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Violence Plagues Israelis and Palestinians; Syrian War Stirs Reprisal Fears in Moscow; Typhoon Koppu Pummels Philippines; Protests Over India Child Rapes; Migrant Crisis Strains Merkel's Popularity; China Posts Slowest Growth Since 2009; South Korean Gay Man Comes Out on CNN; Trump Claims 9/11 Would Have Happened If He Were President; Syria Taps "Doomsday" Seed Vault. Aired 1-2a ET

Aired October 19, 2015 - 01:00   ET

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

[01:00:00] ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR: A futuristic building designed to help save humanity in the event of a global catastrophe but modern-day events are already drawing from it.

JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, and welcome to our viewers all around the world. Great to have you with us. I'm John Vause.

SESAY: And I'm Isha Sesay. NEWSROOM L.A. starts right now.

VAUSE: We begin in Israel where a case of mistaken identity has reportedly left an asylum seeker dead after a shooting at a bus station.

SESAY: Police tell our affiliate Channel 2 an Eritrean man was shot and killed in Beersheba after being misidentified as an attacker. A gunman opened fire at the bus station Sunday night killing an Israeli soldier and wounding 11 others. The shooter was killed.

VAUSE: Phil Black is live in Jerusalem this hour. He joins us live.

So, Phil, what is the latest on that Eritrean man who was apparently shot dead in Beersheba.

PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: John, the information that we have from the local hospital in Beersheba just to us, that man has died as a result of gunshot wounds we are told. It does appear to perhaps be a case of mistaken identity or something that happened in the chaos of that particular attack.

According to Israeli Police, this man, a migrant, was shot dead by a security guard at the station. The police say that after the attack began they had a unit of special forces in the area who responded, who engaged the one attacker that was believed to take place. They describe him as a terrorist. They haven't commented on this man's ethnicity just yet. And in the gunfight that followed they say that five of those officers were injured.

One soldier, one Israeli soldier was killed, they say, by the man that, as I say, they described as a terrorist. And a number of other injuries. At least three of those in the local hospital are considered serious, John. VAUSE: And does this incident in Beersheba raise the level of

concern, raise the tension there, if you like? The attacker was armed with a gun, not a knife, and this happened not in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv but pretty deep inside Israeli territory.

BLACK: Yes, so most of the attacks we've been seeing here over the last two weekends, these street attacks, they have involved knives. And yes, most of them have been in Jerusalem. This one differs on both of those counts. There have been others in other parts of Israel but certainly the security crackdown is mostly visible here and only one of the other attacks that has taken place has involved a gun in this way.

But it shares the characteristics of what we've been seeing here on the streets, and that is sudden, almost random attacks. And the nature of these attacks which is so difficult to police and to prevent really. And of course using a gun in this way, the effects can be all the more deadly for it.

VAUSE: And one way the Israelis are trying to prevent these attacks, they're building a temporary barrier in parts of east Jerusalem, which have seen a lot of violence. But that comes with political implications. What's been the reaction there in east Jerusalem to this -- what the Israelis insist will be a temporary barrier?

BLACK: So what we're seeing, the installation of a lot of fortified checkpoints around Palestinian communities. And now what they say is a temporary but still pretty significant and very really strong wall between a Palestinian and Jewish community in the east of the city. The reaction certainly from the Palestinian community is one of anger and frustration because of the impact that this is having on their day-to-day lives. These checkpoints. The restriction of movements that they are enforcing.

The difficulty just in leaving their communities to go to school, to go to jobs. All of this is really quite significant to them. They say they find the process of being checked, lifting up their shirts, proving that they are not armed, they find that quite humiliating on a day-to-day basis. So in this sense it is they say something that the Palestinians complain about here quite often and that is they describe it as collective punishment. Whole communities they say being punished and having freedoms restricted because of the actions of these individuals who are taking part and launching these attacks on the streets.

The Israeli government says it is a reasonable, necessary security precaution. And they say hopefully a temporary one.

VAUSE: Phil Black in Jerusalem this hour, where it's just gone four minutes past 8:00 on a Monday morning. Thanks, Phil.

SESAY: Now the nuclear deal between Iran, the U.S., and other world powers has taken a major step toward implementation.

VAUSE: Sunday was so-called Adoption Day for the agreement, which was finalized in Vienna a few months ago. The deal calls for a lifting of most sanctions against Iran in exchange for the country opening up its nuclear program and suspending a number of other activities.

