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British Government under Pressure to Tighten Restrictions; At Current Pace of Vaccination, America Needs 10 Years to Complete; U.S. Reels under Daily Virus Death Tolls, Tuesday a Record 3,700; Nearly 2.5 Million Ballots Cast in Georgia Senate Runoff; Beijing Sentences 10 Hong Kong Activists to Jail; Argentina's Senate to Vote on Legalizing Abortion; U.K. Parliament to Weigh in on Brexit Trade Deal Wednesday; North Korean Refugee Uses Virtual Reality to Visit Hometown; Nearly 2.5 Million Ballots Already Cast in Georgia Senate Run-offs. Aired 12-12:45a ET

Aired December 30, 2020 - 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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PAULA NEWTON, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and a very warm welcome to our viewers joining us from all around the world, I'm Paula Newton live from the CNN Center in Atlanta.

Ahead right here on CNN NEWSROOM:

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JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: The next few weeks and months are going to be very tough, very tough period for our nation.

NEWTON (voice-over): The stark warning from the president-elect as vaccine distribution moves slower than expected. And the U.S. finds its first case of a COVID variant.

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NEWTON (voice-over): Plus Argentina appears on the verge of legalizing abortion. Live in Buenos Aires with the details of that historic, vote.

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NEWTON (voice-over): Later a project intended to promote peace with North Korea, how South Korean virtual reality designers are helping blur the lines for separated families.

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NEWTON: Now from East Asia to North America, at least 26 countries have detected the new strain of coronavirus, first found in the U.K. On Tuesday, the United States became the latest to report its first case of the variant.

Officials say a man in Colorado was somehow infected even though he had no travel history. That is significant. According to one expert the U.S. could see more cases as well as its own variant in the weeks ahead.

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DR. PETER HOTEZ, PROFESSOR AND DEAN OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: We finally picked up the U.K. one. I'm sure if -- as we expand our virus genomic surveillance, and I hope the Biden administration will make that a priority, we'll see a lot more of the U.K., one. We will see the South African one.

Guess what? We're going to see homegrown variants that are similar in character in terms of transmissibility. I can almost promise you that.

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NEWTON: Variant from U.K. continues to spread. Officials fear it will further strain America's health system. On Tuesday, the country reported a staggering nearly 125,000 hospital admissions. That is another new daily high.

Meantime the British government is under pressure to further tighten COVID19 restrictions, after hitting another record daily high for new infections there. There were almost 53, there were little bit more than, pardon me, 53,000 new cases Tuesday. Officials say hospitals in England are being pushed to the brink.

Several areas, may be put under the toughest tier 4 measures, Salma Abdelaziz has the latest, from London.

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SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN PRODUCER: Health officials here are ringing the alarm as this country faces unprecedented infection rates.

For the second day in a row, the U.K. broke its record of new daily COVID-19 cases. And that's not the only warning sign.

There are now more patients in hospital with coronavirus than at any point before and the London ambulance service, they say they're receiving a huge volume of calls, thousands a day, nearly as much as the first wave of this pandemic in the spring.

Now doctors, nurses, health care officials pleading with the public to please follow the restrictions, please follow the rules. They say hospitals are vulnerable.

Take a listen to what the chief executive of the National Health Service had to say.

SIMON STEVENS, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE, U.K.: This has probably been the toughest year that most of us can remember. That's certainly true across the health service where we've been responding to the worst pandemic in a century.

And now, of course, again, we're back in the eye of the storm with this second wave of coronavirus sweeping Europe and, indeed, this country.

ABDELAZIZ: A very stark warning there. And fears from experts that the worst is yet to come. Health officials expect a spike due to Christmastime celebrations to hit the hospitals next year.

At the same time, many health care workers are having to call out sick, having to isolate. So we're looking at potentially hospitals teetering on the edge in the new year.

But there are signs of hope, signs of progress. A new vaccine by Oxford University and AstraZeneca is set to be approved by British regulators anytime now. And it will be rolled out as early as January 4th -- Salma Abdelaziz, CNN, London.

