♪ >> good evening and welcome. i am undone the vase. -- on the in the vase. geoff: president biden works to sell his new budget to the american people and a divided congress. amna: the ceo of northern suffolk future scrutiny after the toxic train derailment in ohio geoff: the families of several americans held in iran press for a meeting with the white house to up secure their loved ones release. >> i really hope president biden hears his cries and meets with us and does what he has continuously said he is going to do and bring them home.

♪ >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by -- ♪ the candida fund committed to advancing restorative justice and meaningful work through investments in transformative leaders and ideas. more at candidafund.org. carnegie corporation of new york supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security at carnegie.org. and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions.

this program was made possible for the corporation abide public broadcasting and by contributions to yr pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. geoff: welcome to the newshour. lawmakers are making thousands of political and financial calculations this evening after president biden it releases $6.9 trillion budget plan for 2024. amna: the white house proposal calls for raising taxes on the wealthiest americans to invest in the working class. pres. biden: my budget is about investing in america and all of america, including places and people and folks who've been forgotten. amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades, too many people have been left behind or treated like they're invisle. not anymore. i promise you, i see you. amna: the white house plan anticipates the gap between what

the country takes in and what it spends will grow next year to $1.85 trillion. npr white house correspondent tamara keith is here to break down the highlights and make dollars and sense of it all. see what i did there? correspondent: you got a budget plan in. amna: the president often says budgets are reflective of the author's values. what does this budget tell us about the president at white house? correspondent: this is a decent preview on what we could expect him to run on for president in 2024 with his anticipated reelection campaign. this is a lot of when he ran on in 2020 when he ran for president last time. what you see is a lot of spending. this is not an austerity budget. he is not gettinghe nearly $3 trillion in deficit savings the white house has been touting or days by cutting spending and a big way. what he is doing is putting

moneynto programs he believes will make life easier for everyday americans, wings like paid family leave, childcare, universal pre-k. also funding for border security. a budget is a huge document that covers the waterfront of every part of the american government, and president biden as a lot of ideas in there. amna: you mentioned the $3 trillion, and that has been the headline from the white house is that this will reduce the budget -- the deficit by $3 tllion over the next decade. correspondent: the math does back up that they are cutting by $3 trillion. let's add to contacts. the government will spend a lot of money and there will still be deficits every single year in that 10 year window. by the end of the window the

debt to gdp ratio, which is something budget watchers pay attention to, the national debt compared to the size of the u.s. economy, the debt will exceed the size of the u.s. economy at a level not seen since immediately aer world war ii according to analysis. it is both a budget that cuts the deficit and also a budget that continues to have deficits and continues to add to the national debt. amna: we see democrats saying they want to raise taxes on the wealthy. republicans are saying the country brings in enough. we are simply spending too much. yes yesterday house speaker kevin mccarthy said he is ready to negotiate to appoint. -- a point. >> i do not believe that raising taxes is the answer. i've had thidiscussion with the president personally.

if you look at the revenue that's coming in to america today, it's higher than at any 50 year average. we've only topped this two other times at the same time, but our expenses are much higher. amna: is there any indication that either side is ready to compromise on this? correspondent: not really, not yet, though compromise is probably going to be inevitable if the debt ceiling is going to be raised in the government is going to be funded. if in long-term programs like medicare and social security will continue to be fully funded and viable, but president biden hearing the speaker was upset he had not met with him and had not negotiated yet talk to speech today by saying the speaker wants to meet with me today. i said i will meet with him again when he will show me his budget. it is a political document. it is also an opening volley in what will be a high-stakes battle between house republicans

and the president of the united states and democrats. amna: you mentioned medicare and social security, those becom top line issues. i do not think we could remind people enough where the money two when you take a look at federal spending. that blue chunk is mandatory spending, you save medicare and social security make up half of that. the green section is spending and military and defense spending except just a little less than half of that. do we have any sense when republicans are saying we have to make cuts where those are going to come from? correspondent: republicans said they did not want the cuts to come from defense and they do not want the cuts to come from medicare and social security, so you take that giant pie and you cut it down to much smaller piece of the pie, and that is where they would need to get their cuts run, and they are saying they want the budget to balance over the next 10 years. that would require massive cuts to the point where people would definitely notice, but just as

