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U.S. Ambassador To The United Nations Says She's Ready To Vote On A Security Council Resolution Calling For A Suspension Of Fighting Between Israel And Hamas; No Word Yet About Gunman's Motive In Czech Republic Shooting; New Report From "The Detroit News" Alleges Trump Was Recorded Pressuring Two Republican Election Workers To Not Certify 2020 Presidential Election Results; Rudy Giuliani Declares He Is Broke; Thousands Protest New Economic+ Reform In Buenos Aires; Israel's Ground Offensive Continues Across Gaza. Despite the U.S. raising concerns about civilian casualties, it continues to back Israel's war. The U.N. warns of a toxic mix of disease, hunger and lack of hygiene and sanitation. Growing Violence in West Bank Causing Concern; View from Above As Volcanic Eruption Begins to Slow. Aired 2- 3a ET

Aired December 22, 2023 - 02:00   ET

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

[02:00:00]

KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to all you watching us around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. Just ahead, United States changes its position on the latest U.N. resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. We'll look at what it says with the vote expected in the hours ahead.

The deadliest mass shooting Prague has seen in decades raises concerns about rising gun violence in Europe. Plus, a recorded phone call could be another smoking gun for former President Donald Trump, who he reportedly tried to pressure voting officials in one key state to do during the 2020 election.

VOICE-OVER: Live from Atlanta, this is "CNN Newsroom" with Kim Brunhuber.

BRUNHUBER: The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations says she's ready to vote on a Security Council resolution calling for a suspension of fighting between Israel and Hamas. Linda Thomas-Greenfield spoke with reporters after a closed-door session Thursday night denying the measure was watered down.

In addition to a pause in fighting, the resolution calls for more humanitarian aid to Gaza. After a series of delays, the vote is now expected to take place on Friday. Now, it comes as more than 20,000 people in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli military since October 7th, the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry reports.

Israel says its military has destroyed a strategic network of Hamas tunnels under Gaza City and killed over 2000 terrorists since the last pause and fighting ended on December 1st. A new report from the World Food Program and other U.N. agencies says more than one in four households currently face extreme hunger and Gaza is headed for a famine if the conflict continues.

Now, Hamas isn't giving up its fight against Israel, launching a fresh round of rocket attacks at Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, in Gaza, doctors describe unbearable conditions as nearly constant Israeli bombardment continues. CNN's Will Ripley has details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Another day in Israel, another round of rocket fire. Hamas targeting Tel Aviv with a barrage of rockets from Gaza. Israeli media reporting some 30 rocket interceptions by the Iron Dome. No injuries or major damage.

The Israeli military warning Gaza residents it will retaliate with more airstrikes aimed at areas already reeling from more than two months of brutal bombardment. U.S. intelligence agencies warn Hamas' credibility and influence has grown dramatically in the more than two months since the October 7th terror attacks.

As global outrage grows over Israel's military response, nearly constant Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, plunging hospital hallways into total darkness, putting countless patients in peril. The World Health Organization warns --

SEAN CASEY, WHO EMERGENCY MEDICAL TEAM: What we found here is a hospital that's really almost completely stopped functioning.

RIPLEY (voice-over): The WHO says northern Gaza has no functioning hospitals left. Only nine of 36 hospitals operating in all of Gaza, all of them in the south. Doctors describing unbearable conditions.

On the ground in Gaza, fierce firefights. Israeli forces going door to door, building to building, snipers opening fire with deadly results. The Israeli military says it killed hundreds of Hamas militants. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning more bloodshed is coming.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): The choice I am offering Hamas is simple, surrender or die. They do not have and will not have any other option.

RIPLEY (voice-over): Those grim words after Hamas rejected Israel's offer for a one-week pause in fighting in exchange for the release of 40 Israeli hostages, prioritizing women, the elderly and patients desperately in need of medical care.

A Hamas statement saying, they won't agree to any talks about prisoner swaps until after Israel ends its military operation in Gaza. An operation that only seems to be intensifying. The Israeli military taking the fight underground, uncovering what it calls hidden Hamas tunnels, underground bunkers beneath the battle scarred streets.

RIPLEY: And that massive explosion you just saw there is what Israel calls the demolition of a massive underground tunnel complex underneath Palestine Park in Gaza City. They say it housed apartments and living quarters along with offices for senior Hamas leadership. Israel claims that since the ceasefire, they have killed at least 2000 Hamas militants.

