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Putin Indicates Support For IAEA Inspection Of Nuclear Plant; Trump Factor Could Hurt Republicans In Midterm Elections; Liz Cheney's Future In Focus After Wyoming Primary Loss; Mother Struggles With Loss Of Two Sons In One Year; DOJ Pushes Back On Efforts To Release Mar-a- lago Search Affidavit; Former Mexican Attorney General Arrested Over 2014 Missing Students Case; U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Visits Turkish Port; Heat Shutdowns In China Come After COVID-19 Slowdown; Falling Danube Levels Expose Sunken WWII Ships. Aired 5-6a ET
Aired August 20, 2022 - 05:00 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 AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hello and welcome to all of you watching us here in the United States, Canada and around the world.
There's deep concern at the White House over the classified material Trump took to Mar-a-lago. Look at whether the documents put national security at risk.
And tensions are rising at the nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhya, the largest one in all of Europe. Both Ukraine and Russia are making accusations about military action around it. We're there live with the latest.
Plus --
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SHANA CHAPPELL, GOLD STAR MOTHER: I don't think any parent should have to bury their kid.
BRUNHUBER (voice-over): Pain and rage: that's the cycle of emotions a mother says she is experiencing after losing two sons in less than a year after the war in Afghanistan.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM is Kim Brunhuber.
BRUNHUBER: The Biden White House is officially hands off regarding last week's FBI search of Donald Trump's Mar-a-lago residence. It turned up 11 sets of classified materials, including some with the highest secrecy.
Privately some White House officials admit they're worried about what other sensitive documents might be out there. And court documents unsealed in relation to that search hint at the legal jeopardy the former president and his allies could be facing. Jessica Schneider has our report.
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JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): New information revealed in documents related to the Mar-a-Lago search sharpening the focus on former President Trump as a possible subject of a criminal probe.
The application for the search warrant unsealed Thursday reveals that among the crimes DOJ is investigating includes the willful retention of national defense information, a language that could point to the role of Trump, who would have been authorized to possess national defense documents while in office but not once he departed the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago.
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: The papers don't specify Donald Trump in particular. You, usually, as a prosecutor, don't specify a person. But we can sort of try to figure it out what they mean by the word they did give us.
SCHNEIDER: Trump's former attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who's a target of another criminal probe out of Georgia investigating election fraud, he lashed out, defending the former president.
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER TRUMP LAWYER: And now, they want to make him responsible for having taken classified documents and preserve them. Really, if you look at the Espionage Act, it is not really about taking the documents; it is about destroying them or hiding them or giving them to the enemy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.
GIULIANI: It is not about taking them and putting them in a place that's roughly as safe as they were in the first place.
SCHNEIDER (voice-over): Trump and his team continue to push publicly for releasing the full search warrant affidavit, which would have a lot more detail. But they didn't file any motions to that effect in court.
A source tells CNN that remains a possibility, while Trump is continuing to hunt for additions to the legal team, including someone with experience in Florida.
ALINA HABBA, DONALD TRUMP'S LAWYER: One thing I did like today, and I have to be positive about this, he said, look, if it's redacted too much, I am going to take it and I'm going to redact it myself.
SCHNEIDER (voice-over): Since the search, threats against FBI agents have reached unprecedented levels, a source tells CNN. That's why a House oversight panel is calling on social media
companies to take immediate action and identify the number of threats made on their platforms since August 8th, the day of the search. The demand comes in a letter to social media companies, including Meta, Twitter and TikTok.
SCHNEIDER: And then when it comes to the affidavit, prosecutors now have less than one week to submit proposed redactions of the judge, so he can decide what might be released publicly.
It will likely be a tall task for DOJ that has repeatedly said, any redactions they would propose would be so extensive it would make the affidavit, quote, "devoid of content" -- Jessica Schneider, CNN, Washington.
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BRUNHUBER: The Trump factor is looming over the upcoming midterm elections. Some are aligning themselves as closely as possible with the former president. But others are trying to avoid him with every step of the way.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell admitted it will be tough for Republicans to retake the Senate. And other party figures urge candidates to focus on issues and not Donald Trump. Melanie Zanona has more.
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MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: With fewer than 100 days until the midterm elections, Republicans are starting to put a finer point on their general election strategy. In primaries, it's beneficial for a number of candidates to embrace Trump but in the general election, it is a different calculation.
