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Two Top Pence Aides Test Positive for COVID-19; Polish President Tests Positive for COVID-19; Exclusive with Russian Vaccine's Main Developer; The Reality of Normalcy after a COVID-19 Vaccine; Trump Rallies in Three COVID-19 Hotspots Saturday; Nigerian Police Force Mobilize to Quell Worst Unrest in 20 Years; U.S. to Provide Humanitarian Aid to Sudan; Samsung Chairman Dies after Long Illness. Aired 4-5a ET
Aired October 25, 2020 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): This is CNN breaking news.
KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Welcome to our viewers in the United States, Canada and around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. We start with breaking news.
New cases of COVID-19 are escalating so rapidly in the United States that the office of the U.S. vice president has been directly affected. Two senior aides to Mike Pence have now tested positive in recent days. Pence's office revealed chief of staff Mark Short has begun quarantine and the vice president and second lady tested negative.
And CNN learned another senior Pence adviser tested positive recently. It's not clear exactly when.
The record spikes in recent days paint an ominous threat. More than 167,000 new cases in just the past two days. If July's surge was a category three, what's looming could be a category five.
At the polls with barely one week until the election, Trump and Pence can't afford to let up. In Wisconsin, the president falsely blamed the nation's high death toll on a flawed counting system.
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DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If somebody has a really bad heart and they're close to death, even if they're not but they have a bad heart and get COVID, they put it down to COVID. Other countries put it down to a heart. We're going to start looking at things. Because they have things -- they have things a little bit backwards.
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BRUNHUBER: That by contrast, Biden struck a different tone in Pennsylvania all the while observing basic health precautions. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D-DE), FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm more optimistic about America's future than I've been since I've been involved in politics. We're the only country in the world that's come out of every crisis stronger than we went in. There's not a damn thing America can't do when we decide to do it together.
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BRUNHUBER: As the campaigns head into the home stretch, Biden is getting a huge assist from the biggest heavyweight in the Democratic Party, former president Barack Obama. He is no longer holding back after mostly remaining silent since leaving office. Listen to this.
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BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Eight months into this pandemic, new cases are breaking records. Donald Trump isn't going to suddenly protect all of us. He can't even take the basic steps to protect himself.
We won't have a president who threatens people with jail for just criticizing him. That's not normal behavior, Florida. A Florida man wouldn't even do this stuff.
With Joe and Kamala at the helm, you won't have to think about them every single day. There might be a whole day where they don't be on TV. There might be a whole day where they don't tweet some craziness.
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BRUNHUBER: So it's important to understand the significance of coronavirus infecting top aides to the U.S. vice president. Mike Pence is head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. But under his leadership many have often publicly ignored the same rules recommended for the rest of the country.
That includes quarantine for anyone who has had close contact with an infected person, as the vice president has but Pence isn't leaving the campaign trail. His schedule is packed with rallies and events, where face masks are few and social distancing is nonexistent.
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BRUNHUBER: All right, to discuss all of this, let's bring in Natasha Lindstaedt, professor of government at the University at Essex, who joins us from Colchester, England.
Thank you so much for being with us. The news from the vice president's office, Mike Pence's chief of staff diagnosed with. COVID- 19.
What are the political ramifications given?
Pence is head of the Coronavirus Task Force and also the vice president's campaigning without his chief of staff.
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NATASHA LINDSTAEDT, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX: This just isn't good news for the Trump campaign. It may not really matter. But Trump is at a point where he needs all the help he could get. And this shows that the Trump administration can't even contain a virus in the White House.
With the case of Pence, his chief of staff tested positive, his lead adviser tested positive and three other important advisers in his team. Reportedly the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows wanted to keep it private. And there is a reason why he wanted to keep it private. It's not good news.
But what you have seen with this task force, once Mike Pence took over, it became politicized and it wasn't really about listening to experts and listening to science. In fact they wanted to downplay the virus. And the vice president's chief of staff in particular wanted to downplay things.
