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CNN NEWSROOM

Java Sea Weather Halts AirAsia Search & Recovery; Kremlin Critic Defies Putin; Remembering the Victims of AirAsia 8501; Flu Epidemic Across the U.S.; First Ever College Football Playoffs Tomorrow

Aired December 31, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Chad Myers, thanks so much.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: And many of the tools being used to search for Flight 8501 are the same as those used to search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. One of the biggest differences between the two investigations, the depth of the water. The Java Sea is only about 100 feet deep. Compare that to the Indian Ocean where Flight 370 is believed to have crashed. The depth there is about 13,000 feet in certain areas. That's deeper than the height of the tallest building of the world in Dubai, the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower.

Well, let's talk more about the sea operations with specialist Tim Taylor. He's also the president of Tiburon Subsea Research, a company that specializes in ROVs and AUVs and underwater imagery.

Welcome back, Tim. I'm glad you're here.

So, first of all, let's talk about the weather and how that's affecting the search.

TIM TAYLOR, PRESIDENT, SEA OPERATIONS SPECIALIST: Well, weather is always going to hamper it. And with the 50 knot winds, that's near impossible to work out there. But that being said, if I was running this operation, if I was leading this, I would seriously look, since they're out of the visual hunting stage or they're -- they're not out of it, but it's narrowed down where they can actually start putting sonar or acoustic listeners in the water. I would consider night operations. They can launch these big ships. They can work at night. And they can run from the weather during the day. And at least start looking for the pinger, which is on a clock that's ticking

COSTELLO: Yes, because they have a general idea of where the plane went down.

TAYLOR: Yes.

COSTELLO: I understand that sonar equipment is on its way from Singapore, but it's not there yet, and you have to wonder, well, why isn't it there yet? TAYLOR: Right. And if they have sonar images, who took them? So the --

that's a little bit in question if they've seen the plane or not. And then, frankly, when you take sonar images, you take long range pictures to narrow it down. So the imaging is not going to be extremely detailed. You might have a -- something that looks like a plane, but it could be a World War II wreck. It could be something else and so those were the rumors maybe starting. But night ops is an option.

COSTELLO: OK. So they found some debris on top of the water but not so much.

TAYLOR: Right.

COSTELLO: They found a piece of luggage intact. They found maybe an emergency door of the plane and, of course, they found some bodies. Why haven't they found more debris floating on top of the water?

TAYLOR: There's many reasons for that. One of which could be the plane could have gotten down more intact and sank. So it could be more -- less of a debris zone and more intact. I mean that's hopefully that was what they tried to do. But it could be scattered. It could be weather. And there's -- you know, it's speculation at this point, but since they do know it's down, they do know the area, the certain can start with the pingers and sonar.

COSTELLO: Yes, I think so far they found seven bodies, and they were floating in the water. But the man in charge of the search and rescue operation said he expects that most of the bodies will be inside the plane and most of the passengers will still be strapped in. So what does that tell you?

TAYLOR: It's early in the flight. They were strapped in. People are strapped into the planes for lots of reasons, least of which is shifting. If everybody was unstrapped and they had an event like this and all -- everybody went to one side of the plane, it would just complicate -- it would throw the plane off-balance with the weight -- shifting weight. So they are probably strapped in. And if they did go down with the plane, it's more intact, they have a higher likelihood of recovering a large percent of these bodies. So (INAUDIBLE).

COSTELLO: Now, there is a rumor out there, and this has been printed in some major newspapers, that one of the passengers was found with a life vest on. We're not -- we have not confirmed that, though. Could have been near the body. But if that's true, that brings up a whole different scenario, right?

TAYLOR: It -- least of which is in our imaginations, imagining what they went through and that they lived to try to deal with this and tried to land the plane. It really brings that whole element to this, that leads to a lot of possibilities that then possibly --

COSTELLO: But all indications so far is this happened very quickly after that original call went out to ascend.

TAYLOR: Right. Right. Right. And, unfortunately, that's probably what did happen. But let's hope that weather allows us to -- allows them to get out and locate this and find the bodies.

COSTELLO: Once the sonar equipment is there, do you think it will take long to locate the black boxes?

TAYLOR: I would imagine -- good weather, if they get operational within a week, if they've narrowed it down within -- what they say they have, it shouldn't take long to find it.

COSTELLO: And then once the black boxes are taken out of -- I don't know how difficult that will be, but you know.

TAYLOR: Yes. They're accessible. So once they find the wreckage and, again, bodies are the priority. The black boxes. Once they find it, the black boxes can sit down there forever. As long as they know the wreckage is there and they can get them when they need to. The bodies are probably the priority. I would have to guess (ph).

