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. From the tisch wnet studios at Lincoln Center in new york, megan thompson. This is pbs newshour weekend. Thompson good evening and thanks for joining us. After primaries and caucuses in 33 states, campaign 2016 is increasingly defined by two words delegate math. In the month ahead, only a handful of big states remain for president ial candidates to close the gap with frontrunners Hillary Clinton and donald trump. Next up is wisconsin, which votes april 5, followed by new york, pennsylvania, and maryland. After sweeping three democratic caucuses yesterday, vermont senator Bernie Sanders trails former secretary of state clinton by 700 delegates needed to win the partys nomination. Sanders easily won Washington State with 73 of the vote and netted at least 16 more delegates than clinton. In hawaii, sanders received 70 of the vote and netted nine more delegates. And in alaska, sanders won 82 percent of the vote and netted 10 more delegates. And i believe that our campaign is the campaign of energy, of momentum, which will lead to a large voter turnout in november and victory. Thompson the democrats have allocated 57 of their total delegates, and the republicans, 65 . Despite being a distant third in delegates among active candidates, Ohio Governor john kasich said today hes the most electable republican. Im beating hillary by 11 points. Im the only one that can win in the fall. And as you notice, the narrative over the last week has been,i what is wrong with the party . kasichs the guy that can win the general. Thompson donald trump, whos won 12 more states and 275 more delegates than texas senator ted cruz, told abc news today whoever has the most votes and delegates after the primaries should be the partys nominee. In belgium today, police carried out more than a dozen raids in brussels and other cities and detained at least four more suspects, in connection to tuesdays terrorist attacks that killed 28 people and injured hundreds at the Brussels Airport and a subway station. Police in italy arrested an algerian man suspected of forging i. D. s for suspects in the brussels attacks and the terrorist attacks in paris last november, hell be extradited to belgium. Belgian prosecutors today charged a fourth suspect previously in custody. The suspect was shot at a tram stop thursday. Like the other three men charged, hes accused of participation in a terrorist group, isis, the group behind the brussels and paris attacks. About 500 demonstrators staging an antiisis march in brussels today clashed with police, who used a water cannon to disperse them. The marchers had ignored calls to postpone a solidarity march. At the citys main cathedral, the archbishop told parishioners in his easter sermon that the attacks, undermined the foundations of our society. At the vatican this easter sunday, pope francis denounced what he called blind and brutal terrorism in belgium, as well as in france, turkey, ivory coast, iraq, and other countries. In his traditional message from the balcony of st. Peters basilica the pope also urged europe not to forget the plight of refugees fleeing war and injustice, and seeking a better future. Isis has suffered a big setback in syria. Backed by russian air strikes, Syrian Government soldiers have driven isis fighters out of palmyra, a city isis occupied for tenmonths, destroying treasured monuments from roman times. The army is expected to use palmyra as a base to mount an offensive on the isiss de facto capital of raqqa, to the east. A faction of the taliban is claiming responsibility for a suicide bombing tonight in pakistan that killed at least 60 people, and says christians were the target. Officials say the suicide bomber struck near a playground crowded with families celebrating easter in a park in the city of lahore. Most of the victims are said to be women and children, almost 300 other people were injured. Californias state legislature is poised to vote as early as this week to raise the states minimum wage to 15 an hour. The Los Angeles Times reports legislators have agreed in principle to raise the wage from the current 10 an hour to 15 anhour over the next six years. California is already one of 11 states that requires a 10 an hour minimum wage. New york is also considering a hike to 15. A unionbacked initiative to raise the state minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour has already qualified for the california ballot in november. Learn how some states are rethinking guaranteed, minimum wages for tipped workers. Watch our report online at pbs. Org newshour. The u. S. Director of National Intelligence estimates the number of men whove traveled from their home countries to syria and iraq to take up arms with the Islamic State group, isis, now exceeds 36,000. These socalled foreign fighters hail from more than 80 countries, and according to the soufan group, the number from western european nations has doubled since june 2014. Two brussels bombers are believed to have trained with isis in the middle east. But is the influx of foreign fighters causing ideological discord in isis . Wall street journal reporter matt bradley has been reporting on that, and he joins me by skype from beirut. Nk the most people have assumed that the foreign fighters have been welcomed with open arm by isis but you have written thats not necessarily the case, what is going on . Well, it is and it isnt. The foreign fighter are welcome because Islamic State wants to be able to project an image of globally appealing islamic ideal. But its