[02:05:00]

The overall death toll in Gaza, as reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah, around 20,000 people. Will Ripley, CNN, Tel Aviv.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: There's no word yet about the gunman's motive following the deadliest mass shooting in the Czech Republic in decades. Police say a student went on a shooting spree at a university in Prague on Thursday, killing at least 14 people, leaving 25 others wounded. Investigators believe he later took his own life, but that's yet to be confirmed.

The rampage shook the country to the core, partly because gun attacks are relatively rare in the Czech Republic. Saturday will be a nationwide day of mourning there. One woman who was near the university while the shooting was going on says she was lucky. Listen to this.

UNKNOWN: It looks like it's something totally unprecedented in the Czech Republic, and I think everybody is completely shaken. For us, it's even worse, because we're locals and because we're graduates of the philosophy faculty. We go there sometimes to visit. If we had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, it could have affected us much more than just the fact that it happened a few meters away from us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Now, the attack happened even though police had received a tip about the shooter and tried to stop him just before the rampage. We have more details now from CNN's Melissa Bell.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR PARIS CORREPONDENT (voice-over): Terror on the streets of Prague. Students risking their lives to escape a gunman's bullets that killed more than a dozen on Thursday afternoon. More than 20 were injured, 10 severely, in the shooting at Prague's Charles University before the gunman, an enrolled philosophy student, was eliminated, police said. It's an attack that has rocked the Czech Republic.

PETR FIALA, CZECH PRIME MINISTER: (through translator): There is absolutely no explanation, no justification for this. Like many of you, I am feeling a deep sorrow and disgust over this incomprehensible and brutal violence.

BELL (voice-over): As night fell on Prague, details emerged about the 24-year-old suspect. Before the deadly shooting in the capital, police said the shooter left his home village where his father was found dead. Intent on further bloodshed, he made his way to the Czech capital. Tipped off, police forces rushed to evacuate the building where the

shooter was due to attend a lecture, but he struck elsewhere, forcing students to barricade themselves inside classrooms, later evacuated en masse. Their preparation for end-of-year exams brutally shattered by the country's deadliest shooting in decades.

No indication of a link to international terrorism, the Czech Interior Minister confirmed. But tonight, a city in shock on a continent where mass shootings are few and far between. Melissa Bell, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: For more analysis, we're joined by Alexei Anisin, the Dean of the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at the Anglo- American University in Prague and the author of the book "Mass Shootings in Central and Eastern Europe". And he's speaking with us from the Czech capital. Thank you so much for being here with us.

So, I want to start with what we just heard from our reporter there, that mass shootings in Europe being few and far between. But are the numbers growing?

ALEXEI ANISIN, DEAN, SCHOOL INTERNATIONAL: I think so. Good morning and it seems as if it is the case that there are more and more incidents. In recent years there have been, you know, an array of different cases that have typically been carried out by relatively young offenders and obviously yesterday's gruesome incident was one of those.

BRUNHUBER: One of the student survivors of the project shooting told CNN that he felt like mass shootings were spreading like a disease from the U.S. to Europe. Now, this is something that you have warned about that mass shootings will go up in Europe inspired by what's happening here in the U.S. Why is that?

ANISIN: Well, I think it largely boils down to, you know, these new forms of communication. Many young people learn how to live their lives with aid or through the internet. And the phenomenon of, you know, cross-border diffusion of an idea to carry out a mass killing has been referred to as a copycat shooting.

And from yesterday's attack, we can see clear behavior in which the offender, you know, he probably studied other previous cases that resulted in high fatality rates. You know, he planned the attack, he was highly militarized, and it would be strange if it was just, you know, a random act that he thought of the morning of, you know, it seemed like he planned it.

And there are a number of other cases, especially in recent years in the Russian Federation, where you've had, you know, direct sympathizers to U.S. mass shooters.

[02:10:00]

So, people carrying out mass shootings in the name of, you know, the Columbine killers and similar previous high profile cases in the U.S. So, yeah, there seems to be a process of diffusion going on.

BRUNHUBER: Yeah, even down to the way they dress and so on right?

ANISIN: Yep.

BRUNHUBER: So, you touched on, you know, the fact that this was a young male. I mean, let's go into that a bit more detail. Who are the shooters typically? What kind of gender and age profile are we looking at here?

ANISIN: Yeah, so this is the actual interesting thing here. So, I've had several comparative analyses of, you know, central Eastern European mass shooters and American mass shooters. So, the age is typically from age 33 to 34 on average. And in the U.S. context, it's about 95 percent male. In the central Eastern European regions, my data indicates that it's all males.

