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ISIS Executes British Hostage; America Held Hostage by ISIS; Ebola Case in U.S. Examined; Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Protests Continue; Search for Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane Continues
Aired October 04, 2014 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: As CDC workers focus on the nine people in Dallas who had direct contact with Ebola, at least 3,000 American troops now are preparing to deploy to the center of the outbreak. Now even more troops are slated to head to Liberia. CNN chief Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr takes a look at the preparations.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: With 3,000 troops already tapped to head to Ebola-ravaged West Africa, CNN has learned the U.S. military is increasing the fight against the deadly disease. Hundreds more troops are being added to plans to help the infected countries contain and control Ebola.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's America. Our doctors, our scientists, our knowhow that leads the fight to contain and combat the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
STARR: Approximately 200 troops are already in Liberia. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has signed orders for another 700 from the 101st airborne division to head to Africa in coming days to staff a command headquarters. And 700 more army engineers will be going to help build and advise on mobile hospitals.
CHUCK HAGEL, DEFENSE SECRETARY: We are standing up a field hospital in treatment units and we'll be training thousands of health workers.
STARR: Even before most left the U.S., military officials told CNN the Pentagon is considering drastic measures to ensure they don't come back to U.S. shores with the disease.
DR. LAURA JUNOR, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We are working with experts right now on this.
STARR: That could include enforced isolation for 21 days, the Ebola incubation period, for high-risk troops who may have come in contact with the disease. All troops deployed will be monitored daily for symptoms, and all service members will face increased monitoring for the 21 days before they are allowed to return to the U.S.
GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: This is a complex emergency beyond a public health crisis that has significant humanitarian, economic, political, and security dimensions.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
STARR: How concerned is the Pentagon about keeping the troops safe? Well, they will take all their own supplies -- food, water, fuel, everything they need for a six-month deployment. Fred?
WHITFIELD: Thanks so much, Barbara Starr.
Some unusual diplomacy happening in South Korea today. Top officials from North Korea made a surprise visit, the first such high level trip in five years. And they delivered a message. Pyongyang is willing to hold a new round of high level meetings later this is month or in early November. Meanwhile, North Korea's leader Kim Jung-un remains mysteriously out of sight. Officials say he has been suffering from what they call a discomfort for nearly a month.
And there has been another brutal killing of a western hostage by ISIS. This time the beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning. And once again, the terror group has released a video showing the killing. Henning was kidnapped in Syria the day after Christmas after he went to help as a medic. The video contained a threat to American hostage Peter Kassig. A masked captor threatens the Indiana man's life, saying his death will be president Obama's fault. A short time ago Kassig's family released a video statement.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ED KASSIG, FATHER OF PETER KASSIG: There is so much that is beyond our control. We've asked our government to change its actions, but like our son, we have no more control over the government than you have over the breaking of dawn. We implore his captors to show mercy and use their power to let our son go.
PAULA KASSIG, MOTHER OF PETER KASSIG: Dear son, we hope that you will see this message from me and your father. We are so very proud of you and the work you have done to bring humanitarian aid to the Syrian people. We were grateful and relieved to have received your messages earlier this year.
We know you were very worried about your friend who was taken with you. He was released and is well.
Please know that we are all praying for you and your safe return. Most of all, know that we love you and our hearts ache for you to be granted freedom so we can hug you again and then set you free to continue the life you have chosen, the life of service to those in greatest need. We implore those who are holding you to show mercy and use their power to let you go.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Arwa Damon has more.
ARWA DAMON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Fred, we first met Peter in the summer of 2012. He had just been in Lebanon for a short while after having basically thrown whatever medical supplies he could get his hands on into a backpack and making his way there. He had decided that it was his purpose in to try to help wounded Syrians, and that is exactly what we found him doing at a hospital in Tripoli, Lebanon. He had infectious enthusiasm and passion about the plight of the Syrian people and a sense of responsibility he felt to make a difference. Take a listen to what he told us back then.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETER KASSIG: We each get one life and that is it. We get one shot at this. We don't get any do-overs. And for me it was time to put up or shut up. The way I saw it, I didn't have a choice. This is what I was put here to do. I'm guess I'm just a hopeless romantic and I'm an idealist and I believe in hopeless causes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: Peter and I have stayed in close contact since then, and a few months after we met him he had already set up his own nonprofit SERA, the Special Emergency Response and Assistance. It was focused on trying to help with Syrian refugees both in Turkey and inside Syria, also running much needed medical missions, either training up volunteers because of Peter's EMT background, something that he was qualified to do, or just deliver medical aid, and that is what he was doing when he was captured by ISIS on October 1st, 2013.
