captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: the hunt for debris from that missing malaysian jetliner came up empty-handed again today, almost two weeks after it vanished from radar. good evening, i'm judy woodruff. as rescue teams keep scouring the indian ocean by air and by sea for the plane, miles o'brien looks into the effort to get literally millions of people to join in the search. >> this search for the malaysian airliner is just the latest manifestation of a powerful mix of space, computer and mobile technology coupled with social networking and a plain old human desire to help others in need.

>> woodruff: then, margaret warner samples the mood in eastern ukraine where pro and anti-moscow sentiments-- rooted in the region's history-- run high following nearby crimea's reunion with russia. and it's friday, mark shields and david brooks are here to analyze the week's news. 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: >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations.

and... and friends of the newshour. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: two weeks on and searchers today appeared no closer than ever to finding the missing malaysia airlines plane. hopes had been raised after a satellite spotted two large objects in a remote region of the southern indian ocean, more than 1,500 miles southwest of perth, australia. search planes criss-crossed part of the area today and australia's acting prime minister promised to continue the effort. but he cautioned that it's difficult. >> something that was floating on the sea that long ago may no longer be floating, it may have slipped to the bottom.

it's also certain that any debris or other material would have moved a significant distance over that time, potentially hundreds of kilometers. >> woodruff: chinese and japanese aircraft will join the search this weekend. at the same time, people around the globe are poring over satellite photos, hoping to find clues to the plane's fate. science correspondent miles o'brien looks at the crowd- sourcing effort, right after the news summary. the crisis over ukraine played out in dueling pen strokes today. in brussels, the european union signed an agreement with ukraine, including defense and trade cooperation. the e.u. also slapped sanctions on a dozen more officials in russia and crimea. at almost the same moment in moscow the president of russia completed the annexation of crimea. john irvine of independent television news reports. >> they already have it sealed and delivered.

so today vladimir putin signed for the parcel of land that is crimea. (music) whether the peninsula belongs in russian hands depends on your point of view. in crimea itself, many ukrainian soldiers have been sent packing. russian soldiers, the enemy at the great are looking out, not in, they've taken over most military bases here, today being the deadline for ukrainian troops to leave. at one barracks where the transition was still happening, the mismatch was obvious. the russians had armor and the ukrainians very little. a ukrainian colonel came out and told us that he'd been ordered to get his men to remove all their belongings. with the victor within earshot, they agreed it was a sad day

indeed. it's hard not to feel sorry for the ukrainian soldiers because in less than a month they've gone from being home guard to fallen forces. the land they swore an oath to defend has switched sides and now they've got a choice to do the same or leave crimea. one place where a russian siege is yet to cause complete capitulation is sevastopal. by scuttling in strategic places, the russians insured that ukrainian warships are kept in port, but getting the ukrainians to surrender all these valuable assets may yet take some time. on the corn coat terrat that is ukrainian land the cap no longer fits. ukrainian troops are yesterday's man. today many send e accepted the offer to switch sides. this is russian soldier digging russian soul. >> woodruff

>> woodruff: in moscow this evening, fireworks marked the annexation of crimea. but the celebrating masked concerns about sanctions as russian financial markets lost ground again. meanwhile, u.s. national security advisor susan rice voiced concerns about russian military movements near ukraine. we'll have a report from margaret warner in eastern ukraine later in the program. in iraq, nearly 30 people died in a wave of violence today. most of the attacks targeted security forces north of baghdad. meanwhile west of the capital, a suicide bomber struck the funeral for a leader of an anti- al-qaeda militia. the government of turkey has apparently failed in a bid to block access to twitter. tech savvy users found ways today to circumvent the effort. prime minister recep tayyip erdogan had called for banning the social media network. a turkish newspaper editor says it's because people have been

tweeting links to recordings that implicate erdogan in corruption. >> ( translated ): because sound recordings and videos were spread through twitter, more precisely, since communication through twitter is very strong, they see it as an enemy. erdogan said before: "there is an evil called twitter." yesterday it was closed hours after he said that he would close it. >> woodruff: the ban even sparked divisions within the government as turkey's president abdullah gul tweeted his opposition to it. first lady michelle obama formally began a week-long, goodwill visit to china today. she met with chinese president xi jinping peng and his wife peng liyuan, accompanied by her two daughters and mother. the first lady also visited schools and students and even played some ping pong. later, she toured beijing's forbidden city. american first ladies have visited china 15 times over the years, but mrs. obama is the first to be invited on her own.

