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Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa Flees Country; Biden En Route To Israel For First Visit As President; Study Shows Economic Loss From Burning Fossil Fuels; Rioters In Sri Lanka Clashed With Security Forces; Webb Telescope's First Images Unveiled By NASA; Interview With European Space Agency Markus Kissler-Patig; Surveillance Video Released From Uvalde School Shooting; January 6 Investigation. Aired 2-2:45a ET
Aired July 13, 2022 - 02:00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[02:00:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from all around the world. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM and I'm Rosemary Church. Just ahead.
Hours before he was due to step down, Sri Lanka's President flees the country, leaving behind a political and economic mess. A live report on what comes next. The truth trickling out in Texas, a horrifying video of that deadly Elementary School shooting, and the reality of the excruciatingly slow police response. And the most powerful telescope ever made capturing stunning new images of distant galaxies. We will speak live this hour with one of the scientists behind that project.
ANNOUNCER: Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Rosemary Church.
CHURCH: Thanks for being with us. Well, Sri Lanka's president has fled the country, adding another twist to the political and economic turmoil gripping that nation. The country's Air Force confirms that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his wife flew to the Maldives on a military plane just hours before he was due to formally resign on Wednesday. Protesters continue to gather outside the president's office and they've taken over his official residence saying they won't budge until he is formally out of office.
And CNN's Senior International Correspondent Will Ripley is following developments from Taipei. He joins us now live. Good to see you, Will. So he was due to formally resigned Wednesday but instead, flees the country, Sri Lanka's President leaving his nation in economic turmoil. So what comes next for the country, and what will likely happen if anything to the president, particularly given there is still no formal resignation?
WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that is the key problem now, Rosemary, is that in order for the Sri Lankan Parliament, which is due to reconvene on Friday, in order for them to elect a new president, to select someone from within their ranks, which is supposed to happen on Wednesday, they need a formal resignation. Otherwise, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is essentially a president in exile.
And he's in the Maldives. We know that. He tried to get out twice on Monday to head to the UAE but he couldn't because the immigration officers at the airport wouldn't process his you know, passport without him physically being present. And he didn't want to stand in the immigration queue with everybody else. He and his family were in the lounge, kind of hiding out hoping that they could just sneak by and get on their flight. And that didn't work.
And so now they took this military plane to the Maldives, where they almost weren't accepted there or they had to get intervention, you know, in order to, you know, buy officials in the Maldives in order to be able to get special permission to land. And now the question is, how is the Sri Lankan Parliament going to choose a new leader who can then reestablish the rule of law in Sri Lanka because you still have the protesters, thousands of people occupying the president's house?
They're protesting right now outside of the Prime Minister's official residence, which was set on fire over the weekend. And then, of course, this new leader on top of the immediate pressing concern of rule of law will then have to figure out how to turn things around and get people badly needed economic relief because the country is so deeply in debt as a result of financial mismanagement on the part of Rajapaksa, the current president, and the previous president, who is his brother. And his brother was also the prime minister under him.
I mean, this family which has been in control of Sri Lanka, Rosemary, for almost 20 years, they've made so many bad deals a lot of them particularly with China, resulting in these you know empty white elephant infrastructure projects that have -- that have caused Sri Lanka so much. They cannot pay their creditors. They can't get any money into the country to get the basics that people need like food and fuel and medicine.
When you're more than $51 billion in debt with almost no way -- you know no easy way to pay it -- pay it off, it's difficult to see how there's going to be a solution that's going to appease the people on the ground and appease the creditors of Sri Lanka. So really -- it's a really tough situation, a situation made more complicated now by the fact that the president is in the Maldives in exile and hasn't formally resigned.
CHURCH: Yes, a desperate situation for Sri Lanka. Will Ripley, joining us live from Taipei, many thanks.
Joe Biden is on his way to Israel for his first visit to the Middle East as U.S. president. He plans to visit a holocaust memorial, get a briefing on the Iron Dome missile defense system, and meet with the new Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
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On Friday, he will visit Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. After that, Mr. Biden travels to Saudi Arabia for the most controversial part of his trip. As a candidate for president, he pledged to make Saudi Arabia a pariah for its involvement in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. So let's go live now to Jerusalem and journalist Elliott Gotkine. He joins us now live. Elliott, Joe Biden's first trip to the region as president, what's expected to come out of this U.S. presidential visit?
