Return to Transcripts main page

Live From...

Scientists Say Tsunamis Unlikely to Affect Eastern U.S.; Family Gets Good News About Missing Honeymooners; Economists Expect Vast Financial Impact from Tsunamis; Debate Arises Over Amount of U.S. Foreign Aid

Aired December 28, 2004 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Rescue crews are using search dogs to find survivors of a building explosion in Ramsey, Minnesota, outside Minneapolis. Police say three people are missing and may be trapped under the rubble of the two-story structure. Earlier, one person was pulled out alive.
Law enforcement sources say it may have been a natural gas explosion.

The U.S. military is making plans to send troops and supplies to aid the relief effort in Thailand. Sources say up to 700 personnel will be dispatched. A decision is expected shortly. Options are under consideration at the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii.

And the voice on the audiotape played on Al Jazeera yesterday appears to be that of Osama bin Laden. That is the conclusion of one U.S. official after the CIA analyzed the recording. The voice on the tape calls for a boycott of the Iraqi elections next month.

Author and activist Susan Sontag has died at 71. Her passing was announced at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, but a spokeswoman declined to give the cause of death.

MILES O'BRIEN, CO-HOST: Now as we watch the video and are horrified by the stories of the tsunami disaster, it's only human to wonder could it happen here?

For the U.S., the answer is yes. Already has.

The terror of a tsunami triggered by an earthquake swept Valdez, Alaska, right off the map on Good Friday, 1964. More than 100 people were killed all the way down in the coast of California, as well.

Today scientists worry a tsunami could strike North America again. They worry about active fault lines causing earthquakes in the west, a triggering event for these monster waves, as you know.

Government officials worry, too, which is why a federal warning system also monitors other potential triggers, volcanoes, meteorites, and landslides, as well.

Now from the West Coast to the East, do Americans who live along the Atlantic seaboard have to fear tsunamis as those who live on the Pacific coastline do? CNN's John Zarrella checked out the possibility with some experts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tens of millions of people live along the eastern seaboard from Florida to Maine. Hurricanes they worry about. But tsunamis too?

PROFESSOR TIM DIXON, UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI: Some earthquakes, it turns out, are more efficient at generating big tsunamis than others.

ZARRELLA: University of Miami geology professor Tim Dixon says don't lose any sleep over it.

The speed the sea floor moves in an earthquake is one ingredient in determining whether a tsunami forms. It has to be just right.

DIXON: If I move the bowl real fast, most of the water stays in the bowl. If I move the bowl real slow, most of the water stays in the bowl. But if I move it at just the right speed, it sloshes out.

ZARRELLA: That right speed creates the tsunami. But in the Atlantic, the sea floor is, Dixon says, old, cold, and dense, not conducive to big or efficient earthquakes.

Some scientists say other natural events are more likely to trigger big waves on the East Coast. On July 3, 1992, a fast-moving thunderstorm created a 10-foot wave that crashed ashore in Daytona Beach.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Twelve hours later on the 4th of July, you could have had, you know, hundreds of people killed in Daytona Beach from what they call a meteorological tsunami.

ZARRELLA: Volcanoes can do the job, too. Some scientists think if the Cumbre Vieja Volcano in the Canary Islands off Africa erupts and collapses into the Atlantic, that would spin off a massive wave that could reach the U.S. East Coast.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If an edifice the size of those volcanoes the size in the Canary Islands collapsed, then North America and southern Europe would be at risk.

ZARRELLA: Off the North Carolina coast, scientists have found gases escaping from the walls of the continental shelf. But researchers are not sure the sea floor instability there will cause a tsunami.

What tsunami experts say they do know is if you live on the East Coast and you have to have something to worry about, make it hurricanes.

John Zarrella, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE) NGUYEN: Here in the U.S., many families are still waiting to hear from their loved ones who could have been in the path of those tsunamis. We have an update on that honeymoon couple we told you about yesterday. His sister is back with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: We have an update on a story from yesterday about a woman waiting desperately to hear from loved ones honeymooning in Thailand. Wendy Beville is on the phone with us today.

And Winnie, I hear you have good news about your brother, Brent.

WENDY BEVILLE, FOUND HER BROTHER: Yes, we sure do. We have great news.

NGUYEN: You heard from him when?

BEVILLE: We heard from him last night at 11:30 p.m. He e-mailed us.

NGUYEN: By e-mail. Didn't pick up the phone and call. Why is that?

BEVILLE: There were no phones where they were. He said, in fact, that they didn't even know of the tsunami -- the tsunami until they logged on this computer.

NGUYEN: I want to read from this e-mail that he sent you. This is the very first e-mail you got from Brent.

He says, "Hello, everyone. This is our first time getting on e- mail since the trip began. We found out of the tsunami when we first logged on. Otherwise, there is no contact with the outside world. Shocked and worried for our friends we have met along the way. We thought to let you know we are fine in Vietnam."

Now what was your initial reaction to this e-mail?

