[Wolf Blitzer, Cnn Anchor:] Jake, thanks very much. Happening now, Bluefin-21 making its final deep-sea scan of the targeted search area. Authorities now have a plan of action if it finds no trace of Flight 370.. As Russian forces start new military drills, Ukraine's leader is warning that Moscow wants to start, quote, "World War III." Can President Obama's threat of new sanctions get Russia to back off? Plus, hail, high winds and tornadoes. Violent storms threatening much of America's midsection and the south right now. We'll go live to our severe weather center. I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM. There are new details on the hunt for Flight 370, 50 days after it disappeared. Here are the latest developments. The Bluefin-21, the U.S. Navy's underwater drone, is now scanning the last 5 percent of its targeted area. If it can't find a trace of the airliner, authorities plan to expand the search zone and may bring in different technology. And angry Flight 370 families making a rare show of civil disobedience in tightly-controlled Beijing. They've marched through the city and they're staged a sit-in at Malaysia's embassy. They're demanding information. Our analysts are standing by here in THE SITUATION ROOM. Our correspondents are standing by around the world, bringing you the kind of coverage only CNN can deliver on the search for Flight 370, the worsening Ukraine crisis, and a threat of violent storms and tornadoes across much of the country's heartland. Let's begin with CNN's Miguel Marquez. He's got the very latest in Perth, Australia Miguel.
[Miguel Marquez, Cnn Correspondent:] Hello there, Wolf. Clearly things are in transition here right now, Both the HMS Echo and the HMS Tireless, a submarine and a service ship, that had been participating in this search are now headed to port or in port. The Ocean Shield is continuing to search for that plane, but it says it is now searching areas adjacent to that most hoped-for area to find Flight 370.
[Marquez:] A new show of anger by Flight 370 families camped outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing, chanting "tell the truth" and "stop lying." They're demanding face-to-face meetings with top Malaysian officials, something they say they'd been promised but repeatedly denied. Several thousand miles away, a source of their frustration, the Bluefin-21's scan of the most promising search area winds down, nearly two weeks later with nothing to show for it so far. If no leads turn up once the whole area is covered, coordinators now confirm that the underwater drone will scour stretches of the nearby ocean. The Bluefin has been combing deep waters, about six miles around the second ping that was detected, a possible signal from the jet's black boxes. No official word yet on what technology will be used next, but we learned today that the British Royal Navy's world submarine is out of the mix. It's no longer needed to hunt for pings now that the black-box batteries are believed to be dead. Australian and Malaysian authorities are holding urgent talks about the next phase of the operation.
[Najib Nazak, Malaysian Prime Minister:] This is totally unprecedented. What do we have going for us? What is the evidence? The evidence simply lie with the pings. The handshakes that we have analyzed. That's all we have.
[Marquez:] The Malaysian prime minister in an exclusive interview with CNN acknowledges the investigators haven't had much to go on, as they've tried to pinpoint any possible crash site. He's promising to release a preliminary report on the Flight 370 investigation next week, exactly seven weeks after the plane vanished. Many relatives of the 239 people on board are skeptical about everything they're being told.
[Sarah Bajc, Partner Of Mh-370 Passenger:] Actions speak louder than words. The briefings, both in Malaysia and in China, have been a joke.
[Marquez:] Now, what is not clear, Wolf, is whether or not they have any more math to go to, basically. The way that they picked up those pings and how they map where they are searching right now, where will they go next? Will they just continue to search around the edges? Will they go to the area of the first ping? Or will they reset this entire operation for a much broader search Wolf.
[Blitzer:] Miguel Marquez, from Perth with the very latest. We'll check back with you. Let's get now to the fallout from CNN's exclusive interview with Malaysia's prime minister. He sent out shock waves when he broke his silence on Flight 370. CNN's Richard Quest, who did the interview, is joining us once again, live from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. So what's been the reaction to this very important interview that you conducted, Richard?
[Richard Quest, Cnn Aviation Correspondent:] I think the fundamental view is the prime minister spoke, and about time, too. Everybody that I've spoken to said what he putting the best foot forward from and pointing out what Malaysia has actually done, not the myths of what the country hasn't done, and many here will say why didn't you put this into the international arena sooner? I think on the family's question, Wolf, there is still quite a lot of people who don't quite understand how this relationship has deteriorated so badly, so quickly. And those are those who simply say the families will never be satisfied and those who say actually what the families are asking for is legitimate, and Malaysia needs to step up to the plate.
[Blitzer:] Any indication they will be more forthcoming? You told us yesterday the prime minister told you that this preliminary report Malaysia has provided to the International Civil Aviation Organization, this international U.N. body, that that report would be made public. Are you getting any indication when it will be made public, what day?
[Quest:] No, I haven't. And I've asked several times, and obviously I've asked before then. And it will be impossible. Note the word. Impossible for the Malaysians not to release that report next week. Even if the committee looking at it decides the entire report has to be redacted except for one word, preliminary, and then report underneath it, they are going to have to release something next week. And then, Wolf, it becomes an issue of how the prime minister intends to enforce this transparency on perhaps other areas of government that do not see it in quite the same way. So the cargo manifest, the new passenger list, the maps, any other documents that they may have that would be of use to understanding. You cannot have a P.M. saying he's following a policy of transparency and then, at the first whiff of grapeshot, documents saying we can't let you have this, that or the other.
[Blitzer:] We'll stand by for that report next week. Richard, don't go away. I want to bring in our aviation analyst, the former NTSB managing director Peter Goelz; our law-enforcement analyst, the former FBI assistant director, Tom Fuentes; along with the retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant, Ken Christensen. He's a commercial pilot, certified aircraft crash investigator. So they're 50 days in now. They've not found, Peter, at least, not even an iota of the wreckage. Nothing of the wreckage. The initial search area, 95 percent done, 5 percent left to go. Presumably they won't find anything. Where do they go from here?
