>> it bothers me, you know, the police feel they can do whatever they want because that's not true. they're here to protect us, not harm us. >> woodruff: plus, the story of a virginia furniture maker who saved hundreds of american manufacturing jobs in an age when many factories have closed and moved overseas. >> ifill: those are just some of the stories we're covering on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> charles schwab, proud supporter of the pbs "newshour." >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> ifill: u.s. warplanes and drones have launched new attacks on the islamic state group in northern iraq. the strikes hit targets near the mosul dam. kurdish forces recaptured the dam this week, and are trying to establish a buffer zone. yesterday, islamic state militants who beheaded journalist james foley, threatened to kill another american, if the air strikes don't stop. we'll have more on the killing of james foley after the news summary. >> woodruff: israel and hamas attacked each other today with fierce new rounds of rockets and air strikes. one strike targeted the head of hamas' military wing. gazan officials said he escaped, but his wife and infant son were killed. jonathan miller of independent television news filed this report. >> reporter: in gaza, it was a loud and dangerous night. 22 killed; many wounded. this, one of the five missiles which killed the hamas military chief's baby boy. thousands of chanting mourners urged the hamas al-qassam brigades to target tel aviv. which they did. the baby was buried today with his mother, along with the cease fire, which had lasted 10 days. israel says nearly 140 rockets have been fired by palestinian militant groups into israel since hopes of renewing the truce disintegrated. code red alerts in tel aviv and jerusalem. no one killed; no one wounded. israel responding with a vengeance; more than 80 drone and f-16 strikes. by dawn, the gaza ghetto was going up in smoke yet again. more houses visited by the israeli air force, from beit hanoun in the north to rafah, here, right down in the south. "we can't reach our homes. one day there's a truce. the next day it's off. what kind of life is this? we want to live like everyone else in the world. we are human beings." a few miles away, inside israel, target of 3,400 unguided missiles, which have killed three civilians, that indignation and frustration is mirrored. >> it's impossible to live like that. and i'm sure that every mom, or father who lives across the board, not in israel, have to understand that this is not a normal way to live. >> reporter: the israeli prime minister appeared live on national t.v. channels. "hamas will not wear us down," he said. "this operation's not over. hamas will be hit with unprecedented force." >> woodruff: later, there were still more rockets and more air strikes. in a statement, u.n. secretary general ban ki-moon urged both sides not to let things escalate. >> ifill: police and soldiers in liberia fired live ammunition and tear gas today to enforce an ebola quarantine. it's unclear if anyone was hurt. the security forces opened fire when angry residents stormed barricades around the west point slum in monrovia, the country's capital. the government quarantined the neighborhood on tuesday, in a bid to curb the spread of the ebola virus. >> woodruff: in pakistan, thousands of demonstrators blocked entrances to parliament today. they demanded that prime minister nawaz sharif resign over for an alleged fraud in last year's election. crowds chanted "go nawaz go" at blockades in front of the building. sharif and other lawmakers managed to leave through a heavily guarded back exit. >> ( translated ): god has given us victory and we have reached parliament house. god willing, we will not go back until this system changes according to the will of our leader and a complete victory comes to us. >> woodruff: later, the head of pakistan's army called for the government to negotiate with the protesters. >> ifill: back in this country, the supreme court delayed a lower court ruling that struck down virginia's ban on gay marriage. same-sex couples in the state would have been allowed to get married, starting tomorrow morning. the high court did not explain its action, but most other rulings allowing gay marriage have also been put on hold. >> woodruff: the u.s. navy is discharging at least 34 sailors in a cheating scandal at a nuclear training site. that word today follows february's announcement that sailors in charleston, south carolina had cheated on qualification exams. they were being trained to operate reactors on submarines and aircraft carriers. the navy says the cheating dates back to 2007. >> ifill: republicans in alaska have chosen their nominee for the u.s. senate-- as the party tries to capture control of the chamber in november. former state attorney general dan sullivan held off a tea party challenger in tuesday's primary. he'll face democratic incumbent mark begich in november. >> woodruff: on wall street, the dow jones industrial average gained 59 points to close at 16,979. the nasdaq fell a point to close at 4,526. and the s&p 500 added nearly five points to finish at 1,986. still to come on the newshour, remembering american journalist and newshour contributor james foley, the humanitarian crisis in refugee camps along the iraq- syria border, local perspectives on the protests and violence in ferguson, missouri, keeping american manufacturing jobs from moving to china and how a warming arctic is made worse by creating more methane. >> ifill: as family, friends and colleagues mourned the death of american journalist james foley, president obama today had strong words for the sunni extremists who killed the reporter. >> jim was taken from us in an act of violence that shocks the conscience of the entire world. >> ifill: the president condemned james foley's killers, in a brief appearance