captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> ifill: the world health organization has called for an emergency meeting on the ebola outbreak in west africa tomorrow calling it a global public health concern. good evening, i'm gwen ifill. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. also ahead this wednesday, after a ten-year chase across the solar system, the european rosetta spacecraft has reached its destination. a comet billions of miles away. >> ifill: plus, california scientists and engineers develop a network of sensors that can detect earthquakes before they hit. >> the sensors are very sensitive. imagine a football field, and you lift it up on one end, slide

a human hair underneath it, and the sensors could detect that lift. >> ifill: those are just some of the stories we're covering on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

>> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: investigators in afghanistan today pieced together the circumstances surrounding yesterday's killing of a u.s. army general. they said an afghan soldier hid in a bathroom, then opened fire on a group of foreign and afghan officers. major general harolee was killed, but officials say there was no indication that he was specifically targeted.

the general's remains were being readied today to return to the u.s. >> ifill: indirect talks began in cairo today on a long-term cease-fire between israel and hamas. an israeli official told reuters his government is ready to extend a 72-hour truce, now in its second day. at the united nations, secretary-general ban ki-moon said the death and destruction in gaza, from israeli strikes has "shocked and shamed" the world. >> mere suspicion of militant activity does not justify jeopardizing the lives and safety of many thousands of innocent civilians. international humanitarian law clearly requires protection by all parties of civilians and civilian facilities, including u.n. staff and u.n. premises. >> ifill: ban called for hamas to halt all rocket fire and weapons smuggling, and for israel to lift the blockade of gaza. later, in jerusalem, prime

minister benjamin netanyahu insisted israel's tactics in gaza were justified and proportionate. he said it's hamas that bears the blame for heavy civilian casualties. >> so it's not that they don't want them. they want them. and they pretty much say so, indeed hamas has adopted a strategy that abuses and sacrifices gaza's civilians. they use them as human shields they endanger them and deliberately increase the death toll. >> ifill: officials in gaza say nearly 1,900 palestinians died in the fighting, most of them civilians. israel lost 64 soldiers and three civilians were killed. >> woodruff: in eastern ukraine, government forces made new gains today against pro-russian rebels holding the city of donetsk. at the same time, there were new warnings that russia's military might invade, to protect the rebels. in warsaw, the polish prime minister pointed to a russian buildup, just across the ukrainian border.

>> ( translated ): we have reasons to believe, according to information i have received in the last few hours, that the threat of direct russian intervention is certainly greater than it was a few days ago. for that reason, it is not ruled out that the ukrainian crisis could grow more serious than it already is. >> woodruff: u.s. and "nato" officials say the russians now have about 20,000 troops massed along the border. a nato statement today suggested moscow could use the pretext of a humanitarian mission to invade. >> ifill: the u.s. and europe have already imposed sanctions on russia, over its actions in today, the kremlin struck back. president vladimir putin announced his government will target agricultural imports from the west. the russian veterinary service said all such products from the united states will be banned outright. >> woodruff: in iraq, two car bombs tore through shiite neighborhoods in baghdad, killing more than 50 people.

meanwhile, to the north, the government reported an air strike killed 60 militants in mosul now held by the islamic state group. and, kurdish forces launched an offensive against islamic state fighters near the regional capital of irbil. >> ifill: the death toll from the weekend earthquake in southern china rose sharply overnight to at least 589. rescue teams found more bodies as they reached mountainous farming villages that had not yet been searched. in addition to the dead, more than 2,400 people were injured. >> woodruff: the state of hawaii braced today for a one-two hurricane punch. the first of the two storms could strike tomorrow, with the second trailing by three or four days. in advance, people in honolulu rushed to stores to stock up on food and power supplies. others battened down boats before high winds and storm surges hit. >> ifill: another veteran republican lawmaker has turned back a tea party challenge. kansas senator pat roberts won

