captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreivasan: on this edition wir sunday, september 13: fires continue to devastate parts of california and the pacific northwest. >> sreenivasan: jeff greenfield with the latest in politics. >> sreenivasan: and, upcycling: rning food scraps into nutritious snacks. next, on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is de possible by: the anderson family fund.iii. bernard and denise schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. ubarbara hoperberg.

kl the leonard and normfine foundation. arles rosenblum. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front ofs. at mutual of america, we believe taki care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investment >> for 25 years, consumer cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans, designed to help people do more of what they like. our u.s.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits y. to learn more, visit www.consumercellular.tv. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the american peoe. ibutions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thk you. >> sreenivasan: good evening, and thank you for joining us. the campaigns for prident are osing in on the november 3

election, and for the next eight weekends, we're going to track the issues in our "roads to election 2020" series. battlegrou state ofthe pennsylvania this weekend, where we are reporting in person. we'll also be visiting s ttes virtuallking with reporters and voters. we'll have morenirom pennsyl after today's news summary. at least 33 people have now died in turhe massive wildfiresng from california to washington state since mid-august. the fires have also brought a smoky hazup and down the st coast, and some of the worst air quality in the world. californ is battling 28 major fires spreading across more than the million acres. in oregon, tens of thousands of people have evacuated. more than 600,000 acres have burned in washington state. south of portland, oregon, in groups set up temporary shelters and provided aid to evacuees.k in json county in southern oregon, local officials continue to search for missing peop,

and identified the remains of four people yesterday who died in a fire there. newshour weekend's christopher oker spoke with oregon public broadcasting reporter emily cureton earlier today for the latest on the continuing fire crisis. >> reporter:hat is the status of the fires and what is the >> the danger is not over. today, half a million people in oregon are under some level of evacuation notice. about 40,000 people have been told to leave their homes. but majority of those have been told to pack a bag and get ready to go. so, thluis is communities not far from portland, and in southern oregon, we're alsoar braced for awing couple of days. towns that have already burned are now under red flag warning again, and there's high winds expected in that part of the >> reporter: a red flag warning because there's an expectation or an anticipation that the fires may return. >> conditions are prime for extreme fire activity. >> reporter: andhile this is happening, there seems to be a quite a mbit information,

or missing information. tell me e about what peoow and how people are making decisions. >> it's very difcult right no yesterday, i spoke with people who had fled the holiday farm fire-- one of dozens burning throughout the state-- and they fled their homes in the middle of the night last week. and here we are, six days later, and theydid not know the extent of damage to their communities or where unaccounted people were-- if they were missing, if they had escaped, or if they had been caught in the fires.om so that ishing that's been really hard for survivors and for responders. and we're also seeing misinformation on social media take the form of rumors, and this has wasted law enforcement resources, specifically facebook community groups, with residents in areas that have been hit by the fires. people are posting things like, that antifa set the fires. o.p.b. spoke with officials. there's absolutely no evidence to support this, but it hasn't stoppedeople from setting up

roadblocks around towns or checkinwho's coming in and out of some of these bued communities. in fact, one of o.p.b.'s own reporters was stopped by armelad vies trying to access molalla, oregon. >> reporter: the governor has also told the state to brace for a mass casualty event. has there been any updates about just how ma people have died? and if not, has that warning continued? >> yeah, we are braced for a high death toll. the governor of obrgo kate n, has said this is likely to be the most substantial lossr of life and pr from fire in the state's history. and again, it's not like the immediate danger is over. so search and rescue efforts have been slowed, firefighters and emergency responders, they spent this weekend in surval mode, and have not yet pivoted to recovery. r orter: the pandemic is still going on. where are people being sentid are they ouor they in tents? are they collecting in gyms? >>what we're seeing at evacuation points set up around the state is people who have the ability to remain in a vehicle or camp around their vehicle ar

and people who absolutely have nowhere else to go or don't have a family to go and see, theye being referred to hotel rooms as they're available. aren't enough available hotel roomin the immediate area of the evacuated communities. >> reporter: what is the air quality like currently ineg ? >> it's terrible. the smoke is blanketing the entire state right now, and making it hard to breathe. i don't go outside without wearing a respirator right now, and all of oregon and washington have unhealthy air. t ihe particulaso dense, it's considered either ery uounhealthy" to "haza" or even above the levels for hazardous, so it's literally off the charts. bad to breathe outside right now. rter: what are the peopl you've spoken with, who have evacuated, wh are they saying to you? >> the people i've spoken iath in the imm aftermath of fleeing were just traumatized. i mean-- and these aiv people thatin fire-prone communities, so people have seen this before. and what was different about the