not quite that simple. There is of courseco quite a lot of discord and what is sparking the discord between foreign fighter and local fighters are the problem with money and the problems with battlefield defeats thats increasingly a problem for Islamic State in their selfdeclared. Thompson talk more about that what all these conflicts are that are happening. When you have foreign fighters who are rewarded for their trip, for their sacrifice, coming to the caliphate with with more money more spoils officer war there is bound to be resentment from the local fight are. These are local fighters for the mo part living under Islamic State rule. So they have less of a choice. So, theres going to be some discord, this is especially acute when theres battlefield defeats. So, when they lose Something Like as were seeing right now, city of palmyra they dont have the vocabulary to accommodate a defeat. This is the group that constantly tells its followers that they are working with the writ of god when their defeated they have to find another way of explaining that. Some sometimes that means executing people within their own ranks. For the most part that means executing some of the local fighters not the foreigners. And this projects this image of a foreign occupying force. Thompson do you think these internal conflicts have the potential to fracture isis . Most of the people that ive talked to, even those who live under Islamic State rule, they say that this is going to be more of a symptom of the decline of Islamic State rather than a cause. I mean, it is very tempting to say that Islamic State is being torn from within, because of this fracture, because of these differences between foreign fighters and local fighters. Thats not really the case. What were talking about really is attention that is existed within the group thats becoming more and more acute as they lose territory, as they lose funding. But we cant really talk about the demise of the group yet, we dont know. We dont have enough information about whats going on within Islamic State and particularly within Islamic State within the borders of the caliphate in syria and iraq. Thompson matt bradley of the wall street journal. Thank you so much for joaning us. Thompson a native American Indian tribe, the Cherokee Nation, is the First Community in the united states, and one of only a handful in the world, to set a goal of completely eliminating hepatitis c from its population. In tonights signature segment, the newshours stephen fee reports. If the cherokee program is successful, it could become a model. Reporter gaye wheeler is 61 years old and lives on this quiet street in the town of fort gibson, oklahoma. Shes a member of the Cherokee Nation, a federallyrecognized indian tribe with 320,000 members. Wheeler works as a Substance Abuse counselor, helping men and women who struggle with addictions to drugs and alcohol. Its a struggle she knows well; she started drinking at age 14. Then i graduated from high school and moved to tulsa. And thats when i started the intravenous drug use at the age of 18. I started off with crystal meth. That was the big thing then. And then i did cocaine. And mainly i did speedballs, heroin and cocaine. Reporter in the 1990s, wheeler went to prison twice for drugrelated offenses. When i came out the last time, i decided, you know, i had to do something different. Reporter she stopped using drugs, went to recovery meetings, regularly attended church, and stayed sober. Then last year, after a routine physical, she found out she had hepatitis c. And so did a lot of her friends. Everybody i knew, everybody i ran with, everybody i used with. Reporter hepatitis c is a virus that affects the liver and can lead to liver failure, cancer, and even death. But half of americans who have hep c dont even know it, in part because theyre not screened or diagnosed. Its a silent epidemic in many ways. Reporter doctor jorge mera is the director of Infectious Diseases for the Cherokee Nation. So hepatitis c is a virus that the main form of transmission is intravenous drug use. Thats number one in the united states. It doesnt produce symptoms for many years and even when it does, unless the providers are very familiar with hepatitis c, they tend to blame the symptoms on something else. Reporter hepatitis c is a growing Health Crisis in the united states, now affecting 3. 5 million americans. The problem is particularly acute for native americans and the Cherokee Nation, where hep c infection rates are nearly five times the National Average. Native americans are twice as likely to die from hepatitis c than other americans. Thats part of the reason the Cherokee Nation has made eliminating hep c one of its Top Public Health priorities. Alarmed by the disease, cherokee officials in 2012 began working with the university of oklahoma, the Oklahoma State health department, and eventually federal Health Officials to design a hep c Elimination Program that launched late last year. Bill john baker is principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. Hep c has been almost like the big c word of when you found out you had it, it was a death sentence. Reporter in addition to the health impact, baker says the disease takes an economic toll. Most folks cant work. They cant function as the disease progresses. Its a tremendous financial burden. Reporter the Cherokee Health system serves 130,000 native americans in northeastern oklahoma at its main hospital and at eight outreach clinics. Like many Indian Health systems, care is free for tribal members. Doctor