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Biden Sharpens Attacks on Trump Ahead of Midterms; U.N.: Serious Human Rights Violations Committed in China; Airlines Tweak Policies on Meals, Hotels Ahead of Holiday; U.S. and South Korea Stage Largest Military Drills in Years; Updated COVID Boosters Could Soon Be Given in U.S. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired September 01, 2022 - 04:30   ET

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

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CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, President Biden is on a campaign blitz of Pennsylvania ahead of the midterm elections with a key address in Philadelphia tonight. Those details are coming up.

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MACFARLANE: Welcome back to CNN newsroom. I'm Christina Macfarlane. If you're just joining us what me bring you up-to-date with our top stories this hour.

We've now learned one of the reactors at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been shut down. And an emergency protection system activated because of ongoing shelling in the area. This comes as U.N. inspectors are en route to the site.

And Donald Trump's legal team will make their case for a Special Master today in a Florida court. The hearing comes after Trump's lawyers responded to the Justice Department's scathing court filing. We'll have more on their response next hour on "EARLY START."

Sarah Palin has lost her bid to fill Alaska's vacant U.S. House seat. She was defeated by a Democrat Mary Peltola who will become Alaska's first indigenous member of Congress. The former Republican nominee for U.S. vice president blamed the loss on a state system of rank choice voting which was used for the first time in this special election. She said Alaskans don't want a, quote, destructive Democrat agenda but that's what resulted from the confusing new system. Alaska's only House seat has been empty since March after the state's Republican Congressman died. Palin will get another shot at it during the November midterm elections when she and Peltola will again be on the ballot. Palin is vowing to, quote, reload instead of retreat.

U.S. President Joe Biden will head to Pennsylvania tonight to light a fire under Democrats as they campaign ahead of November's midterm elections.

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While Republicans are attacking Democrats over crime and inflation, the president's message is zeroing in on Trump and his MAGA supporters as the greatest threat to the soul of the nation. CNN's MJ Lee has our report.

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MJ LEE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The White House is making clear that President Biden's primetime speech in Pennsylvania on Thursday night is not just going to be about the theme of democracy, but also about the battle for the soul of the country. Which of course was a main pillar of the presidential campaign back in 2020. So, it is very clear that the White House sees a political opening here not just to cast the midterms as a choice between Democrats and Republicans, but against Trump Republicans and the MAGA GOP extremists and anti- democratic actors. We got a forceful preview of this earlier this week when the president spoke in Pennsylvania, when he used the issue of law enforcement to cast the GOP as simply unacceptable. Here is what he said.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress. Don't tell me you support law enforcement if you won't condemn what happened on the 6th. Don't tell me.

You're on the side of a mob or the side of the police. You can't be pro law enforcement and pro insurrection. You can't be a party of law and order and call the people who attack the police on January 6 patriots. You can't do it.

LEE: Ahead of that speech Thursday night, I did ask White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre whether the president believes that some of these factors, these threats to democracy that he saw a couple of years ago and that prompted him to run for president in 2020, whether he believes those forces are still at large or whether he believes there has been progress made since he has come into office. And Jean- Pierre told me it's not stopping, it is continuing.

So that does give you a little bit of an idea of the tone that we probably will see from President Biden. I will also note that this will mark the second of three trips planned to the state of Pennsylvania in just about a week or so. So, you really get a sense of how much this political calendar is ramping up.

MJ Lee, CNN, the White House.

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FOSTER: Now the long awaited U.N. report on China's treatment of Uighurs and other Muslims is finally been released. And Beijing is blasting the findings saying they are a farce planned by the U.S. and other Western countries The overall assessment by the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights is that serious human rights violations have been committed in China's Xinjiang province.

That assessment is based on interviews with 40 people of Uighur, Kazakh and Tajiks ethnicities.

The report says quote: Allegations of patterns of torture or ill treatment including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention are credible as are allegations of individual instance of sexual and gender-based violence.

The report years in the making was released in the final minutes Michelle Bachelet's term as human rights commissioner. I want to bring in CNN's Kristie Lu Stout who is live for us in Hong Kong. And Kristie, I know you have that report in your hands. Just walk us through the key lines here.

KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christina, the report is 45 pages long. It was as you said released just minutes before the end of the tenure of the outgoing U.N. Human Rights Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet. And this is a damning document.

