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Hearing This Hour On Reported Threat Against Nikolas Cruz Juror; Musk Asks Pentagon To Pay For Crucial Internet Services In Ukraine; Shoppers Pulling Back As Prices Climb Higher. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired October 14, 2022 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

CARLOS SUAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We do know at least according to CNN affiliate WFOR here in Miami -- in Fort Lauderdale, that there were three no votes against the death penalty. There were three members of the jury that came back at one point or another during the 17 counts and said that Cruz was mentally ill and that he should not be put to death.

That is a point that the victims' family members have all had a really difficult time processing. They've all been really angry at the fact that these jurors came back and said that Nikolas Cruz here was -- came across as the victim and not their loved ones. Tony Montalto, he was on CNN earlier today and he talked about exactly that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY MONTALTO, 14-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER GINA KILLED IN PARKLAND SHOOTING: How can we excuse someone for choosing to take the life of so many other individuals and attempt to take many more in his own words. The only reason he stopped shooting was he ran out of people to shoot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SUAREZ: The motion is very clear. At this point, they are just asking the judge to see whether she is going to ask law enforcement to interview the juror that apparently has made this allegation. Nikolas Cruz, he's not scheduled to get sentenced until November 1. So exactly what happens between today's hearing and the formal sentencing is still to be seen.

One final note, Ana, all of the family members, they're going to get one more opportunity to address the court right before the formal sentencing.

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Carlos Suarez live in Fort Lauderdale for us, thank you.

Now to a CNN exclusive, Elon Musk says his company SpaceX can no longer pay for critical communication services in Ukraine. So he's now asking the Pentagon to help foot the bill. CNN Senior National Security Correspondent Alex Marquardt was first to report the story and has the details

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): In Ukraine's fight to push out Russian invaders, one of the most critical pieces of technology doesn't fire rockets or bullets. It's small, easy to use satellite internet terminals called Starlink, made by SpaceX, the rocket and satellite company founded by Elon Musk.

According to SpaceX, there are around 20,000 Starlink terminals in Ukraine. And they've been vital for soldiers' communication, flying drones and artillery targeting.

SETH JONES, SENIOR ADVISER, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM, CSIS: The Starlink is the glue really between the forward deployed drone and the artillery that's conducting the strike against Russian positions.

MARQUARDT (voice-over): Starlink arrived in Ukraine as the war started, earning Musk global praise and thanks. CNN has now exclusively obtained documents showing not only that SpaceX is just one part of a large international effort getting Starlink to Ukraine's front lines. But now, seven months into the war, SpaceX is warning the Pentagon, it is facing the difficult choice of reducing or stopping service.

JONES: Why at this moment Starlink is raising this issue? It just -- it's a bit -- it's really bad timing.

MARQUARDT (voice-over): The company says it has spent almost $100 million and, quote, "We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time." SpaceX has now requested the Pentagon pick up much of the tab $124 million for the rest of 2022, a rate that would translate to close to $400 million for the next year.

DMITRI ALPEROVITCH, CHAIRMAN SILVERADO POLICY ACCELERATOR: SpaceX is not a charity of course, and they're losing a lot of money right now as a business, so I'm sure they're trying to recoup some of their costs.

MARQUARDT (voice-over): SpaceX's request came after Ukraine's Commanding General Valerii Zalushnyi wrote in July directly to Musk. The letter obtained exclusively by CNN. Starlink units provide exceptional utility, the general wrote. Then asked Musk for almost 8,000 more terminals. Instead, SpaceX said they told Ukraine to send a request to the Pentagon, adding, "We have now exceeded our original agreement with Ukraine."

Without Starlink, Ukraine says, it can't fight. Last week, reports emerged of widespread sudden Starlink outages on the front line as troops fought to take back territory.

ALPEROVITCH: They are puzzled about why that's going on. Is that something that's SpaceX is doing intentionally? Is that coming from Elon? No one is quite sure. MARQUARDT (voice-over): The outages and news of the funding request to the Pentagon come as Musk support of Ukraine is also questioned after he proposed a peace deal, suggesting that Ukraine relinquished Crimea to Russia and hold U.N.-backed referenda for parts of eastern Ukraine.

He told a private audience that Ukraine doesn't want to talk about peace negotiations while he says, Russia would accept those terms.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUARDT: That peace plan was so widely seen in Ukraine as being pro- Russian that one Ukrainian diplomat told Elon Musk to bluntly f-off. Now when Musk was confronted with our report wording on Twitter as well as those comments by that Ukrainian diplomat, Elon Musk responded on Twitter, "Were just following his recommendation" i.e. to leave Ukraine.

[13:35:10]

Elon Musk also tweeted about the high cost of Starlink in Ukraine saying it costs around $20 million a month. So confirming our reporting that SpaceX now believes these costs to be far too high for them to continue. I should note I wasn't actually able to see those tweets because Musk blocked me on Twitter following our report, this crusader for free speech on Twitter blocking but not contesting our reporting. Ana?

