restricted zone at the moment. still so many questions to be answered. and there s going to be a lot of finger-pointing over the next several hours, days and even weeks as this investigation begins to intensify. let s take a kind of a look back now at all we know. at the top of the hour, thank you very much for joining us, it is 3:00 here on the east coast of the united states. we are following breaking news this hour. right now it is 10:00 p.m. in ukraine where earlier today the horrifying scene was captured on camera, the moment a passenger jet falls from the sky, exploding on impact. the tragedy without a doubt. but was it an accident? right now it appears very likely this plane may have been intentionally shot down over eastern ukraine. we don t know for sure. there s a lot we don t know. here s what we know right now. this was malaysian airlines flight a boeing 777 traveling from amsterdam to kuala lumpur in malaysian. on board, 295 people, 280 of them passengers. 15 of them crew members. there are reports americans were among the passengers. president obama commenting on that a short time ago. obviously, the world is watching reports of a downed passenger jet near the russia/ukraine border. it looks like it may be a terrible tragedy. right now we re working to determine whether there were american citizens on board. that is our first prior to. and i ve directed my national security team to stay in close contact with the ukrainian government. the united states will offer any assistance we can to help determine what happened and why. and as a country, our thoughts and prayers are with all the families of the passengers, wherever they call home. the president making no mention of the back and forth going on right now between ukraine and russia. the ukrainian president calling this a terrorist act. of course, we should also point out that on this day in 1996, twa flight 800 crashed into the water off the coast of long island in the united states. those inside the interior ministry in ukraine claiming this plane was shot down by pro-russia separatists using a russian made missile system, a buk, capable of hitting a target 70,000 feet up. this passenger jet was at a cruising altitude of 32,000 feet. cnn is on the ground in ukraine. let s go to victoria butenko in kiev and tom foreman with a closer look at what unfolded. victoria, what s the latest you re hearing from kiev? and we just lost victoria. we ll get her back shortly. let s go to tom foreman with a look. we ve been looking all day at this buk anti aircraft system or anti missile system as it is called out there. we don t know this is what was used. we re looking at the capability of the system, if, in fact, it could accomplish such a thing. if you look at the flight pattern, you see it came across the country as we have discussed, wound up down here before it went down. let me put it on to a more normal map so you can see more of what we re talking about. that puts the crash site down in this area, and this is russia, all over here. all of the green out here, this is all russia. so you re getting quite close to russian territory, 18 miles away from where the plane went down. that s within range. but also it could be within the area, because this is what we re talking about when we refer to the buk system. it is highly mobile, operated by four people. it has four ready-to-launch missiles on top of it. it s quite fast. from the time this thing is rolling to the time it can stop and be ready to fire is five minutes or less. the radar acquisition target acquisition system can find a target and fire a missile in about 22 seconds. so this thing can be moving very quickly, can fire fast and can be gone fast. so no matter where this came from, if, in fact, it was a missile, the launcher could now be very, very far from where it all happened. let s talk a little bit more about the missiles up on top there. there are many different configures for the buk. but if they re using the 9m-317 missiles, each 16 feet long, each weighs 1,500 pounds, carries a 154-pound warhead, high explosive, 154 pounds, that s extraordinary. and all it has to do is guess close to the plane. it can t actually impact its target but get close to a plane and it blows up with tremendous force. and this is really important note here. look at the speed of this. 2,684 miles an hour. that s around three times the speed of sound. this is unbelievably fast. a missile streaking through the sky like that. when you compare it to a plane like this, which is flying along at maybe around, let s say 600 miles an hour, you see that not only could a missile like that be guided in, because it is guided the whole way, to a plane like this, but it could come in so quickly, truly nobody on board, including the crew, might have any idea it s coming. the truth is, if this is what happened, this plane could have been hit and nobody on board would have the slightest idea it was headed their way. and we know from the map we showed earlier it is happening in a region over here, this highly contested region, where pro-russian separatists at work. this is crimea down here. so right in the hot zone. and certainly weapons are capable. one last note, anderson, i want to throw in here. we know they have the buk system is and could reach across the border. we speculate as to whether or not the separatists have such systems. but in all fairness, we have to note that ukraine has been a very important partner with russia for many years in developing missile systems. and despite some difficulties of the late 90s, their missile system is robust here. their production, technology, knowledge. so the ukrainians would have such systems. not incapable of this. that s why we have to be careful about deciding if it was a missile and if so, who fired it? anderson? is. yeah. tom foreman, i appreciate that update. fascinating details about the buk system. i want to go to christian amanpour joining us from london. christian, obviously there is the human tragedy of this, and, you know, and our thoughts and well wishes and prayers are with the families of the 295 people on board, some probably watching right now, trying to get as much as they can. it s very hard sometimes for families to get information directly from the airlines in the early stages of something like this. but there are also strategic considerations, military considerations, geopolitical considerations, in all of this. this is a potentially game-changing situation for the conflict in eastern ukraine. reporter: well, i would absolutely say it is. and to that point, we have just seen dmitry medvedev, the russian prime minister, has posted on facebook, on his site, condolences to all killed and all of their families calling it a terrible tragedy, making no illusions as to what happened or how it happened but very quick to post condolences. let s talk now about what we do know. over the last several weeks, there has been a pattern of aircraft downed in that very region. june 14th, a ukrainian transport military plane down. ukraine accusing and mentioning that two other planes, this week, were downed. and i had a lengthy, lengthy conversation with ukraine s foreign minister on my program yesterday who told me that over the last several weeks, there has been no let up in the russian control of the border. in other words, of russians allowing fighters and material to come from russia into ukraine. he specifically mentioned not just mercenaries but tanks and anti air missiles, as he called them. so this has actually been going on and not just ukraine saying that. it s also europe. the chief european leader who has been spearheading the move to confront the russians over crimea and the continued destabilization in eastern ukraine is german chancellor angela merkel. and just yesterday she said they are considering more sanctions on russia, because they have not met vladimir putin, despite his promises to all those leaders at d-day which we all broadcast live, has not met his promise to stop the flow of weapons and fighters across the border, to stop destabilizing that area. has not met the promise to have a contact group for peace negotiations. and the foreign minister for ukraine very clear on what hasn t happened and so the escalation of heavy weaponry coming over the last several days and weeks, anderson. we have seen that, certainly. and also the growth of russian forces, christiane on the border, more than 10,000 said to be there after a period of which it appeared that russian forces had dwindled in number, they seem to be rebuilding those forces. reporter: that, plus the fact that the international community, president obama, chancellor merkel, the new ukrainian president, petro poroshenko, overwhelmingly elected at the end of may, had wanted to have peace talks with the separatists. president poroshenko thought he had president putin s support and acquiescence on that, there was a so-called contact group which involved the russians and other nations to try to bring this conflict to anent. and that has produced no result. the foreign minister spoke with the head of the russian sort of the russian part of this over the last couple days and said we need to get these talks back on track, because no matter what the evidence turns out to be over what happened to this malaysian airline flight, there have been these planes downed regularly over the last three or four weeks. in that area. plus this fight still going on. and there is no tangible evidence of russia doing anything to stop it, despite president putin s public calls for a peaceful settlement. so there is a double game being played over there and it is now an incredibly dangerous one. and obviously as you said, if this does prove to be the worst-case scenario, it is a massive game changer in terms of this conflict. we should point out, christiane, there have been improvements by ukrainian military forces and their capabilities against separatist groups early on. we saw in crimea and elsewhere, kind of an inability by ukrainian forces really to defend themselves or hold on to territory. that seems to have shifted under the new president. they do seem to have whether it s a fighting spirit or more experienced forces. they have made some games gains on the ground against separatist groups. reporter: yes, indeed, they did in the region a couple weeks and took back that area. but the separatists moved down to donetsk and sort of the regrouped and are still holding out there and this is what the ukrainian government wants to solve peacefully. i asked specifically the foreign minister about whether there was going to be an he escalation of their counter offensives. and he said we don t want to do that. he said we are even ready to hold video conferences to have peace talks with those separatists if they refuse to meet with us now. so even before this plane was brought i see you want to go live. ukraine government spokesman. let s listen in. translator: to establish the links of those of the militants, links of the militants of the russian federations. [ speaking in foreign language ] english, european, france, we send our condolences and providing to ukraine today, making public. we are providing to all international media, to all people, to all relatives, people who lost their relatives, family members in these anti humanic crime in donetsk, we are providing those recorded phone calls, where two officers, two military officers of russia, gru, minister of defense, discussing, one reporting and one is receiving, the report the shutdown of the plane over the territory of ukraine in donetsk exactly at 4:20 p.m. one officer, russian officer, who is reporting is a terrorist, gru russian federation. and the person who received the phone call is cornell wasili and also the russian gru officer. we are also providing to all media, international media, a russian cell phone number used by cornell guranan, while receiving the report. we also are providing the intercepted and recorded phone calls where terrorists are discussing to each other that they arrived to the place where the plane shut down. that they were recognized that the plane is civilian. and they also discuss that there are many, a great number of casualties on the scene, on the site. or where the plane crashed down. we a ukrainian government, will continue to investigate this criminal case, not terrorist, criminal case. which was conducted and committed again by those. two of them i established at this conversation at least documented phone calls gru officers of russian federation. again, let me express deep and sincere con dole he sayses to all people who lost their dearest members of their families. thank you very much. condolences. it s been spokesman for the ukrainian government there. i want to go to noah schneider, an american freelance journalist who i m told is on site. noah, you re here with richard quest on cnn. where are you exactly? reporter: we are in the village a little ways north of a city called torez. it s kind of a long road and a big wide field where the wreckage from the plane is spread out and there is still emergency services working, but it s getting pretty dark so folks are trying to wrap-up for the day. who is in control of the site and what are you seeing? reporter: the site is controlled by the separatist dnr donetsk people s republic forces. there s some rebels down the road. but i think most people here have been hearing battles with the ukrainian forces for are a few days now, stationed not far down the road. at the moment, i m not seeing anything. it s pretty dark. but when you get here it s a gruesome scene. people said the plane exploded in the air and the plane rained down in bits and pieces. the plane itself, the people inside. how intact is the debris you saw earlier? how large are the pieces of debris? reporter: pretty burnt. it s going to be close to impossible to establish what happened here. there are big huge pieces still intact. but for the most part everything is burnt up and charred and scattered over a few kilometers. noah, this is richard quest. this the debris field, is the site, is it secured in any way or are local people able to get access to it, to get access to the property, to go through what s there? reporter: i don t think anyone here in the village has even bothered doing that, to be honest. most are so frightened they have not come near. there are two nests of rebel fighters at the end of the road. but even they themselves are just in shock. most people here haven t seen anything like this, as one man said to me, nothing has happened in this village for 30 years. and then suddenly this. how wide a field of debris are we talking about? reporter: i mean, it s hard to say with certainty, but maybe 5 kilometers. it s a pretty wide radius. and the debris starts up the road. there is a tailspin, and you come further down and you see the place where the emergency services crews have set up a base of sorts. some firefighters, rescue teams. and they re kind of in the center of where most it landed. there a white tent in the field where they are collecting bodies. but you can wander through the open fields. there is not much of anything. there is a chicken farm nearby or chicken factory, as someone said. and then these little ukrainian villages. dilapidated homes, and and not much of anything. so an effort has been made and is being made to collect the remains of those on board. reporter: absolutely, absolutely. rescue teams have been going through the fields the last few hours, marking where bodies are, tying white, cotton ribbons to sticks. so as you walk through the fields, if you see one of those you know that s where a body is. but there is is still a lot 295 people on this plane. and i don t think they ve found all of them yet. and it s too dark now really to do much more work. so people are trying to figure out at the moment what to do with this site for the night. like i said, it s kind of an open peeled. open field. it s unclear. they don t know what will happen overnight. and it s going to be really difficult for anyone to secure this in a way that would be certain that no one can come in. when you say the rescue workers have been going through the debris and making these marks for where bodies are, where have these rescue workers come from? are they the separatists? reporter: no, these are local men who have stayed and worked despite everything that s happening. they re political persuasion here i think are beside the point. they were called, and they came. from pretty much any town that was within range. and they themselves are kind of stunned and have never seen anything like this. one of the firefighting teams putting out the wreckage was driving sort of an old fire truck and the fire hose had holes in it. so they were trying to put the remains of the flames and there was water spraying everywhere. i don t think they ve really had to use it much. do you know what sort of capability they hve for caring for the victims of this flight in terms of i mean, is there a morgue nearby? reporter: they have improvis improvised. no, but is there a morgue nearby? reporter: yeah, so there s two towns, two larger cities nearby, one torez, and and both of which are rebel controlled. the morgues are still working, so the bodies will be taken to the morgue there or in donetsk. i don t think the regional morgues have the capability to handle this number of individuals. when there was a battle at the airport, a month ago now, something like 50 people died and they don t have space immediately at donetsk, the regional capital. so it s going to be a big question. i don t think it s one that people on the ground here have quite gotten around to resolving. and obviously, noah, auto said, these are people, these are people taken upon themselves to do what they can to care for the bodies, to sort through this wreckage. has anyone there expressed any opinions about what happens next in terms of who should investigate this crash? we ve heard through other corresponden correspondents, through leadership from separatist groups they want an international body to investigate. are you hearing that from anyone on the ground here? reporter: yeah, i m hearing that from the separatists, the people in the village, i don t think they have much sense of where it could go. the separatists are saying they want an international commission, they want to send the airplane s black box back to moscow for investigation. there is actually one of the separatist leaders is up the road from me giving a press conference of some sort. so i think they re going to put out a plan. pretty quickly. i imagine it will be nearly impossible for the ukrainian authorities to visit this site. as far as you know, have they found the black box? reporter: i can t confirm that one way or the other. i haven t seen it myself. have they commented on that at all? reporter: they have been quiet. i haven t heard anyone say i ve got it. so darkness has now arrived. there is a difficulty in securing the area. and i m wondering, what happens now? because what must be late in the evening now, getting late in the evening. what happens now during the overnight hours, do you believe? reporter: i hope there will be an understanding between both sides that there needs to be a night of peace here. and they re going to set up a permanent sort of base for rescue teams and firefighters. but there s not much they can do beyond wait. one point to bring out to anderson, europe s flight safety body has just closed eastern ukrainian air space. noah, do you have a expense sense of how many people are onsite. reporter: dozens. rescue crews arrived a couple hours ago. there were two or three fire trucks and kind of spread out and so i would say dozens of local sort of rescue workers. and more and more rebel fighters. so now i would say there s dozens of them, as well. like i said, it s a pretty big area what we re talking about. so i haven t walked the entire perimeter yet. we have seen images, noah, of passports, a travel book for bali. are people s possessions clearly visible and retrievable? reporter: it s visible. it s visible and they re being collected. that s one of the things these rescue teams are doing. as you walk through the field you see a man with his cracked iphone sticking out of his pocket. sort of people s clothing everywhere. most of it s kind of ripped off by the air. other suitis cases and stuff in a while along the road. one was telling us headphones. peoplen had been flying watchi watching movies so they have been finding lots and lots of headphones. have you ever seen anything like this, noah? reporter: in my life, to be completely honest. this is beyond i mean, i ve been in ukraine now for a few months and there has been fighting and you can certainly call it a war but nothing of this scale has happened. and i think that s it s not just it s not just the locals, it s not just the fighters. but a lot of the folks coming, journalis journalists, are kind of stunned. do you think this will change anything. reporter: it s tough to say. it will clearly change things. it s a pretty massive event. but it s way too soon to be talking about who actually did this. there is too much we don t know and too many possible versions of story to get into right now. i think the task is to do right by people on the flight. to have the decency to pause the politics for the moment and collect the bodies and have a proper investigation here. how it change, you have to and mr. putin and mr. obama and mr. poroshenko and leaders. and noah, is an effort being made to collect passports, to collect identity documents? reporter: yeah. i mean, they re trying to collect everything they can. but first and foremost, bodies. i think that s and my sense is that s the rescue crew s number one priority right now. collect as many bodies as they can and gather them under these ten tents, these gathering points. some people are picking up personal effects. some people are walking straight by them. it s also, you know, keep in mind, it s kind of it s a long grass. and like i said, again, a really wide field. so finding things like passports is chance. noah, i appreciate you talking with us. i know this is a horrific scene. reporter: yeah, absolutely. thank you. and i appreciate the way you ve handled it and communicated it to our viewers. thank you very much. noah sneider, an american, freelance journalist, on the scene of this crash. one thing to point out from listening to this extraordinary account from noah. an aircraft crash site is an extremely danger allows but very complex environment. and not only for the debris of the aircraft that needs to be preserved so you can work out what happened, but the preservation of bodies. the respect and dignity. the personal effects. and that why in most cases you have this security zone that goes around it to stop basically do-gooders oral well meaning people. i notice the separatists are talking about a two to three-day truce to allow refer work and recovery work ers to go in and do the job to get the job done. and i have been in situations where there are bodies and i head hate to refer to them as bodies because these are men and women and families just living their lives. it s for those families listening right now to our coverage, i hope there is some small consolation in hearing from noah that there are people on-scene right now who are trying to care with compassion and with tenderness for the victims of this crash who are trying to gather all those who have died together and who are trying to do their best to take care of them as best they can. we re joined also by a journalist, victoria butenko, joining us from kiev, the capital of ukraine. what are you hearing from are the government there in kiev? reporter: well, one of the most disturbing statements we hear is actually from the locals in donetsk who say that neither emergency services or law enforcement agencies have access to the site. the territory where the airplane crash happen is fully controlled by the separatists and they are afraid this will interfear with finding out the reason and compromise the evidence. central government is trying very hard to show how open it is to inviting international investigators. and in kiev, they said the flight did not experience any problems with communication. much much i appreciate your update. we re going to take a short break. we re anticipating hearing from joe biden. we ll bring that to you live. we ll be right back. big plans. so when i found out medicare doesn t pay all my medical expenses, i looked at my options. then i got a medicare supplement insurance plan. 