thailand will have to hold new general elections after the country's constitutional court annulled last month's results. the judges ruled all voting should have been on the same day. that wasn't possible because of anti-government protests in some areas. the demonstrators, who continue to occupy part of the capital city, have demanded that prime minister yingluck shinawatra step down. the bankrupt bitcoin exchange called mount gox has been going through its pockets and turned up a fortune in the digital currency. the tokyo-based company says it discovered 200,000 bitcoins thought to be missing. that has a value of about $120-million. the funds were in old format digital folders or electronic wallets. some 650,000 bitcoins remain unaccounted for. wall street faded on this friday. the dow jones industrial average lost 28 points to close at 16,302.

the nasdaq fell 42 points to close at 4,276. and the s&p 500 slipped five points to finish at 1,866. for the week, the dow and the s&p gained about one and a half percent. the nasdaq rose .7% still to come on the newshour, miles o'brien on the millions using satellite images to help find the missing jetliner, race and inequity in america's education system, margaret warner samples the public's mood in eastern ukraine, mark shields and david brooks on the week's news, plus, a famed irish author takes on american crime fiction. >> woodruff: for now, the most useful lead in the search for the missing airliner has been those satellite images of possible debris. but nothing has been confirmed yet. and even as the hunt continues, people around the globe are

trying to do their share to help aid in the search by utilizing technology. newshour science correspondent miles o'brien has our report. >> it's interesting because we don't even know where the haystack is. it could be here, it could be here, it could be here. >> reporter: this is what spare time looks like for jenny peterson these days. >> makes it seem like a game, almost. and being a former gamer, it's almost like you're on a quest. >> reporter: she is on a quest to find that missing malaysian airliner without ever leaving her home in the washington dc area. >> people have also found whales. i found a whale. so, it's actually pretty-- i don't want to say it's fun, but it is kind of fun to get new pictures everyday and to uncover things. because you don't know what will be there. and so you just want to keep going and uncover the whole picture.

>> reporter: she is one of more than three million people who have volunteered their time to pore over satellite imagery of the search areas to see if there is anything unusual, any sign of the missing boeing 777. >> you want to be able to do something, but you can't because you're not in the line of work, you're across the world, you have family or whatever, again you can't just up and leave and volunteer for the red cross. this is something that we can do. >> reporter: jenny is searching on the tomnod site run by digital globe. the colorado company acquires and sells satellite imagery captured by a fleet of five satellites in polar orbits. when they pass over the region, those satellites-- the most powerful available outside of the classified world-- are now focused on the huge area where they are searching for the missing airplane. they release the images on the website as quickly as they can contribute analysis over to the crowd.

>> so far, anything you can use, satellite imagery makes it better. >> reporter: barrington is senior manager at digital globe. he explains how the search works. >> if you see anything interesting, if you think that it might be evidence of the crash or of the wreckage, or a life raft or an oil slick, anything that could be useful, you simply click on it in your web browser and that tag gets recorded. and what we find is if you agree with ten or 100 other people who have all independently seen that same location in their own web browser, we start to identify these locations with consensus, and that's where the real information comes out. that's the wisdom of the crowd. that is crowd sourcing. >> reporter: once the crowd agrees, the object in question is passed along to the real experts who then determine if it is something that can be eliminated or an urgent destination for search and rescue aircraft. this crowd sourced search for the malaysian airliner is just the latest manifestation of a powerful mix of space computer

and mobile technology coupled with social networking and the plain old human desire to help others in need. >> so we stop this nonsense of, we wait for the government to help. this fire truck approach to quickly putting out the fires. why don't we become citizen firefighters ourselves? >> reporter: patrick meier had that epiphany in the immediate wake of the haiti earthquake of 2010. at the time working on an international affairs ph.d. at tufts university, he gathered some friends together in his living room to brainstorm ways to harness the information generated through social networking in the wake of the disaster so that the humanitarian response will be more effective. he is an early and leading advocate of the power of crowd sourced mapping. >> humanitarian professionals, paid professionals cannot be everywhere at the same time. but the crowd can, the crowd is always there and the crowd has agency and they're going to respond a lot faster. you're getting real time information from sort of birds

