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Israel: 600+ Arrested, 140 Killed in Al-Shifa Operation; Kyiv Reels from First Russian Strikes in Weeks; U.S. Sues Apple in Antitrust Case; Police Kill Gang Leader in Gunfight, Residents Fight Back; Indian Opposition Leader Arrested Ahead of Election; U.N. Report: 2B+ Do Not Have Safe Drinking Water. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired March 22, 2024 - 00:00   ET

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

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RICH LITTLE, COMEDIAN: The salaries were actually ridiculous. I remember Dolly Parton was playing. They paid her over 300,000 a week. Everybody was astounded. Sometimes these salaries were so huge, you wonder how they were going to make their money. And they just couldn't continue to do it.

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LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR: Be sure to check out the final episode of the CNN original series, "VEGAS: THE STORY OF SIN CITY." It's airing Sunday night at 10 Eastern on CNN.

Hey, thank you all for watching. Our coverage continues.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Michael Holmes. Appreciate your company. Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM.

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DR. NICK MAYNARD, BRITISH SURGEON: I saw things at al-Aqsa hospital, which I still wake up at night thinking about.

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HOLMES: Nowhere to go. I'll talk with a doctor who describes apocalyptic conditions inside Gaza hospitals.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The way you see this is kill or be killed.

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HOLMES: Out-of-control gang violence inside Haiti, forcing people to take justice into their own hands. And --

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MERRICK GARLAND, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Consumers should not have to pay higher prices because companies break the law.

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HOLMES: And U.S. regulators try to take a bite down of Apple, suing the iPhone maker over its chokehold on the competition.

ANNOUNCER: Live from Atlanta, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Michael Holmes.

HOLMES: Negotiations are expected to resume in Doha in the hours ahead as the U.S., Israel, Egypt, and Qatar continue to work towards a potential ceasefire in Gaza and the return of hostages held by Hamas.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Arab leaders in Cairo on Thursday. He'll travel to Tel Aviv and meet with Israel's prime minister and war cabinet in the coming hours.

Egypt says the U.S. has agreed to plan what they describe as concrete steps to get more aid into Gaza. As for a ceasefire and hostage deal, America's top diplomat gave this assessment of the talks.

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ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Negotiators continue to work. The gaps are narrowing, and we're continuing to push for an agreement in Doha.

Still difficult work to get there, but I continue to believe it's possible.

The U.S. says it will bring its U.N. Security Council resolution on Gaza are up for a vote on Friday morning after vetoing multiple prior resolutions. This one from the U.S. will express support for the ongoing diplomatic efforts, while also calling for, quote, "an immediate and sustained ceasefire" in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.

A U.S. official says it's meant to pressure Hamas into accepting the deal on the table.

Meanwhile, European leaders voice support for a humanitarian pause in Gaza but fell short of calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Now on the ground in Northern Gaza, an Israeli military operation at Al-Shifa Hospital stretched into its fourth day, with thousands of civilians trapped on the premises.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond reports.

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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A crowded stairwell at Al-Shifa Hospital. Dozens of women and children await Israeli military instructions.

For four days, thousands of civilians have been trapped here as the Israeli military raids the hospital, targeting Palestinian militants allegedly operating inside the medical complex.

"Soldiers are everywhere," the voice on the loudspeaker warns. "If you leave the premises, the soldiers will shoot you. We have warned you. We have come here in order to get the Israeli hostages. Then, we will let you go."

Soon, word of evacuations begins to spread. "Now they're forcing out the women," the voice behind the camera says. "We don't know where they're going to take us."

The Israeli military says they have killed more than 140 militants in and around the hospital. And detained these five men, described as senior terror operatives among more than 600 suspects, the Israeli military says they've detained.

Eyewitnesses say medical personnel and other civilians have also been rounded up.

Outside the hospital, the fighting continues, as seen through the lens of Hamas militants, who have been targeting Israeli tanks and troops around the hospital complex.

Israeli airstrikes reducing parts of the surrounding al-Rimal neighborhood to rubble, sending thousands fleeing South. It's a journey marked by the sights and smells of death.

