john: tonight on "pbs news weekend" -- after a string of fatal helicopter crashes, we examine their safety and reliability. then, the myth of plastic recycling. how the plastics industry knew

for decades it wasn't a viable solution. and off the coast of cape cod, a conservation success story with human implications. a surge in sharks creeping closer to shore. >> cape cod has exploded as an area that draws people to enjoy this environment. and so now, the predators coming back to feed on its prey, but it's overlapping with human activities and certainly humans are not used to that, but they're coming to grips with it. ♪ >> major funding for pbs news weekend has been provided by -- 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 and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. john: good evening. i'm john yang. tonight, nearly a million and a half gazans are sheltering in the southern city of rafah, the last remaining haven in gaza, as israel moves toward moving ound forces into the city. across northern gaza, there were more air drops of aid from the united states, jordan, and germany. the u.n. says a quarter of the population is starving, some say it's not enough. >> the situation is so bad that no one can imagine it, and the ship, even if it helps, will be

a drop in the ocean because the entire region is in need. they throw us airdrops of aid. and we run like dogs behind airdrops. john: in central gaza, israeli bombs were also delivered by plane. gaza hospital officials say about 20 people were killed overnight in an israeli strike on a refugee camp. they said nearly half of them were children. talks aimed at a deal for the release of israeli hostages in exchange for palestinian prisoners are expected to resume in doha, qatar tomorrow. hamas has proposed an eventual, permanent ceasefire, something that israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu sayis out of the question. police have surrounded a home in trenton, new jersey where a 26-year-old shooting suspect has barricaded himself. trenton police say the residents of the home have been evacuated. the suspect is armed with an ar-15-style long gun and is believed to have killed at least three people in falls township, pennsylvania, a suburb of philadelphia. the was a shelter-in-place order there, but it's been lifted. police said the suspect knew his victims and that the shootings were the result of a domestic

situation. there's been another incident involving a boeing jetliner. an older united airlines 737 landed safely in oregon on friday, minus a large external panel along the plane's belly. there were no indications of trouble during the flight and the missing panel was only discovered during a post-flight inspection. both united and the faa are investigating. in russia, protests on the seco day of voting in the country's three-day presidential election. protesters tried to set fire to voting booths and poured green dye into ballot boxes. at least a half-dozen cases of vandalism have been reported at polling stations as supporters of the late opposition leader alexei navalny try to undermine president vladimir putin's hold on power. he's facing no serious challengers and is almost certain to win another six-year term. while in belgorod, russian officials say ukrainians shelled the border city, killing two people. and, more americans are tying the knot.

the cdc says marriages are back to pre-pandemic levels. during covid-19 isolation, marriages dropped to the lowest levels since 1963. but despite the uptick, marriages in the united states remain in a decades-long decline. still to come on "pbs news weekend," the problems with plastic recycling and how plastic makers knew it wouldn't work. and, tracking the surge in shark numbers off the coast of cape cod. ♪ >> this is pbs news weekend from weta, home of the pbs newshour, weeknights on pbs. john: late last month, the head of a nigerian bank, his wife, son and three others were killed when the helicopter taking them to las vegas crashed in california's mojave desert. also late last month, the army national guard temporarily halted all its helicopter operations after fatal crashes

in utah and mississippi. that followed the army's temporary grounding late last year of its osprey aircraft, which can function as a helicopter. these incidents and recent high-profile accidents like the one that killed basketball star kobe bryant and his daughter in 2020 and 2019's tour helicopter crash in hawaii that killed seven raise questions in people's minds about the safety of helicopters. john goglia is a former member of the national transportation safety board and former chair of the national coalition for aviation education. john, we may be seeing a lot more helicopters as air taxis are being developed, as soon as next year. quite simply, are helicopters safe? >> helicopters and the vehicle itself ivery safe. what we're seeing today is a lot of issues with -- we have pilot issues and maybe not not monitoring their operations well enough. you know, you mentioned two accidents. thnigerian fella who died and kobe bryant, both of those were helicopter pilots that

disregarded weather cues and allowed it to accomplish the mission. and that self-imposed pressure that they have on themselves to get the mission done. oftentimes, it's the driver behind the event that leads to a crash. john: and those military ground, as we talked about what they call stand downs. those were for the to make sure that the crews, the pilots understood the operating guidelines or were they worried about the craft themselves? >> most of the time, the craft is pretty reliable. and there's been a few instances where there was a mechanical problem. but the real issue was the pilots, usually the single pilot operations. and, you know, and especially in the military, it's gets done. i got a mission to do. i'm going to get it done. well, when you're not in a war zone, you have a lot more flexibility. but sometimes, it's difficult for people to separate those two events. john: pilot error. is it more dficult? are helicopters trickier? more difficult to fly than fixed wing aircraft?

