JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, Israel's assassination of the head of Hezbollah marks a major escalation in hostilities, then the rising death toll from Hurricane Helene as the massive storm causes record breaking flooding across the southeast.
And how schools are coping with the end of pandemic era funding.
WOMAN: There are districts that are in pretty good shape right now, and some that are really not so, unless taxpayers are willing to increase taxes substantially in states, they don't have 190 billion to fill in here.
(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening.
I'm John Yang.
We're following two big stories tonight, the rising exchange of rockets and bombs between Israel and Hezbollah and the rising death toll from Hurricane Helene.
We begin in the Middle East, where Israel's assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is reverberating across the region, raising fears of retaliation from Iran and a wider war.
Tonight, Nick Schifrin is in Tel Aviv.
NICK SCHIFRIN (voice-over): This evening, Southern Beirut is still smoldering after what residents called the most intense bombing in nearly 20 years on a cluster of high rises and the bunker beneath them killing Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader for the last three decades.
The group confirmed his death on its TV channel After the Israel Defense Forces posted on social media, Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorize the world.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, Prime Minister, Israel (through translator): At the start of the week, I came to the conclusion that the intense blows the Israeli military struck Hezbollah within the past days, these blows will not be enough.
Nasrallah's assassination was an essential condition to achieving the goals we set.
NICK SCHIFRIN (voice-over): Nasrallah was Hezbollah's commander and communicator in chief.
His charisma made him powerful in Lebanon and one of the Middle East most influential figures.
He inspired Shia followers with fiery speeches and the sacrifice of his own son fighting Israel, even if for years he has only spoken remotely.
For Iran, Hezbollah became its key proxy, and Nasrallah anchored its Axis of Resistance, a close confidant of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.
In Tehran today, the regime's supporters vowed revenge.
MAHDIAN, Protester (through translator): We have heard the message clearly.
With the killing of Nasrellah, Israel will be destroyed.
Israel is finished, for sure.
The oppressor Israel will go.
NICK SCHIFRIN (voice-over): But in southern Beirut, the smoke hasn't yet cleared, and residents are beginning an overwhelming cleanup.
Many have fled 100,000 just in the last week, some from Lebanon to Syria, despite its civil war.
They're too scared to spend the night in their southern Lebanon homes, so they sleep outside longing for a safer present and future.
ZAINAB FADEL, Displaced from Southern Lebanon (through translator): May God protect the people who were displaced from their homes and those who fled the south and all the areas affected by the war.
May God protect them.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Tonight, President Biden called Nasrallah's death a quote measure of justice for his many victims, but added the U.S. aim was to quote deescalate the ongoing conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon through diplomatic means.
But tonight, the means that we're seeing from both sides, John, are military strikes and rocket attacks.
JOHN YANG: Nick, what is this going to do to Hezbollah, taking out Nasrallah?
What is this going to do to the organization?
NICK SCHIFRIN: It's going to have an enormous impact, John.
Tonight, Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant.
His death quote, the most important targeted strike since the founding of Israel.
As we said in our piece, he was the commander in chief of Hezbollah, extracting real pain from Israel over the past 30 plus years, including a war in 2006 all the way to last year's decision to link the wars between Hezbollah and Israel, with the ongoing fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
But he was also, as I pointed out, the communicator in chief.
He was able to create that fierce following that we talked about, and in fact, that following was so fierce, it's going to take time for any leader, really, to fill his shoes.
For Iran, he was an excellent return on investment, again, taking a bite out of Israel multiple occasions, helping Iran in Syria when it wasn't so popular among the Hezbollah rank and file, for Hezbollah to go into Syria, and also becoming the real anchor for Iran's Axis of Resistance.
And that means, in the short term, that Iran is likely to take more control over Hezbollah, says Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute.
RANDA SLIM, Middle East Institute: Anything that affects the stability of Hezbollah will affect the stability of that axis, and so it will have impact.
But in the long term, even in the medium term, they will reorganize, they will regroup.
There will be new leaders emerging, and in the interim, given the shake up inside the organization, given the role that Nasrallah played, especially in terms of the command and control decision making, I will expect more role or more control by the IRGC Quds Force of the decision making inside Hezbollah, especially in the in the military sphere.
NICK SCHIFRIN: And part of what we expect, of course, John, is for Iran and Hezbollah to decide how to strike back after Nasrallah's killing JOHN YANG: Nick, I know you've got a broad range of sources over there in the region.
What the people you're talking to, what do they think, or what do they expect is going to happen now?
NICK SCHIFRIN: Well, John, prediction is difficult, especially about the future, as Yogi Berra says, but U.S. officials really insist that this is a pivot point.
Publicly, they want the pivot point to be toward diplomacy.
What does that look like?