the white house budget is pretty abstract and dead on arrival in congress, a republican budget if they release one or when they release one, that is also not going to become law. as i say, there is a back and forth. this is a conversation that is happeng and these are vision documents. amna: we have the president's budget, fungus has a very real pressures, they have to raise the debt ceiling by the summer. how do you see this unfolding in the weeks ahead in a body not known for being deadlines? correspondent: it is not clear exactly when the x date will happen, sometime in the late summer likely. that is a real deadline with real consequences if it is not raised. i think that there are going to be negotiations, but my guess is the real, hard negotiations,

serious talks will not happen until he gets much closer to the deadline. amna: always good to see you, thanks for being here. correspondent: good to be here with you. ♪ geoff: in the day's other headlines. russia launched its biggest barrage in a month all across ukraine. the assault included 81 missiles, plus exploding drones, and killed at least 6 people. hundreds of thousands more lost power. in this eastern ukrainian village, residents picked up the pieces of what is left after pressure's punishing bombardment. this home is still standing but uninhabitable. >> they are destroying our city, every day there is shelling and here are the results.

geoff: today's wave of attacks struck across ukraine. villages that had so far been spared the worst of the fighting now in ruins. and the capital kyiv explosions reported that this power plant and did this residential neighborhood. half of the city was left without heat. >> i am fed up with it, cannot withstand all of this. how can they do this? >> the goals are achieved, all assigned targets were hit. geoff: moscow said it launched a retaliatory strike in response to an attack this week on russian territory. volodymyr zelenskyy called it terrorism and remained defiant. in a social media post he said we will altogether ensure the invincibility of ukraine. we are working. we will win.

ukrainian soldiers are mostly working to defend bahkmut. well most russian strikes today were hundreds of miles from the front they also struck zaporizhzhia, home to europe's largest nuclear plant. it lost power for the sixth time since the start of the war. the u.n. atomic agency has failed to forge a deal with moscow to create a safe zone that would prevent shelling. the director general urged immediate action. >> how can we sit here in this room this morning and allow this to happen? this cannot go on. i am astonished by the complacency. geoff: more than one year into the war there are no signs yet the fighting will stop. russia says today's barrage was retaliation for attacks on russian territory last week that it blamed on ukraine. the streets of israel were alive with protests again today against a

plan to overhaul the courts. this time, demonstrators clashed with police in tel aviv and flooded major roads to the main international airport. prime minister benjamin netanyahu had to be airlifted there to leave on a trip abroad. meantime, three islamic jihad gunmen died in a shootout with israeli troops in the occupied west bank. police said the gunmen opened fire as security forces hunted suspects for attacks on israeli soldiers. it came as u.s. defense secretary lloyd austin visited israel and met with prime minister netanyahu. austin said he urged everyone to de-escalate. >> the united states also remains firmly opposed to any acts that could trigger more insecurity, including settlement expansion and inflammatory rhetoric. and we're especially disturbed by violence by settlers against palestinians. geoff: later, a crowded street in tel aviv erupted in chaos when a palestinian attacker opened fire. police said he shot and wounded 3 people before he was kille

back in this country, senate republican leader mitch mcconnell spent last night and today in a washington hospital. his office says he suffered a concussion when he fell at a private dinner wednesday night. mcconnell is 81. he's expected to be hospitalized, under observation, for a few days. the senate has confirmed president biden's choice of danny werfel to lead the internal revenue service. today's vote was 54 to 42, mostly down party lines. werfel pledged not to expand audits of businesses and households making under $400,000 a year. the fbi is investigating whether hackers accessed personal data on members of congress, plus staffers and relatives. officials announced it late wednesday. social surity numbers, names, and addresses may have been exposed in a cyberattack on a health insurance marketplace. in economic news, general motors announced buyout offers for its 58,000 white-collar workers in the u.s. and, on wall street, stocks sank

