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Snowstorm Pummels New York State; Investigating Trump; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Steps Down; Idaho Police Release New Details on Students' Killing; Russian Dissident Alexei Navalny Moved to Solitary Confinement; Twitter Turmoil; COP27 Summit; Swifties Can't Shake It Off. Aired 3-4a ET
Aired November 19, 2022 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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LAILA HARRAK, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from the United States and all around the world. I'm Laila Harrak.
Donald Trump on the attack after news that a special counsel will look into criminal investigations involving the former U.S. president. What he had to say and how it may play out politically is just ahead.
Plus, Buffalo, New York, is digging out from a colossal snowstorm. We'll go live to the weather center for details on where the storm is going next.
And there are new details in the killing of four students in Idaho. Police update what they learned about how two of the victims got home.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Laila Harrak.
HARRAK: Donald Trump and other Republicans are lashing out against the latest move to oversee the criminal investigations he faces. The U.S. Justice Department has appointed a special counsel to take over two of the most sensitive probes involving the former president. CNN's Evan Perez has the details.
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EVAN PEREZ, CNN SR. JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Attorney general Merrick Garland appointed war crimes prosecutor Jack Smith to serve as special counsel to oversee two criminal investigations related to Donald Trump.
The decision was triggered in part by the former president's decision in recent days to declare a third run as a presidential candidate. Smith most recently worked as a prosecutor in The Hague, overseeing Kosovo war crimes. He'll take over investigations stemming from the alleged mishandling
of classified documents, which the FBI retrieved in a search from Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, as well as portions of the January 6th investigation, dealing with Trump's efforts to impede the transfer of power after the 2020 election.
Garland said the appointment was intended to show that the investigations will be done with independence.
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MERRICK GARLAND, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Based on recent developments, including the former president's announcement that he is a candidate for the next election and sitting president's stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel.
Such an appointment underscores the department's commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters.
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PEREZ: Smith is expected to set up an office separate from the Justice Department, with prosecution teams and FBI agents currently handling the investigation reporting directly to him.
In a statement, Smith said, "The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. I will exercise independent judgment and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate."
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HARRAK: Evan Perez reporting there from Washington.
Trump is giving every indication he intends to ignore the new special counsel, calling him the quote, "super radical left." Even though the DOJ investigations have been going on for months, the former president acted surprised they're still very active. Here's what he told a crowd on Friday night at his Florida resort.
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TRUMP: This horrendous abuse of power is the latest in a long series of witch hunts that started a long time ago. I thought the investigation with the document hoax was dying or dead or over.
And the investigation into January 6, in my very peaceful and patriotic speech, remember, peaceful and patriotically, was dead, especially after the record-setting 40 point loss of Liz Cheney, in the great State of Wyoming. I thought it was dead.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRAK: Well, naming a special counsel is meant to ensure a criminal probe does not become political. Yet Trump again playing the victim railed against Friday's decision as the, quote, "worst politicization of justice." The White House firing right back.
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KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Look, I will say this and I've said this many times before, we do not politicize the Department of Justice. That is something that the president said during the campaign.
That is something that the president said in his early days of being in the White House. And that continues to be true.
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HARRAK: Some Republicans also want the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel in its investigation into the foreign business dealings of President Biden's son, Hunter Biden.
Senator John Cornyn tweeted that, by appointing a counsel in the Trump case, the DOJ admitted there was a conflict of interest. And he says the department must now admit there's also a conflict in the Hunter Biden probe and that a special counsel should oversee it.
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HARRAK: Joining us now from London this morning is Thomas Gift, who teaches political science at University College in London.
Very good day, sir.
As this becomes a special counsel investigation, what are the political ramifications?
THOMAS GIFT, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON: Well, Laila, I think everything was careening toward the selection of a special prosecutor. The Justice Department wants to insulate itself from politics as much as possible. And attorney general Merrick Garland is very much an institutionalist.
So unless the DOJ was just going to drop this case altogether, I think what we saw was the likely move. I do question the timing maybe a bit, less than a week after Trump's announcement for 2024, especially if the objective is to obviate the appearance of a politically motivated investigation.
