captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: hopes of finding any of the passengers on that missing malaysian jet alive all but vanished today. with officials telling relatives they're sure flight 370 went down in the southern indian ocean. good evening, i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill, also tonight. the deadly, mile-wide mudslide in washington state. a desperate, but dangerous search for survivors rages on, with possibly more than a hundred people still unaccounted for. >> woodruff: plus, the story of a young liberian nurse tackling his country's mental-health crisis, and healing the psychological scars of a prolonged civil war. >> debah is a certified mental

the only mental health worker in a region of liberia that's home to a half million people. >> woodruff: 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. >> at bae systems, our pride and dedication show in everything we do; from electronics systems to intelligence analysis and cyber- operations; from combat vehicles and weapons to the maintenance

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>> ifill: the government of malaysia now says the fate of a missing malaysian airliner is a mystery no longer. the prime minister announced today that satellite data shows the plane crashed in the southern indian ocean. all 239 passengers and crew are presumed killed. we'll have a full report right after the news summary. the death toll from a massive mudslide in washington state rose to eight today. another 108 people were listed as missing, but authorities said that figure could drop. search and rescue continued on the ground and from the air over the one-square-mile area, an hour north of seattle. about 30 homes were destroyed in the saturday morning slide, and fire chief travis hots said today, the outlook is grim. >> we're still holding out hope that we're going to be able to find people that may still be alive. but keep in mind, we have not found anybody alive on this pile since saturday in the initial

stages of our operation. but again, we're still in a rescue mode. >> ifill: in addition to the dead and missing, several people were critically injured. the coast guard labored today to reopen the port of houston, one of the country's busiest. it's been closed since saturday when a barge crash, in the houston shipping channel, spilled nearly 170,000 gallons of heavy oil. additional containment booms were set out today to isolate the spill. authorities hope to stop the oil from reaching the shoreline as well as nearby animal sanctuaries. ukraine has begun pulling back troops from crimea, as it warns russia may have designs on more ukrainian territory. the crisis also dominated a meeting of major industrial nations today. they called off a meeting that russia was to host in june. instead, they'll meet in brussels, minus the russians. chief foreign affairs correspondent margaret warner will have more, from kiev, later in the program. a court handed down death sentences for 529 supporters of

ousted islamist president mohammed morsi, after a two-day, mass trial. all but 150 were tried in absentia. we have a report narrated by lindsey hilsum of independent television news >> reporter: "our sons, our sons," she screams. the families were not allowed into the court. nor most of the defendants, nor their lawyers. >> ( translated ): we were all banned from attending by the security forces. the judge issued his verdict with no defense lawyers attending, and sentenced 529 to death. the remaining verdicts will be heard on april the 28th. this is not justice! justice has been killed. >> reporter: the verdict will be appealed and the sentences may be commuted. but a mass death penalty like this has no modern precedent anywhere.

some 900 people have been believed to be killed. the following day, brotherhood supporters including those today, went through the streets of other towns where they allegedly burned several churches. egypt's de facto leader is determined to crush the brotherhood. in cairo today, three journalists of al-jazeera appeared for the third time in cages. >> ifill: the u.s. will send more troops and military planes to uganda to hunt for fugitive warlord joseph kony. his lord's resistance army is accused of killing and mutilating civilians, and kidnapping thousands of children. the u.s. sent 100 special operations troops to help find kony in 2011. the new deployments add another 150 troops and airmen. japan has agreed to hand over more than 700 pounds of weapons-grade nuclear material to the u.s. for disposal.

the deal was announced as the nuclear security summit opened at the hague. the white house said it has reached similar agreements with italy and belgium. we'll talk to an expert in nuclear proliferation, later in the program. china demanded an explanation today after reports that u.s. intelligence has hacked e- mail servers for a major chinese tech company, huawei. the reports say the national security agency targeted senior chinese officials and government institutions, going back to 2009. in beijing, a foreign affairs ministry spokesman had this to say. >> ( translated ): we are gravely concerned at the reports. over a period of time, there has been a lot of global media coverage regarding the us wiretapping, monitoring and stealing confidential information from countries including china. china has made many representations to the u.s. we urge the u.s. to give a clear account and stop similar acts. >> ifill: president obama and chinese president xi jinping met today at that nuclear security