-- dropped again, weighed down by worries over interest rates. the dow jones industrial average lost 543 points, nearly 1.7% percent, to close below 32,255. the nasdaq fell 237 points, 2%. the s&p 500 was down more than 1.8%. still to come on the pbs newshour. an american detained in iran speaks out from behind bars. the former head of the national institutes of health discusses the white house plan to eradicate hepatitis c. and we look at ways to be a smarter shopper amid rising grocery bills. ♪ >> 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: the ceo of norfolk southern faced intense questioning from senators today in the wake of last month's toxic train derailment in east palestine, ohio. during a hearing before the

senate lawmakers focused on tough questions about railroad safety and preventing future accidents. >> norfolk southern will get the job done and help east palestine thrive. correspondent: on capitol hill today, an apology from the head of one of the nation's largest railroads, norfolk southern ceo alan shaw. >> i want to begin today by expressing how deeply sorry i am for the impact this derailment has had on the residents of east palestine and the surrounding communities. geoff: norfolk southern facing scrutiny since last month's derailment of dozens of cars on the ohio-pennsylvania border, some carrying toxic chemicals. days later, a controlled burn of vinyl chloride to prevent an explosion sent flames and smoke into the sky. that prompted the evacuation of thousands of residents. today, a local emergency official said that norfolk southern was absent at critical meetings about that planned rease. >> i think this confusion was probably a result of the lack of communication from norfolk southern. residents in east palestine

remain concerned about their health following the chemical exsure. >> i can share some good news with you. geoff: during the hearing, epa officials said testing so far showed only low levels of hazardous chemicals known as dioxins. for his part, shaw promised some specific safety changes and pledged to send the community more than $20 million. >> just this week, we announced several new initiatives to enhance safety, which included more hot box detectors across our network, partnering with other railroads to share best practices. >> the devil is in the details. gef: democratic senator bernie sanders accused the company of putting profits over safety and its workers rights. >> will you make that commitment right now. to guarantee paid sick days to all of your workers? that's not a radical demand. it really is not. will you make that commitment, sir? >> senator, i share your focus to our employees, i will commit to continuing to discuss with them important quality of life issues.

with our local craft colleagues. >> all due respect. you sound like a politician here, mr. shaw. geoff: this week, the national transportation safety board launched a special investigation into a number of norfolk southern's issues, including its safety culture. it is investigating five incidents since december 2021, three of which involved employee deaths. there were more derailments in the last week, one near springfield, ohio on saturday, with no casualties. another at an ohio steel plant, killing a conductor. and one today in alabama, involving roughly 30 train cars. senators also criticized the federal government for being slow in communicating potential health risks to the east palestine community. >> you can't address fear and mistrust by pointing residents to an epa website filled with fact sheets and press releases. geoff: government data shows more than a thousand derailments last year, though a decline in recent years. senators say they want safer railroads and are pushing for bipartisan legislation to

regulate an industry they say enjoys lavish benefits. that includes ohio's jd vance, a republican who's become an unlikely ally with ohio's other senator, democrat sherrod brown. they are working on a bill calling for more inspection and tougher fines. >> this is an industry that enjoys special subsidies, that almost no industry enjoys. this is an industry that enjoys special legal carve-outs that almost no industry enjoys. geoff: today, the norfolk southern ceo stopped short of endorsing that legislation. for a closer look at these issues and the investigation into norfolk southern, i'm joined by jennifer homendy, chair of the national transportation safety board. thank you for being with us. have you in your investigation been able to determine what norfolk southern has had so many derailments as of late especially in ohio? >> we actually looked at the record of some of the major

freight railroads in ohio, and it is interesting to note csx operates twice the track mileage of norfolk southern, but norfolk southern has a greater number of accidents per 1000 miles. each of these accidents are very different. we are investigating six now involving norfolk southern, and will review assignment one that occurred back in october. that is a lot in a short period of time, but it is tough to say there is a commonality among all of them, because they are all different. geoff: the ntsb investigation into the east palestine derailment so far says there was an overheated erring on the car that caused the derailment. you have established the what. have you learned more about the why and the how? >> that is right, the fastest

thing we will find is the what. now we have to dig into the why and how, which is gettg a lot of factual information from norfolk southern, and it will require a lot of digging and constant request for information, which our investigators are doing right now. in addition we are testing the pressure relief valves on the tank cars carrying the vinyl chloride, and a lot of that testing is going on through next week. so there is a lot of work our investigators are currently conducting. geoff: in talking with railroad union members, they point the finger at cost cutting by these major railroad companies and the reduction in workforce. i was told in some cases safety inspections are not done by humans. they are done by some sort of automated processes.

