>> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> lincoln financial-- committed to helping you take charge of your financial future. >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. >> supported by the rockefeller foundation. promoting the well-being of humanity around the world by building resilience and inclusive economies. more at rockefellerfoundation.org >> carnegie corporation of new york. supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security. at carnegie.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions: and individuals. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: convoys of buses carried some 3,000 people out of eastern aleppo in syria today, under a cease-fire arrangement. their evacuation to idlib province effectively marked the end of rebel resistance in that city. in washington, secretary of state john kerry called again for peace talks, as he blasted the syrian government. >> the assad regime is actually carrying out nothing short of a massacre. we have witnessed indiscriminate slaughter, not accidents of war, not collateral damage, but frankly purposeful. >> woodruff: the white house said president obama spoke with turkey's president tayyip recip erdogan by phone and thanked him for brokering the truce. and syria's president bashar al- assad likened the fall of aleppo to the birth of christ or the revelation of the koran. we'll get a report from aleppo later in the program. >> sreenivasan: in the day's other news, president-elect trump checked another box on his cabinet list. he chose congressman ryan zinke for interior secretary. the montana republican is a former navy seal who is finishing his first term in the u.s. house. zinke has pushed for energy independence and voted to expand oil and gas drilling. >> woodruff: a jury in charleston, south carolina, has convicted dylann roof, in the killing of nine black church-goers last year. the white supremacist was found guilty today of federal hate crimes and other counts. in closing arguments, the prosecution called roof a cold, calculated killer, full of hate. the defense admitted his guilt, but focused on trying to prevent a death sentence. >> sreenivasan: bitterly cold air swept down from canada and engulfed the upper midwest today, spreading to the east coast. temperatures were frigid and fell below zero in parts of north dakota, minnesota and wisconsin, where wind chills made it even colder-- 15 to 30 degrees below zero. the arctic blast also brought snow from the great lakes to the northeast, and caused a pileup of about 60 cars in western pennsylvania. >> traffic was stopped. i tried to stop. i got pushed over into another lane, and i stopped and other cars started coming along, truck passed over. he was going about 60, got into the ditch and it just started piling up after that. >> sreenivasan: overnight, light snow from another storm system caused commuter havoc in portland, oregon with multiple crashes and traffic backed up for miles. >> woodruff: the 320,000 residents of corpus christi, texas, are being urged not to drink their tap water until further notice. city officials say it might be contaminated with chemicals from an industrial leak yesterday. the warning has caused a run on bottled water, with long lines at grocery stores across the city. schools are also closed, and it's not clear when the drinking supply will be safe again. >> sreenivasan: an ex-police officer in milwaukee has been charged with "reckless homicide" in a fatal shooting that sparked riots. a criminal complaint released today says the victim was armed, but threw away his gun moments before he was killed. the officer was fired later, over a separate incident. and in pasco, washington; a coroner's jury cleared three state police officers. they shot and killed an unarmed mexican farm worker after he threw rocks at them. >> woodruff: the united states today renewed sanctions against iran for another 10 years. the extension became law automatically when president obama declined to sign or veto the bill. the white house says the president will waive most of the sanctions, but it's warning congress against doing anything else to undo the nuclear deal with iran. >> the president did not veto this bill because it does not undermine the deal. but there has been plenty of rhetoric and plenty of legislative work done on legislation that would blow up the deal. and this is a message that if the united states congress blows up the deal that prevents iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, they will have to deal with the grave consequences that ensue. >> woodruff: iran says the sanctions renewal does violate the nuclear deal, and it vows to respond. >> sreenivasan: investigators in egypt say they've found traces of explosives on victims of an egypt-air crash in may. all 66 people on board died when the flight plunged into the mediterranean sea. search crews were able to recover a variety of wreckage from the sea floor. the plane had been on a flight from paris to cairo. there has been no claim of responsibility for downing the airliner. >> woodruff: back in this country, u.s. labor secretary thomas perez announced he's running for chair of the democratic national committee. he'll take on congressman keith ellison of minnesota. the state party heads in south carolina and new hampshire-- jaime harrison and ray buckley-- are also running. >> sreenivasan: as of today, recreational use of marijuana is officially legal in massachusetts. it's the first state on the eastern seaboard to take that step, and one of eight states nationwide. the ballot measure, passed last month, allows adults to grow and use limited amounts of marijuana at their homes. it will be another year before retail pot shops are allowed to open. >> woodruff: and, wall street rebounded some from yesterday's losses. the dow jones industrial average gained 59 points to close at 19,852. the nasdaq rose 20 points, and the s&p 500 added eight. >> sreenivasan: still to come on the newshour: the trump family's role in the administration and business. the last survivors evacuate in the syrian city of aleppo. evidence of vladimir putin's involvement in the hack leading up to the election, and much more. >> woodruff: today was supposed to be the day president-elect trump held a news conference to spell out what role, if any, he would play in the future of his business empire. he's since postponed that news conference, of course, to