Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

President Donald Trump Attended G-7 Summit In Southern France; Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has Just Completed Three Weeks For Treatment For Pancreatic Cancer; Trump Administration Has Implemented A New Rule That Would Allow The Administration To Detain Migrant Children Indefinitely At The Border, Replacing A Longstanding Supreme Court Settlement That Limits How Long Children Would Remain In Custody; Inside Venezuela Tracking The Trail Of Bloody Gold That May Be Keeping Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro In Power; CNN Flies Along With NASA To Get A First-Hand Look At The Shocking Impact Of The Climate Crisis On The World's Biggest Islands; CNN's Film About Halston; Astronaut Anne McClain Is Accused Of Accessing Her Estranged Spouse's Bank Account And Stealing Her Identity From Space. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired August 24, 2019 - 16:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:00:10] ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Thanks for staying with me. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Ana Cabrera in New York.

Let me take you to southern France where it is night one of the G-7 summit. President Trump arrived for a welcome dinner a short time ago and the dinner should be winding down here shortly. Hopefully we will get some kind of readout as to what was discussed, but apparently we're not going to get any more pictures.

CNN Chief White House Correspondent, Jim Acosta is traveling with the President.

Jim, a lid has been called meaning no more filming tonight. Do we know why?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. We don't know why, Ana. It is unusual because typically, as you know, when we have a presidential trip like this the pool will stay with the President, the group of reporters and photographers and so on that are assigned to stick with the President on a regular basis on these sorts of trips. They will stay with him until he gets back to his hotel and he is done for the night.

Something unusual has happened here in France. And that while this G- 7 working dinner is under way, they essentially told the White House pool that's all we need from you guys, have a good night and they call what they called lid which means no more photographs of the President.

But typically a pool stays with the president until he gets back to his hotel in case something happens, and it has to be reported out to the world and we're not seeing that in this case. So it is going to raise all sorts of questions as to what's going on here. Why did they do this? Why did they decide to send the press home before the President gets back to his hotel.

CABRERA: And this trip follows a very chaotic week for the President. The Dow plummeted Friday. Both China and the U.S. imposed new tariffs. Trump lashed out at Denmark. Former aides expressed concern over his erratic behavior. There's been a dip in his approval rating. And yet the President said he is the chosen one which he apparently brought up again today?

ACOSTA: That's right, Ana. The President tweeted and he said that, you know, everyone in the press should have known this. That he was just joking when he said he was the chosen one earlier this week. He was talking about trade with China. He looked up to the sky and said he was the chosen one.

I will tell you in talking to some of the reporters who was there when the President said this, they didn't think he was joking. He didn't look like he was joking at the time. If you look at the footage he is not laughing or smiling or really anything that would say that he is joking about being the chosen one. I will say that I spoke to a senior White House official earlier this afternoon who said, of course, he was just joking when he said that. So I think they are trying to clean that one up.

But there's a lot to clean up after this week, Ana. And I will tell you that the president's comments before heading into this G-7, they have really rattled U.S. allies, longstanding U.S. allies who are at this summit. They are wondering what the President is doing with China and what will happen with that.

And then just heading to France for the summit, on his way leaving the White House, the President talked about how he was going to slap tariffs on French wine if the French were to escalate things on their end. And Donald Tusk who is the European counsel, one of the top officials at the EU, told reporters earlier today that these sorts of petty squabbles run the risk of plunging the world into a global recession. And so there are a lot of jitters here.

And unlike previous G-7s during previous administrations where these major world powers will get together and talk about what to do about Iran, what to do about North Korea, and what to do about Russia. They are now talking about how to deal with President Trump. I suppose the President likes it that way.

He likes all of the attention on himself, but he has unnerved longstanding U.S. ally. No question about it. And we are going to find out how that plays out.

He has breakfast with the new British prime minister Boris Johnson tomorrow morning. They potentially will have a better relationship than he had with Theresa May. Just talking with officials this afternoon. It has been noted that he hasn't really tweeted about prime minister Johnson yet.

Remember when he would go into Britain, he would say about Theresa May and her handling of Brexit. So that hasn't happened so far here with this G-7 summit. And so there's the potential that they will have a warmer relationship with the President have with Theresa May in the past.

CABRERA: And the President saying everybody is getting along. I think we will accomplish a lot this weekend. That is yet to be seeing. We hope that happens.

Jim Acosta, thank you.

