Designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were 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 hello and thanks for joining us. This memorial day holiday weekend, about 40million americans are traveling at least 50 miles or more, according to the aaa. Most by car, and threemillion by plane. Now, new restrictions on plane travel are in the works. Homeland security secretary john kelly said today the Trump Administration is considering a ban on large electronic devices, including tablets and laptops, on all International Flights to and from the u. S. A partial ban now affects 50 flights a day from ten cities. Mostly in the middle east. Kelly also said hes likely to order greater screening of carryon bags, often overstuffed by travelers avoiding airline fees for checked luggage. Were very definitely going to raise the bar in terms of baggage security. The t. S. A. People who are looking at those bags as they go through the scanner cant see exactly whats in the bags, so now, because theyre stuffed so full, now in terms of the t. S. A. Process, they will ask people to open their bags so they can look inside. Sreenivasan following last weeks terrorist attack in manchester, england, kelly said europe faces a more imminent threat from isis operatives than the u. S. We have threats all the time, no, right now, specific threat, but that goes to the fact that we are over here and not over there. The fact is, that as the caliphate is being destroyed that is syria and iraq, there are large numbers of returning fighters, western europe, in many cases like the guy that did this thing in manchester. Sreenivasan kelly played down reports of president trumps adviser and soninlaw, jared kushner, having explored a secret backchannel with russia. Kelly said any channel of communications, is a good thing. Congressional democrats today called for kushners contacts and security clearance to be fully investigated. British Police Arrested a 12th person today in their investigation of last weeks terrorist attack on people leaving an Ariana Grande concert in manchester, england. British authorities have now released these images of the attacker, a britishbornand raised son of libyan immigrants, on his way to the concert site with a backpack bomb. Police say he returned to britain from libya ten days ago and likely assembled his bomb in a rented apartment in manchester. The explosion he set off killed himself and 22 people, including seven children, and injured more than 100 people. British airways resumed flights today from londons two busiest airports, heathrow and gatwick. Passengers braved long lines to check in for their rebooked flights after the airline was forced to cancel hundreds of flights yesterday due to a global Computer System failure. Many passengers had spent the night sleeping in the airports. The airline blamed a power supply problem for the disruption, and c. E. O. Alex cruz apologized to stranded travelers. In the philippines, Authorities Say at least 85 people have died in fighting this week between Government Troops and islamic militants. The fighting began six days ago in marawi, a mostly muslim city of 200thousand people in the southern part of the country, where muslim separatists have been active for decades. Thousands of civilians have fled the city, many telling aid workers at Evacuation Centers their homes were destroyed. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant calls last nights mass shooting that left eight people dead a senseless tragedy. It happened 70 miles south of mississippis capital, jackson, as a 35yearold man shot his victims in three different houses. A sheriffs deputy who responded to a 911 call was among those killed. Police say the rampage may have sparked by a dispute between the shooter and his wife and in laws. The alleged shooter told the local newspaper, the clarion ledger, quote suicide by cop was my intention. The two Good Samaritans stabbed to death on a train in oregon on friday have been identified as 53yearold army veteran ricky best and 23yearold reed College Graduate taliesin myrrdin namaki meche. The men had intervened to protect two women on the receiving end of antimuslim rant on a portland commuter train. The assailant who allegedly stabbed them and is now charged with murder is 35yearold jeremy christian, a known white supremacist with a criminal record. The f. B. I. Is now working with Portland Police to investigate the killings as a hate crime. The war in afghanistan is now the longest in american history. Its been almost 17 years since the United States invaded in retaliation for the september 11 terrorist attacks carried out by al qaeda, the terrorist group harbored at the time by the talibanled government. To date, 2,396 American Military personnel, along with 1,136 Coalition Soldiers have died in the war. So have an estimated 170 thousand fighters and civilians in afghanistan and pakistan. Now, with the taliban having regained control of 40 of the country, the Trump Administration is contemplating a surge of 5,000 u. S. Troops to add to the over 8,000 still there. Joining me here to discuss this is barnett rubin, associate director of new york universitys center on international cooperation. He previously worked in the obama state department. Why 17 years out are we talking about our adversary controlling 40 of our country . We never defined what we