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CNN Live Sunday
U.S. Forces Join Hunt for Mudslide Victims; Parades in New Orleans for Mardi Gras; Wasps Can Help With Security; Bird Flu Confirmed in France, India
Aired February 19, 2006 - 16:59 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SUSAN ROESGEN, CNN GULF COAST CORRESPONDENT: As U.S. Marines join the rescue and recovery mission in the Philippines the horror of death hangs over the scene where a massive mudslide buried a village.
And here at home more bad weather in the south and in the northeast, the Midwest just about everywhere. If you are driving today watch out, we will have a live weather update for you just around the corner.
Also are you waiting for the big claimer, we are live in Lincoln, Nebraska to find out who it was, who is cashing in on the biggest lottery jackpot ever.
Hello and welcome to CNN LIVE SUNDAY I'm Susan Roesgen. We will have those stories and more after this check of the headlines.
Now in the news, the site of a huge mudslide in the Philippines is presumed now to be a mass grave. American forces have joined the search for the nearly 1,000 people still missing. We will have a report from that scene just ahead.
Here in the U.S., it is just cold, cold, cold. A deep freeze stretches from the Rocky Mountains to New England and on down south. A live update from the CNN weather center is coming up.
And off the coast of Africa, the Pentagon says the crash Friday of two military helicopters claimed the lives of eight Marines and two members of the Air Force. These are pictures of the search effort. Two crew members were rescued and the military says there's no indication those choppers were shot down.
In the Middle East, the Israeli military says two Palestinians were killed in an air strike while they were trying to plant explosives along the Gaza border. This is the funeral procession in Gaza. Two Palestinian teenagers were also killed in the west bank. But Palestinian and Israeli sources differ on the circumstances.
In Lincoln, Nebraska, the store owner who sold the winning Powerball ticket is due to get $50,000. One ticket has all six numbers. We don't know who bought it yet, but we'll have a live report coming up.
U.S. Marines hit the ground today at the site of a lost village in the Philippines. Rescue officials say there's really nothing left to salvage and there might not be any more survivors. This village just disappeared on Friday, when part of a rain-soaked mountain collapsed on it, apparently burying hundreds of people. CNN's Hugh Riminton is on the scene and he has a grim report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HUGH RIMINTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The U.S. Marines have arrived, an advanced group of 30 men flying to the mountain base, the stated aim still to find survivors.
UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER: There's been some indication that there still may be some people that may be alive. There's some movement. So we're going to get over there try and help out the local Filipinos as much as we can to try and start digging.
RIMINTON: But the mountain has given up no living soul since the day of the disaster and even American might is of little use for the task ahead.
UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER: What that means for us is heavy equipment is a no-go as of right now, because it rains daily, OK. So our excavation is going to have to be in other terms, shovels, men, yes, sir.
RIMINTON: To walk in this debris, it is very difficult not to be pessimistic about the prospects of finding anyone live underneath all of this. It is simply awe-inspiring the force that was generated as that mountainside cascaded down here onto the river flats taking this village away. Just even in the least dangerous parts of this landslide, there are parts of quicksand. You sink immediately up until your waist and it's the most difficult task imaginable for searchers, even though they say that they still believe they can find people alive somewhere underneath this morass.
The dangerous painstaking work is done mainly by Filipinos. All human life is dwarfed in this arena of death. The focus has been at the school where sounds of tapping were reported, where 240 children disappeared. But specialist listening equipment has heard nothing, nor can the dogs smell life or even death where the school was. It now lies 28 meters, almost 100 feet until mud, rocks and rubble.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The chance of survival is so nil, because it's a loose soil. It has no pores, venting for oxygen is very impossible in this kind of situation.
RIMINTON: It is treacherous when it's dry. It's a potential death trap each time it rains. Dr. Isquarez (ph) says offering hope now is just being cruel to the families.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would like to say prayers to the families, may God help us.
RIMINTON: We met Juan Garcia Saturday when he was identifying the body of his wife. His four children are still missing. Now he is part of the rescue effort acting as a guide.
TRANSLATOR: Today for the first time I accept that there is just no hope. The mud is too deep. It's painful.
RIMINTON: He is one of the few people who knew this village intimately who is still alive today. Hugh Remington, CNN, South Leyte, the Philippines.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROESGEN: Back in this country, we're looking at another frigid night from the Rockies into New England and as far south as Texas. Old man winter will not let's go, so let's go now for the latest in the weather with CNN's Monica McNeal. Monica.
MONICA MCNEAL, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Old man winter has a serious grip on most of the nation tonight, Susan. Let's take a look at some of the low temperatures, 32 degrees in Dallas now. Some of these temperatures are not as bad tonight as they were in the past couple of nights, so we're finally starting to see this cold air starting to moderate, 18 degrees in D.C., still a very cold night in New York, a low of 21 tonight, your overnight low. Unfortunately for those folks without power, it's going to be a cold one for you. Minneapolis looks like 5 degrees and 19 degrees in St. Louis.
