john: tonight on "pbs news weekend" -- the rising number of bowel cancer cases and the promise of new treatments on the horizon. then, what's behind the lack of affordable rentals in austin, texas even as rents there are dropping. and, how our appetite for big amounts of internet data has

even bigger costs to the environment. >> researchers think they're in the top 10 water consuming industriesn the u.s. they use 2% of the electricity in the us, which is a lot. and a source told me that data center campuses can use the resources equivalent to a small city. >> major funding for pbs news weekend has been provided by -- and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. and friends of the newshour.

this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. john: good evening. i'm john yang. it's a tale of extremes across the united states -- oppressive heat, wildfires, and flooding hitting many parts of the country. from the midwest to the east coast, millions of people are searching for relief from record-breaking temperatures. in many places, it felt hotter than 100 degrees. and it's only the beginning. the heat wave is forecast to last all weekend, affecting people from the ohio valley to the mid-atlantic and prompting health warnings. >> i don't know how long this is going to continue. it's just horrible. >> if you have to be outside, be outside for a minimal amount time as much as needed. definitely drink a lot of water, always hydrated. john: the extreme weather is affecting travelers, too. amtrak warned customers some northeast corridor trains will travel at slower speeds because

of the heat. that's causing delays of up to an hour. in the west, a wildfire in new mexico has tak root and spread quickly. residents said an orange and black haze quickly filled the skies. the village of ruidoso ordered residents to evacuate and the town's mayor said entire neighborhoods have been destroyed. and in northeast iowa, a different kind of extreme weather. weeks of rain have sent the rock river overflowing its banks, forcing people out of their homes. an arkansas man is facing capital murder charges stemming from the grocery store shooting that killed three people and wounded 11 others, several of them critically. police say 44-year-old travis eugene posey opened fire yesterday inside the store in the small arkansas community of fordyce, about 70 miles south of little rock. authorities say posey only stopped firing after he was wounded in a gunfight with policehat injured two officers. the death toll in gaza climbed higher today follong two israeli airstrikes on separate

locations. one hit a refugee camp and another struck an eastern neighborhood of gaza city. palestinian and hospital officials said at least 39 people were killed. israel's military said they were targeting two hamas military sites. in tel aviv tonight, thousands of people rallied for new elections and called for the prime minister to reach a deal to bring hostages home. ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy said russia has launched more than 2400 guided missiles at ukrainian targets this month alone. his remarks followed a deadly day of attacks that killed three people and injured dozens more in kharkiv, ukraine's second-large city. zelenskyy said ukraine needs more help from western allies. and, a new chapter in an unsolved mystery. las vegas police said they removed a tall monolith from a remote part of the neva desert. they said the 6'4" structure was a public safety and environmental hazard. just how it got there is

anybody's guess. it's the latest in a series of mysterious monolith placements around the world since 2020, including in the democratic republic of congo and turkey. the nevada monolith is being held at an undisclosed location. crews are trying to figure out how to best store it or dispose of it. still to come on "pbs news weekend," the struggles renters in austin, texas are facing as they hunt for affordable housing. and, the big environmental costs of big data. >> this is pbs news weekend from w eta studios in washington, home of the pbs news hour, weeknights on pbs. john: bowel cancer, cancer in the colon or rectum, is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, killing nearly one million people a year. and cases of colorectal cancer have been on the rise, especially among those younger than 50.

fopatients with a certain type of bowel cancer in two separate studies, one in the united statnd a me recent one in britain. each found that using immunotherapy drugs before surgery dramatically increased the chance of curing bowel cancer in patients with a certain genetic profile. dr. vikram reddy is chief of colon and rectal surgery at the yale school of medicine. he is not affiliated or connected with either study. doctor, how potentially, how big a deal is this? dr. reddy: so, this is a huge deal for us because it's a new category of medications that we can use to treat patients with bowel cancers. john: and immunotherapy drugs. tell us what is immunotherapy and how does it work? dr. reddy: so, immunotherapy is different from conventional chemotherapy. so, immunotherapy actually augments and uses your own immune system to fight the cancers. whereas, the old conventional chemotherapy would work targeting the cancer cells and killing them with drugs. jo: are immunotherapy drugs