>> helicopters require a lot of concentration in a in an airplane. oftentimes, you're with the automation that's in there that you don't have to focus as much helicopters. you have to maintain your focus from beginning to end. and so sometimes, people will lose their focus. and when that happens, the consequences are severe. john: is there a narrower margin of error with a helicopter than a fixed-wing aircraft? >> yes. ifou're talking about the pilot, yes. it's concentration that has t be maintained, you know, and the helicopter industry themselves has taken a page out of the commercial aviation, playbook with their safety teams and really driving down, analyzing virtually every mishap that happens and looking at the cause and identifying that for the pilots that are flying today. so, getting caught up in bad weather that's a major contributor to helicopter accidents, fatigue on the part of the pilots, which leads to that lack of concentration. that's a major factor in accidents. john: can that problem be addressed with regulations, guidelines about training, about

recertification? >> helicopter industry has a very robust set of of regulations. you know, if the pilot's not going to follow the guidelines for weather, you know, sooner or later, it's going to lead to a bad outcome. that's not a regulation issue. that's the individual pilot issue. so, i don't know that at this point in time we need additional regulations, but we need to have a very robust training program in which the industry themselves is pushing for in order to make sure that the pilots don't lose sight of the fact that they need to maintain their skills and their attention to accomplishing the job, not just getting the mission done. john: is the pipeline for helicopter pilots with those skills, that concentration, that ability to safely fly a helicopter, is that big enough or is that is there a supply problem? >> there is a bit of a supply

problem because most of them come out of the military, and the military is having problems building their own pilots so that they're not letting them out so much, so to speak. they're providing additional bonuses to keep them in the military because training takes a lot of resources, a lot of money to train a pilot. there are commercial trainers, but they're only a fraction compared to what the military supplies. john: most people's experience with helicopters these days really is probably sightseeing tours, like over hawaii, the grand canyon, a tourist out there about to get on a helicopter. thinking about taking one of these tours. what would you say to them? >> well, i've taken them myself, so i don't think they're particularly dangerous. but there are certain pilots that like to give those people that are on the helicopter the thrill of the adventure. and i have been on some of those helicopters, too, unannounced. i've had thrilling rides. and again, it's up to the individual because he's alone. he doesn't have the company representative over his shoulder. he doesn't have the faa looking

at him until something that happens. so, yes, you need to be concerned and sometimes, you need to have a conversation if you're chartering a helicopter, what you expect from that pilot. so if, you know, if you have it beforehand, say, if the weather gets bad, i don't mind if we don't go, you know, so make sure they understand that this isn't mission critical. i don't have to accomplish just this task getting me from point a to b, that it's ok that we don't go. john: john goglia, a former member of the ntsb, thank you very much. >> thank you for having me. john: on average, the world produces 430 million metric tons of plastic each year. the united states alone produces tens of millions of tons of plastic waste annually.

yet on average in the united states, only about 5% to 6% of plastic is recycled. ali rogin digs into a new report uncovering the plastic industry's tactics to push recycling and avoid regulation. ali: a new report by the center for climate integrity and environmentalist group says newly-uncovered statements from oil and plastics executives underscore the industry's decades-long secret skepticism about the viability and efficacy of recycling. the authors of the report reviewed old investigations and new documents, including previously unknown assertions from indtry executives. in 1994, one exxon chemical executive put the industry support for plasticsecycling in blunt terms, saying, "we are committed to the activities but not committed to the results." another representative from dupont noted in 1992 that recycling als were set knowing full well "they were unlikely to meet them." michael copley is a correspondent covering climate issues for npr. michael, thank you so much for joining us.