Across the Rio Grande Valley, it looks like your temperatures will be cold again tonight. Overnight lows will be in the 30s. Right now you're at 30 degrees, Dallas. You're at 37 in Austin, finally we got out of the freezing zone right there in Austin where you were dealing with that freezing drizzle all day today. Thirty-two degrees right now in Shreveport and 36 down in Houston. Here's the freezing rain, continues to push its way out of Oklahoma City and finally will be out of Oklahoma City later on tonight. So you will be dealing with a little bit better forecast, but with the very cold temperatures tonight, you'll be seeing some black ice on those roadways, so be careful.
As we take a look at what's going on across the rest of the nation, you will certainly see this plume of moisture continues to ride its way toward the north and east and that's the same amount of moisture that created all of the problems across the south, across the south and east over the weekend. We do have some lake effect snow across parts of Buffalo and into the forecast on Monday, it looks like most areas will finally start to warm up, 50 degrees in metro Atlanta for tomorrow. Susan?
ROESGEN: OK. Thanks, Monica.
So we've got one ticket plus six numbers. What does that equal? It equals a $365 million jackpot. You don't have to be good at math to figure it out. CNN's Jonathan Freed is in Lincoln, Nebraska where the winning Powerball ticket was sold and Jonathan, somehow I think somebody there in Nebraska today is thinking about buying a one-way ticket to a warm Caribbean Island.
JONATHAN FREED, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Very much so, but they're going to have to come forward here in Nebraska first, at least to the Nebraska Lottery Corporation. We were talking about the rules here. That winning ticket was bought just behind me here at this U-Stop convenience store at 3:09 p.m. this past Friday afternoon. Now in some states, you can stay anonymous, but here in Nebraska, you in the very least have to allow the lottery corporation to release your name. And Susan, they were telling us that they do encourage whoever wins to come forward, hold a news conference and as they say here, get it over with before trying to slip off into some degree of obscurity.
ROESGEN: Yeah, get it over with before all your friends and relatives that you never knew you had come out to see you.
FREED: Exactly, the 100 best friends you never knew you had, exactly.
ROESGEN: Jonathan, didn't you say earlier that whoever did win this ticket, does have six months to come forward?
FREED: They have six months here, that's exactly right and the lottery corporation here says that they advise people to really take their time to talk to their family, first of all, because life is not only going to completely change for the winner, but for the family and in some cases the immediate friends of the people who won. They want them to talk to their bank, talk to a lawyer, talk to an accountant, really think through how they want to handle it before they actually come forward. They say usually it takes a couple of weeks for people to come forward but they do have up to six months.
ROESGEN: OK, we hope to find out who it is sometime soon. Thanks Jonathan.
Well, you know, winning the lottery and becoming filthy rich in an instant, you would love that, right? We're going to talk to an expert about the hardships, the hardships of suddenly becoming very rich.
Also, celebrations are in full swing in the big easy. The voice of Mardi Gras himself will give you some insights into what's so very different this year.
And thousands of mobile homes meant for Katrina victims aren't moving anywhere. FEMA is under fire. We checked it out and we've got the story coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROESGEN: Well, the crowds are a little smaller and the mood is a little more subdued, but the Mardi Gras parades are rolling through New Orleans just like usual this weekend. It would not be Mardi Gras down there without Arthur Hardy. He is considered the foremost authority on our annual party in New Orleans. He's also known as the voice of Mardi Gras. Arthur Hardy joins me from, where else, New Orleans. Hey, Arthur.
ARTHUR HARDY, VOICE OF MARDI GRAS: Hey, Susan, how are you?
ROESGEN: I'm doing just great. You and I know that New Orleans depends on Mardi Gras for an economic boost, a huge boost to the local economy, but if I were a tourist in Lincoln, Nebraska I would not think that this is a good year to come to New Orleans. What do you think? How would we get tourists to come down even next weekend for the last four days of the real big parades?
HARDY: Well, if you can get a flight and that's a big if, if you can find a room and that's a big if, I'd say come. It's a very historic Mardi Gras. It's the 150th anniversary of the first parade in New Orleans. Most of all, it's a comeback from hurricane Katrina. It's telling the world that we ain't dead yet. Instead of people in rowboats on Canal Street, we have people on floats in Canal Street so Mardi Gras is going to show the world we're alive and pretty well.
ROESGEN: Arthur, have you heard how many hotel rooms are open for the last four days, say next weekend on into fat Tuesday?
HARDY: Susan, it changes every day as FEMA workers and reconstruction workers check out and visitors check in. So I have not. We don't know. It's a moving target. You can bet it's not many, but there still are some rooms available. We expect a lot of day- trippers. Half of New Orleans is living in Baton Rouge and St. Tammany Parish and certainly they're going to drive in for a day's worth of celebration. So I think the crowds are going to be bigger than we first thought.
