PBS NewsHour full episode Aug. 9, 2017

JUDY WOODRUFF: Good evening.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

On the "NewsHour" tonight: the fallout from fire and fury.

President Trump's comments on North Korea raise alarms in Asia and elsewhere and prompt Pyongyang to threaten an attack on a U.S. base in Guam.

Then, our series on Stopping Superbugs continues - - tonight, as farms become breeding grounds for disease, the overuse of antibiotics could spell danger for our food.

LANCE PRICE, Molecular Microbiologist: On every grocery store shelf in this country, I guarantee you you're going to find drug-resistant bacteria on the meats of those shelves.

And then they get in our guts when we consume the meat.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Plus: pushing the bounds of freedom.

We hear from a woman who dared to drive in Saudi Arabia.

All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."

(BREAK) JUDY WOODRUFF: The latest flash point in the American showdown with North Korea has drawn sharply different responses from President Trump and his top national security aides.

It all follows reports that Pyongyang can now make nuclear weapons small enough to fit inside a long-range missile.

John Yang begins our coverage.

JOHN YANG: Amid the escalating war of words, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged calm.

REX TILLERSON, U.S. Secretary of State: I think Americans should sleep well at night, have no concerns about this particular rhetoric of the last few days.

What the president is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong-un would understand.

JOHN YANG: Tillerson spoke on his way to the U.S. territory that's home to the B-1 bombers that have been flying training missions over the Korean Peninsula, drawing North Korea's ire.

WOMAN (through translator): The Korean people's army is now carefully examining the plan for making an all-consuming fire at the areas around Guam with a medium-to-long-range strategic ballistic rocket in order to contain the U.S. major military bases on Guam.

JOHN YANG: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned Pyongyang to stop "consideration of actions that would lead to the destruction of its people."

The volley of tough talk comes amid increased North Korean tests of missiles that analysts believe could strike the American mainland.

Yesterday, President Trump delivered a stark warning.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: They will be met with fire and fury and, frankly, power, the likes of which the world has never seen before.

JOHN YANG: Today, in South Korea, a government denounced Pyongyang.

BAIK TAE-HYUN, South Korean Government Spokesman (through translator): These kinds of comments by North Korea do not help in the relationship of South and North Korea.

JOHN YANG: But, in Japan, the chief cabinet secretary welcomed the American muscle-flexing.

YOSHIHIDE SUGA, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary (through translator): The United States have said all options are on the table.

The Japanese government supports this attitude.

JOHN YANG: President Trump said this morning that he had ordered a modernization of the nation's nuclear arsenal: "It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before.

Hopefully, we will never have to use this power."

While Mr. Trump did order a review of the country's nuclear capability during his first week in office, it was President Barack Obama who began a $1 trillion modernization of the arsenal.

It's barely begun and will take decades to complete.

The Trump administration has seemed to send a variety of signals about its approach to Pyongyang.

Mr. Trump had called on China to pressure its renegade neighbor.

But after missile tests last month, he seemed to give up on Beijing.

DONALD TRUMP: We will handle North Korea.

We're going to be able to handle them.

It will be -- it will be handled.

We handle everything.

JOHN YANG: Last month, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said the solution to North Korea's nuclear threat is to oust Kim Jong-un.

MIKE POMPEO, CIA Director: The thing that is most dangerous about it is the character who holds the control over them today.

So from the administration's perspective, the most important thing we can do is separate those two.

JOHN YANG: Amid a New York Times report that Mr. Trump's fire and fury threat caught his aides by surprise, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "The tone and strength of the message were discussed beforehand, if not the exact words."

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said military action would be inevitable if North Korea continues on its current path.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), South Carolina: President Trump has basically drawn a red line, saying that he will never allow North Korea to have an ICBM missile that can hit America with a nuclear weapon on top.

But if there's going to be a war, it's going to be in the region, not here in America.

JOHN YANG: A prospect that is sending a shudder through Asia and the world.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm John Yang.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We will have more on the North Korean nuclear threat and how the Trump White House and North Korea's neighbors are responding after the news summary.

Also today, North Korea said that it released a Canadian pastor who's been serving a life sentence there since 2015.

The North's state news agency said Hyeon Soo Lim was let go on -- quote -- "sick bail," but gave no other details.

It comes two months after the death of American student Otto Warmbier, who'd been in a coma when he was released from North Korea.

In the day's other news: There's word that FBI agents have searched a home of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and seized documents and other materials.

The Washington Post first reported the pre-dawn raid and said it happened in July.

A Manafort spokesman confirmed the search and said that Manafort has -- quote -- "consistently cooperated with law enforcement and other serious inquiries and did so on this occasion as well."

Allegations of election fraud set off deadly clashes in Kenya today.

Early results from yesterday's vote showed President Kenyatta with a strong lead.

But challenger Raila Odinga claimed that hackers infiltrated an election database.

Protesters in Nairobi and elsewhere burned tires and set up roadblocks.

At least three people were killed.

Odinga urged calm, but said that he doesn't control the people.

RAILA ODINGA, Opposition Leader: Democratic elections are based on the basic principle.

The sovereign are the people.

It's not a show for those who stand for election or those who run it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Kenyan election commission defended its system and denied interference - - quote -- "before, during or after the vote."