some of these quotes that are in this report are very blunt. they might be shocking to some, but you've been covering these issues for a long time. were you surprised by anything that's in this new report? michael: yeah. i think what's in the report echoes a lot of what we've been seeing from previous investigations, and that is that the plastics industry push recycling as a solution. even though industry officials have known for a long time that it wasn't going to be viable at scale, or that they had serious doubts about its ability to be viable at scale. what we've seen is that they they really looked at recycling as a way to kind of fend off regulation and to keep selling more plastic. and so, we've known about that. i think it's always striking when you see a report like this that unearths new statements, new quotes. and to see the way in which they really seem to view recycling, as sort of, you know, a public relations tool as opposed to an environmental tool that they sort of presented publicly. ali: many of the most eyebrow-raising quotes from this report are 10, 20, even 30 years old. if they're so old, why should we be paying attention to them today? michael: so right now, what the industry is saying is the focus on these comments doesn't

accurately reflect where the industry is today. and so what's asking for is sort of the public to trust it, that it's working on this new technology that is going to solve the problem of plastic waste now. and i think that the historical record sort of undercuts public trust in the industry and raises questions about those assertions. i think the other reason why this matters is that it is potentially legally problematic for the industry. and by that, i mean the oil and gas industry right now is facing dozens of lawsuits from states and localities, based in part on statements it made about climate ange and fossil fuel going back decades. we know that the state of california has opened an investigation into the role of oil and gas companies in the petrochemical industry in kind of the creation of the plastic waste crisis that we're facing. and the group that put out the report, the center for climate integrity was up front saying that it was compiling this to serve as kind of the fact basis or the basis of evidence for potential legal action. ali: i want to read a response we got from a plastics trade group called america's plastic makers. their president accused this

report and the authors of it of citing "outdated, decades-old technologies" and says it's mischaracterizing the current state of the industry as you were just talking about. this group also says that plastic makers are looking to have all plastic packaging be "reused, recycled and recovered by 2040." so you just mentioned this, but where does plastics recycling technology stand right now? how advanced is that technology? michael: so, the industry has presented advanced recycling, chemical recycling as a real solution. there is deep skepticism of it. and not just from sort of environmentalists who you'll talk to. ali: and i should note here, michael, that advanced recycling is actually a term of art that is used among the plastics industry to describe the current state of this recycling. michael: yeah, that's right. and so as opposed to sort of traditional mechanical recycling, what they're doing now is turning plastics sort of back into liquids and gases to rt of reuse.

the skepticism comes from questions about, has anything about the economics of recycling changed? if in the past, it was cheaper to make new plastic, why is that not still the case, especially when you see low oil and gas prices? and the other piece of it is, plastic degrades over time. and so what scientists say is that there are just limits to how many times you can reuse plastics. so, there is deep skepticism. ali: what does your reporting say about this claim that all plastics will be recyclable by the year 2040? michael: obviously, the industry has put out this promise. i think that it's critics will say we have been hearing these promises or promises like it for decades now. and that there is nothing in the record to think that now is any different. ali: is there a solution here that climate activists and environmental experts agree on that actually includes recycling, or is there consensus among that side of the issue that staholders need to be looking at solutions beyond recycling, that recycling is not the be all, end all to avert the climate crisis that experts will point to and say we're in?

michael: there's a recognition that tt plastic is so ingrained in modern life, and it plays important roles in medical devices and other things that it's almost impossible to envision a world where we move completely beyond plastic. i think what people are talking about is reducing plastic production to a level that is more manageable with kind of recycling systems, getting rid of types of plastic that are especially hard to recycle or you can't recycle, being more transparent about what chemicals go into this stuff that, again, make recycling hard. but, it really does come down to when you talk to, not just activists, but also businesses increasingly that regulation is going to play a big role. and so that, you know, there was a hearing in the senate and the head of sc johnson, a big consumer goods company, said something to the effect of we need government regulation. businesses can't do this on their own. and i think, you know, again, that gets back in large part to the economics of this. if companies don't have to deal with these costs, it's hard to

imagine that they will in sort of a sustained way, create systems to deal with this if they don't have to. ali: michael copley, correspondent covering climate issues for npr. thank you so much for breaking this down for us. michael: thanks, ali. john: environmental efforts to protect sharks in recent years has resulted in a huge increase in the great white shark population off the new england coast. it's a conservation success story with potentially unnerving implications for beachgoers. david wright of rhode island pbs weekly went out with one conservation group, which is tracking the rise of the world's biggest known predatory fish. david: just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water comes a pointed reminder you might want to think twice, at least in cape cod.

