[Holmes:] Good morning and welcome back to the CNN SUNDAY MORNING. I'm T.J. Holmes.
[Nguyen:] Yes, good morning, everybody. I'm Betty Nguyen. OK, it is Easter Sunday. We do invite you to stay with us; we have a lot to show you, including this, a live picture of an Easter message being heard around the world at this hour. Pope Benedict focusing on love, strength and hope in this on this Easter morning. Again, this is happening in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican City, and the Mass is taking place under overcast skies. Yet you hardly notice with all of well, you can't see it in this shot, but there's a lot of people in crowd, and a lot of flowers, traditional pageantry. Look at the baby there. The ceremony comes one day, though, after Italy buried many of the victims from Monday's devastating earthquake.
[T.j. Holmes, Cnn Anchor, Cnn Sunday Morning:] Also, we take you to New Orleans now. No arrests have been made yet in the killing of three people at a home outside New Orleans. Two of the victims children, a 23-month-old baby and a six-year-old boy. They were shot and killed along with a 19 year-old woman. Also an 11-year-old girl is in stable condition with several gunshot wounds. Police say they are looking for two men who broke in and started shooting.
[Nguyen:] Well, the crew of the U.S. flagged Maersk are docked safely in Mombasa, Kenya. But their thoughts are with that person right there, Captain Phillips. They say he surrendered himself to Somali pirates in order to save his crew. Right now he is still being held hostage just off the coast of Somalia. The U.S. Navy and FBI negotiators are still working to deal with some way to free him.
[Holmes:] Here is what we know about the captain, Captain Richard Phillips. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, graduated in 1979. Has more than 20 years experience on the high seas. His previous job, a cab driver. He's 53 years old, lives with his wife in Vermont. The couple has two children in college. And officials say, even though this thing has been going on for some days now, they go up to five days with the pirates showing no signs still that they are giving up anytime soon.
[Nguyen:] In fact, CNN's Barbara Starr tells us the pirates fired off warning shots at the U.S. Navy when they got close yesterday. Take a look.
[Barbara Starr, Cnn Pentagon Correspondent:] A U.S. official directly familiar with that what is going on off the coast of Somali, tells CNN a small Naval party from the USS Bainbridge boarded a small boat and tried to approach the lifeboat, in which Captain Phillips is being held. When that Naval party got near the lifeboat, the pirates fired warning shots, apparently. And the U.S. Navy retreated very quickly, not wanting to do anything to endanger Captain Phillips. The goal of the United States is to get him safely released and take the pirates into custody, according tot his official. Since that incident there has been additional word that Captain Phillips is uninjured and OK, according to this official. But there is a good deal of concern. By all accounts, the lifeboat has now moved within miles of the border of Somalia, off the coastline of that very troubled country. The U.S. Navy is keeping watch 247. Barbara Starr, CNN, Bahrain.
[Nguyen:] This isn't the only hostage situation that we have been watching pretty closely. I want to give you a look at some of the French hostages that were freed on Friday, after being held for almost a week.
[Holmes:] Yes, four adults and a child had been held aboard their yacht since they were seized in the Gulf of Aiden last Saturday. One hostage and two pirates died during a rescue operation. Three pirates were captured. The military made its move after the pirates refused several offers, including one to swap an officer for the mother and child who were on board. The pirates had also threatened to execute the hostages one by one. The possibility that the pirates could take their hostages ashore prompted the mission.
[Nguyen:] That just really illustrates why situation, dealing the with the U.S. captain, T.J., is just so volatile. And they are moving, you know, just really walking a fine line in dealing with those pirates out there.
[Holmes:] And we know most of the time, most of the time, these things end peacefully, because the ransom is paid, hostages come back unharmed. But it's a reminder here that these things can still end badly. See what happens when there is some kind of intervention and people say why don't the sailors have guns.
[Nguyen:] Just swoop in and yeah.
[Holmes:] It starts a fire fight and people get hurt and people get killed. So a reminder how dangerous it is.
[Nguyen:] And as we've been reporting, I mean, this is the first time in what, some 200 years, these Somali pirates have attacked a U.S. ship?
[Holmes:] A U.S. ship.
[Nguyen:] So, you don't have a whole lot of history to go by with a situation like this. Although, they are obviously very trained in hostage situations dealing with the U.S. Navy. But it is a very delicate dance out there. And we are watching it very closely. Well, as you can imagine, most hostage negotiations can be very tense and very tricky, especially with lives and sometimes millions of dollars on the line. So to get a better perspective we talked to a former military intelligence officer. And here is what he had to say on CNN's "Anderson Cooper".