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NEWTON: So now to some startling numbers from the city where COVID-19 first emerged, Wuhan, China. As of Sunday authorities there had confirmed just over 50,000 cases of the virus in this pandemic. But this is the result of a new study by China's CDC, which suggests almost 10 times as many people may have been infected in Wuhan.

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NEWTON: The researchers analyzed data to determine how many people would have antibodies. The CDC says the study was conducted a month after China moved to contain the first wave.

Now the U.S. president-elect is warning Americans that the weeks and months ahead could be the toughest of the pandemic. Joe Biden says he is expanding his COVID response team and his administration will spare no effort to provide vaccines.

He is critical of the Trump administration's vaccine distribution plan and says it's following, in his words, far behind. An estimated 2 million Americans have been vaccinated in the past 2 weeks.

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BIDEN: Even if we boost the speed of vaccinations to 1 million shots a day, it will still take months to have a majority of the United States population vaccinated. I've directed my team to prepare a much more aggressive effort with more federal involvement and leadership to get things back on track.

We'll find ways to boost the pace of vaccinations. This is going to be the greatest operational challenge we've ever faced as a nation but we're going to get it done.

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NEWTON: Now for his part, President Trump responded to Biden's criticism, tweeting, "It is up to the states to distribute the vaccines once brought to the designated areas by the federal government. We have not only developed vaccines, including putting up money to move the process along quickly but gotten them to the states."

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NEWTON: CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen joins me now, she's also a former Baltimore health commissioner.

We use your title, it's really denotes something quite significant, you are a public health professional. This is something that I know shakes you to your core when you see that vaccines are not being rolled out here in the United States at the pace at which they need to be rolled out.

I've been really interested to hear from you, because you're not trying to blame people or point fingers. You're saying, look, we need to find out what's wrong, right, and fix it.

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: That's exactly right, this is not about blame, it's about introspection and having humility to say, this is the most ambitious vaccine program that we've ever undertaken as a country.

So we know that there are going to be hiccups along the way. But let's not over promise and under deliver. Let's figure out what went wrong, if the original expectation was 40 million people, that 40 million doses that were supposed to be distributed by the end of the year, but now we've only been able to administer 2 million doses?

What happened?

Where are the mistakes?

What can we do differently moving forward?

NEWTON: What is the difficulty of moving forward?

There seems to be, really, the federal government, saying that look this is not our responsibility, the states need to be able to do this.

In your experience, do the states have the apparatus?

Is it all they need, is the money?

Or do they lack also some of the logistics help that they may need or the expertise?

WEN: Well, those are tied together. So state and local health departments know how to do vaccinations. This is their bread and butter in the same way that testing and contact tracing and quarantine, that's the bread and butter of public health.

But you can't do that in a vacuum. Even prior to the pandemic, local health departments were severely under resourced and understaffed. The local health departments in the U.S. lost about 25 percent of their workforce in the last 2 decades because of lack of funding.

So then the pandemic, in addition to their daily normal duties, these individuals have also had to stand up testing and contact tracing and do public education. Now they're also told that they have to do vaccination on top of it. So they needed to have resources months ago in order to do the logistics, the administration, the coordination.

That needs to come now.

NEWTON: I've been hearing anecdotally from the U.K., which has been doing a better job of rolling out the vaccines, that older people in the community are getting their vaccinations. This is happening in a more timely way.

Your back of the envelope calculations at this pace would take 10 years. OK, the pace will increase.

But what do you think needs to be done in terms of how many vaccinations need to be done per week?

WEN: Well, it depends what our goal is. The initial goal that was set out by the Trump administration, to have most Americans, let say 80 percent of Americans to reach herd immunity, to get that number vaccinated within six months, if we're going to have that rate then we need to have vaccinations at 3.5 million a day.

We're a long way off from that. We're at 1 million a week. So in theory, something that we can achieve but we need to ramp up substantially. We need to ramp up every step of the way, from production to better distribution, to also critically that last mile of what happens once, between the time that a vaccine is given to a state and the time that it actually goes into someone's arm, whether it's at a hospital, a nursing home or in a pharmacy.

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NEWTON: Right, you can't put it more plainly than that.