So, thus far, I have not identified any female shooters. And as I said earlier, you know, in recent years, it seems really that the younger demographic seems to be, you know, the main culprit of who's carrying out these attacks.

BRUNHUBER: So, when we're talking about the rise of the number of mass shootings in Europe, the cultural export of this phenomenon from the U.S., that's one thing, the availability of guns is another thing. I mean, we've seen 20 times more mass shootings in the U.S. compared to Europe, which has a much bigger population. So, gun regulations, obviously, work and they're quite strict generally in Europe. So, are guns becoming easier to get in Europe now?

ANISIN: Well, on average, it's more difficult to acquire a gun legally in a European Union country than it is to acquire a driver's license and a car. The estimations on firearm ownership like per capita, so per 100 residents like the Czech Republic is 12.53 firearms per 100 people. The U.S. is over 120. So, yeah, there's a massive difference and it's much more difficult, obviously, to acquire a gun.

But as you mentioned, you know, there's this cultural aspect and it seems like that's really what is tied to these recent attacks. And I think if you look at, you know, criminological research, there are few studies that would say, you know, total numbers of guns are correlated with causing a mass shooting. But nevertheless, the total number of guns in society are correlated with you know outbursts of violent crime.

The difficulty with mass shootings is that there are on average, right, it's such a rare form of homicide in comparison to others. So, to put things into perspective, at least according to my data, yesterday's attack here was only the fourth mass shooting in the country's history. So --

BRUNHUBER: Here, mass shootings, gun violence, I mean, it's such a divisive political issue because so many people are against gun control. Are political solutions more feasible there? Are there other solutions that could prevent this culture from growing until it sort of mirrors what we're seeing here in the U.S.? ANISIN: I think the current regulatory structures that are in place

here are already quite developed because you have, you know, national level regulation and then you have European Union level regulation, which is somewhat analogous to, you know, state level regulation in the U.S. and then federal regulation.

I think after yesterday's attack, they're probably in this country, at least from what I'm seeing already, there are already political discussions being carried out about what can be done to prevent such a thing in the future. So, with the current regulations in place, it seems as if Europeans are inclined to favor stricter restrictions on firearms.

And like many of your viewers would know, there's no second amendment across the board, so to speak, in any European Union country. We'll have to leave it there, but really appreciate your insights, Alexei Anisin. Thank you so much.

ANISIN: Yeah, thanks.

BRUNHUBER: Well, we've heard the phone call in which Donald Trump pressured officials in Georgia to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election. Now, the Detroit News says it has yet another recording of the then president urging officials in Michigan to do the same -- details, next.

Also coming up, people in Argentina hit the streets to protest their new president's economic policies -- why some have called his plans radical. That's when we come back. Stay with us.

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[02:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRUNHUBER: A new report from the Detroit News alleges that then- President Donald Trump was recorded pressuring two Republican election workers to not certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. The paper says in a phone call days after the vote, Trump told the Republicans they'd look terrible if they signed the certification. Gabe Cohen has more.

MARSHALL COHEN, CNN REPORTER: Studying news from Michigan where the Detroit News has published excerpts of a phone call that former President Donald Trump made in November 2020 to two election officials in Detroit. The goal of the call was to convince them not to certify the results of the election which he had lost to President Joe Biden.

According to the Detroit News, Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tried to twist the arm of those election officials and convince them to not to sign the certificate that would certify the results from Detroit, which is a heavily democratic county.

Here are some of the key quotes. Donald Trump said, quote, "We can't let these people take our country away from us. Everyone knows Detroit is crooked as hell."

He also said, how can anybody sign something when you have more votes than people? That of course was a false claim. One of his many lies about the election that thousands if not tens of thousands of dead people had voted more votes than people.

Perhaps the most stunning revelation in this tape though is when Ronna McDaniel told the officials quote, "Do not sign it. We will get you attorneys." And then Trump said, "We'll take care of that."

Incredible developments and a -- audio recording of Donald Trump in his own words. To be clear, CNN has not obtained this recording and has not independently verified its contents, but it was reported by the "The Detroit News" just last night.

Here is a reaction from the Trump campaign. They have vociferously pushed back on the idea that he ever did anything wrong. He says, his campaign spokesman says, quote, "All of President Trump's actions were taken in furtherance of his duty as President of the United States to faithfully take care of the laws and ensure election integrity."