Let's bring in "Daily Beast" Contributor and CNN Global Affairs Analyst, Kim Dozier. Also former U.S. Intelligence Communications Director, Shawn Turner who is also a CNN national security analyst.

Kim, President Trump is meeting with nations that have been friends of the U.S. for decades., if not centuries. But even if he is hoping for some solidarity in his growing trade war with China and how to address that nation, he made this new terror threat over French wine just as he is leaving the White House.

I want you to watch the President and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron as they tried to downplay the tension this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We actually have a lot in common with Emmanuel. We have been friends for a long time. And every once in a while we go at each other a little bit, not very much and we get along very well. And I think I can say we have a special relationship. We all remember the Eiffel tower dinner. That was a very good beginning. And we have some really great things to talk about.

[16:05:13] EMMANUEL MACRON, FRENCH PRESIDENT: We will discuss, as well, about the economic, the global situation. How to decrease it and fix the situation in terms of trade because I think if you meant it to fix the situation, the seven of us, will fix a great part of the work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: So Kim, we saw that, we heard that, talking about a very special relationship, a very good relationship. The President Macron also all smiles as they met for tonight's working dinner. Where do you see things headed at the G-7? Can we expect real cooperation?

KIM DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, the G-7 leaders have had a chance to get a measure of Donald Trump in previous summits. They know what they can expect in terms of big outsized threats from over in Washington or by Twitter, but a more conciliatory Trump in person. This is their opportunity to flatter him and also give him some tough talk behind closed doors.

One of the things that president Macron said there was that perhaps the European economy could be improved by tax cut. That's music to President Trump's ears. Senior administration officials told us before Trump headed to Paris -- to Beirut (ph), that they were going to be bringing the message that the EU could possibly recover its economy by taking the page out of Donald Trump's book. So there is Macron highlighting that playbook but you can bet behind

closed doors there will be tough talk about Chinese trade, threatened EU tariffs, you name it.

CABRERA: Right, the President threatening to, again, tariff French wine. Just weeks ago, Shawn, the President said he was only kidding when he threatened tariffs on German cars. One G-7 diplomat told "the Washington Post" quote "ahead of the summit, everyone of this, you just hope it ends without any problem. It just gets harder and harder."

SHAWN TURNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes.

CABRERA: So I wonder while our partners depend on the U.S., you know, in large part for its military might against threats from countries like Russia or North Korea or Iran, is there a point in which they might try to just stand on their own?

TURNER: Yes. You know, I think that's the real concern here. Look, one of the real challenges we have with the relationship between the United States and the G-7 partners is that when the president goes to the G-7, he understands that the nation's represented there are absolutely partners and allies of the United States. But the leaders who represent those nations are not necessarily partners and allies of Donald Trump. And what he doesn't realize is that that actually does hurt the relationship.

We have seen a number of different instances in which those nations are talking to each other more and working out a global problem among themselves more and the United States is on the sidelines. And that's not a position that the United States has ever been in before. And I think that when Donald Trump is there he feels that and it's a very awkward situation for him.

So I think that for those of us who work in the national security space and who are still very concerned about some of these emerging national security threats, there is a real concern that these -- that there will be decisions made, there will be initiatives made and the United States won't have a seat at the table.

So I think that for the President's team, for those around who understand that, they have a big responsibility at the G-7 summit to understand what the President is doing, but also work behind the scenes to maintain these really important relationships that we have built over time.

CABRERA: Let me follow up on you, Shawn, on something you said there because between the President's track record and the G-7 summit and the ongoing pressure he has been putting on in recent years, does that weaken the U.S.? Does he run the risk of putting America last?

TURNER: You know, it really does, and I'll tell you a little bit why, Ana. You know, this relationship is one -- these relationships are relationships that not only deal with traditional national security threat, but you know, the president recently said and was reporting that he had real concern with some of the topics being discussed at the G-7 and those were not topics that he necessarily wanted to discuss.

But look, when you talk about things like global climate change, if we talk about global health issues, water scarcity, these sort of issues, these are national security issues that the rest of the world, the rest of the G-7 partners are all concerned with. They are coming together to try to find some solutions for these problems and to put initiatives in place.

And look, you know, if you think about some of those emerging national security issue, they just aren't at the forefront of Donald Trump's mind but they are the kind of issues that impact the everyday lives of Americans. And so he is going to find himself in a situation in which these issues are being dealt with by the rest of the world.

