PBS News Hour - Full Show - September 14, 2025 – PBS News Weekend full episode

Episode Date: September 14, 2025

Sunday on PBS News Weekend, a rare on-the-ground look at the Israeli military’s presence in southern Lebanon. After Nepal’s worst unrest in decades, what was behind the Gen Z protests that toppled a government. How comedy is being used in the fight against suicide. Plus, a new archive opens in London celebrating the dazzling career of rock star David Bowie. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Tonight on PBS News Weekend, Israel's two fronts. As strikes continue in Gaza, we look north to the conflict in Lebanon for a rare on-the-ground look at the Israeli military's presence there. Then, following Nepal's largest unrest in decades, we look at what's behind the Gen Z protests that toppled a government. And he aimed to blow our minds. A new archive opens in London celebrating the dazzling career of Rock's star man, David Bowie. Every day, we're finding really interesting new stories, new discoveries, things that never been on display before. Good evening. I'm Lisa Desjardin. John Yang is away.

New details. tonight on the suspected shooter in the Charlie Kirk assassination, which Utah's governor says may provide clues about the motive. The state of Utah, where the murder occurred, expects charges will be filed this week. Today, Governor Spencer Cox confirmed several new details about the investigation. He said the suspect was in a romantic relationship with his roommate, who is transgender. Cox also said the alleged gunman recently spoke with others about his dislike of Charlie Kirk. And after the shooting, friends of the suspect, initially joked with him that he looked like the shooter police were searching for,

but did not think it was really him. Governor Cox said an important next step will be to figure out exactly why the suspect chose violence and if social media played a role in radicalizing him. I can't emphasize enough the damage that social media and the Internet is doing to all of us, those dopamine hits, these companies, a trillion-dollar market caps, the most powerful companies in the history. of the world have figured out how to hack our brains, get us addicted to outrage. The governor said the suspects family and transgender roommate have been helpful to law enforcement.

Meanwhile, supporters of Charlie Kirk are coming together to mourn the loss of the young influential activists. Supporters set up a memorial for him outside the headquarters of Turning Point USA in Phoenix, Arizona. A prayer vigil is also set for later this evening at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Now to Africa and Southern Congo, where a few hundred doses of vaccine have finally reached an area dealing with an Ebola outbreak. Some 400 doses arrived via U.N. helicopter. tens of thousands more still have not made it. The effort has been slowed down from lack of funds and trouble accessing the area. In the past, USAID provided support with outbreaks in Congo.

The agency was dismantled earlier this year by President Trump. In the Middle East, Qatar's Prime Minister strongly denounced Israel, saying its strike on militant Hamas leaders staying in the country threatens efforts to normalize ties. This comes as Qatar hosted a meeting of Arab and Muslim leaders to consider a response. Gutter says it will still work toward a ceasefire in Gaza. And in Gaza, the Israeli military struck multiple high-rise buildings in Gaza City. today killing at least 13 Palestinians. The blast sent people scrambling in a city where there are a shrinking number of places to shelter. The IDF has urged Palestinians to evacuate South, but residents say there is no easy path to safety. As it intensifies its war in Gaza

in the South, Israel also remains in a simmering conflict on its northern border with Lebanon. Under a ceasefire agreement, Israel was supposed to withdraw from the area in January. But the military has recently expanded its presence, stating that the militant group Hezbollah was in violation of the terms and an active threat. Special correspondent, Simona Fultin, brings us this report. An Israeli flag firmly planted on Lebanese soil. This military base in Hula is one of several new posts the IDF has set up in Lebanon in recent months. A roadblock erected by the Lebanese army is as far as we can go. Next to it, the burnt hulk of the war. of a car hit by Israeli fire serves as a warning.

You see that machine gun they put up on the base? If we get close to those barrels, they shoot immediately. Hesank Tej, a former member of Hula's municipal council, who used to live just past the roadblock. His house is nothing more than a pile of rubble. That's my house over there. You see that column, that tree, just 20 meters from here. My house went in an air raid, but the rest of this neighborhood was booby-trapped and detonated on a single day.

The IDF base in Hula is located around 500 yards inside Lebanon's territory. It has cut off the main road tracing the border. More than 50 family homes used to be in that area, including Hussein's, raised to the ground as part of what Amnesty International has called a deliberate destruction of civilian property. In the abandoned village center, Ali Hassan, the newly elected mayor, told me that a third of Hula's agricultural land remains inaccessible. Farmers can't live away from their land.