They also wanted to ensure that all communication from public health agencies, all of it had to go through Mike Pence's team and this was to try to be in step with what Trump wanted, that this is going to go away and this is what we are seeing Trump doing on the campaign. Trail.
He keeps telling people that this is going away, we're rounding the corner now. Yet he just had a superspreader life event in the Villages in Florida. So they are ignoring all the safety protocols and really not being honest with the American public and this is really important because Trump is the most important communicator to the American public about the dangers of the virus.
BRUNHUBER: Right and, as you say, Mike Pence, his chief of staff, the people around him are often seen there on the campaign trail, going to rallies, packed with people, just like the president and vice president is continuing, planning to continue campaigning.
And that contrast with vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who took off a couple of days, off of campaigning when a close aide tested positive earlier this month.
So will the campaign pay any political price for this type of behavior or will it be seen as a sign of strength to carry on?
LINDSTAEDT: Well, we have been seeing the polls haven't shifted very much; the base is incredibly loyal to Trump. They get alternative sources of news. They don't believe a lot of the legitimate news media, what they are trying to offer and explain to them.
So we see that one group of people, it doesn't really matter for them. Then you also have Biden supporters who are on the other side, are wanting more regulations, want the federal effort to be more concerted and stronger, better organized. But for Trump, what he needs to do is win over these last undecided
voters. At the exact same time in 2016, this is where the polls really started to tighten for Clinton and Trump started to make a lot of ground, because the FBI, of course, had announced they were investigating her emails.
Trump needed some big shake-up, some big thing to happen that was going to really shift the polls and move the voters in his direction. And this type of news story just isn't going to help him.
BRUNHUBER: So essentially will it use up all the oxygen, I guess, or some valuable oxygen as we're heading into the last days of the campaign?
Will this be a big and unwelcome distraction from their message of shifting the focus away from COVID?
LINDSTAEDT: I think it just makes it harder for the American people to think that we are rounding the corner here, as Trump likes to say. That is really what the key issue was of the final debate.
We saw that Biden kept criticizing Trump about the COVID crisis, that we're about to head into a very long winter, that he is downplaying it too much and that we need to have a strong federal response.
Trump keeps trying to tell people, we are almost over this thing. That is really dangerous, because Trump feels he has to say this because it's vital for the economy. And the economy is the other big issue in the campaign.
But I think what many Americans know is that we are not going to recover economically until we get the COVID crisis under control. So if this continues to be the key issue of the campaign and not other issues that may play to Trump's strengths, like this idea that he is this law and order president or that the economy is only going to be good under him, then that is going to be problematic for him.
I think that, with COVID being the focus, he is not going to be able to distract voters that are in the middle or undecided for whatever reason, that he is the best person to take us through the next four years.
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BRUNHUBER: Natasha Lindstaedt, thank you so much. We appreciate. It
LINDSTAEDT: Thanks for having me.
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BRUNHUBER: As coronavirus cases soar across Europe, scuffles are breaking out in Italy over restrictions. Police clashed with hundreds of supporters of an extreme right wing group in Rome Saturday night. Agitators threw bottles at riot police as they defied the curfew that went into effect. Police used tear gas to break up the demonstration. Europe is bracing for its second coronavirus wave to get worse as if
it wasn't already bad enough. Several countries are reporting record numbers of infections and many fear cases will continue to increase this winter.
On the same day France broke its daily case record, President Macron said the virus is likely to stick around until at least next summer. He said there could be new target restrictions in the days to come.
Some European leaders have tested positive for COVID-19, including Poland's president. He said he is asymptomatic and is continuing to work but in isolation. The Czech Republic is the worst hit country in the past two weeks. It is reporting more than 15,000 new cases since the pandemic began.
Germany is reporting the biggest daily rise in cases from Friday to Saturday. The number of new infections per day has almost doubled within a week.
