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Clinton and Sanders Face Off in Democratic Debate; Republicans Look to South Carolina; Ending Syria's Civil War; Pope to Meet Russian Patriarch in Cuba; Deadly Riot at Overcrowded Mexican Prison; U.S. Stock Markets in Red as Oil Price Slides; Oregon Standoff Ends with Drama, Streaming Online. Aired 1-2a ET

Aired February 12, 2016 - 01:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[01:00:05] JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: This is CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. Ahead this hour, where's the money? Hillary Clinton goes after Bernie Sanders and his big promises in the latest Democratic presidential debate.

And world powers agree to a cessation of hostilities in Syria, the first baby step towards a more permanent ceasefire, but this deal is fragile and tenuous at best.

Hello, everybody. Great to have you with us. I'd like to welcome our viewers all around the world. I'm John Vause. NEWSROOM L.A. starts now.

It started out friendly enough, but by the end of their two-hour debate, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were throwing a few elbows and bickering over who was the biggest and most loyal supporter of President Barack Obama.

Just two days before this debate, Bernie Sanders had won the New Hampshire primary in a landslide. Both candidates tonight went out of their way to try and win over minorities whose support will be crucial in the next two voting states, Nevada and South Carolina. From former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger to race relations, to the cost of campaign promises, here are some of the highlights.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Every progressive economist who has analyzed that says that the numbers don't add up.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't know what economist Secretary Clinton is talking to.

CLINTON: I believe I can get the money that I need by taxing the wealthy, by closing loopholes, by closing loopholes, the things that we are way overdue for doing, and I think once I'm in the White House, we will have enough political capital to be able to do that.

SANDERS: Secretary Clinton, you're not in the White House yet.

CLINTON: Well, I know journalists have asked who you do listen to on foreign policy. And we have yet to know who that is. SANDERS: Well, it ain't Henry Kissinger, that's for sure.

CLINTON: That's fine. That's fine. Calling the president weak, calling him a disappointment, calling several times that he should have a primary opponent when he ran for re-election in 2012, you know, I think that goes further than saying, we have our disagreements.

SANDERS: One of us ran against Barack Obama. I was not that candidate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Well, for more on this, CNN political reporter Eric Bradner standing by live in Washington, and here in Los Angeles, CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein, also editor at the "Atlantic" magazine.

Thank you both for being with us. Eric, we'll start off with you. This was a very different debate, it seems, for Hillary Clinton, if not necessarily in substance, but possibly in tone.

ERIC BRADNER, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Yes, absolutely, John. She was -- it's like she dialed back the volume by several notches tonight. In the previous debate she'd gone really, really hard, had been really confrontational with Sanders immediately right off the bat. Tonight you saw it in that argument over Obama toward the end, but it was sort of a softer Clinton throughout the first hour and a half or so.

Rather than attacking Sanders as directly as she had in the last debate, every time she sort of pivoted to Obama, she aligned herself with President Obama and cast Sanders as someone who is really out of touch with the president, who, by the way, is very popular with African-American voters, who make up the majority of South Carolina's Democratic electorate, and in Nevada, where Latinos make up a significant portion of the electorate. That's where the election is going next.

So it was definitely a softer sort of less attacking Clinton tonight, though she definitely got her shots in on Obama, at the end driving a wedge between the president and Sanders.

VAUSE: Yes, I guess the message was, if you don't like me, then I know you certainly like President Obama, or if you want his legacy, you've got me, I guess.

But -- and just very quickly, Eric, before this debate even began, history was made.

BRADNER: That's right. Two female moderators, Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff, and a female candidate on stage. For the first time ever the white male on stage was in the minority. It's something we've never seen before in a presidential debate, and this has been a year with a lot of firsts, so that one was worth taking a note of.

VAUSE: And we should note Bernie Sanders is Jewish as well, so a historic debate for a number of reasons. Eric, thank you. Eric Bradner there in Washington.

OK. Let's get some more analysis on this. Ron Brownstein here in Los Angeles. OK. Let's go to the end of the debate because that's when some of the bigger blows were landed. They came from Hillary Clinton. She got them in just before the bell. And essentially it was part of that hug that she had with President Obama and really trying to draw this contrast with Senator Sanders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: From my perspective, maybe because I understand what President Obama inherited, not only the worst financial crisis, but the antipathy of the Republicans in Congress. I don't think he gets the credit he deserves for being a president who got us out of that, put us on firm ground, and has sent us into the future.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

[01:05:01] CLINTON: And it is a -- the kind of criticism that we heard from Senator Sanders about our president, I expect from Republicans. I do not expect from someone running for the Democratic nomination to succeed President Obama.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