BEVILLE: We were just glad that they were in Vietnam and not on the coast where all the devastation took place. And we feared they might be there doing some surfing and some traveling. And sounds like they were there for awhile, because they had met some people and they were worried about them in Vietnam when they found out about this.

NGUYEN: You had to have been just relieved. Were you jumping for joy? Did you get on the phone and call family members?

BEVILLE: At midnight and woke everyone up.

NGUYEN: I imagine you did, but for good reason. Well, I want to read another one of the e-mails that came into you, because he did meet several people along the way as he was honeymooning with his wife, Diana, in Thailand.

BEVILLE: Right.

NGUYEN: This other e-mail says, "The sad thing is we knew people that were there that we became friends with during our journeys. One guy from Brazil, we don't have a good feeling about him. He was on the island of Phuket that was completely swamped. So sad."

BEVILLE: Right.

NGUYEN: Now, many families like you were looking for loved ones over the Internet. You have a good ending to this, but do you have any advice about what you had to go through? Were you getting any help for those still looking for their family members?

BEVILLE: Yes, we -- we were in contact with the Red Cross. And their 1-800-number that we were calling, regularly. They welcomed us to keep calling them. And they took our name and number.

And I would just advise for people still searching for their loved ones to just keep in touch with them and keep looking and don't give up.

NGUYEN: And you just happened to check your e-mail. This was not something that you were expecting, correct?

BEVILLE: No, I went to do some e-mailing regarding finding him. I was trying to e-mail some of his friends in California. And when I sat down, I saw the e-mail and the little caption that you see when you first sit down, it said, "We are OK." And so I was pretty excited.

NGUYEN: Absolutely. What a relief that is. So would you suggest simply because the lines are down in so many of these affected areas that perhaps the Internet, e-mail is the best way to do a search right now for loved ones?

BEVILLE: Well, if -- if there are loved ones over there, that may be an easy way for them to -- to reach people. Because evidently the phone systems over there are just -- they're not working. So he was able to get to a computer and e-mail out to us because he knew that we would be looking for him.

NGUYEN: Do you expect to hear from him by phone anytime soon?

BEVILLE: I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't hear from him, because he knows that we were looking for him. And I think he wants to get to us as soon as he can to speak to us.

NGUYEN: And he might also want to find out about his friends that he met along the way during that honeymoon on Thailand. When do you expect him to come home?

BEVILLE: The third of January.

NGUYEN: Still on course for the third of January?

BEVILLE: Still on course. They're -- they're flying out of Singapore.

NGUYEN: All right. Well, we are so glad that there is a happy ending to your search.

BEVILLE: Definitely. Thank you.

NGUYEN: Wendy, thank you.

CNN.com now has special tsunami sections where survivors are posting their stories and people are also trying to locate relatives and friends. They are posting message there, as well.

CNN's Randi Kaye joins us next hour with details.

So do you drive an SUV?

O'BRIEN: Big one. Big one. Have a fuel tanker that follows.

NGUYEN: Well, you want to listen up, because there is a recall, Miles. Details on which call -- which car, that is, and which model years next.

O'BRIEN: Rain is drenching southern California. Forecasters are afraid it won't end anytime soon.

NGUYEN: And Liza Minnelli goes to the hospital. We will update you on her condition.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: With the catastrophic loss of life in Southeast Asia, it's hard to focus on other aspects of the tsunami disaster. But economists are assessing the financial toll on a part of the world that has always struggled to compete and to provide for its citizens.

CNN's Andrew Brown reports on the lingering impact the disaster is likely to have.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREW BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): from holiday resorts in Southeast Asia to the coast of East Africa, devastation. And with that devastation, not just loss of life. There is also financial misery.

Long stretches of coastline have to be rebuilt. The Asian Development Bank says the scale of this disaster is unprecedented.

ANN QUON, ASIA DEVELOPMENT BANK: We're looking at a reconstruction effort in the billions of dollars. BROWN: Many experts say it's simply too early to calculate the cost of damage to property, highways, the phone networks and other infrastructure.

When Florida was struck by hurricanes this year, the insurance industry picked up much of the bill.

HANS GOETTI, CITIGROUP PRIVATE BANK: This time around, the impact on the insurance industry will be much less because there simply is less real estate insured in this part of the world. I've seen estimates from the reinsurance industry that the impact on them might be about $5 billion.

BROWN: Goetti says Asia's industrial infrastructure remains mainly intact after the dramatic surge. Most of the factories are not in the affected areas.

It's Asia's tourism that will suffer the most, just as it was recovering from the SARS outbreak and the Bali bombing.

Thailand earns six percent of its GDP from tourism. The government and private sector of Thailand are bracing for a sharp downturn after extensive damage to islands like Phuket.

Sri Lanka's tourism revenues will also suffer, but financial aid may limit the overall impact.

GOETTI: As sad as it is for the individuals involved, but it will not have much of an impact on the economies of these countries.