I am told that Republican Tom Emmer, the head of the House GOP's campaign arm, has been privately counseling some Republican candidates to avoid any Trump talk and to not be distracted by the former president and told them focus on issues most salient, such as crime, inflation and the border.
I've talked to a number of these Republican candidates, who says they've tried to do exactly that. One said they only mentioned Trump when asked about him by constituents.
Another said they never mention him by name and only talk about his policies. But that is going to be increasingly difficult to do with Trump continuing to dominate headlines, under increasing scrutiny with myriad investigations and even teasing a potential presidential bid before the midterms.
So there's a lot of concern among Republicans about this midterm election becoming a referendum on Donald Trump instead of Joe Biden. And we should also point out that this concern is not just limited to
the House. In the Senate, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has warned that the fall fight is going to be extremely close, in part because of these Donald Trump-backed candidates, who have struggled in their races. Take a listen.
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SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), MINORITY LEADER: I think there's probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome. Right now, we have a 50-50 Senate and a 50-50 country. But I think, when all is said and done this fall, we're likely to have an extremely close Senate.
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ZANONA: Of course, McConnell did not name Trump there. But it is clear that he is frustrated with how things are shaking out and he's trying to set some expectations ahead of November -- Melanie Zanona, CNN, Capitol Hill.
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BRUNHUBER: CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein joins me from Los Angeles and senior editor for "The Atlantic."
Thank you so much for being with us.
So, Ron, looking at the big picture, on one hand, you can say it's been -- you know, a bad week for Donald Trump, with the accumulation of his legal troubles and those of his allies and associates.
But on the other hand, he's reportedly pulling in millions in fundraising on the back of the Mar-a-Lago search.
So even if his legal woes worsen, in the backwards world of Donald Trump, is it actually good for him politically?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think, clearly, that even as his legal problems are mounting, his hold on the Republican Party is tightening, right?
I mean, when -- in May, when the governor of Georgia and the secretary of state of Georgia, who had defended the integrity of the elections in 2020 and pushed back against Trump's lies, when they won their primaries, there was a great deal of heated speculation that Trump's grip on the Republican Party was loosening.
And the summer has sent a very, very different message. I mean, in state after state, in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Arizona, in Nevada, in Minnesota, Trump-backed election deniers have won Republican nominations, of course, capped by the defeat of Liz Cheney in the primary this week, the resounding defeat in the primary this week. That meant that eight of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach
him are either retiring or were defeated by Republican voters in their primaries.
For better or worse, this is Donald Trump's party. That is the umbrella under which Republicans are going to be running in the fall.
And I think the events of the past few months and the fact that so many Republican elected officials rushed to defend him after the execution of the search warrant in Mar-a-Lago and not really knowing anything about the case, all of that underscores how difficult it is going to be for anyone to stop him if he wants the GOP nomination again in 2024.
BRUNHUBER: And as you say, Liz Cheney's primary loss underscores all of that. There's been plenty of speculation about their potentially running in 2024. You've written recently about that.
How realistic is it and what effect would it have on the race and the Republican Party as a whole?
BROWNSTEIN: Well, look, Liz Cheney is not going to be the Republican nominee that. Is very clear. But if she runs in 2024, she could have influence over the outcome, particularly in a general election.
If you look at polling, Kim, consistently, somewhere, depending on the question, between 20 percent and 25 percent of Republicans consistently say that Donald Trump, Donald Trump's claims about the election are not true, that he is -- his actions after Election Day were improper, that he bears a responsibility for what happened on January 6.
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BROWNSTEIN: And Cheney has the opportunity to remind those voters why they are uneasy with Trump.
That's unlikely to stop him from winning the nomination if he seeks it. But the real leverage that those voters have, that Cheney has and that the dwindling band of Republican critics of Trump have, really in a general election is to withhold their votes in a general election.
And I think there are many people who correctly believe that the Republican Party is not going to change, you know, get off of this Trump-like path unless it is proved to them that it is electorally kind of a dead end.
And right now they do not believe that. But a Cheney candidacy that kind of moved those voters who are uneasy with Trump out of the Republican Party in a general election may be the kind of thing that could begin to get the party to rethink.
But you know it is pretty clear, it's an uphill fight at this point, given the level of dominance he's displayed over the summer.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes, you talked about this new Trump path, one of the bricks in that path is this war on ideas. We are seeing more and more measures to erase mentions of race, gender, oppression and so on in schools, libraries, with books being banned, ideas being censored.