the headline is there are lots of sharks. >> yes. david: megan of the white shark conservancy is one of the authors of a new study documenting the surge in the population ogreat white sharks in recent years. what is your best estimate? >> the best estimate is 800 individual great white sharks visited the waters off of cape cod. david: she has spent years patrolling these waters, tracking every shark they encounter. they recently let us tagalong. >> we did get one. a white shark spotted off the southernmost part. david: overhead, they have a spotter plane. the pilot keeps a sharp eye out. on the boat, they have underwater cameras and microphones. and a ready supply of these things. >> it is like an ezpass for sharks. that is the simplest way to explain it.

david: a radio beacon with batteries that last 10 years. every time a tagged shark swims passed one of these yellow buoys, it sounds out a ping. the conservancy relies on citizen sightings. did you get to see some? >> we saw one, super shallow here. david: the people on that boat tell us they saw a 14 footer here moments ago. every citing from people or pings gets related to an app. sharktivity. i have identified more than 600 individual sharks over the past 10 years. i bet the app is fairly popular among beachgoers. >> i'd like to think so. it has been downloaded over 100,000 times at this point and it is a great platform for us to report sightings, for eco tour boats the report sightings and for anyone. david: it may come as a surprise

to know that nearly 50 years ago, when steven spielberg scared the pants off just about everybody with his iconic movie about sharks in this part of the atlantic, the population of great whites was in danger of dying out. >> we are going to need a bigger boat. david: greg was still in grade school when "jaws" came out. the movie caught his imagination in the best way. >> that was motivated by the scientists in the film, as were a lot of colleagues of mine at the time to become shark biologists. as a young kid watching that, i was thinking wow, this is a really cool job. david: he's personally tagged more than 300 sharks, fulfilling his eam at a time when cape cod is finally beginning to see the dividends of decades of marine conservation efforts. over the last 50 years, the marine memo protection act gradually helped bring back the

seals and the sharks who prey on them. >> in the time that both sharks and seals were gone, cape cod has exploded as an area that draws people to enjoy this environment. now, the predators coming back to feed on its prey, it is overlapping with human activities. and certainly, humans are not used to that. but, they are coming to grips with it. david: the team deploys a drone for a birdseye view of the water, but they tend to find the sharks spend about half their time in water that is less than 15 feet deep. >> you've got the seals that love the beautiful beaches. so do people. the sharks are coming close to shore to hunt so there's an overlap of these three species. david: finally late in the day, a bona fide citing. greg climbs out like a friendly captain ahab, armed not with a harpoon, but a go pro camera.

a 14 footer. a teenager, not yet fully grown. great white sharks are four feet long when they are born. they can grow up to 20 feet long. their lifespan, more than 70 years. >> that shark right there is one that we tagged a few weeks ago in this same area. so, clearly, he's been sticking around. i think the only reason they stick around is if they are successfully feeding. they will stay in an area where they are not having any success. david: much of the regulars have nicknames. not this one, yet. who gets to name it? >> we have a donor who gets to name the shark. that program helps us fund the cost of research trips. david: to the work you guys are doing and you get to name a shark. how much does it go for these days? >> $2500. david: that nickname will pay for another day out of the water like this one.

for pbs news weekend, i'm david wright. john: and finally tonight, how do you parent a rescued newborn fox? if you're at the richmond, virginia wildlife center, you wear a fox mask. because the goal is to reintroduce the kit into its natural habita she needs to keep a healthy fear of people. so, the masks keep it from becoming too attached to its human caretakers. they also try not to speak while they're with her and have given her a stuffed animal to try and make her feel like she's around her real mom. this newborn fox arrived at the wildlife center a few weeks back after a richmond man mistook it for a kitten and turned her over to a local humane shelter. the richmond wildlife center was founded in 2010 to provide veterinary care for all animals in the area.

it operates solely on donations. ♪ john: now on the "pbs newshour" youtube channel, the challenges of getting aid into gaza as the humanitarian crisis worsens. all that and more is on the official "pbs newshour" youtube channel. and that is "pbs news weekend" for this saturday. on sunday, concerns about the recent decline in support for lgbtq rights, reversing years increasing support. i'm john yang. for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. see you tomorrow. >> major funding for pbs news weekend has been provided by -- >> consumer cellular, how may i help you? this is a pocket dial. well, thought i would let you know that with consumer cellular, you get nationwide

coverage with no contract. that is kind of our thing. 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 and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.]

announcer: my music is made possible by public television viewers like you. thank you. ♪ ♪