The United Nations says that up to 50 migrants were deliberately drowned off the coast of Yemen today.

The U.N.'s Migration Agency said that a smuggler forced more than 120 people into the water when he saw authorities on the shore.

The migrants were from Somalia and Ethiopia.

Their average age was around 16.

The death toll from yesterday's powerful earthquake in Southwest China has risen to at least 19.

It hit near a national park that's one of the country's top tourist attractions.

Nearly 250 people were injured.

Rescue crews worked around the clock to pull victims from under heaps of debris and collapsed rock.

But they were slowed by unsafe conditions.

MAN (through translator): As you can see on both sides of the valley, there are mud and rock slides everywhere, so our rescue has been cut short.

All we can do is stay here and observe until there's a change for the better.

Once that's happened, we will go in there and begin the rescue.

JUDY WOODRUFF: A second strong earthquake in far Northwest China hit morning and left dozens of people injured and damaged more than 1,000 homes.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on eight more people in Venezuela, amid that country's deepening crisis.

They target current and former government officials for their role in the creation of President Nicolas Maduro's new, all-powerful Constitutional Assembly.

One of the sanctioned individuals is the brother of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

There was yet another attack targeting security forces in France today.

A man rammed his car into a group of soldiers in a Paris suburb, injuring six of them.

After an hours-long manhunt, police cornered the suspect on a nearby highway, opened fire and wounded him.

The man's motivation was unclear, but officials say they're looking at it as a potential terror attack.

GERARD COLLOMB, French Interior Minister (through translator): We know it was a deliberate act.

It wasn't an accident.

What I can say is that the anti-terrorism section of the Paris prosecutor's office is in charge of the case.

This shows that today the threat remains extremely high and that our security forces, our military forces are still being targeted.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Later, heavily armed and masked police searched a building believed to be linked to the attacker.

President Trump appeared to bristle today over comments by the Senate's top Republican on health care.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday that Mr. Trump had -- quote -- "excessive expectations" about how quickly lawmakers could act.

But, in a tweet, the president said he disagreed, adding: "After seven years of hearing repeal and replace, why not done?"

And on Wall Street today, stocks were lower, as investors weighed tensions between the U.S. and North Korea.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 36 points to close at 22048.

The Nasdaq fell 18.

And the S&P 500 dropped a fraction of a point.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": why tamping down the North Korean nuclear threat is so difficult; steps the U.S. is taking to upgrade its own nuclear arsenal; how livestock breed antibiotic-resistant superbugs; and much more.

Returning to our top story tonight, the threats and counterthreats between Pyongyang and Washington.

Joining me now are Abraham Denmark, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, and Mike Chinoy, a former senior Asia correspondent for CNN.

He's visited North Korea 17 times and is now a senior fellow at the University of Southern California's U.S.-China Institute.

And we welcome both of you to the "NewsHour."

Abraham Denmark, let me start with you.

Given what has happened in the last 24, 48 hours, how do you size up the situation now between the U.S. and North Korea?

ABRAHAM DENMARK, Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense: I think we're at a bit of an inflection point, that both Kim Jong-un and President Trump have elevated the tension in terms of rhetoric between the two sides, yet the policies the two sides have been on have not radically changed.

Kim Jong-un and North Korea have been conducting ballistic missile tests at a relatively regular pace, and the on-the-ground policies that the United States has been pursuing has also been fairly consistent.

The real change here has been changes in the rhetoric, with Kim Jong-un putting out very strong statements, as well as President Trump making his very strong statements.

And so the question now is, what happens after these statements have been made?

JUDY WOODRUFF: And that's what I want to ask you about.

And, just quickly, you follow the region, the East Asia region closely.

How is all this being received there?

ABRAHAM DENMARK: There's a great deal of concern.

Amongst our allies, there's concern that the messaging out of the Trump administration has been fairly chaotic, and that different senior officials are speaking about different policy positions, so there's a lot of question about where the United States really is when it comes to North Korea.

And there is also broader concerns and I think deeper concerns about how the United States is going to handle a North Korea that's making very steady progress in developing a robust, credible nuclear capability that is able to reach the United States.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mike Chinoy, again, this is an area you follow so closely.

We talked about how many times you visited North Korea, the North Korean mainland.

How do you see this situation right now?

MIKE CHINOY, Author, "Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis": I think what the North Koreans are doing has been quite predictable.

They have believed for many years now that the best way to guarantee their security is to have a nuclear and a missile capability that would deter the United States, and this dates back a long, long time.

It was reinforced in the early 2000s, when the North Koreans saw the U.S. invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, who didn't have nukes.

They saw Libya's Moammar Gadhafi overthrown, and he had voluntarily abandoned his nuclear program.

So the North is really committed to this.

They have just accelerated, I think, in the last couple of years the pace at which they're doing it.

I think one of the big questions is how the North Koreans are going to respond to the very confusing signals coming from Washington.

Secretary of State Tillerson has mentioned talks, but President Trump is talking in very, very forceful and extreme language.

And so I think there is a risk, because I don't think the North is going to change its approach, of a misunderstanding leading to some kind of conflict.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Why do you believe there is a risk of a misunderstanding?

MIKE CHINOY: Well, the North Koreans are sitting there, and they're going to respond to threats from the United States with full speed ahead, because that's just their style.