had accomplished. We had a long list of goals which were exirg and killing terrorists. And we were never compactly clear where the boundary around that category was and trying to stabilize afghanistan, those two missions got in their way. We were distracted by iraq. We never really had an adequate understanding of what the problem was, and we did not Pay Attention to the region around afghanistan which has changed very radically in the 16 years ago osh so that we have been there. Sreenivasan it seems like there are two goals now that are countering each other. You can either stabilize the country or road out the terrorists. You can have a permanent u. S. Military presence there to try to strike at terrorists and other enemies and so on in the region or you can try and stabilize the country. Because the country cannot be stabilized with a permanent presence of u. S. Troops because most of the countries of the region dont want us there and they let us know that by supporting the taliban. Sreenivasan what did the Obama Administration get wrong . Of course i was there. In my opinion, the big mistakes were, one, when obama announced a troop surge, he should not have given a sedate for withdrawing it a date for wrawng it. And two, when he announced the troop surge that is the time he should have made very farreaching offers of negotiated settlement. Unfortunately our military and many others in the government believe you shouldnt make any offers of negotiated settlement until you have already succeeded militarily. But that is too late. You have to do it when your comaftcapacities are increasing. I believe they are about to make the same mistake now. Theyre about to add administer troops and then they say when they are stronger they will make some offer of negotiation. Sreenivasan wouldnt the 5,000 troops make a difference . Of course the 5,000 troops will make some difference but they will make only a marginal difference. They might stop the erosion of the stalemate as it is now as if you say, these estimates are all very dubious but lets say the taliban control approximately 40 of the population. Well, maybe with 5,000 troops we could get that down to 30 or 25 . That would not be decisive in any way. And then of course our troops are not going to be there forever. No matter how many times we tell people that were committed everyone knows we are not going to be in afghanistan longer than the afghans so they can wait us out. So there is no alternative to working towards a political settlement not just with the taliban but with the countries of the region now, immediately. Sreenivasan we have been talking about policy, what about the People Living through this . Kind of seesaw between a local or provincial government control and then back and fort to taliban control . From the point of view of the people in afghanistan this war has been going on for almost 40 years since there was a coup detat in 1948. You give the number of People Killed and injured in the last 16 years, people believe a million or more people have been killed over the last 40 years including the period of the soviet intervention. Its been a terrible agony that the people of afghanistan have gone through for a long time. Of course they have become very resilient and those of them who arent killed, find ways of adapting but its becoming more and more difficult for them. Sreenivasan barnett rubin, thank you for joining us. Sreenivasan tomorrow marks the 100th birthday of John Fitzgerald kennedy, the nations 35th president , whose tenure was tragically cut short by an assassin in 1963. Despite only three years in office, j. F. K. Continually ranks among the top ten u. S. President s in polls of historians. As newshour weekend special correspondent Jeff Greenfield reports, kennedys death has given historians almost as much to study as his life. Reporter kennedys death has and so my fellow americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Reporter for many of us, it is as stark a measure of the passage of time as any. Could this symbol of a new generation really have been born a hundred years ago . Could he really be dead for 54 years, eight years longer than he lived . From ahalfcenturys distance, we have a clearer understanding of why his presence was so arresting the handsome war hero with a radiant wife and Young Children who helped define him. The oldest president replaced by the youngest ever elected, whose flair and wit became defining traits. But now, we also know that the image of that idealized family concealed a private life far different. Historians debate his sometimes contradictory legacy. He ran for president as a cold warrior and ramped up u. S. Military presence in vietnam. But in the last year of his life, he called for an end to the cold war. We are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combat ignorance, poverty, and disease. Reporter and he signed a Nuclear Test Ban treaty with moscow. He presided over attempts to bring down the cuban government of fidel castro. But during the cuban missile crisis, when the soviets placed missiles 100 miles from floridas shore, he rejected the military option to remove them and may have averted wwiii. He was at first a reluctant civil rights warrior, but in the last year of his life he committed to a landmark bill that banned Racial Discrimination in Public Places and the workplace, though this