ROESGEN: I hope so because I know in my neighborhood just yesterday there were five parades that turned the corner at Napoleon and St. Charles in just one hour. I mean really short parades this year. Do you think the biggies Orpheus and (INAUDIBLE) and Bacchus (INAUDIBLE) will be as big and beautiful as usual?
HARDY: They're almost at full strength. In fact, even today we had two parades uptown at the same corner that were four times as big as yesterday and the crowds are bigger, too, in spite of what for New Orleans is cold weather. We had wind chills in the 30s and for us, it's kind of cold. But the crowds are getting bigger and very enthusiastic so we're looking for a great celebration. It's a little bit smaller, but the big news is that we're doing it, not that it's a little bit tinier.
ROESGEN: You know, you can't ignore the debate that's gone on. I've said before that Mardi Gras is a date on the calendar just like Christmas or Easter. You can choose to celebrate it or not. How do you think things are changing now Arthur? Do you think evacuees have been displaced are accepting it any more than before? What's your take?
HARDY: I think they are, because it's not an either/or. Certainly if we canceled Mardi Gras and some of the levees would be rebuild, Mardi Gras makes money and the key point, Susan, as you well know is that the city could cancel it, but it can't make it happen. We choose to celebrate. The people on the floats are paying for this. It's their gift to us and to our visitors. So I think that debate is long gone. We're doing it and it's going to be -- not bigger and better than ever, but we're doing it. That's the main thing.
ROESGEN: You know, Arthur, I know that in a really good year, Mardi Gras is like a $2 billion boost to the New Orleans economy. Any thoughts on how much money we might take in this year?
HARDY: We don't know. Actually the record is a billion 56 million, which is an awful lot of money. Normally it costs the city about $5 million and brings in $21 million in direct tax. All of that will be down a bit, but it's certainly not going to cost us anything. We will make money on it, but the biggest thing for us I think is it's group therapy. We need to do something other than being in this Katrina funk where we're ripping out wet carpets and sheetrock. That's behind us. This is the new us and this tells the world we're on our way back.
ROESGEN: Yeah, I think what folks in the rest of the country don't understand is how could we be partying when we've got so much misery. I think you said something really nice in your magazine this month. You said, some cities hide their treasures in museums. New Orleans shares hers on the street. That's a nice line. That's a nice way of looking at it.
HARDY: Well, actually, I stole that from somebody else, but it is a good line and it's true. This is what we do. I think it's genetically encoded into our DNA when we're born. We celebrate; we come together. It's a remarkably culturally diverse festival. So many people just embrace each other, particularly now. We just need to come together and Mardi Gras is going to be the catalyst to bring people together back on the streets of New Orleans.
ROESGEN: All right, Arthur. I'll be looking for you on fat Tuesday.
HARDY: Happy Mardi Gras.
ROESGEN: Happy Mardi Gras.
Well, as New Orleans does try to continue its recovery, the homeland security chief is telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer that it's time to look ahead. On CNN's "LATE EDITION," Michael Chertoff also acknowledged that his department fell short in its response to Katrina.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL CHERTOFF, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: I thing first of all there was a failure to have real clear information at our disposal. There was a real lack of situational awareness. We didn't have the capabilities on the ground to give us real time accurate assessments of the physical condition of the city.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: But you knew that for days that this hurricane was coming towards New Orleans.
CHERTOFF: Wolf, putting these capabilities together is not a matter of putting them together in a few days. It's a matter of planning and preparing for months.
BLITZER: But there have been these tabletop exercises. There was this fictional hurricane Pam a year earlier in which they basically outlined all of these dire consequences that nobody seems to have paid any attention to.
CHERTOFF: I'm not excusing the fact that planning and preparedness was not where it should be. We've known for 20 years about this hurricane, this possibility of this kind of hurricane. So all during the '90s and for the first half of this decade, we've had opportunities to get evacuation plans in place, better communications in place, but rather than look backward, my obligation now is to make sure we do a lot of the work we need to do between now and June 1st.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROESGEN: Now earlier this week, Secretary Chertoff told a Senate committee that his department's slow reaction to Katrina was in his words, unnecessarily prolonged and it unnecessarily prolonged the suffering of Gulf Coast residents. And yet all week, CNN has reported on a glaring example of the disconnect between homeland security and FEMA, the agency it oversees.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROESGEN (voice-over): Welcome to hope, Arkansas, a small town with a huge problem. These are nearly 11,000 mobile homes FEMA has parked in Hope, more mobile homes than the town has people. But no one's living in these mobile homes. They're 450 miles from the Gulf coast and Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu says FEMA just can't get it right.
SEN. MARY LANDRIEU, (D) LOUISIANA: Well, it's another example, Susan, of the mismatch in planning that has gone on, and it really is again to the point that even on FEMA's best day, they're not suited to manage this catastrophe.