his primary yesterday by a narrow margin. meanwhile, in michigan, republican congressman kerry bentivolio, a tea party ally, lost to a challenger supported by the party establishment. another tea party-backed congressman, justin amash, won re-nomination. and democrat debbie dingell was nominated to succeed her husband, congressman john dingell. he's retiring after a record 58 years in the house. >> woodruff: same sex marriage lawsuits in four states went before a federal appeals court in cincinnati today. a three-judge panel heard arguments on gay marriage bans in michigan and kentucky. the issue in ohio dealt with recognizing same sex unions from other states. and, a tennessee case more narrowly focused on the rights of same-sex couples. the judge's rulings could be weeks away. >> ifill: there's word bank of america and the justice department are nearing a record

settlement over alleged conduct over house meltdown. the banks will pay $16 billion to $17 billion, involving actions by two subsidiaries of the mortgage market. the announcement is expected tomorrow. >> woodruff: on wall street today, the dow jones industrial average gained nearly 14 points to close at 16,443; the nasdaq rose two points to close at 4,355; and the s&p added a fraction to finish at 1,920. >> ifill: still to come on the newshour. the u.n. declares ebola is a public health outbreak of global concern. protecting your data and identity in a vulnerable cyber world. unlocking the secrets of a comet. detecting earthquakes and alerting the public before they hit. and the ongoing reach of world war i.

>> ifill: computer hacking and the breaches of privacy that come with them are becoming a regular and unwelcome feature of our wired world. now, the new york times and a security firm based in the midwest are reporting a massive one that includes the collection of more than a billion username and password combinations and more than 500 million e-mail addresses. what's more, the perpetrators appear to be a shadowy russian crime ring. details, including the names of the victims, are hard to come by. but the news has raised eyebrows around the world. so how serious is it? for that, we turn to dmitri alperovitch, co founder and chief technology officer of crowdstrike, a web security firm. mr. alperovitch, in context of all the other breaches in the past year, say, relative to those, how big is this? >> well, the number is certainly striking. 1.2 billion credentials is a lot. in the past, wie seen big breaches that numbered in the hundreds of millions but this is certainly the biggest one that i can remember.

>> woodruff: are we talking about a targeted attack in which they are trying to take down either individuals or corporations or was this a sweep? >> not all the details are known yet but what we do know is that these criminals did aggregate a lot of stolen data from other cybercriminals and that probably amplified some of these numbers. they were also able to hack into a number of web sites and steal credentials people were using to log in as web sites. >> woodruff: when we say shadowy russian crime ring, who are the hackers? >> they have not been publicly identified. they have been called cyberthieves, cyberwar -- in russian, "war" means thief -- and we don't know a lot about them but we know a large ring of cybercriminals out of russia forming cybercriminal syndicates.

they have banking details, credit cart numbers and it's a booming business there. >> woodruff: lested talk about the security firm that uncovered this and provided the information to the "new york times" who authenticated it to a third party. there have been questions raised among tech reports whether the timing is suspicious, just as tech people are meeting in las vegas for a big conference which you are there actually. >> i am, indeed. this is not unusual, that security releases these. it is usually done to get more publicity around this time and is not something that is all that unusual. >> woodruff: at the root of this, i am told, i read, is something called a botnet. what is a botnet? >> a botnet is essentially a network of compromised m machin. when you get a suspicious email, you click on it and your email

is infected by a cybercriminal, your machine will connect to a server they control and when you multiply in by millions around the world, you create a network of machines the cybercriminals have complete control over. they can steal any type of file from the system or monitor the system on an ongoing basis. and anytime you go to your online banking web site, they can use your password and send it to the cybercriminal. >> woodruff: do we know that happened in this case? >> the firm is reporting some of the credentials were harvested from botnets, which is a common thing we see from cybercriminals. that won't get you 1.2 billion credentials. for them to get to those types of numbers, they have to go to the source of data which is web sites to aggregate this information. so we've heard of indents in the past, adobe compromised a year ago, "forbes" magazine earlier this year where the criminals

were able to get into the web sites of these companies and steal all the credentials, all the user names and passwords used for logins to those sites. >> woodruff: and caused the individuals damage? do we know if money was drained from bank accounts? do we know whether this is lucrative to amass all the information which is basically what sounds like these hackers are doing? >> these credentials are not to the banking sites. most banking sites are very secure, unless you're collecting it from the botnet, as i mentioned before. what is a common problem is people reuse passwords. so the same user name and password you may sign up to a magazine subscription is use ford a banking site which is a problem because if one of the sites gets used, you vulnerable