That looks like Hezbollah agreeing to what they agreed after the end of the 2006 war, Security Council resolution 1701 moving back from the border, moving back behind the Latani River, which on average, is about 18 miles from the border.
But a senior U.S. official tonight tells me that privately, they actually believe this is an opportunity to, quote, dismantle the biggest of their proxies and free Lebanon of their political and armed stranglehold.
In other words, get rid of, or at least severely diminish Hezbollah's influence in Lebanon.
Now, the group has taken a serious military blow, not only with Nasrallah's killing, but also going back last week to those pager attacks, the walkie talkie attacks, really the decimating of the senior military leadership.
So the diplomatic goal in the short term might be achievable, but that long term, more ambitious goal is not, says Randa Slim.
RANDA SLIM: There is, in my opinion, a short window opportunity right now where Hezbollah feels is really weak, and where it's going to need time to regroup, to organize, and they will be amenable to the delinking between the Raza theater and the Lebanon theater.
But in terms of eliminating Hezbollah, let the Israelis tell them about eliminating Hamas.
And Hezbollah is much, much, much more powerful than Hamas.
NICK SCHIFRIN: And it's not clear John, whether the U.S. or anyone else really has a partner in Beirut who would be willing and able to try and take Hezbollah's military and political power on.
JOHN YANG: Speaking of Hamas, speaking of Gaza, what -- is this going to have any effect, you think, on the war in Gaza?
NICK SCHIFRIN: U.S. officials certainly hope it does that if there's some kind of reduction in violence in Lebanon, they can reduce the violence in Gaza, and that big statement by the G7 by President Biden, by French president Emmanuel Macron, a few days ago about the ceasefire in Lebanon directly linked the cease fire in Gaza.
But the fact is that the Israeli operation in Gaza continues.
The Israeli military says that it has not finished what it's trying to do.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that he was undergoing still mopping up operations, so it's not clear that any reduction or any change in Lebanon could lead to a direct change in Gaza.
John.
JOHN YANG: Nick Schifrin in Tel Aviv.
Thanks to you and cameraman Eric O'Connor.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Thanks John.
JOHN YANG: Hurricane Helene's death toll has climbed to at least 50 people across five states, from Florida to Virginia.
Remnants of the massive storm are causing record flooding across the southeast, submerging roads and entire towns.
More than 3 million people are without power.
In eastern Tennessee, thousands of people were ordered to go to higher ground because of the potential of a dam collapse.
But officials say the danger has passed.
Special correspondent Christopher Booker is in Florida's Big Bend region where Helene made landfall.
Christopher now it's been about 48 hours since landfall.
What's the situation now?
CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: Well, we're in Taylor County, in a town called Steinhatchee, which sits just along the Steinhatchee River.
It's a small little town that's in the Big Bend of Florida's Gulf Coast.
And the story here wasn't wind, but water.
The Steinhatchee River, which is right behind me, rose the storm surge pushing through the town.
It's almost like someone took a snow globe and shook it and spread everyone's belongings all over town.
Officials tell us that all over town, utility crews are working.
There's bulldozers pushing debris out of the way, but it's clear the cleanup is going to take a long time.
JOHN YANG: And how are the communities responding?
CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: Well, earlier today, we went to a town called Cedar Key, and we met with the mayor there, a woman named Sue Colson, and she said she's worried about residents returning.
MAYOR SUE COLSON, Cedar Key, Florida: They want to come back, and some are coming back to nothing, and some are coming back to no water, no sewage, and no safety.
So we have to provide these services as soon as possible.
But it's now we're going to have to invent things.
CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: Cedar Key is just south of where we are now.
It's a town of about 700 people, and Mayor Colson is worried what people will be coming back to, because now there's debris everywhere.
There's wires everywhere.
There's rebar everywhere.
The town has really been largely destroyed, and the worry about wires is that if they're able to return electricity to the town this could start a fire, but the town doesn't have any water, so if there's a fire, they're not going to be able to fight it.
Now, Cedar Key is a town that knows hurricanes.
In the last 13 months, they've had three.
In 2023 they had hurricane Adalia.
This past August, they had hurricane Debbie, but hurricane Helene has much different, much more powerful, and did a lot more damage.
And it's clear that this town is really in for a long road, and it's not clear if they'll be able to walk that and who's going to walk it with them.
JOHN YANG: Christopher Booker, in the Big Bend region of Florida.
Thank you very much.
CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: Thank you.
JOHN YANG: In tonight's other headlines, the vice presidential candidates were campaigning in battleground states today, days before they meet for a debate.
Republican Senator J.D.
Vance held two events in Pennsylvania.
In Monroeville, Vance participated in a town hall hosted by Lance Wallnau, a controversial evangelical leader.
He claims to be a prophet, and he defended the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
They have hit on a familiar issue, immigration.
