captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, july 3: isis militants strike again-- this time in baghdad-- killing alth.of clues about publicints next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the john and helen glessner family trust. supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. the citi foundation. supporting innovation and enabling urban progress.

sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. 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 has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. this is pbs newshour weekend. >> sreenivasan: good evening and thanks for joining us. it is the third mass killing of civilians believed to be carried out by the islamic state group-- isis-- in a week. today the country targeted was iraq. a suicide truck bomb blew up shortly after midnight in a busy shopping area of central baghdad where families were celebrating the end of the muslim holy month of ramadan. iraqi officials say the bombing killed at least 115 people and wounded nearly 200 more. the victims killed included 15 children.

this is the most lethal attack on civilians in iraq in a year. when iraqi prime minister haider al-abadi visited the scene, he was met with angry crowds; some throwing rocks and shoes at him. a second car bombing north of baghdad today killed at least five people and wounded 16 others. the attacks come a week after american-backed iraqi forces recaptured the city of fallujah, which isis had occupied for two years. today, bangladesh began two days of national mourning following friday night's isis attack on a restaurant popular with foreigners in the capital of dhaka. seven terrorists, targeting non- muslims, killed 20 hostages, including three u.s. college students, and two police officers. bangladeshi officials said today all seven attackers were from bangladesh, and the police had sought to arrest five of them before the attack. 13 suspects in tuesday's attack on the airport in istanbul, turkey, made their first court appearances today. they are among 27 men detained in connection with the mass

shooting and triple suicide bombing that killed more than 40 people and injured 240 others. turkey's president recep tayyip erdogan said yesterday the investigation points to the three attackers being trained by isis. john mccain, the 2008 republican presidential nominee, said today neither donald trump nor hillary clinton has a strategy to succeed in the war on isis. mccain, who supports trump as this year's republican nominee, is on a visit to afghanistan with senator lindsey graham, and today they said president obama's plan to withdraw half of the nearly 10,000 u.s. troops in afghanistan is a mistake. please do not cut the troops in half. if you do, afghanistan will become the next iraq very quickly. >> and have rules of engagement that we can utilize the full use of american military power. >> sreenivasan: president obama has said the troop level will drop to 5,500 by the end of the year or early 2017. find out why the hole in the ozone layer over the south pole

appears to be shrinking. go to www.pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: tomorrow in venezuela, president nicolas maduro will end electricity rationing that began in april, following a drought that affected water levels at the hydroelectric dam that provides most of the country's power. the rationing has cut off electricity to much of the country for four hours a day. still, venezuelans are struggling with shortages of food, medicine and other necessities, with increasing finger-pointing at maduro's leadership. for more on these challenges," new york times" reporter nicholas casey joins me by skype from the nation's capital, caracas. pictures and the stories that you've seen are really tragic. talking about people riding for food. has that basic need got any closer to being met? >> no, and it's not clear that it's going to be met this summer at all. still in a situation where there are long lines to get food, there are people who are going into grocery stores, by force, to get what's in there.

and you know, the reason this is happening for the most part is because venezuela isn't able to produce food that it needs and it is not able to buy the food that it needs to import if it can't make what it needs. >> sreenivasan: is this something acute to the cities or across the country? >> we stopped in a town caulked boca de chide, a fishing village. about a week before we got there they had sacked two places, one a bread store, the other a chinese grocery store. and if 500 people, a huge part of the town had gong out in this fishing village to get what they could find. >> sreenivasan: is there any sort of recourse that these poor and hungry people have? >> one thing the option is trying to organize a referendum

which would recall nicolas maduro. he doesn't feel it is necessary, they are not making up this route to get rid of maduro, in fact they have gathered a large number of signatures at this point. the process is beginning to advance but it is unclear whether the government which has control over the agencies and mechanisms in which a recall would be organized is going to allow this to happen. but the bigger question though hari is if there is a referendum, id there is a new government in power will they be able to put more food on peoples' plates? that is not clear. for so many years, venezuela was dependent on oil to bring in almost everything they needed. this country had become a rich guy who forgot how to cook and ordering takeout for years and suddenly when the money disappeared there was no money to buy some of the basics anymore. that model doesn't change,

whether the opposition or the trevistas are in power, the left is in four or not. that remains the same. >> sreenivasan: all right, nick casey of the new york times joining us, thank you so much. >> sreenivasan: of the estimated 34 million americans who lack high speed internet access at home, the overwhelming majority live in rural areas of the country. despite the limited options available to them, some of these communities have found a way to bring state-of-the-art connectivity to their residents, by doing it themselves. the newshour's ivette feliciano explains in tonight's signature segment. this report is part of our series on urban ideas, which explores how cities and towns tackle problems to improve their quality of life. >> reporter: visiting the rural hill towns of western massachusetts, you probably wouldn't be surprised by people in cafes or coffee houses taking advantage of free wi-fi to work and check emails.

