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Ruth Bader Ginsburg calls national-anthem protests ‘dumb and disrespectful’

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Oct 6, 2016; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers outside linebacker Eli Harold (58), quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) and free safety Eric Reid (35) kneel in protest during the playing of the national anthem before a NFL game against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports - RTSR4IL

San Francisco 49ers outside linebacker Eli Harold, quarterback Colin Kaepernick and free safety Eric Reid kneel in protest during the playing of the national anthem before a NFL game against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi’s Stadium. Photo by Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

Editor’s Note: Monday on the PBS NewsHour, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg talks with Gwen Ifill.

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has called the protests of football players who decline to stand for the national anthem “dumb and disrespectful.”

In a wide-ranging interview posted Monday on Yahoo, Ginsburg said she had the same opinion about flag burning.

“I think it’s a terrible thing to do, but I wouldn’t lock a person up for doing it,” she said. “I would point out how ridiculous it seems to me to do such an act.”

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and other athletes have received national attention for refusing to stand for the anthem this year. Kaepernick cited racial injustice and police brutality among the reasons.

“If they want to be stupid, there’s no law that should be preventive,” Ginsburg said. “If they want to be arrogant, there’s no law that prevents them from that. What I would do is strongly take issue with the point of view that they are expressing when they do that.”

The 83-year-old justice made news this summer after criticizing GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. Critics called her comments inappropriate for a sitting justice, and she later said the comments were “ill advised.”

In her latest interview, Ginsburg declined to weigh in when asked whether Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country is constitutional. She said the issue could end up before the high court.

The post Ruth Bader Ginsburg calls national-anthem protests ‘dumb and disrespectful’ appeared first on PBS NewsHour.


Without human-made climate change, U.S. forest fires would be half the size

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A firefighter battles the Trinity Ridge Fire in the Boise National Forest near Featherville, Idaho, in this U.S. Forest Service handout photo dated August 19, 2012. A new study says man-made climate change has expanded forest fires in this state and across the western U.S. Photo by Kari Greer/REUTERS/US Forest Service/Handout

A firefighter battles the Trinity Ridge Fire in the Boise National Forest near Featherville, Idaho, in this U.S. Forest Service handout photo dated August 19, 2012. A new study says man-made climate change has expanded forest fires in this state and across the western U.S. Photo by Kari Greer/REUTERS/US Forest Service/Handout

Human-made climate change is, by its nature, difficult for the average person to witness. Even if you lived for a century, you may not physically notice two extra degrees of warmth or have the capacity to monitor sea-level rise as it creeps, inch by inch, up a beach. The margins are too small.

This truism, however, does not apply to wildfires, according to a new study from climate modelers at the University of Idaho and Columbia University’s Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO). The researchers found human-made — anthropogenic — climate change doubled the expansion of forest fires in the western United States over the last 36 years. The hardest-hit locations include places in the Pacific Northwest, such as the Cascade Mountains in eastern Oregon and eastern Washington, and the northern Rocky Mountain territories that cross Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

So will the millennial era be remembered for when forest fires lost control? No, because it’s going to get worse — way worse.

“These are all areas where fires were especially influenced by climate change,” said Park Williams, an LDEO bioclimatologist and co-author of the report published today in PNAS. “Most things tend to be influenced pretty slowly by climate change. But forest fires are one of the systems on the planet that are showing a very strong effect.”

Here’s how Williams and his colleague John Abatzoglou measured this strong effect in the American West. Their analysis siphoned data from climate models for dryness and its ability to turn trees into tinder, which is known as fuel aridity. There’s no single silver bullet model, so they opted to use eight different metrics for fuel aridity that are commonly used by people who monitor fire danger.

They found a strong relationship between burned areas and fuel aridity — in that 76 percent of the changes in forest fire area from 1979 to 2015 could be tied to fuel aridity. The models agreed on which years were the driest, which years were the wettest, and they showed trend toward drying due to warming temperatures.

Aside from the drier fire-prone conditions, every degree of warming increases lightning strikes in the U.S. by 12 percent.

“With every model, there is uncertainty. But that’s a pretty good fit given how messy fire data typically is,” said Mike Flannigan, a wildland fire expert at the University of Alberta who wasn’t involved with the study.

Next, the pair determined to what degree humans contributed to this increase in fuel aridity. They relied on the CMIP5 model, a project that assembles data from climate scientists across the globe. Each contributor uses their own climate models to run the same experiment, so the model can ultimately estimate how various factors — greenhouse gases, aerosols use or volcanic explosion — warm or cool the planet.

Montana's Roaring Lion fire burned close to 9,000 acres late July and early August of this year. A new study says man-made climate change has expanded forest fires in this state and across the western U.S. Photo by Mike Daniels

Montana’s Roaring Lion fire burned close to 9,000 acres in late July and early August of this year. Photo by Mike Daniels

“These are very complex models, and they’re simulating the whole planet pretty comprehensively,” said Williams, which allowed the study to isolate the human contribution to global warming. “We could then go into a hypothetical world, where we say what if we didn’t have global climate change occur over the last century.”

The result, based on their estimates, would have been half as many fires in the western U.S. over the last three decades.

“I was surprised at how much these [fire danger] measures have increased in recent decades,” said Philip E. Dennison, a geographer at the University of Utah who has also observed an uptick of American West wildfires. “Although this research does confirm what I have been hearing anecdotally from firefighters. They tell me that stands of forest that would never have been susceptible to fire in the past now seem drier and more prone to fire.”

Can we fight these fires?

So will the millennial era be remembered for when forest fires lost control? No, because it’s going to get worse — like way worse.

“There’s just no way around it. The 2020s and 2030s will have even more intense fires than we’re seeing now,” Williams said. “And the fires that we’re seeing now are far more intense than the ones we were seeing in the 1980s.”

Aside from the drier fire-prone conditions, every degree of warming increases lightning strikes in the U.S. by 12 percent. More lightning means more opportunities for wildfires. With increased fire, forests shift from sapping carbon from the atmosphere to becoming a greenhouse gas source, which may elevate global warming. Also, as the atmosphere warms, the air’s ability to hold moisture increases almost exponentially, Flanigan said, exacerbating fuel aridity.

As the climate continues to change and temperature and moisture patterns change, our management of natural resources such as forests will also need to change.

If precipitation increases, then it can compensate for this fuel dryness,” Flanigan said. “But in recent work, we found for every degree of warming, you need a 15 percent increase in precipitation for fire fuel moisture to stay the same. Almost none of the scenarios suggest that we’ll get those kinds of increases in precipitation.”

But Americans shouldn’t abandon hope because changes in fire management policy could prevent some losses.

“As the climate continues to change and temperature and moisture patterns change, our management of natural resources such as forests will also need to change,” Susan Jane Brown, an attorney and wildlife director at the Western Environmental Law Center. “In some places, we will need to carefully thin trees to release others so that they have enough moisture, light and resources to survive. We will also need to restore appropriate fire regimes, which means we will need to increase prescribed fire on many landscapes.”

Over four days in 1996, the Charlton Butte Fire burned more than 10,400 acres of forest on the shore of Waldo Lake in Oregon. 19 years later, the forest begins to recover. Sky behind is obscured by smoke from the nearby National Creek Complex fire and others. Photo by Erin Ross

Over four days in 1996, the Charlton Butte Fire burned more than 10,400 acres of forest on the shore of Waldo Lake in Oregon. 19 years later, the forest begins to recover. Sky behind is obscured by smoke from the nearby National Creek Complex fire and others. Photo by Erin Ross

She continued that studies like these will help land managers, the public and elected officials determine what types of steps are necessary to best cope with climate change. Flanigan agreed, saying that fire management can effectively insulate communities from forest fires. He recommended options like replacing conifers with deciduous trees, removing grass or using sprinklers to reduce fire intensity.

But Flanigan said people also need to change how they view forest fires. Most U.S. officials take the approach of putting out every single blaze, he said, but 99 percent of burn damage in the western U.S. caused by just one percent of the fire events.

“We can’t eliminate fire from landscapes. We’ve tried for 50 or 60 years, and how’s that going?” Flanigan said. Williams agreed, saying our country’s philosophy is to react rather than to be proactive.

“We wait for fire to get started, and then we try our best to fight it off. And every year to do that, we totally exhaust the forest service’s budget,” Williams said. “ And then they don’t have enough money to do proactive things like forest thinning, prescribed burning or public education. These are things that they should be doing and that they want to be doing, but they simply don’t have the funds.”

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg on becoming ‘Notorious’

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U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives to watch U.S. President Barack Obama's State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 20, 2015. Picture TAKEN January 20, 2015. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo - RTSHXMG

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HARI SREENIVASAN: Ruth Bader Ginsburg broke countless barriers for women in the legal profession long before she was tapped by President Bill Clinton for the highest court in the land.

Now she has published a collection of her writings and speeches called, “My Own Words.”

For this latest addition to the “NewsHour” Bookshelf, Gwen Ifill sat down with Justice Ginsburg recently at the Supreme Court.

GWEN IFILL: Justice Ginsburg, thank you for speaking with us.

I want to start by — with a broader question than you even address in your book, which is, you’ve become something of a folk hero to some women. Did you see that coming?

RUTH BADER GINSBURG, U.S. Supreme Court: It is utterly amazing. Of course I didn’t see it coming.

And it was all the creation of a second-year student, second-year law student, at NYU. It came about this way. She was reading a court’s decision that invalidated a very significant part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

And she was angry. And then she remembered that I had said anger is a useless emotion. It doesn’t get you any place. Do something positive. So, she created this tumbler starting with my dissent, and then it took off into the wild blue yonder.

GWEN IFILL: You know, some people would say it’s about politics, but I wonder if it’s not also about your presence, your very existence on the court and the way that you write and the way that you sometimes take on your colleagues.

RUTH BADER GINSBURG: I would like to think so, but I certainly was given a tremendous boost into the public arena by the Notorious R.B.G.

When I was asked about it, I said, well, it’s exactly right, because Notorious B.I.G. and I had something in common?

You did? What?

We were both born and bred in Brooklyn, New York.

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: You ever consider being a rapper?

(LAUGHTER)

RUTH BADER GINSBURG: I don’t think I have that talent.

GWEN IFILL: Well, neither do I.

I want to talk to you about someone you give a lot of credit to in this book. And that is your late husband, Marty Ginsburg. And one of the things that someone said is that you would never have been on the court without him.

Do you agree with that?

RUTH BADER GINSBURG: It’s absolutely true.

One of my law clerks at the Court of Appeals said at the time that Clinton was considering who would be his first nominee to the court, he said, “You will be on the list, but you will be probably be around number 25, unless you do something to promote yourself.”

So, I’m not very good at promotion, but Marty was. And he was tireless in his effort to see that I would be the nominee.

GWEN IFILL: Just the way you write about, speak about Marty, it’s almost like a present tense presence in your life.

RUTH BADER GINSBURG: He will be present in my life as long as I live. I have his portrait in my bedroom. And I look at it and say, “You would probably like what I am doing now.”

(LAUGHTER)

GWEN IFILL: Out of all the speeches and the writings that you have collected in this book, what do you get the most frequent questions about? What do young people, older people ask you?

RUTH BADER GINSBURG: One question is, did you always want to be a judge, or, more exorbitantly, did you always want to be a Supreme Court justice?

I try to explain the way things were in the not-so-good-old-days. So, when I graduated from law school in 1959, there wasn’t a single woman on any federal bench. It wouldn’t be a realistic ambition for a woman to want to become a federal judge.

It wasn’t realistic until Jimmy Carter became our president. He looked around at the federal judiciary and said: That’s nice, but they all look like me. So, I am determined to appoint members of minority groups and women in numbers to the federal bench, so we will use the talent of all of the people of the United States, and not just some of them.

