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White House responds to Formal Recognition of Palestinian State; Severe Turbulence on Singapore Flight; American Pleads Guilty in Turks and Caicos; New Study on Nightmares Could Lead to Earlier Diagnosis; DHS Warns about AI Threats. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired May 22, 2024 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:30:42]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now we do have breaking news just in. The White House responding for the first time to the announcement this morning by Ireland, Spain and Norway that the nations will soon be formally recognizing a Palestinian state.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is at the White House for us.

I was just talking to Democratic Senator Chris Coons about this, him giving his take on what he thinks we'll be hearing from the White House. What are you learning from the White House now, Priscilla?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kate, they are pushing back, saying that this should be done through diplomatic negotiations, not simply through recognition. In a statement, a national security council spokesperson saying the following, quote, "the president is a strong supporter of a two-state solution and has been throughout his career.? It goes on to say, "he believes a Palestinian state should be realized through direct negotiations between the parties, not through unilateral recognition."

Of course, the president has said that he supports a two-state solution. He said so last weekend during his address at Morehouse College, saying - or calling it, quote, the only solution where two people live in peace, security, and dignity.

We heard from senior administration officials over the last several weeks and days who say that they are working toward this, and what this would look like post-conflict. And that is all underway. But what is clear through this statement is that it's not going to happen simply through recognition, but rather that it is - involves direct negotiations, diplomatic negotiations, and that is something that the administration is currently engaged on.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Priscilla, thank you so much.

And the point we heard from Senator Coons, we also heard from Israel, is that the fear is, is that this - this coming out now from these three nations is a hindrance to the ceasefire process, not helping it along. Thank you so much.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, this morning, 20 people are still in the ICU after a Singapore Airlines flight hit severe turbulence. We have new images from inside the cabin that show the aftermath. Look at that. More than 100 people were hurt. One passenger died. You can see just the debris everywhere in there.

This happened ten hours in to a 13-hour flight from London to Singapore. The pilot declared a medical emergency, diverted the flight to Bangkok. The NTSB is now joining the investigation.

With us now, CNN aviation and aerospace analysts Miles O'Brien.

Miles, always great to see you.

This much turbulence, to cause so much damage, you know, how does it happen?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, we're talking about what we think in this case is clear air turbulence, John, which literally comes out of the blue and is something that an aircraft cannot detect, air traffic control cannot detect, weather forecasters cannot predict. And there are rivers of air up there, we call them jet streams, traveling along at hundreds of miles of hour sometimes. And it's a bit like a layer cake. And sometimes the direction of those layers changes dramatically. And as an aircraft encounters that, it can suddenly change the amount of lift that the wing receives, and that causes that abrupt change. It's not getting as much lift as it got very suddenly.

Now, this trend is actually getting worse. There's a study from the University of Reading which shows that over the north Atlantic, over the past 50 years, severe air turbulence events and the time which they have occurred have increased 55 percent. And that has a lot to do with a changing climate.

BERMAN: We're looking at this footage here, Miles. And you can just see debris strewn about the cabin.

What does it tell you - based on what you've seen of these images, what does it tell you? Just, really, there was just no warning at all?

O'BRIEN: Well, it's interesting, no warning at all, but we're told the seat belt light was on. So, for some reason the flight crew had anticipated some turbulence.

Now, what pilots do primarily in - in this day, with all the technology we have, is we rely on reports of pilots ahead of us to tell us there's turbulence. Perhaps there was a so-called pi-rep (Ph) or pilot report to that end and that's why they put the light on. But it's difficult to predict when you get something like this.

But the big takeaway I have from this, and looking at this, is it's just a reminder that - to those of us who fly, when you're in your seat, keep that seat belt buckled.

[08:35:04]

No one who's seat belt was buckled was in harm's way in this case. And it's very important to do - to pay attention to that light. I mean, obviously, on a 12-hour flight, you've got to get up occasionally. But while you're in your seat, stay buckled.

BERMAN: It's really good advice.

Just - Miles, I've heard you say this before. Hit on it once again. Pilots need to relay the weather back. And one of the best ways that pilots can get information is from other people who have been in the air.

O'BRIEN: Yes, pilot reports. And - which is fine if you have somebody going ahead of you and they see it and anticipate it. That helps. But if you're the first flight in, or the first aircraft in, that's not going to help you, of course.

And, of course, it's a dynamic thing, which changes and can worsen very suddenly. So, a lot of it is just those reports. Clearly, there are other kinds of turbulence associated with big cumulus clouds and thunderstorms, which pilots and weather radar, et cetera, can see and avoid. But there is this category of turbulence which remains invisible and we really don't have technology to detect it.