BROWN: Some of the multilateral agencies are not just focusing on GDP figures at this point. Their immediate concern is funding for humanitarian purposes.

QUON: Bear in mind that in disasters like this, very often it's the poor who are most severely affected, and that is the large part of the constituency that we're looking at.

BROWN: It took just minutes for the tsunamis to wreak havoc, but it will take many months, perhaps years for the people living along Asia's coastlines to recover.

Andrew Brown, CNN, Hong Kong.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Now, just a short while ago, the State Department pledged an additional $20 million from the U.S. in disaster aid. That's on top of the $15 million that was pledged yesterday.

Meanwhile, a U.N. emergency relief official is backing off a critical remark he made yesterday that so-called rich nations including the U.S. are stingy when it comes to foreign aid.

Of course, that's not the first time the U.S. has been accused of being tight with aid dollars. So we've asked "National Review" columnist Joel Mowbray to join us from Chicago and Ian Williams, the U.N. correspondent for "The Nation," to join us from New York to debate the question how much is enough aid.

Joel, I'm going to begin with you. The numbers, when you really break them down, are probably surprising to most people. Most people, I think, have this perception in the United States that the U.S. ships a lot of dollars overseas.

As it turns out, it's 0.2 of a percent of our gross domestic product, and that is the lowest by percentage of any of the industrialized nations. Is that an embarrassing figure?

JOEL MOWBRAY, COLUMNIST, "NATIONAL REVIEW": No, Miles, not at all. In fact, in many ways we should be cutting down on our foreign aid and then stepping up...

O'BRIEN: Cutting down? Why?

MOWBRAY: Look -- look, Miles, you can't give out foreign aid like you can -- like you do welfare checks. You can't give it to nations that basically prop up structurally unsound economies.

A good example is Israel, where we are now over the next six years phasing out all our economic assistance like nonmilitary assistance to Israel, in part because they asked for it. Because what we were doing was propping up socialist tendencies, which then limited the overall growth of the economy.

And so our government aid -- foreign aid money was doing more harm than good. So things like that, it's how you spend the money, not how much you spend.

O'BRIEN: All right. How you spend the money is a good point. Let's get back to that.

Ian, what's your thought in general about that figure, that 0.2 of a percent of gross domestic product? Should Americans be ashamed of that figure?

IAN WILLIAMS, "THE NATION": I think Americans should. If we compare it with Scandinavia, the Swedes, the Danes, the Dutch, they spend four times as much per head.

And in fact, the U.S. is sort of part committed with the U.N. to spend 0.7. That's 350 percent increase.

I have to say this isn't -- this is a bipartisan trait of recent governments. Foreign aid reached its lowest under Clinton. I think they -- it was about half of what it is now in 1997.

So I think Americans are very generous people. The American government is extremely mean.

And you just mentioned foreign aid to Israel. Nowhere else in the world would you count giving military aid or money to an already rich country to be foreign aid. O'BRIEN: Hang on.

MOWBRAY: Miles.

O'BRIEN: Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Ian -- Ian, did you say the U.S. government was mean? Is that what you said? Or lean?

WILLIAMS: Mean.

O'BRIEN: Mean? What do you mean by that?

WILLIAMS: Well, I think the big problem is that there are no senators from Sierra Leone. If you're -- if you're the senator from Idaho, then you can pork barrel them millions of dollars for potato research. But there's no percentage -- there are no votes in foreign aid, unfortunately.

MOWBRAY: You know, Miles...

WILLIAMS: When it comes down to it, if you look at the amount of money that was sent down to Miami, for example, where 4,000 people claimed new television sets damaged in the hurricane that didn't even touch the city, $3 billion was sent from FEMA, $3 billion from FEMA for hurricane which was bad, but nothing on the scale of this.

O'BRIEN: Surely you wouldn't quibble with a government's role in protecting its folks first and foremost. I don't think -- we should separate that out.

Joel, you go ahead.

MOWBRAY: OK, look, if we're going to talk about numbers here, it sounds very small when we say 0.2 percent of GDP. First off, government spending only accounts for roughly 20 percent of GDP. And we put about $17, $18 billion a year into foreign aid, give or take. Now, that's a lot of money.

O'BRIEN: Wait a minute. We're spending $450 billion at the Pentagon. So what kind of...

MOWBRAY: Miles, hang on.

O'BRIEN: Joel. Wait, wait, wait.

(CROSSTALK)

MOWBRAY: Before we start giving foreign aid to other countries. This is not -- this is the United States. We are here to defend 50 states in the union first and foremost.

O'BRIEN: All right.

MOWBRAY: Anything else we do after that is charitable and generous. And frankly, we are a very giving country. It's not just government giving. It's private giving. O'BRIEN: But let's talk about it for a minute. Joel, let's just talk about it for just a moment though.