CABRERA: Alex Marquardt, that is interesting. Thank you for this report.

Consumers have two choices, cut back or pay up. New numbers just in show how Americans are trying to keep up with the sky-high inflation, but it comes at a cost. And a new review of cancer records is just plain alarming. Cases among people younger than 50 are on the rise. And it's happening around the world. Why?

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[13:40:51]

CABRERA: Prices are rising and Americans are struggling to keep up, but it's how they're digging deeper to pay for the essentials that's causing more alarm. CNN Business Correspondent Rahel Solomon joins us now. Rahel, what are people doing to try to keep up with the inflation?

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Essentially trying to pay for things any way they can, right? So for some that's dipping into their savings or not saving as much. For others, it's tapping their credit card. For others, it's trading down.

But, you know, Ana, Moody's analytics put out an estimate yesterday saying that essentially to buy the same amount of goods and services in September this month, you'd need about $445 more this month compared to last year. So unless you're making that much more, unless you've gotten that type of pay rise, right, you have to find that money somewhere else.

So in this retail sales data, it's a monthly report we get from the government. We saw where people were still spending and where they're starting to pull back. So we saw people still spending in categories like restaurants and bars, which is really interesting. It is the summer, however, as we transition into the fall, rather.

We saw people still spending in apparel, clothing stores, really however pulling back and other discretionary areas like appliances, electronics, furniture, that sort of thing. So we talk a lot about the resilience of the consumer, still resilient, but starting to really pull back

CABRERA: $400 a month, that's shocking, that would make a big difference in quality of life, perhaps for a lot of people.

SOLOMON: Absolutely.

CABRERA: You talk about spending slowing, we're seeing softening of the housing market --

SOLOMON: For sure.

CABRERA: Mortgage rates going up. I think when people talk about the recession, a lot of people's minds go to the 2008 housing crisis --

SOLOMON: Absolutely.

CABRERA: -- and crash, does it look like that's where this could be headed?

SOLOMON: We're not really hearing a lot of consensus for that for a few reasons. We've absolutely seen this pullback in the housing market, but it's for those same reasons. Housing rates are so -- mortgage rates are so much higher than they were even just earlier this year. Home prices are still much higher than they were in the recent past. So that's why you're really seeing a lot of people sit it out.

The reason why most expect this time to be much different, thankfully, hopefully than 2008 is because most people were sitting on quite a bit of equity. Most people are still more flush, even just in terms of their checking accounts than they were before the pandemic and that shouldn't make this much better than that?

CABRERA: Okay, fingers crossed. Thank you so much --

SOLOMON: Yes, absolutely.

CABRERA: -- Rahel Solomon.

Brace yourself, health experts say the flu virus is picking up speed about a month earlier than usual. Case in point, at just one high school in California, get this, 1,000 kids, nearly half the student body were absent on Wednesday alone due to what is likely influenza, officials say. On top of the flu will likely start to see an increase in COVID cases as well. And as we know, the symptoms of COVID and the flu are similar fever, chills, cough, body aches, tiredness. A few ways maybe to tell the differences, you can lose your ability to taste or smell with COVID as well as the shortness of breath which so many people experience.

Let's stick with COVID for a minute. A new study finds that almost half of patients with symptomatic cases say they're still not fully recovered more than six months after their infection. We're talking 42%. Some of those lingering symptoms? Breathlessness, chest pain, palpitations and confusion. Researchers say lack of recovery was linked to things like older age, the female gender, severity of infection, and black and South Asian ethnic groups.

We're learning about a new disturbing trend here. A CNN review of cancer records from 44 countries shows more and more people under the age of 50 are being diagnosed with cancer, something considered early onset.

CNN Medical Correspondent, Dr. Tara Narula is with us now. This is scary.

DR. TARA NARULA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is.

CABRERA: What exactly did these researchers find is contributing to this increase in cancer?

NARULA: So as you mentioned, they basically looked at cancer data from 44 countries and they found an increase in early onset cancer. This is before the age of 50. Starting in the 1990s for about 14 different types of cancer. In particular, eight of them were digestive cancers. So when you think about colorectal cancer, for example, one out of 10 who are diagnosed with colorectal cancer are between the ages of 20 and 50.

[13:45:01]

And in this study, when they looked at the average yearly increased incidence in colorectal cancer in young adults, it went up about 2% in America, 3% in the U.K. and 5% in Korea. So you can imagine over time, over 10 years that really adds up. They also saw something called a birth cohort effect, meaning the later you were born, the higher your chance of having this early on to cancer. So if you were born in the 1990s, you're at a higher risk than those born in the 1980s.

CABRERA: Wow, that's really interesting. Why?

NARULA: Well, we think it's due to risk factors and exposures from early life as early as conception, in the utero and after, so things like obesity, sedentary lifestyle, Western diet, alcohol, smoking, food additives, pollution, and the gut microbiome. That's a big one. So changes in the bacteria in our digestive tract may be leading to predisposition to cancer down the road.

