeing the freshest material. >> reporter: they collected sediment cores and dropped in instruments that measure water salinity, temperature andtu ulence. it turns out the water at thisic paar spot is very still. aurora basinski is a grad student at n.y>>. ince turbulence is below detectable levels, that meansn' there as much mixing as potentially we would have expected. and so what that means is, the warm water is mostly staying near the bottom, not necessarily making its way up to the ice. >> reporter: that might seem like good news, but for the first time, scientists have confirmed what they suspected: the ocean under thwaites is warm, 3.6 degrees fahrenheit above freezing-- too warm for the ice to remain stable. it's a sobering moment, too, isn't it? >> yeah.

change happens, and this looks like a potential case for change going forward, that could be quite impactful. you can probably change air temperature over the next century, but the ocean is such a big, sluggish creature that in t way, whe doing what it's doing, it's not the kind of thing we can engineer and stop e veily. >> reporter: before they left, the team buried five.p.s.ns statcross the grounding line. they will gath precise data about the glacier's movement and thickness over the long, dark winter. the melt team plans to be back next year to recover that data and do more science. they hope this risky work at the edge of possible will help models, adding more facts to the growing fear. for the pbs wshour, i'mo' milerien.

>> woodruff: a child's tantrum is rarely humorous, but a new and highly acclaimed novel,se "nothing there," from author kevin wilson, takes an otherwise dreaded situation and turns it into satire. part of our arts and culture series "canvas," jeffrey brown sat down with wilson and began by asking why he felt a compulsion to explore family dynamics. well, for me, compulsion is love, so, yeah, i love to write about family. i come back to it again and again. yeah. i started ou, i wrote about family from the perspective of a child, because that's how i grew up, thinking of the weirdness on born into a family. >> the weirdness of being born. i mean, we're all born into a family. >> but you don't ask for it. all of a sudden, there's these people and they're, like, we're going to take care of you and raise you and that's a strangeng kind of feehere you think i'm made of these people but i'm gog to become mywn person. and maybe the writing about

family would havenstopped but had kids and i was on the other side of it of watching these children develop and leave me. so i thought, oh, i'll just kee writbout it. >> reporter: so what is this book about, ultimately? >> to me, the id of family, i wanted to broaden that. it's not just thee pople -- our immediate family, right. i'm starting to think of family of how you can expand it to include the people who are important to you, the ople that protect you, and, so, in this bok, a lot of th peopl are not actually biologically linked and, yet, they're in this space and they're basically somehow form a family. so i'm trying to think about family in broad terms with this book. >.>> reporter: soyour main protagonist, liliny, ate 20s, a self-described loser, gog noe. >> right. >> reporter: gets a call from her old friend madison, a wealthy woman, married to a senator, with an unusual

request, come take care of his two ten-yd twins by a former wif re. ht. so the catch is these children, when they're agitated, spontaneously combust. they burst ito flames. >> yeah, you've got to stop that fire when they get agitated, on angry or upset. >> right,yeah. reporter: which sounds crazy. >> it is. it's a hard book to sell off that initial premise where it's wa book about childr burst into flames. but the flames don't harm them.h can harm everyone around they're fine, right, and, so, e book becomes lillian trying figure out how to take care of these children with this strange kind of power. >> reporter: an instant, unexpected family. >> yeah. if we go back to family, lillian finds herself in possession of these two children, and she becomes their caretaker.

so, agidn, it's thiea of how do you protect the people that you love, how do youeep them safe, how do you keep yourself safe when you're deangith these vulnerable children. so even though she's not their mother, it's still family. >> reporter: i'm thinking people watching, there hearing children that combust, catch on fire. that sounds horrible, sounds awful. >> yeah. >> reporter: but you somehow make it a kind of normal andev if this is a very funny book, how are we to understand the fire in this cas>>e? nybody, to my mind, if you've had a kid or been around, like, a three-year-old, this metaphor isn't that crazy to me. if you're in a store, right, and you're leading your three-year-old around and you're in a public place and they're so funny, they want a cookie, they're tired,. >> reporter: i've seen the multi-down.

>> you've seen that kid, they face gs red and they're about to blow up and it's happening and a lot of times you can't stop it, right, you just have to ntain it. so, to me, the children bursting into flames madnperfect sese. i thought, yeah, that's what kids do, they're combustible. >> reporter: in a way, these meds become normalized ts a reader, but, of course, they're not normal and this is not a nrmal siuation. so is that part of what you're looking at, what is normal, hown do we about it? >> i lived an isolated existence on a mountain in tennessee, and the world is so bizarre and strange to me, so what i think of as normal is those people who pretty much against all odds try to contain weirdness. that's what normal is. it's not actually a regular state of being, it's an enforced state of being in order for, like, society to function, people think that normality needs to override weirdness, but

for me there's no containingat weirdness spills out no matter what, and, so, it's kind of a fool's errand. >> reporter: this is a wildly, funny, satirical look at other issues liake clss. who is your model. >> hatcher, her stories are about family but about a diverse group of people wh under strange circumstances have to become a family. and anne, in her new novel "the dutch house," writes so elegantly about class and about what it mens to have privilege. but that book to me, even -- and what i love about it, ist ha these fairytale elements thathe maketory slightly magical to me. and the other writer is george saunders, who, as y know, he's so wild and strange, but a story like sea oak is really about the inescability of poverty but, instead of coming at it head-on,

he has this aunt come back from the dead who becomes this profane oracle, and that really influenced me. i'm thought, if i'm going to write about this stuff, i don't know that i have thauthority do it, so i'm going to come at it in a strange way and then, that way, if i'm funny at first, then i can work my way into th larger topics. >> so childhood, family and wha is the mean normal. >> right. class issues. i use the word satire. >> i'm fine with thatht. works for me. i think, especially with this bookit is satirical in the way it examines kind of old south money, old south politics, the way that privilege kind of protects you from distress or fliction for as long as you possibly can.e >>orter: kevin wilson, the book is "nothing to see here." thank you so much. >> thank you so much.

>> woodruff: and, a news update before we go tonight. there's word that president trump will tap the u.s.ad amba to germany to be the next acting director of national intelligence. it was first reported by the "new york times." long-time trump lo.ll, a he would succeed joseph macguire, who temporarily served in theacting" role, after dan coats resigned from the post last summer. and that is the newshour for tonight. on thursday, a review of michael bloomberg's debut on the democratic debatstage. i'm judy woodruff. join us online, and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, and we'll see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> before we talk about your investments-- what's new? >> well, audrey's pecting... >> twins! >> we'd be closer to the twins. >> change in plans. >> at fidelity, changing plans is always part of the plan. no-contract wireless plans that are designed to help you do more of the things you enjoy. whether you're a talker, texter,

uowser, photographer, or a bit of everything, o.-based customer service team is here to find a plan that fits you.ea to l more, go to consumercellular.tv >> collette. >> american cruise lines. >> bnsf raway. >> the ford foundation.in workwith visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and individuals. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> you're watching pbs.

hello, everyone, welcome to "amanpour and company". here's what's coming up. anyone hear the will get it done? >> mike bloomberg rises as a serious challenger in th democratic primary a qualifies for his first debate. i speak with his senior adviser tim o'brien. >> first the unknown about this plan is how long is it going to last? >> reality hits home for an american with the coronavirus. now, what might the epidemic mean for china's leaders and the world economy? i ask veteran china corporate. and creeping authoritarianism in our own back yard