I do think, to some extent, it plays into Trump's hands in the short term, who's already smearing this effort as a witch hunt. And in the long term, if any indictment is handed down, it increases the chances that it would occur in the heat of the 2024 election.
But either way, this is going to loom over the Trump campaign, much like the Mueller investigation defined the first two years of Trump's presidency. I am skeptical that this will ultimately result in an indictment. But it was notable to hear former attorney general Bill Barr say that
he actually thought the prospects of that happening were increasingly likely.
HARRAK: I would like you to elaborate on what this means for the 2024 presidential race. Mr. Trump reacted; he slammed the special counsel probe as unfair. The White House says it had no special advance notice. It didn't know anything about this.
What does it mean for the 2024 presidential race?
GIFT: Well, I just think that it gives Donald Trump fodder. I mean, his entire campaign last time around was that "everyone's out to get me. Democrats are out to get me. It's character assassination. It's political witch hunts," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This is all very familiar rhetoric for Donald Trump.
I think that basically having this special prosecutor just gives him the ammunition that he wants to galvanize the base. I think it plays right into what he wants. In some sense, I don't want to call it a gift to Donald Trump. But I do think that he can frame this in a way that is very useful, particularly for talking to his core base of supporters.
HARRAK: Let's look at what's ahead in the next two years. Now with government divided, a Republican-controlled house and Democrats controlling the Senate, will anything get done?
Or will the next two years be dominated by congressional oversight investigations?
GIFT: Well, we're certainly going to see a litany of investigations. You know, "Benghazi times infinity" is how it's been described. That's going to cover everything from Hunter Biden's laptop to the origins of COVID-19 to Afghanistan to charges of a politically motivated DOJ.
And I do think that some of these probes have the potential to embarrass the White House and its associates, even if that's as far as they go. But I think a big open question is how cooperative the administration will be with these investigations.
Of course, we saw the Trump White House just totally shut down and refuse to hand over documents, to offer testimony, to comply with subpoenas, et cetera. And in the course of those investigations, that violated really long-standing norms.
And so the question now is will the Biden White House do the same. But I think, in terms of policy, you're right. Everything's just going to kind of grind to a halt with Republicans taking over the House. It's going to be very difficult to get any kind of legislation through.
Legislation that does get through is going to have to be very incremental.
HARRAK: As you know, young voters came out in force these midterms.
Will we see that reflected in government?
Will we see a generational change?
GIFT: That's a really good question. I guess we are seeing a leadership change in the House on the Democratic side, with Nancy Pelosi stepping down. But you know, I'm not sure if sort of the -- if you think about sort of the youth vote favoring more progressive policies, if that's really going to happen.
You know, the fact that Democrats did do better than expected in the midterms, I suspect, will be used by progressives to make the case that their agenda is ascendant. But to some extent, I think that would be a misreading of what happened.
Americans weren't buying what many Republicans were selling, especially election denialism. But that doesn't mean they're foursquare behind a progressive blueprint for the country, either.
To my mind, the midterms were more a repudiation of the GOP than an endorsement of liberal policies. If the Democratic Party tries to shift to the Left or try to reflect some of these new generational shifts.
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GIFT: I'm not sure if it will work because Republicans have de facto veto power. But second, I think it risks backfiring, because if there really is a policy mandate to come out of these elections, I think it's for moderation.
HARRAK: Thomas Gift, thank you so much for joining us.
GIFT: Thank you.
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HARRAK: Georgia's key Senate runoff election is heating up this weekend. The state's newly re-elected governor, Brian Kemp, is set to join Republican nominee Herschel Walker on the campaign trail for the first time later today.
While Mr. Walker, a former football star, finished well behind other statewide Republicans like Georgia's incumbent U.S. senator. Raphael Warnock got about 36,000 votes more than Mr. Walker but did not pass the required 50 percent threshold to avoid the December 6th runoff.
In the past 24 hours, a judge decided to allow early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The ruling comes after Mr. Warnock's campaign sued the state for barring voting on that day. The Fulton County judge said blocking voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving would irreparably harm voters and their candidate of choice.
