geoff: good evening. i'm geoff bennett. amna: and i'm amna nawaz on the "newshour" tonight, newly-empowered house republicans take aim at the irs, and what they call government overreach, as their first orders of business. geoff: the biden white house proposes more student loan relief, while plans to cancel some of the debt are held up in court. amna: and, navy veteran mark freric shares what his newfound freedom means to him after ing held hostage in afganistan. >> if i don't let this thing go, it's gog to just keep festering and festering. i got to just let it out. let it go. ♪ >> major funding for the pbs

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♪ >> this program was made possible by the corporation for broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. stephanie welcome to "the : newshour." i'm stephanie sy with today's top stories. nature is still throwing everything it has at california tonight. more than a foot of rain, 4 to 5 feet of snow, severe floods and mudslides. pacific storms have battered the state for 10 days now, claiming

at least 17 lives. scenes of destruction are unfolding across many parts of california. at sliding down a hillside onto a highway in the santa cruz mountains. a man paddling through flooded streets in santa barbara county, and homes crushed by trees in sacramento. residents, like camilla shaffer in the mountain town of felton, said the water rose rapidly. >> it was rising at about two feet per hour. we experienced this on new year's eve, so we kind of had our markers for 22 feet, but it kept on rising, and it did get quite scary. stephanie: the entire town of montecito, a wealthy enclave in santa barbara county, was forced to evacuate or shelter-in place. earlier yesterday, officials raised concerns about the increasing potential for a major mudslide. >> the community is at risk from a second debris flow from the thomas fire burn scar. we're taking this risk so

seriously that we have more than 200 responders pre-positioned in our community for that event. stephanie: the thomas fire left a massive burn scar that led to a deadly mudslide almost exactly five years ago, a tragedy on many residents' minds this week, including celebrity ellen degeneres. >> this is crazy. on the five year anniversary, we are having unprecedented rain. stephanie: some miles down the coast, more evacuations were ordered in ventura county, where rescuers aided a trapped homeless community out of the dangerous waters with ladders and helicopters. not everyone could be saved. in san luis obispo county, the floodwaters were so powerful, rescuers had to call off the search for a 5-yr-old boy, swept away from s mother. authorities have resumed the search for the five-year-old,

identified as kyle doan. president biden and the leaders of mexico and canada held wide-ranging talks in mexico city today on trade, climate change and more. they pledged to bill prosperity across the hemisphere even as they face divisions over how to regulate the flow of migrants. and while in mexico, in his first remarks on the subject, biden expressed surprise at the discovery of potential classified documents in an office he used after leaving the vice presidency. pres. biden: i don't know what's in the documents. my lawyers have suggested i -- have not suggested as quite's in the documents. we are cooperating fully. stephanie: in brazil, police question hundreds detained after they stormed -- in brazil today, police questioned hundreds of people

detained after rioters stormed the capital complex in brasilia on sunday. late monday, pro-democracy protesters rallied in sao paulo and rio de janeiro, waving flags and demanding "no amnesty" for the rioters. >> these people have to be punished, the bosses have to be punished, those who are giving money have to be punished. brazil is much bigger than what they showed there. those people do not represent brazil. we represent brazil. stephanie: russian forces are intensifying attacks in eastern ukraine escalating already , savage fighting. reports today indicated russians have captured most of the town of soledar, trying to cut off the key city of bakhmut, in donetsk province. ukrainian officials said artillery, mortars, and rocket fire have laid waste to the area. they said the russian strategy is to reduce whole cities to rubble. the world health organization today urged countries to

recommend that passengers resume wearing masks on long-distance flights. that came as a new sub-variant of covid-19 is spreading. in the u.s., it now accounts for more than a quarter of new cases. the pentagon announces evening that it was ending the requirement for u.s. litary personnel to be vaccinated against covid-19, but still encouraged troops to get the shots. 8400 military members were forced out for not complying in the mandate and thousands of others had sought religious exemptions. two democrats in the house of representatives filed an ethics complaint against freshman republican george santos of new york. he's acknowledged lying about his background and education. the complaint raises questions about his finances. congressmen daniel goldman and ritchie torres pressed gop leaders to back an investigation. >> we haven't seen a single movement on the part of republican leadership. they have not commented on this publicly. they have not condemned george santos and all of his lies.

