Transcripts For KQED PBS NewsHour 20240622

I dont know i think hes panicking. Ifill danger on the road how hackers hijack the Computer System of a car while someone else is driving. Woodruff all that and more on tonights pbs newshour. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by moving our economy for 160 years. Bnsf, the engine that connects us. Supporting social entrepreneurs and their solutions to the worlds most pressing problems skollfoundation. Org. And with the ongoing support of these institutions this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Ifill Senior Obama Administration officials were on capitol hill today to rally support behind the iran nuclear deal. House lawmakers streamed into a secure meeting room for a classified briefing from secretary of state john kerry, Energy Secretary ernest moniz, and treasury secretary jack lew. Reaction so far has been mixed, as Congress Begins its goday review period. I think its fair to say there is bipartisan skepticism about whether iran will meet its commitments under this deal, whether admin will hold them to it. And about what happens to all of irans other activities. You can always dream of a better deal but look where we were when iran was a Nuclear Threshold state before this negotiation began and consider where the deal puts you in contrast to where we were and consider the question that is difficult to answer which is imagine not doing it and where does that put you . Ifill Republican House Speaker John Boehner also vowed to do Everything Possible to stop the nuclear deal from becoming a reality. The house and senate are expected to vote on the agreement in september. Woodruff the f. B. I. Reported that the gunman who killed five u. S. Military Service Members in chattanooga, tennessee, last week, acted alone. The bureau gave an update today on its investigation into 24 yearold Muhammad Youssef abdulazeez. The special agent in charge, ed reinhold, said it was too soon to paint a full picture of abdulazeez. At this point, its too early in the investigation to determine whether or not his whether or not he had been radicalized. So we are pursuing that as a possibility, but it is too early in the investigation to determine. At this time were treating him as a homegrown violent extremist. We believe he acted on his own that day. Woodruff reinhold also said preliminary reports indicate all of the victims died from bullets from the same gun. Ifill the suspect in the deadly shooting rampage at a black church in charleston, South Carolina will face federal hate crime charges. 21yearold dylann roof killed nine black worshippers in last months attack. Today, u. S. Attorney general Loretta Lynch unveiled the charges in washington. We have here a defendant who is alleged to have harbored discriminatory views towards African Americans, to have sought out an African American house of worship, one that was particularly noted because of its age and significance, and he also sought out African American parishioners at worship, implicating several hate crimes statutes. Racially motivated violence such as this is the original domestic terrorism. Ifill no decision has been made yet on whether authorities will seek the death penalty. Woodruff there were words of warning today from the trustees who oversee the Social Security system. The Disability Trust fund will run out of money in late 2016 triggering an automatic 19 cut in benefits. The trustees urged congress to act before that happens in the middle of a president ial campaign. Congress could shift revenue from Social Securitys larger retirement fund, but republicans are pushing for fundamental changes in the program itself. Ifill more teenage girls are now using the morningafter pill. A new survey released today by the centers for Disease Control and prevention found more than one in five teen girls have taken the emergency contraceptive. Thats up from one in 12 a decade ago. The pills are more accessible now that they are available without a prescription. Woodruff in greece tonight lawmakers moved toward a crucial latenight vote to reform the countrys banking and judicial systems. The highstakes vote is required by greeces International Creditors in order to clear the way for a third round of bailout negotiations. Failure to pass the economic measures could trigger fresh fears about greeces future in the eurozone. Ifill chinese dissident ai weiwei got his passport back from the Chinese Government today. The artist posted a photo to social media showing the passport in his hands. It was confiscated four years ago, when he was detained by authorities for three months but never charged. Ai has long been outspoken against the ruling communist party. The artist plans to attend an exhibition in london this fall. The white house is in the final stages of drafting a plan to close the military prison at guantanamo bay, cuba. White house spokesman josh earnest announced that today. He sad the plan would be shared with lawmakers in congress as soon as its finished. Republicans have largely opposed president obamas plan to shut it down, arguing that transferring dangerous prisoners to other countries may lead to their eventual freedom. Woodruff scholars in britain have discovered the fragments of one of the oldest known copies of the quran. University of birmingham researchers said radiocarbon dating indicates the two page folio is at least 1,370 years old. That suggests they were written within a few years of the founding of islam. And islam scholar david thomas said the parchment could also have been made from an animal alive during the prophet mohammads lifetime. The parts of the quran that are contained in this fragment are very similar indeed to the quran as we