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U.S. To Boost COVAX With $4 Billion Injection; Updates: Brazil And Colombia's Vaccination Programs; Texas Storm: Governor Blames Power Company Saying Texans Deserve Answers; China Ramps Up Ongoing COVID Disinformation; Mattress Mack In Texas: Providing Meals And Beds During Texas Freeze; Meet Those Who Have Paris' Louvre Museum All to Themselves; 20-Year Old Protester Who Was Shot By Police has Died; PM Netanyahu Courting Right Wing, Homophobic Party; U.S. House Committee Seeks Answers on Trading Debacle; NASA'S Mars Rover Paves the Way for Humans. Aired 1-2a ET
Aired February 19, 2021 - 01:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN VAUSE, ANCHOR, CNN NEWSROOM: Hello, everyone. I'm John Vause, you're watching CNN NEWSROOM. Another hour live from studio seven at CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta.
Coming up this hour. With power restored to much of Texas, now comes a water shortage with widespread supply disruptions and millions ordered to boil tap water.
A big announcement from the White House expected in the coming hours. What it will mean for global distribution of the coronavirus vaccine.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SWATI MOHAN, OPERATION LEADER, NASA: Touchdown confirmed. Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars. Ready to begin seeking --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: An historic touchdown on Mars by NASA's Perseverance. Skipping orbit for a direct landing and the start of a search for ancient life.
Almost 30 million Americans are under a hard freeze warning at this hour but the U.S. state of Texas is bearing the brunt of the deadly winter storms.
Almost 300,000 homes and businesses remain without electricity -- that's down from 3 million 24 hours ago. Many have been without power since last weekend.
The storm is now expanding across the north and east, bringing ice and heavy snowfall.
The cold knocked out water treatment plants across the state where 13 million people have had their service disrupted. Many have to boil their water now. Others have had their homes severely damaged because of burst pipes. At least 38 people have died nationwide because of the storms. Some
Texans are sleeping in their cars, burning their furniture; whatever they can to stay warm.
And in the midst of all of this, the junior senator from Texas Ted Cruz, flew to Mexico for a family vacation. He returned a few hours ago saying the trip well, it was an obvious mistake, wouldn't do it again.
More now on the situation in Texas from CNN's Ed Lavandera.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Texas is bracing for a another dangerously frigid night.
GOV. GREG ABBOTT, (R-TEXAS): We are not yet out of this. We will not stop until normalcy is restored to your lives.
LAVANDERA: As another winter storm barrels in, the governor is requesting a major emergency declaration.
UNKNOWN: Oh, what a nightmare. Oh, my God.
LAVANDERA: Local officials are fed up and fearing the worst.
STEVE ADLER, MAYOR, AUSTIN, TEXAS: The truth is that right now we're just trying to keep people alive and safe for the next two days.
UNKNOWN: We expect to see that death count rise.
UNKNOWN: It is a mess. It is a mess.
LAVANDERA: While power is being restored to much of the state, some 13.5 million Texans are now facing water disruptions.
GAIL BRUCE, TEXAS RESIDENT: I'm out of candles for a little bit of light. Can't charge batteries.
LAVANDERA: At grocery stores, there are long lines and empty shelves as food supply chains buckle.
UNKNOWN: You can't find food and, when you do, you have to stand in a line four or five hours. This is ridiculous. Whoever's in charge of this, they need to run them off because that's not right.
ABBOTT: I'm taking responsibility for the current status at ERCOT.
LAVANDERA: But Governor Abbott is also re-upping his attacks on ERCOT, the organization hired to manage more than 90 percent of the state's power grid. He says it had assured him they were prepared.
ABBOTT: ERCOT failed on each of these measures that they said they had undertaken. Texans deserve answers about why these shortfall occurred and how they're going to be corrected and Texans will get those answers. LAVANDERA: ERCOT's CEO says it prevented a catastrophic power grid
failure with no time to spare.
BILL MAGNESS, CEO, ERCOT: It was seconds and minutes given the amount of generation that was coming off the system.
LAVANDERA: Others are blaming Abbott and his state's focus on a low- cost deregulated power supply, largely independent of the national grid.
CLAY JENKINS, JUDGE, DALLAS COUNTY, TEXAS: The choice is not a federal takeover or people freezing in their homes, the choice is to require winterization of equipment like all 49 other states do.
LAVANDERA: One official who left the crisis entirely was senator Ted Cruz. Exclusive video shows the Texas Republican quickly returning tonight from a family trip to Cancun.
He was photographed departing Houston yesterday. Cruz says his daughters wanted to take a trip so quote, "wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them." And he added: "My team and I will continue using all our resources to keep Texans informed and safe."
LAVANDERA (On Camera): After a week of facing the political heat in the wake of this winter disaster in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott says he accepts responsibility for the situation at ERCOT, the state power grid agency.
But he also says that the executives at the agency assured him that the state would have enough power to get everyone through this winter storm. Clearly, that didn't happen.
LAVANDERA (On Camera): Ed Lavandera, CNN, Dallas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[01:05:00]
VAUSE: Everyone wants to know, obviously, in Texas when will this cold end, also other states too, Pedram.
So meteorologist, Pedram Javaheri, with all the details and all the answers, hopefully, about when there's some relief in sight.
DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Derek Van Dam, that is. Pedram's off tonight.
VAUSE: Oh, I'm sorry. Derek.
VAN DAM: That's OK. John --
VAUSE: Sorry, mate.
VAN DAM: Fair enough. With this work from home, it's gets confusing very easily.
VAUSE: It does -- oh, my God, I couldn't even see you there. I'll have to get my glasses.
VAN DAM: Fair enough, fair enough, fair enough. We'll forgive you. Just this one time though.
Onto the serious business here because, wow, what a disaster is happening in Texas. It's just this humanitarian, ecological and economic crisis, kind of unfolding before our eyes.
And the big question is when will they see some relief? Well, the answer for everyone watching is it will not be tonight, it will not be tomorrow but we do have some light at the end of the tunnel in the next two, three, even four days.
So we're going to start seeing those temperatures moderate above freezing during the day when we get the maximum sunshine but overnight they drop below freezing.
So that freeze-thaw cycle that we continue to go through will bring pipes into -- the potential, at least, to burst once again that has impacted the water supply there.
We have 60 potential record cold temperatures from this morning, so Friday morning local, and all the way into Saturday morning before the temperatures moderate enough to where we won't have record-setting temperatures.
But look at how it's just impacting the supply chain there, just incredible.
You can see, these are forecast morning low temperatures. So below freezing for the next two days for Houston, Austin, Dallas, Little Rock, Oklahoma City as well as Lubbock.
Look at the maximum temperatures. With the sunshine, we were above freezing but, again, it's that freeze-thaw cycle. Only by Monday and Tuesday do we start to normalize into our seasonal temperatures for places like Dallas and Houston. Goodbye and good riddance to that cold Arctic air.
Well, the storm system now is located along the East Coast. It's a very complex storm but one thing you want to take away from this is that it's not done yet. We still have another 36 hours of potential snow, potential ice.
And some of the areas that have been hardest hit over the past several days with several storms moving across the region. We have 60 million Americans feeling the brunt of this winter weather along the east coast.
You can see the snow band lining up from Philly to New York as well as Boston -- we're expecting four to six inches across that area -- with the potential of icing there accumulating into an additional quarter inch of ice from Richmond, Virginia right through the Delmarva Peninsula.
And then we say goodbye to the system by Sunday. Finally, John. They need a break across the east coast and south of the United States.
VAUSE: Yes. It's because I haven't seen you for such a long time, I've forgotten what you to look like.
VAN DAM: (Inaudible). I'm growing a beard these days.
VAUSE: Yes. Good to see you, Derek. Thank you.
Many political leaders in Texas have spent days finger-pointing and avoiding responsibility. Others have outright lied about what's to blame.
But there are some Texans who are stepping up and doing what needs to be done. Like Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale, owner of the Gallery Furniture in Houston.
With millions suffering and frigid temperatures, he opened his huge store offering not just a warm meal and a warm place to stay but a warm welcome to anyone in need.
LOUIS, RESIDENT AFFECTED BY WINTER STORM: At this moment (inaudible) no electricity, no way to make any kind of food in the house, just -- no transportation and no nothing, I got up here on a bike. And I got up here this morning about 11 o'clock somewhere, and they were just now letting people in. And it's been a blessing.
CARL, RESIDENT AFFECTED BY WINTER STORM: Lot of people ain't like reaching out to help people, and he is, man. And I'm grateful for that, man. It's like an angel in the skies.
VAUSE: Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale is with us this hour from Houston Texas. Jim, it is nice to see you again.
I'm hearing you have about a 1,000 people dropping in through the day, a few hundred opt for a sleep over. How are they all coping and how are you and your family doing?
JIM "MATTRESS MACK" MCINGVALE, OWNER, GALLERY FURNITURE: It's a massive project, 1,000 people coming in today. Lots of food, lots of hospitality and lots of COVID awareness, of course, for the people coming in.
A lot of them want to come in, warm up and then eat a hot meal and then go back to work, go back to their home, wherever they need to go with lots of projects going on after this ice storm and this thing that's put us out of business in Texas for three days.
Then we have about 300 people a night spending a night at our furniture store. So putting to bed 200 adults and 100 children every night is something I've learned to do through Hurricane Katrina, Harvey and now this Arctic storm.
[01:10:00]
VAUSE: How bad is this disaster? Because, as you say you've seen some big ones, this time there's that added complication of a raging pandemic. You've got to feed, shelter, maintain social distance -- this is not easy.
MCINGVALE: Yes. The COVID adds a new dimension that people have to hand sanitize when they come in, of course, you have to wear a mask and on top of that, it's very important to do the social distancing. So that's a little difficult.
The damage to the people's psyche during this cold and power outage is not nearly as severe as it was when they had to wade through 45 feet of dirty water during Hurricane Harvey to get to our store.
But, at the same time, the damage to the psyche of seniors and to these young children that are in here is unknown and unknowable and a lot of the seniors are having a rough go with this power outage and lack of electricity in their home.
VAUSE: Yes. We just heard before from some people who you've been helping and they are very, very grateful for what you do and what you have always done. What else will Texans need in the coming days, coming weeks?
MCINGVALE: Yes, obviously we need to restart our economy, we've kind of missed a week here but Texans are resilient people. And one of my favorite sayings is "Tough times never last, tough Texans do."
