captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: construction of new homes dropped more than 10% in april as foreclosed properties

continue to saturate the market. good evening. i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. on the newshour tonight, we examine the latest housing numbers and what they mean for the struggling economy. >> woodruff: newshour political editor david chalian updates who's in and who's out of the race for the 2012 g.o.p. presidential nomination. >> woodruff: ray suarez talks to dr. anthony fauci about a new clinical study showing early hiv/aids treatment can help prevent the spread of the disease. >> if you know you're infected and you get on a treatment program and you link to care you've a dual positive effect: good for the person and good to prevent infection. >> woodruff: from bahrain, margaret warner reports on the sectarian fault lines in the persian gulf kingdom. >> ifill: and jeffrey brown interviews science and technology author james gleick about his new book chronicling the evolution of information. >> woodruff: that's all ahead on tonight's newshour.

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years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. and the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: there was fresh evidence today of weakness in the housing market and the overall economic recovery. new me cstruction was expected to rise, but it fell

last month by more than 10%, and new building permits dropped by 4%. the housing news followed other troubling data, including the continuing foreclosure problems. in the broader economy, factory output slowed in april, after the earthquake in japan caused an auto parts shortage. and a day earlier, economists in a national survey predicted that g.d.p. will now grow by less than 3% this year. we take a look at the developments on housing and its impact with guy cecala, the publisher of the trade journal "inside mortgage finance," and dina elboghdady of "the washington post." we thank you both for being here. >> good to be here. >> woodruff: what do these numbers say about the health of the housing industry? >> quite simply they say that home builders are reluctant to build new houses. it's because they know they can't sell the houses. demand for all types of housing is down. this is the first step. the construction of new houses. then the next step, of course, is sales of new houses which

are down also. i think tomorrow the existing home numbers are coming out. those are expected to be down too. it's a series of bad news. >> woodruff: but this was not the expectation. it was thought that things would be better. >> well, yes. they were expected to be better because we're going into the home-buying season. april is a good month in terms of normal home sales. that's when most people get out of the houses after a long winter and go out and buy homes. it's particularly disturbing to see declining numbers as you enter the peak home-buying season. >> woodruff: what's behind it? >> well, clearly the problem is there's too much foreclosed properties still on the market which is driving down home prices and that the average foreclosed home is still selling for much less than someone can build a new home for. so it makes it particularly hard to move new homes. that's why they're hit the hardest. >> woodruff: you're saying that's the main cause that is is at work here. >> yes.

mostly that's just the price issue. also the demand issue with more news coming out that home prices are continuing to slide. most parts of the country home buyers are reluctant to jump off the fence and buy a new home because they don't want it to go down 10 mrs in the first year that we have it. mortgage underwriting standards are another big problem. a lot less people can qualify for a mortgage these days. that's reducing demand overall. >> woodruff: that was something that we had thought was getting better as well. but it hasn't. >> no, not really. >> woodruff: dina elboghdady, let's turn to you. we've heard guy cecala mentions foreclosures. we know there are negotiations underway between the banks and the state attorneys general and the federal government. what have they been trying to accomplish? >> basically this started back in september when there were widespread reports of mishandling of foreclosure work. allied financial, an employee said he had signed off on thousands of documents without

verifying their accuracy. so there were lots of different lawsuits. there were lots of reports looking at various different institutiones. it was a rather widespread problem of what they call robo- signing. there were also problems with forged signatures, people at the institutions who were not signing the documents that they claimed to have signed. so that caused an uproar. there are there were many different investigations both at the state level and at the federal level. the federal law enforcement, state law enforcement decided to join forces. most of the attorneys general in the 50 states and the people at the department of justice of urban development and the department of treasury are now trying to negotiate a settlement with the five largest servicers in the country and trying to figure out what kinds of penalties should apply. >> woodruff: trying to get them to do what? so that the foreclosure crisis would look like what if they were able to make progress. >> what they would like to do at least at the start of the negotiations they were talking about having these mortgage servicers pay something upward

of $20 billion in fines. and then use these fines to reduce the mortgage balances of people whose homes were underwater, meaning people who owed more on their mortgages than their homes were worth. that has become a major sticking point. the banks are resisting. some of the a.g.s are saying, wait a second. that's not fair. that's not really the crux of the problem. so the unified front that was there at the beginning sort of falling apart a little bit as far as the a.g.s are concerned. one state attorney general in oklahoma already said he had prepared to break ranks if they push this proposal to reduce the mortgage balances. others are saying this isn't going far enough. >> woodruff: what happens if they can't reach any agreement? >> well, that is a possibility. maybe then the a.g.s go on their own and each separate state try and go after the banks on their own terms. >> woodruff: which would mean an even slower resolution? >> yes, yes. i mean all of this... they