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[ male announcer ] join the millions of people who have already enrolled in the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp, an organization serving the needs of people 50 and over for generations. remember, all medicare supplement insurance plans help cover what medicare doesn t pay. and could save you in out-of-pocket medical costs. call now to request your free decision guide. and learn more about the kinds of plans that will be here for you now and down the road. i have a lifetime of experience. so i know how important that is. welcome back to continuing coverage of malaysian flight crashing with 295 people on board. we just heard from a young american freelance journalist, noah sneider, on scene at the crash site where it is growing dark. and an extraordinary account of what it s like, the people doing what they can, local people, separatists, trying to gather the bodies of those who have been found. many not found. and to echo what i said before the break, for family members of those who may be watching right now. there are people on site right now to do the best they can to care for the bodies of all those on board of this malaysian airlines flight, facting them together, the men, the women, children, trying to do best they can as darkness falls. a lot of new information coming in pieces. we want to check with jim sciutto on the response by russia. reporter: the response from the ukrainian officials from very early on, the ukrainian government has placed blame for this on pro-russian separatists and russia for arming the separatists with missiles capable of taking down airplanes. i ve been in with the ukrainian foreign minister and he said that russia sponsors terrorism and we hold putin responsible for this. so the ukrainian government pointing the finger at putin himself, who has played a double game here thinkisaying it wants deescalate ukraine and sending arms across the border and ukrainian officials saying some of those arms and has caused this passenger jet to come down. so in very definitive terms there from ukraine officials. obviously, an important piece in this is who is going to lead the investigation, who is going to investigate this crash site. separatist groups there saying they would like international investigation. richard roth has been monitoring developments at the u.n. and joins us now. what is the u.n. response in. reporter: anderson, the you wanted kingdom has asked for a session. no timing given f. you re going to have an international nicris like, this you re going to get the u.n. involved. you re definitely, according to the british, they would like it open with speeches. ukraine and russian have been going at it almost to exhaust n exhaustion. 18 or 19 meeting regarding the subject and done nothing to slow the combat. the other day language was introduced washing bank the warld, and other members have blocked any movement saying the russia russians are not making a balanced presentation. each side blaming the other. we have had ukraine government officials who have made their case. and as long as russia, a permanent member of the security council has veto power, little retraction contracting agreement on the diplomatic front. christiana amanpour monitoring events out of the london. extraordinary to hear from noah sneider on the scene of this crash. obviously focusinging on human tragedy. there are many aspects to what is going on. reporter: absolutely right. it was an extraordinary eyewitness account of the carnage and although he said that villages are trying to do their best. as victoria said, this is a crime scene and it has to be preserved and it s come down in the heart of those suspected of those taken the plane dawn. this is really serious. and if the international community wants to it find out what happened, needs to get investigators there swaps. and the ukrainian spokesman who has had conversations intercept between pro russian separatists and russia s military service. essentially, talking about this plane coming down, talking about shooting it down and then saying, oh, my goodness, this looks to be a passenger plane. to for those who remember, 30 years ago a plane was brought down over the soviet union in 19 83. and is the russians denied it rpg said it was a military spy pane plane. the past few days, the international community which is holding vladimir putin and the russian government responsible for not closing that border between russia and eastern ukraine and continuing to allow the free flow of heavy weaponry, according to what the more than fini minister told me yesterday. this is a major ccatastrophe thd have implications in geo strategic meetings right now. and also the anniversary. there all carrying on the exact day in july 17, 1996, when twa flight shot down off the coast of long island, killing all on board. we are joined by general ryan. at this point in this investigation, where what the data points you want to understand? well, the first thing to know is that if the aircraft was shot down and if it was flying at its normal cruising level of above 30,000 feet, we re talking about an air defense system like the buk, which has been mentioned already on your show, sa-11 or bigger. so nighit s not shoulder-fired, something one man jumps out of a truck to do. it has to be i a team of defense personnel personnel. so fired by a national military unit, either ukrainian or russia, or it is fired by separatists who have been highly trained in the testimony and who, by the way, happen to have access to a system which most rebels would not have access to. so must have been given to them by some state government. general ryan, if you would hold with us, and i want to ask you about this. and he want israel s prime minister are has instructed the israeli defense systems to begin operations in gaza, not a huge surprise. this has been talked, anticipated for several days as a bombing campaign, rockets being fired by hamas militants into israel, as well as israeli forces firing into targets throughout gaza system and throughout gaza. christiane amanpour joining us from london. a dangerous ground operation by israeli defense forces, very tricky in the close quarters you find in gaza city. reporter: anderson, this had is potentially just incredible to behold. this is the third time in six years, maybe are month, there have been these incursions by air or by ground no gaza. and each and etch we have one a hostilities that never ends the crisis and keeps leading to further crisis. and now with the world s attention focused on this plane this is the time when everybody has to be paying attention also to that conflict and trying their best to mediate some kind of cessation. we have heard that they have all sorts of plans possibly they may implement now as ground offensive. including if the government says it has to do this, the military has said if they want to really root out what we call terrorists, this is not a week s or one-month operation. this is a many, many, many month operation. so everybody has to understand what this in fact does mean. i want to check in with our wolf politics blitzerer, a major escalation. reporter: a major statement, anderson, saying the israelis have died decided to go in on the ground. let me read a couple sentences. following ten days of hamas attacks by air are land and sea and offers to do dehe isca lace. there is an ground eggs within the gaza strip. to establish safety and security while striking significant blow to hamas infrastructure. it looks based on what i m reading, it looks like virtually all aspects of the idf are involved, infantry, artillery, intelligence, combined with aerial and naval support. the effort will also be supported by theis israeli security agency and other intelligence organization. so what so many of us had anticipated over the past ten days is about to happen. israel moving in on the ground into gaza. and as you know, the israeli military have activated military troops, reservists doing their regular jobs, spending time with their family. they were activated of the. meant to units, maybe not close to the border but where regulatory personnel could move. and are now be sbribt deliberately on ground. a huge development unfolding between hamas and gaza. and wolf, as you know, we have all spent time in gaza city. it operating on ground is going to be very difficult and dangerous. of course. there is going to be a lot of casualties, palestinian casualties, they ll go after hamas targets and there will be inevitably be civilians, women and children and elderly caught in the fire. 1. million people people in this gaza strip, one of the most concentrated in the areas. there will be plenty of casualties. they say in the face of tactics the idf will continue in its unprecedented efforts to limit civilian harm. there will also be israeli casualties and the public is gearing up for that. is rah israeli casualties. one israeli has died in this operation. more than 200 palestinians have died you but i expect that number is going up you. the cabinet let by benjamin netanyahu, they have concluded that israel has to go in. and even as we speak,er they re probably on the ground. do we have a time table are are? we know they have been amassing troops along the board border. the statements says along the strip. they have already moved in. let s see how quickly those tanks, armor personnel carriers. i ve been here a week, maybe more, anderson. the races israelis have no desire to reoccupy the strip. they have gave up the gaza strip. they want to destroy as much of hamas military capability as they can. and then leave, basically. and try to crush as much of hamas as they possibly can. that s the operation. that s goal. we ll see how that s achieve if in fact ifs achieved. but this represents a whole new venture. the israelis no longer striking from the air but how moving in as we speak right now, moving into gaza. in terms of rockets today or military action today, what s been going on, wolf? well, they had that temporary u.n.-sponsored truce that is humanitarian cease fire that they that both sides basically honored, but as soon as that was over, it was not only business as usual, are it was even more intense, more palestinian rockets and missiles coming into israel. the iron dome working to try to destroy those that jeopardized major cities or anything along those lines, sensitive areas if those missiles were going into some open area farmland or whatever, they wouldn t bother. it was going trds a populated is area, they would. the israelis upping the ante. we heard earlier in the day that it was the most intense israeli activity they had spotted over the past ten days. so clearly even in advance of word that the israelis have made a decision to go in on the ground, the situation had been heating up dramatically and so that s where we stand right now. i suspect diplomats from around the world will be trying to get some sort of cease fire. i also suspect the israelis will try to destroy as much of hamas s military capability in the coming hours and days as they can before there might be some sort of cease fire. so this represents a whole new chapter in this current crisis. wolf, do you have a sense of how prepared the idf is for an operation like this? i was embedded with idf forces i think it was 2006 going into southern lebanon and they ran into, you know, much more extreme circumstances than they had probably anticipated. i remember being on a mission that was supposed to be two hours ended up being some 14 or 15 hours, ves slow going, very difficult operation, a lot of booby traps and concern about ieds. is the idf ready for this? the idf, i think they re pretty aware of the potential for danger and they ve had some nasty, pretty ugly experiences. remember all the experiences in lebanon where israel went in thinking it was going to be relatively, relatively smooth, relatively quick and turned out to be much more difficult when they were fighting hezbollah in lebanon. a lot of us remember covering that encounter. the israelis eventually left. it was a major major problem for israel. it was not as easy as some of the military planners had assumed it was going to be. they go into this, military planners told me over the past few days with their eyes wide open. they know this is difficult terrain, heavily populated area. they ve appealed to the palestinians to evacuate, especially from the northern part of gaza. they said get out as quickly as you can. here s the problem though. there s not a whole lot of places those palestinians can go. they can go south to gaza city. that s not that safe either as we saw what happened to the four little boys on the beach in gaza city. so many palestinians have evacuated, have left and fled to other parts of gaza. they can t come into israel unless they have a foreign passport. they can t go into egypt and can t go on boats into the mediterranean because that is area has been blockaded as well as by the israelis. they re stuck there, those palestinians. unless they can find some safe place someplace else, there s going to be significant casualties. we re monitoring the situation. you see a live shot from the gaza city. obviously, wolf, tomorrow is friday. it s a day when many people go to mosque. it s a day of prayers. it will be interesting to see how that factors into the israeli operation on the ground. yeah. well, i suspect the fact that it s friday which is the muslim holy day, saturday the jewish sa bat, i suspect that s not going to be relevant right now. this is for all practical purposes, this is a war that s going on. and as much shoal i days are holy days, there s an operation that s under way, i suspect the israelis want to try to the achieve their military goals as quickly as they possibly can. as a result, the fact that it s friday, the fact that it s saturday or for christian sunday, i think that s going to be basically irrelevant right now. this is a new phase in this military operation and the israelis decided to move in. what they keep saying, by the way, anderson, the hamas has a lot of the blame themselves because when that will six hour egyptian brokered cease fire, the israelis honored it for six hours although hamas never kept firing missiles into israel at which point the israelis said if you don t want to do it that way, we ll continue to up the and thee. earlier today they had a few hours of respite. palestinians could get out of their homes, do shopping, prepare. the israelis are moving in. no more cease fires for now. let s see what the reaction is from the u.p. u.n., are from egypt which has been working very hard to achieve a cease-fire. let s see what the u.s., the obama administration is going to do. there are going to be a lot of hectic phone calls going on around the world right now. i want to the go the to ben wedeman in gaza city. i want to correct something i said regard diagnose the plane crash. i said today was are the anniversary of twa flight crashing off the coast of long island in 1996. i believe i said it was shot down. the government said it was a center fuel tank explosion though some people indicated they saw a rocket, there s no evidence of that. it was ruled to be a center fuel tank exexplosion. i apologize for misspeaking about that anniversary. ben wedeman joins us on the phone in gaza city. ben, what are you seeing, what are you hearing? what are your thoughts and any statement from hamas yet? reporter: yes, anderson. we actually just got the order to evacuate our hotel, which is on the gaza coast. that was after some fairly heavy bombardment of the gaza seaport by israeli boats offshore. and we are now headed away from the coastline. apparently that entire area is now unsafe. certainly what we ve seen this evening, anderson, is the most intense israeli bombardment i ve seen in the last ten days. tank fire, artillery fire, fire from ships at sea, air strikes, definitely sort along the entire border but actually focused on the northern part of gaza. but what we re seeing is just strikes from the far south, far north at the moment. andersoned? ben, you have been there before when there have been ground operations by israel. you ve seen what it s like. explain the difficulties, the dangers that lay ahead. well, the dangers are that as soon as israeli ground forces enter and they are very heavy little armed, there s a tendency for huge destruction of houses and huge loss of life. when i was here in 2009, their entire areas of gaza, of northern gaza that were utterly destroyed, house after house after house. and multiple examples of civilian casualties who people caught in the fighting. the problem is, and i think we ve stressed this time and time again on our air, that there s really no where to hide in gaza. the israelis have been sending out these robocalls, dropping leaflets, telling people to go to gaza city, for instance. as we ve seen time and time again, there s strike all over the place. so for instance, this afternoon, we saw an air strike on a building right next to our office three children were killed in that instance. and, of course, yesterday, there was that incidence where four people were killed in gaza city, not the outlying areas where people have been told to evacua evacuate. gaza is bracing for a very, very bad night tonight. and as we were waiting for our car to get us out of the area down by the coast it, ordinary people were coming up and saying what s going on, what s going on? should we take our children? should we go, should we flee? so there s a sort of air of panic. another thing, a lot of power is off in most of gaza city. those lucky enough to have generate sers have some light. for the most part, the city is pitch black. anderson? so it s nearly 11:00 at night there. are you seeing people on the street? where do people try to flee to? well, they try to flee inland away from it because clearly a lot of the focus of the bombardment has been on the coastline. so they try to move further inland to really the center of the city where they re hoping to be safe. but as i said, they re striking in the centers of the city, as well. we saw this afternoon. in fact, we had our cameras aimed on that house where the three children were kill this had afternoon because a warning shot had been fired. we focused our cameras and within ten minutes, that rocket hit the house. so there s really no where to go to, even though people know that will certain areas like the coastline, like any area near the israeli board ser dangerous. anderson? ben, are stay with us.