We've weathered the storm through Hurricane Harvey, we'll weather this storm, we're certainly weathering the COVID storm.
And we -- one thing about adversity in Texas, it's brings us all together. We forget about our differences and we focus on our commonalities and our interests that we all share. We all share interests for a better tomorrow for ourselves, for children, for our community.
And so that's what Texans do, they rally around each other. And it's very heartwarming this week to see all of these people who are out of their homes for days at a time volunteering to work in the restaurant, volunteering to empty the trash, volunteering to clean the restrooms. Just a great spirit of can do.
VAUSE: To be honest, you seem like it's -- sort of on the permanent good guy list there in Texas. You mentioned Hurricane Harvey, Katrina, you opened your store as a shelter and you've been helping out not just during storms but also with the pandemic as well.
I guess as far as the message that sends to everybody else, what do you want it to be?
MCINGVALE: I want the message to be that us Texans will overcome this crisis. Rather than pointing fingers I want to point to solutions, things we can do better, things we can help people to raise their families and a better environment to avert these tragedies in the future, whether it's a devastating hurricane or a power outage like we've had this week.
So the good news is that we're a resilient group in Texas and we shall overcome, we shall be stronger in the future and a better Texas in the future.
And adversity brings us closer together; we forget about our differences, we focus on our shared interests, our shared commonality. And I'm just the person who's an eternal optimist about the people in Texas and the people in this country that will get better together long term.
VAUSE: You ever thought about running for governor, Jim? I'll leave it at that. Jim McIngvale. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you being with us.
MCINGVALE: Thanks, John.
VAUSE: Take care.
Well, there is cautious optimism that perhaps the pandemic may have peaked with the number infections falling worldwide, down 16 percent last week according to the WHO. That's the good news.
On the flip side, there's been a sharp rise in new conspiracy theories about the origins of the virus.
CNN has found China is pushing some of these misleading and fictitious scenarios. In particular, one which claims the virus was created in a lab in the United States.
CNN's David Culver has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNKNOWN (Voice Over): Do you know about the U.S. Army's Fort Detrick labs? Do you know that they research on dangerous viruses for decades?
DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Chinese officials carrying out a propaganda fueled war of words and tweets. The apparent intention? To muddy the waters in the search for the origin of COVID-19 and to potentially deflect responsibility for the virus's global spread.
CNN combing through months of digital data analysis that shows a combined push of conspiracy theories carried out by official Chinese government accounts, state media and a broader group of Chinese online influencers.
The propaganda push coinciding with the highly politicized World Health Organization source tracing mission.
UNKNOWN: Did you find anything inside?
CULVER: Last month as the WHO's international team of experts traveled to Wuhan, CNN found that China's sophisticated propaganda machine flooded both social and state media --
MARTHA RADDATZ, HOST, ABC THIS WEEK: Mr. Secretary --
CULVER: -- with several origin theories. Including one to counter the Trump Administration's own unsupported allegation that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab.
A theory the visiting WHO scientists essentially ruled out before leaving China last week.
PETER BEN EMBAREK, HEAD OF WHO MISSION TO CHINA: The laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely.
CULVER: But in recent, weeks Chinese officials have doubled down on their own lab origin theory. Renewing a conspiracy that the virus began in the U.S., specifically
here at the U.S. Army's Fort Detrick medical research lab in Maryland.
Inspectors for the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention briefly halted work here in 2019 to investigate safety concerns.
There is no evidence the virus originated in the U.S. but China's state media saw an opportunity. Beginning in March of last year as the virus started sweeping across the world they published stories surrounding the Fort Detrick lab and a possible leak.
A foreign ministry spokesperson went a step further tweeting last March that it might be the U.S. Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan soon after China's government-controlled broadcaster begin airing mini documentaries on the Fort Detrick conspiracy theory.
For 10 months, China's foreign ministry has relentlessly pushed the conspiracy.
UNKNOWN (Speaking in Foreign Language, Captioned): When will the U.S. in the WHO to investigate the origin?
CULVER: And just as the WHO field team arrived in Wuhan in January to investigate the origin, Chinese officials once again voiced their version of a possible lab leak.
HUA CHUNYING, CHINESE FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESPERSON (Speaking in Foreign Language):
CULVER: "I'd like to stress that if the United States truly respects facts it should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like its 200-pus overseas bio-labs and invite WHO experts to conduct origin tracing in the United States," the spokesperson said.
That clip of a foreign ministry spokesperson went viral online circulating on both Western and Chinese social media.
CNN reviewed data analysis of Internet searches in China. It shows that after the initial push of the conspiracy theory in March 2020, search interest in Fort Detrick remained relatively flat for nearly a year, only to surge once again in January just as the WHO source tracing field mission got underway in Wuhan.
During that time, more than 230,000 posts using the Fort Detrick hashtag were viewed more than 1.48 billion times on social media platform Weibo. And the foreign ministry hashtag attracted more than 210,000 posts with 790 million views.
China has also floated the theory that the virus originally got into Wuhan through imported frozen foods. As CNN uncovered late last year, that theory has led to hazmat-like handling of international cargo. And it's encouraged Chinese state media to label the virus as an imported threat suggesting it even started that way.
