The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: Good evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; then, an update on widespread devastation in the wake of Sunday's deadly earthquake and tsunami in Asia. Health problems spread as the death toll rises: What lies ahead? America's role: Is the U.S. doing enough quickly enough? And what science brought us during the year now ending.

NEWS SUMMARY

GWEN IFILL: The death toll in the Indian Ocean tsunami soared to more than 76,000 people today. Officials expressed fears today it would yet exceed 100,000. The spike in the numbers came after relief teams reached the West Coast of Sumatra, the Indonesian island nearest the epicenter of Sunday's massive undersea earthquake. Officials reported miles of coastal villages buried in mud and sea water with hundreds of buildings flattened. They also discovered thousands of bodies, bringing the number of dead in Indonesia alone to over 45,000. Officials in Sri Lanka said today the first reports of measles and diarrhea are now coming in. And India began vaccinating its survivors against water-borne diseases. President Bush said today the destruction had "brought loss and grief to the world that is beyond our comprehension." He also said a U.S. pledge of $35 million to tsunami victims is only the beginning. In his first public remarks since Sunday's tragedy, he said any suggestions that the U.S. was stingy were "misguided and uninformed." He spoke to reporters at his ranch in Texas.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We're a very generous, kind-hearted nation, and, you know, what you're beginning to see is a typical response from America. First of all, we provide immediate cash relief, and then there will be an assessment of the damage so that the relief, the next traunch of relief will be spent wisely. That's what's happening now.

GWEN IFILL: The president announced plans to coordinate relief efforts with India, Australia and Japan. Mr. Bush also said he'd look at a request made by German Chancellor Schroeder today for western nations to forgive the foreign debt of Indonesia and Somalia. We'll have more on the tsunami's damage and on relief efforts right after the News Summary. The president also denounced the most recent audio tape released by Osama bin Laden. Mr. Bush said bin Laden's demand Monday for a boycott of the Iraqi elections should only strengthen the Iraqi's desire for democracy. He said: Bin Laden's "vision of the world is where people don't participate in democracy The stakes are clear in this upcoming election .it's very important that these elections proceed." In Iraq, at least 29 people were killed in a raid in western Baghdad overnight. Insurgents apparently lured police to a house with an anonymous tip and then detonated a massive bomb. At least seven policemen were among the dead and 21 Iraqis were wounded. Also today, U.S. officials said 50 suspected militants, including foreign fighters, were captured in raids in and around the capital. The Iraqi government also announced the capture of a top commander in terrorist Abu al- Zarqawi's network. Ukraine's prime minister asked the country's Supreme Court late yesterday to reject the results of last weekend's presidential runoff. Viktor Yanukovich has refused to concede. He said his campaign has received thousands of complaints about voting irregularities in Sunday's election. Preliminary results showed opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko winning the contest by more than two million votes. USAirways has asked non- scheduled employees to work for free this New Year's weekend. The company is recruiting volunteers for its Philadelphia operations. The airline canceled hundreds of flights around Christmas because it did not have enough workers to fly planes and handle baggage. A company spokesman said employees will be paid for regularly scheduled work but not for any extra shifts. Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps was sentenced to 18 months probation today in a Maryland court. The 19-year-old swimmer pled guilty to drunk driving charges. Phelps was also fined $250 and ordered to speak to local high school students about the dangers of driving drunk. Phelps picked up eight medals at the Athens Olympics this summer, six of them gold. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost about 25 points, to close at 10,829. The NASDAQ fell less than one point, to close at 2177. One of the stars of the hit television series Law and Order has died. Jerry Orbach suffered from prostate cancer. Orbach played New York City police detective Lennie Briscoe for 12 seasons on the show. He was also a veteran Broadway song and dance man, winning a Tony Award for his performance in Promises, Promises. He was 69 years old. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: The tsunami disaster; the growing health implications; the U.S response; plus, the year in science.

UPDATE - TSUNAMI DISASTER

GWEN IFILL: We begin our coverage of the tsunami disaster with an overview. Kwame Holman has that.

KWAME HOLMAN: The full magnitude of the destruction from Sunday's massive earthquake and ensuing tsunamis still is being revealed today, as the Indian Ocean sweeps back to shore more of the bodies it claimed. And as rescue teams finally reach more remote regions, like the Aceh Province on Indonesia's Sumatra Island, the death toll climbs. This is what a tsunami wave looked like as it swept through Banda Aceh, the capital of the province. Outlying regions of Aceh are even worse off. 75 percent of this fishing village of 40,000 is destroyed. Relief camps like this one on the eastern coast of Sri Lanka are springing up all over the Indian Ocean rim. They're housing people who have nothing left and nowhere to go. In Galle, Sri Lanka, a doctor warned of a new wave of problems from disease.