[Anderson Cooper, Cnn Anchor, Anderson Cooper 360:] Short of paying money, which doesn't seem like the U.S. Navy is going to be doing, unless -I mean, do you think they would?
[Ken Robinson, Terrorism & Nat'l. Security Analyst:] Up until now, all the negotiations have been through the insurance companies, dealing directly with the Somali pirates in the safe-haven area, Puntland, which is north of Somalia and Mogadishu. And they communicate over international satellite communications. They're talking to those pirates on board that vessel, right now, the same way. I've been told all they want right now is, they want to get to the shore because they fear the same thing happening to them. And then they want to negotiate for some form of ransom, or some form of deal once they feel that they are safe. That is probably going to be unacceptable to the United States Navy.
[Cooper:] What do you think about how the French operation went down?
[Robinson:] I think it's remarkable more hostages were not killed. It's very hard for those things to be surgical because you only have a matter of seconds to be able to overwhelm with fire power the adversary. It's really remarkable that more weren't killed.
[Cooper:] And now what happens I mean, once this thing is resolved, however it gets resolved in whether it is a day or a couple days, what happens now? I mean, ships are still going to be going through here. There are still going to be pirates. Are we just going to go through this every so often? Every time an American is kidnapped or is there going to be some sort of more regular military presence that is going to have to be involved here?
[Robinson:] I think the last couple days is a watershed event, because it is the first time in 200 years that an American flag ship has been taken. The last time we had this problem in this heavy way was the Barbary pirates, and Thomas Jefferson sent the Navy halfway around the world to solve the problem. Now President Obama has a real policy issue, because they have been hesitant to wade back into Somalia. In order to deal with this problem, you can't deal with it on the high seas, because you are simply reacting to an event. They have to go after the safe haven, they have to go after that place from which plan, train, equip and finance themselves. And also, this is very lucrative. This is the most successful business in a failed state; $81 million in one year is not anything to sniff at.
[Nguyen:] And you can watch "Anderson Cooper 360" weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern.
[Holmes:] All right. We will turn to some severe weather now that hit Murfreesboro, Tennessee pretty hard. Take a look at some of the pictures. More, that we have been getting in this weekend. These were taken now by iReporter Josh Beasley. It captures some of that damage left behind after that town got hit by a tornado. Also, got some more video that Reynolds is going be showing us here. We get more and more pictures. I mean, this thing has happened over the past couple of days with iReporters starting to check in and we are starting to see more video and tornadoes actually captured on video.
[Reynolds Wolf, Cnn Meteorologist:] I know, hard to believe. We know today with today's modern technology people are able to go beyond the boundary and get shots like this one, T.J. I mean, look at that. You can just make out that low-hanging cloud. You see the funnel, itself. It's making contact with the ground. Just from this view it's hard to believe that thing can cause so much widespread destruction. And not just in parts of Tennessee, but we have seen that, T.J., in Alabama, we have seen it in the Carolinas, of course, and Mena, Arkansas. This is just the start of really severe weather season. You are going to see this playing out.
[Holmes:] Have they confirmed most of these? It seems so weird sometimes. You have to wait for them to confirm that they are tornadoes, but are they starting to confirm that
[Wolf:] Oh, there is no question.
[Holmes:] Oh, yeah.
[Wolf:] Absolutely. I mean, just by looking at some of the wreckage. Some of it you can just take a peak at, especially when you go up above. You are taking aerial observations. It doesn't take much at all to really confirm these things. But, again, it's that time of year. In springtime we often see these storms.
[Nguyen:] We have received so many responses from viewers on this very topic. A Texas lawmaker suggesting that Asians change their last names to make it easier to deal with. Take a listen.
[Betty Brown, Texas State Legislator:] Well, rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese, I understand it's a rather difficult language.
[Unidentified Male:] Right.
[Brown:] Do you think that it would behoove you, and your citizens, to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?
[Holmes:] Oh, my gosh.
[Nguyen:] Well, don't forget to e-mail us. We want you to sound off on this. We know you have thoughts about it. Because we have heard many of them already. Also, on Facebook and Twitter, go to those pages. You can see them right there, at Weekends @ CNN.com. You can reach us there. There are plenty of ways for you to let us know what you think about that very idea of having Asian-Americans change their last name so they can, quote, be "easier to deal with". Send us your thoughts, we'll read them on the air.