stephanie: the number 2 house republican, steve scalise, said gop leaders are handling the matter internally. he gave no specifics. the trump organization's former chief financial officer, allen weisselberg, was sentenced today to 5 months in jail. he pleaded guilty to tax fraud in new york, and was ordered to pay nearly $2 million in taxes and penalties. weisselberg has testified that mr. trump knew nothing about his scheme to dodge taxes on executive perks. still to come, what we know about the potentially classified documents found at president biden's former office. advances in artificial intelligence raise new ethics concerns. folk and electronica singer beth orton on creating what is considered to be her best work yet. and much more. >> this is the pbs newshour, from weta studios in washington and

in the west, from the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. geoff: after a tumultuous start to to its term, the republican-led house is targeting its biggest priorities. amna: today, gop lawmakers started work on their top agenda items, and launched key subcommittees that would focus on china, as well as investigations into the biden administration. republican whip tom emmer was optimistic about what's in store. >> this is a great time to be a republican in washington, d.c. in the house, because you have a chance to make a difference, and you have a chance to be part of a great team that is going to work together. and i think you saw that starting to happen last week. and have we arrived? no, no, not yet. we'll continue to get better at this together. geoff: following this all closely is washington post reporter leigh ann caldwell. welcome to the newshour. in the republican-led house, they clawed back $70 billion in new funding for the irs signed into law last year.

the house gop fulfilling a major campaign promise, expected to die in the democratic lead senate. help us understand the gop's priorities. leigh ann: a couple things. what they will be doing publicly on the floor of the house, some of their priorities, and what is going on behind the scenes as far as publicly, in addition to scaling back of the irs funding, there is going to be a series of votes on abortion to limit federal funding of abortion and condemning attacks on pro-life entities. you can see those cultural issues will be important for them. behind-the-scenes, these agreements that were made over the past week or so are really focused on cutting back government spending. that will be a huge priority for republicans, given the influence of the far right in this congress. geoff: the house voted to

establish new select committees, one focused on investigations and another focused on u.s. competition with china, which might be an area where there could be bipartisan cooperation. tell us how these committees came together and what i understand is a fight about who will sit on congressional committees moving forward. leigh ann: it is a contrast that the formation of these committees past the house tonight. the one on the weaponization of the federal government, that will be led by conservative firebrand jim jordan. that passed along party lines and that will be a very political and polarizing committee, where will focus on what they say is overreach of the fbi and department of justice. meanwhile, you have the committee on china that passed with bipartisan support. it will be led by representative mike gallagher, someone who is respected among democrats.

china is a big political issue. no one in congress wants to look weak on china so this could be an area of bipartisan cooperation. geoff: what about immigration? president biden visited the southern border sunday, talking about a whole host of issues to include immigration. immigration has been talked about a lot on the hill but we have seen precious little in terms of policy. might that change? leigh ann: you are right, not a lot has been done in two decades or more on immigration. there are a couple different dynamics that are happening. in addition to president biden going to the border, which is a huge sign, the first time, this will be a political issue leading into the 2024 election. he has to show like he is trying to do something about what is happening at the border. you have a bipartisan group of senators that are at the border today.

they are moving forward on bipartisan legislation that tackles border security, but also addresses the dreamers, children who came to the united states. the house of representatives is moving in a hard-line direction. they don't want to have anything to do with dreamers at this point. they want to secure the border. all of these different dynamics will come head-on. we do't know if any of them will become law. geoff: now that congss is getting to work, has the heat let up on kevin mccarthy, given the way the rules are? any one of his critics could issue a vote of no-confidence. leigh ann: we will have to see. because of the threat of the vote, mccarthy has a lot of pressure that he has to follow this agreement he reached with hard right members. if he messes up, they will or could deploy that. so they have gotten, now they are doing the easy stuff. electing a speaker was supposed to be easy. it wasn't. now they are doing the messaging bills and things the party agrees on.

when it comes to funding the government, government spending, it will be a lot more difficult. geoff: thanks so much. good to see you. amna: one item house republicans are adding to their list of priorities, investigating a small number of potentially classified documents discovered at a private office president biden used after he was vice president. incoming intelligence committee chair mike turner wrote to the director of national intelligence today, and called for a damage assessment into the documents and potential violation of laws. to help us understand what this means, i'm joined by mark zaid, an attorney who focuses on national security issues. mark, welcome back. there are questions and i want to begin with the timeline. according to the white house, biden's personal attorney found the documents while packing up and moving the files. they immediately notified the national archives, handed them over the next day.

