August 4, 2024 - PBS News Weekend full episode

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, how a student protest in Bangladesh has spiraled into a national movement against the country's leadership.

Then what time you go to bed and wake up could play a big role in how well your brain functions and the Hidden History of black sailors unjustly punished after the 1944 Port Chicago explosion.

MAN: They had a second or two to decide, do I go back to work?

Do I go back to these conditions that I know are unfair?

Or do I take a stand?

(BREAK) LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Good evening.

I'm Laura Barron Lopez.

John Yang is away.

Israel's security minister is urging people in the country to carry weapons to defend themselves following a stabbing attack in the West Bank.

Police say a Palestinian militant stabbed four people in a suburb of Tel Aviv, killing an elderly man and woman.

The suspect was later killed by police.

And in Gaza today, Israel conducted at least two separate air strikes killing dozens.

Overnight, a strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of a hospital.

Another air strike hit two schools in Gaza City.

In both cases, Israel said it was targeting Hamas militants.

English police today are struggling to contain violent crowds after a right-wing mob tried to break into hotels suspected of housing asylum seekers.

Rioters broke down barriers and smashed windows as they clashed with law enforcement.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the riots, calling it organized violent thuggery.

It's the latest episode in a series of far-right protests following a deadly stabbing attack at a children's dance class last week, false reports spread on social media that the suspect was an immigrant.

Police later said the team was born in Wales.

Georgia's Brian Kemp is firing back after former President Donald Trump repeatedly attacked the Republican governor at a campaign rally last night.

Kemp said Trump should focus on winning the presidential election, not on petty personal attacks.

At Saturday's rally, Trump ranted about Kemp's refusal to help him overturn the 2020 election, and Trump accused Kemp, without evidence, of actively working against him this election.

DONALD TRUMP, Former U.S. President: Your governor, Kemp and Raffensperger are doing everything possible to make 2024 difficult for Republicans to win.

What are they doing?

I don't know.

They got something in mind.

You know, they got a little something in mind.

Kemp is very bad for the Republican Party.

He wouldn't do anything.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Trump also congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin for the prisoner exchange that freed three Americans this past week, but Trump did not name any of the Americans who were released.

Ukraine got a boost today in their war with Putin's Russian forces when newly arrived F-16 fighter jets took to the skies.

29 months after the full scale invasion, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy unveiled the jets given to his country by Western allies.

While this steps up Ukraine's air defenses, Zelenskyy said more pilots need to be trained.

Until now, Ukraine only had Soviet era war planes to fight Russia.

Florida's West Coast is bracing for impact from the latest named storm this hurricane season.

Tropical storm Debby is rapidly intensifying thanks to the warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

The storm is now expected to become a category one hurricane before it makes landfall over Florida's panhandle.

Forecasters anticipate heavy rain and flooding before the storm moves up the East Coast.

And it was a golden Sunday for American athletes in Paris on the track, sprinter Noah Lyles is once again the world's fastest man winning gold in the men's 100 meter.

In the pool, Team USA broke records and took home two more gold medals.

The American team set a new world record in the women's four by 100 medley relay, and Bobby Fink clocked a world record swim in the 1,500 freestyle, Scottie Scheffler took the top spot in men's golf, and Kristen Faulkner won gold in women's road cycling.

And the water quality of the River Seine is again in question after athletes from Belgium and Switzerland withdrew from upcoming events.

They fell ill after racing in the river last week.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, antigovernment protests in Bangladesh turn deadly, and what being a night owl versus an early bird can do for your brain.

(BREAK) LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Bangladesh is under a nationwide curfew and internet blackout after a weekend of violent clashes between security forces and protesters, almost 300 people have died, with thousands more injured.

The protests have grown into a national movement against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her increasingly autocratic rule.

Ali Rogin has more.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): In Bangladesh, protests over a government jobs policy ignited a broader movement against the country's longtime leader.

Protesters say Sheikh Hasina's violent crackdown is destroying her image and legacy tied to the birth of the nation itself.

JAHIRUL ISLAM, Waiter (through translator): We want the government to resign.

We want to go back to the golden times we had in the past.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Student protests began in mid-July against a government workforce quota system, which reserves some jobs for veterans of the country's 1971 war for independence and their families.

Hasina responded with violence, imposing an internet blackout and curfew, with security forces given an order to shoot on site.

The government reduced the quota after demonstrations began, but the protests had already expanded to calls for justice for those killed in the crackdown, a toll now exceeding 200.

MEGHMALLAR BOSU, Student Dhaka University: They are killing people indiscriminately.

People are being jailed.

People are being tortured.

At the same time, you are seeing the courage of the people of Bangladesh, who have decided they will not sit down.

They will not go down without a fight.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Hasina and the quota system are part of Bangladesh's founding story.