january. instead, today, there was a tweet pushing back against all of the talk about potential conflicts of interest. he said: "the media tries so hard to make my move to the white house, as it pertains to my business, so complex when actually it isn't!" but there's also this from one of his top aides-- kellyanne conway. she told msnbc this morning that there was still work to be done. >> getting this right, before you announce it, is what's important. that's what i've been told by the legal experts and the other protocol experts. to make sure that the structure that's put in place shows the complete separation, so that donald trump himself as the president of the united states, steve, can focus 100% on being president of the united states. it's going to take a little bit longer. >> woodruff: meanwhile, there's new pressure today from a group of senate democrats, who unveiled a bill that would require mr. trump to divest from his businesses, and put his assets in a blind trust. here now to unpack those possible conflict of interests are marilyn geewax, senior business editor for npr, and richard painter. he's a professor at the university of minnesota law school and was a white house ethics adviser for president george w. bush. and we welcome both of you to the program. marilyn geewax, let me start with you, what do we know about why this announcement is being postponed? >> we know very little, other than what he tweets but one can speculate. he had said several weeks ago that he would have this press conference today, on the 15th, and on monday, he said, never mind. i'm not really going to do that. so people are speculating that some think he wanted to wait until after the electoral college votes. others say the business is just so complicated that it's going to take more legal work to figure out how to pull him out of it. and others just say that this is just kind of a general smokescreen, that you could say you're going to do this, you stall for two weeks, then he says he's going to do it, but now he's going to stall longer. and by the time he does get to this topic, it will be january, and we'll be focused on the inauguration and it will seem smaller. >> woodruff: richard painter, as we just reported, mr. trump tweeted today, you know, it's not complex. on the other hand, we just heard kellyanne conway, we've heard some of his other advisers say, well, there is more work to be done here to sort it all out. >> well, it isn't that complex to sell businesses, particularly if you have the advice of some of the best lawyers and investment bankers in new york. they buy and sell businesses all the time. he could have a public offering. he could find a private equity firm, sell it to a private equity firm. there are a number of different options. i don't think it's that complex, but it needs to be done correctly. but i wish he would assure us at this point that he is going to sell off his business interests, and in particular, he needs to be in requirement with the constitution, and the emoluments clause of the constitution which prohibits payoffs from foreign governments to united states officials. he simply cannot receive payments from foreign governments. the businesses doing businesses with foreign governments, he can't own them. >> woodruff: marilyn geewax, is there agreement among ethics experts -- and i know professor painter is one of them-- is there agreement about what donald trump needs to do? >> i think there really is broad agreement. i can't think of anybody, really, who would say, "no, it's a great idea to keep owning hotels a couple of blocks from the white house and having people feel pressured to stay at your hotel when-- i mean, it just-- it's pretty much second grade stuff to see that there could be all sorts of conflicts of interest. he's going to be shaping foreign policy, and he has businesses in something like 20 countries. he literally has some position in hundreds of companies over all of these different parts of the world. it would be impossible to separate out when is someone trying to win his favor, curry favor by boosting his business and when aren't they? it's really pretty obvious that you need to have a big, very high wall-- if you're going to build a wall that's the one you want to build-- between your business and your job as president. >> woodruff: well, we don't know what he's going to do for sure, but, richard painter, one of the things he said is hements his sons-- or suggests he wants his sons to take over the business. would that provide a measure of separation? >> no, particularly if he's still going to own the businesses. in order to give them to his son, he'd have to pay the gift tax. i don't think he likes paying taxes. so if he just has his sons manage the businesses, that's not going to solve any of these problems. businesses taking money from the foreign governments he will be in violation of the constitution on january 20 if he owns the businesses. >> woodruff: is there a precedent, richard painter, for a president-- and we know-- we don't typically have billionaires assuming the office of the presidency-- but is there any precedent-- what is the precedent for a-- someone coming into office and figuring out some way to keep his family involved? >> well, we have had family members of the president involved. usually, of course, it's the spouse. and-- but the involvement is informal, and giving advice to the president about how to do his job. but running a business on the side and trying to profit from the presidency, that's what's inappropriate. and i do not not think family members who are both attending official meetings and on the other hand running a business. >> woodruff: and this week, marilyn geewax, we've seen the children just yesterday in that meeting with technology executives, both of his sons were there, his daughter, ivanka, her husband, jared kushner. mr. trump has talked about bringing ivanka and jarp ed kushner into the administration. what's the precedent there? i mean, everybody refers back to john kennedy and his brother bobby as attorney general. but that was back in the 1960s. >> right. and there are rules that are supposed-- ethics that have grown up in the post-watergate era, since 1978, where you really were trying to address these kinds of problemes of nepotism and conflicts of interest where congress did spell it out. it's pretty clear what the will of the founding fathers was. they didn't want you to take money foreign