The range of origin theories an attempt to seemingly deflect blame and sow doubt in ever uncovering this devastating and deadly pandemic's true source.
CULVER (Voice Over): David Culver, CNN, Shanghai.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: On Thursday, a reporter from the Associated Press asked a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman if China spread misinformation.
This was her response.
"Since the pandemic began, there have been lots of conspiracy theories on social media in the west. Some U.S. officials, legislators, media and institutions have concocted and spread a lot of disinformation about China -- or "against China," rather -- "without any evidence.
In regard of disinformation, I believe many people in the U.S. are victims too. The disinformation ignores basic facts and smears and attacks China based on presumption of guilt."
Whatever that means.
The global vaccination effort's about to get a booster shot. A huge cash injection from the U.S. $2 billion from the Biden Administration.
Details when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[01:20:00]
VAUSE: When Donald Trump was U.S. president, it was all about America first, no concern for those so-called s-hole countries. That was especially evident when it came to global vaccinations.
In stark contrast, the now president, Joe Biden, expected to announce on Thursday -- or Friday, rather -- a huge investment in global vaccination programs known as COVAX.
CNN's Phil Mattingly has details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The U.S. on Friday will announce a significant contribution to a global vaccine initiative; four billion dollars in total, two billion dollars immediately. President Joe Biden will make this public in a meeting, virtual meeting, of G7 leaders as the U.S. really moves to significantly change course from where Joe Biden's predecessor was, President Trump, who declined to join the initiative, declined to give money to the initiative.
However, President Biden making clear that with the U.S. already having secured enough orders that by the end of summer to have enough vaccinations for all Americans, or at least 300 million Americans, the U.S. wants to be a leader in terms of getting the global community vaccinated.
An acknowledgment, senior administration officials made clear, that this is not just a domestic issue. This is a global pandemic and with new variants popping up all over the world to truly end that pandemic, they need shots in arms in places other than the United States.
Now this initiative was put together -- it involves most major countries with the exception of the U.S. up to this point, however its funding has lagged.
And the purpose, the necessity of it, is to get money in order to order vaccines and distribute those vaccines in 92 lower to middle- income countries, the types of countries that don't have either the cash flow or kind of the opportunities to match up in terms of ordering those vaccines from the larger countries.
President Biden will look to change that. And additional 2 billion dollar investment with a second 2 billion dollars to come when other countries make their pledges as well.
The point, administration officials say, is for the U.S. to lead on this to try and use the U.S., not just money but influence as well, to really contribute to the global effort to get vaccines distributed.
Again, all a part of that effort to put an end to what just riled -- roiled the entire world over the course of the last year.
Now something to keep in mind here. This 4 billion dollars didn't come out of nowhere, Congress actually appropriated it in December, in a bipartisan vote. And it will not take away any money from the domestic vaccine effort.
As I noted, there are already hundreds of millions of doses that are ordered, that will be delivered so none of that will be taken for this initiative itself. Right now, it's just money.
One thing to keep an eye on though as the administration works through this process, there is a possibility that if the United States has leftover vaccine when all of the vaccine is distributed or the majority of the population receives the vaccine, that may also come online to distribute to other countries.
Administration officials making clear they're not there yet. Right now, it's money and for this initiative, for COVAX, money is extremely important. MATTINGLY (On Camera): Phil Mattingly, CNN, the White House.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: The British prime minister also pushing to improve vaccinations worldwide. Boris Johnson will ask world leaders at the G7 to try and speed up the development of new vaccines.
He released a statement saying it's great that the world got a COVID vaccine in 300 days. Next time, he says, how about 100 days?
Meanwhile, Pfizer BioNTech is now testing its vaccine on pregnant women in the U.S. The company says the trial is meant to evaluate the effects of the vaccine not just on the women but also their babies until six months old.
Pfizer will also start vaccine studies on children ages 5 to 11, that begins in the next few months.
Our reporters are covering the roll out of vaccines across the world.
We begin with Brazil, which is set to become the third country to surpass 10 million cases.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Researchers in Brazil have kicked off what they are calling an unprecedented experiment where they're going to try and vaccinate the entire adult population of one single city.
The city is called Serrana, it's in the state of Sao Paulo and officials say that, over the two months or so, they hope to vaccinate roughly 30,000 people ages 18 and older.
Now, beyond the obvious benefit of hopefully preventing serious illness in a lot of different people, they are also wanting to see what happens when you vaccinate this level of people in one place. Does it actually reduce the transmission of the coronavirus in this area?
They're going to use the Chinese-developed CoronaVac vaccine in this experiment. We're expecting to get the results of what happens in the next several months.
[01:25:00]
And this comes at a time when Brazil, overall, has a shortage of vaccines. We were reporting a few weeks ago about that very fact.
There's not going to be a shortage in this particular community, around 60,000 doses have been set aside, specifically, for this experiment.
Brazil's pandemic, of course, has been one of the worst of the world, the death toll is second highest behind only the United States. And it was just on Thursday that health officials announced that Brazil had surpassed 10 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
It's going to be fascinating to see what comes out of this study in this one, singular Brazilian city.
RIVERS (On Camera): Matt Rivers, CNN, Mexico City.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEFANO POZZEBON, JOURNALIST: As vaccinations have finally begun here in Colombia, I'm right now at the public hospital in Soacha, a working class suburb of the Colombia capital, Bogota.
