Trump Strong Words for North Korea
CHURCH: A warm welcome back to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. I'm Rosemary Church. I want to update you now on the main stories we've been following this hour. Turkey says it has the fingerprints of the shooter who killed 39 people at a popular nightclub in Istanbul. Police put out this photo of the suspect. At least eight people have been detained for questioning. ISIS is claiming responsibility. Turkey believes the shooting was retaliation for attacking the terror group in Syria. Convicted church shooter Dylann Roof will represent himself in the sentencing phase of his trial. A federal judge ruled the self- proclaimed white supremacist is mentally competent. Roof shot and killed nine African-Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina church in 2015. He could be sentenced to death. A large fire has destroyed at least 100 homes in central Chile, forcing about 400 people to evacuate. Officials say 19 people are slightly injured. Investigators are determining the cause of the fire, which broke out in a fisherman's club. Gusty winds and high temperatures helped fuel the flames. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has a powerful response to Kim Jong- un following the North Korean leader's threatening New Year's announcement. Trump tweeted this. "North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the United States. It won't happen." Trump also had some strong words for North Korea's neighbor. "China has been taking out massive amounts of money and wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade. But won't help with North Korea. Nice." Well, North Korea has been working to improve its missile capability. The country conducted a fifth nuclear test in September. Well, CNN has reporters across the region. Saima Mohsin is in Seoul, South Korea, and Matt Rivers is reporting in Beijing. Thanks to both of you for joining us. So, Saima, let's start with you. How can President-elect Donald Trump be so sure that it won't happen, referring of course to North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, threatening to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile. Does Mr. Trump know something we don't?</s>SAIMA MOHSIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's the big question, Rosemary. Of course, President-elect Donald Trump does have periodic intelligence briefings according to his team, so is he privy to information that we don't have? We're not sure about that. Maybe he'll reveal that in the days to come. But it's important, of course, to assess what we do know about North Korea's capabilities. Is he referring to the fact that we don't think that they yet have managed to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and attach that to a long-range missile. Of course, we also know that the majority of North Korea's long-range missile tests have been unsuccessful according to intelligence reports and North Korea watches. What we do know, though, Rosemary, is that back in February 2016, North Korea launched a satellite which a lot of experts said could be a guise for launching a long-range missile. The technology is similar. And in April 2016, Kim Jong-un presided over, according to state media, the testing of a new engine for an intercontinental ballistic missile. And at the time, he said this will now help North Korea target its enemies including the U.S. mainland. And so, all of these stages allude to the fact that he is on the path to getting an intercontinental ballistic missile. We just don't know how close he is to that, Rosemary.</s>CHURCH: Yes. Of course, and Saima, what are we to make of Mr. Trump chiding China for not helping when it comes to North Korea? How much control does China really have over North Korea and its leader, of course, Kim Jong-un?</s>MOHSIN: Yes, according to President-elect Trump, he seems to see this in very black and white terms, that China is an ally of North Korea. Therefore, China wields a lot of influence and should be able to use that influence to stop North Korea in its tracks. The reality is that recently, as recently as December, we saw that China actually sided with the U.N. on sanctions against North Korea. And although there is a close relationship between the north and China -- China or in North Korea and China, we haven't seen any summits between Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. He hasn't visited North Korea or Pyongyang, whereas, Xi Jinping has made several visits to North Korea and met with President Park here. So, just how much influence China really has is up for debate. Rosemary?</s>CHURCH: All right. Saima Mohsin reporting there from Seoul in South Korea. I want to turn to Matt Rivers now in Beijing. So, Matt, what has been the reaction in China to Donald Trump's tweet accusing the country's leadership of taking out massive amounts of money from the U.S. But at the same time, in his words, it won't help with North Korea. What's being said about that? And, again, let's look at this control. How much control does China perceive that it has over North Korea, and how is that relationship between China and North Korea changed?