Her father was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led the fight for an independent Bengali state after the partition of British ruled India in 1947.

The Muslim majority areas became East and West Pakistan, but the Bengali speaking East Pakistanis faced exploitation and marginalization from the west.

Mujib helped found the Bengali nationalist Awami League, which fought for independence at the polls and eventually in a bloody war against West Pakistan in the wars nine months about 3 million people were killed and millions more displaced.

Mujib became independent Bangladesh's first prime minister, and put the quota system in place as a reward for Bangladesh's freedom fighters.

He was assassinated in 1975 and Hasina positioned herself as his political and ideological successor.

SALIL TRIPATHI, Writer and Author: People see her as a harbinger of democracy, the daughter of the father of the revolution, and in 1991 actually gets elected to be the prime minister.

And then she loses in 1996 and from 1996 to 2008 she continues to fight for democracy and gets a lot of support, lot of goodwill.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Salil Tripathi is a writer and the author of a book on "The Bangladesh War."

He says after Hasina regained power, her commitment to democracy waned as she won three disputed elections in a row.

SALIL TRIPATHI: All of that has been accompanied by a period of serious human rights violation and economic downturn and this perception of nepotism and corruption.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): He says most of the beneficiaries of the quota system were from the founding Awami League, excluding supporters of opposition parties.

SALIL TRIPATHI: The quota became the symptom, and now it has become full scale opposition to the rule.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Since protests began, police have arrested at least 11,000 people.

SHEIKH HASINA, Prime Minister, Bangladesh (through translator): Many were punished after getting out from jail.

They're showing the same face.

They will not be spared easily.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): One student protest leader said police abducted, sedated and detained him for days.

ASIF MAHMUD, Coordinator, Students Against Discrimination in Bangladesh (through translator): I think they took us away to refrain us from making decisions about the movement.

While they massacred all these people, they made some of us disappear.

Some were beaten.

We were pressured to stop the movement.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Hasina stoked tensions when she referred to the protesters as Razakars, a wartime slur for supporters of the Pakistani military who fought the Bangladeshi freedom fighters.

SALIL TRIPATHI: The Razakars is the word she used on the 14th of July.

And so the students started a protest saying that I'm here Razakars.

You are Razakars.

Everyone is a Razakar as a kind of you own, and campaign against it.

And the protest just snowballed.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Now, international pressure is mounting.

The United Nations and European Union are calling on the government to halt its attacks.

The UN human rights chief wants the government to disclose details about the crackdown, but Tripathi says the number of crises spiraling elsewhere in the world is fracturing the world's attention.

SALIL TRIPATHI: On one hand, you have the conflict in Ukraine, then you the conflict in the Middle East, in Gaza, the U.S. is in the middle of its own election.

The Venezuela election has thrown, you know, rabbit out of the hat now.

So I think there are lots of other priorities which are which are also distracting the international community.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): Inside Bangladesh, the National reckoning persists.

SYED SADMAN, Student Protester (through translator): People make mistakes.

If she would have apologized, everything would go back to normal.

If she cannot control it, things will keep getting heated.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): As protesters continue to defy police in the streets, it's clear that for some, an apology is no longer enough for.

PBS News Weekend, I'm Ali Rogin.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Sleep is vital for our health, but according to the CDC, more than one in three adults say they are not getting sufficient sleep.

Now, new research suggests it's not just how much sleep you get, but when you are going to sleep and waking up that matters.

A recent study from the Imperial College London found night owls, those people who stay up late and wake up later, appear to have superior cognitive function, while early risers had lower scores on the cognitive test.

Azizi Seixas is the Associate Director at the Center for Translational Sleep and Circadian Sciences at the University of Miami.

Professor Seixas, thank you for joining.

The researchers in this study found that people who stay up late had, quote, superior cognitive function, while early birds had the lowest scores.

How did they reach this conclusion?

AZIZI SEIXAS, University of Miami: Well, this was a large study done in the United Kingdom with about 26,000 individuals.

And essentially what they were trying to do is that they're looked at different what they call chronotypes, people who were morning folks, people who were even folks, and people who are in between.

And what they tried to do was to look at the relationship between those individuals who said they were morning versus people who are in between and those folks who were at night, and they found that individuals who said that they were intermediate in between morning and evening, and those individuals who were night olds, they had better cognition in this study.

And this is a very large study, and it's really provides a unique, interesting opportunity for us to understand the timing of sleep and the type of sleep, where you are, when you most optimally, will do better in your day.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: How does this study compared to other research done on this topic?

AZIZI SEIXAS: Well, it raises many different flags.

Why?

Because previously, we've always known that morningness is oftentimes equal to better performance.

And what this study shows is that those individuals who are night owls actually got better cognition.