In Wales, streets were largely empty Saturday as the country completed the first day of lockdown. The firebreak will run until November 9th. Officials trying to stem the spread of the virus there.
CNN has reporters across Europe covering the coronavirus surge. We have Scott McLean in Berlin. But let's begin with Nina dos Santos at the border of Wales with England.
Nina, a lockdown dreaded by all. Wales doing that. Already anger at some of the surprising restrictions.
What's happening there?
NINA DOS SANTOS, CNNMONEY EUROPE EDITOR: Thank you so much, Kim. Good morning. I'm in the city of Chester, which is a northwestern town in England just less than six miles away from the border in Wales. It's pretty quiet over here.
We spent most of the last two days in Wales. As the country within the bigger country of the U.K. started to shut down, people just emptied from the streets. You almost couldn't find anybody to talk to, to find out whether or not they were thinking this lockdown was a good thing or a bad thing.
Either way, off the streets; but online it's controversial. The Welsh government has taken what is viewed as draconian action to keep shops from selling anything that's nonessential. Over the border, people can't mix with other households. They have to stay home. They can go out but only to exercise, exercise a dog or to go to the supermarket and buy those essential items, food or medicine.
The Welsh government forced some retailers to essentially cordon off big aisles with items deemed to be nonessential or nonperishable. This prompted this polemic online about what is deemed essential and many members of the Welsh government and Welsh parliament, the Senate, are saying this is only going to benefit big international online retailers like Amazon. What a lot of this has caused is people to go online to sign a
petition. There's already 45,000 signatures and counting. That means the Welsh government will have to start considering at least potentially some kind of climbdown on how severe the restrictions are.
Either way, they will be in place until November 9th. Wales says it needs them to try to control the spread of the virus in hot spots where it gained a foothold, to villages where there's very few cases. They can't afford to have it spread across Wales. Otherwise, things like Christmas further down the year will just have to be off the cards.
BRUNHUBER: Thank you so much, Nina. Now let's cross over to Berlin. I'm joined by Scott McLean.
You've been looking at the big picture.
What's the latest?
SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: First an update on the Polish president, Andrzej Duda. He contracted the coronavirus and tested for it on Friday. We got confirmation he was positive yesterday. He posted a video on Twitter where he explained that he was asymptomatic, continuing to work.
He appeared healthy in the video. He said he is at full strength and hopes it will stay that way. But obviously he has to isolate for the next two weeks or at least until he's negative of the virus. He apologized to those who he met with in the previous few days because they'll have to isolate, potentially testing positive themselves.
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MCLEAN: And also really hammered home the point to his country that they need to do whatever they can to isolate and to shelter senior citizens.
Across Europe we've seen the number of coronavirus cases soaring but the death toll has been pretty slow to catch up. You can understand the cautious approach from European leaders in bringing in sort of strict draconian restrictions like they're seeing in Wales where Nina is.
But the calculus might be changing. It is a case of east and west on this continent. I want to show you a couple graphics that illustrate that.
First, here's one that shows that the deaths in the U.K., France, Spain, Germany and Italy, you can see from this graphic that Spain has fared the worst, Germany the best. But by and large, the trend is that this second wave of the coronavirus has not been nearly as deadly as the first one was.
But once you look at countries from eastern Europe, so we can see on this next graphic, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic, all are seeing death tolls right now that pale in comparison -- sorry, are much, much higher than the first wave. Especially Poland, where they're seeing four times more deaths than the peak of the first wave.
The Czech Republic seeing nine times more deaths, their health care system is on the brink of collapse. Today the military has just completed a field hospital expected to see patients any day now as the hospitals begin to fill up and reach their capacities.
They're also going to be getting help in the Czech Republic from U.S. medics, U.S. doctors from the National Guard, who are going to be flying in over the next week or two.
The country has surpassed 2,000 deaths but here's the most remarkable number. If you were to go to the Czech Republic today, one out of every 69 people you would run into would be currently, right now at this moment, infected with the coronavirus. And those are just the official numbers.