This is not a system or a regime or a leadership that's going to bow to that kind of external pressure.

And if they fear that the very strong language from President Trump means the U.S. might, in fact, be considering some kind of preemptive strike, then it's possible they will calculate that they need to strike first.

But I think there is one other point that gets lost in all of the inflammatory headlines, which is the North Korean position continues to be that they will not give up their nuclear or missile capabilities unless the U.S. abandons what Pyongyang calls Washington's -- quote - - "hostile policy."

And I think, if you parse the North Korean rhetoric, there might be an opening for some kind of negotiations, but, again, that depends in large part on the very -- the extreme level of confusion in the signals from Washington is clarified in way that suggests the U.S. is interested in talks.

And, right now, that is not at all clear.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, and as we're sitting here talking ourselves, I'm told by our producer that the wires report that North Korea is now saying that they will have a plan to attack Guam by the middle of August.

They go on to call what President Trump has been saying, in their words, as a load of nonsense, and they're also saying that only absolute force can work with President Trump.

Abe Denmark, what does this tell you about what the United States is dealing with and what our allies in the region are dealing with?

ABRAHAM DENMARK: We're dealing with a country, North Korea, that has a very clear idea of what it wants to do.

It sees the development of a nuclear capability as essential to the preservation of its regime.

And it's willing to bear significant costs in the pursuit of that, in terms of diplomatic isolation, severe economic sanctions.

They're continuing to make progress on that.

So, the question is, how do we get them off that path?

In terms of the threats they have been making about Guam, there's actually quite a few steps that they have and other options that they have between where we are now, with the elevated rhetoric, and actually conducting strikes against the United States.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you mean?

ABRAHAM DENMARK: We have seen, in the past, North Korea doing several things, attacks against South Korea on the DMZ, sinking a ship in the Yellow Sea, as you may recall, several years ago, which in the past was able to demonstrate -- they were able to demonstrate to their own people that they're strong, that they're able to attack South Korea, but it didn't escalate into a war.

And the question now is, what options is North Korea considering, really considering, beyond this -- the threatening rhetoric about Guam?

And how will the United States and our allies respond to that?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mike Chinoy, the question one hears from a number of people is, are the North Koreans suicidal in their attitude?

Because one assumes that, if they were to take any sort of military strike of the kind we're discussing here right now, the threat against Guam, something in the region, that there would be a return strike that would hit directly at the leadership of the North Korean government.

MIKE CHINOY: I don't think the North Koreans are suicidal.

And I think you have to be very careful in assessing North Korean rhetoric, because if you look at the history, going back a long, long time, the North Koreans are masters of incendiary rhetoric.

Brinksmanship is the cornerstone of the way they approach the rest of the world.

These kinds of threats keep their adversaries off-balance.

They feel it gives them the initiative, but I don't think you can always take it literally.

I recall, for example, in the spring of 1994, when tensions were high over the North's then nascent nuclear program, North Korean officials that they would turn Seoul, the South Korean capital, into a sea of fire.

But four months later, after former U.S. President Carter visited North Korea, there would be an agreement for the first ever summit meeting between the North and the South, although it didn't happen because North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung died.

So, I wouldn't -- just because the North Koreans talk about attacking Guam, I wouldn't take that literally, although, as a military planner, you obviously have to take all contingencies into account.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Right.

MIKE CHINOY: But don't assume that their rhetoric means that they're actually going to do everything they threaten to do.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, we can't know, Abe Denmark, just quickly here, finally, what the Trump administration is going to do.

But if you're in their shoes right now, do you respond in kind of with another -- with escalated rhetoric, or do you try to calm things down?

ABRAHAM DENMARK: I think you do two things.

Rhetorically, I would try to calm things down.

President Eisenhower would practice this.

When Khrushchev's rhetoric would get more and more escalated, his rhetoric would get more and more calm.

And that gave a great sense of strength to our allies and to our adversaries.

But I would also do a lot more on the ground in terms of enhancing our ability to deter North Korea and to reassure our allies.

We have extremely strong alliances in Japan and South Korea.

And there's a lot we can do there to demonstrate to North Korea that we have a great deal of capability and will to act.

And I would also send a message to our allies that we're there for them, that we're reliable and that we're capable.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Abe Denmark, Mike Chinoy, we thank you both.

As we reported earlier, the president tweeted this morning that he ordered the modernization of the America's nuclear weapons.

That decades-long, $1 trillion project was actually begun under President Obama.

Last year, the "NewsHour" aired a series about that process, which we called Aging Arsenal.

In one report, special correspondent Jamie McIntyre, with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, looked at the debate over the wisdom of updating the United States' three-pronged nuclear arsenal.

He interviewed the top military commander in charge of it, who has since retired.

Here's an excerpt of that story, explaining what the nuclear triad is, and why it exists.

MAN: Weapons away.

JAMIE MCINTYRE: Missiles, bombers, subs, America's nuclear triad, a three-pronged approach to deterrence that dates back to the 1960s, when the former Soviet Union was the enemy, MAD, mutual assured destruction, the strategy, and thermonuclear war seemed a real possibility.

ADM. CECIL HANEY, U.S. Strategic Commander: The real key here, as you look at the combination of the triad, is making the adversary's problem very complex, very costly, so that restraint is a better option.