ROESGEN: On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security which oversees FEMA released a report criticizing FEMA for buying so many mobile homes and allowing many in Arkansas to sink.
RICHARD SKINNER, HOMELAND SECURITY INSPECTOR GENERAL: Since they were not properly stored, as you can see from this second picture, the homes are sinking in the mud and their frames are bending from sitting on trailers with no support. Insofar as many of these homes fail to meet FEMA specification requirements or FEMA has no qualified, prearranged site location to place them, they may have to be disposed of.
ROESGEN: But FEMA Chief David Paulison told CNN Tuesday that the mobile homes have not damaged.
DAVID PAULISON, ACTING DIR., FEMA: The mobile homes are fine. There's not one mobile home that's been damaged. They're going to be usable. Mobile homes last a long time, 15, 20 years, so we are going to use them. I don't know where the information came from that the inspector general got, because somebody gave him bad information.
ROESGEN: On Wednesday, FEMA allowed CNN to see the mobile homes on the FEMA lot. In a two-hour driving and walking tour, we saw dozens of mobile homes, but nowhere near the full 11,000 and it was hard to tell from our vantage point what was going on with the mobile homes. FEMA managers at the site say the largest ones, about 1,600 of them, are sagging under their own weight and workers were bringing in jacks to prop them up, but FEMA denies that the mobile homes might not be usable. In your opinion, are these so badly damaged that they might have to be destroyed?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are no damaged trailers here, none?
ROESGEN: Why aren't they moving then?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You need to talk to somebody else about that.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROESGEN: Richard Skinner, the Homeland Security inspector general has begun qualifying his earlier testimony that those mobile homes may have to be disposed of. He told CNN on Thursday that his bigger concern now is making sure that those mobile homes are properly stored and beyond that, not one of those mobile homes has left that lot, not one has been sent to a hurricane victim who needs a place to live.
A new weapon in the fight against terror. Straight ahead on CNN LIVE SUNDAY, sure they sting. We'll tell you why the Pentagon is all abuzz about wasps.
And the close encounter of a wannabe bandit with a stubborn defender of a gas station cash register.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROESGEN: On the CNN "Security Watch," new concerns about security at American ports. A company based in the United Arab Emirates has received U.S. approval to manage six major ports, including New York, New Jersey and Miami. Critics in Congress say it's a bad idea. They cite potential terror threats and some want the agreement called off. Others want to know why they weren't consulted.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R) INTELLIGENCE CMTE: Congress does not have a direct oversight of decisions like this, but frankly in a post- 9/11 world, we should be consulted in a very deliberate manner on this and certainly there are classified issues that have to be dealt with, but Jane and I deal with those classified matters on a daily basis. So I think the Congress is due some explanation about this. It's suspicious on its face, but is it the right decision? It's difficult to say. I have confidence in the administration, but I just think Congress should be consulted.
SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D) NEW YORK: Today we are calling for the first time on President Bush to personally intervene and block this contract. We cannot leave it to a committee that operates in the dark of night. We cannot accept the words trust us. That happened before with horrible consequences. We cannot allow this contract to go forward.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROESGEN: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff defends the port agreement. He says the company that will manage the port underwent a rigorous security review.
And there's a new weapon in the fight against terrorism. You're looking at it. It is a wasp. Scientists say that wasps can help sniff out and expose terrorists. Sounds like something out of a comic book, but it isn't. CNN's Randi Kaye has the story in one of our "Best Of" reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They are as small as a sunflower seed and weigh less than 10 milligrams, but these tiny wasps are an amazing secret weapon. So might one day we see airport police or TSA walking around with a handful of wasps?
JOE LEWIS, RESEARCH SCIENTIST: That's a possibility. It's no longer just an absolute dream. It is a real technical possibility.
KAYE: Having grown up on a farm, Dr. Joe Lewis has been around plants and insects his whole life. He loves bugs, but he never imagined wasps, with their infallible sense of smell, would be called on to protect Americans in the case of a chemical attack.
LEWIS: Their nose is an antenna. It's two antennae that's constantly monitoring and smelling.
KAYE: Decades ago, this USDA research scientist from south Georgia surprised himself when he taught wasps to smell vanilla and chocolate. Then, he was even more surprised when out of the blue, the U.S. Department of Defense came calling, wondering since his wasps are so smart, could he train them to detect nerve gas and dangerous explosives? What is it about their wiring that would make them a good candidate to help fight the war on terror?
LEWIS: They could detect and learn practically any chemical and they could detect these chemicals at very minute levels, such as parts per billion, which is just a few molecules released in an area as large as this room.