this was all back in november. should they have disclosed this in november when it happened? mark: there was no legal requirement for them to have done so, just as with trump and mar-a-lago, we the public didn't know about the situation there for quite an extensive amount of time until someone in both cases, basically leaked the information to the media to run a story. one could possibly argue that perhaps the oversight committees in congress should have been notified in both instances but i don't think that happened with either case. overall, it is not that surprising. amna: unsurprisingly the revelation was met with criticism from republicans, comparing this incident with as you mention former president trump having classified documents at his florida estate. here is what republican members of congress had to say. >> there's a true two-tiered justice system stemming from merrick garland's department of justice. >> those classified documents were known before the election, and was intentionally concealed

to the americans. i think that's wrong. >> how ironic. i know joe biden was quick to criticize president trump for mistakenly taking some documents that were apparently classified. amna: mark, when you look at what happened with former president trump and what is unfolding, are these circstances comparable? mark: other than from the very beginning, when there was the disclosure or finding of classified information, and even then, it is different because the government had to go after president trump rather than the government being notified by president biden's lawyers and the national archives of this fact of what happened. they are incredibly different. as a legal matter, anytime there is classified information found that is not where it should be, that is significant. an apparently there was sensitive information in this and there will be a very serious investigation by a former trump appointed u.s.

attorney, to look into this. apparently, that is almost finished. the circumstances are so completely different. immediately, as you mentioned, president biden's lawyers notified the white house, who notified the national archives, who retrieved the documents right away. we will see where the facts lead, but in the mar-a-lago case, there was a repeated effort for almost a year and a half to get donald trump to turn over the documents. it was only after multiple attempts to retrieve them, and the execution of a search warrant because there were lies that were stated to the administration to recover this. now there is factual evidence that trump himself was hiding and obstructing the investigation. very different fact from what we know as of now. amna: do you agree there needs to be a damage assessment? mark: that, absolutely. that would be common. it is very common that

shandling of classified information occurs, unfortunately. individuals mistakenly take home documents for work or they retire and pack up their office and then five years later, they find them in their garage or attic. mostly, this is handled administratively. it is rare where some criminal penalty happens if there is not actual espionage or egregious hoarding of classified information. there should always be a damage assessment. we have to see who accessed these files. how did they get there? where were they kept, in a locked closet? did anyone get access to them? that would be common and i would expect the house and senate intelligence committees will receive a damage assessment at some point, particularly after the u.s. attorney finishes his investigation. amna: there is the ongoing doj probe, the special counsel appointed by merrick garland to look into mr. trump's handling

of the documents. does this revelation have any potential impact on that investigation? mark: legally it should not. politically is a completely different creature. as you have seen from the clips you aired, this is and has been seized by republicans and will continue to be, and what concerns me is that frankly, the average american is probably not going to be able to understand the difference between the cases. they will think president biden, classified records at his office. president trump, classified records at his home. but the reality is these cases , are vastly different. amna: thank you for your time. mark: thank you. ♪ geoff: the biden white house has released a new student loan plan that would lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers, and pause them completely for some.

there's been a freeze on loan repayments throughout the pandemic, but that's coming to an end in june. the new proposal allows borrowers earning less than $30,600 annually to pause payments altogether. the ambitious plan also proposes reducing paymes on undergraduate loans to 5% of discretionary income, and it would cancel student debt 10 years earlier for certain borrowers. but the total cost is one of many crucial questions. npr education correspondent cory turner broke this story, and joins us now. it is good to see you. the white house is moving forward with the proposal that president biden announced this past summer, but it was overshadowed by his sweeping plan to eliminate thousands of dollars of federal student loan debt for people who qualified. how does this income driven repayment plan work? cory: if you think about the difference between the president's debt relief plan and

the income driven plan, the latter will arguably help more borrowers looking forward into the future. the new plan would do a few things, as you mentioned. for borrowers who earn less than $30,000 a year, they would be allowed to bake -- to make basically zero dollar monthly payments. for borrowers who take out relatively small loans, talking $12,000 or less, they mollify -- they qualify for forgiveness after 10 years instead of the current 20 years. also, maybe most importantly is something i have heard about for a long time, with the old income driven repayment plans where you are making small monthly payments but interest is exploding. that is not going to happen under this new plan. there is a lot here for borrowers, especially lower income borrowers, to like. geoff: income is the only requirement. who is eligible generally speaking? how much would someone's payment decrease under the new plan?

cory: i think the largest decrease would be for undergraduate borrowers. there is a real preference for undergraduate borrowers. according to the education department it cuts their monthly loan payments in half. and that is basically because of the new way, the lower threshold for calculating discretionary income. the old rule would apply for grad school borrowers. the plan would be open for the majority of new and current borrowers. there is one pretty large exception and that is family members and caregivers who have what are called part plus loans. geoff: as this is unfolding, happening on a parallel track is the president's plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt. a group of republican governors challenge that plan. it is headed to the supreme court.

