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Doctors Call for Olympics to Be Moved or Delayed; Trump Supporters and Opponents Clash; Trump Aims for Traditionally Democratic States; French Vessel Will Try to Locate the Pings; Kim's Aunt Works As Dry-Cleaner in U.S.; Chinese Detergent Ad Draws Public Outrage; Climbers Are Current and Former Military Personnel. Aired 2- 2:30a ET

Aired May 28, 2016 - 02:00   ET

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


NATALIE ALLEN, CNN NEWSROOM HOST: High anxiety over the Rio Olympics. Why more than 100 top medical professionals say Brazil should not host the summer games.

Also, yet again, political protests get ugly in the U.S. As Donald Trump targets California, demonstrators target Trump.

Plus, Kim Jong-Un's aunt is found living an ordinary life in the United States. We'll hear from the correspondent who found her.

It is all ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM. We're living in Atlanta. Thanks for joining us. I'm Natalie Allen.

There's growing disagreement in the medical community about the health risks at the Rio Olympics. A group of doctors is calling on the World Health Organization to rethink their stance, which has long been there is no reason for concern. Senior international correspondent, Ivan Watson, explains.

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A group of more than 100 doctors and researchers have issued a public warning about health risks to the Olympics that are scheduled to take place in Rio in just over two months' time. The doctors writing that they're very concerned about the threats of the Zika virus. It's a mosquito-borne disease that is still being investigated at in time.

These doctors writing to the World Health Organization saying that the Olympics should either be postponed or moved to another place, warning that the risks of having a half million tourists coming here and then potentially bringing the virus to other countries around the world, to perhaps third-world countries that don't have very good healthcare facilities, that that could be a major threat to global health.

Now, this is coming in direct contradiction to advisories that come from the World Health Organization and from the Centers for Disease Control. The CDC just on Thursday said, quote, "There's no public health reason to cancel or delay the Olympics." The advisory was for pregnant women not to travel here and for people to use mosquito repellent to protect them from mosquitoes.

The W.H.O. has also advised people not to go into poorer districts of Rio, where there is more open water and could be more exposure to mosquitos. The city officials say they're working hard to try to crack down on the mosquito population. And they say that here it is the winter months here in the Southern hemisphere, that there are usually fewer mosquitoes at this time, but the debate between doctors and health officials is likely to continue. Ivan Watson, CNN, Rio.

(END VIDEOTAPE) ALLEN: Also in Rio, Brazilians are outraged over the alleged gang- rape of a 16-year-old girl. These demonstrators are demanding justice for her and the end to chauvinism. They say being born a woman means living in fear.

Police say the teen's rapist posted video of the attack on her on social media. It's unclear how many men were involved, but it could have been between 30 and 36, including her boyfriend. Sickening story.

In Colombia, officials say three journalists allegedly kidnapped by the Marxist guerrilla group, ELN, are free. A local bishop claimed the release of the first journalist on Friday, and she went on to describe her ordeal.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SALUD HERNANDEZ, PREVIOUSLY HELD BY COLOMBIAN GUERRILLA GROUP (through translator): And when they showed up, they said, you're going to stay with us a few days. They took all of my stuff, and they said, they're going to bring you some clothes, and they brought me some.

And I thought, OK, if this is how it is, I'll stay a few days. And then, five days passed. All of these days and we moved from place-to- place.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: Colombia's president later announced the release of these other two journalists. If they were indeed kidnapped, it could complicate ELN's peace talks with the government. The two sides announced in March they would enter formal associations to end over 50 years of conflict.

Some chaotic scenes on the U.S. presidential campaign trail outside a Donald Trump rally in California. As you can see, police moved in to break up the crowds after supporters and opponents went after one another shouting. Thirty-five people were arrested, but police say no one was hurt. The presumptive Republican nominee had already left the event when the confrontation started.

People on both sides of the Trump divide managed to keep things civil while the rally was going on. It was after it ended that the situation spun out of control. Our Paul Vercammen was in the middle of it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: San Diego police and sheriff's deputies and other departments had to respond in full riot gear after the Trump rally ended. What had happened is they had gone through great lengths to seal off the anti-Trump demonstrators from the people leaving the convention center, but eventually they did start to blend together as they were both walking back towards parking areas.

Shouting matches ensued. They were pushing. They were shoving. There were throwing things. There were punches thrown. There were arrests. And then they moved in in force.