used in other types of cancer? dr. reddy: oh, yeah. immunotherapy drugs have been used in other kinds of cancers for a while. but recently, we'ven using them for colorectal cancers. john: what more do you want to know about these drugs that they're going to continue the clinical trials sort of looking at long-term results and relapses? what else do you want to know or what should the researchers be looking at? dr. reddy: i think with immunotherapy trials we're seeing a lot of promise in them treating colorectal cancers. we want to see if they can maintain those over a longer period of time. so, whenever we have a patient with cancer, we follow them for five years or even more to make sure the cancer doesn't come back. now, most of these trials have been going on for about a year to two years. so, we have short-term data. they're very promising. we just want to make sure there's a sustained response even five years out. john: and as i understand it, there's only they've only been testing or there's only been effective, found to be effective among patients with a certain

genetic pattern. how widespread is that? how many colorectal cancer patients have that genetic pattern? dr. reddy: so, about 15% of the patients he these types of cancers called, mismatch repair deficient type of colon cancers. so in those patients, these immunotherapy drugs can work beautifully. in the past, conventional chemotherapy did not was not effective against these patients. but now with immunotherapy, we can actually make a difference for these patients. john: why are cases of coloreal cancer on the rise, especially among young people? dr. reddy: so, it's a multitude of factors. you know one, our diets have changed. so, diets high in red meat, processed meat, sugars, sedentary lifestyle. these are all associated with an increase in colorectal cancers. and unfortunately, all of these are going up over the past two decades. and that's why we're seeing an increase in colorectal cancers. john: does it suggest that there

should be screening earlier or screening in particular cases earlier? dr. reddy: so in the older days, i mean, before 2021, you know, we used to actually start screening people starting at the age 50. and in blacks, we used to do it at 45. but in 2021, we actually changed the guidelines to start screening at 45. but unfortunately, we even see patients as young as 20 or 18 who are getting colorectal cancers. so even now, what i tell everyone is that if they have any bleeding, like rectal bleeding, if they ve abdominal pain, if they have change in their bowel habits, like, you know, if you're usually having one bad moment today and now you're constipated or you're having diarrhea, which persists, i say get a colonoscopy because it can diagnose you. it can even treat an early polyp. it can even get rid of the cancer if it's early stage. so, a colonoscopy is important. but unfortunately, screening by itself only starts at 45. john: and we said in the introduction about how prevalent deaths from colon cancer are in

terms of cancer deaths, but if it's caught earlier, does that change that sort of prognosis? dr. reddy: oh, yh. early-stage cancers, the survival is so much better than advanced or metastatic cancers. once it metastasizes, i mean, our survivals are still pretty good, but you know, you're talking about maybe 50% survival if you resect all metastatic disease. if you can resect metastatic disease, you know, the survival is much lower. so if you catch them early, you're looking at almost close to 100%. and especially if you have this mmr deficient, which is the mismatch repair deficient kind of cancers with these new category of drugs. i mean, you're talking about a cure. john: earlier, we lked about the things that seemed to be, contributing to the increased number of colorectal cases. what can peopldo? are there things people can do in terms of diet and terms of lifestyle to reduce the chances of developing colorectal cancer? dr. reddy: absolutely. you know, what i tell patients

are try to minimize how much red meat and pork counts as a red meat. the second thing is try not to eat any processed meat. third thing, you know, try to increase your fiber intake. fiber intake usually comes from fruits and vegetables, so increase your fiber intake to about 25 to 30 grams of fiber intake. fourth thing, there's some data to show that two tablespoons full of tree nuts like walnuts, almonds, or pecans can actually decrease the incidence of colorectal polyps and colorectal cancers. so, i told them to do this. the last thing is 30 minutes of exercise five days a week can actually, you know, mitigate the incidence of colorectal ncer. john: dr. vikram reddy of the yale school of medicine, thank you very much. dr. reddy: you're welcome. john: the latest inflation numbers show that nationwide, rents have cooled from historic highs. but, it's not reaching every

rental market or every renter. austin, texas is one of the places where rents are showing a downward trend. but, lower-income families say their rents are often staying the same or even going up. blair waltman-alexin of austin pbs tell us who's getting a deal in the texas capital and who's not. blair: mary lou had achieved that rare dream in austin, finding an apartment that was close to everything she needed. >> it was close to the library, close to the grocery store, close to my daughter's school and work. i was close to everything. now i feel like i will use a lot of gas. blair: she's worried about burning gas because soon she will be moving about 45 minutes out of town. she's leaving because her rent has gone up and she can't afford to stay. >> used to pay $1040, and