ELLIOTT GOTKINE, JOURNALIST: Rosemary, his first visit as president, but he's been here nine times previously. This will be his 10th visit. He's met with every Israeli Prime Minister and President going back some five decades. They, of course, will be meeting for the first time as prime minister with Israel's new Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, and also Israel's President, Isaac Hertzog, there'll be greeting him at the foot of the plane when it lands to Ben Gurion Airport, just outside Tel Aviv. Half of the airport has been commandeered for this visit.
He'll then get a demonstration of Israel's missile defense capabilities with Israel's Defense Minister Benny Gantz. This is not just Iron Dome, but also the recently announced Iron Beam. This is a missile -- a laser missile defense system, the idea being that it will protect not just Israel, but also its new allies in the region such as Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and also the Saudis.
Now, although Israel doesn't have normalized or diplomatic relations with the Saudis, we are expecting some more, let's call them baby steps in terms of moving towards some kind of normalization with the Saudis. So, for example, this visit is expected to yield an announcement that Israeli flights will be able to go over Saudi airspace from now on, and that Muslims in Israel will be able to fly directly to the kingdom to partake in the -- to take part in the Hajj pilgrimage.
Of course, one issue that is very much a concern of both the Saudis and the Israelis is the Iranian nuclear threat that we very much on the agenda during President Biden's visit. Israel's stance remains unchanged, it is deadly opposed to the JCPOA, as it is called, Israel was happy that the U.S. bulk that Iranian demands to take the Iranian Revolutionary Guards off the U.S.'s terrorist blacklist. But there remains some distance between the Israeli and the U.S. position, Israel, for example reserving the right to use all the tools at its disposal to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat.
But for now, of course, the approach of the current Israeli government is somewhat different to the previous Israeli government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the recall, of course, he's going to Congress effectively over the head of then-President Barack Obama to try to persuade the Americans not to sign up to the Iranian nuclear deal in the -- in the first place. And, of course, the other issue that will be on the agenda is the Palestinians. President Biden will be visiting Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.
And we've actually seen some developments on that front. Just last night, it was announced that Israel be issuing some rare building permits for housing in the West Bank and new border crossing will be opened, more work permits will be issued for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and the status of Palestinians. Some Palestinians will be normalized as well. But no moves towards the peace process, Rosemary, that is still -- excuse me, moribund, but some of these perhaps better the economic a lot of the Palestinians as the best that can be expected.
CHURCH: Yes, All right, Elliott Gotkine, bringing us that live report from Jerusalem, many thanks.
Ukraine is claiming a victory in the south even as Russian forces continue hammering the country's east. On Tuesday, the Ukrainian military announced that it had destroyed a Russian ammunition depot in an occupied part of the Kherson region.
Russian-backed officials in the area are accusing Ukraine of using long-range artillery supplied by the U.S. to carry out that attack. Ukraine is not directly confirming those reports, but in his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy touted the success of modern artillery from the west.
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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The occupiers have already felt very well what modern artillery is, and they will not have a safe rear anywhere on our land which they occupy. They have felt that the operations of our reconnaissance officers to protect their homeland are much more powerful than any of their special operations. Russian soldiers -- and we know this, from interceptions of their conversations are truly afraid of our armed forces.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Russian forces appear to be stepping up attacks on other parts of Ukraine. On Tuesday, more strikes pounded Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv. To the south, shelling was also reported in the city of Mykolaiv and in the -- and the Donetsk region of the Donbass.
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It comes as the death toll continues to rise from Saturday's brutal rocket attack on a town near the frontlines in Donetsk. Ukraine says at least as 45 people were killed and another nine were rescued from the rubble.
Or for more, we want to bring in CNN's Scott McLean. He joins us live from Kyiv. Good morning to you, Scott. So I also want to get to the situation in Enerhodar with the Russian-occupied nuclear plant there and, of course, the latest on the fighting on the ground across the region.
SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Rosemary, this is a strange situation. So, yesterday, the mayor of Enerhodar who is actually not in the city, he is outside of the city since it's Russian-occupied at the moment, and he was Ukrainian elected. He said that there were explosions heard inside the city or just outside the city and then there were shots heard in some residential neighborhoods.