[00:05:06]

"We walked over the martyrs who are dead in the street. People are reduced to body parts," this woman cries. "Where is the humanity?"

The newly displaced arrive on foot in central Gaza, carrying only backpacks and plastic bags, children clutching dolls and stuffed animals.

Others, like this mother and her triplets, arrive with nothing at all.

"Tanks and artillery were firing at the buildings around Al-Shifa and forcing people to leave the building," she says. "They make them leave with nothing on them, nothing. No pillow, no blanket, not even water."

Nussa (ph) isn't just fleeing the fighting but the starvation that has left her eight-month-old babies thin and frail.

"You can see them," she says. "Each of them is not even two kilos. Eight months old and not even two kilos. Anyone who sees them would think they're only two months old. They are eight months. It's a catastrophe. No water, no food, and siege and gunfire."

But her journey is not over yet. She's heading further South in search of food and shelter, no longer taken for granted in Gaza.

Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE) HOLMES: For more on the dire conditions inside Gaza, we're joined by

Dr. Thaer Ahmad. He is now back in the United States after working inside Nasser Hospital earlier this year.

Doctor, really appreciate your time. How would you sum up conditions when you were in Gaza in terms of what you saw, but also the resources? I mean, it was apocalyptic. It was horrific. It was miserable. It really was conditions that I don't think we've ever seen before.

I worked for MedGlobal, a non-profit organization that we'd been in Yemen, in Sudan, in Syria, and Turkey after the earthquake, all over the world. And we've never seen anything like the Gaza Strip.

I mean, not only are we talking about an intense military campaign where 2.2 million people are close together in this very small strip of land. But we're not allowing any food, any water, any medicine in. Each hospital one-by-one seems to be dismantled, and the healthcare system has collapsed. So people who are injured have nowhere to go.

HOLMES: Yes.

AHMAD: And the doctors are also being killed in an alarming number. Four hundred health care workers have been killed and 200 abducted.

HOLMES: Yes, absolutely. Yes.

Another doctor, Dr. Nick Maynard, he spoke recently about what he saw at al-Aqsa Hospital. He spoke of one particular child with burns. I just want to play that for people.

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MAYNARD: I saw things at al-Aqsa Hospital which I still wake up at night thinking about. One child alone, never forget had burned so bad you could see her facial bones. We knew there was no chance of her surviving that. But there was no morphine to give her. So not only was she inevitably going to die, but she would die in agony.

And what made it even worse that there was nowhere for her to go and die, so she was just left on the floor of the emergency department to die.

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HOLMES: It's just impossible to comprehend that: facial blown -- bone showing, no morphine, no pain relief; left to die on the floor. Unimaginable. What -- what sorts of things will stay with you forever?

AHMAD: I will never forget a father begging me to continue working on his daughter after bringing her into the emergency department at Nasser, after their house had been bombed and destroyed.

And it was just an 11-year-old girl lying on the floor in the emergency department, lifeless. Knowing that I couldn't do anything. And he was begging me. He said it's only been five minutes. Please do something. It's only been five minutes.

And I didn't -- I couldn't bring myself to be able to tell him that there was nothing that we could do. And I had to watch that father pick up his daughter in the blanket that he had wrapped her in and brought her to the emergency department for home, and go and find somewhere in the middle of the night to bury her. And then go and try to find the place for him and his family to seek refuge or shelter in, knowing that there was nowhere for them to go.

I mean, every family has a story in the Gaza Strip. Everybody has lost someone. Everybody has been affected by this. And the vast majority of them seem to be women and children. And those numbers are what we saw at Nasser Hospital. That's the families that we had seen. And so many of them just had to say goodbye to their loved ones.

HOLMES: As a medical professional, how -- how frustrating -- frustrating is probably not the word -- infuriating is to have to work with such injuries with, for example, no way to alleviate the pain of the patients, to be able to treat them the way that you can outside of Gaza.

