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Least 93 Killed In ISIS Attacks In Iraq; ISIS Claims Responsibility For Deadly Baghdad Attacks; North Korea Denies Restaurant Workers Defected; Trump Resists Calls To Release His Tax Returns; Bernie Sanders Vows To Stay In The Race; ore Details in Prince's Death; Woody Allen Called Sexual Predator by Son. Aired 1-2a ET
Aired May 12, 2016 - 01:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[01:00:13] ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles.
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SESAY: Hello and thank you for joining us. I'm Isha Sesay.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Great to have you with us. I'm John Vause. Another hour of NEWSROOM L.A. starts now.
ISIS has taken aim at the Iraqi capital. A series of bombings killed at least 93 people in Baghdad on Wednesday.
SESAY: As Jim Sciutto reports, Iraqis want to know why their government can't protect them.
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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was the bloodiest single day in Baghdad in months. Here the smoke still rising, moments after a suicide attack on a checkpoint killed 12.
Earlier the deadliest strike of the day, more than 60 killed at a busy market in a Shiite neighborhood. Blood soaking the pavement. Cars reduced to smoldering hulks.
ISIS quickly claimed responsibility for the bloodshed. The attack sparked renewed anger from Iraqis already deeply distrustful of their government.
Today's violence coming just days after angry crowds stormed government headquarters inside the capital's heavily fortified green zone protesting corruption.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Many people were killed, and you can see blood everywhere. There were poor people who were here to earn a living. Why did this happen? Can this corrupt government tell us why? The people are dying because of this government.
SCIUTTO: Today the White House blamed the ongoing political struggle in the deeply divided Iraqi government for undermining Iraqi efforts to fight ISIS.
JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The united states government has been of the strongly held view that the Iraqi government is more likely to be successful in securing the country if they can succeed in uniting that country to face down the threat. That's what Prime Minister Abadi has tried to do.
SCIUTTO: The attacks come as the terror group has suffered devastating losses on the battlefield. U.S., coalition and Iraqi security forces have driven ISIS out of more than 40 percent of its territory, including once important power centers in Ramadi and Hitt. The result, says the U.S. military, is an ISIS that is less capable of large-scale operations on the battlefield.
MAJOR GENERAL GARY VOLESKY, OPERATION INHERENT RESOLVE: It's much smaller groups really attempting to in my mind stay relevant and to put pressure, really to try to fix the Iraqi security forces from continuing to move.
SCIUTTO: Jim Sciutto, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Jomana Karadsheh joins us now from Amman in neighboring Jordan and CNN intelligence and security analyst, Bob Baer is with us from Telluride in Colorado.
Jomana, U.S. officials say ISIS was able to carry out these attacks because Iraqi security forces are stretched thin. What is the security situation right now in the capital? What are the Iraqis doing to try to improve it?
JOMANA KARADSHEH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, as we've seen over the years, the violence in Iraq does ebb and flow. And these sort of attacks, we've seen them in the past, over the last decade unfortunately happening over and over again.
Even when the U.S. military was in Iraq, the predecessor of ISIS, al Qaeda in Iraq, was able to carry out these sort of attacks. I think obviously the timing is critical here with all that is going on, on the political scene.
But also it would seem like ISIS might be changing its strategy there rather than focusing on grabbing territory, as we saw in the past, it seems to be in recent days, in recent weeks carrying out these high- profile attacks like this bloody day we saw in Baghdad.
But we've also seen similar attacks over the past couple of weeks, whether in Baghdad or Diyalah Province, and also those coordinated complex attacks that we saw in Northern Iraq last week.
So it comes at a time where ISIS might be trying here to undermine whatever trust people might have in their security forces and also sending a message that it still has that ability to carry out whatever attacks it wants whenever it wants, like we saw yesterday.
And really underscoring here that the solution to fight ISIS here, it is not just a military solution, John, that also a lot needs to happen on the political scene to try and weaken the group.
VAUSE: Bob, just to pick up on one of those points that Jomana made. If the Iraqi forces can't secure Baghdad, how are they going to retake the city of Mosul from ISIS?
ROBERT BAER, CNN INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY ANALYST: Well, John, I don't think they're going to be able to. I'm really worried about Iraq breaking up.
[01:05:07]I talk to people every day there. And you have the whole problem of Kurdistan wants to break away, the KRG. You have the Sunnis who are still not included in the political process.
Even if the Islamic State collapses today, what do you replace it with? There's nothing. And the Sunnis are not going to let the Iraqi army, which is primarily Shia move into places like Mosul without a big fight.