at martha's vineyard. >> their victims are overwhelmingly muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. no just god would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day. from governments and peoples across the middle east, there has to be a common effort to extract this cancer so that it does not spread. there has to be a clear rejection of this kind of nihilistic ideologies. >> ifill: the national security council confirmed it is foley in the gruesome video posted yesterday by the islamic state group, and titled "a message to america". the newshour has chosen not to show any of the images. foley was abducted in syria, in november 2012, while reporting for the news site "globalpost". >> a grim routine has taken hold in the fight for syria's largest city. >> ifill: just a few months earlier, he filed this report on what life looked like in a rebel-controlled neighborhood of aleppo. his career as a freelance photojournalist spanned a number of countries and conflicts. in 2010, reporting for the newshour in afghanistan, foley found himself in the line of fire, as he shared a firsthand look at a taliban ambush on an american infantry unit. >> it was only after this near catastrophe that we see the convoy's front truck is on fire, and, worse, the soldiers have pulled a casualty to the side of the mountain, as others frantically begin to work on him. >> ifill: in 2011, in libya, foley was held for 45 days by forces loyal to former dictator muammar gaddafi. following his release, he spoke about that kidnapping on the newshour. >> i never worried that i would be in captivity for, let's say, a year. i was concerned, i was really concerned to tell my mom that i was okay. and when we hit that two-week mark, i knew, okay, this is going to be a long time. they're telling us two to three days, but they're just playing mind games with us. >> ifill: it was unclear who initially abducted foley in syria, or when he fell into the hands of islamic state forces. but his death marked the first time they've killed an american citizen in the syrian conflict. >> it haunts me how much pain he was in and how cruel this method of execution is. >> ifill: still shaken, foley's parents emerge from their home in rochester, new hampshire, today to remember their son. >> he >> ifill: still shaken, foley's parents emerged from their home in rochester, new hampshire, today to remember their son. >> jim had kind of had nine lives. i mean he came out of libya and i guess we just never gave up hope either. we just kept thinking somehow we're getting closer we know he's alive we just ran out of time. he ran out of time. >> ifill: foley was 40 years old. the same video also showed another american journalist-- steven sotloff-- who has written for "time" magazine. the militants threatened he'll be killed next, if u.s. air strikes in iraq continue. >> ifill: the committee to protect journalists estimates at least 20 other news professionals are being held in syria. >> it is an act of murder and murder without any justification. >> ifill: meanwhile, british prime minister david cameron announced a manhunt for the hooded militant with a british accent who appeared in the beheading video. joining me now to talk about james foley and the threat that reporters like him face covering conflicts today. is "globalpost" co-founder and journalist charles sennott and robert mahoney, deputy director of the committee to protect journalists. charles sennott, first of all, our condolences to you and your colleagues in the loss of james foley. what's can you tell us about him and how he came to be held. >> thanks, gwen. the best way to start to describe who is james foley is probably to start with the way his parents talked about him today. anyone who saw how much faith they have, how strong they are, they know where james came from, and that's really important to understanding him. jim had strong faith in himself, but his parents had tremendous faith in what he did as a journalist. they understood that jim wanted to do work that mattered. he wanted to do work that made a difference. they understood his motivations and they were unwaveringly supportive of it, and that really is who jim boehei jim foe was a courageous report who took great risks to bring the story was gwen ifill do we know where he physically was yesterday when this happened? >> we don't. if you've seen this video -- and i hope you viewers have not seen it, it's the most dark and horrific thing i've ever watched -- it's about four minutes long. it's very clear he's under great duress. it's clear the statements he's making are forced and it's in a barren landscape that could be syria or iraq. it's very difficult to distinguish that and we don't know precisely where that happened. >> ifill: have the people who have been holding him been in touch asking for ransom? there was a report there was a threat made they would kill him a week ago. >> that's correct. our c.e.o. has really tirelessly followed this every day for two years and has amassed really quite an extensive body of facts and information through a lot of information we've gathered from law enforcement, private investigators, our own private investigators, and importantly from colleagues on the ground. you know, we have a lot of colleagues who really cared about jim and every bit of information they could glean would come to us and would be filtered and it's hard to sort of share in great detail without putting some of the other hostages who may still be being held and whose lives as we know are hanging in the balance, we can't share a lot of that information, but it is safe to say that at first there was information he was being held by the syrian government. that information changed shape over time. it appeared quickly he was being held by islamic militants. that's when fear really set in. he was held in different locations, first in arepo and later in a different