They depend on it to survive. They must return to cultivate. The mayor says that the IDF has killed five civilians as they tried to return to their land. They don't want to see anyone here. They want this to become a buffer zone without any life. If they target one person, of course the others won't try to come back. The IDF was supposed to completely withdraw from Lebanon in January. But in March, Israel's defense minister said it would indefinitely keep five strategic outposts inside Lebanese territory.

Some of these posts like here in Labune have been built right next to UN peacekeepers, who just like the Lebanese army, have been unable to stop Israel's ongoing occupation. The IDF has built its bases on high vantage points, seizing hilltops that overlooked Israeli settlements and could be used to launch attacks. We drove along the border to see the impact of Israel's military action. The first thing you notice, of course, is the utter level of destruction here. There's barely a house standing. It's also very difficult to get from village to village because of the new Israeli outposts that have been erected here. We're having to take detours.

some of the roads have been blocked off because they're simply too dangerous. We find village after village reduced to ghost towns. These are the ruins of Kvarkila. In the distance on the hill behind it, we can see another IDF base. Located almost a mile inside Lebanese territory, this is the deepest IDF post. It overlooks the plains of Khayam from where Hezbollah used to launch rockets into Israel. Hezbollah has seized its attacks on Israeli settlements seen here across the war. here across the wall, but the IDF has shown no signs of leaving, making its withdrawal

conditional on the group's complete this armament. Meanwhile, Israel has committed near-daily ceasefire violations. Ali Fakeh is a construction worker whose bulldozer was taken out by an Israeli drone earlier this month. The drone seems to have dropped explosives or fired a small projectile, setting fire to the engine. Ali believes the goal was to intimidate villagers who try to rebuild. We are working on our homes that got damaged during the war. If they, the IDF, think these strikes will make us leave, they are wrong. This is our land and we will die here.

After the attack, another drone dropped flyers onto the area. It says that the bulldozer was in fact rehabilitating a military installation belonging to Hezbollah. You can see the image of the bulldozer right here. And it goes on to warn villagers here to distance themselves from the group. Support for Hezbollah runs deep in Lebanon south. People here call it the resistance, seeing it as Lebanon's primary bulwark against Israel. But Ali says neither he nor his client have any connections to the group.

They don't want anyone to do construction work here. They want the area to be empty so they can do whatever they want. Hezbollah has handed over hundreds of its military facilities to the Lebanese army, which is supposed to fill the security vacuum. But it lacks the equipment, capabilities and political backing to protect Lebanon's sovereignty against the much more powerful IDF. In Aitab, a Hezbollah stronghold right on the border, people have little confidence that the Lebanese army can protect them.

God help the Lebanese army. They are standing by the bulldozer to protect it from Israeli drones. What kind of army is that? Let's be honest, they don't protect us. Villagers say the IDF destroyed a Lebanese army outposts that used to overlook Aitahab and still uses it to stage operations. The Israeli forces come at night on the outskirts of the village. Not long ago, they blew up a few houses in the village.

In the cemetery where many Hezbollah fighters lay buried, I met Aziza Suru, who came to visit. her brother's grave. She's unable to return home to Hula because an IDF post now stands on the rubble of her house. For her, the reason is clear. Israel's goal is to expand. They want to create greater Israel. Hezbollah has rejected U.S.-led calls for its disarmament as long as Israel occupies Lebanese land. For PBS News Weekend, I'm Simone Fultin at Lebanon's border with Israel. We reached out to the Israeli military about our report. They told us they operate carefully in accordance with international law

and said their actions in southern Lebanon are defensive in nature, meant to neutralize immediate threats to Israel's security. They added that any claim that Israel intends to occupy Lebanon is baseless, and they strongly condemn it. Still to come on PBS News Weekend. We explore a new tool being used in the fight against suicide, comedy, and a colorful legacy, the archive of British rock star David Bowie. This is PBS News Weekend from the David M. Rubinstein studio at WETA in Washington, home of the PBS News Hour.

Weeknights on PBS. Nepal finds new calm this weekend with the appointment of a temporary leader following an extraordinary week of violence. The death toll now stands at over 70 after anti-corruption protests led to police clashes and a host of buildings in the Capitol being set aflame. An interim prime minister is in place today asking for people to come together. New elections are expected to be held in March, but key issues like unemployment and inflation that drove the protests remain unaddressed. Earlier, I spoke with Alex Trevelli, a South Asia business correspondent for the New York Times.

