tv PBS News Hour PBS December 22, 2022 3:00pm-4:00pm PST
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judy: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. on "the newshour" tonight. a troubling trend, united states life expectancy falls to the lowest level since the mid-1990s due to deaths from covid 19 and drug overdoses. then. let's make a deal, congress irons out the details of, and amendments to, this year's massive spending bill in hopes of avoiding a government shutdown. and holiday retail, despite the pandemic and online shopping causing widespread small businesses to close down, some operations are finding ways to adapt. we are actually approaching hopefully some sort of equilibrium in the online versus brick and mortar equation.
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judy: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. ♪ >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by -- ♪ the kendeda fund committed to advancing restorative justice and meaningful work through investments in transformative leaders and ideas. carnegie corporation of new york supporting innovations in democratic engagement and the advancement of international peace and security at carnegie.org. and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions.
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♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. judy: there is grim news today about the state of america's health. the average expected lifespan for a person in this country shrank by over seven months last year, according to the cdc. that comes after an even steeper decline in 2020. as william brangham reports, the primary culprits are covid-19, and opioid overdoses. william: judy, because of this decline, the average american today is now expected to live
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just 76.4 years, that's lower than its been in nearly twenty years. for more on this new report, i'm joined again by dr. steven woolf. he's director, emeritus, of the center on society and health at virginia commonwealth university. nice to have you back on the newshour, although this is sort of awful news to be talking about. year and a half ago, you set here in our studio and we talked about a study that you had just done, showing how lifespan in america had dropped by over a year. now the cdc report comes out saying it has dropped another seven months. did this reports of prize you -- the price you that the trend has continued? >> i hate to sound like an academic, but yes and no. it did surprise me in the sense that 2021 was a year in which we had a vaccine available in which many otherountries, it
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recovering their life expectancy that they -- many country saw their life expectancy increase. so to see ours continue to plummet was very worrying. it is not a surprise in the sense that we have been tracking what we call the u.s. health disadvantage for some years. william: one thing that jumped out in this report to me was that unlike and last -- past declines, where some groups really fell behind and other groups held on, this seemed to be an across-the-board decline, all age groups, all demographics. how do you understand that? >> people of color in our country were devastated by this pandemic. black and hispanic, native americans had much higher losses than the white population. this new data shows they continue to suffer losses, but it was actually the white population that experienced a
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larger decrease in life expectancy. nonetheless, dea rates were still much higher among people of color. we had alrea been aware for the decade preceding this pandemic that we had a problem in this country of rising death rates in working age population, people 25-64. those groups are not experiencing increasing death rates in other countries, it is just the united states that is having this problem. so when the pandemic struck, it wasn't entirely a surprise that we had a disproportionate increase in death rates in that young and middle-aged group. of course the elderly were at higher risk so the increasing death rates among the elderly was also unfortunately anticipated. what is worrying about this report is that it is also reporting an increase in death rates in children and
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adolescents. that is not something we have seen before. william: the -- the cdc has blame this principally on covid and drug overdoses. can you talk about alcoholism, we don't often talk about its impact on public health. >> we were very much aware of the opioid epidemic and the rising rate of death, alcoholics, suicide and heart disease, all those problems continued right into the pandemic. layered upon it was the tremendous stress his people were experiencing. individuals struggling with addictions of drugs and alcohol were more vulnerable to those conditions and had reduced access to substance abuse and counseling services to address those problems. so unfortunately, we have seen a
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disturbing rise in deaths from alcohol and drugs, but also our health care system was disrupted overall. people with chronic diseases had more limited access to primary care and special services and we saw increasing death rates from heart disease and diabetic -- diabetes and other chronic illnesses. william: as you are saying we are unique compared to other, similar nations. why is that? >> it's not because we don't spend enough on health care. a massive amount we spend on health care, much higher than other countries and much higher than countries in which people live longer lives and are healthier. so this is a lesson for us, that health care is only a partial answer. studies suggest it only accounts for about 10%-20%, our health is shaped by our living conditions, jobs, the wages we are in our