cory: we are now waiting. it is in the hands of the supreme court. oral arguments will happen sometime next month and we assume we will get a decision by late may, early june. in the meantime, we wait. and we do know, this is portt borrer kno the administration and education department have released a timetable for a return to repayment. whatever the supreme court decides, millions of student loan borrowers will still have loans left over that they will need to begin repaying. this year. geoff: if the supreme court finds president biden's debt relief plan is legal, that means as i understand the president's debt proposal since august 2022 would increase deficits by at least $600 million over a decade. you reported there was some education department officials who were surprised. others were angry about the new proposal because it leaves them

scrambling to find hundreds of millions of dollars to cut from other programs. cory: this is the thing to remember about implementing both the president's debt relief plan and also everything else that the office for federal student aid has to do. it has lots of things, from revamping the forms, signing new contracts with services, public service loan improvements. there are the big costs and the smaller but still important cost of how to implement the program. what i have found, the office for federal student aid is in a budget crisis and it is having to scale back many of its efforts for 2023 when it comes two rolling out these programs and sustaining them, because it just can't afford it all. geoff: cory turner, thanks again. cory: you are welcome. ♪

amna: the last eight years have been the hottest recorded in human history, according to the european union's copernicus climate change service. and with planet warming emissions on the rise, scientists worry about melting glaciers and the onslaught of repercussions. a new study, published in the journal of science, looks at the future of hundreds of thousands of glaciers, and what we can expect. to explain the findings and what they mean for the planet, i'm joined by david rounce, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering for carnegie mellon university in pittsburgh. professor, welcome and thanks for joining us. your study looks at more than 214,000 glaciers. you looked at what happens even if the world manages to meet its most ambitious global warming goal. just a 1.5 degrees celsius increase. what did your study find happens to those glaciers if we can do

that? david: we found that if we limit the temperature increase relative to preindustrial levels to a degree and a half celsius, that we will lose approximately a quarter of glaciers by mass. the contributions to sea level rise will be approxitely 90 mm, and we will lose about 50% of the glaciers by number. amna: what is the timeline? david: over the next century. we modeled from 2015-2100 for various temperature change scenarios. amna: with that conservative modeling estimate, nearly half of those glaciers, over 100,000 you said would disappear by the end of the century. what would that mean for sea level rise? david: most of the glaciers that will be lost completely are smaller. out of those 215,000 glaciers, the majority are very small. they are still important for water resources, for culture,

spirituality, especially high mountain communities. when we think about sea level rise, it is really the largest glacierized regions that is important. there will be ice remaining by the end of the century in those different regions. amna: you mentioned the importance of water supply. explain that to us. how important are the glaciers to communities around the world? david: they are located in the high mountain regions and they act as a reservoir of freshwater. these are in areas like central europe, high mountain asia, alaska, westercanada, where there are also large populations nearby. in high mountain asia, there are over one billion people who rely on these resources from the glaciers. any changes to glacier runoff that is available downstream means those communities need to seek freshwater resources elsewhere, either from

groundwater or they would need to build reservoirs in order to have a similar capacity as to what is provided by glaciers now. amna: how much of this is inevitable? are there actions you find in your studies that we could or should be taking that could help slow this down or stop it or reverse it? is this a matter of when rather than if? david: great question. as i mentioned, right now the temperature change increase based off current pledges is estimated to be around 2.7 degrees so there is a lot we can do to reduce carbon emissions and bring that temperature change increase down to a degree and a half. if we do that, we can save about 20% of the glaciers number and about 8% of the glaciers by mass and we reduce the glacier'' contribution to sea level rise by about 25 millimeters. so we can have a big impact if we are able to reduce the temperature increase in the future and that is something we should be hopeful about. however, there is the inevitable

cause of the glacier mass loss, that glaciers are responding to changes in temperature that have occurred over the last several decades. the response time of glaciers can be very long. so even if we were to stop the temperature increase now, we have an amount of committed mass loss that will occur regardless. amna: we are talking about percentages and mass and so on, but if you could put it into context, when you talk about a loss on this scale, that seems close to inevitable, how devastating is this? david: it is devastating. we focus on trying to understand the differences in these temperature change scenarios but one thing we have found is that between 1.5 and two and three degrees, a lot of regions around the world are very sensitive to changes. such thawith three degrees and the contiguous unid states and western canada and central

europe, those regions will experience near-complete deg laciation. if we limit the increase to 1.4 or two degrees, we will limit the loss. amna: david, thank you for your time. david: thanks for having me. ♪ geoff: in the coming weeks and months we will be exploring the newest developments in artificial intelligence and how it is changing the way we live and work. stephanie sy kicks off our series, the ai frontier, with a look at some new tools that are getting attention and sparking concern over their ability to produce original work, ranging from college-level essays to art. stephanie: a chat box that can mimic human intelligence, and create poetry? i had to try it.