but you might be surprised by the lengths they go just to get online. >> my strategy, do it late at night when everybody in my house is, like, asleep so that everything works well. >> because we have so many people that use it, it overworks our router, so we have to reset it periodically. >> reporter: beyond the boston metropolitan area there is a digital divide in massachusetts. though the state has the 15th largest population in the country and a thriving tech industry, small towns in the more rural central and western regionslike new marlborough, goshen, and new salemstill struggle with connectivity because cable companiesthe most common providers of internet access to american homes and businessesdon't offer them high speed internet. and the bay state isn't the only one facing this problem. earlier this year, the federal communications commission released findings showing that 10% of americans are without access to high speed internet. but when you go to a rural area like here in western massachusetts, that number rises to 39%.

that lack of high speed access is affecting residents and businesses alike. jane iredale's makeup company in great barrington, massachusetts employs more than a hundred residents in the area. in the 24-hour-a-day world of online retail, her employees need to be able to work from anywhere. and that's where they run into problems. >> it's very difficult to find those people who can actually go home and get the right connectivity for their laptops. because a lot of people here don't have connectivity. and this is very difficult when you're dealing with a manager who has 12 people under her, and she can't go home and supervise what's going on in an emergency. >> reporter: the population in western mass has stagnated or declined as more young people leave the area in search of better job opportunities. for example, berkshire county which borders new york statehas seen its population drop more than 2.5% in the last six years. tim newman, who moved to the berkshires in 2002 and opened a small cafe, says people leave

the region, in part, because of a lack of connectivity. >> it's bad for real estate values, it's terrible for economic development, it is unfair as far as education is concerned. >> reporter: susan crawford, director of harvard's berkman center for internet and society, says in 21st century america, being on the wrong side of the digital divide can be devastating for economic growth. >> the risk of not treating our rural areas well when it comes to high-speed internet access is that they become even more hollowed out than they already are, that their population just vanishes, that they are no longer sustainable places to live. who would buy a house today without high-speed internet access? why would you do that? and so you're leaving these places and their property values at tremendous risk of simply collapse. >> reporter: western massachusetts residents often resort to dial-up phone lines or satellite dishes for their online access, which offer download speeds starting around five megabytes per second-- far

slower than the 25 megabytes per second that the f.c.c. has set as a minimum standard for high speed internet. customers can pay up to $90 a month for satellite service, almost double the average amount charged by large internet providers. crawford says big diversified media companies that provide internet and cable service avoid building high speed online networks in rural communities because the expense of doing so in a sparsely populated area doesn't offer them enough bang for their buck. >> they are responding rationally to wall street, and wall street wants them to keep their profits up very high. and for them, it's not as profitable to run a wire to a remote, isolated area with a few houses in it. >> reporter: i mean, can you blame them if it doesn't make financial sense to service a less-populated area? >> for many utility companies in the united states, it does make sense. if you're looking for modest, steady returns until the sun explodes, this is actually a great investment.

if instead you're a diversified media company, it doesn't make sense. >> reporter: treating the internet as a public utility, like a phone or electric company, has been growing more popular in recent years. chattanooga, tennessee, cedar falls, iowa, and lafayette, louisiana are examples of the more than 80 u.s. cities that have built publicly-owned high speed networks using fiber optics, the fastest and most efficient internet connection currently available. though building a municipal fiber network is a big task that many small towns and rural areas may be unable to do on their own, residents in western massachusetts may have found a solution. over the past six years, more than 40 towns throughout the region have come together to form a high speed internet cooperative called "wired west" whose goal is to build a high speed fiber optics network, connecting all the towns' residents and businesses. newman is now on wired west's board as a delegate for his town, new marlborough. >> the fiber will pass every-- it will be on every road, it'll pass every driveway, and anyone,

however remote they are, will be able to get service. >> reporter: bob labrie, who serves on wired west's executive committee, says that the cooperative model calls for towns to pool their resources and form a larger customer base, who will all be part owners of the network. >> we're not a stock company. we don't have to earn a return on equity that we have to pay back to our shareholders. these are all things that are savings that can be passed on to the customers that we ultimately serve, making it more affordable and sustainable over the long run. >> reporter: is building a fiber network really something that small towns are able to do? or is this something better left to professionals? >> while a small town alone might not be able to build that network that you're talking about, when you regionalize several towns and get a larger scale, you attract a different clientele or different people that might be able to help you build that network. >> reporter: this do it yourself