what is your assessment of that? >> that is exactly what we will look at. this week we announced a special investigation into norfolk southern and the culture as a whole and the safety culture, and a part of that is what is occurring whether it is cost-cutting or staffing or training or how they are conducting their inspections and maintenance? we want to look for commonalities across the organization, the company as a whole, to see if there are greater concerns within the company and make some recommendations on that. geoff: the train that derailed in east palestine had two crewmembers and a trainee. i asked him if the train had only had one crew member on it, which is what the railroads wanted, that the problem would have been exponentially worse as bad as it was. have you been able to come to any determination on that issue? >> not on that issue.

we recommend they collect information on the number of crew members when accidents occur. what i will say is the crew did nothing wrong in this derailment. in fact, they followed the seizure, which was on -- uncoupling the locomotive from the rail and move the locomotive up about 1 mile to make sure they were safe. one thing i do want to give some credit to the federal railroad administration is yesterday they came out with a notice of proposed rulemaking that will be published in the federal register for inviting train crews with emergency escape breathing apparatus. that is a recommendation we have had on the books since 200 when two norfolk southern trains, a norfolk southern train collided with a part norfolk southern

train collided and released chlorine gas and killed eight crewmembers. geoff: what are the next step in the investigation and how long will it take to wrap up? >> we are in the fact-finding phase. we are requesting information from different entities, and then we will follow up on that information. that could take about three months. then we will move into the analysis phase of the investigation where we will start taking those facts and conducting an analysis to determine how this happened, and we will present a number of findings. probable cause but including contributing causes and safety recommendations to various entities like d.o.t. or department of transportation and norfolk southern and possibly even to the response community to prevent this from reoccurring. we are going to have an

vestigative hearing in east palestine in june, and hope to wrap this up within the next 12 than 18 months -- 12 to 18 months. ntsb does issue urgent safety recommendations where we feel something is needed to address safety throughout the railroad system. geoff: so it will not take 12 to 18 months for you to make recommendations. you can make those recommendations along the way. >> that is right and we have done that in the past. i suspect we will do that here as well. geoff: thanks for your time. ♪ amna: in an unprecedented move,

an american detained in iran has given an interview from inside the notorious evin prison. siamak namazi has been held for more than seven years, and he spoke by phone to cnn's christiane amanpour. >> i keep getting told that i'm going to be rescued, and deals fall apart or i get left abandoned. honestly, the other hostages and i desperately need president biden to finally hear us out, to finally hear our cry for help and bring us home. and i suppose desperate times call for desperate measures. so this is a desperate measure. i am clearly nervous. amna: namazi is one of three american citizens currently held by iran. environmentalist morad tahbaz was detained in 2018, as was businessman emad shargi. shargi was sentenced without a trial in 2020 to 10 years in prison for espionage. his sister, neda shargi, and one

of his daughters, hannah shargi, join me now for an exclusive interview. welcome to you both. thank you for being here. >> you heard him speaking from inside the same prison where your father is held, your brother is held. he said it is dire, his voice was breaking. what was it like for you to hear that interview? >> it was heartbreaking. i imagined him being only doors away from them, and i think it was so courageous of him to do that interview, and frankly just the risk you took to do it, he should not have to take that risk. he should have been brought home a long time ago, all three should have been brought home, and the lease president biden can do is at least meet with the families as he requested. amna: did you watch the interview? >> i did not watch the interview

because it is hard knowing that my dad was going to the same situation. i did not want to be upset before doing this interview. all i can say is how much i respect him for doing that and how desperate they are to be home, and i hope president biden hears his cries and meets with us and does what he continuously has saidhat he is going to do and bring them home after all of these years. amna: we note the iranians did not know about the interview. are youorried that your dad could face repercussions as a result of this? >> i am worried every day, and as he said this is a necessary measure he had to take to get the president's attention. i wish it did not have to come to this point, and i hope that they are safe and i hope that it pays off, the risk pays off. amna: have you heard from him since the interview aired? >> no, we have not.

