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At Least 247 People Killed, Death Toll Expected to Rise; Relief Group Mobilizes Help in Italy; American University in Afghanistan Attacked By Gunmen; Trump Campaigns With Brexit Advocate Nigel Farage;; Sex Trafficking in Canada's Indigenous Communities; French Burkini Ban Rouses Support, Enrages Others; Countries Bid on 2025 Olympics. Aired 1-2a ET

Aired August 25, 2016 - 01:00   ET

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

[01:00:11] ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. Ahead this hour, a desperate search for earthquake survivors in Italy. But aftershocks are making an already difficult situation even worse.

Plus seven students are dead after gunmen stormed their university campus in Afghanistan.

And Donald Trump calls on U.S. voters to re-declare American independence with the man who led the UK's Brexit vote standing at his side.

Hello, and thank you for joining us. I am Isha Sesay. NEWSROOM L.A. starts right now.

Aftershocks are keeping rescue crews in central Italy on high alert as they search for earthquake survivors. The powerful quake struck Wednesday in the middle of the night collapsing buildings and trapping people inside.

It struck near Norcia, but the tremors could be felt 160 kilometers away in Rome. The number of confirmed dead is now at least 247 people and that toll is expected to rise even further.

But there are happy moments we want to share with you like this one as workers pulled a young girl out alive from the rubble.

Well, CNN contributor Barbie Nadeau has been tracking the story throughout the night and the day. And she joins us now from Saletta.

Barbie, it is just after 7:00 a.m. Thursday morning there in Italy. What can you tell us about the situation where you are?

BARBIE NADEAU, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, you know, it really is sort of a ghost town compared to what we were watching yesterday. Right behind me there were these frantic efforts to find anyone who might be alive below the rubble. Unfortunately all we saw were people, you know, pulling bodies out of the rubble. We've seen some significant change, though, in that rubble overnight.

There have been a series of tremors and several of the buildings that we've been sort of tracking, watching, have collapsed even further. So that just tells you how dangerous it is for these rescue workers as they try to find anyone who might be alive underneath the rubble.

You know, they are still calling this a search operation. It's not truly just a recovery operation. So they are hoping they're going to have a few good stories today. But the rescuers, more than 4,300 people now on the job throughout the night using heavy lifting equipment, using their bare hands, using search and rescue dogs, everything they can to try to find people, but what we've seen out here in the countryside are people who are sleeping outside of their homes who've lit sort of bonfires and little campfires in their front yards, you know, so that they can sleep.

There are a couple of tent camps set up where people can go. But, you know, where we are here it seems like people don't really want to leave their houses even though they are destroyed. We have seen several people who have come back early this morning or who have been sleeping in their cars or in the -- who just aren't ready to say good- bye to their houses yet -- Isha.

SESAY: Yes. It's such a tragic situation. Barbie, at this stage, do we have a handle on the number of people who may still be trapped under the rubble? What are we hearing?

NADEAU: We do not have any sort of solid number of missing people at this point. You know, they are still trying to gather information about who might have been in the houses. You know, as we were discussing even yesterday so many of these houses are weekend houses, holiday houses. You know, people who come here on the weekend, come here -- maybe they have been here for the last couple of weeks of summer. There's really no way to know unless someone -- you know, they don't show up for work the next day, unless someone is looking for them whether or not they were here or not.

You know, they are interviewing, you know, neighbors and things like that, calling cell phones to see if people answer. But you know, everyone kind of has their back -- each other's back here. People are looking for their neighbors, looking for their friends, searching around. But the authorities are not ready to give us any sort of number of missing yet. We just have the confirmed dead so far and the injuries which, you know, is well over 350 people, quite, you know, severely injured. And this in addition to the 247 so far we know have perished -- Isha.

SESAY: Yes. People who have lost their belongings and lost everything to their name it is a very difficult situation for many there in Saletta. How much aid has made it to that town?

NADEAU: Well, you know, we -- in the tent camp about a mile up the road from where we are there are all sorts of amenities, food, bathroom, water, things like that. Yesterday we saw a variety of aid workers coming through, giving out water, giving out blankets. [01:05:04] But where we are right now which is really on the outskirts

of Amatrice, where the epicenter is about one mile away from the epicenter, there is really no tent camp set up.