Before I let you go, I have to ask you about the exponential growth in the U.K. They are incredibly concerned about it, they are assuming that a lot of this is coming from the different variant.

How much of a wake up call should this for the rest of us, all those measures, all those restrictions, all the mask wearing, everything that we've done, do we now have to do more?

Do we have to question even what we're doing now, if that variant is truly going to take hold in other parts of the world?

WEN: The variant is more transmissible but it hasn't changed fundamentally how we think about the virus. It's still spread exactly the same way, it's still a respiratory virus, it's still aerosolized, airborne. So it's still the same measures. We just have to double down and do them.

As difficult as it is, as much of that pandemic fatigue has set in, in the U.K. and all around the world, we have to keep up these measures of masking, physical distancing and, really, important avoiding indoor gatherings, including with extended family and friends, where so much of that kind of transmission here in the U.S. occurs through that route.

NEWTON: Yes, you certainly seem indefatigable, Dr. Leana Wen, so we will try and take some energy from you, because you certainly are concerned about all of us and you've been giving us this message for so many months now. Dr. Leana Wen, again, thank you for your time.

WEN: Thank you.

NEWTON: President Trump and Congress meantime are still warring over whether to increase the COVID relief checks from $600 to $2,000 and it's putting Senate Republicans in a very tricky spot. Kaitlan Collins explains.

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KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Republican senators are feeling the heat from the very top.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): We didn't expect to be in session this week but we are.

COLLINS: President Trump now says, "Unless Republicans have a death wish and it is also the right thing to do, they must approve $2,000 payments ASAP, $600 is not enough."

That tweet is forcing Senate Republicans to decide between defying the president or getting behind bigger stimulus checks, which many in the GOP initially resisted but a growing number are now supporting.

That includes David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, two Republicans just days away from a heated Senate runoff in Georgia, who both sided with the president today.

SEN. KELLY LOEFFLER (R-GA): I've said absolutely we need to get relief to Americans now and I will support that.

SEN. DAVID PERDUE (R-GA): I fully support what the president is doing right now.

COLLINS (voice-over): The fate of the stimulus checks is now in Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell's hands who offered no clarity today but blocked an effort by Democrats to vote on it immediately.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: This week, the Senate will begin a process to bring these three priorities into focus.

COLLINS (voice-over): Democrats are eager to take advantage of the Republican family feud.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: There's one question left today, do Senate Republicans join with the rest of America in supporting $2,000 checks?

Now some of my Republican colleagues have said they support the checks. But there's a major difference in saying you support $2,000 checks and fighting to put them into law.

COLLINS (voice-over): Senator Bernie Sanders is vowing to hold up a vote to override Trump's veto of the massive military bill unless they vote on the $2,000 checks. And his frustration spilled out on the Senate floor today.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): Do we turn our backs on struggling working families?

Or do we respond to their pain?

COLLINS (voice-over): McConnell said the Senate will vote on whether to override Trump's veto of the defense bill, potentially setting the GOP up for its first major rebuke of the president during his last days in office.

MCCONNELL: Failure is simply not an option. I would urge my colleagues to support this legislation one more time when we vote tomorrow.

COLLINS (voice-over): The House passed an override of Trump's veto on Monday, causing him to lash out on Twitter today, saying, "Weak and tired Republican leadership will allow the bad defense bill to pass. A disgraceful act of cowardice and total submission by weak people to Big Tech."

With the stakes in Washington higher than ever and the financial stability of millions of Americans on the line, the president spent today, like he has many others in Palm Beach, on the golf course.

COLLINS: Now since he appeared on the Senate floor today, Mitch McConnell has made clear he's going to put everything that the president wants in one bill to try to potentially bring it up for a vote on the Senate floor.

But that's essentially guaranteeing that it's going to go nowhere because Democrats are against several other factors that the president has demanded be included, including that repeal of Section 230, which would affect Big Tech companies and social media and the liability that they've had so far, the liability shield that they've had so far.

