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U.K. Breaks Daily Case Record for a Third Day; Omicron Poses Global Health Threat during Holiday Season; Some U.S. States Reimposing COVID-19 Restrictions; A Deeper Look into Haitian Presidential Assassination; COVID-19 Impacting Sports; Former Police Officer Kim Potter Takes the Stand in Her Own Defense; Growing Awareness of Cyberattacks Worldwide. Aired 4-5a ET
Aired December 18, 2021 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Welcome to all of you watching us here in the United States, Canada and around the world, I'm Kim Brunhuber.
Ahead on CNN NEWSROOM, as Omicron spreads, there's news from the scientists in the U.K. We're learning about how severe it is and how fast it spreads.
Plus, a COVID outbreak in the NFL forces games to be postponed. Hear what one doctor says is needed to keep players on the field.
And CNN has new, exclusive reporting about the suspect in the assassination of the Haitian president.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM, with (MUSIC PLAYING)
Kim Brunhuber.
BRUNHUBER: It may be too soon to say whether the Omicron variant is milder than other forms of COVID-19. Researchers at Imperial College London say they found no evidence it is any less severe than Delta. And the risk of getting infected again is five times greater with Omicron than Delta.
Data shows it is spreading faster in the U.K. than in South Africa, with infections doubling in 2.5 days. The U.K. reported more than 93,000 cases on Friday, breaking the record for a third day in a row.
The Irish government is trying to stem its own Omicron surge. In addition to other measures, restaurants and bars will have to shut their doors at 8:00 pm starting Sunday.
And across the Atlantic, the spread of Omicron has U.S. health experts urging people to get vaccinated and get boosted.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DR. FRANCIS COLLINS, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: It's clear that Omicron is an extremely contagious variant and doubles every two to four days. And if you look at the projections of what that means and we're in for a lot cases of people getting infected with this virus.
What we would like to see is as many people as possible protecting themselves with vaccines and especially with boosters in order to limit the consequences.
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BRUNHUBER: One health expert predicts there will be a viral blizzard of COVID cases across the U.S. within weeks, as the Omicron variant continues to spread quickly. It's the reality New York is already facing, as the state reported a record number of new COVID infections on Friday. CNN's Kyung Lah has details.
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KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): America's COVID time warp, long testing and vaccination lines from Miami to Massachusetts. In New York City, the positivity rate has doubled in just four days. A city health adviser tweeted we've never seen this before in NYC.
Radio City Music Hall canceled Friday's shows of its Christmas spectacular citing breakthrough cases. In pharmacies, store shelves for rapid tests sit empty, all echoes of the past. People here waiting more than an hour to be tested as omicron reveals its rapid spread.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is after coming yesterday twice and then not being able to get tested here.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D-NY), NEW YORK CITY: This is a whole new animal. We got to be honest about the fact that it's moving very fast and we have to move faster.
LAH: The past is prologue as New York's mayor redoubles restrictions and considers scaling back the Times Square New Year's Eve celebration, a visible return of sports restrictions. Hockey in Montreal played to empty stands and the NFL and NBA increasing COVID protocols.
This is all in response to deaths, increasing in nearly half of U.S. states, up sharply in seven. That's an increase of 8 percent from just last week.
DR. MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, CENTER FOR DISEASE RESEARCH AND POLICY INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: I think we're really just about to experience a viral blizzard. If you look at what happened in South Africa, in Europe, in the next 3 to 8 weeks, we're going to see millions of Americans will be infected with this virus.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated. LAH: As with previous surges, the unvaccinated are filling hospitals as weary doctors warn they are exhausted and losing staff.
DR. SHELLEY STANKO, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, SAINT JOSEPH HOSPITAL: The reality is you can't -- you can't just create humans in order to provide that care and staffing is a challenge everywhere.
What makes this winter different, while Omicron may be highly, highly transmissible, vaccinations, especially boosters, can protect you from serious illness.
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LAH (voice-over): But in a setback, parents of 2- to 5-year olds, Pfizer says two doses of the vaccine did not produce enough immunity and now they're testing out three child-sized doses, a delay until the second quarter of next year.
