Relief Efforts in Sri Lanka; 'The Last Word'
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: It's just about half past the hour now on this AMERICAN MORNING. I'm Heidi Collins in for Soledad today.</s>RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Rich Sanchez, filling in for Bill Hemmer on this day.</s>COLLINS: You know, as we get more information on the tsunami crisis, we are learning more about the enormous task ahead now for relief agencies. There are the dead bodies that threaten to bring disease. There is the distance between the affected countries, the hungry and the homeless, one million people in Sri Lanka alone. The director of CARE in Sri Lanka is going to be talking with us just ahead to give us the very latest information.</s>SANCHEZ: Also, while we're watching what's going on overseas, we're also trying to wrap up 2004 for you. A little bit later on, after a commercial break, we're going to tell you which television commercials the ad industry thinks were the best and the worst of the year, including the television show that turned into one giant commercial, and the ad that was such a problem it had to be pulled.</s>COLLINS: Meanwhile, though, Carol Costello is here now. She's going to give us a give of the headlines. Good morning.</s>CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. And good morning to all of you. "Now in the News." More violence across Iraq this morning. At least six Iraqi police officers were killed in a series of insurgent attacks near the town of Balad. In another incident, one Iraqi police officer was killed at a checkpoint near Tikrit, and a suicide car bomb attack in northern Baghdad left one person dead and five others injured. In Ukraine, while opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko is embracing his apparent election victory, his opponent is promising another legal challenge. Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych refuses to concede and says he will appeal the outcome to Ukraine's Supreme Court. Final results are expected on Friday, but the opposition leader, Yushchenko, maintains a commanding lead with nearly all of the votes counted in this repeat election. And comedian George Carlin is checking himself into rehab. The 67-year-old entertainer is saying he's got a problem with -- quote -- "too much alcohol and the painkiller, Vicodin." Carlin says he made the decision on his own, but he's not saying where he will be going for treatment. He just decided to go before it gets worse.</s>COLLINS: All right. Carol, thank you for that. We'll check back a little later on. Thanks.</s>SANCHEZ: Well, officials in these countries that we have been showing you throughout the mornings are scrambling now to try and organize local and international efforts to get essential supplies to some of the survivors of this tsunami. Sri Lanka, for example, by far one of the areas hardest hit, more than 12,000 people have died, many in the eastern district of Batticaloa. Thousands more remain missing, according to reports, and at least one million people there have lost their homes as well. Scot Faya is the director of CARE in Sri Lanka. He's joining us now to try and discuss the relief efforts that are now under way. It's a long way from where we are. We know we may have some problems in terms of hearing each other. So let me try and be as concise as we can. Get us started by drawing a picture for us of what the devastation is there, what the need is. Can you do that?</s>SCOTT FAYA, CARE SRI LANKA COUNTRY DIRECTOR: Well, this here happened around 48 hours ago. And the devastation is really tremendous. I mean, I have not experienced anything like this in my 30 years in the relief and emergency business. There have been houses swept away, people swept away, bus stations obliterated, buses overturned. A really incredible amount of destruction.</s>SANCHEZ: What are survivors doing to get by, as far as shelter, as far as food, as far as water?</s>FAYA: Well, it is a big struggle for survival, and I think that the survivors were extremely kind of shell-shocked when this initially happened. And they needed help and guidance, and people were kind of trying to move them to safer areas and trying to locate their loved ones, which is something that was first and uppermost in their mind.</s>SANCHEZ: We look at these pictures, and I've got to tell you, it's tough to look at some of these. As hard as it is, as well, some of the pictures we've seen of bodies now, people who died, whenever you have that many people who are deceased in one area, you can always have problems with things like cholera and hepatitis. How big a concern is that? And what's being done to prevent that?</s>FAYA: Well, it's a very big concern. And I can tell you on the first day of this, we had vehicles that were transporting injured people and bodies to the hospital. And we spent a whole day doing that, and that continued even on the second and the third day. Now, there's a real concern about disposing of these bodies, but there's also a big concern about the bodies that have not recovered, that are buried in the rubble. And a lot of measures have to be taken to purify the water supply and reduce the contamination that had occurred, because of all of the dead bodies and all of the debris and so on that have washed into these water sources.</s>SANCHEZ: It's hard to organize this type of massive relief effort, and especially to get it going in the very beginning. Just from an organizational standpoint, can you explain to us what you're doing and what type of dilemma you think you may have on your hands, just to get this thing going?</s>FAYA: Well, as I mentioned, this hit very suddenly. But the immediate response on Sunday was for us to deploy all of our vehicles, and they were very busy all day long transporting both wounded people and dead bodies to the hospitals, and ferrying people up to areas of higher elevation that were more safe. Then, after that, we started to try and serve the needs of those people that had been moved to safer areas. And that involved things like supplying food, clothing, utensils, and things of that sort. And, you know, the biggest challenge at the time, in the first two days, was to understand what was going on and to get a handle on the numbers. And, of course, this thing has just been growing exponentially. And it's just really scary. It's really frightening the level that it's reached in terms of number of people affected and the number of dead that we have.