The john and Helen Glessner family trust. Supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. Sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. Corporate funding is provided by mutual of america designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why we are your retirement company. Additional support has been provided by and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. From the tisch wnet studios at Lincoln Center in new york, hari sreenivasan. Sreenivasan good evening and thanks for joining us. This first weekend after Hillary Clinton clinched the Democratic Party president ial nomination, her likely opponent is testing his fall election strategy. Republican Businessman Donald Trump campaigned in the swing state of florida today the battleground with the most electoral votes at stake, and won twice by president obama. From there, trump went on to pennsylvania, which democratic nominees have won every november since 1992. In tampa today, trump said, in his view, the former secretary of state, senator, and first lady, is unqualified to be president. Look at the mess she got us into with syria, everything she touches. And youre going to have four more years of that . We wont have a country left, folks, believe me. Sreenivasan in his remarks today, trump repeatedly called massachusetts senator elizabeth warren, who endorsed clinton this week and claims native american heritage, pocahontas as he has done before. Hillary clinton took to twitter today to criticize Donald Trumps defunct trump university, releasing a satirical infomercial saying, pad donalds pockets and put your own finances at risk all for the low price of 35,000 the final president ial primary occurs tuesday, when washington d. C. Democrats vote. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is competing for delegates there, despite clinton having secured both the majority needed to win the nomination and president obamas endorsement. The president will start campaigning with clinton on wednesday in wisconsin. In syria, Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for three suicide and car bombings today in a predominantly shiite suburb of damascus, the wartorn nations capital. The syrian observatory for human rights says the attacks killed at least 20 people and wounded dozens more. In northern syria, american backed kurdish fighters are said to be advancing on isisheld positions in the aleppo province. They have reportedly encircled the town of manbij, which is an isis stronghold, but the fighting has trapped thousands of civilians. In bangladesh, isis is claiming responsibility for yesterdays stabbing murder of a hindu monastery worker, the latest in a wave of similar attacks. People took to the streets in the capital of dhaka, today to protest the executionstyle killings of religious minorities in the sunnimuslim majority country. Officials say islamic radicals have killed at least 18 people in the past two years, including aid workers, professors, gay rights activists, and members of the hindu, christian, and shiite muslim minorities. Under pressure to stop the killings, Bangladesh Police have detained 1,600 suspects in the past few days, but officials said only a few dozen are suspected islamic militants. Train, trash, and now airline strikes are plaguing france. When air france pilots went on strike today to protest a pay cut, the airline cancelled 20 of its flights. Pilots say they wont fly for four days. The strike comes just as france is hosting two million visitors attending the european soccer championships. Metro train drivers have already been on strike for days, Oil Refinery Workers have walked off the job, and a strike by sanitation workers has left mounds of uncollected garbage on paris streets. California is the first state in the country seeking to offer undocumented Immigrants Health insurance under the Affordable Care act, commonly referred to as obamacare. Governor jerry brown signed a bill yesterday that could allow those immigrants to buy Health Insurance without any government subsidies from the States Health exchange. The state must first obtain a waiver from the federal law that bars undocumented immigrants from obtaining insurance through exchanges set up under obamacare. If the state gets the waiver, it expects 400,000 of its estimated 2. 5 million undocumented immigrants would be eligible to apply. California already allows the children of undocumented immigrants get Health Coverage through medicaid. Find out how researchers uncovered a hidden ruin buried in the ancient jordanian city of petra. Visit www. Pbs. Org newshour. Sreenivasan gawker media, which runs the gossipdriven website gawker and half a dozen other sites, is offering itself up for sale after filing for bankruptcy yesterday. The filing came three months after gawker lost an invasion of privacy lawsuit brought by the famous, onetime professional wrestler known as hulk hogan, who had sued gawker for posting a video in 2012 of him having sex with a woman who was not his wife. A jury awarded hogan 140 million in damages, and the trial judge upheld the verdict, though gawker is appealing. It turns out hogans suit was bankrolled by billionaire businessman peter thiel, an early employee of paypal and on the board of facebook. Thiel had his own grievance with gawker for outing him as gay in an article years before. The case raises questions about the journalistic judgement of news organizations as well as freedom of the press. Joining me here in the studio to discuss this is edmund lee. Hes the managing editor of recode, a news site that specializes in covering the tech industry. So, for people who havent been following