SESAY: Adoption Day kicked off the administrative work that will lead to tangible results and there's a lot of work to be done. It could take a decade for the entire deal to be fulfilled.

Well, U.S. Defense officials have confirmed that a key Jihadi leader with ties to al Qaeda has been killed by a coalition airstrike in Syria.

[01:05:05] VAUSE: Sanafi an-Nasr, believed to be the man here in this photograph, led a shadowy group of fighters called the Khorasan Group. Al-Nasr was once al Qaeda's chief financial officer, more recently he played a key role in recruiting and transporting fighters into Syria.

SESAY: While stepped-up Russian activity in Syria has helped government forces there gain ground, but it's also stirred frustration outside of Syria among the U.S. and its coalition and inside Russia.

VAUSE: CNN's Matthew Chance has more now on the fears in Moscow that the war in Syria might just come home to Russia.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Into the morass of Syria's war, Russia has plunged itself headfirst. Its newly modernized military is pounding rebels from the air. And from the sea. Potentially game-changing fire power, never before seen on the Syrian battlefield. But it's the potential consequences at home, the retribution, the blowback that has the Kremlin concerned.

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (Through Translator): On different estimates already from 5,000 to 7,000 people from Russia, and other former Soviet states are collaborating with Islamic State, taking part in military actions with them. We certainly can't let them use here at home the experience they are receiving in Syria.

CHANCE: Russia already has bitter experience of homegrown terrorism, and Tatiana is just one of its victims. She lost her eldest son, Alexander, in one of the most notorious attacks.

The siege of a Moscow theater in 2002, when Chechen rebels held an entire audience hostage, before Russian special forces moved in with a mysterious and deadly gas, leaving 130 of the audience dead, 40 militants were executed.

TATIANA KARPOVA, SON IS KILLED IN TERROR ATTACK (Through Translator): As for my son, when the raid was over they started bringing out the dead bodies. They were just laid on the steps of the theater. My son was among them. No one checked their pulse and no one checked whether they were dead or alive. They called them bodies. Those bodies were knocked out by the gas.

CHANCE: There have been other atrocities, too. In Beslan in 2004, more than 330 people were killed, including 186 children, held on their first day of school. Russia's brutal wars in mainly Muslim Chechnya, and the countries rested south, have sported a catalog of horrors. Including suicide attacks on Russia's transport system, like the train station in Volgograd. And Moscow's crowded metro.

(On camera): Well, we've come to the Park Kultury station deep beneath the streets of the Russian capital, one of the two metros that was attacked by suicide bombers back in 2010, killing over 40 people and injuring more than 100. Somewhere here there's a small plaque to commemorate the victims. But it's pretty low profile because the authorities rejected big memorials saying they didn't want to frighten commuters. The Kremlin isn't even trying to hide the growing threat posed by Russia's intervention in Syria.

(Voice-over): Hardly a day passes without state television broadcasting reports of ISIS sympathizers in Russia, being thwarted from carrying out some terrorist plot. The latest arrests were made in Moscow, according to state media, militants trained in ISIS camps in Syria poised to attack public transport. It may help the Kremlin justify its Syrian intervention. But it also stirs deep-seated fears.

KARPOVA (Through Translator): It can be repeated at any moment. I'm afraid when my other son is on the metro on his way to work. It can happen on any public transport. I'm constantly afraid of the terrorists. I live with this fear.

CHANCE: The fear of how Russia's bold campaign in Syria may one day find its way home.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Moscow.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: We head to the Philippines now where Typhoon Koppu is inundating the northern part of the country. Some places have seen more than 400 millimeters of rain. The storm has killed at least two people and injured five others.

SESAY: Disaster officials say 20,000 people have fled their homes, but that number is expected to rise. There are widespread power outages, flooding and landslides. Koppu's expected to linger over the Philippines' main island of Luzon for a few more days.

CNN's Matt Rivers is covering the storm from Hong Kong and he joins us now live.

[01:10:05] Matt, as we just mentioned, power outages, flood waters, and thousands displaced. How well is the government responding to the situation?

MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they say in recent briefings that they're doing the best they can given very difficult conditions, even just getting to some of these disaster areas. Given the landslides that we've seen, given the uprooted trees, given the rivers over-spilling their banks. It's very difficult, they say, to provide relief. What we've heard from our CNN affiliate, ABS-CBN, in that area is that in several of the harder-hit provinces local officials are requesting federal aid but they -- from Manila which is in the southern part of Luzon Island but they say that aid just isn't arriving fast enough. And there you see the pictures, people trying to get out of some of

these villages where the water has risen relatively quickly over the past 48 hours or so. We're told by the federal government that nearly 70 villages across several different provinces are experiencing some level of flooding like you see there in those pictures and the rain continues to fall as this storm lingers over top this island.