said back in march they said it would take a few more months. you know, here we are in may. they don't seem to progress much further. >> woodruff: guy cecala back to your comment a few minutes ago that the foreclosure are at the center of what's happening in the housing market. if it doesn't get resolved what does that mean going forward? >> it drags out any resolution of the problem meaning ultimately you have to get the foreclosures done, the properties have to be sold to new buyers. new homeowners have to move into the properties. you have to go through that system before you can talk about any sort of housing recovery. right now close to 50% of all home sales transactions are distressed properties. the loans and loans being sold by defaulted borrowers. until you get that cleared up, you're not going to have any home price appreciation or increase in home prices which is is one of the fundamental problems. >> woodruff: i'll ask both of you to step back a bit.

what effect is what's going on in the housing industry having on the broader... the recovery? i mean this recovery was supposed to have begun, was technically did begin almost two years ago. here we are almost, you know, the middle of 2011, dina elboghdady, and things are worse in housing. >> right. housing was in the past usually leads us out of a recession. right now it really is lagging behind in terms of the economic recovery. part of the reason right now is the joblessness. i mean there's been a stubborn problem with unemployment. that doesn't seem to be getting fixed fast enough. so, you know, i mean just to put it simply, no jobs, no mortgage. you just can't buy a house. you can't stay in the one you have. >> woodruff: how does it look from your perspective in terms of the housing industry and how it fits into the bigger economic recovery. >> what a lot of people don't realize is housing generates a lot of sales and economic factors in the country beyond just all the people employed in real estate, home building,

mortgage finance. you have all the people who sell appliances, home improvement, things to decorate houses. if you have less home sales you see less across the board in all those durable sales going on. that has a negative impact and puts the brakes on the economy. >> woodruff: from the perspective of people inside the industry, as they look to the future, as you and you who watch them look to the future, what do you see? >> we keep pushing back on any sort of recovery. i think a year ago we were talking about maybe by the middle of 2011 we start to see some improvement. right now based on the housing numbers we've seen we're already talking about the middle or late 2012. i think that's going to continue. as long as the numbers remain bad, we're going to keep looking out further. realistically we're looking at another two years at this point. >> woodruff: how does it look to you as somebody who covers housing and focuses on the

foreclosure problem. >> prices keep tumbling and people didn't expect them to be tumbling at this point. people expected more stabilization. the fact that they're still tumbling, that the analysts keep saying maybe by the end of this year things will stabilize. maybe next year things will stabilize. it's not good news at this point. >> woodruff: the folks you talk to in the federal government and the state government level, none of them have any... do they have any kind of prospect for a solution anymore optimistic than what we've been talking about. >> right now they've been talking about the federal government getting out of the mortgage business because so many of the mortgages out there are guaranteed by the federal government. i don't see how they can do that any time soon given the state of things right now. >> woodruff: all right. we are going to leave it there at that fairly pessimistic level. dina elboghdady, thank you very much. guy, thank you. >> ifill: still to come on the newshour: the g.o.p. presidential field;

sectarian fault lines in bahrain; reducing hiv/aids transmission; and the very human desire to disseminate information. but first, with the other news of the day, here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: wall street had its third losing day in a row. the economic news and a forecast of weaker sales at tech giant hewlett packard weighed on stocks. the dow jones industrial average dropped more than 68 points to close at 12,479. it had been down as much as 170 points. the nasdaq rose less than a point to close at 2,783. the coast guard closed part of the mississippi river today and there's no word on when it will reopen. traffic at natchez, mississippi, was suspended because wakes from passing barges could put even more pressure on levees. meanwhile, floodwater continued a slow creep across louisiana's cajun country. but governor bobby jindal said the army corps of engineers' latest forecast has improved slightly. >> lowered the amount of water. they've reduced an area where they expect there to be significant back-water flooding but there are still areas that will be inundated.

we encourage people to get the best information for your particular community, for your property. and then finally do listen to the guidance from your local officials. >> sreenivasan: nearly 5,000 people have already evacuated their homes as they await the flooding. pakistani troops exchanged shots with a nato helicopter today in a new incident on the afghan border. the pakistanis said two soldiers were wounded. it happened in the north waziristan tribal region, a known sanctuary for taliban and al qaeda militants. nato and pakistani officials gave conflicting accounts of which side of the border the helicopter was on when the shooting started. anti-government protesters in syria have called for a nationwide general strike for tomorrow. it is their latest attempt to force president bashar assad to end a brutal crackdown and give up power. the strike call came as scores more syrians crossed into lebanon. they told of mass killings by security forces in a syrian border town. queen elizabeth ii began her historic visit to ireland today.