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wealth accumulation, the education that enables us to get those jobs. we are struggling in those areas and we are seeing our health suffer as a result. william: you are describing potential remedies to arresting this decline are fundamental, structural changes to american society. it's not just vaccines to avoid covid debts, or naloxone to avoid overdose deaths. you're talk about something much more systemic. >> if this only happened during the pandemic, we could blame it on a virus. but we as a society have made a decision. we have to shift our priorities if we want to be healthier and one our children to not die earlier. the country in which reliving is the richest in the world but we have the highest level of income inequality. much of the resources we need for healthy population arnot available to much of the population. william: dr. steven woolf,
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always good to see you. thank you. >> likewise, and thanks for giving attention to this important issue. ♪ judy: in the day's other news, a massive winter storm is tightening its grip on a huge swath of the country, and threatening to up-end holiday travel plans for many americans. flightaware, an app which tracks the flight status of airlines, reported more than 2200 flight cancellations in the u.s. today. roby chavez has the latest. >> on one of the busiest travel days of the year, people across the country are finding themselves in the same position: trapped where they started. >> i'm tired, stressed, hungry. just hopeless, honestly. >> the national weather service reporting that 190 million
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americans are under some type of winter weather advisory, spanning a vast part of the country, from the plains and midwest to the east coast. the blizzard-like conditions do not bode well for thousands trying to make it home for the holidays, creating even more chaos at overwhelmed airports with thousands of cancellations. some travelers are deciding to take matters into their own hands and skip the airport where they can. >> we are trying to search on our phones, figure out otr routes, maybe even taking a bus, it will take us about 21 hours, so that's really inconvenient, but anything we can do just to get there, we will do. >> we've been monitoring the travel concerns for the past couple of days since we heard the blizzard is going to minneapolis, where we're heading. and hoping we make it there on time and safely.
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and once we get there, we're hoping we can drive safely to our destination. it's just a little hectic right now. we're not exactly sure. >> but in the midwest in particular, road conditions are also posing a challenge. roadways in nebraska and iowa are slick and blanketed in snow. and in south dakota, this video from aocal sheriff's office captured a bottleneck of over 100 cars on interstate 90 late yesterday. stranded motorists were rescued and taken to emergency shelters. with the worst of the heavy snow and powerful winds still to come, president biden warns travelers to get out as early as they can, starting with his own staffers. pres. biden: if you have travel plans, leave now. not a joke. i'm sending my staff, my staff, if they had plans to leave on tomorrow, late tonight or tomorrow, telling them to leave now. they can talk to me on the
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phone, it's not life and death, but it will be if they don't get out. >> wintry conditions are expected through saturday. for the pbs newshour, i'm roby chavez. judy: the u.s. senate passed a $1.7 trillion government spending bill -- 68 to 29, ahead of friday's midnight deadline. the bill will fund the government through september. it also includes aid for ukraine and helps communities recovering from natural disasters, among other things. members of both parties celebrated the bipartisan achievement. >> this bill, we know what it is. we know it's omnibus. we know it's not perfect. but it's got a lot of stuff in it, a lot of good stuff. its the right thing for the government the right thing for , the nation, i believe. >> the omnibus was a appropriate metaphor for the last two years, a lot of sturm and drang, a lot of ups and downs, but in the
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end, a great result that really helped the american people. judy: the bill now heads to the u.s. house of representatives for final passage. we'll have more on this after the news summary. sam bankman-fried was released on 250 million dollars bond today after his first court appearancen new york. the judge is allowing him to live at his parent's home in california while he awaits trial on charges of fraud and money laundering. it comes a day after the u.s. prosecutor announced that two of his business partners secretly plead guilty to fraud charges. the u.s. economy is showing more signs of strength, despite inflation and rising interest rates. the government revised its earlier estimate of third quarter growth upward to three point 2%. meanwhile the labor department reported jobless claims rose slightly last week, up 2000, but
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still relatively low. on wall street today, stocks tumbled as investors remained concerned about higher interest rates. the dow jones industrial average lost 349 points to close at 33,027. the nasdaq fell 233 points. and the s&p 500 slipped 56. virginia state senator jennifer mcclellan has won the democratic nomination to succeed late democratic congressman donald mceachin, who passed away last month. she is the overwhelming favorite to win the special election in february. her district stretches from richmond to the north carolina border. if she does, she would make history as the first black woman to represent virginia in congress. and, president biden delivered a christmas address from the white house today. it was a message of unity and optimism, calling on americans to move beyond the country's division to come together as one.
