appreciate your company. coming up on i do cnn newsroom, close put no white smoke. that s how one republican describes negotiations on the u.s. debt ceiling. ukraine assessing the damage after one of russia s deadliest attacks in recent days targets a hospital. people flocking to a u.s. monastery where a nun s body appears to show no signs of decay nearly four years after she died . a flurry of activity on capitol hill as the white house and republicans race to finalize a deal to raise the u.s. borrowing limit, called the debt ceiling, and avert financial catastrophe. a person familiar with the negotiations tells cnn they re hoping to announce an agreement perhaps as soon as saturday. jeremy diamond is at the white house with more on where things stand. reporter: as the white house and republican lawmakers continue negotiating on friday over a potential deal to raise the debt ceiling and cap spending, president biden on friday sounding downright optimistic about th
somewhere in the ballpark of 8 to 10 inches of rainfall in a very hilly area. so that could cause flash flooding as well. chad myers there for us. a little girl suffering from seizure-like symptoms was airlifted from a cruise ship off the california coast on wednesday. the u.s. coast guard has just released this video of the medical evacuation. you see there the crew giving the child a teddy bear before she was hoisted onto a helicopter with her mother. the little girl was then taken to a medical center where she is said to be in stable condition. no word yet on the cause of her illness. at least a dozen people have been rescued in the u.s. state of nebraska following heavy rains there. up to 10 inches fell in less than 24 hours in dundee and hitchcock counties. cars could be seen floating downstream. officials urged many people in those counties to skip work and stay off the roads.
headlines to discuss from severe weather to fire weather and just talking about how much acreage has been burned gives us a good idea of the difficult conditions. on average to date, we should only experience about 600,000 acres of charred landscape and of course we ve seen significantly more than that. here is one of the large active fires still ongoing, that is coming out of the u.s. state of nebraska. we have 14 active large fires burning across eight separate states, many focused in on an area known as the great basin or the four corners region. there is new mexico, arizona. this is just two examples of fires. we have seen some improvement, the tunnel now 89% contained. the canyon fire outside of santa fe, 33% containment. but you can see the thousands of acres that have burned with just those two fires alone. once again, a recipe for disaster today unfolding before
people say the local government took their land, sold it to developers and kept the money. residents say food and supplies are running low and they fear police might storm the village. u.s. military officials now admit its u.n.-man droned was looking for suspected nuclear sites in iran. one official says it was on a cia mission, tehran put the aircraft on display after it was brought down recently on iranian soil. prolific writer and social critic christopher hitchens has died. he often skewed the elite in his writings. his 17 books took aim at everything from the cancer that ravaged his body to waterboarding to religion. christopher hitchens was 62 years old. those are the top stories from cnn, the world news leader. i m of did does have. world business today starts now. it s 9:00 a.m. here in london. good morning, i m nina dos santos. and it s 5:00 p.m. in hong kong, i m manisha tank. this is world business today, the top stories on friday, the 16th of decembe