COSTELLO: I'm sure -- I'm sure that's true, as it should be.

TAYLOR: Yes.

COSTELLO: Tim Taylor, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, convicted and sentenced to house arrest but still denying President Putin. A leading Russian activist takes to the street, but his brother appears to be paying the price. We'll tell you why, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: It's like something out of a Russian novel by Tolstoy, only this is real life drama. One of President Vladimir Putin's most outspoken critics is defying the government. Just hours after he was found guilty of fraud, he was sentenced to house arrest, but not prison. Guess who is going to prison though? That would be his brother. Alexei Navalny, you know the main critic of Putin, he joined a protest against the verdict as it applied to his brother. He even tweeted a picture of himself on the Moscow Metro on his way to the demonstration.

CNN's Matthew Chance is following this story for us.

Hi, Matthew.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol.

COSTELLO: Tell us more about why Navalny's brother is going to prison and not him.

CHANCE: Sorry. Right. Well, it's a difficult one. It seems to be a very clever verdict by the judiciary here to try and exercise some control over Alexei Navalny, but not make him a martyr. You know, this is a character who has emerged as a major political player in terms of the opposition here in Russia. He's got, you know, kind of a lot of support in cities like Moscow and other urban centers as well. He's not a direct change to Vladimir Putin yet, but the Kremlin wants to make sure that he doesn't emerge as such. And so they seem to have revived this old Soviet era program of punishing the relatives of enemies of the state.

Well, you know, the whole day yesterday was very controversial. Alexei Navalny went to the streets after that court verdict in which his brother was sentenced to three and a half years in jail, and he got a suspended sentence. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHANCE (voice-over): With supporters chanting his name, Alexei Navalny arrived at a crowded Moscow courthouse to hear his sentence. Russian judges are notorious for taking hours, even days to read their verdicts. But for the country's most prominent opposition figure, it was just 15 minutes.

The crime of fraud and embezzlement, denied by Navalny, he received a suspended sentence, but his brother was imprisoned for three and a half years, prompting allegations of Soviet-era methods of punishing the families of dissidents. "I am ashamed of what you're doing," Navalny told the judge. "Why are you putting him in jail. All this is to punish me even more," he said. Outside the courthouse, the anti- corruption campaigner urged his supporters to rise up.

ALEXEI NAVALNY (through translator): This power does not deserve to exist. It should be destroyed. I'm calling on everybody to take to the streets. I'm calling on you to take to the streets until the power that tortures innocent people is removed.

CHANCE: And take to the streets they did. A mass protest that had been planned for January the 15th, this was a much smaller showing in the often passive world of Russia's opposition, it's a result.

CHANCE (on camera): But you can see that despite the cold weather, people have turned out to protest against the sentencing of Alexei Navalny. But you can also see that the police here are pushing people back, preventing them from getting to Manezh Square. Excuse me. Preventing them from getting to Manezh Square, where the protest was meant to be held.

CHANCE (voice-over): And one of those prevented was Navalny himself. As he walked towards the square in violation of his house arrest, he was seized, driven away. He's been dubbed the man the Kremlin is most afraid of. The authorities clearly taking no risks here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHANCE: Right. Well, Alexei Navalny is now back under house arrest. He's back at his home. He's continuing his campaign against the Kremlin from there. The problem, Carol, he's going to have is that, of course, he's running up against the new year holidays now and that's the most important holiday in the Russian calendar, and so it's going to be very difficult for that anger we saw on the streets last night to keep its momentum, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Matthew Chance reporting live from Moscow this morning.

Bad weather hampering search efforts off the coast of Borneo. The first bits of debris from Flight 8501 were discovered just 24 hours ago. Indonesian searchers saying this morning they've recovered ten bodies so far. Here's Jake Tapper with more on those who are lost.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For the families praying and waiting for good news, each piece of debris discovered represents the destruction of their last hopes.

TONY FERNANDES, AIRASIA CEO: The only slight benefit is that, for the people in there, there is some closure. This is a scar with me for the rest of my life.

TAPPER: Now, as victims' belongings are collected from the sea, the world is gaining a clearer picture of who we've lost.

One hundred and sixty-two souls, including 18 children. One of the first pilots to spot debris told the Indonesian newspaper "Compass" that he saw victims floating in the water still holding hands. It's perhaps an apocryphal tale, but it is symbolic of the tragedy.

In this South Korean church, the congregation is weeping for one of their missionaries. Park Sun Bong (ph), as well as for his wife and for their 11-month-old daughter. Gone along with them, a fiance whose chance to become a husband will never come.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They said that his plane was missing.