write a haiku about a tabby cat. here's what came back. "soft fur, brushed by breeze, tabby cat basks in the sun, purrs of contentment." not bad. there's also an image generator that can compose and manipulate pictures with a few key words. a tabby cat sleeping on the beach, wearing a fedora, as an oil pastel. a site that writes and debugs prograing code for you, or a video-generating tool. >> hi. i'm anna. i'm a.i. avatar created entirely by artificial intelligence. stephanie: it's part of the rise of generative a.i., a branch of artificial intelligence that enables computer programs to create original content. >> let's see how good of college essay chat gpt can write. stephanie: this tool, from the san francisco-based company open ai, is chat gpt, and can "write" essays.

>> take a look at a couple of these sentences, starting from the top. "computer science has always been a fascinating field to me. from the moment i learned about computers --" stephanie: and children's books. last month, design manager ammaar reshi used chat gpt and text-to-image program midjourney to create his book, "alice and sparkle." here's how it works. to create new content, these programs are trained on datasets of existing content that hold text, images, video files, or even code scrapefrom the internet. some artists say this amounts to appropriating their work without permission. >> i do hyper realistic drawings. stephanie: including south african artist jono dry. >> this scares me. it makes a huge part of my practice somewhat redundant. >> hey, artists! if you've wondering if a.i. has been using your art to train itself, i figured out where to look. stephanie: illustrator carlianne tipsey suggested artists go to the site haveibeentrained.com to see if their artwork was used in

training popular text-to-image programs. >> i personally found my book cover on there, and a lot of stuff from my favorite artists. stephanie: and last month, artists protested the portfolio site artstation for featuring a.i.-generated art on its page. this new wave of sophisticated a.i. tools is raising some tricky ethical questions, as well as some big concerns about topics such as the future of human labor. for more on some of these ramifications, i'm joined by kelsey piper. she's a senior reporter at vox news who covers artificial intelligence. kelsey piper, thank you so much for joining the newshour. i know this is a tricky topic, but what strikes me as the most new about some of these a.i. platforms is that we're no longer just talking about artificial intelligence. we seem to be talking about artificial imagination. is that hoyou see this new breakthrough? kelsey: yeah. i think a few years ago, there was something a lot of people would say about a.i., which is,

maybe they will replace some machines and automation, and learn how to do lots of manual work that humans can do. but they'll never write poetry. they'll never play great chess, they'll never tell good stories. and so one of the things that's been astonishing about the recent breakthroughs in a.i. is that long before a.i. has learned how to clean out a toilet or put together a fast food order, it has figured out how to write poetry, how to draw beautiful artwork, how to riff off shakespeare. it's not the direction many people expected a.i. to take. stephanie: and i think it's created a lot of anxiety. is that what you sense when you talk to artists, and people who feel that their works somehow being not only appropriated but threatened, even replaced? kelsey: so i think that any industry that sees itself start to be automated is going to be sort of appalled and frustrated at people losing good jobs that were able to support them being

replaced with computers. but i think a couple things have made it worse. one of those is that it happened so fast. we went from having no a.i.'s that could do meaningful, beautiful images, to having a ton of them from different companies, including some open source ones that anybody could go online and play with at any time, you know, for free, or for a very small price. so that's just an overnight shift. and then, i think the other thing is that artists take pride in their craft. they don't think of it as just a job. they think of it as like an expression of their individuality and their style, and who they are as people. and so, of course, it's a little galling to have an a.i. system that can just do it all, and copy your style without any need for you. stephanie: so this app, this application, this tool that's been created, chat gpt, it's gotten incredibly popular, incredibly fast. who's using it? is it just people having fun, or are there real world ramifications? i mean, for example, does it become irrelevant to be able to write a college essay now? kelsey: yeah, so i think the college essay is certainly in