DOCTOR: It will be mostly diarrhea, acute gastroenteritis and pneumonia. Those will be the most important things.

KWAME HOLMAN: In Cuddalore, India, a worker sprinkled disinfectant over the ground to destroy disease-carrying germs; 56 teams of paramedics fanned out today over the devastated Tamil Nadu state to vaccinate and care for more than 65,000 refugees. Parts of India's remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands were completely devastated, with some 8,000 people still missing and feared dead. At this Indian relief camp there was enough food to go around, but the people were in desperate need of building supplies.

MAN (Translated): We need building materials, temporary sheds, corrugated sheets, rafters, cement, for rehabilitation of people. There is enough food here.

KWAME HOLMAN: In Washington today, the general in charge of the U.S. Military's aid effort in the region explained the American plan.

LT. GEN. JAMES CONWAY: Three disaster relief assessment teams are either in place or moving into place. The first arrived in Thailand this morning, a second will arrive this afternoon in Sri Lanka, and a third will arrive tomorrow in Indonesia. Their task, of course, will be to make immediate assessment as to the nature and the scope of the impact of the disaster.

KWAME HOLMAN: Aid shipments began arriving today in the Maldive Islands, where at one time two- thirds of the land was submerged by the tsunami. And aid agencies around the world continued to mobilize, packing up shipments of health kits and basic supplies destined for the region.

GWEN IFILL: Now, two independent television news reports from near the epicenter of the quake. Correspondent Dan Rivers is in the Indonesian province of Aceh.

DAN RIVERS: This was the moment of impact in Bandah Aceh. This staggering footage, taken by a family on a second floor apartment as the sea swallowed their town. (Crying) Terrified, the family thinks they will surely die. Somehow they escaped. Four days on, this is the scene in the port area, perhaps one of the most devastated sectors of this crippled town. We picked our way through with our guide, missing persons posters pinned to upturned trawlers. It was surreal, obscene, stranded boats, the twisted wreckage of a once-thriving fishing community. In the town center, corpses are being pulled by the hundreds from the ruins of Bandah Aceh. There is a nauseating stench everywhere, death and decay at every turn. The army is ferrying in troops, but they're facing apocalyptic destruction, entire neighborhoods razed to the ground. Like many, this man has lost everything: His home, his family. Nothing left?

TARMIZI ARIFIN, Survivor: I have nothing left.

DAN RIVERS: Nothing at all.

TARMIZI ARIFIN: My house has been destroyed... everything

DAN RIVERS: Destroyed?

TARMIZI ARIFIN: Yes.

DAN RIVERS: Reporter: If you want a graphic illustration of the sheer power of this tsunami, have a look at this. This trawler was smashed a mile and a half into the center of Bandah Aceh. The locals say the tsunami was 60 feet high. Those that survived are trying to clear the streets, but so far there is apparently little outside help. Bandah Aceh is now in acute crisis. They are desperate for basic supplies. The destruction is relentless, street after street utterly destroyed, survivors stupefied by this carnage. In some places only dogs survived, waiting in vain for their owners. But out of town the horror of all those deaths is concentrated at one place: lorries streaming in, carrying body after body.

GWEN IFILL: Next, a report from the Indian islands of Andaman and Nicobar. The correspondent is Martin Geissler.

MARTIN GEISSLER: Set aside from the outside world by geography and choice, the Andaman and Nicobar islanders have resisted change for centuries. Now life here will never be the same again. Whole communities have been washed away. This is Kar Nicobar. It's almost impossible for foreigners to get here. Islands like this are so remote it's been difficult to fully assess the damage until now. These islands are so close to the earthquake's epicenter that even if there had been an early warning system, it would have made no difference. The waves hit here within minutes. The islands themselves are scattered over 1,000 kilometers, and that geography is proving a real problem to the relief effort. Several islands remain completely cut off. No contact has been made with them, and officials here concede they have no idea what's become of the thousands of people who live on them. For those who have been rescued, a refugee center has been set up in Port Blair, the tiny capital of these islands; 1,500 were there when we visited, but more are arriving all the time. Relatives search desperately for the name of a loved one on the admissions board. It's safer for them to camp outside here. Significant tremors are still being felt every day. The people cling to what little they have left; many have nothing. What has happened to the island?

MAN: The island is totally destroyed.

MARTIN GEISSLER: Reporter: They don't know what to do now. Everything is gone. This refuge may only be open for a few more days, but most have no homes to go back to, and these are the lucky ones.

GWEN IFILL: Yesterday, the head of crisis operations for the World Health Organization in Geneva said as many people could die from disease as from the tsunami itself.

Margaret Warner spoke with that official, Dr. David Nabarro, earlier today.

