JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, Israel steps up ground operations in Gaza against Hamas.

Desperate Palestinians search for aid and safety, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis are still displaced.

MAN (through translator): I wish God will have mercy on us in the worst stops.

WOMAN: When I came here and it my first time I just cried because I didn't know how much time it's going to be.

JOHN YANG: Then why pharmacy chains are closing stores and some workers are going on strike and how to protect your personal data and what some states are doing to help.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening.

I'm John Yang.

As the Israeli military presence in Gaza grows, so too, it appears does the desperation among the residents of that besieged Palestinian enclave.

The Israeli Defense Force said it sent more ground troops into Gaza.

And then in the previous 24 hours, it struck more than 450 militant targets, including Hamas command centers and platforms for launching anti-tank missiles.

Meanwhile, internet and phone services come back for much of Gaza after Israeli strikes had knocked it out on Friday.

Once again tonight, Leila Molana-Allen is in Israel for us.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: In southern Gaza, as desperation grows, what little aid is getting through is at risk of death.

At this United Nations warehouse in Khan Yunis, it was every man and child for themselves.

The U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees called it a sign of breakdown in civil order after three weeks under siege.

At this nearby refugee camp families are living on next to nothing.

Rami Al-Erqan shares one tent with his wife and six children.

RAMI AL-ERQAH, Displaced Palestinian (through translator): I wish God will have mercy on us and the war stops.

We reached a state where we wish we had died under the rubble just to find some rest.

Our life is torture.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: On Sunday, the Naseer Hospital in Khan Yunis received its first truckload of supplies since the war began.

The Palestinian Red Cross said it was one of 10 truck fulls of aid, which passed through the Rafah Border Crossing two days earlier.

The Israel Defense Forces kept up its air campaign releasing video of what it said were expanded ground operations inside Gaza.

The IDF has warned gardens to evacuate the north, but civilians sheltering at the al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City say they have nowhere to go.

ABU QUSAI AL-DEEB, Displaced Palestinian (through translator): Since Saturday, October 7, we've been here we've received six warnings to evacuate the hospital.

We told them, identify safe places and we will leave the hospital.

There's no safe place, not in the south, nor in the whole of Gaza.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: On CNN State of the Union this morning, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said he has been asking his Israeli counterparts hard questions about civilian casualties behind closed doors.

JAKE SULLIVAN, National Security Adviser: Hamas is making life extremely difficult for Israel by taking civilians as human shields and by putting their rocket infrastructure in terrorist infrastructure among civilians.

That creates an added burden for Israel but it does not lessen Israel's responsibility under international humanitarian law to distinguish between terrorists and civilians and to protect the lives of innocent people and that is the overwhelming majority of the people in Gaza.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: The war is also uprooting Israeli civilians.

Ye'ela Malka and her family were forced to evacuate their home in the northern town of Kiryat Shmona near the Lebanese border after increasing exchanges of fire with Hezbollah militants.

They've been living in a single hotel room since Wednesday, with no idea when they'll be allowed back home.

YE'ELA MALKA, Displaced Israeli: It's not easy when I came here and they ate my first time I just cried because I didn't know how much time it's going to be.

We still don't know what I'm trying to get you to be here.

But we hope it will learn weekly.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: A hope and prayer shared by all those caught up in this war.

For PBS News Weekend, I'm Leila Molana-Allen in Jerusalem.

JOHN YANG: Last night, we brought you the story of an American citizen Haneen Okal and her three small children who were stuck in Gaza.

Her family tells us they were able to reach her today for the first time since Friday that she and the children are alive but still struggling for food and water and still unable to leave.

It's against the backdrop of Israel's war on Hamas that former President Donald Trump has renewed his vow to reinstate his ban on travelers from mostly Muslim countries entering the United States.

Trump who dominates the race for the Republican presidential nomination spoke in Las Vegas.

DONALD TRUMP, Former U.S. President: We had a travel ban that was very restrictive to certain countries where they want to send people that hate us into our country.