so there s no training behind this. there s no standard attack in any of this. so, actually, we can see it going any way. but i think the i think the longer it goes on without violence the more likely there won t be any. welcome back, everybody. i m john vause at the cnn center. i m natalie allen. thank you for joining us. we ve been here several hours with this breaking news out of australia. and we will continue to bring you the latest now. and we d like to welcome our viewers in the united states and all around the world. we d like to give you the update now. a gunman is still holding an unknown number of people at a lindt coffee shop in sydney s main business district. sky news australia reports that the hostage taker, seen here, is calling himself the brother. he has forced hostages to speak with three media outlets over the phone. he apparently has two demands. he wants an isis flag. he also wants a conversation with australia s prime minister. we also have video of five hostages who managed to get out. we still don t know how they did it. but they got out. that was the first one we saw in the blue jacket. then the man in the white shirt. and then there was one more that burst out of another door, a door that police aren t standing behind. that was about four hours ago. when that happened. and then two women, two workers ran out a short time later still wearing their aprons from the coffee shop. that woman. and then right behind her this one. all five hostages reportedly escaped from the cafe. they were not released. that is the information that we have at least. and they are now of course speaking to police. one was being observed at a hospital. it has been now more than ten hours since the gunman walked into that cafe. a flag with an islamic phrase was held up to the cafe s window. later hostages were forced to stand at that window with their hands up against it. australia s prime minister has spoken about the hostage taker. we don t yet know the motivation of the perpetrator. we don t know whether this is politically motivated. although obviously there are some indications that it could be. we have to appreciate that even in a society such as ours there are people who would wish to do us harm. well, our anna coren has been with us pretty much from the start of this, and she s now live there in sydney, and you ve been describing a lot of things going on today, anna. but the good news is that you haven t had to report on anyone getting hurt. and as far as you know, is the situation ongoing, hostages still inside that cafe and no one at this point hurt? reporter: yeah, that s right, natalie. certainly according to the deputy police commissioner. she wants this resolved peacefully. the siege now into its ninth hour. we know that the hostage taker, who is armed, has a number of hostages. we still don t have specifics. it s rather frustrating. i have to admit that we don t have the details that we would hope. but certainly police remajor extremely tight-lipped. they say they have the situation under control, that they are talking to the gunman, who is armed. we don t know if he just has a gun or if he has explosives or bombs. but certainly the cbd, the central business district of the city here in sydney, has been evacuated. all those buildings. the banks. the law courts. the commercial area has been evacuated. and there was a stream of people leaving the officers, telling me that authorities have told them to keep away from the window. they were kept in their building for hours until police could get to them and get them out safely. but certainly now we know that five hostages have managed to get away from the cafe. still here on the ground we don t know if they escaped or if they were released. but certainly according to the police commissioner, the deputy police commissioner, catherine burn, she wants this resolved peacefully. and if this is going to go into the night, and now it s gone, 7:00 p.m. local time, then they are prepared to do that. they don t want there to be any bloodshed and any violence. so anna, you and i, both stranl australians, we ve both reported in australia. never before has there been anything like this on the australian mainland. we had the bali bombing in 2002. this is an unprecedented situation. how are people reacting to it? because it s been going on for a number of hours now. we re getting a lot more information. is it all starting to sink in? reporter: yeah, definitely. and i think you re absolutely right. australia s real taste of terrorism back in 2002, when 88 australians were killed in bali, we haven t had anything like that since then. and really for this to be taking place now, still obviously these gunmen wanting an isis flag, holding up, or forcing these hostages to hold up a sign in arabic writing, it would certainly suggest that he is a sympathizer of islamic extremists, but we don t know that for sure. but yes, it s startling for people here. talking to tourists, talking to people who live, who work here, they say it is seriously offputting, it s scary. they are fearful that there could be other people out there who want to harm australians, who want to harm our way of life. which is a very open society. a tolerant and democratic society, an open society. we know that there are people here in this country who have ties to isis, who are sympathizers of isis. we know that there are 100 citizens who go on and join the fight in iraq and syria and that there are many people still here who are supporters of those fighters. certainly australia became a target for them ever since they got involved in this fight against isis. we know we have hundreds of troops helping out, you know, advising and training the peshmerga, the kurdish forces, the iraqi forces on the ground there. and certainly, you know, fighter jets, part of the air campaign that is aggressively attacking isis. so australia very much a target. but certainly we haven t seen anything like this on our home soil. yes, i m curious, anna, this is natalie. what is that all around you? we re seeing a long line of police cars, ambulances. kind of describe the situation that you re seeing around you. reporter: for sure. so just to give you an idea, we re about a block from where that cafe is, the lindt cafe. and along here, this is mcquarry street, all these ambulances are parked. they ve been coming here over the past several hours, obviously on standby in case the situation turns violent, turns ugly. we haven t seen any sign the five hostages who have managed to get away. we know that they re with police. there are hundreds of police in the area. but certainly this area is cordoned off. we cannot go any further. we were closer to the cafe. we had a visual of the cafe several hours ago, but police have since moved us on. i am now here with all the rest of the media. australian media and also international media. there s a huge contingency of media here now focuses very much on this story and what it means. for australia and the threat of course of terrorism. and as it s emerged what the gbman demands-r the two demands, he wants an isis flag-e also wants to talk to the australian prime minister tony abbott, the authorities there have been reluctant to release that information. why is that? it seems kind of benign really in the scheme of things. so why was there concern that this information was getting out there? reporter: yeah, it does seem very strange, and it s certainly frustrating for us in the media trying to disseminate information to the public, to not have access to that, to not know how many hostages are still in the building, to not know if it s only one gunman or if there are more involved. police have been extremely tight-lipped. that is the way that australian authorities operate. it always has been that way, as you would know, john, having reported here in australia for many years. it just is the culture. they want to contain it. they want to focus on resolving this situation. they don t want the media involved. we have to remember that that gunman you would have to presume chose that site. it was located opposite the 7 network australia. perfect vantage point to get the world s attention. so clearly he had an objective. now his demands, they seem a bit bizarre. they seem very strange, that he now wants an isis flag and he wants a phone conversation with the australian prime minister tony abbott. but certainly i think what we can assure you is that negotiators are talking to him, hoping that the situation will be resolved peacefully. okay. all right. anna coren for us there in sydney. we thank you again. and it s interesting, isn t it, john, that police aren t saying much at all, but this man, whoever he is, has reached out to the media and maybe this is the point. sorry. didn t mean to interrupt. but maybe this is the point, that the police don t want him getting his message out and they ve managed to stop him at every turn. he contacted a radio station, two tv stations, and it s only now, nine hours into this that really his demands, his message is actually getting out there. well, hopefully they do have a plan, they re working on this to figure out how to bring it to a successful conclusion. but so far, again, no one has been hurt. so thank goodness for that. we want to talk now on the phone with tiffany gender. she s a police reporter with 2gb radio. several of the hostages called into that radio station. so tiffany, what more can you add as far as what these hostages were relaying? what was their demeanor? what information did they give you about their situation? well, basically, that line of communication opened up quite early is this morning. one of the men from inside the building, the lindt cafe, actually called one of our announcers on air, and they took a conversation off air. it was decided it was not really appropriate for that conversation to be going on air, a lot of sensitive information. and basically, it was identified that he was a hostage inside and that he wanted to speak to prime minister tony abbott live on air, a live on-air interview. now, of course that demand was not met. negotiators have been to that 2gb radio station all day. we ve been fielding a lot of calls from people inside the building, from family members of people inside the building. who are just listening to this ordeal i guess play out on the radio. so let s get this straight. so people inside that cafe, inside that coffee shop, have had the ability to get on their cell phones and just call in whenever they want? that s exactly right. many of them have been on social media. one hostage in particular has posted a very horrifying message on social media with a list of the demands. and they have also been texting family and friends from the inside to say look, i am inside, i am okay at the moment, these are the demands, and if they re not met, you know, threats to kill and, you know, some other very horrible threats have been made against the group. interesting, isn t it, that this gunman didn t take their phones away. they re sitting there texting whomever they want, it seems, and presumably they could reach out to the police or be texting with the police. we just don t know, do we? you re right. it is bizarre. this whole thing is playing out on facebook, twitter, you know, through radio announcers. it is a very bizarre situation. and police have actually mobilized a special task force which is only mobilized during an act of terrorism. so basically, that allows i guess mobilizes the huge amount of resources that they have. it allows police to share more information with authorities, with azo and the federal government. police have just held a press conference and have said they are actively trolling through facebook and twitter to get information, you know. a lot of these the hostages are posting information on their facebook pages. that is one avenue that police are actually getting their information from. i guess the assumption could be this is a deliberate ploy maybe this gunman has taken to get the word out because what we ve been talking about for many, many hours now is what they want here is publicity. they want the megaphone so they can have their voice heard, their demands met. and one lady much like the 9/11 hijackers allowed the people on the plane to call their loved ones to tell them the plane had been hijacked. they weren t worried about that because they knew the plane was going to crash. so in a similar way this guy with the gun is letting people get this same horrific message out. that s exactly right. and that is fueling the fear and that is fueling their message. and police actually asked us to stop reporting those demands because it is really fueling hysteria and it is putting their message out there. and that was their objective. and what more have you been able to learn about the gunman, tiffiny, through these conversations? as your reporter mentioned earlier, police are keeping very tight-lipped on the operational information. they have not even been able to confirm how many hostages are inside. from what i understand personally, and that s speaking to sources, that police know who the gunman-s they know who they re dealing with and they are aware of his identity. but as far as any publicly released details about that gunman, nothing is being released. well, we can understand that because now at least we know they know who they re dealing with and they ve got a tactic to try to figure out how to deal with this person. but it is really bizarre that hostages are sitting there posting pictures making telephone calls and posting on social media. tiffiny gender the police reporter with radio 2gb giving us some very valuable information about what has actually been happening there all day long. she works at the same radio station as ray hadley. he has spoken to the suspect as well via at least one of the hostages, a 23-year-old man who actually managed to call on his cell phone into ray s radio show, and a short time ago we spoke with ray. i ve just come off a nine-hour shift. i normally do nine till midday. and we kept going because i made contact with the hostages. they found my program. obviously i didn t want to put them to air, so i took their calls off air. and at the same time could hear the hostage taker giving the young man who spoke to me, a 23-year-old, instructions on what he wanted to do. what s now been revealed by your reporter and others, that he wanted the i.c.e. flag, he wanted a conversation with the prime minister or he d start to dispose of hostages. i spoke to our police commissioner, our police chief, the equivalent here in new south wales where sydney is the capital, and spoke to him, spoke to our premier, which is a bit like your governor. and they told me off air it would be best if we didn t report those matters. i kept in contact with the young man. he gave me his mobile. and we had four conversations off air. between about midday and 3:00. and then i felt troubled by his tone. so i asked the police to supply me with a negotiator. i didn t feel equipped to keep talking with him because i m not a trained negotiator. i m a radio broadcaster. so the negotiator arrived here and i went off air about 20 minutes ago, about quarter past 6:00 at night our time on monday night, and the negotiators are still dealing with him. as you ve been told, five people have escaped. they weren t released. three gentlemen, one of them a worker from inside the lindt cafe, and then two young ladies who are also workers escaped as well. and police continue their negotiations. they re dealing with a lunatic. they re dealing way person who s making outrageous claims. he wants to be he wants the government to acknowledge that this is a terrorist operation, that he s doing this on behalf of isis or isil. and the government at this particular stage are treating terrorists as you d treat any terrorist in any part of the world, they re doing their best to secure the safety of the hostages without meeting his demands. just explain how the process works. you got this phone call from this 23-year-old man, this hostage which was being who was being held inside the cafe there. and then he relayed what the guy with the gun was saying. he told you and you responded and he said it to the gunman? i could hear the gunman. well, first of all, we were a bit skeptical, as you would be, getting a phone call to your open line saying i m a hostage. can i talk to ray on air. and so i made an editorial decision that i wouldn t talk to him on air because i was fearful that i may have been duped or that i might put people at risk. so i came off air during a three-minute commercial break and spoke to the young man. i thn rang him back and confirmed he was in fact a hostage. i spoke to police and they had a list of some hostages and his name was one of the hostages. his name was given to me by the young man. i was talking to him and in the background i could hear the hostage taker issue instructions about wanting to talk to the prime minister, calling me a scumbag, calling the media generally scumbags for incorrectly reporting isil as being a group of people who are murderous bastards who have no regard for human life. so i heard all this in the background. i went back on air. i didn t report what i d been told. i just said i had a phone call from a hostage and i contacted police which i did do. then he called me again and left his numbers and asked me to call him. i went to a news break and rang him again 37 this happened three times. and as i say, at the end of three or four conversations, these demands were still being made, that he wanted to talk to the the hostage taker wanted to talk to the prime minister, mr. abbott. i then said to police i need someone over here with a bit of expertise. a negotiator came over and started to take the calls. and since then he s had conversations with another four or five hostages through the course of the last two hours. ray, you said you could hear the gunman in the background making these demands. can you describe what he sounded like? yeah. that s what i was wondering. weighs he unhinged? was he yelling? what kind of accent he had. he had a middle eastern accent with an australian tinge. he was obviously someone originally from that part of the world, be it iran or syria or somewhere else over there. and you know, we have been a country like your country very welcoming of people from that part of the world. we have a long tradition of lebanese christians coming to australia, particularly of the maronite variety, over a long period of time and more recently people of the muslim faith coming here. and the vast majority of them are peaceful, hard-working, decent people who want to mac a better life for themselves. but we have these radicals highlighted by this lunatic who still has somewhere between 12 and 25 people being held hostage. the police know, john, how many people are in there but they won t release details to the media. five have escaped, but we know originally there was somewhere between 15 and perhaps 30. sow take a guess, it s either 10 people in there or 25 people. we don t know. you say he threatened to dispose of hostages. i m making the assumption he threatened to kill them. well, that s what he was saying. police negotiators told me the fact that we are now into the ninth hour and no one s been hurt or injured would indicate that this is someone they can deal with, if you know what i mean. ray hadley there, a radio host on radio 3gb in sydney. he is one of the most listened to programs in the country. he s a very popular radio announcer. for the number one talk station in sydney. and i believe across australia, really. and he had a number of conversations with a hostage in there which he s detailing to us. but it is now appearing to be a very bizarre situation, that we re learning more details, that many of the hostages in there have been able to use their telephones to call out, to post on social media, to tweet, to post photographs or demands, whatever, on facebook as well. all of this apparently being allowed by the gunman. right. and all the while, according to the radio, the same radio station, he alleges he has two bombs. that s right. inside the cafe. inside the cafe. and another two bombs hidden somewhere in the area. the police have had nothing to say about that. but a short while ago we did hear from the deputy commissioner of the new south wales police and she updated the situation, but she stayed clear. she continues to stay clear of confirming any specific numbers on how many people are still inside. here she is. i put out that plea and that message. if anybody does have information, please let us know. it s really important that you pass it on. because even the smallest snippet of information might be vital. there are hostages inside who are posting on facebook and social media some of the demands that the gunman s making. how are you responding to that? i know operationally that you need to keep some things under wrap, but it s out there for everybody to see. look, absolutely right. and we are monitoring what is happening on facebook clearly. we are monitoring what is happening on twitter. and that is forming a part of our tactical response in how to handle this. yes, that is out there. and we are aware of that. what has he told negotiators? that s not something i can talk about, what he might be telling negotiators. but the contact that we have will be ongoing. and it will be based on our best assessment about how to get those people out safely, which is what does count most. some of the hostages are talking about is he making the same demands to police or is he trying to use the media to make those demands? i think that there s probably a number of mediums that are being used at the moment. but we all have to be very careful not to completely overreact at this time because it is still ongoing. but it is important to reiterate that we are aware of that. we are monitoring it. and we are using that as a part of our strategy. why couldn t he have said how many are still inside? it s not something i can confirm at the moment, and it s not particularly useful to actually confirm potential numbe numbers. for people who we might be dealing with who might have concerns that a friend or a relative or a loved one might be in that building, we have set up our nb[ inaudible ]. how many maybe inside. that is a tactical, operational imperative. why is that so sensitive? because at this point everything has to be about the safety of the people in the location. so it s important we don t confirm at this point. that s catherine burn, the deputy police commissioner for new south wales speaking a short time ago, give us a little bit of new information, which was essentially what we ve heard from a number of people of the demands being listed on twitter and facebook by the hostages inside. what was interesting was she couldn t bring herself to call the people being held hostages. he had stopped herself from saying that. we should note it s coming up on 7:25 p.m. local time in sydney. all of this has been going on for nine hours and 40 minutes. we re coming up to our tenth hour. and want to point out this video we re seeing right here, that is the gunman and we ve also should h. video as you know of the hostages putting their haunds on the glass. that was much earlier. that was hours ago before police cleared off a wider area and had the media pulled back and not even sure how we got this picture. and the few details that we do know, again, coming from our afwilts who have been working their sources in sydney. apparently, the gunman inside there likes to be known as the brother. that s what we know about him. and that he is in his 40s. ray hadley, the radio host who actually heard him speaking, says the gunman speaks with a middle eastern accent. with an australian with an australian tinge. that s what we know. and we ve also