MARGARET WARNER: Dr. Nabarro, welcome. Since you made that statement yesterday, the death toll has risen to, as we speak now, 80,000 and still rising. Do you think that many people are at risk of dying from disease?

DR. DAVID NABARRO: No, and indeed it will be an absolute tragedy if it was, but there's a pretty good chance that as many as 50,000 could die of disease. And my reasoning is this: There are at least five million people in the region who are now homeless, who don't have access to drinking water, who lack food and who lack proper shelter. They're unable to access functioning health services because the health systems have been badly damaged or even destroyed.

MARGARET WARNER: Explain for us in greater detail. We keep hearing the risk of contaminated water is the greatest. How would a tsunami coming in once or maybe twice and then leaving lead to this terrible problem of contaminated water?

DR. DAVID NABARRO: The water supplies on which people depend are precarious anyway. They are taking water from wells or they've got very rudimentary piped water supplies. They are... the water is coming from collection points which may well be a very limited protection against the outside. The tsunamis have come in like a force of many bulldozers and just simply smashed piping, well structures and other facilities that would normally be used to keep the existing water supplies protected from environmental contamination. That's contamination with fecal material or other potential causes of disease. Now, what we find in these kinds of crises is that when these relatively fragile water systems are damaged, that people do not have clean water sources, and they take water from wherever they can get it, and that will very likely be contaminated with fecal material, and therefore there will be a risk, quite a high risk, of the ingestion of bacteria. Remember that these are communities where the quality of water that's normally used is not very good, so, therefore, it will worsen, be worsened as a result of the tsunamis and the earthquake.

MARGARET WARNER: So what diseases are at greatest risk of developing?

DR. DAVID NABARRO: The most likely diseases in the first instanceare diarrheal disease, and what we will see is an exacerbation of the normal pattern of diarrhea that is particularly commonly seen in poorer families. It won't be a massive outbreak again unless we're very unlucky but then gradually, unless we can improve water supplies and also ensure decent sanitation, we will see a gradually increasing level of these conditions. And, again, if we can't ensure proper treatment quickly and promptly, then what we call the case fatality rate from these diseases will also be comparatively high, and we'll start to see climbing death rates.

MARGARET WARNER: There has been some confusion about whether unburied corpses pose a danger to the survivors. What's the truth there?

DR. DAVID NABARRO: Our position, based on the data that we have available, is that unburied corpses do not pose a danger to the health of survivors in communities. Yes, they're unsightly, and they give off odors which people find offensive. It's also very disturbing to a community to see dead people in large number in their communities. But it's not essential to rush to bury these corpses for public health purposes. They're not a primary cause of disease.

MARGARET WARNER: So... first of all, are you getting any reports from the field already of any cases of disease? I think I read today that Sri Lanka was reporting some diarrhea, some malaria. What are you hearing?

DR. DAVID NABARRO: Yes, I have heard the same information that you have heard. I'm expecting tomorrow morning a more detailed report from our team in Sri Lanka, who are in the process of setting up a rapid surveillance system precisely to track possible increases in diarrhea. In malaria also we're expecting increases, though we'd not expect them to come quite this quickly after a disaster. That's something we'd expect in a month or so. So we need to check this out. But I am not surprised. This is about the time I would be expecting to begin to see increases in diarrhea particularly, and it shows how prompt we have to be with ensuring that water purification or other measures are put in place and necessary treatment facilities are set up.

MARGARET WARNER: So, is the focus on shipping in water itself, bottled water and tanks of water, or it is in bringing in the kind of equipment that enables people to purify their own water, or is it in getting teams in to repair the sewer and water systems?

DR. DAVID NABARRO: Yes, and it's all of those. Firstly, the absolute requirement now is that communities have bottles of water purification tablets so that they can put these tablets into their drinking water and then be certain that when they drink it they're not going to be ingesting lethal bacteria. Unfortunately, the water purification tablets make the water taste like water from a swimming pool. It's very chlorinated, and not many people enjoy drinking that, so they try, if possible, to avoid it. The second requirement is to try to tanker in clean water, and that's already starting in Sri Lanka and in parts of India and I'm sure we'll see it. It's already happening, I just don't know for sure, in Indonesia. The tankering means that you bring in clean water and then you make sure that it's either put into bladder tanks, which then are connected to faucets from which people can take the water, or you put the tanker in a particular place and then people know that they can go at a time of day and get clean water.

MARGARET WARNER: Dr. David Nabarro, thank you for joining us.

DR. DAVID NABARRO: And thank you. It was my pleasure.

MARGARET WARNER: Now a view from one of thehardest-hit countries: Sri Lanka. As of late today, some 22,000 or more people had been reported killed on the small island nation of roughly 20 million. Devinda Subasinghe is Sri Lanka's ambassador to the United States, and he joins us now to talk about the still-unfolding situation there.