Have we ever seen anything like this before in America, beyond maybe the Red Scare, and what effect might this have?
BROWNSTEIN: Well, right. So there really isn't much that is -- certainly, not at this scale. I mean, the two examples that people cite in American history was the Red Scare in the '50s, when there were loyalty oaths demanded of teachers and university professors.
And then, the anti-evolution laws that led to the monkey trial, the Scopes Trial in the 1920s. But many more red states are moving then to restrict the classroom discussion of race, to make it easier for conservative critics to banned books than we saw in the 1920s.
And this is part of a much broader development, whether we are talking about abortion rights, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, book bans, the right to protest, with heightened penalties for public protest, on a whole variety -- and, of course, the class and the censorship of teachers.
You are seeing the red states, with the support of the Republican majority in the Supreme Court in many cases, looking to roll back and move in, in the opposite direction since the 1960s.
Since the 1960s, the general direction of American life has been to nationalize more rights and to reduce the ability of states to restrict those rights. And we are seeing a full-scale counter- revolution, of which abortion is the most powerful symbol and the one that may come back to bite Republicans the most.
But we are heading to a world which we really haven't seen since the 1950s in America, in which your basic civil rights and civil liberties are going to diverge enormously, depending on your ZIP Code, depending on where you live.
And what that means is that, essentially, we are going to have one set of rules for half the country and another set of rules for the other half of the country, unless either side can get the votes to impose a national regime via abortion rights or an abortion ban.
BRUNHUBER: Always appreciate the analysis. Ron Brownstein, thank you so much.
BROWNSTEIN: Thank you.
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BRUNHUBER: The door could be opening to an international inspection of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant. Still ahead, inspectors reportedly get the go-ahead from the Kremlin.
Plus --
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CHAPPELL: It could have been handled completely differently. And those 13 kids would still be here. They were treated like they were disposable and replaceable.
BRUNHUBER (voice-over): A mother's grief and anger over the death of one son during the Afghan withdrawal and another tragedy less than a year later.
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BRUNHUBER: We're getting word that Russia may allow international inspectors going to the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant. The Kremlin and French government both say Russian president Vladimir Putin indicated his support for the idea in a conversation with French leader Emmanuel Macron.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has been pushing hard for a visit to the plant after several artillery strikes in the area. That has raised fears of a potential nuclear disaster which Ukrainian President Zelenskyy expressed in very dire terms. Here he is.
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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): If Russian blackmail with the radiation continue, this summer may go down in the history of various European countries as one of the most tragic of all time because not a single instruction at any nuclear power plant in the world provides a procedure in case a terrorist state turns a nuclear power plant into a target.
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BRUNHUBER: Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary general Guterres says electricity produced at the plant belongs to Ukraine. Russia plans to disconnect Ukraine from the power grid. Sam Kiley joins from the city of Zaporizhzhya, northeast of the nuclear plant.
Sam, what's the latest there?
SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kim, there was a great deal of tension over the last 48 hours, following various elements of propaganda and disinformation put out by the Russians and supporters of Russia, suggesting, for example, that workers were being reduced in number at the nuclear power plant ahead of some kind of potential attack.
I think this is all part of the hybrid warfare, with the veracity of any of these claims almost impossible to establish and very often, as we have noted now, since Vladimir Putin's statement yesterday, claiming the Ukrainians were systematically bombarding the nuclear power stations, factually incorrect.
CNN's own analysis of the latest satellite imagery of the nuclear power station, just south of where I am here, indicates strongly there have been no significant attacks in or near the nuclear power station for just over a month.
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KILEY: So those are just sort of the atmosphere, in which all of this very serious issue of the future of Europe's biggest nuclear power station is coming under focus.
Clearly Emmanuel Macron very exercised about this, because, of course, the European mainland stands under threat if there is a nuclear disaster here. And the indications coming from Putin, that the IAEA might be welcome, is a repeat really of the Russian line.
But the problem is how do they get there?
There's some indication they may be allowed to travel through Ukraine and cross by boat to go there. But this nuclear power station has been put firmly on the front line of a war here in Ukraine by the Russians.
They are firing missiles from the ground, close to the grounds of the nuclear power station. We have been able to see the evidence of that with our own eyes a couple of days ago, Kim. And in that context, very difficult to see how inspectors could even be risked going into an environment, in which they could be killed.
