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Ukraine-Russia Sea Clash: Trump May Cancel G20 Putin Talks; Martial Law Takes Effect In Parts of Ukraine; Alarming Rise of Anti- Semitism in Europe; Crash Of Lion Air Flight JT-610. Aired 2-3 ET

Aired November 28, 2018 - 02:00   ET

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


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ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Rising tensions and martial law set to begin in Ukraine as the country's president warns a full- scale war is possible after a naval clash with Russia.

Ignorance and hate, the latest from a CNN investigation into the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the disturbing trends in Germany.

Plus the crash of Lion Air Flight 610: investigators reveal what happened in the cockpit minutes before it plunged into the ocean.

Hello and welcome to our viewers joining from us all around the world, I'm Rosemary Church and this is CNN NEWSROOM.

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CHURCH: Martial law is going into effect right now across parts of Ukraine. Russia seized three Ukrainian ships and more than 20 troops on Sunday near Crimea. Ukraine's president says they now face a full- scale Russian invasion. The reaction in many Western countries has been swift.

NATO is condemning Russia's use of force but U.S. president Donald Trump said earlier he's waiting on a full report from his national security team. He tells "The Washington Post" he may not meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin at the G20.

For the latest, CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is live in the Ukranian capital, Kiev. He joins us now.

Nick, Ukraine's president warns a full-scale war with Russia and martial law, as we report it, now in effect across parts of the country.

What is the international community doing about this increased tension?

We hear them talking.

But what actions will be taken? NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There are no actions at the moment, Rosemary. The key thing I think here is while some European states have suggested that maybe further sanctions are required, we still are looking to the White House to set the general tone.

As you said earlier on, Trump said last night he was waiting on a full report. That's a full report about events that occurred on Sunday from his national security team. He also said he didn't like the aggression at all. But I think his response has been a little muted compared to that of his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who condemned Russian aggression and in fact of Nikki Haley, his U.N. ambassador.

It was Haley's comments strangely that national security adviser John Bolton referred back to when asked about Ukraine, only very briefly during the White House press briefing yesterday.

Without being too American-ocentric about this, it is quite startling frankly that we have the capacity for possibly some broad conflict on the European mainland to break out and the White House often views it as a seconds-long riposte during a lengthy briefing.

But here in Ukraine, just in the last few minutes, officially, martial law has gone into effect here. We're living suddenly in the last few minutes in a country surrounded by razor wire, this is something slightly more subtle. It's about heightened air defenses, cyber defenses.

We're told there aren't any immediate changes at airports or checkpoints but there's two things potentially which may escalate tension.

One is the fact that this martial law has gone into effect in the 10 regions near the separatist areas and near border areas, where Russian troops are operating and, of course, last night, Petro Poroshenko, the Ukranian president, told CNN in fact that he thought it might be possible -- he hadn't decided yet -- that they would restrict the entry of Russian citizens into Ukraine.

That will be a drastic measure certainly, given how many Russians have families here and in Ukraine and vice versa. So an escalating sense of tension here, particularly with 12 of those soldiers arrested after the Kerch Strait incident, being sent to jail terms until January yesterday and potentially another dozen facing a similar fate today -- Rosemary.

CHURCH: Let's talk more about the likely impact of martial law in parts of Ukraine.

What impact would that have on -- you mentioned the impact on Russians -- what about within the country itself, Ukrainians?

WALSH: We just don't know because this is something on paper, which reads one way and then something that, on the ground, given Petro Poroshenko only revealed during an interview last night, that they might stop Russians coming into the country, it may on the ground actually look somewhat different.

I think the key question is, does this really result in some sort of blockade with separatist areas?

Those inside those areas, Russian backed; there's been a war -- and this has been a war going on for the last two or three years, quite intensely, backed by Russia, designed to whittle away what remains of Ukrainian economic prosperity.

Those in separatist areas were concerned that there may be an escalation in violence and they may find it --

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WALSH: -- hard to leave separatist areas. Some of them still collect their state pensions from the Ukrainian state in Ukrainian territory.

But that might become harder, too. So potential complexities in the days ahead for them. But I think more, if the blockade is put into effect in those areas, that will heighten tension, too, and perhaps provide Moscow with the excuse it may need to escalate tensions, too.