Mr. Ambassador, welcome, and first of all, our condolences on this tragedy.

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: Thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: Give us a sense of how widespread the devastation is in your country.

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: Sri Lanka is the size of West Virginia. It's an island nation. 70 percent of the coastal area of Sri Lanka has been impacted by this tsunami and the aftermath of it. It's a line from the northern peninsula all the way down the East Coast, back up the South and the Southwest Coast.

MARGARET WARNER: How far inland did the water sweep?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: It had varied. In some instances it's been yards. In other case it's been a quarter of a mile to two miles, depending on what was ahead of it as it came on shore.

MARGARET WARNER: And what kind of villages and cities even were these?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: The peninsula is just about sea level. It's very much at sea level. And many of those coastal areas have been impacted. The East Coast too is a relatively flat area going inland, so that is a low-lying area.

MARGARET WARNER: But I mean were these fishing villages? Was the tourist trade big?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: A mix. The northern peninsula fisheries, East Coast fisheries, some tourism, but certainly the southern coast predominantly very populated, as well as the infrastructure, hotels, resorts.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, how many people in addition to the 22,000 known to be dead, how many people do you think you have homeless already?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: We are estimating up to one million people are homeless that have fled their homes or have had to flee as they ran away from the water as well as the destruction.

MARGARET WARNER: So already 5 percent of your total population?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: That is correct.

MARGARET WARNER: And then what light can you shed on these reports that you've already had outbreaks of disease?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: The malaria component, I will defer to the WHO. This is the period right after the monsoon rain. Typically that's when the malaria begins to grow and become a problem in the southern and the southeastern coast. It's probably seasonal.

MARGARET WARNER: So you're saying you really do have malaria?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: We do have malaria season normally at this time of year, in those parts, especially in the remote areas where the water has collected and mosquitoes are breeding. Water-borne diseases are beginning to emerge. That's what we have to mitigate.

MARGARET WARNER: How confident are you that your government has a handle on the scope of the problem? I mean, are there areas still inaccessible because communication lines are down or because you can't get there?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: I think we're beginning to get ahead of the curve on, this but fortunately it's a relatively small area, accessibility is an issue. We've been able to penetrate most areas. However, the search and rescue phase I don't think is over. Clearly, recovery is also ongoing.

MARGARET WARNER: In other words, there could be many more deaths?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: Either many more dead or survivors that have not yet been located, and I might add I think the balance is probably in the area of more deaths rather than finding more survivors.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me ask you a little bit about the capacity of your government to cope with this. Andrew Natsios, who is going to appear later on this program, but he had a press conference today, and he said, unlike India and Indonesia, which are very large countries and though they have considerable poverty, they do have infrastructures and some relief agencies in place. Sri Lanka, I think the word he used is, he said, "I think the Sri Lankans are really overwhelmed by this" because you are a smaller nation, you are more vulnerable. Is he right about that?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: If you look at the reports we're getting about the landing capacity at the Colombo International Airport, the Banda Aceh International Airport, they have a big traffic jam there. Yes, we are a small country with modest means, but we do have a national disaster system in place, but yes, this is nothing like we've ever dealt, with not a drought, not a flood. It's a massive wave that hit 70 percent of our coastal area.

MARGARET WARNER: What has your government been able to do?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: We have mobilized military as well as civilian resource, but for now infrastructure, everything we've got is out there. Physicians, they are all out in the field. Everything that we have we've mobilized. Obviously we need supplementation of those capabilities.

MARGARET WARNER: Now I read somewhere today that you actually -- as you know, there has been looting in other countries, a fairly extensive nature, but in Sri Lanka, you mobilized soldiers to enforce a curfew to try to prevent looting?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: Yes, we have. I think there have been some instances of looting reported, but I don't believe it's going beyond that.

MARGARET WARNER: Now give me a sense of what kind of international relief. You said there is a traffic jam at the airport. How much assistance has already gotten in and of what kind?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: I can speak to what I do know from sitting on my vantage point as the ambassador to the United States. There have been, as the press conference that preceded us reported, assessment teams on the ground. There are some assess that are being moved to help us with regard to surveillance of the damage. President Kumaratunga in her conversation with President Bush this morning did reiterate the need for the surveillance search and rescue and recovery capabilities to be supplemented. And that's on the ground, parts on the ground disaster assessment. I'm sure Andrew Natsios can elaborate on this. A team has arrived and teams will continue to arrive over the next couple days.