summit. the white house said they discussed cyber-security, among other things. a federal jury in new york has convicted five former employees of bernard madoff of enabling his long-running ponzi scheme. the verdicts today followed a six-month trial. the defendants were found guilty on all 33 charges, ranging from securities fraud to falsifying books. madoff himself is already serving a 150-year prison term. on wall street today: the dow jones industrial average lost 26 points to close at 16,276. the nasdaq fell 50 points to close at 4,226. and the s-and-p 500 gave up nine points to finish at 1,857. still to come on the newshour: why officials now believe the missing jetliner went down in the indian ocean; margaret warner in kiev; a dangerous search for survivors in the washington state mudslide; healing the psychological scars from liberia's civil war; who should control the world- wide-web?

plus, japan surrenders part of its nuclear stockpile. >> woodruff: let's go to the latest on the malaysian airliner, missing for 17 days. government officials finally declared what they believe happened to flight 370. but the search for the plane itself, and for an explanation of what happened, continues. so does the anguish of the families, many of them chinese. tom clarke of independent television news narrates this report. >> reporter: after more than two weeks of hoping, today all hope was dashed. some were overcome by grief. others enraged at the intrusion into it, or at the airline they blame for their loss. around the time their loved ones should have arrived here in

beijing their plane in all certainty came down in the empty ocean 6,000 miles away. minutes later, the world learned the same. >> it is therefore with deep sadness and regret that i must inform you that according to this new data, flight mh370 ended in the southern indian ocean. >> reporter: the new data he referred to came from engineers here at british firm inmarsat. it reportedly shows the final satellite ping west of perth, australia flying south, meaning the plane was surely lost. exactly where we still don't know. though today there was a potential breakthrough. this australian air force plane spotted four pieces of debris near to that scene earlier by satellite. they dropped smoke to alert others and photographed the evidence. >> reporter: based on those

possible sightings, mh370 is thought to have crashed 2,500 kilometers southwest of perth, 43 degrees south of the equator. it's an area long-known to mariners as the roaring 40's. as these computer generated current maps show, this is a belt of ocean known for unpredictable eddies and sudden violent storms. with nothing but computer mott model of currents, submarines had to map the sea floor to locate the plane and its recorders. >> woodruff: for a closer look of the investigation, we turn to michael schmidt of "the new york times." michael schmidt, welcome. so what gave the malaysian government the confidence finally to say this plane is lost and in the south indian ocean? >> what they said today was that it was satellite information that came from a british company that had basically tracked the

plane off the coast of australia, but what happened again today that the malaysians didn't really provide a lot of evidence for why they believed this satellite information, and that immediately created questions among the family members saying where is the real proof that you guys know that the plane went down? and all of a sudden, the malaysian government was once again on the defensive. >> woodruff: well, are reporters and others who have been looking into this able to piece together what that evidence may be, what the technology is? >> well, we're only given a little sliver of it today by the prime minister and basically what reporters and we're forced to rely on is what the government was saying and what happened is they didn't really explain what this was and how it actually worked and, because of that, these questions still remain. >> woodruff: why weren't they able to come up with this sooner, michael? >> well, that's an interesting question because here we are two weeks out and, now, it seems like the investigation and the

search for it sort of hit a high gear, but the question is why didn't this happen sooner? and i think the problem was that the malaysians did not have a lot of experience dealing with issues like this, and they were really caught flat-footed, and in the first week they didn't share information with anyone else. they were very reluctant to do that and basically a lot of time was lost initially and, now, we're getting some answers and they're seeing some debris and such, but here we are two weeks out, and i think that's been really frustrating for the families. >> woodruff: speaking of the debris, the investigators you're talking to, folks in that community, are they saying they're confident they they're going to be able to eventually know what happened to this plane? >> no, i don't think so. as we've seen, there was a report at the end of last week, there was debris they saw off the coast of australia, but when they tried to find it, they couldn't, and now we have other reports of other debris that they're now searching for.

