Transcripts For KQED PBS NewsHour Weekend 20140518 : compare

Transcripts For KQED PBS NewsHour Weekend 20140518

Wallach. The sheryl and philip mill steen family. Bernard and irene schwartz. Rosalind p. Walter. Corporate funding is provided by mutual of america. Designing customized, individual, and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. Additional support is 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. Good evening. Thanks for joining us. Western and African Leaders met in paris today to devise a strategy to fight boko haram, the islamic Extremists Group responsible for the abduction of hundreds of nigerian schoolgirls. Even as they met, they were responsible for additional terror attacks in africa. Ten Chinese Workers were seized at a camp inside cameroon. And a similar number of people were killed on the other side of the border in nigeria. For more, we have a report by paris by simon israel. Reporter unable to travel to meet the captive girls families in his own country, the nigerian president managed to make it to paris today. He was one of five west african heads of states to attend. The dangers posed to the region of boko haram have finally brought them together. Translator we have identified the threat of boko haram. We have understood its links with other terrorist movements in africa, and we have seen what this organization was capable of. Bring back our girls the rest of the world is waiting for news on the search for the abducted schoolgirls. Today saw another protest outside the Nigerian Embassy in london. This may be a tiny stand in the Global Awareness campaign, but theres been no6vpw y progr. Theyve seen no progress in any attempts to get the captive girls released. Boko haram but in paris, little was offered to developments. There were just promises. Weve been scanning the areas with surveillance, aircraft and also using local intelligence. This has been complemented now by france, uk, u. S. , and other countries. The summit ended with a declaration of war on the islamist kidnappers boko haram, now seen as al qaeda affiliates and not just by nigeria, but also its neighboring countries, with all their porous borders. When they cross the borders into our communities, and run back to cameroon, internationally, Nigerian Military cannot move into cameroon except you take special permissi permission. Theres no room for you to take permission to enter. There was an acknowledgement too that the boko haram poses a threat to the west. This week a key figure arrested in sudan was educated in wales. Hes suspected of organizing bomb attacks in nigeria and had been monitored at times by British Security services. But its the face of the schoolgirls that matters the most. And nigeria will be judged turkish rescue workers today retrieved the bodies of the last two men killed in the mine fire earlier this week. The death toll is 301. 485 people survived the countrys worst industrial disaster. The incident has sparked demonstrations across the country over the lack of safety regulations. A federal judge in washington has halted the u. S. Militarys force feeding of a syrian prisoner on a hunger strike. The restraining order will remain in place until a hearing wednesday. A u. S. Appeals court ruled that prisoners had the right too sue over the practice. Last year, 46 of the 166 prisoners held at guantanamo was force fed. The procedure involves feeding them liquid through tubes inserted in their noses and into their stomachs. Colorado became the first state to let terminally ill patients to try experimental drugs without fda approval. The right to try bill was signed this afternoon. Similar law is expected in other states soon. A judge in North Carolina struck down a law that would ended tenure for teachers in the state. In issuing the ruling, the judge said the law passed last summer violates Constitutional Rights and protecting government from taking a persons property. Firefighters got a boost today in containing wildfires in southern california. Since tuesday, flames is scorch nearly 30,000 acres, destroying homes and forcing evacuations. On friday a suspect pleaded not guilty to charges he set one of the smaller blazes. Two others have been arrested on suspicion of arson. President obama will nominate Hulian Castro as the next 68 of housing and urban development. The threeterm mayor is often mentioned as a possible Vice President ial nominee in 2016. The Postal Service is about to issue a stamp honoring harvey milk. He was on the board of supervisors and was one of the first to be openly gay. He was assassinated. The stamp will be unveiled at a white house ceremony next week. And after 60 years in radio, carl castle has retired. He started in radio at the university of nashl with his classmate charles kur alt. He was part of nprs morning edition for 30 years and became something of a cult favoriten the weekly commed quiz show. Wait wait, dont tell me. His last appearance was today. [ applause ] we thought about doing an hourlong special of nothing but tributes to carl, and we could do that, believe me. But we wanted to send carl out the way he wants, by simply doing a good radio show. Why start now, peter . [ laughter ] we want to go more deeply tonight into a significant story that yesterday, the government fine against General Motors for its slow response reporting a safety problem linked to 13 deaths. For more we are joined from phoenix, arizona. Just remind people what this case is all about. Right, so these involved General Motors vehicles, saturns, pontiacs and chevrolets, started to be built in 2002, older models General Motors cars. Theres a pin in the ignition that can come loose. If that happens, the car can switch itself off, essentially. When that