FAUCI: You want to really get the right dose and the right regimen for the children. So although you don't like there to be a delay, you want to get it right. And that's what they're talking about.
LAH (voice-over): Kyung Lah, CNN, Los Angeles.
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BRUNHUBER: Omicron is now the dominant variant in Scotland as COVID-19 cases skyrocket across the U.K. CNN's Scott McLean joins us from London.
Another day, another record.
What's the latest?
SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Kim, yes, the surge of Omicron across the U.K., is such a concern that France actually shut its borders to both British tourists and business travelers, even the vaccinated ones.
As you mentioned, the U.K. has the highest daily case counts for three days running. If there's good news it's that Thursday was also a record setting day for vaccinations given in a single day, almost a million.
Omicron is now the dominant strain of the virus in Scotland. That's where a high containment lab, where I visited earlier this week, found -- is finding that the variant doesn't infect cells quite as quickly as previous strains of the virus, though they stress that, what happens in the lab doesn't always translate to the real world. Watch.
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MCLEAN (voice-over): With the Omicron variant surging across the U.K., scientists at the University of Glasgow are racing to confirm in the lab what real-world data is already suggesting. MASSIMO PALMARINI, DIRECTOR, CENTRE FOR VIRUS RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF
GLASGOW: Omicron is able to escape far better immune induced by the vaccination than any other variant.
MCLEAN (voice-over): It also appears to spread much more easily but some indications say it causes less severe symptoms.
TONI HO, CLINICIAN, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW: We will possibly have a million people a day infected in the U.K. Even if it is a tiny proportion of that large number, that will result in quite a few hospitalizations.
MCLEAN: Because the lab we are about to enter contains live samples of the Omicron variant, we have to be decked out head to toe and sealed off with this respirator from any potential danger.
MCLEAN (voice-over): When the virus sample arrived here, it came in a very small vial. It has been left to grow and multiply in this incubator since then. Now they have enough to experiment with.
Omicron doesn't multiple as quickly as Delta. Under the microscope the dark spots are cells Delta infected in 24 hours. But after 48 hours, the Omicron variant hasn't spread as far, a potential encouraging sign.
AGNIESZKA SZEMIEL, VIROLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW: It is slower in the lab and it does not seem to be killing the cells as the other variants. But this is all in the lab. So question is, now how does it translate into the actual patient?
MCLEAN: And sometimes things behave differently in a lab than they would in real life?
SZEMIEL: Yes.
MCLEAN (voice-over): In the real world, new infections of Omicron are doubling in as little as two days in some parts of the U.K.
BORIS JOHNSON, U.K. PRIME MINISTER: There is a tidal wave of Omicron coming.
MCLEAN (voice-over): The government thinks every infected person infects 3-5 others. One not yet peer reviewed model suggests, in the worst case scenario, more than half of the English population could be infected with the Omicron variant over the winter months.
JENNY HARRIES, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, U.K. HEALTH SECURITY AGENCY: It is probably the most significant threat we've had since the start of the pandemic.
MCLEAN (voice-over): In response, prime minister Boris Johnson is resorting to plan B, reviving the indoor mask mandate and introducing a COVID passport for night clubs and large events.
But a vote this week to confirm the measure provoked a mutiny from within Johnson's own Conservative Party, passing only thanks to votes from the oppositions.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So The ayes have it, the ayes have it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are segregating society based on an unacceptable thing. We are not a "papers, please" society.
MCLEAN (voice-over): But they are in mainland Europe. COVID passports are making life difficult for the unjabbed in places like Italy, France, Germany and Austria. They're now required for restaurants, public transit, going to work or even leaving your house.
Austria is making adult vaccinations mandatory. The new German chancellor is pushing for the same.
But when Johnson suggested even a conversation about that in the future, it was publicly shot down by his own health secretary.
SAJID JAVID, BRITISH HEALTH SECRETARY: Although we've seen plans for university mandatory vaccination in some countries in Europe, I will never support them in this country.
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MCLEAN (voice-over): Instead, the government is reverting to a familiar approach: personal responsibility.
DR. CHRISTOPHER WHITTY, BRITISH CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER: I think people should prioritize what really matters to them and cut down on the things that don't.