BRUNHUBER: Sam, so one bit of good news for Ukraine, in the form of a new U.S. aid package, what more can you tell us about that?
KILEY: Yes, pretty substantial aid package coming incrementally, part of an incremental series of aid packages, some in the many billion. This one just under $755 billion, I believe, or close to that kind of figure. Very important essentially resupply.
If you look at what's being given in this aid package, it's new or replacement Javelin missiles. Couple of thousand of them and very important launch systems that go with them known as the CLUE, new rockets for the HIMARS, which are sophisticated longer range multiple rocket launch system, which very useful indeed and very important tactically for the Ukrainians.
Also, surveillance equipment, new drones. But when analysts go and look at this package, once again, although the Ukrainians have signaled and President Zelenskyy tweeted out he is extremely grateful for this very important resupply, effectively, what is missing from this -- and analysts and Ukrainians will point it out -- is strategic weaponry.
No aircraft, no long range attack drones, no weapons systems that could be capable of reaching inside Russian territory, which the Ukrainians are told they're not allowed to do with existing weapons systems they have, because there remains in the West very deep support for the principle of Ukrainian victory.
But a nervousness about helping particularly as NATO members to deliver that victory with NATO-style weapons, that could provoke a very, very dangerous reaction, possibly even a nuclear response from Russia, Kim.
BRUNHUBER: Yes, absolutely. Sam Kiley, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
Grief, rage, feeling forgotten: that's the cycle of emotions a California mother says she is experiencing after losing two sons in less than a year. One son, a U.S. Marine, died in a terrorist attack in Afghanistan last August during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal.
And just 10 days ago, her other son took his own life after struggling with his brother's death. Now that devastated mom is speaking with CNN's Kyung Lah about her pain.
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CHAPPELL: I don't think any parent should have to bury their kid.
KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Shana Chappell will, twice, in just one year. This was a year ago at the airport. Kabul was falling to the Taliban. Afghans fled in droves and America was pulling out of its longest war.
CHAPPELL: As far as I knew, they were evacuating people. I just thought he's doing his job. He's helping people and he'll be home in a few days.
LAH: Chappell's son, Marine Lance Kareem Nikoui, sent his mother pictures and video explaining how the Marines were helping outside the airport.
CHAPPELL: He said I'm dealing with a little boy. I was happy because Kareem is great with kids. Kids make him happy.
The morning of August 26th, I woke up. When I woke up, I woke up crying and I couldn't figure out why I was crying. I was very emotional. I was felt very emotional about Kareem.
And the first picture that came up was the picture of Abbey Gate and an explosion had happened. The first thing in my mind was the video. And in the background was Abbey Gate.
LAH: Her son's father was the first to know.
CHAPPELL: And he said Shanna and as soon as he said, Shanna, I just started screaming, because I knew what he was going to tell me. He didn't even have to tell me. It's weird. He never even had to say it. I just knew.
LAH: Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui, one of 13 flag draped caskets returned to Dover air force base. Then home to his family in Norco, California.
But months after the ceremonies faded, his older brother, Dakota, struggled to accept what had happened.
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CHAPPELL: He would come to be with Kareem. And I would be like, Dakota, you can't be sleeping here.
LAH: Why was he sleeping here?
CHAPPELL: To be close to Kareem. He didn't want Kareem here alone. He would say it bothered him that Kareem was alone. As the one-year was approaching, he started expressing that, well, Kareem is really gone, he's not coming back, you know. He would cry.
I would just take it that we're all hurting, because we are all. And I didn't know he -- he gave no signs. I didn't know he was going to do that.
LAH: Sheriff's deputies would find 28-year-old Dakota's body just days before the one-year anniversary of his brother's death in Afghanistan.
CHAPPELL: It's a memorial in a place where he spent a lot of time with his brothers. That's the park that Dakota chose to take his life.
LAH: Do you blame Dakota's death on the war?
CHAPPELL: Yes, I do. It is a pain that is so hard to deal with. You can't even understand it. It is like a pain you've never dealt with before. You can't even describe it. So I know what Dakota, the reality this month for some reason, there month the reality started setting in for him.
LAH: People who are watching this are wondering how are you able to talk about this?
CHAPPELL: I'm still in the shock phase. I keep saying, what I am a going to do when the shock phase wears off?