been told police know who they re dealing with, but they re not letting us know that. earlier we spoke with roger shanahan. he s a former australian army colonel. he s a middle east expert and a fellow at the middle east center for policy. he thinks the hostage taker chose his location for maximum international impact. here s his comments. it s going to be very difficult obviously to determine what the whole purpose of this was until we find out more about the hostage taker, but i think the fact that the cafe in question is directly opposite one of the major television stations in sydney, it s done right in nearly the dead center of australia s largest city in the central business district, all of these point to the fact that the person in question wanted maximum exposure not only nationally but internationally. and putting up that flag with sh shahada on it even though it s not specifically the same as any islamist organization s flags, it s certainly a replica or a variation on a theme. so i think all of these together indicate the person in question wants a great deal of media attention placed on this. whether that s because he holds these beliefs or he has some kind of mental issue we won t know until the siege is over. what if that is in fact the case, that this is just a guy who is essentially suffering from some kind of mental derangement and he s grabbed this flag to try to get this attention and he has very little to do with isis? well, it s going to be the fact that either way he s got little to do with isis 37 but the kernel is that isis in the past has called for these kind of individual attacks against people. they said it in the past. and also in australia. so the concern is that this kind of flag in concert with the fact that he appears to be an individual doing it in such a public way. you think that might be his expression of his belief in what isis stands for. but as you pointed out, it could also well be possible that he s somebody with mental issues. should we have heard any kind of statement from i.c.e. at tsi point? they re very active on twitter, social media, they love to get their memorandum out. has there been any kind of support support for this guy? claim of responsibility is probably a stretch. but any kind of message that this guy is one of ours? you pronl wouldn t expect to see something like that until after the situation is resolved. you would assume if he s done this he s done this off his own bat, so it s not quite a limited degree of professionalism in what he s doing, so you would assume he s doing it off his own bat, and you would assume therefore the media branch of isis is probably playing catch-up on this issue and they d wait to see how it resolves itself before they make some kind of proclamation as to whether they support it or what they want to spin out of this situation. is it possible to know how many other people like this guy are actually in australia right now? no, it s very difficult. police and security forces for obvious reasons are quite cagey about what they say. what we do know is that in terms of figures there s been about 20 australians killed as foreign fighters overseas. it s believed there are about 70 over there currently active. about 20 have returned after having fought. and there s been approximately 60 or more passports of people of concern that have been canceled by the australian government, stopping them from leaving the country. how many people have concern like this if that s what this person is? that kind of information is only known at the highest levels of the security services. and hello to everyone, to our viewers in the u.s. and around the world, we continue to bring you breaking news out of australia. i m natalie allen. and i m john vause. thank you for staying with us. it s now 3:30 in the morning on the east coast, 7:30 in the evening on a monday night in sydney where a gunman is still holding a number of hostages at the lindt coffee shop in the very heart of sydney s business district. sky news australia has reported that the hostage taker has identified himself as the brother. he s reportedly used his hostages to contact three media outlets. the government has three demands. phone call with australia s prime minister. he also wants an isis flag. that s according to media reports. throughout this ordeal five hostages, you re about to see the first three, managed to get out. three men running out right there. two people who were just visiting the coffee shop and then an employee of the coffee shop comes out of another door. not the one that police that you see there standing behind. suddenly the door just bangs open and he comes out running. we believe the guy who comes out is in fact one of the workers because there s a combination of workers and customers who are being held hostage. and there he is. that was many, many hours ago. and of course they were debriefed by police after they got out. two women, here s the first one. also ran out a short time later. all five hostages reportedly escaped. that s not coming from the police. that s coming from other reports from the cafe. they were not released. what is not clear, almost ten hours after this all this began, how many hostages remain inside. let s go to cnn s anna coren. she s been with us for many hours. she s standing out near just a block or so away from the scene. anna, anything new? reporter: no, natalie. we re just waiting for more information from police. at this stage this is as far as we can go. we re on mcquarry street. anybody who s been to the city here in sydney before would have aware this is a very busy street. we re about a block from that lindt cafe where the gunman is holding up several hostages. we don t know how many. we know as you ve reported that five have managed to get away. we don t know if they have escaped or if they were released. however, we do know that police negotiators are in touch with him. that is being confirmed. that dialogue ongoing. and hopefully this will be resolved peacefully. but certainly for now the entire area like blocks in all directions are cordoned off. hundreds of police here on the scene. and then there have also been a number of police snipers who we have seen as well. as you can see behind me, a row of ambulances lined up. obviously on standby in case anything were to go wrong. but certainly an unfolding situation. a tense situation has people very much on high alert and very concerned that this could happen here in sydney. anna, just for our viewers who are outside of australia who are not familiar with martin place. i think the best way to describe it, this is an ongoing siege in an area of sydney which would be like times square in new york, for instance. this is pretty much in the heart of the city. reporter: yeah, absolutely in the heart of the city. there in martin place you have the reserve bank of australia. you have other financial institutions. you have the u.s. consulate. yove the 7 network australia located opposite this lindt cafe. so you d have to assume that the gunman chose his target very carefully. he wanted that exposure. he wanted the world to watch. police have now evacuated the entire area. hundreds of staff. we spoke to some of them a little earlier. streams were coming out from beneath the police tape. asking how it all unfolded this morning. they were told they had to keep away from the glass, from the windows, in case there were any bombs, any explosions, if the gunman started firing. and then they waited for police to escort and evacuate them from these buildings. but as i say, people are fearful that this could take place. obviously, there have been many raids anywhere australia over the past few months. terror-related raids. police trying to get on top of the situations. doing a great deal of intelligence gathering and foiling many attacks. but there have been many arrests. we know australia has been atarget. but it s another thing for it to actually be happening. yes, and it s been interesting to hear both of you since you re australian talk about the fact that this does not happen in australia. you can even hardly find a gun in australia, anna. and this person was able to do this. and the people in australia have now been caught up in a situation that sadly in the united states we see almost on any day, some sort of hostage situation with a gunman. yeah, that s absolutely right, natalie. australia s gun laws are just so strict here. and to think that somebody could actually walk into a cafe in the middle of the city armed with a gun with other weapons is frightening because it doesn t happen, as you say. and the last time that we really, you know, i guess felt the impact of terrorism other than it happening to australians overseas was in bali back in 2002, when there were the bombings and there were 88 australians that were killed in that attack. but it s another thing for it to be unfolding here on the streets of sydney. australia clearly involved in the war against isis. hundreds of troops over in iraq helping to train the kurdish and iraqi forces. we have australian fighter jets involved in the aggressive air campaign. threats have been made against australia. threats have been made against martin place in recent weeks. but as i say, for this to be happening, unfolding on the streets of sydney here in the heart of sydney is certainly very unnerving. yes. i can imagine unnerving for the people inside that coffee shop right now. so many hours. they are still in there. we don t even know how many. with this man. thank you so much, anna coren for us live there in sydney. miles godfrey is a political reporter for the daily telegraph. and he joins us now. he s been at the hostage scene all day, and he is now on the phone. miles, most of the information we re getting has been coming from reporters who talked with hostages in there, who ve been been contacted. we re not getting a lot of information at all from police. what do you know? what have you heard as far as who this person is, his demands, and how many people might still be in that coffee shop? yeah, good evening, guys. and good evening to your viewers. the latest information that we have is there are still a number of hostages obviously involved that are still in this cafe. the initial reports we got this morning were there were around 13 hostages being held. that number has crept up very slightly. and we think the latest information we have is there might be around 15. in terms of the perpetrator here, i don t think it s too helpful to speculate at moment as to who he is or where he s actually from. we don t actually yet know his motives apart from the obvious banner that he has put in the cafe. that would hint at a sort of background as to where he s coming from. nevertheless, it pears he s acting alone and he is acting in terms of sort of his mental state perhaps not from a very good place. but the thing you have to remember with all of this is that it is not actually it s not actually come as a huge surprise to many here in sydney. you may or may not know that we had a series of terrorism raids across the western area of sydney just a few months ago in september. and that actually led to a raising of the terror level threat here across australia from medium to high. the central part of that raid in september was an allegation that was later reported that there was a plot to kidnap someone from this very spot, from martin place. the allegation that was widely reported was that once that person was kidnapped they were going to be beheaded. now, the washout from that was a lot of people actually cast doubt on these claims and said was that really a reality, was that something that really could happen here in central sydney? and i think what we ve seen today is very much it is. we are living very much with the threat of terrorism on our doorstep. and miles, my understanding is one of the demands that the gunman has made is essentially he wants the world to know that australia is under attack by isis. and it seems that one of the reasons why police will not declare this a terrorist incident is because they don t want to give in to that demand. is that a fair reading? i think it is. and we re seeing right now at this very moment actually reports coming through that the hostages who are being held in this cafe have throughout the day been contacting a number of organizations, not to mention the national broadcaster. my understanding is they ve been ringing these organizations under the demands of the hostage taker and making a number of not least to bring an isis flag to the cafe and also a demand for the hostage taker to be allowed to speak to the prime minister perhaps on the national radio station, something like that. now, a lot of the media organizations that have received these demands are refusing to air them. some have, and that s how we know how they ve come about. but some of the broadcasters are actually refusing to pass on that information. and that is a direct result because they don t want to be seen to be assisting this guy, this madman, i guess, who s taken people hostage and is holding them under a siege. do you have any indication, miles, at this point as evening sets on in australia how long police are willing to wait this out. have there been any changes in the scene there? have you heard anything about are they allowing anything in, anything out? food, electricity ongoing. is there any kind of informat n information? i know it s very hard to get. but anything like that you re hearing. actually the assistant police commissioner here, catherine burn, who heads up the sort of terrorism side i guess of the new south wales police 230rss, just in a press conference in the last few minutes actually and they said they will be there for as long as they need be. and you wouldn t expect any less of any police force anywhere in the world. not least of all the new south wales police force, which is incredibly professional and incredibly capable as well. they ll thereby as long as they need to be. we ve got lives on the line here. they re not going to be taking any shortcuts. they re not going to be trying to end this quickly, by sort of pushing the situation or anything like that. in terms of food and that sort of thing being passed into the cafe, i ve not actually seen any going in there. by the very nature of the premises it s a cafe, you would think there would be some adequate splierksz food and water at the very least, to keep these people going. it s a very interesting point because it raises the question how long will this actually go on? and now we re in the 10th or perhaps the 11th hour of the siege that began around sort of 9:45, 10:00 a.m. sydney time. it s a very interesting question. all of australia and probably all of the world is surrounding their tvs this evening or whatever time of day it is in your part of the world and watching this unfold and we re all asking that question. when will this end? how long will it go for? and praying there is a speedy resolution and a safe resolution. and we certainly hope negotiators are talking with this person to try to talk him out of whatever else he wants. we do not know how long it will go but we know how long it has gone. almost ten hours now since that gunman first walked into that coffee shop. that chocolate coffee shop. the lindt coffee shop there in martin place in sydney armed with at least some dined of shotgun and took everybody inside hostage. and in the past few hours we ve seen at least five people manage to escape. there s also been communication with the hostages inside by a number of media organizations. but the police rin sifting the area is secure and they ll wait him out. and of course it is now turning into night in sydney. all this happening in the very heart of the city. chris reason be a reporter with 7 news australia was at the scene for hours. his newsroom is across from the cafe. listen to how he can describe what he can see from his position. let s start with what we can see of the gunman. he has been clearly identifiable through these last few hours as he paces his way back and forth affront of the four plate glass windows that link cafe. he s wearing a white shirt, a black cap, he s unshaven and he s carrying what appears to be a pump action shotgun. that gun almost coming into the frame of the windows, often close and menacingly close to the hostages themselves. let s talk about them, mel. we ve counted so far 15 different faces being forced up against the windows over these last eight, nine hours. not the 50 that had been speculated earlier. i think that number is wildly inaccurate. we re talking about that number, 15 people, combination of men and women and young people but thankfully no children involved as far as we can tell from our vantage point up here. now, you can the ghan seems to be rotating these people through the positions at the windows with their hands and faces up against the glass. one woman we counted was there for at least two hours. an extraordinary, agonizing time for her surely, having to stand on her feet for that long. some of them have got their heads in their hands like this as they re standing in the windows, mel. others look so vibly upset. one whom whose eyes were bloodshot red, obviously been crying her eyes out for some time, who knows what s been going through their minds these last few hours? just a terrifying ordeal for them. and i ve got to speculate here but would have been even more terrifying two hours ago when we saw the rush of escapees. we saw at this vantage point the gunman got extremely agitated as he realized those five had got out. he started screaming orders at the people inside. the hostages remain behind extremely agitated. we didn t see anything more than that. and we can t swing our camera around from this position to show you those windows directly live, mel. the police have been good enough let us get up here. we re not going into the fehr with their tactical operations by doing that. but there s a little bit of detail about what can be seen at this time in the siege. that was before they evacuated the network and well, actually, what they have done is i think the timing on that is that they did evacuate the network and the police took over that building because it is line of sight directly across from the coffee shop. chris mentioned right at the end they did allow them back in to make that report. i see. but hundreds of people who work at channel 7 in that building. most of those people, pretty much all of them had in fact been evacuated. we saw earlier tonight we were broadcasting from their melbourne studios because they had to leave their sydney studios. and they were the first network to give us these pictures you re seeing here of people in the windows and also of the suspected gunman. reporter glenn conley describes what he saw. reporter: our camera was trained on the front door of the lindt cafe, and we had quite a long lens on the color. we were able to see right 234. what we saw is nothing short of terrifying. he was using one of the employees of the lindt cafe as a human shield as he moved between what appeared to be two groups of hostages. the first group in the front window that we had seen looking across from the 7 newsroom from the very moment this began but also another group further into the cafe which led to speculation perhaps there was more than one gunman. at various times he was going backwards and forwards with his hand on the back or back of the neck of this lindt cafe employee as he moved the hostages around. we did see other hostages there. in particular a middle-aged woman in a white top who was very, very distressed. she was wiping her eyes, wiping her nose, and at one stage went to wipe her eyes and was obviously yeltd at by the gunman, her hands went straight back up in the air. she was visibly upset. we ve seen that. particularly with the faces of those who escaped. the terror in their eyes as they reached the moment of safety was something unforgettable. certainly agree with that. glenn conley there with channel 7 australia giving? good details of what happened in the last couple hours or so. and you ve been saying, and anna coren is from australia as well, our reporter there, that this is the first time australia has seen a hostage situation like this. it s the terrorism dimension as well which makes this so different. earlier we heard from david mallen, associate director of the melbourne school of government. he told us the government has been ramping up security in the country for quite some time. here he is. it has been a very big concern for the past few months. at least for the government. i m not sure it s been the case for the general public. there was a planned attack in the same part of sydney martin place a couple months ago. it led haveto very tough anti-stror laws being passed. tougher in some ways than in the u.s. you can go to prison for an extended period simply for traveling to iraq and syria without permission. a lot like the patriot act after.95 pv. there s been a threat here but like some of the people you had the interviews for a few minutes ago, a lot of australians feel this is a safe country, nothing happens, the police are on it. and the threat comes with these lone wolves that don t necessarily have chatter that can be picked up and eventually luck runs out because the police have to be right every single time. ? very true. very hard to stop someone who walks into a coffee shop with a shotgun. it s a low technology, high-impact attack and they re the hardest ones to stop. americans in sydney, meantime-v been warned about the ongoing situation there in market place. the consulate, which has been evacuated, issued this statement a short time ago. u.s. citizens are strongly encouraged to review your personal security plan, remain aware of your surroundings including local events, and monitor local news stations for updates. maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to enhance your personal security. good advice, not just for u.s. citizens who happen to be in sydney for pretty much for everyone who is there. concerning this situation ongoing in the world. witnesses to what s going on there at the cafe say australians are wandering around the streets with looks of disbelief. listen to what some people had to say near the scene. kind of a bit weird. like i ve never seen anything