MCLEAN (voice-over): But with another record high of new infections on Friday and the threat of rising hospitalizations, Johnson may soon need to convince a weary public to go along with even more restrictions, unless some good news is discovered inside labs like this one.
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MCLEAN: And a new, not-yet-peer-reviewed British study found the risk of reinfection with the Omicron variant is five times higher than it was with Delta. That same study also found that there is no evidence that Omicron is a less severe disease than previous variants, though the researchers also stress that data on hospitalizations is still very limited.
BRUNHUBER: Great reporting from that lab, Scott McLean in London, thanks so much.
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BRUNHUBER: Joining me now is Dr. Peter Chin-hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California San Francisco.
Thanks so much for being here with us, Doctor. So we were warned about how quickly the Omicron variant spread but I think many of us were still very surprised by what's happening in the U.K. So you know, with that variant spreading here in the U.S. and predictions it will eventually take over from the Delta variant, is what's happening there in the U.K. a precursor of what will happen here?
DR. PETER CHIN-HONG, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA/SAN FRANCISCO: Well, Kim, I think many people are fearful that what's happening in the U.K. will come to the U.S.
After all, after Alpha in the U.K., after Delta in the U.K., we saw the ripple effects and a similar surge in the U.S. several weeks later. So again, given that precedent, many people believe that what's happening in the U.K. comes over here.
BRUNHUBER: Right, but the way that the U.S. and the U.K. sort of dealt with that suggests that there might be some differences this time around. Take us through what those might be.
CHIN-HONG: Yes, definitely. So I think, in the late spring and early summer, the U.S. and the U.K. were in very similar positions but for different reasons. The U.K. was coming off the Delta surge. The U.S. was beginning their Delta surge. And they handled it in very different ways because at some point the U.K. was also going up in cases.
But then Freedom Day came in July and, at one point, they were very, very similar. But the U.S. said, hey, I'm seeing these cases go up, even though a large swath of the population is vaccinated. I think I'm going to put a break on our reopening and maybe increase restrictions a little bit.
In California, New York and some of the more populous areas, there were mask mandate; events were scaled back and people hunkered down a little bit. There was never any lockdown but certainly a very, very different response.
BRUNHUBER: And then one of the other key differences is sort of the vaccination programs, sort of when people were vaccinated and who. In a way, the U.K. was sort of punished for getting ahead of vaccinations so early. Explain that for us.
CHIN-HONG: Yes, so waning immunity is definitely another factor that might explain some of the differences and may explain how the U.S. may respond as a country to the oncoming Omicron surge.
And the U.K. was very, very good at vaccinating very, very quickly and early on. And of course, there were different vaccines used; it was AstraZeneca, with Pfizer; in the U.S., it was merely an mRNA country with Pfizer, Moderna and a little bit of J&J, a sprinkling.
But that was done much more gradually and later. So when you come to summertime, there's a lot of waning immunity. And in the U.K., the U.S. again being very gradual in its uptake, had still a large proportion of the population with intact immunity to Delta. So that is certainly an explanation.
BRUNHUBER: As you kind of referenced how the U.S. handles the Omicron must depend on where in the U.S. You live. California, New York, there are already reimposing indoor mask mandates in response in part to that threat.
So two years into this pandemic, can we conclusively say that these mitigation measures, that California, for instance, used, works, that outcomes are measurably better in states that clamp down early and hard?
CHIN-HONG: Well, certainly, there's a big relationship between vaccination rates and hospitalizations and deaths. But the relationship between the other mitigation factors, like masking, et cetera, is much more controversial. And they probably only helped to a certain point but they do sort of temper.
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CHIN-HONG: The way I think about it is a vaccine, the vaccine is the cake. And the masking, the social distancing, that's the icing on the cake.
But there's so many other factors, like waning immunity, who you immunize, that play in the field. If you compare California to Florida, Florida was open in the same way that possibly the U.K. was. And California wasn't.
But they ended up pretty much in the same place. But if you look at deaths, there are probably more deaths per 100,000 in Florida compared to the California landscape. And you know, sometimes people refer to Florida as the U.S. Sweden. You know, thinking about natural immunity, it hasn't really been as successful.