trouble, because chatbots can put together, i would say it is not quite at the peak of human ability. it is not yet writing something that is, like, as great as a talented human who's dedicated and working hard, but it can write something as good as your average 18 year old who's kind of phoning it in a little bit. and that means that it is, you know, writing things that are indistinguishable from many college student essays, and that has a lot of professors sort of reeling and asking themselves, how do we do assignments that aren't going to be trivially cheated on? stephanie: when i tried chat gpt, what strikes me is that it can do, uniquely, what i thought was a uniquely human thing of bs'ing. a serious question, though. what does its sophistication, its ability to do that, say about the future of a.i. and what we're looking at? kelsey: yeah, i think that's a great question, because the key thing here is that four or five years ago, people were first

coming out with the earliest language models using these generative techniques that could produce text. and they weren't very good. they were kind of stilted. they were maybe writing it like a middle school level, not a college level. they would make up a lot of stuff, and they didn't seem to have a good way of telling whether the things they were saying were true. and over the course of just a couple of years, we have vastly improved the quality of these programs. and now, they're writing at a college level, and they're clever, and they blu and they make things up. but they can also be pretty accurate when they're prompted to be pretty accurate. so wheres that taking us, when in a few years, maybe we do have something that replaces my job as a journalist. maybe we do have systems that can tell you what you want to hear in incredibly convincing length, at any time. and then there's the question of, who decides what those a.i. systems tell everybody, and how do we train those a.i. systems, such that they are, you know, on humanity's side, helping us understand the world better? instead of, right now i would argue they're kind of trained to appease us.

they're trained to say what they think we want to hear. and there's something scary hearing about the idea of introducing these immensely powerful, immensely persuasive systems to the world, with a mandate that's as limited as, just say what will make people happy with you. stephanie: absolutely fascinating. kelsey, thank you for joining the newshour. kelsey: thank you so much. ♪ amna: yesterday, we brought you the story of mark frerichs, a 60 year old american contractor from lombard, illinois, who was kidnapped and held in afghanistan for 32 months. u.s. officials believe he was taken and held by the taliban-allied haqqani group. mark was released in september of 2022. just before the new year, i went to meet mark in his hometown, for his first and only tv interview. tonight, in part two, his

ptivity and his release. mark: in complete darkness of the tunnel, i didn't know. i had no way of knowing how many weeks had gone by, day or night. amna: isolated in captivity, mark clung desperately to the hope he would one day be freed. he didn't know his government was making a plan to get out of afghanistan. in february of 2020, just weeks after mark was taken, ambassador zalmay khalilzad, the u.s. special representative for afghanistan reconciliation under then-president donald trump, signed a deal with taliban leadership in doha, qatar. the deal laid out a timetable for full u.s. troop withdrawal by may of 2021. it did not include mark's release. >> we will continue to work for the release of detained americans, including mark. amna: after taking office, president biden pledged a september withdrawal. but by august, taliban forces had reached kabul, and reclaimed

it. what do you think at that moment, when you realize they are now in control of the country? mark: i'm frightened. amna: why? mark: what about me? what about america first? does that include americans first? amna: how do you hang on to hope in a moment like that? mark: what other choice do you have? you just hope tomorrow is the day you know, looking back, i don't know how i made it. amna: later in his captivity, mark says his guards would sometimes share news from the outside world, from a deadly virus spreading around the world, to his sister working to free him. he believed nothing. markfirst thing i thought was, this guy wouldn't be privy to that information. because a week prior to that, he asked me if i had a sister. amna: but in fact, 7,000 miles away in lombard, mark's sister, charlene cakora, was doing everything she could to get her big brother out. charlene: and this is, he got taken to khost, and he started

out in kabul. amna: charlene went to washington, lobbied the white house, gave national interviews to call attention to mark's case. charlene: i cry every now and then at night. and i just think about it,bout what he's going through right now. is he being bathed? is he being fed? is he clothed, is he warm? amna: no one in the family has done more than you to lead the fight, to keep his name in the headlines, to talk to everyone you could talk to, to get him free. what was that like for you for the last couple of years? charlene: it was just, i jus took each day, and just did what i needed to do each day. amna: she worked with the fbi and justice department, which put up a $million reward for information on mark. soon after, she says, the phone calls started. >> sunday. 9:53 a.m. >> we are working for the release of mark. amna: numbers from afghanistan, calling at all hours, claiming they could help to free mark.

