rosalind p. walter, in memory of abby m. o'neill. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're 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. the white house said last night that president trump will sign a bill imposing new financial sanctions on russia for meddling in last year's election and for its aggressive acts in ukraine and syria. the bill was approved overwhelmingly this week by congress with veto-proof majorities in both houses. the white house did not say when the signing would happen, or whether it would be public or in private. earlier this week, new white house communications director anthony scaramucci had suggested the president might veto the bill, and negotiate an "even tougher deal against the russians." the bill would force mr. trump to seek congressional approval before suspending or lifting the russian sanctions. a number of current and former trump associates are being investigated over possible collusion between russia and his presidential campaign. the bill sent to the white house also includes new sanctions on north korea and iran. cheering in the capital of pyongyang, as north korea carried out its second successful test-launch this month of an intercontinental ballistic missile. leader kim jong-un said yesterday the launch was a" stern warning" to the united states. north korean state television showed pictures reported to be of kim jong-un at the launch site. the missile reached an altitude of more than 2,300 miles, and soared 620 miles before landing in the sea of japan, which western experts called an improvement over the first test-launch, more than three weeks ago. some analysts say the data shows the missile could have been able to penetrate as far inside the u.s. as denver and chicago. president trump said the u.s. will take "all necessary steps" to protect the homeland and american allies. iran's revolutionary guards charge that the u.s. navy aircraft carrier "nimitz" came near an iranian off-shore oil platform yesterday, fired flares and launched a helicopter that hovered near the platform before returning to the carrier. the iranians called the u.s. navy's action near the resalat platform "unprofessional." it was the second confrontation this week in the persian gulf. last tuesday, a u.s. navy patrol boat fired warning shots after u.s. officials say an iranian vessel came within 150 yards of the american vessel. ortions that state lawmakersg e of the restrictions would have banned a common procedure used in second-trimester abortions called "dilation and evacuation." abortion rights advocates say it is the safest method, while the state calls it "barbaric." the procedure is banned in mississippi and west virginia. the american civil liberties union and the center for reproductive rights, which had challenged the arkansas restrictions, say the laws could have effectively ended access to abortion facilities for many women in the state. washington, d.c. was under a flood warning today as heavy rains continue to drench the mid-atlantic states and central appalachians. flooding overnight closed roadways and prompted rescue operations in southwestern pennsylvania and the pittsburgh area. an additional two to five inches of rain is expected today, on top of the more than four inches that fell yesterday across the region. the national weather service says flash flooding could cause a potentially life-threatening situation overnight. >> sreenivasan: when the u.s. senate fell short this week of the republicans' goal to repeal the affordable care act, it left the a.c.a. in place, at least for now. and today on twitter, president trump seemed to threaten those lawmakers and insurance companies, saying:" if a new healthcare bill is not approved quickly, bailouts for insurance companies and bailouts for members of congress will end very soon!" the president might have been referring to cost sharing reduction payments, which lower the amount individuals have to pay for deductibles, co-payments and insurance. currently, obamacare provides insurance to 12 million people through private policies purchased on exchanges. but some of the exchanges have seen insurers like aetna, anthem, cigna, and humana, pull out. that trend, according to the "new york times," reuters and kaiser health news could leave three million people in more than 1,300 counties with only one obamacare participating insurer next year. 45 or more counties could have none. for more, i am joined from washington by mary agnes carey of kaiser health news. how did we get to this situation? you know, the president likes to describe it as obamacare imploding. but we're clearly seeing that there's a disparity in how much choice consumers have when they go to these exchanges. >> insurers have been very concerned about the uncertainty around the affordable care act. as you mentioned, there's been a lot of discussion on capitol hill about repealing and replacing the law. that fell apart this week in the senate. there's been concern about whether or not the trump administration would fund these cost-sharing subsidies that help low-income people with their out-of-pocket costs. and there's also been concern from insurers about tough enforcement of the individual mandate, this requirement that most americans have insurance is or pay a fine. so when you look at that collectively, insurers are getting worried, and some are deciding not to go into some markets or leave other markets or raise their prices to try to compensate for that uncertainty. >> sreenivasan: i remember when the a.c.a. first passed, one of the big sort of compromises to the insurance industry was saying, "hey, this individual mandate will be in place. everyone will have to have insurance. so you're going to have an opportunity to find new customers." >> right. but the thought has been also that has been the opportunity for the insurers, and they have gotten in, but they knew initially the sickest people would come in first. they have been very, very expensive. and then there's also been ongoing concern about the price of the