So I don't see Mosul falling anytime soon. And again, if the Islamic State collapses, if something is going to replace it, something very much like it.
VAUSE: And Jomana, to Bob's point there, Bob saying essentially that the real danger here is the entire country breaking up. What is the feeling within the country? Is this country on the verge of collapse in many ways?
KARADSHEH: If you look at it, John, right now, we're looking at one of the worst political crises in a long time. You're talking about divisions - not only like we've seen in the past between the different sectarian and ethnic groups.
We're talking about divisions within the Shia groups too on the political level and also within Shia militias too. It's a very dangerous situation, a very complicated situation for the political leadership in the country to try and deal with and a very tough task actually for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
If you talk to Iraqis, people are just simply fed up, John, with this situation. They don't know where their country is going at this point. You're talking about frustration that has been building up for more than 13 years right now with the situation in the country, frustration with the politicians, and this political situation.
And of course, as you mentioned, a lot of people are wondering if this country will be able to be held together the way it is, this Iraq that we see right now, if it will be able to.
And of course the dangerous situation here is ISIS exploiting these fractures within the Iraqi society, within the Iraqi political scene, to try and reignite that sectarian war in the country.
VAUSE: And Bob, to you, to that point, I mean, ISIS is a Sunni group, targeting Sadr City, a Shiite stronghold. Is this an attempt to try to break those sectarian divides, make the most of the sectarian divides and ignite the violence between the Shiites and the Sunnis again?
BAER: Yes. They're trying to get the fence setters in the Sunni side to break off and ally with the Islamic State. They're trying to big down the Abadi government, as Jomana said, sowing chaos they believe serves their purposes.
And it's so easy to make a car bomb now and remotely detonate it and get it into Baghdad. And frankly, there's no way for this government or any government in Baghdad to stop these car bombs.
So as long as you have the Islamic State, you're going to have terrorism like this. And I just fear for the future of the Iraqi people.
VAUSE: Bob, thank you. Bob Baer there in Telluride and Jomana Karadsheh in Amman, Jordan. Thank you.
SESAY: Now, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff could be spending her last night in the presidential palace, at least for now.
VAUSE: The Senate is likely to decide within hours whether to launch impeachment proceedings. She would have to step down for up to 180 days if the vote goes against her. Shasta Darlington is there.
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SHASTA DARLINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brazil's Senate has been gathered all day and into the night for a crucial vote that will decide the fate of President Dilma Rousseff. If a majority votes in favor of an impeachment trial, she'll be forced to step down for 180 days to defend herself.
And while the speeches have gone on longer than expected, each senator given 15 minutes and many going over, it is widely expected that that impeachment trial will be approved and Rousseff will be stepping down on Thursday, replaced by her Vice President Michel Temer.
This again will happen at some point during the day on Thursday. He'll be in a hurry to appoint a finance minister and other economic staff to prove to markets and investors that he's going to get the economy back on track.
Unfortunately for him, he'll face a lot of the same challenges and problems that Rousseff has so far failed to overcome, a deep recession and frustration over widespread corruption. Shasta Darlington, CNN, Brasilia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Investigators say two pieces of debris found in March almost certainly from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. They were found on beaches in South Africa and Mauritius, two years after the plane disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
SESAY: Here's a look at those pieces. One is an engine cowling where you can see part of the Rolls-Royce logo. The other is an interior panel that came from the main cabin.
VAUSE: North Korean officials are making an extraordinary propaganda move, bringing forth the relatives of 13 defectors to try and prove those defectors were in fact abducted and forcibly taken to the south.
[01:10:10]SESAY: The defectors were working at a North Korean restaurant in China when they fled en masse to South Korea last month. Now their relatives are speaking exclusively to Will Ripley.
WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John and Isha, it's highly likely these families received some kind of media coaching before the government brought them here to our Pyongyang hotel for these interviews, but I can tell you sitting across from them looking into their eyes the heartbreak they're feeling is real.
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RIPLEY (voice-over): The final gift from a daughter who disappeared. Ri Ji Ye (ph), seen here smiling as she left North Korea to work in China, saved up to buy her newborn nephew a present.
Ri's mother says when she got our letter that Un Song was born, she sent this coat and shoes. She said she wanted to see him. They don't have Facebook here. Before they could mail this picture this one emerged.
Ri and 12 other restaurant workers in South Korea. The government says all defected willingly. Abandoning this North Korean state-owned restaurant in China, now closed.
North Korea says agents from the south lied, tricking the group into thinking they were going to another state-owned restaurant in Malaysia.
Government officials brought three families to tell their stories in a Pyongyang hotel. "This is an abduction, a kidnapping," says the mother of waitress Ri Bom (ph).
