Those are some of the stories were covering on tonights pbs newshour. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by moving our economy for 160 years. Bnsf, the engine that connects us. Lincoln financial committed to helping you take charge of your life and become youre own chief life officer. And the william and flora hewlett foundation, helping people build immeasurably better lives. And with the ongoing support of these institutions and. This program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Ifill its been a fruitless hunt so far for an airasia jetliner that disappeared sunday morning off indonesia. 162 passengers and crew were on board and two days of searching has failed to find anything. Alex thomson of independent Television News has our report. Reporter dawn this morning on the java sea for the International Search effort some hopes raised as an Australian Team reported seeing debris off shore. The sighted debris proved to be nothing of significance leaving another day passed in this operation with no sign of missing flight qz8501. Human sight is daylightlimited and compromised by cloud cover. So the planes flight data recorders fixed with underwater locator beacons might prove crucial. When submerged, they should emit a signal every second to be picked up in theory, locating the plane. With every passing hour the likelihood of it having gone down in the ocean increases. After todays disappointment, the search area has been expanded to include islands to the south and east there are now 30 ships involved in the search, and at least 15 aircraft. I think the possibly this one will be found quickly. The java sea is actually quite shallow. Which means there si a much greater chance that the signal from the position indicator will be detected. Reporter the man in the eye of the storm right now air asia boss and chairman of q. P. R. Football club. Reporter the search for flight qz8501 resumes on and in the java sea at first light. Ifill there was no suggestion of foul play in the airasia disappearance. Ten months ago, Malaysian Airlines flight 370 vanished on a flight to china, with 239 people on board. Investigators believe it was deliberately diverted and went down in the indian ocean. No trace has ever been found. Emergency crews today completed rescuing 427 people from a greek ferry that burned off the coast of albania. At least ten others died. Fire broke out yesterday on the ferrys car deck, not far from the island of corfu, between italy and albania. Video from the italian navy showed crews lifting passengers from the upper deck of the vessel onto rescue helicopters. The operation was hindered by driving rain and high winds. In iraq, a suicide bomber killed at least 15 people and wounded two dozen more, just north of baghdad. It happened at a funeral for a man linked with progovernment sunni militias. Officials said the attack bore the hallmarks of Islamic State militants. A british medical worker was diagnosed with ebola today after flying home from sierra leone. The patient arrived in scotland last night, and only then showed symptoms. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization announced the number of cases in west africa has passed 20,000, with more than 7,800 deaths. The kremlin confirms that russias economy lost ground this year for the First Time Since 2009. It shrank by half a percent under pressure from Falling Oil Prices and sanctions over ukraine. The news sent the russian ruble tumbling another eight percent. People back in this country the number three House Republican acknowledged he addressed a gathering hosted by white nationalists in 2002. The Washington Post reported louisiana congressman Steve Scalise was then a state representative speaking on wasteful spending. His office says he was unaware of what it called the sponsors hatefueled ignorance. And wall street had a lackluster day, the Dow Jones Industrial average lost 15 points to close at 18,038; the nasdaq was virtually unchanged, closing just under 4,807; and the s p 500 added about two to finish at 2,090. Still to come on the newshour. The search widens for a missing airasia jetliner. The official combat mission ends for u. S. Troops in afghanistan. An uncertain future for greece after the Prime Minister calls for snap elections. How the ice bucket challenge sparked a year of viral philanthropy. The colombian government tries to repay victims of civil war. Putting urban homicides on the record. And, Judy Woodruffs exit interview with outgoing republican senator Saxby Chambliss. Ifill now back to the search for the missing airasia flight. Wall street journal correspondent Guarav Raghuvanshi has been covering this story from singapore. I spoke to him a short time ago via skype. And Guarav Raghuvanshi thank you so much for joining us tonight. Can you tell us what the latest is that you know . Yes, it has been more than two days and the plane is still missing. So as the day breaks today the with the day break which will happen in a couple dch dch more than an hour from now, we will see the ships and the aircraft renewing their search and trying to look for this aircraft. Ifill how expensive is the search at this point . We are trying to look all over an area that is around the last known location of the aircraft. And they want to broaden the search a little bit. So they are searching some parts of the islands over there to see if tended up on land. Ifill is weather the leading theory . I know its monsoon season there. Thats right. Monsoon is the season. And weather is possibly one of the factors because we are aware that there was a little bit of a problem in the area. But until it is found everything is a theory. Ifill do we know anything about the experience of the pilot . Well, he had more than 20,000 hours of flight experience. He was in the air force