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Italian Earthquake Aftermath; Syirans Finally Evacuated from Damascus Suburb; Trump and Clinton Campaigns Continue to Trade Accusations of Racial Bias; A Look at Mud-Slinging in Campaigns Past. Aired 3-3:30a ET

Aired August 27, 2016 - 03:00   ET

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

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[03:00:12] NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: Italy prepares to lay to rest victims of this week earthquake while thousands of survive get by in makeshift camps.

Syrians in Damascus suburb escape a four-year siege after the government and rebels right a deal to let people get out.

And the main candidates for the next president of the United States sharpened their accusations of racial bias. It's all ahead here on "CNN newsroom". We're live in Atlanta. Thanks for joining us. I'm Natalie Allen.

Some 40 victims of Wednesday's earthquake in central Italy will be remembered at state funeral shortly. Saturday is a national day of mourning for all 281 people killed. The 6.2 magnitude quake destroyed entire villages, historic villages and its epicenter. Thousands of people are now displaced and living in tents. Rescuers are trying to find more possible survivors. It's unclear how many may be trapped and rescuable for the people already rescued and in various hospitals their trauma is far from over.

Atika Shubert talked to some of the survivors fall from the rubble.

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ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A little girl plucked from the rubble alive. Rescued 17 hours after the earthquake. Many of their victims here were children, enjoying their summer holidays with their families. 4-year-old Georgia Renaldi (ph) survived because her older sister, Julia (ph) shielded her from the rubble, sacrificing her own life for her baby sister.

This is the Ascoli Hospital. And this is where that little girl pulled out of the rubble was brought to for treatment. 99 of those endured in the earthquake where brought here. And this is where family members wait for word of their loved ones still living the trauma of their ordeal.

Here, Georgia's father is coming to terms with the loss of one daughter and the survival of the other. He told doctors he was not yet ready to speak to media. But others talk to try and make sense of the destruction. Giuseppe Bagnato (ph) was lying in bed with his wife Dominica (ph) when the earthquake struck. Now he is waiting for her to come out of a lengthy surgery.

"For us, it's the end, he toll us. It's a house with so many memories, so much life, but it's finished. We're scared. We won't be coming back. We saw death. We felt it. My wife." And then he breaks down in tears. He says "We prayed the Madonna wanted to save us." 19-year-old Mattia Rendina was sleeping on the top floor of his family's summer house, his mother in the house next door when the house collapsed.

MATTIA RENDINA, EARTHQUAKE SURVIVOR: My first thought was my mother. My mother is here, but I can't help her.

SHUBERT: Brandina (ph) was buried in rubble. It took an hour for his uncle to find him and dig him out with his bare hands.

RENDINA: When I came out, I kissed him. Because -- and I said to him that he was my life. And -- but my -- my thoughts are still of my mother because she passed away. She's gone now.

SHUBERT: He survived with hairline fractures to several vertebrae. His greatest pain is the loss of his mother.

RENDINA: I like this because my mother teach me to be a person like this.

SHUBERT: To be strong.

RENDINA: To be strong and lives.

SHUBERT: Given new life, the survivors of Italy's devastating earthquake are healing slowly.

Atika Schubert, CNN, Italy, Ascoli Piceno.

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ALLEN: In Syria, thousands of civilians and hundreds of rebel fighters are leaving a Damascus suburb back endured a nearly four-year long siege. According to state media they're being given save passage out of Daraya under an evacuation deal between the Syrian government and rebels.

The Daraya has been heavily damaged by bombs and fighting. It also face constant water and foot shortages. Syrian state run media say families will be taken to temporary housing facilities in Damascus. Rebel fighters will go on to Idlib in northwestern Syria.

The brutal war is effectively getting even more complicated and multi layered. Turkey now vows to continue its first major military Persian into Syria after helping liberate a key Syrian town from ISIS.

[03:05:00] Ankara says its goal is to drive out the terror group along the Turkish Syrian border and prevent Kurdish fighters from receiving (ph) territory.