we hope to hear from him tomorrow. and before that we hope to hear from the white house to have them say they have listened to the interview and they might -- want to be with us right away. amna: there was a press conference today. another detained amera it was there and your family was not. can i ask why not? >> our three families are very close. we have a chat together all the time, and everything we do is really in coordination of one another for the benefit of the cause of bringing all three men home. if i had done that press conference, i would not be able to be here today. it is hard to get press, so we wanted to make sure we were able to expand his message far and wide. we are hoping president biden hears this, watches this show tonight at the response to the words and calls our families and

meets with us. amna: when it comes to the efforts to release detained americans, there were reports last month of indirect talks between iranians and the biden administration to arrange some kind of credit or exchange and secure their release. have you heard anything about those talks are any possible deal in the works? >> what i see in the media is what you see in the media, and those reports are speculation, and i cannot wastey time focusing on things that i do not know if they are true or not. i am just his sister, i am not a policymaker. my job is to get my brother home, and what i know will bring them home is one person, and that is present biden. in order to convince him to do that, we have to sit in front of him and have the chance to talk to them. that is what is real. that is what is accurate. everything else is speculation. amna: a state department's

spokesperson was asked about that today. he repeated it was a priority to free the americans. he says it is a cruel practice for iranians to hold them in this way and said we will do everything we possibly can to bring them home. what is your sense of the progress to free your dad? >> we have heard for years that this is a top priority to bring them home, but how am i supposed to believe this is actually a priority when the president will not meet with us. when we cannot have those 15 minutes. we live 2.9 miles from the white house. we can to be there in 15 minutes. how am i supposed to believe that my dad is going to be home when we cannot even sit down with the president? that is what i want. i want to talk to my president about my dad, i want to tell them how scared we are and how this is a time sensitive matter. my dad was almost killed in the

fires in october. that could happen tomorrow, the next day. we need them home now and we cannot wait. i need to see it is a priority and i need a dad on my plane back to the airport. amna: five years? >> five years he was detained. amna: what are those years like? >> is hard. the first year he was there i did not talk to them once. it has been difficult for our family. we have done everything we can. we are not politicians. the person that will make this decision is the president. i know he has an empathetic person, he has a father, a son, a brother. he has the ability to bring our dad home and i want the opportunity to sit down in front of them and tell him how much in my dad. my dad has missed five years of my life and i do not want him to miss more.

that is what i think about at night. that is my fear. we need this action to weapon now. amna: you have clearly been asking for this meeting with the president. it sounds like there is no progress, but you said you want him to know who he is. what do you want to say about your brother? >> my brother is a wonderful, ordinary american citizen who needs to be at home. he is from washington dc. he lives down the street from the white house. i want him to know he is an ordinary citizen, and ordinary citizen like the others, i should not be the one to remind the president his priority should be and is supposed to be the safety and security of american citizens like my brother and the others. amna: if you could say something directly to the president right now, what would you say? >> i would say i need my dad

home. ease use every tool you have at your disposal to bring him back, the others are back. i would ask him to put patriotism above politics and let this be his legacy, bringing innocent americans home like you did with greiner, trevor reed. amna: the daughter and sister of a detained american citizen in iran. thank you so much for being here. you can watch christian almond for -- amanpour's full interview tonight at 11:00 p.m. on pbs. check your local listings. ♪ one part of president biden's

budget focuses on attacking a disease that is almost completely curable with drugs, hepatitis c. roughly 2.4 million americans still have hepatitis c, a viral liver infection. untreated, it can lead to chronic illness, liver cancer, and death. but drugs made available since 2013 cure hep c in 95 percent of patients. yet all kinds of barriers remain over cost and access. the president is asking for $5 billion to expand rapid testing, access, and treatment. dr. francis collins,he former director of the nih, is now a special projects adviser to the esident on this, and i spoke to him earlier this week, before the budget was released. >> welcome back to the newshour. >> glad to be here with you. amna: we do not often get to talk about hepatitis c, but it does disproportionately affect certain populations. who is most at risk and why? >> hepatitis c is permitted to

the blood. there were baby boomers who got the transfusions back before we knew how to test for the virus and they are infected and do not know it. more recently it is often times people who share needles or a tattoo needle could be the way this passes, and it can be passed from mother to child. it is a mix of folks. many of them in it marginalized communities who do not have great access to health care, which is one of the reasons we need a program if we are going to take advantage of this historical moment. we can hear these people. amna: when you talk about testing, you noted 40% of people do not know they are infected. why the barriers to testing? >> it is complicated and expensive and the logistics are not great. the test requires going in one time to see if you have antibodies against the virus. some people cure themselves. then you have to come backor the test. do you have the virus now?

