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tv   PBS News Hour  PBS  September 5, 2024 6:00pm-7:00pm PDT

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wow, you get to watch all your favorite stuff. it's to die for. now you won't miss a thing. this is the way. xfinity internet. made for streaming ♪ geoff: good evening. i'm geoff bennett. amna: and i'm amna nawaz. geoff: kamala harris and donald trump prepare for next week's debate as legal cases against
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the president make their way through the courts. amna: in the first batch of mpox vaccines arrives in congo. why it has been so difficult to get the vaccinations needed to curb the spread. >> i cannot express how much distrust and anger there is in africa over this whole thing. >> major funding for "the pbs newshour" has been provided by -- >> and law partner rediscovers her grandmother's work and creates a fund to keep the craft alive. life well planned. >> on an american cruise line's journey along the legendary mississippi or, travelers explore civil war battlefields.
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aboard our fleet of american riverboats, you can experience culture and cuisine and experience the music and history of the mighty mississippi. american cruise lines -- proud sponsor of "pbs newshour." >> carnegie corporation of new york, working to reduce political polarization through support for education, democracy, and peace. more information at carnegie.org. and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions.
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this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. amna: welcome to "the newshour." georgia is mourning the lives of four people killed in a high school shooting yesterday. nine others were injured. geoff: reports of the suspect's past run-ins with law enforcement raised even more questions about his motives, how he got access to a gun, and howt unaddressed. at apalachee high school, some students returned today to grieve at a makeshift memorial. a quiet morning after yesterday's tragedy. the community gathered for a vigil last night after a 14-year-old student opened fire outside his algebra classroom. 4 people -- two students and two
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teachers -- were killed. those who survived still processing what they witnessed hours earlier. >> he heard gunshots ringing out through the school, wondering if it is going to be somebody you are best friends with. >> i still don't believe this is real. i know a girl that got shot in the leg, and broke me because she was like a sister to me. i don't know how to react to it. >> students recounted ducking for cover in their classrooms as gunshots rang through the hallway. within minutes, officials say, the shooter surrendered school resource officers. questions remain about how the teenage gunman obtained an assault-style rifle is more information emerges about his past encounters with law enforcement. in may 2023, the fbi traced online posts from an individual threatening to shoot up a middle school according to multiple
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news reports. that led authorities to the youth who was then 13. he denied making those comments. his father insisted his son did not have access to hunting guns kept inside their house. authorities alerted nearby schools to monitor him, but he was not arrested or further detained. in a home search yesterday according to "the new york times," police found evidence that the gunman was "obsessed" with the 2017 school shooting in parkland, florida. he is set to appear in court virtually tomorrow. among his victims, 214-year-old students. -- two 14-year-old students. and two faculty members. a devoted math teacher described as patient and caring and another math teacher who also taught football as the team's
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defensive coordinator. >> coach was an amazing guy. he pushed us to be great in what we did for our team, so it was really hard to live through someone who pushed himself to make us better and make sure we are better -- it was really hard to lose someone who pushed himself to make us better and make sure we are better. >> it's the 30th mass killing in 2024 in which three or more people are murdered in a 24-hour period as defined by the fbi. such incidents have claimed at least 127 american lives this year alone. amna: voters have just two months to make the choice between vice president harris and former president trump. in less than a week, the two will meet on the debate stage. laura: the harris-wells campaign
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-- harris-walz campaign is pushing through pennsylvania. harris' running mate, minnesota governor tim walz, bar and stormed through lancaster in pittsburgh wednesday before arriving in erie, pennsylvania, this afternoon. >> it's not hyperbole. this election will go right through erie, pennsylvania. we know the work you are doing here is going to make a difference. laura: meanwhile, former president trump was in his hometown to speak to the economic club of new york. >> have to take care of our own nation and our industry's first. laura: he boasted about his administration's economic policies and without evidence blamed undocumented migrants for taking jobs from black and hispanic americans. >> african-americans, hispanic american jobs are under massive
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threat from the invasion taking place at our border. they are taking the jobs of hispanic americans, african-americans. nobody talks about it. laura: in a fox news town hall last night, trump compared himself to hungarian prime minister victor ormonde -- viktor orban, who has been criticized for authoritarian policies. >> that is a question they asked evan. he has been called a strong. sometimes you need a strongman. laura: some have worn a second trump presidency will look like that of a strongman. >> he is a risk we simply cannot afford to take. laura: former congresswoman liz cheney said the threat of another trump administration means republican voters cannot sit out or vote third party.