Look behind me. You can see all of these officers in full riot gear, helmets on and visors down. They began moving everyone down Harbor Boulevard in San Diego not very far from the ocean at all.

And it was effective, because they took what was a rather large crowd at one point, and they thinned it out little by little. Not that there weren't confrontations or shouting or skirmishes along the way. But eventually, as it started to get darker, they got a handle on things and they were able to disburse the crowd on a rowdy day in San Diego. Now, back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: Well, Donald Trump has now backed off from his implied agreement to debate Bernie Sanders. Earlier, he said, in his words, he would "love to face off with the Democratic contender if the proceeds went to charity." Now he says he will wait and debate the Democrats' eventual nominee.

Sanders' response to this, "I hope he changes his mind again. Mr. Trump is known to change his mind many times a day."

Meantime, Trump is making some bold predictions. He's got a plan to take California and 14 other key states on what he says will be his "road to presidential victory." Phil Mattingly looks at the map and the possibilities.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Listen, we're going to win the election. So I want to make a big play for California. Should I?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One day after clinching the Republican nomination, Donald Trump stumping in a decidedly not Republican state, one that has greeted Trump rallies with protests and even violence.

TRUMP: I love my protesters.

MATTINGLY: Stops in Fresno and San Diego underscoring the Trump campaign's departure from traditional GOP strategy.

TRUMP: We're getting massive crowds all over the place. I actually think we're going to win California.

MATTINGLY: Trump says he plans to focus on 15 or so states in November, including battlegrounds, such as Ohio and Florida and Democratic strongholds like California and his home state of New York. TRUMP: I view it strategically also, because if we don't win it, they are going to spell a fortune in fighting me off. That I can tell you.

MATTINGLY: If he's able to reshape the electoral map, Trump could force likely Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton to spend heavily to defend those states and up-end the race, Trump advisors say.

But many top GOP officials remain skeptical.

TRUMP: Just met with a lot of the farmers --

MATTINGLY: Trump met privately with farmers before his Fresno stop, looking to bolster his outreach to the agriculture industry, all as he continues to face withering attacks from the Clinton campaign.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Based on what we have already heard, Donald Trump is an unqualified loose cannon.

MATTINGLY: Trump firing right back.

TRUMP: Crooked hilly, she is crooked. But she lies.

She's not competent, and it's always been this way. She's always skirted on the edge, whether it's Whitewater or whether it's all of these things. Going into -- how about Benghazi?

MATTINGLY (on-camera): Trump advisors have made clear their theory of the race involves Trump expanding the electorate beyond traditional Republican states. Still, that being said, for him to expand the map, particularly in a state like California, he needs a couple of things that right now he's lacking.

One, infrastructure and organization, and, two, money. These are two crucial aspects of a general campaign. Two things the RNC and top Republican officials are asking Trump to focus on heavily right now. At this point, his campaign making clear that what Trump has done up to this point has worked. Not a lot of changes may be in store.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: Phil Mattingly there on the campaign train for us.

The Pentagon says U.S.-led strikes has killed 70 ISIS fighters in Fallujah, Iraq, including the group's leader there. Iraqi forces lost its operation to recapture the city from ISIS at the start of this week. They scored their first significant victory Thursday when they retook a town about 16 kilometers away.

The Iraqi military says hundreds of people have fled Fallujah for territory control by security forces, but the U.N. warns that tens of thousands more are still stuck in the city at risk from the bombardment.

A Kurdish military official says civilians are fleeing small villages south of the city of Mosul. He says they're being relocated to refugee camps in the Kurdish region. Mosul is about 420 kilometers north of Baghdad. It was captured by

ISIS in June 2014. Iraqi forces are planning an offensive to recapture it, but no

official date has been announced for when that will happen.

The Italian navy recovered 45 bodies and rescued 135 people on Friday near a half-sunken migrant boat. This was the third-straight day of deaths in the Mediterranean, as migrants take advantage of the warmer, calmer seas to try and reach Europe.

Authorities have rescued 14,000 people between Libya and Italy since Monday. More than 8,000 have been killed in the past 2-1/2 years in Europe's worst immigration crisis since World War II.

There may be a critical new clue in the hunt of EgyptAir Flight 804. We'll have that story, coming up next.

Also, it turns out Kim Jong-un has an aunt living in the United States. Why she's here and where you might run into her. We'll have that story coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALLEN: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM.