He's in Kathmandu, and I asked him to describe the situation. there today. The capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, is actually rather quiet now, and it looks normal in a lot of respects. There's still a large military presence on the streets, but they're not blocking traffic. There are a lot of burned out buildings. So if you're looking at the old halls of power, it's like a disaster swept through town. In fact, a few of them are still even on fire. But I would have to say that traffic, business, civilian life is carrying on almost as if it were an ordinary time in Nepal, which it very much is not. This is a historic time, and it seems like the protests evolved in part because of the

bans of some social media platforms, but there also seem to be a lot more deeper issues there. Can you help us understand how this all evolved? Yeah, it's becoming clearer and clearer, Lisa, that the social media ban, which was the proximate cause or the trigger for the protests, it was a small part of a great big, angry whole. It was Monday of this past week that the mostly young people took to the streets in great numbers. And you could see already on the banners and placards they were carrying. It was much more about entrenched problems that Nepal faces, political problems, corruption, a culture of impunity, and there was a vast amount of anger. And then that all changed on Monday itself when armed

police started firing into the crowds. Very quickly, a lot of young people died by police, and then there's an entirely new cause for outrage. What has day-to-day life been like for the young people, especially those leading this protest? So life in Nepal is very tough for young people, and often these are young people who've invested a lot of time and a lot of their family savings in education. One of the surest signs of this economic crisis is the number of young Nepalis who have to leave the country in order to find employment. This is often for menial jobs in the Gulf or in Malaysia.

It's not that these are young people who necessarily want to leave Nepal, but almost 2,000 do leave every day. There's, by some estimate, half of the country's families depend on income being sent by Nepalese working abroad. This is a desperate situation, and it's not one that young people want to put up with forever. Can you tell us about the new interim prime minister and why it was that young people in particular wanted her in the job? Yeah, it's very hard to get a grasp on really, what the young people want, mainly because we don't really know who they are. It's a leaderless movement, or that's how it began. And we do know that members of that leadership, however, they were chosen, were talking to her. Her name is Susheila Karki, and she came out as the

favored candidate. Now, she's a former chief justice of Nepal. In fact, the country's first female chief justice. And a jurist by training, so interested in constitutional matters. not especially beholden to any of the big political parties, and a satisfying choice if there had to be one for a caretaker, Prime Minister. You help us understand Nepal's role in the region and whether these protests have any wider influences as well. It's a small country, but where does it sit in terms of its importance?

It may be too soon to tell, but Nepal sits between China and India, the biggest countries in the world. in the world. The United States, of course, takes a keen interest also in Nepali affairs. In recent years, as China's political and economic power have grown, it's become a more important rival with India for influence in the region. Each of these giant countries has its favorite political parties within the old political order of Nepal. Now that that political order as a whole seems to have collapsed, it looks suddenly like a clear board in which

these two, three big countries are going to start competing again. What comes next? We expect elections in six months. Do you think that that is the way out of this crisis? What's clear is that it's going to be a very difficult path forward. There's no period of time in which you could say we know how Nepal is going to replace its established political parties. Or the parties themselves perhaps will stick around, but they'll figure out a way to replace their tarnished leadership.

Perhaps Gen Z, as they call themselves, the student protesters will find a party to throw into the fray themselves. But six months is a very short amount of time for anything like that. The country is really going to need parties that can attract popular support. And that's something that is very hard to see from this week. Alex Trevelli, we know you'll keep watching it, and we appreciate that. Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much.

A warning. This next story discusses suicide, but it centers on an original idea for preventing it. In the United States, suicide is one of the leading causes of death, claiming more than 49,000 lives in 23 alone, that according to the latest CDC data. But one organization has found an unconventional. conventional tool to combat these grim numbers, laughter. The group is called one degree of separation. It's made up of comedians who hold sessions that start not with advice,

but family-friendly jokes like these. I actually really enjoyed growing up here, except for the part where I actually had to live here, you know? I was in a date with this girl, and she was like, you're so tall and handsome. How are you single? And I was like, you'll see. Brad Bonner Jr. is the founder of the suicide prevention by comedy program,

One Degree of Separation. He joins us as part of our look at the intersection of health and art, part of our arts and culture series, Canvas. Brad, thank you so much for talking to us about this. You know, traditional approaches to this area are very serious, very straightforward. Why did you think comedy should get involved? A big influence was the biography about Robin Williams that was done after he died by suicide. And I kept waiting for them to talk about his depression or his suicide, and then the documentary was over. They don't even mention a word about it. And it upset me.

I thought he would have talked about it. I don't think he would have shied away from this as a topic. I wonder if I could get a group of comics together that would just give a raw, real demonstration and conversation about what depression looks and feels like. You are an advocate, you are a coach, and you're someone who's experienced this yourself. But I wonder, when you get in a room with comedians, when they're talking to folks who maybe haven't opened up even to themselves about this, what does this actually do when it's happening? You know, there's so many steps to dealing with depression. The first ones to talk about it, if you don't get that one, none of the other things happen.