J.D.
VANCE, Republican Vice Presidential Nominee: American resources and American compassion have to go first to American citizens, and we have to build our country up to a strong place, and that's what allows us to be helpful and compassionate towards other people.
Right now, our country is disintegrating from the inside.
JOHN YANG: Democratic vice presidential candidate Governor Tim Walz was in Michigan.
He stopped at a voter registration event, then he attended the football game between the University of Minnesota and the University of Michigan.
The vice presidential candidates debate is set for Tuesday.
In Ukraine, two separate drone attacks in the northeastern part of the country killed nearly a dozen people.
Russian forces hit a medical center in Sumy prompting the evacuation of residents of an assisted living center.
That's when the second drone attack hit.
Nine people were killed and at least 21 others injured.
Attacks in the region have ramped up since August when Ukrainian troops moved into Russia.
Sumy is only 20 miles from the Russian border.
SpaceX launched a mission to rescue the two astronauts stuck on the International Space Station to make room for them.
There were only two astronauts on board, instead of the usual compliment of four.
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were supposed to be in space for only eight days this summer, but concerns about the Boeing Starliner meant they won't return to Earth aboard the SpaceX craft until late February, eight months later than if scheduled.
Still to come on PBS News Weekend, the choices schools face when pandemic era funding runs out at the end of the month and new wearable technology takes us inside the minds of babies.
(BREAK) JOHN YANG: As September comes to a close.
Public schools across the country are finding themselves at the edge of a federal funding cliff.
Ali Rogin explains.
ALI ROGIN: In the throes of the pandemic, Congress passed three acts totaling nearly $190 billion in aid for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER Fund.
The money was meant to tackle education problems brought on by the pandemic, including learning loss, chronic absenteeism and worsening mental health.
The last of the funds will run out in just a few days, and some districts will need to slash jobs, increase class sizes and cut programs.
We spoke with principals in Georgia and Ohio.
SUZAN HARRIS, Principal, Henderson Middle School: I hate to see the funds go, because one of the things that we use the funds for, that I think nobody really pushes anymore, is enrichment.
We were able to kind of give back to our community, in a sense, by having those offering those camps.
We had photography, robotics.
JOHN GIES, Principal, Shelby High School: We were able to hire some tutors to come in and be here during the school day.
So we would we would pull kids to meet with them, to get them caught up.
SUZAN HARRIS: It was a breath of fresh air for education, for educators to have access to funds to do some of the things that we can't really do without funding.
JOHN GIES: Unfortunately, what it comes down to is that you have to figure out what has to go and so, you prioritize things, and you and you go from there.
ALI ROGIN: For more on what schools have planned we're joined by Marguerite Roza, the director of Georgetown University's Edgeomics Lab, a research center that studies education, finance, policy.
Marguerite, thank you so much for being here.
We heard from a few principals about how their schools spent the money.
But give us a sense of what schools around the country have been using these funds for.
MARGUERITE ROZA, Georgetown University: Well, the money came in the form of a blank check.
Lot of districts put some money into facilities.
Some hired new people.
Often we saw more counselors and nurses social workers.
Some gave out pay raises.
Some stood up tutoring programs, summer school programs, some used it to prevent budget cuts that might have otherwise been happening.
We really saw the whole range of decisions out there.
ALI ROGIN: And do you have a sense of who was helped the most by these funds?
MARGUERITE ROZA: Well, the money did have a stabilizing effect on school districts.
So when the pandemic hit, we saw a lot of enrollment gaps, so a lot of enrollment declines.
And normally districts would have to right size their districts cut some programs and schools, and the money helped prevent that.
Then we saw inflation, and many districts could use the money to hold on to their staff and get do pay raises.
I think that was a benefit.
Overall across the country, we saw some modest improvement in math and reading, which was welcome improvement, given that math and reading really took a hit during the pandemic.
We have not fully recovered from that.
Some improvements in attendance again, still, attendance is not where it was before the pandemic, so it's a lot of lot of different effects out there.
ALI ROGIN: And how is the sun setting of this fund going to be affecting these schools?
MARGUERITE ROZA: Well, districts right now have to decide what they're going to cut and what they're going to keep, so they don't have to go back to the way things were before.
But most districts did put, on average, maybe a half or more of that money into labor expenses.
So that means cutting people or trying to stall salaries, things like that.
And then a lot of districts also paid for vendors, whether those were for apps or safety or security, landscaping, facilities, HVAC, you name it.
And many of those will likely be ending, so parents should expect that maybe they'll see fewer staff in their schools in this coming year than they did in previous years.
But I think different districts, again, will make different choices.
ALI ROGIN: And of course, these funds were meant to address some of the impacts of the pandemic, which, as we mentioned, included learning loss, absenteeism, things that don't seem to have gone away.
