captioning sponsored by wnet on this edition for saturday, august, 16: >> sreenivasan: new american airstrikes in northern iraq after islamic extremists massacre dozens. texas governor rick perry is indicted on felony charges. what happens next? and unconventional efforts to boost declining museum attendance by trying to attract young people. >> if people come to the museum and they are not entertained, then they are gonna be tuned out. next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by:

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 tisch wnet studios in lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. this is pbs newshour weekend. >> sreenivasan: good evening. thanks for joining us. american jets today hit positions near a key dam in northern iraq that that had been captured recently by islamic extremists. this, a day after the extremists members of the islamic state are said to have massacred dozens of yazidis. the extremists reportedly had demanded members of that religious minority convert to islam. for about all of this, we are joined now via skype from duhok in northern iraq by liz sly of

the washington post. so, we've heard about several more air strikes in the region this morning. what can you tell us? >> reporter: all we know is there have been some big explosions around that dam at isis positions. we have been hearing reports from residents about that. it is not clear at this moment whether the u.s. has been involved but we know they have been involved in a lot of the other air strikes going on around that area and i think it is expected these were u.s. strikes. >> sreenivasan: what do we know about the area where the most receipt massacre occurred? >> this is a small village southeast of sin jar, the assault on the yezidis a couple of weeks ago triggered this crisis. it's in a very small village, a remote area. reports have been sketchy but we know at about 1:00 yesterday fighters with the islamic state did go into that village and they apparently killed-- we have a number of 84 men. they lined them up and executed

them and they took away around 300 women. >> sreenivasan: is there any connection between the timing of when president obama said that the humanitarian operations on the mountain are done? >> the situation on the mountain has greatly improved. >> sreenivasan: and when these people went in for the massacre? >> reporter: yes, that's what a lot of yezidis and some kurds are tell us. they believe it's a direct connection between president obama calling off the humanitarian air lift of yezidis which had been planned in the mountain nearby and the islamic state fighters going in and killing these people. they had been surrounding these people fair week, demanding they convert or risk death. so it could be that they were planning to go in anyway, but a lot of people feel that was a sense that they were off the hook, a green light, if you like, from president obama to continue killing in the area. >> sreenivasan: have they made more advanced in the region since the humoritarian crisis that really occupied most of our headlines here in the west? >> reporter: they have been continuing to advance throughout this time. they never really stopped. the air strikes did help them on

the outskirt ofs of erbil but they made gains down near the iranian border, and they've been making a lot of gains recently in the northern aleppo country, in syria, a further edge of the area they control. they've been taking a lot of small towns and villages around aleppo in the past few days, and people are very afraid that the syrian rebels there are going to lose control of the border with turkey and perhaps the town of aleppo itself. >> sreenivasan: what about the talk that perhaps the u.s. military aid could come to kurdistan or other european countries could assist in this fight? >> reporter: well, it's my understanding that u.s. military aid has already arrived in kurdistan. it was announced earlier this week that the u.s. was prepared to send the aid directly to kurdistan. they are coordinating this with baghdad. they are not bypassing the federal government in baghdad. they're not cutting a separate deal with kurdistan, if you like. but they are sending arms. it's my understanding that some have already arrived.

>> sreenivasan: liz sly of the "washington post" joining us have a skype from iraq, thanks so much. >> reporter: thank you. >> sreenivasan: in texas today, governor rick perry said he is innocent of any wrongdoing. yesterday, a grand jury in austin indicted the presidential hopeful on two felony counts of abuse of power something he says he is actually a victim of. >> we don't settle political differences with indictments in this country. it is outrageous that some would use partisan political theatrics to rip away at the very fabric of our state's constitution. this indictment amounts to nothing more than abuse of power and i cannot, and i will not, allow that to happen. >> sreenivasan: we'll have an interview from austin right after the news summary.

