Indian Authorities Struggle To Rescue Residents Trapped On Mountainsides
LU STOUT: I'm Kristie Lu Stout in Hong Kong. You're watching News Stream. And these are your world headlines. Now all the militants who staged an assault on the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul were killed in the attack. At least three guards also were killed when explosives were set off at a checkpoint outside the palace. The Taliban have claimed responsibility. And the attack comes a week after the international coalition handed over security to Afghan forces. Now Qatar is getting a new ruler, 33-year-old Seikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani. His father made history in the Arab world by voluntarily handing over power, something that is rarely seen in the region. Now 61-year-old Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani has backed rebels in Syria's civil war. Russia's foreign minister says that his government has nothing to do with the travels of Edward Snowden. The former computer contractor flew from Hong Kong to Moscow on Sunday. Snowden is behind a major leak of U.S. intelligence and is said to be seeking asylum in Ecuador. And after days of huge anti-government protests across Brazil, President Dimla Rousseff has proposed a referendum that would lead to political reform. She also offered $25 billion of improvements in public transportation. Now in South Africa, worried well wishers are awaiting the latest word on ailing Nelson Mandela. The 94-year-old former president has been in the hospital for more than two weeks. And Robyn Curnow is on the seen in Pretoria. She joins us now live. And Robyn, what's the latest you're hearing there?</s>ROBYN CURNOW, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think the latest here is that more and more people are gathering outside this hospital where Nelson Mandela is lying critically ill. So many more people, in fact, that it seems that local police have been drawn in to try and control the crowds. You can probably see them over my shoulders. At least 10 more policemen have been stationed at the entrance to this hospital. As for the crowd, it seems to be passersby, South Africans coming to not only look and gaze at a lot of mementos and flowers and balloons at the entrance here, but also I think to gawk at the media. There's also been a huge increase in the last six, seven hours of foreign media crews coming to this pavement, essentially setting up camp. Now while all of this is happening here in Pretoria. We also understand there's a big build-up of people, of media outside Nelson Mandela's home in Qunu, in rural Eastern Cape. We understand members, key members of his family are there allegedly having a meeting. It's unclear why they left his bedside here to gather in rural Eastern Cape to have this meeting. What we do know is that his wife, Graca Machel, was not part of this gathering. She remains here at least in Pretoria and certainly overnight spending the night close to the ICU where Mandela has spent the past few nights over the last three weeks. So all-in-all a real increase, a real sense of anxiety. And I think a lot of action going on both here and outside Mandela's house. It's unclear what all of that really means.</s>LU STOUT: A real sense of anxiety in both places as you report, Robyn, and also the flow of information, it's mainly coming from the president's office. Why is that?</s>CURNOW: Well, I think both the family and the authorities here just wanted to have literally one source of information, one person, one body giving information. Just remember, this Mandela family, particularly the direct Mandela family, you know, is about 40 to 50 people. A lot of them have their own views and opinions of course within government. There are lots of conflicting political opinions between the party and government and various departments. So I think there was a real concern -- lessons learned also from previous hospitalizations that there shouldn't be too much -- too many people saying too many things. So the fact that all official information is coming from the office of the presidency, through one person, Mac Maharaj who was on Robben Island with Mr. Mandela all those years ago is indicative that they're really trying to tightly control the flow of information. And of course the information we are getting is not very much, you know, just these brief updates. And the latest one coming on Sunday night, crucially saying that he's in a critical condition.</s>LU STOUT: Robyn Curnow reporting live for us in Pretoria, South Africa, thank you. Now last week, an Indonesian minister accused Singapore of acting, quote, like a child over the haze that was hanging over the city-state. But now Indonesia's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is personally apologizing for the hazardous air pollution which has since also spread to Malaysia. On Monday, he said, quote, "for this incident I, as president of Indonesia, would like to apologize to Singapore and Malaysia and ask for their understanding." It went to say, "Indonesia did not want this to happen. We're trying to address this problem responsibly." Let's get the very latest on the haze affecting Singapore, Malaysia, and of course Indonesia itself. Mari Ramos joins us from the world weather center -- Mari.</s>MARI RAMOS, CNN WEATHER CORRESPONDENT: Kristie, we've had quite a bit of an improvement as far as the weather there in Indonesia. Just a shift in the weather in the winds helped the situation -- helped improve their air quality significantly. We've even had a little bit of rainfall just north of Singapore, which has really helped things out. And it also has been raining in Sumatra. But before we head to the weather there in Indonesia and Singapore, I want to start you off with the situation in India. And I'm going to start you off with Google Earth. This is pretty serious stuff over here. When we look at India, we're not going to talk about the areas down here in the plains, let's talk about the mountains well up here to the north. And what you can see over here, this is the state that was the most affected by that disastrous flooding. You can see that clearly right there if we zoom in a little bit more. What I want to try to do is show you the terrain, the kind of situation that people are dealing with. This picture from Google Earth was taken back in the -- was taken back in the winter so you have a lot of snow in the mountains all the way down even into the valleys. Most of that snow, of course, has melted. Now it's only in the highest peaks that you still have the snow, but that's why these rivers are always so full. And then we had this deluge that happened two weeks ahead of schedule with extremely heavy rainfall. Let's go ahead and go farther down a little bit more and you can see these towns and villages that are just perched up into the mountainsides here. And look at this, what you see that right there? That's actually a roadway up high into the mountains. And these are the roadways that in many cases collapsed. They are the ones that have the landslides. And then down toward the towns in the river valleys, that's where we have all of that disastrous flooding. We continue moving farther downstream and take you to some of the areas as we head now into some of the lower elevations. And here, this is where all of these rivers drain. So the rivers here remain very, very high even now. We have Nic Robertson, I don't know if he's still with us -- do we have him? Yes. Nic Robertson is with us there live. I wasn't sure, Nic, if you were with us, because I know it has been very difficult to get along some of these areas. And I can see it's clear right now behind you, but you've had some very heavy rain in that area as well. What's the latest situation now in the rescue that's ongoing there?