fire storm of monday night was how fast it moved. >> reporter: what are the next >> the next week is going to continue to be an uphill battle for firefighters. president trump approved an emergency federaleclaration thsday that will supplement state resources. keep in mind, orreon's budget ady took a major hit from revenue loss due to the pandemic, and the state already has a pretty notoriousousing shortage. so this makes everything really uncertain now, especially for people who lost their rentals and mobile homes. we know at this point that those mobile homes along rivers have been decimated. on the optimistic side of things, the weather this weekend did improve, and the wildfires grew more slowly. oregonno govkate brown has said we still have a long way to go, though, and that some large fires that have merged to create mega-fes are likely to burn until we get full rain. >> repmorter: emily cureton f o.p.b., thank you so much for joining us. >> you're very welcome.

♪ ♪ >> sreenivasan: president trump thanked firefighters battling the wildfires in the west at a nevada rally last night. he ttalso used the event tok mail-in balloting; his opponent, former vice president joe biden; and did t mention climate changes a factor in the recent fires, instead repeating his opinion that the cause has to do with what he calls "forest management." >> they really have-- they've never had anhing like thisw, but, you knot is about forest management. please remember the words. very simple. forest management. please remember. >> sreenivasan: the president addressed a mostly mask-less crowd at the late night event at an airport in minden, nevada, south of reno. a plan to hold the rally in reno was rearranged when officials said it would violate a covid-19 restriction that limit gatherings to fewer than 50 people. the president will go to california for a briefing on tfi s tomorrow, after meetings with supporters and a speech in henderson, nevada tonight. police in los angeles are searching for a suspect who ambushed otand shwo sheriff's deputies in their patrol car last night. surveillance video of the shooting, near the metro blue line station in compton, shows

what appears to be a man silking up to the passenge of the vehicle and firing several times. the suspec ot then ran o foot. the two deputies survived, but sustained wounds and are reportedly in critical condition. both have been on the job for just over a year.op al storm sally is projected to cross the gulf of mexico tomorrow, and may become a hurricane by the time it makes landfall. new orleans and the gulf coast, from grandsle, louisiana, to the alarama-florida line under a hurricane watch. sally brought hengy rain and stinds as it crossed south florida, and louisiana governor jocl bel edwards ed a state of emergency late yesterday. named storm has ever formed in the atlantic tropical seasonhe according toational hurricane center. this afternoon, new orleans officials issued mandatory evacuation orders for all of st. charles parish, and warned residents to expect power outages. sally is expected to slow down as it reaches the gulf coast and could be a category two sto at landfall. in belarus today, mass anti-

govement protests continued for a 36th consecutive day following the country's disputed presidential vo last month. more than 100,000 people marched the country's capital of minsk calling for the resignation of president alexander lukashenko, who has been in power for 26 years. protesters are also demanding the release of jailed opposition leaders after the august 9 elections, which the opposition says were rigged. local elections are taking place in dozens of regions across russia today, in what kremlin critics say is a big test for the ruling united russia party, hich backs president vladimir putin. the vote follows the suspected psoning of opposition leader alexei navalny last month after het le city of tomsk. navalny is now in a hospital in germany. opposition groups allege widespread corruption among ited russia deputies. many opposition supporters are implementing a "smart voting" strategy aimed at identifyosg candidateslikely to beat the ruling party candidates. tod's vote will elect 18 governors and an arraof local

members of parliaments and city councils. >> sreenivasan: for the latest visit www.pbs.orgour.ional news, >> sreenivasan pennsylvania one of the so-called battleground states, where polls show voters split almost evenly between the two paies, and where a tiny margin of victory electoral college win in the race for president. for more on what's developing in the final weeks of the campaign, recently i spoke with special correspondent jeff greenfield, who joins us from santa barbara, california. jeff, it's the season when pe eople ories about polls. that "biden is up in one poll by eight points" and then "biden is dead even in another poll." amere they measuring the thing, the same electorate? how is it possie? >> basically, there are a whole bunch of assumptions that any pollster would make. do i have the right mix? do i have enough college-

educated whites? do i have eugh rural folks? color?ave enough people of the other thing is that they're basically guessing, also, about who's likely to vote, because if thnoey'rtalking to people who are voting, or if people talk to them and give them their prrneference and it out they don't vote, then the poll is re pally of dictive value. assuming these polls have predictive value anyway. so it's really not that much of a mystery, it's just that every pollster has a different set of got the sample right, which is why biden can be up by five points nationally ione poll and 12 in ather. >> sreenivasan: so is there any kind of a real, clear picre? >> here's my advice-- take the average. and the average bastally tells yohat biden is up nationally by about 7.5 points. i should mention, on march 28,de was up by about 7.5 points. so if you had gone into hibernation on march 20 and awakened yesterday, you would