charlene documented everything. charlene: i have files and files and files of of everything, category of who i talk to each day and our conversations. and i look back, and it's like, wow, it was really a lot each day for 2 and a half years. >> today is -- amna: she even tracked every hostage video of her brother that made its way to her, four in all. mark: i've been patiently waiting for my release. amna: while charlene was fighting for her brother's release, mark was fighting to stay alive and sane in captivity. mark: i tried keeping track mentally, but when one day merges into the other, it's difficult. and sleeping is intermittent. it would be 2 hours and then up for a while, and 2 hours. sometimes i would sleep a complete night. part of the harassment part of it was was keeping your sleep broken up. amna: he says the guards spent their time tormenting him, taunting him, beating him, and

carrying out mock executions. mark: they were having fun. like, coming in the middle of the night, just young kids' faces all wrapped up like a mummy. kind of creepy, just, like, all you see is these two eyes, and coming in to tell me that they're going to kill me. chained up on the ground, blindfold me and just kind of surround me, like walking around me, talking and cycling their weapons. and i could feel the barrel next to my ear. amna: did you think ever, this is the moment that i die? mark: oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. i mean, i'm ready to meet my maker. i was like, would they really do it? you look at their crazy eyes and you think i think they would probably do it. amna: meanwhile, back home, a breakthrough. the biden administration makes a deal with the taliban, trading

bashir noorzai, a convicted afghan drug lord held in a u.s. prison for 17 years, for mark. in september, u.s. special envoy for hostage affairs roger carstens flew to kabul to bring mark home. amna: what does he say to you? mark: "i think you're free now," or something like that. i -- you know, it was such a surreal moment. amna: when you came back and you found out that your sister had been leading the efforts to free you, fighting for you every day of those two and a half years, what did you think? mark: that was amazing. i couldn't believe it. amna: why not? mark: i hadn't seen her in 15 years. she's halfway around the world. i look at her in a whole different way now. yeah. i mean, we're a lot closer. amna: charlene has never before shared with mark the letters she wrote to him while he was held hostage, until today. charlene: we will have great tears of joy getting you home on u.s. soil. amna: mark's hometown welcomed him back with open arms. he's reconnected with childhood

friends,one out to restaurants and is back to practicing his magic skills. >> very nice. amna: but he has a long way to go. you've only been back just over three months, right? how are you doing? mark: i'm doing good. main thing is, keeping it up physically. i seem to be doing okay. i'm in a relationship, so that is working out good. a lot of support for people, knowing what i've been through. and yeah, i'm having intermittent sleep issues. sometimes i'll just have as these feelings come across me, of, like, impending danger. but th pass. amna: he is starting over, in every way. no job, no home, hoping a gofundme will help sustain him.

his savings and equipment were looted back in afghanistan. after 32 months in captivity, he doesn't know what's next. but what he does know is, he's free. your day to day life now, though, means you can move around freely. you can open the door and walk outside. you can look up and see the blue sky above. it is a world away from your life over the last two and a half years. they took two and a half years of your life from you, right? there's no anger there? mark: if i harbor rentment, or carry a continual feeling of anger, then they've won. resentment for the past is a waste of spirit. if i don't let this thing go, it's going to just keep festering and festering. i gotta just let it out. let it go. ♪

geoff: behind the glamour and acclaim of any successful musician, there often lurks a life filled with travails and challenges that fuel the artist's deepest work. beth orton is one such artist. special correspondent tom casciato has this story for our arts and culture series, "canvas." tom: music's been deeply personal to beth orton for as long as she can remember. beth: it was kind of an obsession, listening to music. i listened to words, and i stened to melodies, and i analyzed it, but i never really spoke about it to anyone. when i was little, i playe piano, just like up and down, up and down, you know, like that, moving around on the keyboard. and it was just something i loved to do, and i would do it for hours. i would just get lost in it. but -- and i tried, like, piano

lessons, but i just got rapped, you know, on the knuckles. and it wasn't -- i wasn't good at it, so just gave it up. tom: and did you have a sense that you might do it professionally? beth: no. none. ever. tom: when still young, she suffered twin blows she didn't know how to come to terms with. beth: my mum, when i was 19, she died very suddenly. she had cancer, and just -- yeah, that was that. and my dad, he died of a heart attack when i was 11. it is hard to know how to feel about that. like, how long are you allowed to, like, feel something, or how long are you allowed to miss someone? tom: and how could you even process something at that age? beth: ll exactly. and i think that i, you know, didn't. but then, you know, at a certain point, you have to feel it. tom: beth orton says she's finally feeling it on her latest release, "weather alive," an album described by pitchfork as

"immersive, soothing, and communal," and "the best work of her career." it's a career some 30 years old now. it began at 22 with a unique mix of folk and electronica, and included two critically acclaimed records before she was 27. as the century turned, she won the brit award forbest female soloist. the sky looked like the limit. but there was a "but." she was numbing pain that was not only emotional, but physical. her fans didn't know she'd been suffering since she was a teenager with the painful gastrointestinal malady crohn's disease. and when you made those records in the nineties, were you in a lot of physical pain? beth: i was in agony. and i would just get on stage. and i would do what i had to do, and then i would get offstage and i would just do what i had to do to numb it. there were tours that had to be canceled.