SANDERS: Madam Secretary, that is a low blow. But, you know what, last I heard, we lived in a Democratic society. Last I heard a United States senator had the right to disagree with the president, including the president who has done such an extraordinary job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Senator Sanders said it was a low blow, but was it an effective blow?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. I think, you know, attaching herself to President Obama is an effective strategy, but there's something veiled going on here. I mean, when Bernie Sanders is criticizing President Obama, it's really not the criticism you would hear from Republicans. It's the criticism you hear from the "Nation" magazine, he's criticizing him from the left for not being liberal enough. And that's what she's kind of implying, that Bernie Sanders would take the party into liberal a direction, but she's not really explicitly making that case. She kind of edged closer to it tonight, and particularly talking about the cost of the agenda, but she didn't really pull it together, I don't think, and that's something that's probably going to have to come before this is over.

VAUSE: OK. We're going to get to that in a minute, but I'm just wondering, is this a problem for Bernie Sanders, in a way, that if you want to have a revolution, then you've got to really throw the guy who's already in the White House overboard? You can't embrace him at the same time.

BROWNSTEIN: It's a difficult kind of balancing act for him because obviously President Obama is very popular with Democrats, especially African-American Democrats and he doesn't want to explicitly repudiate them, but yes, he is calling for a very different Democratic Party than President Obama has presided over, which itself is considerably left to the Democratic Party that Bill Clinton presided over.

VAUSE: OK. You mentioned the money.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

VAUSE: You mentioned the financing of some of those very big campaign promises that Senator Sanders made. And Hillary Clinton went for that pretty much straight out the gate, essentially saying to Senator Sanders, where's the money?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: Last week in a CNN town hall, the senator told a questioner that -- the questioner would spend about $500 in taxes to get about $5,000 in health care. Every progressive economist who has analyzed that says that the numbers don't add up. And that's a promise that cannot be kept.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: And she actually went on to say, and many people will be worse off under your plan. And that was an elevation or an escalation of her attacks.

BROWNSTEIN: Right. Well, look, I think we talked about it before. The Sanders healthcare plan is based on the assumption the federal government would take over all the financing and would cut total national healthcare spending in half from what it is today. And there are economists like Ken Thorp, who's a prominent healthcare economist who worked in the first Clinton administration, who said that you can't really cut it that much. And it would cost significantly more than he's saying. And the taxes would, thus, have to be higher than he's saying and that it would have to reach more broadly into the middle class.

I think the broader issue, though, if I could, is that when Sanders talks about each one of these things, free public tuition -- free tuition at public colleges, trillion-dollar infrastructure program, expanded Social Security, and universal --

(CROSSTALK)

VAUSE: They love it.

BROWNSTEIN: Love each one. And to the extent -- and she has a very hard time making a case against each one of these programs individually. The real case to make against it is collectively. Can you afford to do all those? Would the country allow you, as she accurately pointed out, to increase federal spending by 40 percent to 50 percent overnight. Federal government would spend more of the share of the economy than at any point since World War II and she kind of edged into that but I don't know if she fully engaged it.

VAUSE: And each time she says we can't afford or it's not practical she sounds like the Grinch.

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

VAUSE: Although tonight with her tone.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

VAUSE: This is one of those moments where I thought it was different. Do you think it worked for her?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, I though like it ended it. I mean, I thought throughout it was somewhat of a lower energy debate. The problem she's got into, she's wandered into this cul-de-sac where he has effectively defined the only way that you are serious about solving a problem is to propose the most liberal possible solution to the problem. And you know, if Bill Clinton what was able to do in the '90s was say it is possible to be for big change without necessarily being an ideologue. And she is now stuck, as you say, looking like the Grinch, saying no, we can't, we can't do this stuff. At some point she has -- I think she has to question, not just whether his ideas are feasible but whether they are desirable.

VAUSE: OK. We had this extraordinary moment where Bernie Sanders was asked if how he would do on race relations. Let's listen to his answer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANDERS: We are looking at an economy in which the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer and sadly in America today, in our economy, a whole lot of those poor people are African-American.

JUDY WOODRUFF, PBS DEBATE MODERATOR: So race relations would be better under a Sanders presidency than they've been?

SANDERS: Absolutely. Because what we will do and say, instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires, we are going to create millions of jobs for low-income kids so they're not hanging out on street corners.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[01:10:02] BROWNSTEIN: Yes. And candidate Sanders, he's not really saying he could manage race relations better than President Obama. He's saying as he does on everything that if you have a political agenda that shifts resources toward the working class and lower middle class, we're going to create so much more opportunity in the African- American community that is going to reduce tensions. I mean that's what -- I think that's what was his point was even though it's being interpreted in a different way.