i've wrote else. >> woodruff: this is supposed to be billions, are we talking from different web sites or one big breach? >> reportedly, it includes data from over 400,000 sites but there are probably very being breaches in there that amplify the numbers. >> woodruff: the real question for us who are rushing to our desks to change our passwords again, is this the risk of living in a wired world? do we have to get used to this and build into our psyche that once a month we'll hear about another big hack? >> unfortunately, it is. once month -- we would be lucky if we heard at that fre frequen. we recommend using a different password for every site and use a password management system to

track the sites. create long and randal passwords, store them in a secure program and you can easily access that password when used to log into that site and when there's compromise the compromise will be isolated just to the site hacked. >> woodruff: in your experience, do people take that advice? >> most don't, but it's not that hard. takes a little effort and you will be a lot more secure as a result. >> woodruff: dimitri alperovitch, thanks so much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: it's taken ten years and a journey of four billion miles, but today, a spacecraft began orbiting a comet. a first in space history. and a mission that may tell us something about the origins of life itself. hari sreenivasan has our conversation, which was recorded as part of a google hangout earlier today. >> reporter: the rosetta spacecraft was launched years ago by the european space

agency. along the way, its journey has taken it around the sun five times. and its now 250 million miles from earth. send a probe that will land on the comet. the first images were sent back today. mark mccaughrean of the senior science advisory with the european space agency joins me now. why do we want to send a satellite so close to a comet? >> comets have information at the origin of our solar system. by rummaging through the garbage pile, we can start to learn about how our solar system is

built but not only that, because comets perhaps hold the answers to a long mysterious question that baffled people for a long time. if the earth was really hot when it was first made, which it was, how did water stay on the planet? would it have boiled off? maybe it came later or maybe from a comet. the coffee you're drinking this morning, maybe it came from a comet. comets are really dark. they're not snowballs, they're very, very black and they've got stuff in them which is dust but also organic complex molecules including amino acids, the buildings blocks of life. so comets could have also seeded the earth with the raw materials for making who we are today. so there's the loop. >> sreenivasan: we've gotten close to comets before, why do we need to orbit one? >> all others have been fly-bys.

it's easy to fly past a comet quickly instead of work our way around the solar system using the other planets, using earth and mars to get our trajectory and slow down to get to the right speed to rendezvous. so we've learned things ability comets but just a few minutes at the time. this time we watch as it comes into the solar system, heats up, evolves, changes, gets dynamic. there will be so many unexpected surprises, we'll be able to then use that to link what we see from the comet close up to what we see from comets from distances and this is exactly what the name suggests, a "rosetta" stone for understanding comets in general close up. >> sreenivasan: we're talking a ten-year-long project, sign scientists and equipment from all over. >> in some ways actually a lot longer than that because in 1986, the european space agency did the first ever fl fly-by ofe

comet hally in 1986. then flying by in a few seconds and seeing a few minutes of data is good. but what would it be like to go and stay there for about a full year and maybe land? by 1993 the mission had been improved. it took ten years to build it. then it had to launch. we had a year's delay -- not on our side, the mission was ready, but one of the rockets exploded and we had to revisit and work out what was wrong with that. we lost the first comet we were supposed to be going to, it looped off, we had to pick another one quickly, and now we have been in space for ten years. what i'm saying, been in the cars ten years, the kids in the back are a bit irritated, are we there yet? we're there now, haven't gotten out of the car, looking out the window and there's disneyland waiting for us. what an amazing place to land,

we couldn't have wished for better. >> sreenivasan: you're going to try to land on the comet, i've even heard the word "harpooned." >> yes, you might think we would take off today and have a glass of champagne but we can't relax. we're at a goldilocks time. the comet is moving in from beyond jupiter. it's cold, not much sunlight, we couldn't power the spacecraft out there. but coming in, we have power enough to power the spacecraft. but the comet is not active yet. it will be becoming active soon. we have till november to pick a site and get the thing on the surface, so it will be frantic. really exciting. >> sreenivasan: what happens to the object after it lands in i heard they're both hurdling

toward the sun. >> we have the pictures going so close to the sun they don't break up and come back out again. the comet last year was one such object. this comet never comes as close to the sun as the earth. it ends up, the closest to the sun, 184 kilometers out, so somewhere between here and mars. it will have a tail and we'll learn a lot but it's never in such danger of being so bad we'll risk the mission. some want to know where they can see it. you won't see wit the naked eye. we'll have a ringside seat and show you close up. >> sreenivasan: mark mccaughrean from the european space agency, thanks so much.