TAPPER: His bride-to-be explained that Alan Aktafina Sho (ph) perished along with his family on their last trip together.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was supposed to be their last vacation before we -- us got married.

TAPPER: Britain's only citizen aboard, Choi Chi Man (ph), was traveling with his two-year-old daughter, Zoe, when the plane went down. According to the newspaper "The Telegraph," the father boarded this flight because there were not enough seats to fly with his wife and son on another.

The wife of the pilot is mourning as well.

RR. WIDIYA SUKATI PUTRI, WIFE OF CAPTAIN IRIYANTO (through translator): The children still need a father. I still also need a guidance from husband. He's a good husband in my eyes, and he's a faithful husband.

TAPPER: Captain Iriyanto was an experienced Indonesian air force veteran whose daughter posted this photo on social media pleading for his return. A return that tragically will never happen.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: It is now an epidemic across the United States. The flu now widespread in 36 states, it's responsible for killing 15 children and sending many, many more to the hospital. Plus, the main line of defense, the flu vaccine, proving to be less effective than hoped. And "The Wall Street Journal: says there is a shortage of the medicine Tamiflu. Now, that's true in some spots as this year's flu season starts stronger and earlier than in years past.

Dr. William Schaffner, the chair of Vanderbilt University's Department of Preventative Medicine, joins us now. Good morning, Doctor.

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, CHRMN, DEPT OF PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE, VANDERBILT UNIV.: Hello, Carol, good to be with you.

COSTELLO: Good to be with you, too. So tell us, why isn't the flu vaccine working this year?

SCHAFFNER: Well, the flu virus has done its thing. It's mutated a little bit so it's not exactly on target with what we have in the vaccine. So for that particular strain, and unfortunately it's the dominant strain at the present time, the vaccine is not optimally effective. So that's contributing to the spread of flu across the country.

COSTELLO: So does that mean they'll put a new vaccine out?

SCHAFFNER: Not this year. Next year. The one we have is the one we need to keep using. Remember, even though it's not a perfect match, it provides partial protection against some of the complications -- pneumonia, hospitalization, and dying. That's still pretty good. And there are other flu virus strains out there that are well-represented in the vaccine and you can get protection against those. So we say, if you haven't been vaccinated yet, it's still not too late. But run. Don't wait. Get vaccinated.

COSTELLO: Well, it is disturbing that 15 children have died. So what should parents look out for?

SCHAFFNER: Well, obviously there's flu in virtually every state. So make sure that your children stay away from crowds, if you can. That's hard in the holiday season. Keep the hand hygiene up. And should they become sick, immediately call your pediatrician or family doctor, because they can get an anti-viral, one of them is Tamiflu, that will help reduce the severity of the illness. But you have to do that right away. In order for it to be really effective, you have to start the medicine shortly after the onset of illness.

COSTELLO: Well, there's a shortage of Tamiflu in some parts of the country. That's disturbing.

SCHAFFNER: Spot shortages, nothing major. The manufacturer says they have plenty. They're ready to ship it out wherever it's needed so -- so far so good, but we're really at the start of what's looking like a serious flu season. COSTELLO: OK, so let's destroy the myths that always occur this time

of year, because I heard them again this morning. Getting the flu shot makes you sick. It makes your arm swell up. It can lead to people having heart attacks. Is any of that true?

SCHAFFNER: Well, obviously you're going to get a little soreness in the arm, but, no, it's not true. The flu vaccine will not make you sick. It protects you against getting sick.

COSTELLO: OK, I don't think people ever believe doctors when they tell them that, because I hear it every single year from very educated people.

SCHAFFNER: Yes, Carol, it's a persistent myth. You can't get flu from the flu vaccine; that's not an excuse. And the recommendation is very simple -- all of us older than six months of age, that's everyone viewing, should get vaccinated each and every year. You know, it not only contributes to protecting yourself, but it makes you less apt to spread it to others. No one wants to be a flu spreader.

COSTELLO: Exactly. Do you hear that, Brian, Carolyn, everyone in the control room? I'm teasing. It's only because I care about y'all.

OK, I have to ask you, Doctor, about Ebola. Two people died of Ebola in this country; 15 children have died of the flu this year. No precautions at airports, no national scare, no talk in Congress, no national emergency. What does this say about us?

SCHAFFNER: Well, new things are frightening. As we learn more about Ebola, the concern has abated. We're doing a better job of actually educating people and managing the Ebola situation. The Ebola situation in West Africa requires our sustained attention, because that's going to take a lot of work in the months going forward. And then, as regards flu, we should all make a new year's resolution. Each year, we should all get vaccinated to protect ourselves and our loved ones and co-workers around us.