location. the guardian reported that location. we thought it better not to report it but it was a known i.s.i.s. center inside syria. >> ifill: robert mahoney, how does syria rank as a danger zone for journalists? >> it's the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist, has been for the last year or so. we've noted 70 journalists have been killed in syria since the conflict started in 2011. >> ifill: many syrians, right? most of them, actually, are local journalists. also, to james' story, syria is the single worst place we've seen in the entire history as an organization where hostage activity is happening in the zone. >> ifill: it's difficult to negotiate or to figure out a way to rescue these hostages. what's are the special problems, the special delicacies for someone like you or the u.s. government, for that matter, in trying to free people like james foley? >> well, in many cases, the families or the news organizations that some of the journalists work for don't want to jeopardize their safety and don't want us to publicly talk about where they might be or even who they are. stephen sadler, for example, appeared in the video this week, we knew about him but we did not publicly disclose that because we just don't know sometimes who we're dealing with. there are very many groups. they're splintered. some were holding hostages for criminal ransom and others were holding them for political purposes. so with all that uncertainty, it was very difficult to get precise information about the captors. >> ifill: bob, is it more complicated when they're free license journalists not working for major news organizations? >> absolutely. and we at the committee, you know, are very, very concerned for the freelancers. they don't have the big institutionl support of journalists going in for big news organizations and the majority of the journalists now around there are people like jim working as freelancers. >> ifill: charl charl, james foley's phat -- charles sennott, james' father said today they were considering raising money for ransom. were you involved in that? >> i was not involved in that. sadly, we have been down this road before with james and other correspondents, and what you abide by is the family will dictate what will be made public. this is their decision. we feel that's extremely important and we've always deferred to the foley family. just to speak to the point of freelancers. globalpost, we deal with freelancerfreelancers every dayd they're deeply at risk. there's a concern about how to build a news organization that has a culture of caution and caring for if correspondents on the ground. we've worked with a lot of journalists and different organizations to think that through and i think jim's death, this horrific news, there's a lot of sobering lessons to learn and one is we are responsible as news organizations for the people we send into the field, we take that seriously, but it's also really important to remember this is a deep reminder that there are journalists doing courageous work. we live in a cynical time where there's a lot of criticism of the media from the left and the right, but there is also time to remember there are journalists like jim foley out there representing news organizations, believing in what they're doing and doing the best they can outside of the big network production companies or the big newspapers, they're doing the best work they can to bring home the stories that matter, and i think that's important to remember today. >> ifill: bob mahoney, how hard does it make it to get reporters out of syria at this point? >> makes it hard. who and what has happened will be rushing into syria especially freelancers who don't have the backing and don't earn the money that will make it worthwhile going in. what we rely on and the news organizations rely on, the local journalists, some of whom are outside, they're the ones who have born the brunt in terms of death and capture in this conflict and they're the ones who don't have necessarily an international voice. >> ifill: robert mahoney and charles sennott, thank you very much. >> thank you. how has social media adapted to deal with violent terrorist imagery? hari sreenivasan spoke with the chair of the journalism department at quinnipiac university. you can watch their conversation online. >> woodruff: other victims of the islamic state in recent weeks include christians and members of the yazidi miniority. most who were lucky enough to escape have flooded the kurdish controlled region in northern iraq with nothing but the clothes on their backs. tonight, chief foreign affaris correspondent margaret warner takes a close look at these newly internally displaced persons-- or i.d.ps-- and efforts to contain their suffering. >> warner: the boeing 747 touched down in the afternoon heat of erbil's today, carrying 3,300 united nations relief agency tents-- the first wave of fresh supplies since the u.n. announced last week a heightened level of emergency for northeastern iraq. >> we're not just getting the materials we already have in stock but are bringing them from around the world. >> reporter: the tents will shelter 20,000 people, just a fraction of the estimated 1.25 million iraqis who fled into the kurd, region since the self proclaimed islamic state began its onslowght eight months ago. yesterday a bruting wind ripped through the camp near iraqi-kurdistan's border with syria. this camp was empty two weeks ago, before i.s. attacked members of the minority yazidi religious community in the town of sinjar, and they raced for refuge on sinjar mountain. u.s airstrikes and kurdish forces helped thousands escape to sun-scorched sanctuary here. we accompanied dr. syed jaffer hussein, iraq country director for the u.n.'s world health organization, as he made his rounds through the camp. >> i think this is one of the extremely complex i.d.p crises at least i have witness not