>> ifill: next, a science report on a major new effort to give california communities more warning about an impending earthquake. a quake in china's southwestern yunan province earlier this week provided a sobering reminder of the deadly toll. unlike most natural disasters, earthquakes usually hit without warning. the newshour's cat wise has a story on plan to give residents in southern california a heads- up. many mexico, when an earthquake is about to hit, many people hear this (siren) and in japan, where thousands of seismic centers are installed around the country, this is what some tv viewers saw in 2011, right before their large quake hit. but in long beach, california, residents have had no warning system, even though the area, home to the second busiest container port in the country, oil refinery and a major airport sits on top of one of the most

seismically active regions in the world. in 1933, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake hit long beach, causing widespread distrucks and killing 115 people. new building standards were passed. lucy jones is a science advisor for risk reduction in the usgs. >> 6,000 died in japan, mexico had 6,000 die, china had 80,000 die. what we're hoping to be is the first country to bring it in without killing 1,000 people first. (alarm sounding) >> reporter: the system called shake alert is being tested in a handful of sites around california including long beach.

>> looks like this earthquake is 142 -- >> reporter: on a recent afternoon, a loud warning and a countdown sounded in the city's emergency command center when a small quake hit to the north. >> 67 seconds of total warning. >> reporter: reggie harrison is long beach's deputy city manager in charge of disaster preparedness. >> if we get a warning, seconds or tens of seconds of warning, we have to give information to the gas department where they take an opportunity to turn off gas, an opportunity to drop cover and hold or giving the crane operator at the port an opportunity to get down from the crane. >> reporter: shake alert is being developed by a team of scientists from the usgs and several west coast universities including here at the california institute of technology. >> so what we have here is what we typically have installed in the field. >> reporter: elizabeth cochran

is one of those working on the new system at usgs. >> we have about 500 sensors throughout the state which are contributing data and that number continues to grow as we install new sensors or upgrade sensors. >> reporter: the sensors send back data in realtime to the servers on campus which use sophisticated algorithms to analyze the information in less than a second and send out alerts. those alerts which range from a few seconds to a minute or more depending on the distance from the epicenter will go out over cell phones, radios, tv and other communications. communications. earthquakes send out two downtown seismic waves. p waves or primary waves come first. they travel faster but are generally small and harder to feel. s waves are secondary and slower but cause more damage. that lag time is important, says

cochran. >> we can actually measure the p waves which aren't very damaging and predict how big the earthquake is going to be and homefully get the warning out before the s waves come in. >> reporter: she showed us how the warning system would work during a hypothetical 7.8 earthquake in southern california. >> our sensors will detect that earthquake. you can see here the yellow or e the p waves and the second wave is the s wave and that's where we get the strong shaking. los angeles would get about 60 seconds of warning. >> reporter: russ oliver is one of the dozen or so seismic engineers around the state who install and maintain a large network of sensors. on the afternoon we caught up with oliver, he was checking on sensors ten feet underground in a concrete bunker near a rose bowl in pasadena. the sophisticated equipment in

this location costs about $30,000. >> the sensors are very sensitive. imagine a football field and lift it up on one end, slide a human hair underneath it and the sensors could detect that lift. >> reporter: while the public early warning system will be new for most residents once it's rolled out, some private companies like one called seismic warning systems already use different proprior tear technology to provide alerts for paying clients. sensors installed directly on the buildings reduce alert times, the cost range from $1,200 to $2,500 per client a year. but usgs's lucy jones feels it's important also for the government to make investments to the public system being created. >> the reality is it's a benefit for all of us, something like 40 states have some earthquake risk. we're going to figure out how to do it here because so much more is at stake but once we do it it's something we can give to