[00:10:03]

AHMAD: You know, that's something that I -- that I really struggled with when I was there, something that overwhelmed me. I mean, we are asking the Palestinian healthcare workers to do so much with so little. They don't even have clean gloves. They don't even have clean equipment. They have to treat patients on the floor, because there are no hospital carts.

Some days there are no pain medicine. Other days there's no antibiotics. They are watching patients suffer and die of slow and painful death.

And it's almost like -- and this is something that a nurse had told me. It's almost like you wish they would have just died initially in an airstrike or a bomb, rather than them having to suffer on the floor without any of their dignity and no one around them. I mean, that is the -- a catastrophe that's taking place in Gaza.

HOLMES: And to that point, what does the world need to do for those people in Gaza, the civilians, the women, and the children? Do -- do they feel, and I imagined they do, abandoned by the world?

AHMAD: Absolutely. I mean, the one thing that really stuck out in my head is that everybody is asking, are we not also human beings? Are we not also people who have children that they love?

I mean, I remember walking in the pediatric department of Nasser Hospital and going to a room where a child had been killed because a tank shell burst through her window, struck her in the head and instantly killed her.

And remember turning around and seeing 11 children playing Ring Around the Rosie in the department. The world needs to realize that Palestinians are human beings, too.

They need to understand that they have feelings. They want their kids to grow up. They don't want their kids to die in airstrikes.

And that's something that's the first step. The second that we realized that the 32,000 people and the 13,000 children have faces and have stories and have dreams, that's the step we can get closer to a ceasefire. That's the step that we can get closer to aid coming in from the border and reaching the hungry and starving people.

But right now, it seems like the entire world does not consider the Palestinians human enough.

HOLMES: Powerful testimony. Dr. Thaer Ahmad, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

AHMAD: Thank you for having me.

HOLMES: A Ukrainian defense source telling CNN that Russia's latest missile barrage on Kyiv was targeting the country's defense intelligence directorate. That's the Ukrainian agency behind a string of recent high-profile attacks and cross-border raids into Russia.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen with more on Thursday's attacks on Kyiv.

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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): After more than a month of relative calm, Ukraine's capital once again, under sustained Russian missile fire.

More than a dozen injured, mostly from falling debris, as the Ukrainians shot the missiles down.

"This is a ruthless extermination of the Ukrainians and an attack on the civilian population that was just sleeping," this man says.

"We feel hatred, terrible hatred," he says. "This is not fear. This is hatred towards Russia generally, and everyone in particular."

Russia's new missile blitz on Ukraine's capital coming just as Vladimir Putin was officially announced as the winner of the Russian presidential election, which was never in doubt.

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): The elections has shown that Russia today is one big friendly family. We walk together on the historical path, chosen by U.S., confident in ourselves, in our strengths and in our future. Thank you.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): But some Russians fear, their path after Putin's victory could lead them straight into military service and the battlefields in Ukraine, as Russia burns through soldiers while achieving only minor gains.

And the Russian defense ministry says they will drastically increase the size of the Russian military by tens of thousands of troops. SERGEI SHOIGU, RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTER (through translator): The plan is to form by the end of the year two combined arms armies of 30 units, including 14 divisions and 16 brigades.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): All this as the Ukrainians are already drastically outmanned and outgunned, ammunition stocks running dangerously low, Kyiv says.

The E.U. now wants to step up and use profits from Russian assets frozen in Europe to pay for arming Ukraine.

While the Kremlin is threatening to retaliate the Ukrainian say they'd welcome the measure with a U.S. funding is still held up by House republican leadership, even though national security advisor Jake Sullivan on a visit to Ukraine said he remains hopeful from our perspective, we are confident we will get this done we will get this aid to Ukraine just hours after Sullivan's remarks, Putin's missiles came raining down on key of a reminder that when it comes to getting weapons, stocks its replenished. The Ukrainians don't have a moment to lose.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Berlin.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Coming up on the program, why the U.S. Justice Department says tech giant Apple has too much power in the marketplace.

Also on patrol in Haiti, police struggle as they push into gang territory.

