Tonight on PBS News Weekend five years after the murder of George Floyd his family tells us their fight for racial justice and police reform goes on Then tensions in the South China Sea mount as Chinese coast guard ships clash with Philippine vessels in disputed waters And 50 years after the blockbuster movie Jaws an endurance swimmer navigates the waters around the island where it was filmed to change perceptions about sharks For the past 50 years it's all been about fear and about the danger of sharks They want to try to change the narrative for a new generation and say sharks actually bring life They sustain life They make oceans healthy Major funding for PBS News Weekend has been provided by In 1995 two friends set out to make wireless coverage accessible to all with no long-term contracts nationwide coverage and 100% US-based customer support Consumer Cellular Freedom Calls the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions and friends of the NewsHour for this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you Thank you Good evening I'm John Yang It was five years ago today that George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police Cell phone video of the event captured by a young witness sent shock waves around the world and triggered an American reckoning with racial justice and police use of force Today vigils were held in cities across America to mark the day In Minneapolis at the intersection where Floyd died crowds placed flowers on his memorial But despite the protests and the focus on race and racial inequality that followed Floyd's death a recent Pew Research poll found that 72% of Americans surveyed said it did not lead to changes that improved black people's lives Earlier I spoke with Selwin Jones who's George Floyd's uncle He's co-founder of the Justice 929 Foundation a nonprofit that promotes civil rights and systemic change Our conversation is part of our ongoing series Race Matters I imagine this time of year has got to be difficult for you and your family What are you thinking about what do you think about when this anniversary comes rolling around the impact that it made upon the world CO came CO had everybody where we needed to have them That's indoors looking at television needing to be informed And boy didn't they get informed about a lot of things they got informed about racism hatred police brutality systemic racism power control That all came out that day You know afterward there was a sort of a flurry of changes Police departments were banning choke holds They were requiring body cams requiring training on deescalating confrontations and yet killings by police officers have gone up since then What do you make of that i think the mental health that goes along with being a police officer has to be stressful So we need more patience You know obviously we need more mental health evaluations but we literally need something to flip the script because you're right there's been more people deceased 5 years after than 5 years before George All I know is this is we have to continue this fight this push You know just a few days ago the Justice Department said that they were going to stop monitoring the Minneapolis Police Department and other departments around the country that have been accused of violating civil rights What's your reaction to that for them to uh say that they're going to deactivate uh their their efforts as part of the course We've been fighting systemic racism police brutality for a plethora of years and the fight is real It still continues And why anyone of power would make that decision because what good comes from exonerating killers Talk about the work you've done in the years since then uh to try to make good to try to do good I know you've got a foundation Tell me about your efforts You know I've got a foundation that we created Justice 929 and we want to work on homelessness We want to work on mental health issues We want to work on domestic violence police brutality obviously social justice wrongfully convicted There will not be enough change to me until all of the killings all of the ignorance and all of the unrest is settled And wow that's a whole lot to offer It is a whole lot to offer and a lot to work on What do you th hope is your nephew's legacy what do you want his legacy to be i don't know if it's a legacy but what I know is that death that was caused by Derek Chave on May the 25th of 2020 has changed the dynamics of how the world has been ran since that date and it's changed policing So let's hopefully we can keep momentum keep pushing keep fighting and you will continuously hear his name from me Sen Jones thank you very much Thank you my mayor In tonight's other news Poland scrambled its air defenses as Russia conducted an aerial assault on neighboring Ukraine Poland a NATO member said it took the necessary precautions to keep its airspace safe It happened as Russia bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and missiles At least 12 people were killed across the country including three children The US envoy to Ukraine says the attack on Keev violates the Geneva peace protocols for protecting civilians Hours later and even as battles continued Russia and Ukraine traded more than 300 prisoners It was the third exchange of the weekend Altogether a total of 1,000 soldiers and civilians returned to their