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U.S. Faces Another Grim Milestone for Cases, Hospitalizations and Deaths; Moderna Waiting for FDA's Approval; Trump's Final Weeks; U.S. Lawmakers Call for Answers on Navalny Poisoning; Congress Reports Progress on COVID Relief Deal; Congress Reports Progress on $900 Billion Deal; Tom Cruise Heard Scolding Crew for Breaking COVID Rules; Conservationists Restore Green Space to Hong Kong; Former Houston Police Captain Out on Bond, Accused of Armed, Violent Encounter over Conspiracy Theory; Russia Responds to CNN/Bellingcat Investigation into Navalny Poisoning. Aired 12-12:45a ET
Aired December 17, 2020 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ANNA COREN, CNN HOST (voice-over): Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from all around the world, I'm Anna Coren.
Coming on CNN NEWSROOM, optimism: a second vaccine coming into the picture but caution, too; allergic reaction suffered by a nurse in Alaska.
From coronavirus success story to major struggle, why South Korea's contract tracers are having such a hard time containing the current outbreak.
And Tom Cruise's expletive-filled rant on the set of "Mission Impossible," we will tell you what set the star off.
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COREN: We begin with the coronavirus in the U.S.. Even as the country stands on the verge of having two working vaccines, still a long way to go. Once again on Wednesday, the U.S. set new daily record for cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
Top infection disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci says the Food and Drug Administration could greenlight Moderna's coronavirus vaccine as soon as Thursday. Of course the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine is already being administered to health care workers nationwide though we've learned one worker in Alaska did have an allergic reaction to that vaccine.
She was treated and is now stable. A top health official says it's a small price to pay for protection against the virus.
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MIKE OSTERHOLM, CENTER FOR DISEASE RESEARCH AND POLICY INSTITUTE: We have to remember that these vaccines are to prevent people from dying and becoming seriously ill.
In the sense of having a reaction, which, of course, none of us want to have, but these are all very manageable and, in fact, all three cases, these individuals are up walking around shortly after it happened once they received an injection from their EpiPen.
So we can expect that these might happen; surely none of them have led to any life-threatening or serious reaction that could have caused someone to be harmed in a permanent way. So to me, this is a small price to pay, I'm willing to get my sore arm, I'm willing to potentially have a reaction to get protected.
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COREN: Pfizer BioNTech vaccine is now also being given to those in long-term care facilities, with Florida being one of the first states to do so.
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COREN: Joining me now is CNN medical analyst and internal medicine and viral specialist, Dr. Jorge Rodriguez. He joins us now from Los Angeles.
Great to have you with us.
DR. JORGE RODRIGUEZ, INTERNAL MEDICINE AND VIRAL SPECIALIST: Thank you, Anna.
COREN: Doctor, let's begin with this allergic reaction.
The health worker in Alaska had no history of allergies unlike the two cases in the U.K. The fact that this person had an anaphylactic fit within 10 minutes of being given the vaccine, is that of concern to you?
RODRIGUEZ: Well, it's always a concern when someone receives either
an antibiotic or any injection, an anaphylactic reaction can happen with any of these.
Is it a concern to the extent that I don't think people should take the vaccine? Absolutely not.
You have to keep in mind that there have been 20,000 people on the Pfizer study, no anaphylactic reactions. Probably 10- to 15,000 other people have already got the vaccine, three anaphylactic reactions. It is minimal.
It is something, of course, that is newsworthy and we should be aware of. But in no way should it keep people from getting this very necessary vaccine.
COREN: But does this sort of news, I guess, give ammunition to the skeptics. Because there are a lot of people out there, rational, normal people, who are reluctant about this vaccine because of the speed at which it has been developed?
RODRIGUEZ: Sure. I think that this news will give some people pause.
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RODRIGUEZ: I don't think it is necessary that they become fearful of it. But I think someone that is seeking a reason not to do something, is going to find it.