There are a lot of Russian military maneuvers on the southern end of their border and many reports of as well. So I think a fear that, while Angela Merkel in Germany calls for deescalation here, day by day the rhetoric heightens for both sides. The actions continue to wind each other up and Moscow and Kiev appear, frankly, both content to allow this to continue to grow in tension rather than dissipate -- Rosemary.

CHURCH: We will be watching very closely to see what happens. Nick Paton Walsh, joining us live from Kiev, many thanks.

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CHURCH: CNN is reporting all this week on the troubling rise of anti- Semitism in our special series, "A Shadow over Europe." Our extensive investigation and polling tracks the surge in hate crimes and hate speech across Europe.

Surprisingly, some of the ugliest examples come from Germany, the country whose Nazi leaders killed 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. Germany has gone to great lengths to atone for their atrocities and to remember the victims.

But new polling commissioned by CNN shows 55 percent agree that anti- Semitism is once again a growing problem in Germany; 50 percent say Jewish people are at risk of racist violence in Germany and 16 percent believe most anti-Semitism is a response to the everyday behavior of Jewish people.

Well, Germany has seen a surge in neo-Nazis and far right nationalist groups over the past few years. But they're not the only ones behind the rise in anti-Semitism. CNN's chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward has our report.

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CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a sight you don't expect to see in Germany in 2018. Hundreds of right-wing extremists, many neo-Nazis marching through the nation's capital.

"Close the border" they shout. "Resistance, resistance." The far right is enjoying a major come back here, bringing with it a troubling rise in anti-Semitism.

According to government figures, anti-Semitic attacks have increased by 20 percent in the last five years. The number of violent right- wing extremists has gone up by nearly a third. This man tells us a shadowy cabal of globalist controls the world.

So, when you talk about elites and you talk about finance is that another way of saying Jewish people?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

WARD: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

WARD: It is.

"Let me say it this way. The banking system, for sure. Banks, finance, the economy, mainly Jews," he says. We had more questions but our conversation was cut short by one of the march's organizers.

I think we have someone who is following.

Making anti-Semitic statements can be punishable under German law. But Christian Weissberger explains that neo-Nazis are finding new ways to express the same old hatred. And he should know, Weissberger used to be a right-wing extremist himself.

CHRISTIAN WEISSBERGER, FORMER NEO-NAZI: I would say that it is a form of anti-Semitism that disguised itself, so they don't talk about the Jew anymore, they talk about the Zionist, or the globalist or the bankers.

WARD: And they are growing more brazen. One man flashes a quick but unmistakable Nazi salute right in front of us, a crime in Germany. It's important to remember this isn't any country, this is Germany.

Just a few hundred yards from the march is a memorial for the millions of Jews murdered here in the Second World War. More than 70 years after the Holocaust, Germany is still haunted by its past and yet remarkably anti-Semitism is once again a growing problem here with 50 percent of Germans agreeing that Jewish people are now at risk of racist violence.

The statistic comes from a CNN poll that also found half of Germans believe Jews are at risk of hate speech. At Feinberg's Israeli --

[02:10:00] WARD (voice-over): -- restaurant, owner Yorai says he gets threats every day.

YORAI FEINBERG, RESTAURANT OWNER: From murder, to I'll break your knees, I'll break your arms, I'll break your teeth, they're very creative in everything. All of the options that they want to break.

WARD: He was recently accosted by a man who told him Jews will end up in the gas chamber.

"It's only about the money for you, you will pay," the man says to him. "Nobody wants you here."

He told you to go to the gas chambers or that you will go back to the gas chambers?

FEINBERG: Yes.

WARD: You've heard things like that before?

FEINBERG: I heard it very often.

WARD: Germany acknowledged it has a problem, recently appointing its first anti-Semitism czar. Felix Klein is focused on creating a nationwide system for reporting anti-Semitic crimes and on improving integration of Germany's different communities.

FELIZ KLEIN, ANTI-SEMITISM COMMISSIONER, GERMANY: Anti-Semitism always existed in Germany and also after 1945 and now though, it is showing its ugly face more openly. Things that people would never have dared to say in a bar or in a restaurant and a private surrounding do it so now using social media or the internet.

WARD: Germany has seen upticks in neo-Nazi activity before. Most notably in the 1990s. While official statistics show that more than 90 percent of anti-Semitic attacks nationwide are from the far right, there's a new element of concern for the Jewish community. The arrival of 1.4 million Muslim refugees in the last three years.

Doron Rubin is the leader of Germany's small Orthodox Jewish community.