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DAVID CULVER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There are no front lines in this war. The boundaries are blurred, and they're constantly shifting. And these officers know driving around in an armored vehicle like this, well, they expect to be shot at. They're moving targets.

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HOLMES: The U.S. Justice Department and more than a dozen states are suing Apple in a massive antitrust lawsuit. The tech giant being accused of illegally controlling the smartphone market.

CNN's Brian Todd with more.

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BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's one of the most iconic, powerful brands in the world, now worth more than two-and-a- half trillion dollars. It's sold more than a billion iPhones worldwide. And Apple's ability to maintain that hold on the marketplace has put

it squarely in the crosshairs of the U.S. Justice Department on Thursday, Justice filing a sweeping anti-trust lawsuit against Apple, accusing the tech giant of illegally monopolizing the smartphone market.

GARLAND: For consumers, that has meant fewer choices; higher prices and fees; lower quality smartphones; apps and accessories; and less innovation from Apple and its competitors.

TODD (voice-over): At the heart of the antitrust suit, the allegation that Apple has set up its own closed ecosystem that limits Apple users to only using Apple products. That's also known as the "walled garden."

At the center of the walled garden, the iPhone.

TRIPP MICKLE, TECHNOLOGY REPORTER, "NEW YORK TIMES": And that's really, you know, the centerpiece of Apple's empire. It's -- it's what has made it such a dominant company for so long.

TODD (voice-over): One example of unfair practices alleged by the Justice Department: that Apple degrades the texts that iPhones receive from Android phones. Those green texts iPhones get from non-iPhones.

BRIAN FUNG, CNN TECHNOLOGY REPORTER: The Justice Department says that messages that are sent between iPhones are more secure because they're encrypted. But when you're messaging with a non-iPhone user, that those messages are not encrypted and thus less secure.

TODD: Also a difference in picture quality. A picture sent from an Android to an iPhone could be of lesser quality?

FUNG: Yes, according to the Justice Department, when those messages or images get exchanged, the quality is less. You know, images might look grainier. Videos might look grainier.

TODD (voice-over): Another example of what the Justice Department calls Apple's, quote, "exclusionary conduct" these days, good luck trying to use anything but Apple Pay if you're using your phone at the checkout counter.

GARLAND: Apple has blocked third-party developers from creating competing digital wallets on the iPhone. They use what is known as tap to pay functionality.

TODD (voice-over): And, Justice says, Apple Watches only work well with iPhones, forcing owners to buy nothing but Apple phones. The Justice Department says unlocking more competition for Apple products will lead to more innovation and lower prices for consumers.

[00:20:03]

FUNG: On the other hand, Apple says, look, if -- if the Justice Department gets its way, then that effectively makes Apple devices much more like Android devices, and consumers don't want that. TODD: Apple responded to this antitrust suit by saying that it, quote,

"threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets." Apple says, if the lawsuit is successful, it would hinder Apple's ability to create the kind of technology people expect from it.

And the company says the lawsuit is wrong on the facts of the law. Last fall, Apple did introduce plans to make texting from Android phones just as good as texting from iPhones.

Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Authorities in El Paso, Texas, say the situation is under control now, after a large group of migrants breached a barricade on the border with Mexico.

It's not clear what caused the rush, but officials describe it as an isolated incident. Between 400 and 600 people were arrested for illegally crossing the border between ports -- ports of entry.

Additional personnel had been deployed to the area, and patrols increased. A government official says there hasn't been any significant rise in the number of migrants crossing into El Paso, which has averaged about 1,000 a day for the past few months.

Now to the continuing civil unrest and humanitarian crisis in Haiti, the U.N. describing the gang violence, growing hunger, and rising fear as, quote, "humans suffering at an alarming scale."

The humanitarian coordinator for Haiti says more than 2,500 people have been killed, injured, or kidnapped over just the past couple of months.

The U.N. says more than 5 million Haitians need assistance, more than 3 million of them children.

And the gangs have advanced into new areas of the capital of Port-au- Prince in the last few days. All of this as talks drag on to form a transitional government and provide some semblance of political stability.

Here's more from the U.N. coordinator.

