February 2, 2015 6:00pm-7:01pm PST

We're doing a text photo. We're going public! Expinity Internet, in-home Wi-Fi for the entire family. Whoa. A battle over economic priorities, from taxes to public works. President Obama delivers his budget to Capitol Hill. We have to make sure that paychecks go farther. We know that families are struggling to afford childcare, struggling to afford to send their kids to college. And so, what we have is a comprehensive proposal that'll make paychecks go farther. Good evening, I'm Gwen Eiffel. Judy Woodruff is away. Also ahead this Monday, one journalist released two still behind bars, the uneven fate of jail journalists in Egypt, and the mass death sentences imposed on violent protesters. Then, from Disneyland to the Heartland, the return of the measles once thought to be eradicated. The vaccination debate that may have sparked

the latest contagious outbreak. Plus, director Richard Link later on using the passage of time as a storytelling device and making his Oscar-nominated film Boyhood. All film is a construct. You know, it's just how you want to be perceived and how you want an audience to take in your particular story. And I want an audience to lose themselves in the story I'm trying to tell and make it feel like it feels like your own life to some degree. Those are some of the stories we're covering on tonight's PBS NewsHour. Major funding for the PBS NewsHour has been provided by... The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation

helping people build measurably better lives. And with the ongoing support of these institutions. And this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. The latest winter storm dumped fresh misery across New England today after pounding on the plains and Midwest.

While over a foot of snow fell in the Chicago area and around the Great Lakes region, a number of schools canceled Monday classes. As the storm pushed east, New York State and New England braced for the blow with more than a foot forecast for Boston. Mayor Marty Walsh said plows are still clearing last week's big snow. This weekend, Michael Denehee and his team removed about 6,000 truckloads of snow off the streets of Boston. And as you can see, there still was a lot before the storm today, there was a lot of snow out there. So it shows you how much snow we actually got during the Blizzard. So we're going to continue that effort after this snow storm is cleared up. We're going to continue to try and get as much snow off the streets as possible, particularly with the very cold weather. The storm also disrupted air travel with a combined 6600 flights canceled since Sunday. Many of those were supposed to bring Super Bowl fans back from Arizona. Walsh Street started the month on a high note, a gain in oil prices outweigh the news that manufacturing grew in December at its slowest pace in a year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 196 points to close at 17,361.

The Nasdaq rose 41 to 4676 and the S&P 500 added nearly 26 points to finish near 21-21. There was no sign of a break today and the standoff over a Jordanian pilot, held by Islamic State militants in Syria. The government of Jordan has agreed to the group's demand to release a convicted terrorist. But it said again today, it needs reassurance. We demand an emphasized demand for proof of life of the pilot Muat al-Qasaspi. Then we can speak about further steps. We follow up around the clock and our security organizations are following up on this case. Theers for the pilot's safety ran even higher after a second Japanese hostage, journalist Kenji Goto, was beheaded over the weekend. In Ukraine, pro-Russian rebels pressed their offensive across multiple fronts today. Civilians ran for cover as rockets streaked across towns in the embattled province of

Donetsk. Many scavenged the rubble for belongings as they prepare to evacuate their homes. Meanwhile, rebel leaders announced plans to swell their ranks to 100,000 fighters. We will mobilize enough people to the army, because considering the situation on the fronts and what Ukraine does, we will have to mobilize people who are able to carry weapons. After today's events, it has become urgent. Almost 2,000 people have fled the fighting in the last few days. The first large-scale Ebola vaccine trials began today in Liberia. About 600 volunteers were taking part in the effort, which ultimately may involve 27,000 people. They're testing two potential vaccines, one developed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the other by Canadian health officials. It's been 800 years since rebellious Barrens forced an English king to accept essential rights under law. They were enshrined in the Magna Carta, and today the surviving copies from that summer of 1215 went on display in London.

Sally Biddle of Independent Television News reports. The founding document behind our rule of law and citizens' rights. These four remaining original copies have been brought together for the first time in 8 centuries, two from the British Library and one from each of the cathedrals in Salisbury and Lincoln. It's unprecedented for Salisbury to move its Magna Carta out of the cathedral. We did it for just a little while during the Second World War when we put it in a quarry in Wiltshire, but you can guarantee that our copy has never left Wiltshire in 800 years. When King John stamped the Magna Carta in runny-meade with his royal seal in 1215, little did he know it would herald parliamentary democracy. When Magna Carta has his global resonance, it established for the first time that everybody was subject to the law. The Magna Carta manuscripts are only together on display for three days, with tickets to the event drawn from a ballot, translated from the Latin, it means great charter and

great it was, its impact still resonating down the ages. Weeks after King John accepted the Magna Carta, the Pope voided it, but its fundamental tenets were reaffirmed in succeeding documents. Back in this country, union workers at nine oil refineries in chemical plants were out on strike for a second day. Those are the first such walkouts since 1980, and they're affecting plants that account for about 10 percent of the nation's refining capacity. The workers are demanding higher pay, better benefits, and safer work conditions. And the New England Patriots celebrated their dramatic win in Super Bowl 49, which set a new television record with 114 million viewers. The Patriots edged the Seattle Seahawks 28-24 last night in Glendale, Arizona. It's their fourth championship in six tries since 2000. A victory parade in Boston has been delayed though until Wednesday, as the city digs out from its record snowfall.