But the United States is going have to work with very hard to repair the damage that's been done to those relationships and to get back at the table. And hopefully, as we are used to, to find ourselves in a position of leadership on many of those issue again.

[16:10:06] CABRERA: Kim, on Shawn's point, the ecological crisis stemming from the fires in the Amazon rain forest, for example, the world relies on the Amazon for 20 percent of our oxygen, fires are on the minds of at least some leaders there at G-7 including British prime minister Boris Johnson. Let's watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRIME MINISTER BORIS JOHNSON, UNITED KINGDOM: The diversity, habitat lost the excruciating scenes that you have seen from the Amazon, this is being repeated around the world in the loss of species, in the loss of habitats and in some places, it's irreversible. We need to talk about that. We need to escalate here at the G-7 the tragedy of what humanity is inflicting on the natural world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Kim, we reported this week that President Trump was irked after past G-7 gatherings because they spent too much time focused on the environment. Johnson appears to be one of the President's best friends right now in the G-7. Do you think he can help convince the President to give more attention to the climate crisis?

DOZIER: Well, look, Johnson is also speaking to his own base back in Britain. They care about climate change. Yes, He will probably bring it up, but Britain needs the U.S. more than the U.S. needs Britain right now. So what could be happening is you will see some tough talk, but it won't emerge publicly.

President Macron has already made sure that the climate discussion is happening on Monday when other non-G-7 countries are coming into that discussion. And there won't be an overall joint communique because they won't want to try to trying to drag President Donald Trump into signing that again and having something happen like happened at the last G-7 when he pulled out of the signature as he was flying away because he was annoyed at something that the Canadian prime minister said in a press conference. CABRERA: Kim Dozier, Shawn Turner, thank you both for being here.

Back in the U.S., the new health scare for one Supreme Court justice. The President says he hopes Ruth Bader Ginsburg does really well after treatment for pancreatic cancer. We will have the latest.

Plus, Trump's interest in buying Greenland has generated plenty of political heat, but real heat and melting ice make what's happening to the island a real cause for international concern.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:15:56] CABRERA: A major headline out of the Supreme Court this week, this time about one of its own. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has just completed three weeks for treatment for pancreatic cancer.

The high court put out a statement saying in part the tumor was treated definitively and there's no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body. Justice Ginsburg will continue to have periodic blood tests and scans. No further treatment is needed at this time.

President Trump sent his prayers to the 86-year-old justice ahead of his departure to the G-7 summit in France.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Well, I hope she does really well. And our thoughts and prayers are with her. It's a very serious situation. I'm hoping she is going to be fine. She has pulled through a lot. She is strong, very tough, but we wish her well, very well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: CNN Contributor and Co-Author of the book "The Notorious RBG," Irin Carmon joins us now.

This is her fourth bout battling cancer. I mean, talk about a tough woman.

IRIN CARMON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Throughout her life, Justice Ginsburg has beat the odds. So this is actually the second time cancer has been detected at her pancreas. The first time it was caught early. There was surgery. She was already being monitored for her previous, more serious (INAUDIBLE) with colorectal cancer.

CABRERA: Right. That was in the '90s (INAUDIBLE) and then it was 2009, right, with the pancreatic.

CARMON: Correct, 2009. And then in December after she had fallen and fractured her rib they found a tumor on her lungs. And that, they were able to have successful treatment. She was cancer-free until this most recent news.

So we have been here before. That said, Justice Ginsburg's entire life has been about defying the odds. She has -- no one ever expected that she would be on the Supreme Court. No one ever expected she would transform the constitution for women during the time that she was sick. Until her sickness this year at age 86 she never missed a day on the bench in 25 years. So there's nobody that wants Justice Ginsburg back on the bench and working as much as she does.

CABRERA: And in fact, it doesn't seem like there's any sign of her slowing down given she was just at a Broadway show on Thursday. She has got speaking engagements coming up starting on Monday, right?

CARMON: Yes. She keeps up a schedule that for any person let alone an 86-year-old would be exhausting. She wasn't just at one Broadway show, she has been spotted at several. She was spotted at the movie at Lincoln Center seeing the farewell.

She is scheduled for 11 speaking engagements in September and so far she hasn't canceled them. That is something that she has done in the past when she has been ill. So clearly she is feeling well enough to keep up her schedule at least for now. The court has said that they haven't found further evidence of cancer and that she has tolerated it well.

