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Israeli Election Exit Polls Project No Clear Winner; Brazil Sees Over 3,000 Daily Deaths; U.K. Reflects On Loss One Year After First Lockdown; Biden Urges Assault Weapons Ban; Police Identify Boulder Supermarket Victims; Hundreds Of Arrested Protesters Freed In Yangon; White House: North Korea Missile Tests "Low End" Threat; Activists Helping Myanmar Refugees Cross Border. Aired 2-2:45a ET

Aired March 24, 2021 - 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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JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello, you're watching CNN NEWSROOM live around the world. In the hour ahead. Votes are being counted in Israel has been Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition maybe inching closer to a narrow majority in parliament. His political fate remains uncertain.

A change from Brazil's president expecting sympathy from those who died from COVID-19, promising a return to normal. Just as the COVID death toll hits another right court high.

New details into the investigation into the gunman behind the latest mass shooting in the United States.

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VAUSE: For the fourth time in two years, it seemed Israeli voters had opted for more of the same, total political gridlock. The votes are now being accounted, official results are coming in. The national tally will be days away.

According to exit, polls a projected 36 seats for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes his party the biggest in the next parliament. The main opposition has a predicted 18 seats. Overall 61 seats are needed for a governing majority; 53 are pro Netanyahu. That number increasing in the last couple hours or so; 52 are anti-Netanyahu.

That leaves two parties, right wing Yamina and the Joint List, the largest Arab party, to join either bloc to form a coalition. Speaking to supporters, the prime minister emphasized the need for a coalition, to end the political paralysis.

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BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL (through translator): We must not under any circumstances drag the state of Israel into new elections, into its fifth election. Establish a stable government now.

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VAUSE: Elliott Gotkine once, more this hour, live in Jerusalem.

Last time we talked it looked like Netanyahu was getting closer to 61.

Where do things stand now?

ELLIOTT GOTKINE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We've got about 70 percent of the vote counted. According to the state forecast this is Channel 11, the pro Netanyahu bloc is set for 56 seats. If you add the man who's supposed to be kingmaker here, Naftali Bennett of the Yamina party, he gets to 63, which gives him, at least in Israeli political terms, a relatively comfortable majority, in the Knesset, if the final result does play out this way.

I should caveat all of these numbers for the fact that they are changing and this is just 70 percent of the vote counted. The final results could be different. The anti Netanyahu bloc on its own, looks like it's getting 51 seats based on the current 70 percent of the votes counted.

And with Naftali Bennett's party would get up to 58, falling shy of a majority now. There are other permutations and possibilities but certainly right now the most likely scenario it would seem, is it could as easily the biggest party in parliament, its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, most likely to get that tap on the shoulder from president Reuven Rivlin once all the votes are in. In order to try to have the first stab forming a coalition.

VAUSE: It happened last time that the Arab vote went way up through the roof. This time it seems like it collapsed. The actual turnout seemed small compared to the last couple of elections.

What's interesting is the Arab list, the Arab politicians that will stay in the Israeli parliament, have never actually formed a government before. It seems unlikely they would do it this time, right.

GOTKINE: Very much so. We have had occasions in the past where they haven't formally been part of a coalition but they have supported the government policies, such as back in the days of the Oslo accords. Certainly no Arab party has ever sat in a governing coalition.

And it seems very unlikely that that will change this time around either. The Joint List, looks according to the votes that have been counted so far, like it's going to come in with around 6 seats. There is another Arab party which interestingly enough is supportive of the pro Netanyahu bloc.

They look like they will not make it into parliament. If they did, that would potentially give prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu more breathing space when it comes to forming a coalition or at least forming a government that is likely to have majority support on most legislation in parliament.

VAUSE: Only in Israel is 63 out of 120 a comfortable majority. We will see what happens. Thank you, Elliott Gotkine.