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pres. biden: really look at each other. not as democrats, republicans not as members of team red or team blue. but as who we really are, fellow americans. i sincerely hope this holiday, that this holiday season will drain the poison that has infected our politics and set us against one another. i hope this christmas season marks a fresh start for our nation. judy: president biden will be remaining in washington over the christmas holiday. still to come on the newshour. vladimir putin pushes to improve russia's military as the invasion of ukraine grinds on. skyrocketing methamphetamine use poses a new security threat in iraq. the discovery of two-million-year-old dna in greenland furthers understanding of ancient life plus much more. >> this is the pbs newshour, from weta studios in washington
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and in the west, from the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. judy: with congress coming down to the wire to keep government open, there were questions today about whether the $1.7 trillion spending bill would be derailed in the senate. it cleared that chamber earlier today and heads to the house of representatives where a vote is expected tomorrow. john bresnahan is a veteran capitol hill reporter who has been following the drama. he's the co-founder of the political news daily, punchbowl news. john, welcome back to the newshour. how much suspense was there really over this bill? john: there wasn't a lot of suspense, in the final outcome it was going to pass. the question was when it was going to pass. this is a $1.7 trillion piece of legislation. it is 4100 pages long.
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no one has actually read the whole thing. it is tremendously intricate. it is in legislative language, so you cannot follow it completely as you would just reading a book. it's not something you can read easily. there was some doubt about timing. the final outcome was not in doubt, it was a question of whether they would get it done this week before christmas or next week. that was the real question. judy: a lot of members in congress and the senate do want to go home for christmas, no doubt about it. if touched on this, but just remind us, what are the main things that are paid for in this bill as it moves over now to the house? john: again, it's a huge page of legislation. there's 858 million dollars for fy 2023 for the pengon and other national security agencies. there's $800 billion in domestic
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spending. this covers the entire government. as you mention in your lead-in, there's 45 billion dollars in additional aid for ukraine, military and economic aid for ukraine and nato allies in the region as they deal with the russian war in ukraine. there's $40 billion in additional funding, economic aid for here in the united states, disaster aid for fires, droughts, hurricanes. that goes across the country. this legislation literally touches every american and it will impact every american and millions of folks overseas as well. judy: what about in terms of the politics of this, which is of courselways going to play a role. did one party or another come away with more of what it wanted than the other? john: you have to say republicans in this case had a
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very strong position. senate minority leader mitch mcconnell wanted a big increase and they worry about ukraine, taiwan, worry about the rise of china as a superpower. but there was an even higher increase in defense spending, there was an increase in domestic spending of just over 5%, but that is less than the rate of inflation. so in a real sense there was a cut in real dollars for domestic spending. what republicans wanted to do the last couple of years, the democrats insisted if we raise defense spending, we will raise spending for domestic programs. republican said we are not going along with that. they had the leverage here and they used it. republicans came away with a lot of victories in this bil but again, there's lots of money and therefore domestic priorities that the democrats wanted.
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there is $700 million for the violence against women act. they wanted or money for the national labor relations board and they got $25 million more. i would say overall, ruby -- republicans did very well during the later part of these negotiations. judy: what were some of the big ticket items that did not make it in? john: there was a number of issues. for instance, the afghan adjustment act, this was for helping afghans that assisted the united states during t war. there was a lot of debate over that. democrats had also pushed for an extension of the enhanced child tax credit which was implemented during the pandemic. they wanted to extend this. republicans blocked this. there was a lot of stuff that
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was left on the cuing room floor here. one thing that didake it that was very important was electoral college reform act. this is reform in the role of the vice president certifying the electoral college victory. it was very important to senators and members in both parties that we don't have a repeat of what happened in 2020 with the january 6 insurrection. want -- once enacted, this legislation will help stop that. judy: for those of us who don't follow every nuance of what happens in congress, democrats now have a majority in both houses, but you are saying that were not able to work their will on everything they wanted here. john: they are historically small majorities. they only have two stout majority in the house and it has been a 50-50 senate the whole town -- the whole time.