VAUSE: OK. He needs minorities. She needs younger women voters.

BROWNSTEIN: You know, look, the generation gap that we see not only in Iowa but again in New Hampshire is absolutely staggering. I mean, Bernie Sanders is not only winning unbelievable percentage of young men, I believe he won 71 percent of white women under 45 in New Hampshire.

And that is -- you know, Madeleine Albright said there's a special place in hell.

VAUSE: Yes.

BROWNSTEIN: I was at that event on Saturday, bring us some more cots or bed because --

VAUSE: Bigger hell.

BROWNSTEIN: You know, a lot of women who are choosing. And I think ultimately Hillary Clinton has got to find a way to, you know, deal with that. But for Sanders, the -- these are white voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. The big question is, does that generational advantage extend across the color line in effect to Hispanic and African- American communities? If it does, we have a very different race. If it doesn't it's going to be hard for him to stay with her.

VAUSE: Stay with us, we'll be talking Republican politics in just a moment because we want to go to the Republicans side.

Donald Trump on Thursday was stumping for votes in Louisiana, riding high of his victory in New Hampshire. Trump warned his supporters not to believe the political attacks. He also said he knows being president is a tough job, but if elected, he'll get everything done during his first term.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So I'm just telling you, I can do it all in four years. But if I'm doing a great job, let me have four easier years. OK. Give me four easier years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: It's good to be confident. Meantime, the rest of the Republican candidates were in South Carolina. We are just eight days away from that state's primary election.

CNN Politics reporter Sara Murray has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the rough and tumble South Carolina primary, Donald Trump is trying out a positive tone, pulling this ad that takes on Ted Cruz.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What kind of man talks from both sides of his mouth on amnesty for illegals on national television and still denies it?

MURRAY: And airing this sunny spot instead. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really cool to hear him speak the truth.

MURRAY: It's a stark contrast to Trump's harsh jabs from the trail.

TRUMP: This is political bull (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Do you understand?

MURRAY: But his campaign now says it believes Trump's friendlier tone gave him a boost in New Hampshire.

TRUMP: New Hampshire, what a great place.

MURRAY: As Trump tries to play nice, Jeb Bush fans are pushing him to hit harder.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How do you plan to combat Donald Trump's silliness on stage when he tries to back you up or tells you to ssh?

JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The ssh'ing part of it, the more he does it, the less presidential he appears, I think. And as long as I stand up to him because I'm the only guy going after him, I assume that hopefully I'll get credit for that.

MURRAY: A playbook Marco Rubio is adopting as well.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump has zero foreign policy experience. Negotiating a hotel deal in another country is not foreign policy experience.

MURRAY: And in a state that could prove to be another showdown between Trump and Cruz, Cruz isn't backing down.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Vera Coking's home was all she had left. But it stood in Donald Trump's way.

MURRAY: Meantime, John Kasich is trying to preserve the positive message that carried him to second place in New Hampshire.

GOV. JOHN KASICH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's all negative. How the heck can you sell negative? You know, I want to talk about what I'm for, my vision, my view, my positive.

MURRAY: But even he says when attacked, he's ready to start back.

KASICH: Somebody once said, poke at me, and they do, they're already starting. That's OK. You know, I'm not going to be a pin cushion, though. I don't take crap from anybody.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: OK. John Kasich there finishing that report from Sara Murray. They're all talking tough.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

VAUSE: The amazing thing, though, is, well, maybe not amazing, but just how quickly Donald Trump has adapted his campaign. He is a very skilled politician.

BROWNSTEIN: Well, look, you don't go positive on television unless you think you're ahead. And he's ahead. South Carolina has been usually the decider in the Republican race. Everything has to race since 1980 except the last one. It picked the winner. And you know, it is again a critical moment. You have in New Hampshire, what didn't happen in some ways was the most important thing, no one consolidated the center right lane. It's still fragmented between Rubio, Kasich and Bush. That gives a big advantage to Trump and if he wins South Carolina particularly by cutting into the evangelical community, he could be very difficult to stop on March 1st, March 8th, March 15th, and ultimately all the way through.

VAUSE: I believe I did say that last year.

(LAUGHTER)

VAUSE: But we'll see. We'll see how it goes. It's still a long way to go.

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

VAUSE: Could be a contested convention or brokered convention. We don't know yet.

Ron, great to see you. Thank you.

BROWNSTEIN: Thank you. Good to be back.

VAUSE: Well, there is much more about the U.S. presidential race on CNN.com/politics. You can get a full debrief of the Democratic debate plus an in-depth look at how Republicans left standing plan to take on the next state.