And so whether or not it's actually going to make those $2,000 checks happen is another question because you are starting to see this growing support from Republicans. So the president hasn't responded to this. It is what he wants but it won't actually achieve what he wants when it comes to those $2,000 dollar checks -- Kaitlan Collins, CNN, traveling with the president in Florida. (END VIDEOTAPE)

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NEWTON: Now just a short while ago, COVID claimed the life of a newly elected congress man, Luke Letlow. The Louisiana Republican announced he tested positive for the virus on December 19th. Just two days later he tweeted from hospital that he was confident he would be, in his words, "on the mend soon."

Luke Letlow was just 41 years old.

And that devastating news brings us to this tweet.

"We are way past a Pearl Harbor a day in death tolls, past even a 9/11 a day in death toll and the president remains AWOL, golfing while his party raises not a peep of complaint about his leaving cities, states and average Americans to fend for themselves amid the surge."

The author, none other than our own CNN senior political analyst, Ron Brownstein. And he is also a senior editor for "The Atlantic." He joins me now from Los Angeles.

Ron, I've been following your Twitter feed today, I could really feel the frustration and really rage that we don't get from you often, Ron, in the sense that you're so level headed. And yet it's that word, right, "not a peep" from Republicans, even though this virus has now killed one of their own.

We all know this would be different if it was a foreign adversary actually killing Americans.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: We are watching what I think is the greatest example of the dereliction of duty of a president probably in American history. If you look at the magnitude of what we are now dealing with, as I said in the tweet, we are past a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11 a day in the daily death toll.

There are -- the projections from the University of Washington model, which is one of the most respected models, is that there may be 100,000 Americans dying in January alone.

Here in Los Angeles where I am, patients are being turned away from hospitals because they are running out of oxygen.

In Phoenix, the big hospital chains are talking about rationing care.

In Georgia, in Atlanta, they have reopened a field hospital because the hospitals are being overrun.

And the president has simply walked away from the public health challenge in the same way that he remained disengaged from the economic side of this, the legislation on that, until the 11th hour, 59th minute, coming in to try and torpedo the bill.

So he has essentially left American cities, states and average families on their own. And you really have not heard a word of complaint from other Republicans since he has walked away, which is probably sometime in late summer.

NEWTON: And that brings us to what went on in Washington today and Kaitlan tried to go through. There is very a complicated dance going on now there. This week and into this weekend, it's really Mitch McConnell, right, who's doing the choreography here?

BROWNSTEIN: Right, and it's a complicated dance but it's a straightforward outcome. There should be no confusion. Mitch McConnell moved today to kill the $2,000 payments the president has called for. And to do it in a way that allows Republicans, who want to cynically act as though they're supporting it, the way he did that was by attaching it to what's known legislatively as a poison pill.

In this case, two poison pills, both, the idea of a commission to study nonexistent voter fraud in the 2020 election, on the same day that Georgia announced that a survey, as you know, an audit of absentee ballots, found two mistakes, possible mistakes, out of 15,000 ballots.

McConnell ties the payments to a commission that he knows Democrats won't accept as well as to the repeal of these protections for social media companies, which Democrats might be willing to go along with but through a normal legislative process, rather than this way.

So the effect of what he has done is to virtually guarantee that these payments will not happen, while allowing, somewhat cynically, the two Republicans running in Georgia to claim that they support them.

This is probably a preview of what the Biden administration has to look forward to if McConnell maintains the majority after those Georgia elections next year.

NEWTON: Let's get to that. The poll still remain closed so let's not prejudge this. We don't know what the income (sic) will be.

But it's interesting that Republicans, if they do win both those seats in Georgia, would you say that Georgia voters are actually voting for McConnell, not the two senators?

Because what they're going to be doing, is they're going to be making that decision for all of America, there will be more of this.

BROWNSTEIN: Absolutely. That is -- look, our elections -- and this will be familiar to viewers around the world -- our congressional elections are becoming parliamentary elections.

As I like to say, the name on the back of the jersey no longer matters as much as the color on the front of the jersey. People are voting for which side they want to see in control of Congress.

And Georgia is a state where Democrats have elected a senator since the year 2000. Now they have to elect two senators in one day in order to reach a 50-50 tie. But they do see promising signs in the early returns of who has voted, both absentee and in the in-person early voting.