of an unarmed african american teenager. there were peaceful protests this afternoon after renewed unrest overnight. that's when protesters deified police calls to disburse and looted at least three stores. some store owners complained the police, accused of using excessive force earlier in the week did not do enough to stop the looters last night. turning now back overseas tensions remain high along the border between ukraine and russia, after reports yesterday that the ukrainian military had destroyed an armed russian convoy that had entered ukraine. for more about the conflict and efforts to end it before it escalates further, we are joined from moscow via skype by james marson of the wall street journal. so, yesterday there was some confusion on whether or not the event happened at all. the ukrainians say they did away with a russian military convoy. the russian call it a fantasy. what do we know about it? >> reporter: that's right. this call-up of about 20 armored vehicle crossed over the

russian-ukrainian border thursday evening, spotted by two british reporters. they snuck around the border post and entered ukraine. ukraine yesterday said that it had destroyed this armored column. russia dismissed this as a fantasy. and ukraine has so far provided no pictures of this. it royaled the market because everyone was fearful the destruction of the column would lead to a wider conflict in russia and ukraine. but in fact, today, ukraine has tried to play it day saying this is quite a regular occurrence, that russia keeps send these columns across. >> sreenivasan: what's in their interest to make this up? >> reporter: well, ukraine, obviously, wants to make it seem like it was having military success against the separatists. it doesn't want to look like it's easy for the russians to send weapons and men into the

east. ukraine has been fighting this pro-russian insurgency for around four months. it's been having significant successes in recent weeks. it's managed to push the rebels out of a lot of towns and cities, and they want to keep that momentum going. >> sreenivasan: what about that aid convoy? we've seen those pictures of those hundreds of trucks that are waiting on the border. are they any closer to getting through? >> reporter: they seem to be stuck on the border at the moment. they're parked up in a field a few miles from the border crossing. the ukrainians say they're waiting for paperwork which will allow them to cross. the russians say the ukraine rans are not allowing them to go across. there's a lot of finger pointing. ukraine is sending their own aid column, so there are a lot of people in besieged towns waiting for aid and not receiving it. >> sreenivasan: any advancing on the diplomatic front? >> the diplomatic front was

frozen for a very long time but now it appears to be coming back to life. the finnish president was in russia yesterday meeting vladimir putin. today, he is in ukraine, meeting the ukrainian president. tomorrow, the french, german, ukrainian, and russian foreign ministers will neat in berlin. there seems to be a concerted diplomatic push to find a resolution here. now, it could be difficult to find that resolution. ukraine has been pushed with its military operations as it seems sofeel it can push the rebels out. >> sreenivasan: james marson from the "wall street journal" join us live from moscow. thanthank you very much >> sreenivasan: in south korea today, during an outdoor mass attended by hundreds of thousands of people, pope francis beatified 124 koreans who had been killed during the 18th and 19th centuries for refusing to renounce christianity. beatification is one of the steps toward sainthood.

the pope also spoke about income inequality, saying "alongside immense wealth, dire poverty is silently growing" and "the cry of the poor is seldom heeded." mexico is protesting the deployment of u.s. national guardsmen along its border with texas. late yesterday, the foreign ministry issued a statement saying, no circumstance or change in border security exists that justifies this measure. governor perry is planning to send one thousand guardsmen to help secure the border following a wave of illegal immigration into the united states from berlin today, word that germany's intelligence agency eavesdropped on calls made by american secretaries of state, hillary clinton and john kerry. according to "der spiegel," which broke the story, the tapping was accidental. the magazine said the calls were made on the same frequency as calls placed by a terror suspect. the u.s. has been sharply criticized in germany for eavesdropping on chancellor angela merkel and other german officials. in china today, opening ceremonies at the youth olympics. the international olympic committee has barred athletes from several west african

nations from competing in combat sports and swimming events out of concern that they may have been exposed to the ebola virus. more than 1,000 people have died in the outbreak in west africa. the u.s. department of agriculture has issued new regulations designed to restrict the number of puppies shipped into this country from overseas often from china and eastern europe. the new regulations, which go into effect in 90 days, will require that all puppies imported into the u.s. be at least six months old, healthy and up to date on vaccinations. animal welfare workers say that one quarter of the thousands of puppies shipped, die on the way here. a milestone of sorts about how americans are getting our information and being entertained at home. a report released yesterday says for the first time ever, cable companies have more internet subscribers than tv subscribers each at just under 50 million. cable tv subscriptions are down because of competition from satellite tv providers and telephone companies. a team of college students found

