♪ john: tonight on pbs news weekend, on the brink of another government shutdown, we get the latest from capitol hill. then after record breaking heat this summer, why certain areas of cities, like austin, texas, are hotter than others.

>> we need to be thinking about what we need today, but also what are strategies we need to be doing in the next year or two years as climate change gets worse. john: and what to know about screening, diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer. ♪ >> major funding for pbs news weekend has been provided by -- >> consumer cellular. this is sam. how may i help you? >> this is a pocket dial. >> i thought i would let you know with consumer cellular yo get nationwide contract -- nationwide coverage with no contracts. that is kind of our thing. have a nice day. >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions.

and friends of the newshour. ♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting at a by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. john: good evening. i'm john yang. on capitol hill, lawmakers are taking eleventh-hour efforts to avoid a government shutdown at midnight tonight right down to the wire. this afternoon, the house overwhelmingly passed a 45-day temporary spending bill after house speaker kevin mccarthy -- unable to overcome disreements in his own party -- turned to house democrats for help. in the end, more democrats voted for the bill than republicans. the measure includes the $16 billion in disaster relief money

that president biden wants but not the aid for ukraine that many house republicans don't want. but that's only half of what's needed to avoid a shutdown. the senate has to approve the bill too, and that could come as soon as tonight. after the house vote, mccarthy acknowledged that hardline republicans could try to remove him from the speakership because he reached out to democrats for help. >> when are you guys going to get over that it's alright that you put america first. that it's alright if republicans and democrats joined together to do what is right. if somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it. there has to be an adult in the room. john: it has been a hectic and chaotic day on capitol hill and as always congressional correspondent lisa desjardins has been following all of it. lisa, just 24 hours ago it looked like a shutdown was inevitable, and now here we are a senate vote away from putting it off. what happened? correspondent: they said it

would take a legislative miracle, and in a way we got one. it also needed a complete collapse of the house republican party realizing they did not have a plan at all, and that the only way out was to go deeper in and cause a lengthy shutdown or to have a simple resolution to fund the government that they thought would pass with many democrats. john: you just serve the speaker say bring it on on a motion to vacate the speakership. will that happen? correspondent: i think it will. i do not know when. he is calling it a bluff of hardliners who oppose him, but it does not matter to him if they win or not. they have a point to make. they really do object to the speaker. just a single member can make a motion to vacate him. even if the vast majority of republican support speaker mccarthy the question is up to democrats, because you need a majority of the house to elect a speaker, so democrats can

maneuver, maybe try to get something out of speaker mccarthy to help him keep his job and could lead to a lot of other different plot lines. john: what is the outlook of the senate? correspondent: it looks good. senators want to pass this deal. senate not known for its exceeding speed, but tonight they want to avoid this deadline. they do not want to shut down, even a sunday one. they are asking every senator if they will object to speeding this up, and in fact if all senders give the green light we could have a vote within minutes or hours. john: it is a 45 day reprieve. what did they want to happen and that 45 days? >> ts is part of what this entire debate is been about, spending in general. in the house they would like to pass all2 appropriations bills. so far they have passed five of them, so they still have a lot of work ahead of them. it takes a long time to get 400 members to debate these appropriations bills, especially the more controversial ones.

they went to get their time to do that and also negotiate those bills with the senate. we are not talking dollars and the size of government, which is a difficult debate, but also policy. these bills contain things about abortion. should abortion pills to be allowed to be sold in the mail? those are debates that may take more than 45 days as well, but now they have got another 45 days to figure it out. john: what does the past 24 hours tell us about the house republicans come up the state of the house republican party? correspondent: i think it is what we expected. we knew this was a body that operates on instinct and not on plan. there is not really strategy. they have no problems with internal debates that could even put the entire nation and government funding at risk, b it also tells us a lot about kevin mccarthy. he has a speaker who lives day by day. he is confident in his ability to make it through even the toughest of tests, but he does

not have a plan for the next one. you and i will be sitting here again talking about similar dynamics i maybe even this week the speaker. john: let's remind people what the alternative was. if they had not done this with the alternative would have been and what we will be facing in 45 days. correspondent: we would've had a government shutdown starting tonight, 2 million workers, millions of federal contractors, many of them who would have been sent him. that could have meant no paychecks for many of those people, some services would have stopped like wic, and also moody's and analytics -- moody's analytics and others could have wngraded our credit. with a lot at stake, we have to see the next steps, because all of that is hanging in the balance getting closer to thanksgiving. john: never a dull moment. thank you very much. ♪