Now, we understand during his captivity at some point he did convet to Islam, taking on the name Abdul Rahman. According to a statement released by his family, they say that they do understand from other hostages who have been released that Abdul Rahman, as he is now being referred to by his family, took great comfort in his faith. Fred?
WHITFIELD: Thank you so much, Arwa Damon.
And the search is back on in the Indian Ocean for that missing Malaysian airliner. Are crews any closer to finding the plane more than six months after it disappeared?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: Searchers are heading back to the Indian Ocean this weekend. They're looking for the Malaysian airliner that vanished in March with 239 people on board. This time around searchers are going deep beneath the ocean surface with new technology. Here's CNN's Tom Foreman.
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TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: All through the thundering waves of winter, the ships have pressed on across the Indian Ocean, pulsing out sonar signals. And this is what they have to show for it -- the most detailed map ever of the sea bed ever in this area, 16,000 square miles with crumbling under water volcanos, winding valleys, plunging canyons, and just maybe the solution to a mystery. The new map is not fine enough to show wreckage, but it is a wealth of information to guide underwater search vessels. DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Tom, they make a great deal of
difference because they will be able to hold a tighter path right above the ocean floor knowing what's coming ahead of time so they can go a little bit faster and get a lot more done in less time.
FOREMAN: Before the search broke off earlier this year, much hope was pinned on the Bluefin under water search robot. It came up empty. But now with the new map a much broader search with sonar arrays is beginning. Australian authorities remained convinced this arc is the right place to look, saying recent refinement to the analysis of satellite data about the plane's flight path has given greater certainty about when the aircraft turned south into the Indian Ocean, and that gives a better sense of where it ran out of fuel, most likely south of these submerged mountains called Broken Ridge. But --
SOUCIE: We have to be cautious about over-predicting or overconfidence in those predictions that you make, or you'll end up exactly where you thought you would, but it may not be the right place.
FOREMAN: Don't look for people scanning the surface for debris. Those days are over. Now it is all about looking in some places nearly four miles beneath the waves and once again hoping for a break.
The search is scheduled to last for about a year. And if they find the plane during that time of course it will be huge step. But a big mystery still remains, whatever caused this plane to go down?
Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: And CNN's Martin Savidge goes back to the beginning, retracing the key moments of flight 370 and asking experts the questions we all want to know. Be sure to watch "Vanished, The Mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370" this Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. eastern.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: No flight required for this week's episode of Anthony Bourdian's "Parts Unknown," depending on where you are on the map. He goes all the way to the Bronx in New York City. Take a look at a clip from this week's episode.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANTHONY BOURDAIN, CNN HOST: The Bronx is always seen as where it was scary. Other people live there. It's basically an investigation of three people, Afrika Bambaataa, Melle Mel, and Kool Herc. You guys have invented singlehandedly the entire soundtrack for the entire world as we know it.
(MUSIC)
BOURDAIN: Hip hop, which is now the soundtrack to every commercial, every football game, every song and everything we hear on the radio, everything. We try to make the case that it happened in the Bronx because it couldn't have happened anywhere else.
Correct me if I'm wrong. There is a lot of good food here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is. If people can get over their bias and come over to 96th street they would find out.
BOURDAIN: It's really the last great unknown. It's massive and deep and old and cool. It's where so many amazing things came from culturally and every other way. It's a place that someone like me who has been to many countries around the world should probably know a little bit, and I'm ashamed they don't, but I'm making an effort. This vast area of New York we think we know but we don't at all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: All right, enticing. Watch "Parts Unknown" with Anthony Bourdain tomorrow night, 9:00 eastern, right here on CNN.