It wasn't long after that the Russians had said that there were Ukrainian strikes or an attempt to strike with a kamikaze drone, but that it was shot down. And then you had Russian state media saying that there were two kamikaze drone strikes that hit a building near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar. This is something that the mayor says is simply not true, that Ukrainians have not attacked Enerhodar. And he said something to the effect of look when the Ukrainians come to retake the city, don't worry, you'll know it. This was a weird back and forth because it's not entirely clear what exactly happened in the city but, of course, ears perk up when they hear about fighting in around a nuclear power plant, especially one that's occupied by the Russians, and especially one where the fighting has -- actually has taken place on the grounds of that nuclear power plant early on in the war.
Rosemary, you also mentioned those strikes in the south near to the city of Kherson, this, perhaps marking an example perhaps of a bit of a turning point in this battle for the Ukrainians and use -- being able to use these foreign supplied weapons to strike deeper behind enemy lines. Now, President Zelenskyy did not confirm that the U.S.- supplied HIMARS system was used but he certainly hinted at it saying as you mentioned that the Russians now are getting a taste of what modern weaponry is all about. And one other thing to mention, that -- is the situation in Chasiv Yar.
This is the part of the Donetsk region. This is a town in the Donetsk region that had been hit by a pair of missile strikes over the weekend that absolutely obliterated part of an apartment building there. We have gotten new updates from the emergency services now the total number of dead is 46. Amazingly, nine people have been rescued from the rubble alive. They are still picking through the rubble. They think they're about 80 percent through cleaning up that area, Rosemary.
CHURCH: All right. Scott McLean joining us live from Kyiv, many thanks.
New bombshells from the January 6 committee's latest hearing, which focused on ties between the Trump team and far-right militia groups, also revealed a series of private messages from a former campaign manager who said Donald Trump's rhetoric on the day of the insurrection "killed someone." Some of the testimony included profane language. CNN's Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PAT CIPOLLONE, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: I was not happy to see the people in the Oval Office.
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Four days after all 50 states certify the electoral results, Donald Trump convened a tense meeting in the White House where several top aides engaged in a screaming match over the effort to install him into a second term in office. CIPOLLONE: I don't think any of these people were providing the president with good advice.
RAJU: Former White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, telling the January 6 committee about the December 18 meeting. One of the aides called it unhinged. It involved Trump and election deniers, including Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, and Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne.
REP. JAMIE RASKIN, (D-MD): What ensued was a heated and profane clash between this group and President Trump's White House advisors who traded personal insults, accusations of disloyalty to the president, and even challenges to physically fight.
ERIC HERSCHMANN, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE ATTORNEY: What they were proposing, I thought it was nuts.
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER PERSONAL LAWYER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: I'm going to categorically describe it as you guys are not tough enough or maybe I put it another way, you're a bunch of pussies.
HERSCHMANN: Flynn screamed at me that I was a quitter, and everything kept on standing up and standing around and screaming at me. And then at a certain point, I had it with him. So I yelled back. Either come over or sit your effing ass back down.
RAJU: And during the six-hour meeting that ended after midnight, Trump even suggested naming Sidney Powell a special counsel, even though he was told repeatedly there was no widespread fraud to investigate.
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SIDNEY POWELL, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN LAWYER: The president said OK, you know, I'm naming her that and I'm giving her security clearance, and then shortly before, we left and totally blew up.
CIPOLLONE: I was vehemently opposed. I didn't think she should have been appointed to anything.
RAJU: The meeting resulted in this draft Executive Order, commanding the Secretary of Defense to seize the voting machines.
CIPOLLONE: To have the federal government seize voting machines? That's a terrible idea for the country. That's not how we do things in the United States.
RAJU: And within hours after the meeting ended at 1:42 a.m., Trump tweeted big protests in DC on January 6, be there, will be wild. The committee revealing this led to a rallying cry for right-wing extremist groups to converge on Washington.
ALEX JONES, CONSPIRACY THEORIST: He is now calling on We The People to take action and to show our numbers.
RAJU: Behind the scenes, Trump's longtime associate, Roger Stone, was in touch with these groups who provided him security.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will be back in January.