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>> because of the danger that donald trump poses, not only am i not voting for donald trump, but i will be voting for kamala harris. laura: cheney joins other republicans who have gone against their party's candidate, including her fellow january 6 house committee member, adam kinzinger. harris will soon have a chance to face from herself in the upcoming presidentl debate. >> if you've got something to say, say it to my face. laura: both have agreed to the ground rules, including muted microphones when it is not a candidate's turn to speak. amna: key details at the center of donald trump's election interference case were debated this morning. the judge declined to slow proceedings in the case, giving prosecutors a chance to unseal crucial and potentially politically damaging information against trump.
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the case had been on hold for several weeks while the former president's team argued for presidential immunity ethic supreme court. today was the first time that both sets of lawyers were back in the classroom since that big supreme court ruling on presidential immunity earlier this summer. >> it was a big day in court. lawyers for the special counsel counsel, jack smith, wanted to suggest that their case survives even the supreme court decision, which required them to pare down significant parts of their case against the former president, and they want to file a brief by the end of this month explaining why trump should continue to face these charges and why he was acting in his personal capacity or his capacity as a political candidate and not in his capacity as president in the united states -- president of the united states when he attempted to cling to power in early 2021, right around the
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time of the january 6 insurrection. as for trump's lawyers, their key strategy all along has been to delay this case. what they now want to do to the extent they can is control the idea of any further damaging details coming out about january 6 in advance of the november election. the judge, a former public defender, is right in the middle of all of this. she is going to have to make those tough calls. amna: a political timeline really does seem to matter. this is a case about mr. trump's actions to overturn the 2020 election. we are now facing down the 2024 election in a matter of weeks. did that political timing come up at all today? >> absolutely did. trump's lawyer told the judge, this is a very sensitive time in our nation's history. we are talking about the presidency here, and the judge shot back immediately, i'm talking about a four count felony indictment against donald
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trump. i'm not talking about the presidency. the electoral calendar should play no role in this prosecution, and indeed, she accepted by the end of the day a special counsel proposal and set up a briefing schedule about trump's immunity and lingering questions about it to end shortly before the election. the open question on that is it any new detail will come out in public from those fbi witness interviews, in grand jury testimonies in advance of the election or if the judge will keep those new details under seal until after voters go to the ballot box. amna: on another legal front, the president's son was in court today for what was supposed to be jury selection in its federal tax case. he surprised everybody by changing his plea to guilty. what we know about why that changed and what happens now. >> a wild day in court. my colleague from npr was there we know hunter biden's lawyers
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that he did not want to put the family through further anguish. there was the possibility hunter biden's daughter and other family members may be called to testify. hunter biden, of course, had already been convicted in june on charges. he has pleaded guilty to nine if -- nine additional tax charges. what is that you have been a sentencing in december. the current president joe biden maintains he will not pardon his son. we will have to see what happens after the election. amna: we take you back to that trunk case i know you were following. you did report that one of the biggest legal battles ahead would involve former vice president mike pence. why? >> this is a huge issue because the supreme court left open the idea that trump could be immune from prosecution for conversations with vice president pence. prosecutors have to show they have overcome that high burden. they want to say that trump was pressuring pence in his role as