everyone. >> reporter: so far the system's only been partially fund bid kong and in california governor jerry brown signed a bill supporting development of the system but stipulated that no general state funds could be used. mark is the director of the governor v governor's office of emergency services. >> government will provide a funding stream but not all the funding. we're looking at it in a more inno vaiflt way, an outside the box thinking to incorporate our partners in the private sector. >> reporter: in long beach, deputy city manager reggie harrison doesn't care how the system is funding, he's just anxious to get it implemented in his community. >> it can literally save lives, this technology. seconds really do count in this industry and especially with an earthquake. >> reporter: officials say even if funding is coming through soon, it will be several years before california residents are likely to hear

this -- (alarm) -- before an earthquake. >> woodruff: now, an update on the ebola outbreak. the world health organization today raised the number of dead and called for discussions on using experimental drugs. every day there are more victims of the ebola outbreak, and more burials. the world health organization now says the death toll reached 932 by monday. almost all had been in three countries, guinea-- where the outbreak began-- liberia, and sierra leone. but, the new number includes a man who died in nigeria after traveling from liberia. since monday, nigerian health officials report a nurse who treated that patient has died. the airport in lagos, nigeria's largest city, is now on high alert, screening passengers for

body temperature and other symptoms as they arrive. >> we have a medical team from the ministry of health under the port services that inspects their medical history and also have some equipment where they check without having personal contact and all that is done on arrival even before the immigration. >> woodruff: meanwhile, officials in sierra leone and liberia have deployed hundreds of soldiers and police to quarantine remote villages and medical centers in ebola hot spots. the leaders of those two countries missed this week's africa summit in washington, to deal with the crisis. president obama took note of their struggle today. >> the united states and our international partners will continue to do whatever we can to help our african partners respond to this crisis, and to stand with the people of guinea, liberia and sierra leone. in their histories, they've

overcome great challenges, and they're drawing on that same spirit of strength and resilience today. >> woodruff: two americans who helped treat ebola patients in liberia and were themselves infected are now being treated in atlanta. they've received an experimental drug z-mapp that had never been tested on humans. the drug is extremely limited in supply. today the world health organization announced it's convening a medical panel next week to consider the ethics of making z-mapp more widely available. a late-breaking piece of information. president obama was asked this afternoon as he met with the african leaders who are here meeting at a summit in washington, he was asked about that drug made available to the two american healthcare workers. he said "all the information is not in yet on the new ebola drug." he said "we need to let the science guide us." having said that, reports say there are only a handful of courses of treatment with the

experimental drug now. its use is prompting questions of who should get access and under what circumstances. we have two experts. robert garry, we hear from two experts about this. robert garry is a virologist and a professor at the tulane university school of medicine. and, laurie garrett is a senior fellow for global health at the council on foreign relations. what is known about any drug available at this point to treat ebola? >> almost none. we don't know if they work or are safe. there have been not been clinical trials. we know one individual, an american, received this zmapp drug and seems to have had a recovery. did he have a recovery because he's part of the lucky 30% of the people who contracted ebola in the current outbreak who survived the disease or did he make it through because the drug

worked? we don't know and until you have something more than one person, you don't have clinical evidence. >> woodruff: dr. garry, what is your understanding of the drug and its comfort level of it being given to the one or two american healthcare workers. >> i am very comfortable having the americans being given the treatment. they're both healthcare workers and knew the risks of taking the drug so they were fully informed of the possible outcomes. as americans, we need to do all we can to protect people that go to countries where very serious disease like this is occurring and do all we can to protect them if they should be unfortunate enough to get infected. so this drug, zmapp, has shown very good promise in experimental animals, these

antibodies are very promising drugs, at the very top of the list for hemorrhagic fevers like ebola. >> woodruff: does that mean it would be more widely distributed at this point, dr. garry? >> when i came back from sierra leone about a month ago, i realized the outbreak had the potential unlike any other to spread wider and inif we could more people because it was in west africa instead of central africa. the people there are more mobile and unfortunately that kim the pass. my first concern when i came was about some of my colleagues i had been working with for about ten years and i thought, well, maybe we need to start to pull out some of the stops and get them some of these either experimental treatments like the zmapp or perhaps even better some of the vaccines that