governments and they didn't want people to have conflicts of interest. when you're the president, you should be focused on doing only what is right for all americans, not for your family business. but what we've seen this week is really an aggressive push-back to that. rather than have this press conference and talk about solving conflicts of interest, he had a meeting with a bunch of tech executives. >> woodruff: right. >> there were 25 people at the table and four of them were trumps. i mean, that's pretty aggressive on his part. >> woodruff: that's right, and his daughter, ivanka's husband. richrd painter, if there is some arrangement say where ivanka trump was involved-- obviously not the first lady. that would be mrs. trump. but if she is there in a semiofficial role as daughter of the president. if jared kushner is involved, as has been suggested, maybe advising on national security, the middle east, and they're not paid, could an agreement like that work? >> well, i think you probably have to work out with congress because the antinepotism statute, which came in after the bobby kennedy appointment, is quite clear about not allowing someone to appoint relatives to positions in the government. expwroang the fact that it's not a paid position would-- would affect that. and i think that that he could work something out with congress, maybe to-- if he wants to maybe disclose his tax returns and do some of the other things that we care about, i would not have an objection to jared kushner. i mean-- or other family members being given a position. they're veriented people, and in some ways i think more talented than some of the people he has brought in. you have to work it out with congress. the statute is quite clear on nepotism. >> woodruff: and yeltsin the first lady, marilyn geewax, typically does play some role. the modern first lady takes on a clause. with hillary clinton, it was health reform. >> but think about the roles they took on. in mrs. clinton's case, he was pushing a health care agenda. with mrs. obama, it was about children and obesity and nutrition. but what if, you know, if mrs. obama had come out with a new line of jewelry and she started selling obama-wear, and was holding up her new bracelets, that would have seemed peculiar. i mean, i think people would have been very shocked to see, you know, a little obama fragrance or-- you know-- >> woodruff: but we dont know that it's going to happen. >> it didn't happen while they were in office. but we do know the trumps plan to continue-- it appears-- to sell all sorts of products. >> woodruff: we will see. marilyn geewax, richard painter, thank you both. >> thank you very much. >> sreenivasan: the brutal fight for aleppo seems to now be over. evacuations of civilians and fighters from the rebel-held east began today, as the pitched four-year battle ends. dan rivers of independent television news is there. >> reporter: after so many false dawns, the siege of aleppo is over. but even this morning, president assad's artillery couldn't resist one last go at killing those still trapped. inside the rebel enclave, those he targeted for four and a half years prepared to leave. and these pictures show that while fighters were among them, most appeared to be civilians. they included women, children, the injured and the vulnerable, all caught up in the catastrophe of this conflict. the scale of the destruction they were leaving was laid bare. as was the enmity with which they regard those who've besieged them. >> ( translated ): it's true we're leaving aleppo. but once we grow up, we're going to come back and liberate aleppo, god willing we're going to come back and liberate aleppo. me and all of my brothers. all of us. >> reporter: outside the regime buses were lined up and ready. a solitary vehicle carrying a red crescent flag emerged from rebel lines. terms agreed. it was time to end the suffering. the buses threaded their way through the debris to start the evacuation. the call to prayer cut through the silence as a tense city held its breath and hoped for peace. then, the first sign. flashing lights, a convoy of ambulances and buses emerging onto aleppo's ring road. the occupants of the buses came almost face to face with the men who'd sought to kill them. but they were allowed to leave unhindered. and it didn't take long for president assad's supporters to start their celebrations. >> i feel very happy. i feel that this victory will continue to all syria. >> reporter: but after so much bloodshed, this shouldn't have been a day of celebration. jooerks we're joined by satellite connection so please exciewz the interference on the line. you were there the last month. tell me the main differences between then and now, especially among members supportist of the regime. >> when we were here a month ago, this war was waging outside the window i'm standing in front of. but in the intervening time, they have lost, day after day, chunks. districts have fallen week after week, till they have just been reduced to about one square mile. and the devastation across the city is absolutely jaw-dropping. to see today, finally, the battle coming to an end, seeing a piece of history and a watershed in this conflict. we didn't manage to speak personally to anyone hocame out because we were prevented from doing so. we've spoken to people in refugee camps. many of them were terrified coming over into government-controlled aleppo. >> sreenivasan: we've seen pictures of the destruction over the last few weeks. what's left of the city? what have assad and his allies actually won? >> reporter: they've won a shell of eye city in the east. the destruction is epic. that's the only word i can use to describe it. we were taken to the old city the other day, and just the loss of heritage, of this, a city that claims to be one of the oldest in the world. i can only liken it, i guess, to something you would see in maybe the second world war. people have talked about it being syria's stalingrad. >> sreenivasan: dan rivers of independent television news joining us tonight from aleppo, syria, thanks so much. >> woodruff: stay with us, coming up on the newshour, what happens when bookies bet on the wrong presidential candidate. facebook's plan to combat fake news. and using business to combat global poverty. >> sreenivasan: but first, donald trump took to twitter this morning to attack the obama administration's handling of russia's alleged hacking during the