in other news, new yorkers began drying out today after one of the wettest days in decades. record rainfall -- more than 8 inches in somearts of the city -- overwhelmed the city's drainage system, knocking out subway and commuter rail lines, turning roadways into rivers, and stranding people in cars and flooded apartments. no deaths or critical injuries have beereported, but the city remains under a state of emergency. and, the white house is sounding the alarm about a build-up of serbian troops along the border with kosovo. and nato has beefed up its forces in northern kosovo. long-standing tensions escalated last weekend when armed serbs stormed a northern kosovo village and killed a local police officer. us officials are urging the two sides to continue talks mediated by the european union. still to come on "pbs news weekend” -- why some city's neighborhoods are hotter than others. and a look at prostate cancer, one of the most common cancers among american men. ♪

>> this is pbs news weekend from weta studios in washington, home of the pbs newshour weeknights on pbs. john: this summer, cities across the united states broke thousands of heat records. but in many them, some areas were hotter than others, what are known as urban heat islands. and that can mean higher energy bills and unsafe conditions for -- conditions. blair waltman-alexin of austin pbs, in partnership with austin vida, has this report. correspondent: birth our lives and the dove springs neighborhood of austin, and selling is her main source of income, but she is making less ney this year. >> i had to change because of the heat, because i no longer go out to sell the same as i did

before. the son will not let me -- sun will not let me. it is too hot, so even if i went to go out i cannot. correspondent: over the summer austin saw a record-breaking heat, some areas of the city see hier temperatures than others, and i can meet higher energy bills. mark is with the cities office of resilience. >> we have data that shows heat from satellites, working lots, the airports and so on, and that is valuable information but does not tell you what is happening at the ground level. correspondent: the city of austin teamed up with researchers at the university of texas to see what was going on. what they found was higher temperatures in places with less greenery. this is called the urban heat island effect. this doctor is a professor of geosciences and engineering at the university of austin. >> it gets absorbed into the

streets, into the steel, infrastructure that is required, so when you measure the temperatures you will get that there are blobs which are much harder. it will look like an island. that is what gets referred to as an urban heat island. it could be different by anywhere from 5 to 10 degrees. correspondent: this is what hernandez and others are dealing with. areas with impervious cover reflect the sun's rays and degreasing temperatures, but not everyone is feeling the heat. >> some parts of the city are much coolerrarts are much warmer. correspondent: some of this can be traced back to redlining practices that stard in the 1930's when the federal government labeled nonwhite neighborhood as risky places to invest homelands. according to the epa research shows redlined communities have less vegetative cover, higher temperatures and increased health risks. >> if you look at map that looks

at health outcomes or race, they essentially show the same maps, and talking to community members we understand that they are more sensitive to heat and also cold, better quality and so on. correspondent: these neighborhoods often have older homes that it can be harder to keep cool. this doctor says he studies architecture and climate change. >> older homes are particularly vulnerable. air comes indirectly, not just through heat transfer. the hot air comes in or the cold air goes out. over time it deteriorates, so anything built before the 1980's is probably not insulated at this point. correspondent: many homes in hernandez's and neighborhood were built in the 1970's, and that equals higher energy bills. >> it is not well insulated. it is also old and not well

insulated. >> there is another thing that happens, it is a lot warmer inside. it creates adverse health effects. because of climate change it gets worse. maybe you delay turning on the ac, but the conditions last longer and longer, so it is not good. >> they have to make a decision between not using energy and staying cool, and that is a hard conversation to have. correspondent: it is a conversation hernandez has said more than once. >> it is difficult if you want to save electricity, because it is getting expensive. so there are moments when we have to put up with the heat, because we cannot have the air on all day. correspondent: heat has pushed electricity bills higher for everyone, but for lower income households that increases harder to deal with. >> it might seem like it is $50

more, but that $50 would be quite different in neighborhoods where this might be insignificant in the monthly budget. correspondent: cities can take steps to turn down the heat. this team is making recommendations to the city council that includes adding trees and improving bus stops, but they agree action needs to be taken and quickly. >> we need to be thinking about what we need to do today but the next year, two years as climate change gets worse. correspondent: for now hernandez says she will continue to get out early and get back inside before the temperature rises. >> you cannot be defeated. you have to push forward so that he does not impoverish us anymore than we already are. ♪