JAMIE MCINTYRE: U.S. Strategic Commander Cecil Haney is the four-star admiral in charge of America's nuclear arsenal.

He says the triad endures because it's still the surest way to guarantee that, even if hit with a first strike, plenty of U.S. nuclear weapons would survive, enough to allow Haney to present the president a full range of options.

It's a strategy based on redundancy, having backups for backups.

But to critics, maintaining and rebuilding all three legs of the triad in the 21st century amounts to expensive overkill, among those critics, former Defense Secretary William Perry.

WILLIAM PERRY, Former U.S. Defense Secretary: Well, you can have belts and suspenders, and then belts and suspenders for the belts and the and suspenders.

And that is what we are getting into here.

JAMIE MCINTYRE: Perry says the current strategy is based on the folly of winning a nuclear conflict, the kind of Cold War thinking caricatured in the classic movie "Dr.

Strangelove."

ACTOR: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed.

But I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops, depending on the breaks.

WILLIAM PERRY: The whole sort of "Dr. Strangelove" rationale that went with how you use nuclear weapons, which was endemic to the Cold War, I don't think is in place today.

If we regard nuclear weapons, the role of nuclear weapons today, as preventing the use of nuclear the weapons against us, then all of that goes away.

JAMIE MCINTYRE: The United States is at the point where, to maintain the safety and reliability of its aging nuclear arsenal, largely designed in the 1950s and '60s, almost everything needs an upgrade.

There are plans for new submarines and stealth bombers, along with upgraded bombs and missiles to go with them.

Add in the possibility of next generation land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs, and the price tag comes to an eye-popping $1 trillion over 30 years.

Each leg of the triad has its advantages.

Submarines are stealthy, virtually undetectable, and therefore nearly invulnerable.

Bombers are slow enough to be recalled at the last minute.

It's the third leg, the intercontinental ballistic missiles, on hair-trigger alert, that are under the microscope.

We're flying over the missile field that essentially surrounds Minot Air Force Base, 150 ICBMs buried in silos underground spread across 8,500 square miles of North Dakota.

It's just one of three missile fields that cover five states, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, and North Dakota, 450 ICBMs altogether.

Were it not for the security fence, this silo would be barely visible in the snow.

But the locals know where it is, and so do America's enemies.

For now, the debate over the triad is purely academic.

The latest Pentagon budget funds plans to begin rebuilding all three legs, and no one in Congress is mounting any serious opposition.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jamie McIntyre.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you can watch our full series on the U.S. nuclear arsenal on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour.

Stay with us.

Coming up on the "NewsHour": a new book from a woman who dared to drive in Saudi Arabia.

But first: our special series Stopping Superbugs.

This week science correspondent, Miles O'Brien and economics correspondent Paul Solman tag-team again for a look at how the use of antibiotics in livestock can lead to unhealthy, even dangerous outcomes.

Miles begins at a Missouri pig farm, as part of our weekly science series, Leading Edge.

MILES O'BRIEN: Pig farmer Russ Kremer is up early, tending to his herd, talking to the animals.

RUSSIANS KREMER, Heritage Foods: I have the ability to interact with pigs.

I think that they are the smartest, most social animals.

I tell people that, if you like kids, you love pigs.

MILES O'BRIEN: He is the fifth generation in the Kremer clan to farm this plot of land in Frankenstein, Missouri.

He introduced me to the newest residents.

RUSS KREMER: Everything that we do on this farm as far as feeding, and as far as production, as far as genetics, that all has to do with keeping them healthy.

MILES O'BRIEN: Russ Kremer is obsessed with keeping his pigs healthy, because he knows firsthand that his own health depends on it.

RUSS KREMER: That's about as good as it's going to get.

MILES O'BRIEN: Thirty years ago, the farmer from Frankenstein created a monster after he adopted industrial farming techniques to increase his pig production.

RUSS KREMER: My pigs were unhealthy.

I would go through my pigpens three times a day, injecting them with antibiotics to cure some sort of chronic diseases that I had on my place.

And, in fact, I was actually growing superbugs in this farm and didn't know it.

MILES O'BRIEN: How he found out nearly killed him.

He was gored in the leg by a boar, and the wound became infected.

His doctor told him not to worry, antibiotics were the cure.

But it wasn't that simple.

RUSS KREMER: We tried two different tetracyclines.

We tried streptomycin.

We tried erythromycin, amoxicillin, seven different antibiotics in total, to no avail.

MILES O'BRIEN: So he checked the reports from his veterinarian to see what infections his pigs had and what antibiotics worked for them.

RUSS KREMER: It came back, resistant, resistant, resistant, resistant.

And finally, aha, there was one antibiotic at that time that had some effect on that disease.

They treated me, and thank God there were this new-generation drug.

And so that transformed my life.

MILES O'BRIEN: Molecular microbiologist Lance Price also grew up on a farm, a cattle ranch.

He watched firsthand as a neighboring dairy went from a small-scale family operation to an high-density, industrial-scale farm.

They are called concentrated animal feeding operations.

Lance Price says they are fertile breeding grounds for disease.

LANCE PRICE, Molecular Microbiologist: You pack them together, snout to tail in the case of pigs, and beak to feather in the case of chickens and turkeys, they're going to share bacteria.