How am I going to react to this?
What will happen to me?
LAH: Shana Chappell wants you to hear her grief but also her rage. One year after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, she feels forgotten.
CHAPPELL: Because the withdrawal was a complete failure. It doesn't look good for the administration. So they wanted the disastrous pullout forgotten about. And they wanted the 13 that were killed to be forgotten about, mainly because they were so young. It could have been handled completely differently and those 13 kids could be here. They were treated like they were disposable and replaceable and that's what really gets me. LAH: Adding financial insult to her pain, she needs to have the money to bury her son sometime in September. She is trying to raise that money via GoFundMe. Her plan is to bury Dakota beside his brother -- Kyung Lah, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: A Virginia court hands down multiple life sentences to a British ISIS member involved in the kidnapping and deaths of multiple people, including Americans. We'll have the story after the break.
Plus, almost a decade-old crime in Mexico is back in the spotlight. The disappearance of dozens of students, a government coverup and a new arrest. We'll have details ahead.
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BRUNHUBER: 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.
Prosecutors have less than a week to tell a federal judge what they would have to redact if he unseals the affidavit that led to the search of Donald Trump's Florida home. The Department of Justice says it would have to withhold so much information the document could be, quote, "devoid of content."
Legal experts have zeroed in on one key phrase in the court documents that have been unsealed so far. It reads, quote, "willful retention" of national defense information. That suggests the former president could be the target of a criminal investigation.
And CNN has learned that some current White House officials are privately worried about the volume of classified materials that were seized at Mar-a-lago and whether more sensitive documents might still be missing.
A senior U.S. official says Iran has dropped a key demand that had been a major sticking point in efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal.
In its response, the European Union's agreement submitted Monday, the official says Iran didn't ask that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps be removed from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations.
The U.S. had repeatedly rejected the request. Monday's version of the agreement has been described by the E.U. as the final draft.
On Friday, a member of an execution squad dubbed the ISIS Beatles for their British accents was sentenced in a Virginia courtroom. The charges connected to the hostage taking and deaths of four Americans. One of them journalist, James Foley, was beheaded in 2014.
El Shafee Elsheikh was given eight concurrent life sentences. CNN's Kylie Atwood has more.
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KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The families of the Americans who were killed at the hands of this ISIS terrorist welcomed this life sentence for him.
Diane Foley, mother of Jim Foley, a freelance journalist in Syria beheaded by ISIS eight years ago, she said that while this is a hollow victory because of the fact that her son is no longer here and the other Americans were also killed, she also said that there was some victory in this sentencing.
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DIANE FOLEY, JAMES' MOTHER: Let the sentencing make clear to all who dare to kidnap, torture, or kill any American citizen abroad. The U.S. justice will find you wherever you are. And that our government will hold you accountable for your crimes against our citizens.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ATWOOD: Now Diane Foley made it her life's work to support the families of other Americans who are wrongfully detained abroad. She launched the James Foley Foundation which supports those families.
She said they launched because she believes the U.S. government can do better in its efforts to bring home safely and securely Americans who are wrongfully detained abroad.
Now after this sentencing, we also heard from the family of Kayla Mueller. She was an American aid worker in Syria, who was tortured and killed by ISIS. And they said the sentencing was critical because it demonstrates that there is a price to pay for those who kill or detain Americans.
We heard from other family members who encouraged the U.S. government to act quickly after Americans are taken -- Kylie Atwood, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: The former attorney general of Mexico is now behind bars. Jesus Karam was arrested on Friday over multiple charges relating to the disappearance of 43 students back in 2014. The arrest comes a day after authorities determined the case to be a crime of the state. It was covered up by the government.
Now students were on their way to a protest, when they were intercepted by security forces and local police. At the time, authorities said a drug gang mistook them for members of a rival group and killed them. Officials say the remains of only three students have been discovered and identified.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): There is no indication the students are alive. On the contrary, all the testimonies and evidence prove they were cunningly killed and disappeared.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUNHUBER: The current administration has issued dozens of arrest warrants, including for military members and police.
Somali police say at least 15 people were killed when gunmen attacked an upscale hotel in Somali's capital Friday night. Officials say large explosions rocked the Hyatt hotel in Mogadishu followed by a gun battle. They warned the death toll is likely to rise because casualties are still coming into the hospital.