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it is actually a tribute to speaker nancy pelosi and chuck schumer. what they've gotten done with centrist republicans and moderate democrats, they've been able to pass some significant legislation, but historically small, narrow margins here. and it is a tribute to president biden and the white house. i briefly talked to senator chuck schumer today and he was ecstatic on what they've done over the last 24 months. he was over the moon about what has been done, and he's able to send his members home having passed this legislatn today. judy and the house will take about tomorrow where it is expected to pass. is that right, yes or no? john: yes ma'am, it is. there was thought they could get it done tonight, but there are some technical problems they have to deal with. just putting the legislation
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together, it could slide in tomorrow night, but it is going to pass. judy: we know you will be up all night or day following all this. thank you very much. ♪ judy: ukraine's president volodymyr zelenskyy returned to ukraine today. yesterday he met with president biden in the white house and received thunderous applause during his address to congress. meanwhile this week the russians announced plans to beef up their military and double down on the war effort. geoff bennett has the story. >> the russian defense minister visited russian soldiers fighting in ukraine. he inspected the soldiers canteen and dormitories and he walked through the field where the russians are waging war.
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before leaving, his final message was clear, everything is fine. but in a speech to his military chiefs yesterday, e russian president admitted shortcomings. >> we need to improve the system of military recruitment offices. we will can he knew to equip our strategic forces with the latest types of weapons. geoff: he also pledged to monetize the military and stopped to observe surveillance drones. russia plans a 30% expansion of its armed forces and wants to form a and bigger units. in time, russian troops have lost ground in ukraine. moscow's recent focus is in the east, where a city has sustained a relentless attack. >> they have been attacking it
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day and night, but it stands. geoff: in a historic speech last night, ukraine's president thanked americans for their support as he called for more weapons. >> your money is not charity. it is an investment in global security. >> the u.s. has announced an additional $1.8 billion in aid to ukraine. the new package includes a missile battery, today president putin downplayed the weapons capabilities. >> with regards to patriots, it is a rather all system. geoff: but president zelenskyy said his trip to washington was a success. >> we are coming with good results, ones that will help. the victory will be ours. geoff: for more on russia's plans to rebuild their military and continue to fight in
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ukraine, we turn to samuel bendett, a russian military analyst for the center for naval analyses. it's great to have you with us. vladimir putin is admitting mistakes, he is acknowledging criticism that his army lack the basic necessities to wage war. but he's also suggesting that the kremlin is digging in for a protracted war effort. how should we interpret his remarks? samuel: well, his remarks are nothing new to millions of people who have been following different telegram channels that have been screaming about the deficiencies and problems and offering very frank critique of what the russian forces were doing in ukraine and about the lack of basic supplies and about the lack of systems and weapons and a lot of that actually really came forward during the mobilization issues that were also actively covered not just in russia and abroad. and so he really couldn't hide from the truth in that regard. as far as this war going long term, this has always been the plan. neither side is going to give up. ruia isn't going to give up. the kremlin indicated that this
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is a war to the finish, and therefore he had to announce that this is going to be a long-term conflict. >> putin said, have no limits in terms of financing. is that so? i mean, the russian economy, struggling under the weight of western sanctions will likely limit how much the kremlin can spend to improve its military. samuel that's correct, and some : of what he said. maybe posturing, but russia does have a lot of resources we have to remember. it's a large country with a diverse economy. still, it's got a lot of human resources material resources, they're still finances available. this may be an indication that maybe this war isn't going to last another year. perhaps if it drags into 2023. it will go on for several months in that year, with whatever result can be achieved, but again, he is speaking to the nation that is looking to him for leadership. to deliver a victory. after all the blood all the loss, and after all the resources have been already dedicated to this conflict.