election. he wrote: "if russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the white house wait so long to act? why did they only complain after hillary lost?" in fact, the u.s. intelligence community said in early october that it was confident russia directed the hacks of the d.n.c. today, senate minority leader harry reid said russian president vladimir putin was personally involved in efforts to disrupt the election and help donald trump win. we look at putin's role now with angela stent. she served in the state department during the clinton administration. she's now a professor at georgetown university. does it make sense that vladimir putin would have a role? >> i think we have to go back to 2011. in the fall of 2011, there were mass demonstrations in moscow, protesting falsified elections and protesting vladimir putin's announcement that he was coming back to the kremlin. he directly accused hillary clinton at that point of paying the demonstrators to go on to the streets in moscow. so he apparently, and his colleague in addition the kremlin, believe there was u.s. interference in 2011 in the election, and, therefore, it's fair game to interfere in the u.s. election because that's, you know, what big countries do. >> sreenivasan: can something like this-- it's a big government, like all governments are-- can something like this happen without his knowledge or approval? >> i think he must have known on some level that this was happening. i mean, hackers couldn't just have done this freelance without at least having a sense that this was permitted. whether he personally directed it, i think that's much more difficult to say. i haven't seen the evidence. none of us have. we have had contradictory statements from our own officials. so i think we'd have to know more about the personal direction. but, clearly, there was an environment that encouraged this to happen. >> sreenivasan: what about the assessment by the intelligence community that this was an effort to help trump win? was it, as you said, perhaps revenge against hillary clinton, or was it that other element, too, to actually help donald trump? >> well, clearly on the campaign trail, donald trump consistently praised vladimir putin. it was only world leader that he consistently praise. he said we need to do a deal with russia. we vanity have such bad relations with russia. whereas hillary clinton took a pretty tough line, as she has since leaving secretary of state. so i think it's credible to believe the russians wanted donald trump to win. i'm not sure they expected thoim win, but i think they saw an opportunity there, also, really, to help muddy the waters here and to have americans questioning what was really going on. >> sreenivasan: what could the u.s. do in response? >> it's very difficult to respond in kind. i mean, we may be retaliating in ways we tonight know. it would be very hard to prosecute the hackers themselves. and to do what they dwhich is to then hack into people's e-mails, and then release information that might help another candidate in an election. i mean, vladimir putin is going to run for president in 2018, but it's not going to be a competitive election. so we can't-- we couldn't respond in kind anyway. and so i think, you know, that-- there's the possibility of sanctions. that's talked about in the congress. i'm not sure that that would do any good. and i don't think a trump administration would want those sanctions. so i actually think one of the things that we should do, once the next administration is in office, is to try and work out with the prussianing, as we have the chinese arct least some ceend of a cyber agreement, some rules of the game, which-- which we don't have now with the russians. i'm not saying this would prevent this from happening again but i think we need to at least try and work on out rules of the game with them. >> sreenivasan: i was going to say, do these kind of agreements hold? >> well, with the chinese, there are different views on this. i mean, some aspect of it, apparently, have worked. others haven't. it's really the best one can do because we're in a very shadowy world there. i mean, it's very hard to know exactly who did the hacking and then, you know, who directed them. as i said, it's very difficult to prosecute. >> sreenivasan: perfect the administration leaves-- i mean that's a very small window of time. if president obama, with his existing authority, wanted to launch any sort of counter-offensive. i mean, what's that conversation like on january 20-- "by the way, here's this operation i've giewn. here are the keys." >> i mean, that's possible, but, again, we have an incoming administration that has vowed to improve relations with russia, and it's very-- one wonders whether they would really continue with it. plus pea have a president-elect who questioned what our intelligence services have said about this. so i think it would be very difficult to do it even if we started something now. and i think, obviously, that's what the russians have been figuring would happen, too. >> sreenivasan: all right, angela stent, thanks so much. >> woodruff: next monday, the electoral college meets to finalize the election of donald trump as president. his victory was a shock to many. pollsters are asking if they need to rethink their methods for surveying the public. betting markets had been a good predictor, but this year was different for them as well. our economics correspondent, paul solman, explores what happened, part of his weekly series, "making sense." >> reporter: the race is over. the longshot won. and yet pundits, pollsters and punters in the prediction markets had all been so sure. >> a lot of people have no idea that trump is headed for historic defeat. >> most analysts are saying hillary clinton is going to win in a landslide. >> the odds are overwhelming of a hillary clinton victory on >> reporter: sam wang of the princeton election consortium became famous for his forecasting acumen in the 2012 election. now, prophets like wang are eating crow, or worse. >> dr. wang, you tweeted recently that you were so sure of the result, you'd eat a bug if donald trump pulled this thing out. >> see this? here it goes. >> reporter: on the prediction markets, they actually bet money on the outcome. one of the largest, paddy power, an irish bookie, paid out a million dollars to people who bet on clinton 20 days before the election. that was just after, skyped paddy