mera says that makes it easier to screen nearly everyone, a cornerstone of the hep c elimination project. Most of our patients will come in through the system at some point. We will be able to screen them, and once we screen them and detect that theyre positive, engage them in care and hopefully treat them and cure them. Just imagine a skeptic watching this story, maybe thinks, you know, why should the Cherokee Nation be spending its resources on trying to fight the disease when they should really be going after drug use . Part of our Hepatitis C Program is to evaluate the need and visibility of starting opiate substitution clinics which is it tackles the it diminishes i. V. Drug use. Definitely prevention is the answer, the longterm answer. Right now, we have to put the fire out because theres a lot of people who are infected. And those people will develop liver endstage Liver Disease if we dont treat them today. Reporter the centers for Disease Control and prevention helped design the cherokee hep c program, which includes screening and treatment, as well as Public Information campaigns and a program to train Healthcare Providers to treat the disease. Doctor john ward directs the cdcs Viral Hepatitis division. He says its not entirely clear why native americans are more likely to die from hep c. Some of it could be under recognition which is a problem throughout the country. They also have other cofactors that when brought together with hepatitis c accelerate the progression of their Liver Disease, and those other conditions include alcohol use and obesity. Reporter the cdc recommends hep c screenings for all baby boomers everyone born between 1945 and 1965 now aged 50 to 70. But doctor mera discovered half of his hepatitis c patients are younger than 50. So now, under the tribes hep c Elimination Program, anyone over age 20 who comes through the Cherokee Health system, for any reason, is screened for hep c, regardless of other risk factors. Were doing age targeted screening. Were not doing screening based on risk factors, first because we know it doesnt work well. Many providers will not ask risk factors with patients. They dont have the time to do it or it is a sensitive issue. Reporter when gaye wheeler was diagnosed as part of the hep c Elimination Program, she told a nurse she was worried about the treatment. Friends and a close male relative had experienced debilitating side effects like fatigue and depression. I said, what medication am i going to have to take . And she said wl theres new medications. And i was like, okay. But you know in my own mind after i hung up, i thought, wow, is this going to be like what he had to go through . Reporter in addition to those side effects, the main drugs used to treat hep c until a few years ago, interferon and ribavirin, cured hep c only about half the time. And many patients had other medical conditions that prevented them from taking those drugs. When i was treating patients in the interferon era, i could treat 10 of the patients, roughly 10 of the patients that came to my office with hepatitis c. Best Case Scenario i could cure, 50 . Best Case Scenario. Reporter in 2014, the food and Drug Administration approved a new class of medications to treat hep c. These drugs are taken orally, once a day, have few side effects and a 90 cure rate. We have this powerful intervention now in our hands and our challenge as a nation is to bring together the populations who can benefit from these treatments together with those treatments and really have an excellent opportunity of wiping out this disease. Reporter but the drugs are very expensive. Gaye wheeler took a medication called harvoni its manufacturer, gilead sciences, charges 63,000 94,000 for an eight to 12 week treatment course. Wheelers medication came at no cost to her. Pharmaceutical Companies Offer substantial discounts to cherokee patients, and the tribe uses medicare and medicaid dollars to cover remaining costs. But even with discounts, a Bipartisan Senate finance Committee Report last year said gileads drug prices were putting a large burden on medicare, medicaid and other Government Health programs. In a statement to the newshour, gilead said the price of harvoni reflects the cost of innovation, and that harvoni and other therapies offer a cure at a price that significantly reduces hepatitis c treatment costs. The company also said it offers deep government discounts to Eligible Health programs. Gilead has donated 1. 5 million to the university of oklahoma for its part in assisting the cherokee hep c Elimination Program. Doctor mera says with competing hep c drugs in the pipeline from other pharmaceutical companies, he expects medication costs to come down. Do you worry at all that some of the conclusions youll reach here, arent gonna be applicable outside of Cherokee Nation because most people dont have the kind of medical coverage that people here in Cherokee Nation do . We wont be able to extrapolate what we do or find to every medical scenario in the united states. But i think everybody will learn a little bit from some of the things we did. Like, for example, we expanded age targeted screening to from 20 to 69. The recommendations right now are only baby boomers in the u. S. Reporter john ward from the cdc says the cherokee program could become a National Model for eliminating hep c. Well, the number one lesson we can learn from the Cherokee Nation is the power of political commitment to tackling this problem. Reporter so far, the cherokee program has treated almost 300 hep c patients, and