So far, for the many, many fans concerned for her, all of that is pretty optimistic.

CABRERA: And yet she is 86 years old. She has been on the Supreme Court now for 26 years, more than a quarter century. Do you think the thought of retirement has crossed her mind?

CARMON: I don't think it has and it certainly hasn't under the Trump administration. Any successor that trump would appoint would be so opposed to the values that she has stood for throughout that entire career. Though there was significant pressure on her to retire when Obama was president and Democrats controlled the Senate but she repeatedly said she was not ready to go.

There were charges that it was sexist to pressure her to go because finally a woman was given a chance. At that time she was the only woman on the court. The court also said that she continued to work on the Supreme Court while she was getting radiation.

So no, I do not think that she will leave the court by her own volition any time soon and she fully intends to keep on working.

CABRERA: I mean, her name is now synonymous with toughness and with dedication, clearly, with intelligence. She is, you know, directly tied to women's rights and advancements in this country. Do you think there's something left for her to accomplish that she sees as something that she needs to accomplish before she calls it quits?

CARMON: Yes, I think she would like to be a justice in the majority more often and use the dissenting color that she puts on when she is lost the majority more often -- sorry, less often. And you know if the winds of the courts shift as they perhaps stood to, if Hillary Clinton were going to become president, she would have found herself less in the minority and more able to shape the direction of the law of preserve its president. So I think what she wants to accomplish is to try to see the court out

of what she considers a very dark time, a very sharp turn to the right overturning a lot of presidents. So I think she wants to stick around and make sure that the work that she has been doing for the last half century won't be undone. Whether she will, let's hope.

[16:20:32] CABRERA: Irin Carmon, thank you.

CARMON: Thank you.

CABRERA: Good to have you here.

Now to the border. The Trump administration says it is lifting restrictions in detaining migrant children saying families can now be held indefinitely. But are these policies doing what they think? We will take a look next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:24:26] CABRERA: A tragic story out of Texas. A young couple who married at their local courthouse died just minutes after tying the knot. Nineteen-year-old Harley Morgan and 20-year-old Rhianna Boudreaux were killed in a car accident after leaving their wedding ceremony. They were high school sweethearts.

Their car collided with a pickup truck which according to police was towing a trailer loaded with a tractor. The driver of the truck was not injured. The groom's mother and sister were following the couple and witnessed the deadly crash just feet away. The detective division of the police department is now investigating.

A new report details the lack of transparency from the Trump administration about what exactly is happening with migrants at the border. U.S. customs and border protection is refusing to publicly report the data that they are collecting about how many migrants are suffering from contagious diseases in their care.

And this comes as CBP has announced it will not provide flu vaccines for migrant children in their care citing the complexities of operating a vaccination program. So far three migrant children have died in U.S. custody from the flu just since December.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has implemented a new rule that would allow the administration to detain migrant children indefinitely at the border, replacing a longstanding Supreme Court settlement that limits how long children would remain in custody. Now the point, they say, is to keep families together. The acting director of the U.S. citizenship and immigration services has defended this new rule.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[16:26:00] KEN CUCCINELLI, ACTING DIRECTOR, U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND MIGRANT SERVICES: This is a deterrent because they know that instead of rushing the border which is what's been going on for a number of years now, by using the massive numbers coming to the border and overwhelming our facilities and our capacity to hold folks, now they can and will, to the extent we are able to do so, hold them until those hearings happen. They won't simply be released into the interior for us to never see them again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Joining us now is journalist Alice Driver. She is live on the border. She's extensively covered the immigration crisis.

Alice, from your experience, will this work as a deterrent because families don't now know that they will come in and be released?

ALICE DRIVER, JOURNALIST: Well, definitely, I'm here on (INAUDIBLE) on the Mexico-Guatemala border. And behind me you can see tents of actually dozens of families from Africa who have been camped out here for months because with the pressures that Trump has put on Mexican president Lopez Obrador to stop migrants from coming to the U.S., African migrants have actually lost their only legal pathway to travel through Mexico to request asylum in the U.S. or in Canada.

CABRERA: Wow. So again, I think people have the assumption that most of these migrants are coming from southern or Central America. And yet you now open our eyes to again, diversity of migrants who are trying to come into the U.S. being held there in Mexico including African migrants.