GWEN IFILL: I’m not sure everyone knows how extensive your interest in women’s issues, women’s rights were long before you got to the court. Is that something which this can also begin to illuminate?

RUTH BADER GINSBURG: Yes.

The book includes one of my many speeches about why we need an equal rights amendment.

GWEN IFILL: Do you feel that — as a liberal, that conservative women, men can identify with you as well?

RUTH BADER GINSBURG: The label liberal or conservative, any — every time I hear that, I think of the great Gilbert and Sullivan song from “Iolanthe.”

It goes, every gal and every boy that’s born alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative.

What do those labels mean? It depends on whose ox is being gored.

GWEN IFILL: You got into a little trouble for making a comment about Donald Trump this year. Do you still regret it?

RUTH BADER GINSBURG: I said what I had to say about that, and I will not address that subject again.

GWEN IFILL: That’s fair.

Let me ask you another question about what’s happening right now. Do you know Merrick Garland?

RUTH BADER GINSBURG: Yes, I know Merrick quite, quite well.

He is now the chief judge of the court on which I served for many years. And he’s an expert in administrative law. So, I have read his writings.

I wish that the spirit that prevailed in 1993, when I was nominated, I wish that that could be restored. In 1993, the vote on me was 96 to 3. I was nominated on June 14. I was confirmed on August 3.

GWEN IFILL: It’s very different now.

RUTH BADER GINSBURG: Yes. But there was a true bipartisan spirit prevailing. Democrat and Republicans worked together, and they got things done.

GWEN IFILL: Everybody wonders whether you’re going to be ever done. You have moved the bar many different times.

RUTH BADER GINSBURG: Yes.

At first, I said I wanted to stay as long as Justice Brandeis did. He was appointed at the same age I was, 60. But he retired when he was 83, which I am. So, my answer is, I will do this job as long as I can do it full-steam.

And, at my age, that means you take it year by year, though I am confident that, this year, there will be no slowdown. What will be next year? I don’t know.

GWEN IFILL: None of us really knows, but we will be watching.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, thank you very much.

RUTH BADER GINSBURG: It was a pleasure.

The post Ruth Bader Ginsburg on becoming ‘Notorious’ appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

This plantation-turned-university grows environmental entrepreneurs

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HARI SREENIVASAN: Next: combining sustainable agriculture with entrepreneurship in developing countries.

Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from EARTH University, a campus in Costa Rica that aims to do just that.

His story is part of our Agents for Change series.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It is quite likely the only university in the world where traffic stops for bananas, millions of them wrapped tightly in blue plastic.

EARTH University actually was a commercial banana plantation before being converted in 1992 to a school to train students from developing countries grappling with climate change and growing populations. Funds came from the U.S. and Costa Rican governments and the Michigan-based Kellogg Foundation.

JOSE ZAGLUL, Co-Founder, EARTH University: When we first came to this property, the whole river was contaminated with the blue plastic bag that also have chemical inside to protect it, to protect it from insects. And when the first group of students came, we brought them here and we started to pick all the plastic.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Today, university co-founder Jose Zaglul says the blue plastic bags are recycled and tons of plant waste, stalks, fruit that don’t make the grade. Things that used to be discarded are collected and fed to livestock.

JOSE ZAGLUL: Now we don’t use chemicals in the bags. And we also are using an organic fungicide.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: These bananas are labeled as responsibly grown and sold across the U.S. in Whole Foods stores. The enterprise supports dozens of local jobs and scholarships.

JOSE ZAGLUL: That girl over there, she’s from Panama. This guy is from Brazil. I think she is from Ecuador. That guy you see, he’s from Somaliland in Africa.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Forty-three countries are represented here. A majority of the 400 students depend on financial aid. From 1,600 applications, about 110 are admitted each year.

JOSE ZAGLUL: What we attempt to discover there is their interest to go back to their countries, because we are about forming leaders and individuals that really overcome barriers.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Yves Rusanganwa is a first-year student from Rwanda born soon after that country’s genocide.

YVES RUSANGANWA, Student, EARTH University: I grew up hearing about hunger, hearing about poverty, hearing epidemic diseases. I grew up in that environment. So, as I was growing up, I grew up a passion inside of me of doing something in this world and try to change that history.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Many students say a lack of knowledge hinders productivity and keeps most farmers in their homelands in poverty.

Devotha Tumushimiyimana is also from Rwanda, a nation the size of Maryland with a population of 11 million.

DEVOTHA TUMUSHIMIYIMANA, Student, EARTH University: My country is a small country. So, I would like also to teach people how they can use — I mean, how they can do agriculture in small land.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Jose Zaglul says doing agriculture on small land, or even no land, is an important part of the curriculum.

JOSE ZAGLUL: At home, in the schools, in rooftops in the cities, and you don’t have to utilize so much energy and fossil fuels to transport them.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Across campus, fruits and vegetables are grown in unlikely containers, with unlikely tools.

JOSE ZAGLUL: All the bottles, you can fill them with water, with — and then it’s like drip irrigation.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The campus tries to model the ideal carbon-neutral world it wants its graduates to help create. Zaglul says that’s sometimes involved taking risks, like the decision at the start to keep producing bananas.

JOSE ZAGLUL: It used to cost us 25 cents more per box to do all the sustainable practices. And nobody would pay us for that. I tell you, we were losing money, but we had to show the students that it is possible to do sustainable business.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Possible, he says, because, over time, recycling and not using pesticides save money. Then came the right large customer, Whole Foods.

Besides the classroom and field emphasis on sustainable practices, students are encouraged to develop business ideas.

Twenty-three-year-old Diderot Saintilma has plans for when he returns to his native Haiti.

DIDEROT SAINTILMA, Student, EARTH University (through translator): Where I come from, there are a lot of peanut farmers. They don’t do very much post-harvest processing. So I would like to start an association or cooperative of small peanut farmers, so they can get added value for products.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Many graduates have taken ideas from here to the business world. For Costa Rican Joaquin Viquez, it was animal waste recycling. Solids are separated to make fertilizer, while large bladders or bio-digesters break down liquid wastes to capture methane, or biogas.

JOAQUIN VIQUEZ, Entrepreneur: This is like five times thinner than what we use now.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Its not new technology, he says. It simply wasn’t commercialized for farms in developing countries.

JOAQUIN VIQUEZ: There was no one you could call or no store you could go and say, hey, I want a digester. And so we made it technically accessible and we do a lot of efforts to make it economically feasible for a farmer.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: On this day, they were installing a digester at the Calderon family farm, about 100 head of dairy and beef cows.

MARIA AGUILLAR CALDERON, Dairy Farmer (through translator): I took a course recently at the National Institute of Learning, and they talked about global warming and hygiene. And I really came back wanting to have a clean farm. So, I contacted a microfinance agency, talked to my husband and used our savings to do this.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Viquez says not only will this family be reducing greenhouse gases emitted by unprocessed animal wastes, but their energy savings over time will more than cover the digester’s $3,400 cost.

JOAQUIN VIQUEZ: They’re not going to have to use any firewood or propane for the cooking. And I know they’re going to have surplus.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Viquez is one of about 2,000 EARTH University alumni. Jose Zaglul says each on average has created four other jobs, and their influence has spread in other ways. Many commercial banana producers, he says, have adopted practices that began here.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Guapiles, Costa Rica.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Fred’s reporting is a partnership with the Under-Told Stories Project at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

The post This plantation-turned-university grows environmental entrepreneurs appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

How the country’s oldest city weathered Hurricane Matthew

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ST. AUGUSTINE, FL - OCTOBER 8: A man puts up caution tape as people walk by and take photos of the Casablanco Inn the day after Hurricane Matthew hit St. Augustine, FL on Saturday October 08, 2016. Hurricane Matthew plowed north along the Atlantic coast, flooding towns and destroying roads in its path. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

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HARI SREENIVASAN: Earlier in the program, we told you about the record-breaking flooding in North Carolina. Hurricane Matthew also left a wake of damage on its way to North Carolina along the coasts of three states.

Billed as the oldest city in America, St. Augustine, Florida, was one of the places that felt the storm’s might. The small coastal town of nearly 14,000, which dates back to the 16th century, is only now emerging from this weekend’s storm.

I was there yesterday.

It looked like one big garage sale on Solana Road in St. Augustine, Florida. But everything in the front yards was contaminated, couches, mattresses, family keepsakes all soaked by the floods after Hurricane Matthew. Families were racing to get it all out before the moisture turned to mold and made its way into the walls.

MAYOR NANCY SHAVER, St. Augustine: When you evacuate, you take only the things that you really find irreplaceable. But this is the whole — these are all the things that may be replaceable, but they’re what give you something to come home to.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Mayor Nancy Shaver took us to one of the low-lying areas that was hardest-hit. The sewer pumps were still offline, meaning underground waste was overflowing onto the street. Residents were only allowed back into the area Saturday.

NANCY SHAVER: Your home is where you’re supposed to go to be peaceful, restful, be with your family, sleep, eat. And none of these things are possible in these homes.

HARI SREENIVASAN: One of the homeowners on this block, the city manager, John Regan.

What did you have to throw out?

JOHN REGAN, City Manager, St. Augustine: Everything.

HARI SREENIVASAN: How many feet of water?

JOHN REGAN: My house was two feet of water.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Tasked with coordinating the city’s recovery effort, now working furiously on his own.

JOHN REGAN: And these houses are at this level of destruction.

HARI SREENIVASAN: While trying to salvage what he could from his home, he was also trying to prevent more fires like the ones the city has been fighting every night since the storm.

JOHN REGAN: So, and all these houses that have been flooded, when we bring the power back, you got to be sensitive that there’s no short-circuiting.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Regan is luckier than some just up the coast, who will never move back into their homes again. The storm’s waves gouged deep beneath the foundations of some homes, and surge-driven waters lifted and washed away everything they could.

The debris is not limited to the coastline, but inlets as well. Marinas usually full of tourists and boaters are shut down because floating junk is a danger to boats and several docks have lost their moorings.

BILL HUNSICKER, Charter Boat Captain: We’re ready to go fishing, but, at this point, this marina, we can’t get our boats back in here.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Bill Hunsicker captains a charter boat for sport fishermen. He says he can last two weeks without customers before he has to make tough decisions.

In the city’s historic Old Town, most businesses remained shuttered, as they dried out and cleaned up.

WOMAN: This is the oldest bar in the oldest city.

HARI SREENIVASAN: The local watering hole that rarely closes stopped for Matthew.

WOMAN: Usually, we have a hurricane party, but, this year, we didn’t have any power. So…

WOMAN: And it was a really bad one. Nobody wanted to be here.

JORGE RIVERA, FirstCoast.TV: So, this is where the bulk of the water came.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Blogger Jorge Rivera wanted to stay and track the storm.

JORGE RIVERA: The water’s up to my waist.

HARI SREENIVASAN: He captured some of the earliest scenes of Matthew’s arrival. Over the weekend, he continued to document its toll.

JORGE RIVERA: This was scary, because it’s not so much that the hurricane is powerful. It’s that you’re in such a vulnerable place.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Now he wonders whether it would have been worth it.

JORGE RIVERA: The question is, once they find your body, they say, was he a fool or was he brave? So, I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for that.

HARI SREENIVASAN: But Rivera wasn’t alone. Mayor Shaver says almost half the city stayed behind, many who didn’t have the means to evacuate and others who were homeless and out of reach, numbers she hopes to change in the future.

How do you build in resilience to face something like this?

NANCY SHAVER: Well, this is a — we have had 450 years of practice. We are an extraordinarily resilient city. It’s a real community. It has a very rich fabric of reaching out, connecting and helping folks.

HARI SREENIVASAN: That sentiment moved the owners of Le Macaron to hand out sweets to their local firefighters. Recent transplants from France, they’re overwhelmed by the support

STEPHANE JUSKOWIAK, Storeowner: Here, we see this, and it’s — we don’t have this in Europe, in France. I’m sorry to say that, but, here, it’s very different. And we — there was lots of people coming every 15 minutes, saying, hey, we can help us.