it is the first by a british monarch in more than a century. the 85-year-o queen arrived in dublin under heavy security, hours after a bomb was found on a bus near the city. she later met with ireland's president, and laid a wreath honoring rebels who fought against british control. the u.s. senate debated gas prices and tax breaks for big oil companies today. democrats pushed a measure to repeal the tax breaks and save the federal government $21 billion over the next decade. senator chuck schumer of new york said the companies can afford it. fine at almost every level of their business. and we're giving them a tax payor subsidy at a time when we have record deficits? give me a break. we believe it's a no-brainer. we believe it's long overdue. these companies should be lookeded into, not lavished with handouts. >> sreenivasan: republicans like john thune of south dakota argued the democratic plan does not get at the real issue, the cost of filling up. >> for the average american what this translates into is

the price for a gallon of gasoline. that's what they care about. that's the economic impact on their pocketbook. it's not everybody who has looked at this has said that this will do nothing to reduce the price of gasoline at the pump for the average american. >> sreenivasan: republicans plan to offer their own bill tomorrow to increase offshore drilling. neither bill has the 60 votes needed to get past filibusters. former california governor arnold schwarzenegger has admitted he fathered a child with a former household staffer. he issued a statement last night after the "los angeles times" interviewed the woman. the child was born before he first ran for governor in 2003. schwarzenegger said he told his wife, maria shriver, after leaving office in january. last week, the couple announced they have separated. the hall of fame slugger whose silhouette inspired baseball's logo died today. harmon killebrew passed away at his home in scottsdale, arizona. he had cancer of the esophagus. killebrew began his 22-year career with the washington senators in 1954, and moved with the team when it became the minnesota twins. he hit 573 home runs and boasted

eight seasons with 40 or more, second only to babe ruth. harmon killebrew was 74 years old. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to gwen. >> ifill: next, the shaking up of the unsettled republican presidential nomination contest. from raising big money to performing damage control, the race to take on president obama has become increasingly active. the alternately shrinking and expanding campaign for the 2012 republican presidential nomination has shifted once again. on monday, former massachusetts governor mitt romney, who is not even officially in the race yet, changed its parameters by announcing he had raised $10 million in a single day. meanwhile, former house speaker newt gingrich, who joined the race last week, was on the defensive with many of his fellow republicans after dismissing a house plan to reform medicare as "right wing social engineering." appearing on "meet the press"

sunday, gingrich appeared to veer off-message when he seemed to support forcing individuals to purchase health insurance, the most disputed part of the new health care law. >> i've said consistently, we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance, or you post a bond, or in some way you indicate you're going to be held accountable. >> ifill: but gingrich immediately sought to step away from those comments yesterday, releasing a youtube video. >> i am for the repeal of "obamacare," and i am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone, because it is fundamentally wrong and, i believe, unconstitutional. >> ifill: as candidates drop in and out, the republican field is gradually taking shape. real estate mogul donald trump dominated the coverage of the race only weeks ago after raising questions about whether president obama was born in the united states. but yesterday, after weeks of mockery and new questions about his business acumen, he said he would not run after all. >> i've decided we're going to

continue onward with "celebrity apprentice." we're going to continue making lots and lots of money for charity. i will not be running for president, as much as i'd like to. >> ifill: a potentially more consequential decision, especially for social conservatives, came from former arkansas governor mike huckabee, who announced over the weekend he would forgo a second run for president. >> my answer is clear and firm-- i will not seek the republican nomination for president this year. >> ifill: the recent flurry of political activity has only intensified the pressure and rutiny on a handful of other undecided candidates, including indiana governor mitch daniels, former utah governor jon huntsman, minnesota congresswoman michele bachmann, and 2008 vice presidential nominee sarah palin. for more, we turn to newshour political editor david chalian. david, $10 million in one day is not chump change. mitt romney may be unofficially in the race. >> since he's indicated that

he is very serious about making another run for the white house, almost all of the coverage of mitt romney, gwen, has been about his flaws as a candidate. why is he such a flawed frontrunner? his health care position, questions about his authenticity. today was a day for the romney campaign to put forward their strength. that was the purpose of this. we don't have other fund raising reports. the candidates don't have to report until the middle of july. this is in a vacuum where in one day they put out a total of $10.15 million. we have nothing to compare it to. four years ago when he did this he raised $6 million. for the first three months of his last run in 2007 he raised a total of about $23 million. his fund-raisers are talking about this quarter the first of this race $40 million. that will wipe away the rest of the republican field. >> ifill: he sets the bar and everyone has to chase him. you talk about people who are flawed candidates.