And that's where it is very unique, and it's very different.

Now this has been shown where in adolescence, that adolescents who pretty much will have their best optimal performance during the afternoon, and those individuals who are older, 50s and above, they will perform better in the mornings.

And that's where this you this.

The findings of these studies are unique.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I consider myself a bit of a night owl, naturally, although more recently, I've been waking up early.

But what impact do these different sleep styles have on the body?

AZIZI SEIXAS: Very different.

Why?

Because typically people who are oftentimes seen as morning individuals, these are the individuals who go to bed earlier and wake up earlier, they actually have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.

While those individuals who are actually night owls tend to have greater risk for heart disease.

What this study is showing is that for your brain health and for cognition, the reverse may be true, and so this is where it provides a unique opportunity for us to dig a little deeper as to what might be going on.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Are there benefits to both sleep styles?

You talked about the negative impacts potentially on both, but are there benefits to being a night owl versus a morning person?

AZIZI SEIXAS: There are benefits, but it really depends on who you are, right.

So there are individuals who are naturally morning people, and those individuals who are just night owls.

The most important thing is to find out who you are, and then patcher and revolve your entire day around that.

So if you are a night person, you may want to actually do most of your cognitive tasks later in the day.

And if you're a morning person, you may want to put those earlier in the day.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And at the end of the day, is the amount of sleep more important than the time that you sleep?

Time of day that you sleep?

AZIZI SEIXAS: Well, both are true, meaning the timing of your sleep is important, but it's also important that you do so consistently.

What the studies and other studies have shown is that if you're a morning person, stick with that routine, if you're a night person, stick with that routine.

And you want to get seven to nine hours of sleep daily to get the best health benefits, whether it be physically or in terms of brain health and in cognition.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So we all know that sleep is incredibly important.

So how can people maximize the rest that they're getting?

AZIZI SEIXAS: So how you can maximize your rest is pretty much you want to make sure that your sleep schedule is consistent.

You want to also ensure that you reduce the amount of stress that you get before you go to bed.

You want to reduce also the amount of food that you eat right before bed, and you want to remove all the different blue light from your phones or your mobile devices, because that can significantly impact your quality and the time of sleep that you get.

Most importantly, ensure that your bedroom environment is conducive to good sleep.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So it sounds like I need to stop doom scrolling through my phone right before I go to bed.

AZIZI SEIXAS: I would suggest that you do that certainly.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, Professor Seixas, thank you so much for your time.

We appreciate it.

AZIZI SEIXAS: Thanks for having me.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: 80, years ago, 320 people were killed in a massive explosion at a navy munitions depot in Port Chicago, California.

About two-thirds of the people killed were black sailors who loaded bombs and ammunition onto ships.

50 survivors refused to resume handling the explosives and were convicted of mutiny.

Last month, the Navy Secretary posthumously exonerated the men who became known as the Port Chicago 50.

Ali Rogin has more.

ALI ROGIN: The Port Chicago explosion was World War II's deadliest stateside disaster.

It's also a blistering example of racism, negligence and injustice in America.

Steve Sheinkin wrote about all of it in his young adult book, "The Port Chicago 50: The Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights," and he joins me now.

Steve, thank you so much.

The death toll at Port Chicago represented 1/5 of all African American World War II naval casualties take us back to that day.

What was it like for black sailors at Port Chicago?

STEVE SHEINKIN, Author, "The Port Chicago 50: The Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights": This was a loading a base, a naval base in the Bay Area of San Francisco Bay, and all they did was load ammunition, and it was totally segregated, like all of the Navy was during World War II.

So Black sailors, many of them teenagers, were assigned to this base and loaded ammunition in three shifts, 24 hours a day.

They understood about the racism in the country at the time, of course.

But they also knew that it was unnecessarily dangerous, that they had been given the proper training, and that something horrible was eventually going to happen.

And sure enough, there was this huge explosion, two full ships, thousands of tons of ammunition exploded, killing over 300 people.

ALI ROGIN: And when these men were charged after they refused to return to loading ammunition, they were charged with mutiny, which carries the possibility of execution.

Why did they receive that charge?

STEVE SHEINKIN: Well, it happened over the course of a couple weeks.

First, they were given the gruesome task of cleaning up the base, finding bodies, but mostly parts of bodies.

And they were taken to another base in the Bay Area and not told anything about what they were going to be doing.

And sure enough, a couple weeks later, they were marched down toward the loading dock to begin loading again.

And at first, about 250 of them refused to go.

And they were taken to a prison barge.

Then after three days on the barge, they were taken in a very dramatic scene, taken to a baseball field, and an admiral came out yelling at them and telling them they were all going to be charged with mutiny if they didn't go back to work right away.