SESAY: Yes. Incredible pictures there that we are showing our viewers right now.

Matt, you mentioned the short-term needs. Of course people need the aid. They need these vital items. But long term there are some serious implications of this typhoon, bearing in mind that the flood waters are swamping rice farmland during the harvest time.

RIVERS: That is correct. The Philippines is one of the countries with the most rice consumption in the world. And as you mentioned, Luzon Island, the central and northern part of the island in the valleys there, that is one of the country's biggest rice-producing areas. And with so much water it's flooding these paddies, making drainage a severe issue. And typically in most of these areas the harvest does start in October and so the obvious implications of that are that if the same amount of rice is to be consumed it's going to have to be imported.

That could lead to higher prices. And for the farmers who rely on that crop as a source of revenue, as an income for themselves and their families, this certainly will have an impact. How large that impact will be, though, does remain to be seen.

SESAY: Yes. And Matt, as you mentioned, some saying that the aid is not arriving fast enough. The government saying they're doing all that they can. At this stage are they requesting international assistance?

RIVERS: As far as we know, there haven't been major calls for international assistance. The federal government says that they're doing all they can at the moment. But part of perhaps why we haven't seen broad international calls for assistance is because they're not exactly sure how widespread this damage is yet because they haven't been able to get into all of the sections that have been affected at this point.

That is their mission over the next several days as this storm begins to slowly move out of the area. They want to get into the areas that have been so greatly impacted by this typhoon.

SESAY: Matt Rivers joining us there from Hong Kong. Appreciate it, Matt. Thanks so much.

VAUSE: Let's go to meteorologist Pedram Javaheri, who is at the CNN Weather Center with all the very latest on this.

And of course, Pedram, the questions, two questions, how much longer will the rain stay around the Philippines and once it's done where next for the storm? PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, you know, at least two more

days for the first question there, John. And you know this storm brought the heaviest rainfall sometime on Saturday morning when it initialized over this region, and now we're talking about potentially not until Tuesday before it exits the picture. And to answer your second question, Taiwan as it makes a right turn, and well, I'll break that down in further detail momentarily.

But I want to show you this particular storm because just measure the cloud field associated with the storm system. It would measure about 1,000 kilometers from its northern fringe to its southern fringe. That's an area that would roughly take you from Madrid toward Paris if you were to put this storm over Europe. So it tells you how large of a storm system we're talking. That's why the impacts have been so widespread over this region.

In fact, you take a look when it made landfall in the late hours of Saturday night into Sunday, it impacted portions just south of the Cagayan Valley. That's an area right there where the rice harvest prominent across this region. The storm actually went south interact with mountains across the Sierra Madre Mountains, and then really broke apart as it reemerged back over portions of the South China Sea.

But as we're watching with the storm system the concern of course is just how slow it's moving. You take a look. Seven kilometers per hour. That's the progression at this hour over this region. With high pressure to the north it is actually really in a weak steering environment, meaning the storm system has no plans on an immediate exit out of this area. So we think over the next 24 to 48 hours it slowly pushes to the north. But still could see 200 to 300 millimeters.

In fact, some models indicate possibility of another half a meter of rainfall on top of what we've already seen over this region. And notice as we head in, say, to Wednesday and Thursday, Taipei areas around Taiwan are in line with the storm, which would be a strong tropical storm at that time, no longer a typhoon. But you take a look at the rainfall forecast. Again, widespread area of possibility, of a half a meter across the northwestern corner of Luzon.

[01:15:11] Again, Koppu exiting the picture. We have Champi, another typhoon back behind it. By the way, this is a super typhoon. Fortunately, the track of this next storm system in line is due north. It will take it back out over open waters. Places like Chichijima certainly in line for some rough weather the next couple of days. But you take a look at what's happening and what's transpired so far in 2015 you think it's been an active year, historic certainly when we're talking about major hurricanes or major tropical features, meaning category 3 or stronger.

We've had 20 of them so far in 2015 in the northern hemisphere. That breaks the previous record from 2004, John and Isha, where we had 18 major cyclones across the northern hemisphere. So yes, it has been active and the storms are certainly stronger than we've ever seen them across this part of the world.