that is an rna test, then you have to come back at their time and start on the bills. most people who are in difficult circumstances have trouble with revisits, and our medical care system does not do so well either on making that easy. you have to see a specialist. i do not think in this circumstance a specialist as needed, but that is the way a lot of systems are. a lot of things are getting in the way of what she did be an easier process -- what should be an easier process. come in, you have a simple figure stick. you have hepatitis c, 30 minutes later here are your pills. amna: in one visit. there is a cure. most cases are terrible. is cost one of the reasons cure has been out of reach for some people? >> that is a big part of it but not the whole thing.

the cost has been high, but the cure has been available for about seven or eight years. it is one of the most major dramatic achievements of medical research for the last decade. it knocks at the virus but does not knock out anything in the host. one pill a day, 12 weeks, 95% cured and virtually no side effects. it is almost miraculous for a disease that has taken so many lives. it was priced very high, $90,000 per patient. it is still high at $24,000 per patit. if you are trying to run a medicaid clinic o a clinic for people who have no insurance or people inrison the incidence is pretty high because of the interaction with the drug trade, you cannot figure out how to pay for it. amna: you mentioned overcoming barriers to testing and getting treatment into more people's hands. there was this investigation to

look into the prison system and found state governments were failing to care for people in their custody, not testing them because they did not want to have to treat them and in some cases refusing to treat people they knew were infected. how do you overcome barriers? >> talking to people who read those prisons. they feel terrible about this but they cannot afford to actually offer the treatment. so they try not to even test, because if they tested and they are not doing anything that makes you feel worse. they are looking for a way forward. that is what this proposal is from the biden administration being rolled out now. a five-year plan to make the drug available essentially for free to prisons, medicaid clinics, community health centers that deal with the uninsured to people on the reservation, people in opioid treatment centers, but we have to come up with a way to make that happen, which is a pretty creative model some would call a

subscription model. i think it is the way to solve this, and it has already been successfully done. amna: it is a five-year plan based on a subscription model. how does that work at the community model? >> louisiana piloted this. the idea is netflix. when you sign up for netflix, i am not advertising for them, you pay one payment and you can binge all you want with whatever they have to author -- offer. you pay the drug company a lump sum, and they have to agree to make the drug available for free from that point on two people imprisoned, people in community health centers uninsured, people in medicaid, people on the reservation and you end up driving the cost down dramatically, and everybody wins because the company right now are not making any money selling

those drugs to those groups because nobody can afford it. more importantly all of those people get treatment. it will work. amna: you have had success for -- successful pilot programs. it is also a $5 billion plan at a time when there is a brewing deba over spending cuts in congress. how likely are they to practice? >> i hope people will look at it carefully and see that although you have to pay upfront for testing and deliver the drugs, if you look downstream in terms of dollars you save for people who will not need a liver transplant, that treatment for liver cancer, over the course of 15 or 20 years you more than or make up for what you had to pay. this is actlly deficit reduction. you just have to scale it out over time. amna: i hope you do not mind my

asking, you come to this work with your own personal experience informing it? >> my brother-in-law, rick, just a wonderful human being, wonderful husband to his wife, he had hepatitis c. it never was quite clear how he got it and he developed liver failure, ended up having a liver transplant, and then he turned out to have liver cancer and he died a terribly awful and difficult death. this was just a couple of years before the cure became available. i do not want anybody to go through what rick went through or rick's family went through including me, my wife, his wife. it is totally preventable now. if we are a country that cares about all of our people, even those who have had a rough times , how can we look at this and walk away? amna: dr. francis collins, thank you for being here. >> glad to be with you.