KAYE: These are not your average wasps. We're talking about parasitic wasps. Farmers love them because they help control pests and watch how easy they are to work with. As I put my hand inside their cage here, move it around, even touch them, they don't sting me. Dr. Lewis says he got a $4 million grant from the Pentagon to train his insects. For each wasp, training to detect a specific order say TNT or a nerve agent, takes just 15 minutes. The key is to get the wasp to think a particular odor means food. As a test we're going to teach wastes to associate the odor of coffee with their food. They love sugar.
LEWIS: We have a little hole so they can smell that coffee, while they taste sugar water on his little tiny piece of filter paper. So they taste while they smell. Now as an example, we'll place a wasp here on this source and the little wasp will taste while they're smelling. We let them do that for 10 seconds. And after 10 seconds, we remove them. Replication is very important to learning. We let them repeat three times. Then they have learned that odor means food.
KAYE: When training to detect dangerous chemicals, a nontoxic version is used so the wasps survive the training. Once they are trained, the wasps work in teams of five. They're put inside this device called the wasp pound.
GLEN RAINES, RESEARCH SCIENTIST: And that cartridge goes into the cap here.
KAYE: The wasp pound It was designed by University of George Professor Glen Raines. It harnesses the wasps so they don't fly away. In the case of an emergency, the wasp pound can be carried by emergency responders or even sent in by robot. The wasp pound is a equipped with a camera. Here are our coffee detecting wasp again. Watch what happens when they smell coffee. Remember, it could just as easily have been TNT or any dangerous chemical. In less than 30 seconds, the tiny camera shows all five circling, gathering, trying to get at the chemical, which they associate with sugar water. So the whole unit including the wasps would be a little bit more than $100 to help fight the war on terror. That's a pretty good deal.
RAINES: Yeah, it seems to be.
KAYE: A lot less expensive than probably some of that high-tech stuff they're using right now, right?
RAINES: That's right. That's right.
KAYE: Not only could the wasps save money, but time, too. Remember that nerve gas scare at Washington Senate office building a week ago? It took three hours to test the air and get an all-clear, but the wasps would have known immediately. They'd have looked like this, aimless milling, instead of a focus on food. Since the DOD contacted you, you've actually realized that these little buggers can sense a whole lot more than you even imagined.
LEWIS: The level of success that we have achieved in exploring this avenue is far beyond the fondest imagination that we had.
KAYE: Dr. Lewis says the wasp can learn to pick up any odor. One day they may track TNT, anthrax, even ricin (ph). He can train them to recognize the smell the decaying flesh, so they could be used to detect bodies or play a role in food safety by sniffing out mold, even the drug trade, since they can recognize the odor of marijuana. The options are limitless, and, of course, so are the bugs. Randi Kaye, CNN, Tipton, Georgia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROESGEN: And CNN is committed to providing the most reliable coverage of news that affects your security. Stay tuned to CNN for the latest information day and night. Here now the news, United States Marines arrived today at the scene of a buried village in the Philippines. Rescue officials say there is nothing left to save and probably no remaining survivors. The village disappeared on Friday when part of a rain-soaked mountain collapsed on top of it, burying hundreds of people. The mud there is up to 100 feet deep.
Icy roads caused wrecks as far south today as Dallas. Old man winter hanging on from the Rocky Mountains east and south as well. The upper Midwest and New England are poised for another frigid night. Monica McNeal will have your frosty forecast coming up.
The Pentagon now says 10 Americans died when two military helicopters crashed on Friday off the horn of Africa. The eight Marines and two Air Force personnel were part of an anti-terror task force operating out of Jabuti in Africa. Two crew members survived the crash. The cause is under investigation.
And a car bomb exploded in Baghdad killing two civilians and wounding six. At least seven other Iraqis died today in attacks all across the country.
More countries are getting into full battle mode to fight the spreading bird flu virus. We'll have the latest developments for you.
And can you imagine winning millions and not being happy about it? How do people deal with becoming overnight millionaires? We'll talk to an expert about the potential pitfalls of winning big jackpots.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROESGEN: India and France are now the latest two nations to worry about bird flu. Both countries reported bird flu in wild birds yesterday. CNN's Tim Lister reports on a growing sense of alarm.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TIM LISTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): The remorseless spread of H5N1. The virus was detected in Germany just five days ago, now it's spread to the Baltic Coast where farms have been quarantined and the army called in to remove dead birds. Visiting the area, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the situation was serious but so far the virus had not spread from wild birds to poultry.
About 60 dead birds have been found in Germany with the lethal strain of bird flu. France has confirmed its first case of H5N1 in a wild duck found in the country side near the city of Lyon last week. That's the European Union's top poultry producer, raising 900 million birds a year. France is ordering all farm birds to be kept indoors or vaccinated. But so far French consumers seem unraffeled (ph). This shopper says there's no risk when chicken is cooked properly. It's important not to exaggerate.
There are few European countries not yet affected by avian flu. Bosnia is the latest waiting for bad news after two dead swans were found on the shores of Lake Plivsko. The lake is on a major migration route and that's what appears to be driving the rapid spread of the disease. H5N1 spread first through southeast.