And again, it's very dramatic to say that somebody had a huge anaphylactic reaction and indeed it can be dangerous, but it has not been.
The main thing is that if you have ever had any sort of allergic reaction to a shot, you should wait and not take this until we know more.
But otherwise you need to be in a controlled setting, just in case something happens, that the health professionals can be on hand to help you out.
COREN: Well, let me ask you this. As a doctor what is your advice to people who perhaps may have concerns?
RODRIGUEZ: My advice is for them to wait. My advice is for them to wait a couple of months until we see what is going on. And that is for people that have had actual allergic reaction.
Many of us carry the mythology that our parents told us, that we've been allergic to penicillin or this. You better be sure that that's correct before you deprive yourself of this potentially lifesaving vaccine.
So my patients, if they have a real history of anaphylactic reactions, I would tell them to wait until we see more data on this.
COREN: Now as we know, Moderna is expected to receive emergency authorization from the FDA this week in regards to its vaccine. Meaning there will be two vaccines out there on the market. Obviously, bringing a great deal of desperately needed help. But health officials are saying to people do not drop your guard. Tell us more.
RODRIGUEZ: Well, if you would look on the website of the University of Washington Health and Metrics, they have been completely on the money as to how many people are going to get this virus, how many people are going to die.
Getting the vaccines now will start making an effect that we can see somewhere around February, mid-February.
However, if there are universal mask mandates throughout this country we will start seeing a difference in the death rate in two weeks. So therefore, don't assume that everything's going to be peachy dory, right, in a couple of months.
The biggest change that can happen today is for people to adhere to mask mandates and social distancing. Without a doubt.
COREN: Dr. Rodriguez, we know that Vice President Pence is due to receive the vaccine on Friday alongside his wife and the U.S. surgeon general. It's going to take place in front of the cameras. Tell us about how powerful those optics will be?
RODRIGUEZ: I think it's amazingly powerful. I think people can't relate, first of all, to the number of deaths that are occurring unless they have had a family member -- it's just out there.
And I think that seeing someone that you respect, no matter what political party you are involved in, I think it carries an impact.
I would love to see some pop culture -- people that people look up to or admire also take the vaccine in public. I think it would make a world of difference.
COREN: OK. Well, the call is out there for the celebrities of the world to take the vaccine.
RODRIGUEZ: Yes.
COREN: Dr. Jorge Rodriguez, great to see you. Thank you for your advice --
RODRIGUEZ: Likewise.
COREN: -- and for being on the show today.
RODRIGUEZ: My pleasure.
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COREN: Health officials have released some sobering numbers on the pandemic in the Americas. They say Canada and the U.S. have the most new cases but the regional picture overall is complex because of pervasive inequalities. CNN's Paula Newton has the story.
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PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The latest statistics from the Pan American Health Organization lays bare the fact that look, the Americas have been disproportionately hit by this virus. Now, its director, Carissa Etienne, points out that nearly half of all deaths and infections have occurred in the Americas so far.
And you just have to look at the United States and Brazil, number one and number two in terms of deaths. And to realize that cases are still surging in those countries as well. But, you know, the director also points out that look, cases are surging in places like here in Canada, where a deadly second wave continues to rage.
Now she also points out that in some of these regions, there were already not very well equipped to deal with this kind of healthcare crisis and that continues. She does point out that in places like Latin America they were able to double ICU capacity in very few months.
She points to that kind of behavior, which she hopes will continue, and will continue that other countries will contribute to the developing nations in both Latin America and South America to make sure that they can fully recover from this virus -- Paula Newton, CNN, Ottawa.
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COREN: South Korea has reported another 22 deaths from COVID-19, its highest daily toll since the pandemic began. The country is now seeing its third and worst wave of COVID infections.
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COREN: And as Paula Hancocks reports, contact tracers are struggling to keep up the rapid surge of cases.
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PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The lunchtime rush at a Seoul restaurant, with almost every table taken, one diner tests positive for coronavirus, the search begins for who else may have been infected.