Where these -- Dr. Natalia is receiving -- has just received her jab. We're going to have to ask her how do you feel, [speaking Spanish].
DR. NATALIA (phonetic), (Speaking in Foreign Language):
POZZEBON: She says she is very happy, and full of high hopes. This is a new step, she says, for health workers like Natalia, who've spent the best part of the last 12 months struggling against this virus.
But while there are high hopes and high expectations in Colombia and in the rest of Latin America because the vaccination campaigns are finally kicking into gear, the real challenge begins just now.
Colombia, for example, has received only 50,000 doses of the vaccine up through Thursday. And the goal is to vaccinate 35 million Colombians by the end of the year.
With the supply chain of worldwide vaccine under stress, it's indeed a difficult challenge ahead.
POZZEBON (On Camera): For CNN, this is Stefano Pozzebon, Soacha.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: The Louvre Museum in Paris is not immune to the pandemic. Like so many other public places, it's been closed for months. The reality is no visitors means no revenue but curators are getting their hands on something money can't buy.
CNN's Saskya Vandoorne reports.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SASKYA VANDOORNE, CNN SENIOR PRODUCER: The world's most visited museum awakens. But there are no visitors here.
Escalators that once carried 40,000 pairs of feet a day whistle in the eerie emptiness brought on by COVID restrictions.
Venus De Milo, Liberty leading the people and the Mona Lisa are having a break from their usual crowds of admirers. What were bustling halls now take mere minutes to walk through. Sculptures, forced into hibernation, in this Renaissance palace.
But they're not completely alone.
GAUTIER MOYSSET, PROJECT MANAGER, LOUVRE MUSEUM: It's still living even though it seems really asleep from the outside.
VANDOORNE: Since October when the Louvre closed, hundreds of artisans have been working five hours a week to refurbish and rejuvenate with the stroke of a brush or the crank of a forklift.
MOYSSET: We have all the arts that are being stored or just studied by the curators. We have all the maintenance work that, obviously, can start. So it's really rewarding.
The stakes are pretty high, let's say. You don't want to spoil what people have been building (inaudible) centuries.
VANDOORNE: Not since World War II has the Louvre been shuttered to the public for so long. Last year, it lost 90 million euros in revenue.
But curators here say they have gained something more valuable; time.
COME FABRE, CURATOR, LOUVRE MUSEUM (Speaking in Foreign Language, Captioned): The pace of the exhibits is so intense that it's very stressful. It's also a pleasure to be able to have a calm and long- term reflection on what we want to show at the Louvre.
All of a sudden, a painting seems too big, too small or the frame doesn't fit with the ones nearby. You have to listen to what the works have to say. Sometimes, some of them don't like each other. You have to separate them.
VANDOORNE: These 19th Century doors that once opened into the bed chamber of French kings are being restored to their former beauty.
MOYSSET: And you have these different layers that are meant to recreate, all in all, the veins of the wood. Because you have so many different colors when you look at that closely.
GAELLE DULAC, ARTISAN, LOUVRE MUSEUM (Speaking in Foreign Language, Captioned): We have synthetic brushes that are very soft. This brush is made up of badger hair and here is one that is made up of hog hair.
[01:29:42]
VANDOORNE(voice over): These doors will finished in three weeks. When the Louvre will reopen is anyone's guess. The belief here is that art comes alive through to the public's eye. Until then, the museum prepares for its resurrection.
Saskya Vandoorne, CNN -- Paris.
(END VIDEOTAPE) JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Well, if it's February, it must be time for election in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walking a fine line now between winning over to new supporters while not losing his conservative allies in the process. We'll explain when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAUSE: Welcome back, everybody. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM.
I'm John Vause and we have this just into CNN from Myanmar.
A protester who was shot and seriously hurt last week has died. She is the only protest known to have been killed during these demonstrations which have lasted for two weeks now.
Thousands have been on the streets protesting against the military coup, which took place earlier this month.
Paula Hancocks has the very latest now for us from Seoul.
I guess, you know, it is obviously a sad situation and a tragedy that this protester has died. But to think that they've been on the street for two weeks now this is the first fatality?
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That is true, John. But certainly this could well galvanize the pro-democracy movement. This was a young woman who on February 9th was at a protest in Naypyidaw, in the capital. Now a video circulating online shows that protest, it shows security forces using water cannon, protesters running away from it and then you see a woman fall to the ground.
Now, the doctor at the time told the media that in fact that bullet had pierced the motorcycle helmet and she had been in a critical condition since that time. May Thwate Thwate Khaing was her name and she had really become a symbol of the pro-democracy movement. We had seen that at a number of these protests.
As you say, the first known casualty among the protests movement. So it will be interesting to see the reaction on the streets of Myanmar.
Now, it's not just the daytime protests that the protesters worry about when it comes to the response from security forces when night falls and when the Internet is shut, that's when the arrests come.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HANCOCKS (voice over): Paing Phyo Thu says she's been protesting on the streets of Yangon since day one of the military coup. One of the country's best known actresses Thu and her film director Na Gyi have been vocally and financially supporting the civil disobedience movement.