So if you don't mind, we'll have it again.

Okay, is that okay?

JOHN YANG: The White House responded quickly calling Trump's ban vile and unAmerican.

Fans have lost a friend.

Matthew Perry, the Emmy nominated actor and the ensemble cast of the hit 90s sitcom Friends, was found dead last night at his home in Los Angeles.

On the long running sitcom Friends, Matthew Perry portrayed the widow the sarcastic Chandler Bing.

MATTHEW PERRY, American Actor: Could I be more sorry.

JOHN YANG: A role that allowed him to deliver some of the series mostly memorable lines.

The show followed a group of young professionals living in New York, it became an instant classic running for 10 seasons on NBC and catapulting the entire cast to stardom.

MATTHEW PERRY: Well, I loved Chandler.

I love the show.

And I also knew remember this because it's going to be the best time of your life.

JOHN YANG: After the show left the air in 2004, Perry showed his range with dramatic roles like White House lawyer Joe Quincy on The West Wing.

MATTHEW PERRY: Saying that it's good that you can buy food for less than entire wage.

JOHN YANG: He had leading parts in the blockbuster films Fools Rush In and The Whole Nine Yards.

But behind the professional success was personal turmoil.

In his 2022 memoir, friends, lovers and the big terrible thing, Perry candidly described his decade's long struggle with substance misuse.

His chronic alcohol and drug use led to multiple stints in rehab and life threatening medical complications.

After overcoming his addictions, Perry wanted to support others on their journey to sobriety.

In 2013, converting his Malibu beach home into a sober living facility.

MATTHEW PERRY: The best thing about me, bar none, is if somebody comes up to me and says, I can't stop drinking, can you help me?

I can say yes, and follow up and do it.

When I die, I don't want friends to be the first thing that's mentioned.

I want that to be the first thing to mention.

JOHN YANG: In 2021, Perry and his classmates got back together for a Friends reunion special on HBO Max.

There was nostalgia but also a celebration of the show's newfound popularity among younger viewers.

ZAIRA RAMOS: It was actually one of my favorite characters.

You know, his sense of humor was super dry and I grew up watching it with my family, so it's really sad that he's gone.

JOHN YANG: On social media today, Perry is being mourned by CO stars and co-workers.

On X formerly called Twitter, the official Friends account called Perry a true gift to us all.

He was also remembered by fans including former childhood classmates, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who posted thanks for all the laughs, Matthew.

The cause of Perry's death is being investigated.

He was just 54 years old.

Across the United States, at least three people are dead and more than 40 injured and multiple mass shooting incidents across this weekend.

Four people to have them students were shot today near Georgia State University in Atlanta.

In Chicago, a gunman fired into a crowd at a Halloween party on Saturday night injuring 15.

One person was shot dead at an Indianapolis house party and in the Tampa neighborhood of Ybor City gunfire erupted between two groups during a Halloween celebration.

Two people died, 18 were hurt.

So far this year there have been 577 incidents in which four or more people have been shot, that's nearly two a day.

And in Lewiston, Maine on the Sunday after the worst mass killing in the state's history, residents attended church services and gathered to express their grief and to reflect.

Last night there was a vigil in nearby Lisbon Falls.

A similar event is planned to report tonight in Lewiston.

It's an opportunity for residents to come together after days of fear and anxiety.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, what some states are doing to protect your personal data, and the story of UNICEF's Halloween fundraiser and how it's changing with the times.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Finding a neighborhood pharmacist is becoming increasingly challenging.

Over the past two years, the nation's three biggest pharmacy chains with brick and mortar stores, CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid, which is filed for bankruptcy have either closed or announced plans to close hundreds of stores.

And many of the remaining locations pharmacy workers say working conditions have gotten worse.

That's led to unannounced walkouts.

And this coming week, a planned walk out at Walgreens nationwide.

Tom Murphy is the Associated Press national health writer.

Tom, I know you've been talking to pharmacist at Walgreens and elsewhere.