The hotel was popular with lawmakers and government officials. The Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group Al Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Monsoon storms are affecting millions in the U.S. The latest on that and the tropical storm warnings are up for parts of Texas.
Plus, extreme weather around the globe from flooding to droughts to wildfires. We'll get the details when we come back. Stay with us.
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BRUNHUBER: We want to take you live now to north Istanbul. United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres is making a stop there following a trip to Ukraine. Now while in Odessa, he praised a deal brokered by the U.N. and Turkiye between Kyiv and Moscow.
That deal reconnected grain and food supplies to the global markets, which would pass through Turkish waters. Guterres noted that since the deal was signed more than 600,000 tons of grain and food supplies had left Ukrainian ports.
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BRUNHUBER: He has also called on developed nations to help developing countries purchase these essential supplies. So again, we're looking at live pictures there, United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres, paying a visit to a port in Istanbul after a stop in Ukraine.
(MUSIC PLAYING) BRUNHUBER: Millions of people are currently under flood watches, as monsoon storms pummel parts of the southwestern U.S. Near Phoenix, flash floods ripped through intersections, pushing cars to the side like toys.
Officials say the storms aren't over yet. Some areas are expected to see up to six inches of rain in the coming days. And tropical storm warnings are posted for parts of South Texas and the east coast of Mexico. The National Hurricane Center says the storm system is likely to intensify before making landfall.
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BRUNHUBER: Two areas in China have ordered factories to halt operations for about a week. The goal is to conserve energy amid a record heat wave that's taxing the country's power grid. As Selina Wang tells us, the shutdowns are raising concerns of supply problems far beyond China's borders.
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SELINA WANG, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A scorching heat wave grinding work on the world's factory floors to a screeching halt.
As China battles the worst heat wave on record, factories in the key manufacturing hubs of Sichuan province and Sichuan City have come to a standstill.
For about a week, power is being saved for its more than 100 million residents amid a crippling crunch. But the diversion threatens an economic jolt. It hits factories for semiconductor companies, like Intel and Texas Instruments and suppliers of Apple and Tesla.
Most importantly, Sichuan is rich in one of the world's most important commodities, lithium.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sichuan produce like 30 percent of the lithium supply for China. So we think that this is going to affect the lithium supplies in the short run. Very likely we are going to see the lithium price going up.
WANG: Lithium is essential for technologies, like electric car and smartphone batteries. While experts say the impact will be minimal if the shutdown only lasts a week, if they drag on, it threatens to snag already strained global supply chains and hike up prices for global consumers.
The power cuts are yet another headache for factories after COVID- related shutdowns. It could encourage the U.S. and Europe to move more of their battery supply chains back home.
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SUSAN ZOU, ENERGY METALS ANALYST, RYSTAD ENERGY: Also kind of strengthens people's belief that you can't rely on China too much for the battery materials processing.
WANG: This is China's strongest and longest heat wave on record. Lasting for more than 60 days, pushing temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit in some regions. It's put extreme pressure on the power grid, because of spikes in air conditioning use and hydropower plants that are struggling to meet demand.
Droughts are sweeping across the country. Parts of China's longest river, the Yangtze and other reservoirs have completely dried up. Fire trucks are sending water to places struggling to get enough drinking water. Villagers line up with their buckets.
In the south, the heat and droughts are ravaging crops, impacting 159 million acres of arable land. Many regions are taking desperate measures.
Central Hubei province is firing rockets into the sky with chemicals to help clouds produce more rain. Videos of staff pouring ice cubes into swimming pools have gone viral, as did this woman's video diary, showing her bag of live shrimp, cooked after she was outside for an hour.
Office workers are sitting around giant ice cubes to cool down because of power cuts. Some cities are operating subway stations in near darkness to save energy. Other residents are sleeping in subway stations to take refuge from the heat.
China's heat wave is expected to get worse. So all of this might be the new normal -- Selina Wang, CNN, Beijing.
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BRUNHUBER: And the extreme weather doesn't stop with China. Places all over the globe are suffering from torrential downpours and severe storms, to droughts and wildfires burning out of control. CNN's Melissa Bell has details on the wild and dangerous weather around the world.
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MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As though Venice needed more water, crowds sheltering from the storm that swooped across Europe this week. Violent winds spread havoc across beaches in Liguria and Tuscany, with two killed by fallen trees on Thursday.