COSTELLO: Gotcha. Dr. William Schaffner, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

SCHAFFNER: Thank you, Carol. Let's all stay healthy in the new year.

COSTELLO: Absolutely.

Checking some other top stories for you at 52 minutes past, investigators say the death toll could rise in that ferry fire off Greece's Adriatic Coast. There is confusion because officials say migrants may have stowed away in the ship. So far 11 people are confirmed dead; dozens more could still be missing. Officials are working to reconcile passenger lists with people who were rescued.

Baltimore Ravens security director Darren Sanders has been charged with a fourth degree sex offense. That count is considered sexual contact without a victim's consent. An attorney for Sanders tells the "Baltimore Sun" the charge is totally fabricated. Sanders came under fire during the Ray Rice investigation for failing to get the elevator beating video from an Atlantic City casino.

The minimum wage will rise in 21 states tomorrow. The move comes after voters approved ballot measures and state lawmakers passed bills. 29 states and the District of Columbia will have minimum wages above the federal level of $7.25 an hour.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a new year's day present for sports fan -- he first ever college football playoff games. Yay. CNN's Andy Scholes is covering the Battle of New Orleans.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Carol. Alabama and Ohio State fans have taken over the French Quarter. I'll have a preview of tomorrow's college football playoff games after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Finally, college football fans get what they want: a playoff. The nation's top four teams go at it tomorrow with the winners advancing to the championship game. CNN's Andy Scholes is in New Orleans to watch the excitement. Good morning.

SCHOLES: Yes, good morning, Carol. You know, New Orleans is always an exciting place to be, an awesome place to be on new year's day. But this year, a little extra spark in the air because, for the first time, the Sugar Bowl is a part of the new college football playoff. The other game is of course the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. Both playoff games are going to take place tomorrow on new year's day. And for the first time both of these games are going to help decide a true national champion.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCHOLES (voice-over): After 16 years, the BCS is out and college football fans are finally getting what they've been asking for.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Playoffs?

SCHOLES: In the inaugural four-team college football playoff, the semifinals will take place at the Sugar Bowl and the Rose Bowl.

KEANON LOWE, OREGON WIDE RECEIVER: This is part of sports history, not just college football history.

SCHOLES: In the Sugar Bowl, No. 1 Alabama faces off against No. 4 Ohio State in a matchup that features two coaches who have dominated college football over the last decade, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer.

URBAN MEYER, OHIO STATE HEAD COACH: We're both very player oriented coaches about the welfare of players and the welfare of the game. I think there's a lot of mutual respect there.

NICK SABAN, ALABAMA HEAD COACH: They're very well coached, which is nothing different from any other team that we've faced that Urban has coached. Because he does a fantastic job with his players and coaches to put an outstanding product on the field. SCHOLES: At the Rose Bowl, it's going to be Heisman versus Heisman as

this year's winner, Marcus Mariota, and the Oregon Ducks take on Jameis Winston and the defending champion Florida State Seminoles.

MARK HELFRICH, OREGAN HEAD COACH: I think that's a great storyline. I think the key is Jameis's team and Marcus's team are the guys that really make this thing go.

JAMEIS WINSTON, FLORIDA STATE QUARTERBACK: I'm not matching anyone. I'm playing Florida State football. My job is to lead my team and lead us to victory, and his job is to do the same.

MARCUS MARIOTA, OREGAN QUATERBACK: I don't like that spotlight. I would prefer to just go about my business and not have to deal with some of the stuff like this.

SCHOLES: The winners from the Sugar Bowl and Rose Bowl will meet January 12 in Arlington, Texas, in the championship game. And for the first time ever, there will not be any argument of who the true champion is, because we finally have --

UNIDENTIFEID MALE: Playoffs? You kidding me? Playoffs?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHOLES: Oh, I love that, Carol. Playoffs? Definitely excited for two games tomorrow. They should be two great matchups. And if you're wondering where we're standing right now, I could probably throw a football to Cafe Du Monde. There's already a line of like 40 people waiting to get in to get some of those beignets.

COSTELLO: That's just cruel to tell me that, Andy.

SCHOLES: I think I'm going to go join them.

COSTELLO: I think you should because that's where I would be.

SCHOLES: I'll mail you one!

COSTELLO: I'm sure it will be very tasty once it gets to New York. Andy, happy new year.

SCHOLES: You, too, Carol.

COSTELLO: See you later. The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.

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