DORON RUBIN, HEAD, KAHAL ADASS JISROEL CONGREGATION: A lot of coming, the incoming of a lot of immigrants, a different history and different background and especially obviously coming from the Middle East also because of Israel, a different attitude towards Jews.

KLEIN: When we talk about Muslims originated anti-Semitism, I think we can only win that battle with the help of the moderate Muslims, without them, this wouldn't be a successful fight.

WARD: Overall, the Jewish community remains anxious.

RUBIN: I think much more Jews now think again like can we call Germany our home. And is it possible to live in this society. You can know that that's question that might not have been asked five years ago are starting to pop up again.

WARD: It's a question few in this country ever imagined would have to be asked again -- Clarissa Ward, CNN, Berlin.

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CHURCH: CNN's investigation is getting attention around the world from human rights activists to heads of state.

Marsha Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, says, "The results indicate that substantial numbers of European citizens hold dangerous views about Jews ... the stereotypes that we hoped were disappearing about Jews are sadly alive and well."

And the chairman of Israel's official memorial to victims of the Holocaust said, "The survey highlights the troubling fact that many entrenched hateful anti-Semitic tropes persist in European civilization, 75 years after the end of the Holocaust."

Coming up next hour, we'll go live to Jerusalem, where our Oren Liebermann spoke with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu about his reaction to CNN's investigation.

The rise in anti-Semitism is not unique to Europe. Anti-Semitic incidents and hate crimes are surging in the United States as well. The FBI says they increased in both 2016 and 2017. CNN's Sara Sidner reports on the state of hate in America.

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RABBI JEFFREY MYERS, TREE OF LIFE SYNAGOGUE: I'm not just concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism, I'm concerned about the rise of hate in our country.

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A quiet Saturday morning of prayer and reflection at rabbi Jeffrey Myers' synagogue in Pittsburgh...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Contact! Shots fired, shots fired!

SIDNER (voice-over): -- savagely interrupted by gunfire.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's got an automatic weapon. He's firing right in front of the synagogue.

SIDNER (voice-over): Anti-Semitism had blasted its way back into America's consciousness.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have at least four down in the atrium, DOA at this time.

SIDNER (voice-over): Barry Werber was praying inside the Tree of Life Synagogue when bullets started flying. He hid in a closet as a gunman mowed down 11 of his fellow worshippers.

SIDNER: What is it like being a survivor? BARRY WERBER, SYNAGOGUE MEMBER: Sometimes I just feel dead inside. No feeling at all. And I hate that feeling. But it's there.

SIDNER: How many of your friends have you had to bury?

WERBER: Too many to count.

SIDNER (voice-over): It was the deadliest anti-Semitic --

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SIDNER (voice-over): -- attack in American history. The personification of a rising state of hate in this country. The Anti- Defamation League says anti-Semitism in America was already exploding, from neo-Nazi marches to more subtle propaganda.

In 2017, the ADL logged nearly 2,000 anti-Semitic incidents, a 57 percent spike in just one year.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's the single largest surge we've ever seen since we've started tracking this data.

SIDNER: The FBI, which only counts hate crimes reported by police, saw an astonishing 37 percent rise in anti-Semitic crimes. The police in Pittsburgh says the gunman's anti-Semitic fervor was spelled out on social media.

One site in particular that attracts racists and neo-Nazi because of its loose policies on free speech. Experts say those sites are becoming echo chambers that are getting louder and helping motivate real-life attacks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Race war now.

SIDNER (voice-over): The anger and misguided ideology of neo-Nazi which has been permeating the dark corners of the internet now materializing on street corners and being scrawled across the American landscape.

Swastikas on a temple in Indiana, on a school in Colorado, on a school bus in Florida, on political signs in California and on street signs in Nevada, words of hate on a temple in California.

SIDNER: What was spelled out here?

RABBI YISROEL CINER, BETH JACOB CONGREGATION OF IRVINE: Expletive, F- U, Jew, expletive again in red spray paint.

SIDNER (voice-over): And anti-Semitism expressed through bullet holes shot through a temple in Indiana. Cars were set ablaze at a Jewish cultural center in Tennessee.

And across the country, posters are popping up on college campuses meant to instill Nazi ideals in young minds. Even the dead are targets.

At 92 years old, Millard Braunstein knows the pain of loss.

MILLARD BRAUNSTEIN, MOTHER'S GRAVE DESECRATED: This was the love of my life.