We talked about this Flores rule being essentially skirted through this new ruling. Does the administration have the ability to just unilaterally change the Flores rule and actually hold children indefinitely?

DRIVER: No, absolutely. A lot of migrants here are worried about that. I'm speaking to people from Angola, from the DRC, from Ghana. And what they have said is that they think that indefinite detention is unlawful. And in fact, many of them told me they would much prefer to request asylum in Canada.

CABRERA: So they would rather go to Canada. What else are you hearing from the migrants that you're talking to there about what their experiences have been like?

DRIVER: What -- I have spoken to -- I have spoken to several migrants who are from LGBTQ community, one in particular yesterday who -- his partner was macheted to death in Ghana, and you know, LGBTQ members are from countries where you really can't live openly as who you are. And he said that because of the way that President Trump has talked about the LGBTQ community in the United States, he would never want to request asylum from the U.S. and he would rather request from Canada.

CABRERA: Now the trump administration is tied to Mexico's cooperation, right, allowing migrants to remain in Mexico while they await their asylum proceedings. How is that working out?

DRIVER: Well, what's happening here on the border with Guatemala is that for specific -- in this case, for any migrants coming from Africa, previously they were allowed to request a permission -- it was called an exit permission to travel to Mexico. And with the pressure from President Trump Lopez Obrador was what he did was ended that permission.

So in fact these African migrants who have been here for months and living in tents who were with, you know, small children are quite desperate because they don't have food, they have run out of money and yesterday a young man said to me, he said I have never stolen in my life. I'm not interested in stealing, but you know, what's going to happen to me if I'm here indefinitely in limbo?

CABRERA: All right. Alice Driver, thank you for being our eyes and ears on the ground. I appreciate it.

A CNN Exclusive from inside Venezuela taka look at the brutal way's gangs are using torture, murder and gold to help keep Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro clinging to power.

[00:16:30]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: A CNN Exclusive report from inside Venezuela tracking the trail of bloody gold that maybe keeping Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro in power.

Now, the same gold that allows Maduro to allegedly buy the military's loyalty to his government. CNN International Correspondent, Isa Soares goes inside the gold mines, interviewing miners, tortured by Venezuelan gangs and tracking the gold all the way to the halls of Venezuela's government in Caracas. And a warning to our viewers, some of the images you see are graphic.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ISA SOARES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: On the fringes of the Amazon rainforest, a state-sponsored network of violent gangs and corrupt Venezuelan military hide amongst a fast land, rich minerals and seeping gold.

All this has made this area Maduro's El Dorado and it's this that's giving him the financial lifeline.

We've come deep into Venezuela's mining arc to find out how Nicolas Maduro is holding on to power and able to resist American pressure.

He's given himself direct control over this land and he is bleeding it dry. Enriching himself and buying the allegiance of the military and it all starts with the local miners.

[00:16:35]

With mouths to feed our home, risk it all is operating this lawless region. We venture in 50 meters deep. It is a precarious operation. Inside the miners guide us through the various levels and galleries, past evidence of a colonial thirst for gold.

Along the way, I meet Darwin Rojas who has been mining here for three years now. Path breaking work in intense humidity. Everywhere you look speckle shimmer from above. This mine has been so

productive for them because they have got 250 kilos of gold out of this mine just to give you a sense really on why it's called the millionaire mine (ph).

If 250 kilos or just over 550 pounds is accurate, that's well over $10 million at global market prices all from one single dug hole. There are dozens around us, thousands within Venezuela's mining arc.

But not all that shimmers is gold and these miners know it. These rocks need to be crushed, processed, scraped and melted before you actually see the gold.

This nugget here $315, but it comes at a cost to the health of the miners as well as the environment with mercury and other chemicals used to separate gold from grit, poisoning everything you see around us.

But this is business and these mills don't do it for free. And then there is an additional cost even if the miners are scared to admit it.

It's clear from what he is saying, there are the forces involved, there are the people they have to pay in order to be continuing to work in these mines, in these mines, clearly, they're not prepared to tell us who they are.

They have every reason to be afraid. These mines are run by a network of hood and militias Kopranes (ph) who according to a senior military source enter mines to extort steel and silence. They do so together with complicit members of the military who they bribe to operate freely.

A local miner too sacred to speak out about the gangs close to the mines opens up once his identity is hidden.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They mutilate people, they cut them, torture them and the ones that speak are also tortured and mutilated. They kill them and throw them down those holes.

