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Kansas City has some of the Internet best service anywhere. Providers there jostle for customers who can now expect broadband that's about 100 times faster than the national average.

But, four years after Google Fiber landed in Kansas City, people are still trying to figure just what do with all that speed.

Kansas City's a modest, Midwestern place. Residents are proud of their barbecue and baseball team. But Aaron Deacon says that now there's something else: inexpensive, world-class Internet.

"Yeah, it's the best," he says. "Maybe Hong Kong's a little bit better than us, and Seoul."

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Kansas City Slow To Connect With Google's Super Fast Internet

Deacon runs KC Digital Drive, a group set up to make the most out ultra-high speed Internet available in the city for $70 a month. "You have faster Internet here than anyplace else, and you can get it for cheaper than anyplace else. Because Google chose this market to build out in first."

The network's still not done, but Internet connections running at close to one gigabit-per-second are easy to find.

"We're sitting at the world's fastest Starbucks," says Ilya Tabakh, the COO of Edge Up Sports, a website for sports stats and news. He points out that the coffee shop has laptops hooked up to Google Fiber and says the difference is most visible on YouTube.

"Click on a video, it's loaded," Tabakh says. "Click on another video, it's loaded. Click on another video, loaded. There is no waiting for anything."

But many users are left waiting for programs to make use of all of that speed. Running normal applications on gigabit Internet is like riding a bicycle on a NASCAR track. For the moment, only a lucky few have any access. Everybody else is still on dirt paths.

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An AT&T worker splices cable for the suburb of Overland Park. Last month, the company became the third provider broadly offering affordable gibabit Internet to residents. Frank Morris/KCUR hide caption

itoggle caption Frank Morris/KCUR

An AT&T worker splices cable for the suburb of Overland Park. Last month, the company became the third provider broadly offering affordable gibabit Internet to residents.

Frank Morris/KCUR

Not much money can be made figuring out a 200-mile-per-hour bicycle, or to step back from the analogy, an application to maximize the massive broadband. Toby Rush, who runs a Kansas City biometrics startup called EyeVerify, says the apps will follow as access expands.

"When you can knock down the barriers — the roadblocks of near infinite bandwidth, real time, all the time, very cheap — it allows for a lot more digital things to happen, which is great for everybody," he says.

In the meantime, Rush says, Google has made gigabit speed standard in Kansas City. "Everyone else is following suit, just making this high-speed connectivity a commodity."

Mike Scott, the president of AT&T Kansas, stands by as workers splice fiber optic cable before sinking it into someone's back yard. Last month AT&T became the third provider broadly offering affordable, one gig Internet here. Time Warner and other providers have also boosted speeds.

"It's a fiber war so to speak," he says. "We are literally standing in the trenches of a fiber war. And I think the customer ultimately wins in all this competition."

But not everyone's a customer. In some Kansas City neighborhoods only one-in-five households have any type of Internet connection, let alone a fast one. Michael Liimatta, runs a nonprofit called Connecting for Good, that's trying to change that.

"Our center here, you might consider it to be the front lines closing the digital divide in Kansas City," he says.

Folks from this low-income neighborhood come in and use Google Fiber for free, but no one has it in the huge housing project across the street. Liimatta says he's sometimes disappointed that some of the expectations that the city had in terms of universal adoption, and loads and loads of free bandwidth, "never came to be."

Not yet anyway. Residents are still grappling with uses for super-fast Internet.

digital divide

google fiber

Kansas City

Internet

When it comes to the current controversy over antibiotic use on farm animals, milk is in a special category.

Lactating cows, unlike hogs, cattle or chickens that are raised for their meat, don't receive antibiotics unless they are actually sick. That's because drug residues immediately appear in the cow's milk — a violation of food safety rules.

Milk shipments are tested for six of the most widely used antibiotics, and any truckload that tests positive is rejected. So when cows are treated, farmers discard their milk for several days until the residues disappear.

Yet a new report from the Food and Drug Administration reveals that a few farmers are slipping through a hole in this enforcement net. These farmers are using antibiotics that the routine tests don't try to detect, because the drugs aren't supposed to be used on dairy cows at all.

The FDA looked for 31 different drugs in samples of milk from almost 2,000 dairy farms. About half of the farms — the "targeted" group — had come under suspicion for sending cows to slaughter that turned out to have drug residues in their meat. The other farms were a random sample of all milk producers.

Just over 1 percent of the samples from the "targeted" group, and 0.4 percent of the randomly collected samples, contained drug residues. An antibiotic called Florfenicol was the most common drug detected, but 11 other drugs also turned up. Perhaps most disturbing: None of the drugs that the FDA detected are approved for use in lactating dairy cows.

Because the survey was carried out for research purposes, the samples were collected anonymously, and the FDA cannot send investigators to the farms to find out what happened.

Mike Apley, a researcher at Kansas State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, says that it is "totally illegal" for dairy farmers to use two of the drugs that the FDA detected: Ciproflaxacin and Sulfamethazine.