What are they telling you about why they're taking these job actions?

TOM MURPHY, National Health Writer, Associated Press: Well, the biggest thing they're stressing is this isn't about money, they're not seeking more pay, they just need more help behind the counter.

That's what they tell me.

They've been stressed especially by all the vaccines they have to give now, especially in the fall, when you have COVID shots and flu shots and pneumonia vaccines coming into your store every day.

They want more help behind the counter because they said their main job is obviously filling and checking prescriptions.

And every time you have to break away from that to do a vaccine that's putting more stress on your main job.

A lot of times, there's only one pharmacist behind the counter, and they can't break away for a bathroom break or the pharmacy has to close.

They're also being asked to do a lot more with health care.

A lot of them help people quit smoking or monitor their blood sugar.

So they need help with these tasks in order to do the main job, which is filling prescriptions and checking them for accuracy.

Chain stores tend to operate with one pharmacist on duty, instead of having overlapping shifts or multiple pharmacists on duty.

And that means the pharmacist can't leave the counter because you can't operate a pharmacy without a pharmacist on duty.

JOHN YANG: And what are the chain stores say in response to this?

TOM MURPHY: They say they are listening to their concerns.

Walgreens, for instance, has opened a bunch of processing centers around the country to process a lot of the chronic prescriptions that patients get regularly which will take workload off the store pharmacists.

CVS is doing some things too.

But so far the pharmacists haven't seen enough to alleviate their concerns.

JOHN YANG: How much is the changing economics of the pharmacy industry, I mean, we've seen sort of great expansion now retraction, the rise of pharmacy by mail, how much of that has led to these problems.

TOM MURPHY: All those factors have definitely contributed to the problem is the biggest one is pharmacies just don't get a lot of money for the prescriptions they feel.

So they're left with what's called a thin margin.

So they have to make money elsewhere.

And vaccines can be a little bit lucrative for them.

The other problem is they added a lot of stores 15, 20 years ago to get closer to the consumer.

And then Amazon got much closer to the consumer and is taking business away from what's called the front of their stores, which is the area outside the pharmacy where a lot of their consumer goods are sold.

JOHN YANG: And what's the effect on the consumer of all of this?

TOM MURPHY: Well, with the consumer.

There can be really long waits for prescriptions, you could come into the drugstore and find that the drugstore is temporarily closed because there isn't a pharmacist on duty.

It also exacerbates problems with drug shortages.

I had a pharmacist tell me that one day last fall, he took 100 phone calls during the day just for shortages of amoxicillin and Adderall.

JOHN YANG: With so many physical stores closing, are we in danger of having regions or neighborhoods where there's just no nearby pharmacy?

TOM MURPHY: That's always a risk, especially in poor neighborhoods that have a lot of Medicaid patients because they just don't make a lot of money for the drugstore.

So financially, it might not make much sense for the drugstores to stay open in some of those neighborhoods.

JOHN YANG: And what about rural areas?

Are there concerns about pharmacies disappearing in rural areas?

TOM MURPHY: Yeah, it's a different dynamic.

Instead of drugstore being a few blocks away, a pharmacy desert in rural areas is considered a drugstore that's maybe five miles away.

But that is a problem and Rite Aid was actually trying to address it earlier this year with a really small program where they opened many stores in SoCal Pharmacy deserts areas where there aren't a lot of pharmacies.

JOHN YANG: You mentioned Walgreens setting up these distribution centers to handle a lot of the prescriptions.

Is it getting to the point where we really don't need a brick and mortar pharmacy?

TOM MURPHY: Not quite because pharmacists play a really valuable role in talking to people about their medicines and making sure that they have the right dose or talking to them about side effects and how to manage those, and just seeing how they're feeling.

And if you're at a processing center, filling a prescription and not talking to the customer, you lose that.

So, there's still a lot of value for those brick and mortar stores.

JOHN YANG: Tom Murphy of the Associated Press, thank you very much.