but i think the idea that they're confident that they're actually going to find this is not true because, as we reported, the ocean air moves very quickly, there's very high winds and it's a very difficult area to search and that makes this more difficult. >> woodruff: there's a u.s. navy ship going there with the capability of picking up the sonar, the dig nails from the data -- the signals from the data recorder, is that right? >> yeah, but the ping would have to be within 20,000 feet of that, and that's not a lot of area in the area they're working. they don't have a specificiary down to several miles they're looking, they just sort of have the general area off the coast of australia, so i think this could drag on for many more weeks if not months. in previous cases, it's taken them years to find this. >> reporter: michael, separately, the investigation into what happened and the

passengers on the plane, the pilots, we know that the chief pilot had a flight similar simu, any more information on that? >> the f.b.i. is looking at the hard drive and trying to figure out what was deleted on the hard drive. the malaysians tried to look at the hard drive and couldn't access the deleted files so the f.b.i. is tiggin digging into tt haven't reported to the malaysians yet which shows they haven't found anything, so that's what the americans are working on here and, in terms of what happened on the plane, we don't know much more than we did two weeks ago, and that's sort of the whole problem with the story is here we are, you know, this far out and we don't really know much more. all we basically know is the plane headed south and they still don't know where it is. >> woodruff: michael schmidt with "the new york times." we thank you. >> thanks for having me.

>> ifill: the escalating crisis between russia and ukraine was a key topic as world leaders met today in amsterdam. chief foreign affairs correspondent margaret warner has been traveling in ukraine for the past week, and has this report. >> reporter: rembrandt's 17th century masterpiece "the night watch," depicting dutch militia of that time, served as the backdrop as president obama warned of an unfolding 21st century threat. >> europe and america are united in our support of the ukrainian government and the ukrainian people. we are united in imposing a cost on russia for its actions so far. >> reporter: mr. obama and other g-7 leaders met at the hague to discuss nuclear security, but russia's seizure of crimea from ukraine, overshadowed the talks. ukrainian marines in crimea were blocked by russian forces today and forced to abandon their ship in donuzlav bay. russians also stormed three bases in recent days.

in response, ukrainian forces started packing up and leaving crimea, on orders from kiev. >> ( translated ): the national security and defense council has made the decision to instruct the ministry of defense to conduct the redeployment of military units located in the autonomous republic of crimea. >> reporter: nato's top commander, u.s. air force general philip breedlove, also voiced concerns about russian troops near eastern ukraine, and what it means for allied deployments in europe. >> the force that is at the ukrainian border now to the east is very, very sizeable and very, very ready. you cannot defend against that if you are not there to defend against it. >> reporter: and ukraine's new foreign minister said ukrainian troops are prepared to fight if russia makes any new military moves.

>> we are worried about this concentration of troops on eastern borders, but at same time we are ready to defend our homeland. >> reporter: meanwhile, russia's annexation of crimea continued apace. at a moscow ceremony, crimea and sevastapol's flags were installed in line with other russian regional flags. prime minister dmitry medvedev chaired a meeting on providing economic help to crimea. >> ( translated ): the top priority task is to set up a system of governing the new territories. in crimea, they have their own bodies of government and it is necessary to reformat them to match russian standards within the shortest possible time. >> reporter: back in crimea, school children returned from spring break to salute a new flag and anthem. and people started counting their money in russian roubles. >> ifill: i spoke to margaret in kiev a short time ago.

margaret, it's good to see you again. you have been traveling to southeastern ukraine, to crime. i can't tonight you're in kiev in the maidan, looks like. how are people reacting there to what we saw come out of the hague today with strong tough words for putin? >> the official level, we met with the economy minister today. they're very grateful for economic assistance and the threat of sanctions against putin, but i have to say from the general public there was really a feel that what the u.s. and west are doing is grossly insufficient, the idea of threat of perspective sanctions hasn't stopped putin, isn't going to stop him now, and they feel they have been left to fight one on one with the russians. i sat in the cafe off maidan with the former defense minister sunday who said, you know, the u.s. and the brits in particular who signed this memory dumb in #