Obviously perhaps not everyone has tested. The true number could be much, much higher than that.
BRUNHUBER: That is astounding and frightening, Scott.
Scott McLean in Berlin and Nina near Cardiff, Wales. Thank you very much for that.
The world is winning its hopes on a coronavirus vaccine. Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM. We'll talk to one expert about why it might be the great cure-all everyone is hoping for. Stick with us for that.
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BRUNHUBER: Even if there were a safe and effective COVID vaccine, many Americans are so skeptical about taking it, health professionals are alarmed. Only about half of Americans surveyed said they'd get the vaccine. But the director of the National Institutes of Health warns that's not enough. So the virus could be here for years.
Dozens of pharmaceutical companies around the world are racing to get a vaccine. Nine are in the U.S., China and Russia has two, including the controversial Sputnik V that was registered for public use.
Now Russia has been bragging about how quickly it developed that vaccine but, in an exclusive interview with CNN, the vaccine's main developer admits it's not actually recommended for some of those most at risk from COVID-19. Fred Pleitgen explains why.
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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: As Russia deals with a major spike in new coronavirus infections, despite already having approved two vaccines for emergency use, the head of the Gamaleya Institute in charge of the development of the most prominent vaccine, Sputnik V, told us it may take up to a year for the majority of Russians to get shots, as production sites are still in the process of going online.
ALEXANDER GINTSBURG, GAMALEYE INSTITUTE (through translator): Planned capacity of these full sites by next year should reach about 5 million doses per month, which will allow 70 percent of our population to be vaccinated with this vaccine within nine, to 10, to a maximum of 12 months.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): Russia's certified the Sputnik V vaccine with great fanfare in August after testing it in only a few dozen people. The move hailed as a major PR victory for Vladimir Putin as Russia claims to be outpacing Western pharma firms. But in current large phase 3 trials, Sputnik V is lagging well behind Western vaccine candidates.
Sputnik V's makers said only about 6,000 participants have so far received the two doses necessary to achieve complete immunization and start collecting data, compared to almost 30,000 in some large Western trials.
All this as Russian state TV is trashing the U.K.'s vaccine candidate, calling it, quote, "a monkey vaccine," despite the fact that Russia itself has made a deal to produce this very vaccine under license. The head of Russia's direct investment fund which is bankrolling Sputnik V claiming Moscow's vaccine is superior because it uses so-called human adenovirus technology.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So we decided to use something already existing, something already safe, something already proven. And many people in the West failed to think about this.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): But even the Sputnik vaccine's instructions say it's only indicated for people 18-60 and not for people with some allergies and illnesses, meaning now older age groups and people with health conditions, some of the most vulnerable to severe cases of COVID-19.
The head of the Gamaleya Institute told CNN the vaccine simply hasn't been tested on older people but he believes the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions can still take it.
GINTSBURG (through translator): With many chronic diseases, in particular people with diabetes, it is not just that it is carried out; it is prescribed to vaccinate people because these are risk groups that need to be protected. But these people, people with cardiac diseases, these are all chronic diseases, as we know, you need to vaccinate.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): Russia says it will still soon wrap ramp up production of Sputnik V to vaccinate more medical workers and other high risk groups, a move Konstantin Chumakov, a top vaccine expert at the Global Virus Network, called dangerously risky. [04:25:00]
KONSTANTIN CHUMAKOV, GLOBAL VIRUS NETWORK: I think that there is a reason why they call it Russian roulette. So this is exactly it.
PLEITGEN (voice-over): One Russian who isn't taking the Sputnik V vaccine so far is the president, Vladimir Putin, his spokesman telling CNN, Putin is, quote, "thinking about it" -- Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Moscow.
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BRUNHUBER: Even as the world holds out hope for a successful vaccine to be ready soon, it's important to understand what a vaccine can actually do. For a look at what normalcy would look like, I'm joined by Professor David Salisbury, an associate fellow at the Chatham House Global Health Programme.
