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Iran Vows to Retaliate After U.S. Seizes Vessel; Sources Say Vance is Expected to Head to Pakistan for Iran Talks; Still Not Clear Whether a Delegation From Iran Will Show Up, as Ceasefire Nears End; Study Shows Pancreatic Cancer Patients Thrive After mRNA-based Vaccine; U.S. Southern Command Kills Three in Strike on Alleged Drug Vessel; Principal Who Stopped Gunman Named Prom King. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired April 20, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": -- keep our eye on. She was showing you a picture there of the roof. That was because the 13-year-old who did survive that shooting jumped off the roof, becoming considerably injured, but is recovering at this point.

Ahead, we are keeping our eye on Vice President, J.D. Vance, who is expected to leave tomorrow for the latest round of talks to end the war. But Iran says it has no plans to take part in those negotiations. Are these even going to happen?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We're following some Breaking News. President Trump now says it is highly unlikely he will extend the two-week ceasefire with Iran that ends Wednesday night Eastern Time by his interpretation. Those comments to Bloomberg coming just hours before Vice President, J.D. Vance is expected to travel to Pakistan to lead more U.S. talks with Iran.

But Iran's foreign ministry says there are currently no plans to resume discussions with American negotiators.

[13:35:00]

Both sides have accused the other of violating their truce, including a tense moment yesterday, when a U.S.-guided missile destroyer boarded and seized an Iranian cargo ship trying to avoid the American blockade on Iranian ports.

I want to bring in Ian Bremmer. He's the President and Founder of the Eurasia Group and GZERO Media. Thanks for taking the time. Good to see you.

Look, usually it's the details of any ceasefire negotiations that are the sticking points, and here we've got Iranian officials saying there are no immediate plans for a second round of talks, yet the latest reporting is Vance is expected to head there for a second round of talks with Pakistan. Is this just posturing? What do you make of this dynamic?

IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT & FOUNDER, EURASIA GROUP & GZERO MEDIA: Probably.

JIMENEZ: Yeah.

BREMMER: In the sense that there's good reason for the Iranians to want the ceasefire to hold. They're also trying to show that they have more leverage. They want this to be the Americans requesting the Iranians to have talks. They don't like the Americans acting like they have all the cards. Certainly, the biggest moves over the last few days has been the U.S. imposing the blockade and then boarding an Iranian ship after firing on it.

So, the latest rounds of escalation have been more on the U.S. side than on the Iranian side. I see this as Iran looking to have more influence before talks occur, but I would be surprised if the talks fell apart before they happen.

JIMENEZ: So let's assume -- let's go with that. Let's assume the second round of talks materializes. That's what we end up seeing this week. Where do you believe realistically these talks could actually end up? Because a lot of the discussion is just over re-opening the Strait of Hormuz. That doesn't really get to the root of sort of nuclear proliferation, uranium enrichment levels.

We sort of feel a long way from that. But do you think that that could even be included in this next round?

BREMMER: So, there are a number of issues of potential conflict here that have been taken off the table. Regime change, Trump has basically said wasn't a goal and it's already a new regime, don't need to worry about that. Ballistic missiles, a big demand of the Israelis and the Gulf States, Trump has privately told Gulf leaders, that should be an issue that's discussed by the regional conflict -- by the regional parties. We're not going to have that as part of our negotiation.

Iranian support for proxies, America hasn't been engaged in that issue either. So, several of the in principle war demands are not even necessary for the Iranians to engage with to get to yes. That leaves the issue of transit of the Strait and nuclear material. Nuclear material has been really where most of the energy has been used in the first round of talks and there's been movement by both sides.

It looks like the Iranians are prepared to accept, at least in principle, that all of the stockpiles of 60 percent enriched uranium would be removed from Iran and exactly where it would go and whether it's sort of -- what territory and how that would be done. Those are details that need to be worked out. But in principle, it would go away. It doesn't require the Americans to militarily go in and take them.

Then there's the question of ongoing enrichment. The Americans are saying there can be no ongoing enrichment for 20 years. The Iranians appear to be willing to accept that as opposed to the old Obama deal, which had some lower level enrichment that the Iranians could engage in. But then for how long?

And the Americans are saying 20 years, the Iranians, depending on what day you're talking to them and who's engaged in the talks, three years, five years, 10 years. But there's been movement there and that's an area you could see some agreement.

So the idea that there's been -- that these two sides are super far apart, they're actually much closer than you would have expect back when the Americans broke off the negotiations and the supreme leader and many other leaders were assassinated.