power's owner, whose real name is "paddy power," the access hollywood tape surfaced. >> the one where he was grabbing certain parts of women's anatomy. or boasting about that. and, and then we just thought that has to be it. we took an absolute conkers on it to be fair. we were left with our pants around our ankles at the end of it. >> reporter: an absolute conkers, pants around the ankles. on the other hand: a jackpot of p.r. in the u.s., we have two betting markets, only legal because they provide results for academic research and limit bets to modest amounts. as late as election night, at the office party of one of them, predictit in washington, d.c., the consensus among traders: clinton at 80%. >> everything's invested in clinton winning tonight. >> reporter: among america's academic prognosticators, however, there were dissenters. >> this is the website that i put all the results on. >> reporter: economist ray fair first forecast the democrats would lose in november... of 2014! >> the prediction i made two years ago was that the republicans had a huge head start and were favored by quite a bit. >> reporter: his model is based on past history, period. >> so there's no polls, there's no surveys, this is all just fundamental economic events that you're talking about. >> reporter: fundamental events, and to an economist, there's nothing more fundamental than the rate of economic growth. >> a good economy helps the incumbent party, a bad economy doesn't. what the opposition party should do if the economy is poor is to keep hammering the economy. >> reporter: fair's model considers just a few factors: if an incumbent, is up for re- election, voters tend to give the president a second term. after eight years, voters tend to be itching for a change. but most important: the state of the economy in the four years before an election. >> in the 15 quarters of the second obama administration, only two quarters had strong growth, growth bigger than 4% at an annual rate. that's very low historically and the growth rate of this year, which counts a lot for the equation, was only 1.7% at an annual rate in the first three quarters of this year. >> reporter: by the end, fair's model predicted that the democrat would get only 44% of the two-party vote. since clinton beat trump by 2%, and wound up with 51% of the two-party total, he thinks clinton actually did much better than she should have, given the economy, and his model, much worse. >> had the republicans nominated some mainstream person, they probably would have done much better than they did. >> reporter: but fair did get the winner right, unlike so many of the pros. why did the prediction markets do so badly? >> i think they overestimated the polls and underestimated the fundamentals about the economy. >> reporter: so pretty humbling for those of us who follow the prediction markets, no? >> it was a humbling for a lot of us in a lot of different ways, yeah. >> reporter: economist justin wolfers studies the prediction markets, and swears by them. neither the polls nor the markets were really so far off, he told me by skype from michigan. >> remember the chicago cubs were two games behind in the world series and betting markets said that there was only a 30% to win the world series? as history now records it, they went on and won the world series. well, betting markets pretty much said the same thing about donald trump. so we were surprised, but we should have been no more surprised than we were when the cubs won the world series. >> reporter: the "new york times" upshot was another prediction site on which many relied. it expressed clinton's odds of losing in terms of an nfl kicker missing an easy field goal. when i first began to think that donald trump had a real chance was when the new york times upshot made that field goal analogy, and my favorite kicker missed field goals from a shorter distance than the odds were of donald trump winning. >> one of the things that we learn here, and th is a lesson for both the media and for social scientists, is how difficult it is to communicate clearly about probabilities. >> reporter: david rothschild tends the website predictwise, which tracks the prediction markets and makes forecasts of its own, as on election night. >> right now we have the presidency at about 89% for hillary clinton. >> reporter: so every day i went to your site and i was certain that donald trump was going to lose and i told everybody who asked me, you misled me. >> look, the website predictwise had a bunch of different data up there and it was important to take the best available historical data-based approach and that really is the prediction market data and that's what we led with the top line numbers for, because that is what we know has worked historically. >> reporter: but rothschild also had a model based on the economic fundamentals. >> it showed the republican candidate getting 282 electoral votes for a narrow electoral college victory. i'm not going to sit here and tell you i was right because i like everyone else who looked at the idiosyncratic information coming out from the election and said look, "this is a year in which the fundamentals were going to be off." >> and that's why i didn't want to talk to people like you. >> reporter: one last time, professor fair: >> because it was kind of embarrassing to come in and say trump looks like he's going to win and this and that when i... that's what the equation said. >> reporter: were you surprised by the outcome? >> yes. >> reporter: despite your model. >> reporter: so you didn't have the courage of your own conviction. >> i didn't have the courage of the equation's prediction, okay? >> reporter: and so even professor fair didn't heed the simple punchline of his model, of this story, and perhaps of this election. >> "it's the economy, stupid," would be the very simple answer to that. >> reporter: oh by the way, the prediction markets like paddy power are now giving odds on donald trump's re-election. >> four to one odds to be returned next time so that means he's got like a 20% chance of retaining the presidency next time around. when obama was elected for the first time, it would have been more like a 50% chance of him getting reelected. so we're still underestimating the man. >> reporter: unless, i suppose, the economy tanks in the interim. in new york, for the pbs newshour, this is economics correspondent paul solman, who lost $200 to the producer of this story, it