this thing chapter by verse, this is hulk hogan, former wrestler, we have a sex tape. We have racist comments here. And weve got this scrappy little web site that doesnt care and wants to publish all this. But it goes to the core of the freedom of the press, where the freedom of the press extends to even press you dont find favorable. Exactly. And i think thats what the First Amendment protection has been about, is to protect the speech you dont like, or dont agree with, and to have the diversity of voice out there is what ultimately levels out in terms of having that freedom. Its important to our democracy, absolutely. I think the other thing thats happening here, what thiel is doing is effectively acting like a regulator. Hes deciding what is and isnt journalism. He said that he felt this was one of his better philanthropic causes, which is to put gawker out of business. And it looks like he might end up getting his way there sreenivasan considering hes not the only billionaire in town, any billionary could decide to pick on any publication, especially the smaller, digital ones. Exactly, and thiel showed us a model for how that could happen and sheds light on the economics of web publishing. Walker is a successful web publisher. It has grown and grown and has profit but it does not have enough profit to fend off these legal challenges. That also spells potentially difficulties for all kinds of web publishing, which is now the model for publishing, period. I mean, the Big Companies like time inc, conde newscast, and even the new york times, theyre having to strip down and have smaller profits and go after people on the web, and i think publishing is not what it once was, and i think thats one of the real dangers here sreenivasan one of the first bid has been by a Company Called ziff davis, more traditional in the tech media world. Niche sreenivasan not going against the grain as gawker did in covering the technol industry. Silicon valley, culture there has been a bit abrasive to the idea of gawker because they dont listen to the press release, they dont obey the press embargoes. They write what they want to write. If ziff davis is successful in making this acquisition, ziff days of daifs say more toneddown publication, or company with publications. No matter what happens, i think the gawker of old, or the gawker we know today will cease to exist. I think it will be a shelf its former self. I think the content will ultimately have to be toned down, and, again, thats clearly the Chilling Effect of these suits and what thiel really set out to do in the first place sreenivasan very briefly, the possible outcomees, lets say they win the appeal nape dont have to pay the 140 million, and they get this buyer to pay them 100 million or whatever it is. The other possibility is they lose the appeal, they have to buy this, and then no one wants to touch gawk wer a 10foot pole knowing you have to pay someone 140 million bucks. I do think gawker has a really strong legal argument to make and i think theres a very good chance they will win on appeal. But even if that were the case, i think it still doesnt matter because, you know, again gawker wont be what it once was. And i think thats the bigger effect here. And thats really the sort of victory that thiel is going to claim here, if it turns out that way, is that he basically cut gawker down, you know sreenivasan edmund lee of recode, thanks for joining us publius. Sreenivasan the city streets we walk, ride, or drive on every day are usually an afterthought for most of us, but not for janette sadikkhan, who is credited with rethinking the streets of new york city how they work and who they serve. She was the citys transportation commissioner under former mayor michael bloomberg, and she has authored a book about how cities around the country can make their streets less carfocused. As part of our series, urban ideas, about innovative ways cities govern and solve problems, i recently sat down with sadikkhan in the heart of one of her biggest projects times square. Sreenivasan how is it possible that were sitting in times square . What happened here that you made you think you could build this . Well, times square had been a tangle of traffic for almost 200 years, since it was first created, and people had tried for years to fix it. They tried slip lanes and signal changes, and nothing worked. And so i brought the idea to mayor bloomberg that we should try something bigger. Sreenivasan in 2009, janette sadikkhan proposed closing broadway to cars from 42nd street to 47th street and turning it into a quartermile long pedestrian plaza. And it started just with some traffic cones and some beach chairs, and its really become a model for other cities to try things out. You can reimagine them, test it, measure it. Sreenivasan the permanent redesign cost 27 million, and the city measured the changing traffic flow through times square using g. P. S. Devices in 13,000 taxis. It was much safer for both pedestrians and motorists. The traffic worked just fine. And it became an economic blockbuster. It became one of the top ten Retail Locations on the planet. Sreenivasan in her book streetfight, sadikkhan argues, the nation needs to shift the focus of city streets away from cars. Our streets, for so many years, have been used to move cars as quickly as possible from point a to point b. And people have even forgotten that there are other uses for the streets whether to walk or to bike or to take the bus. Its not anticar. Its really prochoice. Its about providing options to make it easier for people to get around. Sreenivasan by 2013, when sadikkhans tenure in mayor bloombergs administration