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UIRIKA RICHARDSON, U.N. HUMANITARIAN COORDINATOR FOR HAITI: The situation here in Haiti and Port-au-Prince, in particular, has really gone from very worrying to extremely alarming.

We now have a situation of -- of actually 5.5 million of the 11.4 population is in need of some type of humanitarian assistance. And that is, as you can imagine, it's a significant number.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HOLMES: The U.S. State Department says it was able to get more than 90 Americans out of Haiti on Thursday, about 60 of them taken to Miami, Florida.

And CNN has learned that one of the Haitian gang leaders was killed in Port-au-Prince on Thursday night. According to a source, he was killed in a gunfight with police.

Now residents are fighting back against the gangs, as CNN's David Culver reports. We do warn you: some of the images might be disturbing to some viewers.

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CULVER: Oh, my God. I see a body just sitting right in the middle of the street there. And people are trying to figure out the best way to get around it.

CULVER (voice-over): Across the street, this family rushes into a truck, shielding their little one's eyes: an effort to preserve what innocence is left here in Haiti.

The gruesome sight slowing but not stopping the morning rush hour.

CULVER: And you can even see here, look at this, a police car is just going right past. And it will continue on. Doesn't even stop.

CULVER (voice-over): A neighbor explains how an overnight gang attack ended in vigilante killings.

CULVER: This is gunfire.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

CULVER: A shooting here.

CULVER (voice-over): This man says he and more than 50 others immediately set out to find those terrorizing their neighborhood. They surrounded a man they didn't recognize.

CULVER: You believe he was a gang member?

CULVER (voice-over): Carrying machetes, he tells me, they carried out justice, as he sees it. The only way they know to defend themselves.

"When they come in shooting all around, trying to scare us to flee, we won't just let them kill us. They have to die," he tells me.

CULVER: The way you see this is killed or be killed?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oui, oui, oui, oui.

CULVER (voice-over): Police don't condone the killings, but they are overwhelmed and overrun, and they don't have time to stop them.

There are daily gun battles in the capital as police struggle to push the gangs back. The officers have willpower but little else.

We see that firsthand as we patrol with Haiti's national police.

CULVER: There are no front lines in this war. The boundaries are blurred, and they're constantly shifting. And these officers know, driving around in an armored vehicle like this?, well, they expect to be shot at. They're moving targets.

CULVER (voice-over): They cruise through gang territory, revealing a city in ruins and on fire.

[00:25:06]

At this intersection, we find another gruesome scene. Three bodies, half-eaten by dogs and still smoldering.

People desperate for food and for shelter, even if it is in the shell of what was once a government building.

CULVER: I mean, this is just a symbol of state collapse here. More than 1,500 have now occupied this building and made it their own, mostly children from what we see.

CULVER (voice-over): And there are those who line up for hours, trying to get visas to go anywhere but here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "Certainly, there's no security. There's no jobs, you know? And not only there's no jobs, they're running after us wherever we are.

CULVER (voice-over): The gangs are now targeting more affluent areas.

CULVER: What's left of an ATM is still in there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're trying to show themselves as Robin Hoods or stuff, but they're just thieves. They're just thieves; they're criminals.

CULVER (voice-over): For street vendors like this woman, who still have fruits to sell, no customers to buy them.

CULVER: because folks can't afford most of these items.

CULVER (voice-over): More troubling for her, the horrors she witnesses on these streets. "Many people have died," she tells me, "and they have to make trips to pick them up."

We see that for ourselves as we head back just before curfew. Medics clearing the remains of that suspected gang member. They hurry, not to save a life, but to pick up two more bodies on this same street.'

Here in Haiti, humanity has disintegrated into a brutal fight for survival. CULVER: Late Thursday, a Haitian security source confirming to us that

police killed a gang leader in an operation that played out in the downtown area, that same area in which we were embedded with police.

Police also, according to the source, killed several gang members. However, for officers, it's always a question as to how long they can hold the line.