In it, it says that serious human rights violations have been committed in Xinjiang and that crimes against humanity may have always been committed in Xinjiang. And it goes through quite methodically all the key allegations that have been made over the years against China in regards to its treatment of Uighurs as well as other ethnic Muslim minorities in the region. Allegations of torture, of sexual violence and rape, of forced medical treatment. And critically, this report says that those allegations are credible.

Now in this report you have the voices of people who have been inside these detention facilities, inside Xinjiang, individuals who either worked there or were detained there since 2016. And their accounts are truly chilling. Many of them say that they were forced to undergo these medical treatments, that they were regularly administered injections or pills.

I want to bring up one such account for you in this U.N. Human Rights report.

One individual said this, quote: We received one tablet a day. It looked like an aspirin. We were lined up and someone with gloves systematically checked our mouths to make sure that we swallowed it. Unquote.

Others spoke of various forms of sexual violence including rape, including sexual humiliation, including forced very invasive body exams. One woman talked about an incident in which one of these invasive exams was conducted in a group.

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And she said it was done in this group setting which, quote, made old women ashamed and made young girls cry.

The details in this document are truly disturbing and damning. China has blasted the release of this report. They have said it is based on lies and disinformation. We have a statement from China's mission to the U.N. in Geneva, they say this, quote --

All ethnic groups, including Uighur are equal members of the Chinese nation. Xinjiang has taken actions to fight terrorism and extremism in accordance with the law, effectively curbing the frequent occurrences of terrorists activities. Unquote. I should add that this report also includes a number of recommendations directed at Beijing. One of them urging the Beijing government to take prompt steps to release all those who have been arbitrarily detained. Back to you.

MACFARLANE: Truly disturbing details. We will wait to see if anything comes from this. Kristie Lu Stout there. Thanks very much, Kristie.

STOUT: Thank you.

MACFARLANE: Well, with millions expected to fly this Labor Day weekend, some major airlines are now adjusting their policies on food and hotels for stranded passengers. We'll explain those new passenger rights next.

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MACFARLANE: U.S. financial markets are hoping to rebound from four straight days of losses when trading begins in just a few hours and it is not a great picture right now. You can see all three major indices are still down. On Wednesday the Dow lost nearly one percent. The Nasdaq fell more than half a percent and the S&P 500 lost more than three quarters of a percent.

Well meanwhile, Bed Bath & Beyond is trying to stay out of bankruptcy. The company says it will lay off at least 20 percent of its corporate employees and close about 150 stores. Its sprawling line of in-house brands will also be reduced with the company looking to improve inventory.

The parent company of the popular app Snapchat is also planning to lay off 20 percent of its global workforce.

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This impact the jobs of more than 1,200 staffers at the tech giants. The company says it is planning to restructure with a new focus on community and revenue growth. Snaps stock has plummeted by more than 75 percent since the start of the year.

And it's been a dismal summer for travelers with frequent delays and sudden cancellations, often with little sympathy from the airlines. Now just in time for the Labor Day rush some of the biggest carriers are promising do better and take care of stranded passengers. But as CNN's Pete Muntean explains, it took some producing from Washington to get it in writing.

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PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Christina, airlines have been under a mandate from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to step up their game ahead of the Labor Day holiday travel rush. Just a couple of weeks ago urged airlines to take a hard look at their policies.

They're called customer service agreements, the airline version of that dreaded fine print. And they lay out what you as a passenger are entitled to in case of a cancellation or delay. Remember, airlines have canceled about 45,000 flights this summer alone according to Flight Aware. Now airlines are caving to this federal pressure. American, Delta, JetBlue, United, and Southwest have all rewritten their policies. Before you almost had to be a lawyer to sift through some of these. All these airlines have rewritten their policies in plain language.

But in some cases, airlines are going a step further and outright changing the policies themselves. Here's one example. On United Airlines, you used to be entitled to a meal voucher only if your flight was delayed four hours. Now United will give a meal vouchers to a passenger delayed more than three hours.

One big caveat here, these passenger protections only apply to delays and cancellations within an airline's control, we're not talking about the weather.

We do know that changes will be compiled all in one spot starting on Thursday. The Department of Transportation is rolling out a website so you can see how each airline stacks up against one another. Just in time for what could be a big weekend for travel. The FAA says Thursday will be one of the busiest days of the holiday weekend in terms of flights scheduled. United Airlines is expecting 2.6 million passengers on its airline alone -- Christina.

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MACFARLANE: Thanks very much, Pete.