premiums. some people have opted, rather, not to enroll and simply pay that individual mandate penalty. so the individual mandate, of course, we know has been a lightning rod on capitol hill. republicans hate it. they say americans shouldn't be required to purchase insurance or be told what insurance to buy. so it has been a focal point of this ever since the affordable care act was created. >> sreenivasan: insurance companies are also responsible to their shareholders. they're thinking a couple of years out. in the past couple of years we've seen them start to make moves regardless of who was going to win this white house. >> they looked at the market, as you mentioned, some are in, some are out. again we get back to the uncertainty. is this a miles pe marketplace t to be? will it be supported by the trump administration. the rules and regulations of the affordable care act be overseen of the trump administration and that has been the focal point of this entire thing. >> sreenivasan: what about medicaid expansion or subsidies or how much the affordable care act or what sort of replacement will pay? what can the insurance companies expect? >> right now, since things have fallen apart about this on capitol hill, the medicaid expansion, which 31 states embraced, is still there. so they could still count on that enrollment. and for now, the subsidies,s nd eight out of 10 mentioned ear beneficiaries. the key is the cost sharing subsidy. that is the subsidy that helps nearly seven million enrollees with out-of-pocket costs. and they're very worried the trump administration might stop funding that. >> sreenivasan: what action can be taken for the bare counties where there are no insurers on the exchanges, or those counties grow in number? >> there are a variety of proposals that could be in place. claire mccaskill has a plan that says if you're in a bare county you should be able to buy health insurance on the same exchange here in the district of columbia, where members of congress buy coverage. there is also a variety of coverage out there to help insure with their high-cost cases. this is called reinsurance. that program existed for 20 years. you have members on both sides of the aisle talking about that. if you step in and try to help with those high-cost cases premiums could be reduced. but we also have to remember those broader bills from republicans in the house and the senate, all included money for state markets to try to help these insurers. so it's kind of a moving target at this point. >> sreenivasan: all right, mary agnes carey of "kaiser health news," thanks so much for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> sreenivasan: this organization makes short films for children that spotlight african american figures throughout history. read more at www.pbs.org/newshour. since 2010, india has undertaken what is by far the largest citizen registration drive in history: attempting to add all of its 1.3 billion people into a single national identification database. the system assigns everyone a number, stores fingerprints and even scans their eyes. in tonight's signature segment, newshour weekend special correspondent fred de sam lazaro reports on how india is creating the biometric database and the privacy concerns it raises. >> reporter: over the past seven years, across india, almost every citizen has stood in line to get a new national i.d. >> next, next. >> reporter: it is a 12-digit number backed by biometric security. a head shot, plus fingerprints, plus an iris scan. it is the most exhaustive headcount by a country in history. ajay bushan pandey heads aadhaar, the agency running the identification program. >> we have now reached the figure of 1.15 billion people. among the adults, more than 99% of the adults have aadhaar now. >> reporter: pandey says the aadhaar project, which has so far cost 90 billion rupees-- about a billion-and-a-half dollars-- improves national security by making it easier to monitor border crossings with india's neighbors, like pakistan and bangladesh. he says the biometric i.d.s verify identity, and weed out corruption by replacing paper records-- if they even exist-- with electronic ones. aadhaar is bringing vast sections of the country that barely entered the industrial age, into the digital age. >> reporter: many people in india don't have birth certificates or formal i.d.s, and the government says that the aadhaar program will correct this problem by issuing everyone a unique biometric identification." a tool of inclusion" is what the government calls it. a third of india's population survives on less than $2 a day. they and many low-to-middle income people receive government benefits, including temporary employment in public works, farm subsidies, and food commodities distributed through ration shops. the system is rife with fraud: fake paper i.d.s, fake beneficiaries, and theft by middlemen preying on vulnerable, often illiterate people. the new, harder to fake i.d.s are designed to alleviate these problems, says a spokesman for india's ruling party, the b.j.p., in the capital of delhi. >> 30 years back, when late mr. rajiv gandhi was prime minister of india, he has used a phrase: "when 100 rupees goes from delhi, only 15 or 16 rupees reaches to the targeted poor." now, we have ensured that if 100 rupees goes from here, the entire 100 rupees directly reaches to the person concerned. >> reporter: given its promise of security and efficiency, the government recently decided to make aadhaar mandatory for a growing number of financial transactions. every bank account and tax return must now be linked to one's biometric i.d., and an aadhaar number is now required to receive any welfare benefits. >> the world bank has estimated that if government of india uses aadhaar in all its public welfare schemes, the annual savings would be to the tune of almost $11 billion every year. >> i think that the savings that the government claims which spring from aadhaar are vastly exaggerated. >> reporter: opponents of aadhaar, like columnist and editor