Wouldn't it be, perhaps -- maybe it's penny wise and pound foolish to spend so much on the military. Maybe there's some preemptive money that could be spent sending money out for peaceful means, which would mean that we didn't have to spend as much on our military. Is that -- is that something that's illogical to you?

MOWBRAY: Well, I don't think it was lack of foreign aid given to Afghanistan, for example, that led to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.

O'BRIEN: I think -- I think -- no, no, no.

MOWBRAY: I don't think it was lack of money going to Saddam Hussein that caused us to go into the Iraq war.

O'BRIEN: Excuse me. Excuse me. I think -- I think the lack of money and support for Afghanistan had a lot to do with creating an environment that fostered terrorism there over the years, right?

MOWBRAY: Actually, Miles, one of the things we did is we supported -- remember we supported the mujahedeen against the Soviet Union. And then the State Department lined up behind the Taliban in a policy of tilted neutrality after they toppled the regime back in 1996.

O'BRIEN: All right, but then we left Afghanistan to its own devices. Ian, dive in.

WILLIAMS: Well, we left Afghanistan to its own devices, as you said, and we're in danger of doing the same again.

But I'd like to distinguish, foreign aid is not the same as development aid. Foreign aid means sending money to corrupt dictators in the case of Congo or Uzbekistan. It means sending money to Israel, Jordan and Egypt for spending on -- on military affairs.

Foreign aid is different from development aid. And that's what the rest of the world is measuring.

O'BRIEN: We're talking foreign aid, development aid, and disaster aid.

Let's just talk about one thing here. What if -- what if the United States had said, "You know, it's not a good idea," and I'm pointing this at you, Joel, right now. It's not a good idea for the Indian Ocean not to have a tsunami warning system. Let's spend the money now to help them do that.

Ultimately, wouldn't that have been not only much less of an economic loss but tremendous lives would have been saved as a result? So that's -- that's the logic that you hear from that argument. Do you go along with that?

MOWBRAY: Well, look, with 20/20 hindsight, of course, had we known the tsunami was going to hit five years ago, that there would have been some kind of tsunami, then it would have been made absolute wonderful economic sense.

But, you know, the odds of a tsunami like this hitting -- remember, this is the biggest earthquake in 40 years. This is a tsunami that no one predicted, one of the worst, you know, in modern history. Certainly, the worst in terms of death toll and overall damage.

But you know, a tsunami, Miles, is not like a hurricane where we see the pattern coming across, you know, our little weather screens. You know, we have a couple days notice. You can clear out cities. A tsunami -- this thing happened, like, in an hour in some of the areas first affected.

O'BRIEN: But there is a sophisticated -- there is a sophisticated warning system which rings the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean was without one. I'm just using that as one example of how thinking long-term might ultimately save in the cost and might ultimately save lives.

Ian, final thought here.

WILLIAMS: Well, if you want to persuade the rest of the world that America really cares about them, it's exactly what you said. Help them set up tsunami -- send generous and immediate aid in huge quantities commensurate with the scale of the disaster. Don't hand out pennies.

I'm sorry. It sounds like a lot to you or me, but $15 or $30 million is pennies in the scale of what we're talking about here with anything up to 50,000 dead, whole areas devastated.

MOWBRAY: Wait till you see how much private Americans give. And then I think we'll have the true story. Because there's going to be more money coming from the U.S. taxpayer to the government, but then there will be even more coming in the form of private giving, because Americans are very generous people.

O'BRIEN: And that is a point well taken. I do believe that. Joel Mowbray and Ian Williams, thank you very much for engaging in this debate.

MOWBRAY: Thank you.

WILLIAMS: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Appreciate it -- Betty.

NGUYEN: News across America now.

A massive storm continues day two of its assault on California. In the northern part of the state, two to four feet of snow and whiteout conditions expected today in some areas.

And in southern California, high winds, torrential rains and flash floods. City officials in San Francisco have been handing out free sand bags to homeowners.

In Kansas City, Missouri, an initial federal court appearance in about an hour for Lisa Montgomery, the woman accused of strangling a pregnant woman and cutting the baby from her womb.

Montgomery has already appeared in a Kansas district court but will be tried in Missouri on a federal kidnapping charge that carries a possible death sentence.

And more bad news, if you drive a Ford Escape. Earlier this month, Ford recalled almost a half million of these SUVs for possible accelerator problems. Now model years 2001 to 2005 are being recalled because their rear lift gates, well, they could open during a crash.

The Bush administration has made sure to enforce the trade embargo against Cuba.

O'BRIEN: But that's not stopping tourism to Cuba from other countries around the world. You know, you kind of stop here, go there, that kind of thing.

David -- David Haffenreffer joins us from New York with a story on how you get to Cuba. Not so easily, right?

(STOCK REPORT)

O'BRIEN: Thank you, David.

All right. The very latest on tsunami recovery efforts at the top of the hour.

Plus, the story of a little boy and a picture that captured the world's attention this morning. There you see him. No one knew who he was in the chaos right after the waves hit. We have his story along with stories of many others.