In the meantime, we'll take a short break here on CNN. And there has been a breakthrough agreement, on paper at least, and now to put it into practice on the ground. Major powers involved in the Syrian civil war agree to stop fighting to get help to civilians under siege.

[01:15:07] Also ahead, heavily armed officers move in after a Mexican prison explodes in fire and violence, leaving dozens of inmates dead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(SPORTS)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VAUSE: Diplomats meeting in Munich have agreed to what's called a cessation of hostilities in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says the goal is to implement it in a week's time, while expanded delivery of humanitarian aid to Syria begins immediately. The proposed deal, though, will not include terrorist organizations like ISIS.

CNN's Nic Robertson is in Munich with more on this ground-breaking agreement.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR (on camera): With the agreement here in Munich does seem to set the stage to get the peace talks up and running again, humanitarian aid to be delivered to all communities across the country. Opposition communities, pro- government communities that are beleaguered and cut off, that was what they said. The humanitarian aid to be overseen by a U.N. working group. Talks to begin immediately to make that effective in Geneva. Also, a cessation of hostilities to begin in a week's time. Not a ceasefire per se but a cessation of hostilities.

[01:20:09] So what we're looking at here is an incremental process that builds confidence to humanitarian aid. Then the cessation of hostilities. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry describing that cessation as a pause that could lead to a ceasefire further down the line. This is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: A ceasefire in the minds of many of the participants in this particular moment connotes something far more permanent and far more reflective of sort of an end of conflict, if you will, and it is distinctly not that. This is a pause that is dependent on the process going forward and, therefore, cessation of hostilities is a much more appropriate apt term.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: Now the United States and Russia to lead the task force on the cessation of hostilities. Secretary Kerry, though, saying that it was very important these are words on paper but the real decisions, the real actions have to come from all the groups on the ground.

Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. Special Envoy, also talked about the humanitarian delivery of aid. He said that this would be a test of the willingness of all parties inside Syria and that for any difficulties he would come back to the international Syria support group. This is how he put it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STAFFAN DE MISTURA, U.S. SPECIAL ENVOY FOR SYRIA: We will test it very soon in Monday, Tuesday, not later, and see whether, in fact, we will have problems as we often have had in order to reach places. If that is the case, we go back to you again and we will go back to the I.F. and say we are needing help in order to make it happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: Well, de Mistura also said that he had a list of specific communities across the country that should be targeted first for this humanitarian aid delivery. But this was something that should reach all the way across the country. He said that this is what he had heard from Syrian people, that if the U.N. can deliver on humanitarian aid, that there can be a cessation of fighting. He said that will give the Syrian people the confidence that their leaders can move forward in these talks and that, of course, is what they've been trying to do right here.

Nic Robertson, CNN, Munich, Germany.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Joining me now is Gayle Tzemach Lemmon. She is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to the Atlantic Media's Defense One site covering foreign policy and national security issues.

Thank you for being with us, Gayle. OK. This ceasefire, it's incredibly fragile, it's still on paper. We should note ISIS, al Nusra, the other terrorist groups are not signatories to this. It's a partial ceasefire. If -- if it does go into effect, is this a turning point?

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON, SENIOR FELLOW, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: It is a sign of hope in an otherwise entirely grim landscape. And I think that's where we are. Peace talks in Geneva collapsed last week, and this is, I think, the first shot at something that is other than carnage that we've seen in a while. So I think it's a bright spot, but the devil will be in the details of this deal.

VAUSE: This is the first time in four years, though, there's actually been any kind of structured sort of halt in the fighting, if you like.

TZEMACH LEMMON: Yes, well, and this is all happening while Russia continues airstrikes. Right? I mean, I was interviewing people from inside Syria last week in southern Turkey who had just come out for a civil society conference, and they said they had never seen anything like it. You know, one young activist showed me video he had taken of the hole in the ground where his family's home used to be.

VAUSE: Wow. And let's talk about Russia's strategy here because essentially they now have another week to try and lock in and basically increase their gains on the ground, especially around Aleppo?

TZEMACH LEMMON: That's right. And folks in the Obama administration gathered at the White House this weekend. There was a conversation about the date, right, the United States wanted a ceasefire immediately. Russia wanted two or three more weeks, and they've settled on one week. So it is, you know, a little closer to Kerry's favor. But what happens in this next week? Right? More gains locked in on the ground. And all of the time the Russian strategy has been to change the facts on the ground before you get to the negotiating table.

VAUSE: And by doing that, they lock the opposition out.

TZEMACH LEMMON: That's right.

VAUSE: Essentially of these peace talks. They get to that point. So it -- the opposition has no voice in the future.