have it today and so this tends to support the view that the quran that we now have is more or less very close, indeed, to the quran as it was brought together. Woodruff the university didnt originally realize what it had because the pages had been bound with leaves of a similar, but newer, quran manuscript from the late seventh century. Ifill stocks turned south on wall street today after disappointing tech earnings reports. The Dow Jones Industrial average lost 68 points to close at 17,851. The nasdaq fell 36 points and the s p 500 dropped five. Woodruff american novelist e. L. Doctorow has died. He passed away yesterday in new york from complications of lung cancer. Doctorow was best known for his works of historic fiction like ragtime, billy bathgate, and the march. His criticallyacclaimed novels would earn him a number of top literary honors from the National Book award to the National Humanities medal. E. L. Doctorow was 84 years old. Still to come on the newshour what does new dash cam video of Sandra Blands arrest tell us . A nazi hunter who pursues war criminals to the grave and much more. Woodruff . Ifill new developments in the case of sandra bland, the woman found dead in a texas jail three days after being arrested for a routine traffic violation. The full video of the arrest recorded from the Police Officers dashboard camera cast new light on the arrest as her family searches for answers. Okay, maam. Ifill the video shows state trooper Brian Encinia approaching Sandra Blands car on july 10th in Waller County, texas. He pulled her over for failing to signal a lane change. You seem very irritated. Ifill the dispute escalated when encinia asked bland to put out her cigarette. She refused, and he ordered her out of the car. I dont have to step out of my car. Step out of the car. No, you dont have the right. Step out of the car ifill encinia threatens to drag bland out; she refuses. Then, he pulls his taser. Get out of the car i will light you up get out now ifill the two can still be heard yelling as the incident continued outside the dashboard cameras range as a second officer apparently arrived on scene. But a bystander filmed this video with a smartphone in which an upset bland can be heard saying the officer threw her to the ground. The trooper has been placed on administrative leave. Police officials said he violated trafficstop procedures. Bland was found dead in her jail cell three days later. Authorities said she hanged herself with a plastic garbage bag. But family and friends disputed that finding. Jailhouse video released monday showed no officers near her cell for 90 minutes before emergency technicians wheeled in a stretcher. Waller countys District Attorney now say blands death was being treated like a Murder Investigation. Today, blands body was flown back to her home outside chicago, where shell be buried saturday. Her family spoke this afternoon. She was pulled over for something so insignificant and because of an officer who felt like maybe his ego was bruised and got in the way, not once did he ever say he felt threatened but when you tell me that youre going to light me up, i feel extremely threatened and concerned and im not going to get out of my car. We want the answers and sandy demands them and we will find them. Ifill Texas Governor greg abbott, in a Statement Today said the roughly50minute dashcam video released late yesterday drew criticism for apparent jump cuts, which led to charges that it had been edited. The Texas Department of Public Safety denied that accusation, and said the glitches occurred when the recording was uploaded for public viewing. A second, corrected version of the video was released this afternoon. So how does that disputed video change our understanding of what happened . And where does that promised thorough investigation stand . For that, we turn to alana rocha, multimedia reporter for the texas tribune. I spoke with her a short time ago. Alana rocha, thank you for joining us. This story seems divided into two parts, the story about the disputed video and then obvious, three days later the dispute over how she died. Letlk about the video first. What is at the root of the dispute over what we saw on that video . Well, her initial reason or the officers initial reason for pulling her over was changing lanes without signaling. She tried to explain why she was from you strayed, she saw him coming behind her, wanted to get out of the way and was thinking and maybe didnt signal. She was obviously frustrated expresses that to him, he obviously doesnt like her attitude and uses unnecessary force is what d. P. S. Is saying that he, you know, violated protocol in that stop. Ifill is there any way looking at the video you can determine i know youve had a chance to look at more of it than we showed that she did anything on tape that was illegal . No. I mean, i think him asking her to put out the cigarette was the straw that broke the camels back, if you will, and you hear him put down his clip board after she refuses that request and said im in my car, within my rights. Weve talked to experts since the video came out yesterday saying she is within her rights to be smoking in her car, but they also say when a Law Enforcement officer asks you to do something, whether its right or not, sometimes its best to just comply and she does not. Ifill so when the city said theyre going to investigate the officers behavior and investigate and take him off the street, as it were, that is still an open question about whether his behavior was acceptable . It was not. We heard that at yesterdays press concerns from the department of Public Safety from which hes a trooper and representing that agency, they took him off the streets. He is on