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>> you mentioned all of the blood and all of the loss. russia's defense chief, as you well know, he announced a plan to increase russia's military by roughly 500,000 service members. help us understand the significance of that, and this overall effort to reallocate civilian resources and civilian labor to this ongoing war in ukraine. samuel: russian military lost a lot of people over the last year it lost. a lot of good officers lost a lot of experienced officers who could have made a difference downrange. there were a lot of losses amongsthe privates, amongst the regular ground troops. tens of thousands of people are no longer available, and so these resources have to be replenished. russia is dedicating the mobilized troops. the force that's up to 300,000 that has been called up to basically sure up its defenses and to plug the existing gaps. excuse me, but for russia to
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continue and for russia to actually try and win this conflict, it needs a lot more resources than it planned for. after all, it launched the war with a very limited resource-based thinking this is going to be a very limited conflict. it is going to be a long, long-term conflict, and russia needs a lot of basically bodies to launch at ukraine from different directions, and therefore there waan announcement that russia will have a standing force of up to 1.5 million of whom 700,000 are going to be the contractors. these people will have to be found somewhere. they will have to be called up, they'll have to be mobilized. and all of this, of course, is against the backdrop of hundreds of thousands of fighting age men escaping the country because they don't want to fight in the war. >> there is the ground war, and there's also the air war. the us announced this week that it's providing a patriot missile battery to ukraine, considered one of the most capable long range air defense systems on the market. how much will that change the dynamic of this war? it takes months to train troops
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on how to use that complex system as i understand it, and it also won't be ae to provide blanket cover for the entire country. samuel: well, it remains to be seen what the effect of this one system is going to be. maybe is is a test for another sort of long term transfer of additional systems. but as you indicated, one system is not enough. ukraine has a lot of targets. civilian targets, military targets, and it needs protection over most of them. and so this th particular patriot system will have to be stationed near a high priority target but overall, ukraine needs lots of these systems to make a difference against russian missiles and against russian drones. >> samuel, was this all of this news from the russian side. was this intentionally designed as counter programming? how have the russians responded to president vladimir zelensky visit to washington and his speech last night before that joint meeting of congress. samuel: well, most of the country responded in a predictable fashion because most
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of the country follows state media, so they criticized his visit. they criticized united states for waging the war by proxy via ukraine. ey criticized ukraine for not leaving room for dialogue or negotiation in the speech, so of course it was a very predictable response. >> samuel bendit is a russian military analyst for the center for naval analyses. thanks for your time and for your insights. ♪ judy: the covid-19 pandemic has changed the face of retail in cities across the country. with small and independent businesses bearing the brunt of closures. and, this winter many have seen a drop in demand from last year. but, as paul solman reports, owners and even a city are doing what they can to buck the trend this holiday season. paul daphne olive's first trip : back to "tabletop," her
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defunct gift shop in downtown dc. so what happened here? i mean, you started this in, what, 2003? daphne: 2003. yeah. and we just needed to not get to a place where we're really losing money. paul: the store folded, back in january. daphne: it's sad. i loved my store. i really loved my store. paul: but six miles away, at the store's second location in residential takoma park. daphnewe've actually so far had a really a great decber, like a really, really both festive and busy december. paul: both stores had been bustling, until covid. then, in downtown dc, daphne: the hotels and the business district both became, you know, shadows of their former selves. it was not great, because most of the people who work in d.c., commute from somewhere else. paul: in some sense your business shifts from dupont circle, where people are coming in to work, to takoma park,
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where people are staying home from work. c. ebere anokute, who tracks national retail trends, says olive's experience is echoed in cities across the country, retail rents up in residential areas, ebere: as opposed to the parts of the city that are dependent on tourism and office workers where they have had a little bit of a more difficult recovery story. paul: while domestic travel has returned, international tourism is sll 30% below pre-pandemic levels. and research says more than 50% of offices in 10 major u.s. cities languish, unoccupied. among the hardest hit? downtown chicago where the city is trying desperately to fil empty storefronts. on once prime state street, just off chicago's magnificent mile of retail, the city has morphed a shuttered chain store, into a pop-up holiday market. micro businesses hawk their wares, rent free.
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andre: as a native chicagoan i have traveled downtown state street all my life and never thought for a moment that i'd be on state street, like selling a product. paul: a human resources manager for about 20 years, andre wilson turned his pandemic hobby, baking, into a bundt business. >> so i do some really fun things with bundt cake. paul: wilson rents space in a commercial kitchen and sells online. but, thanks to chicago's small business storefront activation program, he's been coaxed into turning on the charm. andre: i'm naturally an introvert. i had to really change that and become more extroverted. i've learned things about myself that i never would have learned behind a spreadsheet, behind a laptop, working in corporate,
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ally, because it really pushed me out of my comfort zone. paul: so, the personal touch. behind an artisanal bundt, or, for marijuana afficionados, blunt. plus, in this era of thinking globally, customers like lauren roush get to shop locally lauren: i would much rather spend my money here and support people from the community, people from the chicago area, than going to a big department store where the money's not necessarily going to come back to the community. paul: the city program has even turned vacant storefronts into art. nez garza. nez: the city of chicago had a grant for artists in lakeview and roscoe that's where the money came from for this project. so you're a government employee paul here. : nez: for this one? yeah. paul back in d.c., in-person can : mean unearthing buried treasures at capitol hill books. kyle: we just got this great set of ulysses s. grant's memoirs. paul: that's the one that mark twain got into. kyle: that's exactly right.