thousands of artifacts from the mid-1700s near lake george in upstate new york. the area was the scene of military activity for nearly a quarter century, starting with the french and indian war in 1755, through the american revolution. among the objects found were uniform buttons and musket balls. >> sreenivasan: the first governor in texas to be indicted in a hundred years, those were the headlines late last night about governor rick perry and what a grand jury says was his abuse of power. to explain what's behind it all is tony plohetski from the austin american statesman. let's talk about the incident in question. what is it that rick perry allegedly did that was an abuse of his power? >> reporter: well, it all started more than a year ago in april, 2013. the sitting district attorney here in travis county, rosemary lindberg, was arrested and charged with drunk driving. two months after that, while the

legislature was finishing their session, governor rick perry was about to sign the state's budget and during that time, he is accused of sending word to district attorney rosemary lindberg-- resign or i am going to veto an item in the state budget to withhold $7.2 million in funding to your office." rosemary lindberg, the district attorney, is a democrat. rick perry is, of course, a republican. sphwhrar so why is that an apuce of power? is that not within his right as a governor to veto items from the budget? >> reporter: well, that is the key question here. the governor's camp steadfastly says, "listen, the governor was doing just that. he was exercising his line item veto authority." but what the prosecution and these grand jurors essentially have said, "well, yes, governor, you may have been doing that, but you also attached a threat to it, so that changes the dynamic. yes, you may have legally used your veto authority, but

potentially you did something illegal by attaching a threat to that veto." >> sreenivasan: none of this happens in a political vacuum. there are republicans who say the public integrity unit that was underneath this prosecutor went after republicans far more aggressively than it did democrats. >> reporter: right. that is a decades-long, you know, dispute between republicans and the democratic party. the d.a.'s office here in travis county operates the public integrity unit. the money that the governor vetoed was ear mark forward that unit. that unit is tasked with investigating state ethics violations among all state officials. their jurisdiction is not just travis county. and so for years republicans have alleged that the d.a.'s office is going after republicans and their party. the d.a.'s office here has been led by democrats for decades. >> sreenivasan: all right, so what happens next in the legal process for the governor? what does the governor's office do about it? >> well, some time during the

next several days, governor rick perry is expected to come to the travis county courthouse and turn himself in, just like any other indicted criminal defendant. he will be fingerprinted. he will have his mug shot taken, and then released on pond. he will have to, at some point, though, answer for these charges potentially in court. >> sreenivasan: all right, tony plohetski from the "austin american statesman" thank you for joining us today. >> reporter: thanks for having me. >> sreenivasan: according to the national endowment for the arts, the number of americans who visit an art gallery or museum has been declining steadily for many years now. attendance is especially low among young people. now, a few enterprising young art lovers have come up with some unconventional plans to reverse the decline. the newshour's hannah yi reports. >> reporter: it's friday and in

a few hours ethan angelica and jessye herrell will host a small get together. they're going through their checklist to make sure everything's ready. there will be games and music, too. ♪ their agenda tonight is to recruit a new generation of museum goers by helping them have fun once they get there. they say it's important because of the declining museum attendance by young people. >> they haven't historically been posited as the most hip spaces. >> reporter: sandra jackson- dumont oversees education programs at the metropolitan museum of art. she says many millennials those between the ages of 18 and 33 don't go to museums because they've never had the right introduction. >> there were moments in time where arts education was a part of basic education like it was just normalized behavior. and there's this new generation of folks then that represent in many ways a body of people that

actually didn't have arts education in school. >> reporter: jackson-dumont says museums are also competing with a variety of cultural activities like food fairs, street art and even online lectures. nick gray is 32 years old and loves museums. he goes several times a week but knows he's in the minority. >> maybe people had a bad experience when they were growing up at a museum. maybe they were taken to museums as kids, and it was a snooze fest. it was super boring, or they were dragged there by their parents. and for one reason or another, the vast majority of people have checked out of museums. >> reporter: so how do you get millennials to check into museums, and get them to keep going back? gray decided to hire young museum lovers like jessye herrell and ethan angelica, and he created a company called museum hack. with the permission from the met and the american museum of natural history, his company gives small group tours.

