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Nearly One Hundred Killed As Rival Generals Battle For Control In Sudan; SpaceX Scraps Launched Most Powerful Rocket Ever Built; Thriving Ecosystem Found In The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Aired 11:30a-12p ET
Aired April 17, 2023 - 11:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, there's real concern Sudan may dissolve into civil war as two rival military generals fight for control of the country. Moments ago, we learned Sudan's army chief issued a unilateral decision to dissolve the paramilitary. The army chief and the head of the paramilitary are at the center of this conflict that's killed about a hundred people so far.
Some of the fighting has been in the capital city of Khartoum, where smoke and flames have been seen near the Presidential Palace, the army headquarters, and the airport. Today, residents woke up to the sound of more artillery fire.
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SIDNER: CNN's Chief International Investigative Correspondent Nima Elbagir joins us now. Nima, can you give us a -- Nima, you -- can you give us a -- I know I've known you for years. How do I get your name on? Can you give us an update on the latest on what is going on in Sudan, a place that has seen so much violence and war over the decades?
NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Well, we finally managed to speak just a little while ago to General Burhan himself from inside army headquarters. And as we were interviewing him, Sara, over the phone, I could hear the sound of fighting -- continuing fighting in the background. It's very clear that despite the fact that both sides had agreed to a humanitarian pause from that hour of 4:00 p.m. Local Time in Khartoum, that that was not being respected.
And he told us that he intended to not only dissolve the paramilitary but that he intended to bring commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo to justice. That he believed that his forces had mutiny -- mutinied against the authority of the state. And he is now, Sara, calling this a coup attempt. Those are very strong words, but the context continues to be complicated. We were able to verify and create this heat map that we want to show our audience of just how widespread that fighting continues right across Khartoum.
SIDNER: Right.
ELBAGIR: And what you're seeing now on your screens, much of that is residential -- is inside residential areas. So, although General Burhan told us that they are in control of the Major Garrisons, the airport, and the army HQ, even just in those few moments that we were speaking to him, we could tell that their control, if it is completely under their control, is not as solid as they would hope it was.
And throughout all of this, doctors are telling us that it is hell, that the conditions that they have had to flee leaving patients inside hospitals are absolutely heartbreaking. This is what one doctor told us, Sara.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We were living in a real battle. Can you believe that we left the hospital and left behind children and incubators and patients in intensive care without any medical personnel? I can't believe that I survived dying at the hospital where the smell of death is everywhere.
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ELBAGIR: And there really is, Sara, no end in sight. Neither Burhan nor Hemedti can tell us where this is all going to go.
SIDNER: You know this country well, Nima. I know you were from there. I hear that your family is safe at this hour. And we're glad to hear that. But this is really disturbing.
ELBAGIR: Thank you.
SIDNER: Appreciate you coming on the show. John?
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Sara.
The way the government asks about race and ethnicity could soon be changing. For the last 25 years, the census is asked first, are you Hispanic or Latino? And then asked a separate question, which is, what is your race? Now, this has confused some respondents, so the new proposal seeks to combine these two questions. This is what that will look like.
A question asks for, you know, what is your race or ethnicity, combining the two. And then it gives you a whole wide range of options, including a new category, new to the census here, Middle Eastern or North African. The goal is to reduce the share of Americans who are choosing some other race.
Here now, CNN Senior Data Analyst Harry Enten. Here, this is some other race category, what's been happening with that?
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA ANALYST (on camera): Yes. So, I think that this sort of gives you an indication of why the Census Bureau wants to perhaps change things. Americans identifying as some other race. Look at this percentage, it has climbed through the roof. It was just seven percent in 2010, it was 15 percent more than doubling in 2020. And a lot of people in the Census Bureau don't necessarily like that because they believe that they're losing some information when people just say there's some other race.
BERMAN: They want precision here. There's no question that that is what the census is after always. Is there any group that's disproportionately affected by this?