only in the region but beyond. not only the number but also the fast pace it happened, taking the u.n. and the government unaware and unprepared for such a huge number of i.d.ps. >> warner: how does the psychological state in which they arrive? is there anything different about the yazidis? >> they seem to be. interviews we have conducted with many of the seem to be extremely, what we call the post-traumatic stress disorder. you can see the gloom in their eyes like a person who doesn't know what will happen to him. >> warner: he stopped to see a family that had been in the camp more than two weeks. >> have you taken your kids to the clinic? >> ( translated ): no, we haven't but they got here and did vaccinations. but we lack food, we only get some soup and bad quality rice. >> warner: we were invited by 19-year-old fuad hassan to the tent he shares with his parents and eight siblings. they fled sinjar when they heard islamic state forces were nearby, but one night on the mountain was enough. >> ( translated ): it was very bad on the mountain, we saw people being eaten by insects. >> warner: they were fortunate to find an escape route into syria opened up by syrian kurdish fighters and made their way on foot to this camp. so fuad, what comes next for you? >> my grades were high, i would have entered medical college, but now everything is ruined. we want to go back to the homeland of our forefathers, but if we can find a country that welcomes us, we may leave here. >> warner: his 37-year-old mother, zaineb yusuf asim, was overcome by feelings of betrayal. >> ( translated ): we don't cry only for ourselves, but for all yazidis. they tortured us, attacked our honor, our religion. we have lived together with our muslim arab neighbors during the iran-iraq war, during the first gulf war. we protected each other, now they became our enemies. >> warner: this camp for 15,000 people originally built for syrian refugees was the first place yazidis found shelter when they escaped from sinjar mountain. as hot, dusty, wind blown and under-supplied as this camp is, it's far better than what others fleeing the mountain found when they arrived. 40 miles east, in duhok, capital of iraq's northwestern-most province, we found what's far more typical here-- thousands of yazidis living in half- constructed buildings. khuduid hussein, a construction worker, says the 150 people in his group are subsisting on private donations from local citizens-- they have received no government help so far. >> ( translated ): people in duhok are very welcoming, they've helped us, they give us bread, water and food. >> warner: you're surrounded by these beautiful children what future do you see for them? >> ( translated ): if this situation remains like this i don't see that they'll have any future. soon it will be winter here and many of them will die if cold. >> warner: his relative, 20- year-old afra hassan, is seven months pregnant. >> ( translated ): i tried to go to the hospital here, but they wouldn't give me any medicine because i didn't have any money. it's such a miserable situation. i wish i had died in my home. >> duhok is the smallest governorate, with the smallest resources with the highest intensity of i.d.p and refugees. >> warner: haval amedi is deputy director of a committee set up by the provincial government just last week to coordinate the local response. he admits they are overwhelmed >> now the problem becoming more and more, it's beyond the capacity of a small governorate to host all those people together to the here because of the limitation of the resources. >> warner: he explained the waves of syrians and iraqis fleeing islamic state extremists have doubled the population of his tiny province. but he said most kurds had generous feelings toward the new arrivals. >> one day each of us was refugee or i.d.p somewhere and mainly they believe in helping people. there are people who are hosting them, receiving them at the border, at the schools, at the public buildings and everything. >> warner: yet no amount of aid can heal the psychic wounds here. back at the camp, the man of the hassan house-- walid hassan-- stopped us before we left. he had something to say. >> what was our fault? what wrong have we done? we are peaceful human beings. what is the fault of those kids who died? they have killed so many kids, they shot them in their heads. i want to deliver this letter to anyone who cares about humanity, help us. humanity in iraq is just gone. iraq has become the country of monsters. >> woodruff: i spoke to margaret earlier this afternoon. margaret, thanks for joining us. first of all, what's the reaction of where you are in erbil to the beheading of american journalist james foley? >> well, judy, it is a big story here. it is leading a lot of media web sites. president obama's remarks just now, recently led the web site and it's being interpreted or described as the president vowing to crush the islamic state forces. i frankly was surprised. i thought the attitude here would be we've had thousands of our own people kill, one american killed, what's the big deal? but not at all. >> woodruff: we just saw the report you did on the situation that the iraqi minorities are facing. you've reported on many other refugee displaced populations. what's different about the yazidis and the christians you have been speaking to there? >> i think it's the shock, the surprise at being suddenly uprooted from their lives, given 24 hours or less to clear out or be killed. all refugees are traumatized, of course. afghanistan, pakistan, refugees from syria who've fled to turkey and lebanon, but the difference is most of them made a collective decision or a family decision that the fighting had become too intense, they were being shelled by one side or the other and decided to flee together and could take things with them. these people here feel, to me, as if they're completely shell