$4 where ukraine gave up the third largest arsenal in the world, ukraine thought it was on the basis russia and the u.s. and u.k. would preserve the integrity of ukraine. the u.s. says it wasn't that kind of a treaty, bu treat. so there's a feeling of betrayal by the united states and, at the same time, among people in the square anger at their own government for what they feel was giving up crimea too easily. >> woodruff: so even though crimea feels far away from kiev, they feel there should have been more of a fight to keep it? >> well, yes, i have to say they're surprised. in maidan, there are remnants of tens of thousands who fought and died for this revolution and these are a couple of thousand people still camped out and their purpose is to keep pressure on the new government, end corruption, bring more transparency and deliver for

people. so i was stunned yesterday when we spent several hours to hear so many talking about crimea, in a sense that -- i mean, they're military experts, they don't know if ukraine could have defended crimea, but they feel there's a real loss of part of ukrainian territory and great disappointment in their government who already faces tremendous economic pressures, but now they face this new emergency and they're really eloquent to handle it. >> woodruff: now we see the u.s. national security adviser and nato commander expressing worries about what's happening on the border with russian troops. do you feel that echoed in the streets of kiev? >> in the streets of kiev, gwen, and the streeft streets of donen ukraine where we spent several weeks. the ukrainian military is woefully unprepared, there's no

way they can really take on the russians. they vowed at this time to fight, but if russia wants to cross that border, they're going to have to fight and they're going to incur losses for it. but this border is wide open. i mean, the governor and hisman brother built this trench supposedly to stop tanks. we went up there as you could see in our friday piece. i could practically ford it. it is not going to stop a modern russian tank. and the only ukrainian military we saw were old soviet issue armored vehicles, not even sure they were armored. and the u.s. ambassador told me today that, really, the ukrainian military have been pretty much decimated by the years of corruption. yes, they've moved some troops now from the western border to the east, but they were so lacking in basics that oligarchs

had to chip in to buy them fuel and batteries and the final element which i hadn't realized till i got here is the loss of crimea meant the loss of about three-quarters of its navy. the only warship they have left is one nato helped retrofit that was down fighting piracy in the somalian coast, they have no navy and the army and air force are being evacuated from crimea, but some are going to stay because they're native crimeans and it's going to be pretty disorganized mess coming back. so they've raised this national guard. they announced today they have a 10,000 new troops but a successful business woman said to me, yeah, they're like my brother at 19, she said, is eager to fight but totally untrained and she said, we really have saying they're going to be meat for the butcher. it's not going to be a pretty sight if putin decides to cross that boarder pt. >> woodruff: amazing on this

reporter trip, margaret. thanks so much. >> my pleasure, gwen. >> woodruff: rescue teams are continuing a difficult, hazardous and grim hunt this evening for survivors in a large mudslide in washington state. more than 100 people are unaccounted for, though the precise number of people missing is uncertain. at least eight are confirmed dead. the huge slide has prompted many questions about the cause. jeffrey brown explores that part of the story. >> brown: the mudslide destroyed some 30 homes and occurred about 55 miles northeast of seattle, near the town of oso, right off state route 530. just before 11:00 a.m. saturday, a wall of mud and debris slammed into the former fishing village, covering an area about one- square-mile wide and 15-feet deep in some places. david montgomery is a geologist at the university of washington. he joins us now with more.

thanks for being with us. so what can we say so far? what appears to have happened to cause this mudslide? >> well, the proximal cause is that we had one of the wettest months of march on record. that region had something north of 7 inches of rain, as i understand it, in the last month. it's been very wet out here lately. but that slide actually slid before. this is a reactivation of a prior salad that was a reactivation of a much older prior slide. so the hill had failed before so it had been weakened by the act of sliding in the past and the material that forms that hill is glacial sediments. it's fairly weak material for such a tall cliff, so you had a naturally unstable exposure that received an awful lot of rainfall lately and there's this other factor of the river cutting into the toe of the slide for the past few decades. i don't know whether that contributed to this slide.