SIDNER: But he's never personally experienced anti-Semitism until this year, when 175 tombstones at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia were desecrated.

BRAUNSTEIN: My mother's stone was knocked over and it was really very upsetting.

I said, how could this happen in America today?

SIDNER: For the victims of anti-Semitism, the question is, why has it returned with such a vengeance?

JONATHAN GREENBLATT, CEO, ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE: Anti-Semitism is nothing new. What is new is, number one, the public conversation. The charged atmosphere, the incredibly polarized phenomenon in our society today.

SIDNER: Experts say Charlottesville, Virginia, last year was a turning point. The moment the growing rise in racism and anti- Semitism went public. Hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazi and Klansmen took to the streets, protesting the decision to remove a Confederate statue.

It was one of several protests last year, but this was different. It began with a torch-lit march on Friday night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALES (chanting): Jews will not replace us.

SIDNER: That turned into a violent confrontation the next morning between white nationalists and counter-protesters. In the end, police say a man with neo-Nazi ideals killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Those who monitor neo-Nazis say the aftermath may have encouraged the movement.

TRUMP: But you also had people that were very fine people -- on both sides.

SIDNER: Especially because the president's lack of a complete condemnation of what happened was cheered by white nationalists.

BRAUNSTEIN: Show me a good neo-Nazi and show me a good Ku Klux Klansman. I mean, it just isn't there.

WERBER: Instead of saying, well, there's wrong on both sides, how were we wrong? What were we doing wrong? Except praying. That can't be wrong.

SIDNER: Barry Werber likens that kind of thinking to Hitlerism. He's well aware of the torture that regime meted out on a family member.

WEBER: He was used by the German scientists for experiments. They had literally cut the muscles out of his arms to see if they would regrow. And he had to live with that. Thank God I never had to go through that.

SIDNER: Jews have a saying about the Holocaust: never again. After what he's been through, Werber is terrified it really could happen again -- Sara Sidner, CNN, Pittsburgh.

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CHURCH: We have much more on this important CNN investigation. Ahead, I will speak with Rabbi Marvin Hier from the Simon Wiesenthal Center on how to break the stereotypes --

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CHURCH: -- about Jewish people.

Plus a Lion Air flight crashes minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 people on board. A new report offers a glimpse of what went wrong. We'll have the details for you on the other side of the break.

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CHURCH: We're learning more about what went wrong before that Lion Air crash that killed 189 people in October. In a new preliminary report, Indonesian investigators say the Boeing 737 aircraft experienced similar flight control problems on a previous flight but the pilots took different action.

It suggested Lion Air can do more to improve safety and ensure operation documents are properly filed. But it did not offer a definitive cause of the crash. Boeing has responded and said the report does not disclose what action taken by the pilots on the doomed flight.

Our Ivan Watson joins us now from Hong Kong with more on this.

So, Ivan, people do want answers. They need to know the cause of this crash to establish if the problem was with the aircraft or the airline to know what to do going forward.

So did we get any closer to getting answers to that question?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It does seem that there's a cascading chain of events that could have contributed to this disaster that happened a month ago off the coast of Indonesia with this crash that killed 189 passengers and crew.

But one of the main issues was that there was an angle of attack center that had been chronically not functioning well in the days running up to the crash. It had been replaced but it was still not functioning well.

On this final doomed flight that only lasted for 11 minutes, the copilot radioed into air-traffic control 90 seconds after takeoff and asked the air traffic controllers to please confirm the altitude of flight JT-610. It meant they were not confident about their own instrument readings.

That copilot at that moment also said there was a flight control problem. What we see from the report, with data gathered from the flight data recorder that was retrieved off the bottom of the Java Sea, is a very disturbing pattern, where a kind of autopilot feature kicked --

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WATSON: -- in that forced the plane's nose to turn down because the plane's computer thought that it was going into a stall. So this graphic, which we've taken from the preliminary report, shows you the orange line. That's the autopilot and every dip is the autopilot aiming the plane down.

The blue line above it is every time the copilot tried to pull the plane up in response. This happened more than 30 times over the course of an 11-minute flight, which suggests how terrifying and how bumpy this must have been for the pilots and for the passengers on board as well.

Ultimately the plane plunged into the sea. What the investigators haven't been able to confirm to us is why the crew weren't able to turn off the autopilot feature, as a different crew did the night before on a previous flight, on the same plane, when they encountered the same autopilot malfunction.