HARI SREENIVASAN: This city has soldiered on through challenges for more than 400 years. City hall, which was flooded, reopened to essential personnel today.

Online, a poet shares her experience of hurricane destruction and recovery. Find that at PBS.org/NewsHour.

The post How the country’s oldest city weathered Hurricane Matthew appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Deadly Saudi airstrike in Yemen alters conflict’s outlook

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Forensic experts invistigate the scene at the community hall where Saudi-led warplanes struck a funeral in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah  - RTSRFU6

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HARI SREENIVASAN: We turn now to the ongoing civil war in Yemen, where the civilian death toll grew over the weekend.

More than 140 people died after what witnesses say was an airstrike on a funeral on Saturday in the capital city of Sanaa. The Saudi air force has been bombing the country for months, with logistical assistance from the U.S. Reports from the scene said it was U.S.-made bombs that were dropped on the funeral.

The Saudi-backed government in Yemen is fighting Houthi rebels, as well as al-Qaida forces. At least 10,000 people have died over the last 18 months, and more than million have been displaced. And on Sunday, a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer in the Red Sea was targeted by Houthi missiles fired from the Yemeni coast. The Navy says the missiles detonated short of the target, leaving the ship untouched.

We begin with this report from Neil Connery of Independent Television News.

NEIL CONNERY, ITN: They’re burying the dead in Sanaa, dozens of burials for those killed in this weekend’s funeral attack.

On the streets, thousands came to mourn the capital’s governor, his picture looking down on his own procession. The governor was one of hundreds of people packed into the funeral hall when it was hit by a Saudi-led coalition airstrike. But even as they pay their respects to the governor’s family, the jets are back again, their roar heard overhead.

As Sanaa buries its dead, there is rising anger at the weekend funeral attack, and, with it, calls for revenge. Hopes for peace here have never seemed so far away.

MAN: It means to us war. We need war. We will kill or be killed. That’s for us, blood for blood, and eye for eye.

NEIL CONNERY: Yemen’s tragedy has a new chapter, the single deadliest attack in its 19-month war. In the capital, as they cover the graves of its victims, how many more will follow?

HARI SREENIVASAN: And to Jeffrey Brown.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yesterday, Secretary of State Kerry spoke with Saudi officials and called for an immediate cessation of hostilities. And a National Security Council spokesman said that the U.S. would review its support of the Saudi-led coalition.

For more on the situation, I’m joined by Michael Hanna, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation.

Welcome to you.

There was already so much concern and anger over civilian casualties and deaths in this conflict. How important is this new incident?

MICHAEL HANNA, The Century Foundation: Well, it’s gotten a lot more attention than this war usually does.

And I think that’s partly because of the nature of this attack and the scope of the damage. This was a really horrific attack. It happened on a funeral hall with a huge number of senior Yemeni figures, tribal figures and political leaders. And it does seem like a difference in time, like a red line had been crossed in bombing this kind of funeral gathering.

And for that reason, it’s gotten a lot of attention and a lot of negative attention. And the reaction of the United States has been different. We have seen horrific bombings in the past, but this has elicited a different kind of response from the United States.

JEFFREY BROWN: Before we get to that, just remind us briefly where things stand in this conflict in Yemen. And what’s behind the Saudi-led bombing?

MICHAEL HANNA: Well, the Saudi military campaign began in March of 2015, so it’s been going on about a year-and-a-half.

And, of course, Yemen and Saudi are border countries, so Saudi has looked at Yemen differently than it does at other conflicts, say, Syria, for example. That being said, it is quite different to see Saudi Arabia engaged in direct military conflict.

They began a military campaign about a year-and-a-half ago. They were joined by other Gulf states. And, of course, they are getting support from the United States and the United Kingdom. And so this is a difference in kind.

I think Saudi Arabia sees the region changing. It’s quite concerned about the influence of Iran. It sees in the Houthis, the rebel movement that essentially overthrew the government in Yemen, as a kind of extension of Iranian influence, as a proxy force.

And while the United States has a differing view of the conflict, doesn’t necessarily agree about the Saudi analysis of the conflict, it has clearly reached a point for Saudi Arabia in its own calculations that enough is enough. And some of this is about establishing deterrent capacity and trying to change the kind of regional balance of power at the moment.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, so, to the extent the U.S. has supported this Saudi effort, and yet there have been many strains, particularly over casualties among civilians. What now? When they talk about a review, what do you see happening?

MICHAEL HANNA: Well, I think it’s high time that there is a review. The statement by the NSC this weekend suggested that U.S. security operation is not a blank check.

And I think, for a long time now, the United States has hoped that the Saudis and others would essentially declare victory and focus on a political settlement. And I think that’s still the American position. And that has been voiced publicly and privately.

But I do think this seems different, that the United States, because of this latest incident, is going to be much more keen in bringing about a cessation of hostilities, and much more keen on focusing on the diplomatic track, which has sputtered on through various iterations, but has failed to have any kind of lasting impact.

But I think the United States has a very different view about the utility — the continuing utility of this military campaign and the prospects for it to be particularly successful in the coming months.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Michael Hanna, thank you very much.

MICHAEL HANNA: Thank you.

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The ‘remarkable’ dynamic confronting the GOP

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HARI SREENIVASAN: That brings us to our Politics Monday duo, Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and Tamara Keith of NPR, joining us tonight from Detroit.

So, Amy, let’s start with this evaporation of support from some Republican leadership. Does it matter?

AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Oh, it absolutely matters.

If you think back to the 2012 election, Mitt Romney, of course, lost the campaign. He lost while getting 93 percent of the Republican vote. Getting less than 90 percent is a big problem in a country that is as polarized as this.

And so even if it’s only 5 or 10 percent of voters, not necessarily who even just go out and vote for Hillary Clinton, but the bigger concern, I think, for Republicans down ballot is that traditional Republican voters stay home. They find themselves so disgusted by this race, they can’t support Donald Trump, they don’t like Hillary Clinton, and so they sit on their hands, they don’t turn out.

That is a bigger problem, I think, for down-ballot races than almost anything else.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Tamara, what does it mean when the man, Paul Ryan, two heartbeats away from the president, the leader of the House, says that he’s not necessarily unendorsing Donald Trump, but he’s not backing him, he’s not going to spend more effort?

TAMARA KEITH, NPR: He’s in absolutely a tough position.

And he’s been in a tough position, and really the Trump candidacy has put a ton of Republicans in very tough positions. From the Democratic perspective, the Clinton campaign today responding to Paul Ryan, basically said, Paul Ryan, you enabled Donald Trump for months throughout the summer and before that.

And they are intent on not letting congressional Republicans, including those ones who are unendorsing, get away with trying to distance themselves from Donald Trump.

And I think we’re very close to this point in a campaign where potentially you are going to have congressional candidates, Republican congressional candidates running, saying, let’s assume Hillary Clinton is going to be president, reelect me or elect me so that we can have a Republican Senate and a Republican House to serve as a counterbalance to the person they assume will be the president of the United States.

And that is a pretty remarkable moment.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And that happened during the Clinton…

AMY WALTER: During the ’96…

HARI SREENIVASAN: Right.

AMY WALTER: Right, during the ’96 campaign, there was concerted effort by the House and Senate campaign committees to basically concede the presidential race and say, vote for Republican candidate X to make sure that Clinton, then Bill Clinton, doesn’t get a blank check.

And this has been happening throughout the campaign, Hari. We have seen the Republican Party divided, come back together, divide, come back together. And we are now only 30 days from the election, and so the question is, does it come back together like it always does, or are we going to see it continue to be divided, dispirited and essentially you are going to have this big enthusiasm gap between those who are going to go out and support Hillary Clinton and those who are going to split the Republicans?

HARI SREENIVASAN: Tamara, late in the afternoon, we had the RNC come out and say: We are still behind our candidate.

Is this sort of continued cause to believe about this rift inside the Republican Party, almost a civil war, intentions on who is supporting who to be a true Republican?

TAMARA KEITH: Well, and there had been rumors over the weekend that Reince Priebus was trying to tamp down that the RNC was cutting bait and was going to pull its support from Donald Trump, financial support or campaign support.

And with this, Priebus is essentially saying, no, we’re in it for our candidate.

Priebus is in another tough position. You have a large portion of the Republican base. Yes, there are people who are Republicans who say that they can’t vote for Donald Trump, but there are a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump in the primaries who are passionate about his candidacy and do not want establishment Republicans or Beltway Republicans to tell them that they can’t have their candidate.

HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Amy, so, where do voters fall on this divide inside the Republican Party?

AMY WALTER: Yes.

So, we have had some polling come out in the wake of the videotape that came out over the weekend. And the question was asked — The Wall Street Journal poll asked voters who are supporting Donald Trump, do you think that this is enough for the Republican Party to distance themselves, to ask him to step down, maybe to repudiate him?

Sixty-seven percent of Republicans said, don’t do anything, right, Donald Trump is in the right, the party has no right to basically do any of those things. Sixty-seven percent is a big number. As Tam pointed out, that is not a group of voters you want to alienate.

At the same time, that means that there is another pretty sizable group of Republicans right now, or at least people who would support Donald Trump, who say, I don’t know that I can continue to have him at the top of ticket.

And that is a very, very difficult spot to be, especially if you are a candidate running for Congress in one of these districts like Tom Davis did, suburban, where you have a lot of voters who are independent, maybe are Republican by nature, but feeling very alienated by the party at this point.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Tamara, first I guess your impressions on the debate.

TAMARA KEITH: Yes, so it was a tough debate. It was rough. It was hard to watch. It was — I got messages from lots of people saying, oh, my gosh, I have a pit in my stomach watching this.

In the end, you know, Donald Trump went nuclear. He really did. He brought out the big thing that he said he had been threatening to bring out for a long time. And I don’t know that it materially changed the state of the race. It certainly excites his base, but it’s not clear that it was any sort of a knockout blow against Hillary Clinton.

She, you know, today, at her rally said, how about that debate, and got the biggest applause of the day again. So, for people who support her, she did a fine job, and they were happy with it.

And in terms of broadening the ways, Donald Trump appealed to his base, but I don’t know that he appealed to people who were looking, trying to figure out what to do in this election.

AMY WALTER: Yes. There is a lot of talk about, is the floor going to drop out on Donald Trump? Donald Trump has never had a floor problem.

The people who are with him are always going to be with him. Let’s say that is 35, 40 percent of the electorate. His problem is a ceiling problem. And he has never been able to expand it very high, in part because he keeps going back and talking to the people who make up his floor, instead of trying to go to the people who can expand his ceiling.

And that scorched earth campaign that he ran yesterday at the debate to me suggests that that’s the kind of thing we’re going to see for the next 30 days, which means there is no reaching out, there is no broadening, there’s no pivoting. This is all about, can I get those people who love me, who come to my rallies to continue to support me at the same rate?

That’s, though, not a winning coalition. It’s a coalition, though, that he likes to spend time with.

HARI SREENIVASAN: It’s also one of the first times that we have had a candidate essentially threaten to throw the other one in jail if he wins.

AMY WALTER: Yes, I mean, we have never seen anything quite like that.

And his campaign will say, well, it wasn’t actually — he quipped about it. But the fact of the matter is, he said, I’m going to — first of all, I’m going to have this — the Justice Department appoint a special prosecutor to investigate somebody who lost a campaign.

And then, as an aside, he said, well, if I were president, you would be in jail.

That is not something that anybody has ever seen before. And I think, again, to the voters who are looking to see could they picture Donald Trump as president, where their number one concern, at least that I hear from a lot of these especially women voters, worried about his temperament, that is the sorts of thing that keeps them — you know, keeps pushing them away.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Tamara, did Hillary Clinton reach out to any larger audiences last night?