people will be looking into that in the future. you had these three factors that:spider to make that particular hill side the one that went. >> brown: so it happened before. so this is not an atypical experience or is it in terms of scale? >> well, this one is big. the failure that just happened was bigger, traveled farther, did more damage than the ones that happened at that same sight so pieces of that slope had failed in the past and this is an enlargement of that, a much bigger, more violent, more rapid one that did far more damage, tragically. but that slide had failed -- you know, seems like about every decade or so going back to the 1960s as far as i can tell and sort of a quick look into things. it was a fairly unstable place. >> brown: and what about other possible contributing factors? some people asked about logging for example. >> well, i understand that the site had been logged back i believe in the 19 1980s, and tt

was before the last slide that happened in 2006 and whether that played a contributing role is probably an open question. there's questions about whether or not logging may have influenced the recharge of the groundwater to the site. those kind of things, i'm sure -- those questions will be asked and looked into. it's a little early to have a firm opinion on that now. but the site had been unstable. there's certainly no chance locking the site would increase stability in my view but whether that actually contributed to the second failure since that occurred is an open question. >> brown: what about the the difficulties of the rescue mission now? i see the geologists are continually checking to make sure that it's safe to go in. what exactly are they looking for? >> well, when a hill side like that made of a lot of silt and sand essentially lic liquefies - you take a hill and turn it into

loose, shaky material, you've essentially created quick sand and that's not easy to move through, having sunk into quick sand myself in the philippines, you can't go anywhere and need somebody else to pull you out. it's a nightmare scenario for a rescue team to rescue people that get caught in it. it's like working in a sand jell-o or slurry. but that will set up over time and become harder as the water drains out of it. so what you don't want is to put the rescuers at risk as well. it's a fine line to walk between trying to get people out and have people get in safely to try to recognize. you couldn't ask for worse conditions than what they had. >> brown: thinking of potential other places this could happen or how much people know or are aware of where they're building, you're talking about knowing this has happened several times in the last, how much do the general public and local governments know and how

much awareness o awareness is te people should and should not build? >> that question goes to the heart of opportunities that this tragedy presents for education for geological hazards. the odd thing about this particular case was that the people who were impacted by the landslide lived on flat ground on a flut a floodplain by the rf a place that failed. if map would have listed flooding as dominant hazard for the properties and that's, in hindsight, not what the major hazard of the place was. so looking to see what the hazard was across the river on a slope that is on somebody else's property, that actually creates -- it's a problem for the information flow in terms of actually getting the homeowners so they might even be aware that they might be at risk. most people probably don't have a terribly sophisticated understanding of the goal ji of the area they live in.

that's why geologists can make a living doing what we do. but consulting a geologist in terms of understanding the hazards that a piece of property that you might be thinking of buying or living on is a really good idea to actually get the benefit of that, but there's a real challenge as to how we get the knowledge that's in the geological community out and available to homeowners in the general public in ways they could actually use it. >> brown: david montgomery geologist from the university of washington. thanks so much. >> thank you. >> ifill: now, we turn to the west african nation of liberia. special correspondent molly knight raskin reports on a program aimed at healing the psychological scars from the country's prolonged civil war. she filed this report from the town of ganta. >> reporter: it's sunday evening in ganta, a bustling city in northern liberia, and it's time for a weekly radio show that's

become a surprise hit across the vast region on the border of guinea. >> reporter: the creator of the hour of mental health radio show, the first of its kind in liberia, is thirty-two year-old aaron debah, a registered nurse and teacher at a local medical college. >> reporter: debah earns his living teaching psychiatric nursing, but the job he's most proud of is one that is not paid and consumes most of his waking hours. debah is a certified mental health clinician, a tough job in a post-war country. but for debah its especially taxing; he's the only mental health worker in a region of liberia that's home to half a million people. in 2011, debah graduated from a

program created by the atlanta- based carter center in response to a mental health crisis in liberia. studies found more than 40% of liberians suffer from post- traumatic stress disorder related to the country's 14 year civil war. and they have nowhere to turn, liberia has only one psychiatrist for four million people. it's a staggering statistic, but experts say its not unique to liberia. >> 90% of the population in the developing world does not have access to mental health services, 90%. and that translates into hundreds of millions of people. >> reporter: sean mayberry is the founder of strongminds, an organization that's treating people with mental illness in uganda. >> the barriers to mental health in the developing world include the lack of financial resources, the lack of training of medical personnel, the lack of available medications and certainly the stigma that is in existence in the communities towards mental illness itself.