TOM MURPHY: Thanks for having me.

I appreciate it.

JOHN YANG: You may not be aware of it.

But right now there are companies out there making money off of your personal data, data that you likely never agreed to share like real time location, spending habits and private financial information.

These data brokers say the information allows service providers to make our lives easier by personalizing their products.

But privacy advocates say it's collected from our devices, smartphones and wearables like Fitbits without our permission, and that once collected, it isn't properly secured.

With no one single all-encompassing federal law regulating data brokers, more and more state legislatures are acting.

13 states now have comprehensive data privacy laws, in effect or soon to take effect.

Earlier this month, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill called the Delete Act that consumer protection advocates say is a groundbreaking advance in privacy rights.

Emory Roane is Policy Counsel for Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, which advised California lawmakers on the bill Emery will tell us what the Delete Act does and why it's considered such a big advance by privacy advocates?

EMORY ROANE, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse: Right.

So these consumer privacy laws that are coming online, are almost all following the California model, which though there are some variations are based around the idea that you can go to a business and say, hey, tell me what information you have about me, please don't share that information and maybe delete that information if I want you to delete it, and businesses have to comply with that.

But what about this hundreds or thousands of businesses out there that are buying and selling your information that you've never heard of, if you wanted to exercise your consumer rights against these businesses, you have to one know that they exist, which is difficult already, then you're faced with an actual monumental task of exercising your rights.

So you go to this registry, and there's 600 registered brokers in California right now, then you initiate your California Consumer Privacy Act request, which can take up to 90 days to fulfill for every single broker on that list.

And then of course, once you exercise your privacy rights, there's nothing to stop that broker from turning around and then immediately collecting your information again and selling it from some other third party.

So the Delete Act recognizes that this is the framework we have and tries to imagine what would be required for a consumer to be able to effectively exercise that deletion right with data brokers.

What that looks like, is that it takes the existing requirements in California that data brokers registered with the Attorney General, and it for one, it moves that registration requirement to the California Privacy Protection Agency, as opposed the Attorney General's office a dedicated privacy Enforcer.

But most importantly, it requires the agency to and by 2026, at least create a mechanism that will allow any of us to go to the agency's website, and in a few minutes for free for anyone with disabilities require that every single broker that's on that list, delete all of your personal information.

They have to delete their information every 45 days and then have to stop selling, you're sharing your information for all of time into the future until you decide otherwise.

JOHN YANG: And what's the enforcement mechanism?

If you don't know these companies exist?

How can anyone tell whether they really have deleted this information?

EMORY ROANE: That's a great point.

Any law and especially privacy laws are only as good as the enforcement mechanisms.

So the California Consumer Privacy Act last year, created the new California Privacy Protection Agency, the only dedicated privacy protection agency in the country.

So they're going to have the ability to go into data brokers and make sure that they're deleting information when they're required to delete and make sure they're registering when they're required to register.

Additionally, the Delete Act doubles the fines for non-registration increases the amount of information that brokers have to provide every year when they register with the agency.

And it also includes auditing requirements.

JOHN YANG: The head of the trade group of data brokers, obviously they oppose this bill.

And they say that one of the things is this is going to give a big boost to big platforms like Google and Meta who collect a lot of information but don't sell it so they're not touched by this What do you say to that.

EMORY ROANE: Frankly, the California Consumer Privacy Act already exists.

And it works fairly well when it comes to businesses that have a direct relationship with you.

And you can go to those businesses and you can exercise your CCPA rights without the fear that they're going to turn around and immediately start collecting your information from some other third party and selling it after the fact.

That's simply not the case with data brokers.

JOHN YANG: This summer, the head of the consumer protection finance bureau said they were going to start rulemaking on data brokers.

But given the nature of federal law right now, what can they actually do?

EMORY ROANE: There's reasons to be optimistic about the CFPB's rulemaking on data brokers, it's certainly long overdue, and it's desperately needed.

To be clear, you know, federal policy work is in a really tough place right now.