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VAUSE: A stunning change in tone and substance from Brazil's president, who, announced this year will be the year of vaccinations, promising return to normality very soon. Jair Bolsonaro also defended his response to the pandemic as cases are soaring and the daily death toll has reached a record high CNN's Matt Rivers reports.

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MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, another brutal day for Brazil on Tuesday, with health officials announcing yet another single day record had been set for the most coronavirus deaths recorded, more than 3,200 deaths recorded by officials here on Tuesday. That's the highest such figure so far.

And it's the first time since this pandemic began that Brazil has recorded more than 3,000 deaths from the virus in a single day. Part of the reason that is so high is because of what is happening in the state where we are right now, the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest state.

Health officials here announced on Tuesday that more than 1,000 coronavirus deaths had been recorded. That's the first time since this pandemic began that they've recorded more than 1,000 deaths and it's roughly 50 percent higher than the previous single day record, which had been set last week.

Meanwhile, news out of Brazil's supreme court where president Jair Bolsonaro had brought a case against several governors across the country, these governors had put in place lockdown measures to try and stop COVID-19 from spreading as rapidly as it is right now.

Bolsonaro had argued that only he had the power to put in place certain measures. But the supreme court basically throughout that case ruling in favor of those governors. The supreme court saying, in part, "a totalitarian vision is not appropriate in a democracy like Brazil," that the president is responsible for the, quote, "larger leadership," the coordination of efforts aimed at the well-being of Brazilians-- Matt Rivers, CNN, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

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VAUSE: Pandemic restrictions are being ramped up in parts of Europe to contain yet another wave of the coronavirus. With Norway and the Netherlands are extending national lockdowns, the French president said increasing the rate of vaccination is a priority.

German chancellor Angela Merkel has announced a hard 5-day lockdown over the Easter holiday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ANGELA MERKEL, CHANCELLOR OF GERMANY (through translator): We basically have a new pandemic. The British variant has taken over, which means we have a new virus. Of course, of the same kind but with very different properties. It is clearly more lethal, more contagious and longer contagious.

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VAUSE: CNN's Melissa Bell is live for us this hour.

We may come back to Melissa because I don't think she's quite up and ready. It's still early there.

Since the first COVID lockdown, many in the U.K. have sought to remember the thousands of lives which have been lost. Buildings and landmarks were lit up in yellow in support of those grieving. Prime minister Boris Johnson says it's been a dark and difficult year but the situation is starting to improve.

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BORIS JOHNSON, U.K. PRIME MINISTER: Month after month, the fight against coronavirus was like fighting in the dark against a callous and invisible enemy until science helped us to turn the lights on and to gain the upper hand.

And cautiously but irreversibly, step-by-step, jab by jab, this country is on the path to reclaiming our freedoms.

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VAUSE: CNN's Scott McLean is live for us. He's in London this hour.

Thanks for being up. What's remarkable about what's happening in the U.K. is was a really bad bungled response to the pandemic at the very beginning. But this national vaccination rollout has turned it around and it has been a dramatic turnaround for Britain.

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It has definitely been a year of extremes, John. You remember the U.K. went into lockdown a year ago yesterday, that was one week after the Spanish did the same and 2 weeks after the Italians.

There was this feeling at the time that what's happening there could not happen here. Obviously that was misguided. The day the U.K. went into lockdown, there had only been 364 coronavirus deaths recorded. Today there are almost 350 times that number.

Even after the first lockdown ended and numbers got really, really low in the summertime, the prime minister seemed to urge the economy back to life, urging people to go back to offices, even offering cash incentives for people to go eat in restaurants.

You can imagine what happened next. Cases started to rise, in the fall there was another lockdown which was not all that effective. A third one, which is the one we're in right now, started in early January. For all of the failings that you mentioned, all of the

miscalculations, there is this almost unmatched success, with the vaccine rollout.