cooperative model is already working over 1,300 miles away from western mass in southern minnesota, where 27 farming communities have formed "r.s. fiber". it's made high speed internet available for the first time to more than 1,500 homes and businesses. and it's continuing to extend that service to more towns and outlying farms. for rates ranging from $50 to $130 a month, r.s. fiber offers their customers internet speeds between fifty and 1,000 megabytesor one gigabyteper second. at that speed, a user could download a two-hour movie from itunes in under five seconds. jeff nielsen, the c.e.o. of the united farmers cooperative, which has been involved with rs fiber since its inception, says that high speed access is essential to modern farming technology, allowing farmers to determine with pinpoint accuracy how to grow the most crops with the most efficiency. >> this technology is powerful, because we can go up to our farmers now who have the ability

with their modern equipment to adjust how many seeds per acre they plant as you're going across the field. they have the ability to adjust how much crop nutrients they're putting down as they go across the field. all this requires broadband technology to talk to this equipment. the high-speed internet is making this much easier. >> reporter: farmer jake rieke is one of the beneficiaries of the new network. his family has been farming in the area for over 150 years. with the new technology, he can share information about his crops, upload overhead drone footage of his fields, and monitor his livestock on his smartphone. until recently, the poor quality of the internet service available to him was an impediment. >> i would have to plan out my day in terms of do i need a large chunk of internet at certain times? are my kids going to try watching netflix at a certain time? are there any major updates to my iphone or to my smart phone or to any of the tablets or anything like that?

>> reporter: was it a pain? was it annoying to have to deal with that? >> absolutely, yeah. everything was just a struggle. >> reporter: for rieke, the new high speed internet is a boon for his farm and a necessity for his two young daughters. >> teachers are always assigning homework that requires internet for research. if you have a quality internet connection, it really opens up a lot of opportunities that you wouldn't even think about if your internet didn't work right. >> reporter: rieke, who is also the vice chair of rs fiber, says the network will ultimately cost $45 million to build. the towns involved have raised the money by issuing bonds, taking out loans, bringing onboard local investors, and through a $1 million grant from the state of minnesota. back in massachusetts, wired west's network is estimated to cost between $100 to $120 million. the towns in the cooperative have agreed to borrow two-thirds of the cost and are looking to the state to fund the remaining amount. until then, development of the network is on hold.

susan crawford says that despite the high pricetag, a well thought-out high speed network will be able to pay for itself through subscriber fees and remain sustainable for years to come. >> as long as you build deliberately and incrementally and make sure that you have enough revenue to cover the next stage of the build, these are very successful implementations of something that every other thing we need to do as a country relies on. >> reporter: bob labrie remains hopeful that the project will be completed within a few years once construction begins. >> we still think that there's a role for a regional cooperative to exist that will provide regional services to our customers. we feel that when we have a group of towns together, a cooperative, we have a bigger voice at the negotiating table for when we're looking for vendors to come in to provide internet service, to provide telephone service, to provide television service, to provide

service that we haven't even dreamed about yet. >> reporter: tim newman insists the demand for these services is just as great in his small town of new marlborough, massachusetts, as it is in big cities. >> there's really no difference for people who live here than people who live in boston and new york or los angeles or anywhere. in order to do things as part of your life, you need connectivity to the internet. it's not a luxury, it's a utility. >> sreenivasan: increasingly in the u.s., city governments are turning to big data and technology to improve performance and planning. in another part of massachusetts, the city of cambridge is now deploying robots underground to better understand public health. this report is also part of our" urban ideas" series looking at innovations in the ways cities are solving problems. the newshour's christopher booker has more. >> reporter: the most unpleasant job in all of cambridge,

massachusetts, boston next door neighbor, may well belong to a robot named luigi. these researchers from the massachusetts institute of technology lower luigi into the city's sewer system to collect samples of human wastewater. more than two-feet long this robot is on the cutting edge of data collection and public health research. he was created by m.i.t.'s senseable city lab, which innovates new approaches to study urban environments. >> it's a great way to get behavioral data that would be very difficult to get on a person-by-person basis. >> reporter: m.i.t. biological engineering professor eric alm helps oversee the project. >> there's a lot of folks looking at sewage often at the wastewater treatment plant. we're trying to go closer to people's homes and say, 'iwell, what's really coming out?' what can we learn about the human activities that are going on in a city by looking at these bacteria, viruses, chemicals, closer to the people that encounter them? >> reporter: once luigi is finished gathering, the students

