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Six People are Wounded in New Zealand Terrorist Attack; The Final Flight of America's Longest War; Taliban Expected to Announce New Government; Afghan Refugees Begin Their New Lives; Fights Erupt Over Mask Mandates in U.S. Schools; Racial Abuse Aimed at England Players; Abba to Release New Album, First in Four Decades. Aired 4:30- 5a ET

Aired September 03, 2021 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to all of you watching us here in the United States, Canada and around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM.

All right, let's recap our top story. Six people are wounded, some in critical condition following a terrorist attack at a shopping mall in New Zealand.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get inside.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's someone here with a knife. There's someone here with a knife.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Panicked shoppers fled when a knife-wielding man went on a rampage at a supermarket in the suburban Auckland. Now this video taken inside the shopping center was posted online partially blurred and censored as you can see. At a news conference Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the attacker was a Sri Lankan national under surveillance by police. She called him a terrorist.

The U.S. Air Force commander who oversaw the last flights out of Afghanistan is giving CNN an inside look at those tense final hours. As Pentagon correspondent Oren Liebermann reports, it was a dangerous and emotional final mission. She

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The approach into and out of Kabul allowed little margin for error. Mountains that surround Hamid Karzai International Airport and the valley is prone to bad weather. Thousands of Afghans on the field, thousands more desperately trying to get in.

Nearby, a terror threat from ISIS-K. In this environment, Lieutenant Colonel Alex Pelbath on a mission, the end of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

LT. COL. ALEX PELBATH, U.S. AIR FORCE: Instead of focusing

on the danger, what all the operators do is you focus on the mission you got at hand. So, you focus on individual tasks. You focus on success, and you focus on doing your part of the mission as well as you possibly can.

LIEBERMANN (voice-over): Pelbath was the commission commander of the final five flights out of Kabul. He snapped this picture of another C- 17 taking on Afghan evacuees. In the background, the cars and baggage and hangars about to be left behind.

PELBATH: I graduated from Air Force Academy in 2001, and a couple months later, September 11th happened. So, my entire career has been spent with a conflict in Afghanistan, and to see it come to an end -- that does make a mark, I think.

LIEBERMANN (voice-over): Pelbath knew time was precious. Every second on the tarmac was added risks and with the final troops loading up, the danger was at its peak.

Major General Chris Donahue, the commander of the 82nd Airborne, was the last soldier to step off Afghan soil, the military says.

Pelbath later snapped this cell phone picture of his own flight. Then Pelbath gave the order, clam shell, close the cargo doors. Minutes later, flush the force. The order to take off.

PELBATH: I was able to see in front of me, the first aircraft had just made their left turn. The second aircraft right behind him. The third aircraft had just lifted off, the fourth aircraft on the runway. I had the entire picture of the C-17 force in front of me. For sure, an image that I will never forget.

LIEBERMANN (voice-over): The five C-17s had been on the ground a total of three hours, he says. The end of a 20-year war was his final flight.

LIEBERMANN: Part of what made this so special for Lieutenant Colonel Pelbath is that his own grandparents were on a U.S. evacuation flight. They lived in Hungary and fled to neighboring Austria in 1957 and were removed from Austria by a U.S. military aircraft in 1957 as part of "Operation Safe Haven" and that made this very personal for Pelbath.

I also asked him at the end of the interview if he had any thoughts. And he said, look, this isn't just the credit of one person or any individual. It was all of the 80 or so crew members on board those five flights who made the final evacuation and withdrawal happen and made it happen safely.

Oren Liebermann, CNN, at the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: So, now the world is waiting for the Taliban to announce the formation of a new government in Afghanistan. CNN's international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson is live this hour in Islamabad, Pakistan. Nic, so it's hard to know exactly what to expect in terms of this new Taliban government, certainly the Taliban have made plenty of promises. But what are you hear hearing?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, the first big diplomatic test for the Taliban 100 percent. Because this is the moment where, you know, they have said a lot of things about how they will give women education. How they're going to have for example non- Taliban members in the government to sort of give a message to the people of Afghanistan that they will be inclusive, inclusive of different ethnic groups, inclusive of less conservative views. That's why everyone's watching this moment so carefully.

[04:35:00]

But I think the sort of ground reality is the picture that begins to emerge is the Taliban are going to have all the senior and important positions and the question is who do they include as the non-Taliban member or members and what role and relevance do they give that person. I think we can expect, you know, the security, you know, defense, internal security, education, religious institutions, all those sorts of dimensions to fall directly onto the Taliban.

There is one name that seems to be sort of floating up the list of possible members of this new government. And that will be Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former Prime Minister in Afghanistan, very conservative in his views. More closely aligned to the Taliban per se than people like Dr. Abdullah Abdullah or former president Karzai, who both been in conversations recently with the Taliban. But undoubtedly this will be the moment the international community gets an insight into whether or not the Taliban is going to be inclusive. And I don't think that anyone at the moment is expecting a woman to get a ministerial position or a senior position in government. But waiting and watching.