However, it's hard to take that at face value. Trying to overturn an election is the opposite of election integrity. And that's why Trump is facing federal charges -- federal criminal charges for trying to overturn the election. Marshall Cohen, CNN, Washington.

BRUNHUBER: Former U.S. President Donald Trump's long-time ally Rudy Giuliani says he's all but broke and he's asking for a federal court from protection from bankruptcy. The move comes just days after a jury ordered Giuliani to pay nearly $150 million for defaming two election workers in Georgia.

[02:20:00]

The disgraced attorney says he has assets of up to $10 million. But he says his debts are up to half a billion dollars, which includes that defamation judgment, three other pending defamation cases, nearly a million dollars in unpaid taxes, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyers and accountants fees.

Protesters are voicing their anger in Argentina over the new president's plan for reshaping the economy. Argentina's new leader Javier Milei has signed a decree to dismantle regulations that he says have hindered growth and get the state off the backs of the people. David Shortell reports.

DAVID SHORTELL, JOURNALIST: And thousands taking to the street in Buenos Aires in protest of this economic reform plan that was announced by Milei on Wednesday evening. He calls it an economic plan to rebuild the country after decades of poor policy and poverty.

The main idea of this plan is to essentially take the government out of economy. Argentina has, of course, had a very poor economy in recent years. It's contending with one of the highest rates of inflation in the world. Let me walk you through a few of these policies that he outlined in

this Wednesday emergency session. He says he's going to privatize the country's state-run companies, which include a national airline and some energy groups.

He's also planning to eliminate export limits and deregulate around the country's rental housing market. And importantly, he said that he'll roll back some employee benefits.

Now, that's certain to be a flashpoint in Argentina where poverty rates are very high and there are some powerful unions. But none of this should come as a surprise. Javier Milei is a libertarian economist himself. He ran for president at campaign rallies, literally holding a chainsaw in his hand in a not so subtle reference to what he planned to do to government spending in office.

And then just a few days ago in his inaugural speech, he outlined his vision, calling it basically shock therapy for the country. He said it's going to hurt, but it will work in the long run. Take a listen to Milei on the radio Thursday morning explaining a bit more of his rationale around these new policies.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

JAVIER MILEI, PRESIDENT OF ARGENTINA (through translator): People benefit from lower inflation. They will benefit with the economy recovering. They will find a better job, a better quality of life. What's the alternative? I do nothing and we go into hyperinflation and profits will not drop 10 percent, 20 percent, but will drop 90 percent.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

SHORTELL: And markets largely reacting positively in Argentina following the news of this announcement, this new economic plan. Of course, markets measure one thing. The mood on the street is quite different. Thousands in the street protesting in Buenos Aires, banging on pots and pans in typical Argentinian fashion, saying that they want these austerity measures rolled back. More protests are planned in the coming days. David Shortell, CNN, Mexico City.

BRUNHUBER: All right, still ahead, we'll look at the growing violence in the West Bank. Israeli military raids and confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli settlers making for a tense situation. That's coming up.

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[02:25:00]

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BRUNHUBER: The United Nations Security Council is expected to vote in the day ahead on the latest resolution calling for suspension of fighting between Israel and Hamas. It's been delayed four times already, but the U.S. Ambassador now says she's ready to support it. In addition to a pause in fighting, it also calls for increased

humanitarian aid to Gaza. Now, it comes as more than 20,000 people in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli military since October 7th, according to the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry. CNN can't independently verify that number.

Now for weeks, Israel has instructed civilians in Gaza to evacuate areas that would see intense fighting, but a CNN analysis shows that this month alone the Israeli military has struck at least three locations where it had told people to seek shelter. And at this point it seems there's nowhere safe in Gaza. As our Nima Elbagir reports, Gaza's overwhelmed hospitals can't keep up with the crush of victims.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIMA ELBAGIR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Airstrike after airstrike after airstrike. In the daily bombardment, Gazans rarely find a reprieve. When the smoke clears, it's back to the daily routine. Searching the rubble, hoping for miracles, hoping to find survivors. A journey that leads many to the overflowing morgues.

At the European hospital in southern Gaza, there is no relief in identifying the dead. Roughly 20,000 people killed in Gaza after 11 weeks of Israeli bombardment, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah. A number CNN can't verify, but U.N. officials say they found the ministry's figures from past conflicts to be accurate. A grim landmark with every lost life, the pain is inconsolable.

RIDAAN ABU MA'MAR, GAZA RESIDENT (through translator): There is nowhere safe in the whole of the Gaza Strip. My whole family is gone. We are only four people left out of a family of eight.