TAMARA KEITH: There was a little of that. And the campaign is continuing that today.

Certainly, she delivered her stronger together message, which is, of course, the theme of her campaign. But that is a message that is intended to reach people who aren’t just deep blue Democrats. And, today, her campaign is out with four ads that will be running in swing states that feature Republicans talking about why they’re voting for her and not Donald for Trump.

And she’s really presenting this as a choice of saying, voters know who Donald Trump is, but the way we vote will be — will say who we are, is the message that she’s delivering. That is a message that’s aimed at Republicans and independents, and certainly not just die-hard Democrats.

HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, thanks so much.

AMY WALTER: You’re welcome, Hari.

TAMARA KEITH: You’re welcome.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And our analysis and fact-checking continues on our Web site, where you can find the top five debate takeaways from our politics team.

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Is the Republican rupture irreconcilable?

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HARI SREENIVASAN: We return to the race for the White House, with Election Day now four weeks away.

John Yang looks at the growing split within the Republican Party.

JOHN YANG: With the mass defection of high-profile Republicans from their presidential nominee, has the divide between Donald Trump and the GOP establishment become irreconcilable?

We explore that question now with Tom Davis, a former member of Congress who was in charge of electing Republicans to the House, and Barry Bennett, a Donald Trump supporter and former campaign senior adviser.

Gentlemen, thank you both for joining us.

Mr. Davis, let me start with you.

The House speaker this morning said he’s not going to defend Donald Trump, he’s not going to campaign with him, he’s going to focus on the House and Senate. Is he saying that he thinks the presidential race is over?

FORMER REP. TOM DAVIS (R-Va.): No, I think he’s saying he wants to make sure the House Republicans get reelected and he has a working majority.

This isn’t different than what he was telling the House a month ago, which is, you have to look after your own district. Donald Trump is going to help candidates in some districts. In some districts, he’s going to a liability and candidates are going to have to do what they have to do.

But his number one responsibility isn’t to elect a president. It’s to reelect the House members. And when I was campaign chairman in 2000, it was actually a similar arrangement with George W. Bush, where they went out and did their thing and we did out things. We coordinated to some extent, but it was up to each individual member in terms of how they were going to handle it.

JOHN YANG: But, Mr. Bennett, with all these Republicans, with so many Republicans over the weekend who — many of them in tough races, many of them running for reelection, saying that they are no longer supporting Donald Trump, is that the smart move?

BARRY BENNETT, Trump Supporter: Well, the smart move is to recognize that the issues that he’s talking about and how people are reacting to them and talk about those issues.

You know, if this were an election on personality, Donald Trump would be down by 100 points. I mean, Hillary has spent $200 million pointing out his perfectly obvious imperfections. But the issues that he talks about are why people rally around him. So, I think it would be smart for all candidates to think about those issues.

JOHN YANG: We have had — let’s stay with you. We have had Donald Trump tweeting out that maybe Paul Ryan should be focusing on balancing the budget, creating jobs and immigration and not fighting with him, that Kellyanne Conway this morning talked about inappropriate behavior by some of the Republicans who are now turning against him.

Are we lining up with this sort of one wing of the party vs. another wing of the party?

BARRY BENNETT: I hope not. I hope we’re lining up with people who are in real pain across America. That’s what we should be talking about.

That’s all Mr. Trump should be talking about. There are people out there that haven’t had a real increase in real wages in a really long time. That’s what he should be talking about. I don’t care what Paul Ryan does. Paul Ryan’s duty, as Tom’s was, is to help elect members to the House. Tom was very good at it.

And Speaker Ryan needs to raise a lot of money to those done. But they don’t need to be talking about each other.

FORMER REP. TOM DAVIS: John, I don’t think there is any question, though, that the Trump constituency that came in, to some extent, was anti-establishment, and that means anti-congressional establishment. There is some tension there.

The question is, can they coexist and get along and maximize both their outputs to produce a Republican Congress and perhaps elect a Republican president? And, of course, there are tensions there.

JOHN YANG: What is the answer to that question? Can they get along and how can they get along?

FORMER REP. TOM DAVIS: Well, I think members — it just depends.

In some districts, you have members endorsing Trump, running with Trump, coming to his Trump rallies. In other districts, you won’t be able to find them with a search if Trump comes to town. It really depends.

And we have always had to run our own races. I have found, in my district out here in Northern Virginia, after a couple of terms, there were very few Republicans I could really appear with without hurting myself.

You were trying to be a team player, but, first of all, you owe yourself and the caucus a duty to get reelected. And Donald Trump performs very well in some districts, and in some districts, he’s not.

JOHN YANG: Mr. Bennett, over the weekend, we saw Paul Ryan actually get booed when he talked about the situation, the videotape, and that Trump wasn’t with him, as he was scheduled to be.

When Joe Heck in Nevada, a Senate candidate, withdrew his endorsement of Mr. Trump, he got booed.

Is there a risk for candidates who are jumping off the Trump bandwagon?

BARRY BENNETT: Yes.

I mean, no one’s ever successfully sawed a boat in half and floated to safety. Once we’re in the boat, we’re in the boat. We need the presidential race — if not it’s winnable, we need it to be very close in order for those House and Senate races like Joe Heck to get across the line.

So, you have got to be very careful. You can have your own opinions, but realize that 40 or 50 or 60 percent of your supporters are still with him. So don’t go too far.

JOHN YANG: Mr. Davis, if you were running the Congressional Campaign Committee now, what would you be telling challengers, what would be your members who are running for reelection?

FORMER REP. TOM DAVIS: Well, it’s district by district.

But I think you look at the top of the ticket. If it helps you, you want to try to latch onto those coattails and ride across the line. If the wind is coming at you, you are going to have to basically personalize the district, carve your own identity, make this a referendum on you.

By the way, the NRCC has been pretty successful. John Katko’s district up in Syracuse, he’s running double digits ahead, and Mr. Trump is running double digits behind.

Everybody understands this. Professionals understand you do what you have to do to get reelected at this point. Mr. Trump’s remarks, nobody’s going to attach themselves to those remarks. You won’t find anybody coming forward. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you abandon ship, because, once you divide yourself up, I have seen very few cases where parties survive that kind of thing.

JOHN YANG: Mr. Bennett, no matter what happens at the top of the ticket in November, this anti-establishment feeling that you have been talking about is going to be there. It’s going to continue and it’s going to exist.

What does the Republican Party look like moving forward? What does it do moving forward, win or lose? Because even if Donald Trump is elected president, he will have to deal with this Congress that is the establishment that so many of his supporters hate right now.

BARRY BENNETT: Well, I think the Freedom Caucus probably gets larger.

I think that there’s going to be more turmoil. But I think that if we think the scary stuff is over now, wait until after the election, because the winner is probably only going to get 46, 47 percent of the vote, so more people will have not voted for them than voted for them.

And the next four years in Washington, I don’t predict calm seas.

JOHN YANG: What would you do, Mr. Davis, if you were running a party and, if you were the RNC chairman? How would you move forward after the election, no matter who wins?

FORMER REP. TOM DAVIS: Well, look, we have got to learn how to coexist.

What the Republicans have found in my state of Virginia is, even when they’re united, given the Democratic shifts, we lose sometimes. So, you are going to have to learn to coexist, everybody get a piece of things and try to line up accordingly.

We’re going to primaries, instead of conventions. I think that’s a good thing in this state. And it shouldn’t jeopardize the Trump supporters either, who won primaries. But it’s the kind of thing where we are going to have to learn to coexist.

Politics is parties are coalitions. And coalitions mean sometimes you get in a room with people you’re not quite comfortable with to advance your own interests. And the Republicans have not gotten comfortable with their coalition. Democrats, which are also a diverse coalition, have learned to coexist and win.

JOHN YANG: Tom Davis, Barry Bennett, thanks so much for coming in and discussing these interesting days with us.

FORMER REP. TOM DAVIS: Thank you.

BARRY BENNETT: Thanks.

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News Wrap: Doctors Without Borders appeals for access to rebel-held parts of Aleppo

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A boy walks past damaged buildings in the northern Syrian rebel-held town of al-Waqf, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi - RTSRHI2

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HARI SREENIVASAN:  In the day’s other news:  The desperation of Aleppo, Syria, prompted Doctors Without Borders to appeal for access, amid a Russian-Syrian assault on the city.  The group supports eight hospitals there, but has only 35 doctors to help 275,000 civilians.  It says the wounded are sleeping outside, waiting for care.  Meanwhile, Russia announced it is creating a permanent naval base in Syria to increase its military presence in the region.

The wind and rain have subsided, but the damage that Hurricane Matthew did is far from over.  As of today, the storm is blamed for hundreds of deaths in Haiti, plus at least 22 more in the U.S.  Flooding extends across five states, with North Carolina hit the hardest.

Whole towns awash in water, the legacy of a long, stormy weekend across Eastern North Carolina.

ALISHA BROOKS, Fayetteville Resident:  I don’t have nothing left.  Nothing.  I have to take all this and put it in the garbage.  I just want somewhere else to go.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  It’s the worst the state has seen since Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and Governor Pat McCrory warned today, it will not end soon.

GOV. PAT MCCRORY (R-N.C.):  The greatest threat at this point in time remains inland flooding that will continue throughout this week in both Central and Eastern North Carolina.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Matthew dumped a foot or more of rain more than 100 miles inland in Fayetteville, and eight inches in Raleigh, the state capital.

In Lumberton, just south of Fayetteville, rescuers worked to evacuate 1,500 people after a levee along the Lumber River broke overnight.  The deluge also triggered scores of rescue missions Saturday night and Sunday, with emergency crews from as far away as New York taking part.

WOMAN:  All us had to pitch together and help people get out of their apartments, get our stuff out, and crawl through water all night long, babies, all children all stuck in the water.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Nearly a million homes and businesses in the Carolinas were still in the dark today, plus thousands more in Georgia and Virginia.  Parts of Interstate 95 were flooded in several places in North Carolina, halting traffic on a major north-south artery.

A number of roads and bridges remained closed in South Carolina as well, and 2,000 people were still in shelters.  Meanwhile, cleanup began elsewhere in Savannah, Georgia, where 17 inches of rain fell and in Florida, where Governor Rick Scott surveyed coastal erosion today.

GOV. RICK SCOTT (R-Fla.):  We were actually blessed that this storm never turned in and had a direct hit.  While we don’t want to see the devastation we have seen behind us at all, the most important thing is to save everybody’s life.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  The hurricane did score a direct hit on Haiti, destroying whole towns.  Estimates of the dead there range from 500 to 1,000, with a new outbreak of cholera compounding the crisis.

The United Nations called today for a massive response to get food, water and shelter to at least 750,000 Haitians.

We will look at what the hurricane did to the nation’s oldest city later in the program.

Samsung faced a new debacle today after reports that replacement Galaxy Note 7 phones are overheating and catching fire, just like the originals.  The company said it is temporarily adjusting production schedules.  It didn’t confirm reports that it halted production entirely.  Samsung recalled the original batch of 2.5 million Note 7s last month over the fire issue.

Two Boston area professors will share this year’s Nobel Prize for economics.  Oliver Hart of Harvard University and Bengt Holmstrom of Massachusetts Institute of Technology were honored today for their work in contract theory.  In Stockholm today, the Nobel Committee said they have shed light on everything from paying executives to privatizing prisons.

PER STROMBERG, Chair, The Economic Sciences Prize Committee:  Thanks to their research, we now have — can analyze not just financial terms, who should get paid what, but also the control and decision rights, ownership, property rights and other types of decision rights and contracts.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Hart was born in Britain and has taught at Harvard since 1993.  Holmstrom is from Finland.

On Wall Street today, stocks rose as the price of oil topped $51 a barrel, the highest in a year.  The Dow Jones industrial average gained 88 points to close at 18329.  The Nasdaq rose 36 points, and the S&P 500 added nearly 10.