That is a question that the investigators are asking about. They're still looking for the cockpit flight recorder, the voice recorder, which could give us answers as to what the pilots were trying to do as they were quite literally wrestling with the autopilot features on this plane.

CHURCH: The details are just chilling and hopefully we will get closer to what actually caused the crash. Ivan Watson, thank you so much for joining us.

British lawmakers investigating fake news and disinformation did not get the answers they were looking for from social media giant Facebook. In London, lawmakers from nine countries grilled Facebook executives at Parliament. They left an empty chair for CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who did not show up.

Business correspondent Hadas Gold was there.

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HADAS GOLD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I was in the room and I can tell you that you could just sense the frustration from these members of Parliament, from everywhere, from Argentina to Ireland to Latvia and, of course, the United Kingdom. And many of them were incredibly frustrated that Mark Zuckerberg declined to show up, decline to even be made available over Skype or a video link or anything like that. Instead, he sent a deputy, a vice president of policy for Europe, who

then had to take in this barrage of questions about everything from Russian meddling to disinformation and fake news and also data privacy.

I want to read a little bit of a statement from one Canadian lawmaker, which really gets to the sense of the frustration. This is from Charlie Angus (ph).

She said, "We've never seen anything quite like Facebook. While we were playing on our phones and apps, our democratic institutions seem to have been up ended by frat boy billionaires from California."

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CHURCH: A British lawmaker has seized some of Facebook's internal documents and he says they could be released within a week.

Time for a short break now. When we come back, CNN's special investigation, "A Shadow over Europe," why memories of the Holocaust seem to be fading across Europe.

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[02:30:40] CHURCH: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Rosemary Church. I want to check the headlines for you this hour. Ukraine has just imposed martial law in areas it says under threat from Russia. The two countries are trading accusations after Russia seized three Ukrainian naval ships near Crimea. Ukraine's president says his country could be facing a full-scale ware with Russia.

Indonesian investigators have released more findings about the Lion Air crash in October that killed 189 people. It says the Boeing 737 aircraft experienced similar flight control problems on a previous flight, but the pilots took different action. Boeing says the report doesn't disclose what action was taken by the pilot on the doomed flight. The report recommends that Lion Air do more to improve safety. Appalling and frightening, just a few of the responses from around the world to an extensive CNN investigation into anti-Semitism in Europe.

More than 70 years after Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust, a major CNN poll across seven European countries found hatred or suspicion of Jewish people remains prevalent. Among the most shocking findings, 10 percent of those surveyed said they view Jewish people unfavorably. More than a quarter said Jewish people have too much influence in finance and business. One in five said they have too much influence in media and in politics.

Stunningly, one-third of those surveyed said they know little or nothing about the holocaust. And 44 percent say anti-Semitism is a growing problem in their country. Rabbi Marvin Hier is the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles and I asked him earlier about his reaction to the CNN investigation and polling.

MARVIN HIER, FOUNDER, SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER: We're only 75 years from the Holocaust and here we are in every single European city blaming the Jews. Twenty-five thousand Jews have left France. Forty percent of British Jews say they're considering leaving. What has happened on our planet that people are saying they never know about the Holocaust? It's quite amazing quite shocking.

CHURCH: It is confounding. Absolutely. And the CNN survey also found that many stereotypes and myths about the Jewish people still exist. How do you go about dispelling those myths and stereotypes?

HIER: Well, it's very hard to dispel it. First of all, a lot of it is playing jealousy. Rather than face to face say the Jews are very good at finance. Look, I watched the NBA. I would say that the African-Americans represented the NBA are better than the Jews in terms of playing basketball. So if you ask me why is that? I'd say because they're better athletes. There's nothing wrong with saying, why are the Jews in finance is something that they like and they're good at?

They're also good at medicine. If one looks at what the Jews have contributed to human rights, to humanity in the fields of medicine, in the fields of literature, on the fields of science, so rather than say, we applaud them for that, they are jealous of it and they say they must be some kind of a fix in and there goes anti-Semitism again.

CHURCH: So how do you -- how do you stop that? How do you change that thinking then that culture, that response to the Jewish people? What can you do about that?

HIER: Well, you can -- you can simply educate them as to what happened during the Holocaust. You know, the other day I was reading (INAUDIBLE) the commandant of Auschwitz and it was asked by a Jewish psychiatrist, how did you kill millions of people and you had a home in Auschwitz? How did you raise your children there? And he said, what kind of newspapers?