Half of them were teenagers.

They had a second or two to decide, do I go back to work?

Do I go back to these conditions that I know are unfair, or do I take a stand?

And understandably, most of them went back 50.

This is where the term Port Chicago 50 came from.

50 of them refused, and they were indeed charged with mutiny and told point blank, told that they were going to be executed by a firing squad.

ALI ROGIN: There was also a court of inquiry into this explosion.

Did this court treat black soldiers differently than it treated the white officers who were overseeing them in these roles?

STEVE SHEINKIN: Yes.

For instance, the white officers got lead after this horrible disaster, and the black sailors did not but also the Navy didn't really know.

To this day we don't know exactly what happened, what went wrong, some sort of accident or malfunction, but it was clearly implied that it was, quote, rough handling by these sailors who had told their officers, hey, we're not being trained.

This is the kind of work that takes years of training.

There's not even a train, even a training manual.

Can you give us better equipment?

And they were always denied that at every turn.

ALI ROGIN: And after the trial, what penalties did these 50 men experience?

STEVE SHEINKIN: These 50 men were all convicted of mutiny.

They were not given the death penalty, though that was legally possible.

They were all sent to a military prison for sentence to 15 years.

They didn't end up serving all of that time, but that was the sentence that they were given.

ALI ROGIN: In 1999, President Clinton pardoned Freddie Meeks.

The family of others said that they weren't interested in pardons.

Why is that?

STEVE SHEINKIN: Several of the of the 50 men were still alive at that time, and they knew what Freddie Meeks was doing, and they supported his effort, but they said, That's not for us.

We're not asking for a pardon.

A pardon is when you did something wrong and you're asking to be forgiven for it or not punished for it.

And they said, No, that's not it at all.

That's almost exactly the opposite of what we're saying.

We're saying it was the government, the country, in a sense, that was wrong.

We want to be exonerated, so that the government admits we didn't do anything wrong.

And in fact, the injustice was on the other side.

ALI ROGIN: The military was desegregated not long after.

How did this incident help lead to that?

STEVE SHEINKIN: I think the most famous part of that story is Truman signing an executive order desegregating the whole military.

But in fact, it was the Navy, to their credit, that desegregated first, largely in response to what happened at Port Chicago and some other, as they would call them, racial incidents, where they said, this just isn't working.

The segregation isn't working.

Let's just try integrating ships, and for the most part, that went well, and so the rest of the military saw that, and essentially gave Truman the OK to sign that executive order.

But it largely came out of this stand that these young black sailors took at Port Chicago.

ALI ROGIN: This is such a sordid and significant chapter in American history.

Why do we not know more about this?

STEVE SHEINKIN: This is the summer of 1944 so you have to account for D-Day and all the things that are happening in Europe and the Pacific.

But also, I think there's a bigger issue, which is that it doesn't fit our American narrative of World War II, which we like to think of as a really simple story in terms of good and evil, in terms of the sides.

And we're not as good at understanding that, yes, that can be true.

We were fighting for good.

We were fighting very evil fascist and communist dictators.

That's absolutely true, and yet we were not, at the same time, living up to our ideals at home.

And these black sailors were, of course, a living embodiment of that.

They were telling everybody who would listen that.

And that doesn't exactly fit, or at least complicates our world war two story, and I think therefore it doesn't make it into the mainstream version of our history.

ALI ROGIN: Steve Sheinkin, author of the "Port Chicago 50: The Disaster, Mutiny and the Fight for Civil Rights."

Thank you so much.

STEVE SHEINKIN: Thank you.

Thank you for covering this important story.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Finally tonight, we leave you with scenes from some of the world's newest protected sites courtesy of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ (voice-over): This vast landscape in the north of Scotland is helping fight climate change by storing more than 400 million tons of carbon in its dense peak.

MILLY REVILL HAYWARD, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds: It's a brilliant, brilliant example of what a blanket bulb can look like, and the type of species that you can find here.

Flow country represents 5 percent of all blanket bulb research in the world.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ (voice-over): Now, it's been designated by UNESCO as one of the best examples of a crucial, yet threatened ecosystem that's helping the planet keep breathing.

Within its 1,500 square miles is a diverse range of wildlife and plants, including mosses that store large quantities of water in their cells.

Another site in China is a stopover for millions of migrating water birds on the Yellow Sea.

WU WEI, Chonming Dongtan National Nature Reserve (through translator): On our right hand side is the boundary of our protected area.

Among the breeding bird species recorded here are the black winged stilt, little ringed plover and the black headed gull.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ (voice-over): The site supports crucial habitats for birds migrating between the Arctic and Southeast Asia and Australasia.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And that's our program for tonight.

I'm Laura Barron Lopez.

For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.

Have a good week.