suddenly that was raised to $1530. it does no seem fair to me that after so many years, they simply raise the rent so much that we have no other option buto leave. blair: reports show that rents are going down in austin. a study by rent.com showed rents dipping by more than 10% year-over-year. >> it is not all bad. blair: he's a associate professor in the community regional planning program at the university of texas. >> we were flooded with headlines about how all of america was moving to austin and developers responded to that. blair: austin's population increased especially during the pandemic. 6% between 2020 and 2022. demand for housing increased as well. this drew a lot of developers to build apartments, and maybe as it turned out, too many apartments. one report showed as of last fall, almost 20,000 more multifamily units were delivered then released and it has some

landlords offering deals to bring in tenants. >> maybe two years ago, i feel like they were jostling for an apartment. now, the landlord is saying if you sign this 12 month lease, i will give you a month or more of free rent. >> the biggest thing has been rent increases and we are seeing that throughout austin and a lot of low income housing properties. blair: jazmine is an outreach specialist with a group that works with low income renters. she says they see residents struggling with a very tight housing market. >> we do have a lot of folks that are saying there is no housing i can find that is within my range that i can afford so they are definitely moving to the outskirts of austin. blair: that is the challenge she found herself in. >> i thought about moving and that is what i will do because i have nother option. it is too much money, i cannot pay it because i cannot pay so much rent alone. blair: if there are all of these

new apartments, why can't lower income families find a place to stay? >> most of our newer housin remains unaffordable. blair: she is with housing works austin. part of the problem with a lot of these new buildings, they are aimed at high income earners. nationwide, 89% of new apartments built in the last couple of years are considered high-end. they are also the ones getting deals on rent. one report showed in texas cities, luxury apartments saw bigger price drops than middle-tier rentals. >> we are seeing more higher-end apartments being built. at the same time, this gap between housing costs and the gap between income has been growing for over a decade in austin and other parts of the nation. blair: this gap also skewed a

number that has a big impact on low income housing. median family income, sometimes referred to as the ami or average median income. the interim director of the eviction mitigation team explains. >> if you are having an influx of high income earners, that is going to tip the scale. for the most part, affordable housing programs are actually tied to the ami. the ami goes up, but like a working-class family's income is not increasing the same way, so the affordability is actually going the opposite way. it is getting less affordable for regular working-class people. blair: when the mfi increases, the amount landlords can charge also increases. experts say wages for low income workers are not keeping up. rents are still above pre-pandemic levels, even when

the price drops. high housing costs can eat into other parts of a family's budget. >> once folks spend more than 30% of their income on housing, they are cutting funding from somewhere else. whether that is childcare, health care or other basic provisions. even though we are hearing a lot about how rents have comparatively gone down during the pandemic, we have seen they are high enough for a lot of households to be struggling. blair: there is a silver lining here for affordable housing advocates. >> this is a great time from the public sector and for nonprofits to scoop up land and to scoop up projects at a lower rate. mayb they are now able to acquire more projects during a downturn like this than they had been planning on. blair: the city is still pursuing its housing goals. voters approved $300 million for anti-displacement efforts as part of the new project connect

transit plan but those plans will take time to come together. for those that cannot afford their rent now, once she puts in her notice, she has about 60 days. >> we found a place to live together so there's no other option. blair: for "pbs news weekend," i'm blair waltman-alexin in austin. john: the rise of artificial intelligence is requiring faster and bigger computations for even sile tasks compared to, say, a google search. it's adding to the demand for more internet data centers, the places that house all the servers that keep the internet running. but as ali rogin reports, there's a price to pay for that. ali: demand for data centers is growing rapidly, but these facilities come at a big environmental cost, especially for the communities that host

them. northern virginia is the largest data center hub in the world. the area is responsible for processing nearly 70% of global digital traffic. it's a rate that local officials say is unsustainable. sasaki kitajima mulkey is a science journalist and writer for the climate focused news outlet. sachi, thank you so much for joining us. first of all, tell us a little bit more about what a data center is and why do we need so many of them? sachi: whenever we use the internet, upload photos to the cloud, send emails, watch a video, all of that data and digital information needs a home. and it lives in these huge facilities called data centers, which hold tens of thousands of servers each. and they process all that digital information. something like 70% of the world's digital information is processed by a cluster of data centers in virginia alone, and there are over 5000 facilities in the u.s. ali: what are the environmental impacts of having some of these data centers in your backyard? sachi: so to process all that information, they need two things. the first is electricity, of course, to physically crunch and