TZEMACH LEMMON: You have much less leverage by the time you get to the table, right. You're holding much less territory and you force the United States to choose which, you know, has always been a strategy between ISIS and Assad.

VAUSE: So has Putin done that now? Has the Russian president effectively forced the Americans to make that choice between ISIS and Assad?

TZEMACH LEMMON: I think we're closing in on that. Right? I mean, you don't hear a lot of folks talking about Assad must go, or the time it's come for Assad to step away right now. Although there's no question that the United States has been pushing for a transition. But talk to Syrian opposition and the timing of that transition is much longer than anything they had wanted to see five years ago when this war began.

VAUSE: And while this is ongoing, it's impossible to overstate just how much suffering is happening.

TZEMACH LEMMON: The human misery.

VAUSE: Yes.

TZEMACH LEMMON: Just breaks your heart. We're talking about the population of Los Angeles that has now become refugees. More than the population of New York.

VAUSE: Fourteen million people. Yes.

[01:25:05] TZEMACH LEMMON: That's right. Four million people outside Syria, more than 10 million --

(CROSSTALK)

TZEMACH LEMMON: Yes. Just by total, the population of New York City more or less displaced entirely.

VAUSE: And 11 percent of the population wounded or killed?

TZEMACH LEMMON: Yes.

VAUSE: This is the number I read today.

TZEMACH LEMMON: I have seen the same thing. They said close to 500,000 killed is the latest count from one of the organizations monitoring this war from inside Syria. We were on the border of southern Turkey last week and saw a little 2-year-old girl with red nail polish, who lost her eyes and had a broken leg, was nearly killed by all this carnage.

VAUSE: Yes. This is a stain that so many people are responsible for that obviously we're coming to some good news, maybe.

TZEMACH LEMMON: Yes. Or at least I think any pause. You know, one civil society activist said to me, you know, we used to talk about democracy, we used to talk about peace, now all we want is a halt to these strikes.

VAUSE: Is to live.

TZEMACH LEMMON: Yes.

VAUSE: Gayle, thank you.

TZEMACH LEMMON: Thank you.

VAUSE: A short break here. When we come back, a fight between rival gangs inside a prison in Mexico leads to a riot and fires, killing dozens of people. The very latest when we come back.

Plus it's a trip nearly a millennium in the making, Pope Francis is set to meet with the head of the Russian orthodox church. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VAUSE: Welcome back, everybody. Live pictures there from Rome. Just coming up to 7:30 on a Friday morning and waiting for the Pope's plane to take off because he is on a historic trip to Latin America right now. He will spend the next five days in Mexico. That's starting on Friday night.

[01:30:00] But before getting there, the pope will stop in Cuba to meet the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, the first such meeting ever, and the Vatican has worked for the past few decades trying to mend ties with other churches since they split nearly a thousand years ago.

And in Mexico, which has the second-largest Catholic population in the world, the pope would like to talk about immigration. That's a contentious issue during this U.S. presidential race. Pope Francis will also visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Senior Vatican analyst, John Allen, joins us now from Denver, Colorado. We're also going to keep a close eye on that airport in Rome for the pope's plane, which I believe has a call sign of Shepherd One.

So, John, this meeting at Havana's airport between the pope and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, before we get to the significance of that, just the logistics, why are they meeting there? It seems kind of an odd place, doesn't it?

JOHN ALLEN, CNN SENIOR VATICAN ANALYST: Well, there are a relatively few news story that one can say a millennium in the making. This is the closest we'll ever see. Of course, the split between eastern and western Christianity goes all the way back to 1054.

In terms of why Havana, it is one part dumb luck and one part design. But the dumb luck is that Patriarch Kirill, of the Russian Orthodox Church, was already scheduled for a trip to Cuba when it was announced that Pope Francis was going to be going to Mexico, which meant, logistically, it was feasible for the two to intersect in Havana.

The design part is that, as you indicated, there has been work to try to make a meeting like this possible for decades. And part of the ballet here was you could really do it Rome because that was like a win for the pope. You couldn't really do in Moscow because that would look like a win for the patriarch. You had to come up with some neutral site.

And because the relationship between Catholics and Orthodox has been so weighted down by European history, doing it outside of the West in some neutral venue made a great deal of sense.

So for both of those reasons that's why they're meeting at the airport departure lounge there at Jose Marti International Airport in Havana.

VAUSE: So 1000 years in the making. Clearly, they'll have a lot to talk about, you'd imagine. But they're talking about this communique, this declaration, this joint declaration. What exactly is that all about?