Thank you so much for joining us. This is a very important topic here. I want to start, here in the U.S., president Trump tries to reassure Americans that a vaccine is just around the corner. Other politicians have been saying similar things.
We're primed to hear this, that something, a vaccine will make everything better. We're so looking forward to all of this being over. But you wrote a piece suggesting it won't be that simple.
DAVID SALISBURY, CHATHAM HOUSE: No. I don't think it is that simple. Vaccines are wonderful things that have saved millions and millions of lives but we have to be realistic about what they can do.
And if the new vaccine that we are all waiting for protects 75 percent of people, that leaves one in four still vulnerable to getting coronavirus disease. And we have to appreciate that that's just those that get vaccinated.
We're going to have plenty of people who are not vaccinated. And if we have people who are neither protected and people who are not vaccinated, there's enough fertile ground for the virus to continue to spread.
I see the future as not vaccines and that's it. But I think the future is going to be vaccines plus -- plus face masks, plus social distancing, plus homework, plus many of the things that reduce our chances of being exposed.
BRUNHUBER: Yes.
You know, on that, are we looking at life with essentially a deadly flu?
That's to say, I get the flu shot every year; hopefully it will help but every so often I still get the flu.
If so, would it be a disease just to kind of live with, as you say, still requiring masks? Distancing for how long?
For years, for decades to come?
Do we have to get used to the idea of changing the way we live in terms of having masks in public spaces, as they do in many Asian countries?
SALISBURY: I don't think anybody knows the answer to that.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if this virus just went away like SARS did in the early 2000s or if it just turned into a common cold?
But we can't put our faith into that and at the moment there's no sign that's happening. So we have to assume for the short term, medium term and who knows, that's what we'll face. If vaccines will protect some of us but won't stop the virus spreading between us, we have to consider other interventions as well.
BRUNHUBER: So that's the part of the key here that you just referred to, is that difference between individual protection, basically everybody for themselves, and trying to stop the virus from spreading, generally, in the community using the vaccine.
So explain the difference and whether you think that interrupting transmission is even possible, given all the constraints that you've outlined there.
SALISBURY: When you vaccinate people over 65 or with medical conditions, you're trying to protect them. You're not going to be doing enough of the intervention to stop the virus being spread in the rest of the community.
So individual protection is great for those who receive it. But, remember, we won't know who is actually immune. So you could be vaccinated and think that's your passport to freedom. But it may not be.
Then there's trying to stop transmission. To do that, you have got to vaccinate really high numbers of the whole of the community, amongst whom transmission is taking place. If you've got significant numbers of people who don't wear face masks, who won't social distance, will they take a vaccine?
And if they don't, they will preserve transmission. So we've got to think about two approaches: individual protection, which is great for those at risk, and then strategies to stop transmission. And I think those are going to be much, much more difficult.
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BRUNHUBER: All right, well, this is very sobering news for many people but very necessary. I appreciate you coming on and talking to us, Professor Salisbury. Thank you.
SALISBURY: Thank you. BRUNHUBER: President Trump campaigned in three COVID hot spots on
Saturday. Looking there, that's the crowd in Wisconsin. We'll have more on that and the battle of the states fighting against the coronavirus. Stay with us.
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BRUNHUBER (voice-over): That's Jon Bon Jovi warming up with a rendition of his classic, "Livin' on a Prayer" Saturday in Pennsylvania.
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BRUNHUBER: All right, our breaking news: the chief of staff for vice president Mike Pence has tested positive for COVID-19. Mark Short is the second senior aide to come down with the virus in recent days. On Saturday the U.S. recorded more than 83,000 new COVID cases and 914 new deaths.
The news came on the same day President Trump held rallies in three coronavirus hot spots. He appeared in Wisconsin, Ohio and North Carolina. All have been reporting record infection numbers. But in Wisconsin, Mr. Trump seemed pleased to see so many people packed so close together. Listen to this.