SOARES: One active senior military source confirms what we've heard in El Cabal (ph) telling me the same groups use death squads to command obedience battling each other and the military for control over this mining area.

It's a pressure tactic of blood and bullets. I asked the miner if he blames Maduro.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the government has the capacity to put an end to Kopranes (ph) if it wants to do it, but they are not going to do it because they benefit from it.

SOARES: This is echoed from the top, General Manuel Figuera was the former spy chief for the Venezuelan President until April the 30th when he defected.

GENERAL MANUEL CRISTOPHER FIGUERA, MADURO'S FORMER SPY CHIEF: Maduro has knowledge of all of this and has done very little if anything.

SOARES: For years, he was part of Maduro's in a circle with the U.S. Treasury sanctioning of accusations and mass torture, mass human rights violations and mass persecution. Now, with sanctions dropped, he is speaking out about corruption at the very top, backing the U.S. assessment that Maduro's family are also profiting.

FIGUERA: There are companies linked to Maduro's family circle to buy the gold or negotiate the extraction of the gold in the south of the country. They sell one part of it to the central bank and the other part they take out of the country without any kind of control.

SOARES: In Caracas, we find its network expands beyond Venezuela. In 2018, Maduro traded Venezuelan gold to Turkey, some in exchange for food which the government then used in their subsidized food boxes. But he didn't stop there.

According to a source at the Venezuelan Central Bank, 26 tons of gold were taken out of the Bank to the end of April.

[00:16:40]

They were put into private airplanes and a destination Middle East and Africa.

That's $1.6 billion much of it skirting U.S. sanctions. According to the source, several other shipments left Caracas this year to United Arab Emirates directly and also via Uganda on a Russian plane in exchange for Euros.

FIGUERA: Maduro is at the helm of a criminal enterprise. He has hijacked all the state's institutions to work in his service. This has allowed him to corrupt public servants and military officials and all the power structures in order to perpetuate his rule.

SOARES: This matches what we hear on the streets of El Cabal (ph) here where gold is a standard currency. Many like this gold seller are just a cog in the system which is controlled all the way from the top.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we hear, is that everything is completely controlled by the government. Directly or indirectly, we're all working for them.

SOARES: With the river of gold running deep and the economy shrinking by half in a span of five years, there is little sign Maduro and his men will turn their back on this blood gold.

Here human misery goes hand-in-hand with environmental devastation. It's the free for all, a gold rush where the main winner is Maduro.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: CNN has contacted both the Venezuelan government and Central Bank but obtained no response. The Venezuelan government has dismissed U.S. sanctions in the past saying they are unjustified an attack on the country and an attempt to get a hold of its resources. Now, we also reached out to the Turkish government, but received no

response. An Emirati official did tell CNN, they take these matters very seriously and that the UAE government is in compliance with international law but wouldn't comment on legal proceedings in another country.

Coming up, CNN flies along with NASA to get a first-hand look at the shocking impact of the climate crisis on the world's biggest islands.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:16:45]

CABRERA: In the Amazon, it's fire. For Greenland, it's the ice that bears witness to the devastating effects the climate crisis is taking on the planet. CNN's Senior International Correspondent, Fred Pleitgen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Take off from a tiny airfield in South Greenland. NASA embarking on its mission to map how warmer ocean water is melting arctic ice. Chief Scientist Josh Willis shows me the probes they are launching all around Greenland. It's like dropping thermometers into the sea.

JOSH WILLIS, NASA'S OMG LEAD SCIENTIST: Bolts all the way down to the sea floor, so it gives us a profile from the surface to the bottom on the shelf.

PLEITGEN: We've reached today's drop zone, the massive Helheim Glacier. What you are seeing from our cockpit camera is not even the glacier itself, it's just the ice. It's lost in the past days.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is absolutely awe inspiring to see the size of this glacier, to see how much ice is coming off that glacier, that's obviously then going to flow into the world's ocean.

PLEITGEN: But the scientist spots an ice free zone right at the mouth of the glacier, it's pretty unusual. With great precision, they have to drop a probe right in that pond.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Drop, drop, drop. 14 away. I see water.

PLEITGEN: Bull's eye.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the drag, perfect.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw it, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow. I see it.

PLEITGEN: But the readouts they get are troubling.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And these warm waters now are able to be in direct contact with the ice over its entire face. Super charging and the melting.