Our Senior International correspondent Ben Wedeman has more now.

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BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It was by the standards of the Syrian war a decisive victory. In less than 4 hours, fighters with the free Syrian army drove ISIS out of the border town of Jarablus.

They couldn't have done it without the active participation of the Turkish military. The second largest NATO armed forces after the United States. Fahim Issa commands the FSA's Sultan Murad brigade a Syrian Turkmen unit.

"For now, our focus is on is", he tells me. "We came to rid this area of ISIS." But he doesn't deny they've also clashed with U.S. backed Kurdish militias which turkey insists must withdraw east of the Euphrates. The U.S. spend hundreds of million of dollars to armed and trained Syrian rebels but has little to show for it, while American officials see Kurdish fighters as far more effective in the war against ISIS. Turkish involvement, not American support, helped provide these Syrian fighters with a rare victory.

"The Turkish role here will be to protect the region", says Commander Fahim. "Because of in difference and insufficient backing for the free Syrian army Turkey is providing that support. U.S. aircraft did strike ISIS targets during the push on Jarablus, but the non-Syrian boots on the ground are Turkish."

Officials here say one of the goals of this operation is to set up a terror-free zone in effect a buffer zone to ensure the safety of Turkish citizens living along the border.

This is the wall that separates Turkey from Syria. For years, Turkish forces watched from this side as Syria descended into an ever more brutal and complicated civil war. Now Turkish forces have crossed that wall and in a sense crossed the Rubicon into a war, it may be very difficult to get out of.

Ben Wedeman, CNN, Carchemish, Turkey.

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ALLEN: U.S. secretary of state John Kerry says the U.S. and Russia are close to reaching a Syrian cease-fire agreement. They still have issues to work out. Both sides will try to finalize details while they continue to meet in Geneva.

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JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: I can say we achieved clarity on the path forward. We have completed the vast majority of those technical discussions, which were primarily focused on making this cessation real and improving the level of humanitarian assistance and, thereby getting the parties to the table so we can have a serious negotiation about how to end this war.

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ALLEN: The U.S. and Russia are on opposite sides in the Syrian conflict, but share a common enemy ISIS. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Syria since war began there nearly 5 1/2 years ago.

People in the Syrian city of Aleppo are mourning victims of barrel bomb attacks. Active to say 15 people, including children, died. We're about to show you some disturbing images from the aftermath. It's almost unbearable to watch, but we feel it's important for the world to understand the extent of the suffering in Syria. Residents dug franticly to look for loved ones buried under the rubble.

This pictures show wounded children coated in dust being carried away. Barrel bombs are crude, imprecise weapons. That are pack with nails and other shrapnel, to maximize carnage.

Mothers and fathers whose children didn't survive face the unimaginable prospect of having to bury their baby.

Jomana Karadsheh shows us more in the aftermath in Aleppo from Thursday's horrific attack. Again, we warn you, the content is graphic and disturbing.

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JOMANA KARADSHEH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: "This is my son, Hassan (ph). He's gone", she says. She wants a last picture of her son. What follows is pain and anguish that does not need to be translated.

Once again, she try to wake 12-year-old Hassan (ph) up.

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[03:10:05] KARADSHEH: This is one mother. More than a hundred children have been killed in Aleppo this month alone, according to Syrian monitoring group. Reports say two barrel bombs dropped by the regime on this prestige rebel-held neighborhood of Aleppo killed women and children. There's been no comment from the regime. As rescue workers search for wounded and lifeless bodies, this distracts (ph) man sobs.

"Don't step on them," he says. There are children underneath the rubble. This scene is a little over a week after this image serviced of a 5-year-old Orman daqneesh. An image and a story that captured the world attention and some hope would pressure world powers to enforce cease-fire in Aleppo, even if just 48 hours to get desperately needed humanitarian aid in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That has taken more time, frankly, than I thought was needed. I thought everybody would help us make it happen. We're very hopeful that it would only be a very short time until we can roll and we can help the -- long suffering people of Aleppo.