would have jeopardized his re election. We chose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Reporter and he set the nation on a path to win the space race. Despite what he did in life, the shocking manner of his death and its aftermath may have had as great an impact. His alleged assassin was a violenceprone former marine and selftaught marxist. But for many, the responsibility was elsewhere. This was Supreme Court chief Justice Earl Warren at the capitol memorial service. We do know that such acts are commonly stimulated by forces of hatred and malevolence, such as today are eating their way into the bloodstream of american life. Reporter there was something of a consensus that something had gone wrong, terribly wrong in the collective soul of the country, where optimism and confidence had always been at the core of our outlook. Moreover, it seemed impossible to believe that the most powerful person on earth could be brought down by a single, insignificant figure. Instead, conspiracy theories bloomed in bestselling books and popular movies, pointing to a cabal of shadowy, powerful figures in the military industrial complex. And to the extent that americans embraced such theories, what did it say about how much trust should be placed in the legitimacy of the american system . That kind of doubt grew deeper and wider in the late1960swith the divisive and costly vietnam war, racial unrest in the cities, generational upheaval on campus and the assassinations of jfks brother, robert, and Martin Luther king jr. A decade after kennedys death, after vietnam and watergate, the percentage of americans who had trusted their government in washington to do what was right dropped by more than half. No one can say what would have been different if president kennedys life had not been cut short. His ingrained cautiousness might have made him less ambitious about launching a war on poverty than his successor, lyndon johnson. But that same cautiousness and his skepticism about the militarys judgment, after the bay of pigs and the cuban missile crisis, as well as his longheld doubts about fighting a land war in asia might have made him pull back from the vietnam commitment hed made in his first years. Perhaps his Extramarital Affairs would have become public and threatened his political survival. What does seem clear is that his death drained something out of the american spirit; made us less confident, less certain. If that could happen in broad daylight in the streets of a city, maybe we werent the country we thought we were. Sreenivasan 50 years ago this week, the beatles release sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club band. From its cover to its 13 track sergeant pepper redefined the album as an art form and rock stars as artists. To commemorate the anniversary, Universal Music Group has released a deluxe boxed set including a stereo remix, outtakes and alternative tracks, and a documentary about how the album was made. Newshour weekend special correspondent Alison Stewart spoke with music writer Anthony Decurtis about sergeant peppers impact and influence. Sergeant peppers changed 00 lot about the way musicians were treated how they were seen and also, how albums were made. Fill in the blairchtion. When sergeant pepper came out it altered the way people thought about rock musicians. It was a serious bid for bands like the beatles around certainly the Rolling Stones and bob dylan of course to be perceived as artists. The Music Industry was driven by since, pretty much up to that point. By singles, pretty much up to that point. You had a hit last month whats your next song . The beatles went off the road and dioded they were going to work in the studio and they took full advantage of that. And when sergeant pepper dropped i. T. Was just cataclysmic. It was the representation of the summer of love and if ways the anthem of the summer of love what would you think if i sang out a tune would you stand up and walk out on me it was a generational dividing line also. Those were the days of dont trust anyone over 30. And there was a sense of psychedelic drugs coming on the scene. When you come to the line, i get high with a little help from my friends, the beatles stating that so directly in a song, so massive. Nobody deny that now but it was like okay, theyre on our side. Lucy in the sky with diamonds lsd. It was really a sense of kind of sounds silly now, but it was a sense of like envisioning a utopia. There was a real sense that a kind of revolution of consciousness was taking place and sergeant pepper became the symbol of that. Loousy in the sky with diamonds you really dont see it now very much. Listening to an album in its entirety right . Absolutely. Its become factionable among critics to sort of over the years pa poo poo sergeant peppe, but when you are assessing an album and whether or not it was the best, those albums were great but they didnt alter the culture. Sergeant pepper altered the culture. It was very much a concert piece, why wasnt that on the album, penny lane . The beatles wanted to step back. Before sergeant pepper, albums were, now you had a hit single, put ten other songs on, well sell it as an album. The beatles didnt want to do that. Sergeant pepper is going to be completely new, thats part of its imhact. It sound sewed fresh. Is there one song on the album you feel is important, or one that made