ended, the city had repurposed 220 acres of space taking away lanes from cars and giving them to pedestrians, bikes, and buses. Sadikkhan says dedicated car turn lanes, restricted bus lanes, and adjusting traffic light signals based on realtime traffic conditions helped increase average driving speeds in central manhattan by nearly 7 . At the same time, traffic and pedestrian fatalities in the city have declined. Our streets have never been safer. In fact, with more and more cyclists on our streets, weve seen a onethird reduction in cyclist injuries and fatalities, while weve seen a quadrupling of people biking around. Sreenivasan much of the increase in biking is from citi bike, the Bike Share Program funded in part by citibank and mastercard thats been used more than 26 million times since launching three years ago. The Citi Foundation is one of the underwriters of this program. It was the first new Transportation System in new york city in 60 years and at almost no cost to taxpayers. So i think its a model, particularly in an era where we dont have a lot of federal funding and state funding and local funding is hard to come by. Sreenivasan sadikkhan says the huge number of riders actually makes biking safer. Youre not going to ride the Tour De France on this bike theyre, like, heavy right . Sreenivasan right. And i think that also goes a long way to calm down the streets. Sreenivasan new york city streets now have 400 miles of bike lanes, with more than 30 miles separated from vehicle traffic by a lane of parked cars, an idea sadikkhan copied after seeing it in copenhagen, denmark. But with the new lanes came a backlash, including from drivers who complained bike lanes caused more traffic congestion. A 1. 8 mile lane bordering brooklyns Prospect Park is still mired in litigation, six years after being installed. What do you think it is that creates that initial resistance to change, whether its city people get pretty comfortable with how a space looks and how a space is used, until they try something else, right . Its a really good question, because people are really attached to the status quo. And when you change the status quo, we find the status quo pushes back hard, right . And people have expectations that our streets are for cars. And they dont really have any other expectations that they can be anything else. So that was one of the innovations that we did in new york city. We moved fast to show that you could have change on your street, that it would be better. That you can build in other ways to get around just really by narrowing the traffic lanes and opening up that space for other uses. Sreenivasan with more than half the worlds population living in cities expected to become twothirds by 2050, sadikkhan hopes new york sets an example for a more personcentric view of transportation. I think its really critical that we build in really good choices for people to get around, making it safe for people to bike, making it fast for people to ride the bus, making it easy for people to walk around. Those are the kind of really secret sauces for 21st century cities. And really, we get what we design, and when we design our streets to make them wide and as runways for cars, you know, thats what we get. And when we design our streets for people, and make it easier to walk and bus and bike, we get a much different result. Sreenivasan at tomorrow nights tony awards recognizing the best work on broadway, the blockbuster musical hamilton will be center stage with its record 16 nominations. But there will also be a spotlight on Sheldon Harnick, who will receive a Lifetime Achievement award. Harnick cowrote the classic fiddler on the roof, which premiered on broadway in 1964 and is nominated this year for best musical revival. A second harnick musical, she loves me, is also nominated for best revival. The newshours zachary green has this profile. Tradition tradition tradition reporter a half century after its premiere, the songs fiddler on the roof are known around the world. It tells the story of tevye, a poor jewish dairyman, and his family, facing oppression in rural russia at the turn of the 20th century. This production at the broadway theater marks the fifth time fiddler has been revived on broadway. This is one of the finest casts weve ever had. So revisiting the show has been a thrill. Reporter even at 92 years old, lyricist Sheldon Harnick has been directly involved in this revival, helping choose the director and attending rehearsals. We spoke with him at sardis restaurant, famous for its caricatures of broadway stars; amongst them, harnicks own likeness. Harnick says the inspiration f fiddler came when he received a book by humorist sholem aleichem. The stories were riveting. And what was astonishing about them was that some of them were actually tragic, and yet there was a great deal of humor in them. And by the time you got to the end of the story, you might be crying, but you were laughing along the way. So i sent it to jerry bock, and i said, this is our next musical. Reporter composer jerry bock and harnick had already written hit musicals like she loves me, also a current broadway revival, and fiorello, about new york city mayor laguardia. But fiddler would become their most successful collaboration and produced their best known song, based on aleichems prose. If i were a rich man all day long id bitty bitty bum if i were a wealthy man i find it a little embarrassing if somebody reads one of the stories closely, he will find the lyrics to if i were a rich man. I practically just took them right out of the story and set them to music. Thats not entirely true; i have some craft. But a lot of those