RAJU: And was included in encrypted chats with the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Former Trump National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, was also in communications with these groups, according to the committee. And three days after the heated White House meeting, a group of House conservatives met at the White House to discuss how to get Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results while presiding over a joint session of Congress on January 6. Cipollone was excluded.
CIPOLLONE: My view as the vice president had -- didn't have the legal authority to do anything except what he did.
RAJU: The committee also revealing that before Trump's former aide Steve Bannon recorded a podcast on January 5, saying this.
STEVE BANNON, FORMER TRUMP AIDE: All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.
RAJU: He spoke with Trump for 11 minutes, according to White House phone logs. Bannon and Trump spoke again later that evening. Lawmakers also presented evidence showing Trump's Plan B's before January 6 to order his supporters to march to the Capitol after a speech at the rally that day, including a draft tweet that was never posted. In the rally, organizers said POTUS is going to just call for it unexpectedly. Stop the Steal organizer, Ali Alexander knew of Trump's plan.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You were going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.
RAJU: Trump even adlib in his speech he'd be joining the rally-goers at the Capitol. While he didn't go, his supporters did and the deadly riot ensued. In the wake of the attack, Trump's former campaign manager Brad Parscale said that Trump's rhetoric may have killed someone. Katrina Pierson responded. It wasn't the rhetoric. Parscale said, Katrina, yes, it was.
Manu Raju, CNN, Capitol Hill.
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CHURCH: The parents of victims of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas are outraged over the leak of surveillance video showing what was happening inside Robb Elementary as the massacre unfolded. The Austin American-Statesman newspaper published edited portions of the video that reveal the police response during the mass shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers. CNN's Rosa Flores has the story. A warning though, the footage is very disturbing.
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ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): An edited version of surveillance video, one of two videos released Tuesday by the Austin American-Statesman shows that at 11:32 on May 24, the first shots were fired outside Robb Elementary School and audio of a teacher calling 911. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) Oh, my God. Get down. Get in your rooms. Get in your rooms.
FLORES: Then, at 11:33, the School surveillance video shows the gunman entering an empty hallway unhindered walking casually with his gun hanging down. He slows down, peaks around the corner. A boy sees him as he starts shooting and the boy runs. According to the Statesman, the gunman fired his weapon, an AR-15, inside two classrooms for two and a half minutes, stopping and starting multiple times. The Statesman saying they edited out the most disturbing sounds including screams. The surveillance video shows seven police officers arriving, armed, some with rifles.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we got?
FLORES: They entered the hallway. Weapons drawn at 11:36 just three minutes after the gunman arrived while shots are being fired. In total, the material revealing just over two of the more than 70 minutes, Police were in the hallway before killing the gunman, some rushing towards the classrooms, other officers hanging back.
Within one minute, shots are heard, 16 rounds in total, and police can be seen retreating, running back down the hallway to take cover. Then at 11:52, 19 minutes after the gunman enters the school, the timestamp on the video shows more officers arriving, heavily armed, some with ballistic shields.
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Still, they wait. At 12:04, the video jumps 31 minutes after the gunman enters the school, and law enforcement is still waiting. At least 19 officers are now in the hallway, according to the official timeline. At 12:21, 45 minutes after police arrived, the gunman fires another four shots and police start to move down the hallway again remaining outside the classrooms. At 12:30, one officer uses the hand sanitizer dispenser in the school. At 12:43 and 12:47, more 911 calls to send police. And the caller says children are aware the police are outside the door.
Then at 12:50, 74 minutes after police first arrived, officers breached the classroom door and kill the gunman. At this point, the video shows officers in the hallway pushing to go in. The Texas DPS director expressed his disappointment the video was released before the victim's families were given access to it, releasing a statement saying those most affected should have been among the first to see it.
The Statesman defending their decision to publish the material saying "we have to bear witness to history and transparency and unrelenting reporting is a way to bring change." As for the families of the 19 students and two teachers who were massacred at Robb Elementary, some say the video's early release just adds to their pain.
JAVIER CAZARES, FATHER OF UVALDE SCHOOL SHOOTING VICTIM: It got leaked. It got shown all over the world, and we are pissed. These families didn't deserve it. I don't deserve it. That's a slap to our babies' faces and we're tired of this. You know, we can't trust anybody no more.