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paul but when covid closed kyle : burk's doors, how to personalize? with grab bags. kyle: we kind of converted to an online busess and these grab bags were the main way that we were able to stay afloat. paul customers submit favorite : authors or genres, and a budget. kyle: when you go on amazon, you're just going to get recommended the newest, latest thing. i would say that the algorithm that we have, which is our actual human employees, is just better. human emoyees who read the way most of us eat. so i plunged online for a $50 bag, mentioning samuel r. delany, who writes speculative fiction. kyle: this is the intuitionist by colson whitehead. it's about rival elevator inspector factions. i guarantee you, a better novel about this, you will not read. paul today, burk survives : because he's in the right corridor: residential capitol hill, which benefits from work from home. but wait a minute, i asked our retail expert. isn't physical bricks and mortar retail a badet, given the
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growth of online shopping? ebere: no, paul. i would not say that. paul: online shopping spiked to historic highs when covid hit, anokute says, but has leveled off, at about 15% of all u.s. retail. ebere: what that tells me, paul, is that we are actually approaching hopefully some sort of equilibrium in the online versus brick and mortar equation. all of the most successful retailers have figured out a way to combine both into some sort of omnichannel strategy that allows them to meet their consumer and their customer wherever they are, in as convenient a manner as possible. paul so, in-store experience : married to online convenience -- it's how all the retailers we spoke to are trying to buck this season's unmerry trend: slower sales than expected. for the pbs newshour, paul solman in chicago and takoma park maryland and reading about the elevator wars back home in boston.
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♪ judy: the middle east has long been plagued by geopolitical conflicts, but now, a crisis of a different sort is taking hold. the narcotics trade poses new security threats, and risks forever changing societies whose conservative norms had usage in check. we explore the drivers behind the regional drug trade and why efforts to combat it have largely failed. special correspondent simona foltyn brings us the first of two reports from the region, tonight from basra, in sthern iraq. >> as night falls over the southern port city of basra, the anti-narcotics unit is dispatched for a mission in the battle against the booming drug trade. after years of conflict with isis, iraq's security forces are now fighting an undeclared war against a new enemy: crystal meth. the anti-drug unit just received
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information from a source about a dealer w is selling crystal meth out of his home, and they're on their way now to try to arrest him. these operations happen nightly, and they are dangerous. in basra ane, seven police have been killed over the past year during raids like these. luckily, the men face no resistance tonight as they detain the suspect. brigadier general ismail ghanem abdallah is in charge of the unit. >> show us where it is and we will help you. we're coming for the crystal meth you keep in this house. we know someone who is buying from you. >> next door, investigators find what they're looking for. the young man and his father are taken away for questioning. but they are just small fish in a city that is flooded with crystal meth. nestled on the persian gulf between iran and kuwait, basra's strategic location has turned it into a hub for the regional drug trade.
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crystal meth from iran and afghanistan is smuggled through basra and onwards to the gulf and the mediterranean. but much of the drug is finding a market here, a country of 40 million plagued by rampant youth unemployment. the anti-narcotics unit sets up checkpoints every night to stop distribution inside the city. but apart from causing traffic jams and alienating residents, it does little to stop dealers. >> we don't have the technology. we rely on human intelligence and our own resources. that's why it's sometimes difficult to for example locate a suspect while he's on a call, it takes a lot of time. the criminals are becoming more sophisticated and we need to keep up. simona: the trade is facilitated by tribal networks, protected by powerful armed groups and enabled by corrupt officials. a 2017 anti-narcotics law introduced rewards for informants and officers to
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increase interdictions and curb corruption. five years on, this unit hasn't received any funding. >> if we had the resources, the number of informants would go up and corruption would go down. instead, we depend on our relationships with sources. we appeal toheir patriotism and our relations with them and that's not enough. >> in a worrying development, the traders are turning into producers. according to a 2020 un report and two insiders the newshour spoke to, there are now crystal meth laboratories inside iraq, something the government still officially denies. >> there's no production or cultivation inside iraq. iraq is importing 100%. >> and there's another problem. iraq's prisons have become a breeding ground for drug dealers. general ismail shows us the holding cells in a basra police station, so crowded that not all prisoners can sit down at the same time.