ALLEN: Look, part of that is going to be focused on the past. There is, of course, a lot of bad blood on both sides of this relationship. The Russian Orthodox have many resentments over what they perceive to be Rome's imperial ambitions in the Christian world. Catholics are sometimes criticized. Some of the Russian recalcitrants to engage in inimical relations. But I think, to a great extent, the joint declaration that Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill are likely to sign is probably going to be focused on the present.

I mean, let's not forget that both sides, in announcing this historic encounter, pointed above all to the fate of persecuted Christians in the Middle East as one of the urgent issues bringing the two religious leaders together. Both the Catholics and the Russian Orthodox have believers, the faithful on the ground in places such as Iraq, Syria, in what Christians call the Holy Land, that is Israel and the Palestinian territories. And particularly in Iraq and Syria, those Christians are in the firing line these days. They tend to be in the front ranks of the victims of ISIS. Both sides want to mobilize the resources of their two churches to try to be of assistance to those Christians.

So I think, in many ways, although the weight of the past will hang over this meeting, I think it's the burden of the present that's really the engine driving the train.

VAUSE: And obviously, this is a stopover on the way to Mexico. Once in Mexico, there's a lot of issues for the pope, but he'll also be visiting a prison there, which I found quite interesting. Typical Pope Francis. But these are the things that he does, and it's a dangerous thing to do in Mexico.

ALLEN: Yeah, of course. He's going to be visiting a prison basically 48 hours after an appalling riot broke out in a prison in another part of the country, in Monterey, leaving dozens of people dead. And it's a reminder that prison overcrowding, and tensions in those overcrowded prisons, particularly among rival members of drug gangs, is a chronic problem. And in addition, that is merely one of several sorts of issues of social justice we expect Francis to be picking up along his itinerary.

You mentioned in the set up to our conversation, certainly something Americans will have their eyes on, on the 17th, when he goes to Ciudad Juarez and walks up to the border between Mexico and the United States. He'll be about 65 yards away, right across the Rio Grande, greeting several hundred immigrants from Mexico, from Central America, who are now in the United States. And obviously, in the context of a highly charged immigration debate amid the presidential primaries in 2016, it's a gesture with clear political significance. But if there's one thing we have learned about Pope Francis over three years, this is not a pope shy about wading into political waters when he thinks there's a moral and humanitarian point to make.

[01:35:44] VAUSE: Yeah, absolutely.

John, thank you.

John Allen, our senior Vatican analyst there in Denver.

And we are still waiting for the pope to arrive on the tarmac there for this historic meeting with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. He's running a little late, but this meeting has taken about a thousand years to put together, so I guess they can wait a little longer.

Thanks, John.

And more now on the prison riot that John mentioned there in Mexico. It happened at Topo Chico Prison just before midnight on Wednesday in the northeastern part of Monterrey. Family members gathered outside the prison in the overnight hours, desperate to find out if their loved ones were still alive. 49 people killed, dozens injured, five of them seriously. The violence comes just ahead of that visit by Pope Francis.

This latest deadly riot appears to be another symptom of an overcrowded prison system rife with corruption where inmates are often the ones who are in charge.

Ioan Grillo is a journalist and author of "Gangster Warlords." He specializes in drug trafficking. And he joins us from Mexico City.

Ioan, this riot, it seems to reflect the bigger war across Mexico between major drug cartels.

IOAN GRILLO, JOURNALIST & AUTHOR: Yeah, when you go to the prisons, you see surreal things. And I've been going to many prisons across Mexico and Latin America, and you see the prisoners control wings completely and divide up among the cartels and gangs. I've even seen people having guns, Uzis and grenades inside prisons. So this fight and this violence is no surprise.

What is concerning is when you have the military and police storm in as well, it's hard to know how many of the people were killed by criminals, or how many could have been killed by police or soldiers as they went to quell the situation.

VAUSE: So you have a situation in many prisons there in Mexico, where these drug cartel leaders are essentially in charge, and they're mixing with the general prison population, which can also include women?

GRILLO: Yeah, and we've seen very crazy and very sad things in this very prison, in fact. There's accusation some female prisoners were being used as sex slaves. But often inside these prisons, you see women going in quite freely. Sometimes the girlfriends and wives of inmates, sometimes prostitutes go into the jails.

I've seen a crazy thing in one jail in Mexico where one of the heads of the prisoners was killed and, afterwards, we went into his cell, he had a pool table and a disco sound system in his cell. And he had a big, massive poster on the wall of Al Pacino from "Scarface."

VAUSE: So in many ways, the guards and the authorities are not in control day to day of the prison, because, obviously, the prisoners, for the most part, stay inside the jail?