Rosa Flores, CNN, San Antonio.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Well, still to come, putting a dollar amount on climate change. A new study finds the U.S., China, and other top greenhouse gas emitters have caused trillions of dollars in losses to the global economy. We're back with that and more in just a moment.
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CHURCH: A new study puts actual dollar figures on the economic harm caused by the countries most responsible for climate change. Researchers at Dartmouth College say the world's top five emitters of greenhouse gases, the U.S., China, Russia, India, and Brazil, caused losses of $6 trillion to the global economy between 1990 and 2014. That's about 11 percent of global GDP. And the U.S. and China alone cause more than half of those losses. Scholars say the data could someday open up the potential for legal action against the world's wealthiest nations.
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Christopher Callahan is a Ph.D. candidate at Dartmouth College and is the lead author of that new study. And he joins me now from Hanover, New Hampshire. Thank you so much for being with us.
CHRISTOPHER CALLAHAN, PH.D. CANDIDATE, DARTMOUTH COLLEGE: Thank you for having me.
CHURCH: Well, your report concludes that the United States and China owe more than $3.5 trillion to developing nations for economic harm caused by the climate crisis. How did you come up with that actual dollar amount of economic harm, and how did you go about conducting your study?
CALLAHAN: It's a good question. So we proceeded in basically three steps. We know how much countries like the United States and China have emitted in terms of greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere. And we were able to use basically simple simulations of the earth, so our little computer models that simulate the planet that lived in our computers that show us that when that amount of greenhouse gases are emitted, the global climate changes by a certain amount. And the global average temperature rises over the course of the last 25 years.
We can then show that global warming produces local warming in individual countries such as Indonesia or Brazil or Venezuela. And then we can use other additional work that shows that when temperatures rise locally in certain countries, the economic output of those countries has changed -- it just changed because it becomes more difficult to grow crops or becomes more difficult to work outside or in an air-conditioned space.
And so we take all these different puzzle pieces and put them together to produce this single number that communicates the impact of the warming produced by the emissions from an individual country.
CHURCH: That is fascinating how you come up with that. So do you have any expectation that the United States, China, Russia, Brazil, and India will actually admit responsibility first for causing this climate crisis and then ultimately pay up? And if they don't, what legal action could potentially be taken against them? Could this data provide a basis for that?
CALLAHAN: You know, as scientists, we are sort of confronted with the reality that we can put numbers into the world, but it's ultimately up to other people to determine what to do with those numbers. And so at the end of the day, conversations about legal liability for climate change have been a major sticking point in international climate negotiations.
We can hope that providing these numbers will prevent countries from claiming some sort of plausible deniability or lack of knowledge about the impact that their emissions have caused. And we think that that is a major contribution to our study.
But at the end of the day, it's a political decision by major emitters to choose to admit that responsibility. And that's something that developing nations have been calling for, including things like contributions to the Green Climate Fund to help other countries develop their economies in a green and low emitting way.
And we can hope that this will produce further action on things like contributions to that fund. We -- on the terms of legal liability, we believe that our study provides evidence that individual emitters can be held culpable. Scientifically, we can provide quantitative scientific evidence for the impacts of those emissions. There are many other legal and technical barriers to providing liability in an actual legal context. But we think that we have filled an evidentiary gap as existed so far.
CHURCH: We will watch to see the reaction to those numbers, then. In the meantime, what's the future cost to our planet if changes are not made to address climate issues right now, and if nations like the U.S., China, and others fail to curb their high emission of planet- warming gases?
CALLAHAN: Well, the cost could be quite stark. Our numbers communicate the cost of historical global warming, but going into the future, those costs are likely to rise further. We discussed it in terms of increasing temperatures and things like heat waves, but there are also the costs from more intense hurricanes, increasing droughts, floods, and all the other costs that we have not yet fully quantified. And so I think it is absolutely essential to reduce emissions to avoid these mounting costs in the future.
CHURCH: Christopher Callahan, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it.
CALLAHAN: Thank you for having me.
CHURCH: And coming up next, new developments just into us from Sri Lanka where police have used tear gas on protesters in the capital who were demanding accountability from their leaders amid an economic crisis. We're back with them in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[02:30:00]
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN. More people get their news from CNN than any other news source.