It starts with a phone call, confirming the patient ID from a health official to an epidemiologist investigator. Mobile phone and credit card checks follow. Lee Young-wook, a contact tracer, and her colleagues physically retrace the footsteps.
The restaurant owner shows where the customer was sitting and shares the CCTV footage. Lee checks who was close by and needs to be warned. The owner and staff have already tested negative.
Lee makes at least 10 of these visits a day, rarely finishing work before 9:00 pm.
She tells me, "The person having lunch with the confirmed case is not wearing a mask and is a close contact. He has been contact tested and quarantined for 14 days."
With hundreds of new cases every day, this work is becoming harder, with many cases now termed as untraceable.
HANCOCKS: If the mobile phone and credit card usage isn't quite enough to gain a full picture, then contact tracers can track an individual's movements here at this CCTV center. They can find out exactly where a confirmed case went, who they met and crucially, they, say whether they were wearing a mask.
HANCOCKS (voice-over): More than 3,000 cameras cover just this one Seoul district, normally used for crime prevention, but now a key element in the fight against the coronavirus.
The mayor says, "The reason this third wave is so difficult to contain is because infections are happening in all cities and districts simultaneously."
While the first two waves centered around one or two main outbreaks, health officials now say you can catch the virus at any time in any place. Extra testing sites have been set up around greater Seoul for the next three weeks, health officials providing free tests for all, regardless of symptoms or exposure.
Shipping containers are being used to set up more hospital beds to cope with the feared upcoming lack of rooms for coronavirus patients.
And more than 1,300 military personnel have been deployed to health centers in greater Seoul to help with the legwork and data processing. President Moon Jae-in says this is an emergency situation, calling it the final challenge before the vaccines arrive -- Paula Hancocks, CNN, Seoul.
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COREN: Ahead on CNN NEWSROOM, Donald Trump takes aim at the Senate's top Republican for acknowledging Joe Biden's election win. How others in the president's party are reacting.
Plus Congress is closing in on a new COVID relief package, what kind of checks Americans could be getting in the mail.
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COREN: Welcome back.
The White House says Donald Trump won't be getting the COVID-19 vaccine just yet but will wait for a recommendation from his medical team.
Meanwhile, the president is pressing forward with his baseless claims of election fraud.
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COREN: CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports.
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KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It didn't take long for President Trump to bash Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for recognizing Joe Biden's victory, even though he waited six weeks to do so.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): The Electoral College has spoken.
COLLINS (voice-over): Without noting that his opponent received 80 million votes, Trump tweeted, "Mitch, 75 million votes, a record for a sitting president. Too soon to give up. The Republican Party must finally learn to fight. People are angry."
Trump's press secretary said he was including himself in that category.
MCENANY: This president, he's made clear his thoughts about Leader McConnell on Twitter.
COLLINS (voice-over): Trump also blamed his loss not on the way he handled the pandemic, but on FOX News, claiming their coverage was, quote, "perhaps the biggest difference between 2016 and 2020."
The president made no mention of how McConnell has also pleaded with Senate Republicans not to join efforts by their colleagues in the House to challenge Biden's win when Congress ratifies it on January 6th, an effort being led by Alabama congress man Mo Brooks that is all but certain to fail.
REP. MO BROOKS (R-AL): The law is very clear. The House of Representatives, in combination with United States Senate, has the lawful authority to accept or reject Electoral College vote submissions from states that have such flawed election systems that they're not worthy of our trust.
COLLINS (voice-over): With only five weeks left in office, President Trump held a Cabinet meeting for the first time in seven months today. Today's meeting was closed to the press, which is rare, but could have been because Trump's attorney general is stepping down next week, his secretary of state is quarantining and Trump has considered firing his CIA and FBI directors.
No one from the CIA, Pentagon, State or Justice Departments attended today's meeting, as CNN has learned Trump has pushed extensively for special counsels to be appointed to investigate his baseless allegations of voter fraud and for the investigation into Hunter Biden.