administrative duty, from what i understand is the latest, and that he violated protocol as far as always being professional and courteous. He was not clearly in that video. Also, i mean theyre trained to deescalate situations and he clearly tried to further infuriate her. Lets talk about the second piece of this which is how she died which we also dont have the clear answers to as we could tell from listening to the familys News Conference todays. What do we know about what happened after she was arrested, how she came to be in a cell by herself and be in a position, if its true, to commit suicide . Details released monday from the Waller County Sheriffs Office and the d. A. We asked if her Mental Health was ever evaluated, they say they give all inmates a questionnaire or ask them a series of questions to try to determine that and said, you know they really didnt say the results. We are hearing from the closeddoor meeting from an official in the closeddoor meeting yesterday that evidently, in that questionnaire, she had attempted to commit suicide prior, i believe the official said it was the result of losing a baby. But back to where or how she was categorized when she came into the jail because of the nature of charge of assault of a public ser variant, she was deemed high risk, separated from other inmates and ended up in a cell alone. Thats how a traffic stop became being held on 500 bail. Right, there was a lot of question. Later in the video, the d. P. S. Released the traffic stop. You hear the officer told her he told her she was under arrest after she kicked him but it was likely after she refused to put the cigarette out and get out of the car. Ifill why is this treated as a Murder Investigation . Is that automatic . Monday, they made it clear its being worked as a homicide investigation. Thats because the texas rangers, whenever there is a person who dies in Police Custody whether a jail or prison, they just try to put everybody at ease by doing everything as far as, you know in this case doing dna of the trash bag to see who elses dna aside from hers would have been on that. Of course, you know, we can expect that were going to see some of the other officers dna on that just because somebody had to put that bag in the trash can. Can. Ifill what can we say about Waller County . There a history . Watching this as other conflicts unfolded in the last year and it always emerges there was friction that existed between the black community and the Police Officers at the time of these flashpoints, was there a history here as well . From what i gather yes. I got into town sunday and attended a Memorial Service at hope a. M. E. Right in front of where she was stopped initially. Packed church several faith leaders took a few minutes to speak. They said it would not be political, that they would just offer well wishes for the family in the time of mourning. But as the speeches went on, you heard white and africanamerican reverends take to the podium and talk about the history of racial profiling in that community. You have a large africanamerican population with prairieview a m a predominant africanamerican college in that county. Ifill alana rocha of the texas tribune. Thank you very much. Thank you. Woodruff one of the worlds leading nazi hunters set his targets this week on a 90year old man in denmark. Efraim zurroff from the Simon Wiesenthal center has accused danish authorities of being reluctant to act against a former guard who served at a forced labor camp where hundreds of jews were murdered during world war ii. Newshour special correspondent Malcolm Brabant takes an inside look at zuroffs quest and hears from the accused firsthand. Pursuing war criminals around the world and securing a string of successful prosecutions, efraim zurroffs latest mission brought him to copenhagen. I hope an official government investigation will be initiated against this person who served with the danish troops at s. S. In belarus and was serving at a camp in which 90 of the jews who were in that camp was murdered or died because of difficult conditions during the period that the danish troops were in charge of the camp and regarding the camp. And this is the target, a nazi battalion occupied by the germans. Serzuroffs case is gather by an historian. The two men poured over documentation and maps to have the camp in belarus. Every morning, there was a selection to see if the jews could work or not and they were actually starving so often they could not. And if you couldnt work you were taken to the gravel pit and shot. Reporter these are believed to have been some of the victims of the bobruisk camp, 100 miles from the belarusian capital minsk. This is a propaganda film. These are polish jews transported from the ghetto, in poor physical shape when they left the ghetto. According to historians, 1400 jews lost their lives in this camp. They were guards. They guarded these jews in this camp in the period of 1942 and 1943. Reporter historian and coal author strader says there is evidence guards carried out atrocities against jewish slave laborers, linking the dane at the center of the case. Its just to file charges against a guard in an annihilation camp which is a small one, not very well known but you could say the atrocities were just as bad as auschwitz. Zuroff went to a Downtown Police station to file his complaint and urge the danish authorities to expand their investigation. He believes this case is the tip of the iceberg and there may be up to 30 danish nazis still alive who are guilty of war crimes. Okay, first of all, we handed in quite a bit of information. To be perfectly honest, im not so expert in the workings of the Danish Ministry to be able to say i am confident. I