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BROWNSTEIN: All the indications seem to be that turnout is higher so far in Democratic congressional districts, Democratic counties. African Americans are a larger share of the vote so far than they were in the general election.

It doesn't mean the Democrats are going to win. But it does mean that Trump, in his last-minute appearance on Monday night, coming up in Georgia, is likely going to have to inspire a significant day of turnout among Republicans for them to keep the majority.

But, no question, that is what is on the ballot, not Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. It is which party is in control and whether Biden has a fighting shot --

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NEWTON: And it will be election night in America once again next Tuesday. Ron Brownstein, thanks for joining us.

BROWNSTEIN: Thanks for having. Me

NEWTON: And you are watching CNN NEWSROOM. Still ahead this hour, protesters are out in force as Argentina makes a landmark decision on abortion. We're live in Buenos Aires.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking foreign language).

NEWTON (voice-over): Gosh, that is chilling. That is the dramatic moment a powerful earthquake hit central Croatia. As officials were discussing a smaller tremor that had shook the area just the day before. At least seven people were killed, dozens injured in the 6.4 magnitude quake.

It happened about 48 kilometers southeast of the capital, Zagreb. But really it was felt right across the region. Emergency crews and the military are still digging through the rubble, searching for survivors. Electricity is out and patients in local hospitals have now been evacuated.

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NEWTON: Now to a court in Shenzhen, China, which has now handed down jail sentences for 10 pro-democracy activists who tried to flee Hong Kong for Taiwan. Two minors are among the group. And they have been sent back to Hong Kong without charges after officials said they admitted guilt.

CNN's Selina Wang is following developments from Tokyo.

Certainly a lot of controversy over this and just the fact of how young these people are.

SELINA WANG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Paula, that is a great point. The activists that were arrested, they are between the ages of 17 and 33. As you mentioned, two of them were minors. But the charges against them have been dropped.

This case of the Hong Kong 12 has drawn international attention amid the worsening political freedoms in Hong Kong.

In August, these activists were arrested by Chinese coast guards when they were attempting to flee for Taiwan. Most of the 12 activists were either on bail or facing charges related to the protests last year.

In fact, one of them had already been arrested over the national security law before he attempted to flee. Two of them were convicted of illegal border crossing and were sentenced to two and three years in prison. Another eight were convicted for taking part in the border crossing and had lesser sentences of seven months.

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WANG: The mainland police have said that all of them had pled guilty. Before the trial this week in Shenzhen, these 12 had been detained for more than 100 days. Family members, journalists and diplomats were blocked from attending in what the families of the 12 called a secret trial.

They said that the unfair court proceedings are an example of, quote, "draconian political persecution." They said that the 12 did not have access to contact family members, were denied access to a lawyer of their choosing as well.

It is not uncommon, however, Paula, in Mainland China for detainees to be held for long periods of time without access to relatives or lawyers of their choice.

Numerous high-profile activists have recently already fled Hong Kong in trying to avoid arrest and connection with the Hong Kong protests last year. Several countries, including the U.S., have called for the 12 to be released.

I want to quickly bring up this quote in which the State Department said that, their so-called crime was to flee tyranny. Communist China will stop at nothing to prevent its people from seeking freedom elsewhere -- Paula, back to you.

NEWTON: Selina, thank you for that update of that story as you said we're all continuing to watch. Selina Wang, in Tokyo, thank you.

You are watching CNN NEWSROOM. Still ahead, the protesters are loud. The issue divisive. Argentina weighs a controversial bill to legalize abortion.

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NEWTON: The new coronavirus strain first found in the U.K. has now been detected in the United States. Health officials say a man in Colorado was somehow infected, even though he had no travel history. Experts fear the new variant is already spreading right across the United States and could lead to even more infections and hospital admissions.

British officials warn the National Health Service is, quote, "back in the eye of the storm," because of rising COVID-19 cases. The U.K. reported more than 53,000 new infections Tuesday, another daily record high.

And there are more patients in hospitals than there were during the April peak.

The Spanish health minister says people who refuse a coronavirus vaccine will be listed on a register which will be shared with other E.U. countries. But he said vaccination won't be mandatory and that the information on the register won't be made public.

