Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Battle Over AI Heating Up as Canada Spends Billions on Tech; Judge Expected to Question Holdout Juror in Lindsay Clancy Trial; Trump Files Urgent Supreme Court Appeal Over Mail-In Voting; Two Men Pulled Out Alive from Nepal Tunnel 9 Days After Floods. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired September 04, 2026 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER: They talk about good restaurants in Toronto, social services like good health care and education, and they say that makes this a really good place to live and also a really good place to build an AI company.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR: And look, when you zoom out here, it's no secret the U.S. and Canada are in the middle of this trade war, this politics back and forth, but the AI ecosystem is obviously a major part of the U.S. economy, seems like growing in Canada as well. How does that ecosystem play into this particular dynamic?

DUFFY: Yes, it's a really significant thing for Canada, in particular, as you mentioned, San Francisco is still the heart of AI development, but for Canada, this reduces their reliance on the U.S. for this very important advanced technology. Geoffrey Hinton told me, he said, this is good for Canada because if AI causes a lot of unemployment, we will want the profits that are made by replacing workers to stay in Canada so that they can be taxed within Canada to support the replaced workers. And as you said, Omar, the Canadian government is now investing in growing this AI ecosystem.

They announced this national AI strategy that includes $2 billion in spending on research and education and efforts to increase adoption of this technology. So Canada leaning in very hard here.

JIMENEZ: All right. Interesting to watch moving forward. Clare Duffy, appreciate it. Thank you.

Meanwhile, New Hour, CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: After a dramatic day in court, the big question this hour, what will the Lindsay Clancy jury and judge do? The verdict has come down to a single holdout juror. Demands were made.

Voices were raised yesterday by the defense saying that the juror isn't following the law. This morning, the judge wants to hear from that juror before deliberations. Also, incredible rescues in Nepal this morning. Two men miraculously

being pulled out alive from a tunnel nine days after being submerged in mud from a catastrophic flooding. There were screams of joy when it happened.

And CNN is at the scene as the search and rescue operations continue, some being done by hand.

And we're minutes away from a crucial jobs report. We're watching Wall Street. And as the cost of diesel soars to an all time high, some are warning of a potential diesel crisis across a wide swath of the country.

John and Kate, off today. I'm Sara Sidner with Omar Jimenez. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

JIMENEZ: All right, next hour, the jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial are going to be back in court as they remain deadlocked on her fate to this point. Yesterday, though, the defense accused a single juror of refusing to follow the law. Now, this morning, the judge is expected to question that juror as the case inches closer to a potential mistrial.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN REDDINGTON, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: If we come back here in a half an hour with a mistrial because of a because of a juror that has just spurned the instructions of this court, it's a shame. My motion is to remove this juror that refuses to listen to your instruction on reasonable doubt.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: Now, if you're keeping tally here, the jury is deliberated for more than 36 hours. The defense says Clancy was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis when she killed her three children and that she should not be held criminally responsible. While prosecutors have argued she acted, quote, intentionally, rationally and swiftly in her mind.

CNN's Kara Scannell is here to break all of this down for us. All right, Kara, so some significant moments in court. But just bring us into what's actually being considered here and why we've the jury has been deadlocked for so long.

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I mean, Omar, today's going to be a pivotal day because, according to Lindsay Clancy's lawyer, Kevin Reddington, the judge is going to bring in a juror for additional questioning. And this all comes out of what happened late yesterday afternoon when the judge informed everyone that there was a note this after two days of the jury saying that they could not reach a verdict. The judge brought everyone up to the bench and this was very unusual.

This is a tight space. And the judge brought the attorneys up first, the prosecutors and the defense lawyer and had them come up. You could see that Reddington was frustrated at the bench. He was slamming his hands on a piece of paper, not happy with what was going on. We didn't know it at the time, but we then did learn that this was the note had said that one of the jurors was not following the judge's instructions on reasonable doubt. So then the judge brought Lindsay Clancy up.