shocked, individually targeted, hunted, really, because of their religion. >> woodruff: finally, margaret, yesterday we know the iraqi army launched a new offensive to try to recapture the city of tikrit from the islamic state force. is this just one day after the mosul dam was retaken. they failed. they abandoned the fight. what are you hearing as to why? >> judy, the analysis is there were two missing ingredients in the assault on tikrit. one, of course, is coordination with american airstrikes. the retaking of the mosul dam was a collective effort of kurdish, iraqi fighters and american airstrikes, very strategically targeted out of a joint operations center in erbil. the second thing that was missing was a cohesive iraqi force. this time the iraqis were fighting on their own and according to a senior kurdish military official here, it was a hodgepodge of regular iraqi army and shiite militia. he said they had great weapons but poorly led by commanders appointed on sectarian grounds, he said, and they were not really committed to the fight. and he said that -- essentially, he described the same kind of iraqi army that fled from northern iraq in june when the islamic state attacked mosul and all these other outposts up here near the kurdish region, and that's a bad sign. if that's true, that's a bad sign for the test that president obama has set for greater u.s. military involvement, that is that you have a cohesive and politically and militarily united iraq. >> woodruff: margaret warner reporting from erbil. thank you. >> thanks, judy. >> ifill: the nation's top law enforcement officer traveled to ferguson, missouri today. hari sreenivassan has our story on the latest efforts to ease the unrest. >> sreenivasan: attorney general holder arrived with twin goals: to help calm the community, and check on the ongoing federal investigation. >> why would i be anyplace other than right here right now to talk to people in this area who are deserving of our attention? we also want to listen. that's the main part of this trip. need to see are there ways we can help. >> sreenivasan: holder also met with the family of 18-year-old michael brown, who was fatally shot on august ninth, by a white police officer, darren wilson. a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting is now underway, and holder received an update during his visit. overnight, in a message published on the "st. louis post-dispatch" website, he promised a complete review: some in ferguson have called for officer wilson--shown in this newly released video-- to be charged with murder. but this morning, the head of the missouri fraternal order of police defended him. >> he has been vilified in the media and by the politicians and we felt it was necessary that we had to come out and just ask for due process for darren wilson. >> sreenivasan: at the same time, protesters have demanded that county prosecutor bob mcculloch step aside. his father was a policeman and was killed on a call involving a black suspect. today, mcculloch said he's staying. >> some legitimately believe, or honestly believe i should say, that they don't think i'm best suited for this case and that's fine. i understand that. nobody's-- not everybody is always happy with what's going on so what i'm trying to convey to them is i've got that responsibility. i'm not walking away from it. >> sreenivasan: the prosecutor also said a grand jury investigation-- starting today-- could last until october. >> justice for you and me! justice for mike brown! >> sreenivasan: meanwhile, officials hoped last night's more subdued protests mean the violence that's plagued ferguson is subsiding. things were mostly peaceful, although police did arrest at least 47 people, mostly for refusing to disperse. highway patrol captain ron johnson has been overseeing police operations. >> we saw a different dynamic. protest crowds were a bit smaller, and they were out earlier. we had to respond to fewer incidents than the night before. there were no molotov cocktails tonight. there were no shootings. >> sreenivasan: more local leaders were on the streets last night, trying to maintain calm. attorney general holder spent time with some of those leaders today, and with local elected officials. amid the demonstrations and the tensions between protestors and law enforcement is reflection-- about what the events in ferguson mean for the community and the country. here is a sampling of what ferguson residents and others have told the newshour in recent days. george paige has lived in ferguson for decades. >> i'm almost 50 years old, so i've been in the shoes of these young people. i've had cops put guns to my head in the middle of the street, so i understand all the protests and the anger. my nerves are real bad about just the whole situation, because some days i want to be mad, some days i can't be mad because somebody's got to have structure for those young people. we've got to have a level head for them young people. they-- i can see their grief. i see it. i lived it, i lived it. so i know why they feel it. >> sreenivasan: cheryl frager grew up in ferguson and has seen the community transformed in recent days. >> the police in our district are being portrayed as the bad guys right now, and that needs to stop. i support the police, i support our community, and i support justice. rioting and justice cannot go hand-in-hand. we have to have peace, and police have to go home to their families and be able to protect and serve everybody-- not just one race. we're all humans. we all bleed red. >> sreenivasan: 18-year-old yale harris went to school with michael brown. >> my purpose is being there, i'm supporting. i'm trying to get justice to what happened to mike brown. because i actually went to school with him. i just know he was a cool person to be around. he was very calm. >> sreenivasan: 23-year-old ferguson resident ahyria butler says the episode has raised