BRUNHUBER: Well, let's hope this booster campaign helps us weather the oncoming Omicron storm. Really appreciate your perspective, Dr. Peter Chin-hong, thanks for joining us.
CHIN-HONG: Thanks so much, Kim.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: Now for more on how countries in Europe are responding to the double threat of Omicron and Delta variants, I'm joined by journalist Al Goodman in Madrid.
Al, it looks like more cases and more restrictions.
AL GOODMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kim, that's right. As the Omicron variant spreads rapidly across Europe it's finding fertile ground in France and Germany and here in Spain. They're among the top 10 countries in the world in terms of their total number of coronavirus cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.
So in recent days, Germany and France have each notched up about 50,000 new coronavirus cases each day. And in Spain, it's been about 17,000. Now new French restrictions against British travelers just went into effect hours ago this Saturday. And Britain has its own big problems with Omicron so British travelers trying to get into France will need what British authorities call a compelling reason to be allowed in and will need a negative test within 24 hours of departure.
The French prime minister announcing a ban of large outdoor gatherings on New Year's Eve.
In Germany, the new health minister with the new government saying Omicron is a massive challenge. The government is eyeing measures targeting the unvaccinated and that led to protests and arrests. There were 30 people arrested, protesters arrested in Munich this week by police, protesting the potential new measures.
Here in Spain, the vaccination rate is higher, about 80 percent of the entire population, than most of the other European countries. So the Spanish government is not announcing new national measures -- some of the regions are.
But the pressure is being felt at hospitals, like this one, a major hospital, here in the center of Madrid, where the ICUs, the intensive care wards, are now feeling more pressure nationwide.
And here in Spain it's 14 percent is now the rate of the ICU occupancy; just a couple of weeks ago, it was down in single digits. And just to end, Ireland and Denmark have each announced new restrictions as a result of this increasing load.
In Ireland, there will be a curfew on restaurants and bars, starting at 8:00 pm, starting on Sunday. And in Denmark, cinemas, theaters, museums are closed and certain and more restrictions, the prime minister announcing, on restaurants. So as the cases grow, restrictions are growing. As you said. Kim?
BRUNHUBER: All right. Thanks so much, Al, appreciate it.
Still ahead, CNN uncovers more information about the possible motive behind the unsolved assassination of Haiti's president. And some of the men held in the case are talking to us in an exclusive report. We'll have more on why they say they are innocent victims being denied their rights.
Plus this.
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(MUSIC PLAYING) BRUNHUBER: So 17 members of a U.S.-based missionary group, who
survived a hostage ordeal in Haiti, seem to be doing OK. That's the word from the group itself after the former hostages flew back to the U.S. Thursday. They were held by one of Haiti's most powerful gangs for weeks until the last hostages were released earlier that day.
The Christian aid group described how they survived the captivity.
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DAVID TROYER, GENERAL DIRECTOR, CHRISTIAN AID MINISTRIES: Everyone, including the 10 month old baby and the young boys, seem to be doing reasonably well. They spent many hours together, praying, singing and encouraging each other. They did not have a Bible but recited Bible verses among themselves.
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BRUNHUBER: The former hostages were kidnapped after visiting this orphanage near the capital in October. U.S. officials say a ransom was paid for their release but not by the U.S. government.
CNN is also learning more about the assassination of Haiti's president in July. The president Jovenel Moise was gunned down near his home close to the capital. And sources are talking to CNN about the reason behind the killing, still unresolved.
And some of the suspects are telling us they're innocent and being held under brutal conditions. Matt Rivers has this exclusive report.
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MATT RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: New information about the investigation into the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moise, who was killed inside the presidential residence back in July, a source close to the investigation tells CNN that the night that the assassins entered the home, one of their top priorities was looking for a document that the president has been compiling.
And inside the document allegedly were the names of some of the top drug traffickers in the country, according to the president. His plan was to take the list after it was done being compiled and bring it to U.S. authorities, with the hope that authorities in the U.S. would help him target some of the drug traffickers and their illicit activities here in Haiti.
That list and the president's plan is now being investigated as one of the motives behind the killing.