The civil protection workers, in fact are sleeping in cots out in a soccer field right behind where our location is. You know, there's not a lot of infrastructure here. There's a house up the hill. They've got a bonfire burning in their front yard. And it looks like they spent the night outside there. You know, but what we did see all day yesterday were people still in their pajamas with the sheets that they were sleeping in when they left their beds at 3:30 a.m. -- when this earthquake took place.

We're now, you know, well more than 26 hours after that here on Thursday morning and people are still walking around in a state of shock. And we're still hearing, you know, buildings collapse as these tremors happen. We just saw a piece of a building right beside us, you know, fall to the ground a couple of minutes before we came on air. Behind me what you're hearing, though, is actually a machine trying to lift away the rubble. You know, they have been working with these huge earth movers throughout the night just to move as much rubble as possible to make it safe for rescuers to go in and also to just, you know, make sure that the further collapses don't compromise the roads and cover the roads so that rescue workers can get through here.

Isha, that's the situation right now. It's still very, very fluid situation, and they're still holding out hope they'll find people alive under the rubble.

SESAY: Yes. We certainly are. We're all hoping that. It is a race against time, of course.

Barbie Nadeau, we appreciate all the great reporting. Thank you so much. Stay safe out there.

Well, let's get the latest on several aftershocks which are creating challenges for rescue workers. Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri joins us now.

And Pedram, those aftershocks are still coming and they're making things very difficult on the ground.

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, absolutely. You know, just in the last hour we had a 4.7 aftershock. Not among the strongest aftershocks we've seen since the 5.5. aftershock that occurred shortly after the quake. But notice this depiction here. Kind of show you the progression from 1 to 6. There is the 6.2 initial shock.

Want to show you as we go on from Wednesday to Thursday to Friday into this upcoming weekend, the area where the intensity of the aftershocks will actually begin to decrease but the frequency of the aftershocks will not decrease. So we'll still get hundreds of aftershocks moving forward but a lot of them will be between the 2s and the 3s as opposed to the 4s and the 5s that we saw in the past 24 hours. So again, that's something worth noting when it comes to the frequency staying pretty strong -- pretty active but the intensity dropping just a little bit.

Now when it comes to survival within rubbles, within earthquakes, we've seen it in the past, we've seen people in the Philippines, people in Haiti that have survived as much as 10 to 14 days trapped beneath the rubble. Environmental conditions have to be favorable. And typically survival time without water generally three to five days. Without food, humans have been known to survive up to eight weeks.

Unfortunately without water you cannot digest food. So if you're trapped in an area, where you're able to move around and reach something and be able to at least have some water that is a critical component to survival and we know that your metabolism rate, the fat storage in your body, also plays significant role in how long you can go without food and of course the environmental temperature.

It's going to be actually ideal over the next several days across this region with mild to warm temperatures and not too hot. But here's the perspective. This is the civic tower across this region built in the 13th century. Notice this close right there, the before and after perspective. The building of course crumbles away, revealing the clock tower across that region. And the clock shows a time stamp, a time period there at 3:36, precisely when this event took place across this region, Isha.

And again some incredible images. But to leave you with the forecast across this region, again mostly sunny to sunny skies. The temperatures not too hot, not to cold. So at least that element of is favorable -- Isha.

SESAY: Yes. At least there is that. Pedram, we appreciate it. It's always incredible to see the image of that clock tower that's standing but frozen in time.

Pedram, thank you very much.

JAVAHERI: Yes.

SESAY: Well, Kerri Murray, president of ShelterBox, joins us now. ShelterBox is a disaster relief organization.

Kerri, it's so good to have you with us to give us some perspective on some of the work groups are doing at this difficult time in central Italy. Your organization has teams deployed there en route to Rieti I believe.

KERRI MURRAY, PRESIDENT, SHELTERBOX USA: Yes.

SESAY: Not far from where our own Barbie Nadeau is. What will they do when they get there? Talk us through your mission.