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president of the senate with respect to counting the electoral votes in 2020 and early 2021, not in his role as president involving executive power, and that is going to be a major fight moving forward in this donald trump january 6 case . amna: that is npr's carrie johnson joining us tonight. always good to see you. thank you. >> thank you. vanessa: i am vanessa ruiz in for stephanie sy with "newshour west." the father of the suspect in the georgia school shooting was arrested today for knowingly allowing his son to possess a weapon. the georgia bureau of investigation announced he is charged with 4 counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder, and eight counts of cruelty to children. his son has been charged as an adult with 4 counts of felony
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murder. secretary of state antony blinken visited haiti today. he is the highest ranking u.s. official to visit the caribbean nation since 2015. he met with top officials just a day after haiti's government extended a state of emergency to the entire country. he said that haiti has taken critical steps towards organizing elections for next year. haiti last held elections in one to 16, and officials blame ongoing gang violence and political upheaval for the delay in a new vote. gangs currently control about 8% of the capital, port-au-prince. ukraine has a new top diplomat amid a broader shakeup resident of a lot of's government. the former ambassador to turkey is taking over as foreign minister and will be tasked with pushing ukraine to western allies in the continued fight against russia. his appointment follows the
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resignation of five top officials as zelenskyy seeks to bring "new energy was put to the war effort. for his part, russian president vladimir putin told an economic form today that ukraine's recent incursion into russia's first region has been a misguided effort. >> armed forces have stabilized the situation and have begun to gradually push it out of the border areas. by transferring their fairly large and well-trained units to our border areas, the enemy has weakened itself in key areas, and our troops have accelerated offensive operations. vanessa: separately, the justice department has charged the former advisor to donald trump's 2016 campaign for work he did for a sanction russian network. authorities say he and his wife accepted more than $1 million from russell -- russia's gentle one since wendy 22 and then laundered the proceeds.
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if convicted, they could face up to 20 years in prison. an olympic marathon runner has died after a domestic violence attack in which her partner doused her with gasoline and set her on fire. a police official in kenya where she trains says the attack happened during a disagreement over land on sunday. friends note that this is not the first tragedy to affect female athletes in africa. >> i can say we are still in shock, and we are in pain. this is the second time an athlete has been attacked. we are not happy. >> she competed in the paris olympics less than a month before she was killed, finishing in 40 fourth place. she was 33 years old.
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here in the u.s., fbi agent have reportedly searched the homes this week of at least three top deputies to new york's mayor. the first deputy mayor seen here with the mayor last year. the searches are the latest legal trouble for the mayor. last year, federal agents seized his phones and ipad in relation to a corruption investigation into campaign financing. adams has denied any wrongdoing. high temperatures are suffocating the west coast, triggering heat warnings from washington state to southern california, and things are only heating up. tomorrow, los angeles is expected to see his hardest day in the world for years with some areas reaching 118 degrees. ticketmaster is under investigation in the united
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kingdom for prices it set for a reunion tour of the 1990's band oasis. the u.k.'s competition watchdog is looking into what it calls dynamic pricing, which causes costs fluctuate based on demand. fans say that caused them to pay more than double the face value of their tickets last week when they went up for sale. the watchdog says ticketmaster may have breached the u.k.'s consumer protection laws and engaged in unfair commercial practices. u.s. soccer superstar alex morgan has announced she is retiring. the 35 year-old two-time world cup champion and olympic gold medalist was one of the national team's most dominant scores and a driving force in the fight for equal pay. morgan was one of five players who sued u.s. soccer in a case that led to both the women's and men's national teams getting equal pay. in a farewell video posted on social media, she reflected on her career.