home countries In Gaza Israel's aerial assault continues Health officials said at least 23 people were killed today across the Gaza Strip including Kanunas to the south and Jabalia in the north Israel says it seeks to destroy Hamas and tries to avoid civilian areas But at a rally calling for a ceasefire last night former hostage Nama Levy said that while she was in captivity she feared Israeli air strikes What frightened me most were the bombings First you hear the whistling praying it won't fall on us then the explosions Sounds so intense they paralyze your body and the earth shaking Each time I was certain it was my end In one bombing part of the house I was in collapsed Fortunately the wall I was leaning against didn't crumble and that's what saved my life As Israel's military operation continues so does the humanitarian crisis Desperate Palestinians raided an aid truck that crossed into Gaza City today Dozens of people jumped onto the truck and tried to grab boxes of food The UN World Food Program estimates that more than 2 million people are facing extreme levels of hunger Billionaire Elon Musk may be easing out of his role heading up efforts to slash government spending for President Trump In a post today on X the social media platform he owns Musk wrote that he's back to spending 24/7 at work sleeping in conference rooms He said he needs to be super focused on X and car maker Tesla In February the president designated Musk a special government employee And on this Memorial Day weekend preparations are underway to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice for this country Members of the Third Infantry Regiment known as the Old Guard have been gathering at Arlington National Cemetery to greet visiting Gold Star families One by one soldiers placed flags at the base of each of the 260,000 headstones It's a tradition that dates back to 1948 Still to come on PBS News Weekend tensions rise as Chinese and Philippine vessels clash in the South China Sea And an endurance swimmer tries to change perceptions about sharks in the waters off Marthur's Vineyard where the movie Jaws was shot This is PBS News Weekend from the David M Rubenstein studio at Weta in Washington home of the PBS NewsHour week nights on PBS The EPA has reportedly drafted a plan to eliminate all limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants That's according to documents recently obtained by the New York Times The power industry is one of the top sources of US greenhouse gas emissions which scientists have said for decades help drive climate change Now with the rise of AI technology demand on power plants is increasing in large part to AI's reliance on data centers Alli Rogan spoke with Kenza Brian climate reporter for the Financial Times Thanks for joining us How would you describe the environmental impact of these data centers that are at the heart of AI their environmental impact is huge and it's growing AI data centers are massively contributing to the continued rise in power demand which itself contributes to the continued rise in global emissions And most importantly it's growing faster than grid capacities And even more importantly it's growing faster than renewable energy growth Which means that even as data center energy use grows clean energy from wind solar nuclear perhaps is lagging behind And what have you learned about the public health implications of the capacity that's needed to power these AI systems some of the public health implications are very local but really the effects are more global than local So pushing up demand for fossil fuels means more CO2 is emitted which helps global temperatures creep up which can have local effects through extreme weather events for example What sort of uh regulatory environment is there for these uh facilities for the moment there's very little regulatory scrutiny of data center energy use And one of the only governments in the world that has started to take this seriously is Ireland and its own energy regulators because they realize that some of the big tech companies that operate in Ireland including some of the big US ones like Amazon are starting to put immense constraints on its grid which means it's difficult for local industry for local houses to get the power they need So they have proposed that when a new data center is built it brings as much additional capacity to the grid as it takes away But until those grid capacity constraints start to be felt more concretely in the US for example I think it's unlikely we're going to see um specific regulations saying data centers have to bring more energy to the grid or have to bring more clean energy to the grid particularly given that Trump wants to make the US an AI superpower It wouldn't make sense at the moment to constrain that growth And in the midst of that growth these companies that are that have these AI products and services they are acknowledging the environmental impact it seems and they're and they're talking about what they're doing What are they telling you about the steps that they're taking to mitigate um all of the impacts they're having companies like Amazon Meta Alphabet Google's parent company they all claim accurately to be some of the world's largest buyers of clean energy now So they make huge investments in wind solar power increasingly nuclear energy The problem with that