Donald Trump Still Skeptical of Russian Involvement of DNC Hack. 8:00a-9:00a ET
LU STOUT: Coming to you live from Hong Kong, you're back watching News Stream. Now, in northern China is the case of new year pollution. Now, choking smog continues to blanket major cities, and we want you to take a look at this video. It was shot by British engineer Chaz Pope in Beijing. You're looking at a wall of pollution sweeping into the city. This time lapse, it was filmed on Monday morning, the smog smothering the capital in just 20 minutes. Let's get more now from CNN meteorologist Chad Myers who joins me now. And Chad, looking at that video, it's just so disturbing to see this wave of smog barrel through Beijing. I mean, just how bad is the air quality there?</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It was very unhealthy earlier today. A wind kind of picked up to about three meters per second and blew some of that away, Kristie, today. But, still, we are way into the unhealthy category there in Beijing. They use a lot of coal to make power. They still have some inefficient automobiles on the roadways, and these small particles get stuck in the lungs, especially there 2.5 or lower size. It's just very, very tiny. But what we see is not just something in the air, it's something that is going to get stuck in your lungs for years, and they are saying that 1.6 to almost 1.8 million people die early because of all of this. It's like secondhand smoke, but it's just secondhand smog. So on Sunday the number was 563. That is off the chart. The chart stops at 500, but yet the parts per million were still way higher than that. A good air quality would be somewhere between 0 and 50. Something moderate, still OK to go out and exercise, 50 and 100, and the numbers are way down here, way down to the hazardous category. And it's not just Beijing. We talk about this. This is a widespread event. Beijing is almost in a bowl or half a bowl because the bowl empties here into the sea, but some of this smog, some of this smoke is even blowing to the east and moving away from that area, blowing into other countries, but all of these purple and red numbers here, 400 to 500, are all the other locations. So it's not just one location by a factory outlet saying oh that's where all the smoke is coming from, no, this is a widespread event for the entire country. And it happens every time we get a high pressure that sits right over that little valley. The valley holds all the smoke in. You can't blow it out. There's no wind coming in from the west to really get it away from the cities, away from the factories, away from the people, and we don't see any real relief until Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday here, healthy to unhealthy to very unhealthy here, somewhere between 200 to 300 parts per million. Now, I know people walk around with masks on, but these are very small particles, they can get through most of those masks. There are a couple things you can do in your home. You can get ion generators to blow things around, but what we really need to do is change the way you make power, change that coal output to something else. Make that electricity with power with water generation, with hydro, like Canada does. Look at L.A.. L.A. back in the '70s had 234 bad days of air and then they did something about it. They said we can't live with this. We need to do something better and last year the number was down to 92. It's not perfect, but it's better -- Kristie.</s>LU SOUT: Wow, pollution off the charts in China. And the solution here, they need a revolution in the way that they approach how they energize and they power themselves. Chad Myers reporting. Many thanks indeed for that. Take care. Now, China says its corruption crackdown has gained crushing momentum with the arrest of dozens of government officials in recent months, and it's not limited to China. The government says 122 people on the run were captured from over 70 countries last year. Now, state media reports that more than a million people have been punished for breaking communist party and government rules since late 2012. Now we got an update now on our top story this hour. Eight people have been detained in connection with that Istanbul nightclub attack at New Year's. Now, this coming into us from Turkey's state-run news agency Anadolu and the state broadcaster TRT. We are told that the eight people are currently under interrogation at a police station in Turkey as the search for the attacker, the attacker captured on the surveillance video, goes on. Earlier we told you that ISIS is claiming responsibility, and the terror group has not revealed any information about the attacker. Those claims, again, could not be independently verified. Now to the United States where President-elect Donald Trump has again cast doubt on allegations that Russia meddled in the U.S. election. He says he has inside information on the computer hacking that led to U.S. sanctions against Russia. For more on this story, CNN's Sunlen Serfaty joins me now from CNN Washington. And Sunlen, Trump not convinced that Russia was behind the U.S. election hack. So, why? What does he know?</s>SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORREPSONDENT: So, that's the big question, Kristie. Trump says that he has information that he will reveal Tuesday or Wednesday of this week that leads him to his own conclusions. He heads into this big briefing with intelligence officials mid-week in New York. And he goes into that briefing already skeptical of the evidence that they say claims -- proves that Russia was behind the hack.</s>SERFATY (voice-over): Donald Trump back in New York City this morning and gearing up for a busy week ahead. The president- elect meeting with intelligence officials for a briefing about Russian hacking just days after again expressing doubt about the intelligence community's conclusions about the Kremlin's interference in the U.S. election.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: I just want them to be sure. Because it's a pretty serious charge, and I want them to be sure. And if you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong.</s>SERFATY: Trump referencing intelligence failures in the lead-up to the Iraq War to bolster his points and claiming to have inside information about the hacking that he says he will reveal this week.</s>TRUMP: I also know things that other people don't know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.</s>SERFATY: Trump's defiance pitting him against the Obama administration and many of his fellow Republicans.</s>SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: When you attack a country, it's an act of war.</s>REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D), CALIFORNIA: If he's going to have any credibility as president, he needs to stop talking this way. He needs to stop denigrating the intelligence community.</s>SERFATY: While speaking to reporters outside of his New Year's Eve party at Mar-a-Lago, Trump, a long time skeptic of e-mail, offered this advice.</s>TRUMP: You know, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old-fashioned way, because I'll tell you what: no computer is safe.</s>SERFATY: Also on the president-elect's "to do" list this week: filling several open cabinet spots, including the secretaries of veterans affairs and agriculture, and giving a deposition related to his legal battle with Chef Jose Andres.</s>JOSE ANDRES, CHEF: Apologize to every Latino, to every Mexican.</s>SERFATY: Trump is suing Andres after he pulled the plug on a restaurant at Trump's new hotel in Washington after the president- elect repeatedly insulted Mexicans during the campaign.</s>SERFATY: And as Donald Trump works to fill out his cabinet, Democrats on Capitol Hill are threatening to drag out votes on the confirmation hearings for some of these nominees, Kristie. They're saying that they have been slow to turn over the information that they would like -- Kristie.</s>LU STOUT: Meanwhile, President Obama, we know that he has just a few weeks left to cement his legacy and Donald Trump is threatening to undo most of it. How so?</s>SERFATY: That's right. This is really interesting to watch how these two men are certainly relating to each other in the final days. We saw President Barack Obama really come out with a defense of his legacy over Twitter of all places, a series of tweets talking about progress that he believes his administration made, and much can be read into why he did that, why he's giving this last big speech in Chicago scheduled now for January 10, because point blank, members of the Trump transition team and Trump himself have really promised to undo a lot of things that President Obama did over his years in office, most notably Obamacare that the president-elect has promised on day one in office that he will repeal Obamacare. Of course, the signature piece of legislation of President Obama's term in office focused on health care, and there's a lot of support for doing that on Capitol Hill with Republicans. So it will be certainly interesting to see how quickly and how fast these things move in the day ahead on Capitol Hill.</s>LU STOUT: Absolutely. Sunlen Serfaty reporting live from Washington. Thank you, Sunlen. You're watching News Stream. And still to come on the program, Queen Elizabeth skips another holiday service. We'll have the latest on the queen's health as she recovers.