like this happen. like it s probably the first time in australian history that something this major in regards to a terrorist threat has happened. it is worrying me, actually. as you know, as me as a muslim i feel because it don t represent me. and if he think that he s a muslim he s doing the right thing, then he s very bad. because that s not us. that s not the muslims doing this. that s why i m worrying. if he think that he is what he s doing is islam then he s definitely wrong and everyone has to stand against him. people in australia shocked about what s going on. we ve been reporting that the hostages have been able to use their cell phones and they ve been involved in social media throughout this deal. people on social media throughout the world have been reacting to the hostage situation for hours. many tweeting about it using the #sydney siege. many hoping for a peaceful resolution. one person writing hope that sydney siege at martin place will end peacefully. please remember that islam is not a crime, extremism is. they aren t the same. another tweeting more innocent lives at stake spilling of innocent blood is not what allah taught us. pray for those captured in the sydney siege. the prime minister a few hours after this began addressed the nation. he encouraged everyone to stay calm. he said this is an ongoing operation and that australians should go about their business, not to be interfered with if you like by what is happening in martin place, not to be affected by it. this is some of what tony abbott had to say. i just want to make a short statement on the hostage incident in martin place in sydney. new south wales police responding. they are being strongly supported by commonwealth agencies. we don t yet know the motivation of the perpetrator. we don t know whether this is politically motivated. although obviously there are some indications that this could be. we have to appreciate that even in a society such as ours there are people who would wish to do us arm. that s why we have police and security organizations of the utmost professionalism that are ready and able to respond to our whole range of situations and contingencies including the situation that we are now seeing in sydney. the whole point of politically motivated violence is to scare people out of being themselves. australia is a peaceful, open, and generous society. nothing should ever change that. and that s why i would urge all australians today to go about their business as usual. of course if anyone does have any suspicions of untoward activity there is the national security hotline, 1-800-123-400. which i would urge them to call. i can let you know that the national security committee of the cabinet has been briefed on this incident. i ve been in regular contact with premier baird over the course of the last couple of hours. i ve been briefed by commissioner schipione of the new south wales police and by commissioner calvin of the australian federal police. this is an unfolding situation, and as the situation unfolds there will be operational updates provided by the new south wales police. i want to assure people that the ordinary business of government must go on and it will go on and that s why treasurer hawkey and finance minister corman will shortly be releasing the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook as planned. finally, this is a very disturbing incident. i can understand the concerns and anxieties of the australian people at a time like this. but our thoughts and prayers must above all go out to the individuals who are caught up in this. i can think of almost nothing more distressing, more terrifying than to be caught up in such a situation. and our hearts go out to those people. [ inaudible ]. i m going to leave it to the new south wales police, who are in operational charge of this incident, to provide those kinds of details. obviously, in a situation like this all sorts of reports fly around. all sorts of claims are made. so i do urge everyone to exercise caution in their reporting, but i will leave all the operational details to the new south wales police, who as i understand it will begin providing operational updates shortly. thank you. australia s prime minister tony abbott speaking a number of hours ago when this situation was first unfolding. and as he did say there, the new south wales police would be providing some operational details. we have learned a lot more about what has been going on in sydney over the last ten hours or so. we understand there s more than a dozen people being held hostage inside this cafe, that the guy with the gun has made contact with three media organizations, making a number of demands. among them he wants an isis flag, he wants contact with the man you just saw there, tony abbott, the australian prime minister. he s also making these claims that there are two explosive devices, two bombs inside the cafe none of that confirmed. yeah. somewhere in the cbd. we ve also seen over the course of the last few hours five people managing to escape from inside this cafe. yeah, we have. and we have the compelling pictures of the women who left the building with the lindt apron. five total. we still don t know how they were able to get out. most reports are they escaped. it wasn t a negotiation release. we don t know. although tony abbott said the police would bring us an update, they are not forthcoming. they like to control the situation as best they can. all is taking place in the lindt chocolate coffee shop. it is a popular place in the morning, especially when the siege began. the company put a statement out on facebook and addressed the situation. it read in part we would like to thank everyone for this kind support for the situation at the lindt chocolate cafe at martin place. we are deeply concerned over this serious incident and our thoughts and prayers are with the staff and customers involved and all of their friends and families. we don t know how many people left in the coffee shop are workers or employees of the lindt company or people who were just stopping to get coffee. we know it is a mixture of both staff and customers who are still being held hostage. we did get some details from the police that negotiators had made contact with the gunman. those negotiations are continuing. they are working out who this guy is. we have been told by our affiliates in australia they know who this man is, but not releasing details. this guy is an aspirational jihadist who wants to be linked to isis in some way. there have been messages of support from the canadian prime minister and the u.s. president barack obama has been briefed. we will continue to report on the interesting aspect that the gunman has had reach out to the media. the hostages reached out to the media. we will continue our coverage
down an american movie, censor an american picture it doesn t like, wrong in not calling him first before buckling before a north korean dictator. this is obama laying it on the line in a press conference that signalled all the audacity he s packed into a week since the november election, the deal on climate change, the protective order for people who came here illegally, and including the post of an american ambassador with the communist government in cube a taking questions from all women reporters in today s press conference, where will this obama audacity take us? i m joined by david corn, and by actor, writer and director sean penn who joins me now by phone. first of all, here s the president speaking about sony s decision to pull the interview, the movie that inspired the hacking. let s watch. sony is a corporation. i would agree with the president. i think that, you know, i m not speaking as an advocate for the motion picture industry or as a critic. but we have to realize this is a genuine emergency, this is the popularization of cyber war and it requires an alternate threshold on the thinking and the language that we use. when representatives of sony deny that they pulled the film and put it on distributors, that it s not really recognizing the same responsibility a parent has to drive the show when something threatens their child. in this case, it doesn t matter whether it s an individual, a government, or a company, the response of sony should have been to say, we ll make our apologies later and we ll put it online open and free for the world to see. so i would say it s a cop-out popularized taking a weapon and shooting at civilians on the street. it shows the possibilities. once those possibilities go out into the culture, just like guns, we ve got a computer in every household, and this is not technology. this is far from the hands of anyone. let me go over to david corn. your view on this as a guy who writes all the time. it does seem to be an easy call. as sean penn just said, they could have gone other routes besides the regal theater chain. we re going to put it on a network. they could have put it out themselves on a website. they could have said we take these threats seriously to the theaters. if they feel they can t have security, we ll do it another way. at the end of the day, unless they put it out they still can put it out. they can put it out for free. or set up their own website and anyone who wants to see it pays ten bucks and that s it. if they don t do that, at some point, probably some point soon, it just sends the message, that this works. i ve heard some conservatives today criticize the president for saying what he did too late, after sony already did what it s done. and the question, though, is, is this going to set a precedent or not? that s why i think it s right for the president and for the others to say, we don t agree and try to give them some more spine, give them some support, back them up a bit. and so sony still has a chance to make this right. but they re engaged now in what looks to be and sean penn, i want to bring you in. sony is engaged with a dialogue in the north koreans. they thanked them today by saying, thank you for doing what we told you to do. if you keep doing that, don t show this picture, then we won t cause you any more trouble, we won t release any more of the information from the hacking. it seems like they re almost in league now because they re being thanked for it, and told, if you re a good boy, we won t bother you anymore. it s an engagement of relations now, it seems. yeah, i think that sony has made themselves almost irrelevant in what s going to be a much, much bigger and more dangerous story. they might have been the trigger that participated in what was a mistake here. but, again, i think that if we don t take this on, on a united nations level, if it if we aren t waking up and recognizing that what happens once, and recognize that we just got hit by a truck and we can t tell ourselves that we have a mild headache and we can go home and go to bed, because you re going to wake up with blood in the brain. that s where we are on this cyber war issue. the declaration has been set. it s not even it s not sony. it s not even north korea. north korea is the size of mississippi. that can be handled by the mean spirited in a day. and it s also that which gets into the minds of a culture with a lot of disease in it. is there any way the creative community, the directors, writers, the actors, are able to leverage this? i mean, it s always dangerous in a tricky career to make demands be on, pay me and put me to work. but is there any way actors or writers could say, you re going to green light this movie, okay, when you green light it, it stays green and no dictator is going to stop it? do you think there s any chance, or is that too far a hope, that the creative communities will say, i m not making movies to be stopped by the bad guys? i think there will be discussions and there will be attempts to put lobbies together on that basis. but i think that the very first thing that those in hollywood or wisconsin can do is stand up as a country and stand up as a united country that this be taken in a serious way. well the me show you more of the president today. i thought it was a first-rate press conference. clarity, and good guys, bad guys, it wasn t the soft line he sometimes has taken before. here talking about north korea and the sony hacking. let s watch again the president today. i think it says something interesting about north korea that they decided to have the state mount an all-out assault on a movie studio because of a satirical movie starring seth rogen and james flacco. i love seth, and i love james. but the notion that that was a threat to them, i think gives you some sense of the kind of regime we re talking about here. they caused a lot of damage. and we will respond. we will respond proportionally and in a place and time and manner that we choose. i wonder, when you make a movie, you ve made some really important films, and i was thinking, part of the decision to make a movie is that you want the bad guy to hear it. it isn t just a joke by seth rogen, a satire movie, but it wouldn t bother you a bit to know that the people being satirized hear it and it hurts them and humiliates them. what did you make of the president saying, it s a seth rogen movie, it s a bit over the top to begin with, that it would scare them? well, you know, i go back to, i think it was 1997 when martin scorsese s film came out on tibbett and the chinese were in negotiations with disney, who backed down tremendously on the release of that film as a result. and whether or not it s the president framing it as a marginalized threat based on the movie, it really goes deeper than all of that to me. i think that when eisner was interviewed and said disney was not in the human rights business, they were in the entertainment business, that he really missed the mark. we are all in the human rights business today, whether in our economy, or in our homes. and i do think that sony does have an opportunity now to do something heroic, but more importantly, i think that moscow and beijing and washington have something to do that s very important. because this is something that threatens all governments, all corporations. it calls into question, you know, where we divide our capitalism and our recognition of human rights, and i think it s a really, really big historic moment. and if it s not taken by the reins by some brave people, we ll be heading into a world that we never imagined. sean, thank you for coming on and for the great work you ve done, all the greatest performances, dead man walking, every one seemed like it dealt with an important issue and you were on the right side. thank you very much and thank you to david corn. coming up, president obama in his press conference, it was kind of a press conference, not the idiotic swagger of w. it was real, it was human. this is a changed president, a confident president. you can see it in the way he s talking and acting. if you watched it today, you may have noticed that the president made some history today. he called only on women reporters. didn t mention it. i noticed it halfway through. somebody called it to my attention when we were covering it live. more on that decision in a minute. and this is hardball, the place for politics. my baby drove up in a brand new cadillac. my baby drove up in a brand new cadillac. look here, daddy, i m never coming back. discover the new spirit of cadillac and the best offers of the season. lease this 2015 standard collection ats for around $329 a month. l today sony pictures released a statement that said the studio did not cave to the threats from the hackers. the studio says that when theater owners refused to run the movie, they had no choice but to pull it. we ll decide. the statement adds that the studio is surveying other platforms in which to release the film. i ll believe it when i see it. we ll be right back after this. thank you. ordering chinese food is a very predictable experience. i order b14. i get b14. no surprises. buying business internet, on the other hand, can be a roller coaster white knuckle thrill ride. you re promised one speed. but do you consistently get it? you do with comcast business. and often even more. it s reliable. just like kung pao fish. thank you, ping. reliably fast internet starts at $89.95 a month. comcast business. built for business. hello, everybody. we really got a full house today, huh? well, all i want for christmas is to take your questions. well, since the midterm we ve seen there again a self-confident forward-leaning president. and in today s final press conference of the year that he hopes will capture the year, he commanded the room, ticking off his accomplishments. here he is. all told, over a 57-month streak, our businesses have created nearly 11 million new jobs. america s now the number one producer of oil, the number one producer of natural gas. our rescue of the auto industry is officially over. we ve now repaid taxpayers every dime and more of what my administration committed. we ve created about half a million new jobs in the auto industry alone. about ten million americans have gained health insurance just this past year. we re leading the coalition to degrade and ultimately destroy isil. and in less than two weeks, after more than 13 years, our combat mission in afghanistan will be over. there he is talking about his successes. joining me now, washington bureau chief for usa today. and from national urban radio. we ll have you on to talk about your book, april, if you d like. april, you were there today, and i want to know what the reaction was from your male colleagues to the fact that not one i could be a male and say, why did you invite us if you weren t going to let us involve ourselves in the q & a process, mr. president? your thoughts and feelings. you know for one thing for sure, in this town, it s a white, male dominated town. i know for a fact. i just walked out of the white house and the press area. many of our male colleagues have been going into the press secretary very upset that they were not called on today. but let me say this to you. as a woman, as someone who s been covering the white house, it s nice. and someone who sits in the third row, not the first row or the second row, but the third row, it s nice to see a change of pace. and from some of the white house sources that i talked to tonight, apparently there was a plan not to go this is not the first time, but not to go to the networks. this is not the first time that this has happened. they said, okay, since we see we ve got a lot of women in the audience who are really good at what they do, let s call on the women. so he didn t call on you. yes he did call on me. you demanded chris, i raised my hand like a reporter s supposed to. why don t they have the old tradition of reporters waving their hands and the reporters get the attention of the president. i raised my hand. that started during the bush years, like a good reporter is supposed to. who else raised their hand besides you? i don t know. i didn t see behind me. anyway, good for you. and how would you describe the men s attitude? we were they whining or bitchy, the fact that they didn t get called on? let me tell you something, the cameras on the front row, they ll keep cool. but behind the scenes, they re not happy. phone calls are being made. but they ll be cool. you ll always see a cool demeanor, but they are not happy with it. what do you think of that, susan? i didn t even notice for the first six or seven, then somebody pointed it out and said, it s all women. and he s going to keep this up. and he went to the end and i think clearly they had a plan to do this. what s the point? a little mischief. why not? what s the purpose of this thing? what was the quality of the questions? i have to tell you sounded pretty good to me. i have to tell you, i didn t notice anything was going on. in fact, i wouldn t have noticed they were all women. so that s a great thing. let s talk about the president today. april, you cover him all the time, and susan. there s something different about the president. i wouldn t call it swagger, because i hate it. some presidents being like w. swagger sitting down, i don t know how they do it, but they do. the french word i like is alon, a quiet self-confidence in the president. he didn t have before this election. something liberated this guy. i don t know if it was liberation, but i think it was more so what he had to present to america, an optimism. because they got a shellacking in november. and he had to come out, everything is changing, i m optimistic, we are americans, we can fix problems. that s what he said to the end, we can fix things as americans. so i think he wanted to come out with an optimistic tone, looking forward to the positive. and one thing that i took away was when he said with the democrats and the republicans, the fight, he said, yeah, there are fighting, but there are things that we also agree on. so he s looking to the positive in 2015 in closing out 2014. how did you react to him talking about the quality in fact, let s watch him respond to you. okay. i actually think it s been a healthy conversation that we ve had. these are not new phenomenon. the fact that they re now surfacing, in part because people are able to film what have just been in the past stories passed on around a kitchen table, allows people to, you know, make their own assessments and eflgdss and you re not going to solve a problem if it s not being talked about. did you buy the fact that people and race relations? i saw his optimism and his hope. you have to remember, when you talk about race in this country, the president did get it right. this is centuries old. centuries. and it stems from slavery. went to jim crow and it s moved on. it s not just a legislative issue. it s a heart issue as well. i do think people want to see a better day, but are there still vestiges and residue of the past? oh, yes. as a reporter, i did like the fact that he did kind of change his answer. because i asked him six years ago this month, in the oval office about the state of black america, and he harkens to charles dickens talk about the the best of times and the worst of times, yeah. yeah. for african americans who have a good education, it s a good time. but for those who don t, it s unemployment and lack of opportunity. when he talked about black america, as well as all america is better in the aggregate since his administration, it was interesting to hear that versus six years ago this month in the oval office from my interview that i had with him. thanks so much. you know, one thing that struck me about his answer was how much different just cell phone technology makes. that picture, the video of eric garner makes all the difference in settling the he said/he said debate. it makes all the difference for people who might have denied what had happened there. there was no denying it. i don t know anybody that thought that was a proper decision. sometimes you have to have a trial before a jury before a thank you. i raised my hand, chris. by the way, i love the weather today. did you like the weather today? it was okay. see, you have to disagree with me. [ laughter ] i proved it now. every time i say something, this reporter has to find a different conclusion. anyway, it s style. thank you very much. coming up, a new biography of john f. kennedy jr reveals new details about the relationship with his mother jacqueline kennedy. the author joins us next to talk about a little bit of glamor here in politics. and this is hardball, the place for politics. i got it. now jump off the bridge. what? in 3.2.1. are you kidding me? go. right on time. right now, over 20,000 trains are running reliably. we call that predictable. thrillingly predictable. right now, you can get a single line with 3 gigs for $65 a month. 