is those investments aren't always very local So they might be investing in solar energy in Texas while they're consuming that energy somewhere else in a different US state And critics of these big tech companies would say their promises don't always match up with the problems that local grids face and local people face And what have you learned about the debate over the merits of increasing use of AI in everyday life uh against the drawbacks that uh we've just discussed in terms of the impact on the environment and public health the AI boom has taken off at a awkward time for the fight against climate change Um because global temperatures are already rising much faster than scientists expected and now AI um the International Energy Agency has said is contributing to a massive increase in power demand which itself is contributing to an increase in emissions because the problem is we haven't decarbonized our grids yet They're still hugely reliant on fossil fuels They need energy even when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining which means they're even more reliant on fossil fuels and those stable sources of energy like a gas power plant than other sources of energy demand Kenza Bryant with the Financial Times Thank you so much for joining us Thank you Nearly a quarter of the world's maritime trade goes through the South China Sea which sits between China and a number of Asian nations including Vietnam the Philippines and Taiwan In addition experts say it has large reserves of oil and gas In recent years it's also been the site of clashes between Chinese Coast Guard ships and Philippine vessels as Beijing tries to exert its claim to virtually the entire sea in defiance of international law A confrontation this past week on the disputed South China Sea Your unsafe maneuvers are in clear violation of your obligation for safe conduct under a Chinese coast guard ship sideswiped a Filipino government fishing vessel and fired its water cannons Philippine officials said its vessel was on a routine research mission collecting sand But three small uninhabited sand bars in the area are the reasons for heightened tensions Both China and the Philippines claim sovereignty over them What's at stake is less about the sand bars themselves than about the body of water surrounding them the South China Sea Since 1952 Beijing has claimed virtually the entire sea Everything inside what's referred to as the nine dash line In 2023 China added a tenth dash off Taiwan The Philippines Malaysia Taiwan and Vietnam all reject China's claims That was the backdrop earlier this month for the annual joint US Philippines military exercises known as balikatan to gallalague for shoulderto-shoulder 9,000 US troops joined 5,000 Filipino military personnel for live fire drills This type of training is absolutely invaluable to us To be able to get out here to operate with our treaty ally and to be able to set up a defense like this and integrate all of our systems is just remarkable and we're really grateful for the opportunity Some of the drills could have been sending Beijing a message For instance the Philippine province of Zambales along the South China Sea coast was the site of an exercise using a US missile defense system to target drones acting as hostile aircraft A 1951 mutual defense treaty between the United States and the Philippines commits each nation to defend the other in case of attack Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the US commitment to the Philippines is ironclad Andrew Chub is a fellow at the Asia Society and a senior lecturer at Lancaster University in England Mr Chub help us put what we just saw in context The the that clash we saw between the Chinese Coast Guard ship and the uh the Philippine vessel that didn't just start this this year Yeah that's right John Um those particular reefs and sandbars that were referred to in the report have been the subject of sporadic incidents over the last six or seven years but there's been a noticeable uptick in the activities and the confrontations uh this year in particular Uh we saw last month China really going public with a sovereignty assertion um with the unfurling of a flag and uh sort of high-profile news reports laying claim to this particular sandbar Sandy Key Um and the significance of that is that it lies uh just a couple of miles from the Philippines main military outpost in the area which it's been doing some pretty significant upgrades at over the last few years Uh it's also very near to China It's one of China's uh major artificially built island outposts So it's a sort of scene where there's a likelihood of further confrontations uh if this trend continues and why is the South China Sea so important to China uh well I think for from China's perspective um the dispute is multi-layered Um it started as a dispute about islands particularly the Spratley Islands and the Parasel Islands but also Scarra Shaw which has been a particular flash point between the Philippines and China uh over the last decade or so through the 70s through to the '9s Um you had the uh initiation of the UN convention on the law of the sea and it's coming into effect in 1994 and that set some very clear rules about they were actually referred to uh by the Filipino captain just now in the clip Some some very clear rules about what you can and can't do