questions about the actions of law enforcement. >> it bothers me, you know, that the police feel like they can do whatever they want. because that's not true. because they're here to protect us, not kill us, not harm us. if you're gonna wear that badge, wear that badge privately, don't wear it like it's the "i can do what i want and get away with it" badge. that's not it. >> sreenivasan: texas native angelique kidd has lived in ferguson now for 11 years. we have been for the most part heart broken, angry sometimes. there is a big divide. a lot of ferguson wishes pretty much it would just all go away. i mean,ip not sure -- we actually took a break yesterday in protests. we have been protesting in the streets since last thursday with signs in our yard since last tuesday, so we're exhausted. >> sreenivasan: devario mcdonald traveled to ferguson from milwaukee to make his voice heard. >> i want them to kind of make a change with the police system. i mean anything-- any incident involving, like, a shooting, especially without no weapon, no firearm-- i think that it should be, that the officer should get in trouble because, you just shot this person down, this person wasn't a threat, this person had no weapon on them-- nothing. this person didn't try to fight you, you just shot this person down like an animal. >> sreenivasan: ann brown has lived in ferguson for three decades. >> i hope michael's family continues to heal. and i also feel really sorry for the police officer's family. everybody's affected. their lives have been threatened. even the mayor's life has been threatened, from people from out of town, on twitter. how sad is that? >> sreenivasan: a question, >> ifill: you can find all the voices from ferguson collected by the newwshour's mike fritz and quinn bowman in our rundown. >> woodruff: next, jeffrey brown takes us to the blue ridge mountains of virginia, for a story of music, factories, and one man's fight against the outflow of u.s. jobs overseas. >> brown: heavy rains couldn't keep fans and musicians from gathering for the 79th old fiddler's convention in galax, virginia. where they spent days singing, dancing and catching up with old friends. >> it's the music. a lot of us have roots in the north carolina mountains or the virginia mountains, and this is part of our heritage. >> brown: it was here in galax in the 1920s, in fact, that a group calling itself "the hill billies"-- two words-- got together to jam in a barbershop on main street. it's now a fiddle shop where musicians still gather. >> this is the originally hillbilly band that hillbilly music is named for. >> brown: folklorist joe wilson helped found "the crooked road," a 330-mile heritage music tour through the blue ridge of virginia. and he draws a direct tie between the musical tradition-- of playing and making instruments-- and the industry that also once defined this region: furniture building. >> furniture was everything here, and a lot of commercial country music is based on the fact that there came a time of when these furniture factory guys, they had a little more leisure time than they'd had on the mountain farm, where i came from. >> brown: for much of the 20th century, southern virginia and north carolina were home to the world's biggest furniture factories and suppliers. but that was then, before the majority of factories closed down and moved overseas. the rise and fall of the industry is told in the new book, "factory man", by beth macy, who began it while a reporter for "the roanoke times." >> i had initially set out to tell the story in martinsville and henry county of what had happened to 19,000- 20,000 workers that had lost their jobs. >> brown: what she saw were places like bassett, virginia where between 1989 and 2007 seven furniture factories closed. >> there was one day kind of late in my reporting where i was driving home from bassett, and i just found myself in tears. in tears. not anything particular had happened that day, but i had just interviewed so many people and had witnessed so much destruction, like i'd seen those plants get taken down month after month after month. >> brown: but macy also had a more uplifting story to tell. and it also was named bassett-- john bassett the third. >> he's this incredible character, he's relentless, he's wealthy, he doesn't have to do this, so what are his motivations? >> i was born in a furniture family, my grandfather was one of the founders of the bassett industries of 1902, my father was chairman of the board of bassett. >> brown: john bassett came from the family, the company, that owned everything in town: the homes employees lived in, the bank, the churches where they worshipped, even the electricity. >> you came home every night and you spoke about furniture, i mean, i was indoctrinated in this for all my life, and i've been doing this for 52 years. >> brown: macy's book details an american epic: the industry's growth in a region with abundant hardwood forests, an eager and, compared to the north, cheaper workforce, and a railroad running through it. the family dramas that, among much else, forced john bassett to leave the main company in bassett to join the much smaller vaughan-bassett in galax. and, of course, the impact of the rise of a furniture-making industry in asia, based on even cheaper labor. there are vivid stories, as when john bassett first visited a vast factory in china and met its confident overseer. >> he said, "i'm going to take all the business away from all of you." >> brown: he just said that to you? >> absolutely. and he said you need to close your factories and put yourself in my hands. and i thought to myself my grandfather would roll over in his grave if he thought his grandson was closing his factories, and put it in the hands of a chinese. >> brown: many, of course, did do that, but john bassett fought back. bringing and winning what was then the largest-ever illegal dumping case