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RIVERS (voice-over): Adding it is not believed that Moise was able to give that list to the United States before he was killed.
We also have exclusive new reporting surrounding the suspects in this case. We have been trying for months to get access to some of the dozens of suspects arrested. And this week, for the first time, Haitian authorities allowed us into the notorious national penitentiary, where several suspects are being held.
We met with five of the Colombian suspects. There are 26 that were arrested as part of the case. They basically say they are the victims of a setup, brought here under false pretenses and had no idea they were going to participate in an assassination and that they are the real victims in addition to the president himself.
They say, from the moment they were arrested, they were denied due process. They were forced to sign statements that they couldn't even read. They were written by police in a language foreign to them -- they only speak Spanish.
Yet under threat, they were forced to sign them anyway. The Haitian government spokesperson said that was not actually true. They denied that happened.
Beyond that, these men still do not have legal representation and have not been formally charged with a crime under Haitian law. They described consistent torture at various times after they were arrested.
Several of the men described how members of their group still have scars on their bodies from being tortured, from police, either being hit or being stabbed. Several of the men still have scars that the men say come directly from police torture.
And where they are being kept right now, the conditions are horrible. We went in and saw multiple people stacked in a single cell. We saw raw sewage flowing through a pipe under our feet that was an exposed pipe. So we saw that.
These men say they are only given one plate of rice per day. That is the only time they eat during the day. They say their lives are essentially worth nothing inside that prison.
The Haitian government responded by saying they do not single out the Colombians for these conditions, that everyone in the prison is treated the same, telling you a lot about how the prison is run if those are the conditions and the authorities don't even deny it.
So this is the latest we have been able to come here out of Haiti with, into the investigation into the assassination of the president Jovenel Moise -- Matt Rivers, CNN, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
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BRUNHUBER: Anyone hoping to watch some football this weekend could be disappointed. Several NFL games are being postponed, blaming COVID-19.
And with the holidays approaching, the U.K. government is urging people to skip the parties and stay home, as the Omicron variant races around the world. A stealth lockdown is taking a toll on the country's economy. That's next. Stay with us.
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BRUNHUBER: Let's take another look at our top story. A new study out of the U.K. gives new insight into how Omicron stacks up against previous coronavirus variants. Researchers at Imperial College London say they found no evidence it is any less severe than Delta and found the risk of getting infected again was more than five times greater with Omicron than with Delta.
And data shows the variant is spreading faster in the U.K. than it has in South Africa, with infections doubling in 2.5 days.
COVID cases are playing havoc with the schedules of sports leagues in North America. Dozens of players with the L.A. Rams and Cleveland Browns tested positive or in contact with infected people.
In pro hockey, games are being rescheduled and more than a dozen college basketball games in the U.S. are canceled or postponed.
Earlier I spoke with Dr. Scott Miscovich, the CEO of Premier Medical Group USA and the COVID medical testing director for the U.S. Olympic swimming track and field and rugby and gymnastics. And I asked him about the arguments some experts have raised, saying pro sports should hit a pause button until things improve. Here he is.
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DR. SCOTT MISCOVICH, FAMILY PHYSICIAN AND NATIONAL CONSULTANT: I think that especially in the United States right now, we're not going to have much of a choice, because there's going to be such a surge in positivity as we go through the holidays.
And we're seeing it as all of the games have been canceled, whether it's the NHL or now, God forbid, the NFL this weekend. The positivity is going to go so high, so quickly, that I believe we're facing major cancellations.
And what's the problem?
Well, now, we have to battle owner, league and players associations. We all know how that goes in our country. That goes into this long and drawn-out stalemate.
They need to come together right now, make a determination, what's safe for everyone and keep the bubbles. And they need to start testing and testing and testing and they basically need to let vaccinations do their work.
BRUNHUBER: Now you know, we're talking pros here. But vaccination rates are lower among young people. And now some schools in the U.S. and Canada, they're warning that they might have to go back to online. So with what you're seeing in the pro league and with Omicron
threatening, as you said, will college sports be able to carry on sort of undeterred in the next couple of months?