a real difference in the way that music moved forward . I think a day in the life was something that was completely different. I read the news today o boy about a lky man who made the grade its a brilliant collaboration between le lennond mccartney. A friend of his who died, these little news items but at the same time, you have a sense of seen from the perspective of like a young person at that time, just like somehow all of this is going to disappear, you know, and were going to enter a new age. That song conveys that very powerfully i think. Tell us a little bit about the significance of this being a record that signaled that the beatles werent going to tour anymore. So the beatles sang, you know we go play our shores, people are screaming all the time. Theyre not listening to the music. We can barely hear ourselves. Were going to go into the studio. That under the stakes for them. It was a daring move and it also created an okay what are you going to come up with then if you are going to be focusing so much on this kind of private world . And it was very interesting because sergeant pepper of course opens with sounds of crowds listening to a band. Its almost like theyre kind of recreating in some sense the communality of a Live Performance except in the studio. It was 20 years ago todayette that sergeant pepper learned to play he letsers learn some song we can play on the road. With all the orchestrations certainly like then would have been virtually impossible to play live. Does the album stand up . It does. It packs a lot of power. If you take the time to listen to it, its metropolitan meant to be a journey. When you start with the sergeant pepper theme and end with a day in the life, you really get there, you feel like youve journeyed and taken a trip and i think the beatles very consciously intended that. Anthony de curtis. Thank you for joining us. I. T. Was a pleasure allison. Sreenivasan musician gregg allman, the lead singer and co founder of the allman brothers band, died yesterday from complications of liver cancer, at the age of 69. In 2012, the newshours Jeffrey Brown sat down with allman to discuss his storied career. In this excerpt, allman revealed his doubts about his chances to become a rock star. Reporter there was, however, a realistic streak in young gregg allman. He writes that he had actually intended to go to college and medical school. I mean no pun, but everybody and their brother had a damn rock and roll band. Reporter so youre looking around saying i am, yes. Reporter were not going to make it here. Were not going to make rent doing this. My brother said, but, no, man, were going to be the best. Were going to be number one. Reporter in 1971, the allmans recorded what is widely considered the finest live album ever made, at fillmore east. It would be their ticket to stardom. But just three months after its release, duane allman was killed in a motorcycle crash in their adopted home of macon, ga. Well, my brother died. And then it just started raining money. And, at first, you know, i screamed and yelled and shook my fist at the sky and yelled, shortchanged. Reporter the band members debated whether to continue. I told them, i said, were going to be the windup bunch of street junkies, or we can forget all that crap and go back to business as usual. And it was pretty much a landslide. Well, it was. You can see all of Jeffrey Browns interview and read about Gregg Allmans musical legacy at pbs. Org newshour. Sreenivasan finally, japanese race car driver takuma sato won todays 101st running of the indianapolis 500. He took the lead on the 195th of 200 laps and held off threetime winner helio castroneves by two tenths of a second. Sato is the first asian driver to win the race. New zealands scott dixon, who had the fastest qualifying time, went airborne in a crash, and walked away uninjured. Thats all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. Thanks for watching. Im hari sreenivasan. Good night. Captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org pbs newshour weekend is made possible by bernard and irene schwartz. Judy and josh weston. The cheryl and Philip Milstein family. The john and Helen Glessner family trust supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. Sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. Barbara hope zuckerberg. Corporate funding is provided by mutual of america designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. Additional support has been ovided by d by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. [ theme music plays ] next on great performances, how did a musical based on the life of an overlooked founding father become the hottest ticket in town . The ship is in the harbor now see if you can spot him find out as composer Linmanuel Miranda takes us on his personal journey from original inspiration to broadway sensation. I grabbed a biography off the shelf of alexander hamilton, and i found it deeply moving and deeply personal when i read it. Im the damn fool that shot him something that really sort of spoke to me when i was, you know, reading this story and beginning to research and write it is that moment when we trade away capital in exchange for the debt plan. We call it the room where it happens. Ive got to be the room where it happens ive got to be the room where it happens oh, ive got to be in the room where it happens