JIMENEZ: Yeah, while all of this is happening, there are a lot of places around the world sort of making contingency plans for lesser or at the very least more expensive fuel while this is going on. And one part of the world in particular is China, almost 40 percent of the oil that typically passes through the Strait heads to Chinese ports. And Chinese Leader, Xi Jinping, obviously calling for the Strait to re- open. They're not quite as affected in the day-to-day in terms of worrying about fuel shortages.

But I just wonder, what do you see as China's influence here or their role on the side of these talks?

BREMMER: Not all that much. The Chinese and the Pakistanis, a few weeks ago, announced this five-point plan to clear out the conflict in the Strait. And then the Chinese backed away from it.

[13:40:00]

You have seen Chinese leadership talk about four overarching principles, talking about sovereignty and security, mutual respect for the territorial integrity of all of these countries, but you would not say that they are playing an active role in the negotiations the way Pakistan is. And I think a big part of that is the Chinese not wanting responsibility for talks that they feel have a good chance of ultimately not leading to an implemented deal.

So yes, they of course want to see the Straits cleared up, and they're not as affected economically as many other countries are, specifically in Asia, because their stockpiles are so much greater, their reserves are so much greater than many of these countries are.

They're not going to run out of core commodities in the coming weeks the way we might see in many other countries in Asia, Southeast Asia, and around the world. But I don't see the Chinese, at this point, playing a fundamental role in bringing the conflict to a close.

JIMENEZ: Ian Bremmer, always appreciate the perspective. Thank you for being here.

BREMMER: My pleasure.

JIMENEZ: All right, coming up, searching for a silver bullet in the fight against cancer, how a new class of vaccines is giving researchers hope against one of the deadliest forms of the disease. Plus, imagine waking up and seeing this in your backyard. Yes, that is a hot air balloon. How did it get there? We're going to have the details next on "CNN News Central."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:45:54]

KEILAR: A potential game-changer that is sparking hope in the fight against cancer, and more specifically pancreatic cancer. It is one of the deadliest kinds there is. The results of a Phase 1 clinical trial finds a personalized mRNA-based vaccine proved dramatically better than standard treatment. This was a small study, only 16 participants, but nearly half of them were still alive and well up to six years after receiving the last treatment.

For context, just one in four patients lives a year after their diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. We're joined now by Dr. Vinod Balachandran, who led the study. He is the Director of the Olayan Center for Cancer Vaccines at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

Doctor, thank you so much for being with us. These numbers are pretty astounding here. How promising is this?

DR. VINOD BALACHANDRAN, DIRECTOR, OLAYAN CENTER FOR CANCER VACCINES, MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING: Well, as you mentioned, pancreatic cancer has been one of the most challenging cancers to treat, so the ability to use this promising technology, RNA technology, to make a really strong immune response that might impact patient outcomes is really exciting. It's a small study. We think additional research is required, but it's exciting to move ahead on that path.

KEILAR: Yeah, I mean, when we talk about pancreatic cancer, we're so often talking about something that feels like a death sentence when someone is diagnosed with it, and yet you're looking at half of this sample responding, and then seven of the eight being alive and well several years later.

What -- how many -- I mean, if you were expecting them to have standard treatment, would any of them have survived? Maybe one? I mean, what would you be -- what would you expect to look at if they perform like the average population with pancreatic cancer?

BALACHANDRAN: Right. So in this study, our question was not really, in fact, to test whether the vaccines would make patients live longer or not. For such a study, typically you would have to do a randomized trial where you give patients either the experimental treatment or not, and really what we were interested here is that could you even teach the immune system to make a really strong immune response against pancreatic cancer, one of the most challenging cancers in oncology that historically has been one of the toughest ones to treat with any immune therapy.

And what we're finding is that you can make a really strong immune response against the most challenging of cancers, and when you do, patients live longer. So this is exciting, and of course, this needs to be tested in larger trials and we have larger trials ongoing.

KEILAR: That is very exciting. And this mRNA technology that, here in recent years, has become a bit of a household name as we have learned more about it. Tell us the significance of that in this, and what it could also mean maybe even for other cancers.

BALACHANDRAN: That's an interesting point, actually, because this clinical trial we had actually initiated even before the pandemic had started because the origination of the mRNA technology was in fact in the cancer space.

So the first patient in this clinical trial was treated in December of 2019, which is before the pandemic. But what we have learned from the pandemic is this technology is very powerful because you can make vaccines fast, safe, and strong. And now, it is exciting to see that you can use this technology also to treat among the most toughest of cancers. So the hope is that if we can use it to treat pancreatic cancer, perhaps this could provide a blueprint to now treat other similar, very challenging to treat cancers. So that's exciting times ahead.