Or will there have to be major changes to their procedures, schedules or, maybe even worst case scenario, cancel seasons?
MISCOVICH: Yes, I think we're faced with that even more so, in college, because you know, you have our colleges. They're facing the whole issue. We all know, in the country, we got red states, we got blue states and, unfortunately, that translates over to the way they create some of their policies.
And I believe that unless we have a solid push for a third vaccination, just like in pros, we're going to see major cancellations going on. I think we could have bowl games that are going to be canceled.
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MISCOVICH: And coming up, March madness might be a wish this year, unless there are dramatic changes.
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BRUNHUBER: And the English Football League is already pressing the pause button on some of its matches; 19 matches scheduled for this weekend have been postponed because of outbreaks among the teams; 17 other matches will still go ahead.
The EFL includes lower tier teams below the Premier League, which has postponed nine of its matches in recent days, including five this weekend.
So U.K. soccer fans won't have as many games to watch this weekend. And the government is urging them to stay home and stay safe. As Anna Stewart reports, the directives to steer clear of big gatherings are not definitely a lockdown but it is a distinction the U.K. economy doesn't seem to appreciate.
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ANNA STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's being called a lockdown by stealth. Unlike previous waves of COVID-19, the U.K. government hasn't imposed restrictions on social gatherings or ordered businesses to close.
But it has advised the British public to work from home and this week their chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, advised people to limit their social contacts if they want to enjoy a COVID-free Christmas with loved ones.
A medical director for the National Health Service told the British public, if they are going to stadiums this weekend, it should be for a booster shot and not to watch a match. The U.K. broke another daily case record for the third consecutive day
on Friday. However, the rapid decline in people heading into towns and cities across the U.K. to splash cash before Christmas is hitting some businesses hard.
Bookings for cafes, bars, pubs and restaurants fell by a third in just 10 days and they are expected to fall further still. Some businesses may struggle to survive.
Business groups have called for more grants or even a return to the furlough scheme. But following a meeting between the U.K. chancellor Rishi Sunak, and business leaders on Friday, no new financial support was announced. The government will continue to engage with businesses and the sectors that are affected.
Meanwhile, the economic picture in the U.K. looks grim. The economy barely grew, coming in at 0.1 percent and inflation hit 5.1 percent in November, the highest level in 10 years.
The arrival of Omicron and the surge of infections is likely to be a major drag on the U.K. economy and the government may need to spend more to support it -- Anna Stewart, CNN, London.
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BRUNHUBER: Still ahead, the defense rests in the trial of a former Minnesota police officer, charged in the death of a Black man during a traffic stop. The latest from the courtroom coming up.
Plus Ghislaine Maxwell's defense team rests its case. Details on the criminal sex trafficking trial of the long-time Jeffrey Epstein associate, straight ahead. Stay with us.
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BRUNHUBER: Ghislaine Maxwell's defense team rested its case Friday in her criminal sex trafficking conspiracy trial. Nine witnesses testified for the defense over two days. Closing arguments begin Monday and then the jury takes over for deliberation.
Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to six federal charges. The case against the former associate of Jeffrey Epstein lies mostly on the testimony of four women. They say Maxwell facilitated and sometimes participated in sexual abuse by Epstein when they were minors.
And defense attorneys in the trial of Kim Potter have rested their case after the former police officer took the stand in a day of emotional testimony. She is charged in the killing of Daunte Wright during a traffic stop earlier this year. Closing arguments in the trial are set to begin next week. CNN's Josh Campbell has the latest from Minneapolis.
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KIM POTTER, FORMER POLICE OFFICER: I remember yelling, "Taser, Taser, Taser," and nothing happened. He told me I shot him.
JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Former officer Kim Potter testifying for the first time explaining the moment she shot and killed Daunte Wright last April. Potter describes seeing her fellow officers struggling with Wright during the traffic stop.
POTTER: He had a look a fear in his face. It's nothing I've seen before. We are struggling. We're trying to keep him from driving away. It's just -- it's just one chaotic.
CAMPBELL (voice-over): Wright, who officers learned had an outstanding warrant for a weapons violation, was initially pulled over for minor offenses pointed out by a rookie officer.