have shown such great promise in monkeys and other trials. so, unfortunately, what i was faced with was resistance, saying you can't do experiments during an outbreak, and that didn't come to pass. unfortunately, some of my dear colleagues lost their battle to ebola virus. >> woodruff: where was the resistance coming from? >> many people say you shouldn't do research during an outbreak but i believe this is totally different. it's not in central africa. it's not so easy to get a ring around the villages so isolated, it's in west africa where the population is more dense. this outbreak will go on for a longer period of time. so we need to think outside the box of thinking that we can't do a research or a trial. we need to get the approvals in place and think about doing things that will be necessary to protect americans and also to help the africans. >> woodruff: laurie garrett,

listens to all this, what other considerations that should be part of this conversation if it's decided, how, when, how, what medications are made available and to whom? >> i think we're in an unbelievably difficult mess here. there's no easy answer, judy. we have a population who demonstrated they don't trust the government, they don't trust police, they don't even trust the folks at the next village or the local healthcare workers. healthcare workers have come under physical attack. part of the reason we can't control this epidemic is because people are not complying with quarantines, they are not complying with burial procedures meant to limit exposure to bodily fluids and, in generics they are highly especially of everything that's going on. so, now, if you start to introduce a pill, an injection,

whatever it may be and say we with're not sure but we think this might be helpful, you're going to have to have an extraordinary effort to communicate that risk to make it understood what you're talking about or you could have a really violent reaction against either saying, you know, those white doctors from someone else put a pill in my relative's mouth and that's what killed them or, conversely, saying they're hoarding the pills, and the pills will save you and our village isn't getting them as fast as this other village. this isn't like rolling out an experimental procedure in bethesda, maryland, this is potential chaos. potentially, if not done carefully, you could be worsening the situation. >> woodruff: you're talking about at the point of distribution, obviously, the difficulty of gaining the trust of people in these countries in

west africa and on the continent. dr. garry, you were speaking of difficulties on the point of origin. what needs to change? again, we don't even know if this drug zmapp is what has led to the survival so far of the american healthcare workers, but even assuming it is making a difference, what needs to happen, do you believe, in the united states or in the places where these drugs are being created and manufactured? >> well, first, let me address something ms. garrett said. there are always going to be some poem in a population that are going to resist what the government says and what they're doing but the vast majority of people in sierra leone and west africa are listening to their government. the government is stepping up, doing the right thing and there is cooperation there. so you're going to get a small fraction that are going to say, no, that's not the right thing to do, that's -- you know, white

people coming in and causing a problem. but it's not the -- it's not the vast majority of people there. and so what we need to do is we need to engage the governments. we need to get all the ethical approvals in place on both sides of the atlantic, in africa and in the united states. we need to get out of our own way. if we can make these wonderful new drugs that may or may not have had an impact in the two americans in atlanta, let's try some things. let's not be faced with the next outbreak and saying, oh, well, we can't do something now because we don't have the proper ethics approvals in place. >> woodruff: these are tough questions and we'll continue to look at this as i know the two of you are, dr. robert garry and laurie garrett, we thank you both. thanboth. >> thank you. >> woodruff: one hundred years

ago the world was drawn into what was called the great war. 17 million people died over the course of four years in a conflict that laid the foundation for wars that continue today. jeffrey brown has more. >> reporter: bright red ceramic poppies seemed everywhere this week, at the tower of london. they cascaded down the stonework into the dry moat, each one representing a british soldier who died during the war, nearly 900-thousand in all. the poppy was about the only flower that would grow in the wastelands of belgium and northern france, where millions fought and died in four long years of trench warfare. this week, former enemies have marked the centennial of the conflict, with ceremonies in belgium and elsewhere. >> ( translated ): the remembrance of the first world war allows us to reflect on the decision made to keep the peace and bring people closer together. the european memory reminds us that no country can last without a spirit that can surpass the suffering endured, and which moves beyond the question of