GRILLO: The guards are often very terrified. Often the guards are corrupt. They're receiving money. And it's obvious from the things you see in the prisons, prisoners with cell phones, prisoners with guns, prisoners with dogs in some prisons. But the guards are very terrified as well. Imagine a situation where you're a guard in one of these prisons and the prisoners can say to you, if you do not help us, we're going to kill you, or we'll go to your home and kill your whole family. There was a case in a prison in northeastern Mexico where various guards finished their shift and, afterwards, the cartel kidnapped them and murdered them all. So they're living with fear. Corruption isn't a strong enough word for it. It's really capture of these institutions by criminal gangs.

VAUSE: Very quickly, last question, last month, after el Chapo, the notorious drug lord, was recaptured, the Mexican president said that the people there, they could trust their security institutions. That would seem to be a bit of a stretch?

GRILLO: Absolutely. The recapture of "el Chapo" Guzman was necessary. You can't let a criminal of his caliber be on the street and show that criminals can beat the system. But the security conditions in Mexico are still very rotten. There's still a very long way to go before the people can feel secure in the street that the police can protect them from criminal gunmen.

VAUSE: Ioan, thank you for the insight. Good to speak with you.

GRILLO: Great to be here.

[01:40:08] VAUSE: Still to come here on CNN NEWSROOM, investors in Asia running for cover again as the stock market rout rolls around the world.

Also, Bruce Springsteen, in his own words. For the first time, the boss puts pen to paper, writes his life story. Much more on "Born to Run" when we come back.

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VAUSE: Welcome back, everybody. Let's turn to the Asian markets. Trading halted temporarily on South Korea's tech heavy index on Friday. Shares fell during the day by 8 percent. That meant there was a 20-minute halt. Once trading resumed, the index pulled back some of those losses, but still closed down just over 6 percent. Other Asian markets fell as well. Nikkei closed down nearly 5 percent. In Sydney, the ASX 200 lost more than 1 percent. Hong Kong's Hang Seng down by almost by 1 percent as well. Shanghai stock exchange still closed for the Chinese New Year holiday. Probably a good thing right now.

Meanwhile, the falling price of oil helped to rattle U.S. markets on Thursday. The Dow fell more than 1.5 percent. The NASDAQ and the S&P 500 also posted losses.

At one point, the price of oil dropped below $27 a barrel, the lowest level since 2003.

Joining me now with a closer look at the markets and the oil, Eric Schiffer, the chairman and CEO of Patriarch Equity.

Thank you for being here, Eric.

ERIC SCHIFFER, CHAIRMAN & CEO, PATRIARCH EQUITY: Good to be with you.

First question, I was always told that low oil prices, net positive, people have more money to spend, it goes into the economy, it drives consumer demand. Last year, because the prices were so low, households had more than $500 to spend, which they wouldn't have had. Why is it not the case now? Why isn't it filtering through, or at least, doesn't appear to be filtering through?

[01:45:01] SCHIFFER: I think it is filtering through, John. I think that it is. I think that the numbers are not that bad. We're certainly not in a recession at this point. Certainly, doesn't look like it will be a recession. I give it probably 25 to 30 percent in even 2017. So I think it's a good thing that consumers are getting this. And I think it's helping the country.

Clearly, oil has also, you know, caused a lot of pain. You look at the fracking industry. It's been decimated. It's been destroyed. And it's crashing a lot of people. And that's affecting the stock market because these investors are having to liquidate many positions, many things that they own, because they got to pay their bills.

VAUSE: And with that, there's been a record number of bankruptcies in the oil industry in the United States. I think it's up more than 300 percent this year. How exposed are the big banks that have basically bankrolled these fracking enterprises with debt?

SCHIFFER: Well, I don't think they're tremendously exposed. Certainly not like the Lehman days.

VAUSE: Hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars?

SCHIFFER: They're putting it aside, but they're not in the situation --this is not 2008.

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VAUSE: Good to hear.

SCHIFFER: Absolutely. It's a completely different situation. But I do think that you're going to see a lot of people concerned about the banks, especially with these negative rates that are going on in Europe --

VAUSE: Japan.

SCHIFFER: But the banks are making money from the central reserves. So now that's changing. And that's going to affect things, and certainly negative rates with Japan and Europe. Yellen is talking about it potentially being here. Investors are concerned about that and you're seeing them sell off.

VAUSE: One of these issues is with the production and storage. Right now, they keep pumping it out, this oversupply, because they have somewhere to store it. Will there come a point where there's nowhere to store it and essentially supply and demand comes back into balance? Is that what we're looking at? Is there a timeframe on that?

SCHIFFER: I think if you can't store oil, you've got a problem. So the people that are facing that right now, they're facing problems. And what happens is oil's going to go down because of it. I think we have potentially further to go. I don't think that we've reached the bottom. When you can't store it, what's it worth? So you have a challenge.