BERMAN: Miles O'Brien, always great to see you. Thank you for explaining this so well. Thanks, Miles.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: A Virginia man is staring down the possibility of a 12-year sentence in a foreign prison right now, all because he mistakenly brought ammunition into Turks and Caicos. Tyler Wenrich, he pleaded guilty to charges yesterday and he's one of five Americans facing similar charges there right now. A group of U.S. lawmakers also just returned from the country in an attempt to plead for their release to no avail.

CNN's Carlos Suarez has much more on this.

So, Carlos, he pleaded guilty. What happens now?

CARLOS SUAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so that is the big question this morning, Kate. U.S. lawmakers, as you noted, visited the island over the weekend and they've stopped short of calling for a do not travel advisory, but said that really could change depending on how these court cases play out.

Now, we could get a better sense of things next week on May 28th, when one of the five Americans that were arrested is expected to be sentenced. Yesterday, 31-year-old Tyler Wenrich pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing ammunition. Now his plea came a day after this bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers, they traveled to Turks and Caicos and they met with officials there, including the island's governor, as well as the attorney general. The lawmakers, they've been calling for these Americans to be released for some time now, arguing that these group - the group of Americans, rather, all unknown to each other, did not know that they had ammunition in their luggage when they traveled to the country. The Americans, they are facing a minimum of 12 years in prison for bringing ammunition into the country.

Here now is Virginia Republican Congressman Bob Good on the message that he said he delivered to officials.

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REP. BOB GOOD (R-VA): We're appealing to the good nature of the Turks and Caicos officials that, hey, this is the unintended consequence. But if they - if they were to continue to allow Americans to suffer as if they had criminal intent, to be treated like they were bringing, you know, multiple machine guns and full magazines and things like that with - if they're going to treat them that way, then we would have to advise and ask our own State Department to issue a travel advisory about going to Turks and Caicos, which would have a tremendous negative impact on their tourism dollars.

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SUAREZ: All right, so, Congressman Good says that he's hopeful that these Americans will be sentenced perhaps to time served, as well as a fine.

Now, officials in Turks and Caicos said that the judges could lower the minimum sentence here and that they could adjust these fines. The remaining Americans, they have hearings next week. One of them has another hearing in June. And then we're talking about one other American that is expected in court in early July.

BOLDUAN: Yes, and you see next to you, Carlos, the names of the Americans who are all being charged. We're going to have much more on this ahead. Carlos, thank you.

Because just ahead, we're going to be speaking with another one of these Americans charged in Turks and Caicos, Ryan Watson. He will be joining us, along with his wife, Valerie.

John.

BERMAN: All right, a new study is providing remarkable insight into nightmares and what they could be signaling about your health. Research from the journal "eClinicalMedicine" finds that people who describe having horrific nightmares might be experiencing the onset or progression of certain chronic diseases.

CNN's Meg Tirrell is with us now.

I'm shaking my head. I mean nightmares are bad enough, but it can mean something even worse?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, in specific situations. I mean this study primarily looked at folks with lupus, which is a chronic autoimmune disease. It can affect all parts of the body. And what they found - I mean lupus affects more than a million people in the United States in more than 5 million people worldwide. And they found that this could be an early warning sign perhaps for either disease onset or for a flare-up of disease. They used surveys and conversations, interviews, with both patients with lupus and other autoimmune diseases, and also clinicians, folks who are taking care of these people, and they said they really recognized that things like nightmares or even what they called daymares or hallucinations could - are actually more common than a lot of people thought that they were in association with lupus.

[08:40:12]

So they found about three-fifths of people had these before they had a diagnosis. But they found some of those folks had these even after diagnoses. And so if you could recognize that the disease is coming earlier, you could have an earlier diagnosis or a correct diagnosis because they found sometimes these things were misdiagnosed as other disorders. And then you can also improve treatment. Also, if you have a flare coming on, this could perhaps enable you to treat it earlier and lead to fewer complications.

BERMAN: That's really interesting, just treatment for the underlying disease does it perhaps reduce the nightmares? Does it work like that?

TIRRELL: That's a good question. They didn't steady this in this particular study, but I think that would be the hope that if you could treat the underlying disease, maybe you would tamped down on some of these effects you're feeling in your brain too.

BERMAN: It really is interesting, the connection between the body and the brain.

Meg Tirrell, thank you very much for all that.

New warning signs about the influence of elaborate deep fakes and other tricks on the 2024 election.

And how basketball superstar Caitlin Clark is rising to the ranks of Michael Jordan in one key metric already.

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[08:45:43]

BOLDUAN: New this morning, the Biden administration is wiping away $7.7 billion in student loan debt for 160,000 additional Americans, bringing the total of Americans who have benefited from some sort of student debt relief to nearly 5 million. This is after the Supreme Court rejected Biden's broader plan, which aimed to erase up to $20,000 for 43 million Americans.