happens, people could lose control of the car. And if the ignition is off, your airbags dont work. So thats the Biggest Issue here, the sudden loss of control, this sudden loss of power, and if you do get in a crash, which could happen if you lose the ignition, your airbags wont come on. So its a very scary situation for the people who have been involved in these accidents and 13 people have died. Its a huge amount of money. The senator calls it a parking ticket. Thats right. This fine is actually the limit the government can charge a company for failino trelease information about recalls. There are proposals to raise it to something around 100 million. So if the new bill went through, gm would have paid a much higher fine. In this case, this is all the government can charge. So besides the fine, what about the monthly meetings they have to have with regulators about every safety issue under the sun theyre dealing with . My friend at Automotive News says gm was put on a short leash. So this is unprecedented in trmz of one of the detroit carmakers. General motors has to basically report in. Its almost like its on parole with the Transportation Department. And this is the kind of information that car companies, they dont like giving over information to the government. They would rather be able to run their operations without having to justify what they do. So its an unprecedented level of oversight for a detroit company. And it will be very interesting to see how this relationship works out. And it doesnt seem that gm is finished with all of this. I mean, theres still investigations ongoing. Are they still possibly liable for criminal malfeasance . Theres a couple of milestones that will probably still happen here. First of all, General Motors is conducting its own internal investigation and it hired kenneth fineberg, who adjudicated the 9 11 victims cases. He was the person who looked into compensation in the bp oil spill and hes expected to make a recommendation as to whether gm should pay the families of the victims. Possibly there will be a Justice Department settlement like we saw it toyota, which was 1. 2 billion and toyota also admitted false. The investigation seems to have uncovered a culture, more than a specific problem. How do regulators tackle this with the people who are on the front lines . Whats fascinating about this, its the second time the government has had to wade into General Motors to fix problems that people saw over years, but were never addressed. So if you remember back to the bailout in 2009, one of the things that the White House Task force did was basically tell General Motors, you havent been running your operations correctly. These are the suggestions, i guess suggestions with a baseball bat, that they had for gm. Now here we have Transportation Department basically saying, you camouflaged Safety Information from 2009 forward. So i think its kind of a sad situation for gm that it takes outside regulators to tell the company to run its operations the way it was supposed to. All right, thanks so much. My pleasure. And now to our signature segment, the nationwide debate about the use of Traffic Cameras. More than 500 communities across the United States now use them in an effort to slow drivers down and save lives. But seven states have now banned their use, believing these same cameras deny drivers their rights and invade their privacy. The battle is now playing out in ohio. News hour special correspondent rick carr traveled there recently and reports. Reporter drivers who run red lights kill nearly 700 people every year nationwide. Sue and Paul Ober Houser refuse to call those crashes accidents. Most of those are intentionally people think theyre going to get away with it, and they run the red light. They never think theyre going to kill a person. Their daughter sara was killed by a driver who ran a red light in 2002. She was 31 years old and the mother of two. A High School Chemistry teacher and basketball coach in oxford, ohio. She was on her way to a teachertraining workshop on a saturday morning when her light turned green. It was a young man, 21 years old, he ran the red light going 55 miles an hour and he t boned her car and sara was killed instantly. They believe theres a way to prevent crashes like the one that killed their daughter. Automated cameras that keep an eye on intersections 24 7. So even when police arent there, drivers think twice before running the light. The proof that they work is a 40minute drive from their farmous in ohio state capital. The city of columbus installed its first red light camera at this intersection in 2006. Since then its put cameras at more than three dozen other intersections. And at those locations, side impact crashes are down by 74 . We have significantly altered Driver Behavior for the good here in columbus, ohio. Hes the citys safety director. Do we have less folks trying to bet the yellow in running red lights . The answer is absolutely. We have over 70 less citations than we used to. Columbus drivers havent turned into angels. But when one does run a red light, at an intersection with cameras, its captured in a 12second video clip. Youll note the red light has been red for a number of seconds prior to the car coming into the intersection. And the driver jeopardizing everyone. The cameras send those videos and photos of the vehicle from behind to a private contractor. It identifies who owns the car and sends that information back to the Columbus Police department. Then cops like lieutenant brent mole review the evidence. Is he safe . Right there. Im going to say he made a safe turn. He did look, he was in control of his vehicle. There was no pedestrians and no other cross vehicular traffic. Im going to reject that. Okay. If