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TRUMP: There's about 25,000 people outside who tried to get in.
Would anybody like to give them their place?
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BRUNHUBER: Wisconsin is experiencing of the worst cases in the country. The state reported a record number of virus deaths on Wednesday. Brian Todd has more.
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GOV. TONY EVERS (D-WI): One thousand, six hundred eighty-one Wisconsinites have lost the battle against this virus.
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Coming off his state's highest single day coronavirus death count, Wisconsin's governor said he's saddened to announce that this facility is taking in its first patients, a field hospital for overflow patients at a state fair park near Milwaukee.
EVERS: Make no mistake about this. This is an urgent crisis.
TODD (voice-over): The surge in cases in Wisconsin is overwhelming health officials in the state's second most populous county.
JANEL HEINRICH, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC HEALTH, MADISON AND DANE COUNTIES, WISCONSIN: Right now, we cannot keep up. With the sustained rise in cases, we cannot quickly contact trace cases and let the people they came in contact with know that they should quarantine.
We are struggling with the constant and unending rise in cases, just as everyone else in the state is.
TODD (voice-over): Wisconsin is one of more than 30 states where the reporting of new daily coronavirus cases is still going up.
DR. DEBORAH BIRX, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: Wisconsin is number four in the country with the number of cases per hundred thousand.
Also concerning is 41 percent of the long-term care facilities in Wisconsin have at least one positive staff member. It shows how broad the community spread right now in Wisconsin is.
TODD (voice-over): The surge in Wisconsin comes as the University of Wisconsin hosted the first Big 10 football game of the season against the University of Illinois. The conference had delayed the season for almost two months because of COVID worries.
The mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, signed a letter with the Big 10 school city leaders, saying they're worried the universities aren't doing enough to protect the populations against the coronavirus, especially at football games.
TODD: Wisconsin is the most populous state in the country ranked in the top five of coronavirus cases. The data shows Wisconsin is having one of the worst outbreaks in the country behind the Dakotas and Montana. And the data shows the surge shows no signs of slowing there -- Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
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BRUNHUBER: With just nine days until Election Day, more than 52 million Americans have already cast their ballots in early voting. This includes both in-person early voting and vote by mail. And it represents more than 36 percent of the total ballots cast in the 2016 presidential election. More than half of the early votes are coming in from the competitive battleground states.
Turnout records are being shattered across the U.S. In New York some 94,000 people voted Saturday in the first day of early voting there. That's more than in all nine days of early voting offered last year.
And in the swing state of Florida, more than 5 million people have already cast their ballots. CNN is reporting from polling places across the country, asking why
voters are motivated this year. Here's Evan McMorris-Santoro in New York.
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EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Saturday was the first day of early voting in New York and across the city, lines stretched for hours at polling places. Including in Jackson Heights, Queens, one of the hardest hit parts of the city for the pandemic.
And voters said they turned out to make their voices heard after months of suffering under the pandemic and economic effects.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A lot of people lost jobs, a lot of people unfortunately passed away due to COVID. Every day, if you walk through different areas of this community, there are food pantry lines that are just as long as this line. So people are outraged and we need support for the Latinos. This is why we're here, we're using our voice, we're using our right and we have to vote.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I had some friends that would complain to God knows where and yet they wouldn't vote.
I said what are you complaining about?
You gave up your right to complain when you don't vote.
MCMORRIS-SANTORO: And so you're not giving up your right to complain?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, no, no. This is a God given gift and I'm not going to throw it away.
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MCMORRIS-SANTORO: Early voting continues in New York for more than a week and after that, the end of a long election that many New Yorkers said today they were happy to finally cast their votes in -- Evan McMorris-Santoro, CNN, New York.
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BRUNHUBER: Well, no Republican candidate has ever won the presidency without carrying the state of Ohio. While rallying there Saturday, the president's event looked much like his other rallies, few masks and no social distancing.