culpability and directs itself resolutely towards the future. >> reporter: the great war, as it came to be called, was the world's first fully industrialized war with tanks, machine guns, airplanes and chemical weapons used to devastating effect. neutral at the beginning, the u.s. did not join the fight until 1917. the american commander, general john "blackjack" pershing, recorded this appeal to the home front, thought to be the first from a battlefield. >> 3000 miles from home an american army is fighting for you. everything you hold worthwhile is at stake. only the hardest blows can win against the enemy we are fighting. >> reporter: ultimately, more than four million americans fought, 116,000 died and 200,000 were wounded. worldwide, 17 million soldiers and civilians were killed in western and eastern europe, and on other continents.

the death and destruction radically altered the maps of europe and the middle east, and the course of world history. in 1917, the russian revolution brought vladimir lenin to power, and led to the formation of the soviet union. the russian empire along with the austro-hungarian and german empires had dominated the european mainland before the war. all three collapsed and their territories ultimately became the states of modern day europe. the ottoman empire was divided into the nation-states including syria and iraq of the middle east. ever since, the redrawn borders have been points of contention, helping fuel conflicts that continue today. french prime minister francois hollande took note of that sunday, saying if france and germany can live in peace, so too can the middle east. >> ( translated ): to those who are losing hope about the peace process in the middle east, we couldn't send a more beautiful message than today's.

france and germany's history proves that determination can overcome fatality. and that two people who were viewed as hereditary enemies can, within a few years, reconcile. >> reporter: world war one ultimately ended with the treaty of versailles, signed in paris in 1919. from then to now, we turn to three people who have studied and written ex tebsively on the war. margaret mcmillan the awe for of the war that ended peace, a professor of international history at oxford university. john mere shimmer of the university of chicago, author of the tragedy of great power poll six, and jack's book the lost history of the war of 1914, now a news analyst for the program "on point." margaret miller, how is the

world we live in today shaped or influenced by world war i? >> what world war i does is begin to destroy european power, the united states' rise to great power was accelerated. the first world war leaves behind the leg say of violence, ethnic and radical politics which plays out to the 21s 21st and into the 23r 23rd century. >> reporter: how do you answer that, looking into headlines about the middle east and ukraine and russia and so on? >> two points. first of all, it is the first time that the united states engages in a major war outside of the western hemisphere and, therefore, it represents the first time the united states begins to act as the world's policeman, a policy that it continues to pursue today. secondly, it's very important to understand that, as a result of the war, three beg empires --

the russian, austro-hungarian empire and the ottoman empire collapsed. tough map as it exists today after world war i and a fundamentalle change in the map of europe, you have all these states that didn't exist before world war i created after world war i, countries like poland, hungary, the ball tick states and so forth and so on, and that has had a major consequence on european politics ever since then. >> brown: same question, jack, but framing it a little differently, thinking in terms of some of the things we heard about, the catalyst for nation state, for nationalism, for the industrialization of war, certainly, after world war i. >> yes, indeed. as a mechanization of war, but there is a cultural or psychological legacy that the historian who died recently,

nearly age 100, commented on. he said the legacy of the war was botherrism, that parent peof his parents generation, who grew to maturity before 1914, couldn't imagine the horrors that were to come, that there were limits to what you could expect nations to do to one another. of course, the nations had been doing terrible things to people in the tropics, you know, and they had been doing -- one battle in two hours, 10,000 10,000derbishes were gunned down. people in the third world felt the violence. but only after the great war that the ba barbarism became cae

to be in the european nations. >> brown: to what extent was all that there in the aftermath of world war i? to what extent was it there from the beginning? >> it was there before the war. a nation state was already there. what the first world war did is make it much more possible because it destroyed the old empires who kept the different nash nationalities inside one border so you have a series of ethnic based states that contained minorities and it was a recipe for disaster and we see it today as iraq is grown apart by the different ethnicities. >> brown: it's still with us even in europe. i was reading about coming elections in catalonia,