went to charity, and a bottle of very good sherry i still owe someone by following the prediction markets. >> sreenivasan: it was a stunning finding, even in a digital age where stories of all kind go viral. during the last three months of the presidential campaign, fake, or false, news headlines actually generated more engagement on facebook than true ones. facebook and other social media platforms were criticized for not doing enough to flag or dispute these posts. today, facebook launched several new tools to flag and dispute what it calls the "worst of the worst" when it comes to clear lies. those tools are essentially embedded in your individual feed here's a bit of a video the company posted about how it will work. >> you may see an alert before you share some links that have been disputed by third-party fact checkers. you can then cancel or continue with the post. if you suspect a news story is fake, you can report it. it just takes a few taps. your report helps us track and prevent fake news from spreading. >> sreenivasan: let's learn more about this effort to detect and slow the spread of fake news, part of our occasional series on the subject. will oremus has been writing about this extensively for slate and working on that site's own new tool for identifying false stories. first, let's talk a little bit about what facebook announce today. how is it going to work? >> so facebook's approach to fake news has several components. one thing it's going to try to do is make it easier for users to report it when they see fake news in their feeds. the next thing they're going to do is they're going to take that information about stories that are being reported as fake, and they're going to use some soft wear, run some algorithms and create a disaive board of stories that might be fake and give access to that dashboard to third-party checking organizations like ?oap snops. they will have their human editors evaluate some of the moat viral of the stories, and if they determine it is in fact a fake news story, facebook is going to treat it differently. it's going to show it to fewer people in its feeds. it's going to make it go less viral and it is also going to give people a warning before they try to hair that story, saying this story has been disputed. it will still let you share it. it is not censoring anything. but it is letting people know this has been disputed. >> sreenivasan: so facebook is not the arbiter of the truth. there are third parties checking this for them. >> and facebook has been incredibly reluctant to become the arbiter of what's true for good reason. facebook, the value of its business, depends on appealing to people on both sides, all across the political spectrum. so it doesn't want to be a media company. it has said this many times. what it is doing here is shrewd, i think. it is delegating the responsibility to respected, third-party, nonprofit organizations to figure out what's true and what's not. >> sreenivasan: you have been covering this for a while. you want to draw a distinction between what is fake newt newsand what are outright lies and conspiracys. there is a distinction. >> yeah, the term "fake news" is relatively news. a few years ago if somebody said, "fake news," you wouldn't know necessarily what they are talking about, maybe they were talking about "the onion "or "the daily show." it is because of the riseave particular type of thing, which say story that is basically made up. it was very popular during the election season for people to-- for hoaxsters to make up stories that played to people's political biases. so something like, you know, hillary clinton is about to be arrested by the new york police department for email crimes. they would just make that up. they would publish it. and it would get shared widely on facebook. since then the term has become applied-- it has become a political football. you hear people on the right calling the "new york times" fake news, people on the left saying breitbart is fake news. but originally it was actual hoaxes made up out of whole cloth. >> sreenivasan: people have been trying to fix the fake news problem. there was a recent hackathon, and some princeton students came up with what they thought was a fix. your folking at slate worked on a tool and you launched this, not coincidence of coincidentally, on monday. let's take a look at how this works. if i come across a fake news story in my feed, and there's this big red banner saying, "this news story is fake. here's how we know. share the proof." this is the tool. >> what we wanted to do was not just flag stories as fake when they appear in your facebook feed. we actually wanted to give users the power to do something about it. it's so frustrating, right? you try to be a good consumer of the media, you try to evaluate what's true and what's credible but you see friends and relatives shawrg this stuff. so what we do is we actually provide a link to a reputable debunking of that particular story that will appear automatically. and then we prompt you to share that link with the person who posted the fake news so that they and all of their followers can see that that story is fake or they can go to the debunking site and judge of the evidence for themselveses. >> sreenivasan: there's a tool you can actually add to your browser. it's kind of an extension, a chrome extension and a button that works there. we can look at other examples of stories as well. who is the arbiter of truth in your system? who decided that this story was false, even though it looks just like an abc news site. >> yeah, i mean, that's a good question, and this is really the trickiest question on this whole thing. this will be an issue for facebook, too. if one of these fact check organizations says this story has some parts that are true, some parts that are false. is that a fake news story? i think what we've done and in fact it seems what facebook has done as well is to set a really high bar for what counts as fake. it's not a story that might be misleading. it's a story intentionally designed to mislead people and it's a hoax, basically. so we have human editors who are going to be reviewing the posts that are flagged by our users as potentially fake and they're going to be looking for, again, a reputable third-party site that has used evidence to debunk that. we're noting if to be doing the debunking ourselveses. >> sreenivasan: can technology solve this problem? there is a