pilot and he had more than 6,000 hours on this particular aircraft with this airline. Ifill and how about the Safety Record of airasia itself . Airasia so far has had no safety issues. It has been a very safe airline in the last years or so that it has been running. So with airasia there are not safety issues. Ifill there have been obvious comparisons to the missing malaysia jet from earlier this year, even though the routing obviously is different. But can you tell us what is similar and what is different . Well the only thing that is similar is that the aircraft has not been found. Typically, there are if an aircraft goes down there are that get triggered and it is very quickly the signals from those transmitters are picked up. So we know where the aircraft is and that seems to be the case with this particular with this particular incident. The signals from those. Ifill and yet other planes apparently, went through similar airspace just before and after this plane turned up missing. Is anything surface yet from those other jets that tells us something whether they also went through turbulence whether they changed altitude, anything that what give any indication about what happened here . There was an aircraft that was that plane did make some distress calls. It was seen on the radar tract as moving slightly away from its course. And thats probably because of weather. We tried to speak to the airline. They said the aircraft arrived on time and they wouldnt give us more details. From the radar track it does appear that also tried to avoid some weather jz the java sea where the search is concentrated is supposed to be more shallow than where they were looking for the malaysia jet. Does that raise hopes about the potential of finding any kind of wreckage. Yeah, there is a lot of difference in the terrain because the java sea where it was last located is reasonably shallow. Something like 50 meters, which is actually pretty shallow. So that does give hope that it will be easier, the seven for this aircraft will be easier. Ifill and how many countries are we talking about involved in this search right now . At the moment it is primarily indonesia and ships from malaysia and singapore. There are other countries the u. S. Has offered and they stand ready to come into the search if required. Ifill Guarav Raghuvanshi of the wall street journal, thank you so much. Thank you ifill after thirteen years, a Major Mission for u. S. Forces and others in afghanistan came to its official end with little fanfare this weekend. And as Jeffrey Brown reports there are major doubts as to whether the country is capable of fighting a resurgent taliban. Brown a subdued ceremony in kabul brought a formal close sunday to the longest war in american history. Today marks an end of an era and the beginning of a new one. Today nato completes its combat mission, a 13year endeavor filled with significant achievements and tremendous sacrifice. Brown the conflict began with a u. S. Led invasion in october 2001, less than a month after the 9 11 attacks. The assault quickly ousted the taliban from power, but fighting continued as the american focus shifted to iraq. Then, in 2009, president obama ordered a surge, and u. S. Force levels peaked in 2010 with 140,000 troops. Since then, the u. S. Combat role has wound down after a tremendous cost in both blood and money. More than 2,200 americans been killed over the course of the afghan war. Another 22,000 have been wounded in these 13plus years. And to date, the war effort has cost the u. S. Treasury one trillion dollars. Now, though, the taliban is mounting its own resurgence, making 2014 the wars deadliest year, with 5,000 Afghan Security forces killed, including four today. Its a daunting challenge for the countrys new president ashraf ghani. translated if they insurgents, with their terrorist acts, want us to ignore the peace movement, they are wrong. Or if they think that by their terrorist acts they can weaken our intentions, they need to know that people of afghanistan have a unified intention and they will Never Surrender to terror acts. Brown still, thousands of afghans have fled the violence and now face a harsh winter in makeshift camps like these in kabul. In a bid to bolster the regime, some 13,000 foreign troops, mostly americans, will remain in afghanistan next year. And joining me now is nprs sean carberry. He was the news organizations chief kabul correspondent before it closed down its permanent presence in afghanistan a few weeks ago. And welcome. I want to start where that pace ended with the troops that will remain even after this is officially declared over. What will they be doing . Well they will have two primary missions. One is counterterrorism operations. So going after any remnants of al qaeda or affiliated groups that are still in afghanistan. The second is what the military calls a train advise and assist mission which is essentially to continue mentoring and helping the Afghan Forces which is really what has been going on for the better part of the last year. U. S. Forces transition from running combat operations to this training advisement largely over the course of 9 year. So there is not a huge dramatic shift that is happening right now. That is the obvious question. What does it mean in practical terms that this end of the war ceremony . Not that much. It really is more ceremonial than it is substantive at this point. Because u. S. Forces have been conducting very few combat operations over the past year Afghan Forces are leading operations. U. S. Forces are continuing to support in some cases they provide air support sometimes on the ground support. Special forces do some joint operations and most of that will continue next year with just a smaller number of forces. So there will be u. S. Forces who will still be seeing