Egypt is finalizing a deal with French company Deep Ocean Search to find EgyptAir Flight 804. The plane's so-called black boxes are still missing one week after the A-320 jet went down in the sea.

Meantime, Airbus says it has detected signals sent by the plane's emergency locator transmitter. Here's CNN's Ian Lee from Cairo.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What we are learning about is the emergency locater transmitter, a device which activates upon impact. It sends out a distress signal that can even be detected by satellites.

There are three of them onboard EgyptAir Flight 804. We don't know which ones were detected. The transmission doesn't last long, only a few hours, not days, and it doesn't work underwater.

It's likely this information isn't new to investigators, given the beacon's window of operation. Egyptian officials say it will narrow the search area to five kilometers, roughly three miles.

Meanwhile, a French vessel is due in the eastern Mediterranean. It'll operate special listening equipment to locate the ping for the cockpit voice and flight data recorders.

It really is a race against time, as the battery from the boxes lasts 30 days. If they are unable to locate it in this time frame, this search grows difficult.

Another French ship is on standby to assist if they are able to find the black boxes. It operates a sophisticated underwater exploration robot and lifting mechanics. This will be crucial for retrieving the debris, as it's believed to be at a depth of nearly 3,000 meters. That's 10,000 feet. Ian Lee, CNN, Cairo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: Kim Jong-un's family has held an iron grip on North Korea for three generations, and like the country itself, the family is shrouded in mystery. But as it turns out, Kim's aunt is living in New York, working as a dry cleaner.

Earlier, our Robyn Curnow spoke with "The Washington Post" news reporter who wrote about her.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNA FIFIELD, REPORTER, WASHINGTON POST: She had a very close relationship with Kim Jong-un. She was there. Her own son was born the same year that Kim Jong-un was born in Pyongyang. So she was there with him from the get-go.

But she served as his, like, caretaker in Switzerland for several years while Kim Jong-un and his older brother were going to school there. So she acted basically as his mother during that time.

ROBYN CURNOW, CNN ANCHOR: So how did she land up in the U.S. then?

FIFIELD: Well, that's a good question. So she -- her sister, Kim Jong-un's mother, was her link to the regime. And she has breast cancer, which was terminal. And so she didn't die until 2004, but by 1998, it was clear that it was terminal. And so her sister told me that she decided to go to the U.S. to try to find good medical treatment to see if she could save her sister, Kim Jong-un's mother.

That may be partly true. It may also have been that the couple was afraid about their future, that their only link to the regime was dying. And as we know, that if you run afoul of the North Korean regime, bad things happen to you.

So they may have just fled out of their fears for their own safety. And they did hint at this a little bit during --

CURNOW: The CIA plays a role in this as well.

FIFIELD: Right. That's right. They went to the American embassy in Switzerland. They were then taken to a military base in Germany, where they were questioned for several months by American intelligence officials, and then they were brought to the U.S.

They told me that they were given a one-time $200,000 payment from the CIA to help them settle down and that they used this to buy the house that they live in today. The CIA declined to comment to me about this. But analysts I've spoken to said that it does ring true that the American authorities would help them and would expect to get some information from them about the inner-workings of the North Korean regime. CURNOW: And what kind of life have they had in the U.S.?

FIFIELD: They have had an entirely unremarkable, normal immigrant life in the U.S. They have live here for 18 years. They have three children, who've all grown up in America and have been to our colleges and now have professional jobs in America.

They work hard, the couple does, running a dry cleaning store. They live in a comfortable house. They have two cars parked in the driveway. So they're not rich, but they're doing -- as the uncle said to me, we've achieved the American dream.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: How bizarre is that one?

Social media is up in arms about a laundry detergent commercial in China. Many people are calling it the most racist ad they have ever seen. Matt Rivers has the story from Beijing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this advertisement has created quite the storm here in China, with many people online calling the commercial for a type of laundry detergent unequivocally racist. And once you see it, it's not hard to see why.

The ad features a Chinese woman and a black man flirting. He strides over to her, and when he leans in for a kiss, she pops a detergent capsule into his mouth. Then she throws him into the machine, waits for a bit, and when she opens the washing machine a bit later, a smiling Chinese man pops out, to the woman's apparent delight.

It is incredibly offensive and has sparked across the world and on Chinese social media. One user wrote, quote, "My god, don't Chinese marketing people get any education about race?" Another wrote, quote, "If you don't understand why it's racist, congratulations, you're a racist."