But in the last few months, the virus has moved through central Asia, to southeastern Europe, Turkey and Iraq. And then, within the last two weeks, to western Europe. So it was a matter of time before it descended on India. Health officials in the western state of Maharishi say they're now on a war footing after an outbreak of bird flu in an area with many chicken farms. Three hundred thousand chickens have already been culled. Small farmers face ruin.
For many countries, avian flu is as much an economic crisis as a health issue. Despite its rapid spread, there are no sign that it's any nearer mutating into a disease that can be passed between humans.
Tim Lister, CNN, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROESGEN: In our "World Wrap," police and protesters clash in Islamabad. The demonstration was over those cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Pakistani police blocked protesters using tear gas to break it up.
From India, former President Bill Clinton says the fight against AIDS is beginning to have an impact. President Clinton told ABC's "Good Morning America" that there are still problems but he believes the government of India has done a good job by encouraging testing.
Thousands of tourists and Dutch visitors crowded Amsterdam's red light district as the prostitutes held an open house today. They want to keep city politicians from shutting down their business.
It was a big night for "Brokeback Mountain" at the British Film Academy Awards on Sunday. The cowboy love story won best film, best director, best supporting actor and best adaptive screen play.
Did you know that tomorrow is President's Day? We've got some cocktail party trivia for you. Historians at the University of Louisville say it's important to remember that our leaders, our presidents sometimes make big mistakes. Some whoppers. They say the worst presidential blunder was James Buchanan's failure to prevent the Civil War. Andrew Johnson's policy after the Civil War, they say, was number two. After that the blunders are, Lyndon Johnson for Vietnam, Woodrow Wilson for the Treaty of Versailles, Richard Nixon for Watergate, James Madison for the War of 1812, Thomas Jefferson for the Embargo Act, to even remember what that was, check the history back in 1807, John F. Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs and Ronald Reagan for Iran Contra. They also say that Bill Clinton earned the number 10 spot because of the Lewinsky scandal.
Now that we know somebody holds that winning lottery ticket, it's easy to assume that the winner's life is going to be so much easier. But history also shows that that is not always the case. Some previous lottery winners have made a mess out of their finances and their lives after winning that jackpot. Financial Planner Michael Boone has advised some past lottery winners and he joins us now from Seattle to talk about how to handle a financial windfall.
I'm guessing, Michael, the answer is not just go blow it?
MICHAEL BOONE, FINANCIAL PLANNER: You're right, Susan. It is really amazing when you think about it. The one thing that we would all say would be the most phenomenal thing that could happen to most of us, winning the lottery, turns out to be such a crisis for some people and just a disaster for others.
ROESGEN: Well, Michael, a few years ago I tried to track down a lottery winner. I guess I got the name from the local lottery board. And I found piled up newspapers, the house was abandoned. Is this the normal reaction, to run and hide? And what should people do?
BOONE: Well, most states require that you disclose that you're the winner. You can't actually hide. It's part of the Freedom of Information Act. And that would be sort of nice. But really, as much as possible, try to hold on to your old life. The fact is, everyone in the world's going to want a piece of your money and that's just the reality of it. And friends and relatives and casual acquaintances, total strangers, are all part of the lineup waiting to talk to you.
ROESGEN: So basically you've got to go out and get a lawyer to help you sort it out and then protect yourself?
BOONE: Exactly. I think one of the first things to do besides, you know, picking yourself up off the floor, is to find good professional help. Most people are not used to making decisions of this magnitude. And if you think about it, this current winning, $365 million, is a good-sized company. And people have to ask themselves, are they prepared to run a $365 million company? And if not, then find good, professional advisors. And try to separate that emotional rush of the big win from the practical thing, OK, how am I actually going to spend this money.
ROESGEN: Hey, we don't want to be prepared, we just want to win. But thanks for the advice anyway, Michael. Appreciate you joining me.
BOONE: You bet. Nice talking to you.
ROESGEN: You bet.
Still ahead, an attempted robbery with a twist. The suspect's weapon of choice.
And then, we're dishing the dirt at the CNN water cooler. You will never guess where this nail wound up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROESGEN: Carol Lin is here now with a preview of what's ahead on her show.
Carol, what do you have on tap for us at 6:00?
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, we're going to cover all the day's news, but we've got a couple of interesting stories coming up. At 6:00, we're going to be taking a look at the outsourcing of the port security right here in the United States. A Dubai-based company is being proposed to manage six U.S. ports. And we're going to have a question tonight later in the evening, get the audience to way in on whether they think this company can be trusted. It may very well be very trustworthy. At 7:00, a great story about a political brains. There was actually a study of 15 Republican brains, 15 Democrat brains . . .
ROESGEN: No way. No way.