can say well do whatever we can do try and encourage a serious investigation, an indepth investigation the good guys against the bad guys. 19yearold herman invited us in to he his side of the story. He said his nazi uncle pressured him to join the free corps. He admits patrolling the camp perimeter as a young man. His drawing is different from the historians map. He insists he committed no crime. The germans treated the jews very badly which we could not help but see, but we had no influence over it. When you were 17 years old, what can you do . I can tell you it was unpleasant to watch. They beat them up with bats. But i had never seen the germans kill jews. I did see some of the jews lying dead. A complaint has been filed against you. How do you feel about that. You know what . I am 90 years old. What the hell are they going to do . Even if they prosecute me, before they even get started on that, i am going to be dead and buried. I have never even touched the hair on the head of any jew. In my opinion a war criminal is someone who goes after civilians. I have never done anything to any civilians. What does app 17yearold know about politics . Nothing. Had i not lived with that uncle, may he rest in peace, had i not lived with him, it would never have happened. Then perhaps i would have been in the resistance. Reporter last week oscar groning, 94 known as bookkeeper of auschwitz was sentenced to four years in prison. He counted the bank notes. This was to have been one of the last nazi trials. Efraim zurroff believes in pursuing nazis to the grave. The pageants of time doesnt diminish guilt of the killers, second, theyre not turned into righteous gentiles. Third is our obligation to the victim to try and find the people who turned innocent men, women and children into victims simply because they were enemies of the third reich. Also a continuing search for these people is indication of the seriousness and horror of holocaust crimes. The trials are important to fight against Holocaust Denial and distortion and, quite frankly, these are the last people on earth who deserve any sympathy because they have absolutely no sympathy for the victims. Reporter if this case were tried in germany there would be more chance of success because there guards of death camps can be prosecuted. In denmark the criteria is different. According to leading law experts, being a witness to a crime doesnt make a person an accessory. One lawyer said she doubted the case would go to trial because of lack of eyewitnesses, because of rasmussens age at the time and the daneer war thyme government which collaborated with the government encouraged youth to join the nazi battalions. Helmuth lief rasmussens secret past has been exposed and one of his biggest fears is his jewish friends will now disown him. For the pbs newshour, Malcolm Brabant in copenhagen. Ifill also ahead on the newshour the benefit of targeting alzheimers at early stages, training todays teachers to be better educators and our visit with this years Pulitzer Prizewinning poet. Now a cautionary tale of a different kind of computer hacking that youll want to see. Hari sreenivasan has the story from our new york studios. Its not fun to have your two ton s. U. V. s brakes hacked just as youre parking in front of a ditch. Sreenivasan writer Andy Greenberg found that out the hard way. For a story on wired. Com, he decided to be a willing victim of carhacking by two researchers Charlie Miller and chris valasek. The twoandahalf ton guinea pig a 2014 Jeep Cherokee, that greenberg drove on a st. Louis highway. Remember, andy, no matter what happens, dont panic. Sreenivasan that easier said than done without warning, and from miles away, they blasted the air vents, and started blaring the music. I cant turn it down sreenivasan after turning on the windshield wipers and wiper fluid, they killed the engine, forcing him to bring the car to a halt on the highway, as cars and semis sped by. Im going to pull over because i have p. T. S. D. Sreenivasan the hack is possible through an internet connected system, called u connect, that controls the entertainment and navigation, and enables communication through phone calls and wifi. Below a certain speed, hackers can even control the jeeps steering as long as its in reverse, they can adjust the locks and disable the brakes. Many automakers now produce vehicles that function like smartphones on wheels, but that convenience also allows hackers to now engage in wireless car jacking. Miller and valasek have been researching car hacking for years, and found the Jeep Cherokee to be the most hackable model. These cars had units exposed to a particular service that probably they didnt want to. It lets you do things like query it for information like the gps or other things, but it also just lets you run commands. Sreenivasan miller and valasek alerted chrysler sharing their research for months. The company, however, is wary of this disclosure. We want to release this information because more People Like Us need to be focused on this problem. Sreenivasan just yesterday senators ed markey and Richard Blumenthal introduced legislation that requires cars sold in the u. S. To meet standards of protection against digital attacks. More about the vulnerabilities and the concerns around all this. Andy greenberg joins me now. Why did you do the hack . Well, this was all actually the work of charlie Charlie Miller and chris valasek, the two researchers. They have been trying to do this for years to gain access to a wireless access remote vehicle. This is the first time theyve done that and they named the automaker, detailed some of how they they did it and theyll talk about it at a conference, and show how it is done so researchers