scotland, these issues are still very much with us. >> well, i think in a funny way it's almost a reaction to globalization because i think as the world gets more interconnected, please cling to smaller identities as sort of a home and safety. i agree. scotland was a strong nationalist movement, catalonia. you see it in eastern europe in. the balkans you have strong national identities. you have trouble between hungarians and neighbors because of hungarians living outside of hungary so we haven't moved away from it yet. >> brown: when you're thinking of great power situations today or the kind of global struggles we see today, are there lessons you most look at from 100 years ago? >> i think there are two fundamental differences between europe today and europe in 1914. i think the first is that in 1914, you had one country, germany, that was especially powerful yet fearful and i think that that germany, imperial

germany was the principal cause of the war. today you have no power in europe who has the power to dominate so no one country can cause the trouble. the second is nuclear weapons. i think it would be almost impossible today to have world war 3 that looked like either world war i or ii anywhere on the planet because of nuclear weapons. nuclear weapons are major forces for peace, but that doesn't mean you couldn't have a limited war. all of this is to say i think the situation in europe is more stable today than before world war i, before world war ii or even during the cold war. >> brown: and, of course, globally, we still have superpower competition, a rise in china, asia, what kind of lessons do you see from looking

at the runup from 1914? >> well, i see what graham allison at harvard has called a trap looming as a potential over history, u.s.-chinese relations. the trap refers to the history of the peloponesian war in which he writes it was the rise of athens and this fear inspired in sparta that made war inevitable. well change that around. it was the rise of russia and the fear this inspired in germany in 1914 that made war inevitable. as you look through the germans in the period we're saying, it was a feeling of now or never, russia's power will be irresistible in a few more years, it's strategic railroads and western borders will be completed. our whole strategy of a two-front war which counted on a lag in mobilization between

russia and germany will be out the window, we won't be able to stand for it, let's have a preventative war now. you say we would never have a preventative war in china, but in 1990, the assistant secretary of defense wrote a paper that made front-page news in the "new york times" saying it should be the policy of the united states to prevent the rise of a rival power and, of course, the bush doctrine of 2002, as it's been called, essentially is a doctrine of preventative war. we will not wait for dangers to gather, we will prevent that from happening. so we have been tempted at the level of our elites, and then to talk about preventative war. >> brown: margaret mcmillan, i wonder, as an historian, do you like to make these direct

analogies or do you hear echo? what's useful for us to think about now? >> i think what is useful to think about is how we might formulate questions about the president by drawing on the past, but i don't think the situations hundreds of years ago are the same as today. so many more things have happened and as john points out we now have nuclear weapons. i think we can learn that it is very important to understand your neighbors, to understand what it is they're worried about, to try to build bridges, it's very important in international institutions. i wouldn't agree completely with jack and i don't think things are inevitable in human history. i think if we accept there are human factors, and possibilities of making decisions that nations on the rise don't necessarily need to go to war with the comfortable nations. you could have argued britain is probably going to war with the united states in the 1890s because the united states is a threat to the british position in the new world. it didn't happen.

they decided to manage the relationship. i think we need to remember that there are choices in history. >> reporter: on that, we'll continue that discussion, we'll do that online and i'll invite the audience to join us there later on but, for now, thank you all so much. >> you're welcome. thank you. >> ifill: again, the major developments of the day. the world health organization called for a review of using an experimental u.s. drug against the ebola outbreak that's killed 932 people in west africa. this evening, president obama said he needs more information on the ebola drub before seeking fast track approval. and investigators in afghanistan said it appears an afghan soldier had no specific target in mind when he opened fire yesterday, killing a u.s. army general. >> woodruff: on the newshour

online right now, since the 2011 earthquake that triggered a nuclear disaster in japan, our science correspondent miles o'brien has returned several times to the site of the fukushima daiichi power plant, including a trip inside its hazardous exclusion zone. we've created a documentary from his reports that includes a never-before seen tour of fukushima's sister plant, which narrowly escaped the same calamity. watch that video, on our science page. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. >> woodruff: and again, to our honor roll of american service personnel killed in the afghanistan conflict. we add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. here, in silence, are five more.

>> ifill: and that's the newshour for tonight. tomorrow, we mark the 40th anniversary of president richard m. nixon's resignation and examine how it changed american history and politics. i'm gwen ifill. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. 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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