newt gingrich's official candidacy is only a week old. he seems to be tripping over his tongue. >> reporter: it's astonishing to see what a tough week he'd had so far. part of it, gwen, remember, newt gingrich came into office, the last time he held public office was 13 years ago. we're in a new technological environment. newt gingrich is somebody who embraces this technology. he went right to you-tube to try to clarify but he's operating in a world that he hasn't really had to operate in with this level of scrutiny when he was back the house speaker in 1998. this just wasn't the environment. what he did here by sort of stiff-arming paul ryan, the house republican budget plan that we've talked about that wants to change medicare, by sort of stiff-arming that he just incurreded the wrath of the republicans from the wall street journal editorial page, national review. these are constituencies you need to court when running in a republican primary. when paul ryan's budget passeded, gwen, we commented on all the presidential candidates. they commended ryan for his

bravery. none of them had embraced it because it doesn't poll very well this medicare change. newt gingrich was starting to run a general election and appealed to the fact this this isn't polling very well to a general election audience. he forgot he has a primary to run here. the entire party felt offended. today he had to get on a call with conservative bloggers and say he's reaching out to paul ryan. he used words that were far too strong. this is is somebody who has had really heated rhetoric in the last several years without an office and now he's going to have to be much more cautious of his language. >> ifill: we know for sure two people who are out. mike huckabee, donald trump. let's measure which is the more important of the two. >> without a doubt mike huckabee's decision not to run though not a surprise i think is probably the single biggest development we've had in the race thus far because of the space he occupied in the field. he has a really strong appeal to social conservatives. he won the iowa caucuses the last time around. he also struck a cord with the economic populism out in the country especially fervent

right now. it drove a lot of the 2010 environment as the republicans tapped into that tea party energy and overtook the house. i think it leaves a big gaping hole for somebody else to get in to do both social conservative and that economic populous language. donald trump.... >> ifill: no gaping hole left there. >> has almost no impact on the race whatsoever except causes those of us in the press to consider how much attention we gave it. >> ifill: just calm down just a little bit. but the people who might be interested in stepping into that vacuum, such as it is, one is michelle bachman the congresswoman from minnesota. the other one who everyone is waiting to see what he does is mitch daniels the governor of indiana. >> mitch daniels said i promise it won't take me very long. it's only been a couple of weeks since the end of the indiana legislature. i do think we'll hear from him in the next week or two. about a decision here. every day i think that the odd's makers can come up with a different answer of what they think he's going to do.

michelle bachman the congresswoman from minnesota is is a natural fit for the huckabee voter world. she has iowa roots. she's from there. she could make a very strong play amongst the caucus goers in iowa. she's somebody to watch. her aides are saying she's all about certain to get into the race. >> ifill: she can easily differentiate herself not only on gender but also on politics. >> no doubt about it. she is the head of the tea party caucus in the congress. she is the representative of this new sort of virulent strand of politics going on inside the republican party. certnly gender also. she'll obviously look different than anybody else on that debate stage. she'll get a lot of attention. >> ifill: david chalian, as always, thank you. >> sure. >> woodruff: now to some dramatic findings from a recent aids study and what they suggest about using drugs for the prevention of the disease. ray suarez has the story. >> suarez: the power of

anti-aids drugs in treating patients has been well documented but a breakthrough study has found new evence showing drugs can help prevent the spread of h.i.v. in fact, the results were so powerful that researchers stopped the trial early. they followed 1,800 couples in nine countries including some in southern africa. nearly were heterosexual. in each case one partner was infected. half of the infected partners were given the drugs immediately. half were given treatment only after their infection level reached a certain threshold. drugs prevented transmission in a uninfected partners by 96%. out of 28 people who were infected by their partner, 27 were not given the drugs initially. for more about the findings and the questions they raise, we're joined by the n.i.h.'s dr. anthony fauci, the head of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases which funded the study. bottom line, what do you know now that you weren't sure of before? >> well, it's a definitive

study because, as you pointed out, it was ramdomized in the sense of half of the couples got the drug immediately or earlier than you normally would give it to them. and half waitedntil they reached a certain threshold. and the difference we already know from many studies that if you give drug to an individual who is infected you benefit the person. there was some suggestions that if you treat a person, you would lower the probability of their transmitting the infection to their sexual partner. but this study was definitive and extremely impressive because the differences were extraordinarily significant. 27 infections of the 28 were in those whose drug was delayed and only one in those who received the drug immediately. so this adds very, very strong scientific credence that you can use treatment of h.i.v. as an effective prevention modality by decreasing the possibility that a person who

is infected would transmit it to their sexual partner. >> suarez: didn't we already know that if you put people on aids drugs it suppresses the amount of virus if their system and makes them less likely to infect someone else. >> the answer is we knew it by observational study but what we didn't have with absolute definitive data that the earlier-- when i say earlier i mean when a person is early in the course of their disease before their immune system declines to that critical point where you absolutely must put them on therapy-- so we knew that the earlier the better broadly. but we didn't specifically ask the question in what we call a ramdomized study where you actually divide them into two groups and you simultaneously compare the results in each. when we did that, the data were overwhelmingly positive. >> suarez: in some countries with a large h.i.v.-positive population they don't start treatment until the disease has already progressed some