>> reporter: despite these barriers, organizations like strong minds and the carter center are tackling mental illness in developing countries by training local nurses and physicians assistants in short but intensive programs. to date, the carter center has graduated more than 100 mental health clinicians who now work in all of liberia's 15 counties. here in nimba county, and all over liberia, health workers are tackling major issues like malaria, h.i.v., and infant and maternal mortality. but in a country still struggling after 14 years of civil war, mental illness is crippling the recovery process. most of aaron debah's patients are referred to him by ganta methodist hospital. but it's budget has been cut by more than half since last summer, when liberia's cash- strapped government decided to partially de-fund several faith- based health organizations. now the hospital is on the verge of collapse, there's almost no functional medical equipment and

an acute drug shortage. the administration can't afford to re-hire aaron debah, who was once on the nursing staff, so for now he's volunteering his own time to counsel patients. one of them is forty-five-year- old vasee payee, a father of three who suffers from depression and epilepsy. debah treated him with medication and counseling three years ago and saw a dramatic improvement in his health. today, however, the medication is no longer available and payees symptoms are getting worse. >> reporter: without access to the drugs payee needs, debah can only offer him words.

>> reporter: another patient who needs medication is this mother of four, who suffers from bipolar disorder. last year, debah wasble to stabilize her with pyschotropic drugs. but the supply has run out and shes relapsed. during this visit, debah tries to reassure her husband. >> reporter: without medication, debah relies mostly on psychotherapy and psychosocial support. >> reporter: it's this level of one-on-one care that debah is

known for. during his radio show he invites anyone affected by mental illness to call his personal cell phone. he makes house calls, even if it means walking an hour to a nearby village. debah says he never turns anyone away, particularly those affected by the war. >> reporter: when debah was a child, he and his family were forced out of their home by rebel soldiers. they spent many years hiding in the bush to escape the violence. today debah sees many patients who experienced similar trauma. one of them is twenty-nine-year- old mike otis myers. myers was abducted during the war and recruited as a child soldier. today he suffers from post- traumatic stress disorder.

>> reporter: since myers began counseling sessions with debah, he's re-enrolled in school for the first time since the war and says he's determined to complete his education and enter the workforce. like so many liberians, debah takes even the smallest amount of progress as a positive sign. >> reporter: until then, debah says he'll continue volunteering his time, and using his voice, to advocate for the mentally ill in his community. even if he has to go at it alone.

>> woodruff: who controls the world wide web, and how is it overseen and governed? these are questions that most of us don't really know the answers to, but the obama administration announced a change in the role played by the united states. one that's stirring up concerns about the internet's future and freedom from censorship. >> to become the world's icann, we have to go to the world. >> woodruff: change was in the wind as the "internet corporation for assigned names and numbers," icann, kicked off a meeting in singapore this weekend. it's purpose: to start crafting a transition from u.s. control of administration of the internet. since 1998, the california non- profit has had a federal contract to manage the unique identifiers of the world's websites and e-mail servers, regulating domain names such as "dot com" and "dot gov". fadi chehade is c.e.o. of

"icann." >> it's been envisaged from the first day of icann's creation, that at some point, at some point, when icann and the global community were deemed ready to carry on in their activities without the oversight of the us government, that the u.s. government would let go of it's unique involvement in the affairs of icann. >> woodruff: there's been international pressure to make the change, fueled lately by the backlash over "national security agency" surveillance. then, on march 14th, the commerce department announced plans to hand off supervision of icann to a new international entity. it drew some skeptical comments across the u.s. political spectrum, from sarah palin to former president bill clinton. >> i just know that a lot of

these so-called multi- stakeholders are really governments that want to gag people and restrict access to the internet. >> woodruff: the shape of any new oversight body remains unclear, but icann's board chairman, steve crocker, promises an open, inclusive process. >> woodruff: more now about how this has all has worked, and what's at stake. vint cerf is a former chairman of the board of icann. he's considered one of the fathers of the internet and is now a vice president and so- called "chief internet evangelist" for google. and randolph may is a professor of law at george mason university who is president and founder of the free state foundation, a free-market oriented think tank. so, vint cerf, let me start with you. how do you explain to the public who doesn't understand it, how much oversight is there right now of the internet? >> well, agia has provided very light oversight, in fact. >> woodruff: what is that. national telecommunications and information agency a portion of the department of commerce.