LIN: To figure out how people make their votes. OK. What motivates them. Is it emotion? Is it reason? Is it facts? And how they respond to their candidate when the candidate, you know, maybe sounds like they're departing from their standard platform. So we've got a great story about that. Political brans, 7:00.
ROESGEN: OK. All right. Thanks, Carol.
Well, speaking of political brains, political something or other, 65 percent of Americans polled by "Time" magazine think Vice President Dick Cheney should have spoken up right away about that accidental shooting in Texas. Only 41 percent believe the vice president is an asset now to President Bush, while 37 percent say Cheney is damaging the president. Fifty-eight percent of people think Cheney is too secretive in this "Time" magazine poll. Twenty-nine percent of Americans approve of the way he does his job, while 41 percent disapprove.
Harvard University President Lawrence Summers is in hot water. The faculty has scheduled a second no-confidence vote on him and there are reports that the school's governing board may ask him to resign before that vote is taken. Summer's abrupt style and outspoken comments have rubbed many people the wrong way.
And time is running out on NASA's space shuttle Atlantis. NASA managers plan to retire Atlantis in 2008 after five more flights. But that retirement actually means that instead of sending the shuttle to a museum, they're going to use it for spare parts for the Discovery and Endeavor shuttle through 2010.
The police in southern California say a would-be thief tried to hold up a drug store and was chased away. About 15 minutes later, the same man tried again at a gas station, a mini mart. And as CNN's Thelma Gutierrez explains, his choice of weapon may have been his undoing.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Cardiff, California. Inside this Balaro (ph) mini mart is where owner Jack Ballo and store clerk Eric Piva experienced one of the most bizarre nights of their lives. Captured on tape by one of the store's many surveillance cameras.
It began around 6:39 p.m. A woman in her 50s with short, bright red hair buys some bottled water and appears to leave.
JACK BALLO, STATION OWNER: Here's the man with a blowtorch.
GUTIERREZ: An older man wearing a fishing hat approaches the counter. Thirty-year-old Eric Piva is at the cash register.
ERIC PIVA, STORE CLERK: This guy walks in with a Gilligan's hat on and like aviators, you know, mirrored glasses, walks in. I walk behind the counter.
GUTIERREZ: Eric says the man puts a box on the counter, then hides something behind his back.
BANDIT: Load it.
CLERK: Huh?
BANDIT: Load it.
CLERK: Load what?
BANDIT: Your money.
CLERK: You crazy?
BANDIT: Yeah, I am. Load it.
CLERK: Load it yourself, mother (BLEEP).
GUTIERREZ: Eric Piva, who's Samoan, grabs his homemade bat called a fiji (ph) stick. The bandit fires up his weapon, a blowtorch. Eric surprises the bandit by wildly whacks away.
BALLO: And then he calls me, Jack, Jack.
GUTIERREZ: Jack Ballo hears the commotion and runs outside.
BALLO: The guy was 6'2". I hit him with a chair and I came back here and then he had a blowtorch on fire and my employee was on the floor. I said, hey, man, you know, just -- can you stop (ph)? Can you get up? Are you OK?
GUTIERREZ: Eric is OK, but now very angry. Jack says that's bad for the suspect.
BALLO: Samoan people are tough. Don't mess with Samoan.
GUTIERREZ: Eric chases the man and hits him several more times as he tries to run to the getaway car. Police say the woman who had cased the store earlier is in the car.
BALLO: He threw the blowtorch at me.
GUTIERREZ: The car tries to run over Eric, but not before Eric manages to ram a plastic chair through the windshield. PIVA: If he pulled out a gun, I probably would given him the money. But, you know, he pulled out a blowtorch, so I go, yes, just take him right here. So I took advantage. Beat the hell out of him.
GUTIERREZ: Eric, the store clerk, hit the bandit so hard so many times, detectives say it's possible he may have broken the bandit's hand, his shoulder and even fractured his ribs.
Officials checked the area hospitals but say the suspects are still on the lam.
Thelma Gutierrez, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROESGEN: Well, that will teach him.
Still ahead on CNN LIVE SUNDAY, not exactly the hard news. It's the water cooler stories of the day. The stories you'll talk about around the water cooler tomorrow, including a layaway delivery. You'll see it and we'll explain it.
And then, one on one with The Flying Tomato. We loved this one so much that we had to bring it back to you again. From the CNN Center in Atlanta, you're watching CNN LIVE SUNDAY.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROESGEN: Even at 62, Janice Wolfe of Redding, California, is a baby machine. A great-grandmother who had her 12th child last week. A boy. But it's nothing new because she also has a three-year-old brother for that new baby. Are you thirsty for more? Step up to the CNN water cooler.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROESGEN, (voice over): All the commotion on this Wal-Mart security camera video is because of an unadvertised special. A baby delivery. Naturally it happened in layaway.