way because they simply don't have the wherewithal to do it. >> exactly. >> suarez: what's the lesson that those countries should take away from this study? >> there's going to be a lot of soul searching and examination on the part of authoritative organizations like the w.h.o., who are very interested in this. a variety of other organizations that are making investments in how the best way to contain the h.i.v. pandemic. there's obviously going to be tension between the fact that there are many people with advanced disease who we still have not gotten to in the sense of getting treatment to them. so when you're trying to balance an investment in treating people even earlier to prevent infection we're going to have to balance the risk-benefit of that in the sense that one of the ways of up-front investment now of treating people early will have a secondary benefit of preventing new infections which are ultimately going to have to treat anyway so there's a lot of good, active discussion going on right now about what this is going to mean to policy, to guidelines

or what have you. >> suarez: in places in the world where they don't have money to do everything, they have to decide with every dollar whether they use that money to check on people's status, whether they use that money to do screenings for other diseases, whether they use that money to treat things that have nothing to do with h.i.v.. how do you make that call? >> you make calls based on scientific data. so just because this study shows this doesn't mean that every country or any country is going to have the resources to be able to enact it given the points that you just made. there are a lot of competing priorities. but it's important to at least have the scientific data and not guess. let me give you an example. right here in this country, we recommend that if an individual should start therapy if they're infected when their count is between a certain bracket. they also recommend that you should even consider if it's higher. in other words, the earlier,

the better. when the physicians speak to the patients, they have to give them all the data about what the ris and the benefit is. now when you con sument... consult with the physician and you're trying to make a decision when to start therapy, the physician can say with with absolute certainty that they know from a scientific trial that not only would it be beneficial to you but it would dramatically decrease the possibility that you would transmit it to your sexual partner. whatever the decision is up to them. it's important to know the scientific data. that's why had this study is important. >> suarez: if you are in the united states, is it already accepted as a given that you should be put on antiretrovirals once it's found that you're h.i.v. positive? or are there places that make you wait or there's a waiting listor a shortage here in the united states. >> unfortunately there's waiting lists but there's another issue. there's 1.1 million people in this country who are infected with h.i.v.. 21% of them do not know that they're infected. we in the cdc and a variety of

other organizations are trying to push what's called seeking out people, getting them voluntary tested and putting them on therapy. the fact that that would be good not only for the individual but would also prevent them from infecting others has huge implications because the people who are transmitting infections for the most part are those who don't even know that they're infected. if you know you're infected and you get on a treatment program and you link to care, you have a dual positive effect. good for the person. and good to prevent infection. so it has implications in the developed world like the united states and australia and western europe, canada, et cetera. but it also has implications for policy in the developing world. treatment can be used as one of a combination of modalities for prevention. >> suarez: dr. anthony fauci, thanks for joining us. >> good to be here.

>> ifill: next tonight, the crushing of the arab spring in the persian gulf nation of bahrain. margaret warner reports on how events there have widened the divide between shia and sunni muslims. >> warner: approaching downtown manama, bahrain doesn't feel like a country in turmoil. skyscrapers gleam in the sun of this tiny persian gulf financial hub ruled by a 200-year-old sunni monarchy. the stock market, though foreign investment has stalled, appears to be humming along. but all is not as it seems. some shoppers have returned to the malls, but hotels and restaurants are hurting. tourists are still staying away, a blow to the economy of this island kingdom. it touts itself as a tolerant playground for visitors from socially conservative gulf neighbors and beyond. that's a hard sell with armed

troops and riot police vehicles on city streets, enforcing a state of emergency in effect since march 15. checkpoints dot the roadways between the capital and suburban villages where many of the country's shia majority live. >> we stop them and ask for i.d., and ask them their purpose, why are they coming into this village. >> warner: lieutenant taher alawi sayshe checkpoints have made the villages safer. residents say it feels like a state of siege. >> when we tried to leave our village they said, "no, you cannot leave it, you have to go back. we don't care. whatever reason you have for leaving, you will go back." >> warner: the state of emergency came in response to month-long demonstrations inspired by the revolutions in tunisia and egypt. the protestors, mostly shias but sunnis, too, had occupied the city's landmark pearl roundabout, calling for greater freedoms and opportunity. after early clashes that killed

