saturday, june 21st, islamist extremist capture an iraqi town bordering syria. in our signature segment, should desperately ill patients be allowed to take medication not approved by the fda. >> if my daughter thinks this could help me healthwise, then that's up to my doctor. this might fetch $45 million. is it worth it? next on pbs news hour.

in memory of mere yann and ira dean wallick. bernard and irene schwartz. roslyn p. walter. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america. designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support is provided by -- and by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tish wnet studios, this is news hour weekend. >> good evening. thanks for joining us. i'm allison stewart. sunni extremists made new gains in iraq. militants led by the islamic state of iraq in syria captured the town of al qaim, 170 miles

southwest of baghdad. many heavily armed and wearing fatigues paraded in baghdad and other mostly shiite cities in iraq. the sunni militants now captured significant portion the of northern and western iraq. turning now to ukraine pro-russian separatists attacked military posts along the border with russia wounding nine ukrainian officers. the attacks came as poroshenko declared a unilateral week-long cease-fire. pro-russian forces claim troops are still conducting military operations. the kremlin also called for a cease-fire. 65,000 soldiers were placed in central russia on combat alert. more violence in western china where muslim extremists have been conducting a series of terror attacks. authorities say they killed 13 men after they drove a truck into a police station and set

you explosives. three police officers were wounded during the incident. last month a bombing killed 43 people in the same area. back in the united states, the presbyterian church devoted to divest $21 million of stock in companies whose products are used by israel on the west bank. the church says the products cause human hurt to palestinians there. at an annual convention in detroit yesterday, they voted to sell shaours in hewlett-packard, motorola. the israeli embassy in washington called the vote shameful in a statement on its facebook page. ptsd continues to lag. the report says last year just more than 50% of those with the disorder received the recommended treatment. far below the department of veteran affairs target of 67%. estimates are that about 1 in 12

service members who served in the wars in afghanistan and iraq may have ptsd. according to the latest accounting in 2012, the department of defense and the v.a. spent a total of more than $3 billion treating the disorder. and the chemist who invented kevlar has died. stephanie was described as a pioneer for women in science by her former employer dupont. she created kevlar in the mid-1960s. it's been used in bullet-proof vests since the '70s and believed to save the lives of thousands of police officers and american troops in the years since. stephanie was 90. since. she was 90. the latest on the stu to analyze the latest on the situation in iraq, gideon rose is with the counsel of foreign relations and editor of foreign affairs magazine. we got into it as soon as you got into the studio. a border town along syria was

captured by sunni islamists. how important is this power grab? >> the sunni jihadists, isis group, is taking a lot of territory. but the ones they are taking are sunni, largely desert and not particularly straoepblgicily important. a battle of power in iraq between the shia in the south, the kurds in the northeast and the sunnis in other areas. >> something is happening within the sunni extremists. you predicted a splintering starting to happen between loyalists of isil. >> sunnis are united in not liking the shiites and the kurds. but there are different groups within the sunni community and different groups that are less radical. eus eus has been disowned by al qaeda because of their brutal. so they are really bad people. and they have fought their own

extremists. will there be enough unity to build a sunni state. the most extreme groups benefit from chaos because they thrive by providing protection to their little areas. >> secretary of state john kerry will spend five days overseas talking about this. going to jordan. let's talk about jordan's part in this whole conflict. >> it wants to stay out. it always gets refugees and the collateral damage. they want to not be destabilized further. we will be able to keep jordan from being too destabilized. but on an overall policy settlement probably likely to be about as successful as the average of his ukraine negotiations and his israeli/palestinian negotiation stpwhrs he's going to go to paris and talk to arab gulf nation leaders. >> you get people to agree not

to fuel the conflict by backing their local proxies. sunnis packing the sunnis, iranians backing the shia and everybody fueling a civil war there. if you can keep a lid on it, that's okay. >> one thing we were discussing before starting the formal interview, what is the iraq to the united states right now? is it it is what it is? should we approach based on our history? approach on what we want iraq to be? what is it right now? >> what's really going on right now is the question of defining what america's core interests are. the president remarkably seems to have no particular interest in some costs either saying i told you so, we shouldn't get back in. or we have to go in to validate our previous commitment. he's basically saying what's the current threat and the future threat and how should i assess this? the real questions that americans have to ask themselves, if iraq does go into chaos, how much will this blow back to us and is there anything