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>> if a drug user goes in there, it's like he's enrolling in school and he'll graduate as a dealer unfortunately, this is the current capacity of the state. >> in the first six months of 2022, the government arrested a staggering 8,000 people on drug reted charges across iraq. police prisons like these are intended only for pretrial detention. >> half of these prisoners have already been convicted. they're supposed to be transferred to prisons run by the ministry of justice. >> but those main prisons are also full. there are more than 700 drug users and dealers crammed inside these prison cells, more than four times their intended capacity. it's a telling indicator just how severely the drug epidemic is afflicting iraqi society, and authorities are simply struggling to cope. we're allowed to interview some prisoners, a rare opportunity
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for these men to leave the crammed prison cell and sit on a chair rather than the floor. >> two people share the same spot on the floor and every six hours they swap. it's very depressing. it's a miserable situation. even if you want to reform yourself, you can't in this place. all the thinking and talk inside revolves around drugs. >> this man is serving a six-year sentence for selling crystal meth. but it was his first stint in prison that turned him into a drug dealer. >> before i went to prison the first time, i knew 10 people who did drugs. in prison, i was introduced to 200. after i was released, we reconnected. the government does not provide any work opportunities, so i was obliged to start dealing. >> under iraqi law, drug users
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get one to three years in prison, except for those who voluntarily seek treatment if , they can get a spot at basra's only rehabilitation center. its 44 beds are not enough to serve a city home to four million. >> we are lacking the appropriate staff and the necessary infrastructure and buildings are also not available. we are just in the beginning of the journey. even the title psychotherapist doesn't officially exist in iraqi government institutions. >> dr. aqeel sabah is a psychiatrist leading group therapy sessions here a new , concept in a country where mental health is widely misunderstood, and drug addiction is taboo. >> people do not admit that they are taking drugs, this is one reason which prevents them from coming to the hospital. >> it took this patient, whom we'll call ali, seven years
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before he sought help for his addiction. >> i did everything just to get the drugs. something was pushing me to get the drugs, i would do anything, even if it meant stealing. i lost a lot. i lost my family, i lost my car, i lost money, i lost everything. >> ali doesn't want to leave the facility, fearing he'll relapse when he returns to the same environment. i ask him what percent of his friends smoke crystal meth. all of them, he replies. ali blames iraq's ruling elites for backing the drug trade to line their pockets and to numb the young, restive population into complacency. >> nobody thinks about the government. nobody is thinking, where is the oil, where is iraq, where we were and where we are heading to? impossible, we are busy taking crystal and pills. otherwise, we might think, why don't i have a job? why is iraq not like other countries? >> the drug epidemic risks consuming iraq's young generation. in a country crippled by political crises, unemployment
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and rampant corruption, crystal meth offers the only escape. for the pbs newshour, i'm simona foltyn in basra, southern iraq. ♪ judy: scientists working in greenland have identified the oldest samples of dna ever found on earth. by analyzing this two-million year old genetic material, they've revealed how northern greenland was once a wildly different environment than the cold, polar region it is today - one teeming with ancient wildlife and plants, including some that scientists thought had never lived so far north. william brangham is back to ask for this with one of the researchers who made this discovery. william: for more on this
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remarkable discovery, i'm joined by one of the lead scientists on this project. professor eske willerslev is an evolutionary geneticist and one of the early pioneers in studying ancient dna. he's director of the center for geo genetics at the university of copenhagen's globe institute. professor willerslev, so good to have you, and congratulations on this research. so you discovered this dna in in northern greenland. can you just tell us a little bit about how you actually found the dna? >> so it's some settings, big hills of 2 million year old dirt basically lying in north in greenland. and what we did is we were digging into this dirt and we were drilling out some dirt core. you can't see any biological material like bones or anything like that. it's basically dirt. but the dna from the past has stick to this dirt. and this is because we are shedding dna all the time while we are alive. and so these animals and plants, all 2 to 2 million years ago.