(on camera): A lot of people might think it doesn't seem likely that a whole group could be abducted. Is it possible that they left voluntarily?
(voice-over): "How can they say my sister went to South Korea? She says they talked about all the new clothes her sister was buying in china and promised to bring some home."
"I never want to believe our daughter went there," says the father of waitress So Byong Ah (ph). Ironically his job is to train citizens working abroad. They bring the North Korean government $1 billion to $2 billion a year according to a U.N. report last year. Each family believes their daughters in South Korea are in solitary confinement on hunger strike, nearly dead. They say relevant authorities told them.
"Our loving, loving daughter is in a life or death situation," he says. "The South Korean Unification Ministry says the claims that they are in solitary confinement and on hunger strike are completely untrue.
South Korea also says they cannot grant a request from the North Korean families to meet with their daughters, a request the families also made to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
South Korea again saying, quote, "they defected on their own free will." All 13 will stay in South Korean Unification Ministry custody for several months, time the government says is needed to adjust.
"My loving daughter. Let me go to my loving daughter." a heartbreaking plea made countless times before on the divided Korean Peninsula.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
RIPLEY: And despite the fact those young women are perhaps 120 miles, less than 200 kilometers from where I'm standing right now, they might as well be 10,000 miles or more because once they cross that border into South Korea they automatically renounce their North Korean citizenship and it becomes a crime for them to have direct contact with their families here.
Why is the government putting them forward now? Well, after the seventh party congress and the Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un trying to project unity and happiness and strength, this humiliating apparent mass defection certainly doesn't fit the image that this country is trying to project to the world -- John, Isha.
VAUSE: Will Ripley with an exclusive report there. And the incredible thing about it is that there are thousands of families who are divided by that DMZ.
SESAY: There certainly are. It's a very sad situation. Our thanks to Will Ripley for that report. Time for a quick break. Growing pressure on Donald Trump to release his tax returns. Just ahead, why he says he's not ready to do that.
VAUSE: Also a search warrant identifies a doctor who was at Prince's compound the day the music legend died. That story next.
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[01:15:28]
KATE RILEY, CNN SPORTS: I'm Kate Riley with your CNN world sport headlines. Sunderland pulled off the great escape in the English premier league by sealing their survival and relegating rivals Newcastle and Norwich in the process. The black cats put together one of their now traditional end of season runs to get out of the drop zones despite spending more time in the bottom three than any other club this season.
They defeated Everton 3-0, which also dipped for New Castle who didn't play tonight and Norwich who did. Sunderland have only lost two of their past 13 games.
Westham fans caught on video hurling objects. The Manchester United team bus for Tuesday's match will be banned for life. The club made the announcement on Wednesday following the ugly incident, which marred what was supposed to be the celebration of the final game played at the bowling ground.
Besides major damage to the bus, the actions caused injury to four police officers and created anxious moments for those innocent fans caught in the melee.
And with Brazilian politics in crisis, authorities have been dealt yet another blow ahead of August Rio Olympics. Rising in the heart of public health review, Dr. Amarant has issued a major warning that the games should be postponed or the Zika virus could become a full-blown health disaster. That's a look at all your sports headlines. I'm Kate Riley.
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SESAY: Donald Trump tells "The New York Times" he believes he has a mandate to be provocative. The presumptive U.S. Republican presidential nominee says the strategy has gotten him this far and he sees no reason to change.
VAUSE: One controversy dogging his campaign is taxes. CNN senior White House correspondent, Jim Acosta reports.
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JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One day before his critical meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Donald Trump just gave GOP lawmakers a new reason to worry.
Defying campaign tradition and saying he will refuse to release his tax returns before the November election, citing an ongoing audit, telling the Associated Press there's nothing to learn from them.
It's a shift from his earlier comments when he seemed to leave the door open to making his tax information public.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I will absolutely give my return, but I'm being audited now for two or three years, so I can't do it until the audit is finished, obviously.
ACOSTA: But last week Trump started to dig in his heels, suggesting the IRS could be out to get him.
TRUMP: I say to friends of mine, how often are you audited? Very wealthy people.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST, "THE SITUATION ROOM": You're saying this is political that they're aiming at you?
TRUMP: I would say yes.
BLITZER: The IRS is doing this?
TRUMP: I don't know.
ACOSTA: Trump has deflected the issue for years. Consider how he answered the question in 2011 when he was considering a White House run then.
TRUMP: We'll look at that. Maybe I'm going to do the tax returns when Obama does his birth certificate.