She is seated at the defense table in a wheelchair. She was wheeled up and the judge brought in jurors one by one. You can see that close proximity that almost never happens during jury deliberations -- very unusual.

And the jurors were questioned. They were sworn in. Our producer in the courtroom said that the questioning was relatively quick.

A lot of the jurors nodded in agreement with the judge. And then they were brought in as an entire group. And the judge reread his legal instructions on reasonable doubt.

[08:05:00]

Now the judge, Sullivan, then it explained to everyone in open court what just happened and why he did it. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDGE WILLIAM SULLIVAN, MASSACHUSETTS SUPERIOR COURT: At this point, I've asked if they are able to follow my instructions of according -- they swore earlier that they could. They've said to that at this point that they can.

That was specifically addressed towards the specific question. And that's what I'm doing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCANNELL: Now, Clancy's lawyer, Reddington, had said that he thinks that that juror, he believes that it's 11 to one in his favor. He wants that juror thrown out. It would be highly unusual.

The bar is very high to do that. But that kind of brings us to where we are today. The prosecutor saying the judge handled this correctly, but the judge will bring in this one juror and question them.

And then we'll see where this goes from here, if the judge thinks there's any credibility to this. But, again, if the judge were to agree to remove a juror, this case is not over. It just means an alternate juror gets brought in and deliberations would have to start from the very beginning.

JIMENEZ: Wow. That would be a major development. And we will see what happens when court gets going in just a little bit, folks.

So a lot could unfold -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right, thank you, guys. Joining me now to continue the conversation seen in legal analysts and criminal defense attorney, Joey Jackson. Thank you for being here this morning.

Look, the defense is making a really serious accusation against this one juror who was a holdout. The defense's behavior, you know, sort of slamming his hand down and raising his voice and making the demand that this juror be kicked off the jury. What does it take to remove a juror?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. Sara, good morning to you. A lot more than you disagreeing with their position or unliking the fact that they're the lone juror.

There's a basis to remove jurors. I mean, generally speaking, is the juror ill, right? Are they going through some other type of issue that would make them incapable of ultimately deliberating the case?

Are they engaged in some kind of inappropriate conduct where they're not listening to the judge's instructions with respect to speaking about the case, where they're caught sometimes by clerks and other people, maybe, you know, giving their position? But the fact that you do not like a juror's position or believe they shouldn't be the lone holdout is not a basis to do that.

In fact, Sara, what happens is when you're selecting the jury, we attorneys often ask, right, do you go with the wind? Or in the event that you believe and you're the only one that believes that you find guilt, then what do you do? Do you just go with the wind, or do you hold on to what in your view is the appropriate thing to do?

And so I think this juror, while the defense may be upset with it, we're upset with many jurors, doesn't have a basis other than the jury saying, hey, I can't file the law. If you say that you're out. If you can, you're in.

SIDNER: Look, if the judge dismisses the one juror, we know that an alternate would be brought in. But I am curious because the defense is very focused right on this one juror. And after seeing a note saying, look, they're not thinking about reasonable doubt, they're not they're not doing this.

Does anyone but the jury know which way this juror is leaning, whether he's leaning to convict or whether he's leaning to acquit?

JACKSON: So you really don't, right? You can certainly read tea leaves, right? Based upon what your views of the evidence are. But you don't know what the juries are doing.

And understand this just backing this up a bit. These are hard cases and the law is generally hard. Let's start here.

You know, I learned a long time ago that when you're practicing law, you're living in the gray. What does that mean? In math, you have a formula.

You get the formula, you input it, you have an answer, right? In science, not perfect, but there are certain things in law you're making arguments. If this were easy, it would not be a trial. You have a five week trial. You have 85 witnesses.

You have two professors in the courtroom, the prosecutor and the defense, who are giving arguments that are very compelling. The prosecution noting it was intentional. And here's the evidence to show it.