before the world trade organization and plowing millions of dollars in duties imposed on chinese imports into new equipment in his factory. >> brown: today, with 700 workers, it's the largest employer in town. but it wasn't-- and isn't-- easy. >> well, we had a lot of sleepless nights, okay? >> brown: you did? >> oh sure we did, and then we thought about it, we talked to our people here, we talked to our board of directors about it, we knew what we had to invest in money, and then we made up our mind, we were going to compete, and remain an american manufacturer, and from that time on we never looked back. >> brown: in addition to equipment upgrades, vaughan- bassett began offering retailers same-day shipping, holding more inventory in its own warehouse. and the company asks more of its employees. delania grapes, an 11-year veteran here, says she's gone from gluing the bottoms of 700 dresser drawers an hour to about 1,000. >> brown: how did you get to speed up? >> we learned our job better. >> brown: 23-year-old lee rigney recently became the third generation in his family to work at vaughan-bassett. >> i was unemployed for six months before i got hired here, and luckily vaughan bassett took me in. i was working for ashland, a big named company and everything, and i got laid off, and they luckily let me in here, and i love it here. >> brown: but so many others in this area aren't so fortunate. >> we're going to have to go buy some more spaghetti sauce and canned goods and i'm going have to put a notice on facebook that we're really in need. >> brown: a former manufacturing executive, jill burcham left the corporate world ten years ago to found push ministries in galax. >> we have people come in here every day in tears, you know, i don't know how, i just got a $600 electric bill, how am i going to pay this? you know, we have paperwork, they have paperwork that they don't understand, they can't pay their child support, they can't, they don't have gas in their car, you know, to get to where they need to get. >> brown: for author beth macy, this story was personal as well. her mother was an ohio factory worker who'd get laid off in hard times. macy says she wanted to explore the human side of globalization. economists would say we shouldn't be making furniture in this country. >> many economists would say that. >> brown: because it can be made more efficiently elsewhere. we should be training our workers for high-tech jobs, new jobs. >> i agree, it sound like a great theory, and it is a great theory, and i've been to indonesia and i've seen what happens when the people come in from the rice paddies and they can send their kids to school for the first time. >> brown: their wages go up. >> their wages go up, their lives get better, but what we didn't plan for is, everybody said when china joins the w.t.o, that will be a win/win for everybody. we won't lose jobs because we will be exporting our goods to the growing consumer class in china and elsewhere in asia. and maybe that'll happen, but not for decades and it certainly hasn't happened in martinsville or henry county. >> brown: for now, the work goes on at this factory in galax. a small remnant of a much larger world of craft, industry, music and tradition. >> ifill: we have more with folklorist joe wilson on the legacy of mountain music and why it's worth preserving. that's on art beat. >> woodruff: finally tonight, new indications that the planet is warming, especially in the north. scientists have been tracking arctic thawing for decades and have seen a dramatic increase since 2000. when holes opened up in the earth recently in siberia, a wave of speculation was set off as to their cause. scientists now think warming is the culprit. to help us understand all this, we welcome back tom wagner, who directs studies of the polar regions for nasa. it's good to have you on the program again. >> thanks. glad to be back. >> woodruff: for those folks who don't follow the polar region so closely on a regular basis like you do, remind us what is the arctic made out of and how are you seeing the change? >> yes, the top of the arctic is an ocean covered by sea ice but all around it are land like russia and alaska and it's ground like in your backyard but frozen. >> woodruff: what have you been observing in terms of the change? >> we know it's been warming and there's less than sea ice and snow. but this latest story from siberia took us by surprise because literally holes the size of a football field opened up in the ground. >> woodruff: we have pictures. what do scientists think is going on? >> this is one case where the internet is amazing because the scientific community is taws tag about it. originally, they thought it was methane. >> woodruff: which would come from? >> you can think of the arctic like a frozen swath with decaying plant matter which releases methane they store in a couple of ways. one of the initials questions was had there been a buildup of gas underground that caused an explosion. >> woodruff: but as time has gone by, what are you now thinking? >> well, no one knows, but more likely it's something akin to a sinkhole like kind of what's happened in florida or under a street when you get a water main break and blows out a lot of the soil underneath and the street collapses. >> woodruff: but why is it a concern? for those thinking about the arctic, thinking about the health of the planet, the health of humans on the planet, why is this a worry? >> nothing on this scale had been observed before and this is an extremely cold part of the world. so what we're saying is, hey, this part that should have stayed frozen is melting and melting so fast, this is something going on that we haven't seen before. >> woodruff: what do you think is going on? >> probably by the release of water causing tunnels and caves under the per ma frost and we probably had a collapse and the water blew out material you saw