Still to come on the new's hour, policy priorities in the president's new budget. Egypt's complicated crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, the alarming new spread of an old disease, the measles, and playing with time in Richard Linklater's Oscar-nominated boyhood. President Obama formally unveiled his $4 trillion spending plant today in Washington, the arrival of box loads of budgets triggered what should it be months of wrangling with Republican majorities in the House and the Senate. The box is rolled down congressional holes this morning, while across town the man who sent them there appealed for a fair hearing. We've got to put politics aside, pass a budget that funds our national security priorities at home and abroad and gives middle-class families the security they need to get ahead in the new economy. The centerpiece of the president's plan is a six-year $478 billion public works program

to repair highways, bridges, and transit systems. Half of the money would come from a one-time tax on US companies overseas profits. The budget also calls for raising the capital gains tax rate to 28% for wealthier Americans and using their revenue for $320 billion in low and middle-class tax breaks. There's also $60 billion for free community college. All told, Mr. Obama wants to increase defense and domestic spending by 7%. That would break mandatory caps imposed in 2011 under the so-called sequestration. I'm not going to accept a budget that locks in sequestration going forward. It would be bad for our security and bad for our growth. The president rejected Republicans' calls to lift the caps for defense spending only, and they immediately accused him of reverting to tax and spend policies that endanger

the economy. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Retorically, at least we hear the White House echo Republican calls for policies aimed at helping the middle-class, but then we see the White House push more of the same style top-down policies favored by political bosses over on the left. House Speaker John Boehner said there's no provision for ever balancing the budget. Republican leaders promised to offer their own plan in the spring. We dig a little deeper now into the budget, beginning at the White House. I spoke with Sean Donovan, director of the Office of Management and Budget a short time ago. Director Donovan, welcome. Much of the advance of discussion about the president's budget, including what we see in the actual document today focuses on the plight or the concerns of the middle-class. Why is your approach better than any other approach on that? Well, because I think what we've really done is look at what are the core things that are eating away at the fortunes of the middle-class in this country?

And first of all, we have to make sure that paychecks go farther. We know that families are struggling to afford childcare, struggling to afford to send their kids to college. And so what we have is a comprehensive proposal that will make paychecks go farther today. At the same time, we've got to look to the future and say, what are the ways we're going to grow the good middle-class jobs of the future? That means we've got to invest in manufacturing our infrastructure. We've got to make sure that we remain the best in the world that inventing new things, and that means research and development. And then we also have to make sure that as we create those jobs of the future, that Americans are ready to take them. And so in this budget, we double the number of slots for job training. We double the number of apprenticeships, and we make sure that community college is going to be like high school is today. In the future, everyone should be able to go to community college, and that's why free community college is a key part of the budget.

But when you use the word invest, Republicans hear the word spend, and they hear the word tax. How do you hope to make any progress with your priorities if that's the translation of your word invest? Well, first of all, let's look at the facts on what the budget does. Over 10 years, we achieved with this budget $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction, and that's undeniable if you look at the numbers. But second, what we're doing is taking a bipartisan example, the so-called Murray Ryan deal that was reached two years ago, we're taking that and building on it. What we're saying is, let's get rid of these harmful cuts called sequestration. Let's do them dollar for dollar on the defense and the non-defense side. And let's pay for it by savings on the mandatory and the revenue side over the long term. That's what was done and allowed us to make progress two years ago on our budget, and that's the model that we're building on. When you talk about the revenue side, you're talking about raising taxes on corporate

profits, you're talking about raising taxes on financial firms and inheritance taxes. Why isn't that, as some Republicans have described, I think Paul Ryan called it yesterday, envy economics or class more? Well, let's take an example on capital gains, for example. Right now, a family that is forced to sell whether it's their home or a business before they die, their tax that regular rates. If a family is wealthy enough to be able to hold on to that asset and pass it onto their kids, they're taxed at a much, much lower rate on that asset. And so what we're really trying to achieve here is fairness. And as the president said consistently, we're asking the wealthiest in the country to pay a little bit more. 99% of the cost of that capital gains proposal would come from the wealthiest 1% in this country. We think that that is a very reasonable proposal. And so we're proposing that, at the same time, we're proposing hundreds of billions of

dollars of savings on the spending side as well. So we're proposing a balanced plan that we think has a real chance of getting done this year. Do you have any reason to believe that there is any consensus or any willingness on the part of the people who are going to receive this budget on Capitol Hill for middle ground on things like infrastructure, transportation spending, do you see any room there? Absolutely. And I do think, first of all, the structure that we're following is based on Murray Ryan. It's established bipartisan precedent that we're building on. Second, there are lots of areas, if you look more closely, where we're building on bipartisan ideas. Community college is something that's been pursued at the federal level. And at the state level, like in Tennessee, on a bipartisan basis. The proposal that we have for a second-nerner tax credit has actually been sponsored by one of the Republican leaders in the House of Representatives.