NGUYEN: Yes. Speaking of, plus post your message for missing loved ones on CNN.com. We will show you that in our next hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired December 28, 2004 - 14:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Rescue crews are using search dogs to find survivors of a building explosion in Ramsey, Minnesota, outside Minneapolis. Police say three people are missing and may be trapped under the rubble of the two-story structure. Earlier, one person was pulled out alive.
Law enforcement sources say it may have been a natural gas explosion.

The U.S. military is making plans to send troops and supplies to aid the relief effort in Thailand. Sources say up to 700 personnel will be dispatched. A decision is expected shortly. Options are under consideration at the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii.

And the voice on the audiotape played on Al Jazeera yesterday appears to be that of Osama bin Laden. That is the conclusion of one U.S. official after the CIA analyzed the recording. The voice on the tape calls for a boycott of the Iraqi elections next month.

Author and activist Susan Sontag has died at 71. Her passing was announced at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, but a spokeswoman declined to give the cause of death.

MILES O'BRIEN, CO-HOST: Now as we watch the video and are horrified by the stories of the tsunami disaster, it's only human to wonder could it happen here?

For the U.S., the answer is yes. Already has.

The terror of a tsunami triggered by an earthquake swept Valdez, Alaska, right off the map on Good Friday, 1964. More than 100 people were killed all the way down in the coast of California, as well.

Today scientists worry a tsunami could strike North America again. They worry about active fault lines causing earthquakes in the west, a triggering event for these monster waves, as you know.

Government officials worry, too, which is why a federal warning system also monitors other potential triggers, volcanoes, meteorites, and landslides, as well.

Now from the West Coast to the East, do Americans who live along the Atlantic seaboard have to fear tsunamis as those who live on the Pacific coastline do? CNN's John Zarrella checked out the possibility with some experts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tens of millions of people live along the eastern seaboard from Florida to Maine. Hurricanes they worry about. But tsunamis too?

PROFESSOR TIM DIXON, UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI: Some earthquakes, it turns out, are more efficient at generating big tsunamis than others.

ZARRELLA: University of Miami geology professor Tim Dixon says don't lose any sleep over it.

The speed the sea floor moves in an earthquake is one ingredient in determining whether a tsunami forms. It has to be just right.

DIXON: If I move the bowl real fast, most of the water stays in the bowl. If I move the bowl real slow, most of the water stays in the bowl. But if I move it at just the right speed, it sloshes out.

ZARRELLA: That right speed creates the tsunami. But in the Atlantic, the sea floor is, Dixon says, old, cold, and dense, not conducive to big or efficient earthquakes.

Some scientists say other natural events are more likely to trigger big waves on the East Coast. On July 3, 1992, a fast-moving thunderstorm created a 10-foot wave that crashed ashore in Daytona Beach.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Twelve hours later on the 4th of July, you could have had, you know, hundreds of people killed in Daytona Beach from what they call a meteorological tsunami.

ZARRELLA: Volcanoes can do the job, too. Some scientists think if the Cumbre Vieja Volcano in the Canary Islands off Africa erupts and collapses into the Atlantic, that would spin off a massive wave that could reach the U.S. East Coast.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If an edifice the size of those volcanoes the size in the Canary Islands collapsed, then North America and southern Europe would be at risk.

ZARRELLA: Off the North Carolina coast, scientists have found gases escaping from the walls of the continental shelf. But researchers are not sure the sea floor instability there will cause a tsunami.

What tsunami experts say they do know is if you live on the East Coast and you have to have something to worry about, make it hurricanes.

John Zarrella, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE) NGUYEN: Here in the U.S., many families are still waiting to hear from their loved ones who could have been in the path of those tsunamis. We have an update on that honeymoon couple we told you about yesterday. His sister is back with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: We have an update on a story from yesterday about a woman waiting desperately to hear from loved ones honeymooning in Thailand. Wendy Beville is on the phone with us today.

And Winnie, I hear you have good news about your brother, Brent.

WENDY BEVILLE, FOUND HER BROTHER: Yes, we sure do. We have great news.

NGUYEN: You heard from him when?

BEVILLE: We heard from him last night at 11:30 p.m. He e-mailed us.

NGUYEN: By e-mail. Didn't pick up the phone and call. Why is that?

BEVILLE: There were no phones where they were. He said, in fact, that they didn't even know of the tsunami -- the tsunami until they logged on this computer.

NGUYEN: I want to read from this e-mail that he sent you. This is the very first e-mail you got from Brent.

He says, "Hello, everyone. This is our first time getting on e- mail since the trip began. We found out of the tsunami when we first logged on. Otherwise, there is no contact with the outside world. Shocked and worried for our friends we have met along the way. We thought to let you know we are fine in Vietnam."

Now what was your initial reaction to this e-mail?