[01:35:00]
HANCOCKS: On Wednesday, the military put Na Gyi on a list of celebrities to be arrested for encouraging opposition of the coup. PAING PHYO THU, ACTRESS: He disgraced the military, that's what he's
been charged for.
HANCOCKS (on camera) : So how did that feel when you realized that your husbands name was on the arrest list?
THU: Sorry.
HANCOCKS: Not at all. Take your time.
THU: I'm just so angry and just so emotional because it's out there, you know. People who are doing the good things, they keep -- they keep being arrested. They just keep arresting the people who are doing good.
HANCOCKS (voice over): The couple have fled their home and are in hiding.
Pots and pans, they once used to join in the daily evening protests now have a different purpose.
THU: We have to make sure that we have pots and pans on nights that there is somebody comes and do something wrong to us we ask the help of the neighbors know just by banging the pots and pans which is obviously that's the only weapon that our civilians have.
HANCOCKS: They don't feel safe on the streets anymore, but they're adamant that this is not the end of their fight for democracy.
THU: This is our last battle, we have to win this. We have to do everything we can to reach out to the world and to everyone -- we must win this time.
The arrests come at night when the Internet is shut down and soldiers knock on the door. The military came from Mya A. at dawn on February according to his daughter. The family have heard nothing since.
A student leader in the failed 1988 uprising spent a total of 13 years behind bars.
WAI HNIN PWINT THON, DAUGHTER OF DETAINED ACTIVIST: We don't want to live in another dictatorship again, and, you know, seeing another generation of children I think who meet their parents in jail it's not something that we want people to go through.
HANCOCKS: Wai Hnin was just 5 months old when her father was first arrested. She says her mother taught her to say daddy from the photograph.
Her father told her he had a back pack by the door with clothes, a toothbrush and medication. He had quadruple bypass two years ago and needs daily medicine. still critical of the military he knew he might need this back in a hurry.
(on camera): As Myanmar's military leadership continues a systematic silencing of voices of dissent, it strikes fear into those on the streets. Wondering if they're next.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HANCOCKS: Now, one Burmese NGO AAPP says that more than 500 political prisoners have been arrested so far. And many protesters we speak to and activists say that they are sure that that number will start to increase as well.
Now from the military leadership point of view, they still maintains that this is not a coup. They say was necessary because of election fraud that happened at the end of last year when there was the democratically elected government.
They don't address the number of arrests and the political prisoners directly but they do say and they have changed many penal codes that make sure that it is very difficult to criticize the military and to stay out of prison, John.
VAUSE: Paula, thank you. Paula Hancocks there live for us in Seoul.
Well, to Israel now and with a prime minister desperate to win it appears he's thrown the country's LGBTQ community under the bus in an effort to win over ultraconservative votes. It's a sharp turnaround for Benjamin Netanyahu, bringing accusations of hypocrisy. CNN's Sam Kiley has details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SAM KILEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): These are scenes that Benjamin Netanyahu's newest political allies never want to see again. To win enough right-wing votes in next month's elections, the Israeli prime minister has done a deal that's horrified his critics, and made cynics of his supporters.
(on camera):In the past Benjamin Netanyahu has shown that he's very much in tune with the times.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: I ask you to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the LGBT community, we will not let hate drown out acceptance. Dignity, respect, acceptance -- These are the values of Israel that will triumph.
KILEY: But members of his new political orchestra a sounding, much more discordant note.
AVI MOAZ, CHAIRMAN, NOAM POLITICAL PARTY (through translator): A country in which two fathers and two mothers is recognized as a family is not normal.
KILEY: Avi Moaz's Noem Party campaigns mostly on a platform of homophobia. It's part of an electoral pact with the religious Zionist Party and Jewish Power. that's an extremist movement accused of racism against Arabs by Jewish groups in the United States.
[01:39:48] KILEY: Netanyahu's added them to his coalition ticket hoping they'll get enough votes to secure a minimum threshold of 3.5 percent of votes and four Knesset seats, meaning no right-wing ballot is wasted in keenly-contested elections for the 120 seats.
Israel's divided left is predictably outraged.
NITZAN HOROWITZ, LEADER MERETZ PARTY: This body is homophobic, it's racist, advocates Jewish supremacy, deportation of Arabs. This is medieval politics.
KILEY: The extreme right political grouping refused to talk to CNN but the spokesman for Netanyahu's Likud Party which used to shun right wing extremists, spelled out the political imperative now at work.
ELI HAZAN, SPOKESMAN, LIKUD PARTY: I need to be prepared to win in any condition. I don't like this party. We share nothing with them except the will to win the election against the left wing.
KILEY: Even this Likud member, an LBGQT activist, is disturbed but he may put politics above principle.
(on camera): As you lost your vote as a consequence of this? .
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, you know, I think like a lot of Israelis after three times of voting, it's very unclear until the minute you get there.
KILEY: Netanyahu has recently pleaded not guilty in his trial on corruption charges. And his coalition election success hangs in the balance. But if he wins, the price of political survival will inevitably be a reckoning with Israel's extreme right.
Sam Kiley, CNN -- Tel Aviv.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Just ahead U.S. lawmakers would like to know what caused the GameStop stock debacle and how they can stop it from happening again.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAUSE: Well, U.S. lawmakers heard from Robinhood, Roaring Kitty, a hedge fund manager and others on Thursday apparently in search for what was the GameStop stocks saga and all the debacle that followed.