3 gigs . is that a lot? that s about.100 app downloads, 45 hours of streaming music, and 6 hours of video playing. (singing) and five golden rings! ha, i see what you did. (singing) four calling birds.three french hens. (the guys starts to fizzle out) two. turtle. doves. i really went for it there ya you did. you really, really did now get 3 gigs of data on one line for $65 a month. switch to at&t, buy a new smartphone and get $150 credit per line. intbladder leak protection.ant new always discreet underwear for sensitive bladders from always, the experts in feminine protection new always discreet underwear absorbs heavy bladder leaks faster than the leading brand, so you can feel comfortably dry. plus always discreet has a discreet fit that hugs your curves. you barely feel it. new always discreet underwear. now bladder leaks can feel like no big deal. because, hey, pee happens. get to the terminal across town. are all the green lights you? no. it s called grid iq. the 4:51 is leaving at 4:51. they cut the power. it ll fix itself. power s back on. quick thinking traffic lights and self correcting power grids make the world predictable. thrillingly predictable. worked for president kennedy in the white house. they had a great time. people loved politics. it was a positive thing. and that s been missing. yeah, i mean, i think it s like anything else. if, you know, the trick is catching people s attention. and the only thing that people see are a bunch of men fighting on television all the time, or negative commercials on television, or acerbic editorials, they ll turn their attention somewhere else. we wanted to bring some fun, some levity, but be serious-minded at the same time. christopher anderson joins us now. he s out with a masterful biography called the good son. thank you for joining us. i ask that question, what did we miss about the upbringing of john kennedy jr? first of all, i have to say, you look much better today than you did back then. [ laughter ] and i love all your books as well. look, what we didn t get right about jfk jr is that he was more bouvier than kennedy. that was a wonderful interview. you mentioned alon and president obama and a transformation that s taken place here and that is a quality that both jfk jr and his father had in spades, but i think more so in the case of jfk jr, because he was really a natural politician in many ways. his dad was a little reluctant with the kissing-babies thing. but john could connect with people. he was self-efacing and incredibly articulate. if you look at the pictures in the relationship with his mother, and the reason i wrote this book, that was a phenomenal relationship he had with jackie. they were each other s protector from the very beginning. did he ever think of becoming a european movie star? he looks like a european movie star. he looks french. there s the bouvier. you see pictures of his grandfather on his mother s side. he looks like that side of the family. he did want to act, as you may recall, and jackie pulled him back from the brink. she did say one of the most wonderful thing was seeing him act and she did on many occasions when he was at brown university and afterwards, but she thought there were great things ahead for him. her whole attitude was hands-on. she said if you bungled raising your children, nothing else in life matters. so she kept him away from people are going to go out and buy this book right now. it looks like candy for christmas. especially for those of us who grew up with the kennedys. the pictures in this book are enough. let me ask you about his possible running for politics. i talked to kennedy jr and said his numbers were very good. my question, john f kennedy jr, did he get polling done and see if he could beat hillary clinton? indeed there was a private poll, taken just before his tragic crash, his death. and he, by all accounts, his close friends said he intended to seek the seat of daniel patrick moynihan. he had gone to the new york chairwoman of the democratic party. he was intent on beginning his political career. ed koch told me, even if she tried, she couldn t have got that seat from kennedy. i think he was right. let s talk about the horrible ending. i read along the line that jacqueline kennedy was concerned about her beautiful son s interest in aviation and wanting to be a pilot someday. absolutely. and it s so unbelievable. it s a premonition from hell, but go ahead. she shared that with maurice templeton, the last significant relationship she had in her life. look at the kennedy track record. uncle joe died in a plane crash. his aunt kathleen teddy was almost killed. alexander o nasis, the son of john s stepfather was killed in a plane crash. so there s a long and terrifying list. that was the one thing that she worried about. it was only after that she passed away that he went ahead with his plans to get his license. and we see the tragic consequences. great book. the book is called the good son, about the attractive son of kennedy. you have a great son-in-law running a good part of this network. thank you, he s a great guy. sure is. up next, the big fight on the right between rand paul and marco rubio s regarding president obama s historic shift of policy on cuba. plus stephen colbert says farewell. what a show it was last night. all that straight ahead. you re watching hardball, a place for politics, where you hear the debate. and cialis for daily useor you. helps you be ready anytime the moment is right. cialis is also the only daily ed tablet approved to treat symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long 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coast, but it will be a wet one. a storm system is expected to bring rain from florida to maine along with high winds. the midwest will see snow and ice. and health officials say the flu is widespread in 29 states. the strain in most cases is not covered by this year s shot. back to hardball. at a minimum, i would say this, barack obama is the worst negotiator that we ve had as president since at least jimmy carter and maybe in the modern history of this country. i intend to use every tool at our disposal in the majority to unravel as many of these changes as possible. this is all one-sided. that s what happens when you send a speech writer to negotiate a deal with a dictator. i think it sends an awful awful that the u.s. under this president is no longer a reliable ally in the feet for freedom and democracy. you saw marco rubio, jockeying for position in a crowded republican field of possibilities, launching an assault on president obama s deal to restore relations with cuba. he has a fight on his hands with senator rand paul of sdk and things are getting personal. rand paul bucked rubio by declaring his support for president obama s goal to end the cuban embargo. i mean, if the goal was regime change, it sure doesn t seem to be working. and probably it punishes the people more than the regime, because the regime can blame the embargo for hardship. if there s open trade, i think the people will see what it s like to all of the things that we produce under capitalism. so in the end, i think probably opening up cuba is a good idea. here s rubio with his lesser abilities going back at paul on fox last night. like many people that have been opining, he has no idea what he s talking about. the embargo is not what s hurting the cuban people. it s the lack of freedom, and the lack of competent leaders. today, the senator unloaded on rubio, saying, i m a proponent of peace through commerce. i believe engaging cuba can lead to positive change. seems that rubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and build a moat. i reject this isolationism. it s a shot here against rubio. he was 7 years old during camp david when jimmy carter, the guy he said wasn t a good negotiator, brought together israel with his major strategic enemy, egypt, and forced a permanent peace treaty between the two of them. match that, marco. just do something like that in your lifetime. let s talk about this interesting fight on the right. we grew up with the idea, we all did, that the republican party was the hawkish party, anti-communist, anti-everything, anti-everybody, let s go to war. and now you see an interesting intra-mural battle where you see rubio carrying the traditional baggage of the hawks. but then you see rand paul, who s got to be the most spontaneous, and i have to say scrambling arguer i ve ever seen. he doesn t say in the pocket. he s scrambling like rg3. he s always got something. you know, it s an epic battle between conservatives and libertarians it s epic, but it s new? it s fairly fresh. it s been simmering for some time, but coming out before the 2016 cycle and rand paul is playing on that and he s also playing on the fact that this is marco rubio s token cuban kid moment. hey, i m cuban american, let me get some headlines here. so this is his way to come out and say really outrageous things, whether they be right or wrong, just so he can say, i m out in front of the beipack, because he knows rand paul is playing it effectively ahead of that cycle. one thing rand paul is doing, why he s taking obama s position on this. he s saying, we do need to change up our strategy on this. he knows there s young voters who want to vacation in cuba. they know the strategy is outdated. and the cuban american vote is about 50/50 now. it s a wash. so don t assume you have to move in the direction of the red hots. the issue of cuba is no longer a defining issue for republicans. 20 years ago, the republicans came down hard. a lot of them in the house in the senate now don t care about this one way or the other. it s ancient history. they re more concerned about domestic policy and spending. it s going to be much more difficult for marco rubio to try to push rand paul to the side than maybe five or ten years ago. how does the white house sum this strange bedfellows situation up? president obama said he will continue to press this on. he had a press conference this afternoon and said he was planning to do what he wanted to do despite congress s opposition, and this is obviously one of those things. but he d rather work with congress. but this is definitely something they ve come out for and they are full throttle to do what they want to do. here he is, he fired back on critics of the cuba deal. let s watch him. what i know deep in my bones is that if you ve done the same thing for 50 years and nothing s changed, you should try something different, if you want a different outcome. and this gives us an opportunity for a different outcome. through engagement, we have a better chance of bringing about change than we would have otherwise. change is going to come to cuba. it has to. they ve got an economy that doesn t work. that sounds so millennial. the old guys didn t get it right. we ll try something new. it s a reflection of the administration trying to pivot into this kind of a mode. i think it s going to be, people want to get everything they want on this deal. republicans may be able to force their hands on things like maybe opening an embassy how do you do that? how do you stop the president who has the right to declare diplomatic relations with another country? they ll go to go to congress to approve shipping money in the state department to open up the embassy. congress will say no. they ll need that. without that, that could have an impact on some of this. but it depends on how much having a physical embassy matters. is that the house and the senate? both. obama made this announcement a week after they pass a $1.3 trillion budget. so he has the seed funding to move forward with the staff it strikes me as a little pissent. to not let the guy name an ambassador. just seems so petty, kate. it s not like debating. it s saying you can t do what you have a right to do. it s like saying we re not going to pay for the white house meals anymore, or close down the electricity in the executive branch. just seems so small-minded to use your power that way. congress will do everything they can to stop it the way they think they can. i called the man who is down there already ambassador. so there may not be an ambassador there, but there s a presence there. it s going to be very difficult for them to really the fundamental change has already happened. we are now talking about having normalized relationships with cuba. it s a fundamental shift and there s not a lot republicans are going to be able to do other than the cuban americans, jose diaz-balart, that would be hard for the republicans to shoot that down, i would think. in many ways, there are things that have ticked down over the years. the president has, you know, loosened travel restrictions. there s a pretty robust u.s. presence there, where they route things through the swiss government. so there s a presence there. really quickly, the underreported political dynamic, russia is about to build a spy base and the cuban relationship with venezuela and with people like iran, north korea, it s a very clever move by the president. and it could continue in the wrong direction for a while. i don t want to deal with the communist government. i don t want to meet with these guys. i ll go with a travel agent. their time is up, by the way. the roundtable is staying with us. coming up, stephen colbert s big send-off last night. looked like a lot of fun. alan alda, george lucas what a crowd. we ll talk about the beautiful song they sang on the way out the door last night. this is hardball. thanks. 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(mandarin) cut it out. see you tomorrow. state of the union address will take place on january 20, that s the date that house speaker john boehner chose. we ll be right back after this. but i ve managed.e crohn s disease is tough, except that managing my symptoms was all i was doing. and when i finally told my doctor, he said humira is for adults like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn s disease. and that in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. when electricity is generated here s awith natural gasu: instead of today s most used source, how much are co2 emissions reduced? up to 30%? 45%? 60%? the answer is. up to 60% less. and that s a big reason why the u.s. is a world leader in reducing co2 emissions. take the energy quiz round 2. energy lives here. if this is your first time tuning into the colbert report, i have some terrible news. this, in fact s your last time tuning into the colbert report, until no, no, no. folks, until ten years from now, when they reboot it directed by j.j. abrams. we re back. it s officially the end of the era. stephen colbert signed off and the satirist did it in style, leading a massive course of celebrities at his sing-along. just like you always do tell the news keep the dark clouds far away we ll meet again we ll meet again. . some sunny day just like you always do till the blue skies dry the dark clouds far away so will you please say hello to the friends that i know tell them i won t be long they ll be happy to know that as you saw me go i was singing this song we ll meet again don t know when don t know where but i know we ll meet again some sunny day we re back with our great round table. charles and katie and john. did you realize what was going on is there? the last music from dr. strangelove when the bombs are dropping, and then henry kissinger while they re singing we ll meet again. what did you think? i was supposed to be there but i had a brother-in-law party last night. i m curious to see what happens when he goes will he be a new permit? well, he has to be. he can t be himself, though. but i want to see how much of the politics he s able to bring into late night sort of basic television. i think that that will be an interesting thing because he s done such a great job of helping along with jon stewart create this new brand on cable. and i noticed kimmel is getting better. isn t he? i don t know what the competition will be. i have a feeling he s a really nice guy when you meet him but he s a regular guy. i think he has to develop a hybrid of the guy he plays because chevy chase, as i said the other night, didn t work as chevy chase. he just disappeared because when he wasn t playing that character like jerry lewis played a character, the jerk, he called him. most guys play somebody. right, right. he made political news reporting more approachable, the whole game of politics more approachable. he represents that rat pack. let s watch more from colbert s sendoff last night. he reflected on some of his major accomplishments over the last nine years. zoe all those things they said i did, save olympics, the rally to restore sanity and/or for and/or cat stevens career. none of that, none of that was really me. you, the nation, did all of that. i just got paid for it. thanks. thanks. that was really cool of you guys. nice when good things happen to good guys. thank you. when we return, let me finish with president obama today and how things are going racially in this country. i m going to let the president speak for the president. you re watching hardball, the place for politics. thanks to angie s list, now it is. we ve made hiring anyone from a handyman to a dog walker as simple as a few clicks. buy their services directly at angieslist.com no more calling around. no more hassles. start shopping from a list of top-rated providers today. angie s list is revolutionizing local service again. visit angieslist.com today. .the getaway vehicle! for all the confidence you need. td ameritrade. you got this. were. the gap between income and wealth of white and black america persists. and we ve got more work to do on that front. i ve been consistent in saying that this is a legacy of a troubled racial past of jim crow and slavery. that s not an excuse for black folks. and i think the overall majority of black people understand it s not an excuse. they re working hard. they re out there hustling and trying to get an education, trying to send their kids to college. but they re starting behind oftentimes in the race. what s true for all americans is we should be willing to provide people a hand up. not a hand up but help folks get that good, early childhood