have assumed nothing happened. not a pandemic, nothe george floyd killing, not the economic collapse-- it's real astonishing how unmoving that national number is. and as we all knew last time, hari, how that national number doesn't necessarily tell you the significant thing. >> whsreenivasan: right, so we go look at the state-by-state picture, what do we learn? i mean, we-- what arwe-- what did we learn last time? >> last time the state polls were-- in wisconsin and pennsylvania particularly-- the naonal poll is kind of right. they had clinton winning by about ttswo or three po nationally, and she did. and pollsters have been scratchading their about how they got this so wrong. one of the explanationst s, they did asure the intensity of support for trump and the antotipathy for hillary cl among rural voters. that kind of "let's think about who you're talking to" or the will do, is partly what made e-- those numbers wron the other theory is that trump

voters are less likely to respond to pollsters' phone callths or online question others, and there is something to that. >> sreenivasan: how is that possle, that the racial reckoning, posthgeorge floyd, pandemic, the economic catastrophe that so many people find themselves in that are not participating in the upside of thstock market-- how does that not have an effect? >> we've seen this now, i think, for five years. and trump was very candid, ars ago, when he said to lesley stahl, "i attack the press so that when my follows he negative stories, they and so i think whappened is, nothing has moved the trump base-- but trump has been unable to expand that base. that's why the numbers are so consistent. he's the first president in recorded memory never to have hit 50% in approval. and the test that we're going to se over the next couple of mons, i think, is whether or not trump can-- can get his base

passugionate eso that they turn out in unexpected numbers the way they did four years ago. and once y can render the e-election polls-- well, and i need to say one other quick thing about this whole business about predicting, which is that people don't seem to get that when someone like nate silver, the guru that biden has a three-to-one chance of winning? that's not a prediction. that's a probability estimate. if you ran this campaign b hundred timeen would win 70. these numbers don't tell you with any kind of certainty at they seem to tell you. i'm suggesting that everybody try the decaf,ake a deep breath, and we'll know in seven weeks or so. >> sreenivasan: all right, jeff greenfield, joining us from santa barabra, california. thanks so much. >> good to see you, hari. >> sreenivasan: one issue both

is the growing problem oface food waste, which contributes to pollution and greenhouse gases. there have been several efforts, both globally and nationally, to tackle that challenge, but one new technique is gaining momentum. it's called upcycling. researchers at drexel university in ouphiladelphia, 60 miles from here, have been producing upcycl products, creating new categories of food from discarded inedients. newshour weekend special correspondent allison aubrey and producer mary beth durkin have the final report from their five-rt series, "waste not, want not." >> can we taste it? >> yeah, you can taste it! >> reporter: that white doughy substancthat kaitlin mogental and claire schlemme are tasting is okara. it's a pulpy protein that's left over after youake tofu. >> oh, it's getting wet! >> reporter: they're at hodo, uran organic tofu manufact in oakland, california.

schlemme is the c.e.o. of a food startl,-up called renewal m just blocks away. renewal mill pays hodo to dry out the okara into strips like this. then, it's milled into a flour that rekal mill sells. lin mogental is one of schlemme's customers, and she's here to see how it's done. mogentale is c.e.o. of her own start-up, called pulp pantry. it's located in los angeles. renewal mill's flour is an ingredient in a new line of chips that mogentale's company makes. th're called pulp chips. why would somebody want to eat snacks with okara in it? >> so, it's full of nutritn. it's about two-thirds fiber and one-third protein. so, it's kind of like a, just a, nutrition t here.delicious >> reporter: minh tsai owns hodo. it's tofhe third largest manufacturer in the u.s. minh says all this okara is typically discarded by most

u.s. manufacturers. so you're telling me, the most usually just gets tossed away? >> absolutely. one of the most nutritious rts of theplant. and we know fiber is really important. it's actually not fuy utilized. >> reporter: in vietnam, minh tsai grew utheating okara. e, they use it to make vegetable pancakes. >> we're doing what we already do in asia, because it's really for hum.an consumption in as but here, we don't think about it the same way. >> reporter: mogentale and schlemme are part of a new wave of entrepreneurs who are thinkingwa that y. they're takingngredients once considered to be the dregs, and transforming them into whole new products. it's called upcycling. >> this is even just a sliver of all those fibrous bomroducts thate out of food manufacturing every year, in the u.s. and .beyo and so, it seemed like a tremendous opportunity. >> reporter: an opportunity