ACOSTA: But Trump is tweeting there is no controversy, saying "I told AP that my taxes are under routine audit and I would release my tax returns when audit is complete, not after election."
If he did wait until after November Trump would become the first presidential candidate to fail to release his returns since 1976. Even Richard Nixon released his taxes while he was under audit.
Mitt Romney, who faced pressure to make his tax information public four years ago, is demanding that Trump release his returns, saying in a post, "tear down that tax wall." an echo of his call to the likely GOP nominee back in March.
[01:20:06]MITT ROMNEY (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I predict that there are more bombshells in his tax returns.
ACOSTA: Democrats are pouncing, with a progressive super PAC launching the web site, trumpreleaseyourreturns.com. Hillary Clinton has latched on to the issue with a preview of what she has in store for Trump.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My husband and I have released 33 years of tax returns. We've got eight years on our web site right now. So you've got to ask yourself, why doesn't he want to release them? Yes, well, we're going to find out.
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ACOSTA: As Mitt Romney noted on his Facebook page, an audit does not preclude Trump from releasing his returns. But one Trump aide told me the campaign is not concerned, noting the real estate tycoon's business dealings are already well known, both good and bad.
But this controversy comes at a critical time one day before a meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan. As one Capitol Hill source told me, members are all over the place on whether to back Trump. Jim Acosta, CNN, Washington.
SESAY: Joining us now is CNN Politics executive editor, Mark Preston. Mark, good to have you with us. As we just heard in Jim's report, the likes of Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney are dialing up the pressure on Donald Trump over his refusal to release his tax returns.
Mr. Trump's general counsel spoke to our own Erin Burnett a short time ago and laid it out like this. Take a listen.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No tax attorney worth anything who's not looking for a malpractice action is going to ever turn around and tell their client to release their tax returns, Bill, when they have an audit pending. No matter what you say or the liberal media.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: So Michael Cohen framing this as a matter of legal counsel. Mark, in an election cycle fueled by anger and questions of authenticity and transparency, do you think the issue of Trump's tax returns is one voters are going to care about?
MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Certainly not right now. The reason being is Donald Trump has become this unconventional candidate that the media does not know how to cover. The voters do not know how to dissect. And his enemies don't know how to take him down, basically.
Now, having said that, if there is something in those tax returns that would potentially be harmful to Mr. Trump, that being that he pays an unbelievably lower tax rate than the average American.
That being that he has offshore trusts where he is putting money for safekeeping to avoid taxes, something like that could hurt Donald Trump.
But having said that, until we actually get to see the returns the fight over actually releasing them is not going to resonate with viewers here in America or voters here in America.
SESAY: Well, the question of Donald Trump's tax filings, yet another issue looming over Thursday's meeting between Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. The get-together is about getting on the same page. But here's the thing. What does that mean from Paul Ryan's perspective? Is he seeking policy concessions from Trump?
PRESTON: Well, a couple things. One is they certainly have disagreements on major policy issues, whether it be trade or whether it be Donald Trump talking about potentially being supportive of raising the minimum wage in the U.S.
But more importantly, I think Paul Ryan is concerned about some of the comments Mr. Trump has made, some of the disparaging attacks he has made against his own enemies that has caused him pause to not actually go out and be supportive for Donald Trump immediately.
Now, having said that, this works well for Donald Trump because not having Paul Ryan endorse him right away and embrace him allows Donald Trump to continue to put up the idea that he is anti-establishment and he is anti-Washington.
For Paul Ryan, it is also important for him because Paul Ryan is new to the speakership and he needs to draw a line in the sand and to dictate that he is in charge of a co-equal branch of government in the U.S. and that is the U.S. House of Representatives.
SESAY: And Mark, finally, Hillary Clinton remains in the tight spot of trying and failing to be able to fully pivot to the general election and battle Trump while she still has to take on Bernie Sanders, who sounds more determined than ever to stay in this race.
PRESTON: And he will stay in this race. If any indication, we saw what happened the other night where he did very well in West Virginia. Looking ahead, there are 11 more Democratic contests.
Bernie Sanders has a chance of winning five of them. And of those five, I'm not even including the state of California, where Bernie Sanders could win the state of California as well.
Mathematically, the way that they choose the Democratic nominee, Bernie Sanders is not going to win the nomination. But he has lit a fire under the liberal base here in the U.S.
In the end that is going to be helpful to Hillary Clinton because it is this liberal base she's going to need to get out to vote, to get out to volunteer, to donate to her campaign.
[01:25:05]But right now it's a nag on her because they are those who are supporting Bernie Sanders at this point, and Bernie Sanders sees no reason to get out.