MURRAY: So ShelterBox is preparing every single day for the worst day ever. And we really focus on one of the basic needs. So people who are surviving disasters, having needs for food, water, shelter, access to medical care. ShelterBox focuses on emergency shelter and essential supplies that really help sustain people in the immediate aftermath of an emergency.

ShelterBox has deployed an emergency response team. They're en route to Rieti. They will be meeting with the Civil Protection officials, local government officials as well as local Rotarians and then we have an office that's actually in Italy.

[01:10:05] So what they're going to be working to do is assessment, precisely who has been impacted, where should they be working. We often work in very remote areas and really go to areas -- this is a very mountainous region. So it could be a period of weeks or months until the rebuilding process starts.

So as you see right now we're in the really rescue, and search and rescue phases and then we'll move into the recovery phases. But for an organization like ShelterBox it's really finding who is most vulnerable in the communities where we can go and affect the most number of lives.

SESAY: You brought a ShelterBox with you.

MURRAY: I did. And so ShelterBox responded to the earthquakes in Italy in 2009 as well as 2012. And in this situation we'll look and see what's most appropriate. So we'd like to bring in the supplies, obviously, to meet the unique needs of each situation and it's always different. And so this is a classic ShelterBox, similar to what was deployed in Italy previously.

SESAY: Right.

MURRAY: And inside contains an emergency relief tent that a family, six to 10 people could live in for a period of anywhere from weeks to months. In Haiti we provided about a third of all tented shelter to people displaced after that earthquake. Inside the box in addition to the tent, you have basic tools. Water purification unit, solar lights, ground mats, blankets. Children's activity sets. Cooking equipment. Tool kits. So you hear about people who's digging out from the rubble with their bare hands. You have shovels and axes and ropes, and basic instruments to help you start the rebuilding process.

These are very close, tight-knit communities in the mountain areas and we really -- what we essentially try to do is bring a family physically back together, back to the communities where they are.

Now you saw in Amatrice, you had over 1,000 people displaced. I think 50 people and counting in that community alone that were killed. Last night the mayor said that half of the town is gone.

SESAY: That's right.

MURRAY: And much of the town is in rubble. And they didn't allow anyone from that community to actually sleep in the town last night.

SESAY: So something like ShelterBox would be absolutely critical at a time like that.

MURRAY: So the basic supplies in here are what people would need in the immediate aftermath. They don't want to sleep indoors. Obviously there's many aftershocks. I think 200 and counting. So these are the basic supplies that we'll look to provide in addition to shelter kits or other palletized aid.

SESAY: So let me ask you this. Logistics is key to something like this.

MURRAY: Yes.

SESAY: Getting what is needed to the right people fast enough. How do you make that work?

MURRAY: Isha, you cannot do in a disaster what you don't do otherwise. And so ShelterBox is preparing these boxes every day and prepositioning them around the world. So at any given time the organization is responding to disasters and conflict situations. We are still in Ecuador that is still reeling from that earthquake earlier in the year. We're in Sri Lanka from the landslides. We're working with partners to provide aid in Aleppo. And in this situation in Italy we actually have prepositioned stock in our headquarters which is in England as well as across Europe.

So what we'll try to do is draw down from inventory. If and when the specific aid is requested or other shelter kits or other palletized aid is required we'll try to draw from what's local. In addition we've activated the emergency response team. We have hundreds of response team members around the world. We also try to deploy locally in these emergencies and get people where they need to go, conduct the assessments, determine what's needed, call in the aid and always working collaboratively with local government officials and local Rotarian and our local partners on the ground.

SESAY: Well, your organization does remarkable work and it's greatly needed at a time like this in central Italy.

Kerri Murray, thank you so much.

MURRAY: Thank you.

SESAY: For coming in to tell us about your work.

MURRAY: Thank you, Isha.

SESAY: Thank you.

All right. Well, for ways you can help those affected by the earthquake head to CNN.com/impact where you will find a list of vetted groups that are working in the area.

Twelve people, mostly students were killed in an attack on the American University of Afghanistan. 30 other students were wounded. Police say the siege ended about 10 hours after the gunmen stormed the campus in Kabul on Wednesday. Two militants were eventually killed.