because many manufacturers are happy to get rid of their waste. it saves them the hauling fees to throw it out. and mogentale's chips haver anothecycled ingredient. what do we have here? >> so, it looks like we have apple. we've s gote kale in there, we've got some celery stalks. >> reporter: it's leftover pulp from cold-pressed juice companleies, and mogenta mixes that in with the okara to make these chips. how much of the volume of a piece of produce is really just the pulp? >> it can be anywhere from 15% to 50% pp. >> reporter: ithsome cities, ere are juice bars on almost every corner. anthat adds up to a lot of pulp. >> we workith juiceries that process millions of pounds of pulp a year. and so juiceries that process solely carrots, and might produce around 80,000 pounds of pulp a day. a lot of people struggle to find the-- the end use for it. >> reporter: and that struggle

plays out throughout the food industry. but it's a struggle that can translate into profits for upcycling sta-ups. one company, barnana, is now a multi-million dollar company that upcycles damaged bananas into snacks called bananna bites. another, treasure 8, is a start- up with a patented dehydrating process. they rescue and re-purpose damaged produce by dehydrating the produce and making products li beet chips and apple chips. and these companies have plenty of ingreents to work with. a report by the natural resources defense council finds 40% the food that's grown never makes it to our ples. itat est that about 125 billion pounds of food gets toyessed out eac. and when food ends up in a laenndfill, it emits pt greenhouse gas, methane,tehich contributo clima change. a unitions climate change panel concluded that wasted food

is responsible for up to 10% of all human-induced ouse gases globally. >> the more that we can keep food out of landfills and put it back into feedinpeople, the more we can not only address issues like the efficicy of our food system and making sure that all of the resources that go into growing our food are to theirpreserv purpose, which is feeding people. >> reporter: andhese upcycling companies hope to win over customers, and make a profit, by telling their stories. >> cat, tell us about yours and wh's in it. and then also, how the upcycled brotperformed. >> reporter: jonathan deutsch runs the food lab at drexel hospitality department philadelphia. he's conducted several studies on consumer attitudes towards upcycled products. >> consumers are willing to pay more if they know that this good for the environment, if there's good messaging. they don't nd to know that they had the most beautiful,

pale pink, grocery store tomatoes in their tomato sauce. they don't mind knowing that these were split, and burst, and overripe. that could and should be part of the story. >> reporter: deutsch started the it's become a go-tfor food innovation, and these dais, the focus n upcycled products. sized companies in that, you know, $10 to $150 million of sales range. they're not doing a lot of innovation in their own systems. and g so, they have been ask to help with new product ideas, ways to divertodaste into pructs. >> reporter: deutsch says it's st start-ups interested upcycling. >> we've seen a big increa in multinationals whoave been interested in upcycling and greening their own practices. think of things like lunchables, right, things you uld, like, stk, put together. >> reporter: in class, deutsch up with new ways to use upcycled

ingrd edients aneate new products. today, cat andress is working that deutsch helped a companyh called matriarch develop. it's made from discarded vegetable bits that the company buys from distributors. another student, anna wilson, is rkwoing with flour made from sunflower seed shells. the flour has a nutty flavor and iofs a good source rotein. she hopes to perfect a crunchy >> weusing it for selective eaters. ildren on the autism spectrumo efer crunchy, crispy things, often don't get enough f protein, becauseu think about protein-- meat and daid , and tofuans, and peanut butter-- a lot of protein soces are mushy. >> reporter: according to deutsch, upcycling is here to stay. he is working with a group called the upcycling food association to conduct focus groups. oneoal is to determine whic symbols may work best to label

these products and make them stand out as "upcled." within a few years, upcycled corner of the food, butttle you'll see a major cereal box, or potato chip or a pasta sauce manufacturer with an little "upcycled" lo, and it will be just as normal as seeing an organic logo. >> reporter: one study estimates tuphat cycled foods now make up a $46 billion market in the u.s. and industry experts expect it to continue to grow. but despite deutsch's optimism, upcycling start-ups, like everyone else, face uncertain econic times ahead. >> sreenivasan: that's all for this editionwef pbs newshour e d, from the lehi valley

for test news updates, visit www.pbs.org/newshour. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. stay healthy, and have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the anderson fily fund. bernard and denise schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. barbara hope zuckerberg. the leonard and norma klorfine foundation.

charles rosenblum. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutual of america, we believe king care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. additional support has been provided by: consumer cellar. and by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the erican people. and by contributions to your ie pbs station fromrs like yo thank you. (peaceful musi

- [jeff] california isn't always on fire. in fact, even when you watch the news and they make it seem like it is, it isn't. every spring, by just sheer acreage alone, another kind of explosion cove much more area vethan wildfires ever n this state. an explosion of color. in the spring of 2019, a rare event called a super bloom took place. no one was evacuated and there were no jumbo jets dropping red stuffrom e sky, so you probably didn't see it live at 11. but it happene we did our best to capture it.