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MCLEAN: It's crazy to think that right now, about 54 percent of the adult population is going to get at least their first shot of the vaccine, the rollout is going at what seems like lightning speed. They're expecting to offer the vaccine to everybody over 50 by mid- April and the entire country by the end of July, barring problems with vaccine supply.

Yesterday was a day for a reflection in this country. The prime minister was asked what he might have done differently. He said that his biggest regret was not having an enough information or not knowing just how easily this virus could spread from person to person.

That informed a lot of policy which, we know now, was a big mistake. His chief medical adviser said, because of lack of testing, there wasn't a whole lot of data about infections, so he didn't really know was truly happening until people started to get into the hospitals and actually started dying. By that time, things were too late.

This time around, coming out of this third lockdown, they want to make sure that this one is irreversible. There's no going back right now. Even as cases are rising in Europe, they want to make sure, even though they expect will be some reverberations of that here in the U.K., they think they'll have a good defense with this vaccination rollout, at least some level of protection.

Even if you see cases start to rise again, you will not see the level of deaths and hospitalizations that we've had in the past.

VAUSE: A bit of revisionist history there from Boris Johnson about the amount of information that was available. There's countries in Asia that have a good handle on it. U.K. just wasn't ready. Scott, thank you.

Let's go to Paris now, CNN's Melissa Bell. She's up and she's with. Us Melissa thank. You

We're seeing a situation across Europe, across the world now in fact, the decline in the number of COVID-19 cases, which we saw is now over. Those numbers are now rising again. Europe is no exception to that. Of course this has a lot to do with the vaccination rollout which has been bungled or delayed to say the least.

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MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's, right what Scott was just saying about the U.K. with that third wave, driven so much by the new variants in particular. The first one, the first one identified in the United Kingdom, it's been a game-changer here in Europe.

We are not seeing that same dynamic as you're seeing in the U.K., where the vaccination rollouts have been so effective that it might prove fast enough to help contain it.

Here quite on the contrary, we're seeing rising figures, rising numbers of new cases, dramatically rising because of the fact that it is so much more contagious, this particular variant.

Rising ICU entries, rising numbers of deaths as well, a vaccination program that remains beset by supply problems and is extremely slow to roll out.

Here in France, Emmanuel Macron has that it's a national priority getting the vaccination up and going but the fact is for the time being, John, when you look at the E.U. as a whole, the proportion of people who have been fully vaccinated is under 5 percent.

It's very little when you consider how long the vaccination campaign has been going on here in Europe. Even as those figures remain extremely worrying. Emmanuel Macron hinting we could see a tightening of restrictions.

Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, all countries where the new variant spreading so much faster and causing so much more death and hospitalization. It's really sweeping across the E.U. much faster than the vaccination program is.

That's going to mean a very difficult few weeks with extensions of restrictions, tightening of restrictions, even as the E.U. tries to get its hands on more vaccine supplies.

VAUSE: It seems a lot that the E.U. has struggled with this vaccination rollout, given that they do have some of the nationalized health system there. I guess there's problems with approval and accessing the drugs in the global vaccines in the first. Place Melissa thank you. Melissa Bell in Paris. We appreciate it.

With that, the British prime minister is urging the E.U. to continue the export of AstraZeneca vaccines to the U.K. and avoid a blockade. This comes as the head of the European Commission warned they could stop vaccine exports, as AstraZeneca's failed to meet delivery quotas. Earlier I spoke with a professor at Georgetown University.

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LAWRENCE GOSTIN, PROFESSOR, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: In pre-purchase agreements, each country will make its own deal. And so it's a contract. The problem is when you have multiple contracts and the company can't fulfill all of the contracts, then it depends on which contract was signed first, in which is the most strict of the contracts.

It's a matter of a contract law. It's going to be, what's basically been happening is that countries like the U.K., European Union, have had export bans. Basically they say, the vaccines here, we're not going to send it anywhere else.

[02:15:00] GOSTIN: Even though we signed a contract. For example, the European Union wouldn't allow the AstraZeneca vaccine to go to Australia, even though Australia had already signed a contract.