Well, Sune Engel Rasmussen covers Afghanistan for the "Guardian" and he joins us now via Skype from Kabul. Sune, thank you so much for joining us. This university operates from

behind fortified walls with a significant amount of security. What do we know about how these attackers were able to access the school grounds?

SUNE ENGEL RASMUSSEN, REPORTER, THE GUARDIAN: We know that there was a car bomb. That's what the officials say. There was a car bomb attacking a wall of an adjacent building, a school for the deaf. And that way created a space for three attackers to enter the university campus and from there they apparently went about and already shot students then and then a lot of students took shelter in classrooms, barricaded the doors.

[01:15:05] Some jumped out of windows, as some (INAUDIBLE) as well as people jumped from second story buildings to escape the attackers. And like you said, it took them 10 hours, the security forces, to clear the campus and in that space of time, 12 people were killed, including seven students.

SESAY: Yes. It just is hard to comprehend just how terrifying it must have been there on the campus. This is a school that is described as being an elite university, an elite institution. Where do its students come from?

RASMUSSEN: It's elite in the sense that it provides a good education in a country that hasn't had -- for many decades didn't have an educational system to speak of. It's the same kind of university that you see in the American University in Cairo or Beirut. There's not a lot after them. And the students who go there are generally students who have ambitions of having either getting work abroad but a lot of them to work within the administration here, working for organizations, working for universities.

A lot of the -- a lot of the classes if not all of them take place in English. So this is an attack on people who have chosen, many of them at least, chosen to create a future in and for their country at a time when a lot of Afghans are leaving Afghanistan for Europe among other places. So it's an attack on education, on -- it's a sign of progress that has been attacked and it's a sign on also the partnership between Afghanistan and the international alliance.

SESAY: Yes. Certainly a frightening development.

Sune Engel Rasmussen, joining us there from Kabul. We appreciate it as always. Thank you so much.

Time for a quick break now. Donald Trump is getting some back up on the campaign trail with a familiar face from across the pond. Why he is ready to bring Brexit stateside.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIGEL FARAGE, UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY LEADER: If I was an American citizen I wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me.

(END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(SPORTS)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[01:21:01] SESAY: Hello, everyone. U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is hammering home his "America First" message with the help of British nationalist Nigel Farage. The Brexit champion appeared at a rally in Mississippi Wednesday as Trump urged voters to re-declare American independence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The multinational banks, the media celebrities, the big donors tried to scare the British people out of voting for change. The same thing is happening right here in the United States. It's happening. All the people benefitting from our rigged system don't want things to change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: Joining us here in L.A., Ron Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst and the senior editor for the "Atlantic."

Ron, it is so good to have you here.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Good to be here.

SESAY: There was so much to make.

BROWNSTEIN: Ye.

SESAY: The Trump campaign inviting the former leader of the UK Independence Party.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

SESAY: Nigel Farage, a man who has been accused of racism and xenophobia there in the UK.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

SESAY: And yet he was on that stage in Mississippi alongside Donald Trump. Before we try and analyze this, let's listen to some of what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FARAGE: If I was an American citizen I wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me. In fact, I wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton if she paid me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: I'm counting on you, Ron, to explain the Trump campaign calculation.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. You know, all the people in Mississippi wanted to hear who Nigel Farage was going to vote for. Look, first of all, it is a reminder that Donald Trump is part of kind of a global trend towards these blood and soil, nationalist parties that are consistently relying primarily on working class voters who feel both economically and culturally marginalized. I mean, there is a similarity in the agenda. But there is something striking about bringing him here at precisely this moment when Donald Trump, after revising his Muslim ban, is now making one of the biggest shifts or flip-flops, whatever you want to call it, from the primary to the general election really in the history of modern politics by backing off his call for mass deportation.

In effect at precisely the moment that his campaign has decided that an America first argument is not the pathway to victory they bring in kind of the embodiment of it from abroad. I mean, it's just hard to know whether, you know, if you have a foot on the brake and the accelerator at the same time.

SESAY: Well, as you mentioned his flip-flop, softening, whatever you want to call it --

BROWNSTEIN: It's more than a softening. Flip-flop is the word, I think.