</s>NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, really I think perhaps the best indication of the way that the weather is going and therefore the rescue efforts is just over my shoulder behind me. The hills are clear. We can see them. The clouds are lifting off. And that's really helped the Indian air force here get into some of the higher mountain valleys, up to about 8,000 feet some of the places they've been going to in the mountains to, to rescue people who have been trapped up there. They've been trapped because the roads were washed away. And what we understand from senior air force officials is, they estimate between about 6,000, maybe down to 4,5000 people still trapped in the mountains who they need to rescue. Their efforts were severely hampered yesterday. Their helicopters were not able to take off as frequently as they wanted to get into the mountains because of the rain, because of the cloud. And today it was like that first thing in the morning. Then the clouds (inaudible) as you see lifted, then they were able to go in. So their hopes are up that they can airlift (inaudible). But it is still, Mari, very much (inaudible) come down again. The rain comes down. The helicopters can't go in. They're still inaccessible those areas. They've had to fly in the fuel for the helicopters by plane and drop it off. They can't even resupply those areas in any way by road right now, Mari.</s>RAMOS: You know, Nic, it's amazing because it would be difficult to fly in those areas to get around on a good day, on a good weather day and with good conditions. Now, when the weather can turn to suddenly -- and the map behind me, I know you can see it, but it has those weather warnings even for those areas where you are now where you can get 25, maybe up to 70 millimeters of rain in the next couple of days. And that's something that worries me quite a bit for those areas, because you could have more landslides. Now, once they get these people, if they can pluck them off of these mountainsides and off of these roadways, and they bring them to safer areas, what are they doing with them. And where are all these pilgrims and tourists and survivors going now?</s>ROBERTSON: Get them out of the area. We were at the civilian airport here today, which flies direct flights to the capital Delhi, other parts of the country, and the government had brought in an aircraft and it was filling it with people that the government had paid for to fly out pilgrims, people had been stuck on the mountains, flown by the helicopters and were now being taken on civilian government paid for aircraft out of the area as fast as they can get them out. The situation in the mountains so severe that what the air force has had to do is literally set up air traffic control points with -- with air force personnel on the ground with all their equipment to be able to guide their helicopters in safely, because obviously you had large numbers flying in. But the aim is to just sort of two or three step process, collect people on the mountains, fly them out when the weather is good, get (inaudible) to the lower terrain onto some civilian aircraft out of the region. And you can see a lot of people still waiting. People there telling them that the conditions there have improved for them, but the first few days were some of the hardest days, a lot of people are really just waiting to get down from the hills and get home and get safe again, Mari.</s>RAMOS: Well, just tremendous situation, a huge rescue effort, probably one of the largest ever conducted in those areas. Nic Robertson reporting live there from those hardest hit areas there in Northern India. Thank you, Nic. When you look at the rain fall right now, Dehradun, not too far from where Nic is reporting had 120 millimeters of rain additional compared to what they've had before. When you think about this one weather station alone, they've had over 400 percent of their rainfall that they normally would get during the month of June. That just gives you an idea, Kristie, of how intense this rainfall actually is. And why were so many people trapped there? Well, because they didn't know it was going to be raining this early in the season. Nobody really knew. The rain did catch them by surprise by the thousands here in the north and it was extremely heavy rainfall that would have been bad even if those survivors had not been in those areas. Images like this, unfortunately, becoming more common. This is a warning map. You can see it extends with the heavy rainfall all the way down even into -- toward the planes and over toward the Bay of Bengal. Those are going to be areas to watch. So definitely something we'll continue monitoring. Temperature not a big deal in the daytime, I think, because it's a lot cooler than it was because of the rain. But I'm a little concerned for people in the mountains overnight. It could be very, very cold still even this time of year. Back to you.</s>LU STOUT: And again, thousands and thousands of people in northern India still waiting for rescue. Mari Ramos there, thank you. And in the wake of a tragedy in the United States, an interesting development out of Hollywood. Now the actor Jim Carrey is distancing himself from his latest film. Now Carrey stars in Kick Ass 2. It's based on a comic about ordinary people who dress up like superheroes. There are no super powers, but there's plenty of violence in the world of Kick Ass. And that's led Jim Carrey to back away from the movie. In fact, he tweeted that he worked on the movie before the Sandy Hook shooting in the U.S. and says, quote, "in all good conscience, I cannot support that level of violence. He went on to apologize to everyone else who worked on the film saying, quote, "I am not ashamed of it, but recent events have caused a change in my heart." Now you're watching News Stream. And up next after the break, a major upset on the first day of Wimbledon. Rafael Nadal is knocked out of the tournament in the first round. Coming up on News Stream, a look at what went wrong for the Spanish tennis star.