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Ryan won’t campaign for Trump; Clinton widens lead in polls

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U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) speaks during his weekly news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 22, 2016. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas  - RTSOZN8

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HARI SREENIVASAN:  Twenty-nine days to go until the election, it’s the day after debate number two, and Donald Trump is scrambling to save his presidential bid.

But the fallout from his lewd remarks about women cost him again today.

Lisa Desjardins reports.

LISA DESJARDINS:  He is the highest-ranking Republican in the nation, and, today, House Speaker Paul Ryan drew a hard line with his party’s nominee.  He won’t defend Donald Trump, and won’t campaign for him either.

A spokeswoman for Ryan told the “NewsHour”: “The speaker is going to spend the next month focused entirely on protecting our congressional majorities.”

But Ryan is still on the record endorsing Trump.  About that, his spokeswoman said: “There is no update in his position” — all this three days after The Washington Post posted video of Trump in 2005 using lewd language and bragging about making unwanted sexual advances on women.

In last night’s debate, Trump again apologized for the remarks, but mainly argued that his words were simple bravado.

DONALD TRUMP (R), Presidential Nominee:  This was locker room talk.

LISA DESJARDINS:  Today, Trump took to Twitter to lash out at the speaker.  He wrote: “Paul Ryan should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting the Republican nominee.”

Meanwhile, Trump today was sending a different kind of signal to Pennsylvania voters, waving the Pittsburgh Steelers’ terrible towel and talking of humility.

DONALD TRUMP:  I’m not proud of everything that I have done in life.  I mean, who among us is?  Is anybody totally proud of every single element?

LISA DESJARDINS:  Meanwhile, for Democrat Hillary Clinton, the day after the debate was occasion to kick off a two-day, three-college swing.  She was back on the attack, this afternoon at Wayne State University in Detroit.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), Presidential Nominee:  I believe that every single one of us in this room today has paid more in federal income taxes than Donald Trump has.

LISA DESJARDINS:  As Clinton embarks on her post-debate push, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted after the Trump videotape appeared showed she is widening her lead over Trump, with 46 percent in a four-way race to Trump’s 35 percent.  Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein are in the single digits.

Now, that poll was conducted before a national TV audience of around 60 million people watched the second Clinton-Trump debate last night.  And a few moments have cascaded into questions today.

DONALD TRUMP:  He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree.

LISA DESJARDINS:  That was Trump disagreeing with a stance on Syria that moderator Martha Raddatz attributed to his running mate, Mike Pence, that the U.S. should be ready to use force against Russian ally and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Pence’s actual words from the V.P. debate added a qualifier:

GOV. MIKE PENCE (R), Vice Presidential Nominee:  And if Russia chooses to be involved and continue, I should say, to be involved in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force.

LISA DESJARDINS:  On CNN this morning, Pence stressed again he was speaking about using force if Russia attacks civilians in Aleppo.  That’s still a difference with Trump, but it’s a narrower one than was portrayed in the debate.

And there was one other moment, on investigating Hillary Clinton’s e-mails:

DONALD TRUMP:  If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception.

LISA DESJARDINS:  The Clinton campaign decried those remarks as using power to target political opponents, but, this morning, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway indicated her boss’ words were sarcastic.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, Trump Campaign Manager:  That was a quip.  And I saw in NBC’s own reporting it was referred it a quip, so I will go with NBC on it.

LISA DESJARDINS:  Conway went on to say that Trump was venting the frustrations of his voters.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Lisa Desjardins.

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Court extends Florida voter registration in the wake of Hurricane Matthew

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A voter walks to a polling precinct on primary day in Florida for the U.S. presidential election in Boca Raton, Florida March 15, 2016. REUTERS/Joe Skipper - RTSAIM3

A voter walks to a polling precinct on primary day in Florida for the U.S. presidential election in Boca Raton, Florida. Photo by REUTERS/Joe Skipper

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A federal judge has given Democrats a partial victory in the presidential battleground of Florida, extending of the state’s voter registration deadline one day and agreeing to consider a longer extension in the wake of Hurricane Matthew.

The initial deadline was Tuesday, but Florida Democrats, with the support of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, argued that would-be voters deserved more time. Republican Gov. Rick Scott last week urged 1.5 million residents to evacuate as the storm approached the southeastern United States.

District Judge Mark Walker issued a temporary order Monday afternoon extending the deadline through the close of business Wednesday. He set a hearing Wednesday at 10 a.m. for arguments for a longer extension. Judges grant temporary restraining orders in cases where a petitioner demonstrates irreparable harm would occur if the court took no action. The orders often portend victory once a judge considers the merits of the case.

Clinton had called on Scott, before the suit was filed, to extend the deadline himself using his emergency authority. The governor declined, saying Floridians “had enough time to register” before the Oct. 6 evacuation orders.

Though the case involves the highest stakes in a perennial presidential battleground, the judge called it “poppycock” to claim that “the issue of extending the voter registration deadline is about politics.” The case, he wrote, “is about the right of aspiring eligible voters to register to have their votes counted.”

The case comes as the two presidential campaigns try to resume their full activities in Florida and North Carolina, the two battlegrounds where Matthew left fatalities and wracked widespread damage.

Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence was in western North Carolina on Monday, while Clinton was planning to visit south Florida on Tuesday alongside former Vice President Al Gore. GOP hopeful Donald Trump was also to campaign in Florida the next two days with stops in three cities that are usually GOP strongholds. And former President Bill Clinton has his own Florida schedule Tuesday on his wife’s behalf.

The voter registration dispute is key since both campaigns acknowledge that the storm’s interruptions could yield even marginal effects on voter turnout efforts. North Carolina and Florida remain close, even as Clinton appears to be taking a commanding national lead. Going days without door-knocking and phone-banking around Fayetteville, North Carolina, or registering voters around Jacksonville, Florida, is enough to make Republican and Democratic aides nervous.

“The time for politics will come back, and it will just have to take care of itself,” said Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, which together with the Republican National Committee leads voter turnout efforts for Trump and the rest of the GOP slate.

Woodhouse said GOP campaign offices remained closed in Fayetteville, Greenville and Wilmington.

In his first public campaign appearance since Sunday’s second presidential debate, Pence told a Charlotte crowd that eastern North Carolinians are “inspiring” for their handling of the hurricane. Pence also praised Trump for apologizing after the Friday disclosure of a 2005 NBC video that captured the real estate billionaire making predatory comments about women.

Florida’s voter registration deadline applies to both in-person registration and postmarks for mailed forms.

The initial petition argued that Matthew constituted a “daunting” and “life-threatening obstacle” to registration. Scott’s office said earlier Monday that the governor’s legal advisers were reviewing the suit.

In 2004, then-Gov. Jeb Bush used emergency authority to allow several Florida counties to delay the start of early voting after Hurricane Charley.

Clinton aides declined comment on the suit earlier Monday, but maintain that under normal circumstances, they would have registered tens of thousands of Florida residents in the final five days of registration. President Barack Obama won the state in 2012 by fewer than 75,000 votes out of more than 8.4 million cast. Both Republicans and Democrats have intensified their voter registration efforts since.

Democrats note that South Carolina, another GOP-controlled state, extended its original Oct. 7 deadline to accept registration forms postmarked no later than Tuesday.

Hurricane Matthew drifted farther north than projected when Scott ordered evacuations, leaving south Florida’s heavily Democratic counties — Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach — relatively unscathed. Campaign activities there have resumed, with Clinton aides saying only a handful of their 65 offices around the state remained closed Monday, all of them in more Republican north Florida.

North Carolina’s voter registration deadline is Friday, but the state also has same-day registration on Election Day.

Barrow reported from Atlanta.

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Photos: Cholera outbreaks feared after hurricane hits Haiti

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A child is treated for cholera in the southern commune of Jeremie. Aid groups were getting reports of cholera outbreaks in other parts of Haiti that hadn't yet received assistance. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

A child is treated for cholera in the southern commune of Jeremie. Aid groups were getting reports of cholera outbreaks in other parts of Haiti that they couldn’t yet reach. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

As Haiti began rebuilding in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, aid groups worried that cholera and other diseases would quickly spread in the flood waters.

The Caribbean island nation has battled cholera for six years, but conditions following the hurricane could make things worse, said Sean Casey, International Medical Corps’ emergency response team leader, from Les Cayes in southwestern Haiti.

Since 2010, when cholera first arrived in Haiti, more than 10,000 people have died from the waterborne disease, and aid agencies fear that number will increase after the hurricane.

“People are drinking water and food that is potentially exposed, and they don’t have access to hand-washing facilities, so the disease is spreading quite quickly, and it can kill quite quickly,” Casey told PBS NewsHour correspondent William Brangham in an interview airing on Tuesday’s broadcast.

U.S. helicopters were bringing aid, and humanitarian organizations were working to distribute the much-needed food and water, but they couldn’t reach all areas right away due to washed-out bridges and mudslides.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed for $120 million to start addressing the needs of hundreds of thousands of people affected by the storm. The hurricane has killed more than 500 people in Haiti, the Associated Press reported.

Jeremie was one of the coastal areas in southwestern Haiti that was heavily damaged by Hurricane Matthew. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

Jeremie was one of the coastal areas in southwestern Haiti that was heavily damaged by Hurricane Matthew. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

A man burns branches from fallen trees in Les Anglais in southwestern Haiti. Photo by Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters

A man burns branches from fallen trees in Les Anglais in southwestern Haiti. Photo by Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters

People wash their clothes on a beach near destroyed houses. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

People wash their clothes on a beach near destroyed houses. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

People are treated for cholera at a hospital in Jeremie, Haiti. The International Medical Corps was among the groups warning that cholera cases could spread from the heavy rains and flooding. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

People are treated for cholera at a hospital in Jeremie, Haiti. The International Medical Corps was among the groups warning that cholera cases could spread from the heavy rains and flooding. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

American soldiers deliver aid to parts of Haiti. The most immediate needs were food and clean water. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

American soldiers deliver aid to parts of Haiti. The most immediate needs were food and clean water. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

Men carry metal sheets to help rebuild homes in the commune of Jeremie, Haiti. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

Men carry metal sheets to help rebuild homes in the commune of Jeremie, Haiti. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

Hurricane destruction was heavy in Coteaux in the southern tip of Haiti. The United Nations estimated that at least 350,000 people were in need of humanitarian aid after the storm. Photo by Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters

Hurricane destruction was heavy in Coteaux in the southern tip of Haiti. The United Nations estimated that at least 350,000 people were in need of humanitarian aid after the storm. Photo by Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters

A woman uses solar panels to recharge her mobile phone in Jeremie, Haiti. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

A woman uses solar panels to recharge her mobile phone in Jeremie, Haiti. Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

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Ask the Headhunter: Beware of pay-to-play job interview scams

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Businessman on phone at desk in office with hand on forehead. Frustrated employee, worker. Photo by Thomas Barwick/Getty Images

Please learn this lesson now: No legitimate recruiter will ever charge you a fee of any kind for a job interview, writes Making Sen$e columnist Nick Corcodilos. Photo by Thomas Barwick/Getty Images

Nick Corcodilos started headhunting in Silicon Valley in 1979 and has answered over 30,000 questions from the Ask The Headhunter community.

In this special Making Sen$e edition of Ask The Headhunter, Nick shares insider advice and contrarian methods about winning and keeping the right job, on one condition: that you, dear Making Sense reader, send Nick your questions about your personal challenges with job hunting, interviewing, networking, resumes, job boards or salary negotiations. No guarantees — just a promise to do his best to offer useful advice.


A few minutes after a visitor to my Ask The Headhunter website posted a public comment about how he got scammed out of $2,500 by a phony recruiter, he asked me to delete what he’d posted. Turns out he’d received a threatening email from a lawyer.