VAUSE: Whether it's floods or fires or hurricanes, it's active a lot of places.

SESAY: Many fronts.

VAUSE: Everywhere.

JAVAHERI: Absolutely.

VAUSE: Thanks, Pedram.

SESAY: Thank you, Pedram.

JAVAHERI: Thanks for having me.

SESAY: Next on CNN NEWSROOM from Los Angeles, protests and outrage after two little girls are raped in India. We'll have the latest on the investigation and the outcry.

VAUSE: Also ahead, in the closet no more. One man comes out here on CNN to raise awareness of the struggles of being gay in South Korea.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN WORLD SPORTS HEADLINE REPORTER: I'm Andy Scholes, your CNN World Sports headlines.

The semifinals in the Rugby World Cup are set, with the remaining two quarter finals taking place on Sunday. And the day is truly dramatic game, a controversial last-gasp penalty from Bernard Foley saw Australia beat Scotland in a World Cup epic. Mark Bennett's interception try with seven minutes to play seem to have sealed one of the great upsets of World Cup history for Scotland.

But with time running out, the referee called a deliberate offside. Replay seemed to indicate the ball had come off a wallaby player. Australia wins it 35-34. And with Argentina beating Ireland 43-20, it means the Pumas will take on the Aussies, with New Zealand and South Africa meeting in the other semifinal next weekend.

For the English Premier League, Newcastle finally got their first league win of the season. In spectacular style, thrashing Norwich 6- 2. The Dutch midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum was the star of the show, becoming only the second Newcastle player to score four goals in a Premier League match. Only the legendary Alan Shearer has also done it for the Magpies.

As playoffs draw for the last four places at the European Football Championships in 2016 have taken place, Ukraine has drawn Slovenia. Bosnia-Herzegovina got the Republic of Ireland. Hungary will take on Norway. And there is an all Scandinavian clash with Sweden taking on Denmark.

All right. That's a look at your sports headlines. I'm Andy Scholes.

[01:20:23] SESAY: Hello, everyone. Huge protests in New Delhi, India after two young girls, a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old, were raped. VAUSE: Activists from the youth wing of the Opposition Congress Party

held signs and chanted outside the home of the city's chief minister. They say the government and police have failed to protect women and young girls.

SESAY: Police arrested five people in connection with the two cases including a pair of teenagers who reportedly confessed to the crime.

Malika Kapur is following the story for us and joins us now from Mumbai.

Malika, what more do we know about those arrested for these horrifying crimes?

MALIKA KAPUR, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the police in Delhi have confirmed to CNN that they have arrested two young men for their involvement in this absolutely horrific crime. They said that the two boys, they're teenagers, one is the age of 17, one is a 16- year-old boy, and both these boys live in the same impoverished, very poor neighborhood that the girls lived in. And they made the arrests on Sunday night.

Now this horrific incident took place on Friday night. There was a power outage, an electricity outage for a few minutes around 15 minutes on Friday night. And it was in those 15 minutes that these two teenagers managed to take this little girl. They took her away to a secluded area, away from her home, and then allegedly raped her. Her family began looking for her and it was several hours later that they found this little girl beaten, abused, bleeding, dumped in a park nearby.

After which they did go to the police and the police confirmed that they had been able to track these two suspects down after interviewing more than 250 people or so. And they've also made some more arrests in another case of another young girl just 5 years old being allegedly raped also earlier on Friday.

These are the latest details we have, that arrests have been made in both these cases.

SESAY: Malika, while obviously the Indian public is certainly heartened by the fact there have been arrests, rape activists in India have repeatedly made the point that India's judicial system fails rape victims. So here's the real question. Will there be a speedy prosecution in these two cases? That's the real test.

KAPUR: That is the real test. And that's a very, very valid question, Isha. Like you said, the public is heartened by a few signs of progress. And we should take a step back and go back to the Nirbhaya rape case of December 2012 which is really the rape case that galvanized India and made security a national issue here.

Now it was after the Nirbhaya rape case that the Indian government began using special fast track courts for rape cases. And the Nirbhaya case, that trial was completed in about seven months. And while seven months doesn't necessarily seem speedy in many parts of the world, you know, in India, here, it is considered speedy because in this country I can tell you that many court cases go on for years and years and years.

It isn't uncommon to have a case winding its way through the courts for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. So when you're having rape cases being tried and done within about seven months, that is very good progress for India. And even in this case we've heard that police say that they hope to introduce some official charges against these teenage boys within the next seven days. So things are moving faster than they have in the past. Are they going to get fast enough or they can never really be fast enough in cases like this when everybody is just waiting for justice to be served?