Infrastructure has traditionally been a bipartisan area. And we're linking it to international tax reform that has both Democratic and Republican sponsors. And I could go on. There's a long list of areas where there's the potential for bipartisan agreement. What about Pentagon spending or even on Homeland Security spending rolling back these across the board budget cuts you talked about? Well, look, you don't need to take my word for it, Gwen. If you've listened to the testimony that the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave this past week, they said one of the most dangerous threats that we're facing around the world is sequestration. If we can't reverse these cuts, we're not going to be able to invest in the critical things that we need to keep folks safe overseas. We're going to keep them safe at home. You know, right now we're having a fight about whether we're going to fund the Department of Homeland Security for a full year. We need to do that and we need to increase investments in things like cybersecurity and many other things, the technology, the future, where the wars of the future are going

to be fought. And so the battle is joined this time on the budget front, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Sean Donovan. Thank you for joining us. Great to be with you, Gwen. For the Republican view from Capitol Hill, I'm joined now by Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley. He serves on the Senate budget and finance committees as well as the Joint Committee on Taxation and Welcome Senator. The President said today that he welcomes GOP ideas, but that the numbers have to add up. What is your reaction to his budget? Well, first of all, I think you have to look at not only this budget, but past budgets that have been put before the Congress for a specific vote, and in most instances, maybe every instance over the last five or six years, there hasn't been one Republican or one Democrat vote to approve of the President's budget. So I think you have to look at it that this budget put forth by the President isn't serious, but even if it were a serious budget, the President proposes and Congress disposes that there's obviously going to be some areas where the President and the Congress would

agree. Like, for instance, not having sequestration because of for national defense, because national defense is the number one responsibility of the federal government. So I think you're going to find more spending on defense. That area we agree with the President of the United States. But in other areas of domestic expending, I think that you're going to find sequestration if it isn't followed, it surely isn't going to be modified to the extent the President wanted to modify it. And I'll stop with this by saying you can't consider a budget, as OMB director said, reducing spending by one in eight-tenths trillion dollars when it actually increases the deficit from eighteen billion to twenty-six billion over a period of these ten years. That's an eight trillion dollar increase in the debt and the President has already increased the national debt since he's been President by at least six trillion dollars. The director of office management budget just said that he not only sees areas, broader

areas of agreement that you seem to, but he believes that Republicans ought to be putting their priorities in the table. What would you say are the Republican priorities for spending for taxes for just priorities in general? Well, we would disagree with the President on taxes because when you have a lot of people that are left the labor force and you're talking about helping the middle class, the way you're going, the only way you're going to help the middle class is not by these envy politics and redistributing wealth, you're going to help the middle class by growth. And you don't get economic growth by increasing taxes, by taking capital out of the economy. We've got to put more capital into the economy. So we would disagree that you should have tax increases, we're going to agree with the President on national defense and probably disagree with the President on expenditures for domestic programs and you've got to remember that he doesn't have any idea whatsoever what to do with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which is about 40% of all the expenditure

right now. So let me try to figure this out. So infrastructure proposals he's making are off the table in your opinion as well as spending for what he calls middle class economics. First of all, on the infrastructure, no. By May we have to pass an infrastructure bill and it'll be very high on the agenda of the Republican Congress. In regard to helping the middle class, yes, we're going to help the middle class by having economic growth. Our program's going to be one that gets economic growth among above the six or seven year average of 2.6%. We have to have economic growth of 3% if you're going to really increase jobs and get more wealth into the middle class. And I have to ask you, Senator, about the Homeland Security issue in which those sequesters, I hate to use that term even, across the board budget cuts of President would like for you to lift them when it comes to Homeland Security, not tie it to immigration reform.

What do you say about that? What's going to happen? Well, we're going to pass, we're going to attempt to pass in the United States Senate on doing the President's immigration reform because we feel he is acted unconstitutionally that he doesn't have the power to do what he did for undocumented workers. Only Congress has that power. And so what does that mean about what's going to happen next with that vote? Well, I won't know until we find out if we can get a bill to the President. If we can't get a bill to the President, then we're going to plan B and plan B hasn't been figured out yet because we're going to try to deliver to the American people what we promised to in the last election that we were going to stop the President's unconstitutional actions on immigration. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, thank you very much. Thank you. Now for more on the political side of the budget debate and on the budding presidential campaign, we turn to our new weekly politics discussion where every Monday we'll hear from Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report and the Amalika Henderson of the Washington Post.