KARADSHEH: The Syrian state news agencies reporting a death on Thursday in a regime held part of Aleppo. The people of Aleppo stuck in this death trap where living through one day doesn't mean surviving the next.

Jomana Karadsheh, CNN, Aman

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ALLEN: We have this just in CNN. Bangladesh's National Police Chief said the police raid have killed one of the suspected ringleaders of last month deadly terror attack on a cafe in Dhaka. Two others extremist were also killed in a hour long gun battle with police Saturday. The whereabouts of another suspected leader, a dismissed army officer remains unclear. Armed militants stormed the cafe in July, killing 21 people including 18 foreign nationals. ISIS claimed responsibility. But police claim a home grown ban Islamist group.

In Bolivia, five people are under arrest for the brutal killing of the country's Deputy Minister of Interior and police. Authorities say the minister was kidnapped and beaten to death by minors on Thursday. He had gone to the region of Panduro to try to negotiate with striking miners unions. Suspects include a union leader. Mining unions have blockaded roads over falling mineral prices and demanded they'd be allowed to work directly with private companies.

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FRANKLIN PAREJA POLITICAL SCIENTIST, (Through Translation): The cooperative minors in Bolivia are a privilege sector who, for years because of high prices of minerals had tremendous income.

[03:15:06] Now that the climate is no longer that good to maintain their compensation and income, they have confronted the government with completely unreasonable and illegitimate demands. This is what is generating tension and violence.

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ALLEN: In addition to the arrest, 40 minors are under investigation in the minister's death.

In the race for the White House, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump continue to trade insults and charges of racism. Their allies also exchange barbs as election rhetoric turns more and more negative.

Our Miguel Marquez now with the latest.

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HILLARY CLINTON, U.S. DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A man with a long her of racial discrimination who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and these kind of white supremacist, white nationalist, anti-Semitic groups should never run our government or command our military.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Clinton and her campaign keeping up a blistering race-based offense against Donald Trump. TIM KAINE, U.S. DEMOCRATIC VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Ku Klux Klan

values, David Duke Values, Donald Trump values are not American values.

MARQUEZ: Trump rejecting outright support from David Duke or other white supremacist.

Do you want white supremacist to vote for you?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No, I don't at all. Not at all.

MARQUEZ: Clinton citing Trump's hiring of Breitbart editor Steve Bannon's to run his campaign Trump's tirade against immigrants, Muslims, Mexican-American judge and even using his own words against him, this Clinton TV ad now running in swing-states.

TRUMP: What you have to lose, your living in poverty, your school are no good, you have no jobs.

MARQUEZ: Trump hitting back.

TRUMP: Hillary Clinton is a bigot.

MARQUEZ: Insisting Clinton has the race problem.

CLINTON: They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators.

MARQUEZ: Trump releasing this Instagram video highlighting a term Clinton used in 1996 many see as racist. She has apologized for it, but it has dogged her campaign.

SEN. BERNIE SANDER, FORMER U.S. DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Because it was a racist term and everybody knew it was a racist term.

Miguel Marquez, CNN, New York.

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ALLEN: Another Trump tactic has been to raise questions about Hillary Clinton's health. But now the doctors who issued the only public medical record about Trump in his campaign says he spent just minutes writing it. Dr. Harold Bornstein wrote a four-paragraph note last December, in it, he declared Trump would be "The healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

Now he tells NBC News he wrote it in a rush.

DR. HAROLD BORNSTEIN, DONALD TRUMP'S DOCTOR: I thought about it all day and at the end, I get rushed and I get anxious when I get rushed. So I try to get four or five lines down as much as possible. That they would be happy. OK, for five minutes -- just fast and write that letter, while the drive waiter for.

(END VIDEO CLIP) ALLEN: Dr. Bornstein told NBC he stands by his assessment of the candidate health.

There certainly been plenty of brutal name calling in the U.S. election, but the bare-knuckle tactics are nothing new.

CNN's Gary Tuchman looks back at past campaigns to shows us how other candidates behave.