images were in the stories. Reporter fiddlers main story follows the struggles of tevye and his wife, golde, as they try to marry off their five daughters. Matchmaker, matchmaker make me no match im in no rush maybe ive learned reporter the three eldest insist on marrying someone they love despite the wishes of their wellmeaning parents to find them wealthy suitors. That disassociation between love and marriage is illustrated in the song do you love me, where tevye and golde admit their feelings for each other after 25 years of marriage. Harnick wrote it as a late addition to the musical during its initial prebroadway run in detroit. I was standing in the back of the house, and i suddenly started to sob. And i thought, why am i weeping like this . And then i thought, its because i wished that my own parents had had the relationship that golde and tevye had had. I grew up during the depression, and there were a lot of vicious, violent arguments between my parents about money. Not that the relationship between tevye and golde is a simple, loving relationship, its a complex relationship, but basically its a loving relationship. And it just affected me, and i started to cry. So there was much more in the song than i knew when i wrote it. Reporter fiddler opened on broadway to rave reviews and went on to sweep the 1965 tony awards. The original production ran for eight years at the time, the longest run in broadway history. The 1971 movie version brought the show to a wider audience. Although the story focuses on the plight of russian jews, harnick says the prejudice in the film and Stage Productions is familiar to many different people. We saw a remarkable production of it in a black and puerto rican neighborhood, where the cast was all black and puerto rican. And the young black man, he was 15 years old, who played tevye, was superb. They understood the show. They understood what it was about, and that kind of race hatred. Reporter and harnick says the musicals end, when tevyes family and fellow villagers leave with only the belongings they can carry, can still be seen in real life even today. The syrian problem and people leaving syria and having nowhere to go, it resonates even more. It says something terrible about the human race that in 50 years, that image has always been current. Theres always been some place in the world where something horrible is going on. To us and our good fortune be happy be healthy long Life Reporter but despite the timeless quality of fiddler on the roof, harnick says the musicals enduring legacy is still remarkable to him. That we would run eight years, and that the show would become what it was, was a surprise to us. Its kind of still a surprise. I must say its a very pleasant surprise. We recognized when we read the stories, that they were not just about a jewish family, that there was something universal about these stories. And we tried to realize the universality of what was in those stories, and to make this a show that would appeal to people of all faiths and all beliefs. Drink lchaim to life sreenivasan finally, italys coast guard said today it rescued more than 1300 migrants and refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea from north africa to italy. That brings the threeday total of people rescued past 3,000. 50,000 people have come ashore in italy during this third year of massive migrant crossings. The traffic along the africatoitaly route has increased since the European Union cracked down on the route between greece and turkey in march. On tomorrows program, Jeff Greenfield on the politics of the outsider candidate. Thats it for this edition of newshour weekend. Im hari sreenivasan. Have a good night. Captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org pbs newshour weekend is made possible by lewis b. And Louise Hirschfeld cullman. Bernard and irene schwartz. Judy and josh weston. The cheryl and Philip Milstein family. The Citi Foundation. Supporting innovation and enabling urban progress. The john and Helen Glessner family trust. Supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. Sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. Corporate funding is provided by mutual of america designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why we are your retirement company. Additional support has been provided by and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Ri sreenivasan. Thank you for watching pbs newshour weekend. Id like to take you behind the scenes and show you just what it takes to bring the news to you. Whether its from around the globe or from around the corner. weve got kabul on the line. hari and how you can help support our Ongoing Mission of keeping you connected with this ever changing world. Whether you watch onair, online or on your mobile device pbs newshour weekend is connecting you with news that matters most. 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You can choose any amount that works for you. Best of all, youll be providing a steady stream of support to this station. It takes just a couple of minutes to set up, but the benefits are long lasting. Just give us a call or go to our website. Thank you. Support of pbs newshour weekend ensures that we can keep you connected. On behalf of everyone here at pbs newshour weekend, thank you for your support man it is extremely rare to have a planet where there is soil. As this living crust that is smeared over the surface of our planet. Most of the planet is not living. Its mineral. Its never known life, its just this rock. And yet soil starts forming on it and creates this crust, this very thin layer where life is possible. [footsteps crackling on ice]