john: this year alone, nearly 300,000 american men are expected to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, though most of those diagnosed with it don't die from it. on this final day of prostate cancer awareness month, ali rogin takes a look at screening, diagnosis and treatment of the disease and what it means to live with it. ali: prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in the u.s. and t second most common cause of cancer-related deaths. and, glaring racial disparities exist with the disease: 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime, but that rate increases to 1 in 6 for african american men. but, a diagnosis doesn't have to be life-changing. in fact, many men with certain types of slow-growing prostate cancer are able to forego surgery and treatment altogether. dr. charles ryan is a genitourinary oncologist, and he heads the prostate cancer foundation. dr. ryan, thank you so much for joining us. let's start with the absolute basics.

what is prostate cancer and where does it originate in the body? dr. ryan: sure. well, thank you for having me on to explain this important issue. the prostate is a gland that is very important in male reproduction. it essentially produces the fluid that allows the sperm to fertilize an egg. so without it, we are not able to reproduce. it exists at the base of the bladder. and it is really part of the male urinary tract, but also the male genital tract allowing sperm to be released from the body. ali: and i know the options for prostate cancer screening and whether or not someone is a good candidate for it is a complicated issue. there are lots of factors that go into that. but let's start with what sort of screening is available for prostate cancer. dr. ryan: right, so the prostate cancer screening has long involved a test, the blood test called the psa test and for many years involved a digital rectal exam, which is also called the finger test. so, a doctor inserting his finger into the rectum of the paent to see if there's a

tumor that one can feel. we also now incorporate mri scanning and over time, the mri scan is really replacing the digital rectal exam because it's less uncomfortable and it's actually more accurate. ali: the u.s. preventative services task force, which is an independent body that makes recommendations on disease prevention, recommends currently that men aged 55 to 69 not get automatically screened, but rather discuss the pros and cons of screening with their provider. the uspstf doesn't recommend screening at all for men over the age of 70. but, my question is, if prostate cancer is, as we said, so widespread, why shouldn't all men get tested? dr. ryan: well, it's important to remember that with regards to screening that there are three distinct groups of individuals who can -- who can get prostate cancer. the first is a group that have such low risk disease that they may not require any treatment. and our current estimates are that that may constitute 20% to 25% of all of the men diagnosed with prostate cancer in the united states.

there's a second group, which is patients who are curable with treatment options as long as the disease is confined to the prostate. so those are the ones who really benefit the most from screening and early detection. there's a third group for whom the treatment options are not optimal and they are not guaranteed a cure with current -- current treatment options. and for those we need, we need to do more research and develop better treatment options. it's important to remember also that screening does not necessarily automatically lead to a certain type of treatment. and that's been some of the misunderstanding that's created the problems that we're seeing now with a rising incidence of prostate cancer in its advanced stages. ali: and what are the current treatment options for people that are in those cohorts for whom treatment would work? dr. ryan: so for the low risk group, we have a program called active surveillance, which is monitoring. and it's not that they never receive treatment. some of them and many of them actually do, but it's delayed until later. those involve repeat biopsies,

mri scans and close surveillance from a treating physician -- physician. but for men who are in the curable group, the main treatments remain surgical removal of the prostate. radiation therapy to the prostate, which has really evolved a lot over recent years, and then combinations with other approaches, such as hormonal approaches that may help radiation do a better job. in advanced disease, we've seen a tremendous growth of a number of therapies with a whole variety of different mechanisms of action that extend life and improve its quality for men, even with advanced stage metastatic prostate cancer. ali: we mentioned in the introduction this persistent racial disparity in terms of diagnoses and outcomes. why does it seem that black men continue to be disproportionately affected by prostate cancer? dr. ryan: the cause of that disparity are complex and probably include a combination of both biological factors, genetic factors, as well as societal factors.