This ought to be fun. Thank you. I think it will be. Let's start by asking about this budget issue. Is this a document that the President sent up for negotiation or is he just sending up to be aspirational to Capitol Hill? Well, you saw from both the back and forth there that they would like the White House as they would like it to be a starting point for negotiations. But we listened to the Senator from Iowa. It's pretty clear that there's not much room for negotiation in this and that at the end of the day, yes, this is a stake in the ground for the President and for other Democrats to build on as we go into a 2016 election. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's sort of the companion piece of the State of the Union Address where he claimed the title really, I think, in that address as liberal, one of the common critiques of this President had been that he would give away the store, even before he'd get to the negotiating table. I think in this document, he's being a bit bolder. I mean, some of the things are warmed over, you know, the tax cuts and tax hikes on the rich trickle down to spread it out amongst the middle class. But he also isn't touching Medicare. He's

not touching Social Security in the way that he did in other budget documents, wrinkling out many in his party. Yeah, he seems to be being less ambitious in that respect because it's not worth the fight, maybe be in the final two being a second term. Well, it's not worth the fight. Democrats don't want that fight. Right. And let's face it, Republicans in the Senate, they don't really want that fight either. You got a lot of them up in 2016 in their own races. And then, of course, a handful of them go in happen to be running for president. I'm so glad you mentioned 2016. How interesting. Perfect segue. So, since last we talked, Mitt Romney's out of the race, lots of other moving pieces. First of all, looking at the polling that you've seen and the conversations that you've seen and the positioning that you've seen in the last few days, who the benefits to most from Romney's exits? I think broadly the entire Republican party sort of benefits from him dropping out. Remember back in 2012, they had to write a whole document to figuring out what went wrong in 2012. And obviously, Mitt Romney was a big part of that. If he'd run, they would be rerunning

what happened in 2012. So broadly, I think the entire party benefits. But specifically, I think you've got to look at that governor's lane. People like Chris Christie, people like Scott Walker of the sort of the moderate establishment lane, they're going to get some of that money that Mitt Romney would have locked up if he'd run. Relief or opportunity? And we saw today, Chris Christie and London getting his foreign policy chops together and they meet stumbling into a domestic debate over vaccinations. Right. You can't win. Even when you go overseas, you have to answer questions that are happening here. The question, of course, about whether or not vaccines should be considered something that that parents can do on their own. They can make their own. They should do but or should they be able to make their own decision. Well, since Chris Christie has a very big problem and that is, Chris Christie has a base problem beyond he has to expand his horizons to bring in international experience or clean up whatever comments he made today. If you look at his numbers nationally and in some of these very important states, his disapproval ratings among Republicans are in the

40s. So people know him in the Republican party and they're saying like what we see. So I don't know how much he benefits from any of this if people at the end of the day, Republicans are saying we just don't think he's the right guy. Well, the person who looked like they did the best in this polling at least this and it's just snapshots. We always say that. Right. Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, not Jeb Bush immediately, but Scott Walker, who's coming for a lot of people to brand new name. Yeah, and he gave that barn burner of a speech in Iowa and really I think rocketed to the top of this. And that's why he was very much top of mind to a lot of these Iowa voters. He's someone who straddles really this establishment wing because he's a sitting governor now, but he's also seen as a tea party guy as well has done very well in that state and done well in terms of conservatives conservative grassroots, who also does well in Iowa because it's a neighboring state, right, a neighboring state to Wisconsin, so he benefits in that way. And when you know, I love polls, I mean, I think it pulls every day and they make me so happy. This is, it's a year out. So I'm not going to take this, where's people stand in terms

of the. Okay, so let's look at another. That's right. Donors, eyeballs, credibility, who is shifting, right? I was going to even say both, I can do both of those things, which is the front top line number. I don't care so much about in this new Iowa poll. What I do care about is looking at the perceptions of these candidates in terms of are they liked? Do voters think they're too moderate, too conservative? And this is where Christie, as I said, in a lot of trouble. But Jeb Bush, too, his approval ratings were only 46% with 43% of Republicans saying they don't like him and 18% of a very unfavorable rating. That is not good for somebody who's been designed right now or designated, I'm sorry, as the front runner. Big problems in that state. For donors, I think a lot of donors, what we're hearing is they're going to be sitting a little bit on the sidelines, giving somebody here, giving somebody there, but not going all in for Jeb Bush. Exactly. And that's not necessarily great news. Right. That's like right. But it also probably is, I think, a little early to be putting so much focus on Iowa, too. I mean, some of the

conventional ways to might of Iowa is that you don't necessarily need to win, particularly if you're somebody like Jeb Bush, you really get their really three tickets, winning tickets out of Iowa and you saw that in 2012. One more, one of them was Rick Santorum, but didn't know it at the time. Okay. One more question about the Affordable Care Act. It's going to be another vote, perhaps like the 60s attempt to roll back all of the health care law. Is that mostly the satisfied new members who want a chance to put their handprint on it? Or is this setting the Republican Party on the path that's going to affect it in 2016, not only in congressional elections, but also in presidential elections? Well, this is a party that, thus far, they can't even come to consensus internally about how they want to deal with immigration tax reform. I don't think they're going to be able to come to consensus on having an alternative to Obamacare, and they have a needed one so far. They haven't needed one so far. That's right. That's right. Now, the Supreme Court may make that, yeah, make that happen because if they come out and decide that states that have not set up their own exchange, but set up a federal exchange, they can't give subsidies. That's going to put a lot of pressure though