The lawyer told him to “cease and desist” from posting critical comments about the recruiter. Then the recruiter emailed to tell him that if he removed the comment, he wouldn’t get sued.

READ MORE: Ask The Headhunter: Avoid Employment Scams, Ruses and Rackets

The surprise is that the victim got scammed not once, but twice. The whole story is here: “SevenFigureCareers: Threats and fraud.”

Degrees of scam

We often discuss lazy, sloppy, inept recruiters in this column. (See “Rude Interview? Don’t work there” and “Why do employers play ‘telephone’ with our lives?”) You know the type — they solicit you, they’re in a huge rush to fill a job, you respond and provide the information they need, but you never hear back from them.

That’s really a recruiting scam in itself: recruiters who are dialing for dollars rather than really recruiting. The scam is a matter of degree.

That’s really a recruiting scam in itself: recruiters who are dialing for dollars rather than really recruiting.

Worse are the ones who get you into an interview for a job that’s totally wrong for you, but you don’t find out until you’ve wasted hours of your time, if not a trip to another city. And worse still are those “opportunities” where you attend several interviews and suffer lengthy wait times after employers tell you an offer is imminent — then nothing happens.

The penultimate is when a job offer is extended, then the offer and the job suddenly disappear. (See “What if my job offer was rescinded after I quit my old job?”)

These are all scams to one degree or other, because what’s promised is never delivered: an honest chance at a job. The recruiter, meanwhile, is playing the odds by sending as many applicants as he can to an employer, hoping the employer hires one and pays a fee. It’s no skin off the recruiter’s back — you’re doing all the work.

The inept employer scam

There’s a kind of scam employers run too. Lazy, inept employers lead dozens of candidates through the selection process, because they have no idea what kind of person they need to hire. The job has not really been defined. They waste your time while they figure out what they don’t need. (See “Why employers should pay to interview you.”)

READ MORE: Ask the Headhunter: How did recruiting become so perverted?

In these cases, the employer hires no one, but all the candidates pay. The employer simply hasn’t done its job to determine whether (or whom) it needs to hire. You’re scammed out of your time — and you pay in unnecessary frustration.

The fee scam

From time to time, job seekers get scammed for money, too. This is the worst kind of recruiting scam, and the above-mentioned story is a good example.

A recruiter contacts you, says he found your profile on LinkedIn and that you’re an amazing match for a job he’s trying to fill.

Then the recruiter informs you that there’s a fee involved — maybe it’s a “processing expense fee” — if you want access to this “hidden, highly confidential job opportunity” that only he has access to.

Thrilled, you either visit his office for a two-hour meeting or have lengthy phone discussions and email exchanges that hint at an incredible opportunity. Sometimes these guys will forward email threads from their “clients,” who say they need to interview you immediately to fill a job within a week.

Then the recruiter informs you that there’s a fee involved — maybe it’s a “processing expense fee” — if you want access to this “hidden, highly confidential job opportunity” that only he has access to.

Most people walk away. Others, frustrated by other interview failures, rationalize that the best jobs are of course not free — there’s a cabal that controls them. So they fork over the money.

READ MORE: Ask the Headhunter: I’m waiting for a job offer… Now what?

After a few phony phone interviews and email exchanges, they realize they’ve been had. It might be a $30,000 job or a six-figure job, but I’ve seen more high-income people scammed than lower-level workers. The higher up the income ladder we go, the more susceptible people seem to be. Top managers and executives are accustomed to paying “consulting fees” for specialized help. Who wants to do the work of finding a new job? Of course there’s a way you can pay to have it done for you.

But those pay-to-play opportunities are all phony. The lesson is a painful one. I’ve seen executives lose upwards of $15,000 in these scams.

Walk away

While I was researching the story about the person who got scammed out of $2,500, the victim — a savvy executive — said to me several times, “I was such a dumb sh*t!” Even after he realized he’d been scammed, he believed the scammer was going to sue him.

Please learn this lesson now: No legitimate recruiter will ever charge you a fee of any kind for a job interview.

There’s a psychology behind these scams — it’s about human nature. It’s about wishful thinking. It’s about frustration. It’s why the scams work often enough that scammers keep using them. So please learn this lesson now: No legitimate recruiter will ever charge you a fee of any kind for a job interview. Walk away and toss your wishful thinking in the trash before you toss away your money.

Dear Readers: Have you ever been scammed out of money for the promise of a job? What kinds of scams have you encountered?


Nick Corcodilos invites Making Sense readers to subscribe to his free weekly Ask The Headhunter© Newsletter. His in-depth “how to” PDF books are available on his website: “How to Work With Headhunters…and how to make headhunters work for you,” “Keep Your Salary Under Wraps,” “How Can I Change Careers?” and “Fearless Job Hunting.”

Send your questions to Nick, and join him for discussion every week here on Making Sense. Thanks for participating!

Copyright © 2016 Nick Corcodilos. All rights reserved in all media. Ask the Headhunter® is a registered trademark.

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What spoons have to do with the Samsung-Apple patent lawsuit

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An Android mascot is seen in front of a displayed logo of Apple in this photo illustration. Photo by Dado Ruvic/Reuters

An Android mascot is seen in front of a displayed logo of Apple in this photo illustration. Photo by Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Samsung appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to defend its smartphone design, which Apple says too closely resembles its own.

The court’s task is not to determine whether Samsung infringed on Apple’s patents but to determine how much money Samsung should pay Apple for doing so.

It marks the first time in 120 years that the the court has reviewed a design patent case. (The Supreme Court has reviewed patents based on function, but not appearance.) And the last design patent cases reviewed by the high court dealt in saddles, rugs and spoons.

In fact, one particular case involving 19th-century spoons, Gorham v. White, was cited multiple times by lawyers before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

In 1862, Gorham & Co. obtained a patent for its spoon handle design. Six years later, a competitor, White, obtained a similar patent.

Image provided by smpub.com, SM publications, Silver Salon Forums

Image provided by smpub.com, SM publications, Silver Salon Forums

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gorham, the original patent holder.

“They are still the same in general appearance and effect, so much alike that in the market and with purchasers they would pass for the same thing — so much alike that even persons in the trade would be in danger of being deceived,” the court wrote.

In the Samsung v. Apple case, Apple compares itself to Gorham and likens Samsung to White.

Apple said its patents “cover the overall appearance of the device’s distinctive front face, bezel, and graphical user interface.”

In addition, Apple argues it should be awarded damages for the profits it lost on its entire phone, not just on the parts of Samsung’s phones that violated the patents.

“If people are buying the product because of the appearance, all the profits of the sales should go to the designer,” said Mark Davies, a partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe who filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of Apple.

Trying to determine how much profit Apple lost on the individual parts of the phone would be like trying to determine the profit lost because of the silver that makes up the spoon versus the handle design, Davies said.

Samsung has a different take.

“A patented design might be the essential feature of a spoon or rug. But the same is not true of smartphones, which contain countless other features that give them remarkable functionality wholly unrelated to their design,” Samsung’s court filing reads.

Samsung’s lawyer Kathleen Sullivan reiterated the argument before the justices, saying the main selling point for spoons are the design.

“The patent’s on the handle, but nobody really cares about the sipping cup of the spoon,” she said.

In other words, Samsung says smartphones are much more complex than spoons, and, unlike spoons, you can’t say that someone bought a certain phone only because of the way it looked.

It remains to be seen whether that argument will convince the Supreme Court, because as one might expect, 100 years on, the patent cases are also more complex.

The post What spoons have to do with the Samsung-Apple patent lawsuit appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Obama: Let’s go to Mars!

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President Obama pens an  oped that calls for a manned mission to Mars. Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

President Obama pens an oped that calls for a manned mission to Mars. Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama sought Tuesday to reinvigorate his six-year-old call for the U.S. to send humans to Mars by the 2030s, a mission NASA has been slowly and quietly trudging away at.

The White House was calling attention to government contracts awarded to six companies to build prototypes for “habitats” that could sustain human life in deep space. One such privately developed habitat — an inflatable room —is already attached to the International Space Station. Obama also said that within two years, private companies like SpaceX and Boeing will taxi astronauts to the space station with NASA as a customer.

“These missions will teach us how humans can live far from Earth, something we’ll need for the long journey to Mars,” Obama wrote in an op-ed on CNN’s website. He said the ultimate goal is for humans eventually to stay on the red planet “for an extended time.”

NASA officials and outside space experts said there is little new in what’s coming out of the White House on Mars, something NASA has taken to calling its “Journey To Mars.”

“There’s nothing big here at all, unless you haven’t been paying attention,” said former George Washington University space policy chief John Logsdon. “It’s a re-focusing of the fact that he set these goals and NASA has been pursuing them.”

Alan Ladwig, a former top NASA official in the Obama and Clinton administrations, said he likes the intent, “but it’s a bit late in the term to shine a light on the humans to Mars exploration.”

The president planned to discuss the initiative further when he meets with scientists, engineers and academics at an innovation summit Thursday in Pittsburgh.

Obama first set a goal in 2010 to send humans to Mars by the 2030s, but the initiative has attracted little attention since then. Numerous Government Accountability Office reports have warned of the challenges in meeting that goal, most notable a lack of substantial U.S. government funding

Obama did not elaborate on what a Mars mission would cost or how the U.S. would pay for it. But he said it will require years of patience, testing and education.

“The question is why and how does this support U.S. national interests,” said Scott Pace, a NASA associate administrator during the George W. Bush administration and space policy chief at George Washington University. He said returning to the moon instead of going to Mars makes more sense for both commerce and international cooperation.

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How a composer’s joke melodies became his unexpected legacy

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HARI SREENIVASAN: Now “The Carnival of Animals” and a famous composer who felt he was celebrated for the wrong thing.

Camille Saint-Saëns would have celebrated his 181st birthday this past weekend.

Once again, pianist Rob Kapilow joins Jeffrey Brown to explore what makes great music.

JEFFREY BROWN: Rob Kapilow, welcome.

ROB KAPILOW, Composer: Thanks for having me.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, today, we’re marking the birthday of Camille Saint-Saëns. This is a story of a great composer who didn’t quite get the legacy that he wanted.

ROB KAPILOW: During his lifetime, I mean, he was a famous composer, one of the most famous composers in the world, writing serious operas, serious symphonies.

JEFFREY BROWN: Tell us a little bit about him, for those who don’t know.

ROB KAPILOW: Well, you know, he was also one of the world’s greatest musical prodigies. In fact, many people think he was even more of a prodigy than Mozart or Mendelssohn.

He started piano at two-and-a-half. He wrote his first piece at four-and-a-half, made a public debut at 10, in which not only did he play two concertos and write his own cadenza, but, for an encore, he offered to play any Beethoven sonata from memory that the audience wanted. That’s 32 sonatas at the age of 10, one of the great musical proteges, utterly famous, yet then, for a joke, he writes this piece that literally became his legacy.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, “Carnival of the Animals,” written for a friend, becomes this famous piece. Tell us about it.

ROB KAPILOW: Yes, it was a little party piece, and, in it, he took 14 animals in this grand zoological fantasy, is what he called it.

And each movement turns an animal somehow into music. And the simplest way is to take the sound of the actual animal, and, in the first movement, that’s what happens. A lion’s roar is turned into music.

But, sometimes, for example, in “Hemiones,” which is a wild Tibetan donkey famous for running at blinding speed up and down rough mountains, he turns the idea of the animal into music, and turns that into two pianists running up and down the keyboard at blinding speed in unison.

JEFFREY BROWN: He also has this movement called “The Pianists.”

ROB KAPILOW: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: It’s sort of a joke, pianist as an animal.

ROB KAPILOW: Yes. It’s just a joke. I mean, it’s like based on the scale. It’s based on these ridiculous scales that pianists do. Maybe that’s the animal that annoys the neighbors when the pianists are actually playing.

JEFFREY BROWN: Pianists as animals in a sense.