This has become a huge issue, of not just contract law but international relations and diplomacy. It's become a real game of who is strongest, who is most selfish and who's got the best leverage.

VAUSE: If we look at the rate of vaccination globally it's starting to pick up. If we look at the U.K. leading the world. We have a graphic here, if you look at that brown line at the very top, that's the U.K. The U.S. is not far behind in red. Way below that is North America, then even below that is Europe.

It's already this level of tension and animosity over the access to vaccine supplies between wealthy nations, you need to listen to the WHO, head of the WHO talking about vaccine inequity worldwide.

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DR. TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: We have the means to avert this. But it's shocking how little has been done to avert it.

The gap between the number of vaccines administered in rich countries and the number of vaccines administered through COVAX is growing every single day and becoming more grotesque every day.

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VAUSE: It's wealthy countries already involved in this-for-tat over supplies. What does it mean in less well-off nations, a far bigger challenge?

GOSTIN: I know Dr. Tedros very well and he told me and told the world, this is one of the greatest moral catastrophes in modern history. We're in the middle of a pandemic. And rich countries are hoarding all the vaccines.

I understand why the U.S. The E.U., the U.K. want to supply their own markets first. Every government has a primary duty to their own citizens but only up to a point. Right now, it's morally grotesque.

There are around 70 countries in the world, that haven't even started vaccinating their populations. There's only about 9 countries in sub- Saharan Africa that have any vaccines. Whereas the U.S., the U.K., even the E.U., still on track to vaccinate most of their population by the end of the year.

It might take many years for low-income countries to vaccinate their populations. They're not going to forget this soon. Their people will be dying. Their economies will be in shatters. The E.U., the U.S. and the U.K. will be, by the end of the year, perhaps, near normal.

I think there's a moral failure. I also think it's in our national security interests, to vaccinate the world. So long as you've got widely circulating COVID virus around the world, outside of high- income countries, it's going to create a perfect storm for variants that may be resistant to vaccines.

And then they will receive themselves in the U.S., in the U.K. and high-income countries. I think it's smart diplomacy and in our national interest, to be more compassionate in sharing with the lifesaving resources.

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VAUSE: And a reminder, cnn.com/coronavirus has all the latest news on the pandemic and answers to many frequently asked questions.

Still to come here. No word on the motive for killing spree in Colorado. But the accused gunman's brother has admitted mental illness is one possible issue.

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VAUSE: U.S. President Joe Biden has ordered flags lowered to half- staff for the victims of Monday's mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado. The flags had only just been raised after flying at half-staff for the 8 victims of last week's mass shooting in the greater Atlanta area.

Now Joe Biden has a message for Congress. It's past time for action on gun reform.

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BIDEN: I don't need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense steps that will save the lives in the future, and to urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to act.

We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again.

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VAUSE: It's still not known why a 21-year-old allegedly went on that shooting rampage in Boulder. He's charged with 10 counts of first degree murder and his first court appearance is on Thursday. We have more now from CNN's Kyung Lah in Boulder, Colorado.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The entire building is surrendered.

KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR U.S. CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As the officers first made their way in, they confronted the gunman, 21 year old Ahmad Alissa, the arrest warrant says he was walking to SWAT officers to surrender. He'd been shot in the leg. Removed a green tactical vest, all of his clothing except for shorts. The affidavit said he had two weapons, an aerosol rifle and a handgun. The affidavit says the suspect did not answer questions, though he asked to speak to his mother.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 136, we're in a gunfight, hold the radio.

LAH: That suspect accused of killing 10 people at this Colorado grocery store

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 136, we have multiple shots being fired at us.

LAH: The gunman's brothers says he believes his brother suffered from mental illness and was increasingly paranoid. Alissa's brother says he was bullied in high school for being Muslim. The family had immigrated from Syria in 2002. But the brother says he never knew him to have a gun. Law enforcement did recover additional weapons from the gunman's home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I copy, we're taking multiple rounds.