on the states themselves. The Republican governors there, the Republican legislatures there to figure out what they do with that. Congress will have a role in it. The president will have a role in it, but a lot of that focus is going to be on the states. And you've seen some of that. I mean, you take somebody like Mike Pence and Indiana. He's been creative in terms of how do you figure out this Medicaid subsidy and do your own thing in the state. Somebody like Scott Walker, the same thing. I think the eyes are on other people. What does somebody like Bobby gentle do? What is chris chris you do? It's also positioning and trying to put themselves into place to be seen a certain way on certain issues for now. Okay, Nea Malika, Henderson of the Washington Post, Amy Walter of Cook Political Report. Thank you both. Thank you. And Australian journalists released yesterday after being jailed in Egypt for more than a year spoke for the first time today about his ordeal. While in Cairo, a judge sentenced nearly 200 Muslim Brotherhood supporters to death. Jeffrey Brown reports.

I can't tell you how relieved I am being free. I mean, I really didn't expect that it was the first full day of freedom for Peter Greste. The Al Jazeera journalist released yesterday after 400 days in a Cairo jail. But in Cyprus today, he said his own joy of being released is mixed with fears for two colleagues who remain imprisoned in Egypt. Amidst all of this relief, I still feel a sense of concern, a real sense of worry because if it's appropriate for me, if it's right for me to be free, then it's right for all of them to be free. Greste, Canadian Egyptian Mohammed Femi and Egyptian National Bahar Mohammed were arrested in December 2013 over their coverage of a crackdown on Islamist protests. The three were accused of providing a platform for President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood after Morsi was overthrown by the military. Separately in a Cairo courtroom today, supporters of the Brotherhood chanted in protest

as a judge sentenced all 183 of them to death. They were convicted of playing a role in killing 16 police officers in the wake of Morsi's ouster. It was the latest in a series of mass trials and death sentences that have drawn international condemnation, including today at the State Department in Washington. It simply seems impossible that a fair review of evidence and testimony could be achieved through mass trials. We continue to call on the government of Egypt to ensure due process for the accused on the merits of individual cases for all Egyptians and discontinue the practice of mass trials. Egyptian officials also face accusations that during protests last week, police killed at least 27 people. One of them was 32-year-old activist and mother, Shaima Sabah. President Abdul Fatah LCC said today he was pained by Sabah's death and promised an investigation. We invited Egypt some ambassadors to the United States to appearance in its program. The

embassy did not respond to our request. Joining us now from Cairo is Borsu Darigahi, Middle East and North Africa correspondent for the Financial Times. Borsu, welcome. There's been conjecture that the release of Peter Gresti was tied to Al Jazeera's closing of its Egyptian channel. Make that connection for us and what is known at this point about what led to his release. Well, we know that there have been intense negotiations on multiple planes. There have been ongoing talks in Doha and other parts of the Arabian Peninsula, other cities there between Egyptian, Katari, Saudi, and Emirati officials for months now, and in an attempt to work out this conflict that has created this breach between Katar on the one hand and Turkey to some extent, although Turkey was not involved in the talks, and the other so-called pro-U.S. modern Arab states. And that these talks have included, for example, lawyers, international lawyers working on various issues, including the billions of dollars now,

from Katar that are in the central bank of Egypt. And we also know that there has been intense attempts by Canadian, Australian, and other Western officials trying to get this issue resolved, to get this, get these journalists freed. And this has been going on for many months now. Every single Western diplomat that has come here has raised this issue, the Western journalists, as well as many civil liberties, NGOs, constantly bring up the matter of these three journalists. So there has been intense pressure on the government here. And what's the situation for the other two Al Jazeera journalists at this point? What's the likelihood of their release? Well, based on indications that I'm getting, it looks very much possible that one of those journalists, Muhammad Fad al-Fahmi, who is a Canadian Egyptian dual national, may very well be freed on the condition potentially that he would have to renounce his Egyptian citizenship and leave the country as a Canadian,

as just a Canadian citizen. Now, I happen to know Muhammad Fad al-Fahmi, and this must be such a tough decision for him, because he is truly someone who loves this country, loves Egypt, loves being an Egyptian. And this must be such a harsh thing for him to do to have to renounce that Egyptian citizenship. As for the other one, you know, we don't know what's going to happen to him. He has, in many ways, the worst situation. He has only an Egyptian passport. He's been sentenced to 10 years in prison. He has three children, including one that was born while he's been in captivity. And he would not be obviously part of any such extradition deal that Peter Grest got and that Muhammad Fad al-Fahmi might get. Now, today, we also saw the mass death sentence for Muslim Brotherhood supporters. This is clearly part of the continuing crackdown there. Does President del Sisi still have a lot of public support for this? Well, I think that he does have a lot of public support.