ENTEN: Yes, absolutely. So, take a look here. Share -- what share of some other race is Latino? Look at this. 91 percent of those who say there's some other race say they are also Latino versus just nine percent who are not Latino. So it does seem that we're perhaps losing a lot of information on Latinos specifically, John.
BERMAN: Again, and they don't want those people to slip through the cracks in terms of the counting or how they are counted here. We talk about politics, right? Is there a difference on how Latinos are voting depending on how they identify racially?
ENTEN: Absolutely. And I think this sort of gets at why, you know, we sometimes put people into old one particular group, but in fact, they could have very different voting patterns and see things very differently. So, this is the 2020 presidential margin. If you are white and Latino, Biden won those voters, but just by 12 points.
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Look at some other race and Latino. Look here. Biden won that group of voters by 58 points. So, the fact is, depending on how we group these folks together or separately, you can have vastly different political opinions, which is why these questions are so important.
BERMAN: If -- (INAUDIBLE) very quickly. The Latino share of the vote is --
ENTEN: Huge. It's growing. 11 percent in 2020, well, up from 2004 when it's just six percent. So, that's why it's so important to understand how these folks identified, John.
BERMAN: Harry Enten, thank you as always.
ENTEN: Thank you.
BERMAN: Kate?
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: A setback for SpaceX. Today's launch of the nearly 400-foot-tall rocket scrubbed. When they hope the next window will be to get the starship airborne? That's coming up.
And it's a floating pile of trash. It's news because it covers 620,000 square miles. But the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has become more than plastic bottles and fishing nets, now, a home to sea life. We got much more on this ahead.
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BOLDUAN: Technical troubles are forcing SpaceX to call off today's launch of the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. The Starship rocket is nearly 400 feet tall. It has 33 engines. I don't even understand that part but I'm told reliably it does.
And it was supposed to take off already this morning for a big first. Its first fully assembled test flight. But instead, it remains grounded as we speak.
CNN's Ed Lavandera is back with us now from near the launch site. And, Ed, have you heard -- gotten any new word on when the next window for launch could be?
ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Well, we are told by SpaceX officials that it will take at least 48 hours to reschedule this launch or at least the rocket won't be able to take off for at least another 48 hours. And then has to do because it has to go through the recycling process of essentially adding the propellant -- taking it out and then putting it back into that rocket ship. It takes about ten million pounds of liquid methane and liquid oxygen to propel this massive heavy booster as it's called. It's 230 feet long.
And that will propel the spacecraft into orbit. So, they will have to try again at least 48 hours from now. We don't have an exact time yet, but they continue to do that.
And all of this came -- this disappointment came just minutes before the scheduled launch of the Starship, a rocket here in south Texas. There were thousands of people lining the waterfront here from our perch. We had -- what, she was supposed to be a probably stunning view of this rocket taking off into space. A great deal of disappointment here for many of the people who came out to watch.
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JIM TAYLOR, DROVE 19 HOURS TO WATCH SPACEX LAUNCH: It will happen. I've been watching him for two and a half years, every day. And so it gets scrubbed today. It'll take off tomorrow or whenever it is. He'll fix it and we'll get going.
And once I learned what this really was, how big and massive it is, it's -- you know it's just incredible. So, I followed it for the last couple of years. And we're almost there.
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LAVANDERA: Kate, Jim Taylor drove 19 hours from Georgia to be here this morning. He will stick around this week. And as soon as they scrub that lunch, the waterfront area here, Kate, cleared out like the bars at 2:00 a.m. but many people say they will stick around and try to come back later this week to watch this.
BOLDUAN: Just a little rest then you hit that bar again. It's good to see you, Ed. Thank you so -- thank you so much. John?
BERMAN: All right, Kate. This garbage patch that is floating between California and Hawaii is so big.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How big is it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How big is it?
BERMAN: It's so big that a whole ecosystem is now thriving on it. The stunning discovery, next.
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SIDNER: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is 620,000 square miles. It's a huge hunk of plastic and other debris. How large is that? Almost three times the size of Texas. So, imagine the surprise of scientists who discovered an entire thriving community of sea creatures living in that sea of trash.