MARGARET WARNER: I also read on the wires that the head of the U.S. Pacific Command said it's going to establish what he calls a forward operating base right in Sri Lanka, not only I think for distributing aid to Sri Lanka, but as part of its regional aid distribution. Is that the case and do you particularly welcome that?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: Yes. I mean, this is going to be the use of Pacific Command assets for civilian disaster recovery operations. It's not a military deployment. Yes, we welcome it. We need all the help. It will help enhance the assistance to neighboring countries. The Maldive Islands will need some capabilities. Their airport was closed and there is limitations on operations. We recognize this is a deployment of military assets for civilian purposes.

MARGARET WARNER: Have the NGO's, non-governmental organizations, been able to get in there in major way and start distributing any aid?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: Yes, America today has airlifted water purification and other important medications. I've was in contact with Procter & Gamble today. They're supplementing stocks to get in more purification tablets into Sri Lanka, and a very generous corporate executive is underwriting some of these activities as well in terms of critical items. They're getting through. We have to clear the log logjam at the airport and beyond. That's a challenge we will face.

MARGARET WARNER: How much of a difficulty is it then to move it out from the airport in Colombo? I think my understanding is you've had hundreds of miles of railroad track washed out and some of your roads are still...

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: The southern is badly disrupted. The southern railways are pretty much non-existent in parts. We'll have to look at airlift capabilities and perhaps even air drop in some cases, helicopters capability. We have a modest air force that's been supplemented thankfully from the government of India and their military assets have been deployed almost instantaneously to support this endeavor.

MARGARET WARNER: Finally, your country, your government doesn't control all of your country. These rebel, Tamil rebels, Tamil tigers, as they call themselves, patrol an area in the North. How much of an obstacle is that to the deployment of relief?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: Firstly, the government does control the entire island. There are areas within the north and the east that are controlled by a group that has been in conflict with the government for the past 20 years and have been negotiating, attempting to negotiate a solution. We have been in conversation with that group. And we are confident that we will work out channels to work together because this crisis is far bigger than an ethnic crisis or a religious crisis. I think we're very optimistic the country, regardless of ethnic or historical origin, is going to pull together going forward.

MARGARET WARNER: Rebel leaders have been quoted as a, making independent appeals for aid internationally, and b, saying your government isn't letting aid get through to the areas that you control, even though they suffered major loss of life. What do you say to that?

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: The government is getting assistance in through governmental channels, I can assure you of that. It is going through into areas. There are some limited areas that we are still discussing with the group as to how we get access and the relative arrangements there, but by in large, we're moving and that has been occurring over the past two-and-a-half years of the ceasefire, as well. So we're going to continue with what we've been doing, perhaps expand that and bring on board a greater sense of togetherness to get these supplies in.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, good luck. Ambassador Subasinghe, thank you.

DEVINDA SUBASINGHE: Thank you.

GWEN IFILL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: America's role in the relief effort, and science highlights of 2004.

FOCUS - AMERICA'S RESPONSE

GWEN IFILL: Now to the question of America's role when disaster strikes. For that we turn to the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Andrew Natsios.

Ambassador Natsios, welcome.

ANDREW NATSIOS: Good evening

GWEN IFILL: Give us a summary, if you can, of what the U.S. effort has been so far since this disaster struck on Sunday.

ANDREW NATSIOS: We've mobilized our operations center in Washington 24 hours a day or every day from now on. It is contact with the disaster assistance response team that we've employed to the four countries most affected by the disaster. On these teams of people are experts in water and sanitation, food assistance,logistics, health and medicine, shelter, they are doing assessments, now working with international NGO's, with the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society and with U.N. agencies to determine what the needs are, what the local resources are, and then what local officials are doing. This is not our country. It is the countries of the people who are affected by this --

GWEN IFILL: These four countries, just to remind people...

ANDREW NATSIOS: -- India, Sri Lank, Indonesia, and Thailand are the most severely affect. Others are affected, as well, but much less severely. So we're focusing on these four countries. What we need to do is do the assessment so we don't send the wrong commodities and the wrong assistance to the wrong countries. We've already made a contribution of $4 million to the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies. We've put $35 million aside. There is an account now with that much money in it. The DART team will begin to draw down those resource. And we'll add more in as the assessments --

GWEN IFILL: DART team?

ANDREW NATSIOS: I'm sorry -- Disaster Assistance Response Team is the way that we project our assistance into the field. We work through international organizations, international NGO's. And the DART team itself will do purchasing of commodities if they see it necessary in the field. But we need to let the local people take the lead and our job is to support them. That's the best way to do this.

GWEN IFILL: The president said today, he used the term "initial response" to describe what you have just described. What does that mean, "initial response"? Does that mean just that much again is coming?

ANDREW NATSIOS: No, it means that we put money aside so if they see an immediate need, or peoples' lives are at risk, they will immediately purchase the commodity or give the grant to the NGO or the U.N. agency. Once the assessments are done, which will take a few days, we expect the first assessments to come in tomorrow, we will begin to add more money into the account. And we'll have plan drawn up for each of the countries working.