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>> soccer has been a part of me for 30 years, and it was one of the first things that i ever loved, and i gave everything to this sport, and what i got in return was more than i could have ever dreamed of. success for me is defined by never giving up and giving your all. vanessa: morgan will play one final game with her team on sunday. still to come, displaced israeli students start a new school year in the shadow of war. the battle between disney and directv that is leaving customers in the dark. and team usa's olympic success gives some lesser-known sports a big boost. >> this is "the pbs newshour" from weta studios in washington
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and in the west from the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. geoff: the democratic republic of congo finally received its first delivery of vaccines for mpox today, but it comes nearly a month after the world health organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. we have more on the outbreak and response. quickly who has finally changed its approach so that those mpox vaccines could be delivered and administered in congo and across africa, but some say the who has been too slow. the dhr first asked for vaccines two years ago in a different outbreak. mpox has affected an estimated 18,000 people and killed more than 600 in the drc alone. joining me to discuss the challenges of getting care is a professor of global health law at georgetown university. great to have you back on the show. help us understand why this has all taken so long.
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>> let's just begin by looking at map to see on one map in central africa the whole of the deaths, the suffering, cases. another map is where the vaccines are. that is in japan, europe, and the united states. a lot of it is just pure greed. a lot of it is pure complacency. the other is that people in the united states wanted to donate vaccines. they would not take them because even though the u.s. fda had approved them, they were not approved in the who or in the drc. >> green. is there also a level of bureaucracy at work that is complicating matters? >> i think greed and complacency and bureaucracy would pretty much sum it up. there is, i think, a lot of bureaucracy. the main stumbling block is that the world health organization
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did not give the vaccine emergency listing -- >> which would have freed it up? >> which would have freed it up. it would have allowed organizations to deliver it and deliver it at speed. you still need the donations, the -- though. a danish company has been charging a lot of money for it. the united states, even to this day, has only delivered 10,000 doses. nigeria has promised 50,000 to congo, which should be delivered on saturday, but that pales in comparison to the 10 million that the african cdc say they need. >> right. how confident are you that that continued enormous flow will actually happen? p>> if history is any gauge, it
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will be too little and too late. whenever we wait for vaccines, what africa knows is that it never arrives on time and in insufficient quantities. i think maybe by the end of the year, we will figure this out, but we will have so many preventable deaths. with these vaccines, you can prevent the deaths, prevent the outbreak, and prevent it from coming to the united states, to europe, and to other countries. it is a win-win for everybody. why don't we get our act together? >> if someone did not know and just switched on this conversation, they might think we were talking about covid. >> it is exactly what happens with every global health emergency. we have the opportunity to deliver the vaccines at long time ago. we wait, prevaricate. bureaucracy. and then you have enormous
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vaccine inequities. working with who and the u.s. government and the white house, i cannot even express how much distrust and anger there is in africa over this whole thing since covid and now with mpox. >> the drc and other countries are starting to get some of these vaccines. what do we know about their health infrastructure and ability to deliver them and get people this protection? >> is a great question. what we need to do is not just deliver the doses of vaccines. we need trained health workers. we need testing because the number of cases and deaths that you mentioned are really just the tip of the iceberg because we are not testing. we are not doing surveillance. we don't have labs. we don't have health workers. we don't have vaccinators. it is really top to bottom, we need to have a health infrastructure that can deliver these vaccines, and the vaccines
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need to get there on time and into arms. >> what can we, meaning the global north, the wealthier nations of the world, do to make this move faster? >> there are several things very, very clear. first, let's get the vaccines to where they are needed now. let's invest in a real surge investment in the health infrastructure, the health system, the health workers to actually get those vaccines delivered and protecting people. and ultimately, we will need to have africa be self-reliant. they don't want to wait for charity. they want to be able to manufacture and deliver the vaccines themselves with strong health systems. we can do this if we only had the political will. >> always great to talk to you. thank you. >> thank you.
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amna: children around the world are starting a new school year, some of them in the shadow of war. more than 60,000 israelis have been displaced from the country's northern border because of the risk of rockets from lebanese hezbollah. some residents live in hundreds of towns across israel, including tel aviv, where young students this week went back to school, even if they cannot go back home. nick: it is a rite of passage with an armed escort. students are arriving on the first day of school after summer vacation. reuniting with old friends. and making new ones with new teachers. but this is not their school and the city is not their home.
