so we now know how many people on board, the kourpts they re from. the men and the women and the 16 children and the one baby that were on the airasia flight. but those were answers certainly the cargo manifest. that took weeks and weeks to be released in the case of mh-370. and i remember, natalie, in kuala lumpur a feeling, the tension and the anger from those families who were there trying to get answers. they weren t getting the answers that they needed. we saw some really dramatic moments where there was pushing, there was shoving, there was wailing, people were sobbing, they were surrounded by cameras, it was a very charged, very sad situation. and after that you saw in those subsequent weeks malaysia airlines assigning grief counselors to each individual family member. that was the case in kuala lumpur. that was the case here in beijing. making sure that families needs were attended to. and what we re seeing now is also information being put out quickly. resources being made
remind our viewers, this is only all very preliminary, but they don t see any specific threat to this plane from a terrorist attack. law enforcement and intelligence officials are looking at the passenger list, cargo manifest, the pilot. you re doing all the sorts of things, you re looking, as you said, john, for additional clues that might either give you a lead to what caused this plane to go down or sort of eliminate potential causes like terrorism. don t know yet what it is. no reason to suspect terrorism. but they re looking at every single fact and every single angle. all right. fran townsend for us. again, fran tells us the initial reports are that terrorism was not involved. we ll find out much more about what may have been involved in the coming minutes, hours and days, to be sure. president obama has been informed that malaysia airlines flight 17, the reports are now that it has crashed in eastern ukraine near the russian border.
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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 don t 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 pm saying that he s following a policy of transparency and then documents saying we can t let you have this. we ll stand by for that next week. richard, don t go away. i want to bring in our aviation analyst peter goelz and tom fuentes and ken christensen.
so you constantly question about why is there just this discrepancy between the next of kin s demands and views and what you re saying. now, a lot of the questions that they have asked, they have received the information. i m not saying all. but i ve had it on an extremely high authority that a lot of the information has been provided. and then they ask for it again or in a slightly different form. and where i think the malaysian government or the airline is falling down is that they are not responding fast enough again to give the information. because this next of kin are entitled to that information. they are the people who are affected most. but i don t think anybody should be in any doubt that at least from the very top of the prime minister, his view is that the change will take place. information, may be the cargo manifest, maps, the preliminary report. maybe, as he said to me, richard we have heard the messages