POTTER: We discussed a little bit of suspicious activity. He noticed a pine tree or air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror and the tags were expired.
CAMPBELL (voice-over): Potter revealing they would not have pulled Wright over at all. If she hadn't been training that officer.
EARL GRAY, POTTER DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Then why not?
POTTER: An air freshener to me is not just an equipment violation.
GRAY: You did stop the vehicle, right?
POTTER: Yes, part of field training is that my probationer would make numerous contacts with the public throughout the day.
CAMPBELL (voice-over): That contact would turn fatal.
POTTER: I shot him. Oh, my god!
CAMPBELL (voice-over): When she pulled her gun, instead of her Taser. The prosecutor asked Potter about training on confusing her Taser and her gun.
ERIN ELDRIDGE, PROSECUTING ATTORNEY: You are trained on it. Right?
POTTER: Yes but it was a while back.
ELDRIDGE: But you trained in March of this year on that Taser, correct?
POTTER: Yes.
CAMPBELL (voice-over): The state pointing out you --
ELDRIDGE: You never saw a weapon on Mr. Wright. Did you?
POTTER: No.
ELDRIDGE: Never saw a gun?
POTTER: No.
Oh, my god!
CAMPBELL (voice-over): Adding she did not try to save Wright or check on other officers in the aftermath.
ELDRIDGE: You didn't make sure any officers knew what you had just done, right?
POTTER: No.
ELDRIDGE: You didn't run down the street and try to save Daunte Wright's life. Did you?
POTTER: No.
ELDRIDGE: You're focused on what you had done, because you had just killed somebody. Right?
POTTER: I'm sorry it happened. I'm so sorry.
CAMPBELL (voice-over): Prosecutors continuing to push.
ELDRIDGE: You knew that deadly force was unreasonable and unwarranted in any circumstances?
POTTER: And I didn't want to kill anybody.
CAMPBELL: And the jury in the trial, they heard from all of the witnesses who will be testifying. On Monday, there will be closing arguments, where the prosecution will sum up their case.
Of course, all along, they claimed that a very senior officer should have known the difference between her service weapon and her Taser.
Potter, of course, has pleaded not guilty. Her defense has claimed that this entire episode was a tragic mistake. The jury will be sequestered on Monday as they begin their deliberations -- Josh Campbell, CNN, Minneapolis.
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BRUNHUBER: Concern is growing over the escalating threat posed by cyber attacks to governments and individuals.
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BRUNHUBER: Just ahead on CNN, what some say should be done to reduce the danger. Stay with us.
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BRUNHUBER: Business leaders and former U.S. government officials have a stark warning about the threat of cyber attacks. We've already seen and felt the impact of several high-profile hacks in 2020, when Russian hackers breached U.S. federal agencies, an attack that compromised as many as 14 technology firms.
Here in the U.S. Southeast, there were long lines at gas stations when a ransomware attack shut down Colonial Pipeline. And more recently Facebook says it exposed a vast network of surveillance for hire firms.
Parent company Meta claims they were using hacking tools and hundreds of fake personas to monitor journalists, dissidents and politicians around the world. And earlier this week, the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell had this to say, when asked about potential stability risks.
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JEROME POWELL, CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL RESERVE: The risk of a successful cyber attack is, for me, you know, always the most, the one that we would be -- it would be very difficult to deal with.
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POWELL: I think we know how to deal with bad loans and things like that. I think more, a cyber attack, if it were to take down a major financial institution or a financial market utility, would be a really significant financial stability risk that we haven't actually faced yet.
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BRUNHUBER: The JPMorgan International Council says it is time to step up cybersecurity efforts against the increasingly dangerous threat to not just the economy but national security.
Among the recommendations the group is making, strengthening collaboration between public and private sectors, ramping up the hiring of cybersecurity experts in government agencies and enhancing intelligence sharing among like-minded countries.
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BRUNHUBER: Joining me from Stanford, California is, Jacquelyn Schneider, she's a Hoover fellow at Stanford University.
Thanks so much for being here with us. So in that report I just referenced, former Defense Secretary Bob Gates say, quote, "Cyber is the most dangerous weapon in the world, politically, economically and militarily."