siddharth varadarajan, were skeptical when it began as a voluntary program to improve transparency in the welfare system. now, they are alarmed. varadarajan says a country where 300 million people-- a quarter of the population-- do not have reliable electricity, is unprepared to take such a huge digital leap. >> you need electricity 24/7, you need the internet up and running 24/7, you need proper data speeds. so, given the limitations of technology, given the absence of a privacy law, for the government to steamroller this kind of scheme, to my mind, seems to be rather ill-advised. >> reporter: internet service is at best sporadic in many parts of india, and in regions where aadhaar i.d.s are now required, one recent report by a workers' rights group found the system has done little to reduce corruption. attorney gautam bhatia represents some aadhaar opponents and citizen activists who've taken the government to court. >> for example, if you are, say, a farmer in the rural areas, then say you are entitled to rations or to kerosene, for example, oil. and when that is based upon your biometric authentication, you have to go to the person who is authorized to authenticate you. and that person may simply say your authentication failed and not give you your entitlement, and then you are basically left without that for that one month, and in fact the report shows that many families have gone many months without access to very important, important, entitlements. >> reporter: bhatia says the new technology will not wipe out corruption, but it has violated a basic tenet of democracy: privacy. >> you're giving the state centralized access to a very vast citizenry's data, personal data. that is where the problem lies. you are fundamentally altering the relationship between the state and the individual. you are putting the individual in a position where her actions are visible in a certain way to the state, whereas we think that the relationship should be the other way around. >> reporter: already, there have been several leaks of personal data. aadhaar opponents worry rogue operators or hackers could steal biometric data like fingerprints, allowing indians to be profiled for commercial or political purposes. but aadhaar's director says his agency's systems are state of the art, and privacy concerns are overblown. he adds, when the system authenticates a person, it does not keep any records of transactions. >> aadhaar also places restriction on merging of various data bases. right. so you cannot link the various databases and create a surveillance tool. aadhaar act provides a very strong protection against any such move, so any violation of the law will be taken very seriously. >> reporter: editor varadarajan is not reassured, because, he says, the rule of law is frequently flouted by corrupt or incompetent officials. >> if india was a better governed state, if the rule of law operated in a more transparent manner, half of these objections would vanish. >> reporter: when he was in the opposition, indian prime minister narendra modi called aadhaar a gimmick. but in power, he's embraced it, insisting his government has built in privacy safeguards. and modi wants to vastly expand its scope. >> the whole act was enacted for the purpose of passing on the subsidies more efficiently, not to convert a democratic country into a police state. >> reporter: aadhaar has sparked robust debate on indian news outlets like "mirror now," but not so much in the streets. >> ( translated ): it works. to open a bank account, it works. >> reporter: in this poor section of delhi where almost everyone has an aadhaar number, there's been no controversy, because, people told us, they have far more basic worries. >> reporter: "nothing lost, nothing gained" with the new i.d., this woman said, as she washed cans she'd fill with water as soon as the municipal tanker arrived. there's no running water here. and, this man complained, ration shops often claim they are out of the subsidized rice and other essentials. india's supreme court has affirmed the government's right to link aadhaar to welfare benefits and tax returns. but it has yet to rule on whether being forced to provide biometric information violates an individual's right to privacy. when the court answers that question, the fate of the world's largest single database of biometric information will be at stake. >> sreenivasan: tomorrow, venezuela holds an election for a new national assembly that could rewrite its constitution. parties that oppose beleaguered president nicolas maduro are boycotting the vote, because they say it's a scheme by maduro to expand his executive powers. maduro's socialist party has presided over a severe economic downturn marked by triple-digit inflation and scarce supplies of food and medicine. this, as venezuela's most important export, oil production, continues to decline. for more on the controversial vote, i am joined via skype by reuters reporter brian ellsworth from the venezuelan capital, caracas. brian, we are almost talking about the vote as a matter of course, here, tomorrow. we know the outcome, because the opposition's not putting up any candidates. >> yes, that's right. in effect, the vote will take place tomorrow, and the opposition parties are not participating, which means that this 540-seat assembly will go entirely to allies of the socialist party. we're likely to see next week at some point, there will likely be some divisions that will emerge, different groups sort of seeking to control leadership of the institution. but as you say, yes, there is no opposition participation, so there isn't a lot of suspense as to who will win. >> sreenivasan: well, for people who don't follow the internal politics of venezuela, what does this-- what's the power that this national assembly will actually have? >> well, the constitution has one article that gives very vague description of what this body does. and it says almost nothing, other than the fact that it can rewrite the constitution, and it cannot be challenged or overruled by any other