David Culver, CNN, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Still to come, a prominent Indian opposition leader could be facing corruption charges just weeks before the country's general election. Why his supporters are crying foul. That's when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: Welcome back. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM with me, Michael Holmes.

[00:30:02]

Now one of India's top politicians and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's staunchest critics could face corruption charges just weeks before the country's general election.

Delhi's chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, was arrested on Thursday in an alleged corruption case. Local media reports say that he will appear in court Friday, where the charges against him will be made public.

CNN's Vedika Sud joins me now from New Delhi.

Good to see you, Vedika. What could these accusations mean for the election, especially with the opposition now crying foul about all of this?

VEDIKA SUD, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Michael, interesting times here in India just ahead of the general elections, which begin in less than a month from now.

Now the arrest of the incumbent chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal comes at a time when the Narendra Modi government, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and his government, stand accused of cracking down on political opponents and critics just ahead of the elections, making what the critics say is, there's an uneven playing field ahead of the elections for them while they campaign, which should start in a few days from now.

Now, just ahead of the phase of campaigning when the Delhi chief minister, Kejriwal, would be on the ground, asking people for what's ahead of the general elections, the Enforcement Directorate, which is the federal financial crime agency, which interestingly, comes under the Modi government here in India, arrested Kejriwal on Thursday evening.

There was high drama playing out inside and outside his residence. There were several E.D. officials that we're seeing there on the ground. And a couple of hours later, they took the chief minister of Delhi with them.

And that's when the party, the Aam Aadami Party -- he's the leader of the Aam Aadami Party 00 came out and issued statements over and over again, saying that Arvind Kejriwal has been arrested.

A bit on the case. In terms of the Enforcement Directory, they've come out and said that several politicians from Arvind Kejriwal's party, including him, have -- are now facing charges of corruption and taking kickbacks from an alcohol licensing policy.

Now, these claims have been denied by Arvind Kejriwal and the others from his cabinet who have already been arrested. A lot of the leaders from his cabinet, in fact, have been in jail for over a year without bail.

Now, talking about the elections, why is Arvind Kejriwal a prominent opposition leader? And what does this mean for the Indian elections?

Well, Kejriwal's party is a relatively new party, Michael, but it's also a small party. It actually grew from an anticorruption campaign. And today, he's the Delhi chief minister two times over.

Not only does Delhi --is Delhi governed by Arvind Kejriwal, but they've also got the neighboring state of Punjab that they govern. And this is something that critics say that the Modi government and the Bharatiya Janata Party that Modi's the leader of is not OK with.

They see Arvind Kejriwal as a thorn in their side.

Now Kejriwal has made it very clear that he wants to make this party a national party in the coming years. And perhaps that's one reason, according to critics, that they're not happy with the arrest off the chief minister of Delhi at a time like this, just weeks ahead of the elections. Raul Gandhi, a prominent opposition leader, has come out and made a very strong statement after the arrest.

He has said, quote, "A scared dictator wants to create a dead democracy."

We are going to hear from the court in a while from now, like you stated. There are protests expected in the coming hours. We'll keep you posted.

Back to you.

HOLMES: All right, Vedika. Thank you. Vedika Sud there for us in New Delhi.

Well, as World Water Day is observed around the globe in the coming days, some staggering numbers from the United Nations on the lack of access to clean water, and the impact of that. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. We'll be right back.

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HOLMES: Doctors in Boston have transplanted the first genetically modified pig's kidney into a living human being.

A 62-year-old man with end-stage kidney disease received the organ in a four-hour surgery that took place Thursday at Massachusetts general hospital. Doctors believed the kidney could lash years, but acknowledged there are many unknowns with animal to human transplants.

The hospital says the patient is recovering well and is expected to go home soon.

Now, a new report by the U.N. released to mark World Water Day on Friday warns that a lack of access to clean water is threatening peace worldwide. It says that water is often a tool and a target when it comes to warfare and regional tensions over water.

The report says that more than 2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. It also says 3.5 billion people lack access to sanitation that is safely managed.

And with the climate crisis, nearly 1.5 billion people have been affected by drought between 2002 and 2021.