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william: so you are not drilling into an ancient carcass or an ancient tree, this is something that the animals or plants excreted during their lives. >> that's correct. so it's coming from skin cells. it's coming from ancient feces, from urine and stuff like that. if i touch, you know, the screen like this, right, my dna will be on the screen. so we will basically every person are shedding dna to the surroundings and some of this dna will bind to these sediment particles and survive up to, for 2 million years, basically. william: what you just said there is so striking, though, because i had no idea that dna could survive for such a long period of time. how is that possible? >> well, i was surprised about that, too. so the oldest dna until this discovery was 1 million years, and that's sically what most people believed was is possible. but apparently, i mean, when it binds to these minal particles in the soil it basically
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protects the dna so it can survive much longer. william: so once y've isolated the dna and said, this is ancient, ancient dna, how do you go about then trying to figure out what it's dna from - what these organisms were? >> that was a challenge, too, because 2 million years is a long time in evolution. so whatever dna we were finding are not identical to what we see today. but we can basically compare it to all known dna sequences ever recorded from both the present, but also what people have retrieved from bones and tee of the past, for example. and then you can we can basically identify these fragments and from these fragments, through the comparison, reconstruct what what animals and plants did they belong to? william: and tell us a little bit about what you discovered. >> it's a total surprise. i mean, you have to understand that today this area up in north greenland is what we called an
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arctic desert. there's almost nothing it looks li sahara, basically. and what we can see 2 million years ago, it was a diverse forest all kinds of trees, and also animals like mastodon, these extinct big elephants, as well as the ancestor of reindeers, there was hare. there was lemmings. there was geese. i mean, so a very different ecosystem than what you see today. william: and i understand as well you foundome traces of of horseshoe crabs as well. i mean, again, i'm no i'm no paleontologist, but i don't it seems striking to think that you're finding mastodons in some proximity to horseshoe cbs. >> yeah, but but this is because if you had been there 2 million years ago, what you would have and you were standing at the shore with your rubber boot in the water, right? you would see basically a river facing a river that is coming out, bringing material with it
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you can see the bay into the ocean. so therefore, it's a mixture between the dna from the terrestrial surroundings. you would have looked up at this forest and seen the mastodon and so forth. and then you also get marine organisms, right? because the sediments fold into a marine setting. and that's why we see the horseshoe crab. and all of these animals suggest, you know, a time where it was way warmer than today, probably 11 to 12 degrees celsius warmerhan today. william: walk me through the implications of that. if these species existed in that warmer world, what are the implications for modern day man? >> well, to me, there's two major implications. one is that, you know, what we see is an ecosystem with no with no modern analog. there's no where in the world you find this ecosystem, which is a mixture between arctic organisms and temperate organisms. so what it tells us is really
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that climate change, when you're getting warmer, it's actually quite unpredictable. i mean, most model, if not all models that are trying to predict, you know, how will our surroundings, our biology react to these warming, probably wouldn't be able to have predicted this when you go back in time. so you can see the plasticity of organisms are different than what we think well, this is, of course, worrisome, because if you're bad at forecasting, it means you also have it's difficult to make a strategy how to mitigate the consequences of global warming. on the other hand, i would say now we have a genetic roadmap, right? it's the building blocks of life. we have a genetic roadmap where we can find out how did these organisms back in time adapt to global warming. william: i know that you have been studying ancient dna for much of your career, but this does seem like a genuinely
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striking advancement in your own work. and i wonder how that personally resonates with you. when you realized what you had and what you discovered, what was that like for you? >> i mean, it's amazing, right? i mean, sometimes i kind of divide our discoveries into what we call founding papers. and then you can see the papers where we just build on what found, basically. and this is definitely one of the founding papers. i mean, it allows us to go back to for the first time, back to before the last ice age. and to a climate which is very similar to what we're heading towards because of global warming. so it's also a very important period because it tells us something about what we can expect to happen in the future. william: such a tremendous discovery here. professor esko willerslev at the university of copenhagen, thank you so much for talking with us. >> my pleasure.
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judy: so fascinating. and on the newshour online, on our tiktok and instagram pages, you can see how our own "newshour" correspondents are celebrating the holidays by sharing some of their favorite recipes of the season. that's on our instagram and tikt pages now. and you can't miss this, no ancient dna in these recipes, we promise. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. join us on-line and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, please stay safe and we'll see you soon. >> major fundi for the pbs newshour has been provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular has been offering no contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like. to learn more, visit consumer cellular.tv. >> the landscape has changed,
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and friends of the newshour. ♪ 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 performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.] ♪ >> you
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is. hello, welcome to "amanpour and company." ukraine's president takes his plea to washington. i asked chris coons what zelenskyy's visit can achieve as kyiv continues to ask for more help to fend off russia. also ahead, despair as the taliban ban women from universities in afghanistan. i speak to the manager of an education center in kabul that has been forced to close. then tunia was once the bright spot of the arab spring so why is the country backsliding?
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