</s>MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a line of argument from Donald Trump that China is very used to responding to because frankly, this is the same argument that we've heard from Donald Trump throughout his presidential campaign. And now that he is getting ready to take on the presidency, he's apparently sticking to this same rhetoric. And so, what we heard at the daily scheduled press briefing today at the ministry of foreign affairs is the same thing we've heard from China. Every time Donald Trump says something like this, they come back and say, look, China has been a responsible member of the United Nations Security Council. It has actually helped draft some of these sanctions against North Korea. It is very much in favor of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. But it says that in order to do that, all parties must directly engage with North Korea and with the Kim Jong-un regime. China's contention is that you can't just simply sanction your way out of this problem and that all parties involved, including the United States, including China, including Russia, all the members of the six-party talks that ended some years ago should come back to the negotiating table and resolve this issue responsibly as China says it. But you know, to your question about the China/North Korea relationship, while there might be some debate over how much influence China actually has over North Korea, and China would say that it can't just simply tell North Korea what to do, the fact is that China is the largest trading partner for North Korea. China controls the purse strings, the economic life line to North Korea. It is by far its largest trading partner. And what the contention of critics of China say is that if China were to more effectively enforce these sanctions, if it really wanted to turn the screws on North Korea, it could do so by using that economic leverage against the Kim Jong-un regime. China would say, look, that's not our only our issue. The way to solve this is to through direct negotiations, Rosemary. Very complicated issue both for China and the United States.</s>CHURCH: Yes. And getting more and more complicated as the days progress. Matt Rivers joining us there live from Beijing, where it is 4.38 in the afternoon. Many thanks to you. Well, Donald Trump may hesitate to blame Russia for the U.S. election hack, but Moscow has been accused of cyber-attacks on its neighbors in the past. Ivan Watson reports.</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The war in eastern Ukraine. For more than two years, Ukraine has been fighting separatists supported by its eastern neighbor, Russia, in a conflict that has claimed more than 10,000 lives and displaced some two million people. A shaky ceasefire is barely holding. But this isn't just a conflict being fought with bullets and bombs. Ukraine says it's recently survived at least 10 major cyber-attacks that have targeted organizations like the state railroad company, the ministry of finance, the ministry of infrastructure, agencies that a society needs to function normally. So far, Ukrainian officials aren't publicly blaming the latest cyber assault on anyone. But Ukrainian and American investigators did blame Russian hackers for a separate attack on an electric company in December 2015. It cut power completely in more than 100 cities across the country. Officials in other former Soviet republics like Latvia say they too are frequently targets of their Russian neighbor.</s>JANIS GARISONS, STATE SECRETARY, LATVIAN MINISTRY OF DEFENCE: We've been facing those challenges on all fronts. Information warfare goes on on a daily basis. We're facing Russian propaganda information warfare and even psychological warfare.</s>WATSON: It's not easy to pinpoint the source of a cyber-attack, but experts here argue they appear to be state-sponsored.</s>JANIS SARTS, DIRECTOR, NATO STRATEGIC CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE: Some of the programs that we've seen, it is very evident that no commercial criminal sector or hacktivist would be ready to invest time and resources to such an elaborate program.</s>WATSON: When former Soviet republic Georgia went to war with Russia in 2008, the deadly battles were accompanied by hackers attacking Georgian government web sites. The former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili accuses Moscow of further meddling during elections four years later.</s>MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI, FORMER PRESIDENT OF GEORGIA: In 2012, they were heavily involved in Georgian elections. They've done cyber-attacks over different time periods. They've done all kind of media provocations. They've spread rumors. They've sent operatives to do all kind of dirty tricks.</s>WATSON: But Russia does not have the monopoly on cyber warfare tactics. A computer virus called Stuxnet was discovered in Iran's Natanz nuclear facility in 2010. It caused centrifuges to spin out of control and destroy themselves. Though no government officially claimed responsibility, many experts accused the U.S. and Israel of carrying out the attack. Now, with the outgoing Obama administration announcing new sanctions and the expulsion of Russian diplomats, the threat of further retaliation has some experts worried.</s>MATT TAIT, CYBERSECURITY EXPERT: Cyber warfare is something that is very worrying because of its danger of escalation. You know, this is not a domain in which only, you know, governments and the military play. This is, you know, we've seen it with things like attacks on DNSF as causing mass outage, you know, attacks on banks. These are, you know, parts of civilian infrastructure that we all rely on day to day.</s>WATSON: The threat of a possible cyber war could take our interconnected, highly computerized society into uncharted territory. Ivan Watson, CNN, Kiev.</s>CHURCH: Coming up next on CNN NEWSROOM, family members rush the gates of a Brazilian prison after a deadly uprising. What sparked the riot? That's still ahead.