SESAY: Flip-flop on the immigration. Let's play some of what he said to Sean Hannity of FOX News.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

SESAY: On this issue as he spoke to him on Wednesday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Originally you had said they're all out and there was a big brouhaha. But you're saying that if somebody can prove that they've been here, proven to be a -- but here's the big question, though.

TRUMP: Go ahead.

HANNITY: No citizenship?

TRUMP: No citizenship. No citizenship.

HANNITY: Everyone agree with that? All right.

TRUMP: Let me go a step further. They'll pay back taxes. They have to pay taxes. There's no amnesty as such. There's no amnesty.

HANNITY: Right.

TRUMP: But we work with them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWNSTEIN: Extraordinary, right?

SESAY: Extraordinary pivot. But one with political risks.

BROWNSTEIN: Right. Right. First of all, if you go back and you look through the Republican primaries in the exit polls, they asked people what to do with the people who are here illegally. In every case except for two only a minority of the voters supported mass deportation as Donald Trump did. But the people who supported mass deportation voted for him in such predominant numbers that they provided a majority of his votes, supporters of deportation, provided a majority of his votes in every state with an exit poll except for New York and Wisconsin.

Every other state that's where a majority of his votes came from. So for him now to say well, I didn't really mean it, I'm going to move closer to a position which is really not that far, if at all, from where Jeb Bush was, right? Or John Kasich which was, yes, we're going to let people stay but we're not going to provide them citizenships which is what the Democrats would do and what the bill that passed the Senate in 2013.

[01:25:15] That was a position that Donald Trump ridiculed on his way to the Republican presidential nomination. But as I've said, he's brought in a team that can add. And when they look at kind of where he is in the profile of his support he is stuck somewhere around 40 percent or the low 40s nationally. The voters in between where he is and where he needs to be are not supporters of mass deportation. They're also more likely to view him as racially biased so he is trying to make one of the most head-turning pivots in the kind of modern American politics.

SESAY: And at the same time doubling down on his attacks on Hillary Clinton, exacerbating the attacks or escalating, rather, the attacks. I want you to take a listen to something he said at that same rally in Mississippi.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color -- only as votes, not as human beings worthy of the better future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: All right. So just to make clear to our viewers at home. That was not an adlib.

BROWNSTEIN: No.

SESAY: That was in the prepared remark. Anything that would move the needle with minority voters, that kind of attack?

BROWNSTEIN: No. This is the limits of Donald Trump. I would say, overall you'd have to say the speeches he's delivered in the last few days have been the most coherent case for change he's made since he's won -- effectively won the nomination. You can see the imprint of the new team. He kind of goes through all of the reasons why voters should be dissatisfied with the status quo and should have doubts about Hillary Clinton, but he kind of can't help himself and he goes to the point of calling her a bigot or the way he'd described conditions in African-American communities going way over the top and kind of and making it easy really to come back.

You know, the Donald Trump on stage the last couple of nights is one that I think can cause Hillary Clinton some headaches in that first debate mostly. But again, you know, that inability to kind of rein himself into play to the crowd, to play to his core base, his 40 percent. I mean, what they are learning is the coalition that got him, that won him the nomination cannot win him the presidency.

SESAY: Something people like you, analysts, have known for months.

BROWNSTEIN: I mean, look, the problem Donald Trump has had from the beginning is that his appeal has been, as we have talked about many, many times, has been aimed primarily at blue collar, non urban, the most religiously devout whites. He's had much more resistance even in the Republican primaries from white collar white voters, not to mention minority voters. And today he continues to look at -- he is underperforming really any Republican nominee ever among those white collar white voters.

They have two big doubts about him. They doubt that he's qualified to be president and many of them view him as racially biased. And what's happening, everything that's happening in the last 10 days seems very much aimed to try to deal with those concerns.

SESAY: Got to play what Hillary Clinton said to our own Anderson Cooper in an exclusive interview. One of her first for national media organization in weeks. Listen to how she responded to the name calling.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It reminds me of that great saying that Maya Angelu had that when someone shows you who they are believe them the first time, and Donald Trump has shown us who he is and we ought to believe him. He is taking a hate movement mainstream.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: That's a powerful line.