erupted around the edges. in permafrost is a tremendous amount of carbon and methane, so the feel that as this melts that carbon methane gets released into the atmosphere and rapidly increases the rate at which the planet warms. >> woodruff: because it adds to the carbon levels that create warming all over the planet. >> exactly, more carbon dioxide, also methane is more powerful at warming the planet than co2. there was just a big national academy released calls the climate change and fortunately one of the things they concluded is maybe we don't have to worry about a rapid loss of methane from the arctic in the next century but it's speculative. >> woodruff: for someone like you who looks at this, you would have to believe the methane was going to come out at some point. i'm curious, are you now saying it's coming out faster thanio thought it would be released into the atmosphere and that's why humans have to be worried? >> right, there are two different things going on. we fly airplanes and satellites to see how much methane is coming out of the arctic. it's tough to do because you're talking about a gas seeping out of the ground or in some cases coming out of the ocean. but we know that gas loss is intimately tied to the physical process of melting and that's why the holes are important because they're saying, hearings even in remote, cold corners, look like melting is going on. >> woodruff: does this improve the ability of scientists to measure the weight of global warming, the rate of climate change? >> gives us a better handle on what's happening in some parts of the arctic we didn't know before. it's also important because what's happening when the sea ice in the russian seconder has reseeded in other -- receded in other parts of the arctic and this helps us understand the process better of how the arctic is changes. >> woodruff: how much time do scientists have at the sites, the craters where the sinkholes are happening? >> that's a tough question. it's a remote part of the world and difficult to get there. i was talking to some of the people is they were working closely be the scientists who work with there and even for those scientists to get there it's difficult to do, it's remote. >> woodruff: somebody's there, but you're saying for many people to get there -- >> it makes it challenging. permafrost and if interarea in the generics going there and working is profoundly difficult. you can't drive across it because in the summer months the surface layer melts and it's impassable. >> woodruff: if you're sit hearing in the united states, here in washington, d.c. or tampa, florida, or houston, texas, or los angeles, california, do you worry about this? what are we to make of this? >> what you should make of it is we're starting to understand better how the earth system works and these holes are an example of how the dynamic can be. we have to understand, the planet isn't just changing. it's changed and we need to prepare for more. >> woodruff: and what does that mean? what can people do? >> well, some changes are already happening. it's getting warmer in lots of parts of the world. sea levels are rising along the coasts and those things cofnlt there's also the national climate assessment which just came out where precipitation patterns will change, there will be more flooding and intense rainfall in some parts to have the world. there are a lot of great resources to help plan from the local to the federal level. >> woodruff: another wakeup call. >> one that i hope makes people enjoy science, mysterious holes in some partf the world. >> woodruff: tom wagner, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> ifill: again, the major developments of the day: president obama branded the islamic state group a cancer after its fighters beheaded american journalist james foley, u.s. warplanes and drones launched new air strikes in northern iraq, despite islamic state threats to kill another american, and attorney general >> ifill: a special force has been sent into syria this summer to rescue foley and other hostages but did not find them. attorney general eric holder spent the day in ferguson, missouri promising a full investigation of the fatal police shooting that tumped off ten days of violence. >> woodruff: if you've ever been stung by a jellyfish, you'll understand the latest video from scientist destin sandlin: it's a close-up, slow-motion view of a tentacle injecting its venom using dozens of tiny needles. watch what that looks like under the microscope, on our rundown. certain species of spiders thrive in urban settings and can grow larger in the city. that story also in the rundown. that and more on our web site, "newshour".pbs.org. >> ifill: and again, to our honor roll of american service personnel killed in the afghanistan conflict. we add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. here, in silence, is one more. >> ifill: and that's the newshour for tonight. on thursday, we'll look at the public corruption trial of bob mcdonnell as the former virginia governor takes the stand. i'm gwen ifill. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us here at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> charles schwab, proud supporter of the pbs "newshour." >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib. >> the great divide, when will the federal reserve start hiking interest rates? that question is intensifying a debate and grabbing the attention of investors, wall street and main street. >> turning point, target cuts the profit forecast as it tries to win back customers and increase sales but there may be a glimmer of hope in the latest earnings report. >> and subprime trouble, is a bubble brewing in one of the hottest segments of the economy? we'll have that and more tonight for wednesday, august 20th. good evening, everyone, and welcome. thanks for joining us. great rate debate intensified today. some of the