So we have engineered a system that makes them sick.

Rather than change that system, we actually just add low doses of antibiotics to try to prevent infections.

MILES O'BRIEN: Price and his team at George Washington University conduct large epidemiological studies of meat that is sold in grocery stores.

They culture the bacteria found on the meat and test to see how they react to disks saturated with antibiotics.

He is hunting for superbugs.

LANCE PRICE: If they're susceptible, that is, not resistant, to the antibiotic, they will be inhibited.

They won't grow near the disk.

But when they grow right up to the disk, like all of these, that means that that bacteria is resistant to all those antibiotics.

You don't want to get infected with one of these.

And these are bacteria that we actually isolated from the food supply.

MILES O'BRIEN: He sequences the genomes of E. coli from food and from people, comparing them to a database of 7,000 distinct types of the bacteria.

LANCE PRICE: We're trying to figure out, hey, did this urinary tract infection come from the E. coli from animals or from food?

MILES O'BRIEN: He says there is a strong case linking the use of antibiotics in livestock to the spread of drug-resistant bacteria in humans.

LANCE PRICE: So, on every grocery store shelf in this country, I guarantee you you're going to find drug-resistant bacteria on the meats of those shelves.

And then they get in our guts when we consume the meat from those animals.

Most of the time, that's a dead end, right?

We will eventually get rid of those bacteria.

We will shed them away.

But, sometimes, they will take hold.

MILES O'BRIEN: In the 1950s, farmers discovered feeding livestock steady, low doses of antibiotics made them grow faster.

But this so-called subtherapeutic use of these precious drugs raised concern in the medical community and the government.

In 1977, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed a ban on subtherapeutic uses of penicillin and tetracycline in animal production.

But the rule was never enacted.

And the problem worsened.

In 1989, human and livestock usage of antibiotics was about equal.

Today, agriculture accounts for about three-quarters of all the antibiotics used in the United States.

MAE WU, Natural Resources Defense Council: We have to stop now.

We have to stop abusing them now, so that we can slow this problem down.

MILES O'BRIEN: Mae Wu is a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

MAE WU: Using antibiotics and misusing them just to make animals get fatter or so you can cram more together and have more stressful conditions and feed them worse diets is the worst way to be using these incredibly important drugs.

MILES O'BRIEN: In 2010, the NRDC, sued the FDA to force it adopt its own rule.

Instead, it released new regulations limiting the use of medically important antibiotics in animals to when it is necessary for assuring animal health and with veterinary oversight and/or consultation.

Liz Wagstrom is the chief veterinarian at the National Pork Producers Council.

LIZ WAGSTROM, National Pork Producers Council: The pork industry believes that the most judicious uses of antibiotics are those for treatment, control and prevention of diseases.

MILES O'BRIEN: Wagstrom says the pork industry will follow the FDA guidance, but she says pork producers will continue to use antibiotics as a routine disease-prevention tool even if there are no illnesses detected in their livestock.

LIZ WAGSTROM: It is a judicious and responsible use of antibiotics to go ahead and prophylactically treat some of those animals when we know they're exposed, we know that it's a specific disease, and we're going to use that antibiotic for a defined duration of use.

MILES O'BRIEN: This is a huge loophole, as my colleague Paul Solman discovered in his conversation with Johns Hopkins University environmental health scientist Ellen Silbergeld.

ELLEN SILBERGELD, Johns Hopkins University: What has been stated as the recommendations, not enforceable policy, by the FDA is that agriculture shouldn't use antibiotics for growth promotion anymore, but they are still permitted to use the exact same amounts of antibiotics in feeds for prevention.

So, I think the category of prevention now has blown up.

MILES O'BRIEN: No need to worry about this at Russ Kremer's farm in Frankenstein, Missouri.

His pigs do not spend their life confined indoors cheek to jowl.

They have much more space, easy access to pastures, even a wooded area Kremer calls his pig park.

He is trying to mimic what pigs would find in nature.

RUSS KREMER: This is the best place in America to raise pigs, in my mind.

MILES O'BRIEN: Right here?

RUSS KREMER: Right here.

MILES O'BRIEN: He rarely uses antibiotics at all, and then only if an animal is sick.

Antibiotics saved Russ Kremer's life 30 years ago.

Today, he's doing all he can to return the favor.

RUSS KREMER: They're lifesavers.

And what we have to ingrained into people's mind, in society's mind is we have to do everything we can to preserve them.

It's the most important, the most critical health issue in the world.

And I'm here to do whatever I can.

MILES O'BRIEN: After I got back from Frankenstein, I sat down with Paul Solman to share some anecdotes from Russ Kremer's bucolic pig farm.

So, Russ Kremer was ahead of his time, but the market has kind of caught up to what he is doing.

It's still a small piece of the big pie.

Just a few thousand are raised in the way Russ does.

So, the question is, is it scalable?

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, in chickens, producers claim that 30 percent of the market or something like that, the chickens are raised antibiotics-free.

So, that's where we're going next, actually.

That's our next story.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm economics correspondent Paul Solman.

MILES O'BRIEN: And I am science correspondent Miles O'Brien.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Next: bringing care to women in a country whose medical facilities, already scarce, were destroyed by years of civil war.

Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports on the mission of one woman in Somaliland.

It's part of his series Agents for Change.