SESAY: Malika Kapur joining us there from Mumbai. Malika, appreciate it. Thank you.

VAUSE: A pro-refugee politician in Germany is the new mayor of Cologne but she spent Election Day in hospital. Henriette Reker was stabbed in the neck while campaigning on Saturday.

SESAY: The suspect is in custody. He told police he didn't approve of Reker's support for migrants entering the country. Reker is expected to make a full recovery.

VAUSE: Germany's chancellor condemned the attack. Ahead of a meeting with Turkey's prime minister about the migrant crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel is offering Turkey an expedited path to European Union membership in exchange for Turkey slowing the flow of migrants and accepting migrants rejected by Europe.

SESAY: That meeting comes as the chancellor faces growing pressure at home to tighten control of Germany's borders.

Atika Shubert has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[01:25:08] ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They call her Mama Merkel. For some, she is the embodiment of European wealth and generosity, the leader who opened the doors for Syrian refugees to Germany and beyond. But for her harshest critics, Mama Merkel is a withering dismissal of weak leadership in the face of a crisis that threatens to end Europe's free borders.

We took to the streets of the capital to find out what Germans really think of Mama Merkel.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She just said that everybody's welcome. That's good.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I come from New Zealand, where we're not taking too many refugees in, we're actually really -- we're in great admiration of what she's done.

SHUBERT (on camera): Really? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And how many people she's opened the doors for.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The idea behind it of course is to help, which is always good. But I don't think it's a good idea to tell the people to come over, we want you, you know, and then after four weeks, we start to close down. What's the idea behind it? So there doesn't seem to be a plan.

SHUBERT (voice-over): That concern has dropped her popularity to its lowest point in recent years. For a chancellor that's been in power for 10 years and possibly hoping for another term, that is not good news.

The problem, too many refugees. Germany now expects as many as a million to apply for asylum this year alone. Up to 10,000 a day are crossing the border into Germany.

Many initially applauded her warm welcome but with school gymnasiums, festival tents and churches across the country now overwhelmed, many are wondering how the country will cope.

Merkel insists she is coming up with solutions, devoting $6 billion to refugee housing and integration, proposing transit zones in Turkey, Hungary and Greece to slow down the number of refugees. In the meantime, however, Mama Merkel may find Germany is not prepared to provide such a warm welcome anymore.

Atika Shubert, CNN, Berlin.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Still to come here on CNN NEWSROOM, Donald Trump says if he'd been president he could have prevented 9/11. We'll tell you why those comments are not sitting well with one rival in particular. No prizes for guessing. The brother of former U.S. President George W. Bush.

SESAY: Plus, he got married to a man in the United States, but in his home country of South Korea he's kept it a secret from his family until now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[01:31:03] SESAY: You're watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm Isha Sesay.

VAUSE: Thanks for staying with us. I'm John Vause. Let's check the headlines.

A shooting at a bus station in southern Israel has left two dead, nearly a dozen wounded. The two killed were an Israeli soldier and an Eritrean man. Police tell CNN affiliate, Channel 2, the Eritrean was mistaken for one of the attackers. The alleged shooter is also dead.

SESAY: The U.S. military officials say a coalition airstrike in Syria killed a key member of a member of al Qaeda. Sanafi al Nasri was believed to be a member of the Khorasan Group, a collection of veteran jihadis fighting in Syria.

VAUSE: In the Philippines, at least two people have died as Typhoon Koppu batters the islands with heavy rain. The storm has forced thousands from their homes. There are widespread power outages, flooding and landslides. Koppu is expected to linger over the main island for a few more days yet.

SESAY: Chinese President Xi Jinping will begin a statement to the United Kingdom Monday with a focus on building financial ties. A number of multibillion-dollar deals with expected to be reached during the four-day visit.

VAUSE: President Xi is expected to receive a warmer welcome than he had last month in the United States. He had high praise for the U.K.'s choice to strengthen commercial ties with China.

SESAY: President Xi's visit comes with word of China's economy posting its slowest growth since 2009. Gross domestic product grew by 6.9 percent in the third quarter.

VAUSE: That is better than the 6.7 percent many economists had predicted. But it's still a slowdown from the 7 percent posted in the first half of the year.

SESAY: But the GDP is just one number.

VAUSE: One number.