CNN's Bill Weir is joining all of us now live.
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Hi, my friends.
BOLDUAN: Hello, friend.
SIDNER: Hello, friend. Can I ask about this? Can I say that something good is happening with this --
WEIR: No, you cannot.
SIDNER: All right.
WEIR: You absolutely cannot.
BOLDUAN: Bill Weir was not reporting a good news.
SIDNER: And he is killed.
WEIR: There is nothing good --
SIDNER: We're done.
WEIR: -- about humanity creating an island of plastic wastes so huge. The tiny sea crabs and anemones, and they are supposed to be living on the coast --
SIDNER: That's true. WEIR: -- are now existing in the middle of the Pacific. It's stunning, the impact we have on this planet. There are estimated 170 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean. That's nearly two thousand times more pieces of plastic in our oceans than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
SIDNER: Well.
WEIR: And most of it was put there since 2004.
BOLDUAN: No. Really?
WEIR: Yes. This is an --
BOLDUAN: Oh my God.
WEIR: You can look at the curves of plastic waste. This is a business decision. This is petrochemical companies and plastic lobbies who want to double and triple the production of this stuff. As the demand for gasoline goes down, petrochemicals are the -- are the new frontier, especially in Africa in places where there's zero regulation.
BOLDUAN: Right.
WEIR: But this is -- I mean, look at this.
SIDNER: Yes.
WEIR: And the -- and there's a big problem with ghost nets, which does float around about ten percent or 20 percent of the waste comes from the fishing industry.
BOLDUAN: Yes.
WEIR: Scientists just came up with a new disease for seabirds, plasticosis, they eat so much plastic, destroys their trachea. So, yes, this is a crisis and the United Nations has tried to put together a treaty to address this. It has to happen. But just -- what's the moral responsibility of the companies that made all that stuff? To at least help clean it up.
SIDNER: Right.
BERMAN: Don't upset the reporters.
SIDNER: Really. They're going to come for you. Look, the plastic -- (INAUDIBLE)
WEIR: I'm sorry, I get a little flattered.
BERMAN: If you go into the ocean, I'm lucky that my boys love to fish and you know, I'm lucky enough to go out there and be near them without doing it. There's just plastic everywhere.
WEIR: Everywhere.
SIDNER: Yes.
WEIR: And, John, I'll tell you. Some of the most beautiful places I've been. I can go to Northwest Alaska. You know, I've been to islands in the South Pacific --
BOLDUAN: In the north -- yes.
SIDNER: Yes.
WEIR: -- the most remote places and pick up and just tell you where it came from where it floated from based on the labels you know, that they come from Asia, they come from the United States.
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But this is the cost -- the hidden cost of a disposable consumer lifestyle where have it now, throw it away. But we were learning there is no away.
BOLDUAN: Right.
WEIR: That's the away is our oceans.
SIDNER: It's all we have. Yes.
WEIR: And this is all we've got. So, it's a pretty stunning new study.
SIDNER: If we can go to Mars, we can clean this up.
WEIR: It would be nice.
SIDNER: We just have to have a consensus to do it.
WEIR: Yes.
SIDNER: Bill Weir, thank you so much --
WEIR: Thanks for seeing me.
SIDNER: -- even though you came for me this morning.
BOLDUAN: Bill Weir -- honestly, Bill -- I always said, Bill Weir can read me the dictionary like -- Bill Weir can bring in any dictionary.
WEIR: I never choose anger when it comes to you. (INAUDIBLE) --
SIDNER: I -- you're the most wonderful person. I'm so happy to have you here.
BOLDUAN: Thank you so much for joining all of us. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. "INSIDE POLITICS" is up next.
A very important programming note though. Our DC friends are launching the afternoon edition of CNN NEWS CENTRAL in just a couple of hours. You can catch Boris Sanchez, Brianna Keilar, Jim Sciutto today and every weekday starting at 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
BERMAN: Go south. CNN CENTRAL South.
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