CNN's emerging markets editor, John Defterios is live this hour in Abu Dhabi with some answers.
So, yes, it was the array of characters and was it really an investigation here or was it sort of more theatrics?
JOHN DEFTERIOS, CNN EMERGING MARKETS EDITOR: Well, I think it may lead to legislation, John. But this is going to be a long process according to the chairwoman of the committee. But it's amazing because this cast of characters who are on display and questioned -- and I thought was fascinating. As we saw the hearing taking place. One of the Reddit posters said, look we've gone mainstream, this is good for us in the long term.
I'm not sure if that's going to be the case depending on how the Justice Department of the United States handles this.
At the core of it though, we cannot forget it's -- the new rules of the game for Reddit in the bulletin boards, the small day traders who kind of swarm together to buy undervalued stocks and whether that's manipulation or not. That's going to be defined.
And then there's the trading platforms themselves like Robinhood. And that was the toughest questioning for Vlad Tenev, the CEO because the halted whole trade, not for a matter of hours but days to raise money to handle the volume.
And this was his mea culpa to the hearing on Capitol Hill.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VLAD TENEV, CEO, ROBINHOOD: I'm sorry for what happened. I apologize AND I'm not going to say that Robinhood did everything perfect and that we haven't made mistakes in the past.
But what I commit to is making sure that we improve from this, we learn from it and we don't make the same mistakes in the future.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[01:44:59]
DEFTERIOS: When all else fails, you just basically come out and apologize, John.
And there's been a lot of damage along the way. Just take the stock GameStop itself. It was up 1,700 percent through the month of January. It's now still up but only just up above 100 percent, right.
Similar kind of tale for Blackberry, and AMC Entertainment. But if those got in late, and got clobbered on the way down. This is what the hearing is all about. Is it manipulation or not?
VAUSE: John, also this was -- you know, obviously looking at the day trading and message board, that kind of stuff. There's so much to learn about, you know, Robinhood and also about it's big customer's hedge fund?
DEFTERIOS: I think this is why the hearings are useful. You know, worked and watching (INAUDIBLE) for five years, you'd say, hey why are they these doing these hearings? And does it lead to anything in terms of radical change?
So the day traders and the relationship with the bulletin board says one thing and then the trading platforms that they use. But what we did find, John, and I never heard this before, is that the data from Robinhood or the other trading platforms is legally sold to the hedge funds themselves.
It's the flow that's more important to the hedge funds because they can pick to short a stock after the big rise up, there's no justification in terms of profits.
Or to ride up with it and they get that on a daily basis. And that's where Robinhood makes its money. It is legal according to the SEC and according to the cofounder of Citadel itself. They said, if you want us to drive on the right of the road, we'll do it. If you change the rules and say drive on the left, we'll do it.
Right now, it's deemed legal and why many on the hearing were suggesting the representatives, that Wall Street wins in the end. That's one thing we know.
And also, we found out as you were suggesting in your lead in, this Keith Gill (ph), Roaring Kitty it's not a meme character, but actually somebody who is guiding this reference on Reddit and picking the stocks and then to amplify it for the global community.
Very strange, John, but I think it will be redefined in the next probably six months after hearings.
VAUSE: John thank you. John Defterios there, live for us, in Abu Dhabi.
Still to come here, NASA's Perseverance rover that just landed a few hours ago, is full of first. The first to search for signs of ancient life on Mars, the first to make audio recordings on the Red Planet. A lot of firsts -- we'll unpack all of that in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Touchdown confirmed, Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars. Seeking signs of past life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Tango Delta on Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover safely landing on the Red Planet. You're looking at some of the first images it sent back right after that.
The rover is now on a historic mission to search for signs ancient life on the Red Planet. But not before some nail-biting moments in mission control.
CNN's Randi Kaye has more on that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The vehicle (INAUDIBLE) it's tough. It's in good shape to land which is a great sign. RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): That vehicle is the Mars
rover, known as Perseverance.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are one minute from entry interphase.
KAYE: Inside NASA's control center in Pasadena, California they are on the edge of their seats. The seven minutes of terror are almost up as the rover attempts to land itself on Mars without any help from NASA, given a communications delay with earth.
[01:49:59]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are about 30 seconds from entering interface. Once there is enough atmosphere, it will start controlling its path to the landing target.
KAYE: This is the fifth, and most sophisticated rover, NASA has ever sent to Mars. Its mission? Gather data, and look for signs of ancient life in a crater that once contained a lake -- something like 3.9 billion years ago.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can see a little bit of that slow down of -- the atmosphere on the Perseverance (INAUDIBLE).
KAYE: Perseverance needs to slowdown from 12,000 miles per hour to zero in just seven minutes in order to land safely.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Navigation has confirmed that the parachute deployed. And we are seeing significant deceleration. And --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Perseverance now has radar lock on the ground. We have timing of the landing engines.
KAYE: As Perseverance inches closer to the surface of Mars, the anticipation grows.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Current speed is about 30 meters per second, off shoot (ph) at around 300 meters on the surface of Mars. About 20 meters off the surface.
Touchdown confirmed. Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars. It is beginning to seek (ph) the signs of past life.