Sources say Trump considers it payback for the investigation into his possible ties to Russia led by special counsel Robert Mueller.
TRUMP: First, there was the Russia hoax. Then it was the Mueller witch hunt.
COLLINS: And of course, the remaining question is whether or not the person who is taking over from Bill Barr, when he leaves the Justice Department next week, Jeff Rosen, would actually appoint those special counsels that the president wants.
In an interview with Reuters he did, where he did not say he had actually spoken to the president since he found out he'd be taking over the Justice Department, he declined to say whether or not he would appoint them and instead said they should continue with the work they've been doing at the Justice Department, which could be an indication he does not agree with Trump -- Kaitlan Collins, CNN, the White House.
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COREN: Let's now head to New York and CNN political analyst Patrick Healy. He's also "The New York Times" politics editor.
Patrick, great to have you with us.
President Donald Trump, he obviously refuses to accept defeat. He's now pushing, as we reported, for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate his baseless allegations of voter fraud and allegations surrounding Hunter Biden.
Do you think that any of this will get off the ground?
PATRICK HEALY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: You know, it's not likely. He -- President Trump is just so isolated right now. You have Mitch McConnell who has really been the key Republican to get the Trump agenda, to get Trump's nominees to the courts through the senate now saying that Joe Biden is the president-elect.
The reality is that yes, there are some conservatives in the House who are going to make an effort in early January to try to draw attention to the president's claims.
But right now, he is so isolated. You have Bill Barr leaving. You have Mike Pompeo quarantining. And the reality is just that this isn't a president who is really able to move much beyond just making noise on Twitter.
COREN: Yes. I mean, the courts that have ruled against him, including two rebuffs roam the Supreme Court. The Electoral College has confirmed Joe Biden as president-elect, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as you say has finally congratulated Biden. Why is Trump continuing to play this game?
HEALY: It's a great question. You know, I think Trump is on one level still very angry as our reporting has showed. He is full of a sense of grievance. He's not wanted to really engage with his job. He really hasn't been going into the Oval Office much in the last few weeks.
But he's determined for the narrative to be set from his point of view, that this election was stolen from him. It was not. But it goes to the president's inability and we've seen this throughout his entire time, to accept the fact that he has lost.
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HEALY: That he is a loser in this scenario and that for him and sort of the projection, you know, of his own self, he must keep pushing the idea that now, he actually won, it was stolen from him.
And I think that in some ways he's also looking to the future in terms of his influence within the party and his ability to influence the base, you know, voters in both parties have a tendency to move away from politicians who have lost. And he knows to have any kind of influence, he needs to still be seen at least among part of his base as a winner, even if it is a fake winner.
COREN: Patrick, CNN has been reporting a pardon frenzy underway within the White House and hundreds of Trump's friends and allies are trying to get a pardon request in front of the president.
What are you hearing and who do you think the key people are?
HEALY: Well, we are hearing the same thing. And this is -- this is the kind of power that the president likes. It's a power that is not regulated by the House or the Senate. It's somewhere -- power where he can act unilaterally.
You know, what we are hearing is -- this is the most interesting -- it's just the -- some of the immediate people around him such as Rudy Giuliani who, some of President Trump's allies say very much wants a pardon.
And then even some, you know, family members and again even Trump himself, you know, as unusual a scenario as that sounds like, the reality is that when this president leaves office, he may well have some vulnerability in terms of both federal and state investigations and the pardon cover federal, but not state.
But at this point, the reality is that this president loves to play not just kingmaker, but all-powerful figure and pardons and the ability to kind of dole them out is a big part of that. So it's definitely something they're looking at.
COREN: Patrick Healy, joining us from New York. Always great to get your insights. Thanks so much for joining us.
HEALY: Thanks for having me.
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COREN: Moscow is dismissing CNN exclusive investigation with Bellingcat into the poisoning of a top Kremlin critic. It found Alexei Navalny was trailed for years by elite Russian security forces, highly specialized in nerve agents. Navalny was poisoned in August and almost died. Here's what Russia's foreign minister said on Wednesday.