you may have a contract with the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers to manage the domain names of the internet everyone is familiar with and the you merricle internet are ones that people know nothing about but they're like telephone numbers that let you get to destination points in the net. it's functioned since 1998 since the creation of icann has been to oversee the practices by which changes are made to the way in which internet addresses are allocated and domain names assigned, specifically root zones which points to the d ot come and all the things you're familiar. with they've never made any changes to icann's administration of that domain space, so what's being proposed is to replace that oversight with a multi-stakeholder process, not a new entity, but a

multi-stakeholder process that would assure that no changes get made to the zone that aren't agreed by the multiple stakeholders that rely on it. >> so multiple stakeholders rather than the united states alone, and you have some concerns about that. >> i do have some concerns, and my concerns relate to what will happen at the end of the process. vint talks about a process almost as an end in itself, but ultimately there has to be the u.s. is proposing at the end of the day that there be some new entity or some -- you can call it what you will, but there has to be some organization that's managing the internet. this assignment of domain names. and my concern is we don't know now, at the beginning of the process, what that entity will look like, but we do know based on proposals that have been made by several countries in the

past -- russia, china, iran -- that their vision of who should control the internet includes some form of government control and government supervision, so you have to be concerned about, at the end of the day, whether there can be an organization, entity, whatever, at the is doing what icann does today, the entity that now controls the area, and whether there will be insulation from government control and how that will work. >> woodruff: so multi-government -- you're sounding like you're worried some of those governments may have interests here that are going to hurt the cause of the internet. >> well, they stated -- i think they haven't been bashful, some of the governmentsics about their idea of how the internet should work and, specifically, if we get to the nub of it, these governments, the ones i've mentioned and others, they have a different view of the free

flow of information, whether the internet should not be subject to censorship. of course, here and under icann, there's a policy. you know, we endorse the free flow of information. russia has said it has a very different view of how that works vint cerf, why shouldn't that be a concern? >> it is a concern. actually, we both share a concern that governments should not be solely responsible for what happens on the internet. that's why icann, when it was created, was created as a multi-stakeholder organization, governments are present in the governmental advisory committee, but the technical community, civil society and the private sector are all equal parties sitting at the table on policy development. >> but can you guarantee going in that one or more governments that didn't believe in the free flow of information wouldn't get the upper hand? >> it's whether they can get the

upper hand or not. the announcement in march said they would not accept a solution. >> woodruff: to this feral -- that was only governmental. that's important, because they don't have to accept anything. at the end of this current contract period, in september, they can continue the contract if they decide that they don't like the proposed outcomes. i make one other point, a technical point. it's not possible for any government to force any other government to use anything other than the icann produced weak zone which points to all the places in the internet. there is no way to force that because of the technology. >> woodruff: if that's the case -- >> they can do it to themselves, but not to someone else. >> judy, i agree, presently, under the present structure -- and i think he would agree with -- governments, being china or whomever, presently can

interfere with internet communications, can block twitter. >> woodruff: inside their own borders. >> turkey has been doing it the last few days. but here's the point and i think it's important, if we move to a new structure in which governments influence or control this new entity and it becomes more or less the official policy, or if sanction is given to this type of censorship, then the factor that happens today, that's not a good thing, but i think it will be much more likely we'll see that type of censorship, of interference with the free flow of information. if we're operating under a new regime in which that has become a policy that's sanctioned -- >> a way of guaranteeing, in other words, that it can't happen. >> first of all, can i point out that we're in agreement about the concern.

the thing is that you keep referring to the entity. the entity is icann. the proposal is icann will continue to do what it's been doing the last 15 years and will do so in such a transparent way, in a way that office assurance that they haven't done anything that's harmful to openness. the whole idea is to create the process for oversight which is within the icann structure and not outside of it. >> well, the commerce department announcement doesn't say that at the end of the day it envisions that icann itself will be the entity that's going this. it doesn't say that. and i don't think you -- >> larry strickland had said that. >> woodruff: well, i have a feeling this is something we'll have to come back to in the future but we certainly launched the conversation in a robust way. we appreciate it. vint cerf and randolph may. thank you. >> thank you, judy.