And honestly, I don't think we'll see him get out. Probably at the earliest at the beginning of July. Perhaps at before the Democratic convention, if not at the Democratic convention.
SESAY: Still got a lot of fight in him. Mark Preston joining us now from New York. Mark, appreciate it as always. Thank you.
PRESTON: Thank you.
VAUSE: And the Trump campaign is in damage control after picking a self-proclaimed white nationalist as a delegate in California.
SESAY: William Johnson heads the American Freedom Party, which he says strives to make Americans aware of the decline of the white race. He spoke with CNN's Jake Tapper.
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WILLIAM JOHNSON, WHITE NATIONALIST: I was approved as a delegate. I submitted my application, and I was approved. And then immediately when the list came out they saw that they had a clerical error, and so then they sent me an e-mail saying you are removed from the list.
So I wrote back an e-mail telling them I understand, I resign. And then later in the day I got contacted by a media person that says, well, you're still on the list. And so then I sent them a second e- mail saying that I resign. I will not attend the convention. I will not be a delegate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: A statement from the Trump campaign backs that up. They say there's a data base error that led to the inclusion of a potential delegate that had been rejected and removed from the campaign's list in February 2016.
SESAY: Now, London's new mayor says Donald Trump is ignorant about Islam. Last year Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S.
VAUSE: But on Monday he suggested he would make an exception for Mayor Sadiq Khan, who's a Muslim. And Mayor Khan spoke about that with our Christiane Amanpour.
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SADIQ KHAN, LONDON MAYOR: I'm not exceptional. So for Donald Trump to say, Mayor Khan can be allowed but not the rest is ridiculous because there are businesspeople here who do business in America who happen to be Muslim.
There are young people who want to study in America who happen to be Muslim. There are people here who want to go to holiday in America who happen to be Muslim and around the world.
Now, by giving the impression that Islam and the west are incompatible, you're playing into the hands of the extremists.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: Watch the rest of Christiane's interview with Mayor Khan coming up later on "AMANPOUR." It starts at 10:00 a.m. in London here on CNN.
VAUSE: A short break. When we come back, investigators want to know how Prince obtained those painkillers. Now a search warrant is providing clues in the singer's death.
SESAY: And the so-called golden era of U.K.-China relations may be off to a rough start. A rare moment of candor from the queen, showing what she really thought of Chinese officials.
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[01:31:11] VAUSE: Welcome back, everybody. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause.
SESAY: And I'm Isa Sesay.
The headlines this hour --
(HEADLINES) VAUSE: We're learning more about the investigation into the death of music legend Prince. Officials want to know how Prince obtained the painkillers that were found in his home.
SESAY: Yeah, the focus is now on his inner circle including his doctors.
Our Sara Sidner reports.
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(BEGIN AUDIO FEED)
911 DISPATCHER: Rescue needed for a medical at Paisley Park. Person down, not breathing.
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SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): That was the 911 dispatcher sending paramedics to Prince compound the day he died. Now new details have emerged about that day, and the days leading up to Prince's death.
The details revealed in a search warrant published by the "L.A. Times" and "Star Tribune."
(on camera): The search warrant request was filed May 6th and eventually served on this medical center, which is about 23 miles from Prince's Paisley Park compound. In it, it asks for any and all of Prince's medical records.
(voice-over): Dr. Michael Todd Schulenberg, shown here in an unrelated video on YouTube, worked at the facility and was treating Prince. A detective notes Dr. Schulenberg said he did prescribe Prince medications and the prescriptions were to be filled at Walgreen's. The warrant says the doctor saw Prince on April 7th and April 20th, the day before Prince died. And it states that Dr. Schulenberg was actually at Prince's Paisley Park compound to drop off test results the day Prince's body was discovered in an elevator.
(on camera): We checked on Dr. Schulenberg's medical license, and there were no complaints against him. It was clean. We also called North Memorial Medical Center to try and talk to him. But we were told by a spokesperson that he no longer works here.
(voice-over): So far, no one has been charged in this case but the investigation is still going full throttle. On Tuesday, the DEA and sheriff's deputies were back inside the Paisley Park compound, executing another search.
Sara Sidner, CNN, Chanhassen, Minnesota.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SESAY: All right. Well, let's discuss the investigation into Prince's death and addiction to painkillers in the United States. Dr. Reef Karim is with us. He's the founder and medical director of the Control Center of Beverly Hills.
Dr. Karim, thanks so much for joining us.
DR. REEF KARIM, FOUNDER & MEDICAL DIRECTOR, CONTROL CENTER OF BEVERLY HILLS: Thanks for having me.