I think, in part, the local media here is sort of complicit in whipping up hysteria, in making a lot of incitement on air, in whipping up anger from the public against any kind of dissidents, any kind of leftist or Islamists or secular activists who challenge the current status quo. And so I think there's still a lot of support for it publicly. But interestingly, perhaps less support than there was six months ago as Egypt's economy, at least the macroeconomic improvements that we've been seeing, have not really trickled down to the street level yet. And just very briefly, Borsu, we saw the U.S. State Department expressing its concern and anger over this. Does our government, is it being heard? Does it have any influence in these matters? I think it does. And I think there are well-meaning people around Sisi and perhaps Sisi himself who are aware of how bad these sorts of things look, these mass sentencing of scores of people to death, these continued detentions of

people, including, for example, one photojournalist, his name is Mahmoud Abu Zaid, who's been in prison for 540 days. Apparently, his mental health is failing and he spends most of his days sitting in the corner of the cell, basically just suffering, and has not yet been formally charged with the crime yet. But I think that there are forces within the security establishment, the judiciary, the Interior Ministry, and the intelligence services who have a very hard-line approach to any kind of opposition to the current status quo. Borsu, Darigah, he of the Financial Times in Cairo, thanks so much. It's been a pleasure. The measles outbreak in the United States has now infected more than 100 people in just over a month. There have been no deaths, but cases have been reported in 14 states, with the overwhelming number in California, where public health officials believe the current

outbreak began at Disneyland. But just over a dozen years ago, measles was considered eradicated. Yet, last year, 600 cases were reported, many of them in unvaccinated, Amish communities. Skepticism about the usefulness of back vaccines is long been gathering steam in some circles. For a look at what started at all, we bring you part of a piece by retro report, a nonprofit news organization whose documentary, documentaries, are distributed by the New York Times. The narrator is Zachary Green of NewsHour Weekend. The current vaccine scares and controversies that we're still dealing with today stem from a 1998 paper that appeared in the Lancet, a very respected medical journal published out of the UK. The paper, written by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, claimed there might be a connection between the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine, and autism. In his press conference, Andrew Wakefield stood up and said, parents should not give their children the MMR vaccine, period, until we are able to get to the bottom of this.

The MMR vaccination in combination that I think that it should be suspended in favor of the single vaccines. The notion that you would take a 12-person case study and make claims about a population as a whole is ridiculous. This paper was historically bad. And what the media in the UK did was, they ran with that. It's a dilemma. You know, that's a sensational story. Follow-up studies of hundreds of thousands of children could not find any evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism. And investigations into Wakefield's original paper revealed he distorted the data and acted unethically. He's lost his medical license. The Lancet paper has been retracted, but he had very effectively positioned himself as a martyr. And in some odd way, every piece of evidence that comes out against Wakefield sort of solidifies his standing in the community that still pays attention

to him. Another reason fears about vaccine safety persisted is that complicated science proved difficult for public health institutions to communicate. Case in point, their response when concerns were raised over a vaccine preservative called Thomerisol, which contains ethylmercury. But ethylmercury and Thomerisol is not the same as the toxic methylmercury, which is found in fish and accumulates in the body. Nevertheless, the public health service in the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended Thomerisol be removed. And they're messaging backfired. In 1999, health officials denied a link between vaccines and the autism epidemic yet urge vaccine makers to take out the mercury just to be safe. What the American Academy of Pediatrics said is we are recommending this step so we can make safe vaccines even safer.

As a parent, if you tell me something safe, I don't think that's on a sliding scale. I assume that if you say it's safe, it is safe for my child. It's not safe, safe or safest. There are almost two languages here. There's the language of science and then there's English. And in the language of science, you have these signifiers, like to the best of our knowledge as far as we know, based on the available scientific evidence. Because you can't say anything with 100%, you can't prove a negative. And so when scientists speak in their language and the rest of us translate that into English, it sounds like they're saying something very different than they're saying. Just a clarification. When they talk about the MMR vaccine, they're talking about muscles, muscles, they're talking about mumps, measles and rubella. President Obama echoed the concerns of health officials yesterday when he said it in interview that children should be vaccinated.

Joining me now is Patricia Stinchfield. She's the director of infection prevention and control for the children's hospital and clinics of Minnesota. Welcome. Thank you for joining us. How does this outbreak compare to what we have seen in the past? Or should we be really worried by these numbers? I think we should be concerned by these numbers because the spread of measles is so easy to happen in monks, people who are unimmunized. That virus can stay aloft in the air for two hours after someone with measles has walked through a room, whether it's a lobby at a clinic or a grocery store or a football game. And anyone who comes through that room who's not immunized will get measles. 90% of unimmunized people will get measles. It's very contagious. I've spent my 27 career a year of career at children's ever since the 1990 measles outbreak trying to explain to people how dangerous measles is. We had an entire ward filled with measles kids and two of them died. And ever since then I've tried to commit myself