Now picture this. Of all the billions of photographs ever taken, this one by far is the most valuable. The 1904 snapshot sold last week at auction for nearly $3 million. That eclipsed, the previous record of about $1 million.
Speaking of auctions, want to be Batman? The black rubber suit worn by George Clooney in "Batman and Robin" will be auctioned March 31st. Utility belt is included. Expect to pay about $100,000.
BUD HART (ph): And I was just starting to brush my teeth and pretty soon I started choking and I just about gagged and
ROESGEN: It took 35 years, but Bud Hart finally nailed it. The one-inch piece of metal had been rattling around in his rib cage since a mowing accident in 1970. Now it's out. On the obituary page, the guy who invented miniature golf nearly 70 years ago has sunk his last putt putt. Robert Taylor was 89. And if heaven has a sense of humor, his grave will have AstroTurf and a windmill.
Does Apple have a worm? That company has discovered a computer virus that targets the Mac operating system. That's unusual because hackers usually go after Microsoft Windows, not Apple.
And finally, the eagle has landed on the free lunch program, but not for much longer. Next year, feeding bald eagles in Homer, Alaska, will be illegal. The eagles will have to go cold turkey.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROESGEN: Have you heard of The Flying Tomato? Snowboarder Shaun White has gone from the X-games to a gold medal performance at the Winter Olympics in Torino. And in this "Best of CNN," he worked his charm on "LIVE FROM'S" Kyra Phillips.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SHAUN WHITE: I got the tomato thing from all the hair. They like to pick on me.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: They like to pick -- but, you know, does it take a lot of conditioning and a lot of teasing? And, I mean, do you put more time on the hair than the snowboarding? I'm just wondering.
WHITE: That was like the worst thing is I would do these interviews and actually the girls would want to know. They're like, so, like, do you curl it? Do you like -- you know what I mean? I'm like, come on. Give me a break.
PHILLIPS: You're bringing the curlers back. You're making it hip again.
WHITE: Yes.
PHILLIPS: So I understand you've got your gold with you. Can I -- may I see it?
WHITE: I don't know where the gold is right now.
PHILLIPS: I'm talking the medal.
WHITE: Oh, oh, OK.
PHILLIPS: Oh, lookie there.
WHITE: OK. There it is. It's made out of chocolate. It's pretty cool. It's got the . . .
PHILLIPS: So you -- but you're not going to eat it. You're going to freeze it and keep it for a while, right. WHITE: No, see, that's the thing, I'm trying to figure out where to put it. I mean I asked my teammate Danny Kass who got silver. He said I should put it in the rearview mirror. Just kind of . . .
PHILLIPS: Oh that would be kind of cool. Forget the dice.
WHITE: Yes, he was claiming ultimate parking pass. So I don't know.
PHILLIPS: You'd probably get whatever you wanted if you showed that if you were showing that to anybody.
WHITE: For sure. It's pretty crazy, though. I mean, it's heavy. And, I don't know, I think it really hit me that I got the gold when I went to bed and then I woke up the next day and this thing was just sitting on the dresser next to me. It was cool.
PHILLIPS: You weren't sleeping with it?
WHITE: No. You know what the worst was, I kind of -- I blew it and I was flying home and I almost checked it under the plane. I was like, maybe I should hang on to that.
PHILLIPS: I wouldn't let it go. Were you showing people on the airplane? Were people asking to see it?
WHITE: Yes. Like what happened was the funniest thing is the stewardesses had all seen the games and they were just so excited to see me. And they're like, you have the gold? And, I mean, I had like I had unlimited like service after that. I was getting drinks and I was getting snacks. And, I mean, I was taking photos in the back with all the stewardesses flying.
PHILLIPS: Wait a minute, drinks? Your 19 years old.
WHITE: Yes, I'm talking about Mountain Dews, baby. All right.
PHILLIPS: He called me baby. He called me baby. OK. That's right, Ginger Ale for Shaun White. Outstanding. OK, getting a little warm here.
So do you have a girlfriend? I mean you're rich, you're 19, you've got your own clothes line, you've got a gold medal that looks like a donut.
WHITE: Yes, I mean, things are going good. I haven't really had time for the girlfriend so far. I mean, so much training going into the Olympics. But I'm looking forward to some time off and check it out. I don't know.
PHILLIPS: What do you do when you're 19 years old and you have a gold medal? It seems you have everything that you want. I mean, what's next?
WHITE: I don't know. I mean, I've just been having so much fun. I mean we came home early from Italy to just do some press and just see what everybody at home had to say about the Olympics. And, I don't know, I'm excited because the summer X-games and skateboarding for me is coming up. I love to snowboard, but, I mean, skateboarding's also a passion of mine. And I'm just going to have some fun with it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROESGEN: When did they start making gold medals that look like doughnuts? Kyra's right.
There is still much more ahead on CNN. Carol Lin and more of CNN LIVE SUNDAY after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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