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SERGEY LAVROV, RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER (through translator): All this news is funny to read but it says only one thing -- or rather the manner in which this news is presented, says only one thing, that our Western partners do not have any ethical standards.
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COREN: Russia may find it funny but some U.S. lawmakers do not. Michael McCaul, a Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says CNN's reporting, quote, "uncovers truly disturbing information about the Putin regime's culpability and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny."
That committee is urging the Trump administration to finish its investigation into what happened.
A powerful storm is expected to make landfall in Fiji in the coming hours and officials are warning the impact from Cyclone Yasa could be devastating.
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COREN: Still to come on CNN NEWSROOM, Tom Cruise is on a mission to enforce social distancing guidelines. His explosive rant on the set of his latest film, when we come back.
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COREN: Many Americans could be getting a $600 check from the U.S. government just in time for Christmas. It's part of an economic stimulus package nearing completion in Congress. Talks resume in the day ahead and the deal could be finished by the end of this week. CNN's Manu Raju has the details.
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MANU RAJU, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Leaders of the United States Congress are closing in on a major deal after months of partisan bickering. Now they're talking about a proposal of roughly around $900 billion. That is about half of what Democrats wanted.
In fact, Democrats wanted more than $2 trillion, that's a fraction of what they had been pushing for.
Republicans have been asking for about $500 billion dollars but twice what a lot of Republicans are willing to spend. But this compromise, of course, both sides have sort of put aside some of the things that have been pushing for the hardest.
Democrats are not going to get money for state and local government. They've been pushing for that. Also the Republicans are not going to get lawsuit protection for businesses and others that open up during the pandemic.
We're getting a general sense of what's in this proposal -- expecting a onetime payment, direct payment to individuals, about $600 we're expecting there if they're under a certain income threshold.
Also, we are expecting about $300 a week in jobless benefits. Now both of those are about half of what was approved in the previous rescue package that was enacted back in March, but it's something that both sides, at least, appear to be agreeing on at this moment. We expect also about $330 billion for small business loans that have been hit hard during this crisis. In addition to money for vaccine, potentially also, we're expecting the extension for the federal eviction moratorium ones as well as deferring student loan payments as well.
So, all of these proposals are going to be wrapped into this major package, they're going to jam it through Congress within days, potentially by the end of the week potentially into next week or over the weekend.
But both sides recognizing they have to act now, at the moment, it appears, that they will -- Manu Raju, CNN, Capitol Hill.
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COREN: Joining me now from New York, CNN's economics commentator and "The Washington Post" columnist Catherine Rampell.
Catherine, great to have you with us. We are expecting a $900 billion stimulus deal to be passed any day now.
What will this mean for Americans in the nation's economy, that's not looking so robust anymore?
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CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMICS COMMENTATOR: I think this will be a lifeline to a lot of Americans who are suffering right now. Various measures of economic hardship have -- have really revealed the scale of the devastation recently. You know, something like one in eight families were not able to have enough food to put on the table sometime in the past week, for example.
The number of people filing for unemployment benefits has been rising recently rather than falling. There are other indicators suggesting that what recovery we had going maybe stumbling.
So there's a lot of suffering out there. There's a lot of need beyond that under current law. Some two dozen programs that would provide relief, things like unemployment benefits, for example; paid sick leave. Those are set to expire in the days after Christmas. So this is a sorely-needed deal to make sure, at the very least, that the existing programs continue in some capacity and potentially, some additional relief beyond that will be granted to these suffering families and businesses, for that matter.
COREN: Well, it's less than half the 2.2 trillion stimulus package that went through back in March. Why have the Democrats compromised so much this time around?