BROWNSTEIN: That is a powerful line.

SESAY: Taking a hate movement mainstream. What is she getting at here?

BROWNSTEIN: You can't undo 15 months in, you know, 12 weeks. Right? Donald Trump has had the most racially barbed, racially polarizing major presidential campaign probably since George Wallace in 1968. He has now brought in the executive chairman of the Breitbart News site, which has been kind of at the cutting edge of that kind of Farage-like argument in the U.S. of, you know, kind of this racial nationalism and that is now the -- you know, that is now the CEO of his campaign.

And so while Trump may be now trying to reach out his goal I think realistically they are probably not expecting big improvements among African-American or Hispanic voters where he is facing historic deficits. I think they are hoping to do is try to get a second look from some of those white collar white voters who ordinarily vote Republican but which are turning away from Trump around those two reasons. They question his qualifications and they view him as racially divisive if not racist and that may be a more realistic hope but he is in a big hole.

SESAY: You cannot leave without bringing some poll numbers for you. CNN-ORC poll that we had today.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

SESAY: Today, Wednesday, want you to take a look at this. Trump is leading Hillary by five points in Arizona, a reliably red state, while Hillary Clinton has a two-point leader over Trump in North Carolina, which is within the margin of error. What do those numbers say to you?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. So, I mean, again, those numbers say to me. They're in the could be worse category for Donald Trump. They kind of suggest a stabilization for him along the lines, we're talking about the big red flags in both of those polls we're talking about. In 2012 Mitt Romney won college educated whites by 27 points in Arizona.

[01:30:00] Donald Trump is up by only four. In North Carolina, Mitt Romney won college educated whites by 19 points. He's losing them by five.

That is the big change. Yes, he is struggling among minorities but Republicans usually do. The big change from previous elections are those white collar white voters who simply at this point cannot imagine him as president even though they have many doubts about Hillary Clinton .

SESAY: How many days left? 75?

BROWNSTEIN: And counting.

(LAUGHTER)

It's like Christmas.

SESAY: Without chocolate.

BROWNSTEIN: Exactly.

SESAY: Ron Brownstein, always a pleasure.

BROWNSTEIN: Thank you. Thank you.

SESAY: Thanks for the analysis.

Next on NEWSROOM L.A., dramatic rescues as crews search for survivors of the deadly earthquake in Italy. Do stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SESAY: You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, live from Los Angeles. I'm Isha Sesay.

The headlines this hour --

(HEADLINES)

[01:34:57]SESAY: Powerful aftershocks are hampering a search for survivors in Italy. A short time ago, the country's Civil Protection Department announced at least 247 people are now dead.

Fred Pleitgen has more on the rescue efforts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With the death toll rising and time running short, scenes like this throughout central Italy, a woman trapped, covered in chunks of concrete.

Rescue workers and search dogs are combing through rubble looking for anyone still alive. Many of the steep roads are blocked with debris, making access to the hardest-hit areas more difficult.

(AUDIO PROBLEM)

SESAY: We are going to discontinue that piece from Fred Pleitgen because we're having some audio issues with it. So Fred Pleitgen reporting there from the quake zone. We'll try to get that to you a little later on in the program.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis is calling for prayers for those impacted by the earthquake and wish them peace. At the Vatican Wednesday, the pope also expressed sorrow that children are among the dead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE FRANCIS (through translation): I cannot fail to voice my great pain and my closeness to all the people that are in the areas hit by the earthquake and to all the people who have lost their loved ones and those who still feel moved by fear and terror.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is heading to Rome. It's not clear if Zuckerberg will visit any the devastated towns. He'll have a live question-and-answer session with Facebook users. Facebook has taken an active role in disasters with its Safety Check feature, which allows users to connect with each other.

For ways you can help those affected by the earthquake, go to CNN.com/impact.