LAH: Witnesses first heard shots in the parking lot around 2:30 in the afternoon, Anna Haynes lives across the street from King Soopers grocery store.

ANNA HAYNES, WITNESSED GROCERY STORE SHOOTING: I saw a body in the middle of the parking lot. And I also saw the gun man himself holding a semiautomatic rifle. He was on the handicap rail to the entrance of the store.

LAH: Newly released arrest documents say witnesses saw the suspect fatally shoot at least two people in the parking lot, a man in a vehicle and an elderly man. Store employees say they watched through a window as a gunman walked up to the elderly man stood over him and shot him multiple additional times.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's armed with a rifle, our officer shot back and returned fire. We do not know where he is in the store.

LAH: The first officer to confront the gunman was killed, shot in the head. As a shooter continue to roam the store busy with shoppers and people waiting to be vaccinated in the store.

STEVEN MCCUE, GRANDCHILDREN INSIDE STORE DURING SHOOTING: That's when at least one shooter came in and killed the woman at the front of the line in front of him. They ran upstairs to hide a hidden a coat closets standing up for 45 minutes.

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LAH (voice-over): As the gunman was led away, 10 lay dead at the store.

CHIEF MARIS HEROLD, BOULDER POLICE DEPARTMENT: Officer Eric Talley, 51.

LAH: One by one the police chief spelled out all the names of the 10 victims including her own officer, Eric Talley.

HEROLD: This officer had seven children ages five to 18. I just had that officer's whole family in my office two weeks ago to give him an award. And so, it is personal. This is my community.

LAH: Kyung Lah, CNN, Boulder, Colorado.

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VAUSE: One of the world's busiest waterways, the Suez Canal, is at a standstill this hour because a really big large container ship is now blocking pretty much everything in both directions. There it is. CNN's John Defterios is following developments from Abu Dhabi.

Thousands of ships traveled through the canal in 2019. This is a busy part of the. World do we know exactly what happened here?

Apparently, this is quite a narrow part of the canal.

How did this ship get stuck?

JOHN DEFTERIOS, CNN EMERGING MARKETS EDITOR: In fact, you talk about the volume that goes through the Suez Canal, it's at least 50 a day, according to the traffic right now John. We're starting to get clarity to what took place here.

Evergreen Marine, which operates out of Taiwan, has the Ever Given, this is a huge vessel, apparently strong winds turned it horizontally here into the Suez Canal, coming south to north just above Port Said.

The challenges, in the transition from winter to spring, which as you know, John, quickly turns to summer, they get these strong desert winds and that's apparently what happened.

This is a huge vessel, it's 400 meters long, 59 meters wide. One of the biggest in the world. It's been sailing since 2018. It has the capability or the capacity to carry more than 20,000 containers.

We've seen some videos on social media. It looks like it's fully laden. There are some options. Here apparently there's tugboats if you look at the tracking documents that are being circulated now for the last 12 hours.

They are trying to move the vessel but it seems lodged, facing west in the Suez Canal. The other option is to try to dredge it out. If you get desperate, you have to start unloading to lift the bow of the vessel up.

VAUSE: We look at the situation where it could be days before the waterway is clear?

What does that actually mean?

We've already seen movement on the oil markets because of this.

DEFTERIOS: We had a $7 or $8 plunge in the last 3 or 4 days because of the third wave of the vaccine challenges that we've had. In Europe right now. We went from nearly $70 a barrel down to $60. This incident popped the price back up. And now it's stabilized around $61 a barrel.

According to tankertrackers.com, there are a number of vessels that are carrying Saudi, U.S., Russian and Imani rude traveling north and south right now, holding about 10 million barrels a day. That's about 12 percent of supplies.