in which waters with some very specific uh you know um uh numbers put on the kind of distance that you can claim off of a particular type of feature etc etc And China was China was there at the inception for that particular convention which the US has never signed but which now China is kind of flagrantly struggling against those rules that was really demonstrated came to a head in 2016 arbitration that the Philippines brought Uh and then layered on top of all of that you've got now the US China geostrategic competition playing out also in the South China Sea and other maritime latoral areas in East Asia such as the East China Sea A lot of Americans when they think about this region they think about China's designs on Taiwan But could the South China Sea be just as volatile or even more volatile than that uh the short answer is yes it could The big difference with the South China Sea and Taiwan is the number of players in the area Uh so you've got the Philippines uh Vietnam you've also got Malaysia uh Brunai makes a claim there Taiwan occupies the biggest naturally formed island So you've got many different players operating in the area and that's before you bring in the uh sort of extra regional powers such as the United States Also the UK has been there recently Australia Japan uh South Korea has done some patrols there Uh and other European navies as well have been talking about uh if not actually uh stepping up to fill some of the um some of the the strategic gap Andrew Chub thank you very much My pleasure Sharks have been cast as the ultimate villain ever since the movie Jaws Okay It was released 50 years ago this summer telling the story of a maneating great white shark terrorizing beachgoers But the reality is that humans are a bigger threat to sharks than the other way around An endurance swimmer wants to get that message out by swimming around Martha's Vineyard which is where Jaws was filmed Here again Ally Rogan Endurance swimmer Lewis Pew is swimming 60 miles around Martha's Vineyard I swim for as far as I can each day We then mark the position on the map I go and sleep and then I get back in the next day at exactly the same spot and carry on In just a speedo and swim cap Pew faces wind rough waters and most unpredictable of all sharks in the depths below But the sharks are the point For the past 50 years it's all been about fear and about the danger of sharks What I want to do is I want to try to change the narrative for a new generation and say sharks actually bring life They sustain life They make oceans healthy and he says there's no better backdrop for this message than the place where the Jaws effect was born They portrayed sharks in in a way that they are villains out to get humans and we know that they are nothing of the sort And so this is an opportunity to try and tell a new narrative for a new generation Globally on average 274,000 sharks are killed every day That's a 100 million sharks a year It's an ecoside which is taking place right now is completely unsustainable It's absolute madness and it's going to lead to a watery deserts The greatest threat is from over fishing but it's exacerbated by stigma Sharks are absolutely amazing animals I mean they've been around since before the dinosaur I mean think about that They've survived five mass extinctions and yet they are really under threat right now in our generation We're the only generation that can now save the shark from extinction This swim is meant to celebrate sharks but Pew is still encroaching on their house He's accompanied by a kayaker whose vessel has a shark shield an electromagnetic device that deters sharks without harming them So I'm talking sharks sharks sharks I then now got to get into the water and start doing the swim Well you can imagine what I'm thinking about right and so everything every little shadow which you see perhaps is a rock underwater Everything sort of kind of looks like a shark And so it's so important that I just keep my mind calm and just say "Louis just keep calm carry on."

It's very very easy for the mind to to get carried away in the waters of Cape Cod Hugh is no stranger to tough conditions He represents the United Nations as patron of the oceans and was the first person to complete a longd distanceance swim in every ocean of the world He crossed the North Pole dove into the icy water in Antarctica swam the length of the Hudson River and through the coral reefs and shipping corridors of the Red Sea All to raise awareness about threats to our oceans But this swim he says is one of the most challenging of his career It's long it's cold and it's mentally grueling The morning we spoke to him he managed to get in two of his planned 10 km for the day in a brutal pre-dawn swim And so there I find myself lowering myself slowly into this dark dark black water And the cold it it just gnors its way into you day after day after day It's a type of cold which demands an answer Why are you in here on this swim he's in here for the sharks For PBS News Weekend I'm Ally Rogan And that is PBS News Weekend for this Sunday I'm John Yang For all of my colleagues thanks for joining us I hope you'll have a meaningful Memorial Day Major funding for PBS News Weekend has been provided by the ongoing support of these individuals and 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 You're watching PBS