government agency. which means that neither the courts, nor any executive branch powers, or anyone else, can tell this assembly not to do something. last time this was done was in 1999, there was a very clear mandate to rewrite the constitution. now, the constitution already gives quite a bit of generous executive power to the president, but they could, for example, dissolve the opposition-run congress. they could fire the prosecutor, the chief prosecutor, who has been increasingly critical of the maduro government. so, it effectively creates a superbody, that will have unlimited powers, with very unclear consequences as to what that would mean. >> sreenivasan: so this could actually keep maduro in power indefinitely, kind of sliding away from democracy into more dictatorship. >> we don't know what they would actually do. but the current electoral schedule has maduro's term ending in early 2019, and the next elections taking place in late 2018. so one of the things that they could do is, not only alter the time frame for when the elections would happen, but they could also alter the way the actual votes are taking place. which, if you note, in this election, these are being-- these seats are being distributed by municipality, which basically over-represents the rural areas, and in effect, over-represents the government. which was the main opposition argument for saying, "we're not going to participate in this." so they could do similar things, in order to juggle basic electoral functioning, in an environment in which the socialist party basically cannot win an election, due to extreme economic crisis. >> sreenivasan: well, how do the countries in the neighborhood-- how does the united states weigh in on this? >> the united states has already sanctioned-- last week announced sanctions against 13 high- ranking socialist party officials. and they have said more swift sanctions are on the way, if this vote goes through. it's not immediately evident what those sanctions would be, but it could involve blocking the sale of venezuelan oil to the united states, or financial sanctions that would prevent venezuela from collecting on the oil that it sells. >> sreenivasan: even after this vote tomorrow, is the condition of life likely to get any better for the people of venezuela that have been suffering over the past two months, that we've been chronicling? >> this is another of the opposition's arguments against the assembly, is that the primary concern of any venezuelan that you speak to on the street today is that there isn't food, there isn't medicine, and prices are skyrocketing. the assembly, as proposed, makes no evident-- does nothing, in effect, to change any of that. the reforms that they need to do, which will be painful to change this from a sort of socialist, state-controlled economy into a market economy, they have repeatedly avoided doing. and there is no suggestion that the assembly is ready to do this, and there is nothing, per se, about the assembly that would change this situation. it's not like monday, or wednesday, we're suddenly going to see food on the shelves. so, this has been one of the primary arguments against it, and as things stand, it's not clear that it is going to change any of those things. >> sreenivasan: all right, reuters reporter brian ellsworth joining us via skype from caracas today. thanks so much. >> thank you. >> this is pbs newshour weekend, saturday. >> sreenivasan: there is a massive relocation effort underway in the african nation of malawi. conservationists there are moving elephants from an overpopulated area to one that is less crowded, and safer from the reach of poachers. the move covers more than 200 miles and involves 500 elephants. itn's john ray reports. >> reporter: from high in the african sky, want marksmen with the dart gun makes it look simple. it is anything but. every second counts now. an entire family group knocked out. >> they're up this way! >> reporter: and there's a panic. a big female, the matriarch, is stuck in a ditch, face-down. worse, her calf is lying across her trunk, a sufcaight weight that takes great sweat to shift. >> quickly. >> reporter: more ropes are attached, and slowly, three tons of slum berg elephant is hauled to safety. >> check her breathing. >> reporter: and soon, the body wenched from the ground and placed inside steel grates. it's africa's most ambitious elephant relocation, from a reserve where conservation means there are now too many elephants, to a new home two00 miles to the north, where poachers almost wiped them out, but is now a safe haven again. at the end of the day, no elephant could ever forget the moment of welcome release. the matriarch who might have died in that ditch shows that she's back in charge, a new life beckons, a new hope for the greatest of african icons. >> sreenivasan: american caleb dressle won the 50-meter freestyle, and the 4 x100 relay today. he is the first swimmer in history to capture three golds in a single day at the world championships. tomorrow on pbs newshour, businesses benefiting shareholders and society. that's all for this pbs newshour weekend. i'm 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: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the j.p.b. foundation. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. the anderson family fund. rosalind p. walter, in memory of abby m. o'neill. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're 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. be more, pbs. (man) support for this program is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you! from american university in washington dc, best-selling author and financial expert, suze orman, answers critical questions about your money. tonight is all about you! the goal of money is for you to feel secure. the goal of money is for you to feel powerful. you have problems-- but here's the good news-- i have the solutions. (man) suze provides essential advice in... please welcome suze orman! [drums, guitar, & keyboard play in bright rhythm] ♪ ♪