Andrew Stevens takes a closer look at China's other economic indicators.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN ASIA-PACIFIC EDITOR: When it comes to growth, one number does not tell it all. Least of all in China, where official numbers are often met with a healthy dose of skepticism.

GDP, the most used measure of any country's growth, is an indication. But to get a better gauge of the world's second-biggest economy, many economists try to dig deeper. They look behind the headlines. In fact, China's own premier, Li Keqiang, once described GDP numbers as manmade and for reference only. Back in 2007, according to leaked U.S. government governments, he said that electricity consumption, rail cargo, bank lending, they were better measures to look at economic performance.

But now, as China moves away from manufacturing towards a service- focused economy, many argue that even those measures are even now outdated. The investment research house, Sanford C. Bernstein, has created its own index and it looks at things like movie ticket sales, mobile phone subscribers, airline passengers, Alibaba sales, home prices and car sales. And under those, China's third quarter growth is just 4.1 percent. But Bernstein does admit that the index has "a mountain of shortcuts and assumptions." Its own words. That makes an accurate estimate all but impossible. Let's take another example. In 2014, China officially grew 7.3

percent. Bernstein's model says 6.7 percent. But get this, the Li Keqiang model shows the economy actually shrank 1.6 percent. That's right, a recession.

But in a vast country with so many moving parts even Beijing is unlikely to know exactly how fast its economy is growing. Virtually every economist will tell you, though, that it is growing and still at a pace that is the envy of most developed countries.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Asia-Pacific editor, Andrew Stevens, joins us now live from Hong Kong.

OK, Andrew, you've thoroughly confused everybody with that report.

(LAUGHTER)

If you look at the numbers which came out today, what do you make of them?

STEVENS: That wasn't actually the point of doing that.

(LAUGHTER)

The point is to show that it is very difficult to get a clear read on this. And perhaps the trend is your friend in this one. John, looking at the number today, at that headline number, 6.9 percent, it was better than expected. It is up. A lot of people looking at 6.7 percent. The bottom line here, though, is that it is still, by Chinese standards, it's very weak. If you look at what happened last week, 2014, China was growing at its slowest rate for some 25 years. There is no doubt there is a slowdown going on and a significant slowdown.

The bright spot in this, it looks like the consumer, people are actually putting their hands in their pockets and spending at the shops. That's key because that's exactly what Beijing wants to happen for the Chinese economy. So a couple of little rays of light in there. But don't be fooled. This is not over yet. Expect the economy to continue to weaken.

[01:35:54] VAUSE: It confused me. I'm not saying everybody. I'm easily confused.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

SESAY: Has there been much reaction on the stock market?

STEVENS: I should tell you, there is a reason why economics is called the dismal science.

(LAUGHTER) No, as far as the stock markets go, there has been a little bit of a reaction. This is not, whoo-hoo, back to the races for the global economy because China's gotten a little bit better than expected. There are the numbers you see there. They've been down pretty much all day. It's in the margin of error, if you like. So no big surprises come from China. Investors are reading this as further signs that the economy is still weak. So let's not take any bets on the Chinese economy right now.

VAUSE: In the old days they used to say look at the sky, and the sky is gray and polluted, the economy's doing just fine. If it's blue, they're in trouble. Does that apply?

STEVENS: No. I was in Beijing last week. Funny you should say that. And it was a pretty average day. We were looking at the apps on pollution, and it was seven or eight times the recommended safe level by the World Health Organization. There's plenty of pollution but not a lot of economic activity. So I think we can safely con sine that theory to history -- John?

VAUSE: I reckon it came in at 6.9 percent because they didn't have the courage to major 7 percent, but that's just my opinion.

Andrew Stevens live for us in Hong Kong. Thanks, Andrew.

STEVENS: Thanks, John.

SESAY: Next you're going to be reading the tea leaves.

STEVENS: I do that already. I'll read yours next.

(LAUGHTER)

SESAY: Wait until the break, dear.

STEVENS: Sure.

SESAY: Moving on, it's often challenging for many in South Korea's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to be open about their sexuality. Many don't come out to family, friends, and co- workers, and even go as far as making up stories about fake relationships.

VAUSE: Kathy Novak, though, met one man who has decided to come out to his family. He's actually doing it right here on CNN in her report. And he's doing it to try and raise awareness.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHY NOVAK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mickey Kim and Tony Ruse are business partners running this recording studio in Seoul. They're also happily married. They got hitched in California two years ago. But Kim tells his family a very different story.