can test it out. All of it is meant to send a message to pressure the car industry to solve these problems, to take security vulnerability seriously. Sreenivasan how easy or difficult is it . Should we be concerned theres 400,000 cars with this software inside it . Everybody who has this one computer u connect in their dashboard needs to download the patch quietly released last week. Gut it from their computer, put it on a usb drive and protect themselves. But its a question whether someone could create a new hacking technique. Its possible but not easy. Both are brilliant hackers. One a former n. S. A. Analyst. I wouldnt expect a kid in a basement to come up with a new techtechnique but with a target out there, anyone can at least mess with the dashboard functions and thats mischief enough. Sreenivasan my phone can get an update from going google or apple, but chrysler is not automatically updating the cars. You have to do it yourself or take it to the dealership. Some carmakers already do over the air updates. They dont automatically update but you can do it from the cured itself in the car. In fact, every automaker practically is moving toward over the air updates. They knew this is a fix that needs to happen. Sreenivasan also, automakers are moving toward having greater amounts of technology in cars. Basically, these smartphones on wheels. When we think of the internet everythings getting so connected, does that just mean everything is already so much more hackable . When i talked to Security Experts about the whole industry, they say that yes, the industry is is trying to solve the problem, but things are getting worse faster than theyre Getting Better and thats because the Auto Industry wants to add the features. Theyre competing with navigation, safety and entertainment and those things also provide a nice, monthly revenue stream for the cellular service. So one of the features is also a potentially hackable bug, too. Sreenivasan theres also the piece of current legislation proposed yesterday by a couple of senators, but when is there a scenario when the law and technology are on the same Playing Field . Sometimes it seems the law is ten years behind catching up to technology to try to legislate it or regulate it. I think there are legal standards for the safety of automobiles. They have to have seat belts they have to have air bags, you know, so this is kind of the modern equivalent. It will be, of course, very difficult to legislate something this complex. This isnt just a safety issue. Its kind of a cat and mouse game with a whole world of hackers, and it has to be a dynamic kind of solution to a very dynamic problem. So, you know its not entirely clear that legislation can fix it but nhe Auto Industry needs to wake up through consumer pressure or selfregulation or Congress Taking action something needs to happen. Sreenivasan hacking seems to follow every online leap forward. Bank accounts have been hacked, credit card companies, transactions from multiple vendors. Having your car hacked, when you are driving that car, what was going through your head when you basically lost control step by step . Well, its incredibly unnerving. If youve driven for some number of years and youve come to assume that the pedal does something and the Steering Wheel does something and the realize its just kind of a fallible machine that can even be controlled by someone else or what feels like a virtual, invisible force somewhere far away it definitely produces a unique kind of anxiety. Sreenivasan was it the smartest idea to be on a freeway in st. Louis . In retrospect maybe not. I didnt know what the guys would do. They just told me to drive on the highway. At first they were just messing with the radio and windshield wipers. When they cut the transmission, i was shocked myself and i think probably all of us they didnt even know there wasnt going to be a shoulder at the point when they did it, to the highway, so maybe all of us would have chosen to do it on a closed course if we would have known how it would have gone but in the end it was important to show how scary it could be. No one was hurt and we have an example of how dangerous this vulnerability is and sends an important message. Sreenivasan Andy Greenberg of wired, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Woodruff lets look closer at some interesting news out today from a major conference on alzheimers disease here in washington. Two drug companies, eli lilly and biogen, announced new progress in the development of the first drugs to slow the progression of the disease rather than simply alleviating symptoms. Both drugs target the buildup of amyloid plaques, which many believe contribute to the disease. Researchers found the drugs helped reduce cognitive loss in patients who had mild symptoms. But some observers in the field say the improvements for patients are too small and uncertain. Here to discuss these developments is keith fargo, director of scientific programs and outreach for the Alzheimers Association. Keith fargo, welcome to the program. So some promising news. Lets take the drugs one by one. Theyre difficult to pronounce. Solonazonab is the first one. What are the findings in connection with it. For the first time a drug company voterring the results of a study showing their drug may actually slow the progression of alzheimers disease in the brain. When people think about alzheimers disease they normally think of cognitive symptoms, memory loss, et cetera, but alzheimers disease at a core level is a universally fatal disease of the brain and the currently available treatments for alzheimers disease do nothing to slow down the progression of that disease. They may actually slow the progression of