eye view angle of who's been affected, how badly and where. so a lot of humanitarian organizations, when you start talking to them about, hey, it's like having a helicopter, get it a bit more about what the added value might be. >> reporter: even so, many humanitarian organizations were initially skeptical of patrick and his band of enthusiastic, young, technologically savvy friends. but over time, the united nations, the red cross and other large humanitarian organizations became true believers. the u.n. has created something called the digital humanitarian network to help capture all the urgent tweets and texts, map them and try to connect the pleas for help with someone who can. >> you have this big data and what we're all realizing, humanitarians, technologists alike is the overflow of information generated during disasters can be as paralyzing to humanitarian response as the absence of information. >> reporter: and they enlist the crowd to make accurate maps that

reflect the damage. >> the best way to visualize that is you imagine a haystack that's been put together in a square form, in a cube and you basically then slice up the haystack in tiny little cubes and every volunteer takes care of their little part of the haystack, and they all do it at the same time. that's far more efficient. >> reporter: the digital humanitarian network was last mobilized in the philippines in the wake of typhoon haiyan. maning sambale was a volunteer with openstreetmap, an open source collaboration that is the wikipedia of mapping. >> for the mapping, we have asked people all over the world to trace features, map features using satellite imagery. >> reporter: more than 1,600 volunteers provided four and three-quarter million updates to maps of the tacloban region in less than a month. the volunteers looked at satellite imagery captured after the storm and traced out the footprint of homes and buildings to give relief workers maps that

accurately reflected their devastated surroundings. >> it's the most comprehensive map they were able to see a week after the typhoon. there were other maps that were there on the ground, but the difference is we have this detail on the street level. >> reporter: but does it work? does it really save lives? relief workers in the philippines or in haiti tell you yes. and at digital globe, they claim some success as well although not always with a happy ending. they instigated a crowd sourced search for two lost hikers in the peruvian andes in 2012. the crowd found them, but unfortunately they were already dead. in it is what has people like

jenny peterson to keep looking at swaths of the indian ocean night after night. >> even if you can't say, oh, i found something, finding nothing is still finding something. you know that you don't have to expend resources to search in that area when you don't see anything there, and if i fan out four meters to search and let them focus on the areas that are of interest, then great, i'm good with looking at nothing, if that can help them out. >> reporter: while the cartographers of the crowd are constantly looking for ways to automate some of this painstaking work, this is one innovation that is enabled by technology, but driven by the most amazing computer of all: the one that sits behind our discerning eyes. >> woodruff: and miles joins me now. >> woodruff: miles, if this goes on, it's amazing people all over the world are doing this. >> yes, you can be part of the search.

>> woodruff: so back to that search -- and, yes, we know there's bad weather, yes, we know it's far away from australia where they're looking, but why is this so hard? >> it's hard because we just have so much data. it's hard to imagine in the 21st century an airliner with all the electronics and the technology we have could go missing with so little -- you would think at least a trail of electronic bread crumbs would exist but it doesn't. there are any number of directions still it could have flown, it's still not guaranteed it's in that spot. the wreckage we saw, the piece that's been release bid australia, that might be just plain old debris. there's plenty of it in the ocean, we know that. to say a needle in the haystack is an understatement. >> woodruff: t so the pings from the satellite could be anything? >> it could be anything. you've talked about the malaysian airlines decided not

to invest in a communications system that would have sent more data back to home base. explain what that is and why. >> we all know that the radio transmissions the crew engages in with the air traffic control but in addition there are a couple of other channels of communication on the modern airliner, win is acars, a fax machine meets email kind of thing. it spits out a little bit of information about the airplane on a routine basis. in this case, it was not as frequent as it was in the case of, if you recall, the air france flight that went missing over the mid atlantic regions a few years ago. that had the upgraded acars with an app on it which actually provided much more information, much more frequently and aided the searches because they new better where it was and what the condition of the aircraft yous. in this case, they didn't have it and it really is a very inexpensive thing to add on. it's like $10 per flight. >> woodruff: so we would have a lot more information?