So it did stabilize the market but to your point, John, if this carries on 3 or 4 days, it will not only be a shock to the oil market but also for traffic, which is trying to gear up again in this recovery from the pandemic, particularly in Asia.

This vessel by the way, traveling from China to Rotterdam. And it's a vessel that looks fully loaded, which is extraordinary, to see it stuck in the 21st century in the canal. It's very unusual indeed.

VAUSE: It's a big ship. John, thank you.

Protesters in Myanmar are delivering their message in a very different way, rolling back to a silent strike against a military coup.

Also, why the White House is not too bothered by North Korea's first known weapons test in about a year.

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VAUSE: Welcome back, everybody.

Pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar are staging a nationwide solid strike. Many businesses have closed, residents are staying indoors. The strike is in response to the death of a seven-year-old girl. She was shot and killed by security forces in her own home on Tuesday.

Hundreds of detainees in the last couple of weeks have been released from a prison in Yangon. Paula Hancocks is live for us in Seoul.

What more do we know about these prisoners who were released and where the circumstances around that and the death of this little girl?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, starting off with the prisoners, Reuters quoting witnesses and also local media, saying that busloads of protesters were witnessed leaving a certain prison in Yangon today. These are a people who have been arrested while they were protesting or even those who were arrested in the nighttime, the security forces carry.

At this point, there is no comment from the military and there's no explanation as to why they have been released but Reuters reporting hundreds have been released one advocacy group estimates that the amount of people who have been arrested since February 1st when this military coup happened is well over 2,800.

But certainly, if hundreds have been released, it will be an interesting development. Now to the 7-year-old girl who lost their life on Tuesday. Now the sister has been speaking to local media and said that the security forces came into the home on Tuesday, asked the father if there was anybody else in the house, he said no.

But according to the relatives, the security forces did not believe him and shot at him, hitting the seven-year-old daughter, who was in his lap. We have spoken to the doctor who saw the little girl's body and he confirmed that she had been shot in the stomach and said that he was horrified by what he saw.

A similar thing, we are hearing from Save the Children, saying we are horrified that children continue to be among the targets of these fatal attacks on peaceful protesters. Also, specifically talking about this report of a seven-year-old, saying she should have been safe being in her own home.

This is really a call we've heard from UNICEF, from Save the Children, from other children's charities, calling on the violence against minors to end as well as attacks on peaceful protesters to end as well.

And then finally, there is this silent strike called for this Wednesday. And certainly the images we're seeing on social media are quite remarkable. Not a soul is in some of the streets, in some of the big cities.

And this is really according to one NGO, what they are calling silence is the loudest scream. So protesting by staying indoors, by keeping businesses shut, by shutting down the country effectively -- John.

VAUSE: Paula, thank. You Paula Hancocks with new information about the arrest and release of those detainees.

Officials in Seoul said this past Sunday, North Korea carried out its first non-weapons test with the launch of 2 cruise missiles. The White House, though, is brushing it off as a low-end threat.

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QUESTION: Do you consider that to be a real provocation by North Korea?

BIDEN: No. According to the Defense Department, it's business as usual, there's no new -- no new wrinkle in what they did.

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VAUSE: CNN's Selina Wang is following the story from Tokyo.

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VAUSE: It's not often that the U.S. president will laugh about missile tests by North Korea. So what is the deal with Joe Biden?

SELINA WANG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, not you also heard him say there business as usual. This was widely expected, you had U.S. officials call it part of "normal testing." Experts said that this was routine and a rather mild response to the U.S. and South Korea military drill.

The key piece of information here is that, according to a U.S. official, North Korea had launched short-range projectiles, not ballistic missiles. And this helps to explain why the U.S. is dismissing this.

You heard President Biden say this is nothing new here to look out for and why it's not going to stop the U.S. from pursuing diplomatic relations with North Korea. But this does represent North Korea's first challenge to Biden.