RAMPELL: I think there are few things going on. One is that, of course, the president-elect is a member of their own party, Democrat Joe Biden. And I think there is some hope that they will have another bite at the apple once he becomes president. And potentially, you know, Democrats could control the -- the Senate,
come January. It seems unlikely at this point, but it's -- it's an open question, because there are two runoff elections that are coming up early in January.
So I think the -- the calculus has changed somewhat. The scale of the need is so great that they just cannot let this benefits cliff happen in the next couple of weeks. And beyond that, there is some hope, perhaps, that with new leadership at the top, that they could have another chance to pass further stimulus maybe in January, maybe later on. So it's a few different things going on.
COREN: You talk about the Democrats having another bite at the apple, and Joe Biden said that this deal that hopes to go through Congress is a down payment to what needs to be done in January, February. But tell us about the task that is required to get America's economy back on track.
RAMPELL: There's a lot of work to be done. Obviously, until transmission of the virus is under control, the economy cannot fully recover. So at the very least, we need to be doing more to make sure that the infection rates go down and stabilize at some level, which they are not right now. They are escalating. And until there is widespread distribution of the vaccine, we will just never recovered to the levels that we saw before the pandemic hit.
But beyond that, as I mentioned, you know, there's a lot of these metrics suggesting that hunger is going up, the threat of eviction is going up. Unemployment, at the very least filing for unemployment, has been rising. So there are a lot of things that we can already see baked in.
Beyond that, state and local governments here in the United States are broke. Their -- their tax revenues are down. Demand for services is up. And the way that their constitutions are generally written or other laws on the books, they have to have balanced budgets.
So without additional aid coming, and this is not within the current, you know, $900 billion compromise framework that is being discussed, there is no additional aid for state and local budgets. Without it, you could imagine a huge new round of layoffs, of you know, cops, firefighters, teachers, EMTs, other public officials. So there is a lot more in the pipeline coming, you know, and there's definitely the risk of some sort of double-dip recession if, in fact, we don't get the pandemic under control and we don't deal with these very foreseeable forms of economic fallout from what -- from the pandemic's destruction so far.
But yes, I mean, there's a lot more work to be done at the very top by Congress and by the president, or the president-elect, ultimately.
COREN: For sure. Well, as we know, many economists say this doesn't even come close enough to doing what is required.
Catherine Rampell joining us from New York. Many thanks.
RAMPELL: Thank you.
COREN: Well, there's no tolerance for any risky business if you're working with Tom Cruise on the set of "Mission: Impossible 7." In a recording obtained by Britain's "Sun" newspaper, the actor can be heard swearing at crew members and threatening to have them fired for breaking social distancing guidelines.
CNN's Max Foster has the details.
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MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So this allegedly happened during the filming of "Mission: Impossible 7," filmed at Leavesden Studios just outside London by Paramount Pictures.
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"The Sun" managed to get hold of a recording on set, it says, where you hear Tom Cruise clearly reprimanding members of the crew for breaking social distancing guidelines here in the U.K. A word of warning: an expletive coming up.
"I don't ever want to see it again," he says, "ever! And if you don't do it you're fired. If I see you do it again, you're 'F'-ing gone. And if anyone in this crew does it, that is it."
So two crew members reportedly were seen within two meters, about six feet of each other, which is a clear breach of COVID guidelines here in the U.K.
And he goes on to say, "We are the gold standard. They're back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us! Because they believe in us and what we're doing."
You then hear him say that they're creating thousands of jobs, that people are struggling to put food on the table and to pay for college tuition fees.
Then this comes after an instance earlier in the production of this movie, where production had to be stopped in Italy because of the coronavirus pandemic, allegedly. And apparently, according to U.K. media reports, Tom Cruise used more than $600,000 of his own money to pay for a ship to allow cast and crew to self-isolate. Shows how much he cares about this incident.
And actually, many people on social media, many fellow actors are coming out in support of his concern here.
CNN contacted Cruise's publicist and Paramount Pictures for comment. We didn't get a comment from them. But "The New York Times" reports that Paramount declined its request for comment.