we can really do about it. >> gideon rose, "foreign affairs magazine," thank you so much. >> thank you. now to our signature segment. tonight the growing movement to allow terminally ill patients the right to take drugs that have not been approved by the food and drug administration. even if those medications are potentially dangerous the the idea is tphoeupb as the right to try. a number of states have already approved legislation embracing the idea. missouri is one of them. news hour correspondent steven traveled there recently to report the story. >> reporter: in early 2013, christina brogan was pregnant with her fifth child began experiencing excruciating pain and her obstetrician didn't know why. >> my mom went with me to an appointment and said you have to

find out why she is hurting so bad. so they did an ultrasound and knitted me in the o.e. >> what did they find? >> they found the tumor. they found it had gone up into my liver. >> christina, at the age of 39, was operating with stage 4 colorectal cancer. >> what was that like? what was going through your ed? >> i can't say i had a normal thought in my head. i was scared for me babies. scared for me. scared for my family. >> her doctors needed to take aggressive measures to fight the disease and chose to perform a c-section 28 weeks into her pregnancy. today her son evan is a happy and healthy 1-year-old. christina, however, is battling a disease with disspiriting odds even with regular chemotherapy treatment.

>> what did they tell you your future looked like? >> they didn't. and i don't want them to. i will do what the doctors say. do my best to get better. that's my husband jeff. >> while her four other boys and husband jeff live in galiton, missouri, christina moved 30 minutes away to where her mother, sister, and stepfather can help care for her. her stepfather is a practicing physician at the local hospital. >> i think as you age you tend to recognize the sanctity of life. through the process of living you have been able to deal with a lot of heartache in your activities. >> neely has decided to make

public this very private family matter. see, in addition to being a, did he just finished his first term as a republican lawmaker in the missouri house of representatives. >> thank you, mr. speaker. >> this year he introduced a bill that would allow terminally ill people to take unapproved experimental medication outside a clinical trial and without the federal deposit's go ahead. it's called the right to try. >> let's try. let a person be in charge of their life. and i'm not saying this is the answer for everybody. but it's an answer out in that if we can move forward and we're going to gain access to care, we want options in life. and that's what this bill is trying to accomplish. >> patients and their doctors can already petition a drug company to try an investigational medicine even outside a trial. but they need approval from the

federal food and drug administration. right to try bills are state laws that would bypass that federal approval step and similar measures are gaining ground nationwide. here in missouri, the right to try law passed with unanimous support in the state legislature, as it did in colorado and louisiana. and this fall, arizona voters will have their own version of right to try on the ballot. this may, colorado's democratic governor signed the first right to try bill. like missouri's law passed by a republican legislature, it cuts the fed out of the picture. >> patients should be able to try a treatment even though it hasn't been approved. it's an attempt to save their life. >> lawmakers in the state began calling the measure dallas buyers club bill after the 2013 oscar winning film about aids patients seeking unapproved medication and one man's efforts

to side step federal rules. adding to the colorado bill's momentum, the story of 41-year-old denver dad nick auden. his family may an emotional online appeal for an experimental drug. he was on a trial but disqualified after a complication. >> if there's a chance worth taking it, if there's a possibility, we're going to be part of that possibility. >> what's more, a conservative think tank in arizona. the goldwater institute lent its support to the right to try movement, even helping lawmakers like jim neely draft legislation. >> the decision to use safe new medications out of the hands of bureaucrats. >> while the fda doesn't take a position on right to try laws, the the agency says it already has at least three pathways to allow patients access to

experimentals. there are clinical trials, of course. those are run by drug companies and overseen by federal regulators. but if the patient doesn't qualify, the fda allows individuals and even groups of patients to apply for access to experimental meds outside a trial. since 2009, the fda says it has green lit 99% of those individual and group applications. >> the agency has a pathway. it seems to work quite well. and i'm not sure what the state right to try bills really add to that. in fact, i think might take away some of the safety advantages people have where you have unusual review boards, somebody checking to make sure the patients fully are aware of what they are getting into and what's the balance we know about this particular product.

investigational drug and at this point her doctors are not seeking access. one of the 40 clinical trials for her type of cancer. at a later stage, if she opts to try a drug as a last resort outside of a trial, she wants that choice to be hers alone.