combat. There will still be u. S. Air support provided intelligence, other support to the Afghan Forces. Brown well s so when we speak of a resurgent of the taliban, we see their ability to have deadly attacks. At least in small force. How much are they how strong are they . How much are they able to change things in larger ways . Well its always hard to assess them as a force because they do operate in cells theyre scattered around the country. They did carry out a number of large scale attacks over the course of the summer. They did challenge Afghan Forces in a number of places. They carried out a lot of attacks that did take over terrain for a while and the afghan army had to push them back out. So they are clearly a very substantial force and able to put Afghan Forces on their heels in parts of the country. And we saw a huge uptick in violence the last couple of months i was there in november, about 12 different suicide attacks in kabul alone. Most violent month certainly in the time that i was there and a lot of people said one of the most violent months they had seen. So the taliban are still very strong, active and want to push this new government. Brown before we get there, the Afghan Security forces their ability to counteract the taliban at this point . U. S. Forces swrenly say Afghan Forces can hold their own. But in the face of an ongoing insurgency holding their own is not a fantastic grade. And while they can fight well, they still have huge problems with logistics with maintaining their equipment, with intelligence. The air force is years away from being a powerful force that can replace the air power that the u. S. And other countries provided. So they can fight on the ground but theyre not a selfsustaining force by any stretch of the imagination. Brown so the new goff of ashraf ghani still having some trouble even getting organized, still facing a bad economy, still facing the taliban threat. Yes its three months since he was inaugurated and theres still no new cabinet. And part of this is a function of this dynamic of this National Unity government which was the compromise to end the election standoff that went for months over the course of the summer. Secretary of state john kerry had to fly in multiple times to broker a resolution to the disputed outcome. As a result you have ashraf ghani as president and Abdullah Abdullah the runnerup as the c. E. O. Of the government. So they have to agree on a new cabinet. They have to agree on a lot of decisions that are being made. And they each have their own circles of people around them that they have to deal with. So its made a much more complicated government situation. And they have not been able to competition very much in the first three months. Brown well, that what have been the priorities of ghani and the government at this point . What kind of initiatives are they able to take . Well so far ghani has tried to put a focus on cleaning up the government. Notoriously corrupt government and country. Hes tried to focus on going after some of the serious case the Kabul Bank Case where there was nearly a billion dollars siphonned out of the bank by its shareholders several years ago. He reopened that case has tried to prosecute these people to send a signal that this government is going to be clean, is going to go after corruption. So hes taken some steps in those record. Regard, but on any large scale effort there really hasnt been anything major that has been accomplished by this administration yet. Brown let me ask you finally and briefly from your time there almost three years that you were there how much has life changed for citizens . Depends where you are in the country. For some it has changed. Someplaces are more secure. Theyre seeing a little bit more economic development. Someplaces got worse over the time that i was there. So still people are very concerned about security. Theyre very concerned about the economy. And by and large theres not a huge net positive change today from when i first got there. So the country still has a lot of challenges and a long way to go before its going to be Stable Secure and sovereign. Brown all right, sean carberry, thank you so much. Youre welcome jeff. Ifill in athens today, the greek Prime Minister called snap elections after parliament failed to agree on a new president. The contest is less than a month away and many fear that an outright rejection of yearsold and painful austerity measures could send shock waves throughout the european economy. Paul mason of independent Television News reports. Reporter in the Greek Parliament they vote one by one. By the end of it all eyes were on this man. Alexis tsipras, leader of the far left syriza party, submerged in a media scrum, but potentially on the brink of power. The future has begun, he said, be optimistic, and glad but the markets werent. The Greek Stock Market plunged by seven percent, and the cost of government borrowing rose. Two years ago tsipras was still effectively leader of a small protest party. His typical interview venue was the street. Then came austerity. Imposed by europe, resisted on the streets, increasingly with violence. But as the austerity drained political goodwill towards the centrist parties. Today, one poll put him 6 ahead. By 25 january europe could have its first far left government. The snap election leaves the greek Prime Minister, and the whole european strategy of austerity in greece, fighting for survival. translated to rid of us uncertainty we will establishh stability. Reporter the Greek Economy shrunk by a quarter in five years, but stopped shrinking. On the depressed streets like these, where theres high unemployment, the election will be a straight fight. The entire political establishment versus the far left and its allies. At stake, the 319 billion euros greece still owes europe