But you argue that the nature of that weapon is often misunderstood; it's less dramatically catastrophic but more insidious and maybe even more dangerous. Explain what you mean.
JACQUELYN SCHNEIDER, HOOVER FELLOW AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY: Yes, you know, for years, we started -- we were analogizing cyber as a bomb. It was Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, 9/11.
And it has been 10 years and there hasn't been this giant cyber bomb but instead what we're seeing is this ubiquitous nature of cyberspace operations, where the constant ransomware attacks, the constant stealing of intellectual property, all of these things degrade trust.
And in doing so, they threaten a lot of the foundations of what modern digital economies, what democratic states and even the relationships between states, the trust foundations that we rely on.
And so it hasn't been this cyberspace, you know, exploding or causing physical reactions but instead, that it's eating away at the very connections that we have amongst each other.
BRUNHUBER: So that JPMorgan International Council report calls for more collaboration between the government and the private sector. The Biden administration is issuing new security guidance to critical infrastructure firms, to try to blunt the impact of ransomware and other hacks. But those are largely voluntary.
So should they be mandatory?
Do those measures go far enough?
SCHNEIDER: A lot of folks who are in the wonky cyber world were really hoping that, within the last National Defense Authorization Act, that there would be provisions that actually regulated some sort of incident response or letting the government know that an incident has occurred.
But it didn't work. The legislation was too wonky and they weren't able to get it in the NDAA. The complication is that organizations, companies, they have obligations to customers.
They have obligations to their shareholders and sometimes responding, giving information to the government, can make those kind of responsibilities to customers and shareholders a little bit difficult.
And to be honest, the government hasn't always figured out kind of its bureaucracy, to figure out who are they telling, how are they informing, their mechanisms about how this has been, that the government had not worked out on their side.
BRUNHUBER: So we're talking here, this level of corporations and governments and, for most of us, it can be hard to know what to make of the latest panic over the, you know, the Log4j vulnerability.
And obviously this affects individuals and all of us online. The latest example is that 50,000 Facebook users in more than 100 countries, they may have been targets of hacking attempts by surveillance companies, working for either government agencies or private clients. So what more needs to be done to curb that?
SCHNEIDER: This is a really complicated phenomenon, where, on one end, the solution is to just completely go analog and lose our digital IDs. And there's also a utopian vision, so you look at this vision that being led by people like Jack Dorsey, who is at Twitter, the idea of Web3, where they can regain the idealism of the internet and we can trust each other once again.
I think the answer really is kind of a mixture of all of these things. I'm not highly utopian and also I don't believe we can completely go back in time. It's really figuring out how we layer resilience.
And whether that's technological resilience, in the way we build our network, the way we store our data, the way we back up our data, the way we protect that data or resilience on resilience on our own.
Are we writing down our passwords instead of storing them all online?
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SCHNEIDER: Do we have backups of important data?
And I think elections were a really good example here, where the United States had this debate about, this is such important data that it can't all be digital or it needs a manual backup or a paper backup.
So that's complicated and actually a very costly and inefficient response, which is really this idea of layering and resilience and finding backups and manual options, so that we don't have to completely go back to analog.
BRUNHUBER: No easy solutions, unfortunately. But we really appreciate your perspective. Thanks so much for joining us.
SCHNEIDER: Thank you as well.
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BRUNHUBER: Google and Facebook's parent company, Meta, have the green light to collaborate on a massive project, an 8,000 mile undersea data cable, connecting the U.S., Taiwan and the Philippines, called the Pacific Light Cable Network.
Hong Kong was excluded due to U.S. security concerns about possible Chinese surveillance. The tech giants say they will work with various government agencies to protect Americans' personal data.
And finally, the Red Planet seems to be a wetter place than we thought until now. A Russian and European orbiter discovered what scientists call significant amounts of water in a giant canyon on Mars, far larger than the Grand Canyon in the United States.
Scientists say it is emitting a high level of hydrogen, a sign of possible water. And that suggests up to 40 percent of material just below the ground is likely water ice. Well, that wraps up this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Kim Brunhuber. I'll
be back in just a moment with more news. Please do stay with us.