♪ geoff: and we'll be back shortly with some tips on how to keep your grocery bills low at a time when prices keep climbing. amna: but first, take a moment to hear from your local pbs station. it's a chance to offer your

that premieres march 17th. check your local listings. ♪ amna: if you've been to the grocery store lately, it's hard to miss. consumers are having to eat the cost of higher food bills. while overall inflation is down after hitting a decades-high last year, grocery prices were still 11.3% higher this january compared to the same time in 2022. to help consumers make the most of their food budget, digital video producer casey kuhn decided to put together some tips, including a quiz. hi, casey, good to see you. why did you decide to do this? >> so, to be honest, when i saw

my husband bringing home brand-name items with the grocery store, in this economy, i said no. so we've covered inflation and higher food prices, but how can i actually make some news our viewers can use? my mom taught me the shopping tips, but to some experts to help. amna: this video is for people who hate to go grocery shopping, people like my dad, myusband, and my boss. -- it is that we put food on the table. beth started a cooking blood after the 2008 recession. >> i had nothing left that i can come back so i started breaking down the cost of the food i was leaving -- eating. >> she has a lot of advice on

how to navigate opping at the grocery store, where prices fluctuate and always seem to be getting higher. >> it's a really easy way to save money or manipulate your budget is just based on what you choose to buy and what you choose to cook or not cook. amna: you along with others put together this quiz. >> you shut up to jenna and megan. amna: i have already taken this quiz. i got 4 out of 5 right. to make homemade pizza, and i need to buy the ingredients. the first question is about how to pick the base. >> right, should you choose raw pizza dough or a pre-made crust. >> and i picked the pre-made crust, which is wrong. why? >> is the more processed option. when you were buying something more processed, you are paying for the convenience. if you buy the raw pizza dough it is one more step to make it

to the cross. i will say this was a divisive question on the internet because a lot of people would rather pay for convenience than save the money. amna: ok, now we want to add cheese. and i chose the block of cheese, which is correct, i was thinking i would get more for my money. >> you get more cheese for your money versus the process cheese per dollar. a big giveaway for this quiz is if you look at one item, one thing on the sales data, price per ounce, you will always get it right. if it is a lower price per ounce it will be a better deal, and that is true i the grocery store too. that is one big takeaway i hope people of. if you compare prices in the grocery store it makes a huge difference. amna: you are getting more for your money, and that is the point. digital video producer casey kuhn. thanks so much.

>> thank you. amna: you could watch the entire video and take the quiz yourself, go to pbs.org/newshour. ♪ geoff: and there's a lot more online, including a story about why people who have been incarcerated and are diagnosed with cancer often struggle to get care after they are released. amna: and join us again here tomorrow night, when we'll speak with former arkansas governor asa hutchinson about the gop's priorities and why he's considering running for president. and that is the newshour for tonight. i'm amna nawaz. geoff: and i'm goeff bennett. thanks for being with us. have a great night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour's has been provided by -- >> 420 five years consumer cellular as been providing no contract plans what people do

more of what they like. our u.s.-based customer service team can help you with a plan that fits you. visit consumer cellular.tv. >> it was like an aha moment. this is what i love doing. companies have this energy that energizes me. these are people trying to change the world. when i volunteer with women entrepreneurs, it is the same thing. i am helping people reach their dreams. i am driving by helping others every day. people that know know bdo. ♪ >> the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. ♪ >> and with the ongoing suprt of these individuals and institutions, and friends of the newshour.

and with the ongoing support of these institutions. ♪ and friends of the newshour. this program it was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ >> i am terribly excited to be the anchor of pbs news weekend. we have become known for independent, fact-based reporting. we are challenging viewers to understand the world a little better. we present all sides of the story. we take the time to put them in context. when viewers watch pbs news weekend we hope they come away informed and perhaps a different perspective than they have thought of four.

>> good evening, i am john yang. tonight on pbs news weekend. ♪ ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.] >> you are watching

♪♪ -"cook's country" is about more than just getting dinner on the table. we're also fascinated by the people and stories behind the dishes. we go inside kitchens in every corner of the country to learn how real people cook, and we look back through time to see how history influences the way we eat today. we bring that inspiration back to our test kitchen so we can share it with you. this is "cook's country." ♪♪ today on "cook's country," lawman and bridget make japanese steakhouse steak and vegetables. i tell the wild story of benihana's founder "rocky" aoki. adam shares his top picks for cast-iron skillets, and bryan makes julia charred cherry tomatoes