He is preparing, he is outlining his policy strategy towards North Korea and, interestingly, officials have been waiting for North Korea to send a message to Biden, showing that they are an important player. But interestingly, North Korea has been relatively quiet since the weekend. They normally use this as an opportunity to tout its military prowess, its ability to stand up to the United States.

But very quiet there, which is puzzling for U.S. officials. John.

VAUSE: Selina, thank you. Selina Wang live for us in Tokyo. Thank you.

Still to come, too much water and nowhere to put it. The dangers from Australia's historic deluge. More on that when we come back.

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VAUSE: China and Russia have denounced what they see as foreign interference in their internal affairs. In a joint statement, foreign ministers Sergey Lavrov and Wang Yi called for end to politicizing human rights under the pretext of promoting democracy.

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SERGEY LAVROV, RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER (through translator): Moscow and Beijing are in favor of building interstate relations in the principles of mutual respect and consideration of each other's interests, justice and non-interference in internal affairs.

We reject zero-sum geopolitical games and unilateral illegitimate sanctions which our Western colleagues are increasingly resorting to.

WANG YI, CHINESE FOREIGN MINISTER (through translator): Major countries should take the lead in honoring credibility and set an example of respecting the legitimate rights of other countries. They should not want to interfere in other countries' internal affairs by using their own standards.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: The statement comes as the U.S., the E.U. and other allies have imposed new sanctions on Chinese officials for serious human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims. China denies the accusations and says it's dealing with violent extremists.

And a programming note here, CNN will have an exclusive report on Uighur parents, desperate to reunite with their children. Amnesty International says the policy against the Muslim minority has split up thousands of families.

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VAUSE: CNN's David Culver travels to Xinjiang to look for the children who have been left behind. Here's a quick preview.

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DAVID CULVER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Followed by a convoy of suspected undercover Chinese police vehicles, blocking roads that lead to possible internment camps, keeping us from getting too close to so-called sensitive sites.

CNN is searching for the lost Uyghur children of Xinjiang. Thousands of families have now been ripped apart due to China's actions. We tracked down two of them.

CULVER: Do you want to be with them?

Do you miss them?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: David's exclusive report, "The Lost Children of Xinjiang," can be seen on "AC360" Wednesday night in the U.S. That's midnight London. Time and you can watch it throughout the day here on Thursday on CNN International.

The rain has let up, the flooding has not. Some 10 million Australian still face what the New South Wales weather agency has called an historic deluge. Homes and restaurants submerged in water west of Sydney. Tens of thousands have been evacuated across the. State the premier says while the sunshine is, great the region is still not out of danger.

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GLADYS BEREIKLIAN, NEW SOUTH WALES PREMIER: But what we still have to be aware of is the fact that thousands and thousands of people are still on evacuation warnings. The rivers will continue to swell and catchments will continue to experience flows of water not seen in 50 years and in some places 100 years.

That is what is our primary concern. But the easing of weather conditions does mean that rescue operations are somewhat easier.

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VAUSE: Emergency services have carried out thousands of rescues in recent days. Military helicopters are supporting search and rescue efforts. So far no deaths have been reported.

Prince Harry joined the San Francisco tech company Better Up, as the new chief impact officer. Whatever that. Is he's no stranger to the company, which combines coaching and mental health services. Having been a client himself in the past.

The CEO tells "The Wall Street Journal" that Harry will have input into product strategy and charitable contributions and also will be a mental wellness advocate.

Before we, go take a look at this.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, you have it here. Are we done? "The Game Changer" by Banksy at 14,400,000 is sold. Well done. Congratulations.

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VAUSE: The final price, about $23 million. The auction is a record for the elusive street artist, Banksy. The painting is a tribute to health care workers, showing a boy ditching his superhero dolls to play with a toy nurse. Proceeds from that sale will go to health care charities.

Thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM. "WORLD SPORT" is next and Rosemary Church will be after. That at the top of the break. For more news around the world. See you tomorrow.