her next book should be called kate s rights. kristen tate. he was raised by a moose. comedian nathan mcintosh. she will address me as your honor. remi spencer. and even when he googles himself it asks did you meet jimmy fallon? i love that one. let s start the show. donald trump sat down with his likely successor and according to e! news where i get all of my political news during the 15-minute meeting they discussed the possibility of kanye becoming the ambassador of sorts in an he said they are repeating themselves. rather than learning what keeps this country safe and what this job will entail he is meeting with kanye west. he has weeks before he is moving to the white house. and kanye west is a person who repeats himself. he is walt disthee and he is steve walt disney and he is steve jobs and kim kardashian is the best. it is disgusting that you would meet rappers. no rappers. no. but wait, i think that i think trump is he has plenty of time. he is ahead of where other president-elects were, the most in history. he has the cabinet and we will talk about his cabinet picks. he is getting a lot of work done, is he not? he read on twitter that you can get the best taco bowls. and the other one is i looked at his entrance like this wasn t a planned meeting. i know they walked out and made it look good. elvis surprised nixon. nixon was like, screw him, let him up. kanye didn t walk in like he was supposed to be there. he hustled. remember that scene in pee- wee s big adventure and he pretends he is with the old man. that was kanye sneaking into the elevator. they went up and made the best of it. they are similar. pee-wee and kanye? kanye and trump. they have a sense of their ego, right? they are always bragging about things. both of their wives have tried to take their twitter away at points. both of their wives are i will stop what i was going to say. they are what they are. they are both beautiful. yes. you can t not say that. mobile ceo. the w stands for winning. lawmakers in both parties have warned that tillerson could face scrutiny for his long relationship with russia. he ordered him the order of friendship. like most of trump s cabinet they don t have prior government experience and that s a bad thing according to some people. politico did a tally. two generals and two bankers and three business executives. one billionaire philanthropist and zero democrats. sounds great to me. actually there will be two governors in the cabinet. trump is reportedly planning to pick former texas governor rick perry as secretary of energy. one thing i love about perry is he has a clean signature. he prints it and spaces the letters out like everyone should. i say let s make signatures readable. spread the word with the hash tag. i am going to change the way i write. vee more. anyway, before he comes secretary of energy he will have to step down as vanilla ice s dj. the kid don t play if there was a problem yo i ll solve it check out my hook while the dj revolves it rick perry! that s a real thing? that s a real thing. that is a real thing. i think you are too young to remember, but vanilla ice was a rapper. that was a longtime ago. i think perry all of the rappers get in line. i love rick perry. he is awesome. and i love the cabinet that trump is putting together. i am so happy that he is not putting all of these political pukes in his cabinet. we know how government bureaucrats are doing in power. he is putting businessmen in there and people with real track records of experience. community organizers will no longer run this country. and you know, what i do is i love appointees that make liberals more mad. the more the liberals hate the people trump picks the more i love them. i think liberals are a little upset because rick perry was under indictment for the last year. it is a big political horse and pony show. actually a grand jury indicted him. he was indicted for criminal abuse. he wouldn t step down after he was convicted for a dwi. he wanted her to step down and she wouldn t step down. she was threatening to veto legislation. but shouldn t she have stepped down? i thought she should have whether she should or shouldn t have did this man abuse his power in office to accomplish a goal? and when you are threatening vetoing legislation you have to resign that is technically an abuse of his power. it doesn t mean he didn t do it and it didn t mean he didn t violate the laws, and he was under indictment. that was one of the primary reasons that people and not just democrats, but republicans alike are disappointed in this choice for such an important position in the cabinet. i like what is happening. he has the ceo and rick perry for energy. i think we will see a change in the way we deal with energy. do you think? he is the first guy to lead a department and he couldn t remember the name of it. nothing you said is as remotely offensive as that video. i know you don t know him as a rapper, but probably as an uber driver. listen to me. this is the one thing i admired about his transition process is he is creating an environment you can do bu politics. everybody is greeted with a handshake and a smile and it looks like ideas are being exchanged. there has been an exchange of ideas and he is bringing in people from other processes. is that a word? i went to community college. i think i have been here and trump is in the wwe hall of fame. he has hired linda mcman who was the wife of vince mcman. trump and linda mcman have both taken stone cold stunners in front of the large groups of people. there are two people in that building that have taken stone cold stunners. in a few years they will say please, politicians again. politicians. i mean that s it. trump is an an antidote for the politics we have it in the past. what do you think about the award of friendship? with russia? why is it a bad thing if we can work with russia. i don t understand. all. hate is liberals trying to point fingers. that s what this russia talk is all about. it can t just be that. let s say it is and we go to the next story. uber can ban you for being too flirty. the company released new guidelines for passenger behavior. among them, no smoking and no vomiting and no abusive language and no flirting. it is okay to chat with someone else in the car, but don t if they have single and don t touch or flirt with other people in the car. passengers could lose access to the service. new york city s taxi drivers recently released their 2017 calendar. this will really keep me warm in the winter months. look at that. love that pink tank, man. and there is one more. let s see it. put that away. as samantha from sex and the city might say. first of all what were you doing holding what looked to be a dangerous snake? when my book came out we had a show called snakes on the cab and we drove around picking up people in the cab and they would be like we are going to 83rd and second. those were just what if something bad happened? you weren t afraid somebody would jump out? we were pretty careful about who we pranked. more importantly it was shot with go pro s and made it look more ominous than it it was. you could restrain the snake. at least you thought you could. what about this calendar? they try to piggyback on the back of the fireman thing. they realized that they couldn t compete from a sex appeal standpoint so they went with like the schtick. and i love uber decided vomiting is legal. and you can t even smooch with other passengers. like after a date you get the girl to make out with you in the car? not in uber apparently. i thought the rules were directed initially to the driver and the passenger. i had some uber drivers and taxi drivers that get really personal and they want to talk and ask you all kinds of questions. when they find out i m a lawyer they want legal advice. i had a driver hand me a contract and asked me to look at it. no joke. he is like am i really going to get 72 virgins? the good thing about my practice area i can say is at least i can give you some advice. it is good to have you around. it makes sense that somebody who owns their own car and is nice enough to work a few hours on the woke end so they don t have to watch you have sex in it. you think it is protecting the driver? this is her car. this is their vehicle. it is a party in there. i you hose it down. these rules are ridiculous. there is a granny sitting in the backseat and she can get him a smooch on the cheek. no vomiting some glad they told me that. the next time i am in an uber and i feel like i will vomit i won t. can i say this as a cabdriver? i am in favor of the no hooking up code for the passengers. i really am. do people used to get it on in the people hookup, but it is never who you want to see. good looking people have options. they have places they can go to hookup. people say have you ever seen people have sex in your cab? i listened to people have sex. i looked at like two. ugly people have apartments too. there is a weird spontaneity among other people where they throw down with a different level of aggression because they don t feel like they will fall out of the sky again. there are no standards and practices. dot ugly people throw up harder? they do it with more spontaneity. the u.n says wonder woman is too scantily clad. good thing nobody listens to the u.n. undo bird on a woman s access for abortion. and rebels in eastern aleppo have accepted a cease-fire and return it to government fors. the u.n is looking at mass atrocities including the deaths of 82 civilians killed by bombings and executions. the town of newtown, connecticut will mark a grim anniversary today. it was four years ago when 20 children and six teachers were gunned down at the sandy hook elementary school. the victims with i will be remembered with a moment of silence and prayer services. county el month iys are asked not to do any work between 9:30 and 9:45 a.m. that s when the shootings took place. be sure to bundle up in the midwest and northeast. arctic cold is expected to spread. highs in the northern plains and the upper midwest will range from 20 to 30 degrees below average today. i m patricia stark. now back to red eye. for more news go to foxnews.com. the united nations has a campaign for an ambassador for women and girls. not everyone saw it that way. some saw a sexy spokeswoman as sexist. there was a petition. it read a large breasted white woman of impossible proportions in a simmer re shimmery motif. i signed it and said sounds great. if you want to spread your message to men you need that stuff to get their attention. that s the beauty of wonder woman. they see her and find her attractive and then they don t take it seriously and she kicks their ass. they will inspire girls to self-confidence and occupations monopolized by men. let s compare her skateboard skills to another famous u.n ambassador. it was hard for him to track down criminals. he couldn t get out of that mode. that is the difference between him not getting secretary of state. somebody leaked that. jimmy, is wonder woman sexist? if you are getting your self-worth from a ambassador you have problems. there are women getting stoned for reading. they have angry birds. they want to do they will be engaging in this anyway. it seems silly. she is not a real person. since she was an ambassador, do you think it was legitimate? i think it was ridiculous. i think the whole thing was ridiculous. i grew up watching wonder woman on tv. that was linda carter. right. i i remember watching it with my granted mother and twin brother. she was a positive role model. yes she is can scantily clad, but they take it so serious and get so sensitive on these topics. maybe she should wear a little more clothing, but i don t think speak for yourself. i don t think it was a negative role model. she does embody empower meant and gender equality and i think it attracts females and males to the issue at happened. i think it is a shame they had to let her go after two months. that s it. i used to watch wonder woman too, but i wouldn t have watched her unless she was gorgeous. i never liked wonder woman. i liked spider-man. now that the u.n has deemed wonder woman inappropriate i love wonder woman. the only thing i hate more than boring superheros are beurocrats telling us how to live. i say the u.n should get rid of them and she is better than them anyway. they need a transgender depressed overweight woman because that will make them all feel better and month one will have to be upset. they did say they wanted alternate representations of women. i was going to suggest dog the bounty hunter s wife. is she a hottie? she is a big lady. have you ever seen her? she has like arms of truth. you would tell her what happened. jie do you have a problem with do you have a problem with hot women as role models? it is body shaming, is it not? i suppose. there has to be real women. does it have to be a fake woman? uh-huh track tiff attractive women aren t real women? attractive women don t exist and they most certainly do. half time request andy levey. and the red eye pod cast is available now. subscribe on itunes at foxnewsradio.com. ?[t1a live from america s news headquarters i m patricia stark. authorities in boulder, colorado say they are looking at new dna technology that could help them solve the 20-year-old murder case of jonbenet ramsey. the colorado bureau of investigation is about to unveil this new technology and it also taps into a database that includes genetic profiles of more than 15 million known offenders and uh resties. jonbenet ramsey was found dead in her parents home the day after christmas, 1996. president obama signed legislation that will invest $2 billion in cancer research. they give $2 billion to the state to fight opioid abuse. another record setting day on wall street on tuesday helping push most international stocks higher in trading. the dow jones industrials rose 114 points to pull to within 89 points of the 20,000 level. and the s&p 500 index rose almost 15 points to 2271. all markets will be watching today s federal reserve meeting. the central bank is expected to announce the first u.s. interest rate hike since december of 2015. iraqi special forces are making gains against isis fighters in mosul. the military said special forces are less than three miles away from the tigress river that running through iraq s second largest city. and dolly parton is headlining a list of who s who of the country music world on tuesday night. it is a telethon to help those affected by the recent wildfires in the smoky mountains. parton s dollywood foundation plans to give each resident $1,000 a month for six months to get back on their feet. the telethon raised more than $2 million. i m patricia stark and now back to red eye. they held a rally in wisconsin. now we have some clips. trump addressed the recount lead by the green party candidate, jill stein. the recount vote has come back. you know, i called it a scam, but i won t say that because we want to be nice. i refuse to say it is a scam so this way they can t report i said it. he expressed his love for paul ryan. speaker, paul ryan. i really have come to oh no. i have come to appreciate him. speaker paul ryan. where is the speaker? where is he? i tell you, he has been terrific. i tell you, honestly he is like a fine wine. every day goes by and i can appreciate his genius more and more. now if he ever goes against me i will not say that. he took a poll on if time should have a person of the year or man of the year. and in the old days it was called the man of the year, right? now so let me do this. we have a lot of women here and i have to do it. do you mind? would you prefer i will go person of the year and man of the year and person of the year and man of the year. what should it be? i am doing it for all of you politicians. not that we are going to change at this point. would you rather see person of the year? man of the year? these guys are so politically correct. so far i have done that three times and person of the year is not doing wealth. he is having a good time. this is trump at his best. did you see the christmas trees behind him? the war on christmas is dead. we can finally say merry christmas in this country without fear. he did have a sign. it said merry christmas on the sign. yes. he is having a blast. what about the people who booed paul ryan? to nathan s . about trump in wwe, it cements that. that is a pro-wrestling drill. dumping on paul ryan indicative of them not knowing where trump stands with ryan today. they might have read like two dispatches ago where they were not friends anymore. it does change a lot. he said if he disagrees he can go back with me. he said paul ryan was like a fine wine. what do you think he meant by that? well since he has uh nounsed that he announced he never drank alcohol i think he is telling us he has no idea. that s my take. look, it sbt politics. he is not doing policy. it is all silliness. it is sad though. it is like this man is going to run things. you think the thank you things wouldn t be do you think this should be called person of the year or man of the year? it is like a stand up show. the t point is you can t say woman of the year. you sucked me into this. we have to go. does the baywatch movie have too much eye candy? it is the debate you don t want to miss. baywatch is getting a reboot unlike the show. i found it too serious. the movie is all about babes and beaches and bathing suits and having fun. biggie, biggie, biggie i just love your flashy ways. do you see it too? the trailer was released last week and the movie comes out in 2017, but not everyone is excited about it. to the tweets. one woman wrote, are we seriously not over sexualizing women and fronting unrealistic body standards? another said, woi, they have baywatch hipper sexualizing men and women. 1k3 one more it turns out the casual masogany. who knew? the first baywatch is how i got my first break. the people who tweeted that, they voted for trump. they did? it was never it was always in this spirit, was it not? the same people who have a problem with linda carter and wonder woman wearing a pretty outfit are those who have a problem with baywatch. if you watch baywatch you know that s what it is about. pretty people running around with little bathing suits on. if you don t want to see it, don t watch it. baywatch was a worldwide phenomenon. i had the david hasselhoff shorts and the hair. this is a popcorn movie and it is meant to be fun. there is no real reason to get upset. this is a dumb movie. what were they expecting? i have never seen baywatch and i know what it is about. they should make the movie with clinically obese people. it would be a big hit and it would be reflective of our society. you re right, you could learn a lesson. no one going to see baywatch knows what this means. i happen to be writing jokes for one of the original cast members, pam, pamela anderson. oh, the roast. they have no [bleep] idea what is going on in the movie. the problem is we are fighting the wrong battles in the country. no one should care what is going on in baywatch you have bigger fish to fry. that does it for me. i m tom shillue and i ll see you next time. or us.
jason carroll, thanks so much. donald trump did have a new policy proposal. term limits for members of congress. he s calling for a constitutional amendment. it would take a constitutional amendment that would restrict members to six years of service, senators, 12 years. on monday, they proposed an ethics on when the executive branch leave office. cnn has learned new details about donald trump s preparation for the final debate. a source tells us that rnc chair reince priebus played the moderators with new jersey governor chris christie playing hillary clinton. this is a bit of a change doing mock scenarios. we had been told in the first debate, he did not do this. did not want to do this, apparently coming in nor prepared. hillary clinton, she s been off the campaign trail for several days, raising money and preparing for tonight s debate. in the very first debate she seemed to be trying to bait trump. at 9:00 p.m. eastern, she is expected to employ a different strategy, according to cnn s jeff zeleny. that s right, hillary clinton is getting ready for her final debate with donald trump. she s preparing in a different way. now, she s been actually familiarizing herself with all of those campaign e-mails and previous positions and statements unearthed through the stolen hacked e-mails published by wikileaks. it is a new development in this campaign. something she is preparing for. something she expected donald trump will go after. she will also, i m told, go after what donald trump is did calling a rigged election. pushing back hard, perhaps as a way to get under donald trump s skin. she s also going to make the case for why she can be the president for all americans. of course, that message is aimed at getting some republicans some moderate voters who may not have been open for voting for her. but they simply cannot be there for trump. she s trying to make the case today, a, she s presidential, and b, even if you don t love her, you still may want to vote for her because donald trump in the eyes of the clinton campaign is simply not fit for president. of course, donald trump will be getting his last licks in. this is the last time before a big audience raising case about honesty and her trustworthiness. with the campaign less than three weeks away from election day. john and christine. jeff zeleny for us. the third installment of the debate trilogy is tonight on cnn. we are here now. we ll be here all day long. christine romans. thank you so much, john berman. president obama has a message for donald trump, quit whining. the commander in chief calling out donald trump for his repeated claim that s election is rigged. listen to him mock the gop for what he calls the unprecedented and dangerous attack on the nation s election system. that is both irresponsible. and by the way, doesn t really show the kind of leadership and toughness that you want out of a president. you start whining before the game s even over. if whenever things are going badly for you, you start blaming somebody else? then you don t have what it takes to be in this job. the president hosted his final state dinner last night welcoming italian prime minister matteo renzi. in his toast on the south lawn he borrowed a line from yogi berra telling the crowd it ain t over til it s over. heavyweights for v.p., an e-mail allegedly sent by gop mike pence. has a list, tim cook, bill gates, mary barra, howard schultz and muhtar kent. with tim kaine this was an early list along with kaine, elizabeth sanders and others made the cut. much snarking on social media. podesta said he organized the list by food groups. those groups were gender and race as well as professional background. will they or won t they? a lot of speculation whether donald trump and hillary clinton will shake hands before tonight s third and final debate. we already know who won t be shaking hands. details ahead on early start. credit karma, why are you checking your credit score? insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company come in. like all standardized medicare supplement insurance plans, they could help pay some of what medicare doesn t, saving you in out-of-pocket medical costs. you ve learned that taking informed steps along the way really makes a difference later. that s what it means to go long™. call now and request this free decision guide. it s full of information on medicare and the range of aarp medicare supplement plans to choose from based on your needs and budget. all plans like these let you choose any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients, and there are no network restrictions. unitedhealthcare insurance company has over thirty years experience and the commitment to roll along with you, keeping you on course. so call now and discover how an aarp medicare supplement plan could go long™ for you. these are the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp, an organization serving the needs of people 50 and over for generations. plus, nine out of ten plan members surveyed say they would recommend their plan to a friend. remember, medicare doesn t cover everything. the rest is up to you. call now, request your free decision guide and start gathering the information you need to help you keep rolling with confidence. go long™. hewlett-packard ceo meg williams and 345shg cuban. donald trump has invited president obama s kenyan-born half brother malik. and he will be bringing kristin smith, the mother of sean smith who has held hillary clinton responsible for her son s death. we do not know if hillary clinton and donald trump will shake hands when they walk in. there will be no hand shakes between the candidates family members. the clinton camp reportedly suggested a new setup at the start. according to the the new york times, family members will now enter the hall in their assigned seats instead of crossing the stage like you saw there. bill clinton and ivanka and the trump boys. clinton worried about trump pulling off a stunt like packing the audience with bill clinton s female accusers. people magazine is standing by the article that bill clinton sexually assaulted her in 1995. family and friends who corroborate natasha stoynoff s story. look at her, i don t think so. john and christine, people magnifiering back at donald and melania trump after both of those vigorously denied natasha stoynoff s account of donald trump sexually assaulting her. stoynoff s mentor and former journalism professional paul mclock ineven tweeting this. in 2005 natasha phoned me crying saying trump assaulted her. she is telling the truth. hash tag natasha stoynoff. when at mar-a-lago, and writing in a people magazine article this. she said, we walked into that room alone and trump shut the door behind us. i turned around and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat. stoynoff said she asked her editors to be taken off trump coverage but never came forward publicly until now. she also wrote that she later ran into melania trump on fifth avenue and asking her why they didn t see her anymore. melania denying that to anderson cooper. that never happened. she interviewed twice, and for that story, that s it. i did not see her on the street or ask her why we don t see her name. people releasing a quote for a friend saying she was with stoynoff for that exact encounter. a friend said they chatted in a friendly way. what struck me the most was melania was carrying a child and wearing heels. melania stands by her denial of this ever happening and still demands an a retraction and apology from people magazine. 