KEILAR: Several years ago, I was doing a story on pancreatic cancer, and I interviewed a pancreatic oncologist whose father had died of pancreatic cancer, and he was saying, I'm a pancreatic oncologist and I couldn't even catch it.

[13:50:00]

This is my specialty, and my father died from it. I mean, that's the kind of thing we're talking about when we talk about this cancer. I know you are a doctor, you're a scientist, you've told us about, you know, the kind of cold hard numbers in the science here, but when you did see these promising early results, what did you and your colleagues -- I mean, what were you saying to each other about what this could mean?

BALACHANDRAN: I mean, it was very exciting to see because the thinking had been that pancreatic cancer is too tough to use for a cancer vaccine or any immune therapy. So when we were seeing that these treatments potentially could work in pancreatic cancer, I think this was very exciting to us. And of course, it gives us a path forward because if it could make it work in pancreatic cancer, maybe you can also make it work in many other cancer types.

So I think the most exciting part is essentially what you just mentioned, which is it's such a deadly cancer, 90 percent of patients die within five years of diagnosis with current treatments. So any potential new treatment that could impact patients' outcomes and make them live longer would be very exciting. So that was very gratifying to see.

KEILAR: Pretty amazing stuff. And of course, we're looking for all that other research and trials to be done, but what a fascinating thing to talk to you about. Thank you so much for being here to talk about your work. We appreciate it. BALACHANDRAN: Thank you for having me.

KEILAR: Omar?

JIMENEZ: Just amazing progress on that. All right, we want to get you updated on some of the other headlines we're watching this hour, including U.S. Southern Command announcing that the military killed three people in a strike against an alleged drug trafficking boat. You see some of what was released.

This was in the Caribbean yesterday. Officials say the vessel was on a known narco-trafficking route and the U.S. military, for perspective, has killed at least 180 people in strikes that have destroyed 54 vessels as part of a campaign the Trump administration says is aimed at curtailing the flow of drugs into the United States.

Speaking of, also, 13 people set off in a hot air balloon over the weekend, but the ride didn't go as planned.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ah! We're in somebody's backyard!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not talking to the folks.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, not into the fence!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There we go.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my God.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: I can't even imagine. That is a hot air balloon. You hear a passenger mention landing in someone's backyard, which we're literally showing you footage of here, which was quite the surprise for the homeowner, too.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi, everybody! Look at that.

(LAUGH)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow. Hi, everybody! How's your guys' trip so far?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: Not -- I mean, they're literally a hot air balloon just sitting there. How did he find out he had visitors? A neighbor came over and said a hot air balloon was out back. I don't know how I'd react to hearing that. The balloon's pilot says the winds died down, forcing him to make an emergency landing.

At least everyone's all smiles there. The balloon's crew eventually flew the balloon over the house and onto the street to deflate it. No one was hurt. A whole lot of smiles. Whole neighborhood's out. Wow. Incredible.

Also, a special moment at an Oklahoma high school. Take a look at the moment students absolutely lose it when their hero principal, Kirk Moore, is named Prom King.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, our king, Kirk Moore!

(CROWD CHEERING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: Rightfully losing it in the crowd. Earlier this month, it was Principal Moore who took down an armed suspect who was able to get inside Paul's Valley High School. Principal Moore tackled the man, giving a student on a bench nearby the chance to escape. You see it right there, that tackle happening in just seconds there. Moore was actually shot in the leg, but was able to keep the gunman subdued while another administrator took the gun until police arrived. A true hero, and now honored as Prom King for some of that service.

All right, more news coming up as well, including President Trump wanted to celebrate the country's 250th birthday with a sculpture garden of heroes. Little problem with that, there's no statues. We'll bring you the details next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:59:06]

JIMENEZ: People, we are just a few months away from America's 250th birthday and one of President Trump's personal projects to mark the occasion not even close to being done. His idea, an expansive sculpture garden featuring 250 statues of prominent American figures like Kobe Bryant, Elvis Presley, and Rosa Parks.

Let's talk about it. I've got CNN's Sunlen Serfaty here. So Sunlen, what is happening? What's going wrong here?

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: This project is essentially massively behind. It's quite clear that we're now three months out of July 4th, the big 250 celebration and it's very clear, sources tell me, that this planned sculpture garden that Trump has long talked about will likely not happen, and it's not clear if any sculptures out of the 250 that he had wanted to be unveiled will be there when they potentially do a ribbon (ph) cutting of some sort.

I spoke with foundries and artists across the country that applied to have their sculpture built. No one has heard from the White House that I've contacted and these sculptures takes months and --