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GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Gross hypocrite, godless atheist, who said it, Trump or Clinton? Well, neither. It watts associates of Jefferson and Adams trading barbs, that's Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

CLINTON: A man you can bait with a tweet.

TRUMP: Lying, Crooked Hillary.

TUCHMAN: The fact is, all this name calling and dirty campaigning is nothing new. Take the election of 1828. John Quincy Adams versus Andrew Jackson in another political brouhaha, Adams taking aimed at Jackson, asserting that Jackson didn't know how to spell was too uneducated to become president, while newspapers portrayed his wife Rachel has a short, fat dumpling.

Jackson shout (ph) back, claiming that Adams that told his wife's maid is concubine to the czar of Russia. The election of 1860, another political slugfest, this time Abraham Lincoln versus Stephen Douglas. Douglas accusing Lincoln hypocrisy on issue of temperance, claiming that Lincoln himself had once operated a grocery store that sold hard liquor, causing quite disturb. Lincoln's reply, that that was the case then surely Douglas was his best customer.

In the election of 1912, Theodore Roosevelt called his opponent William Howard Taft, a fat head with the brains of a guinea pig. Taft campaign (ph) calling Roosevelt followers neurotics. Modern campaign a senior fair share of nastiness (ph) too.

Since 1972, Edmund Muskie of Maine, been a front-runner for the Democratic nomination. That is until the conservative Manchester Union Leader newspaper, ran two pieces.

[03:20:09] One article planted by the Nixon White House accused Muskie of using racial slurs against French-Americans. The second implying his wife enjoyed smoking, drinking and cursing in an unladylike way.

EDMUND MUSKIE, FORMER U.S. DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: By attacking me, by attacking my wife, is proved himself to be a gutless coward.

TUCHMAN: But it was also reported that the time Muskie broke down and cried sending a message that he couldn't handle the heat and sending his campaign into a tailspin.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush let lose on Mike Dukakis.

GEORGE H. W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT: Michael Dukakis's oppose virtually every defense system we developed.

TUCHMAN: Asserting he didn't support the military. And instating that Dukakis thought a naval exercise is something you find in Janes Fonda's exercise books Bush went on to win. And in 2000, George W. Bush's campaign was accused of starting of whisper campaign that is primary opponent John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child. His daughter, Bridget was actually adopted from Bangladesh. But the false rumor had its intended effect, stalling McCain's momentum. And Bush of course went on to win. Another example of how -- even though it's ugly ...

TRUMP: Hillary Clinton is a bigot.

CLINTON: This is someone who retweets white supremacist online.

TUCHMAN: It can work.

Gary Tuchman, CNN, Atlanta.

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ALLLEN: All right. No nastiness here. Except from the weather man who usually has put nasty bad report ...

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, yeah. You know, we have been monitoring the monsoon all season across India. But it is really picked up in intensity, Natalie. Good news for farmers. Bad news because it's a little bit too much too quick. And we've had flooding, unfortunately. 5 million people have been impacted by the flooding.

And take a look at this image. And you can see some of the supplies just running thin on some of the stranded residents. They're trying to seek refuge from the flooding. Displaced people, evacuations, destroyed crops. In fact, the heavy rains have pushed the Ganges River too, and some of its tributaries to its limits.

So we've had flooding across much of that part of India. Now if we summarize the entire season of rainfall that we've had on average across the entire subcontinent. We've had about 647 millimeters of rainfall on a normal season up this date, we would see about 663. So we're actually at a 2 percent deficit countrywide. But that doesn't mean that we haven't had our fair share of rain especially across the Uttar Pradesh region.

And points to the south and west. You can see how that rainfall continues over the next 48 hours. We had an additional 100 millimeters or rain. That means a potential for flood and continues across that area.

Now I want to bring you to the Western Pacific because we're keeping a close eye on Typhoon Lionrock. You like the name too, right? Yeah, this thing still turning off the mainland of Japan. Not a threat to land at the moment, but look what was as we head out from three days to five days out. That's when we expect a drastic change in this weather pattern as it starts to shift from a northeasterly direction for the next two to three days than to a northwesterly direction.