VAUSE: You flood the market with more and more --

SCHIFFER: Absolutely.

VAUSE: -- so it goes down to the teens?

SCHIFFER: I think it could go down to the teens, precisely. You said it.

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SCHIFFER: Well, I think so.

VAUSE: And then explain to us the relationship here between -- because every time oil goes down, the Dow tanks a little bit more, or we see the Shanghai Composite go down, so which one is driving which and what's the relationship? SCHIFFER: I think, originally, it was China driving the market, and

the fears of China. I think that's overblown. I think it's not going to be as bad as people are thinking. I think the market has gotten ahead of itself, but that happens right now because the Fed has been like the cage in a zoo. And the Fed has decided they're no longer going to protect the market, so the animals are running loose, is what's happening. They're running all over the place.

VAUSE: Right.

SCHIFFER: And that's this volatility that we're seeing. And this volatility is bad and it will continue to be, because the Fed doesn't have the power to control things. And that's what we're seeing. So originally, it was China, and now I think it's volatility. It's people are concerned. It's people concerned about, do they really want to get into this. If you're on a speedboat in the ocean and there's a lot of waves and it keeps being rough, you're going to start slowing down, because you don't want to damage the boat. That's what's happening.

VAUSE: Eric Schiffer, thank you for coming in.

SCHIFFER: My pleasure.

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VAUSE: Next on CNN NEWSROOM, a six-week stand-off with armed militia at a U.S. wildlife reserve ends with a final tense negotiation and it was broadcast live over the Internet.

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[01:52:32] VAUSE: Welcome back, everybody. Live pictures from Rome. Well, there it is, the tail of the plane. That is the pope's plane, Shepherd One. It's been taxiing on the tarmac, for an historic trip with the pope on board. He actually climbed the stairs a short time ago. He's now on Shepherd One, heading towards a seven-day trip to Mexico, with a stopover in Cuba. He'll be there briefly, but it's for a meeting which has been a thousand years in the making, with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, essentially a fence-mending exercise between the two leaders of those churches. And that plane will take off any moment there from Rome.

Almost six weeks after it began, a stand-off at a U.S. wildlife refuge in Oregon has come to an end.

As CNN's Dan Simon tells us, the end may have come peacefully, but not without drama in the final moments, and it all played out online.

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DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, you can bet that authorities are very grateful to have this one over and that you did not have a Waco- like situation with several dead or wounded casualties.

After 41 days, you had the remaining hold-outs -- we're talking about four of them -- surrender peacefully outside of that refuge. The remaining moments were broadcast live on a YouTube video stream. You could hear intermediaries pleading with the last hold-out, who was identified as David Frye. You could hear him. He was suicidal, and he said he would not come out until all of his grievances were heard.

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DAVID FRYE, PROTESTER HOLED UP IN FEDERAL WILDLIFE REFUGE: I'm not worried about getting anybody killed. I want to stay here. If they attack me, I have to defend myself, OK? I have to defend myself. They haven't even promised me any of my grievances against the government -- they keep trampling on my First Amendment rights.

GREGORY BRETZING, FBI SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: As we've said since day one, our goal has been to end this illegal occupation peacefully. And we are grateful that we are able to do so today.

I want to make it very clear that we'll continue to enforce federal law here in Harney County, and anybody who travels to Oregon, with intent of breaking the law, will be held accountable and will be arrested.

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SIMON: And there was even more drama with the arrest of Cliven Bundy. The 74-year-old rancher was arrested at the Portland Airport. He's the father of Ammon Bundy, who was leading the effort in Oregon. Cliven Bundy, charged with six counts relating to his own incident with federal authorities back in 2014.

So now you have three Bundys in prison, Cliven, and the two sons, Ammon and Ryan. This situation now appears to be over. It was tense for a very long time and authorities are very grateful to now have this behind them -- John?

[01:55:16] VAUSE: Dan Simon, thank you for that report.

Now finally, a story of poetry, danger and darkness. That's how rock star, Bruce Springsteen, describes his new autobiography, "Born to Run." He's been working on the memoir for seven years. Springsteen's life story has been told by others, but this is the first time the boss has written about himself. The title comes from the breakthrough 1975 song which has become an American anthem.

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VAUSE: Oh, yeah. "Born to Run," the book, will be released September 27th.

You've been watching CNN NEWSROOM L.A. I'm John Vause.

The news continues with Natalie Allen right after a short break.

And as we leave you, live pictures of the pope's plane as he heads for this historic meeting at an airport in Cuba.

Thanks for watching.

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