And we all love our cars, don't we? But the future may have fewer of them on the road. That makes me sad. Richard Quest looks at how we will be getting around in the future.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNTIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A century ago trolleys and trams ruled until, that is until the almighty automobile came along. Now a younger generation of urban commuters are reversing course once again.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We look out in the future and we see a lot of people coming to our community. We have to figure out how we get them around.
QUEST: Light rail is still seen by some as the Cinderella way of getting around town. As long as cars are faster, the majority of people will take to their own wheels. See the bridge over there? About a year from now the transportation planners hope it will change the equation.
When it's ready, the Tinicum crossing bridge will be the first of its kind in the United States, off limits to private automobiles. The bridge will gladly carry light rail trains, city buses, and there will be plenty of rooms for bike lanes or pedestrians.
Portland has partnered with a local startup, Globeshutter, creating a computer friendly app, the smart phone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Making it a mobile device as frictionless as possible is our goal.
QUEST: The app allows riders to pay for rail and buses without having to buy multiple tickets. What this really shows is that when governments think big, invest heavily for the future, and harness the power of technology, then when it comes to the journeys, tomorrow is transformed.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: This breaking news, the condition of the first person in the U.S. to be diagnosed with Ebola has worsened. Thomas Duncan is now in critical condition at a Dallas hospital. Let's bring in Martin Savidge who is in Dallas. What more can you tell us, Martin?
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fredricka, unfortunately it's not the kind of news we wanted to bring to you, but you're right. Texas health officials have now changed what is the medical status of Thomas Duncan and said that has gone from serious, that's what they had previously reported for a number of days, to now critical. They do not give any other kind of insight as to what that mean, how does that change the protocol of how he's being treated. Is he on a ventilator, for instance, none of that we do not know. So it's simply the fact that his condition has grown worse.
One of the things that was brought up in the CDC update today, that included Texas health officials on that call as well, a question was asked by a reporter, does he have access or do medical authorities here have access to any of these kind of experimental technologies, experimental treatments that we heard so much about that have apparently been highly successful in the American patients that have been infected overseas but then were treated in America? It was said that the medical staff here where his doctors and family will make that call, but that it is accessible to Mr. Duncan if they so wish to use it.
It is not specified exactly what we are talking about here, whether it's the previous stuff that's been used or something else, but apparently everything that can be made available to Mr. Duncan and the medical team caring for him is being made available according to the CDC. But again, the report is now that his condition has worsened. Whether this is part of just the course of battling Ebola within him, that's more of a medical mind to answer.
But the other news is that there has been no sign of Ebola in any of the 50 other people that are being monitored here in Dallas. Fredricka?
WHITFIELD: And then, Martin, we heard from the CDC earlier today that nine people who they say definitely came into contact with Ebola or at least Mr. Duncan, they are closely monitored, and among them were the medical first responders as well as the four people who were in that apartment. Do we know anything about whether they are showing any symptoms or in what way they are being monitored?
SAVIDGE: There is no other report of Ebola in anyone in the Dallas area. In other words, Thomas Duncan is described as the index patient. There is no other symptom or sign of Ebola in anyone else. And as you point out, there are nine people, and that would of course include the people with whom he was living for a number of days. They are in quarantine in a private residence. And then there are those, the medical personnel who would have initially had seen him and also transported him to the hospital in an ambulance. They are carefully being monitored.
The rest are those who may somehow have interacted with Thomas Duncan, and as a precaution they are monitoring the people as well, but not as closely. The nine are the ones considered high risk, you could say. But again no sign of Ebola anywhere else except with him. But this is unfortunate news that his condition has worsened.
WHITFIELD: It is indeed. Martin Savidge, thank you so much. Continue to keep us posted.
And this just in, the CDC is at Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey investigating a sick passenger on board a plane. Right now none of the 255 passengers or crew are being allowed to get off the plane. We are told by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that the male passenger was vomiting. And we do know that it was United Airlines flight 998 which came from Brussels, the same city where Thomas Duncan had a connection. The plane landed at 12:15 p.m. and has been under quarantine ever since. The CDC has told us the patient will be transported by emergency medical services to a local hospital. Since the Ebola outbreak it has become protocol for the CDC to be called in any time someone is sick on a plane. We will keep you posted.
Thanks so much for spending time with us today. More CNN NEWSROOM in 30 minutes. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. CNN MONEY starts now.