>> we would know much better what direction the plane was in. >> woodruff: final analysis, where is the greatest hope in finding out what happened? >> we'll need a little luck, i think. we'll need luck with the weather. let's hope, frankly, what the satellite saw were in fact pieces of the aircraft because that gives them something to go on. without debris, there's really very little chance they will find this. it's a big ocean and big planet and you can't go every which way trying to find a potential debris pattern. so let's hope for good weather, for starters. >> woodruff: miles o'brien, thank you very much. great to have you with us. a new report spells out the scope of a problem with access, opportunity and discipline in public schools in the united states. for the first time in almost 15 years, the department of education has published data on this subject from all 97,000 public schools across the

country and the findings highlight big patterns of disparity by race. hari sreenivasan in our new york studio has the story. >> sreenivasan: the findings cover a wide spectrum of issues: african american and latino students who aren't even offered some essential courses in math and science, too many kids taught by inexperienced teachers and a high percentage of suspensions among students of color. catherine lhamon is assistant secretary in the office for civil rights at the department of education who worked on this survey. she joins me now. so this is the first year you began tracking pre-school suspensions and in fact it grabbed a lot of headlines today where african-american children comprise 18% of all those enrolled but account for nearly half of all suspensions. you know, frankly, i didn't even know you could get suspended in pre-school. how does someone get suspended and really what does this mean for them down the line? >> you know, hari, we feel the

same level of shock that you experience. i cannot understand how we see thousands of children suspended at three and four years old from pre-school. i can't conceive of a situation that would actually justify a pre-school suspension. i am offended as chief license enforcer at the department of education and as a mom of two little girls. i think that information is shocking and something that you categorically need to end for all of our children in all of our schools. >> reporter: so does this contribute to the school to prison pipeline? >> it absolutely does and pre-school suspensions also send unmistakable message that the children who are suspended are not welcome in school, are not kids you want to see in school and schools aren't prepared for them, so we're teaching them an app palling lesson at the very beginning of their educational experience about their worth in life and the school's preparedness for them. >> reporter: besides

punishment, it reveals a pattern of students of collar and their teachers. african-american and native american students attend schools with a high number of white teachers. >> it's a picture of inequity across the country. the task is to try to figure out the whys. that's something that my staff and my office and i do on a daily basis but the good news about this data is it's also something all of us can access. we have made this data in the obama administration, we've made this data publicly available, very accessible. any mom, any student, any researcher, any educator, any teacher, any community member anywhere in the country can take a look at the data, can try to figure out what it means and what needs to be changed or not changed in their schools and how to act on it. so i hope all of us are taking this data as a call of action so we can see greater equity in the conditions in all our schools. >> reporter: it also points to

the fact that these inequities continue over the years. it's a question of kids not even being offered the classes they may need to go on in college and life. the report found, while more than 80% of asian-american and more than 70% of white students had access to full range of math and science courses in high schools, only 67% of latinos were at schools that offered a range offadvanced classes, 57% for african-american students and fewer than half of american indian and native american high school students. what are the consequences of students coming out of schools without access to same basic science or math education? >> the consequences are devastating for us as the country including devastating consequences for the kids in each of these schools. we are not preparing our youth to be productive, full members of society and not preparing all of our youth on alaska an equal basis for college and career redness. we are seeing discrepancies that are shocking about the full

access to college and career-ready coursework in schools we need to see for all our kids but also just shocking discrepancies in the offerings of these schools of these courses across the board. we have learned in this data only half of our high schools in the nation offer calculus. 50% of our high schools offer calculus to anyone. when we talk about the offerings, we're not even saying, you know, is there enough for everybody who wants to take it and is it well taught and well supported. it's anybody in that high school and high schools often have thousands of kids in them, does anybody in these schools have access to calculus. that's amazing. >> reporter: there's been a push for national eke any education for a long time. supreme court decision in the '50s, civil rights action in the '60s. why are we still having these outcomes? >> very frustrating. it's hard to know why we see discrimination in these various forms. what we know is not that does

discrimination exist but the disparities and we need to get at the whys. that's what we do in the office of civil rights with the data. when we take a look at the discrepancies, we go in and investigate to see if there's more that needs to be done and changes that need to be made and the kinds of things we see when we do the investigations are for example that school administrators think there are particular kids in school that can't succeed and they don't offer courses to the kids and don't have it in schools. we enter into an agreement and change those practice it is for kids. but it's a bit of a welcome mat problem where we find a problem and correct it in one place then have to find it in another. it's time for us as a nation to enter into a different conversation and commit ourselves to the educational opportunity all our kids are entitled to and allows promise to all our kids. >> reporter: catherine lhamon, assistant secretary for office of civil rights in the department of education. thank you so much. >> thank you.