MICKEY KIM, HOMOSEXUAL MAN: OK, I have a girlfriend, it's been a year. I create these fake stories to cover up. NOVAK: When he interned at a big company, he says he also lied to his

bosses.

KIM: They don't really know what gay is. And I was afraid I might lose my job.

NOVAK: He says it's an extremely stressful way to live.

(on camera): In this conservative society, it's so relatively unusual to meet an openly gay South Korean. In a poll, the Pew Research Center reported the majority of people surveyed find homosexuality unacceptable. Just 18 percent find it acceptable.

(SHOUTING)

NOVAK (voice-over): Opposition to this year's pride parade was so fierce, organizers were forced to change the date.

"The Bible states that homosexuality is a sin," says this protester.

Confused young people are running away from home and turning up at the crisis center, where transgender counselor, Edie Park, works.

"These adolescents don't get any information from school or from their community," she says. "So they think they've contracted a disease."

That is a feeling Mickey Kim remembers well.

KIM: I sometimes fear society as well. Because, OK, why am I like this? I know no one whose like this. Maybe I'm crazy. I'm mentally sick.

NOVAK: These days, he's more comfortable in his own skin and is out to his friends and co-workers, if not to his family. He believes society is slowly changing, but Kim and his husband have installed security cameras just in case others aren't so comfortable with their relationship and want to express that opposition violently.

They're still waiting for the day when they can proudly admit they're much more than business partners.

Kathy Novak, CNN, Seoul.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SESAY: Very interesting.

[01:40:06] VAUSE: It will be interesting to see the reaction from the family.

SESAY: Very interesting, indeed.

Now, the so-called "doomsday" vault holds thousands of crops in case of a global catastrophe. But now hear why Syria is making a withdrawal much earlier than expected. That's ahead on NEWSROOM, L.A.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SESAY: Hello, everyone. There are signs of progress for former NBA and reality TV star, Lamar Odom. Sources say he woke up and spoke to his estranged wife, Khloe Kardashian, in the past few days.

VAUSE: On Saturday, Kim Kardashian tweeted that Odom had opened his eyes and smiled. Odom had been in a coma since Tuesday, when he was found unconscious in a Nevada brothel.

SESAY: Let's turn our attention now to the 2016 race for the White House, where Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, is claiming that if he'd been president in 2001, the 9/11 attacks never would have happened.

VAUSE: No surprise here. Rival Jeb Bush jumping to defend his brother's presidency.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Question. Do you blame George W. Bush for 9/11?

DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & CEO, TRUMP ORGANIZATION: Look, look, Jeb said we were safe with my brother, we were safe. Well, the World Trade Center just fell down. Now, am I trying to blame him? I'm not blaming anybody. But the World Trade Center came down. So when he said we were safe, that's not safe. We lost 3,000 people. It was one of the greatest -- probably the greatest catastrophe ever in this country. If you think about it, right?

WALLACE: What would you have done?

TRUMP: Well, I would have been much different. I must tell you. Somebody said, well, it wouldn't have been any different. Well, it would have been. I am extremely, extremely tough on illegal immigration. I'm extremely tough on people coming into this country. I believe that if I were running things, I doubt those families would have -- I doubt that those people would have been in the country. So there's a good chance those people would not have been in our country. With that being said, I'm not blaming George Bush, but I don't want Jeb Bush to say, "My brother kept us safe," because September 11th was one of the worst days in the history of this country.

[01:45:32] JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST, THE LEAD: So what are you objecting to about Mr. Trump's remarks about 9/11 and your brother?

JEB BUSH, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR: Look, my brother responded to a crisis, and he did it as you would hope a president would do. He united the country. He organized our country. And he kept us safe. And there's no denying that. The great majority of Americans believe that. And I don't know why he keeps bringing this up. It doesn't show that he's a serious person as it relates to being commander-in-chief and being the architect of a foreign policy. Across the spectrum of foreign policy, Mr. Trump talks about things that -- as though he's still on "The Apprentice." I mean, literally, talking about Syria saying ISIS should take out Assad, then Russia should take out ISIS, as though it were some kind of board game and not a serious approach. This is just another example of the lack of seriousness. And this is a serious time. We're under grave threats again. And I think we need a president with a steady hand.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: He could go on for a while.

(LAUGHTER)

VAUSE: Well, more than a year before they actually vote.

(CROSSTALK)

VAUSE: The back and forth.

SESAY: Trump and Bush -- the back and forth, yeah. Trump and Bush have been trading barbs over the terrorist attacks.