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they are the displaced, driven from their houses by war. >> most of my students, their house was ruined. >> the superintendent of a school system whose teachers and students have been displaced across the country for 11 months. he says the instructors he briefed ahead of their first classes provide students an antidote to war. >> i think the teachers are holding the torch of the hope. they are giving them a schedule, something to wake up in the morning, something to do. a goal. all other things are chaos. >> their homes or in a town hit by lebanese rockets just yesterday and on hundred separate occasions since hezbollah opened fire on northern israel the day after october 7. it is the largest town in northern israel right from the
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lebanon border, mostly empty since the israeli government forced residents to leave. last weekend, israel's military preempted a barrage of missiles, but some got through and hit homes nearby. a mother and two kids living here escaped at 5:00 a.m., thanks to an early warning, with seconds to spare. >> you can just imagine, you can see the damage here outside. you can just imagine what would happen if this hit the house inside. the family don't have a place to live now. but they saved their life. >> hopefully soon as the war
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ends either with an agreement or maneuvering into lebanon, the civilians will come back and build this community again, but 10 months is a long time for a community like this to be empty. >> which is why these twins have lived in this apartment for 10 months, distracted by card games and longing for home. >> if the war ends, i want to go back. >> that longing is shared by the students' teachers, who must provide sympathy despite their own suffering. david teaches english. >> extremely challenging for all of us because we don't really have time to think about ourselves. we are not just teachers. we are psychologists, mothers, fathers, mothers, anything you can think of. a lot of the kids have got lost.
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>> on the first day of school, they try to re-create their lust community. we are separated all over israel. >> israelis still suffer and live with national trauma from the violence and horror of october 7, but schools are trying to teach lessons, especially to older students, who will soon join a military that failed to protect the country or its own soldiers. >> we thought that we have the strongest army in the world. in october 7 happen. next year, the same army -- we are going to the army, the same army that was unprepared for october 7. we must receive the lesson not to be arrogant and not to repeat the history. >> that lesson plan is being written in real time, and some
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answers cannot be found in a classroom. >> when can we go back? >> it's a question that not only children ask. it is also a plea for this rite of passage to end for everyone. amna: tomorrow, nick and our team will look in gaza for the thousands of children there with no schools to attend. geoff: more than 11 million directv customers were left in the dark after disney entertainment pulled espn, abc, and other channels on the satellite provider on a busy sports night. viewers were caught up in the middle of a u.s. open match before the kickoff of a college football game. the dispute centers on what channels directv must carry and
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if that makes sense in a changing landscape of cord cutting. it comes as the nfl season starts tonight. for more on this and what it says about the business in the age of streaming, we are joined by meg james who covers the entertainment industry for "the los angeles times." thanks for being with us. this all started as a routine dispute over the rates directv would pay disney entertainment for its television networks. >> this debate has been simmering behind the surface because the pay-tv providers like directv are increasingly aggravated that disney and other programmers started their own streaming services basically to go into competition with their longtime partners. this dispute has been going on for a few weeks, but it really roared into public focus on sunday when the deadline expired and directv no longer had
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authorization to carry disney's channels including espn. there are a lot of what would seem like arcane rules that programmers have instituted, which used to work out fine for the pay-tv providers and the programmers, but in an age of skinnier bundles, these rules are not working for the likes of directv. geoff: what is disney's position on this? why are they opposed to what directv wants? >> it comes down to money, basically. programmers like disney required directv to carry their channels in about 80%, 85% of all of directv homes, and what directv wants to do is say only about 40% to 50% of our subscribers are watching espn. espn is the most expensive cable channel out there. what directv is trying to do is tailor some more smaller
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packages like children's entertainment, family entertainment, sports programming, and they say that disney's refusal to relax these minimum penetration rates is making that goal of directv's to offer packages they feel consumers want virtually impossible. geoff: how does the streaming business written both companie'' business models? >> disney has made billions of dollars over the years by the cable programming fees they get. they do not want to see that money go away. at the same time, they recognize that television users, younger viewers, are increasingly turning to streaming services, so they want to be in both places, but that is where the pull is. directv has a directv stream,