Leavesden Studios run by Warner Brothers, which is part of the same parent company as CNN.
Max Foster, CNN, Berkshire, England. (END VIDEOTAPE)
COREN: While the tone of Tom Cruise's message was harsh, one doctor told CNN the actor was right for wanting to enforce coronavirus rules.
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DR. PAUL OFFIT, MEMBER, FDA VACCINE ADVISORY COMMITTEE: Good for him. I think he's exactly right. You know, we -- in America, this is a country that was founded on the basis of individual rights and freedoms, and so people claimed freedoms like ones they don't have, like this one, for example.
It is not your freedom to catch and transmit a potentially fatal infection. When people sort of proudly take their mask off, as they did, for example, in that motorcycle bike a rally in South Dakota. That's not their freedom. It affects not only you but people with whom you come in contact with.
Good for him. I mean, I think he should have that ran pretty much on a daily basis and let everybody in this country hear this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COREN: The pandemic has ravaged Hollywood financially. On top of the rising costs to keep sets clean and crews safe, theaters have closed, film releases have been delayed. And the company Comscore says the box office in the U.S. and Canada is down almost 80 percent compared to last year.
Well, Hong Kong is one of most densely-populated cities in the world, but it's also getting greener by the day, thanks to an ambitious effort from conservatives. Conservationists, I should say. That's next on CNN NEWSROOM.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hong Kong, it's one of the most crowded cities on earth, with around 7 and a half million residents living on less than 280 square kilometers, or 107 square miles.
In the urban jungle, it can be easy to forget that there's another side to Hong Kong.
Almost half of Hong Kong is green. But thousands of years ago, even more plant life existed here. Over the past few hundred years, Hong Kong lost swathes of woodland, according to Austrian-born conservationist, Dr. Gunter Fischer.
DR. GUNTER FISCHER, HEAD OF FLORA CONSERVATION DEPARTMENT, KADOORIE FARM AND BOTANIC GARDEN: In the past, it was common to clear forest for agricultural lands or urbanization and so on. When the British arrived in the last century, Hong Kong was known as a barren rock.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Then came World War II, where the occupying Japanese cut down more trees to use for feel.
FISCHER: It was clear that large parts of Hong Kong needed to be restored with forest.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the 1970s, the Hong Kong government launched a program to restore the region's lost woodlands. Fischer is one of many conservationists who continue this work.
FISCHER: Our main goal is to restore the hill (ph) sites of Kadoorie Botanical Garden to the original forests, which covered Hong Kong many, many thousand years ago.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong's highest peak, Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden has turned the sparse upper slopes from this, into this.
FISCHER: What we see here is a secondary forest, which has recovered the last 50 years.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Today, Fischer and his team are going beyond planting just any trees. They're reintroducing rare native plants, some the last few of their kind in Hong Kong.
FISCHER: A number of extremely rare plants species, especially trees, have been brought into cultivation. I've seen it really contribute a lot to conservation and saving the species from extinction.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The entire process can take decades, but Fischer says it increases the trees' chance of survival from 3 to 96 percent. And with a budding forest comes a habitat for other life.
FISCHER: So one of our biggest projects is on wildlife rescue. So we've got a wildlife rescue center here, which takes injured animals from the country parks and roadsides. And it's very interesting and fascinating to monitor this over time, to see how the forest is changing and life is coming back.
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COREN: We'll find out more about the innovators who are taking on some of the world's most pressing environmental challenges. Watch "GOING GREEN" this Saturday at 6 a.m. in New York. That's 11 a.m. in London, right here on CNN.
Well, China is claiming another major milestone in its flowering space program. The country says its lunar capsule, known as Chang'e 5, has successfully collected samples from the moon and brought them back to Earth.
The spacecraft returned home early Thursday making China the third country to ever retrieve lunar material and the first to do so in some 44 years.
Well, I'm Anna Coren, live from Hong Kong. I'll be back at the top of the hour with more CNN NEWSROOM. WORLD SPORT is up next.
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