We're going to take a quick break now. Next on NEWSROOM L.A., the 2016 Olympics are already a memory. Now the competition is over, who will host the 2024 summer games? That begins. Just ahead, a look at one of the cities in the running.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[01:40:41] SESAY: All this week, CNN's "Freedom Project" is looking into sex trafficking in Canada's indigenous communities. Many of the victims come from remote villages. Paula Newton travels to a healing lodge in Manitoba to find out how one teenager is recovering from her painful experiences.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The location is hidden. This is meant to be a safe house. The natural setting evokes peace and a sense of freedom.

For months, this rural healing lodge cradled Lauren with the love and protection she need.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If I didn't come here I probably would have died or something. I remember wake up some mornings just really thankful that I'm not in a crappy unsafe place. In a city somewhere. But I can look outside and hear all the birds and it's peaceful.

NEWTON: just 14 when she arrived, Lauren had survived a lifetime of pain. An emotionally troubled child, Lauren, would at times run away from home. Eventually she fell victim to sexual exploitation and trafficking on the streets of Winnipeg. She went missing for nine days, lured to a motel by an older man.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm pretty sure I was telling him I was 20. People would believe me when I said I was 20 years old. I was only 14. I looked like a freaking child.

NEWTON: Only now five years later, she realizes how vulnerable she was.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you experience sexual abuse it's really confusing. You never know if it's your fault or is it theirs?

NEWTON: Lauren blamed herself and that made healing that much more difficult.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Before I moved here I used to blame myself and even during the time I was living here I used to blame myself for everything. I would say I let them do that to me. Or I'm dirty. It's my fault.

NEWTON: But hear at the healing lodge named hams of mother earth or home, Lauren truly came to understand that she was a victim. Home helped her connect with indigenous culture and promoted a spiritual path to healing that no one had ever shown her before. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you look at yourself and all you see is

bad, and someone else will look at you and all they'll see is good. This was my safe place. These staff were like my family.

NEWTON: Diane Red Sky is the director of Mom Away, the charity that conceived of and runs home. The fact that indigenous youth comprises the majority of the victims in Manitoba.

DIANE RED SKY, DIRECTOR, MOM AWAY: The indigenous community is rising up and has been the leaders and the forefront on the healing that needs to happen on look at the prevention pieces and supporting victims and there's a very unique way to support victims. It's not to criminalize them any more or victimize them any more than they have been. It really is, as we say, loving them back to health.

NEWTON: When she was here, Lauren embraced a traditional spirit name. She is Striking Eagle. And she says she is starting to believe in what that name stands for, a person who will leave a mark on this earth.

Paula Newton, CNN, in rural Manitoba.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SESAY: Tomorrow, you'll hear from a prosecutor and others fighting for justice for the victims of sex trafficking.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED PROSECUTOR: There's no question this is a very difficult area to prosecute for a whole number of reasons.

NEWTON: This year, she successfully prosecuted 46-year-old Darrell Backman, sentenced to 15 years for living off the avails of prostitution making child pornography and sexual assault. Seven victims came forward, five of them children. Two committed suicide before a verdict was even reached.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[01:45:12] SESAY: We'll have more on the struggle tomorrow in our "Freedom Project" series only here on CNN.

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(WEATHER REPORT)

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SESAY: Hello, everyone. To France now, where the burkini ban on some beaches is both rousing support and provoking outrage, particularly after police forced a woman to remove some of her clothing.

Hala Gorani looks at the burkini debate.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) HALA GORANI, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR (voice-over): Moments earlier, she was napping in the sunshine. New pictures from Nice, France, show a woman being ordered by police to remove some of her clothes, enforcing a new controversial law that bans burkinis from the beaches of several French cities, the full-body and hair covering swim suit won by some Muslim women.

The mayor of Cannes, the resort made famous by its glitzy film festival, described the burkini as, quote, "The symbol of Islamic extremism."

The ban has sparked outrage from many though, with one Algerian businessman offering to pay women's fines.

[01:50:11] UNIDENTIFIED ALGERIAN BUSINESSMAN (through translation): When I saw a few French mayors were prohibiting and without any public debate peaceful women wearing the piece of clothing of their choice I understand that Muslims are going to have a difficult few years. I decided to pay for all the fines of women who wear the burkini in order to guarantee their freedom to wear these clothes and most of all to neutralize this oppressive and unfair law.