Now New York's Times Square is officially a gun-free zone. The state law limiting where firearms can be legally carried in public is set to go into effect today after it survived a challenge to strike it down. The law outlines areas deemed sensitive where firearm possession will be illegal and that includes Times Square which of course is a busy tourist hub.

Now thousands of troops are coming together on the Korean Peninsula and the U.S. and South Korea staging their largest combined military drill in years. Up next, a closer look at that.

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MACFARLANE: The U.S. and South Korea are holding their biggest combined military exercises in years, both calling them defensive in nature. And North Korea says the drills are invasion rehearsals.

CNN's Paula Hancocks joins us now live from Seoul. And Paula, it's been some time since we last military drills like this held of this scale. They may be defensive in nature, but surely that is not how North Korea are seeing it.

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's not, Christina. And it's true, it's been at least five years in fact since the media since we have been invited to see these large scale live fire drills. The purpose of course is not just for the U.S. and South Korean militaries to be able to train together and to be able to have these large scale military exercises, but they want potential enemies to be able to see them too. They want the deterrence that those images will bring.

So, what we did is we went on Wednesday to go and see a combined unit, the first combined unit between the U.S. and South Korea which was formed back in 2015 and it's the first time that they have managed to have these kind of live fire drills. So, they wanted to show those to us knowing that of course there would be others including North Korea that would be watching their capabilities.

Now, they were on hold for some time. There's also been two weeks of joint drills called Ulchi Freedom Shield, which North Korea has slammed had just ended today, this Thursday. But they have been on hold not just for COVID-19 -- which of course made an awful lot of things turn to computer simulation -- but also because back in 2018, then U.S. President Donald Trump said that he wanted to pause what he called the war games saying that they have no place alongside what he was hope doing with Kim Jong-un. He was within his diplomatic arena. He was carrying out summits with the North Korean leader and wanted to put the drills on hold.

Now, very little came of the diplomacy per se and North Korea is showing no interest in talking to either the U.S. or South Korea at this point, so we are seeing these drills once again -- Christina.

MACFARLANE: All right, Paula Hancocks there live from Seoul, thanks very much, Paula.

Now in the U.S., updated COVID-19 boosters that include protection against Omicron variants could be going into arms as early as Friday. Chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has details.

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DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Christina, this new shot authorized by the FDA has two significant components to it. One is that it will now provide an option for people under the age of 50. Remember the shots were authorized for people over the age of 50, these boosters.

Second of all, this is what is known as a bivalent vaccine. So, part of the vaccine is protecting against the original strain of the COVID virus but also now against BA.5 as well -- which is the predominantly circulating strain of the virus. That's the bivalent nature of this.

We know that, you know, just in terms of boosters overall, people who are over the age of 50, they would have a significantly higher risk of dying if they are unvaccinated compared to people with two or more boosters. And vaccinated people with one booster have three times of risk of dying as compared to those who had two boosters. That's why this was primarily authorized for people over the age of 50.

[04:55:04] But now we'll see what the CDC says specifically, but Pfizer's vaccine should be available for those 12 and older to get the vaccine and Moderna for people 18 and older.

One thing to keep in mind, it should have been at least two months since you received your previous shot. And there's reasons for that. If you get a shot too close together, sometimes it may not have the same effect. And it could also increase the risk of myocarditis if you give the shots too close together. So at least two months since the previous shot.

There will be a vote on Thursday, today, by the CDC to make a formal recommendation. So, we'll see what that says. But overall, it probably isn't going to match again the idea that Pfizer's shot available for 12 and older and Moderna's 18 and older. If that vote goes through as expected, these shots could be available in pharmacies just like we've seen over the last couple of years over the next several days. It's Labor Day weekend, so it may take a little bit longer. But certainly, over the next week or ten days these shots should be available.

The federal government has ordered 170 million of these shots. They're not going to have a cost to them, again, they've already paid for by the federal government, so you should be able to make an appointment and get your shot as you've done in the past -- Christina.

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MACFARLANE: Our thanks to Sanjay for that.

And now for the moment everyone has been waiting for. The world gravy wrestling championships are back. After a two year pandemic pause, the charity event returned in full force for its 12th annual event. Challengers compete in two minute wrestling matches in a pool of gravy. Scoring points for their outfits and of course the wrestling ability. Certainly, gives a new meaning to playing with your food doesn't. It's all gravy baby.

And that does it this hour here at CNN NEWSROOM. What a great way to end. I'm Christina Macfarlane in London. Stay tuned for "EARLY START" with Christine Romans coming up next.

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