So a lot that is preventable. And that's really the key message here. And we want people to be aware that by changing their behavior and lifestyle, they could potentially really lower the risk of developing cancer, particularly at a young age in the future.

CABRERA: Important information. So glad we're getting it out. Dr. Tara Narula, thank you for bringing us this report.

A poor Philadelphia teen convicted of attempted murder a decade ago. But did he really do it? CNN's Jake Tapper and his father are bringing attention to this case and our justice system. That's next.

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[13:50:42]

CABRERA: A Philadelphia teenager and the empty promise of the Sixth Amendment. In a new article in The Atlantic, our own Jake Tapper is telling the story of C.J. Rice, a Philadelphia teenager sentenced up to 60 years in prison for attempted murder in the 2011 shooting of four people. Convicted, even though no physical evidence ties into the crime, and rice himself was shot shortly before the crime leaving his stomach stapled and his pelvis fractured.

The doctor who treated him just days before the shooting said this. I quote, "The amount of pain that I saw him with and the inability to stand and get on to an off the table in my office on the 20th of September makes me very dubious as to whether he could walk standing up straight, let alone run with any degree of speed, five days after I saw him."

That pediatrician was Dr. Theodore Tapper, Jake Tapper's dad. And Jake joins us now. Jake, your father's statement seems so compelling that alone, why didn't that have more of an impact?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR, THE LEAD: To be frank, because C.J. Rice had a court appointed attorney, a woman named Sandjai Weaver who passed away a few years ago and she was incompetent. She did not provide C.J. with adequate counsel, she did not meet with my dad, before the -- he testified in court. She did not seek his medical records, C.J.'s medical records.

She did not have the records from the hospital that would have shown he actually had -- C.J. had a fractured pelvis at the time, not just more than 30 staples. And so, because she was so poorly prepared, didn't even visit the crime scene as far as I can tell, my dad's testimony was basically just a wash. She didn't know how to get this compelling testimony out of them. She didn't know how to present the medical evidence to the jury. And because of that -- and one other thing and one eyewitness who was questionable, he was convicted, it's really a travesty.

CABRERA: Not even visiting the crime scene. I mean, how can that lack of representation on his behalf, that lack of just due diligence be explained?

TAPPER: Well, because in this country, you have a right to counsel, you don't have a right to good counsel or even adequate counsel. And the standard for which we -- that the legal system has set for itself is so low, it's basically meaningless. It has been found in court cases across the country that you can be a lawyer and be drunk, be asleep, be disbarred during the trial, be mentally incompetent, and still be considered adequate counsel, because the judicial system exists and protects itself.

We don't really mean it when we say you have a right to an attorney. We don't really mean it when we say that constitutional right. And so, this attorney Sandjai Weaver, she could have moved to have C.J.'s case in juvenile court because he was 17. She didn't do that. She didn't question the witness about why three times than the shooting. She wasn't able to identify the shooter. She didn't question the cops as to whether they suggested in any way in the photo lineup.

There are so many ways that she failed. Anybody who'd seen an episode of "Law and Order" could have could have provided a better defense than she did. And, unfortunately, in Philadelphia, and in Pennsylvania, that's not enough for a case to be even reviewed.

CABRERA: Wow. You, you know, I spent a couple of years working on this story investigating the case yourself. Two of the victims originally said they couldn't identify either gunman. But after multiple interviews with police, one of them identified Rice. Has that person spoken publicly in the year sense.

TAPPER: We've reached out to her a number of times and I -- look, my heart goes out to her. She and her family were victims of a horrible crime. They were shot although thankfully nobody was seriously injured. She's not -- she's a victim here. But my point is there's a preponderance of reasonable doubt.

The only evidence against C.J. was her testimony. Three times in this shooting, she said she had no idea who did it even though she knew C.J. Overnight, a confidential informant tells the police they think C.J. did it. The detective investigating the case goes to the witnesses in prison -- I mean, I'm sorry, in the hospital and says, do you recognize any of these people? Lo and behold, they recognize C.J.

[13:55:09]

By the way, a few years after that Chief Ramsey instituted a policy so that if you're investigating the case, you're not the one doing the lineup.

CABRERA: Quickly, Jake, because I just want to know the answer. What are the options for Rice at this point?

TAPPER: They are -- his attorney is going to file a commutation petition. And people like Governor Wolf in Pennsylvania or the Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, or the Attorney General Josh Shapiro, they can all review this case. There -- this case is -- this was an injustice and it needs to be corrected.

CABRERA: Well, thanks for shining light. Jake Tapper, good to see you. Happy Friday.

TAPPER: Thank you. CABRERA: I just want to give everyone a heads up, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders will join Jake tonight to discuss what Democrats must do to win in the upcoming midterms. CNN Tonight with Jake Tapper airs at 9:00 Eastern.

That does it for me. I'll see you back here next week. Have a wonderful weekend. Until then, find me on Twitter at AnaCabrera. The news continues right after this.

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