GORANI: At the heart of the heated burkini debate is the French concept of secularism, the strict separation of religion from public life, a fundamental principle of the French Republic.

But the issue has been complicated by the spate of terror attacks in France, including the truck massacre in Nice in July which killed 87. And some are accusing French politicians of exploiting the opportunity to stigmatize Muslims.

Back in 2011, France became the first European country to outlaw the public wearing of burkas. Others have followed. Belgium has banned them. The Netherlands recently prohibited them from public buildings, like schools and hospitals. And now German lawmakers are discussing plans to do the same.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SESAY: The Rio games came to a close this week but the bidding race to host the 2024 Olympic Games is just beginning. Representatives from the world's top contenders for 2024 stage went to Brazil to watch the city try to overcome a myriad of issue first hand.

Gene Sykes is here to discuss the lessons learned. He is the CEO of the 2024 L.A. Olympic Bid Committee.

Gene, so good to have you with us.

GENE SYKES, CEO, 2024 L.A. OLYMPIC BID COMMITTEE: Thank you.

SESAY: You are just back.

SYKES: Just yesterday.

SESAY: You watched it all unfold. How did it go in your view? SYKES: I was there for three weeks and it was a fantastic experience.

The games surpassed people's expectations and belied the fears of what might go wrong. The performances were spectacular. We all know about many of them, with many of the great athletes from around the world, and the U.S. But there were a number of other things that made us understand what makes the Olympics specials.

SESAY: What did you learn?

SYKES: We learned how the Olympics makes, for people to feel that the smallest countries in the world participate with the biggest country, and they can enjoy the same sort of performance. So five countries were able to get medals. They never had medals before. They were able to beat the biggest countries in the world. We think about a place where the U.S. or U.K. or other countries might dominate, I think that is not entirely true. The entire world participates and plays the same game, the same sport.

SESAY: How much of the way we remember the Rio games will be shaped by the Lochte controversy?

SYKES: I think it will drift after a period of time where people won't think about it much at all.

SESAY: Has your strategy changed since the visit to Brazil?

SYKES: I think we know more about the decision makers who consist of the leaders of the international committee. We understand more about why they think the Olympics are special, in particular, about how multicultural their perspective is about what they are trying to do and what the Olympics means.

SESAY: L.A. has hosted twice before, in 1932 and 1984. And the existing infrastructure is here. You have been quoted as saying there's not much to build. We know that the actual L.A. committee has said this is a no-risk choice. Why do you say that?

SYKES: It's a no-risk choice because we have all the infrastructure now and we have things coming to Los Angeles in the next several years that we don't have to build ourselves, the Rams' stadium and the L.A. football club is building a stadium downtown for soccer or for the international form of football. Exactly.

SESAY: The IOC will make the final decision in September of 2017. What will you be doing between now and then?

SYKES: We have opportunities to make several presentations to them. We have to do work to develop relationships with the voters. This is roughly 100 people from around the world who represent the Olympic movement. We have had a chance to get to know them in Rio over a three-week period. In the next year, we expect to get to know them better.

SESAY: What does that mean?

[01:55:00] SYKES: We have to visit them in their countries when we are permitted to do that. We have to have the ability to have them say they trust us and that we are competent and nice people and in spite of being from the United States they learn to trust us and they believe that we're the right people to host the Olympic Games and they will feel very comfortable here.

SESAY: California is a state that has had a huge amount of final trouble in recent years also.

SYKES: It may have in the last 10 or 15 years, but today Los Angeles and California are healthy from a financial standpoint because we made the investments in our own infrastructure and we're making the investments right now to build up the transportation infrastructure. What we have to do in addition to host the Olympics is very, very minimal. We are well suited to do this without stress to our own taxpayers and citizens.

SESAY: Gene, we wish you and the rest of the committee a lot of luck. We will know soon the final outcome.

Gene Sykes thanks for coming in to speak to us.

SYKES: Thank you.

SESAY: That decision again is in September of 2017.

You watching CNN NEWSROOM, live from Los Angeles. I'm Isha Sesay.

I'll be back with another hour of news right after this.

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[02:00:12] ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN NEWSROOM, live from Los Angeles.