PLEITGEN: And it's not just this glacier. The ice melt has been super charged in all of Greenland recently. And while it may look majestic, the ice melt is also dangerous. These billions of tons of ice are causing sea levels to rise.

WILLIS: There is enough ice in Greenland to raise sea levels by 7.5 meters, so it's an enormous volume of ice, that's about 25-feet and that would be devastating to coast lines all around the planet.

PLEITGEN: The changes to our plant's environment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Drop, drop, drop.

PLEITGEN: Can already clearly be seen here in Greenland, a remote arctic paradise whose warming climate will affect us all.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: That was Fred Pleitgen reporting. He helped redefine American fashion by dressing the likes of Jackie O and Eliza Minnelli. We previewed the CNN film on the meteoric rise and sudden fall of the iconic designer Halston next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:16:50]

CABRERA: He once said you are only as good as the people you dress. And Halston dressed some of the best including actress Liza Minnelli, human rights activist Bianca Jagger, even Jackie Kennedy signature Pillbox hat. CNN's Kate Bennett looks at the man who we epitomize style for his time and changed the fashion game.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATE BENNETT. CNN CORRESPONDENT: It was the free will and party vibe of the 1970's and 1980's New York City that defined the fashion of Halston.

NANCY NORTH, MODEL: His clothes hit me like this is it and this is the fashion that I would want to wear.

BENNETT: Halston embodied sheikh, his design sometimes no more than an expertly cut piece of fabric, no zippers and buttons. He was a visionary, sunglasses, sleek back hair and parties at night club Studio 54 were his muse.

HALSTON, FASHION DESIGNER: I do everything with every design. You know there are my designs, I don't have any other designers.

BENNETT: Despite his in status, Halston wasn't from a cosmopolitan upbringing. He was born Roy Halston Frowick in Des Moines, Iowa in 1932. A shy Midwestern boy, he learned to sell from his grandmother, eventually attending design school and becoming a hat maker.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Were you the person who put the pillbox on Jackie Kennedy.

HALSTON: Yes, I was.

BENNETT: A story starred to his career was creating the hat of the era for Jackie Kennedy at her husband's inauguration and quite by accident.

HALSTON: It was rather windy day and she put her hand on the hat. And it ended up, to have a dent in it. And so, when doing all the ceremonies, it has a dent in the hat and everybody who copied it, put a dent in it, which was so funny.

BENNETT: By the 1970's, Halston's clothes were revolutionizing the fashion scene, dressing rock stars and artists paling around with Andy Warhol and using his friends, models of color like Al Vachan (ph) and Pat Cleveland.

PAT CLEVELAND, MODEL: He made things as though you didn't really need this structure as much as you needed the women. He really based most of his collection on most of us girls.

BENNETT: Halston eventually sold his name to JCPenney making Halston clothes, Halston perfume, Halston luggage and Halston bedding. Losing control of the empire he created which he would later come to regret.

And though he tried to buyback the label, his career in later years became making one-off looks for good friends. Like Bianca Jagger and Liza Minnelli.

LIZA MINNELLI, HALSTON'S FRIEND: I am wearing a classic Halston.

BENNETT: Halston was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988 and died in 1990.

[00:16:55]

But his legacy as the fashion designer of the glitterati generation lives on. Kate Bennett, CNN Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: Catch the premier of the CNN film Halston tomorrow night at 9 right here on CNN. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: Now, to what could be the first divorce crime committed in space. Astronaut Anne McClain is accused of accessing her estranged spouse's bank account and stealing her identity from space. "The New York Times" reports McClain and her wife Summer Worden have been locked in a bitter divorce battle since 2018, including a dispute of her six-year-old child.

The estranged wife alleges McClain committed identity theft despite not seeing any indication of moved or spent funds. McClain admits she accessed the account from space with the same password she has used for years she says to make sure her estranged wife had enough money to pay bills. NASA is looking into the dispute.

Now, this is not something you want to see in the car next to you, while you are driving.

(VIDEO PLAYING)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's totally asleep.

CABRERA: I don't know if you've heard but they said, he's asleep. The couple that spotted that driver says it looked like the car was going about 70 to 75 miles an hour. It managed to stay in its lane at the very end of the clip, the drivers appears to wake back up, put his hands on the wheel, not clear if the vehicle was on auto-pilot, but Tesla warns there is no substitute for an attentive person behind the wheel. You think?