Good evening. I'm William Brangham. Amna Nawaz and Jeff Bennett are away.

On the news hour tonight, early reports surrounding the Azerbaijani plane crash suggest Russia's

anti-aircraft system might have downed the plane.

How the Assad regime in Syria benefited from producing, selling, and exporting a widely used party drug.

He's traded away our souls for money, and then he slaughtered us using the weapons he bought with our own money too.

And a new investigation finds thousands more Native American children died at government-funded boarding schools

than previously acknowledged.

Welcome to the NewsHour.

There are early indications that it was a Russian air defense system that may have brought down the Azerbaijan Airlines jet that crashed yesterday.

A U.S. official tells the news hour.

But Moscow is warned against making, quote, hypotheses before investigators make their verdict.

Some of that speculation comes from damage to the aircraft's tail section, which shows holes

that could have been caused by shrapnel from an exploding air defense missile.

Stephanie Syne begins our coverage. Eyewitness video shows the moment of impact.

Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 crash lands in Kazakhstan.

A passenger describes the experience.

Two times it tried to land, and on the third time, something exploded.

In the minutes before landing, video shows the plane descending erratically.

Azerbaijani officials say by this point the pilot was flying without GPS and with communications jammed.

Video from a passenger on board shows oxygen masks deployed and what looks like a crack on a

piece of the wing.

Relative calm among the 67 people on board and then this.

...