A potentially historic winter storm pounding parts of the Great Lakes. Two people in Erie County died after suffering cardiac events related to clearing snow. Officials warn the storm could be life threatening and have called on residents to be prepared. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR BYRON BROWN (D-NY), BUFFALO: Right now we do have a travel ban in South Buffalo. We have a travel advisory throughout the rest of Buffalo. And we're asking people, if you don't need to go out, if travel is not necessary, please stay at home so snowplows can do their job.
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HARRAK: Well, the winter storm has canceled flights, halted traffic on major roadways and knocked out power as temperatures plunge. Polo Sandoval has the story from Buffalo, New York.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we got some snow.
POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Heavy snowfall, thunder, lightning, a potential historic snowstorm is pummeling areas surrounding the Great Lakes with Western New York State in the bull's- eye.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a little deep. Oh, my God.
SANDOVAL: The storm already dumped around four feet of snow south of Buffalo, prompting the NFL to move the Buffalo Bills' Sunday game to Detroit.
Highmark Stadium, their usual home in Orchard Park, left completely covered in white. And the storm is expected to hit the city hard tonight. The National Weather Service and New York officials warning the snowfall will produce life-threatening conditions into the weekend.
MAYOR BYRON BROWN (D-NY), BUFFALO: It can turn very quickly. This is a very unpredictable storm.
SANDOVAL: Even with the warning, some people in Buffalo don't seem too worried.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We live in Buffalo, it's expected. That's all I can say.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've been through this before. To me, it's no big deal to me but my family wants everything done.
SANDOVAL: Officials reminding people to stay inside and off the road, saying there is a travel ban in South Buffalo with many flights in and out of the region canceled.
CHRISTOPHER SCANLON, BUFFALO CITY COUNCIL: Police stay indoors. Do not go out unless it is an absolute emergency.
SANDOVAL: National Weather Service forecasters explain lake-effect snow is fueling this extraordinary storm. That occurs when cold air blows over warmer lake water, picking up more moisture and leading to higher snow amounts downstream.
Climate experts warn water temperatures in the Great Lakes grow increasingly warmer each year, shortening the length of time ice covers the surface during the winter.
DAN NEAVERTH JR., COMMISSIONER, ERIE COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: I just want to remind everybody that there is a lake effect warning still in effect. So this thing is still moving, so we need to still take this serious.
SANDOVAL: Polo Sandoval, CNN, Buffalo, New York.
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HARRAK: The University of Idaho says it will hold a candlelight vigil at the end of the month in remembrance of the four students who were killed last weekend.
The four, all in their early 20s, were found stabbed to death in off- campus housing on Sunday in a crime that has left the university's community in shock and grief. There are no suspects in custody and the weapon has not been found.
Police investigating the killings now say two of the victims used a, quote, "private party" to get home. Authorities had initially said they had gotten into an Uber after leaving a food truck early Sunday morning.
Police say the four victims were likely asleep when they were attacked. Investigators report some of the victims had defensive wounds and each was stabbed multiple times. We get more details on the investigation now from CNN's Brian Todd.
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BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Critical new information tonight as investigators continue to hunt for the killer or killers of four University of Idaho students. Police now saying where in the house the bodies were discovered.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I believe the chief provided that information and I believe it was the top floor and the middle floor. So the third floor and the second floor.
TODD: Scenes of horrific violence described by the Latah County coroner.
CATHY MABBUTT, LATAH COUNTY CORONER, IDAHO: I saw lots of blood on the wall.
TODD: Investigators also today releasing a map and a timeline of the students' movements the night they were murdered. Two of them, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle, police say, attended a fraternity part last Saturday night.
They say Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen were at a sports bar between 10:30 pm and at 1:30 am Police say all four victims were back at the house sometime after 1:45 Sunday morning.
CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: You look for cameras. You look for Ring doorbells. You look for anything that you might pick up that shows the movement of these individuals and whether or not was there somebody following them?
You know, were they driving?
Were they walking?
TODD: Police say this was a targeted attack. The four victims stabbed to death inside their shared off-campus home Sunday morning.
Adding to the mystery, there are no named suspects, no murder weapon and two additional roommates were inside the home at the time of the murders, police say, neither of whom were injured or held hostage.