some demonstrators, security forces let them stay, until they blocked the road to the city's vital financial district. 1,500 troops from saudi arabia and other gulf states came in to back up bahraini forces as they imposed a violent crackdown. today, the financial district and pearl roundabout are free of protestors, though we weren't permitted to film the roundabout to show you the military presence there. but this country is polarized now by two opposing narratives. most sunnis think the crackdown is essential to restoring bahrain's order and prosperity; most shias think the crackdown is systematically targeting them and widening the sectarian divide. in relatively poor shia villages like diraz, the signs of political resistance today are subtle-- graffiti urging "down every week, worshippers from nearby villages flock to diraz

to hear the country's leading shiite cleric, ayatollah shaikh isa qassim. last friday, he urged them to continue to fight for their rights, but by peaceful means. after the service, the veiled woman identifying herself only as zeinab described the night raids her relatives and friends have endured. >> they will just attack, break the door and enter. i am very scared of being attacked at house and my children being terrorized. they are trying to crush our pride, crush our dignity. and we are trying to keep it peaceful. i don't know how long this could go on. >> warner: these two young sisters, who also took pains to cover their faces, said the shias feel powerless. >> i can't believe what's happened here. we want you to help us. we are in a big problem here, and we don't know what to do.

>> warner: at that moment, after spotting riot police s.u.v.s circling the village, they fled. nabil rajab, president of the bahrain center for human rights, says the raids are part of a wider pattern of brutality. he says more than 1,000 bahrainis, mostly shia, have been swept up in a revolving door of detentions. >> among them are men, women, journalists, doctors, nurses, unionists, from all sort of professions. and the most of them were systematically tortured. many women were sexually harassed and assaulted. >> warner: four people have died in cuody-- rajab charges fou play. he showed us photos of the bruised body of one such victim, ali isa saqir. five prison guards are being charged with saqir's death. that's according to bahrain's minister of justice, sheikh khaled bin ali bin abdulla al

khalifa, one of the royal family. has there been abuse of detainees in prison? >> do you think it is for me to confirm that ere is an abuse or not. the policy of the government is to respect human right and not to tolerate any human rights abuses. >> warner: and there's no difference between policy and practice? >> there is a big combination between them. >> warner: another new tactic-- the destruction of shia holy sites; at least two dozen so far. a month ago, this pile of rubble in a village we visited was a mosque. so were these columns in another village nearby. sheikh khaled, whose ministry also oversees islamic affairs, says the destroyed structures were on private or city land. >> these lands and these buildings were not licensed. the bottom line with this is if you have a licensed worship place, nobody can touch it and

the government will protect it. >> warner: also targeted-- health workers, many of them at the country's huge salmaniya hospital center, besieged with injuries during the protests, as shown on this cell phone-shot youtube video. it became a flash point when, authorities say, protestors and shia staff sympathizers essentially took over. one experienced shia doctor, whose identity we agreed to hide, said she had done full day-time duty at the hospital, then volunteered at a medical clinic in the roundabout at night. >> i was handcuffed and blindfolded, and then i was taken to a separate room, which was very, very cold. they asked me to remain standing for a few hours in this situation with the blindfolded and handcuffed. >> warner: and were your hands behind your back? >> behind yes, in the back.

after a few hours, i was really very tired, so they allowed me to lie down on the floor without a blanket, without anything in that cold room. and it was really very scary because i don't know what will be, happen to me next. >> warner: did anyone say to you why they called you down in the first place? >> no, no, not at all. when they started the questioning, they slapped me actually very hard on my face. it was three times before they started questioning, and then they started questioning, and during the interrogation, whenever i said something which they don't like it, they will slap me again. and i was beaten also by a hose on my hands and my thighs. when i finished, they took me back to the other room, and they came to me later on. in the dark, still, i was blindfolded. they gave me the paper of confession to sign and from... thumb print, exactly what was

there in that paper. >> warner: and did they read you what was on the paper? >> no, not at all. i was just ask to gn it and thumbprint. >> warner: what were they tryin to get you to say? >> they were trying, first, to accuse some other people, especially one of the doctors. >> warner: so they were trying to get you to implicate other people? >> yes, yes. >> warner: weeks later, inexplicably, she was set free. now home, she's afraid to go public, her medical license is suspended, and she's unsure about her future. why do you think the regime was coming after particularly medical professionals in the shia community? >> they don't wantanyone to speak up to the public that they have seen what happened, because in their news, they are seeing that there were very few injured people and just we are exaggerating these things. >> warner: why are you speaking up this way to me now? >> i have my colleagues detained now for up to two months, so something to be done for their

immediate release. we cannot do anything for us. i think we need the u.s. government to speak up for us in public, and to do sometng for us. >> we are talking about sulmaniya being seized. >> warner: the government defends the detentions as a needed investigative tool to get to the bottom of what happened at the hospital. i asked the justice minister about the doctor's case. >> the policy of the government is against any form of maltreatment. if she is really finding that her rights have been abused and this truly happened to her, she has to-- and my advice to anyone like her-- is to go directly to the ministry of interior or the public prosecution and file a case against the one that she knows or doesn't know that he may inflicted this harm to her. this is the way we should deal with these things in the country.