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but they are not programming their own shows like netflix or pickup, and they really want to hold on to the customers that they have, but that is increasingly difficult when their packages cost $100, and you can get a streaming service for far less than that. geoff: there was some thought at the start of the nfl season would force these companies' hands. is that the case? >> yes, a lot of people are still watching for the first monday night football game on espn, to see if that will be the -- where the flashpoint or breakthrough comes. last year, we covered a similar deal, and it was the monday night football deal that led to the breakthrough. geoff: what might this mean for the industry overall? >> i think what this shows is the strain in these traditional
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cable tv bundles. people typically watch 17 to 30 channels, and that is what directv is trying to do, make it so that they can provide their customers and new customers with these smaller packages that people want to watch. at the same time, it is really, i think, in a weird way, while directv is trying to maintain their customer base, they are also sort of forcing some of their subscribers to look at streaming packages that they might never have looked at before. it is a real tight rope that these companies are walking, and it shows just the strain of these legacy businesses. geoff: thanks for being with us. >> thank you. amna: there are still a couple
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more days before the close of the paralympics, but team usa's success in the olympic games this summer is already having an impact on sports fields and gyms across the country, especially on what had historically been less popular sports. >> is the first practice of the season for the d.c. furies, one of the oldest women's rugby clubs in the country. the players laced up, run drills, and dodge tackles. typical training for the division i club, but this year is different, says president liz lindstrom. >> i'm a little concerned that incoming prospective players will outnumber current club members right now. >> in fact, she says about half the women who showed up tonight are brand-new to the club. >> somehow played before and taken a long break. some folks had never played a sport before, let alone rugby. >> it is a change lindstrom
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traces directly back to this moment, when the u.s. women's team beat rugby powerhouse australia to win bronze at the australia olympics. >> rugby in america is so behind rugby in the rest of the world, so we were definitely underdogs. to actually walk away with a bronze medal, our first ever, i think is really special. place the u.s.'s first rugby metal in a century since the men's team won gold back in 1924. the appeal of women's rugby is unique, says the vice president of women's elite rugby usa. >> we take big hits, we give big hits and don't have any padding, so you can see the joy on everyone's faces and you can see the impact directly on the athletes, and that is the kind of human connection people really want and that we really enjoy out of athletes in the sport. >> team usa's success on the field this summer was magnified online when the center went
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viral. >> i am sore all the time, constantly. >> with funny takes on life as an olympian interspersed with body positive messages. >> from a rugby player to shot putter and sprinter, see yourself in these athletes and know that you can do it, too. >> since the olympics, she has seen a spike in interest at all levels of the sport. >> every college team i have talked to, they are looking at two or three times their normal interest in the first couple of practices. youth in haskell has a massive influx of questions. where do i find my local club? how do i get involved? what ages can my kids play out? >> but it's not just women's rugby that has inspired audiences. i have seen a reflux -- an influx of requests for its boys
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gymnastics team. >> normally on average, we would be getting two or three phone calls per week looking for boys programs, and now we are averaging almost 15 a week. >> this year, the men's gymnastics team, usually overshadowed by their women counterparts, rose to fame largely because of one athlete -- stephen nedoroscik, known as the pommel horse got -- guy. he became famous for his routine and rubik's cube skills. he won bronze in his event and helped the u.s. mint win -- the u.s. men won their first team metal in almost a decade. >> they can sort of relate to him as opposed to somebody up there with a c with big muscles who works out three times a week. >> 12-year-old gabe paul and his younger brother got a kick out of seeing their support in the headlines. >> it felt good because our sport was getting recognized. >> yeah, it was really cool because gymnastics is like --
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not many people know about it or at least men's gymnastics. >> their gymnastics journey began during the pandemic on their backyard trampoline. >> i like it because you got strong, you get flexible. there's so much you get to work on and so many skills you get to do. >> the brothers now train for times a week and aim to one day make the olympic team. coach patterson, a former collegiate gymnast, says he hopes this moment can lead to more funding for the sport at the college level. since 1981, ncaa division i men's gymnastics programs have dwindled from 59 to just well today. >> it's very hard to get into college programs. all the boys continue to grow from grassroots what they started here. >> women's rugby, too, is hoping to capitalize on this moment.