recent pew study saying 14% of people out there shared a fake news story, even after they knew it was fake. >> no, technology can't solve the whole problem. i think technology can be a part of the solution. and that's because it's not just a technological problem or just a human problem. and there are human issues at work here in why fake news is shared. there's confirmation bias. there's the desire for something to be true. i mean, you want something to be true. what's your incentive to go and check it out. but there is also a technological component, which is that facebook in particular has had this leveling effect on the media where a story from abc news.com, which is a big, reputable news site, looks just the same in your facebook feed as a story from abc news.com.co, a site designed to trick people. fab has created the conditions for this fake news to thrive. and that's why i think technology, whether it's facebook or a tool like ours, technology can be part of the solution. >> sreenivasan: il from slate, thanks so much. >> thanks for having me. >> woodruff: with recreational marijuana now legal in eight states, a serious health and safety question about the potency of the psychoactive drug in cannabis, known as t.h.c., is emerging. in colorado, some marijuana products contain 90% pure t.h.c., with little research documenting the physical and mental effects on consumers. this week, the state's health department announced more than two million dollars in grants to study the impacts of marijuana use, including highly potent extracts, on driving and cognitive functioning. as john ferrugia of rocky mountain pbs in denver reports, for some, the results of consumer use may have already been deadly. >> reporter: in december, 2015, marc bullard felt on top of the world. he had landed a good job in denver after graduating magna cum laude from southern methodist university earlier in the year. he made video diaries to keep family and friends updated on his life, looking forward to the new year. >> it is time to start planning projects. >> reporter: but just four months later, in april, 2016, marc bullard took his own life. marc's written diary shows severe depression seems to have taken a quick hold on him. >> you know december he's fine, he comes home for the christmas holiday. >> reporter: mike and ginny bullard say he spent time with family and friends and showed no sign of being down. >> and what we saw in the in the diary later was by january the 16th, i guess he's talking about suicide. >> reporter: it was only after his death that his parents began reading his written diaries. when did you first see the first entry about dabbing? >> that was in the-- march the fifth. and that's where he talks about you know. i think i've been dabbing too much or... i mean... >> reporter: dabbing... it's a way to smoke a potent form of highly concentrated t.h.c., the psycho-active ingredient in marijuana. it's known as wax, shatter, honey. it gives the rush of an instant high. and in colorado, where recreational marijuana is legal, there are no limits on t.h.c. concentration levels in a dab. dabbing was becoming part of the subculture looking for an ever increasing t.h.c. high. >> yes, we heard that marijuana was legal but we're thinking about people smoking cigarettes. this is a very potent marijuana concentrate. and some people have told us that the t.h.c. levels are 80- 90%. we had no idea that this was something that was legal in colorado. >> reporter: not only is high potency t.h.c. legal in colorado, there has been an ever increasing effort to extract t.h.c. in its purest form. >> the sophistication in labs like this is so high, that we can achieve near perfect purity. 98%, 99%, t.h.c. or c.b.d. or any cannabinoid that we're isolating and extracting to the crystalline form. >> reporter: ralph morgan is the c.e.o. of organa labs, a company that extracts t.h.c. from marijuana for use in a smoking device. his solution used by consumers is almost 90% pure t.h.c. >> the industry is chasing purity for the benefits of that. those benefits are a product that's repeatable, that's safe, and has an effect that's consistent. with purity comes potency. >> reporter: while morgan and others in the industry provide an ever purer product, and high potency. it is not their job to worry about how much consumers use, or how they use it. nor is it their responsibility under colorado law. even so, the industry knows that adverse reactions are bad for business. >> cannabis is very safe but it's not foolproof. and no one is going to defend not exercising moderation. and anything in life can fog your judgment or can be detrimental if it's not done in moderation. >> reporter: ginny and mike point to marc bullard's own words in his diary indicating that he was suffering from a dabbing addiction. >> "i found out i was dabbing too much which i already knew and had cut back in february, but apparently if you overdo it. you can get almost like poison and experience some negative effects." >> a lot of people say, oh, >> reporter: people have said well you know you can't get addicted to marijuana. >> oh, you can. oh, definitely, you can. >> in the netherlands marijuana consumption was allowed lofner than colorado. >> it's because marijuana stimulates dopamine nart of our brain that we call the reward center. >> reporter: in the case of 23- year-old marc bullard, his death certificate lists a contributing factor to "use of concentrated marijuana products". and the autopsy report showed high levels of active t.h.c. in his body. but even marc's parent's realize there is no way to know if it was thc that caused his slide into despair. >> low doses of t.h.c., we know what happens. these super high concentrations of t.h.c., we don't know what happens because we have not been studying it. and when they smoke that they're getting in the 600 to 800 milligrams of t.h.c. >> reporter: that's compared to a limit of 10 milligrams in each serving of an edible in colorado, or maybe 25 milligrams of t.h.c. in a typical marijuana cigarette. but it isn't just mental health that is of concern. brandon cullip was 17, had only had his driving permit for a week, and his friends in the car told him he was too high to drive, but that didn't stop him. cullip pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide, and reckless driving in the death of 16-year old chad britton. cullip is serving a two-year sentence in youth corrections. police say cullip had been dabbing high concentrate t.h.c. before getting behind the wheel. chad britton is one of 36 people who died in 2014 in automobile accidents that the colorado department of transportation attributed to fatalities where t.h.c. was the only substance inhibiting the driver. 