She had a very easy delivery, had a delivery last night.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It was a pretty typical day at the Edna Adan Hospital.

Three babies had just been born, a half-dozen high-risk women were in labor, several others were being treated for life-threatening illnesses, and at the center of it all, the hospital's founder and namesake, Edna Adan.

EDNA ADAN, Founder, Edna Adan University Hospital: These are the kind of women I built the hospital for anyway, anemic, a woman who has had previous complications, a woman who has a scar, a woman who has lost babies before.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: What is especially remarkable is where this is all taking place, in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, an enclave that declared its independence three decades ago from the war-torn Somalia, but is not recognized by the rest of the world.

The region suffers from some of the world's highest rates of infant and maternal mortality.

Adan was born here 79 years ago, the daughter of a prominent physician.

At 17, she won a scholarship to study in England, becoming a midwife.

She returned to Somalia, marrying a politician who would become prime minister.

She's seen with him here and next to President Lyndon Johnson at a White House reception.

She fled Somalia's civil war in the 1980s.

When Edna Adan returned to her native Hargeisa, the city lay in ruin from years of war.

She was given a plot of land that had been used as a burial ground and on it laid the foundation for rebuilding the city's health care system.

EDNA ADAN: Most doctors had fled.

Some had been killed.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Adan had worked for the U.N. while in exile and used her savings and a fund-raising campaign to build what had been a lifelong dream: a nonprofit hospital and nursing school designed to specifically address the health needs of women.

In 2002, she opened the 45-bed hospital, which has since doubled in size and grown to include an outpatient clinic and two surgical theaters.

EDNA ADAN: We have delivered 20,000 babies in the past 15 years.

And we have the lowest maternal mortality.

We're a quarter of the national rate.

And it's still too many.

Many of those women shouldn't have been lost, shouldn't have died.

But they bring them too late.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Another factor in the high rate of maternal death and various complications in labor is female genital mutilation.

Nearly 95 percent of young girls in this country are thought to be subjected to genital cutting.

Adan has become an outspoken critic of the practice.

EDNA ADAN: My mission now is to talk to fathers.

I am blue in the face talking to mothers.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But it's the mothers who are taking the daughters to have this done, right?

EDNA ADAN: If a father says no and puts his foot down, there will be a chance that some of these girls will be saved.

Space, your child, happy, clean, healthy.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: She has also become a vocal advocate for family planning in this conservative Islamic society.

Adan planned to counsel this patient who was rushed here by her husband the previous night, hemorrhaging badly after she miscarried what would have been her seventh baby.

EDNA ADAN: The first advice that we will tell her when she comes back from a -- before she goes home, is not to get pregnant.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Is she any way equipped to control that decision?

EDNA ADAN: That decision, we usually do with the husband, because, at a moment like that, he is somebody who almost lost a wife.

He ran with her.

He brought her here.

His wife is alive.

He doesn't want to go through that again.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The hospital does offer limited family planning services, most frequently implantable contraceptives for women.

As Edna Adan's reputation has grown, so has its mission.

The hospital now treats men, and it brings in physicians and surgeons from the U.S. and other countries who volunteer to do specialized procedures, treating patients with cleft palate, and hydrocephalus, among other things, all free of charge.

EDNA ADAN: You see, they're totally conjoined.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Sometimes, all the hospital can offer is compassion.

This pair of eight-month-old twins, conjoined at the heart, were discharged from another hospital soon after they were born.

EDNA ADAN: They're not going to find oxygen anywhere else.

So whatever we can do palliatively, we will do.

But surgery is totally out of the question.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: So it's palliative -- palliative care until nature takes its course.

EDNA ADAN: Until nature takes -- yes, god makes that decision.

I don't want to be the one that switches it off.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In a region where roads are poor to nonexistent, getting to the Hargeisa hospital can be daunting.

So, Adan has a team of midwives and nurses to treat women and children in the vast rural areas of Somaliland.

Khadan Abdilahi was in the first class of midwives to graduate.

We watched as she helped vaccinate newborn babies at a small clinic in Abdi Iidan (ph), and then teach a prenatal class on nutrition for these pregnant women at a refugee camp.

KHADAN ABDILAHI, Midwife: Edna is a role model for myself.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Edna is a role model for you?

Thirty-year-old Dr. Shukri Mohamed Dahir was also trained as a nurse and midwife by Edna Adan.

She went on to become a physician and surgeon, and is now back practicing at the Adan Hospital.

She says, initially, patients weren't sure about the idea of a woman in that job.

DR. SHUKRI MOHAMED DAHIR, Surgeon: When I was dealing with an emergency case, they used to say, oh, you are a female and you're going to operate?

That's very -- maybe she will die.

That idea still exists.

But it's not as strong as when I graduated.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Although she's groomed new doctors and midwives, Edna Adan, almost 80, has not chosen a successor.

EDNA ADAN: I have 800 graduates from various courses.

I have thousands of people whose lives I have touched.

And they're all my children.

And I'm still looking for someone who is crazy enough to say: I will look after them for you, the way you did.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: If only for that reason, Edna Adan says, she has no plans to slow down anytime soon.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Fred de Sam Lazaro in Hargeisa, Somaliland.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And what an inspiration she is.