GWEN IFILL: So it's like opening the tap, --

ANDREW NATSIOS: Exactly.

GWEN IFILL: -- but who knows when the tap will close?

ANDREW NATSIOS: Exactly. Well, the relief response is the first step. That will take three weeks to a month. Then the next step is the rehabilitation so that we restore basic services so that people can care for themselves. And then the longer term is the reconstruction which takes years. It will take four or five years to recover from this.

GWEN IFILL: You made the point earlier today and you made it again just now that this is their country and we're just there to help. How essential is it, however, for United States to take the lead in something like this?

ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, it's not a matter of whether it's essential. We do that traditionally. While there have been some controversies over this, the statistics show, internationally accepted statistics, that in the last year that we have them for, "03.. the United States gave 40 percent of all government assistance for international humanitarian aid for all countries in the world. So we're the largest donor by far, and I would say 40 percent of the total given, it's $2.4 billion, it's a lot of money.

GWEN IFILL: We're also the richest country by far.

ANDREW NATSIOS: We are.

GWEN IFILL: So I guess there is a group called the Center for Global Development that says that 40 percent of the relief aid boils down to about 2 cents a day per American. Is that generous enough?

ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, I would say that 40 percent of the requirement worldwide and 2.4 billion dollars is very generous. How much it is per American seems to me to be irrelevant.

GWEN IFILL: Why is that?

ANDREW NATSIOS: What counts is what the requirement is in the field. How many people are at risk and how much food and how much medical assistance do they need? That's what we design our budgets to do: To respond to people in the field. The Americans are not at risk. And how much we give should not be based on how many people live in America or in Europe. It's how many people are at risk and how much do they need for us to assist them. 60 percent of all the food given in humanitarian assistance around the world comes from the United States - 60 percent. That's a traditional figure for a number of years. We're the largest donor to UNICEF, the largest donor to the International Committee for the Red Cross, the largest donor to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I mean, there are more Europeans than there are Americans. So we are very generous, and we have been for a long time. And we're leaders in international relief --

GWEN IFILL: A lot of people are at risk in this one, though, wouldn't you say?

ANDREW NATSIOS: Yes.

GWEN IFILL: So you could assume that this is going to be a much bigger, using your formula, a much bigger American contribution than you would normally --

ANDREW NATSIOS: Yes.

GWEN IFILL: How does this compare to past major disasters, international disasters that the U.S. has been called upon to get involved in?

ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, for example, I was involved when I was in the NGO community in the mid-'90s with the North Korean famine -- 2.5 million people died in that famine. The Bangladesh cyclone of 1991 killed 140,000 people. I was sent in by the president's father, because I worked in aid in those days, to lead the relief response. And we provided lots of assistance to Bangladesh. But that was only one country. The big complication of this effort is that it's four countries simultaneously spread over a very large distance of... region.

GWEN IFILL: And eleven affected countries.

ANDREW NATSIOS: And 11 affected countries. But we're focusing on the ones that are most severely affected at this point. And so the logistics of this, the communications of this is massive. We're also now lashing up our effort with the 16 ships the president's just sent in through the U.S. Military. We've had meetings this morning. We've put people on the DOD staff at specific command. And they put staff on our disaster assistance response team to make sure this is an integrated U.S. effort.

GWEN IFILL: Before we leave this issue of U.S. generosity, of course, this has been... the dust up today has been about comments made by the U.N. relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, in which he says - I want to actually read his actual words, because the president took issue with that today, he said, "We were more generous when we were less rich -- many of the rich countries. And it is beyond me why we are so stingy really; even Christmastime should remind many western countries at least how rich we've become." Do you fundamentally, does the U.S. Government fundamentally disagree with that world view?

ANDREW NATSIOS: I have written books on this. I've been doing this work for 15 years. Jan Egeland is a friend of mine; we're the biggest donor to fund his office and his staff. I called him and said, Jan, what are you talking about? He's talking about development assistance, not disaster relief. For disaster relief, it's simply nonsense. He doesn'tknow what the data shows. If he did, he wouldn't have made that comment. He told me he was misquoted and he was speaking about development assistance. What he did not know is that President Bush has arranged the largest increase in development assistance since Harry Truman. The budget when Bill Clinton entered office for ODA, Official Development Assistance, which is an international formula used by 27 countries that are donor governments, was 10.6 billion dollars. In 2003, it was $24 billion. You've had a 140 percent increase. We're well beyond what the president committed at Monterey and at Johannesburg. There is a huge effort to combat HIV/AIDS, is the millennium challenge account. My food age budget has been increased hugely.

GWEN IFILL: So you're saying even when talking about development assistance, that those numbers don't add up?