it doesn't... to go to the media without evidence. >> warner: and would reprisals take place against her family? >> there has never been any kind of reprisals. we don't go for reprisals. ths is not the government of bahrain. >> warner: not far from the shia villages but a world away, hisham abul fath, an investment banker and host on state-owned bahrain tv, was enjoying a saturday afternoon with his wife, heba abdul wahab, and their toddler son at a shopping mall's indoor playground. this sunni family is grateful for the crackdown, for restoring order and some sense of calm. >> work is going back to normal and everything is moving back peacefully today, but the intensity of what has happened has led us all to be in fear. we were scared. we were not only scared about our lives, but scared of what's next. what's going to happen to us? we've got families. i've got a kid. my wife's pregnant.

>> warner: the last thing they wanted to see in bahrain was an arab spring-style revolution. >> i disagree on people comparing what's happened to bahrain to what's happened in egypt and tunisia. because i just don't see that we... we have the same problems they have. we live a better life, that's for sure. >> look at egypt, they're suffering. tunisia, all those countries are now almost in absolute chaos. is that the better quality of life that they told us would happen if the regime were not in place? >> warner: abdul wahab, a dermatologist at sulmanyia hospital, thinks the detentions of shia doctors-- who she said made sunni doctors and patients feel unwelcome -- is more than justified. >> from my perspective, it was a... such a scary place to go to. i used to cry in the morning when i was going to work. i was too scared. what's happeng in salmaniya was completely unethical.

those nurses and doctors deserve to be prosecuted and punished, and some... some of those doctors and nurses, even their degree, their medical degree should be taken away. >> warner: another grateful sunni-- jamal fakhro, vice-chair of the royally appointed shura council. he heads an international accounting firm's 300-person office here. >> i was not able to come to enter my office with my people for a week. why? because the protestors blocked the street themselves. it wasn't blocked by the... by the government; it was blocked by the demonstrators. it was very important for us to have this law of... of national security. if we didn't have it, you wouldn't have the bahrain you see today. >> warner: to send a message to world investors and travelers that things are getting back to normal in bahrain, the king declared last week that the state of emergency would end june 1.

and the monarchy says its committed to further reforms and dialogue. sheikh ali salman, head of the leading predominantly shia opposition party, al wefaq, says he's ready to talk. but he says feelings are so raw now that he can't guarantee his followers won't want to return to the streets instead. >> ( translated ): the authorities were gambling on bringing fears to the people so that they will not march again. all what you have planted is more motivation to march again. >> warner: most sunnis and shias alike told us they need each other if they want to preserve the good life this island enjoys. but they also say this crisis has widened the fault line of mistrust between them. if that sectarian divide widens further, what happens in this persian gulf kingdom could have a ripple effect across the region. >> woodruff: margaret will continue her reporting from bahrain through this week.

>> ifill: finally tonight, putting some perspective on our modern era of information overload by tracing its evolution back to a pre-digital time. jeffrey brown has our book conversation. >> brown: we seek to connect and impart and gather ideas knowledge directions to the grocery store, gogs up, everything. we use letters, numbers, codes and we read and write those ancient things called books and google our way through databases and search engines. we email and some of us even use the telephone to make phone calls. it's both a very new and very old story filled with technological achievements, abstract theories and colorful characters. it's told in the new book, the information. its author is leading science and technology writer james gleick. welcome to you. >> thank you. >> brown: this is an ambitious task i thought to myself as i

opened it here. what story were you trying to tell? >> information used to be a small thing. it was not a very interesting word. suddenly it seems to be everything. all the things you just listed: books, messages, google. we know now that music is a form of information, that visual images are information. and they are bombarding us. >> brown: it's everywhere. >> it's everywhere. so i wanted to tell the story of how our sense that all of this stuff is of a related species came to be. how we learned to talk about information in a very modern way. >> brown: so you went back in time to look at this, including back to what we think of as primitive forms of information technology. african drums. >> that's right. we can look back now and, because we know that the internet is a kind of information technology and computers are information processing machines, it brings into focus the fact that books are an older information technology and they are akin

to telegraph wires and the talking drums of africa and a bugle sounds and smoke signals and more obviously the later waves of electrical communication that came after the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, the television. it's all the same thing. >> brown: t drums, the legraph, the radio, the internet. all of that. you write at one point the same paradox was destined to reappear in different guyss. each technology of information bringing its own power and its own fears. >> in our time we worry that there's too much information, that there's an information glut that the last word in my subtitle is a flood. it's only fairly recently that we've been able to talk about information glut or information overload as a thing to be feared or worried about. but maybe it's a little bit reassuring to discover that allf these information