BRUNHUBER: All right, and one of the questions that the government will have to deal with is how they're going to administer the airport. Who are they going to allow to leave? Our focus generally has been, you know, all those people escaping by air via Kabul, but so many others have been trying to escape by land to Pakistan. And you have looked at the exodus of the border there. Tell us what you saw.

ROBERTSON: Yes, I mean this is a message if you will about the border that the Pakistani government is communicating to all visiting diplomats. Dominic Raab, the British Foreign Secretary, is here today. The Dutch Foreign Minister was here earlier in the week, the German Foreign Minister also. And the message that Pakistan will be potentially on the receiving end of a large number of refugees if the situation deteriorates in Afghanistan. Their message to those countries is, look at what the Taliban do in terms of their government but engage with them.

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ROBERTSON (voice over): As they set foot on new soil after countless hours of travel many of the more than 115,000 evacuated Afghan refugees relieved to be free from fear of life under Taliban control. This 40-year-old former translator now in South Korea.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People do not believe them. We do not believe their promise. They are the opposite of humanity, especially for the women and for the girls. They are not happy that the girls go to school.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Whether it's in South Korea, the U.S., Spain, Mexico, France, Qatar or many of the other 100 plus countries that have vowed to take them in their new lives and dreams begin now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We came here and we want to live for a long time in peace. Our children should have a good education here and a peaceful situation.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): At Afghanistan's border with Pakistan those not lucky enough to make the evac flight struggle to leave. One man crushed to death Thursday as the crowd pushed to cross. Some here though, not fleeing fighting or fearing the Taliban but just looking for survival.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Previously during such change a lot of looting had happened. So, for that reason people were scared. People were running away. Myself, I've come here with a patient for medical treatment.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): And some coming for that most basic need economic uncertainty, escaping drought and unemployment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We are 150 families. It was tough for us to cross the border. We were very oppressed and many families are stranded there. We were unemployed and hungry. We migrated here because of poverty. And we need help because we don't have tents and food. We have nothing. Have mercy on us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): There was no work here, no jobs. We fled to Pakistan in disarray. We are requesting the Pakistani government to help us because we are refugees. Look at these kids. They have nowhere to go.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (on camera): So, for now, Pakistan's message to those would be refugees whom I think about coming to the border, would be economic migrants, is don't come if you don't have the correct paperwork. And the reason they say for this is quite simply over the years that Pakistan has hosted millions of Afghan refugees. There really worried about the potential for what could happen now that this trickle of what's coming to the border at the moment could turn into a flood and they don't feel that they have the capacity to handle that many refugees again going forward.

[04:40:00]

And that's is why this meeting with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and those other meetings that Pakistani officials have had is so important. Because I think there's a real recognition that the Western countries are not particularly going to like what they see when the Taliban announce their new government. They perhaps not going to feel it's as inclusive as they would like. But that importance to engage and engage economically because otherwise this trickle of refugees really could turn into something much bigger -- Kim.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, interesting. Appreciate the reporting, Nic Robertson in Islamabad.

All right, coming up on CNN NEWSROOM, mask mandates are turning school board meetings in to battle grounds. We'll look at the fierce debates and why some officials have had enough.

Plus, health experts say that there is likely to be yet another step to achieving full COVID-19 protection. We'll have details ahead. Stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: Florida school districts are now free to require students to wear masks. A circuit court judge made the ruling last week but just signed the order yesterday he says Governor Ron DeSantis simply does not have the authority for a blanket mandatory ban. DeSantis says he will fight the ruling, even threatening to cut funding to officials who defy his order. A growing number of Florida school districts have issued mask mandates as COVID cases surge in the state.

And Florida is just one example of the fierce debate over mask mandates. Heated arguments are now turning into all out brawls and school officials are resigning across the country. CNN's Tom Foreman reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Back to school has become a battle cry in the COVID wars everywhere.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No one should ever going to be allowed in the public again!

FOREMAN (voice-over): With the school board in Oregon firing the local superintendent amid anger and tears. Officials are not saying why, but the move came shortly after the super said classes would comply with this order from the governor.

[04:45:00]

GOV. KATE BROWN (D), OREGON: Moving forward for the immediate future, masks will be required in all indoor public settings.

FOREMAN (voice-over): School board meetings coast to coast are erupting.

CROWD: We want freedom!

FOREMAN (voice-over): Some are already in uproars over critical race theory and transgender rights.

DICK BLACK (R), FORMER VIRGINIA STATE SENATOR: I am disgusted by your bigotry and your depravity.

FOREMAN (voice-over): But now, the fight is over vaccinations and masks. Never mind that polls show most Americans broadly support the idea of masking in schools, teachers and health officials are being attacked for even trying to enforce such safety measures.