ROB KAPILOW: Pianists as animals. Anybody can be a joke. Right.

JEFFREY BROWN: One movement, “The Swan,” next-to-last movement, did become hugely — maybe the most famous part.

ROB KAPILOW: It became the most famous piece he ever wrote.

And it’s interesting. It’s the only movement that he actually allowed to be published during his lifetime.

JEFFREY BROWN: I visited with Yo-Yo Ma last year for a piece for the “NewsHour,” and he played “The Swan” for us. So, what makes “The Swan” work so well?

ROB KAPILOW: Well, I think writing the piece so quickly gave him access to one of the most beautiful, simple melodies he ever wrote.

I mean, it starts off with nothing but the two pianos being the rippling waters, and a little crest of a wave. Then everything focuses on the cello. There were only three ideas. A swan’s neck dips, the same idea lower. Then the swan’s neck rises gracefully on a long note, and then a simple scale. But one note makes it great.

We stretch it out. Instead of this, we get this beautiful high note on the cello. We go on a journey with this, we come back, we repeat the whole thing a second time, and there’s a beautiful epilogue at the end telling us the message.

Then, for the first time, all of a sudden, the rippling waters stop. We know something important is being shared with us now. We journey with the piece’s three ideas, and we finish with a simple scale stretched out like this.

The rippling waters stop. We have been wanting to resolve not up here, but down here. And for the first time, we resolve the piece on a single cello note without accompaniment.

The accompaniment has always been in the middle register, not noticeable at all. Now, after this resolution of the cello, suddenly, from the heavens, up here, in a brand-new register, the pianos take over, those rippling waters become the topic. And we finish with one last wave.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, “The Swan” is the only part that he did allow to be published, but the rest of it, he didn’t want…

ROB KAPILOW: The rest of it is banished.

JEFFREY BROWN: He wanted it to go away?

ROB KAPILOW: He wanted it to go away. He said it could be published after he died.

But he was really worried. Legacy was an important issue. And he was a serious French composer. And that wasn’t what he wanted to be known for. But, somehow, what snuck into this piece was the most exquisite, pure, simple, beautiful melody that he ever wrote, “The Swan.”

JEFFREY BROWN: Rob Kapilow, thank you very much.

ROB KAPILOW: Thanks so much, Jeff.

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Our student debt anxiety explained in one video

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rysdal

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HARI SREENIVASAN: And speaking of student debt, college affordability has become an issue in the election. We have been taking a look at what’s behind the growth of that debt and just how big a problem it is.

It’s part of our year-long series How the Deck Is Stacked, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Our partners at “Frontline” and Marketplace put together a video explainer that’s been drawing some attention for laying out the landscape of student debt.

Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal is our guide.

KAI RYSSDAL, Marketplace: Today, student debt is a staggering $1.3 trillion. But how bad is that for the economy and for the people holding all that debt?

There’s a debate going on right now, and some experts argue, maybe it’s not as bad as we think.

I’m Kai Ryssdal, and this is How the Deck Is Stacked.

One-point-three trillion dollars. So, how did we get here? One reason for the growth is simply because many more people have been going to college. During the great recession, when the economy tanked, a lot of people couldn’t get a job, so they decided to go back to school, and most people can’t pay for school without taking out some student loans.

In 2008, about 29 million people held student debt. By 2015, that was up to 40 million people. More people in school equals more overall debt. At the same time, the cost of college also went up, while state funding for higher education went down.

But, despite the rise in debt, some experts say that this idea of a crisis is overblown. Student debt is much smaller than mortgage debt, and so they say that shouldn’t tank the economy. They also argue that, for most of those 40 million people, taking on the debt is going to be OK.

The reality is, only 8 percent of debt holders owe more than $75,000. And many of those people went to graduate school, which should increase their earning potential. Then there are the majority of borrowers, almost 70 percent, who owe less than $25,000.

Now, that still is a whole lot of money for most of us. But, on average, people with a bachelor’s degree make around $20,000 more a year than those with only a high school diploma. So, while it may be a struggle in the short term, chances are, most will be able to pay it off.

But then there are the people who are really hurting, people who took out loans, but didn’t finish school. Most of them owe less than $10,000, which might seem small, but they won’t be getting the pay boost from a degree, and yet still have to pay back that debt. And with bills to pay, interest accruing, and fees, they can get behind pretty quickly.

For this group, the risk of taking on the debt might not have been worth it. But, for the majority of us, the investment might be. Yet many of us don’t feel that way. We know that because you told us.

In our Marketplace/Edison Research Poll, nearly 40 percent of you said the education wasn’t worth the debt. Why is this? Well, we’re not anxious about college debt in a vacuum. Right? We have got a lot of other economic worries on our minds.

HARI SREENIVASAN: That video actually was produced for the Web in 360 degrees, where you can point your phone in any direction to look around the story. You can see the full story by going to “Frontline”‘s Facebook page.

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ITT Tech students are the newest victims of for-profit education failures

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CHANTILLY, VA   SEPTEMBER 6:
The Chantilly Campus of ITT Technical Institute sits closed and empty on Tuesday, September 6, 2016, in Chantilly, VA.  ITT Educational Services, one of the largest operators of for-profit technical schools, ended operations at all of its ITT Technical Institutes today, citing government action to curtail the company's access to millions of dollars in federal loans and grants, a critical source of revenue.  
(Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

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HARI SREENIVASAN: This has been a tough fall in the world of for-profit colleges, and for some of the students who attend them. The latest case, the bankruptcy and abrupt shutdown of ITT, one of the largest for-profit technical schools.

Its 130 campuses were closed last month after the Department of Education said it could no longer enroll new students who relied on federal loans and grants to attend. The Obama administration cited problems with its accreditation and concerns that it was misleading students. That has left about 35,000 students up in the air over their future.

And it is the subject of our weekly segment on education, Making the Grade.

Paul Fain of the news site Inside Higher Ed joins me now.

So, tell us, first of all, why is ITT shutting down? How important are they in the pantheon of the for-profit school system?

PAUL FAIN, Inside Higher Ed: They’re one of the biggest, one of the oldest, most-established for-profit companies, with campuses in 38 states. They used to have campuses in 38 states, so definitely one of the most important players.

Year — several tough years, hemorrhaging students and revenue. And then they got hit with several investigations and lawsuits, federal and state, some serious charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the SEC both pursuing them legally.

And then you had an accreditor raising questions about their record-keeping, and the Fed finally said, too much risk for those students and taxpayers. And there were just several sanctions that were really the end for the company.

HARI SREENIVASAN: But what about those 35,000 students? What do they do?

PAUL FAIN: They are in a real tough bind. They have two major choices. First, they can elect to have their debt forgiven.

They can — all the aid that they had received, the loans, they can have forgiven by the federal government. But, if they do that, their credits don’t transfer. If they seek to continue their program somewhere else, which might be tough as is, they might not be able to find an option or a similar program nearby, those credits won’t count, if they take the payoff.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And who is the demographic that goes to these schools?

PAUL FAIN: Well, you’re looking at working adults, basically, often the first in their family to go to college, many veterans at ITT and some other for-profits, and really just working adults looking to advance themselves, maybe to break into a career, maybe to get a credential, so they can get out of a low-pay job, folks who are working at night, weekends to try to really advance themselves.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So, it wasn’t easy for them to try to get this route. And now they have put in all this time. And if the credits don’t transfer, they might be back at square one.

PAUL FAIN: Absolutely.

No matter what you think of ITT, you have to feel sorry or really concerned about these students, because a lot of them are really just trying to get ahead to really advance themselves.

HARI SREENIVASAN: OK. And put this in context. This isn’t the first school. This is just the latest school in the for-profit world that’s had problems. We heard about Corinthian a while back. And there’s been other schools as well.

PAUL FAIN: Correct.

Corinthian was even larger, 72,000 students. A couple years ago, it shut down. Now what remains of it in a different owner’s hands is only about 10,000 students. A few years ago, about one in 10 students in America were at for-profit institutions. That’s declined to about 6 percent of the total, so really an existential crisis for these companies.

And there’s a lot of reasons for that. But it’s not clear what the future is for for-profit higher education.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Is it the business model? Is that working anymore? You see — you used to see ads nonstop on TV at late night. And it was competitive. It was DeVry and ITT and Phoenix Online.

PAUL FAIN: Right.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And there were so many different opportunities.

PAUL FAIN: And they were booming.

You had massive growth coming right after the recession, as folks dropped out of the economy and were really trying to retool themselves, and these schools reached out to them. They tended to be better than their competitors when it comes to advertising, because they had the money to do that.

But several factors have hit them. I mean, first of all, the recovery has recovered a little bit. So, you have fewer folks looking to go back to school to try to find a job. You have just waves of bad publicity, investigations, criticism by the media, by lawmakers, primarily Democrats, which I think has taken a toll.

I think the word for-profit has a bit of a stigma. And that’s the companies themselves who will say that. And I just think it’s a harder sell. A lot of them are a little bit more expensive than community colleges. They say they offer more services to help students, but it’s a little harder to get someone to pay $15,000 or more to go to one of these programs.

HARI SREENIVASAN: But what do the executives at these companies say about their plight and how the environment has changed?

PAUL FAIN: Well, first of all, they say they have been treated unfairly, that this administration and Senate Democrats have cracked down on them more than the rest of higher education.

There are questions about all of higher education’s return on investment, the value of a degree. I think it’s quite clear that the best way to get a job is to get a degree. But people are concerned about student debt on the whole. But for-profit higher education has really received, I think, the first wave of aggressive federal policy to try to make sure students are getting what they pay for.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Paul Fain of the news site Inside Higher Ed, thanks for joining us.

PAUL FAIN: Thanks for having me.

 

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Greece sends stranded refugee children to school, stoking anti-migrant resistance

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Refugee children enter a primary school on the first day of lessons under the new refugee schooling program, in Athens, Greece, October 10, 2016. REUTERS/Michalis Karagiannis - RTSRMBH

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HARI SREENIVASAN: But first: The Greek government has begun a pilot program to educate refugee children stranded in the country, because nations along the migrant trail to Northern Europe have closed their borders.

It is estimated there are more than 20,000 children in refugee camps in Greece. The plan is being resisted by some Greeks, who say they worry about refugees carrying infections and also about the cultural change the plan might bring. There have been protests in a number of towns.

Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant has been looking at the issue, and starts his report from Filippiada in Western Greece.

MALCOLM BRABANT: What’s your name?

MOHAMMED ZAITOON, Syrian Refugee: My name’s Mohammed.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Where are you from?

MOHAMMED ZAITOON: I’m from Syria.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Yes. And whereabouts in Syria are you from?

MOHAMMED ZAITOON: I’m from — I live in Damascus.

MALCOLM BRABANT: What’s your name?

SELMA ZAITOON, Syrian Refugee: My name is Selma.

MOHAMMED ZAITOON: I’m sad because I don’t have school now. And I want to go to school, actually.

SELMA ZAITOON: I would like now to go to school. But I can’t. Now, here, I don’t have school, but I want to go to school.

MALCOLM BRABANT: The children’s formal education ended 15 months ago, when they left Syria. Their father is Ammar Zaitoon.

AMMAR ZAITOON, Syrian Refugee: I have three children. Two of them were in school. And they always get top marks.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Like tens of thousands of other refugees, the Zaitoons wanted to settle elsewhere, but are now stuck in Greece, where anti-migrant sentiment is significant, especially over the issue of education.

AMMAR ZAITOON: We were disappointed for that. We want to know, why do they don’t want our children to go to school? We’d like something like to speak with them just in order to knowing us more and more, that we are simple people. We have the right to teach our children. We like life. We like education. Syrian people are very good workers. And when they study, they will be good in school.

MALCOLM BRABANT: The family lives in Filippiada, a small town in Western Greece. The parent-teacher association told the Education Ministry that under no circumstances would they accept children from a nearby camp, citing fears about cultural differences and infectious diseases.