their strategy is simple: jazz up the traditional tour by doing something completely different. >> some people in big museums still believe that the museum experience is meant for you to sit down in front of the object and let its majesty wash over you. and you will be baptized by the light of this awesome art. you look at the objects inside of a museum that are placed there by curators who have done an awesome job, but are sometimes curating for the other curators and not for the visitors. if people come to the museum and they are not entertained, then they are gonna be tuned out. >> reporter: museum hack typically caters to millennials and parents with young children, charging $39 per person per tour in addition to the donation visitors are encouraged to make to the museum. the museum doesn't charge the company anything to conduct the tours. >> we're gonna get you to engage

with the piece of art. assume the position. we're gonna hold it for just a second. friends take photos of friends. we want you to take a selfie with something. we want you to throw something up on instagram. we want you to you know tweet about something. >> reporter: but the main attraction is the stories they tell behind the art and how they tell it. >> we're gonna bring it to you on a level that you're really comfortable with. it's very colloquial. we're not trying to talk, like spew big words that you don't know or that we feel fancy because we do know. >> and we'll break it down for you like really sassy. >> real easy, yeah. >> yeah, really sassy. >> i'd like to introduce you to the one and only caravaggio, my number one drinking buddy at the metropolitan museum of art. if you had to decide where the light is coming from in this painting, where is the light coming from? see how there's the "v" between their shoulders? it looks like there's some orange thing sort of spurting up there. there's a fireplace back there. so part of where the light is coming from, is that the fireplace is bouncing off the dude's chest and shining onto their faces. and what he's doing is

reflecting light and putting shiny ( bleep ) into the corners just to sort of keep it real. he was also known for theatrical lighting so if you're like a filmmaker or something he was sort of like the inspiration for that. >> taking them to a piece like this amazing sculpture of diana that's in the courtyard of the american wing at the metropolitan museum of art, and how do we compare her to maybe kim kardashian. and how do we talk about other objects in the museum and put them in a light that people can understand and can laugh about? it's creating these points of accessibility that only get people to be excited and sort of energized. >> reporter: and what do you say to critics who might say, "you know, that's a little disrespectful to art to kind of link it to pop culture like kim kardashian? that it's sort of irreverent." >> i want to be really careful because a lot of people talk about, is what we're doing just dumbing down the museum experience? and i don't see it like that. i see that we're gonna get people excited to come back to the museum. >> reporter: so why aren't

museums like the ones in new york city embracing sort of your way of giving tours? >> i'd say the average museum tour is first run by a volunteer who works and gives their time freely at the museum. and i bless these people and i thank them so much for what they do. however, i don't think that those are the best people to put in front of a disengaged audience. the tours that my company in contrast are led by these tour guides who develop a route that is purely based on things that they love. it's a route that is based on amazing pieces that have crazy stories. >> reporter: do you feel like that's a good strategy or is that a good way to cultivate an interest in art in your opinion? >> absolutely. i think there's no silver bullet. now, i can tell you that those little salacious details would not be known without the knowledge of the curators and the people that did all the deep down research. so therein lies the reality that there is a certain level of codependence there. >> reporter: then perhaps

everyone's working towards the same goal: making sure that young people don't forget that museums are worth visiting. >> sreenivasan: is museum hack a good idea because it might attract young people to museums? or is unnecessarily dumbing down art? tell us what you think and vote by visiting newshour.pbs.org or on facebook. >> sreenivasan: some late news before we leave you tonight. there are reports there syria of another massacre by islamic state fighters. a human rights monitoring organization in that country says 700 people, most of them civilians, were executed during the past two weeks. a number of those killed when reportedly beheaded. the islamic state reportedly massacred members of a religious minority in iraq yesterday after demanding they convert to islam. tomorrow, margaret warner reports from iraq and a look at

what's behind genius. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: 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. a special previewight,

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