So what is the extent of the problems as they exist now versus at the beginning of the pandemic, when these funds were initially allocated?
MARGUERITE ROZA: In some districts, the progress has been pretty impressive.
In others, students have continued their scores have continued to decline.
Attendance has continued to fall.
Some entire states, we've seen a lot more progress than in others.
So it's really uneven right now, and that is one of the more difficult things, is families have to check in with their district to see what happens next.
The money goes away.
Are we still going to see more improvement in reading and math, because otherwise these students will be affected for the rest of their lives.
ALI ROGIN: And this brings up another wider issue.
This was always meant to be a temporary infusion.
Would you say that some schools have overextended themselves in using these funds for things that they were always going to have additional expenses for, but now the source of the funding has gone away?
MARGUERITE ROZA: It depends on the district.
I mean, there are districts that are in pretty good shape right now, and some that are really not high poverty, urban districts, large districts, got a lot more money per student than some more affluent districts, so they just have a bigger part of their budget now disappearing, and they made different choices.
Some were very careful not to bring on too many more staff or commit to recurring raises, and other ones did.
Some districts have simultaneously lost a lot of students, and that's a compounding financial effect.
ALI ROGIN: Congress is unlikely to approve any extension of this aid, even though the White House has been pushing for at least some extension, and the White House is saying that it's now time for state and local officials to carry this baton and work to fill up the gaps that are going to be left by this fund ceasing to exist.
How do you anticipate state and local administrators to respond to that call?
MARGUERITE ROZA: School District leaders don't usually see one time money.
Normally the money that comes it becomes permanent money, and so many of them acted accordingly.
And now we're hearing this message that states ought to pick up the tab going forward, which kind of sends that, that message again, the worry somebody's going to fill in the holes, but states don't have the money, so that's the issue.
The federal government, of course, can operate on a deficit, you know, with debt, but states generally cannot.
And so unless taxpayers are willing to increase taxes substantially in states, they don't have 190 billion to fill in here, and that's what's creating the financial pressure for school districts.
ALI ROGIN: A distressing reality for people across this country.
Marguerite Roza with Georgetown University.
Thank you so much for breaking this down for us.
MARGUERITE ROZA: Happy to be here.
JOHN YANG: When a baby fusses or cries exhausted, parents may wish they could know what's going on inside their baby's brain.
When our scientists hope clues could come with the help of a wearable brain imaging device.
It looks like a cap and can track cognitive functions, and one day, it may help identify early signs of autism or ADHD.
ITV science correspondent Martin Stew has the story.
MARTIN STEW (voice-over): It's easy enough to tell when babies like Victor aren't happy, not so easy to know exactly why.
They can't talk to tell us what's going on inside their head.
And brain scans until now have often involved full sedation and an MRI that's where this wearable scanner comes in.
LIAM COLLINS-JONES, University College London: The cap has lots of these hexagons in it that shine light into the head and measure how much light reflects back off the brain.
And so by seeing the differences in levels of light that reflect back off the brain, we can map where brain activity is happening in the brain.
MARTIN STEW (voice-over): The beams, whilst completely harmless, are illuminating by comparing brain activity with and without social stimulation, scientists observed different levels of activity in the prefrontal cortex, suggesting babies as young as five months old are already becoming emotionally intelligent.
EMILY JONES, Birkbeck Baby and Toddler Lab: So one of the things that we see is much greater activation in social situations.
Some areas of the brain are much more active when babies are watching people singing to them or talking to them than they are when they're looking at toys.
LAURA CHATTEN, Victor's mother: And that's really interesting, how early it is, because hopefully they can't talk to us.
And you know, you pick up on these cues, but you -- it's so interesting to see it lit up, how the brain lights up.
MARTIN STEW (voice-over): Victor is nearing his first birthday, but the kit is light enough to work on babies as young as one month, mapping different ages and different conditions.
What's the potential for this in the future?
I'm thinking particularly around neurodiversity.
EMILY JONES: Yeah.
So one thing we hope to be able to do is use this in infants.
You have a family history of autism or ADHD, we can pick up signs earlier that brains might be developing a little bit differently.
That might help us think about what kinds of support children might need.
MARTIN STEW (voice-over): Scientists from UCL and Birkbeck say the opportunities are endless, but are offering no promises they'll work out how to get your baby to sleep through.
JOHN YANG: That was Martin Stew of Independent Television News.
Now on the NewsHour Instagram page, more from special correspondent Christopher Booker in Florida on the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
All that and more is on the NewsHour Instagram page.
And that is PBS News Weekend for this Saturday.
On Sunday, 46 years after protections for Pregnant Workers became law, how far they've come and how far they still have to go.
I'm John Yang, for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.
See you tomorrow.