mark shields and new york sometimes columnist david brooks. welcome, gentlemen. ukraine is again the story on the minds of so many now. david, the president, now two rounds of sanctions against vladimir putin, the russians, working with the allies to try to do something, what is the view now of how the president's handling this? >> doing the job has been forceful, started out maybe too modest sanctions on people, ratcheting it up. he's been as forceful as he could be facing the strength of our allies in europe. he's been aggressive and understands the stakes and understands putin is not just about crimea or ukraine, but about the post-cold war order. can we write orders, mess with

iran in our efforts to not allow a nuclear iran? this is radiating thing where poornt is an agent of disorder and thing obama understands that and has ratcheted up the pressure. the only way i fault him, a lot of what we're dealing with is the psychology of fear, are we causing putin to fear us. early response to our limited sanctions one of contempt and now we're more serious but we haven't shocked him with a little surge of fear and putin responds to fear. >> how do you hear -- what do you hear and what do you think? >> well, i don't think there is in this country a great partisan divide. i mean, i think it's posturing and posing is a lot of criticism of the president which has been a little inconsistent and contradictory. he's gone from big a m maniacal dictator to being a critic and

criticism of republicans publicly, but i don't think in a policy sense, judy, there's any real major disagreement about what the united states can do and what our options are. nobody is talking about military action. the president did take that off the table in the interview with the domestic television station. but i do think that sanctions -- in order for sanctions to work, they have to be held on both sides and it's not only going to be discomfort and inconvenience and worse for the russians and for putin and his particular group, but it's going to have to be felt in the west as well. that's how sanctions do. they're felt by those -- the people who impose them are also inconveniencing themselves and i think that will be a test. >> woodruff: and this is one of the occasions you start to question, david. i mean, this is is president who's struggling in public

opinion, low favorability ratings in the low 40s. is foreign policy something typically that a president can use to lift or does it hurt him? can it hurt him? >> it can help and hurt him. welcome to the white house. right now the country does not want to be involved in ukraine. the country is not particularly paying attention to ukraine except on this program, but -- i hope -- but if he messes it up or if we in the west mess it up and we really do have a much more disorderly world here, then it could seriously hurt him. so, you know, foreign policy's the responsibility of the elites and that's what they do. >> yeah, judy, there was a period, you have to understand, the end of the cold war was a moment, a period of joy in the west, particularly in the united states. our values prevailed, our nemesis, the villain of the peace dissolved, the soviet union. and putin and many russians,

this is an enormous sore spot. i mean, here it is called the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, the breakup of the soviet union. so we had a uni-polar world in which the united states stood sort of by itself. it was dealt a serious blow by the united states going into iraq and afghanistan, neither of which worked out as architects expected it to, and i think barack obama is back to a far more collaborative approach, which steams is not dramatic, but that's, as david was descreening it, bringing the allies along is what this is all about and it all comes back to nato. nato's article 5 is attack on any one of sus an attack on all of us. >> sometimes you just have to do something a little criesy. putin did something a little criesy and we're, whoo, we're not getting in front of that guy.

obama is unlikely to do something crazy as putin thinks things through woof with woof like what? >> i think we'll get to a spot as this escalates, if ukraine wants to go west, he'll dismember ukraine and seems to me that arming ukraine and us not getting involved but arming ukraine to keep the russians out there is useful and i think we'll have a serious debate about that? >> the reality of all of this is creamia was turned over under going back 60 years. what he is about, he is a bully, putin, and he is unprekickable and material and i think it's fair to say corrupt. >> breaking news woof with woof it may not be going out on too much of a limb but we'll give

you credit. >> well, i don't want to get in relations between the news and the -- >> woodruff: we know a president juggles things. one of the things the white house is very much engaged in this week, david, is trying to get more people to sign up for the affordable healthcare act, the healthcare law. the president has been appearing on less than -- well, entertainment and sports venues. espn, he did a show online and ellen degeneres. there's been criticism this isn't so presidential. the president said, well, you know, abraham lincoln did this kind of thing. how far can a president stray and be presidential? >> if he's with miley cyrus on the wrecking ball and beyonce and i have been drinking, i think that's too fall. bill clinton did it on arsenio hall and people worried.

