Thousands Flee Their Homes in Australia; Iraqi Demonstrators Left U.S. Embassy's Vicinity
MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from all around the world. I'm Max Foster. Coming up on CNN Newsroom, thousands fleeing the massive wildfires in Australia and new warnings that conditions could get even worse this weekend. Also ahead, we'll take you to Baghdad where it appears tents put calm outside the U.S. embassy after days of violent protests. Plus, the pope's apology, he says he should have been more patient with the woman who grabbed him. We begin in Australia. New South Wales will declare a state of emergency on Friday as the raging bush fires show no signs of slowing down. The situation is also tense in Victoria. The Australian military is bringing in supplies by boats for people who are stranded in Mallacoota. Officials say they have a potential to evacuate about 500 people by boat if they wish to leave. Meanwhile, this is what it looks like on the highways of New South Wales. Thousands of people are fleeing their homes after officials ordered residents and tourists to get out of the areas along the coast. At least eight people have died in the fires in just the past few days, while officials are scrambling to ensure supplies are reaching the hardest hit areas.</s>SCOTT MORRISON, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: Now there are parts of both, obviously Victoria and New South Wales which have been completely devastated with the loss of power, with the loss of communication, every absolute effort is in trying to ensure that those needs to be stood up as soon as possible. In some cases, we've been able to get tankers in to restore fuel supplies that is now greatly assisted. Now there are other places which is still too difficult to get these supplies into now but we will be able to do that as soon as we possibly can.</s>FOSTER: CNN's Anna Coren joins us live from Nowra in New South Wales, Australia. Obviously, people have been worried for some time now, but it feels like the authorities are trying to calm people down because they're panicking a bit.</s>ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Max, they're trying to calm people down but in saying that they've also told thousands, tens of thousands of people here on the south coast of New South Wales to get out. And there's a mass exodus underway. There's been a steady stream of cars traveling up the Princess Highway where just south of Nowra about three hours out of Sydney. And we have seen car after car come through. However, that has been interrupted because of fires about 15 kilometers down the road it jumps the highway. Authorities now trying to get that under control, so from what I have heard from residents who are trying to get to their loved ones is that there are thousands of cars trying to head north. So, these people are panicked. They are concerned about their safety and they are trying to get out of these areas. Authorities are urging everybody to evacuate. We are expecting a deterioration in conditions come the weekend. Rising temperatures into the 40s and very strong winds. And as we know that is what creates these catastrophic conditions. I now want to introduce you, Max, to Rob O'Neil (Ph). He is somebody who is desperately trying to reach his two kids and their grandparents who are stuck south of Batesman Bay, what, half an hour, 40 minutes from where we are.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.</s>COREN: Tell me.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On a good day.</s>COREN: On a good day. Tell me you've been here since one o'clock in the afternoon. It is now just gone 7 p.m. You are desperate to get to your children. What's happened?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four-year-old and a five-year-old went down for a little bit of a vacation with their grandparents on that little bay. And since then they've been cut off obviously by the fires. I'm trying to get down there to evacuate them now but as you said we are stuck here on the roads. We can't get through.</s>COREN: And you have had no contacts, no communication with them whatsoever?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. I haven't been able to speak to them since would have been the 30th. So, I don't know what happened on New Year's Eve. I think they were probably on the beach with a whole bunch of other people trying to escape the fire, but again, we don't know. So, I'm just trying to get there and get them out just before the terrible day on Saturday, as you said.</s>COREN: You mentioned New Year's Eve. There were those catastrophic conditions. People lost their lives. Obviously, hundreds of homes were lost. I mean, what were you thinking? What were you doing at that time?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New Year's Eve was not a night of celebration that's for sure. We were watching the media and trying to get as much information as we could and was pretty scary to be honest. Not knowing and not being able to talk to them. I'm just trying to feel through the images, even we could see the image of them on the beach that would've been reassuring but we couldn't even see that. So, lots of people and lots of smoke and not knowing what to think.</s>COREN: Rod, I hope that the Princess Highway will open soon that you can get to your children and get to your family. Many thanks for joining us.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks. OK.</s>COREN: So, Max, as you can see, they are letting in certain trucks but it is such a fluid situation. The road behind me is lined with more cars. People are desperate to get to their loved ones. I've spoken to countless people whose homes have gone up in flames, whose family members are stuck, they're bringing in supplies. I did speak to a woman who said she wants to go down and protect her home. Thesis the opposite of what authorities are telling people. But she said I have a pool, I have a watering system, I am going to fight those fires. So, bush fires Australia is not immune to them, Max. It is part of -- part of life here but this is the worst fire season on record and we are expecting catastrophic conditions this weekend. Max.</s>FOSTER: Yes. Anna, thank you. It's all about what happens next in terms of the weather. Meteorologist Derek van Dam joins us with more on that. So, a slight window as bad as it all seems there at the moment, but it's going to get worse, right?