[Peter Goelz, Cnn Aviation Analyst:] Well, they've got to keep searching. And it's terribly disappointing. I don't think it was unforeseen, but it's terribly disappointing. They should have set expectations lower. But they've got to keep searching. They've got to continue to look at each one of the pings and search around those. They made a big deal about those. Let's go check them out.
[Blitzer:] The aerial search, Ken, is that over for all practical purposes? They've spent 50 days flying around. They haven't seen anything significant, anything at all. Is it over for all practical purposes?
[Lt. Ken Christianson , Commercial Pilot/crash Investigator:] I would say at this point, Wolf, the aerial search is over. Any debris that would be from that wreckage would be thousands of miles away at this point.
[Blitzer:] Tom Fuentes, if you were in charge of this investigation, what would you do now?
[Tom Fuentes, Cnn Law Enforcement Analyst:] Well, I think they're going to have to do, you know, what they've talked about, the regrouping of how they're going to expand the search, what kind of equipment they're going to use for it. But I would I find it interesting that the prime minister, when he mentions all they have to go on, is the Inmarsat satellite data, which is British-controlled data and the pings, which is American machines operated off of an Australian ship. He omitted any mention of Malaysian's defense radar or their civil aviation radar. And I think that that's a, you know, a critical part of it, especially as Richard mentions when they announce that they're going to they've released this preliminary report to the International Civil Aviation Organization but not to the families, not to the public. And they're waiting a week, creating a greater mystery, creating greater expectations for what I'm sure the report is going to have next to nothing useful in it.
[Blitzer:] Well, let's ask Richard Quest to react to that. Richard, you were the one who spent some quality time with the prime minister yesterday. What do you say about what Tom just said?
[Quest:] I think I've seen and I've spoken to people about the radar data. The radar data is so basic, and if you look at the picture, it is basically blips with a gap in the middle of it after it follows after it crosses across Malaysia and into the straits of Malacca. So to the extent that what Tom said is right. It doesn't actually add a row of beans, other than the fact that it was MH- 370, and it does take the plane into the Straits of Malacca and then onwards. But thereafter and this will be the difficult part, Wolf, if they do have to discount Inmarsat material, then you really do go back to and the P.M. basically says this, you do go back to 222, the last known data from the military radar. And if you're back at that level, well then I think we are really turning the lights off and going home, because you've got no idea where the plane goes after that.
[Blitzer:] Peter, here's a blunt question. They were some confident early on, several moments when they got those pings, those four pings from what they thought was one of these black boxes. They it all looked pretty good that they had honed down a huge area to a relatively tiny little area, but they found nothing. Is it possible that they're looking at the wrong place to begin with right now?
[Goelz:] Boy, that's hard to believe. I mean, they did the most complex mathematical analysis from the pings, from the handshakes. They believe they had the spot. They believed they had the spot. It's going to be tough. They're going to keep searching there but, boy, I think they were a little enthusiastic when they first announced the pings were heard.
[Blitzer:] Let me quickly go back to Richard Quest in Kuala Lumpur. Richard, in the interview you did with the prime minister, he acknowledged that there were shortcomings; he acknowledged that mistakes were made. Did he seem to you confident that this is going to be resolved any time soon?
[Quest:] No. Absolutely not. I think that anybody I mean, Peter will know this from his own investigations over the years. Tom will know this from his investigations. Any of us who have touched this and who have looked at these sorts of incidents will be well aware that the investigators are in this for the long haul. They hope for the best. They believe in maybe the worst, and they know that this is the hard drudgery of deep-water search. So I would say that anybody who is suggesting that this will it could happen today, Wolf. Let's be frank. It could happen today. But the reality is we're in this for the long haul, and anyone who says otherwise is either naive or a fool.
[Blitzer:] Quick question for you, Tom Fuentes. Our own Ted Rowlands, he did a little experiment. He dropped the cell phone into some water, similar properties in the Indian Ocean and, guess what? Videos, photos, once the phone was retrieved, they could go into that cell phone and get a lot of that information. So presumably a lot of those people on that plane, 239 people, they had cell phones, if they ever retrieved some of those phones, they'll be able to collect useful information. Don't you agree?
[Fuentes:] I agree, and I was amazed. I saw that piece conducted in my home town of Chicago, and I thought it was amazing that they were able to pull that motherboard or the chip out of the immersed cell phone and retrieve data off of it. So that I mean, that's a hopeful sign. Of course, now the question is, it was only in that salt water for a couple of weeks. What will happen if they don't find this plane for two years like the Air France plane, how much more damage will salt do to the phones that are hopefully retrieved if they're on the bodies.
[Blitzer:] Ken, does it shock you that 50 days into this investigation they have not found even a tiny little piece of that plane?
[Christiansen:] At first it surprised me that there was no wreckage, but that probably says that they were looking in the wrong area, and the currents there in that part of the world in the Indian Ocean are just so unpredictable, the debris field can disperse pretty rapidly. For a wide body airplane hitting the water, you would think that there would be more wreckage than what they found. I'm confident that the pings that are coming from the underwater locator beacon. They just have not expanded the area and find some wreckage.
[Blitzer:] Let's see if they do. All right, guys, hold on. We're going to continue our analysis of what's going on. But up next, distress beacons, which are supposed to start transmitting in case of a crash, they stayed silent when Flight 370 went down. Here's the question. Why? And Russian troops holding military exercises on the border with Ukraine. Ukraine's leader now saying Moscow wants to start World War III. We'll have the latest on the escalating tensions.