president obama has dignity, so he's not really putting it at risk. when he went on the show "between two ferns," i'm not superhip to it myself, but web traffic surged. it's working for them. and they need the young people. we're at a stage in the healthcare enrollment where they have some legitimacy. they're not where they want to be but it's sustainable. where they aren't yet is with young people, and the young people will pay for this thing. so what they have to do, ellen degeneres or whatever plane you choose, he has to do that. >> a great political consultant says you pick cherries where cherries are. you don't go to the am or charred to pick cherries. this is what barack obama is doing. we're long past the day when the president could talk to 65% of americans by going on the evening news. this is a niche-driven, fragmented, segmented

television-media market and, to reach people, they have shows they watch -- i don't think barack obama could be accused of being unpresidentle. i mean, he's dealing with ukraine, iran and the economy, and, you know, the idea -- i mean, bill o'reilly who launches principal criticism against him for being unpresidentle is a dominant figure on cable news and he's seen in exactly 1% of homes on a given night, 2 million people see him. so barack obama has to -- i think if there's a criticism to be made the failure to sell the affordable care act when it came out. there was no sales program and right now the administration is paying for it in trying to convince people to sign up. >> woodruff: republicans this week are talking much more confidently, david, about taking over control of the senate. should they be more confident now? >> well, if you look at the numbers, yes. seemed a couple of weeks ago

they had to have a run and win all the seats to take over control. now more seats at play because of various candidacies elsewhere. you look at the 34 states where there are senate races, 50 republican, 42 democrat. so they're not doing great nationally, but in the states where there happen to be elections this year, they're doing pretty well. so if you look at the data, they like to be feeling good. >> woodruff: should they feel so good about it? >> the problem with democrats and any incumbent party that's held the white house for six years, there's a sixle, a six-year itch, call it what you will. house lost 39 seats in that six years. when we go to a president below 50% approval rating as president bush was for example in 2006, the damage to his party becomes geometrical. so all of a states were -- for

example west virginia where the president's job rating is in the 20s, and that's a democratic seat they'd like to hold on to. the 30s in south dakota, montana, kentucky, states where the democrats are hoping to win or defend seats. so that's what democrats are fighting. they're fighting to retain their control of the senate in states that have basically red that mitt romney carried. the republicans will have a decided money advantage. they outspent the democrats in 2012 and misspent it. i don't think you will see the same kind of mistakes made this time. >> woodruff: one last thing to ask you about, somebody who was a major figure in this city a long time, bob strauss died at 95 this week. he was a power broker, somebody who worked across party lines. what was his legacy?

>> he was an insider and there aren't that many insiders of that sort anymore. he came close to running for president and they said, you're a fixer lobbyist, you can't run for president. and we've had a lot of outsiders, we go for outsiders. but i'm in the mood to get an insider, a guy who's a lobbyist. you said l.b.j. could get something done, well, strauss could get something done. if i'm talking to you, mr. and mrs. america, vote for the insider next time because it is a skill to get things done around here. >> -- carried 14 states between the last two presidential elections, promised not to give the party a candidate but instead to give the candidate a united party. he overcame the factions, he was remarkable, he was funny, he came from west texas, only jewish family in stamford,

texas. he grew up in an area where they thought hanukkah was a duck call. my wife was from the same town, charlie strauss ran the dry goods store there. he loved politics and liked political reporters, he loved life and was offered this business and he gave the democrats a winning hand in 1976 and worked with ronald reagan and bush as well. >> woodruff: thank you both. you're here every friday. we're grateful. mark shields, david brooks, thank you. >> woodruff: now, how the people in eastern ukraine are reacting to the russian takeover of crimea. chief foreign affairs correspondent margaret warner is in donetsk tonight, where loyalties to both ukraine and russia run deep. >> warner: shoppers strolled

through the donetsk citi mall last night-- a gleaming island in this gritty industrial hub of eastern ukraine-- to tunes of piped-in pop music. until, exactly at 6:30, a small flash mob of ukrainian activists materialized, waving flags and singing the national anthem. but there were almost as many cameras as carolers. afterward, organizer diana berg said these small-scale shows of ukrainian identity and unity were safer than large demonstrations. >> there are reasons to be afraid after the 13th of march; when one of us was killed by a pro-russian. >> warner: threat of russian intervention? >> when we see what is happening in crimea, of course there is a threat.