Police say the roommates have been fully cooperative but won't say if they're witnesses, suspects or neither. The coroner says there were no signs of sexual assault on any of the bodies but she did give new information on the nature of the wounds of at least one victim.
MABBUTT: There were stab wounds on the hands of at least one of the students that make it appear that it would be defensive wounds.
TODD: Jeffrey Kernodle, the father of victim Xana Kernodle, told a CNN affiliate he believes his daughter fought her killer to the very end.
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JEFFREY KERNODLE, XANA'S FATHER: Bruises, you know, maybe, torn by the knife or whatever. She's a tough kid.
TODD: But former D.C. and Philadelphia police chief Charles Ramsey says new questions are raised by the indication that at least one victim fought their attacker.
RAMSEY: Which means, there was noise. This wasn't quiet. I don't know how you could quietly kill four people with a knife and no one in the house would hear anything. And so, it's very important that we know more about the roommates.
TODD: Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
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HARRAK: One element of life before the war makes a comeback in the Ukrainian city of Kherson. Still ahead, a train heads to the newly liberated city for the first time since Russia's pullout.
Also ahead, Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced entrepreneur behind the blood testing start-up Theranos, will spend years behind bars. Details on her sentence when CNN NEWSROOM continues.
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HARRAK: The lights are switching back on across Ukraine after a barrage of Russian strikes on its electrical system. The attacks knocked out almost half of the nation's energy system earlier this week, leaving 10 million people in the dark.
A Ukrainian energy research center now says power has been restored to almost all consumers. But president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is striking a different tone, saying supply issues still exist across the country. But he says they'll be fixed.
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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): We know it is very difficult for people, as the occupiers have destroyed everything before fleeing. We will reconnect everything, restore everything.
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HARRAK: Meanwhile, Ukraine says this is the sign of ordinary life coming back to the newly liberated city of Kherson. The first train bound for that city left the capital, Kyiv, on Friday, just a week after a Russian pullout from Kherson. For more, Scott McLean joins us now from London.
Scott, after the euphoria last weekend over the liberation of Kherson, what is the situation now?
SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that is one sign of life getting back to normal, the train. But in many ways, things are anything but ordinary still in Kherson. You mentioned the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying that power cuts continue to be an issue not just in Kherson but across the country.
But especially in Kherson since the Russians destroyed so much of the infrastructure there. He mentioned that his government has opened up these centers that people can go to, to get warm briefly, to charge up their cell phones or whatever else and try to get a respite from the cold there.
At the same time, you also have in the city war crimes investigators, documenting what they say is evidence of torture there. They also say that they've uncovered more than 60 bodies inside the city. Kherson is still very much on the front lines of war.
So you have the Russian positions dug in just across the River Dnipro and you also have the Russians lobbing bombs in the direction of Kherson as well. We've seen throughout the course of this war, when the Russians are unable to really move the front lines forward, they seem content to lob bombs and lob missiles across the front lines.
And that is what we've started to see already in that area. As you mentioned, though, the train has returned. And it is difficult to understate just how significant this is. The train is a huge lifeline for people across the country, because a large chunk of the population actually doesn't own cars.
So the very first train departed Kyiv to Kherson; carried about 200 passengers. The lights are back on in the Kherson train station as well. You'll remember, at the outset of the war, there were hordes of people trying desperately to get out of the country. And they were flocking to train stations.
That is because they didn't have very many other options to actually get out of the country. It is such a huge lifeline for so many people. It's also one of the primary ways that the Ukrainians move supplies around the country, which is why it has been such a big target for Russian missile strikes, not just on the front lines but really across the country.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainians say that fighting is also intensifying in the eastern part of the country. Some of the heaviest is around the village of Bakhmut, right on the front lines in the Donetsk region. It has taken an absolute battering over the last few months. It has been fought for very heavily.
And yet miraculously, the Ukrainians still control it, despite recent attacks. A British analysis of the situation on the front lines, Laila, predicts that the Russians are likely to take a lot of the troops that withdrew from the Kherson region and redeploy them to the eastern part of the country, which means things are about to get even tougher in terms of the fighting in that region-- Laila.
HARRAK: No letup in fighting there. Scott McLean, thank you so much.