ELBAGIR (voice-over): In southern Gaza, the bombs don't stop, nor does the flow of the injured to overwhelmed hospitals, disrupting the rare moments of respite where children complain.

UNKNOWN (through translator): I was at my aunt's house and we were playing. We saw a big and fast airplane flying over and suddenly it bombed our place and stones fell on me and then people removed me from the rubble.

ELBAGIR (voice-over): Israel's ground offensive continues across Gaza. Despite the U.S. raising concerns about civilian casualties, it continues to back Israel's war. The U.N. warns of a toxic mix of disease, hunger and lack of hygiene and sanitation.

Outbreaks of infectious disease add to the impossible task of survival. Most of the 2.2 million population is displaced and struggling to find food and clean water. The World Health Organization says there are no functioning hospitals left in northern Gaza.

The once sprawling Al Ahli hospital complex is barely providing relief.

CASEY: What we found here is a hospital that's really almost completely stopped functioning. Two days ago, a number of staff were detained.

ELBAGIR (voice-over): Instead of preparing for Christmas, this church has become a hospital ward.

CASEY: But they're not able to perform surgery. They're able to only provide pain management, some wound care, some trauma stabilization. They're doing their best with a very small team of only about 10 clinical staff left at this hospital.

ELBAGIR: Hours after posting this video of the first aid center at the battered Jabalia camp, The Palestinian Red Crescent said the center was raided and communication was cut off. And yet the dead and dying just keep coming. Nima Elbagir, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: The war between Israel and Hamas has sparked an increase in violent confrontations in the West Bank. The Palestinian Health Ministry reports more than 300 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7th.

According to the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz",Israel has detained a huge number of Palestinians, allowed settlers to threaten and attack West Bank residents without consequence.

[02:30:08]

Hagar Shezaf is the West Bank correspondent for "Haaretz" and she joins me now from Tel Aviv.

Thank you so much for being here with us.

So, obviously, most of the focus has been on Gaza. Give us a sense of how the war has affected the violence that was already growing in the West Bank?

HAGAR SHEZAF, WEST BANK CORRESPONDENT: So, I think the first thing that I can point out is that according to data collected by the IDF, the number of settler attacks during October has doubled, if you -- if you compare it to the previous month, to September.

So, this is new data that we have from yesterday, which goes to show how about the situation has become and how, you know, the war affected it. We are seeing not only more attacks, more intense attacks of armed people. Sometimes they would be settlers, sometimes they would be settlers recruited to the IDF because there are quite a lot of reserve soldiers that are settlers and we have seen them participating in attacks and in threats on Palestinian communities which have resulted in some instances, communities basically running away, self evacuating and moving the whole community to a different place. So, yeah --

BRUNHUBER: Let me jump in as well just -- about the number of mass arrests, as well. It's a huge number. Explain who is being arrested and why.

SHEZAF: Right. So, there has been obviously a crackdown on people that Israel says are involved with Hamas in the West Bank, but obviously not all interests are of people involved with Hamas.

The truth is that we have in many cases no way to the verify who -- I mean, what are the allegations against these people because a very high number of the detained Palestinians are being placed in administrative detention, and administrative detention is a process under which an indictment is being submitted against the person detained, and there is no real list of allegations against them. So it's very difficult for us to say who these people are.

According to the Israeli army, a large number of them are connected to Hamas or Islamic Jihad. I, as a journalist, have no way of verifying that.

BRUNHUBER: You sort of touched on this. I wanted to expand a bit more. The Palestinians there in the West Bank seem to be targeted by both settlers and the army. I mean, how much support have the Israeli settlers in the West Bank being getting from the government, who have been, for instance, encouraging gun ownership among the settlers, and the army which been giving weapons to the settlers?

SHEZAF: Right. So even for the war, many settlers were getting basically military weapons. The criteria for getting that weapon as a settler, and again, I'm not talking about privately owned weapons, but weapons from the Israeli army. The criteria is very low. Many people can get it in the West Bank.

And since the war started, the Israeli army has been given out weapons, even more freely. And we are seeing the result on the ground as I mentioned before. As I'm sure you know, the current Israeli government has a few very extreme right wing, not only politicians but senior ministers, such is Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is the minister in charge of Israeli police, basically, and Bezalel Smotrich, who is the finance minister, but also is in charge on Israeli policy in the West Bank in many ways.