process all at gigabyte going on. the other is water, which are used in cooling systems to protect the servers from physically overheating. and researchers think they're in the top 10 water consuming industries in the u.s. they use 2% of the electricity in the u.s., which is a lot. and a source told me that data center campuses can use the resources equivalent to a small city. and as a.i. booms, they'll use even more. the average a.i. application uses six times the amount of electricity, so they run a lot hotter, and that scales exponentially. they just need more water to cool down. ali: and how do these data centers in the united states and around the world affect global efforts to decarbonize? sachi: it's tricky because, right now, we are building out green energy solutions at a great scale. it's happening really fast, but it might not be happening fast enough. currently, a lot of the grid is still running on fossil fuels and even plans in virginia to shut down, you know, coal firing plants may not go through because these data centers need so much energy that grid operators need to fire those coal plants back up, or just keep them running in order to meet all that demand. so, and one of the talking

points of these data center reform coalitions i've spoken to is that that's a step backwards from clean energy goals and kind of almost a betrayal of some of the promises certain states have made to, you know, get off of carbon. ali: and many of these data centers are located in densely populated residential areas. what's it like to live near one? sachi: yeah. you know, they're being built in their schools, neighborhoods, protected nature parks in virginia in particular. and one big impact is that they're really loud. they hum. and they bring all this noise pollution to the area. all that concrete also means a huge increase in stormwater runoff, because that rain can no longer soak into the ground. it all has to go somewhere. and so the amount of electricity also could be more than the grid may be able to handle. so when there's an outage, there's kind of a question of who gets the power. residents or data centers. ali: we're talking to you now via skype. we're using a lot of data to do it. as we increasingly rely on this type of cloud computing to do so many things, we use apps, we

use, we do virtual meengs, that kind of thing. is there any way that these data centers can continue to expand, continue to grow and support all this usage, but do so in a more environmentally-friendly way? sachi: you know, it is possible to build cooling systems that use less water, but we don't really see those built out at scale yet. and you could power them with green energy. but again, right now we have a grid that's kind of stuck on fossil fuels, and we're slowly making the transition to green energy, but maybe not fast enough to meet all this demand. first, before we can really know what we need to do next. we just need more transparency from the industry, which scientists and activists both told me is pretty secretive. google is saying it's a leader in sustainable data centers, and they only began releasing their water usage data a couple of years ago after a lawsuit. ali: and to that transparency point, i want to play for you a sound bite from an environmental activist in northern virginia. as we've said, where so many of these data centers aocated. >> one of the big things that concerns me is that some of these data center companies are claiming to be holding federal

or department of defense servers, and therefore, they are critical infrastructure and cannot be allowed to go down. and so, there's this question of who gets the water in a drought situation, and are they going to leverage that kind of argument of national security to potentially say they get the water first? ali: are there any safeguards that exist to make sure that these companies are being honest about the types of, companies that they're supporting with their servers? and what the effect on the environment is? sachi: we're kind of trusting companies to be transparent and do the right thing. there are a lot of companies like to tout sustainability goals, but truthfully, we're trying to get laws through in virginia right now. a couple of bills were introduced in virginia and in other states, but they're not getting a lot of traction until we have that research we need. and so right now, virginia is conducting a data center impact study. and the results of that will come out later this year, hopefully. i mean, we're just seeing a lot of action in virginia in particular.

the piedmont environmental council is a group that has this coalition called the data center reform coalition, and they just started this year really digging in, organizing their community together with hundreds of individuals and nonprofits on board. and they're working directly with lawmakers too, to see what they can do and how they can, you know, keep this industry a little bit more accountable. they also are taking action through freedom of information act requests to see what other kinds of information they can learn about these data centers en before the transparency is coming from the companies themselves. ali: science journalist satsuki kitajima mulkey, thank you so much for joining us. sachi: thank you so much for having me.

john: on the test editon of 'pbs news weekly," nick schifrin has an in-depth look at the latest delopments in the war between russia and ukraine. all that and more on "the newshour's" youtube channel. and that is "pbs news weekend" for this sunday. -- on this saturday. on sunday, how one ninth grader is helping restore mississippi's endangered oyster reefs, one oyster at a time. i'm john yang. for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. see you tomorrow. >> major funding for pbs news weekend has been provided by -- >> consumer cellular. how may i help you? this is a pocket dial. well, thought i would let you know that with consumer cellular, good nationwide coverage with no contract. that's kind of our thing. have a nice day. ♪ >> and with 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. >> president joe b. >> our very democracy. >> former president donald trump. >> we will make america great again. >> the candidates face-off on the economy, wars in ukraine and middle east, and the future of the country. a pbs news simulcast with analysis of the cnn presidential debate thursday, june 27 at 9:00 p.m. eastern, 6:00 central. ♪

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