SESAY: To pick up on the point of a Minnesota doctor seeing Prince twice in the month before he died including the day before, given what we know at this stage, what does that say to you?
KARIM: It says somebody has a problem with opiates. When you get a Narcan injection, it's serious business. Narcan basically means I need an antidote because of all the opiates I have in my body that will kill me because they will cause me to be short of breath and decrease my respiratory drive and end my life. And that Narcan is the life saver that's going to stop that from happening. If you needed that and multiple doctor visits and multiple pharmacy visits, it means you've got a problem with opiates.
VAUSE: But Prince had no prescription for opioids. No evidence so far he was doctor shopping. So the attention now is on what they call drug runners. Who's a drug runner? And what sort of legal responsibility do they bear in something like this?
[01:35:04] KARIM: Yeah, I run a treatment center. I've worked in the addiction space and the psychiatric space for a long time. I know all the ins and outs of celebrity behavior, celebrity drug and prescribing.
So what happens is you're surrounded by a team of people. That team of people will try to get to you get prescriptions based on an alias name, not your own name, because you don't want to put your own name out there that you're taking all these pills, from a media perspective. They come up with alias names. They try to get different doctors to prescribe under the alias names. If they do, then it's great because you can make up any alias name and get different doctors to prescribe for you based on the fact you're a celebrity. Or you can surround yourself with handlers, or handlers that have other people called runners, drug runners. These are people that will get the meds in their name and then will give them to you. And so you can get a whole number of people that are getting different pills for you and you can just hold and store all these different pills.
SESAY: Lots of different ways of acquiring pills as a celebrity. But beyond Prince's situation, what it has done is shone a spotlight on the huge issue of opioid addiction here in the United States, in your view, what has led to us this place?
KARIM: And the crazy thing is the numbers. 5 percent of the world, the U.S., 75 percent of the narcotic analgesics in the world are used here in this country. This is an America problem. It's a confluence of consumer marketing for pills by Big Pharma, overstimulation. We're a society that needs instant gratification. We're a society that's in a lot of pain. We're in just as much emotional pain as physical pain. And the important thing to think about with opiates, opiates treat anxiety. Opiates are a coping mechanism. You see all those people that are in physical pain and you think OK, once your pain goes away you should be fine. No, they get hooked on not just the reward part of the opiate but the anxiety-relieving part of the opiate.
VAUSE: Let's go here. Is there a danger here that by, you know, these calls for regulation that people who are in serious pain are going to be affected by this? We always overreact. The pendulum always swings too far the other way. National survey on drug use, out of one million insurance claims for opioids less than 5 percent of patients went doctor shopping for multiple prescriptions, which is an indication that most people that are getting these opioids are in fact using them responsibly.
KARIM: Well, first off, you don't know if you're going to be an addict or not. It's not like you have a big "A" on your forehead that says I'm going to be an addict if I take these pills. The numbers we're seeing are about 20 percent to 25 percent of people that take opiates and end up using them on a somewhat regular basis, like your doctor prescribes them for a month for you. 20 percent to 25 percent have a chance of becoming addicted to that opiate. So it has a very high addictive response.
VAUSE: What's the actual result, though?
KARIM: The result is you abuse it.
VAUSE: You say 20 percent have a chance. How many end up being addicted?
KARIM: Some would say 20 percent.
VAUSE: OK.
KARIM: So it's not a benign drug. When you have Oxycontin in front of you, when you take that pill, you are taking a risk because you don't know your insides. We're not at the point where we know our insides. That's the biggest thing. The majority of people do not get hooked on it. But you don't know full or won't. And if you get 180 of these pills, it's very different than having 10.
SESAY: And to that point, one of the things that he keeps coming up in the conversations about regulation is also the issue of how hard it is to access treatment if you do become one of those people who gets hooked. Talk to us about the availability of treatment and how easy it is for people in need to access it.
KARIM: Depending on your socioeconomic ability and class, treatment could be very easy or treatment could be very difficult. There are many treatment centers out there. But some of these treatment centers don't do the appropriate treatment for an opiate addiction. When you're detoxing, you could detox using Soboxon (ph). You could detox using Methadone. You could do an old-school opiate detox. But with that, you have to have doctors that are prescribing those medications. You need to be checking in with doctors on a regular basis. You need to have a whole team of people working with you. And most of these centers don't have that. VAUSE: Yeah. That sounds incredibly expensive for a lot of people.
They just can't afford that kind of stuff.
Dr. Reef Karim, thanks for coming in.
SESAY: Dr. Kareem, thank you very, very much.
KARIM: Thank you.
VAUSE: Appreciate it.