>> warner: on march 1st, just as putin's troops took over crimea, dueling protests erupted in southeastern ukraine between supporters and opponents of joining with russia too. the death came in this melee last thursday. pro-russian protests continued through last weekend, as demonstrators briefly occupied government buildings. did you have such divisions exist before this? >> never. >> warner: unlike predominantly russian crimea, the donetsk region is almost evenly divided between ethnic russians and ukrainians, with many of mixed heritage, who have lived peacefully together. but the winter maidan uprising in kiev-- triggering the ouster of russia-bacpresident viktor yanukovych-- tapped into undercurrents that had simmered here. >> ukraine society is divided, we have western people that is more close to europe; we have

here an east that is more close to russia. ukraine is not so globalized, so people here are not tolerant to >> warner: that intolerance is rooted partly in a powerful collective memory of world war ii. soldiers in eastern ukraine fought and died with the soviet army against the germans, while many easterners say some in the west collaborated with the nazis. now the new government in kiev and its western allies fear putin is trying to exploit that history and the present unrest as a pretext to move on this part of ukraine too. in announcing the incorporation of crimea into russia, putin vowed again that moscow will protect oppressed ethnic russians living elsewhere, but he insisted he has no designs on southeastern ukraine. >> ( translated ): do not believe those who try to frighten you with russia. who scream that crimea will be

followed by other regions. we do not want the division of ukraine. >> warner: do you believe putin, when he says that? >> ( translated ): i think he's serious politician and his statements should be backed up by his actions. but i do not know the man. >> warner: metals magnate sergey taruta was appointed governor of the donetsk region two weeks ago by the new kiev government. the billionaire oligarch's first job: restore quiet to the streets >> ( translated ): when i arrived this building was blocked and the russian flag was flying on the roof. today the situation is quite different: the squares are empty and that is a result of the work that's been done in two weeks. >> part of the people in protest are russian born, not natives. our security apparatus came to the conclusion, noticing the

presence of numerous russian tourists. >> he was so alarmed by russia's designs he paid for an insurance policy out of his own family's pocket. >> ( translated ): this is a line they will not cross. >> warner: this is the line he's talking about carved into this vast plain, the se of epic tank battles during world war ii: an eight-foot-wideeight- foot-deep trench the governor and his brother had built along donetsk's entire 90-mile-long border with russia. farmer yevgeniy voedenko, who left his hog wallow to take us to the trench line, believes putin is up to no good. does this protect you? >> ( translated ): i don't know, the modern tanks would cross this easily. we're fearful. the future is uncertain. >> warner: but there are forces already inside this line that threaten the stability of ukraine. donbass news website editor oleksiy matsuka says there is

substantial prrussia feeling here too, fed in large part by economic disparities. >> the east-west division is profitable for the politicians. >> this industrial heartland area generates one-quarter of ukraine's gdp yet many workers live in miserable conditions. the result of corruption and government neglect. just north of donetsk where coal mines dot the land, we met this 25-year-old, a third-generation miner whose grandparents proved here during the soviet era of lifetime jobs. ( translated ): salaries and life standards were much higher then. but in 20 years of independent ukraine everything was destroyed. and when i am asked what kind of salary i have, i am ashamed to

tell. we are not living here, just surviving. >> warner: do you feel that your life would be better, if this region would be part of russia? >> ( translated ): i think yes from the economic stand point of view. >> warner: but that nostalgi for more secure days is not shared by many young people, says editor aleksey matsuka. he sees a large generational divide between young people who came of age after ukraine oke free of the collapsed soviet union in 1991 and their parents and grandparents. >> ( translated ): they are forgetting about the gulags, the repression and death. it's selective memory or double standard. >> warner: whatever the myriad causes, this vital southeast part of ukraine remains a tinderbox. aleksandr, who wouldn't give his last name, is the self-styled leader of a pro-russia roadblock brigade on the lookout for vehicles carrying what he calls

instigators from the west. he ferried us to two lookouts near the city, one near a crossroads and another next to a ukrainian police traffic outpost. >> ( translated ): the big mistake kiev made kiev cannot threaten our blood ties with russia. let us decide our own future. >>arner: back in the city, donetsk university professor kirill cherkashin devotes his free time to coordinating the pro-russia demonstrations. he says his feelings of separatism have grown. >> ( translated ): i actually always thought of myself as being russian and i always thought that ukraine should integrate within russia; now i think it should be our part of ukraine first. >> warner: demonstrations by locals are not difficult to organize, he said, and he acknowledged that there are russians involved too, who often egg on the crowds. >> ( translated ): yes, there are some people coming from russia, they are extremists that