one key observation is that prostate cancer occurring in a black man is likely to occur earlier in life and such that a screening, when performed earlier, may detect curable cancer earlier than it would before for, for example, a non-black man. so, starting screening at the age of 50 may not be adequate. for example, for a population where the disease is likely to begin even as early as age 40. ali: i want to return to the issue of active surveillance that you mentioned. some studies have shown that some people on active surveillance when they're not receiving treatment, they eventually do have to undergo some sort of treatment. does that indicate that testing needs to advance in terms of being able to determine the potential seriousness of slow growing prostate cancer? dr. ryan: well, it's a wonderful question because we, in fact, are learning a lot more about the biological heterogeneity of this disease. and so when we're making a decision about whether a patient would be an ideal candidate for active surveillance, we incorporate genetic studies now

and genetic factors that look at the interplay of a number of genes, and that can help us further stratify a potential patient for immediate treatment or deferred treatment. ali: the treatments and the surgeries that currently exist for men dealing with prostate cancer tend to be very serious and potentially life altering. what are the prospects that you see for the future of that discipline? is it getting better? is it allowing men to continue to have happy and healthy lives? dr. ryan: because of the location of the prostate at the base of the bladder and as a -- as a key component to the male sexual function the worries around treatment side effects do include urinary function and sexual function. over the course of the past couple of decades, the surgical field has made tremendous strides in preserving sexual function and improving and preserving good urinary function. so one of the problems we have when we're thinking about the treatment related side effects is where are we getting our data from? if we're talking to patients who

had their treatment 15, 20 years ago, it was a very different setting back then than what we see now. of course, there are cases where the cancer is more advanced and it's more difficult to preserve those functions. but -- but today, many men are quite optimistic about their treatment and there are many men out there living happy, normal lives after undergoing curative treatment for prostate cancer. ali: dr. charles ryan, head of the prostate cancer foundation. thank you so much for joining us. dr. ryan: my pleasure. ♪ john: mahogany browne is a poet, writer, organizer, and educator. recently, she became the first-ever poet-in-residence at new york city's lincoln center, where she's trying to expose more people to poetry. tonight, she shares her brief but spectacular take on poetry

as ritual. >> the importance of ritual as a poem, as a practice is finding stillness and, uh, reminding yourself to breathe. how do you quiet the mind? um, even though you may not be able to understand quiet in the middle of new york city streets, but it is possible to quiet your mind to get to a place where you can be at peace, and have promise. [clapping] ♪ i'm going to ask you all to, uh, participate with me in this piece. this is gonna be a, a communal meditation. the poem ritual is about meditation. it's about breathing, and it's about seizing the day, rather than worrying about tomorrow. ♪ today you will. today you choose. today is yours. today is only today. tomorrow ain't here yet. so slow down.

i was interested in creating ritual, because i live in brooklyn, new york, and i rarely found a space quiet enough to meditate. and so this poem became a part of my meditation practice, and now it's, uh, something that i do every day. breathe. for the homies that ain't here. breathe for the kin that is. breathe for your own good skin. your skin, your smile, your, you, you, you. as someone who's aware of her anxiety, the ritual became very crucial for me to just find a place to have deep breaths. and i think that it will offer that to the listeners as well. now come back, come back, come back to yourself. ♪ i do say poetry is a transformative tool because i

believe it allows us to, uh, use poetry as a mirror and we can look very deeply and intently. we can study it without judgment and we can allow ourselves to grow from the things that we see versus the things that we thought we were seeing. poetry allows us a step back, some distancing and a lot of compassion. miraculous star gaze, most fortunate. sky beam, beyond brilliant. and be your resilience. but you do that already. who told you any different? you tell them today you will. and today you choose. because tomorrow ain't here yet so slow down. slow down. breathe. my name is mahogany l. brown, and this is my brief but spectacular take on poetry as ritual. john: and you can watch more

brief but spectacular videos online at pbs.org/newshour/br ief. and that is pbs news weekend for this saturday. for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. see you tomorrow. >> major funding has been provided by. >> consumer cellular. how can we help you? >> this is a crocodile. >> thought i would let you know with consumer cellular you can get nationwide coverage with no contract. that is kind of our thg. have a nice day. ♪ >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting in a by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

♪ ♪ >>

laura linney: this is "masterpiece"... what's going on? robina: douglas came to see me the other day anhe told me about your condition. i don't want anything from you. linney: previously on "world on fire"... albert: they know where i live. claudia: when they win, their ideas win, and one of their ideas is to kill children like hilda. i will get this information out.