BEVILLE: We were just glad that they were in Vietnam and not on the coast where all the devastation took place. And we feared they might be there doing some surfing and some traveling. And sounds like they were there for awhile, because they had met some people and they were worried about them in Vietnam when they found out about this.

NGUYEN: You had to have been just relieved. Were you jumping for joy? Did you get on the phone and call family members?

BEVILLE: At midnight and woke everyone up.

NGUYEN: I imagine you did, but for good reason. Well, I want to read another one of the e-mails that came into you, because he did meet several people along the way as he was honeymooning with his wife, Diana, in Thailand.

BEVILLE: Right.

NGUYEN: This other e-mail says, "The sad thing is we knew people that were there that we became friends with during our journeys. One guy from Brazil, we don't have a good feeling about him. He was on the island of Phuket that was completely swamped. So sad."

BEVILLE: Right.

NGUYEN: Now, many families like you were looking for loved ones over the Internet. You have a good ending to this, but do you have any advice about what you had to go through? Were you getting any help for those still looking for their family members?

BEVILLE: Yes, we -- we were in contact with the Red Cross. And their 1-800-number that we were calling, regularly. They welcomed us to keep calling them. And they took our name and number.

And I would just advise for people still searching for their loved ones to just keep in touch with them and keep looking and don't give up.

NGUYEN: And you just happened to check your e-mail. This was not something that you were expecting, correct?

BEVILLE: No, I went to do some e-mailing regarding finding him. I was trying to e-mail some of his friends in California. And when I sat down, I saw the e-mail and the little caption that you see when you first sit down, it said, "We are OK." And so I was pretty excited.

NGUYEN: Absolutely. What a relief that is. So would you suggest simply because the lines are down in so many of these affected areas that perhaps the Internet, e-mail is the best way to do a search right now for loved ones?

BEVILLE: Well, if -- if there are loved ones over there, that may be an easy way for them to -- to reach people. Because evidently the phone systems over there are just -- they're not working. So he was able to get to a computer and e-mail out to us because he knew that we would be looking for him.

NGUYEN: Do you expect to hear from him by phone anytime soon?

BEVILLE: I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't hear from him, because he knows that we were looking for him. And I think he wants to get to us as soon as he can to speak to us.

NGUYEN: And he might also want to find out about his friends that he met along the way during that honeymoon on Thailand. When do you expect him to come home?

BEVILLE: The third of January.

NGUYEN: Still on course for the third of January?

BEVILLE: Still on course. They're -- they're flying out of Singapore.

NGUYEN: All right. Well, we are so glad that there is a happy ending to your search.

BEVILLE: Definitely. Thank you.

NGUYEN: Wendy, thank you.

CNN.com now has special tsunami sections where survivors are posting their stories and people are also trying to locate relatives and friends. They are posting message there, as well.

CNN's Randi Kaye joins us next hour with details.

So do you drive an SUV?

O'BRIEN: Big one. Big one. Have a fuel tanker that follows.

NGUYEN: Well, you want to listen up, because there is a recall, Miles. Details on which call -- which car, that is, and which model years next.

O'BRIEN: Rain is drenching southern California. Forecasters are afraid it won't end anytime soon.

NGUYEN: And Liza Minnelli goes to the hospital. We will update you on her condition.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: With the catastrophic loss of life in Southeast Asia, it's hard to focus on other aspects of the tsunami disaster. But economists are assessing the financial toll on a part of the world that has always struggled to compete and to provide for its citizens.

CNN's Andrew Brown reports on the lingering impact the disaster is likely to have.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREW BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): from holiday resorts in Southeast Asia to the coast of East Africa, devastation. And with that devastation, not just loss of life. There is also financial misery.

Long stretches of coastline have to be rebuilt. The Asian Development Bank says the scale of this disaster is unprecedented.

ANN QUON, ASIA DEVELOPMENT BANK: We're looking at a reconstruction effort in the billions of dollars. BROWN: Many experts say it's simply too early to calculate the cost of damage to property, highways, the phone networks and other infrastructure.

When Florida was struck by hurricanes this year, the insurance industry picked up much of the bill.

HANS GOETTI, CITIGROUP PRIVATE BANK: This time around, the impact on the insurance industry will be much less because there simply is less real estate insured in this part of the world. I've seen estimates from the reinsurance industry that the impact on them might be about $5 billion.

BROWN: Goetti says Asia's industrial infrastructure remains mainly intact after the dramatic surge. Most of the factories are not in the affected areas.

It's Asia's tourism that will suffer the most, just as it was recovering from the SARS outbreak and the Bali bombing.

Thailand earns six percent of its GDP from tourism. The government and private sector of Thailand are bracing for a sharp downturn after extensive damage to islands like Phuket.

Sri Lanka's tourism revenues will also suffer, but financial aid may limit the overall impact.

GOETTI: As sad as it is for the individuals involved, but it will not have much of an impact on the economies of these countries.

BROWN: Some of the multilateral agencies are not just focusing on GDP figures at this point. Their immediate concern is funding for humanitarian purposes.