2014 is the year marijuana was legalized for recreational use. that is compared to 107 people who died that year in alcohol- only crashes. the percentage of marijuana-only fatalities is small but has been edging up since 2013. >> dabbing has become very popular very quickly and nobody has been able to look at dabbers and publish any results because it's just it's too new. quickly, without any kind of understanding how much is actually getting into the brain and what are the effects of a typical user. >> the credible research that exists was all done on t.h.c. potency. that's very low compared to what we see being made available through products today. >> reporter: dr. larry wolk is director of the colorado department of public health and environment. his agency is tasked with ensuring marijuana products are safe for consumption. wolk says the many delivery systems of high-potency cannabis products complicate its study. >> you can eat it, you can dab it, you can do whatever. and we don't know what all of those different forms do with regard to absorption and the effect it has on people's health. >> we didn't know about the concentrated marijuana products and the different levels of the t.h.c. everybody thinks it's innocent because it makes you feel mellow and not a danger to them. >> after reading through these and seeing the significant changes in his patterns, this is the only thing that we feel that it points to, dabbing. >> reporter: but clearly voters here, and other states, have decided the perceived benefits of marijuana outweigh the unknowns. in southern colorado, a center of production and sale of cannabis, voters rejected a measure that would have shut down operations. the message: legal marijuana is here to stay in colorado.. and across the country. the only question now is regulation. for the pbs news hour, i'm john ferrugia in denver. >> sreenivasan: now to another in our "brief but spectacular" series, where we hear from interesting people about their passions. tonight, entrepreneur jacqueline novogratz, founder and c.e.o. of acumen, a non-profit venture capital fund, talks about using the tools of business to address global poverty. >> when i was six years old, my first grade nun beat it into my head to whom much is given much is expected so i always wanted to change the world. i moved to rwanda to help start the first micro finance bank and soon thraefort realized most people don't want saving. most people want choice and opportunity, which is another way of saying dignity. in a funny way, i became an accidental banker and ended up in latin america during the financial debt crisis of the early 1980s. and there i saw they loved the tools of business. the problem was that low-income people who were so industrious had no access to the bank and that's why i went into international development and saw on the other side there was a great humanitarian ethos, but it lacked the efficiency, the effectiveness of the markets. the we often say the market is the best listening device that we have. so if i give you a gift, you're unlikely to tell me what you don't like about it. but if i try to sell you a solar light, you're going to tell me exactly what you think. we created an organization with this idea that you could change the way the world tackled poverty by using something we call "patient capital." we took philanthropy and rather than give it away, we would invest it in intrepid entrepreneurs that were going where both markets and government aid had failed the poor, basic services like health care, education, agriculture, energy, workforce development. what aurps and otherring we've invested in have in common is what we call moral imagination. moral imagination starts with putting yourself in another person's shoes and seeing the world through their perspective. but it's more than empathy. it's the ability to envision a world and build institutions in which all people matter. so often we look at poverty in terms of how much a person makes, rather than understand their contribution as a-- as a human being. when we see companies enable people to have access to clean drinking water or agricultural inputs that enable them to make a little more income, one of the first things they do is turn around and help somebody else. it's seeing that there is no one above you or below you. and really that's the world that we need on see right now when we are so dweede divided, and yet o much opportunity to become united. my name is jacqueline novogratz. and this is my brief but spectacular take on dignity and the moral imagination. >> sreenivasan: you can find additional "brief but spectacular >> sreenivasan: you can find additional brief but spectacular episodes on our website. pbs.org/newshour/brief. >> woodruff: online right now, our politics team talk with the newshour's p.j. tobia about the racist ideology of the white nationalist movement in our weekly edition of politics live on facebook. that's at facebook.com/newshour. also, why are nations all over the world urgently pulling their bank notes out of circulation? read about the emerging trend that's changing the face of money on our making sense page. that and more is on our web site, pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. >> sreenivasan: and i'm hari sreenivasan. join us online, and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and ramesh ponnuru. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> lincoln financial-- committed to helping you take charge of your financial future. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> announcer: this is "nightly business report," with tyler mathisen and sue herera. funded in part by hss. our value principles are patient first. and we want to deliver the highest quality care. >> the goal of creating and sustaining value is all about putting the patient at the center of the equation. >> the purpose of this organization is to help people get back to what they need and love to do. falling short. stocks gained ground but the dow fails to hit the 20,000 mark again. last in line. think the rates you get on savings may go up as the fed

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