The number of COVID infections in Wuhan, where the virus originated, may be much, much bigger than what's been reported. As of Sunday, authorities there had confirmed that just over 50,000 cases had occurred in Wuhan. But China's CDC, which analyzed antibody data, said that number is likely closer to half a million cases, since the pandemic began.

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NEWTON: OK. We're expecting Argentina's Senate to vote any time now on a landmark bill that would legalize abortion. Now, it is a divisive issue in the predominantly Roman Catholic country, bringing out huge crowds of protesters on both sides.

The proposal would allow for abortions up to 14 weeks. Right now, they're only permitted in cases of rape or danger to the mother's health. Women's rights groups hope if the bill passes, it could set the stage for a wider reform right across Latin America.

CNN's Diego Laje is live for us in Buenos Aires and joins us.

I mean, we've talked so much about how this issue so divides this country. And yet, what's at stake now with this vote in terms of how people have entrenched their -- their thoughts and their feelings, clearly on display there on the streets.

DIEGO LAJE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi Paula.

Yes, there's a lot at stake for the people around me right now. I'm on the green camp right now, the people who are for the abortion bill. And here, they are celebrating, because following a CNN projection, based on the speeches of the senators throughout this evening, where they have anticipated which way they will vote, many had kept it under wraps, remember.

And it looks as if the for-abortion camp will win, will take the day. That will be the difference of 2018, when a small majority stopped the bill in the Senate. This way, a small majority will support the bill in the Senate. And this side, the green camp, is expecting a celebration.

Of course, we're still waiting for the final tally to be cast, the final votes to be cast by the senators. So we still have to wait, Paula.

NEWTON: Yes, and before I let you go, there's certainly a lot of enthusiasm there where you are. But in terms of the pope's influence here.

LAJE: Yes, absolutely. The pope has tweeted in favor, of course, the rejection of this bill. Pope Francis was -- before being Pope Francis, Buenos Archbishop Father Mario Aurelio Poli. And of course, that has had an influence, especially in politics and especially on the other side, on the blue side, on the anti-abortion side. But that is not a concern here.

And it's not a concern for the center -- center of left administration of President Alberto Fernandez, who is also supporting this bill. So despite the tweets and despite the pronouncements, right now, this is not influencing this side, and it's of course, a very important issue on the other side.

On the other side, actually, on the house of Congress where the blues are congregating.

Back to you.

NEWTON: And we will continue to follow this real closely, obviously, in the coming hours. Diego Laje in Buenos Aires for us. Thanks so much.

Now, top E.U. officials and the British prime minister are set to sign the 11th-hour Brexit trade deal in the coming hours. Yes, I know, hard to believe.

But then the U.K. Parliament, of course, still gets to weigh in. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to tell MPs the accord means Britain will be able to trade with its neighbors while controlling its own laws and destiny.

NEWTON: I don't have to remind anyone that this has been a long and rocky road since the 2016 British referendum on leaving the E.U. Here is a look back on how we got here.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DAVID CAMERON, FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: I will go to Parliament and propose that the British people decide our future in Europe, through an inert referendum on Thursday the 23rd of June.

NIGEL FARAGE, FORMER UKIP LEADER: We want our (UNINTELLIGIBLE) back. We want our passports back. We want our country back.

BORIS JOHNSON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: And we can win on June the 23rd? Don't you think so? Yes, we can.

FARAGE: Didn't take long.

ANNOUNCER: Breaking news.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The stunning decision. Britain is ending its 43-year-long relationship with the European Union.

FARAGE: Let June the 23rd go down in our history as our independence day!

CAMERON: I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: E.U., we love you! E.U., we love you!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: E.U., we love you! E.U., we love you!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: E.U., we love you! E.U., we love you!

THERESA MAY, FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: I have just been to Buckingham Palace, where her majesty the queen has asked me to form a new government. And I accepted.

We have been working closely with the devolved administrations.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The best way to get rid of the Tories forever in Scotland is to have a second independent referendum.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Breaking news this hour, surprise announcement from the British prime minister.

MAY: We need a general election, and we need one now.