You lured him out of the house on this sort of get me the medicine, get me the food. If you're the actual defense, you're saying, hey, they really mismanaged her treatment. This is a born with regard to how they treated her.

She didn't get medical help, and she was plied with medication. Those are hard things to evaluate. And so a jury is going through that.

Now, last point as to one juror holding out, that's their prerogative, right? And that's the system we have. You don't get to remove jurors because you don't like their verdicts. You don't like their point of view. You dislike them in general.

You get to remove them if they engage in some misconduct. So absent misconduct, I don't see a removal. And the judge needs to tread very carefully and singling out a specific juror to note that they should be off the jury simply because the defense believes they're not following reasonable doubt.

What does that mean?

SIDNER: Yes, so we will be seeing the judge or at least understanding what happens when the judge does question the juror. We're expecting that today.

And we're also noting we don't know where this is going.

[08:10:00]

He's going to send that jury back to deliberate or a mistrial or exchange jurors. We will see. But you're saying that is highly unusual to an exchange out a juror.

So we'll wait and see what happens. It could happen in the next 40 minutes or so.

JACKSON: It could.

SIDNER: All right, thank you so much for being here, Joey. All right -- Omar.

JIMENEZ: All right, a lot coming up, including President Trump issuing an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court in his battle over mail-in voting, the showdown brewing at the high court with less than two months before the midterms.

Plus, the ICE agent charged for allegedly lying over the shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant in Minnesota. We've got new details on that case this morning.

And not your ordinary traffic jam here. Delivery robots clog up a sidewalk in Chicago. I mean, a lot of delivery robots here. We'll tell you what caused this traffic jam.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JIMENEZ: This morning, the battle over mail-in voting continues.

[08:15:00]

Even as North Carolina begins sending out the first mail-in ballots for the November midterms. President Trump is making an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to enforce his new rules. Rules, by the way, that could limit mail-in voting.

Several state election officials say the changes are impossible to implement this close to the election. And a recent whistleblower report says the system to verify the ballots is, quote, rushed and untested. A lot to get into here.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is live for us at the White House. All right, so what happens now, especially this close to Election Day?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Omar, it certainly feels as though we're entering into chaos territory. And, in fact, hours before the White House issued this emergency appeal, a federal judge in Massachusetts said that implementing this plan so close to the election could cause chaos and major disenfranchisement in these states. So what are we looking at here?

Well, the administration wants the United States Postal Service to enact this basically executive order that President Trump signed in March that prohibits them from sending ballots to voters in states that do not share their voter data with the agency. It also would set up for the agency to review specific ballot envelopes to make sure they are compliant with a new set of standards. Again, unclear how that's going to work with the ballots already having gone out in North Carolina.

Now, the next steps here are that this would be taken up by the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has signaled that they are going to at least look at this, but not that they are in a rush to expedite this immediately. And I say that because they could have issued an emergency stay, which would have allowed the post office to go forward with this plan, and they did not.

Instead, they asked both parties to respond to the emergency application by this Tuesday. Again, we are very close now to these midterms. There was a lot of speculation.

There was no way that this could happen before these midterms. It does appear that the Trump administration is trying to elbow this through ahead of those midterm elections.

JIMENEZ: All right, Kristen Holmes, thank you for the reporting, especially as these votes get underway in North Carolina.

Coming up, a miraculous rescue as two men are found alive in Nepal after being trapped for nine days in a submerged tunnel from the catastrophic floods. We're going to have the latest on the search for more survivors.

And then the start of the college football season spills over into the courtroom. The SEC is suing a key member of their conference ahead of their first game of the year. We'll talk about the growing debate over former NFL players returning to college football. Coming up.

[08:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: Now to miraculous rescues. Out of Nepal this morning, two men have been pulled out alive from one of those intricate hydropower tunnels filled with mud and water. They've been trapped there under all that debris for nine days.