technologies brought the same sort of anxieties. people in the early era of the printing press worried about what it would mean when there were just too many books? if there are 10,000 books on earth it means that no one scholar can have a grasp of all recorded knowledge anymore. that was felt to be a sort of turning point. it was a sort of turning point. people complained about it. now we complain about too many books too but everything is on a different scale. >> brown: when you talk about the fears that have run through time. there's also confusion. there was my favorite moment here is where you tell of a mother who came to the new telegraph office. i think it was a dish of sauerkraut and told the operator she wanted to send that to her son. >> right. >> brown: she just didn't understand what the telegraph was supposed to convey. >> and all of the vocabulary was changing. all of our most basic understanding of messages, for example, changed. another of those early telegraph stories involves

somebody who goes to the telegraph office with a message written out and hands it to the operator and says send it. and the operator taps away, hooks the message up on the hook and says, okay, it's sent. and she says, no, it isn't. i see it right there. >> brown: (laughing) >> we know that a message is something abstract. it's something that you can express in bits. something you can store in a computer and send by e-mail. in different media. these things had to be learned. >> brown: speaking of abstract-- and this is one of the most interesting concept and is hard to talk about. you must have found it hard to write about it. you referred to 1948 this idea of information theory claude shannon a famous figure in all of this perhaps better known to the general public. but he talked about divorcing meaning from the act of passing information, right? meaning was irrelevant to the

engineering. >> exacy. >> brown: i think that's how he put it. >> that's what he said. well, he was an engineer and a mathematician. a very good mathematician. thinking in grand terms because he was trying to solve not just little problems of communication but really what we see now is a very grand problem. he was associating electrical circuits with logic. we know now that an if-then circuit is something real and it's something that our computers are made of. he devised what we now call information theory which was a piece of mathematics. he gave engineers a whole bunch of tools that they could use to solve problems of compressing information for efficient transmission, for sending information in the face of noise, static on the phone lines, but to do this he had to treat information as a cold mathematical thing. and then he....

>> brown: the actual message or the meaning didn't really matter. he didn't want to think about that. >> he didn't need to think about it as an engineer. it was a string of bits. well, we sort of know that. we know that information is stored as 1s and 0s. it doesn't necessarily trouble us. >> brown: but athe same time i mean meaning is not irrelevant to human beings. if i'm sending you a message, the message is what i'm trying to convey. >> meaning is all we care about. so we worry. i mean i think the quintessential fear of information overload is that while we have access to almost infinite data, that doesn't mean we have access to all the world's knowledge. in fact finding a particular piece of knowledge, separating it from the flood of nonsense is our most serious problem. >> brown: finally, i mean, having looked at this old history, are you looking where we are today, are you optimistic, pessimistic?

all of the same? where are we at right now? >> i tend to be optimistic. i can't necessarily defend that. that might be the kind of person i am. i do think that human communication is a good thing. people worry about twitter. twitter is 140 character messages by definition you can hardly say anything profound. on the other hand, we communicate. sometimes we communicate about things that are important. we saw the use to which twitter was turned in the revolution in egypt egypt earlier this week. humorists are using twitter to tell jokes in an interesting way. it doesn't have to be profound and it doesn't have to be earth shaking but it is transformative. >> brown: all right. the new book is the information, a history of theory. james gleick, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day:

there was fresh evidence of weakness in the housing market and the overall economic recovery. new home construction fell more than 10% in april. the coast guard closed part of the lower mississippi river to ease pressure on levees. and anti-government protesters in syria called a nationwide general strike for tomorrow as they seek to force president bashar al-assad from office. and to hari sreenivasan for what's on the newshour online. hari. >> sreenivasan: global post's conor o'clery reports from dublin on queen elizabeth's historic visit to ireland, the first by a british monarch in a century. we assess how the obama administration has responded to the crisis in syria, and we compare that to the reaction to the turmoil in egypt and libya. find that on the "rundown." musician moby talks about his love of photography and his new book of images taken while on tour. that's on "art beat." all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. judy. >> woodruff: and that's the newshour for tonight. on wednesday, we'll look at the impact of the mississippi river flooding on the louisiana environment. i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill.

we'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. thank you and good night. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> i want to know what the universe... >> looks like. >> feels like. >> from deep space. >> to a microbe. >> i can contribute to the world by pursuing my passion for science. >> it really is the key to the future. >> i want to design... >> a better solar cell. >> i want to know what's really possible. >> i want to be the first to cure cancer. >> people don't really understand why things work. >> i want to be that person that finds out why. chevron >> and by bnsf railway. pacific life.

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