there was opportunities. i had to, like, be in the hospital ward, and be told that i wasn't allowed to do. the interesting thing about having parents is that, you know, there's a lot of stuff that goes by the by when you don't have that kind of support system. and if you have a chronic illness, and you don't have a support system, and you're kind of being really successful, but you're also under a lot of pressure to be more successful because you're not quite successful, but you are on the cusp of something. it's just like, boom, you don't know where you are. to she says a change began to come when she became a parent herself, with a daughter in 2006, and then a son in 2011. beth: and the funny thing is when i had kids, i guess i got emotional sobrty or tried anyway. i hadn't really learned the kind of skills of being a human. tom: she's been honing those skills for a decade or so which also led her toward the raw, image-laden songwriting on weather alive.

♪ lay on your back under spider spun trees >> it is the record of someone who's waking up to their own life. tom: the song weather alive speaks to being overwhelmed by nature's majesty. >> i very much wrote a more sensory exploration. so, for example, you're walking in a mountain and the light suddenly burst through. you know, you get to the top and it like this is what the light does. sometimes you're like, oh my goodness. and like, what would it be to write about that? what is that feeling? tom: another song, called lonely, has the singer questioning her absent parents about her future. beth: and i asked my pa, what will i be i look at my children now, it's like 11 and 15, how little they r. when i was 11, i was like, you know, out having to kind of like be an adult when i wasn't

an adult. >> ♪ lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, ♪ tom: when you do something that is that emotionally open, what is it like sharing your music with your kids? i can imagine your kids listening to that song and going, mom sounds like she is pretty lonely. beth: i mean, that's taking it a bit literally. i mean obviously i do sing lonely about 100 times in that song, but it is one of the biggest kind of achievements in life is, is to be all right alone is to belright lonely, is to embrace all of that stuff. but you ask the children, my son says, mommy, when you sing it sounds like you are crying. tom: it sounds like your son was actually beginning to experience something of what art is.

beth: exactly. tom: thirty years on, beth orton appears more comfortable than ever with what her art is, and she has some wisdom to impart about it as well. beth: just do what you do, get out of the way of your own process, create from the most, the truest part of yourself. and then i start sounding like a self-help book. but i mean, there's a reasonll those self-help books get written, i suppose. because it's true. tom: for the pbs newshour, i'm tom casciato in montclair, new jersey. ♪ amna: finally tonight, we remember poet charles simic, who died yesterday. he was a prolific writer, winner of the pulitzer prize, and served as poet laureate of the united states, and honor made all the more remarkable by the fact that he came to this country in his teens. he often wrote, with both bite and humor, of the world war two

era, of his childhood in serbia, as well as his early years in communist yugoslavia. he spoke about all of this to jeffrey brown at his home in new hampshire in 2007. >> i used to joke and say hitler and stalin made me become an american poet. >> a sense of history is in your writing. >> during the bosnian war in the 1990's, there was quite a bit of footage of a woman running down a road. god knows where she is or where she is going. i said this is me on my mother. and my brother, running. just itself. so yes. my kind of poet is the oneho notices such things. amna: charles simic was 84 years old.

and you can find much more online, including jeff brown's full interview with simic. that is at pbs.org/ newshour. geoff: that is the newshour for tonight. join us again here tomorrow night, where we will explore why more americans are installing heat pumps in hopes of reducing their utility bills. and helping the planet. i'm geoff bennett. amna: and i'm amna nawaz. on behalf of the entire newshour team, thank you for joining us. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by -- >> architect. beekeeper. mentor. a raymondjames financial advisor tailors advice to help you live your life. life well planned. >> carnegie corporation of new york, supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement

in the advancement of international peace and security. at carnegie.org. and with the ongoing support of these institutions. ♪ >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> this is the pbs newshour, from weta studios in washington, and the west, from the walter cronkite school of broadcasting at arizona state university. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.] >> you are watching pbs.

(tranquil music) - when you're telling stories about food, a side of nostalgia is always a treat. in this episode of lucky chow we visit several places where legacies of asian american food and cooking are being preserved, but only so that they can evolve and thrive into the future. whether it's taking on the leadership of a craft noodle company in hawaii or honoring mom's recipes at one of brooklyn's hottest restaurants, preserving the heritage you grew up with is a way of preserving the taste of home or of a bygone era. (upbeat music)