[02:35:05] And he said, oh, he got -- he got the regular army newspaper. But he said he would never read Julius Streicher's Der Sturmer because that was -- that would be just too upsetting to my -- to my family. So the psychiatrist said to him, you murdered millions of people and you wouldn't take Der Sturmer in the house? That's the contradiction that we see now in Europe. The streets of Europe were full of the atrocities of the Holocaust and now they say they never heard of it and worst they blamed the Jews.

The Jews are too much involved in finance. They are too much involved in medicine. It's the old canoed of hatred. There's no perfect cure. Education is the best attempt. But, unfortunately, it's been on our planet for 3500 years.

CHURCH: But why do you think we are seeing this rising tide in anti- Semitism now at this time not only across Europe but also here in the United States even though our children are taught about the Holocaust? My children were taught about it. They still are. They are reading books about it. They understand the Second World War. It's part of the curriculum. So the education is there certainly in the United States. I can't speak to it across Europe. But what is happening here? Why at this time?

HIER: Well, across Europe -- first of all, Europe has particularly now let's say Germany, in France, there are very -- there are large Muslim populations. There's -- it would come as no shock. The Muslims many of them do not like Israel. Israel enters the fray and as a result of that, look, you can't wear a yarmulke, a skull cap. I'm wearing a skull cap and if you wear a skull car in France, anywhere in France or in Germany, they tell you not to do it and that shows you how prevalent anti-Semitism is.

CHURCH: And on Thursday, we turn the focus to France, home to the largest Jewish population in Europe. Anti-Semitism has always been a problem, but attacks have increased in recent years. Clarissa Ward talks to one woman who questions her family's future in France.

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WARD: Miriam and her family have considered moving from France joining the more than 55,000 Jews who have left since the year 2000. In a sanctuary of their home, they celebrate Shabbat, a ritual ushered in every Friday night by lighting candles and reciting a blessing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And cared for (INAUDIBLE) of my baby here. I hope that he will have a future here and, you know, Jewish communities are part of history of France really. And so, I think France without (INAUDIBLE) anymore France.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: And Clarissa also talks to officials from the French government to find out what they're doing to counter this trend. You can join us for the next report in our exclusive series, A Shadow over Europe, Anti-Semitism in 2018. That's Thursday only on CNN. And next on CNN NEWSROOM, just days after the U.S. warns on climate change, the U.N. joins the chorus of concern. But hear why President Trump is skeptical of his own experts. Back with that in just a moment.

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[02:41:10] CHURCH: There's nothing new and damning report on climate change. This time from the United Nations. It says the world is woefully short of the goal to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius. The report says countries must triple their efforts to curb carbon dioxide emissions. Worldwide those emissions hit a record high last year and current pledges from the world's biggest economies are not enough to bridge the emissions gap.

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SATYA TRIPATHI, HEAD OF THE NEW YORK OFFICE OF THE UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME: There's critical evidence that countries are not doing enough and we really need to do better. And the biggest elephant in the room that we refuse to see is the risk that it causes to everything we like and appreciate in this planet whether it be biodiversity a thing or sustainable finance or, you know, the health of the planet and the people prosperity or peace or human movements. I mean you just pick up anything you like everything is at risk if we do not buckle up and prevent from the catastrophic risks and that the world is facing today.

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CHURCH: Donald Trump though probably doesn't believe a word of that U.N. report since he doesn't even believe the climate change findings from his own administration. The U.S. government's report last week also delivered a dire warning about the impact of global warming. But President Trump was largely dismissive. He told the Washington Post and I'm directly quoting him here, "One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence, but we're not necessarily such believer as to whether or not it's man-made and whether or not the effects that you're talking about are there, I don't see it."

All right. Finally, this hour, new video of the gender reveal party that backfired big time. The U.S. fire service just released the video where a father to be shot a target filled with explosives. Now, the blue cloud means the baby is a boy of course. But those flames meant big trouble (INAUDIBLE) to what became known as the Sawmill Fire in Arizona which burned 19,000 hectares and took five firefighters more than a week to put out.

The father, a U.S. border patrol agent admitted what happened and was ordered to pay more than eight million dollars in damages. Unbelievable. Well, thank you so much for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Rosemary Church. Remember to connect with me anytime on Twitter @RosemaryCNN. I would love to hear from you. And so to know for "WORLD SPORT". You're watching CNN. Stick around.

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