VAUSE: Donald Trump likes watching Sunday morning television because he tweeted out that, "Jeb Bush should stop defending his brother and," in Mr. Trump's words, "Focus on his own shortcomings."

SESAY: Well, a vault designed to protect vital crops from a global catastrophe is being tapped into earlier than anyone expected.

VAUSE: That's because Syria is asking to withdraw some of its seed samples because of the country's ongoing civil war.

Arwa Damon explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(EXPLOSION)

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Imagine earth decimated, essential food crops wiped out by catastrophe.

It is here, buried deep in an arctic mountain where the seeds for humanity's survival are stored.

But it wasn't an environmental disaster that caused the first mass withdrawal from the so-called "doomsday" seed vault. It was war, the war in Syria.

Cut off from its vault in the battle-torn Aleppo, ICARDA, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, requested a portion of the seeds, it deposited, back.

MAHMOUD SOLH, DIRECTOR GENERAL, ICARDA: This is where we are storing the seeds, the first shipment of seed that came from civil war.

DAMON: Now based in Lebanon, ICARDA director general, Mahmoud Solh, has the challenging job of keeping precious genetic lines alive. This is a wild relative of wheat that likely doesn't exist in nature

anymore.

(on camera): Why is what I'm holding in my hand so important?

SOLH: This is a source of desirable trade including drought tolerance, including heat tolerance, including resistant to diseases and so forth.

DAMON (voice-over): But it's not just the wild strains. It's other crops, like these fava seeds that have been grown by farmers over hundreds of years.

(on camera): This seed contains traits that might end up being necessary for the survival of the species, and we just don't know it yet?

SOLH: Exactly.

DAMON (voice-over): The seeds, with traits potentially vital to help us adapt to climate change, will be replanted in Lebanon, just across the border from Syria.

Another vault built to replace the one in Aleppo, lost to war. And a parallel project in Morocco.

(EXPLOSION)

DAMON: Crop diversity is a prerequisite for food security, and experts say our past is fundamental to our future survival.

But war has meant that humanity has had to activate its backup plan sooner than anyone ever anticipated.

Arwa Damon, CNN, the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Short break here on CNN NEWSROOM. When we come back, Amazon cracking down on fake product reviews on its website. Details in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[01:51:23] PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You're watching CNN "Weather" watch. I'm Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri.

(WEATHER REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VAUSE: Amazon is expanding its campaign against fake product reviews on its website. The online retailer is suing more than 1,000 people they say are selling those kinds of reviews. SESAY: The lawsuit is targeting users of fiverr.com, a website where

writing jobs are sold for as little as $5. Fiverr has not said whether they will cooperate with the case.

VAUSE: Monday is a huge day for "Star Wars" fans. All over the world huge, huge. Don't freak out, though, Jedi lovers.

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

VAUSE: It's not a "Rocky" movie. What are you talking about?

(LAUGHTER)

Take a look at the theatrical poster for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." Starwars.com says it showcases an awakening of the dark side and the light.

SESAY: How can you -- how can you not be excited because there is more. The movie trailer will debut in the U.S. during "Monday Night Football," and as soon as the trailer airs, you can buy tickets for the December 18th release. Yes!

VAUSE: You know what tomorrow is also known as? Monday.

(LAUGHTER)

OK. If politics is the theater of the absurd, the U.S. presidential race may just be high comedy. And lately, Democratic contender, Bernie Sanders, has got a lot of attention for his energetic and distinct way of talking.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I), VERMONT & DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Let us be clear that the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior of wall street, where fraud is a business model, helped to destroy this economy and the lives of millions of people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[01:55:15] SESAY: A very distinct way of speaking. And with that he's getting the attention of comedians. Check out Larry David's impression on the NBC show "Saturday Night Live."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY DAVID, COMEDIAN, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: We're doomed!

(LAUGHTER)

We need a revolution!

(LAUGHTER)

Millions of people on the streets! And we've got to do something! And we've got to do it now!

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: So what does Sanders think of the impression?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANDERS: In terms of Larry David, I think we're going to put him up on the stage at our next rally, let him do it rather than me. He does it better than I do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: You talk to Larry David, he does it better than me.

SESAY: You sound more like Rocky.

(LAUGHTER)

VAUSE: We were doing Rocky at the commercial break. That's why.

You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause.

SESAY: And I'm Isha Sesay.

Stay with us. The news continues with Rosemary Church and Errol Barnett right after this.

(LAUGHTER)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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