And so we hear about people going into a mental hospital or volunteering themselves after they come to one of our events because it encourages dialogue and makes it feel comfortable. One of our comics, Kevin Davis, he's a 20-year Marine Corps veteran, a master sergeant, and until he met us, he had never talked about his depression. And he's 66 now, and he says, this is the happiest I've ever been in my life because I don't have the secrets. I've spilled them all on stage. You have about 100 comedians so far that have participated. You'd like them to be from local areas. But you specifically make sure to go out to rural areas and also military bases.

And I'm curious, those are two areas that we see really heavy incidents of depression and suicide. What have you learned by going into those areas about the problem and resolving it? One of the big things I learned is that depression is the same for everybody. Every culture thinks we don't talk about it, but no culture talks about it. You know, we always have a very diverse panel of comedians, but I tell people, I go, the diversity is just for the flyer, so it looks good. because as soon as we start talking about depression, it doesn't matter. Kevin Davis, the first show he did for us afterwards, he's African-American. He said, I didn't realize white people had the same depression.

And what I learned is, even in these rural communities, is that we're all first responders for a mental health emergency. The first person for a mental health emergency is not going to be an EMT, a therapist, a doctor. It's going to be your friend, the person next to you. I know you start with the comedy, and then you show these five questions. We're going to show them to our viewers now. They center around this idea of what is helpful to you and what is harmful to you, either in your own actions or other people's actions. Why those questions?

What do those do? I wrote these down in two minutes. Word for word, we've given out over 80,000 of these five questions cards. We have clinics now that their intake questions for all new mental health patients are our five questions. Wow. They are all encompassing. They're this big umbrella.

They're non-confrontational. And everyone's afraid to have the conversation. Well, here's five questions. Ask these five questions. and shut up and listen, and you'll have an amazing insight into what somebody's depression feels like, the physical part of it,

what others do that makes it worse, what others do that makes it better? And then that fourth question, that self-inventory of, what do you do that makes it worse? That's looking inward and acknowledging. I isolate, I lie, say I'm fine when I'm not, I drink too much,

all of these things that have a factor in it. And then that last question is the positive one. What do you do that makes it better? All those five questions, they're simply there to teach people how to have a conversation, Nothing confrontational. They're really just open-ended, simple, simple questions.

Brad Bonner, your laughter is the best medicine, but laughter along with listening. Thank you for helping us listen. Thank you. of rock, David Bowie, left behind a profound and colorful legacy. To round out our show tonight, we zoom to London, virtually, to visit the new home for the British Stars Archive that just opened this weekend. Guitars he strummed, notes with handwritten lyrics, a rejection letter from a recording studio, all alongside some of David Bowie's iconic outfits, like the ice blue suit

Bowie wore in the video for life on Mars in 1973. And of course, the famous lightning bolt jacket from his Ziggy Stardust Days. Madeline Haddon is the lead curator of the David Bowie Center at the VNA East Storehouse. There are more than 90,000 items in the archive, and of that, 200 are on display. Woodling down that selection was one of the biggest intellectual and curatorial challenges of my life, certainly. There's just such a massive amount to choose from not only a volume of material, but periods of work, genres, you know, creative personas, even projects that we didn't know that he was working on until we got our hands on the archive. Curator Harriet Reed also

helped sift through Bowie's belongings. Every day we're finding really interesting new stories, new discoveries, things that never been on display before. But for me, I'm always really interested by a sort of ephemera around Bowie's process, the sort of notes he made, the to-do list, things where he's making a record of the exhibitions he wants to see, the films he wants to see, books he wants to read. That kind of devouring of culture is really fascinating to know why he was so restlessly creative. Bowie died in 2016 of liver cancer at the age of 69. In his lifetime, he was a prolific musician, but also a writer, actor and designer.

Toward the end of his life, post-it notes left in his New York office show he was working on a musical set in 18th century London. The notes reveal his keen sort of research and interests in that period. He'd obviously done a lot of reading up about the artists of the time like Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds, London in the 18th century, the coffee houses, the politics. And he was trying to kind of put together a structure, it seems. how this would work, what would make it a success. And if you want to see any of the thousands of items that aren't on display,

you can go online and make an appointment to view them up close and personal. Now online from our excellent. digital team, we get more information on the suspected killer of Charlie Kirk. All that and more is on our website, pbs.org slash news hour. And that's it for our program tonight. I'm Lisa Desjardin for all of my colleagues in the control room in the studio. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you tomorrow.