CHURCH: All right. Some updates now from Sri Lanka where police have used tear gas to disperse protesters trying to storm the barriers outside the prime minister's office in the capital. The protesters were shouting that the leaders are trying to flee the country and that they, "Must not be spared." Now, this comes just hours after Sri Lanka's president fled to the Maldives amid his country's economic collapse.
So, we want to go back to CNN's Will Ripley who's following these developments from his vantage point there in Taipei. And, I mean, it is a disgrace what the president and the prime minister had done to Sri Lanka. And the impact their policies have had on the people there. So, they are understandably very angry. What is happening right now? What is the latest that you're hearing on the situation on the ground there in Sri Lanka?
WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What we're being told from sources who are pretty well placed, Rosemary, is that the Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, he's now not necessarily going to step down. And in fact, he's getting ready to -- you know, he's basically ordered now a state of emergency declaration and a curfew which is an attempt for the government to use its means to silence the protesters who are outside the Prime Minister's residence. More than 1,000 of them.
Police have been deployed. They have not only used tear gas but also water cans against these protesters. And the Prime Minister, Wickremesinghe, he might be taking his oath because now the state of emergency declaration has been declared, or will be declared shortly. Also, apparently ordering that unruly persons and those traveling in loris be arrested.
So, we could see arrests. We could see clashes. You could potentially see injuries if the violence were to escalate between protesters and the police. And now you have a prime minister who might be digging in his heels to stay in power as the acting president for the time being. Because the president himself who's still not -- has not tendered a formal resignation fled and is now in exile in the Maldives, in a lush resort -- you know, island paradise while people in Sri Lanka continue to struggle to obtain the basic necessities of life like food, and fuel, and medicine.
So, this is a situation that people on the ground are certainly been hoping would not happen. You know, the weekend demonstrations, including the Prime Minister's resident being set on fire. That was sort of the peak of the violence. And there had been a period of several days of calm with people occupying the president's residence and, you know, this power of the people, kind of, themed that has been posted on the media.
But with the state of emergency declaration and this curfew, and now the Prime Minister's saying he may not necessarily step down for a while, you're setting the stage for potentially a very, very volatile situation in Sri Lanka in the hours and days to come.
[02:35:00]
CHURCH: Yes, this will certainly enrage protesters there. We will watch very carefully to see where things go from here. Will Ripley joining us live from Taipei on the situation on the ground in Sri Lanka. Many thanks.
Well, unlocking the mysteries of the universe. What stunning new images of stars thousands of lightyears away could reveal. We'll take a look at that in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
Look at this. Humanity has a new glimpse of the universe. These are new full-color infrared images that show some of the deepest views of space ever captured, released Tuesday. They were taken by the largest space ever built, the James Webb Telescope.
And this is the Southern ring nebula, it's about 2,500 lightyears away. NASA says these images capturing the star's final performance. And this is Stephan's Quintet, a grouping of five galaxies. And here we have the Carina Nebula, which reveals previously obscured areas of star birth, roughly 7,600 lightyears away. Incredible shot there.
So, for more on this story, I am joined by Markus Kissler-Patig, he is the head of the Science and Operations Department at the European Space Agency and helped lead the team there on the Webb telescope. And he joins us now from Stockholm in Sweden.
Great to have you back with us.
MARKUS KISSLER-PATIG, EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY: Hello. Thanks. Nice to be back.
CHURCH: So, of course, we spoke 24 hours ago, didn't we, about that first extraordinary snapshot of the universe. Now, we have more images to talk about. What do they reveal, coming to use thousands of lightyears away? Starting, of course, with the Southern Ring Nebula, let me bring that up.
KISSLER-PATIG: Indeed, I mean, the -- we released four more images about 12 hours ago and they're as spectacular as the first one. And then the Southern Ring Nebula, this is actually a dying star. So, pretty much we're witnessing the death of a star, which could be a sun. So, our sun will go through that fate in about five billion years, nothing to worry about now. But it shows how actually the envelope of dust is blown out once this nuclear fusion is finishing. Now, these are spectacular images. We typically call them planetary nebulae, although they have nothing to do with planets. It's really the normal end of a star, blowing out its dust and forming these spectacular cocoons. And the James Webb Space Telescope, with its infrared eye can actually peek through all of the dust which is expanding around the star and allows us to actually study in detail how stars are dying, and how they actually blow out this material which will be recycled into new stars.