SESAY: All right. Well, CNN hosted a special town hall on prescription drug abuse, an epidemic hiding in plain sight. The question on everyone's mind, how do we stop it? Dr. Sanjay Gupta joined Anderson Cooper for "Prescription Addiction: Made in the USA." You can catch it at noon in London, 7:00 p.m. in Hong Kong.
[01:39:31] VAUSE: Still to come here on CNN NEWSROOM, L.A., to fans, Woody Allen is a talented filmmaker but his son calls him a sexual abuser and now he's criticizing reporters for not asking the hard questions.
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VAUSE: Famed film director, Woody Allen, there, whose romantic comedy "Cafe Society" premiered at Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday. These are some of the stars of the film, Jake Lively, Jesse Eisenberg, some others.
SESAY: While the festival kicked off in France, Woody Allen's estranged son was condemning the media for its handling of sexual abuse allegations against the filmmaker. Ronan Farrow says the media has not pressed his father enough over decades-old abuse allegations made by Allen's adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow.
VAUSE: In a "Hollywood Reporter" opinion piece, he writes this, "Tonight, the Cannes Film Festival kicks off with a new Woody Allen film. He'll have his stars at his side. They can trust that the press won't ask them tough questions. That kind of silence isn't just wrong, it's dangerous. It sends a message to victims that it's not worth the anguish to come forward."
SESAY: Well, let's bring in Allison Brower. She's the deputy editorial director with the "Hollywood Reporter."
Allison, thank you so much for joining us.
Let me ask you about Ronan Farrow's basic point here. I know that the "Hollywood Reporter" recently interviewed Woody Allen. He's on the front cover of one of your recent issues. And I haven't read piece. I'm going to be fully transparent. But my understanding is the piece, to Ronan Farrow's point, does not pose the hard questions to Woody Allen about these past allegations. Does Ronan Farrow have a point that the media and this public love affair with Woody Allen has prevented him from being held accountable for these allegations? ALLISON BROWER, DEPUTY EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Ronan
Farrow's piece was extremely passionate. He's been a passionate defender of his sister's point of view on these allegations their entire lives, and including two years ago when she wrote about it for "The New York Times." Woody Allen at that time wrote about it as well for "The New York Times." He made a defense of himself. I think the idea that we will ever have an objective truth to these matters, given the many years that have passed, the many opinions, the many experts on all sides, the many passions on all sides, it is unknowable. But Woody Allen said at that time, I will never speak on this again, no one who represents me will ever speak on this again.
He was on our cover because he had a film owning the Cannes Film Festival. We wanted to talk about the film. We wanted to know about him and we asked a lot of questions I felt that were very revealing about who he is, his relationships, much more revealing than a question that would have yielded boilerplate no to an issue that he has said repeatedly he will never speak about again.
[01:45:09] VAUSE: Bigger picture here, without getting into the details of Woody Allen and Ronan Farrow, but is Ronan Farrow actually suggesting that every celebrity or every high-profile person out there who's had an allegation made against them should be continually asked about that allegation time and time and time and time again? Because that's what it sounds like. I don't want to be dismissive of what has happened to his sister. But you know, doesn't there come a point where this is a "he said/she" said situation, no charges were laid. You know, at the end of the day, there's only so much you can do as a reporter.
BROWER: Certainly, that's true. But he's more than a reporter. He is a reporter. He's an attorney. But he also has a very strong personal point of view about this. We were very glad that he came to us and wanted to do this in the "Hollywood Reporter." Our article about Woody Allen started a huge conversation. There's a very raw nerve in this country about sexual abuse of women. Whatever the "he said/she said" of it is, it start a conversation that we wanted to have the second part of with Ronan speaking to us.
I think you have a point. I think that sort of it's part of what I was saying as well, that what do you get by asking the question. Maybe there are other ways --
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VAUSE: Where do you draw the line? There are so many high-profile people out there who are the victims of allegations, some true, some not true, some malicious. What's there to gain?
BROWER: It's interesting you say that because some of the actors in his film "Cafe Society" spoke about -- Kristen Stewart spoke about her hesitation, her moments of hesitation, do I want to work in a Woody Allen film, this person's been accused of these things. And she said to another publication if everything that's been written about me was believed by everybody, you know, I would have -- I can't necessarily act on those kinds of discussions either. SESAY: But I think there's also the issue here that certain feted
celebrities that face allegations are treated differently. By that, I mean like Bill Cosby, right? The way the Bill Cosby situation has been handled by the media, it's very different in terms of that treatment versus the treatment of Woody Allen. And that is true.
BROWER: That is true. In the case of Bill Cosby, there are dozens of women. I think, at this point, there's 47.