</s>DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. Well, Anna aptly put it that this is the worst fire season that we have experienced in Australia and there are reasons for this which we'll get to but the most pressing information is of course what's happening in the next 24 to 48 hours. Conditions, unfortunately, will become worse before they get better. We have a cold front that's pressing eastward. We get this almost cyclical weather pattern that takes place. the heat wave moves from western and central Australia to the eastern portions of the country and it's all pushed along by a cold front allowing for that extreme heat to make its way towards the coastline of New South Wales and into Victoria. Check out these temperatures as we head into Frida and Saturday. Now we will get relief from this cold front to allow in for a cooler weather to settle in and maybe, just maybe some light precipitation, not enough to put out fires necessarily but will take what we can get at this stage before a change in the wind direction makes it difficult for firefighters to get a handle on the ongoing bush fires. So, how do we get to this point? Well, 2019, according to the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia was declared the hottest year on record. We're talking about with new average temperatures across the country highs and lows. We are 1.5 degrees Celsius above average. I mean, this is incredible and this is also been the driest year on record. Shattering the previous record which was set back in 1902. Just cumulatively across the country we only saw 278 millimeters of rainfall. So, where do we stand now? These numbers are new. Latest updated to CNN we have over 150 current bush fires from New South Wales and Victoria. Forty-nine of which are out of control. That number just last hour was 34 so you can see the breath of these wildfires and the bush fires as they continue to expand not only in size but in numbers as well. Think about what this is doing to the quality of the air. You could actually see from satellite imagery the plume of smoke emanating from the East Coast of Australia and covering parts of the South Island of New Zealand. It is five and a half million square kilometers. That is 14 times the size of Japan. There are reports of people in the South Island of New Zealand having to turn their lights on in the middle of the day because the smog and the thick smoke from the bush fires is actually blotting out the sun. Now you can see the air quality index into Canberra and Sydney very bad and very poor as we head into the rest of the week and into the weekend so here's what we have been in store with the passage of our cold front. Look at the winds picking up into Melbourne, Sydney and points northward as this cold front starts to change the direction for more of a northerly wind to more of a southwesterly component. So that will make it that much more difficult for the firefighters to control these blazes. Like I said it's going to get worse before it gets better. But the good news on the horizon, the silver lining here, Max, is that you can see some precipitation starting to move in to our map. So, I will look out for that on Monday and Tuesday of next week. Back to you.</s>FOSTER: Long may it last. Derek, thank you very much, indeed.</s>VAN DAM: Right. OK.</s>FOSTER: To Iraq now where a huge crowd have left the area around the U.S. embassy in Baghdad after two days of violent protests. Security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets as demonstrators threw rocks and set fires and try to scale the building's walls. They're angry about U.S. airstrikes on an Iranian-backed militia group on Sunday that killed at least 25 people. CNN's Arwa Damon live this hour in Baghdad. So, the area is now secure?</s>ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Max, it seems to be and the Iraqi security forces are based on images that we have seen out along the outer perimeter of the U.S. embassy compound. Things are, as we would say, back to normal in the sense that access to that area is under the restrictions that it used to be, under, meaning that you either need to have a special badge to be able to go through or be escorted by someone. There is still a cleanup effort underway trying to clean the streets up, clean out all of those areas that were burned and scrubbed the graffiti off of the walls. Now even though, Max, the situation is relatively speaking to what we had seen unfold calm at this stage, Kata'ib Hezbollah, that is the group that was targeted by those U.S. strikes, has said that they decided to pull their people back because America had received their message. They are viewing this as being a victory but they are saying that their main demand that the U.S. leave Iraq that still stands. However, for the time being they say that they are going to allow the process to go through the Iraqi parliament. They have set up what's being called the morning tent in another part of the capital at this stage. But when we look at who these protesters are, who this group as was targeted by the U.S., you really end up going to the very core of one of the key complexities that is facing this country at this stage. Because even though the U.S. is calling Kata'ib Hezbollah a militia, this is a group that is ostensibly part of the Iraqi security forces apparatus. It and many other groups are part of what's known as the PMF, the Popular Mobilization Force which was established as ISIS was sweeping through huge swaths of Iraq, instrumental in driving ISIS out of key cities and towns. And even though they are part of, again, ostensibly the Iraqi security forces and how much control Baghdad actually has over them is one of the key questions here. And that is perhaps what was apparent on what we saw unfolding outside of the U.S. embassy. The fact that hundreds were able to just stroll right through these checkpoints and not be stopped. And the Iraqi security forces when they did finally show u, showed up, pretty much after the protesters had decided themselves that they were going to leave.</s>FOSTER: OK. Arwa in Baghdad, we're keeping an eye on it. Thank you very much indeed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is asking for immunity from prosecution. He faces charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust for allegedly giving hundreds of millions of dollars in state favors in exchange for gifts and favorable media coverage. He denies wrongdoing and calls the charges a witch hunt. His political rival Benny Gantz is crying foul but the prime minister says he is justified in requesting immunity.</s>BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): The immunity law is intended to protect elected officials from fabricated legal proceedings, from political indictment intended to damage the will of the people. This law intends to ensure that those elected can serve the people according to the will of the people, not the will of the law clerks.</s>BENNY GANTZ, LEADER, BLUE AND WHITE PARTY (through translator): I see Israel today is led by a man who is prepared to push us to the fringes and is jeopardizing the civic principles upon which we are all educated that everyone is equal before the law.</s>FOSTER: Mr. Netanyahu made the request to the Knesset on Wednesday night but because of Israel's political deadlock a decision isn't expected anytime soon, possibly delaying his trial until after the elections in March. Prosecutors in Japan have raided the home where Carlos Ghosn have been staying while he was on bail in Tokyo. The former Nissan CEO fled the country last month for Lebanon saying he refused to be held hostage by rigged justice system in Japan. Ghosn faces criminal charges including underreporting his salary and abusing his position. TV Asahi reports prosecutors are working with police to access surveillance video around his home as part of their investigation. Now the pope begins 2020 with an apology. Coming up, how an incident in St. Peters Square figured into his New Year homily. And hundreds are arrested in Hong Kong's protests. The economic impact of months of unrest.