CHURCH: I mean, it is just simply beautiful. And then this next image, Stephan's Quintet. What is going on here?
[02:40:00]
KISSLER-PATIG: So, that's a dance of galaxies, really. Gravity pulls everything together. You don't escape it, not even in the universe when things are far away. Now, what we're seeing here is actually five galaxies. One is actually on the foreground, the one which shows the most detail.
The other four are really in the process of being merged together and will form a larger galaxy, eventually. A little bit of -- sort of, like, the analogy would be like our Milky Way and our nearest galaxy, Andromeda. They will merge in a few hundred million years as well. Again, nothing to worry about for tomorrow.
But it's a normal process on how galaxies actually emerge. The spectacular part of this, which we didn't expect at all is that peaking through, again, the dust through this infrared capability of Webb. On the top galaxy there, we see a few very bright light source, not on the composite image, but there's an infrared image accompanying the release. And they actually see the black holes.
So, this is the first time we actually see the dusts falling into the black hole and they're shining the last time. And it completely outshined this entire image, we immediately jumped in and said, wow, you know. We can see actually the black hole, like, creating the dust.
That was amazing. I mean, all of these images were jaw-dropping for us. We were speechless when we saw them.
CHURCH: I can understand that. And then the Carina Nebula, if we bring that up, and this is particularly beautiful, isn't it?
KISSLER-PATIG: That's --
CHURCH: Again, you know, we talked about yesterday about these pieces of art, and that's what they are, too.
KISSLER-PATIG: Exactly. That's my favorite. Actually, I have it already as a background. And again, when we -- thought we'd frame and then put, you know, the head of my bed.
It's showing us actually a cradle of stars. So, stars being born. Here we have a line of dust. And again there, we have looked with Hubble onto it, but the dust was actually blocking our views, visible light. So, if I were to actually put a cloud of dust in front of you, you and I would be the only able to actually see visible light, we wouldn't be able to peak through. If you could see in the infrared, as Hubble does -- as Webb does, sorry, then you would actually see through the dust and you could actually see how this dust is collapsing to form new stars.
And that's what we are seeing here. Now, suddenly we saw lots of dust. Lots -- all of these little stars being born, right? And that was Webb what allowed us -- was allowing us to actually see and, you know, it's amazing because we're going to actually study how really these hundreds and thousands, actually, of stars in this nebula are being born right now. And it's actually demonstrating the capability of Webb to actually -- with these infrared eyes study the birth of stars, you know, in -- with the detail which is unprecedented.
CHURCH: And for the benefit of those viewers who weren't with us yesterday. What are you hoping to learn from these extraordinary new images of deep space coming to us, of course, from the James Webb Telescope?
KISSLER-PATIG: It's really going to be a revolution for the entire field of astrophysics, for our -- universe -- of the universe and for humankind, in general. It touches upon so many fields with (INAUDIBLE), you know, the birth of stars, the death of stars. So, really, where are we coming from? What's the fate of our sun?
And the other, not image per spectrum, which was released yesterday, maybe less spectacular for the public but fascinating for scientists was studying the atmosphere, the chemical composition of the atmosphere and planets in a solar system beyond ours. And we could immediately see water there. So, we knew that water is (INAUDIBLE). We know that life, as we know it, is based on water. We now know that actually water is everywhere.
And really the search for life. Are we alone? This big question is really one that Webb will actually let us address. In addition to actually studying the very really early phase of the universe, the image which was released 36 hours ago now, which allowed us to actually really look at the very, very beginning of the universe. How structured form there. What is our universe made of? Cues on the laws of physics in our universe, potentially giving us a sense of whether there are other universes.
So, really, an enormous field of research is opening up. And I'm really, kind of, jealous for this generation of scientists just coming up out of their PhDs who will have a playground to discover the universe and tell us about their mysteries.
CHURCH: You've still had your fun, though. Simply spectacular, Markus.
KISSLER-PATIG: I will have fun
CHURCH: Markus Kissler-Patig, thank you so much for joining us.
KISSLER-PATIG: Thank you. Thanks for having me. CHURCH: And thank you for your company. I'm Rosemary Church. World Sport is up next. Then I'll be back with our top stories in about 15 minutes. You're watching CNN.
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