SESAY: Yeah, absolutely.
VAUSE: There are legal proceedings.
BROWER: There are legal proceedings. Although, that was one of Ronan's points, that too many journalists feel they have to wait for legal proceedings before they can ask a question. As we all know as journalists, sometimes you do have to wait until legal proceedings to ask those questions.
So, Bill Cosby, many more women. A different relationship to our culture. Woody Allen is a beloved filmmaker but Bill Cosby was a beloved father to the entire culture across many groups. Woody Allen is an auteur. He reaches a lot of people, but it's mostly in Hollywood that he's extremely revered. And the other thing about the difference about Bill Cosby is even compared to two years ago the social media world is very different.
VAUSE: That's a good point.
BROWER: And these things take on a life of their own that can't be avoided by the mainstream media or anyone else.
SESAY: If they had the social media during the time that Woody Allen's allegations first surfaced and there had been a public outcry, would that that have shaped the way the media --
(CROSSTALK)
BROWER: In 1993, I think it would have made a difference. Even two years ago I think there might have been a slightly different reaction. I think we can all say just even in the past year the social media sphere has grown even stronger.
VAUSE: Very quickly, Hollywood does have an issue with forgiving people who have done terrible things. Like Roman Polanski, who sodomized a 13-year-old girl and fled the country, and then got an Oscar in 2003 to a standing ovation, you know, which is a pretty awful thing at the end of the day.
BROWER: The industry does revere its great artists. And I think that's also true of Woody Allen. There are many, many film fans who have e-mailed us and e-mailed Ronan and probably contacted Woody's team as well. I haven't seen his films since 2014. I won't do it. But in Hollywood, people are still absorbed in the craft and they do revere the work, and sometimes very often there is a compartmentalization, a separation of those things. Although again, increasingly in this world of social media the personal and the professional are not as easy to divide. And while Woody Allen wasn't asked those questions today at Cannes, everyone noted that those questions weren't asked.
(CROSSTALK)
SESAY: Yeah. Just on a last one that Ronan brought up, that in this celebration of the auteur or the powerful male when he's the one being accused of these things, it does leave the female victims feeling that their voice is worth less.
BROWER: Yes. And some of the reactions to Ronan's piece today has pointed that out exactly, that it takes a man to speak for women sometimes, which hopefully is something we all are changing in getting more voices out there. We were very, very honored to have Ronan communicate his view through the "Hollywood Reporter."
SESAY: Allison Brower, thank you for joining us.
VAUSE: Allison, thanks for coming in.
BROWER: Thank you.
SESAY: Thank you.
[01:49:42] VAUSE: Good discussion.
Short break. We're back in a minute.
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(WEATHER REPORT)
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SESAY: Hello, everyone. Now to a rare moment of candor from Queen Elizabeth, who was caught on camera making some less than diplomatic remarks about officials from China.
VAUSE: She was talking with a senior police officer about the Chinese president's first state visit to the U.K. last year.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can I present Commander Lucy D'or Sachlt (ph). Gold Commander for the Chinese visit.
QUEEN ELIZABETH: It was quite a testing time. It was I think at the point they walked out of Lancaster House and told me that the trip was off. I felt -- they were very rude. She was with me and they -- (inaudible).
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Keep in mind, the queen's opinions are usually kept very private. Buckingham Palace says the Chinese visit was extremely successful. And China says it launched a golden era in their relations. All very happy.
Are you ready to see something super cool that could revolutionize transportation?
SESAY: Oh, yes.
VAUSE: Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three, two, one.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[01:55:11] VAUSE: Hyperloop Technologies based here in L.A. sent a metal sled down a test track at two and a half Gs. It hit 187 kilometers an hour in less than two seconds.
SESAY: Hyperloop hopes to send passengers and levitation pods zipping through tubes at more than 1,100 kilometers per hour. The company says it can happen in just five years.
VAUSE: OK.
(LAUGHTER)
Astronomers have been trying to find out whether we are alone in the universe. And the odds just went up a little bit. NASA's Kepler Telescope spotted almost 1300 more planets beyond our solar system. That more than doubles the number of planets Kepler has found.
SESAY: NASA says nine of the newly found worlds are in the habitable zone where life as we know it may exist. More than 500 may be rocky balls about the same size as our lonely blue planet.
You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, live from Los Angeles. I'm Isha Sesay.
VAUSE: I'm John Vause.
News continues with Rosemary Church and Errol Barnett after this.
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[02:00:02] ERROL BARNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump is being pressured on his tax returns. Republicans and Democrats alike are demanding he release them.
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