QUON: Bear in mind that in disasters like this, very often it's the poor who are most severely affected, and that is the large part of the constituency that we're looking at.

BROWN: It took just minutes for the tsunamis to wreak havoc, but it will take many months, perhaps years for the people living along Asia's coastlines to recover.

Andrew Brown, CNN, Hong Kong.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Now, just a short while ago, the State Department pledged an additional $20 million from the U.S. in disaster aid. That's on top of the $15 million that was pledged yesterday.

Meanwhile, a U.N. emergency relief official is backing off a critical remark he made yesterday that so-called rich nations including the U.S. are stingy when it comes to foreign aid.

Of course, that's not the first time the U.S. has been accused of being tight with aid dollars. So we've asked "National Review" columnist Joel Mowbray to join us from Chicago and Ian Williams, the U.N. correspondent for "The Nation," to join us from New York to debate the question how much is enough aid.

Joel, I'm going to begin with you. The numbers, when you really break them down, are probably surprising to most people. Most people, I think, have this perception in the United States that the U.S. ships a lot of dollars overseas.

As it turns out, it's 0.2 of a percent of our gross domestic product, and that is the lowest by percentage of any of the industrialized nations. Is that an embarrassing figure?

JOEL MOWBRAY, COLUMNIST, "NATIONAL REVIEW": No, Miles, not at all. In fact, in many ways we should be cutting down on our foreign aid and then stepping up...

O'BRIEN: Cutting down? Why?

MOWBRAY: Look -- look, Miles, you can't give out foreign aid like you can -- like you do welfare checks. You can't give it to nations that basically prop up structurally unsound economies.

A good example is Israel, where we are now over the next six years phasing out all our economic assistance like nonmilitary assistance to Israel, in part because they asked for it. Because what we were doing was propping up socialist tendencies, which then limited the overall growth of the economy.

And so our government aid -- foreign aid money was doing more harm than good. So things like that, it's how you spend the money, not how much you spend.

O'BRIEN: All right. How you spend the money is a good point. Let's get back to that.

Ian, what's your thought in general about that figure, that 0.2 of a percent of gross domestic product? Should Americans be ashamed of that figure?

IAN WILLIAMS, "THE NATION": I think Americans should. If we compare it with Scandinavia, the Swedes, the Danes, the Dutch, they spend four times as much per head.

And in fact, the U.S. is sort of part committed with the U.N. to spend 0.7. That's 350 percent increase.

I have to say this isn't -- this is a bipartisan trait of recent governments. Foreign aid reached its lowest under Clinton. I think they -- it was about half of what it is now in 1997.

So I think Americans are very generous people. The American government is extremely mean.

And you just mentioned foreign aid to Israel. Nowhere else in the world would you count giving military aid or money to an already rich country to be foreign aid. O'BRIEN: Hang on.

MOWBRAY: Miles.

O'BRIEN: Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Ian -- Ian, did you say the U.S. government was mean? Is that what you said? Or lean?

WILLIAMS: Mean.

O'BRIEN: Mean? What do you mean by that?

WILLIAMS: Well, I think the big problem is that there are no senators from Sierra Leone. If you're -- if you're the senator from Idaho, then you can pork barrel them millions of dollars for potato research. But there's no percentage -- there are no votes in foreign aid, unfortunately.

MOWBRAY: You know, Miles...

WILLIAMS: When it comes down to it, if you look at the amount of money that was sent down to Miami, for example, where 4,000 people claimed new television sets damaged in the hurricane that didn't even touch the city, $3 billion was sent from FEMA, $3 billion from FEMA for hurricane which was bad, but nothing on the scale of this.

O'BRIEN: Surely you wouldn't quibble with a government's role in protecting its folks first and foremost. I don't think -- we should separate that out.

Joel, you go ahead.

MOWBRAY: OK, look, if we're going to talk about numbers here, it sounds very small when we say 0.2 percent of GDP. First off, government spending only accounts for roughly 20 percent of GDP. And we put about $17, $18 billion a year into foreign aid, give or take. Now, that's a lot of money.

O'BRIEN: Wait a minute. We're spending $450 billion at the Pentagon. So what kind of...

MOWBRAY: Miles, hang on.

O'BRIEN: Joel. Wait, wait, wait.

(CROSSTALK)

MOWBRAY: Before we start giving foreign aid to other countries. This is not -- this is the United States. We are here to defend 50 states in the union first and foremost.

O'BRIEN: All right.

MOWBRAY: Anything else we do after that is charitable and generous. And frankly, we are a very giving country. It's not just government giving. It's private giving. O'BRIEN: But let's talk about it for a minute. Joel, let's just talk about it for just a moment though.

Wouldn't it be, perhaps -- maybe it's penny wise and pound foolish to spend so much on the military. Maybe there's some preemptive money that could be spent sending money out for peaceful means, which would mean that we didn't have to spend as much on our military. Is that -- is that something that's illogical to you?