and children's in Minnesota has as well to the message that measles is dangerous. Measles kills. It gets in the lungs. It gets in the brain. It is not just a virus. The vaccine is safe. It's effective. It works. And it should be used by parents to help protect their children. Is there any other reason to explain this sudden return of measles other than the fact that people have decided that vaccinations are not safe? Well, we're a global society and we do know that measles cases in the United States do have an international link oftentimes. But we also know that in the last few years we've seen a dramatic increase in many communities of people opting out of vaccines. This is a recipe for an outbreak. If you have a vulnerable community and you have an introduction of the measles virus you will have disease. And we're seeing that come out of California and spread very quickly through the United States. I think the good news here is that if we didn't have 90% of

parents following the usual immunization schedule, we wouldn't be talking about 100 cases. We'd be talking about thousands and thousands of cases. But that's the number that confounds me. If 92 to 95% of people are getting the vaccination, how much is this, how dangerous is this, except for a small subset we're not? Well, we always have vulnerable populations. So you can only get the vaccine when you're 12 months of age and older. That's your first dose. So lots of babies are under one year of age. And that special vulnerable values from six months to 12 months where moms and bodies have dropped off. They're not old enough yet to get the vaccine. So babies six months to 12 months are especially vulnerable. Pregnant women can have severe miscarriages if they get measles. And then of course immune deficient are those people getting chemotherapy or cancer are very highly at risk for a severe measles case. How does this outbreak compare to other ones we've discussed certainly on this program

before involving the flu or Ebola? Well, Ebola flu and measles are all viruses. They're all contagious. But there's nothing as contagious as measles. It's highly contagious. I would say influenza is next HIV below that. And Ebola is the lowest in terms of viral contagion. It's very difficult to get Ebola. It's very easy to get measles. Both can take people's lives, however. There is a vaccine for measles, measles, mumps, rubella. There's not a vaccine for Ebola. And at this point in time, there's no reason for parents not to vaccinate their children and protect them against measles. Are there other diseases where people where vaccines are choosing not to have a vaccine has shown that that disease is back or is on the rise? We are definitely seeing more whooping cough than we have. There's been spread of whooping cough or pertussis throughout the country in the last few years that vaccine is not quite as effective as measles vaccine, but also the spread is going through communities

of those who are opting out of vaccines. So we are seeing an increase in that as well. And finally and briefly, what are the symptoms that we should be on the look out for when it comes to measles? Measles is fever, rash, and the three Cs. The Cs are cough, conjunctivitis or pink eye, and then chorizo or runny nose. But the rash looks like a bucket of rash that's poured over the head and goes down onto the trunk and then clears that way. It's a very distinct rash, but only for those of us who have seen it. So get in and get checked if that's the rash you're seeing. Dr. Patricia Stinchfield at the Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. One of the most honored movies of the year and the leading candidate for several Oscars is Boyhood, a film by an independent director with a unique style of telling stories.

Jeff spoke with him recently as part of our occasional feature, news error goes to the movies. Yes! Yes! Yes! All right. I don't worry about it. In most films, the aging of characters is a slight of hand suggested through makeup or using multiple actors. In Boyhood, the passage of time is real. Director Richard Linklater shot the film over the course of 12 years. Annually gathering his four leading actors together for a few days to shoot scenes to tell the story of a young boy named Mason, played by Eller Coltrane from age 6 to 18. It was this planned as much as it could be. It's kind of like your life. How much can you really plan for the next 12 years? You can have your goals and your outline of what you're working toward, which is certainly what the film did. I knew the last shot. I knew where I wanted it to end, but I didn't really, you know, collaborating here with an unknown future like we all are at all times. So it had to incorporate

it had to incorporate that into the actual storytelling. Linklater age 54 has played with time and storytelling often in his career, notably in the so-called B4 trilogy before sunrise, before sunset, and before midnight, which tells the story of a romance between two characters, played by Julie Delphi and Ethan Hawke as they grow older. You know, I think that book that I wrote in a way was like building something so that I wouldn't forget the details of the time that we spent together. You know, I've always been obsessed with cinematic narrative and storytelling. The artificiality of so much plot always bugged me, so I think I've kind of naturally tended toward time structures, because I think that's closer to how we actually process time and the way we perceive the world and, you know, even our own, the way we drift through, you know, a day, a year, or a life, you know, it's kind of time-based. I think it's one of the

fundamentals of kind of my cinematic thinking. It must be, because I keep kind of playing around it. That I don't intellectualize it too much. You know what I'm realizing? My life is just going to go. Like that, there's series of milestones, any married, having kids, getting divorced. What does that mean though, the artificiality of film? It's not inherent to film. It's inherent in storytelling in general. It depends on how you approach it. I think the three-act structure is an artifice, a lot of plot points that work so well in a thriller, or, you know, that doesn't happen in most of our lives, but there are these beautiful constructs, but all film is a construct. You know, it's just what you want, how you want to be perceived and how you want an audience to take in your particular story. And if you're not, I'm often going for a very realistic. I want an audience to lose themselves in the story I'm trying to tell and make it feel like it feels like your own