the underlying disease. Woodruff so what is in this drug and what does it do to the brain . So this or any other drug well discuss are antibodies against a protein in the brain called amyloid. You may have heard of senile or amyloid plaques both attack the protein that makes up the plaque. Woodruff and destroy it . Exactly, may help it stop from clumping in the first place or help clear it out of the brain. So the idea is to slow down the formation of the plaques. The second drug what does it do . Theyre somewhat similar in terms of the fact theyre both antibodies. They target different parts of proteins, so we dont fully understand all the mechanism yet burks they may work a little differently although at the end of the day theyre both antibodies and target the amyloid that makes up the plaque. Woodruff we are hearing as we said in the introduction from some other researchers that its still early, theres not a big enough sample, what are you and the others at the Alzheimers Association say . Those are all very valid concerns we share. These are exciting results weve seen at the International Conferences this week, but youre not with drug development, youre not done till youre done and the fact is the trial for one drug is a phase one trial which i think less than 200 people were in the trial, and the trial for the other is 3,000 and thats a phase three trial, but you have to repeat it and make sure what you saw the first time around you see again in the second study. Woodruff what happens next with regard to both of these drugs. Solonazonab is already being studied in the second phase three study as we speak and we should see the results in probably 18 months to two years. The other drug, the company who makes that drug Just Launched two large phase three trials and we should see the results of those in two to three years. Woodruff keith fargo for people out there who have a family member, for someone worried about having alzheimers themselves, if proven effective when can they have access to one of these . For both of these drugs, at least 18 months to two years before theyre available from your doctor. Woodruff so a while. Yes. Woodruff the other interesting news if not promising we were hearing about yesterday is that the findings about women with alzheimers means not only are there many more women than men who have alzheimers, but that the progression of the disease is much faster. What is known about that . Well, i would actually say that it is promising in that i think it tells us that were learning more about the disease. So as you mentioned, alzheimers disease is much more common in women than men. Women are essentially twice as likely to have alzheimers disease than men. The conventional wisdom for many years is it was simply because women live longer and age is the largest risk factor for alzheimers disease. But there are other factors other than longevity. Woodruff are there theories about why . There are, the first thing that springs to mind is there may be hormonal differences. They may be simplistic. Certainly there are different life courses for men and women especially men and women who are at the age to be at the highest risk for alzheimers disease now. Certainly if you think about jakesle opportunities in the past and how different they were for men and women we know that education is a risk factor or low education is a risk factor for alzheimers disease. Certainly occupational opportunities have been differing as well and we know highcomplexity occupations are protective against alzheimers disease. There are also potentially genetic differences between men and women that could explain this, too. The xx chromesomes. Exactly. Woodruff keith fargo with the Alzheimers Associations. We thank you. Thank you. Ifill its likely that everyone watching has spent time in a classroom, either as a student or a teacher. At 3. 1 million, School Teachers make up one of the largest portions of the american workforce. And because teacher turnover is very high, there are probably even more former teachers. The newshours special correspondent for education, john merrow, has the story. Reporter its Graduation Day for students at montclair state university, which has one of the largest schools of education in new jersey. It gives me pleasure to state that 665 members of this class are certified and qualified to teach in the Public Schools of the state of new jersey. Reporter these graduates are among the more than 200,000 women and men whove just completed teacher preparation programs across the country. Im trying to find a job in Elementary Education k6. Im a math major, want to be a math teacher. Certified in special education, i would like a teaching job anywhere in new jersey. Reporter is this a good time to become a teacher . Salaries havent kept up with inflation, tenure is under attack, and standardized test scores are being used to fire teachers. Richard ingersoll of the university of pennsylvania says teaching attracts a certain kind of person. We have these surveys that ask people, college seniors, you know, what do you want out of a career . Is it money, is it prestige, is it security, is it problem solving, is it intellectual challenge, is it doing good and helping people . If it wasnt for the people in my schools i would have never have graduated or been here. So i want to be in the systems to help other children. Im not really looking for wealth or riches or anything like that. Its not that they, you know, want to live on a low salary or Something Like that. Its that their main driver is to feel that they can make make a difference. Reporter first, however they need jobs. If you want to be a teacher in the fall give me a hand. If you have a teaching job in