NICOLA STURGEON, FIRST MINISTER OF SCOTLAND: I think one of the biggest issues today the U.K. weighed (ph), of course, is the fact that this is a disaster for Theresa May.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, Theresa May there, returning to Downing Street, clinging to power after dramatically misjudging the mood of the nation.

DONALD TUSK, FORMER EUROPEAN COUNCIL PRESIDENT: I've been wondering what the special place in hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it safely.

MAY: I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honor of my life to hold. The second female prime minister but certainly not the last.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No Belgian waffles!

JOHNSON: And we're going to fulfill the repeated promises of Parliament to the people and come out of the E.U. on October the 31st. No ifs or buts.

TUSK: The European council endorsed this deal, and it looks like we are very close to the final stretch.

JOHNSON: Nobody in this house relishes the idea of a general election.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Boris, mate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Conservative Party candidate, 25,000.

JOHNSON: Good morning, everybody.

And with this mandate and this majority, we will at last be able to do what?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get Brexit done!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get Brexit done!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get Brexit done!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three, two, one!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three, two, one!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three, two, one!

(FIREWORKS)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The leader of the S&P in Blackford --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- market and customs union, we get nothing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you hopeful for a deal, prime minister?

URSULA VON DER LEYEN, PRESIDENT, EUROPEAN COMMISSION: We are under the very last mile to go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are on the final push.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT/ANCHOR: We have breaking news to bring you. The U.K. and the E.U. have announced a Brexit trade deal. A few moments ago, the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, said in a statement, deal is done.

VON DER LEYEN: I know this is difficult for some. And to our friends in the United Kingdom, I want to say, parting is such sweet sorrow.

JOHNSON: It is up to us all together. As a newly and truly independent nation, to realize the immensity of this moment and to make the most of it.

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NEWTON: And to think so many of us thought the big story in Britain of 2020 would be, indeed, Brexit.

OK, she was forced to flee her North Korean home more than 70 years ago. But now this refugee is revisiting the life she left behind, using virtual reality. Details on the high-tech homecoming, ahead.

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NEWTON: For the first time since fleeing North Korea some 70 years ago, an 83-year-old woman was given the chance to see her childhood home once again, with the help of virtual virtual. CNN's Paula Hancocks explains.

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PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hyun MI's heyday was the 1960s. Loved by South Koreans, her emotional signature song about separated families highlights her own heartache.

Millions of people were torn from loved ones by the Korean War, fleeing to the south or stuck in the north when the peninsula was split. Decades later, the chance of elderly families seeing one another again are rapidly shrinking.

Hyun Mi, her parents, and five of her seven siblings walked south for two months to escape the fighting.

HYUN MI, SEPARATED FROM FAMILY: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

GRAPHIC: I thought it would be a week, but that week became 70 years. That's making me cry. I was 13. I left with two pairs of socks, no shoes, and now I'm 83.

HANCOCKS: Hyun Mi paid a broker to track down her younger sister in North Korea who was just 6 when Hyun Mi left and organized a reunion in China more than 20 years ago, the only contact with lost family in her native country until now.

Virtual reality company Tekton, working with the South Korean government, is determined she will at least see her hometown again.

AHN HYO-JIN, CEO, TEKTON SPACE (through translator): As we interviewed her, our designers started to sketch right away, checking whether the sketch is accurate. Then 3-D designers apply and rebuild the sketches, using 3-D modeling tools.

HANCOCKS: A three-month project to show Hyun Mi her old school, her old home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was very worried also, because what if this thing that I made doesn't resemble her memories?

HANCOCKS: The moment of truth. Hyun Mi walks towards her childhood home for the first time in decades. She reaches out to touch her past she knows she will never see again.

HYUN: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

GRAPHIC: My mum, dad, sister and brother's faces flashed before me. My parent's faces flashed so clearly. I keep crying. What shall I do? I'm sorry. I keep crying.

HANCOCKS: This project is intended to promote peace with North Korea. South Korea's unification ministry is hoping they can do this for more separated families next year.

With fading memories, this would be a chance for many to see their home one last time.

Paula Hancocks, CNN, Seoul.

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NEWTON: And thanks for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Paula Newton. WORLD SPORT is next.

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