They are very supportive. They are settlers themselves, first of all, we have to say, both. And they are very supportive of settlers. They're denying the fact that settler violence exists. It has actually become a campaign of Israeli politicians, of these parties saying, you know, that this thing -- this doesn't exist. And we have seen in some cases publications supporting people who were settlers who were detained on charges of violence. We have seen support from Israeli politicians.

So, yeah, I would say the current government in many ways has a lot of support for settlers.

BRUNHUBER: Right. We have been talking about the Israeli attitudes in the West Bank.

[02:35:01]

Let's turn to the Palestinians. A recent survey found that almost three quarters of those polled in the West Bank and Gaza, it was a small sample, but they believe Hamas's decision to launch its attack on Israel, on October 7th, was, quote, correct. They seem to see, it sort of, not as an act of terrorism but an act of resistance. What do you make of that?

SHEZAF: I mean, first of all, we need to say that, even before the October 7th massacre, you know, support for Hamas in the West Bank, or I think, more disapproval of the Palestinian Authority and the current head of Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, is very high. So, I think this trend is not new.

And what do I make of it? You know, obviously, it's a very sad, as an Israeli, to see this result of the poll. I think that the two people, Palestinian people and the Israeli people, our very disconnected from each other. They don't believe one another.

I know personally Palestinians who don't believe the October 7th massacre actually happened, in many ways. I obviously not many Israelis who think that every image that comes out of Gaza is fake and they just don't care about what happened there.

So it's the sad, you know, poll result, I'm not very surprised. I also think that, you know, in the West Bank, the ongoing occupation and, you know, it's consequences, we have been seeing it for a long time. And to some extent, I think that, you know, it reflects in the poll result as well.

BRUNHUBER: Yeah. You touched on that reality that both populations are living in a sense, in a news bubble, and getting very different perceptions of what is happening right now.

We'll have to leave it there. But really appreciate getting your take on everything that's going on. Hagar Shezaf in Tel Aviv, thank you so much.

SHEZAF: Thank you very much.

BRUNHUBER: More than two weeks now and still not word on that whereabouts of Alexey Navalny, the outspoken but jailed critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Navalny has failed to appear at court hearings and his lawyers say they've lost contact with him in early December.

Navalny's team say they were told he lift the penal colony where he was being held. Since reached out to 250 penal colonies around Russia, but there are still under one of his location. They say the Kremlin is refusing to reveal any information about him and his condition.

New warnings about that active volcano in Iceland. Coming up, CNN gets a firsthand look at the eruptions zone with Iceland's coast guard.

Stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: Scientists say that volcanic eruption in Iceland appears to be slowing, but the area remains dangerous and they say it's too early to declare the eruption is over.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen caught a ride with Iceland's Coast Guard as they monitor the eruptions from the sky.

[02:40:07]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Iceland's coast guard flying into the eruption zone on an arctic night.

These flights are extremely important for the Icelandic coast guard. On the one hand, they have to survey the area. But they also have to practice in case they need to do mass evacuations at night.

Iceland was prepared for the massive eruption that started early this week, a more than two-mile-long fissure spewing magma hundreds of feet into the air. But while residents have been evacuated, authorities are still working in the area.

JENS POR SIGUROARSON, COMMANDER, ICELANDIC COAST GUARD: So, this is highly important for us to do this during the night. And it is a lot of hazard involved.

PLEITGEN: The crew even spots a person walking close to the lava and say they notified police to check it out. The eruption has weakened considerably, but magma is still bubbling below us.

The crew strapped me in for a closer look.

This is an amazing thing to be witnessing from up here. You can see just how active the volcanic zone still is. We can see the lava. We can smell the magma. You can feel the power that our planet is unleashing.

The chopper drops us off right by the lava field to train evacuations.

This is extremely challenging flying for these aviators. Right now, they are practicing hoist operations in case they have to medically evacuate a casualty from this area in the dark.

As furious as the eruption was initially, it also seems to be subsiding fast, seismologist Kristin Jonsdottir tells me.

KRISTIN JONSDOTTIR, ICELANDIC METEOROLOGICAL OFFICE: It was quite active in the beginning, four kilometers long, a fissure that opened. Very high rates of magma flow. So, it was a bit of a surprise that it has all culminated.

PLEITGEN: Those evacuated cannot return home yet, as the magma tunnel here remains active and authorities say further eruptions are still possible.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Grindavik, Iceland.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: All right. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Kim Brunhuber.

"WORLD SPORT" is up next and we'll be back in 15 minutes with more CNN NEWSROOM.