Rescuers heard voices this morning and managed to pull the two men to the surface. This is one of those men that you are seeing here. The rescue is a result of days of work.

Crews dug through mud and debris, then drained flood water and used explosives. You can hear the cheering there as they pull them out. And excavators to blow up and remove giant boulders.

But the work is far from over because there are hundreds more believed to be trapped in these tunnels. CNN's Hanako Montgomery was at the tunnel as rescuers continued searching.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HANAKO MONTGOMERY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right now we're at the Trishuli 3A tunnel, one of the worst hit tunnels due to that deadly flash flood in Nepal. And you can see there are dozens of rescue workers right now passing what appears to be body bags. They are also tugging at a rope.

They are trying to get more access to people who might be stuck inside. But it's very unclear right now whether those people are alive or whether they are dead. Earlier on Friday, they were able to rescue two individuals out.

Those people were alive. And they're hoping that because they've seen more signs of life that there might be more people inside who are still alive. But again, you can imagine just the arduous conditions that these individuals would have been in over the past nine days with very lack of resources, with a lack of resources, potentially no water, potentially no food.

And again, you can see here rescue workers passing down what appears to be black body bags. We've also seen during our 20 to 30 minutes here at the tunnel the rescuers passing down oxygen tanks and also face masks. Again, we're not sure who might be inside the tunnel, whether those individuals are alive or whether they are dead.

But these rescuers are trying desperately to get these people out right now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: Hanako joins me now live from Nepal. You have seen so much of this devastation. Can you give us a sense of just what these moments were like when these men emerged alive after nine days?

MONTGOMERY (on camera): I mean, there were cries of joy. There was jubilation after these men were pulled out, almost miraculously, after spending nine days stuck in the tunnel. You can imagine how difficult it must have been for these men to hang on to the walls as the floodwater was coming in, sweeping some of their colleagues away.

Yet somehow, they were able to hang on and stay alive. And you've seen some of those incredible videos of them getting pulled out of the tunnel, using the rescue workers to hang on and to lean on, and of course them getting carried into helicopters with stretchers. And we now know that these two men are receiving medical treatment at a military hospital in Kathmandu, in the capital.

And we actually heard from one of the survivors, Sanjaya Shah, about his time inside the tunnel. Listen to this amazing account of what he experienced.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[08:25:00]

SANJAYA SHAH, SURVIVOR (through translator): My responsibility was to save everyone's life. After the accident happened, I could not run by myself. I had to save everyone.

In the process of saving everyone, I told them that there was an accident in the big dam. I asked everyone to escape outside. Doing so, I wasted time, and I could not get out.

I got trapped.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MONTGOMERY: I mean, truly an act of heroism, if he was sacrificing his time to escape by helping his co-workers. Now, we know that these rescue operations are ongoing. We saw some of them when we were up by the Trishuli 3A tunnel, and we saw those rescue workers pulling at a piece of rope, hoping that the person on the other end of that rope was indeed alive.

I also heard from a commander on the ground there that they believed around 40 individuals might still be stuck inside that tunnel. But again, these are just some of the conditions that rescuers have been experiencing day in and day out as they try to get as many people out as possible. Back to you. SIDNER: Yes, using so many different things, but also their hands to literally dig through some of this debris. It is a remarkable moment, and at least for the very first time in a long time, we're seeing smiles on people's faces because at least two people have been rescued, but there are hundreds of others that remain in those tunnels missing and thousands missing across the devastated area. Thank you so much for your great reporting throughout this to you and your team.

All right, ahead, a live look at this morning's market futures as we're moments away from a critical jobs report. You see the Dow down a bit this morning, Nasdaq and the S&P up just a touch. We will see what the jobs report says about the state of the economy.

And a deer makes a surprise visit for one homeowner in the middle of the night and ends up stuck in the swimming pool. New video coming in of the moments police got the buck out of the house.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)