>> find out about right to try efforts across the united states. watch the goggle plus hang out from kaiser health news. visit news hour.pds.org. >> if you pay attention to the news, people pay extraordinary prices for a piece of history. the man scripts from john lennon. a 1 cent stamp from the 1800s. $142 million for this painting by francis bacon. bids for this 18th century viola. one of the ten believed to exist. they are expected to start at $45 million. that makes plenty of sense to some people, much less to others. news hour's hannah yee >> if you pay attention to the news, people pay extraordinary prices for a piece of history. the man scripts from john lennon. a 1 cent stamp from the 1800s. $142 million for this painting

by francis bacon. bids for this 18th century viola. one of the ten believed to exist. they are expected to start at $45 million. that makes plenty of sense to some people, much less to others. news hour's hannah yee reports. >> it's 15 minutes before a concert in new york city and viola player aaron carpenter is warming up. it's special. he is using a viola nearly 300 years old. >> the instrument heard by all these great composers, just to see where the timeline of this instrument in world history is. it's quite something. >> eight of the musicians are also using instruments. they are just as named. stradivarius named after the same 18th century italian. >> it was the da vinci of his time. the master craftsman. it is genius what he did. they survived 300 years and still sound glorious. >> on this night, carpenter is playing the stradivarius at an

event and the auction house is expecting the instrument and expects to sell it for more than $45 million. to carpenter it is worth it. >> people who are willing to spend over $100 million. a great da vinci painting, i put this in the same category as the master works and i think these have escaped our civilization and culture without them. we would have the same instruments today. >> but to others like this violin maker who has been making high end violins for nearly 30 years, that price is too high. especially when the best instruments used by professionals today typically cost around $50,000. a miniscule fraction of what that stradivarius is expected to cost. >> what makes a strat great? i find that it assumes that all

strats are great. >> he makes his violins by hand, using the seasonth century tools. he also incorporates 21st century technology like the scans and 3d lasers. how the wood vibrates to the sake of the sound hole. he thinks the sound quality are as gorgeous. >> i couldn't tell the difference. i had to admit i preferred my own violins at this point. and then some of my clients were telling me the same thing. >> could this instrument possibly sound as good as strats? the french researcher wanted to find out. so two years ago, just outside of paris, she blindfolded 10 international soloists. they played both modern violins and strads. the musicians posted the violins in a hotel room and with a full orchestra at a concert hall. in a skype interview, they said many of the soloists couldn't tell the difference between the

new and the old violins. in fact many took the modern violins as their favorite. >> this was not the case. people would have been able to sense it automatically. >> otherwise it's the price to pay. >> maybe this entire debate about the quality of sound misses a bigger point. that music lovers or investors on the stradivarius are more interested in owning a piece of history. >> when you are kind of putting one against the other, it's almost disrespectful to stradivarius. at the end of the day, the modern instruments are pretty much copies. to say that one is better than the other, you have to take into account the history as well. >> and in this case of this stradivarius, history will come at a price. starting at $45 million.

>> this is pbs news hour weekend saturday. brazil went to great expense to prepare for the 2014 world cup. one event in sao paulo cost $400 million, but they brought hardship for many of the poor left homeless. gear arrow guillermo from england's channel 4 reports. >> this is brazil's new homeland. >> unable to pay his rent, he came here a month ago with 1,000 other families. they set up camp on this wasteland. >> nothing involved.

>> they call it the people's cup. he shares his new home with two other families and their children. three generations under one plastic roof. [speaking foreign language] >> they make a plastic sheeting with no electricity or running water. now houses 4,000 families. the homeless people's movement runs five camps like this one in sao paulo alone, housing 20,000 people. and it's a growing problem that prices everywhere soar. after recent protests here that people here want a government pledge of 2,000 new homes. when the attention wanes, they will see that promise escape.

a few updates before we leave you tonight. the united nations said one million iraqis have been displaced at the start of the year, many following the recent offensive boy radical islamists. in this country, nearly two-thirds of senior executives at the veterans affairs department received performance bonuses last year, this despite widespread problems throughout the v.a. system. the government is taking steps to ban drones in national parks and because of conservation efforts the number of great white sharks is up off the east and west coasts. scientists say attacks on humans are extremely rare. that's it for this hour of news hour weekend. i hope you will join us tomorrow. i'm allison stewart, good night.

>> pbs news hour weekend made possible by judy and josh westin, joyce, the wallick family. in memory of ira dean wallicc. bernard and irene schwartz. rosalin p walter. corporate funding by mutual of america. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support is provided by -- and by the corporation for public broadcasting and contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

le announcer: major funding for the campaign was provided by the corporation for public broadcasting. additional funding was provided by: - cbs reports: the homosexuals. - most americans are repelled by the mere notion of homosexuality. a cbs news survey shows that two out of three americans look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort, or fear. the average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. he is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. [upbeat instrumental music]