Caitlin Clark doing something that no other athlete has done since the GOAT Michael Jordan. The Iowa superstar turn WNBA pro has signed a contract with Wilson, the league's official basketball supplier. And Wilson said that Clark will test, advise, and provide feedback on a range of its basketball products, becoming a brand ambassador and releasing new collections that celebrate her throughout the rest of 2024.

Animals at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago are benefiting from this year's history cicada emergence. The nightmare continues. Enjoying the insects as a tasty snack. Oh wait, this is a good news story, thank God. African Painted Dogs, Sloth Bears and Brown Bears are just some of the animals who have been feasting on the protein-rich treat. The cicadas are appearing twofold this spring. If you have - if you have been following me on social video, you know I'm obsessed with this because of a rare emergence of two types of cicadas all emerging at the same time, billions of the insects are expected to take over and swarm eastern parts of the United States, including all cities on the - I'm just going to say, all cities. And you have been warned and you should be terrified.

John.

BERMAN: As you do know, Kate, it tastes like chicken. So, there is that.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Delicious.

BERMAN: All right.

BOLDUAN: I do need more protein in my diet.

BERMAN: This morning new warnings from the Department of Homeland Security against the dangers of AI, specifically the ability to interfere with elections like this robo call with fake voices made before the New Hampshire primary.

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FAKE JOE BIDEN ROBOCALL: It's important that you save your vote for the November election. Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again.

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BERMAN: CNN cybersecurity reporter Sean Lyngaas joins us now with the new reporting.

What's Homeland Security saying, Sean?

SEAN LYNGAAS, CNN CYBERSECURITY REPORTER: John, basically they're saying that this is a - AI as a means to really enhance and exacerbate misinformation and disinformation out there. Now, we already know that there's a very chaotic information environment here in the U.S. with a lot of portion of the electorate not believing that the election results in 2020 were valid despite no evidence of widespread fraud. About what we see four years later is a - the advancement of AI, easy to use tools like ChatGPT, but many others where you can just input a little bit of audio, a little bit - a little bit of video, or just one picture of someone, and then it can replicate that and mimic it very easily. My colleagues and I recently reported last week that in 2020 U.S.

intelligence found evidence that Iran and China had experimented, explored with - with deep deepfake technology to use on U.S. voters, but they never did. Four years later, that technology is a lot easier to use. It's more advanced. And it's going to, according to U.S. officials, perhaps really accentuate the disinformation out there.

The main concern is amplification, John, not really any - anything magical or think that we're not seeing out there on the internet right now. But it's mainly things like confusing voters on when polls are going to be open, or even targeting election workers with disinformation. So, it's really a new variable in the 2024 election that we did not see in 2020, John.

BERMAN: All right, Sean Lyngaas, thank you very much for that.

Luckily, one thing that absolutely cannot be faked under any circumstances, Harry Enten.

BOLDUAN: Harry Enten's the guy. Like, you can try to mimic this amazingness. Impossible. Impossible.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Yes.

BERMAN: (INAUDIBLE)

ENTEN: Amazingness, annoyingness. Whatever. (INAUDIBLE).

BOLDUAN: I was trying to be nice today. Tomorrow - tomorrow we will revert back.

Artificial intelligence, though, is everywhere. The focus of lawmakers on Congress, plot lines in Hollywood, big investments from big business. How many people are familiar with the newest focus, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and so much more.

[08:50:05]

Harry Enten is here.

OK, so, Sean Lyngaas was just talking about deep fakes and the influence of deepfake. How familiar are people with just this concept and what this is?

ENTEN: A lot of folks have no idea what the heck we're talking about. And I think that's part of what's so worrying here.

Do you know what a deepfake is? This was a quiz that was given by the Pew Research Center. And the majority answer was, no, they did not know what a deepfake was. Just 42 percent of Americans were correctly able to identify when given a list of sort of definitions what exactly a deepfake is. So, you know, we had Sean up there. Obviously, we've had Donie presenting all these packages. They're really interesting.

But the fact is, for the majority of Americans, and this is what's so worrisome, Kate - BOLDUAN: Yes.

ENTEN: It's not getting through. So, we're sort of talking to these folks and there's this whole other group of people out there who are just like, what the heck are you talking about?

BOLDUAN: Well, and it gets too - if you don't know - if you don't know what it is, if you don't know how to - you don't know how to look for it and to protect yourself -

ENTEN: Exactly.

BOLDUAN: It gets to kind of like the literacy of artificial intelligence that we all need.

OpenAI is something that we - we are - you know, it's a - it's a huge company. We're becoming much more familiar with it. How do people feel about it?

ENTEN: Yes, how - so basically, you know, when we're talking about artificial intelligence, what your top emotion when thinking about it? You know, what words do you sort of associate with it? Fifty-one percent of voters, Americans nationwide, associate a negative word, emotion, reaction. In fact, just 17 percent have a positive one.