pull him out of the sewer and take his data to alm's lab. launched last year, the robot is a key player in a pilot program known as "underworlds" launched last year. the premise is that sewage can be mined for data in real-time to inform policy makers, health officials, and city planners about the health of residents. >> people in public works want to know, "are there people who are illegally dumping their sewage into the storm drains?" people in the department of defense want to know, "are people making bombs in their bathtub? could we detect those chemicals." people in public health want to know, "what are the new diseases that are emerging? can we sequence them? can we get identification of these bacteria before people get sick?" >> reporter: such knowledge could potentially alter cambridge's understanding of issues ranging from demographic patterns, nutritional intake and even illicit drug use. sam lipson is director of environment health with cambridge's public health department. >> we're so used to having broader outcome measures like,'i

how many people showed up in the emergency room? or 'iwhat's the rate of an infectious disease?'" >> reporter: lipson envisions a future where the city's health efforts will be more precise and more easily measured. >> resources are always limited, and you may identify that there is one or two neighborhoods within the city where there's a greater indication of a greater likelihood of diabetes developing in that neighborhood. this would be a way of allocating resources and then being able to measure whether or not you've actually had an impact. >> reporter: but there are broader social implications surrounding just what luigi and the lab are capable of learning and revealing about people. >> the big question for us is going to be privacy, and we've tried to make sure that we're monitoring an area that has at least 5,000 people, so we give people some extent of anonymity that way. >> reporter: is it reasonable to think you could take this down to the micro level, single household? >> we're not going to do that. i think it would be expensive to do that, so you'd have to have a very targeted question.

and i don't think people would want that. >> there's no real possibility of tracking any piece of data back to any individual, these are really combined samples through a combined waste stream, and there's simply no tags or metadata. there are going to be questions down the road about how you work with a community, since in my view the community would own this data, to make that then available and beneficial. >> reporter: because i can also envision commercial implications. >> exactly, right, you could imagine if they could target a neighborhood, or even a city that has a high rate of a certain chronic disease, or maybe of indicators to suggest those diseases will occur later on, that they might find that valuable information. and so there are some really important questions eventually that need to get addressed, but we have a little time to work that out. >> reporter: this summer the underworld's project plans to deploy ten more robots like luigi to sample sewers throughout cambridge and boston.

>> this is pbs newshour weekend, sunday. >> sreenivasan: president barack obama, who once visited a nazi concentration camp with nobel peace prize winner and holocaust survivor elie wiesel, says wiesel told him: "memory has become a sacred duty of all people of goodwill." the president said today upholding that duty became the purpose of wiesel's life. wiesel died yesterday at his home here in new york city. he was 87 years old. wiesel accompanied president obama and german chancellor angela merkel on a 2009 visit to buchenwald. that was the second concentration camp where the teenage wiesel was held during world war two; it's also where the nazis killed his father. "thank you, mr. president, for allowing me to come back to my father's grave." before buchenwald, the nazis rounded up his whole family, along with 15,000 jews from

their hometown in romania, and sent them to auschwitz. his mother and younger sister died there. wiesel documented the genocide in his first person account," night," and dozens of other books. he embodied the call to "never forget" those who died in the holocaust. his 1986 nobel peace prize citation described his message as "one of peace, atonement and human dignity." >> we must speak. we must take sides. for neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. >> sreenivasan: he was instrumental in creating the holocaust memorial museum in washington. >> sreenivasan: and wiesel often spoke out against violence and oppression, calling for intervention to stop ethnic cleansing in bosnia and the darfur region of sudan. >> do not wait for sudan's invitation or consent. >> sreenivasan: his widow, marion, said today her husband waged countless battles for innocent victims regardless of ethnicity or creed.

finally nasa's jufo spacecraft is expected to encumber jupiter's spacecraft today but china completed the radio telescope, the 500 meter wide telescope is expected to begin operations in september. its missions, according the chinese academy of sciences to search for extra terrestrial life. tomorrow, when does free speech enter into area that is dangerous? i'm hari sreenivasan, have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet

captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the citi foundation. supporting innovation and enabling urban progress. the john and helen glessner family trust. supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. 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 has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

ice cream. it may be the best thing on earth. oh, it's fattening and fatty, but it's an amazingly satisfying food that makes almost everybody happy. we came all the way from wisconsin for this ice cream. narrator: on a per capita basis, every american eats about six gallons a year, taking advantage of an ever-changing variety of flavors. ice cream! get your ice cream! for the next hour, we're going to consider some of the joys of ice cream. woman: oh, it's so good! we'll look at some history. and we'll visit some cool ice cream places, mostly small shops where they take a lot of care with the product. good. we'll travel from cape cod to hawaii. we'll meet people who collect ice cream stuff, and we'll talk with people who know a lot about making ice cream. that's a great flavor. we'll go to ben & jerry's up in vermont, and we'll stop at penn state university,