In the case of other drugs, he says, the situation is more complicated. It's illegal for farmers to use those drugs on their own, but veterinarians are allowed to authorize their use in dairy cows under certain strict conditions. Veterinarians also are supposed to ensure that no residues enter the food supply. For whatever reason, that veterinary safeguard didn't work in these cases.

Dr. William Flynn, deputy director for science policy in the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, chose to focus on the fact that the violations were uncommon. "These are encouraging findings," Flynn tells The Salt. The low number of violations indicates that "things are working well."

Flynn says the FDA is working on plans to stop illegal drug use by dairy farmers. This could include testing all milk for a larger number of antibiotics.

Morgan Scott, a veterinary epidemiologist at Texas A&M University, noted that a small number of farmers, through their reckless use of drugs, may end up imposing substantial costs on all other dairy farmers.

"That, to me, is tragic, that some farmers don't think that keeping the reputation of the industry intact is a priority," he says.

antibiotics in animals

dairy industry

Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv to call for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ouster in upcoming parliamentary elections.

As NPR's Emily Harris reports, the gathering did not endorse a specific alternative: "Many of the Israelis filling Rabin Square in central Tel Aviv Saturday night said they didn't know who they were going to vote for. But most ... were against Netanyahu."

The Associated Press calls the rally "the highest profile demonstration yet in the run-up to the election."

The rally's speaker was ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who said Netanyahu was the person who had caused "the greatest strategic damage to Israel."

"I fear our current leadership," he said, warning that the Gaza war "ended with no deterrence and no diplomatic achievements," according to ynet.com.

The Times of Israel reports that in a statement responding to Dagan's speech, the Likud party said that "the rally in Tel Aviv is part of a campaign orchestrated by the left [and] funded by millions of dollars from abroad. The aim is to change the nationalist Likud government headed by Netanyahu with a left wing government headed by [Tzipi] Livni and [Isaac Herzog] which will be supported by the Arab parties."

The Times says the statement "noted that despite what it called Dagan's left wing ideology, the Mossad chief requested to extend his service under Netanyahu. The party asserted that the public knows that only a Netanyahu government can prevent a nuclear Iran and the establishment of a 'terror state' in the West Bank."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel

As the U.S. prepares to reopen its embassy in communist Cuba, relations with another Latin American nation — oil-rich Venezuela — are crumbling.

President Nicolas Maduro accuses the U.S. of plotting a coup against him, and is expelling most U.S. diplomats from Venezuela. He is also demanding that Americans secure visas to enter the country.

The visa requirement is still so new that upon my arrival in Caracas this week without one, the immigration official doesn't even notice. She stamps my U.S. passport and says, "Welcome."

I'm here in time for the second anniversary of the death of Hugo Chavez, who led Venezuela's socialist revolution until he succumbed to cancer. The events include military parades and a modern dance performance about Chavez, whom many Venezuelans still adore.

By contrast, Maduro is struggling. He has failed to tame one of the world's highest inflation rates, food shortages are getting worse and the economy last year contracted by almost 3 percent.

But instead of rebooting his economic policies, Maduro is lashing out at critics. Last month, police arrested Antonio Ledezma, the opposition mayor of Caracas, for allegedly taking part in a U.S.-backed conspiracy against the government. Ledezma and U.S. officials have strongly denied these accusations.

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But in a televised speech, Maduro announced that he would also expel most of the remaining 100 U.S. diplomats. Also, just as Venezuelans must apply for U.S. visas, he said Americans must now do the same for Venezuela.

But in blaming the U.S. for nearly all his problems, Maduro is crying wolf, says Xabier Coscojuela, editor of the Caracas newspaper Tal Cual.

"I've lost count of the number of alleged plots to overthrow or kill the president," Coscojuela says. "It's something like ten over the past two years. But there is no credible evidence in any of these cases."

Still, Milos Alcalay, a former Venezuelan diplomat, says the conspiracy theories are repeated so often in state-run media that some Venezuelans are convinced.

"This is what Cuba did for 50 years — manifestation against imperialism, against the United States," Alcalay says.

The message also resonates because, in the past, there have been real conspiracies. In 2002, Chavez was briefly ousted in a military-backed uprising that he claimed — without proof — was supported by the United States.

A visit to a Caracas slum uncovers deep distrust for the United States. Edgar Angarita, who runs a street-side lunch stand, speculates about a possible U.S. military attack on Venezuela.

"It's happened everywhere — in Afghanistan, in Vietnam," Angarita says. "Under any pretext, they could just send in a few drones."

But Coscojuela calls Maduro's latest anti-American salvos a smokescreen to divert attention from the collapsing economy.

"If Maduro truly believed Washington was out to get him," Coscojuela says, "he could take much stronger actions — like severing diplomatic ties or cutting off oil sales. So far, Maduro has done neither."