You know, I go on OpenAI. I, you know, type in these prompts. I think it's kind of fun to sort of do. But a lot of Americans are not, in fact, having this positive reaction. Just 17 percent. The clear majority, 51 percent. And then, of course, there's this 31 percent who are just neutral or unsure, Kate. And I think that's a lot of what's going on with this technology, right? We're just really unsure what to do with it. It's new. It's different. 2024 is bringing new things that we couldn't have thought about in 2020. And that's what you're talking about. It's so difficult to sort of disentangle. And I think a lot of folks who are out there who might be presented with these deep fakes are sort of going, well, wait a minute, I don't necessarily know the difference. They're not even sure to really be looking out for it, Kate.

BOLDUAN: You know, and how they feel about it, it is here to stay. That's for sure. And I misspoke. We're talking - this is artificial intelligence in general.

ENTEN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Now talk to me about the sensation that is OpenAI.

ENTEN: Yes, so this is artificial intelligence in general. You know -

BOLDUAN: And it's ChatGPT.

ENTEN: And it's ChatGPT, right? So, you know, this to me, although a lot of Americans have a negative affiliation with it, a lot of Americans don't necessarily know what a deepfake is. But there are a lot of folks who are really interested. So, this is global visits to ChatGPT. You know, you go back to

November of 2020, it was just starting out, there were zero visits, right? You jump forward to April of 2023. Look at that, 1.8 billion visits.

Now that basically stayed steady through last month, 1.8 billion. But this month we're heading for a new record. We're on pace for 2.2 billion visits globally to ChatGPT. So, it does seem like after some months of just basically staying -

BOLDUAN: And they're - and they're releasing their new version of it.

ENTEN: That's exactly right. Thats what's cooking. You know, they're releasing these new versions. These new versions that are getting better and better and better. People are getting more interested in it. So, yes, there are a lot of folks who have this sort of negative reaction, kind of pull back, but it's slowly but surely gaining market space and slowly but surely becoming a bigger part of not just America, but the global world as well.

BOLDUAN: Interesting.

Great to see you, Harry. Thank you.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: John.

BERMAN: All right, new important details about what happened as the Iranian president's helicopter crashed. CNN is inside Iran.

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[08:57:00]

BERMAN: This morning, is tens of thousands of mourners gather in Tehran for the funeral of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, new details are emerging about the hours after his helicopter went missing. The hardline conservative, his foreign minister and six others were killed with the helicopter crashed in a mountainous region over the weekend.

CNN's Frederik Pleitgen is in Tehran.

Fred, I know you've seen the funeral procession. What's it like there this morning?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, John.

Yes, we were right in the middle of that funeral procession. I can tell you, it was a huge amount of people that turned up there. A lot of them having signs with the people who died in that plane crash on them. Of course, many of them paying their respects. It was a lot of sadness among many of the folks who passed by there. And then the caskets also were brought through central Tehran, Iran's supreme leader, by the way, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he himself

oversaw the actual funeral prayers and then the caskets were brought through the city. And again, the turnout was very, very large with a lot of people holding up those posters with the likenesses of the deceased on them.

And you're also absolutely right, John, it is quite critical that the chief of staff of Ebrahim Raisi, who was one of the other helicopters that was traveling in that convoy of choppers where the president's chopper went down, he did give some new details where first of all he said that it was actually the president's helicopter that was in command of that convoy and told the choppers to increase their altitude to get over some cloud cover. And then all of a sudden, that chopper had disappeared. He also said that one of the people who was on the chopper, the prayer leader of Tabriz, a cleric, that he survived for at least three hours after those choppers came down and managed to communicate with the folks who had been in those other toppers. But, of course, in the end it took a very long time to find the crash site and all of the people who were on the president's chopper were killed.

So, some new details coming out. But I can tell you from here, today, this was a huge morning ceremony that took place. Obviously something where the government wants people actively to be involved in all of this. This entire city is plastered full of billboards with the likenesses of those who were killed in that crash. Of course, first and foremost, the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, but also the foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian. And Ebrahim Raisi himself will be laid to rest tomorrow in his hometown of Mashhad, John.

BERMAN: I know there are clear concerns about stability and continuity there.

Frederik Pleitgen, in Tehran for us this morning. Fred, great to see you. Thank you very much.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

BOLDUAN: Donald Trump's classified documents case back before the judge in Florida today, and new evidence in that case being released.

Devastation as far as the eye can see. Communities in Iowa left in just shreds after at least 17 tornadoes touched down. Look at that path of destruction.

And a guilty plea for one of five Americans facing prison for bringing ammunition into Turks and Caicos.

[09:00:00]

Another American charged will be joining us from Turks and Caicos this hour.

I'm Kate Bolduan, with John Berman. Sara is out. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.