ANDREW NATSIOS: Those numbers don't add up. What they do is they use a European formula, which we've never used in the United States in 55 years, which is to use a percentage of our Gross National Product. The reason that people quote that is because in Europe it's been used as a standard, but our economy grows so much faster than the Japanese or the European economy that we would never catch up. No matter how much we do, we could never be... if we did, we would dominate the entire world and overwhelm everybody with the amount of money but a 140 percent increase in three years is a massive increase in development assistance.

GWEN IFILL: Let's talk about the challenges at hand. How do you prioritize what happens next? You focus on four of the major affected countries. But then where does it go -- the type of aid, the type of relief, the timing that it needs to get whoever needs it the most quickly, how do you put these things in order?

ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, we focus on four interventions, as I said earlier, the shelter. We look at the number of families displaced, and whose homes were destroyed. And then we will order shelter material in, working with other governments so that we don't replicate what they're doing. We don't want... we might work with the European Union and the Japanese and the Australians, for example, and they'll do shelter and we'll do water purification. The Europeans might do some pharmaceuticals. We might do food assistance.

GWEN IFILL: Debt relief, something that was suggested by the Europeans today --

ANDREW NATSIOS: That was suggested; that is being discussed at treasury level and finance ministry left. But our response now is based on these assessments to support local efforts. And we're dealing with four governments here that have very well-developed social service systems. Sri Lanka has one of the best health ministries in Asia. So they have a lot of very finely... very well-educated doctors. We don't need to bring in a lot of medical staff.

GWEN IFILL: Do you have any concerns that people making pledges now, those pledges will be unmet farther on down the road when rebuilding is necessary after the immediate relief?

ANDREW NATSIOS: There are some countries that make pledges and don't take them seriously. It has been a tradition in the United States for AID and the State Department that we make a pledge, a record is kept at OMB, no matter who the president is. This is not a partisan statement. I'm not criticizing anybody because Clinton did this. We did this. Ronald Reagan did this. It's just an American tradition. You make a pledge, you fulfill the pledge. We're very good about that. And I think if you go back and quietly talk to U.N. agencies that say the United States when it makes a pledge fulfills the pledge, they will tell you, yes, we do. And we don't double count. We don't pledge it three times and then add the three times up when it's the same pledge repeated over and over again. We're very careful about that because we know as a great power, our credibility is at stake and we want to help these people. I know peoples' lives around the world are at risk in these emergencies. And if the United States does not lead and does not act, if we don't, a lot of people die. So we take it very seriously.

GWEN IFILL: Andrew Natsios, thank you very much.

ANDREW NATSIOS: Thank you.

FOCUS - SCIENCE REVIEW

GWEN IFILL: Finally, tonight, Jeffrey Brown looks at the year that was in the world of science.

JEFFREY BROWN: It's the time of year for top ten lists and Science Magazine has just weighed in with its choices of the breakthroughs and big stories in the world of science.

With us to look at some of them is Donald Kennedy, former president of Stanford University and now editor-in-chief of Science Magazine. He also helps us as an advisor to the NewsHour's science unit.

Mr. Kennedy, welcome.

DONALD KENNEDY: Thank you.

JEFFREY BROWN: I know that every list is going to be somewhat subjective, but I understand that your staff had little problem this year deciding on the top science story. Tell us about that.

DONALD KENNEDY: Let's say it was easier than in most years. I think the public attention and the scientific excitement about the Mars expeditions really put it easily in first place. That's mostly I think because Mars is such a candidate planet for life, and everybody was already excited about the strong possibility that there had been water there that might have been a suitable incubator.

JEFFREY BROWN: The question and the search for water goes to some of these big questions that we have always asked ourselves, right, about where life came from, are we alone out there?

DONALD KENNEDY: We certainly know it came from water here. And so there was every reason to suppose that in an aquatic environment water might have been suitable for the generation of life elsewhere and of course Mars is the candidate planet. There was already considerable evidence from gullying on hillsides, all quite visible in the close-up views that the Mars explorers had given us. And what was needed was to close the circle by really looking on the ground for evidence that water had been there. And that's what Spirit and Opportunity were able to do.

JEFFREY BROWN: The other part of the story of the Mars rovers of course is the technological achievement, this remote robotics. How important was that?

DONALD KENNEDY: I think it's stunning to realize how much can be done by a remote geologist in this case or indeed by how much can be done by distant viewing technologies that we can send to various parts of the cosmos and get information back from them. Look, we've already had information from the rings of Saturn by the Cassini probe. It will soon send the Huygens impactor on to its major moon. We've sampled stardust; we've sampled solar wind and returned it to Earth. So much can be done now by instruments and technologies that we send out there.

JEFFREY BROWN: Okay. Another story on your list is one you called "The Littlest Human," and this is the finding in a cave in the Indonesian island of Florus. Tell us about that one.