of those whove completed treatment and finished evaluation, 96 are disease free, including gaye wheeler. Thompson the State Government in utah has become the first in the nation to publish online, a list of people convicted of white collar crimes. Complete with their mug shots. Anyone whos committed a Financial Crime will be posted for a decade. Reporter Jean Eaglesham is covering this issue for the wall street journal, and she joins me now to discuss it. First, tell me, why did you decide to implement this . Two reasons, first stay it will help protect investors because people can see online people with past conviction. The second reason were trying to encourage people to pay restitution, so anyone who is convicted of crime who has paid full restitution online can say off the registry. Thompson talk about the mechanics. Where will this be . What they do now going all the way back to 2006 finding everyone with relevant conviction, putting them information on the website. It shows the individuals, the mug shot, also their personal details like height or weight. And details of their conviction. Anyone with access to the internet can search and look their neighbors or work colleagues or anyone they know have the past conviction. Thompson what kind of crimes . Trevor people who have bilked investors large amounts of money also people who convicted say credit card fraud, who stole from their employer or their friends. Tax fraud, theres insurance scams as well. Pretty large scale. Very wide range of Financial Crimes. Thompson when most people think about these types of registries, they think of a registry for sex offenders, but youve written that there are actually lot of states with a lot of different types of registries. Exactly. A registry for sex offenders and proliferated to very wide range of different offenses. S, for example, in different states, there are registries for arson, for domestic violence, for drug crimes of different types. Even abuse. Tennessee has registers of animal abuse, and nine other states are considering it. Our one concern whether this could have unintended consequences. For example, creating a registry that shows people committed manufacturing drugs, could potentially be used by users who are looking for someone as a supplier. Thompson any evidence that these registries actually deter crime . Thats the question, are they effective, these other types of offenses, a debate for sex offender registries where they actually work. But these other ones, relatively recent, not Much Research into whether they actually are effective. Then theres the wide argument of the privacy, because approach the states with the white collar crimes, directly opposite to the approach federal agencies. So they say because federal privacy laws, they cant give out information on what individuals are paid factions or not. Thompson is there debate what could be considered public shaming . I meanf a person has done their jail time, they have paid their fines, is there limit to how long this punishment might go on with utah you are on there for a lifetime there. Is exactly this debatea concern that people have they serve their punishment, maybe done the jail time, they paid the restitution, but possibly late. Yet they are being punished all over again by the public shaming. This is a concern that it is unfair in that sense. Thompson Jean Eaglesham of the wall street journal. Thompson and now an update to a recent signature segment. In january, we reported on the increasing number of pregnant women struggling with addiction to opioids, prescription painkillers like oxycodone, vicodin, and percocet, and heroin. As a result, the number of babies born withdrawing from those drugs, has soared. The rate is three times the National Average in tennessee, which has the secondhighest rate of opioid prescribing in the u. S. In response, two years ago, tennessee became the first state to empower prosecutors to charge mothers with fetal assault for using opioids while pregnant. Sponsors said it was not intended to punish women but to get them treatment and protect their babies. This past week, tennessee legislators voted to discontinue the law, because it was found not to help women and had unintended consequences. Doctors testified the threat of arrest kept many addicted pregnant women from seeking treatment and prenatal care. Critics also said the law drove some addicts to get abortions. In a related move, the food and Drug Administration announced last week it will issue warning labels for 175 prescription painkillers, saying they should be taken only after other medications and physical therapy fail to alleviate pain. The centers for Disease Control has also released its first prescribing guidelines for opioids, saying doctors should offer the drugs only after considering physical therapy, overthecounter medication, and other methods to treat chronic pain. Opioid painkiller abuse is linked to 19,000 fatal overdoses a year in the u. S. Learn more about the opiod epidemics toll on pregnant women and their babies. Watch our earlier report online at pbs. Org newshour. Was a rugged outdoorsman who set many of his works in the west and rural michigan. Where he grew up. His most recent novel the ancient money tremendous was publish 24d month. He was 78. The Newshour Jeffrey Brown profile harrison in 2009 and you can watch that story online at pbs. Org newshour. Thats it for this edition of newshour, im meagan thompson. 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
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