They claimed their presence would alter the Greek character of the schools. Most parents we approached refused to talk. But Christos Gartzis spoke up.

CHRISTOS GARTZIS, Parent, Filippiada School (through translator): The education issue is not a problem for us, as all these children have the right to education, but, first of all, the government have to solve their housing problems. They must be relocated to more modern facilities. These children are going to be permanently ill during the winter, with colds and coughs, viruses and maybe even pneumonia. What kind of schooling will we be able to offer them then?

MALCOLM BRABANT: Several hundred refugees, mainly from Syria and Afghanistan, live in tents in a former army base on the outskirts of Filippiada. There are about 150 children who do have the occasional lesson from volunteers. But, mostly, they while away the hours playing.

Filippiada’s rejection of refugee children has put it beneath an unfavorable spotlight, and the conservative mayor, Nikolaos Kalantzis, has been trying to limit the damage to the town’s reputation.

MAYOR NIKOLAOS KALANTZIS, Filippiada, Greece, Greece (through translator): This is a rather unique issue, in that the people who have come here don’t actually want to stay here. They want to move on and are seeking ways to do so. This is a matter of trying to manage an interim period for these people. At least that’s the way I see it.

And, of course, this is not just a problem for Filippiada, but also for Greece itself and, in general, Europe, too, since extreme racist and nationalist feelings are on the rise. But in no way whatsoever could Filippiada be considered as a racist town.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Like every aspect of life in Greece, education has been hit by the country’s six-year-long financial crisis. The government has been forced to lay off teachers, and schools like this are being run on half the budget previously available before the country went bankrupt.

But headmaster George Gioldasis is a strong believer in the universal right of children to an education.

GEORGE GIOLDASIS, Headmaster (through translator): Problems definitely exist, but we, the teachers, together with the parents and parent-teacher’s association, as well as the citizens of this town, are trying to solve them with the limited resources we have from the municipality for education.

We’re trying to at least solve the basic problems at the moment, but, in my opinion, much more funding is going to be required in order to be able to provide the infrastructure and prerequisites necessary for the integration of refugee children into our schools.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Greece’s education minister says that the country has an obligation to provide schooling for refugee children. And he’s announced a program where six schools will open up in Athens, and there’ll be three others in towns around the country.

Now, the minister says that this initiative will spread throughout Greece through October. The money to pay for it is supposed to be coming from a $1 billion fund provided to Greece by the European Union, which is supposed to help during the refugee crisis.

But there’s been strong resistance from nationalists in the northern town of Oraiokastro. The rally organizers insisted they were just concerned citizens. But some rhetoric sounded similar to that of the ultra-right Golden Dawn Party. A riot police cordon prevented clashes with about 200 left-wing protesters.

The demonstrators emphasized their orthodox Christian heritage and abhorrence of Islam. Organizer Spiros Haravopoulos says his ancestors were victims of a Turkish genocide on the Black Sea nearly a century ago.

“We are the Greeks. That’s who we are,” he shouts.

This is a place where history is never forgotten, especially Greece’s 400 years under the Islamic Ottoman Empire.

SPIROS HARAVOPOULOS, Rally Organizer (through translator): Of course we care about the refugees, but let them go to other countries, where their own religion is widely practiced, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates. We have nothing against the refugees, but they have been brought here without anyone having asked us if we want them here.

Other people can’t be allowed to decide what we want without us being asked first, and that’s why we’re protesting here tonight. Apart from the fact that they have been terrifying the people here, members of the same government that was voted into power by citizens of this place are calling us Nazis.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Greece belongs to the Greeks, bellowed lawyer Dimitris Mihakis, as he whipped up the crowd.

DIMITRIS MIHAKIS, Lawyer, “Concerned Citizens of Oraiocastro” (through translator): Are we supposed to allow this and make our schools just for the minority? Do they want a Greek minority here in Greece? We will not permit Greek schools to be turned into minority schools. The plan is obviously to cause problems and unrest in this country in order to satisfy some other fanciful geostrategic plans which they have in mind for us.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Despite being the object of fear, suspicion and hate, Ammar Zaitoon is remaining calm.

AMMAR ZAITOON: We know that the Greek people were living the same situation in the past. And, actually, they are good people. I know, sometimes, sometimes, you don’t want to see other people in your country. Sometimes, you don’t want to see another — refugees in your country.

We respect that. But, even so, they are very good with us. They receive us, and they are trying to help us as best as they can.

MALCOLM BRABANT: As the rally organizers danced in the rain, they were condemned as fascists by the left-wing protesters, who chanted slogans in support of the refugees.

“Fatherland, faith, and family. Long live Greece,” he cried.

The government’s determination to provide classes nationwide will be severely tested. A new battleground awaits the war children.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Malcolm Brabant in Northern Greece.

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What Trump and Clinton need to do in early-voting battlegrounds Ohio and Arizona

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People cheer for U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at a rally at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, U.S. October 10, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson - RTSRORN

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HARI SREENIVASAN: We turn now to take a closer look at two key battleground states.

John Yang is our guide.

JOHN YANG: Early voting begins tomorrow in Ohio and Arizona, two states where the presidential candidates are running neck-and-neck.

From Ohio, long considered a political bellwether, we are joined by Karen Kasler. She’s statehouse bureau chief for Ohio Public Radio and TV. And Christopher Conover is a reporter for Arizona Public Media, where polls show the Grand Canyon state could turn blue this year for the first time in decades.

Karen and Christopher, thanks so much for joining us.

Let me start in Arizona.

Christopher, the Republican presidential nominee has won Arizona every election but one since 1948. Why is it so close this time?

CHRISTOPHER CONOVER, Arizona Public Media: This year is, I think, just an interesting year.

In 1996, Bill Clinton was the last Democrat to win. If you look at Arizona when it comes to voter registration, the state is split almost evenly in thirds, with independents, Republicans, and Democrats making up those large portions. Independents are the largest bloc. They picked up 51,000 new voters just this week.

So, the state is split very interestingly along political lines. And Arizona’s always marched to its own drummer a little bit also politically.

JOHN YANG: Karen, Ohio has always been a swing state, a decider in elections. What are the forces shaping the race this time?

KAREN KASLER, Ohio Public Radio: Well, I think you have polling in Ohio before the tapes over the weekend were released that showed that Clinton and Trump were very, very close. The Quinnipiac poll last week had Trump up by five points. The Monmouth poll had Clinton up by two points, so a very close race.

You have got three major markets. You have got a lot of rural voters. You have got a lot of things that are going on here. And Trump is reaching out to voters in some of these areas where Republicans haven’t necessarily done well. That’s what the Republican Party chair, Matt Borges, has even said.

And you see Trump going to areas like Youngstown, which is typically Democratic, that has a lot of blue-collar voters that Trump seems to be reaching. He is reaching a lot of voters in areas where the unemployment rate is higher than it is nationally.

And so you have got that going on, but Clinton has also reached out. She was just here yesterday with her largest crowd to date at Ohio State University. So, she’s reaching out in some of these areas. So, you have got these two forces together.

This was Clinton’s first appearance back in Ohio for quite a while, though. Some people had wondered if she had abandoned the Buckeye State, but her campaign said that was absolutely not the case. And, in fact, President Obama will be here on Thursday. Donald Trump will also be here on Thursday.

We start early voting tomorrow statewide in Ohio, so I think that’s part of the reason why both those campaigns will be here.

JOHN YANG: Karen, you mentioned that videotape, of course. What is the — is it too early to tell or can you tell what the impact is in Ohio?

KAREN KASLER: I think there are a lot of undecided voters who are very concerned about that tape. And you have a lot of Christian evangelical voters, you have a lot of voters who are independent voters who are very concerned about that tape.

And Donald Trump’s weakness has been in some Republican counties like the state’s most Republican county, Delaware County, which is just north of Columbus. He had not done well there. And that’s a county that he really, I think, was hoping to get.

And so I think it’s a little early to really figure out what the impact of those tapes will be. And you have got the Ohio Republican chair, Matt Borges, again saying that he has talked to Donald Trump personally, and that Trump has assured him that there will be no other incidents, no other tapes, no other things like this coming out that could be problematic.

And he says he’s talking him at his word. And so I think there are a lot of Republicans who are questioning that right now. And, of course, you have got three major Republican officeholders in Ohio, Governor John Kasich, U.S. Senator Rob Portman and state auditor Dave Yost, who, over the weekend, came out and said they would no longer vote for Donald Trump.

And in a year where endorsements haven’t mattered a whole lot, I’m wondering what the impact of that will be.

JOHN YANG: And, Christopher, in Arizona, of course, Senator John McCain over the weekend said he would no longer — would split from Donald Trump.

But is it — can you tell yet what the impact is among voters of that videotape?

CHRISTOPHER CONOVER: We really can’t tell yet.

As you said, Senator McCain, who has had a rocky relationship with Donald Trump, officially split from him this weekend. We have had others, like the current governor, Doug Ducey, repudiate the statements, say they were terrible things, but didn’t pull his support away.

And former Governor Jan Brewer, who has campaigned with Donald Trump in Arizona, was at the debates this weekend, also had nothing good to say about the tapes, but is still very openly supporting Donald Trump. So it’s a little early to say how it will all play out here in Arizona also.

JOHN YANG: And, Christopher, Arizona, about 30 percent, I think the — of the voting public is Hispanic. A lot of rhetoric about Hispanics and immigration, illegal immigration in this campaign, how has that affected that voting bloc?

CHRISTOPHER CONOVER: As you said, about 30 percent of the state is Hispanic.

What’s interesting is, we don’t know how they’re going to vote because Arizona on its voter registration form doesn’t ask anything about race. So we only have to guess how they are registered to vote, that group is registered to vote. Nationally, we know that about 69 percent of Hispanics will vote in this election — that’s what they’re saying — and that the majority of them skew towards the Democratic Party.

However, in Arizona, we have some very high-profile Republican Hispanics. So it will be very interesting to see how that Hispanic vote comes down, especially with so much that goes on with immigration in this campaign. In Arizona, immigration isn’t necessarily something we talk about, especially in Southern Arizona. It’s just part of life.

JOHN YANG: And, Karen, in Ohio, with the close poll, the voter turnout, getting out the vote is going to be so important.

What’s the ground game look like in Ohio, especially since, as you pointed out, Donald Trump has been denied in a way that great ground organization that John Kasich, the governor, has put together?

KAREN KASLER: Yes.

And one thing that’s interesting here, first of all, the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrats have said their ground game is excellent. It’s the same kind of ground game they had in 2008 and 2012, when Barack Obama won Ohio.

But you also have an interesting thing that happened in the primary, when John Kasich was still on the ballot. You had a lot of people who voted Republican in that primary. And so we end up now at this point where there are 1.9 million people in Ohio who are affiliated with the Republican Party, 1.1 million people in Ohio who are affiliated with the Democratic Party.

There’s potentially more people that the Republican Party could reach out to. Whether those people will come back and vote Republican again remains to be seen. So, I think the idea that the Republican Party that is not necessarily united behind Donald Trump, even though the Ohio Republican Party chair says he’s still going to be working for Trump at least, at this point in time — others are saying they’re not.

Without that organization and that unification, will they be able to reach all those voters and get those people out to come out over Hillary Clinton and her ground game?

JOHN YANG: Karen Kasler in Columbus, Ohio, Christopher Conover in Tucson, Arizona, thanks so much for joining us.

KAREN KASLER: Thanks.

CHRISTOPHER CONOVER: Thank you.

HARI SREENIVASAN: On our Web site: What does weather have to do with democracy? A Making Sense columnist examines how rain and, yes, hurricane damage and flooding can affect elections.

That’s at PBS.org/NewsHour.

The post What Trump and Clinton need to do in early-voting battlegrounds Ohio and Arizona appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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