SUMMARY: The road to recovery in Puerto Rico will be long and daunting, as electricity, fuel and transportation remain crippled in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Citizens who have lost everything to the storm are trying to rebuild, but continue to wait for assistance as the military surveys the damage. Special correspondent Monica Villamizar reports.
SUMMARY: Two weeks after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, President Trump toured parts of the island to assess the damage and relief efforts. Praising the work of FEMA, Mr. Trump complained about the cost of recovery and said Puerto Ricans need to do more. Special correspondent Monica Villamizar joins Judy Woodruff to discuss how Puerto Ricans are responding to the President’s visit and comments.
SUMMARY:The federal response in Puerto Rico continues to draw criticism from locals, their dissatisfaction amplified by President Trump’s visit to the island on Tuesday. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz talks with special correspondent Monica Villamizar about the President’s visit and the disconnect she sees between the White House and the reality in Puerto Rico.
SUMMARY: Hurricane Maria has taken a toll on Puerto Rico’s power grid and water supply, but for children, school closures and isolation from friends presents a daily reminder of the storm's devastation. For a working class community outside San Juan, schools have become spaces of refuge where people can access food, medicine and psychological support. Special correspondent Monica Villamizar reports.
SUMMARY: The economic disaster in Venezuela caused by tumbling petrol prices — oil production is the main industry — is also behind an environmental one. Lake Maracaibo, which sustains the Añu indigenous group, is being contaminated by oil spills and the leaky drilling infrastructure, all made worse by rampant gas smuggling. Special correspondent Nadja Drost and videographer Bruno Federico report.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): We return now to a Venezuela in crisis.
We recently brought you a report from Caracas on the collapse of the economy and the health care system and the lawlessness run rampant there.
Tonight, again in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on crisis Reporting, special correspondent Nadja Drost and videographer Bruno Federico report from western Venezuela on Lake Maracaibo. It is the hub of Venezuela's oil industry, the country's lifeblood, which is now a trade in serious trouble.
NADJA DROST, special correspondent: The drop in oil prices has not just devastated the Venezuelan economy. It's causing an environmental crisis as well. An oil spill that happened in May still covers the shoreline of Lake Maracaibo.
JOSE GREGORIO GARCIA, Fisherman (through translator): Lately, we have been seeing a lot of oil spills. It wasn't like this before.
NADJA DROST: Jose Gregorio Garcia is part of the Anu indigenous group, who live in the lake area. Anu means people of the shore, and fishing has long been their sustenance. But leaking oil is damaging their livelihood; 15,000 barrels of oil have spilled into the lake in the last two months, according to the state oil company.
JOSE GREGORIO GARCIA (through translator): There were species that we don't see now. We think it's because of the contamination.
NADJA DROST:Shrimp are gone completely, and the lake's once-thriving blue crab fishery is also disappearing.
JOSE GREGORIO GARCIA (through translator):The oil goes to the bottom of the lake. That's where the crab is. It migrates, or dies, or gets covered with petroleum, and when it's stained like that, no one will buy it.
NADJA DROST:Oil wells have been abandoned, and production has slowed to a 13-year low. That means money that was supposed to be set aside to stop oil spills has dried up.
Alfredo Dominguez, who checks oil platforms for the state company which operates all the oil fields, says there's a lack of everything, equipment and the parts to fix it and oversight by management. Plus, thieves have also wrecked the infrastructure.
ALFREDO DOMINGUEZ, Field Operator (through translator): They rob cables from the oil stations, bulbs, everything that can be melted down. They take apart the tubes. The wells keep pumping and sending the oil to the station, but the cables and tubes have been cut, so the oil ruptures and spills into the lake.
NADJA DROST: For decades, Lake Maracaibo has been a symbol of Venezuela's oil wealth, but, today, it's in a state of decay. Beneath us, there is a massive network of interlaced tubes transporting oil and gas. Locals refer to it as a bowl of spaghetti.
SUMMARY: It's been just over a month since a deadly earthquake devastated Ecuador's Pacific coast, destroying thousands of buildings and impacting at least a quarter-million people. As the government struggles with recovery costs and moves to rebuild, the disaster has also highlighted the need for tougher buildings codes — and enforcement. Special correspondents Bruno Frederico and Nadja Drost report.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):It's been just over a month since a major earthquake devastated swathes of countryside and towns on Ecuador's Pacific coast; 663 people are officially confirmed dead.
And, as thousands more face the loss of their homes or workplace, videographer Bruno Federico and special correspondent Nadja Drost bring us this report from Manabi province on Ecuador's coast, where people are trying to rebuild their towns and lives.
ALFREDO JAMA, Fisherman (through interpreter): That night was unforgettable. I was bringing up the net, when, suddenly, I felt the boat vibrating too much. It was like the floor burst open.
NADJA DROST (NewsHour): It's the first time that fisherman Alfredo Jama has dared to return out to sea since an earthquake caught him by surprise on April 16th when he was fishing.
ALFREDO JAMA (through interpreter): When I looked around, I saw an explosion that left us without light. Everything was dark. The sea bellowed from beneath. It was like there was a beast coming up from under. When I returned to the house, everything was a disaster.