The ad appears to be a blatant rip-off of a similarly criticized Italian laundry commercial from the mid-2000's. A slim Italian man is washed with quote "colored" detergent and emerges a muscular black man with the slogan, quote, "Color is better."

A large number of Africans live here in China, particularly in the southern province of Guangdong. There have long-been complaints of prejudice against people with darker skin across the country.

CNN reached out to the company behind the ad, Chowbi (ph), but received no response. Matt Rivers, CNN, Beijing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: Five people have died try to climb Mt. Everest this season, but these U.S. veterans swore to keep going. And keep going, they did. We'll have their story, coming up here. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALLEN: A stormy weekend lies ahead for parts of the U.S. Southeast coast, thanks to a newly formed tropical system that is gaining strength. And our Karen McGinnis is following it, as it follows people to the beach for our holiday weekend.

(WEATHER REPORT)

ALLEN: It has been a difficult climbing season on Mt. Everest. Five climbers have died, but there are also stories of triumph. Among them, a group of American soldiers and military veterans who are on a mission in their quest to summit. CNN's Robyn Curnow has their story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CURNOW (voice-over): Conquering Everest, says this group of U.S. soldiers and veterans, is like being in combat. It's about the mission, teamwork and the fact that you might not make it back.

Harold Earls and Chad Jukes have just made it back from the top of the highest peak in the world.

CURNOW (on-camera): What was it like at the summit?

CHAD JUKES, USX PRESIDENT (via telephone): The summit, honestly, was -- we got there at the perfect time. We got there at 7:40 a.m., and we got to watch the sunrise and see the shadow of Mt. Everest casting down onto other mountains, which was pretty amazing.

CURNOW (voice-over): They say this was one of the toughest expeditions they've faced. Harold Earls describes extreme weather that made the descent terrifying.

HAROLD EARLS, USX COFOUNDER (via telephone): On the way back down, we ran into some incredibly intense winds and storms, which made it very difficult coming back down. My Sherpa got snow blind at one point, and we were trading goggles back and forth. It was a very intense moment.

CURNOW: It was exhausting, says Chad Jukes.

JUKES: I faced steep odds descending and very hostile conditions, including jet stream winds that were, goodness, probably over 100 miles per hour.

CURNOW: For Jukes, this journey was particuarly tough, because in 2006 his leg was amputated below the knee after an IED attack on his U.S. army convoy in Iraq.

CURNOW (on camera): I mean, I can't imagine how much more difficult it is to climb Everest with a prosthetic leg. I mean, what were the challenges you had to get over as you went up and came down?

JUKES: You know, Robyn, it's funny. Some people will comment that they're so amazed that I would climb Everest with one leg. But, you know, I say, how else am I going to climb it? I don't have the option of climbing with two.

CURNOW (voice-over): Their military training, resilience and the need to send a message with this mission kept them going.

EARLS: Our true mission and cause is to try to help our soldiers back home who are suffering from post-traumatic stress and suicide. It's a pretty big issue in the military, and that's what we really wanted to focus on. You know, we wanted to use Everest as a means of highlighting that and really getting that in front of our nation, in front of our nation's leaders.

CURNOW: Talking to CNN from their tent high up on the mountain, Harold Earls was still reflecting on the dangers he and the team had just faced.

EARLS: We were on this massive ridge. It's basically like a chimney. This rock is like a chimney. It's called step, and you climb down this rock. About 20,000 feet, as I peer over this chimney, this step, and look down, literally, there are bodies piled up at the bottoms where they have fallen, you know, thousands of feet down below.

CURNOW: More than 200 climbers have died on Everest. Most bodies are left on the mountain. It's just too dangerous to retrieve them. For this team, making it back was part of the mission. Talking about their fight for military veterans suffering from PTSD is the next part. Robyn Curnow, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: Great story there from Robyn.

Archaeologists may have made a very significant discovery, Aristotle's tomb. The team has been excavating the ruins of Stagira, which was Aristotle's birthplace near Thessaloniki, Greece. They say there is strong evidence that a 2,400-year-old tomb there belongs to Aristotle. He died in 322 B.C. and is considered one of history's greatest philosophers. Stay tuned for more on that story.

Thanks for watching. I'm Natalie Allen. Next here on CNN, it's "Winning Post" and our top stories.

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