september raise your hand. Not yet. If you have a teaching job raise your hand. One, one hand. Wow. Not yet . Applying. Were all applying. Reporter nationwide, job prospects for teachers vary widely by state, School District and subject matter. In this part of new jersey jobs are hard to find. School districts surrounding montclair told us theyre receiving thousands of applications for just a few dozen teaching positions. Its very competitive. Theres enough of us graduating, not enough jobs. Reporter this isnt new. Between 2010 and 2012, montclair state graduated 555 elementary School Teachers, but only about half have found jobs in new jersey. Its a little tough right now, but im hoping im gonna get something soon. Reporter if and when they do get hired, chances are at least 40 of them will leave teaching in the first five years. Why do they leave . Lots of reasons. But the biggest set of reasons has to do with the quality, the caliber of the job. Its the amount of support, its the amount of student discipline and behavioral problems in the building. Its how much say teachers have in the decisions in the building that affect their jobs. Do they have input and voice . And, im sorry to say that the more poor schools, the urban schools have higher teacher turnover than do the more affluent schools and the suburban schools. Reporter standing line with all these young soon to be graduates, i noticed most of them were women. Yes, the teaching occupations becoming more female dominated. It was always a female occupation. People thought that was gonna decline in the last 20, 30 years as all kinds of maledominated occupations, professions, have opened up to women. However, the opposite has happened. Teaching is becoming even more female and weve now passed the threequarters mark. There are not too many elementary men in the field unless you are a physical education, art or stuff like that. Theres large numbers of Elementary Schools in which theres not a single male teacher. This is a big concern. Reporter but theres been a huge effort to try to recruit men. That has never succeeded. Reporter the student population is changing dramatically. 20 years ago 65 of students were white. Today, 49 . To keep up, School Districts have been recruiting minority teachers to work in high poverty schools with large numbers of minority students. The numbers of minority teachers has more than doubled. But the catch is that those schools and districts often are less attractive places to work. And as a result, minority teachers have distinctly higher quit rates than do nonminority teachers. Reporter so minority teachers are more likely to teach in. . In high minority and urban schools, yes. Reporter and more likely to leave teaching . Yes. In fact, minority teachers in affluent schools, they dont quit at any higher rates than than than the white teachers. No its its boils down to the working conditions in these places. So the data tells we need to start paying far more attention to the retention, not just recruitment, but also retention of minority teachers. Reporter and so, efforts to recruit minority teachers have resulted in only a 4 gain over the past 25 years. The Teaching Force remains more than 80 white and most of the new hires are young. And you have schools now where, you know, theres hardly any veterans around. The most senior teacher is someone in their fifth or sixth year. So from a taxpayer viewpoint theres maybe a benefit to this. We are fresh outta school, we are first year and they dont have to pay us as much. On the other hand, we common sense tells us and also we have Research Showing that experience counts, that teachings a complex job, theres a lot of different aspects. Not just simply raising students test scores. And that it and that you get better over time. Its a struggle at first, but you just got to keep trying. I feel confident in the classmates that ive seen and in myself that we can be the change they want to see in teachers. Reporter so what do all these changes in teaching add up to . Maybe all these changes arent so much new as theyre returning to the old patterns. So when the Public School system was was invented over a century ago, it was teaching was quite explicitly and intentionally made an occupation that was women, young women. Indeed, you when you got married you had to quit. So it there was a lotta transiency. Reporter that was then. That was then. Now we see that its the nations largest occupation. Its getting bigger all the time. Its becoming more female. And its instability is increasing. So maybe the data are telling that these transformations are not something new, theyre returning to the old. Reporter so the title of this movie is not back to the future, but forward to the past . It could be. It could be. Reporter a fair number of these newly certified teachers may yet find jobs, because School Districts continue hiring right up to the beginning of the school year, even into it. For the pbs newshour, im john merrow, reporting from montclair, new jersey. Woodruff now, an unlikely winner of a major literary prize, Jeffrey Brown profiles a poet that captured the details of daily life in verse. I was born in minutes in a roadside kitchen a skillet whispering my name. I was born to rainwater and lye; i spend so much time in the classroom, and then i come home and its down to business, washing dishes, cleaning the kitchen, doing laundry. And i dont want to leave any of that stuff out of the poems. Brown Gregory Pardlo is a teacher, student, husband and father and now a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. His reaction when he heard the news . The kind of cliche of im sure they made a mistake. Well, yes, i was absolutely sure there was a huge