KAYE: Relief and now celebration in NASA control.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is so exciting. The team is beside themselves. It is so surreal.
Stay tuned, we might get some pictures.
KAYE: They didn't have to wait long. Perseverance got right to work.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have the target point on the map when you are ready. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are ready. Go for it.
KAYE: Before they called it a day, the rover sent its first tweet from the Martian surface. It reads simply, "I am safe on Mars. Perseverance will get you anywhere."
Randi Kaye, CNN, Palm Beach County, Florida.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Garrett Reisman is a former NASA astronaut and a professor of aeronautical engineering at the University of Southern California. Garrett, it's been a while. So welcome back. It's good to see you.
GARRETT REISMAN, FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT: Thank you very much. It's always great to join you.
Ok. Well, yes, it's a little busy up there right. You've probes from China. You've got the UAE -- these folks entered orbit last week. What was really impressed about Perseverance, it took this direct path from lift off on earth directly to the Martian surface, skipped that whole orbit bit.
And that kind of shows how good NASA is these days at landing these things on Mars.
REISMAN: That's right. It's a gutsy move and I'll be honest with you I'm still, I can't believe it works, you know. You have to be really precise with your navigation to do that, which is not easy when you're all the way out there in Mars. It's not like you have GPS or radio beacons or anything like that for navigation.
You're really on your own and you have to be very precise.
VAUSE: And you've got that what, seven minutes of terror when the rover is out of contact for mission control?
REISMAN: That's right. Yes. And it felt like seven days of terror to me. But actually one of the things that's remarkable about it, as it's going through all of those crazy seven minutes of a very complicated maneuvers, you have a parachute, you have a heat shield that you had to jettison. You have a retro rockets that fire, a sky crane and four cables that lower the rover to the surface -- all that.
But the thing was as we're watching that happen, of course, it's already done. There's about 11 and a half minutes of delay so by the time we're watching her seven minutes of terror right when it's starting we know that it's already either sitting on Mars or it's a big smoking hole.
VAUSE: Spoiler alert, huh, ok? It's been more than what eight years I think since last touchdown by NASA which means there is now Perseverance and Curiosity exploring the surface?
But when we talk about Perseverance it's got some really good upgrades compared to Curiosity and that's it's solar-powered helicopter right? So what else are we looking at here and what will that helicopter do?
REISMAN: Well, you know, it does have a lot of upgrades compared to Curiosity. From the outside at a first glance, as a cursory glance, it looks the same.
But what's very different about it, it has things like the helicopter like you mentioned, it's also got ground penetrating radar so we can see what's underneath the sands of Mars.
It also has new instruments that can detect direct signs of life. Curiosity can detect things like phosphorus and carbon and nitrogen and other compounds but Perseverance can actually see direct bio signs with this instrumentation.
So we might -- we have a chance of getting that holy grail of some indication of past life on Mars which would be scientifically the most incredible thing that we could possibly discover.
[01:54:47]
VAUSE: That's the interesting thing about this mission? Because it's, you know, the primary goal is, you know, finding evidence of past life. The long term goal as part of that is actually bringing these samples back to earth.
Assuming we're still here beyond 2030 -- what samples and how will it head back to us?
REISMAN: Right, well it's too much to do in any one mission. So what Perseverance is going to do is use its drill to take chalk-like, you know -- chalk-like sized bits of the Martian soil and rock. And then encase in metal casings and leave it on the surface of Mars.
And then in the future another probe will come along, scoop those up and then place it in a rocket that will blast off and travel all the way back to earth.
First run to going in Mars orbit with another craft that we take the earth (ph). It's quite a complex bit of choreography but if it all goes well, we can actually get pieces of Mars that we can take with much more sophisticated instruments that we have here on earth and really do some serious analysis.
VAUSE: You know, there's obvious concerns about bringing stuff back, you know, from Mars. Could bugs, life forms, whatever that you've never seen before, you don't know they are
But what about (INAUDIBLE) in the reverse direction? What about our presence on Mars. How do we make sure, you know, the China probe or the UAE probe doesn't spread the coronavirus for example?
REISMAN: Right. I'm thinking the way things are going lately they should be much more worried about us. But yes. We take great pains to sterilize these vehicles before we send them to Mars. I heard one of the JPL engineers say today that Perseverance is the cleanness spacecraft we've ever sent outside of earth orbit. So we try very hard to do that. And that's really important because you don't want to think you found life on Mars when you really just found your own junk, right, that you know, evidence or biological things that you shed from your spacecraft.
Or it's even a bigger problem when we finally go with people. And so that's why this is so important. What we really hope comes out of Perseverance is indications of past life on Mars, and then -- and more knowledge so we know what parts of Mars we should leave alone and not contaminate, and which parts of Mars are ok for human habitation.
VAUSE: We're looking forward to a new plan. I don't think we've ruined this one.
Garrett, good to see you. Thank you for being with us. Appreciate it.
REISMAN: Take care of this one though. This one's much better. It's got people.
VAUSE: Absolutely. This one, I agree with that one. Look after what we've got. Thank you.
And thank you for watching. I'm John Vause.
CNN NEWSROOM continues in a moment with Michael Holmes after the break.
You're watching CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[02:00:02]
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Rolling blackouts, flooding and now it could ice all over.
The latest on an area of the U.S.