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the first women's professional league launches next year. >> arm in arm with our fellow sisters in sports. women's sport is -- is not having a moment. it's a movement. >> a movement she hopes will bring home even more medals in future olympic games. geoff: we will be back shortly with a story about the national cathedral's first female stonemason. amna: but first, take a moment to hear from your local pbs station. it is a chance to offer your support which helps keep programs like this one on the air. for those of you staying with
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us, we returned to the topic of artificial intelligence and the massive amount of energy required to power it. as economics correspondent paul solomon explains in this encore report, the ai arms race has experts worried about it climate consequences. >> by now, you have probably seen chatgpt, which an economist prompted to substitute for me in a recent story. >> and paul solomon. paul: now meet mary, the chatbot/avatar companion created recently for us on the app replica. she is connected to chatgpt but can also float o her own. >> are you always this irresistible? >> albert camus writes --
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[speaking french] >> it translates to one can be virtuous out caprice. he asserts that virtue need not stem from deeper levels. >> 15 milliseconds. that's how long it took a quick switch is extraordinary, but the next question would be -- how much energy does that process take from chatgpt to a robot man? >> a whole lot, and that poses a threat. >> what i'm most worried about is that we are building an enormous infrastructure for artificial intelligence that is extremely energy and water-intensive, without looking at the very real downsides in terms of climate impacts. >> data centers have already been burgeoning with the internet and the so-called cloud of data storage and exchange. >> then we suddenly have cryptocurrency mining adding a lot on top of that.
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>> this amsterdam-based data scientist adds that the value of cryptocurrency has multiplied, so have the data centers like those that mine bitcoin in cheap energy havens. >> this will use as much power as my house in a month. >> ai might be going in the exact same direction. >> and crawford notes ai is not just going to stress the electricity grid. >> large-scale data centers use gpu's that are enormously heat-producing, and the water to cool these chips is fresh water, so it's often coming from the same reserves that are used for drinking water. >> these are basically customer deployments, where they are running critical infrastructure in their applications. >> bill strong the data centers in silicon valley for an operator of 260 of the nearly
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11,000 centers that operate worldwide. the company leases space to firms like at&t, google cloud, to run servers that power their cloud and ai operations, and they are expanding. this is where ai-like processors would go? >> correct. this is a high density deployment. we are taking the building's water. it comes into here. each of these goes into a chip on a customer's server. >> these are nozzles? >> correct. cools the chip, the hot air comes back, ties into our chilled water system, gets cooled, and that is how we are able to provide liquid cooling for these higher density ai-type deployments. >> this silicon valley complex alone features 345,000 square feet of servers. thousands of them operating 24/7 . the company's global energy
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budget as of last year -- same as 750,000 u.s. homes. >> we have had estimates from near 2% to 8%. >> even at the low end -- >> to present his around the same energy budget as the netherlands -- 2% is around the same energy budget is the netherlands. >> christopher willis runs sustainability. >> what we don't know yet, for example, is what will be the benefits to society from an energy perspective. >> such as cap >> we are able to optimize flight pathways and save you will for air canada. i lot of focus is on how much energy ai will use, but the energy that is consumed, for instance, in training these large language models is not
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lost. >> researchers are now investigating different sorts of technical architectures, in particular, what are called small language models, models that use much less data and therefore less energy. we are also starting to see regulators pay attention. theirl report to congress which is looking specifically at ai's environmental impacts. >> solar panels are supplying half a megawatt of power. when the solar panels are active, we are not pulling from the local utility source. >> these panels fuel and mirror 3% of the facility so far, but with solar capacity doubling every three years, maybe this guy is the limit. >> ultimately, i think that will all be very net positive. >> techno up to mr. reid hoffman, creator of linkedin, puts his faith in ai itself. >> a much earlier version 10 years ago figured out how to