</s>SANCHEZ: Scott...</s>FAYA: So that was the hardest thing to deal with in the initial stages.</s>SANCHEZ: Scott Faya, director of CARE, doing some admirable work. We thank you, sir, for taking the time to talk with us, and we certainly wish you well. Heidi -- over to you.</s>FAYA: Can you please repeat that?</s>COLLINS: Just saying thanks for your time, sir, and we do appreciate it.</s>SANCHEZ: You know, it's beginning to look a lot like New Year's. And before we ring out the old, we're looking back this week at the good, bad, the unforgettable from 2004. In our series, "The Last Word," this morning it's the year's real-life courtroom dramas.</s>JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST (voice over): It was a year of big trials. You had Martha Stewart, Scott Peterson, the big trial that wasn't, Kobe Bryant, and the big trial to come, Michael Jackson. It was a combination of the coincidence of some very famous people on trial, combined with the public's enduring fascination with trials period.</s>LISA BLOOM, COURT TV: If the Scott Peterson case teaches us anything, it's that when there isn't a celebrity case, we will invent one. You know, Scott Peterson was just an ordinary fertilizer salesman from Modesto, and now he is an international celebrity. Why? Because he has a case with fascinating facts. How could he have killed his pregnant wife, dumped her body in the bay, allowed the community to be searching for her for months and not say anything?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the titillating thing is when the Amber Frey relationship was revealed. That kept people's attention going.</s>TOOBIN: Scott Peterson emerged from this trial as the perfect villain. He did everything that this is the worst we expect of men. He cheated on his wife. He lied to the woman he was cheating with. And, of course, most importantly, he killed his wife and his unborn son.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We, the jury, in the above-entitled cause, find the defendant, Scott Lee Peterson, guilty.</s>BLOOM: When that guilty verdict came in, people across the country and in front of the courthouse cheered, and especially women cheered, feeling that justice was finally done for just an ordinary woman, for Laci Peterson.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kobe Bryant was a very, very fascinating trial, because I went into Kobe Bryant thinking that the man had gone too far. I got out of it seeing that this was a he said/she said.</s>KOBE BRYANT, ACCUSED OF RAPE: I didn't force her to do anything against her will.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Holding his wife's hand above the table, for all to see that, look, my wife believes me. If this plays out in the court of public opinion, I want you to believe me as well.</s>TOOBIN: These prosecutors went to court without knowing the alleged victim's full story and without being sure that she could be the witness she needed to be. So she lost, and Kobe Bryant lost a lot in his reputation. And the case is totally unresolved.</s>BLOOM: Michael Jackson is a story that I've been following since 1993, since the first child came forward and said that he was molested by Michael Jackson. And we all remember at that time Michael Jackson settling the case. We only learned this year the amount of the settlement, $20-plus million. Now there is a second child who has come forward.</s>TOOBIN: The Michael Jackson trial promises to be the great train wreck of 2005, because what you're going to have in that trial is the defense saying that, look, the victim, alleged victim is a liar. His parents are greedy. The prosecution is out to get him. And you have the prosecution saying, Michael Jackson is an evil child molester.</s>TOURE, CNN POP CULTURE CORRESPONDENT: And he doesn't really seem to have a full sense of what's going on, right? I mean, he shows up to court late. He dances on the car outside. You know, he's on trial for child molestation, and then he's inviting, what, 100 kids back to the Neverland Ranch?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Michael Jackson is so whacky, I have no idea what he is going to do.</s>TOOBIN: Martha Stewart was the most famous woman defendant in the history of the American criminal justice system.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People were so divided on Martha. You were pro-Martha, or you were against Martha. Very few people were neutral on Martha Stewart.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She should be free.</s>BLOOM: She wasn't really even accused of hurting anyone directly. Maybe indirectly. All stock market fraud hurts someone. But really this was a case about her pocketing a few extra dollars.</s>MARTHA STEWART, CONVICTED OF FRAUD: Perhaps all of you out there can continue to show your support by subscribing to our magazine.</s>SARAH BERNARD, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, "NEW YORK" MAGAZINE: She really is the ultimate comeback kid. Before she can even go away and we have time to forget about her, she's already back. She'll be rivaling Jane Pauley for the 11:00 timeslot on NBC. So just when it seemed like Martha was losing her whole empire, she's actually going to come back better than ever.</s>SANCHEZ: Tomorrow, we're going to have "The Last Word" on this year's winners and losers as well -- Heidi.</s>COLLINS: And drivers got at least one good present for Christmas. That's for sure. Andy Serwer is "Minding Your Business" on that.</s>SANCHEZ: Also, the best and the worst -- commercials of 2004 that is. Muhammad Ali was a champ, but which ads were chumps? That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.