In Florida, a man opposed to masking was arrested after authorities say he physically clashed with a student. Public meetings there have filled with rage.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, LEE COUNTY, FLORIDA PARENT: These are demonic entities in all the school boards of all the United States of America, and all of us Christians will be sticking together to take them all out. All the police officers that kick us out for our First Amendment right will also be going down with them. Do you understand?

FOREMAN (voice-over): In Pennsylvania, a school board member resigned saying he had received death threats from the warring factions. While in Wisconsin, three board members stepped down, saying the job of tending to serious school matters was becoming toxic and impossible to do.

RICK GROTHAUS, FORMER WISCONSIN SCHOOL BOARD PRESIDENT: We didn't get to the point of fisticuffs, but was there lots of vitriol and lot of shouting and a lot of disruptive, disrespectful behavior? Yes, that did occur.

FOREMAN (voice-over): And on it goes from Maine to Michigan, Kansas to California, Arizona to Alaska. Kids are getting an up-close lesson in anti-social studies.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I already told the schools that my children wouldn't be wearing masks.

FOREMAN (voice-over): Amid wildly differing views over what it means to be a good American.

FOREMAN: Make no mistake, while there have been some protests in favor of masks, headlines show most of these clashes are being driven by people who virulently anti-mask. People who think that their version of freedom counts more than these proven measures to protect the public health and even the health of their own children.

Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.

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BRUNHUBER: Experts now say that three COVID vaccine doses will likely be needed for full protection. Recently two Israeli based studies show a decrease in infections in people who got a third or booster shot, both Moderna and Pfizer have applied for authorization for a third dose from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Fauci says it makes sense.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: From my own experience as an immunologist, I would not at all be surprised that the adequate full regimen for vaccination will likely be three doses. It is entirely understandable why the results that I've just reported from the Israeli boosters are so dramatic. And we all hope and I believe that we have good reason to believe that that only will not be a strong response but that it will actually be durable. And if it is durable, then you're going to have very likely a three-dose regimen being the routine regimen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: After just one year on the job, Japan's Prime Minister is effectively stepping down. Yoshihide Suga says he won't run in the Liberal Democratic party leadership race later this month because he wants to focus on COVID pandemic countermeasures. The 72-year-old replaced the long time Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who retired for health reasons last September. Suga's term as party leader expires at the end of this month.

Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM, "Mamma Mia" here they come again. The legendary pop group Abba has a surprise for its fans. We'll have details next. Stay with us.

[04:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRUNHUBER: Troubling allegations on the soccer pitch as World Cup qualifying kicks off. Plus, the latest from the U.S. Open. Patrick Snell has our minute in sports.

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PATRICK SNELL, CNN WORLD SPORT: Well, we start with football qualifying action ahead of next year's tournament in Qatar. And once again allegations of despicable racial abuse and that England's players during their 4-0 victory against Hungary. The English national team were loudly booed ahead of the game. Manchester City's Raheem Sterling breaking the deadlock in front of a 60,000 plus crowd inside the Puskas Arena early in the second half before England players were then pelted with cups amid the celebrations there.

Sweden meantime seen a victory over Spain thanks to Viktor Claesson. The Swedes with three wins from three as they go to the top of Group B. Spain handed their first World Cup qualifying loss since 1993, 2-1 Sweden.

And Novak Djokovic's bid for a record 21st major title on track still at the U.S. Open. The world number one powering his way into round three three. Novak easily beating Tallon Griekspoor of the Netherlands. The Serbian superstar going on to seal a 77th win at the U.S. Open.

And American golfer Harris English with a stunning hole in one at the $15 million FedEx cup finale to the U.S. PGA tour golf season here in Atlanta on Thursday. Memories are made at this indeed, and with that, it is right back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: One music's bestselling groups is releasing their first new album in four decades and even giving a series of digital concerts. Have a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ABBA, SINGING: Mamma mia, now I really know My my, I could never let you go

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Well, that of course is the Swedish super group Abba known for such smash hits at Mama Mia and Dancing Queen. Well, there new album named Voyage drops November 5. Benny and Bjorn described how they got Agnetha and Anni-Frid to take a pause from retirement.

[04:55:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BENNY ANDERSSON, ABBA BAND MEMBER: First there was just two songs. And then we said, well, maybe we should do -- I don't know, a few others. What do you say, girls? They said yes. Then I asked them well, why don't we just do a whole album?

BJORN ULVAEUS, ABBA BAND MEMBER: The first song "I Still Have Faith in You," I knew when Benny played the melody I just knew. It had to be about us. It's about realizing that it's inconceivable to be where we are. No imagination could dream up that, to release a new album after 40 years. And still be the best of friends and still be enjoying each other's company and have total loyalty.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: So along with the album, virtual concerts starting in May at London's Olympic Park, six nights a week. Pop stars won't be there in person, but their younger looking avatars will perform with a live band. You can almost hear Abba fans singing thank you for the music -- which my producers ensure me is an Abba song.

I'm Kim Brunhuber at CNN Center in Atlanta. Thanks for joining me. "EARLY START" is next.

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