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save power. in the ongoing week by week operation of the data center. if we are generating ai's that can help with this kind of thing, it takes a bunch of system training, but then it helps us figure out how to operate our electrical grids much better. >> but near term, warns kate crawford -- >> it's inevitable we will see price pressures if we continue to have these sorts of pressures on the electrical grid. >> answer the age-old horse race between the cost of utility compared with benefits. geoff: now to another story from "the newshour's" summer reporting live student academy
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were teenagers come together to hone their journalism and storytelling skills. the washington national cathedral hired its first female stonemason this year, and she joins a team overseeing the installation of stone tablets that symbolize the cathedral's mission to be a sacred gathering place where all americans see themselves reflected. >> that are all my boys, sean and andy and joe. i would not be here without them. they all teach me something different, and i appreciate them so much. >> the newest addition to the crew of stonemasons at the national cathedral in washington, d.c. 24 years old, she is the same age as they had stonemason when he began working at the cathedral in 1989. the team is repairing damage from the 2011 earthquake. >> i am very glad she will be
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part of that once we are gone. here you go. and then here you go. and now, here you go. that is how it works, passing on your trade, your knowledge to someone else, to the next generation. so make yourself obsolete is not a feature, that's the goal. >> she discovered stone masonry at a coffee shop. >> a guy came in covered in dust, and i was so taken by him. i don't know why. something clicked in my brain. i said, i got to do this. >> she and krebs -- she inscribes stone with her mason's mark, which stonemasons use to mark their work. >> it's like my putting my small piece in two their masterpiece.
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>> cathedrals are so permanent. it reflects different eras and different styles in history. it is a gothic, ancient-looking cathedral, but it is also in my opinion distinctly american. >> last year, the national cathedral installed new stained glass windows representing the ongoing struggle for racial justice. these now and forever windows replaced stained-glass windows commemorating confederate general robert e. lee and stonewall jackson. >> taking down some of these monuments is important because you are trying to tell the truth because a lot of these monuments , you know, glossed over the history. you saw what happened in charlottesville, and right after that happened is when the cathedral made the decision that that needed to change. >> elizabeth alexander wrote the poem "america's song" to cover
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the windows. >> how did we get here and where do we go? >> stone carvers inscribed stone tablets. the stonemason team at the national cathedral will be permanently installing those tablets below the windows. the cathedral calls itself a house of prayer for all people, and they hope this installation tells a more inclusive and honest history of america. >> it is a beautiful limestone building, but it is not necessarily avoiding the past, but just getting better from it, which it's really neat to be part of. >> i don't know what the big thing is going to be 100 years from now, but there is space in this cathedral to reflect whatever is going on at that time, and that is what cathedrals are supposed to do, right? they tell stories in stone and glass and metal and all of that.
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geoff: you can watch more stories from our southern -- summer academy online. that is "the newshour" for tonight. amna: thank you for joining us. >> major funding for "the pbs newshour" has been provided by -- ♪ >> moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> that ongoing support of these
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individuals and institutions and friends of "the newshour," including the judy and peter blinkova foundation. the ford foundation, and with the ongoing support of these 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. this is "pbs newshour west" from weta studios in washington and
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from our bureau at the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.]
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