Fred's reporting is part of the Under-Told Stories Project at University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

And we will be back shortly with another addition to our "NewsHour" Bookshelf, a memoir from the leader of the movement supporting women's right to drive in Saudi Arabia.

But, first, take a moment to hear from your local PBS station.

It's a chance to offer your support, which helps to keep programs like ours on the air.

FOR THOSE STATIONS STILL WITH US, TO THE STORY OF A GOOD MAN ON A QUIET - AND HEARTBREAKING - MISSION, ONE MANY PEOPLE WOULD NEVER CONSIDER UNDERTAKING.

FROM LOS ANGELES, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT GAYLE ZTEMACH LEMMON BRINGS US THIS PROFILE, WHICH ORIGINALLY AIRED IN FEBRUARY MOHAMED BZEEK, Foster Parent: What are you doing?

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: Mohamed Bzeek has become something of a local hero here in Los Angeles recently.

MOHAMED BZEEK: I am not an angel.

I am not a hero.

It's just what we are supposed to do as a human being.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: In 1978, Bzeek, then a former marathon runner, came to the U.S. from Libya to study engineering.

He met his wife here in the U.S., and became a citizen in 1997.

But, today, he is a different kind of champion.

His distinction?

He is the only foster parent in this city of four million who cares solely for terminally ill children.

What happens if you get sick?

MOHAMED BZEEK: Father doesn't get sick day.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: It is not a glamorous job.

MOHAMED BZEEK: You have to do it from your heart, really.

If you do it for money, you're not going to stay for long.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: Over almost three decades, he and his wife cared for scores of children.

Ten have died in his care.

Most of the children he's taken recently are born with terminal illnesses.

Sometimes, they are abandoned or born to parents with drug addiction.

Once they enter the foster care system, the county works to connect them with foster parents like Mohamed.

The memories of the children, he says, still live with him every day.

MOHAMED BZEEK: And this is my kid who died with the cancer.

He has a cancer.

He died.

They operate on him, and they find the cancer separate all of his organs.

So, the doctor said, let's stitch him back, and said, there's nothing we can do for him.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: Today, he lives with a 6-year-old foster daughter born with microcephaly, a rare disorder in which a baby's brain doesn't fully develop.

She cannot see or hear.

She responds only to touch.

At seven weeks old, the county took her from her biological parents.

They called Bzeek, and he agreed to take her in.

He also cares for his biological son, Adam, who himself was born in 1997 with brittle bones, dwarfism and other physical challenges.

Taking in critically ill children is a painful process.

He knows at the start their time together will be short.

MOHAMED BZEEK: I know it's heartbreak.

I know it's a lot of work.

I know it's going to hurt me sometimes.

You know, I feel sad.

But, in my opinion, we should help each other, you know?

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: Much of his dedication, he says, derives from his faith.

Bzeek is a practicing Muslim.

And his story gained special notice recently, after President Trump issued an executive order seeking to bar immigrants from seven majority Muslim nations, including his own home country of Libya.

Bzeek says he sees the negative stereotypes out there.

But he is not deterred.

MOHAMED BZEEK: As a Muslim, I don't hate nobody.

I love everybody.

I respect everybody.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: His faith has continued to guide him through many heartbreaks.

His wife passed away in 2015.

After your wife died, did you ever think, this is actually too much for one person to do?

MOHAMED BZEEK: Sometimes.

But I know somebody who needs help.

I will do it as long as I am healthy.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: Now he has a nurse's aide that helps with care on weekdays from 8:00 to 4:00.

But, still, it's a full-time job, one he handles by himself every night and every weekend.

With his foster daughter's seizures happening more and more often, he usually sleeps near her on the couch, just in case.

He says he hasn't had a day off since 2010.

And the challenges have continued to mount.

In November, the caregiver became the patient.

MOHAMED BZEEK: I find out in November I have colon cancer.

And they told me they have to operate on you in December.

I said - I talk with the surgeon.

I said, Doctor, I can't.

You have to give me time, because I have a foster kid who is terminal.

And I have my son.

He is handicapped.

There is nobody for them, you know?

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: Did anyone go with you to the hospital?

MOHAMED BZEEK: No.

That was the scary part, you know?

I felt about the kids who's been sick for all their for.

If I am adult, 62 years old, and I feel this, that I am alone, I am scared, nobody tells me it's OK and it will be fine, this experience, this humbled me.

WOMAN: She's talking.

MOHAMED BZEEK: Yes, she's talking.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: There's so much heartbreak, and yet you keep doing it.

MOHAMED BZEEK: I mean, these kids need - need somebody.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: Even if there's that much heartbreak?

MOHAMED BZEEK: Even though my heart is breaking.

To me, death is part of life.

And I'm glad that I help these kids go through this period of his time, you know?

And I help him.

I be with him.

I comfort him.

I love him or her.

And until he pass away, I am with him and make him feel he has a family and he has somebody who cares about him and loves him.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: That they're not alone.

MOHAMED BZEEK: No.

They're not alone.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: Bzeek underwent a successful cancer surgery in December, and treatment is ongoing.

His story has received wide attention that led to an online fund-raising drive that has already raised over $200,000.

He says he will use the money for a new roof, air conditioning, and maybe even a replacement for his 14-year-old van.

MOHAMED BZEEK: I was reading all the comments that people put on the Internet.