its like baseball, if its a tie, the runner gets the advantage. So if its a tie and i cant really tell, well give the advantage to the person running the light. Its giving them the benefit of the doubt, basically. Right. Its for safety, its not about revenue for me. This city is not going to collapse if i dont write a ticket, or if i dont hit an accept versus reject on here. The comp mails citations to drivers who can pay the fine or request a hearing. The contractor keeps about 30 . The company up fronts all the money in exchange, they receive a percentage. It allows us, as a division of police, to concentrate, quite frankly, on more violent crime. Studies of red light cameras effect on crashes arent conclusive. Most say they cut down on right angle crashes which tend to be severe. But some say they lead to more crashes. Drivers who slam on the brakes may be getting into more rear end collisions. Either way, a lot of motorists just dont like Traffic Cameras. This is probably the most controversial subject matter ive ever dealt with in my 20plus years in government. But they dont just watch out for red light runners. Theyre used to nab speeders. Some communities use these as speed traps. Speed cameras need to be calibrated regularly. And the videos they capture just show cars driving away, which isnt as convincing as a car driving through a light thats red. Other ohio municipalities have deployed them more aggressively. Like Elmwood Place outside cincinnati. Thats one main drag through town and the police chief has said that drivers used to fly through here. But he didnt have enough officers to sit one here to issue tickets. After a few accidents, the town voted to install automatic Speed Enforcement cameras. Within a few months, that led to thousands of citations and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. Motorists action lawsuit arguing that those fines violated their due process. With speed cameras and red light cameras, youre guilty until proven innocent. And thats not right. That fonds me as a lawyer. It offends me as a citizen and and it fonds offends me as an american. Michael allen represented those drivers. When somebody challenges a speeding citation, that Police Officer has to raise his right arm and testify that the device he used was properly calibrated, that he is properly trained, that he isooo certain that the person that is charged is the person that was driving the vehicle. You dont have these in the speed camera cases. The county judge agreed. He called it a hitech game of three card monty, a scam the motorists cant win. He ordered the fine paid back. Generating income was why they installed the cameras in the first place, according to allen. Its all about revenue. Youre seeing a trend in in country about policing for profit. Thats not what Law Enforcement is about. Could you look at the ober housers and make an argument with the two people whose daughter was killed . I think i could. Im could do it respectfully. But you see so many times in the criminal Justice System where you have the families of people that have suffered horrible tragedies and legislators will rush to change laws because of that. And at the end of the day, those laws actually are counterproductive and contrary to due process. Thats not the way to make policy. Thats not the way to legislate. Allen won an injunction against another town and hes filed a third lawsuit against the city of dayton. Theyve introduced a bill that would ban cameras. Ron howe called himself a darling of the tea party. Dale mallory represents inner cincinnati and calls himself a liberal democrat. They agree cameras violate due process and are primarily intended to generate revenue. But theyre also concerned about drifrs privacy. The nsa spying on all your phone calls and your computer work. We have too much. If you own that store across the street and you want a camera over there to see whos coming in your store, thats fine by me. But the government has no right to be spying on american citizens. Mallory believes police like Traffic Cameras because they generate revenue, even when theyre reluctant to use cameras to fight other crimes. We wanted cameras for drug dealing, for real seriously crimes, and they said, well, you can use that camera, but if a guy has crack in his hand, we can identify it, but an officer has to be there to confirm it. Mallory says the firms that install the camera and take a percentage of the revenue they generate, have organized a Lobby Campaign against their bill. Paul and sue ober houser are against that effort. But they argue that support hasnt changed their message one bit. Were not rich. We cant go out and fund our message. And what being with the coalition has done, its given us the ability to access data from all over the country. And also to send letters to the editors all over the country, which we would not have had any way of doing otherwise. Last year, we killed almost 700 people running red lights. Innocent people. One at a time. And nobody wants to do anything about it. The bill to ban Traffic Cameras has passed the ohio house and is now waiting for a senate vote. The ober housers support an alternative that would set standards requiring police to review camera evidence in an appeal process. Learn about how police are monitoring the public in other communities. Visit news hour. Pbs. Org. This is pbs news hour weekend saturday. Topeka, kansas, will be marking a Supreme Court decisions 60th anniversary tonight. Its the city whose board of education was the target of the famous case, brown versus board of education, that desegregated the nations schools. We asked our network of student reporting labs across the nation, if Schoo

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