It's California, other states are demonstrating the goals of federalism by innovating in legislature when able to get bills actually over the governor's desk signed into law, we've faced tougher barriers, let's say federally.

JOHN YANG: The California law doesn't take effect until 2026.

For people who don't live in California, who don't live in one of the states with a comprehensive data privacy law, what advice do you give them?

How can they protect themselves?

EMORY ROANE: Unfortunately, data brokers are an area where consumers have very little control.

There are some private services you can use out there that attempt to, frankly, do what the Delete Act promises.

There are consumer privacy services that will allow you to pay them to repeatedly send deletion requests or opt out requests to data brokers.

But there are some fundamental limitations that would really limit how effective that those sort of delete services can be.

So unfortunately, as you know, with everything there is still a need for legislative and regulatory solution.

There's precious little that consumers can do to avoid the reach of data brokers right now.

JOHN YANG: Emory Roane of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse Thank you very much.

EMORY ROANE: Thank you.

JOHN YANG: For decades, going trick or treating has meant more to children across America than just collecting candy for themselves.

It's also meant collecting nickels, dimes and quarters for Children in Crisis around the world.

Ali Rogin tells us how trick or treat for UNICEF began and how it's changed.

ALI ROGIN: It's one of the most recognizable fundraisers in the country.

WOMAN: My oldest and most significant memory is trick or treating for UNICEF with all of my brothers and sisters.

ALI ROGIN: And a mainstay of Halloween for generations of Americans.

WOMAN: When your doorbell rings and you hear won't you help the children help the children?

ALI ROGIN: Public figures from First Lady's and the Brady Bunch actors to singer Sammy Davis Jr. and supermodel Heidi Klum have taken up to cause.

The little orange boxes were many children's first encounter with giving back.

UNICEF USA President and CEO Michael Nyenhuis was one of them.

MICHAEL NYENHUIS, President and CEO, UNICEF USA: I was a boy growing up in Owatonna, Minnesota, and had my little cardboard box and went door to door and it awakened in me something that said, hey, you know there's a bigger world out there and I can do something about it.

ALI ROGIN: It all began around 1950 When a Philadelphia School teacher and her husband, a Presbyterian minister, got the idea to turn trick or treating into charity.

With the blessings of UNICEF they spread the word and children began collecting loose change in milk cartons.

It was a way to do good during a holiday that for much of its history was about being bad.

Lesley Bannatyne is a historian who has written extensively about Halloween.

LESLEY BANNATYNE, Halloween Historian: During the 20s and 30s and 40s Halloween tricks were getting a little bit more intense became more like vandalism, setting fires breaking windows.

ALI ROGIN: In the 50s, there were PSAs encouraging kids to ask for treats instead of doing tricks.

LESLEY BANNATYNE: A Donald Duck cartoon that came out in 1952 called Trick or Treat that taught kids and adults.

The good and bad ways to trick or treat, do not put fireworks in a treat bag, for example, put candy in there.

But the final and I think most important straw was UNICEF, it became a charitable act, as well as a fun act.

ALI ROGIN: Charitable acts that have never been so important since Nyenhuis.

MICHAEL NYENHUIS: There are actually more children displaced from their homes because of conflict and climate change today than at any time the planet and helping out to trick or treat for UNICEF is a way to do it in a fun way.

ALI ROGIN: And now trick or treat for UNICEF is changing too.

During the pandemic UNICEF discontinued the cardboard boxes.

The campaign is now a month long and digital with online fun razors and print out QR codes for kids and adults alike during the holiday.

MICHAEL NYENHUIS: This is a moment to feel incredibly grateful for what we have for our safety and security.

And out of that gratitude, turn around and help out.

ALI ROGIN: As UNICEF says, putting some meaning in your Halloween.

For PBS News Weekend, I'm Ali Rogin.

JOHN YANG: And that is PBS News Weekend for this Sunday.

I'm John Yang.

For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.

Have a good week.