Ohio posted a record number of new coronavirus cases Friday for the third straight day. During his rally, Mr. Trump riffed on the state's electoral importance.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Remember last time about this state?
They said for a year I had to hear it. You cannot win unless you win the great state of Ohio. I heard it so many times.
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BRUNHUBER: Now polls indicate Ohio currently is a tossup. It's hard to predict how the race will play out. Here's CNN's John King with some possibilities.
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JOHN KING, CNN HOST: No Republican in modern times has won the White House without winning Ohio. So it is absolutely essential to the president's comeback strategy.
What can we learn from the 2016 map as we watch for the results to come in in 2020?
One of the most interesting things we saw early, the polls close early here. In southern Ohio, one of the first things in 2016 was the source of President Trump's white working class rural support.
Look at the margins he ran up in little counties along the southern Ohio border, 70 percent here, 66 percent here, 76 percent there. That was the first sign that President Trump was overperforming even Mitt Romney, running it up in Ohio.
Is the Trump base solid or are some of those white working class voters defecting to Biden?
Other things to watch, turn voters out in the city.
Is African American turnout high in Cleveland? Can Joe Biden get a bigger margin in Cuyahoga County than Hillary Clinton did?
Something else to watch, what about the suburbs?
Donald Trump narrowly carried them in 2016, including here, a big margin in Lake County. These are the suburbs just to the northeast of Cleveland.
Can Biden make it more competitive?
If he wants to win in Ohio, Lake County will tell you a lot about where the suburbs are in 2020.
One more big test. I want to show you down here, Stark County. Biden went here after the first presidential debate.
Why?
Right?
Look at the margins in 2016. Why would Joe Biden go to a place Donald Trump won by such a lopsided
margin?
This is one of the so-called pivot counties. Here's the 2012 for Barack Obama. If you go back to 2008, it was for Barack Obama. Pivot counties voted twice for Obama and then flipped to Donald Trump in 2016.
So on Election Night, watch southern Ohio and Cleveland in the suburbs, Stark County. If it is red, maybe Trump has a comeback in Ohio. If it is blue, Joe Biden is on his way to the White House.
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BRUNHUBER: Nigeria's top police commander is saying enough is enough and he's calling out the nation's entire police force. Will this be enough or the right move?
We'll look at the escalating crisis in Africa's most populous country coming up.
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BRUNHUBER: A chaotic scene in Nigeria, hundreds of people looting, carrying sacks out of this warehouse. After weeks of anti police and anti corruption protests, Nigeria's chief of police on Saturday declared enough is enough. He's deploying the country's entire police force to stop the unrest. The demonstrators are show no signs of easing up.
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BRUNHUBER: The protests were mostly peaceful until Tuesday, when Nigerian soldiers allegedly opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators, killing some of them. Since then, anger, arson and looting have erupted. Nigeria's president says many lives have been lost. CNN's Nima Elbagir has the latest.
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NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Broken glass and debris on the streets of Lagos. Shattered remnants of protests in Nigeria over police brutality that quickly turned from peaceful to deadly.
There is a tense calm in the city now. But on Tuesday night, the city erupted into chaos after eyewitnesses say multiple protesters were shot and killed by army soldiers. The army has dismissed reports of the incident as "fake news."
The shooting set off a wave of anger across the country. Many shops and businesses have been burned or damaged and there is widespread looting in the worst unrest in the country since its return to civilian rule in 1999.
It is one of the biggest political challenges so far for the country's president, Muhammadu Buhari. On Thursday he addressed the nation, appealing for calm.
MUHAMMADU BUHARI, PRESIDENT OF NIGERIA: Your voice has been heard loud and clear and we are responding.
ELBAGIR (voice-over): But critics say he waited too long to make a public statement and didn't even address the events on Tuesday, which has further angered many Nigerians.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People died, people and their loved ones, and he didn't mention anything about. It
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The speech was baseless, hopeless.