just love to do revolution inside their own country. peope are becoming quite aggressive. we can stop it if our government would listen to their people. but i predict this weekend we will see more violent clashes. >> warner: an ominous forecast from a region of ukraine not known for such strife before. >> woodruff: finally tonight, a celebrated irish author picks up the mantle of an american master of crime fiction. jeffrey brown has our book conversation. >> brown: it's been more than 50 years since the death of raymond chandler but his trademark and radiance are suddenly back in full. 1950s los angeles, the hollywood stars, underworld, dead bodies and private eye phillip marlow, one of the great characters in american fiction. all of this found in the new crime model "the black-eyed

blonde," the author benjamin black, series by acclaimed irish writer john banville. welcome. >> glad to be here. >> brown: this is confusing. we have john banville doing benjamin black doing raymond chandler. who is sitting here with me? >> it's banville, of course. i mean, it's just me. i invent these other voices. but none of us is a singular being. we all invent versions of ourselves. >> brown: part of what you do anywhere as a writer? >> yes. >> brown: what attracted you to taking on phillip particular? >> i have been writing since my rly teens. he's a wonderful writer, invented a new kind of fiction. he brought the crime novel up to the level of literature and above, also wonderfully

entertaining and accommodating. he never despised their writings like many of the authors do. like they couldn't be written by mere more talls. i always hated that. people who are, as chandler said himself, you know, what he wanted to do is write the kind of fiction that it would be very, very good and they would get it. so he didn't write down, he wrote up. >> brown: how do you do it without overdoing it? how tohannel his style without making us feel that that's, you know, all we're reading is this sort of -- >> well, when i started out to do the book, i thought i was going to update marlow, make it more contemporary, give him a harder edge. then i went back and reread the books and said why should i interfere with this? this is wonderful. this is a marvelous character.

he's slightly old fashioned but there's nothing wrong with that. he'in a way a constructed romantic as i am myself as i suspect everybody is though nowadays we have to pretend otherwise. so a marvelous character and i just slip into a chandler voice. it was easier than i thought it would be. >> brown: to capture the specific sense of place, the very checkos angeles. he helped define los angeles for many of us. >> he did. he invented los angeles. when demokov moved from europe to america he said i spent the first half of my career inventing europe now i will have to invent another continent. that's what writers do, we invent places. chandler's and marlow's los angeles is an invented place, a wonderfully convincing but invented place. >> brown: so some part of this

is john banville reinventing -- >> it has to be. >> brown: -- chandler's los angeles? >> it has toe. my los angeles is a los angeles of the inside of my head, and my marlow is slightly different to chandler's in that he's -- chandler always felt that he had to make marlow slightly brutal because he was writing crime fiction. didn't have to do that. i see marlow as essentially a melomel lain collie. he has no family, no friends, everyone betrays him, so he is lonely. >> brown: yoused the synonym benjamin black for your crime fiction. i read where you said it is easier writing as benjamin black

than john banville. is it the style of writing that's easier or taking on another persona. >> we as crime writers get very, very cross when we say that. it's a different way of writing. i write more quickly as benjamin black, more spontaneously. i say to myself, don't pause over a sentence or try to get everything right, just be spontaneous and keep going reaso.>> brown: that's different than the other writing? >> benjamin black says don't look down or pause, just keep going to the end. benjamin is a mole. two enrely different ways of working but black is not easier than vandal, it's just a different way of doing it. >> brown: the black-eyed

blonde, john banville, benjamin black. thank you very much. >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day. the search for the missing malaysian jetliner again turned up nothing, despite yesterday's reports of possible debris in the southern indian ocean, and russia completed the formal annexation of crimea, as the european union signed an agreement for closer ties with ukraine. on the newshour online right now, what are the faces of american cool? the national portrait gallery whittled down images from history to come up with 100 icons that it says define what it means to be cool, from james dean to joan didion. you can find some of those photos on our art beat page. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. and a reminder about some upcoming programs from our pbs colleagues. gwen ifill is preparing for washington week, which airs later this evening. here's a preview: >> ukraine spillover how our fractured relationship with russia chowld change everything

and on the home front why democrats and republicans are worried about mid term elections. we explain it all later tonight on washington week. judy. >> woodruff: tomorrow's edition of pbs newshour weekend looks at how the dutch have managed the sale of marijuana over the years, and what it could mean for states like colorado which have legalized recreational use. and we' be back, right here, on monday with margaret warner in ukraine as she makes her way west to the capital, kiev. that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. have a nice weekend. thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪

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