17 minutes after. the operation for the fight for mosul. iraq s second largest city. how long will this take and are americans forces in harm s way here? we ve got a live report from iraq next. the operation to liberate mosing could take two months, that assessment from a kurdish military commander after day two of the offensive. nearly 100,000 troops are marching on iraq s second largest city. their mission to bring an end two more than two years of isis rule there and push the extremist group out of the country for good. we want to go live to erbil, iraq, michael holmes is at the front. reporter: yeah, christine, it s moving well, the iraqi and kurdish leadership and also the americans, they re all saying this advance on mosul is on schedule or even ahead of schedule. it s a very are deliberate methodical advance, though. they re taking and clearing territory as they go. and then having to hold it as well. iraqi forces say they re continuing to liberate towns and villages on route to mosul. in fact, the commander of one division telling cnn that his forces have destroyed, in his words, dozens of suicide vehicles. also saying they ve cleared a large number of ieds. and have killed at least 50 isis fighters over the last two days since this offensive began. they also found, and we had heard an these, too, they found networks of tunnels used to transport weaponry. and they found food in one of those tunnels that was still warm. those iraqi forces and kurdish forces working to take on the areas they ve taken before moving on closer to mosul. there are perhaps some units perhaps within 10 kilometers of mosul. so they re getting ever closer. as you said, the estimate is perhaps two weeks before everything is in place. and coordinated to begin the assault itself. and then once inside the city, it really gets tough. it could take two months, perhaps more to defeat isis in that city. isis reportedly has anywhere between 3,000 and 5,000 fighters inside. of course, we have to remember, there are up to 1 million civilians still inside that city and in a pier littlous situation, christine. absolutely. thanks for that report, michael holmes. breaking overnight, caught on video, police ramming into protesters injuring several. this happened at an anti-u.s. rally at the american embassy in manila. look at this, video footage showing demonstrators hitting the vans with ba tons. they had taken the batons from police. they gathered to put an end to u.s. troops in the philippines and to support a call by president duterte for a foreign policy not dependent on the u.s. an out-of-control wildfire burning in southern colorado has destroyed at least five home, it threatens hundreds of other, putting people on notice to evacuate. the state s governor deploying the national guard to help fight the fire which has burned 25,000 square miles. it s zero% skeined. advantage, los angeles. dodgers shutting out the chicago cubs for the second straight game. l.a. now leads the series two games to one. game four tonight in dodger stadium in the alcs. to avoid elimination, cleveland still leads three games to one and can close out the jays and advance the world series with a win in game five this afternoon in toronto. a nail-biter right now for baseball fans. we re also counting down the final hours to tonight s third presidential debate. is this donald trump s last chance to resurrect his campaign? will hillary clinton do it? live with john berman right after this. 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and help you find the aarp medicare supplement plan that s right for you. the clock is ticking. the final countdown to the final debate. huge stakes here in las vegas. this could be the final chance for donald trump. to get back into this race. hillary clinton staying out of the public eye. preparing for tonight s showdown. what s the strategy? will she go on the attack? will she be forced to explain those e-mail leaks to tens of billions of voters? welcome back to early start this wednesday morning. i m christine romans in new york. i m john berman, about 30 minutes past the hour, i think. i m live at the university of nevada in las vegas. but, we actually have people out here now to watch, to watch this show to join us as we count down to the third and final debate between hillary clinton and donald trump. this could be the last best chance for donald trump to right his ship. to claw his way back into the campaign. you can see the excitement building here on campus. donald trump he is behind the latest round of national polls by a lot in some of those polls. he s also trailing in most of the key battleground states. he made two stops in battleground colorado on his way here. urging his supporters don t believe the polls. and he delivered a kind of dire warning about a possible clinton victory. history will record that 2017 was the year that america lost, truly lost its independence. truly lost its independence. and, by the way, this is our final shot, folks. in four years, it s over. you re never going to be able to win. you re never going to be able to win. it s going to be a one-party system. this is your final shot. donald trump is also renewing his pledge to build a wall along the border with mexico. he describes himself to voters in colorado as a unifier. let s get more now from cnn s jason carroll. reporter: john and christine, donald trump had very little about the debate to the crowd here in grand junction, colorado, he did say that the debate would be, quote, interesting. certainly, a number of his supporters want him to stay on message during the debate. and while he s out on the campaign trail, having said that a number of gop leaders pushing back on donald trump s unfounded claims that the electoral process is, quote, rigged. they certainly want him to stop talking about it when he s out on the campaign trail. but donald trump kept pushing the idea anyway. the moment is going to be november 8th. it s very simple. and we will we ve just begun to fight. they even want to try and rig the election at the polling booth where so many cities are corrupt and voter fraud is all too common. then they say, oh, there s no voter fraud in our country. there s no voter fraud. no, there s no voter fraud. take a look at st. louis. take a look at philadelphia. take a look at chicago. then i have even the republicans saying, oh, this is a wonderful look. look. if nothing else, people are going to be watching on november 8th. reporter: trump holding the media responsible for what he calls that rigged system. saying that the media has been, quote, lying, cheating and stealing, again these are donald trump s words. he also said that the media at this point is worse than his opponent hillary clinton. john, christine. all right, jason carroll, thanks so much. donald trump will unveil a new policy, term limits for congressional amendments that will restrict house terms to six years, senate members to two terms, 12 years. on monday trump proposed a series of ethics reform including a five-year ban on lobbying when members of the executive branch leave office. cnn has learned new details about donald trump s preparation for the final debate here at the university of nevada in las vegas. a source telling us that rnc chair reince priebus played the moderator in final sessions with new jersey governor chris christie playing hillary clinton. this is a mock debate format. the kind of thing he did not like to do before the first debate. interesting that he s doing it now. hillary clinton has been off the campaign trail for several days raising money and preparing for tonight s debate. in the first debate, she seemed to be trying to bait donald trump. when they square off tonight in several hours from now, she s expected to employ a different strategy. let s get the latest from cnn s jeff zeleny. reporter: that s right, hillary clinton is getting ready for her third and final debate with donald trump she s preparing just as much as she did for the first two but i m told in a very different way. now, she s actually familiarizing herself with all of the campaign e-mails in previous statements that have been unearthed through the stolen hacked e-mails published by wikileaks. it s a new development in the campaign. something she is preparing for. something she expects donald trump will go after. she will also go after what donald trump is calling a rigged election. she ll be pushing back on that hard, perhaps as a way to get under donald trump s skin. she s also going to make the case for why she can be the president for all americans. now, of course, that message is aimed at getting some republicans, some moderate voters who may not have been open to voting for her but they simply cannot vote for donald trump. overall, that is her objective in tonight s debate trying to make the case, a, she s presidential. and b, even if you don t love her, you may still want to vote for her, donald trump in the eyes of the clinton campaign is simply not fit to be president. donald trump will be getting his last licks in. this is the last time before a big audience for raise his case. raising questions about her honestly and truft worthiness without question. tonight s debate will set the stage for the rest of the campaign less than three weeks away from election day. john and christine. thank you so much. debate number three is tonight. cnn here now and all day long. christine romans. all day and all night. we don t even know what time it is in vegas. we don t even need to know. president obama has a message for donald trump, quit whining. the commander in chief calling out trump for his repeated claims this election is rigged. obama mocking the gop for what he calls a dangerous unprecedented attempt on the nation s office. michelle kosinski has more. hi, john and christine, in case you haven t noticed president obama is happy to speak his mind on donald trump. it s clear that he sees opportunities. listen to what he said yesterday when asked about donald trump s recent comments on a rigged election. that is both irresponsible, and by the way, doesn t really show the kind of leadership and toughness that you want out of a president. you start whining before the game s even over? if whenever things are going badly for you and you lose, you start blaming somebody else? then you don t have what it takes to be in this job. president also took a heavy shot, not just at donald trump s praise of russian president vladimir putin but also again for republicans who continue to support donald trump. and as we wind down the days before this election actually happens, we can expect to see, again, president obama and the first lady out on the campaign trail this week. john and christine. all right, michelle kosinski. top issue for millennial voters and their parents. stupid loan debt. brand new report shows grads are leaving college with more debt than ever before. here are the grim numbers. the average student loan at graduation is now $30,100. that s up 4% from the last year. that amounts in $300 a month. think about that, these kids are graduating $300 in debt payments every month for ten years. those averages are higher because that does not include students at for profit colleges. most students at for profit colleges do take out loans and they tend to borough higher amounts. private schools cost families an average of $26,400 last year. v% of median income. the amount of students taking automatic loans for college may have plateaued though. right now, 68% of kids have taken out loans in in 1983, less than half. and top that at 24% at 2012. and hillary clinton inviting two billionaires. real billionaires, not fake billionaires like donald trump, donald trump is bringing a relative of president obama needling the president about his half brother. more on earl early start next. john berman here at the university of nevada in las vegas. where the anticipation is building, along with the crowd. we have at least three, four, five people here maybe. i expect we could get to a dozen by 5:30 eastern time. as the excitement building for tonight. the third and final debate between hillary clinton and donald trump. our thanks to the students for sticking to their study plans and being here to support us on this debate. both candidates, they will be bringing guests to the debate tonight. hillary clinton bringing a couple of billionaires. mark cuban will be there owner of the dallas mavericks. and hewlett-packard ceo meg whitman will be there as well. donald trump invited president obama s kenyan-born half brother malik who is reportedly supporting donald trump. and donald trump also inviting patricia smith the mother of benghazi victim sean smith. saying she holds hillary clinton responsible for her son s death. donald trump and hillary clinton they did not shake hands prior to the second debate. we do not know if they will or will not tonight. but we do know there will be no handshakes between the candidates family members beginning at the debate. that is because, reportedly, the clinton campaign requested a new setup. according to the the new york times family members will now enter the hall closer to their assigned seats, instead of crossing each other s paths on stage like you re seeing right now. sources tell cnn that the clinton team is worried about a stunt like donald trump pulled in the second debate, seating in the crowd. people who have accused president clinton of past sexual misconduct. christine romans, back to you. a new undercover video appears to be going democratic operatives of how to have trump supporters in acts of violence. the video suggests that the operatives hired by the dnc may have had a chance in instigating violence. now, two people now out of their jobs as more questions are raised. snrch investigative correspondent drew griffin breaks it all down for us. reporter: the undercover videos produced by discredited conservative activist james o keefe suggested that democratic operatives hired political activists, working in coordination with the dnc to instigate violence and incite reactions at trump rallies. and one of the under cover videos, scott phobele, a subcontractor for a dnc hired firm supposedly describes how he does it. it s a script, script of engagement. sometimes the crazies bite and sometimes the crazy don t fight. the mediaological cover it no matter where it happens. initiating the conflict by having leading conversations with people. and honestly, it is not hard to get some of these assholes to pop off. right. it s a matter of showing, once you get into a rally in a planned parenthood t-shirt. or trump is a nazi. you know, a you can message to draw them out and draw them to punch you. reporter: according to the undercover video it was this man that the democratic national committee turned to, bob creamer is the hunt of jan schakowsky. s he, too, was caught on undercover video, here is how he was hired by the democratic national committee to stage press conferences wherever the trump campaign showed up. wherever trump and pence are going to be at events. okay. the. we have a whole team across the country that does that, both consultants and people from the campaign. and, you know, my role in the campaign is to make it go away. reporter: creamer stepped down from the campaign today and announced his subcontractor scott foval was no longer working for his firm. both the dnc and the clinton campaign denied any coordination with anything involving the incitement of violence. creamer herself told cnn his former contractors were committing barroom talk, insisting none of what is described by foval actually happened. in a statement, creamer writes we regret the unprofessional and careless hypothetical conversations that were captured on hidden cameras of a regional contractor for our firm. he is no longer working with us. the clinton campaign respond, while project veritas has been known to offer misleading video out of context, some of the language and tactics referenced are troubling. we support the democratic national committee appropriate action addressing this matter and look forward to continue waging a campaign of ideas worthy of our democratic process. james o keefe is a convicted criminal, they add, with a history of doctoring video to advance his ideological agenda. drew griffin, thank you for that. the dnc says there is no evidence that anything described on the tapes actually happened. they will investigate whether james o keefe broke the law to get the undercover recordings. and the partnership said it was breached and betrayed in all forms. if you ve ever wanted to own a piece of trump real estate. tonight may be your chance. you ll have to outbid the competition. that s right, donald trump slept here when we get it next on money. rbil from michael holmes. reporter: christine, as both iraqi and kurdish forces move closer to mosul what they re doing is a very deliberate, methodical advance taking in villages as they go. what we re hearing obviously shows such clearing is not an exact science. we just had a disturbing report in the last hour or so. that some iraqi soldiers, we don t know exactly how many have in fact been surrounded by isis fighters. this is near a village about 15 miles south of mosul. we re still checking into the details of that. the feeling is that they went through some villages, kept on moving, but isis fighters were left behind. perhaps fighting in those villages. came up behind them, surrounding them at the moment. still obviously a very dangerous situation and waiting to get more information on that. however, the iraqi command this is that they re going to continue to liberate towns on their way to mosul. in fact, the commander of one division told cnn that his forces have destroyed dozens of suicide vehicles. they ve cleared a large number of i ed and bobby traps and killed at least 50 fighters in the last two days. they ve also, and this possibly ties into what happened with these soldiers now reportedly surrounded. there are these networks of tunnels that are in these toungs and villages, reportedly right throughout mosul as well, used to transport fighters and weaponry around the battlefield. reports that food found in one of those tunnels was still warm. so you can get a sense of what s going on underground. and the key now is to hold those areas they ve taken, before they can move closer on to mosul. as you said, it s perhaps two weeks before they re told everything is likely in place to assault mosul itself. and then once inside the city. the battle itself to retake it could take two months and perhaps more. anywhere between 3,000 and 5,000 isis fighters said to be inside mosul. christine. michael holmes here for us. thank you for that. breaking overnight, caught on video, police van rammed into protesters leaving several injured. this happened at an anti-u.s. rally at the american embassy in manila. you can see the footage showing demonstrators hitting vans with batons. those are ban tons taken from police. at least 1,000 protesters gathered to demand an end to u.s. troops. and support the call of president duterte for foreign policy not dependent on the yoous. dow futures slightly lower right now. investors awaiting earnings from morgan stanley, american express, ebay and others. oil is rising. goldman sachs crushed estimates on higher gold. the consumer price intext ticked up last month. prices are 1.5% higher than this time last year. a problem for the federal reserve not because it s rising quickly but because it s rising too slowly. food and energy prizes rose 2.2% from this time last year. silver lining, paychecks are growing faster than your grocery bills except if you re on social security. the government says the typical retiree s monthly check will grow by $3.90 next year. the average retiree s monthly benefit is a little more than $1,300. this piece of historic trump real estate could be yours. his childhood home goes up for auction tonight. the tudor-style house in queens. 2500 square feet. five bedrooms, 4 1/2 bathrooms. the suggested bid is $849,000. it would be a relative bargain for a house in this location. you won t find the shy end finishes with gold ceilings. i wish i could show you the video like a pink bathroom there it is. there it is. it s not like his current gilded penaltyhouse. this house may need a little tlc, a little work. there s it s bink bathroom, depending on your tastes. check out the money stream app. the story, tweets you want, all in one feed download at the app store or. early start continues right now. just a few hours to go before the final debate of 2016. hillary clinton, donald trump could this be a decisive moment in the race? hillary clinton stay ogg out of the public eye to prepare for