Prospective NATO member Finland says it's planning to build a fence along its eastern border. The fence will cover about a quarter of the 1,340 kilometers of the border that Finland shares with Russia. It will have surveillance equipment and a patrol road.
Construction of the fence is expected to take three to four years. Finland closed the border at the end of September. That's when Russians fled their homeland after President Putin's partial mobilization of citizens to fight in his war against Ukraine.
The defiant Russian dissident Alexei Navalny says he's been transferred to solitary confinement to, quote, "shut him up. "
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HARRAK: He's in a high security prison and announced the move in a tweet on Thursday. He also wrote his first duty now is not to be afraid and not shut up. Mr. Navalny is serving a nine-year sentence for fraud, which he calls
politically motivated. Before his imprisonment, he survived a poisoning with a nerve agent, which was widely blamed on the Kremlin. Mr. Navalny is urging others to campaign against the war in Ukraine at every opportunity.
Kim Jong-un chooses a strange opportunity to reveal his daughter to the world, during the launch of a new powerful missile. How world leaders are reacting to the latest provocation from North Korea, ahead.
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HARRAK: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and Canada. I'm Laila Harrak and you're watching CNN NEWSROOM.
The daughter of North Korea's leader has made her first public appearance during Pyongyang's latest missile launch.
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HARRAK (voice-over): These images appear to show Kim Jong-un and the young girl holding hands as they inspect the powerful intercontinental ballistic missile. The launch of the weapon has sparked outrage from leaders around the world, including from officials at an APEC meeting in Thailand. CNN's Will Ripley has more.
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WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Chinese president Xi Jinping exchanged brief words on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Bangkok, talking about the importance of avoiding conflict and encouraging cooperation on issues of global concern.
That's according to Chinese state media's readout of the brief conversation. One issue that the United States and China are not really cooperating on is the issue of North Korea, which has been launching missiles at an unprecedented pace throughout the year.
Including this ICBM launch of what North Korea calls a new kind of long-range missile, capable of striking, according to the Japanese government, pretty much anywhere in the United States and potentially most of the world, excluding some portions of South America.
If you look at the possible trajectory distance of this missile that was tested, the missile test was pretty striking when you look at the photos released by North Korean state media on Saturday morning. It was rising up over the Sunan area of Pyongyang. Kim Jong-un was
there with his wife and, for the first time, his daughter, believed to be around 9 years old, appearing right alongside her dad as they walked around this gigantic missile.
Dwarfed by the size of the transporter erector launch vehicle that was used to fire the missile basically more than 3,700 miles or 6,000 kilometers up into space before it splashed down in the waters near Japan.
Had the trajectory been different, the missile could have traveled much farther, the Japanese government warns. Yet there has been little in terms of substantive consequences this year, with all of these North Korean missile launch events, at least 34.
North Korea claiming to have launched around 50 ballistic missiles so far this year. That's more than any other year in North Korean history. And certainly it comes at a time that there are growing concerns about a seventh underground nuclear test.
The fact of the matter is China, which does have the ability to heavily enforce sanctions and put pressure on North Korea, from the perspective of the U.S. and its allies, it's simply not doing that.
China and Russia with veto power at the U.N. Security Council are basically saying all sides need to remain calm even though the U.S. says it's North Korea that continues to provoke the situation -- Will Ripley, CNN, Bangkok.
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HARRAK: Once hailed as a wunderkind who started the medical testing company, Theranos, at 19, Elizabeth Holmes is now heading to prison. Natasha Chen reports.
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NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in prison as well as three years of supervised release after that. She was fined $400 but a separate date will be set to determine restitution, a possible $800 million.
Holmes was convicted in January on four counts of defrauding investors but found not guilty of defrauding patients. She had at one time been an icon in Silicon Valley for being a young female entrepreneur, starting the company, Theranos, and claiming her technology could use just a few drops of blood to conduct a variety of tests.
But that technology didn't work. Prosecutors said, when faced with failure, she chose fraud. A separate trial earlier this year found Theranos' second in command, "Sunny" Balwani, guilty on 12 counts of fraud. Holmes has to turn herself in to custody next April.