NADJA DROST: Jama's wife, Paola Farias, walked us through what used to be the two-story home of their extended family, which she also used for her nail salon.
PAOLA FARIAS, Salon Owner (through interpreter): When I said, don't worry, it's over, was when the movement started more strongly. The walls started falling. We managed to leave the house. It was terrible, because imagine how one works so hard for one's things, and from one moment to another, nothing.
NADJA DROST: Farias is one of at least 250,000 Ecuadorians directly affected by an earthquake that knocked down thousands of buildings. It also set off an outpouring of support from fellow Ecuadorians, like Karla Morales, the director of local human rights group Kahre.
She was at home in the city of Guayaquil, over 150 miles south of the epicenter, the night the quake hit.
KARLA MORALES, Kahre.org: And in that moment, I just sent a tweet.
NADJA DROST: “Bring supplies to my house tomorrow,” Karla wrote, and she'd drive them north to the earthquake-affected region the next afternoon.
KARLA MORALES: And I didn't expect that people were so interested in helping and with so much compassion and solidarity. There were like 600 or maybe 1,000 people in my house, bringing help and helping with all that donations that we were receiving in that moment.
NADJA DROST: Karla ended up sending 23 large truckloads of materials that day. Since then, her team continues to distribute donations, from water filters to mattresses, to rural areas, where help has been slower to reach.
Ecuador hadn't expected an earthquake, but preparing for a different emergency, a volcanic eruption and flooding, helped it respond quickly, says Tim Callaghan of USAID.
SUMMARY: One year ago, the first of two massive earthquakes ripped through Nepal, killing more than 8,000 people. Some $4 billion of assistance was pledged to the rebuilding effort, but political gridlock and corruption have left the displaced survivors to largely fend for themselves. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO (NewsHour): Kathmandu still bears scars from the quakes, but many people in Nepal's bustling capital have pushed the rubble aside and started rebuilding their homes and lives.
That's not possible in the quake's worst-hit regions, villages high up in the rugged Himalayan landscape, places that were hard to reach even before the disasters struck. Most people here were displaced into makeshift camps miles away in valleys miles away.
On April 25, 2015, the village of Mailung literally slid out of existence; 38 people died instantly as boulders rained down from the mountainside. Five bodies have never been recovered from under them.
Parma Singh Tamang ran a grocery store and tailoring business in this abandoned community once home to 400 people. The remnants from his shops peek out from under tons of granite. Two daughters-in-law and two grandchildren perished here. Others in the large extended family that lived here barely escaped.
PARMA SINGH TAMANG, Displaced Resident (through interpreter): When they heard the loud rumbling, they were very confused and ran down by the river.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Down the street is the spot where Selnam Tamang lived. She wasn't home on that fateful day. She was visiting her mother, leaving her four children with her in-laws and eldest child, Asmita.
SELNAM TAMANG, Displace Resident (through interpreter): Her grandfather was cooking fish, and all the family was gathered in the main floor area, but Asmita didn't like fish, so she climbed to the second floor of the house.
Then, suddenly, the earthquake came, and the whole house fell, and she was thrown some distance away. But the whole family, they were crushed.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Including two younger daughters and infant son. She did manage to rescue their pictures.
I'm really sorry.
Their current situation stokes the despair. Most people in the camp say they have no money and have received little assistance to rebuild. Selnam Tamang scrapes by on about $3 a day as a daily laborer, working about 10 days each month. And conditions in the metal-roofed shacks are not healthy, says 12-year-old Asmita, who is learning English.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): When the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down, the stakes in the fight for the future of Ukraine went up. At the center of what has rapidly become a global flash point is the deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and Russia. But what, if anything, can the U.S. or Russia do in the face of international grief, recrimination and derailed diplomacy?
Stephen Sestanovich was U.S. ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union during the Clinton administration. He’s now senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. And Eugene Rumer was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia during the Obama administration from 2010 to 2014. He’s now director of Russia and Eurasia Programs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Stephen Sestanovich, how much — how much good can international pressure do?
STEPHEN SESTANOVICH, Council on Foreign Relations: Well, there’s no doubt that Russia faces the most appalling public relations predicament that it’s been in, in decades. And it is going to be responding to international pressure.
No government wants to have the kind of criminal reputation that the Russians are acquiring for their handling of this. And the result is — you already see — is a kind of backing off of some of the positions that they have taken. They supported a U.N. Security Council resolution today. The separatists have been urged to release the bodies. There is that kind of minimal level of cooperation that is meant to rescue their international position right now.
SUMMARY: At least 50 people are confirmed or presumed dead after a runaway train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in the Québécois town of Lac-Mégantic. While still unclear on what precipitated the crash, Hari Sreenivasan reports on information from Canadian authorities about an engine fire right before the disaster.
SUMMARY: Hari Sreenivasan talks to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Nancy Wood, who offers an update on the new criminal investigation into the train derailment and explosion, backlash inside the town of Lac-Megantic against the rail company CEO and whether the recent accident is likely to affect oil transportation in Canada.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
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