MOWBRAY: Well, I don't think it was lack of foreign aid given to Afghanistan, for example, that led to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.

O'BRIEN: I think -- I think -- no, no, no.

MOWBRAY: I don't think it was lack of money going to Saddam Hussein that caused us to go into the Iraq war.

O'BRIEN: Excuse me. Excuse me. I think -- I think the lack of money and support for Afghanistan had a lot to do with creating an environment that fostered terrorism there over the years, right?

MOWBRAY: Actually, Miles, one of the things we did is we supported -- remember we supported the mujahedeen against the Soviet Union. And then the State Department lined up behind the Taliban in a policy of tilted neutrality after they toppled the regime back in 1996.

O'BRIEN: All right, but then we left Afghanistan to its own devices. Ian, dive in.

WILLIAMS: Well, we left Afghanistan to its own devices, as you said, and we're in danger of doing the same again.

But I'd like to distinguish, foreign aid is not the same as development aid. Foreign aid means sending money to corrupt dictators in the case of Congo or Uzbekistan. It means sending money to Israel, Jordan and Egypt for spending on -- on military affairs.

Foreign aid is different from development aid. And that's what the rest of the world is measuring.

O'BRIEN: We're talking foreign aid, development aid, and disaster aid.

Let's just talk about one thing here. What if -- what if the United States had said, "You know, it's not a good idea," and I'm pointing this at you, Joel, right now. It's not a good idea for the Indian Ocean not to have a tsunami warning system. Let's spend the money now to help them do that.

Ultimately, wouldn't that have been not only much less of an economic loss but tremendous lives would have been saved as a result? So that's -- that's the logic that you hear from that argument. Do you go along with that?

MOWBRAY: Well, look, with 20/20 hindsight, of course, had we known the tsunami was going to hit five years ago, that there would have been some kind of tsunami, then it would have been made absolute wonderful economic sense.

But, you know, the odds of a tsunami like this hitting -- remember, this is the biggest earthquake in 40 years. This is a tsunami that no one predicted, one of the worst, you know, in modern history. Certainly, the worst in terms of death toll and overall damage.

But you know, a tsunami, Miles, is not like a hurricane where we see the pattern coming across, you know, our little weather screens. You know, we have a couple days notice. You can clear out cities. A tsunami -- this thing happened, like, in an hour in some of the areas first affected.

O'BRIEN: But there is a sophisticated -- there is a sophisticated warning system which rings the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean was without one. I'm just using that as one example of how thinking long-term might ultimately save in the cost and might ultimately save lives.

Ian, final thought here.

WILLIAMS: Well, if you want to persuade the rest of the world that America really cares about them, it's exactly what you said. Help them set up tsunami -- send generous and immediate aid in huge quantities commensurate with the scale of the disaster. Don't hand out pennies.

I'm sorry. It sounds like a lot to you or me, but $15 or $30 million is pennies in the scale of what we're talking about here with anything up to 50,000 dead, whole areas devastated.

MOWBRAY: Wait till you see how much private Americans give. And then I think we'll have the true story. Because there's going to be more money coming from the U.S. taxpayer to the government, but then there will be even more coming in the form of private giving, because Americans are very generous people.

O'BRIEN: And that is a point well taken. I do believe that. Joel Mowbray and Ian Williams, thank you very much for engaging in this debate.

MOWBRAY: Thank you.

WILLIAMS: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Appreciate it -- Betty.

NGUYEN: News across America now.

A massive storm continues day two of its assault on California. In the northern part of the state, two to four feet of snow and whiteout conditions expected today in some areas.

And in southern California, high winds, torrential rains and flash floods. City officials in San Francisco have been handing out free sand bags to homeowners.

In Kansas City, Missouri, an initial federal court appearance in about an hour for Lisa Montgomery, the woman accused of strangling a pregnant woman and cutting the baby from her womb.

Montgomery has already appeared in a Kansas district court but will be tried in Missouri on a federal kidnapping charge that carries a possible death sentence.

And more bad news, if you drive a Ford Escape. Earlier this month, Ford recalled almost a half million of these SUVs for possible accelerator problems. Now model years 2001 to 2005 are being recalled because their rear lift gates, well, they could open during a crash.

The Bush administration has made sure to enforce the trade embargo against Cuba.

O'BRIEN: But that's not stopping tourism to Cuba from other countries around the world. You know, you kind of stop here, go there, that kind of thing.

David -- David Haffenreffer joins us from New York with a story on how you get to Cuba. Not so easily, right?

(STOCK REPORT)

O'BRIEN: Thank you, David.

All right. The very latest on tsunami recovery efforts at the top of the hour.

Plus, the story of a little boy and a picture that captured the world's attention this morning. There you see him. No one knew who he was in the chaos right after the waves hit. We have his story along with stories of many others.

NGUYEN: Yes. Speaking of, plus post your message for missing loved ones on CNN.com. We will show you that in our next hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com