i went as somebody s guest. ( laughter ) battiste: the tributes pouring in for actress betty white, who died just shy of her 100th birthday. and later, a million meals: americans answering the call for military families in need. this food makes a huge impact on their lives, on their family lives. this is the cbs weekend news. battiste: good evening, and happy new year. i m nikki battiste. adriana diaz is off. we begin 2022 with the world entering the third year of the pandemic, a scaled-down times square town ringing in the new year, as most of the united states faces explosive growth of daily new coronavirus cases. new infections are averaging nearly 400,000 a day, up a staggering 200% over the last two weeks. yet, hospitalizations are growing at a much slower rate than cases. elise preston leads off our coverage tonight from new york. elise. reporter: nikki, new york just hit a record 85,000 daily new cases. the omicron variant is also partially to blame for the
russian government, joe biden and vladimir putin will speak by phone thursday about the build up of russian military forces on ukraine s border. live from cnn center, this is cnn newsroom with john vors. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and around the world. the beginning of the pandemic s third calendar year is days away with daily covid infections at all-time highs averaging more than a million a day worldwide according to johns hopkins university. for the first time the united states averaging more than 300,000 new cases a day, the highest number since the pandemic began and more than any other country in the world. there s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the new omicron variant, but there is agreement that the numbers are certain to rise. while 2021 was the year of the vaccine with national immunization programs begin in many countries, the death toll from covid compared to the year before without vaccines has almost doubled. according to data aga
speaking out. you have to see what happened in this interview with charlemagne thee god. but, first, another covid search and a new set of questions. the covid-19 pandemic has been one long, excruciating lesson about humility, and about being humble in the face of changing circumstances, and a wily virus. it s about being open to new information, new inputs, new approaches. it s about accepting experts sometimes get it wrong and that leaders sometimes fail to lead, and that journalists who strive for clarity sometimes stoke confusion. humility means recognizing different points of view. humility means being respectful of the trauma of the past two years. [ bell tolling ] the washington national cathedral tolled this funeral bell 800 times this week to honor the 800,000 lives lost to covid in the u.s. that s a humbling death toll. everyone has lost something or someone to this pandemic. humility realizes people mourn in different ways. it is still okay not to be okay. it is
place to meet, which you did through by hook and by crook, it took you a long time to get there, even still, it has to be about, well, if you scored a point on me, i m going to score a point on you. and since we re coming from different places we each have to win, and if we don t win by destroying the other, it s not a real win. that dynamic is true, even when you fight for that common ground. i thought you did a great job with it, and i m glad it was you and not me. i had that thought while i was doing it. like, rachel kind of warned me off this last night. it wasn t a warning. it was like, oh, really. okay. well, you know. it s like baseball. glass of wine for you tonight, my friend. well done. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. it s really good to have you here. this past month, abc news reporter jonathan karl published a book called betrayal about the great unraveling of the trump presidency. the final act of the trump show. it hasn t even been a
trump left office, but there have already been a bunch of significant and well-reported books published already about how things went so off the rails at the end there. but in the jonathan karl book, there s one anecdote, one bit of reporting from him that has really stuck with me from that book in particular. and it was the part about rescuing the cia director because she had been wounded in germany. you remember this? i mean, spoiler alert. cia director was fine. she wasn t in germany. nor was she wounded. but this is the way that jonathan karl reported this out, page 51 of his book. pentagon official, quote, received a call from sydney powell who was advising president trump and promoting some of the craziest theories about the election. powell called the pentagon official with a bizarre request. her request was specific, urgent, highly sensitive. it was also completely insane. quote, cia director gina haspel has been hurt and taken into custody in germany, she told the of