So we're going to watch from points northward from Tokyo, Sendai, into the Hokkaido region. That where we have the potential for a land falling typhoon as we headed in the early parts of next week. Certainly already feeling the effects of that with showers and thunderstorms across mainly in Japan.

I want to take you to another area across the central United States. This is breaking here at CNN, a line of thunderstorms have moved across the U.S. city of Kansas city into the U.S. state of Missouri. Now, look at all these storms continue to move over the same location. This is what its called training of thunderstorms. And that allows a thunderstorm to produce a significant amount of rain over one location in a short period of time.

There was about an hour ago, or 45 minutes ago, flash flood warnings for the Kansas City metro region. Take a look at some of the visuals coming out of that area. It is night time still there into Missouri. It will only be when the sunrises this morning at 7:00 a.m. when we start to really see the impact from this flooding. You can see completely inundated vehicle. That's an SUV there. Well, that's going to be days, if not weeks of clean up.

ALLEN: They knew that was coming.

VAN DAM: Yeah, they did. They saw that. But they weren't expecting six inches of rain in the metro area. Only one to two inches. So that did catch them off guard in some respects.

ALLEN: All right. We'll wait and see what daylight brings. Derek thanks.

Well, scientists in Israel have single handily simulated a black hole inside his laboratory. What he created confirms a 42-year-old theory and by physicist Stephen Hawking. And it could win Hawking the Nobel prize.

Ian Lee has the story from Haifa.

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IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You're witnessing what few people on the planet have seen before.

[03:25:01] This blue laser creating a black hole. Illustrated in movies like "Star Trek," cosmic black holes have enormous destructive powers to consume entire worlds. Jeff Steinhauer single handily created this force of nature at his lab in Haifa, Israel.

JEFF STEINHAUER, ATOMIC PHYSICIST LABORATORY, TECHNICIAN: While working on a different experience, I suddenly saw a phenomenon. I realize these atoms must be traveling at super sonic speed. This is an analog black hole, a sonic black hole. LEE: That was 2009. Unlike Gargantua in Interstellar, Jeff's black hole measures a tenth of a millimeter and lasts two tenths of a second. He first uses mirrors and laser to chill the atom close of absolute zero. Creating a flow of atoms called a Bose-Einstein stream. The stream enters a vacuumed and the blue laser triggers the back black hole. The edge of the black hole is known as the event horizon.

Other blue line here, this outside of the black whole.

STEINHAUER: Exactly.

LEE: We have the event horizon right in the middle and everything that's a bit lighter going that way. That's inside the black hole.

STEINHAUER: Exactly.

LEE: What Jeff observed next excites him. Confirming a 42-year-old theory of renowned physicist Stephen Hawking.

STEINHAUER: It happens spontaneously, that's what -- that's one of the very interesting aspect of the Hawking radiation, is the sound wave coming out the black hole has positive energy and the sound wave falling into the black hole has negative energy.

LEE: Physically seen here by this gray line Hawking has yet to comment on the discovery. Jeff says his black holes aren't dangerous like we see in the movies. How do we know? His machine has created more than 4,000 and we're still here.

STEINHAUER: It's not a real black. It only absorbs sound waves.

LEE: The sonic black holes allow scientist to safely study their galactic cousins.

STEINHAUER: Well, they are both waves. And the equations describing these waves are the same equations until the real black hole and the sonic black hole. So that's how one can test on Hawking's prediction about light wave by studying sound waves.

LEE: This discovery if confirmed by the scientific community advances our understanding of the universe.

STEINHAUER: Probably one of the main reasons that when study black hole is not to learn about black hole himself but to learn about the laws of physics. In addition, laws of physics often have applications years down the road and no one knows today what they're going to be.

LEE: One more giant leap in unraveling the secrets of the universe.

Ian Lee, CNN, Haifa, Israel.

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ALLEN: And that is "CNN Newsroom." I'll be right back with our top stories. Thanks for watching.

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