Every day, I was crying because of their kindness and the nice words they said.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: And, in the end, he says he has been humbled by just how much his story has brought out others' heart and humanity.

MOHAMED BZEEK: I can't describe the feeling, you know?

I mean, you see how many nice people around us, but we don't see them because of this turmoil and this time.

We didn't see just how many nice and kind people around us.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: Do you think you see more of them now?

MOHAMED BZEEK: Yes.

There is always good in this world, you know, more than the bad, always.

That's what I believe.

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Gayle Tzemach Lemmon in Los Angeles.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Continuing our week of books, we take an intimate look at the fight for women's rights in Saudi Arabia.

Jeffrey Brown has the latest addition to the "NewsHour" Bookshelf.

JEFFREY BROWN: In may 2011, Manal al-Sharif drove a car.

That is remarkable only because it happened in Saudi Arabia, where women are banned from driving and many other activities in what most of us would consider normal, daily life.

She was arrested and spent nine days in prison, before an international outcry helped gain her release.

She's continued her activism for women's rights, now living outside her native country, and she's written her story in the new book "Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening."

I want to ask you first about this idea of an awakening, because you write about yourself in your early life very much part of the system.

When a group of women drove in 1990, and as a kind of a public protest, you scorned them.

MANAL AL-SHARIF, Author, "Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening": Yes.

Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: But something happened to you.

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Because we got the wrong story.

They didn't have a voice.

We heard about them.

We didn't hear from them, until the moment of truth came to me in 2011, when I started my own campaign, and I got to know their story.

They're my inspiration.

JEFFREY BROWN: What did you see in the system?

You refer to it as the guardianship system.

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Yes.

Yes.

The male guardianship system is the one -- the source of all evil when it comes to women's rights in my country, where I am 38, mother of two, and an engineer, but I'm still a minor.

I'm legally minor.

I need permission from a man to do anything in my life.

And that man could be my father, my husband.

And it could even be my own son, if he is an adult.

JEFFREY BROWN: All this -- this affects all parts of daily life.

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Every single part of your life.

(CROSSTALK) JEFFREY BROWN: Is there any space where you feel freedom or a freedom to act or move?

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Things has been loosened now.

One of them is, for example, going to school.

Now I don't have to get permission to go to school or open a bank account.

Imagine, these things I had to get permission to do before.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, driving became the... MANAL AL-SHARIF: Symbol.

JEFFREY BROWN: The symbol, right?

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: Why driving?

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Nothing will emancipate women in my country like driving, because it gives them a sense of independence.

It gives them a sense of liberty and freedom.

And that breaks all the things they have been learned and brainwashed with, that we are - - we have to be -- obedience to these unjust laws, and we're weak, we cannot take decisions by our own.

This will give independence to women.

This is what I believe, at least.

JEFFREY BROWN: What is it that keeps the system in place, the system of the gender relations?

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Two things, men prejudice, and women submissive.

These two things need to be changed to change the system.

JEFFREY BROWN: How much is it changing?

How strong is the movement?

I mean, I see even recently, in recent weeks, there have been some arrests of women for various kinds of behavior.

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Yes.

True, true.

There have been arrests for some of the leaders for this movement, which is good, by the way.

That means they're recognizing it's influential and it's making an impact.

The millennial generation, the Internet-native generation of women, are changing -- they're changing the rules of the game in Saudi Arabia.

They're outspoken.

They're fearless.

They're courageous.

And they really don't submit to the rules my generation submitted to.

And I do believe women have the key to change, if they break the wall of fear, if they challenge these unjust laws.

And I have been told always respect the law.

And I always say -- I use the line from suffragettes.

I say, I will respect laws that respect me.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mm-hmm.

You're quoting the suffragettes.

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: And you clearly studied your history, women's history.

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Yes.

Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: What is it that, for you, was - - caused that change, I mean, of learning all this history and wanting to become part of it?

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Do you know when I started?

I have always been an activist, and I didn't know.

I have never read about the other feminists or activists.

But when you face so much backlash, so much hardship, so much pain, you seek relief in places, in history, stories that happened to the same people doing the same things that you're doing.

So, I started watching movies about the women's right movement -- I mean, the movement to get the women vote in the U.S.

I watched suffragettes.

I read Rosa Parks' book.

And I was amazed by the similarities between my story and them.

And I'm studying how they changed the system by the nonviolence, the civil disobedience and nonviolent struggle.

And it's amazing to me when I was watching these things.

The civil rights movement itself, remove the black people, put Saudi women.

This is exactly the situation in Saudi Arabia today.

JEFFREY BROWN: You go through the book through many experiences that you had of being in prison, of having to leave the country, having to leave... MANAL AL-SHARIF: My own son.

JEFFREY BROWN: ... your children behind from your former marriage.

Do you have regrets now?

What is your life like now?

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Jeff, I do have a lot of regrets in my life.

I think we are all -- as humans, we do have regrets.

But the speaking up, I have never regretted that, because, if I didn't speak up, I would lose myself.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, the book is "Daring to Drive."

Manal Al-Sharif, thank you very much.

MANAL AL-SHARIF: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And that's the "NewsHour" for tonight.

I'm Judy Woodruff.

For all of us at the "PBS NewsHour," thank you, and we will see you soon.