. good morning, everyone. welcome to cnn this morning. it s december 31st. yes, it s the last day of the year. happy new year s eve to you, martin. happy new year s eve to you as well, amara. thank you. we are, of course, following breaking news this morning. pope benedict emeritus has died. pope francis had been asking for prayers. for the firstet time in modern history he resigned in 2013, citing advanced age, which paved the way for pope francis to head the church. cnn s delia gallagher with more. reporter: in many respects, benedict xvi was the pope who got a bad rap. nearly 24 years as pope john paul ii eternal enforcer and the german chancellor lived in the shadows of hitler s regime, referred as god s rottweiler. years of anything tev publicity caused many of his accomplishments to go unnoticed. he was the first pope to go green, making the vatican the first country in the world with a zero carbon footprint, putting solar panels on its rooftops, and bringing
delia, obviously, we ve been hearing comparisons between pope benedict and his successor. tell us a little more about their differences and how different they are from each other, especially in terms of their leadership in the catholic church. well, in terms of their leadership, of course, they re completely different personalities. pope benedict as i said was not one who wanted the job of pope because he understood he was an introvert. he didn t have the ability to meet a lot of people all day, to be in front of the cameras, to make those gestures of john paul ii or pope francis. they re sort of naturals on the world stage. pope benedict didn t have that. i wanted to mention also in terms of his resignation that pope francis just two weeks ago said in an interview he has
to get out. so it does not appear that much progress was made in the third round of talks, anderson. reporter: a u.s. defense official said the russians are increasing bombardments of major ukrainian cities including kharkiv and kyiv and as well as mariupol in the south. what is the latest on that? well, this was a significant fear. here we are more than a week into this war and russia has not made much progress on the ground. so the concern was to make up for it, that they would start stepping up their aerial bombardment and that is it does appear what they re doing. we re hearing comparisons to places like aleppo, to grozny and that means it is starting to look like russia wants to bomb ukraine into submission. they are starting so lay waste to civilian areas. they ve been claiming since the beginning they re only going after military targets. we know now that it is absolutely not true.
early to tell. i think we re going to see what happens in the next few months, frankly, and sort out the decision making in the biden administration. it s a political question that will confront biden in the months ahead. tim, we re hearing comparisons of this moment, what we re seeing in kabul, to the fall of saigon. the iconic image of people fleeing the u.s. embassy by helicopter as the city fell. took a look at these side by side images. here s what secretary of state tony blinken said about that on cnn earlier today. president biden is intent on avoiding a saigon moment, that s a reference, of course, to the hasty and humiliating u.s. evacuation from vietnam, but with this troop surge to air lift americans out of afghanistan, aren t we already in the midst of a saigon moment? no, we re not. this is not saigon. we went to afghanistan 20 years
reportedly met with others this week. joining us by phone is bill nelson. what s the latest you re hearing first of all in terms of the power that this storm might have in we re hearing comparisons to an cr andrew, and they re not good as this could be far worse. absolutely. you think 25 years ago to andrew, the state was not prepared. the federal government was not prepared. i think that s the big difference today. i think the coordination between the state, local, and federal governments are all there. the mistake in new orleans and katrina, for example, where the u.s. military and the louisiana national guard were on separate pages, i think that has been