ELBAGIR (voice-over): The state governor spoke to CNN and said he is committed to a full investigation of what happened and people will be held accountable but also says demonstrators should have left when they were told, as a curfew was in effect.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The protesters had the time to also have left the site we're talking about. But it's totally condemning (ph).
ELBAGIR (voice-over): The protests began more than 2 weeks ago and has been largely driven by young people in Nigeria, organizing on social media under the #EndSARS who initially called for a police unit known as a special anti-robbery squad to be disbanded because of allegations of kidnapping, harassment and extortion.
Under intense pressure, the government agreed to dissolve the unit and redeploy officers to a different team. But the movement continued, widening to include economic reforms and more protections against the police.
The voices raised here in a call for justice have found willing echoes around the world, gaining international attention from celebrities like Beyonce and Rihanna, placing a spotlight on shootings that have yet to be fully explained and the growing discontent from the country's youth -- Nima Elbagir, CNN, London.
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BRUNHUBER: Sudan's agreement to move toward normalizing relations with Israel is already yielding big financial benefits. On Saturday secretary of state Mike Pompeo said the U.S. will provide Sudan with $81 million in wide ranging humanitarian aid. The assistance will go toward refugees and other vulnerable communities in Sudan.
It comes days after President Trump agreed to drop Sudan's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, the announcement of the Sudan-Israel agreement. According to the International Monetary Fund, dropping the terror designation also eliminates a major hurdle in finding debt relief for the country.
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BRUNHUBER: Samsung's chairman has died at 78 years old. When we return, a look at the man who turned his father's small South Korean company into an international tech giant.
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BRUNHUBER: Another powerful storm is threatening the Caribbean, Mexico and the southern U.S. Zeta has been upgraded to a tropical storm. It's currently in the Caribbean and is forecast to become a category 1 hurricane as it moves into the Gulf of Mexico.
It's now projected to hit the U.S. along the northern Gulf Coast, which was already battered by multiple storms this season. Forecasters expect Zeta to weaken back to a tropical storm before it makes U.S. landfall.
Samsung's chairman Lee Kun-hee has died six years after falling into a coma following a heart attack. The chairman of the South Korean tech powerhouse was 78 years old. no, CNN's Paula Hancocks has more on his legacy.
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PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Lee Kun-hee took control of the Samsung empire in 1987, inheriting a company his father created half a century earlier,
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HANCOCKS (voice-over): Lee would transform a trading and textile manufacturer into a global technology giant, making himself South Korea's richest man.
The key to his success, change.
"If you have to change, change everything," he said in 1993, "change everything except your wife and children," which he did, launching a new management program to change the company focus from quantity to quality.
CHANG SEA-JIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE: Samsung was exporting very cheap electronic products to the U.S. market and to the world market. And it was literally -- it was sold about 20 percent below the price of its competitors, which is Sony or Panasonic.
HANCOCKS (voice-over): Two years later, Lee ordered a mass burning of products he considered defective, ramming home the message of quality first.
In 1996, Lee was convicted for setting up a slush fund and bribery. He received a two-year suspended sentence before receiving a presidential pardon.
In 2008, he was convicted for embezzlement and tax evasion. He received a three-year suspended sentence before again receiving a presidential pardon. Many in Korea questioned the lenient sentences for Lee and other top executives of major Korean companies.
Despite brushes with the law, he is seen as a visionary in Korea. He had suffered from ill health for many years, beating lung cancer before being hospitalized twice for pneumonia and respiratory problems.
Now into the third generation of succession, Lee's only son has been leading Samsung's empire. But he faces a number of ongoing court cases, including a high-profile succession case. He's also spent a year in prison for corruption. His grip on power appears shakier than his father's ever did -- Paula Hancocks, CNN, Seoul.
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BRUNHUBER: That wraps up this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Kim Brunhuber. I'll be back in a moment with more news. Stay with us.
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