DONALD KENNEDY: Well, it's an astonishing finding. Of course, this is a game in which a single bone can change one's view of the entire course of evolution, and because it's a human skullin this case, it has great relevance to us. Three things about this finding: First, the skull is small. The body to which it belonged is small, about one meter high. It's a very small-brained human, about 350 cubic centimeters. And the skull gives fairly clear indications of having belonged to a class of primitive humans; Java Man is another example from the same region. And finally, the date, carbon dating was used here, associated with this skull is stunningly recent, 18,000 years ago, a geological second in time.

JEFFREY BROWN: So there would have been overlap?

DONALD KENNEDY: There would have been 30,000 or 40,000 years of overlap between this small, primitive human and large, aggressive modern humans that we know were in the area for 30,000 or 40,000 of the years in which we presume these small island humans existed at the same time.

JEFFREY BROWN: The term I've heard is island dwarfism. I gather the idea that animals, or in this case human, might have shrunk to deal with the small amount of resources available on an island?

DONALD KENNEDY: Dwarfism in isolated island populations is common for many species, including a number of mammals. Elephants of two different group, rhinoceros, others, and since we're mammals, too, we shouldn't be an exception. There's no reason to think that this is extraordinary in that respect. It's really the overlap with modern humans that gives us the big questions that we need to answer.

JEFFREY BROWN: So it's a story that really goes to how much we know about the human... our own human development?

DONALD KENNEDY: Yes, I think it is. It goes to a history of modern humans as they have gone to other isolated parts of the world where they have generally hunted to extinction other large species of mammals, including in some cases other groups of hominids, human, members of the human family. So it's a mystery how that coexistence came about and how it survived.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now I want to move to a story is that is right up to the in my opinion. This is one that you call healthy partnerships about new, what you call a revolution in public health.

DONALD KENNEDY: I think there is a revolution in how we manage to treat emerging infections. Infectious diseases that are either new like HIV/AIDS or reemerging like tuberculosis, or old diseases that have been a persistent, chronic source of trouble for many developing countries. What's happening is that there has been a coming together of drug companies, of large foundations, of other institutions to collaborate in trying to resolve some of these problems.

JEFFREY BROWN: And what do you think is the impetus that has been driving that, because these are institutions that typically are fairly wary of each other?

DONALD KENNEDY: One impetus is need. I think another - another impetus is the need for certainly drug manufacturers to do something that will improve their credibility as institutions that exist in the public interest. And finally there's the very important factor of some foundations beginning to develop resources that are truly able to make them big players along with government in a game that previously was largely a government game. The Gates Foundation is an especially good example, and they've been a major player in the global fund to fight AIDS, TB, and malaria.

JEFFREY BROWN: Okay. Now you have your list of breakthroughs, but you also have something you called the breakdown of the year; this is something that did not go so well. And here you sight the relationship between the scientific community and the government. Tell us about what's happened this year.

DONALD KENNEDY: Well, hardly anything could be more important to the scientific community than its relationship with the government and the public that support it, and that's been I think pretty good in the past in most parts of the world. This past year it frayed a little bit around the edges. In France and in Italy there were some substantial protests even involving large sit-ins and demonstrations about tenure, about the way the government was allocating resources for research. And in the United States a group of scientists, including in one case a group of some 60 Nobel Prize winners, wrote to challenge what they believed was an excessive use of political allegiance in the making of government appointments in science here in the U.S. That drew a strong response from the White House and from the president's science adviser and that is a debate that's slated to continue for some time we as begin to sort out how much politics in the form of allegiance to the policy of a newly elected government should figure in the appointment of science, scientists who are mainly to evaluate the merit of research proposals.

JEFFREY BROWN: I guess it's a reminder that many of the scientific breakthroughs that you talk about come with real policy implications, don't they?

DONALD KENNEDY: They do indeed. For example, the results of the successful Mars exploration certainly raises the question whether the government of the United States ought to invest more heavily in these than in manned explorations, or whether the excitement and venturesomeness of the manned explorations entitles them to a larger allocation. That's going to have to be worked out.

JEFFREY BROWN: Okay. Well, there's a lot more on your list, and let me tell our audience that you can see the entire list on the website of Science Magazine - that's www.sciencemag.org. Donald Kennedy, thanks a lot for joining us.

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: Again, the major developments of the day: The death toll in the Indian Ocean tsunami topped 76,000 people, with officials expressing fears it could yet exceed 100,000. President Bush said the U.S. would coordinate international relief efforts with other countries. And at least 29 people were killed in a bombing in western Baghdad.

GWEN IFILL: And again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. We add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. Here, in silence, are 17 more.

GWEN IFILL: We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you and good night.