In Corsica, at least five people were killed as hail, heavy rain and winds bashed the island at 140 miles per hour, uprooting trees and cars.
On the French mainland, too, standing up to the elements has been proving a losing battle. Elsewhere in Europe, the rain cannot come soon enough after weeks of drought and extreme heat.
Germany's main shipment artery at a standstill. Low water levels along the Rhine exposing hunger (ph) stones that record ancient and more recent droughts. A 100-degree heat fueling wildfires in Sicily. And in eastern Spain, military units putting down fires reignited after a brief but all too short rainfall. In North Africa, too, at least, 37 people have died in forest fires that have destroyed more than 2,500 hectares of land.
BELL: Such weather patterns, although extreme, are not unheard of in Europe. It's more that they're typical of late autumn rather than of summer. Here in Paris, the parched leaves are already partly on the ground, a dire warning that the worst drought on record could yet cause France lost produce and soaring food prices come September.
BELL (voice-over): Farmers rushed to save crops in mainland China, too, after the worst heat wave in 60 years. Temperatures soaring along the Yangtze River basin for weeks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): All scorched. You see, they certainly cannot grow. The high temperatures slowly roasting sweet potato leaves to death.
BELL: But sudden downpours of rain in northwest China on Wednesday didn't help. Flooding and mudslides killed 17 people, according to China's state broadcaster. Dozens are still missing.
And the difficult weather patterns haven't been limited to the northern hemisphere this week. In New Zealand, hundreds of homes evacuated over fears of landslides. Nelson Tasman region declaring a state of emergency after four days of torrential rain.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The air basically just collapsed. So there was a massive landslide happening. So we checked outside and then we saw the dirt rolling straight to our property.
BELL: In South America, too, the grasslands on raging fire along the Parana River delta in central Argentina. Lives lost, livelihoods destroyed and more damage on the horizon after a week of extreme weather across the planet -- Melissa Bell, CNN.
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BRUNHUBER: And we'll be right back. Stay with us.
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BRUNHUBER: In Europe, stark reminders of the past are surfacing in one of the continent's most important rivers. And it's all because of extreme weather. CNN's Michael Holmes has the story.
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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Scientists are warning that Europe could be on track to see the worst drought in 500 years, leaving the Danube River at one of its lowest levels in almost a century. Now it's exposing sunken German warships that date back to World War II near Serbia's port town of Prahovo.
VELIMIR TRAILOVIC, PRAHOVO RESIDENT AND AUTHOR (through translator): The Second World War's remnants or the consequences of conflict between the Red Army And the German war flotilla are now here in front of us.
Thus they left behind an ecological disaster for us, the residents of Prahovo, which has been threatening us every day for the past 78 years.
HOLMES (voice-over): The Danube is the second longest river in Europe, passing through 10 countries. The sunken ships often hamper river traffic on this main transport artery when water levels are low.
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HOLMES (voice-over): But during this unprecedented drought, more than 20 hulks have been exposed on a section of the river. And this isn't just reminder of a bygone era; there's ammunition and explosives on board these scuttled ships and it has locals worried.
TRAILOVIC (through translator): We certainly have about 10,000 kilograms of explosive devices here. Although we don't know if they can explode or not, you can already anticipate what will happen if one does.
HOLMES (voice-over): These vessels were among the hundreds deliberately run aground in 1944 by Nazi Germany's retreating Black Sea fleet. Turrets (ph), command bridges and broken masts are among the debris exposed along the riverbed, leaving just an area of about 100 meters for ships to pass through.
That's nearly half of its previous width. The estimate for Serbia to get rid of the exposed hulks, ammunition and explosives: $30 million. This summer's record heat waves and severe drought conditions snarling traffic on the mighty Danube.
Now vessels traveling through must navigate around old warships, possibly filled with explosives -- Michael Holmes, CNN.
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BRUNHUBER: And before we go, have a look.
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BRUNHUBER (voice-over): Good luck getting that '80s hit out of your head. AAA's insurance division was hoping just that, when they recreated Rick Astley's "Never Going to Give You Up" video, almost shot for shot there, with a few changes, of course.
The company plans to get in on the Rick roll meme as well as getting people to unknowingly click on links to the video.
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BRUNHUBER: Now I'll have that in my head for the rest of the day. Thank you very much. That wraps this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Kim Brunhuber. "NEW DAY" is next.
