there last night for sure. but certainly it was more star-studded than we ve seen in recent years. the previous administration was not exactly aligned with main stream hollywood. so it was definitely a change. another change, more politicians. we saw one there. there were republicans at this democratic state dinner. kevin mccarthy, susan collins, steve scalise, and, of course, nancy pelosi was there. the outgoing speaker. she said she was happy to pass the baton there to hakeem jeffries who is replacing her. overall, the night was great. people enjoyed themselves. this was the first biden state dinner for the administration, about 400 guests were seated for dinner. john baptiste played on the piano. but it was certainly a very festive evening. you know, guests were ferried from the white house down to the tent in heated trollies. it was a lovely evening.
last year, selling these christmas trees made from fence posts raised more than £10,000. ten trollies. i bet we re about halfway there, if that. that money bought hundreds of toys, which charities gave to families across west yorkshire. hundreds of kids are going to have a christmas that they probably never had. the phrase for this is, it s nice to be nice, innit? last year, rhys and his team made almost 850 trees. this year, they ve made over 1,000 already, with a plan to make around 5,000 trees. and the reason why? in fact, rhys, what s the reason why? all: it s nice to be nice, innit? it s nice to be nice. it s always a good feeling when you re doing something, when you re helping people. i never had a great deal of everything when i was a kid, you know? plus, everything s tough now, isn t it? we ve got nearly everything you d ever want in life, you know? but some people got nothing, absolutely nothing. so it s nice to give a bit back, isn t it? let s just get it out there.
to use barricades, to use the trollies for the luggage to block different entrances of the airport, whether that will keep the riot police out is very doubtful. we ve tried that in the past when it s happened on the street. we are just trying to bed down. we have seen, it appears, a number of people who have dispersed. there s definitely less people here than there were. whether they ve been spreading out a little bit, i don t know. it s unclear at this point. but we can t see the riot police from where we are. we can see that the riot and the police vans have moved along. they re not outside the area where we are right now. whether they re going to come in different entrance, we simply don t know. when they first emerged and appeared at the entrance, it was chaos in here. there was panic among the
thank you. i want to turn to some breaking news. a major protest the paralyzing one of the world s busiest airports. look at this video. this is hong kong international airport. thousands of protesters forcing airlines to cancel flights for the second straight day. and now reports the chinese government is losing patience. what does that mean? cnn s paula hancock is at the airport in hong kong. she s joining me now. what is happening now? what is happening around you and what are the chances that this is going to escalate further? reporter: just in the last few minutes we ve had some remarkable scenes here. we ve had the police turn up, maybe half a dozen police vans coming into the airport, much to the furry of thousands of protesters in here. they were trying to barricade with some of the trollies, with anything they could find to keep the police out. but it appeared as though that was an operation by the police to rescue one individual who