mistake. Brown he had reason his prizewinning book, digest, is just his second, and pardlo isnt wellknown even within the small poetry community. He grew up in a middleclass family in willingboro, new jersey, near philadelphia. His father, an airtraffic controller, was one of those fired by Ronald Reagan during the 1981 strike. I remember walking the picket lines with him. It was an inspiring time for me and a very hard time for my father, because this was his narrative, this was the big story of his success in life. Brown Gregory Pardlo would face his own struggles and circuitous path to poetry dropping out of rutgers, for example, doubting he was good enough to succeed. He says he worries about that with his own students. Watching that just reminds me of the little kid that i was who had, not necessarily ambitions, but certainly thought anything was possible for a long time until i bought into the stories about African American boys. I guess one of my missions, if i can say i have one, is to have my students and have my readers question the limits that they place on themselves. Brown having left school, pardlo joined the marine reserves and later, managed a bar for several years, where jazz musicians, working for peanuts, taught him an important lesson. Watching them night after night and starting to understand what actually goes into the discipline of an artist, of a musician, certainly. And have a regard for, having a respect for how much work that it actually entails. Brown today, with several degrees in hand and now a Teaching Fellow at columbia university, pardlo and his family live in bedford stuyvesant, a brooklyn neighborhood that gets into his poetry, as do seemingly disparate ideas and people the ancient philosopher heraclitus and the contemporary comedian chris rock. That actually speaks to the title of the book. Im a digest of all these identities, of all these interests. Brown how much of your family life, your history, the books you read, how much of that do you want to put into the poetry . All of it, as much as i possibly can. When i have a speaker on the page that is predictable, i think the one thing that a poem cannot abide is cliche. And i dont want the speaker to be predictable. I dont want a single line to be predictable. Brown pardlo speaks openly of other struggles hes had, including a battle with alcoholism. He says his family his wife ginger and their two daughters pulled him out of it. And now the pulitzer gives him a new sense of responsibility. I want to be happy. I want a life that i feel good about. I want a life that i feel, in which i feel productive. And i want a life in which, to whatever extent my words have an impact on the world, i at least feel like im in the conversation about what we do with the society we live in. The one rule i set for myself is to make decisions that are good for my family and my kids. I want them to be proud of me. I want them to be happy. Thats a cliche i can live with. I was born passing off the problem of the Twentieth Century i was born. I read minds before i could read fishes and loaves; i walked a piece of the way alone before i was born. Brown from brooklyn, new york, im Jeffrey Brown for the pbs newshour. Ifill finally tonight, our newshour shares of the day. Something that caught our eye which might be of interest to you, too. The Associated Press and british movietone are releasing over one million minutes of archival footage posted to youtube. Its a treasure trove of iconic milestones in history and some rarelyseen, and quirky, moments as well. Some of our favorite finds the eruption of italys famed Mount Vesuvius in 1938, a 1935 elephant race through the streets of chicago and a home exercise machine for dogs from 1937. They get the junk as they line up for the jumbo stakes. Theyre off. A race in chicago, just a sprint if the road stands up to it. The field hurtles along. The dogs gng for walk. Hes walking all right. Jimmy is the brightest pupil and he struts along like he was following the butchers boy. Woodruff the 550,000 video clips date back to 1895 new material will be added every day. Ifill on the newshour online forensic scientists in this oregon lab use d. N. A. Testing and high tech equipment to examine cases, but they dont solve murders, theyre looking for suspects in crimes against endangered plants and animals, and theyre the only onesn the world dedicated to do so. We have their story, on our home page. Thats at pbs. Org newshour. And thats the newshour for tonight. On thursday how a very successful Family Planning program in colorado ran out of money because the legislature refused to fund it. Im gwen ifill. Woodruff and im judy woodruff. Join us online and again here tomorrow evening. For all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by support also comes from Carnegie Corporation of new york. A foundation created to do what Andrew Carnegie called real and permanent good. Celebrating 100 years of philanthropy at carnegie. Org. 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. Captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org this is nightly Business Report with Tyler Mathisen and sue herera. Blistering prices never seen before. Theres something missing from this housing recovery. Buybacks. Why Earnings Growth may not be exactly what you think. Safety nets. Will Social Security and medicare be there when you need it . All that and more tonight on nightly Business Report for wednesday, july 22nd. Good evening, everyone. Im sharon in for sue herera. And im Tyler Mathisen. Home are officially being bought and sold at their highest prices ever. And those rising prices arent Holding Buyers back. Theyve come out in droves this spring and summer selling season pushi