The report concludes the world is not on track to make the U.N.'s goal of ensuring everyone has access to safe and clean water by 2030.

For more, I'm joined by UNESCO's editor in chief of the World Water Development Report," Richard Connor.

Thanks so much for making the time. In fact, I'll start off with a quote from the report's summary, if I can. And it says, quote, "Roughly half the world's population currently experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year. One quarter of the world's population face extremely high levels of water stress using over 80 percent of their annual renewable freshwater supply."

I mean, they're stunning statistics. What are the real-world impacts of those realities?

RICHARD CONNOR, CHIEF, WORLD WATER DEVELOPMENT REPORT: Well, I guess the first and most obvious is food and energy security because really, water underpins, you know, 80 percent of electricity production worldwide. Not to mention, of course, the entire food supply real world employment prosperity overall, but employment in particular.

In developing countries, 80 percent of jobs are water dependent. They're mostly in agriculture, but also the people that work in the markets or even -- even the banks in rural areas that support -- that support the farmers.

HOLMES: Yes.

CONNOR: So it's really -- the impacts are really across the board including prosperity.

HOLMES: How does climate change impact water issues?

CONNOR: In a nutshell, dry places or go -- are generally getting drier. Wet places are generally, generally getting wetter.

But even the wetter places doesn't mean they're going to have more water available, because it'll come in more extreme precipitation events. And there's no -- not necessarily a way to store that water for further dry periods.

So overall, climate change will increase, or at least the intensity of most of the water availability crises worldwide.

HOLMES: The report does make the point that some of the most severe impacts, and perhaps not surprising, will be felt by the least developed countries. What -- what needs to happen to mitigate that? What can be done?

CONNOR: Well, there's not much that can be done in terms of mitigating the effects of climate change. So it's really in terms of that adaptation in developing countries.

One -- the big problem is water storage. You know, the -- so that water is available for -- for cities and for farming activities, for agriculture during extensive dry periods.

[00:40:04]

But that costs money. Now, if you look at sub-Saharan Africa, where there are several countries and cities that are undergoing -- that are experiencing water crisis, it's not due to lack of water. It's due to lack of the infrastructure required to manage the water, to store it, and to deliver it to the users.

So you can almost talk about economic scarcity rather than actual physical water scarcity.

HOLMES: The world is, of course, full of crises: from war to hunger to natural disasters. Is enough focus being put on the water situation and the trends that are outlined in the report?

CONNOR: Well, obviously, we're coming from the water community, and we're saying absolutely not.

I mean, of course you have -- you know, right now or in the last, what, decade or less, you've had a pandemic. You've had water conflicts. There is mass migration. You know, there -- so there's all kinds of other crises, but water is closely related to them.

And in fact, water for the most part, is a necessary -- a necessary part of the solutions. Unfortunately, if you compare, for instance, water and energy, energy

is very much seen as an economic issue. And so it does get a lot of, -- a lot of attention from decision-makers, politicians, et cetera. Whereas water is much more seen as a social or environmental issue.

Yet water under -- really, as I said at the beginning, it really underpins prosperity. So by, maybe by recognizing the economic import -- importance of water as a driver of growth in the economy, hopefully that will get a little bit more attention from decision-makers.

HOLMES: Yes, certainly needs it. Richard Connor, we've got to leave it there. Appreciate the time. Thank you so much.

CONNOR: Thank you. Happy Water Day.

HOLMES: The NCAA men's basketball tournament is in full swing, and it wouldn't be March Madness without an early upset.

Fourteen-seed Oakland could be this year's Cinderella story, maybe, after they knocked off No. 3, Kentucky, 80 to 76.

Senior guard Zach Golgi (ph) led the Golden Grizzlies with 32 points, including ten three-pointers, which is close to the record for this competition.

The Kentucky Wildcats are now 1 and 4 in their last five NCAA tournament games. Good for them.

I'm Michael Holmes. Thanks for spending part of your day with me. I will be back at the top of the hour with more CNN NEWSROOM. But first, WORLD SPORT, after the break.

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