life to some degree. So cinema can be anything. Let's face it, and it's wonderful. It's the greatest storytelling, telling medium ever, and it can be so many things. And I've done a lot of movies, so each one kind of has its own requirement. Boyhood is filled with scenes that feel like real life, sometimes in all its awkwardness. As here, when Ethan Hawke playing the divorce dad picks up his two children. What about you? How was your week? Fun. What you want to? Not really. You still work on that sculpture project? Yeah. Almost finished. What's it up? Nothing. It comes from myself, as the kid I was once talking a lot with my dad who would pick me up on a weekend, and our best conversations were in the car. And because you're just in a car, I live, you know, an hour and a half away from him. So we'd spend three hours a weekend driving, and that was the best conversations. That is not how we are going to talk to one another, right? No, I will not be that guy. You cannot put me in that category, right? The biological father, I spend every other week with, and I make

polite conversation, you know, while he drives me places and buys me. No. It's fun to see him sort of figuring out fatherhood, and being a very conscientious parent and trying so hard. It's endearing. So, and Ethan and I are very similar in that way that, you know, our parents were divorced, and we have these relationships both in our past, and to varying degrees in our present. So, you know, a film, it seemed like that comes up pretty natural for us. Link later works collaboratively, getting ideas from his actors, including his young ones. But he says this isn't improvised. I never really improvised. I never have. There's a couple moments, even in Boyhood, where, I mean, I knew what they were going to say. We were on subject, and I had two cameras, and I let, in one case, it's a campfire scene where Ethan, his dad, you know, Ella, his son, or they're talking about, you know, a potential future Star Wars movie, if there ever was going to be one. Do you think they were going to make another Star Wars?

I don't know. I mean, I think if they were to make another one, the period where this damas set is where it would have to be, because there's nothing after, really. Yeah. No, we're telling you guys over. There's nothing else to do there. And we had talked about, I knew what they were going to say in general, but I didn't think it had to be scripted specifically. But other than that, everything's very scripted and very rehearsed and planned out just to, it has to be very tight for me to make it seem loose. You know, I wouldn't know how to turn on a camera and see what happened. One time I had lunch with Tolstoy, another time I was a roadie for Frank Zappa. Richard Linklater came out of the independent film world, scoring early hits like Slacker in 1991, and in 1993, Dazed and Confused. I want that piece of paper on my desk before you leave here today. Do you hear me? In a world of blockbusters made for far more money, Mr. Bernie Tito. Let's continue to build a career of smaller, more personal films.

Look at the end of the year here, a lot of the films that people are talking about would definitely fall into personal, you know, visions from, you know, directors. And, you know, they're not, they're not big manufactured entertainments, but they are, you know, they succeed in their own way. So, there's always a lot of films like that. So, you know, Hollywood is more, I think they're business model changed. They, they're structured because of the cost to only do bigger films. So, they've kind of abdicated the, the middle ground of the films they used to do or are completely done kind of outside their system. They'll still distribute it though. So, it's always changing, but the bottom line, it's always a good year for movies. There's always a ton of great movies. More than you'll have time to see worldwide. And people will always want to make movies that mean a lot to them personally. All right, the film is boyhood. Richard Link later is the director. Thanks so much for talking to us. Yeah, good talking to you, man. Good

being here. Jeff continues this conversation with Richard Link later online where the director recommends five of his favorite films. Find that list on our homepage pbs.org slash news hour. Again, the major developments of the day. Washington's annual struggle over taxes and spending priorities began in earnest as president Obama unveiled a $4 trillion budget. Republicans mostly dismissed the plan. For the second straight week, a major winter storm sucked the northeast and New England after dumping heavy snow in Chicago. On Wall Street, a rise in oil prices helped energy stocks and push to Dow industrials up nearly 200 points and former hip hop music executive Marion Shug Knight was charged with murder in a hit and run incident that killed a man last week in Los Angeles. And that's the news hour for tonight. On Tuesday, we traveled to West Virginia to examine how innovative efforts in education may break cycles of poverty. I'm Glenn Eiffel.

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curated local events and experiences such as tickets to Bay Area Life shows, sporting events, culinary festivals and guided tours with Chronicle staff, details at sfchronical.com slash membership. This is Nightly Business Report, with Timon Jefferson and Sue Herrera. Big oil, big changes. Exxon Mobile reports a sharp drop in profits, but the biggest American oil and gas producer didn't do something that many of its rivals did. For trillion dollars, that's the size of the budget President Obama proposes. When he wants to spend, who he wants to tax and whether his plan has a snowball's chance on Capitol Hill. War of words months into the slowdown at the nation's busiest ports, we have exclusive access inside to see what's really going on. All that and more tonight on Nightly Business Report for Monday, February 2nd. Good evening, everyone. A dramatic finish on Wall Street today. Stocks rallied into the close to start the month of February, exactly, where