>> ifill: finally tonight, dismantling the world's nuclear arsenal. japan agreed today it would relinquish enough weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium to make dozens of nuclear weapons. the announcement came as leaders from around the globe gathered in the hague for a nuclear security summit. matthew bunn, an expert on nuclear proliferation issues at the john f. kennedy school of government at harvard university joins us to explain the day's developments. so what led up to this handover and, in fact, if they were so insecure about this material, what took so long? >> this is something the united states has been talking about with japan for some years and i wouldn't say that it was very insecure in japan. there have been some important security improvements there in recent years. after the 9/11 attacks, they added armed guards at this site, there have been more significant

security improvements quite recently, but this is really a tremendous step forward, this is some of the best material for terrorists if they can get their hands on it that exists in states without nuclear weapons and now we're going to be getting rid of it entirely. it's material that's merely the same stuff you would get if you broke into a nuclear weapons facility but not the same kind of security that exists at those facilities in the united states. >> they also asked today that they would be handing over some materials from belgium and italy and the u.s. would be taking control of these materials. does that mean that it's happening around the world, that there are a lot of locations where this material exists? >> actually, that's right. this is one part of a much larger global effort that's bringing these 53 countries together in the hague. so far, just over the last five years, there are 13 countries that have eliminated all the

material that could be used to make a nuclear bomb, so that means in a real sense bombs that will never go off. at the summit, we're seeing progress in other areas. there will be new initiatives where a number of countries follow regulations and peer review for securities arrangements, a new initiative on radiological sources announced. so there's quite a number of major steps taken at this summit. >summit. >> ifill: what happens to the material handed over? if it's dangerous there, why isn't it dangerous here? >> it's material add to large stole piles that already exist in the united states and already require very serious security and then the sides have agreed the high-rich uranium will be blended down to lower-enriched

urinums and used for the standard fuel for nuclear power plants and the plutonium will be added to whatever measure we eventually manage to figure out for our own stocks of excess plutonium. >> ifill: fewer nations have this kind of material than maybe five or ten years ago, but which nations still have it that you wore rabbet the most? >> well, i would argue, and we argued in a report we just put out from harvard university a few days ago that pretty much every one of the dozens of countries where this material still exists has more to do to make sure that it is secure. there are about 30 countries where this material exists, though in a handful of them, it's less than a kilogram, and there are hundreds of buildings. but really the biggest stocks are in the united states and russia, the two countries that

have something like 95% of the world's nuclear weapons and more than three-quarters of the world's potential nuclear bomb material. >> ifill: who pays for the transfer of this kind of material? >> well, japan will pay the united states a fee for the management of the material. if past experience is any guide, the fee may not quite cover the full cost, so my guess is in the end the united states and japan will end up sharing the cost of managing this dangerous material, but i think that's a worthwhile investment in u.s. security because the reality is that insecure nuclear material anywhere is a threat to everyone everywhere. >> ifill: and matthew bunn, finally, is there any global agreement being reached about how to track and secure this kind of material overall? >> that's really one part we need to do as we look toward the next and probably last security summit that will be happening in

washington or somewhere in the united states in 2016. we need to put together a stronger global framework for managing nuclear security that includes effective standards, clearly accountability to confirm that states are following those standards, and some way of continuing the dialogue so we can maintain momentum in improving nuclear security after we stop meeting at the summit level. >> ifill: matthew bunn, thank you. >> thank you. >> woodruff: again, the other major developments of the day. malaysian authorities announced satellite data shows that missing airliner crashed in southern indian ocean. the death toll from a massive mudslide in washington state rose to eight. another 108 people were listed as missing, but authorities said that figure could drop. and ukraine began pulling back troops from crimea, even as it warned russia may have designs on more ukrainian territory.

>> ifill: on the newshour online right now, the last day to buy health insurance is a week from today, but what happens if you miss that deadline? we have an explainer from "kaiser health news" that should answer any lingering questions you might have. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. >> woodruff: and that's the newshour for tonight. on tuesday, we'll look at a fight over religious freedom and women's access to contraception before the supreme court. i'm judy woodruff >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill, we'll see you on-line, 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:

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