That may have something to do with the fact she's currently pregnant. Her pregnancy and her 1-year-old child with partner Billy Evans were brought up by some of her supporters when they wrote to the judge, stating how one much consider very young children growing up without their mother.
There were more than 100 letters written in her support. Holmes had a chance to speak for herself on Friday before the judge read her sentence.
She was emotional in telling the court, quote, "The people I tried to get involved with Theranos were the people I loved and respected the most. I am devastated by my failings."
Her team is expected to appeal her conviction and sentence. Back to you.
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HARRAK: More changes amid the turmoil at Twitter. New boss Elon Musk tweeted a poll, asking users to weigh in on whether or not former president Donald Trump's Twitter account should be reactivated.
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HARRAK: More than 7 million votes have already been recorded. Several other controversial accounts that had been banned were restored on Friday.
Well, shaking things up appears to be Elon Musk's standard operating procedure. CNN's Clare Sebastian takes a look at his career and his management style.
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ELON MUSK, CEO, TWITTER: I mean I'm really working at the absolute most amounts that I can work from morning till night, seven days a week.
CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Speaking from a room which he said had lost power, Elon Musk detailing the impact of his new power as Twitter's owner and CEO.
MUSK: I have too much work on my plate, that is for sure.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): Touting his personal work ethic then telling staff at Twitter in a memo shortly after they need to commit to "extremely hardcore work or leave" fits a pattern for Musk.
MUSK: Last time -- you actually slept literally on the floor because the couch is too narrow.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): In 2018 he told CBS News he had been sleeping in his California factory while trying to fix production problems.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is pushing people to a limit beyond what most of us would consider fair, if you look Basket, Tesla and SpaceX. What he is asking people to accomplish under tight deadlines is something we don't even know is technically possible.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): To say Musk is a culture shock for Twitter's staff, the half of them that he did not fire would be an understatement, having mandated 40 hours a week in the office for Tesla staff this June.
He has now canceled much of Twitter's work from home policy, which just eight months ago allowed employees to work from home forever if they wanted.
Musk seems to thrive on disruption, promising to "do a lot of dumb things at Twitter in the first few months."
And some would argue already delivering
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's mania mixed with chaos. It's just it's hard to imagine where it goes from here.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): Others argue Twitter, a company that took 12 years to turn an annual profit, might benefit from Musk's brand of experimentation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to remember that Musk comes from a culture of SpaceX, where he built in the culture there that it's acceptable for a $100 million rocket to explode and you can move on and build another one the next day.
If you come from that kind of environment, messing up a checkmark on Twitter is honestly not as big a deal, I think, from their eyes.
MUSK: It's very important to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): Beyond the pay case. Musk is a leader, known for his desire to change the world and is having some success doing it.
MUSK: Well, I think it's very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): His vision for Twitter, a company he tried to back out of buying, may prove his most divisive yet -- Clare Sebastian, CNN, London.
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HARRAK: Well, just days before the World Cup is set to begin in Qatar, the government makes a U-turn on beer sales inside the venue. That story next after a quick break.
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HARRAK: The start of Qatar 2022 is just a day away and it's set to be a historic World Cup, the first ever to be held in the Arab world.
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HARRAK: The annual United Nations climate summit in Egypt is now in overtime, as delegates wrangle over ways to limit and pay for global warming. That story and more after the break.
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HARRAK: The COP27 climate conference, supposed to end Friday, has gone into overtime as negotiators seek a breakthrough on outstanding issues.
Delegates have been discussing ways to end reliance on fossil fuels and to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. They've also been debating loss and damage, the idea of compensating poor nations that often suffer the worst consequences of global warming.
Taylor Swift fans just can't shake it off and neither can she.
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HARRAK: They're all leaving teardrops on her guitar over the mess with Ticketmaster.
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HARRAK (voice-over): Taylor Swift says that, in this case, she's not the problem. It's Ticketmaster that's at fault. Swift says she's not making excuses for them, that it's truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets.
But it really annoys here that fans who got tickets felt like they went through a bear attack to get the seats. The mess has sparked a federal investigation and will examine whether Ticketmaster has created a monopoly on tickets to live events.
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HARRAK: That wraps up this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Laila Harrak. I'll be back with more of today's top stories after a quick break.
