Struggle for Food as Famine Spreads
VELSHI: Twenty-one minutes after the hour. Here are three things to put on your radar today: Keep an eye on that FAA budget story out of D.C. today. Right now, Congress is on recess while thousands of workers are furloughed, waiting on their budget to be approved. Also, this week's jobless numbers are coming up on Friday. But we'll get a bit of a preview this morning with the unemployment claims. The numbers aren't expected to be very good. And L.A. Dodger's owner Frank McCourt will go before a judge with his wife Jamie to determine if the title of the team is in Frank's name or if the team should be considered community property in their divorce. Let's go around the world now with Nima Elbagir. She is live in Mogadishu, Somalia, where famine and death are spreading. Nima, I want to warn the people watching that some of these images are truly heartbreaking. It's hard to watch. But give us a sense, Nima, of what is going on there and just how bad it is.</s>NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Ali, last time we were speaking, we were talking about the impact of the edict banning aid foreign groups working in the areas controlled by the Somali insurgency ,which is an al Qaeda affiliated group called al Shabaab. But yesterday, the United Nations announced that even here in Mogadishu where aid groups have been able to work, there is a famine. They are calling the Somali capital a famine zone. And so, really, not now puts the responsibility for the deepening of his crisis but on the international community. It's just incredibly heartbreaking here, Ali. You know, the U.N. have told us that they put out an appeal for $1 billion. They say that's what they need to try and make a difference to people here. Only over 40 percent, just over 40 percent of that, sorry, I should say, has been received. And when you look at the figures here, there are 2.8 million people that no aid is reaching whatsoever in this country -- 1.25 million of those are children. And it just -- what makes it worse is it's difficult to assess how many people are even dying here, Ali.</s>VELSHI: Yes. And, Nima, just give us some sense, it almost seems like history is repeating itself. We watched this in the past, particularly in Ethiopia and sometimes in Somalia. What is -- how do relief workers go about dealing with the famine, how do they go about trying to feed, as you described it, millions of hungry people?</s>ELBAGIR: Well, what complicates this situation is that militant, the al-Shabaab militant group. The U.S. Treasury had put them on their sanctions list, which meant if aid workers in the areas of where they were operating, any aid that went into al Shabaab hands would actually result in them being penalized. And, of course, al Shabaab were demanding taxes, they're demanding cuts from the aid, to allow any of that to even reach the communities in need. The U.S. has just suspended that ban. But many worry that that's coming too late because a lot of aid organizations aren't even present in those areas. And here in Mogadishu, the sense is that that concern over militants being able to use the aid has slowed the aid response, even in areas where they could have reached. So, here in Mogadishu, there's an airport. People are able to come in. There is an African U.N. Security Force trying to secure the areas to deliver the aid. But the issue really is that the aid is not being sent in from the outside world, Ali.</s>VELSHI: All right. Nima, thank you for staying on top of the story and letting our viewers understand how serious and devastating the problem is in Somalia. Nima Elbagir is live for us in Mogadishu, Somalia. All right. Former football star turned actor Bubba Smith has died. Police found Smith unresponsive at his L.A. home yesterday. He was 66 years old. Now, Smith is considered one of the NFL's most fearsome pass rushers of his day. He once jokingly described his strategy as tackling the whole backfield and throwing out people one by one until he found the guy with the ball. Now, after leaving football, Smith as you will recognize, appeared in six of the "Police Academy" movies as Lieutenant Moses Hightower. No word on how he died. Well, he jumped out of a plane with $200,000 in cash and into popular legend. The man we come to know as D.B. Cooper hijacked a jet and bailed out over the Pacific Northwest 40 years ago. Investigators found some of the money but never Cooper. Now, a woman claims that Cooper is at her uncle. She says he showed up at her house one night, looking like he'd been in a car accident, telling her father, "We're rich."</s>MARLA COOPER, CLAIMS HIJACKER WAS HER UNCLE: My father was crying. He was yelling. He was cussing out my uncle for both of them for what they had done. And he said you realize you've ruined your life.</s>VELSHI: She says her father's dead and believes her uncle is also dead. She's writing a book. The FBI is investigating her story. Well, her last name is Zuckerberg and she's leaving Facebook. Why Randi Zuckerberg is saying goodbye to her sibling's business, coming up.