Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

CNN International: China "Aware of Protests" of Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon; Kherson Perseveres in the Face of Heavy Artillery Strikes; Italian Crime Boss Arrested, Hiding as a Pizza Chef; Can Blinken's Trip to China help Restore Bilateral Trust; Palestinian Family's Home Used in Jenin Military Raid. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 03, 2023 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAO NING, CHINESE FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESPERSON: Violating the territory or airspace of any sovereign country. We hope that both sides were handling it with mutual calm and prudent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BIANCA NOBILO, CNN HOST: Oren Liebermann joins us now from the Pentagon. Oren, what more do we know about how this balloon is being tracked. And also, viewers might be surprised given how relatively low tech this is and how spy balloons have been used since I think the Civil War as to what the benefits of doing this might be for China?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Bianca, the Pentagon says they've been tracking this for several days. Now, when it first crossed into the U.S. over U.S. airspace coming in from Canada into Montana, the Pentagon did launch F-22 fighter jets. In the end, the decision was made not to shoot it down, that's because of a couple of reasons.

First, the threat to facilities and people on the ground and then second, the Pentagon officials say that this isn't some new Chinese capability that gives them something that their spy satellites haven't already given them. So because of that, at least for now, the decision was made by President Joe Biden and top military leaders not to shoot this down.

But it is concerning where it is? Montana may be relatively empty. But it is a site of U.S. military facilities that house ballistic missile fields. So that is something worth keeping an eye on here. The Pentagon says it did travel over some sensitive sites but wouldn't detail what those sites are, in terms of the timing of this first, depending on keeps tracking this to see which way it goes in and what happens to it essentially?

If it goes back over Canada comes down somewhere just keeps on floating. But also, if the decision has to be made at some point to go shoot this down to the Pentagon keeping military options on the table at this point. The timing again, it comes at a very sensitive time with high tensions between Beijing and Washington.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken set to travel to Beijing in the coming days or weeks, one of the first visits by the top U.S. diplomat in six years to China. So this very well will probably be high on the agenda adding to the tensions that are already there. This was raised through diplomatic channels both in Washington and Beijing.

China seems being a bit coy with their response, seeing the look into what the U.S. has said about this, as the U.S. tries to make its own decision and watches where this goes, Bianca.

NOBILO: Pentagon Correspondent Oren Liebermann, thank you. Air raid alerts were issued in Kyiv as leaders of the European Union meet at a summit today with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen says that Russia must be held accountable in court for its "Odious crimes in Ukraine".

She announced the EU will set up an International Center in The Hague to prosecute the crime of aggression. President Zelenskyy says that Ukraine deserves to start EU integration talks this year. A Ukrainian intelligence official says that Russian President Vladimir Putin's goal is to capture the Donbas by March.

It comes as fighting intensifies along the Eastern front lines. Emergency teams have completed rescue operations in Kramatorsk. At least four people were killed, 18 wounded in Thursday's attack. And in the Southern Port City of Kherson, a Russian forces attack civilian settlements 65 times over the last 24 hours.

At least two people were killed and three large fires broke out. Russian forces were driven out of the city only three months ago. Now Sam Kiley has a firsthand look into life under the constant threat there of artillery attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): 12 weeks ago Ukrainian celebrated the liberation of Kherson from months of Russian occupation. This is the scene today.

KILEY (on camera): The Russians continuing to fire with direct fire from tanks across the river which is just a few 100 meters in that direction. And on top of that locals are telling us that it's being regularly shelled with grads the multiple rocket launching systems completely indiscriminate.

KILEY (voice over): Homes have been blown up, hospitals torn by high explosives in weeks of an ever intensifying bombardment. Local authorities here talk of scores of artillery attacks from Russian positions just across the Dnieper River every day. Firefighters and emergency workers keep their base location secret their prime targets for Russia's guns.

2 people were killed around the city overnight. Amissah landed very close to here recently adding urgency to this food distribution to people who are still here because they're trapped by poverty. Grad rockets flew in during the day at half past three right here. Our guard was standing there the guard got hit, they said.

KILEY (on camera): Why do you think the Russians are doing this?

KILEY (voice over): Revenge probably she said, probably revenge because they ran away.

[08:05:00]

KILEY (voice over): This underpass is a brief refuge taken by desperate civilians seeking help and food. Most of the houses are destroyed he said people are staying without electricity, water and gas and there's constant shelling. We're on the contact line we live near the bridge.

Anatoly will take what help he can get from local government. A Russian strike against City hall five days ago means that this plastic sheeting can be put to better use.

KILEY (on camera): What are you going to do with that?

KILEY (voice over): I'll board up the windows, the windows out no glass. He'll have to walk home. No one will drive to his neighborhood. It looks out across the river at the Russians.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NOBILO: And Sam Kiley joins us now live in Kryvyi Rih. Sam, your peers clearly show the devastating human toll that these attacks are taking on the population in Kherson. Kherson consistently the most shell city outside of Donbas, where you and your team just were? Why is that? And is there an expectation that these attacks are only going to intensify as Russia struggles for control over that area?

KILEY: Yes, has been you're absolutely right, Bianca has been very intensely shelled really since fairly early on, after the liberation of the city. And the reason for that is of course, the Russians withdrew to the other side of the Dnieper River, which gives them a natural line of defense and they have installed grads, mortars, tanks.

We've seen tanks fire straight across the river there, you can it's almost within small arms range some of the locations there. So it's an obvious target for the continued Russian campaign to try to break the spirit of the Ukrainian civilian population.

And we're seeing that extended perhaps up in Kramatorsk, where my colleague, Fred Pleitgen yesterday had a very close call himself with an S 300 modified missile impacting on the same or similar location to another missile earlier on and gain a clear sign of indiscriminate shelling.

In that case, a town closer to the much more active fighting and the frontline in the Donbas, but in Kherson, it's really a war of attrition. There is a fire from the Ukrainian side back across the river. No real anticipation, I don't think that either side would try to assault in any earnest terms across that river. But we are getting these intelligence reports from the Ukrainian saying that they believe the Russians are likely to launch a pretty violent campaign somewhere over the next few weeks, Bianca.

NOBILO: Sam Kiley in Kryvyi Rih, thank you. Pope Francis's plane has just touched down in South Sudan live pictures here of his plane, which you'll be seeing in just a second in Juba. His delegation is getting off the plane there. And President Salva Kiir is there at the airport to greet him and we're just waiting, I think for the Pope to get off the plane.

And Pope Francis is hoping to bring attention to the young country's struggles including civil war, famine and floods. This comes after the pope received a warm welcome in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In addition to meeting the country's leaders and clergy, the pontiff met with victims of the ongoing civil war there.

And he says that their stories left him without words. Larry Madowo joins us now from Nairobi with more on the Pope's visit to Africa. Larry, what are the expectations for this next part of the Pope's visit.

LARRY MADOWO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Bianca, when we see the Pope step out of this plane here, it should be a very historic visit, not just because of the Holy Father visiting South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, but also because on this trip, he's accompanied by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the top leader of the Church of Scotland.

So these three religious leaders admit that this is an unprecedented trip, but they wanted to do it together, because South Sudan has been in the grips of a civil war since 2013 rather, just two years after it gained independence. And in that period, about 4000 people are believed to have died; almost 5 million people are displaced either within the country or within neighboring countries.

And this builds on something that the Pope did in 2019. I want to show you this video from April of 2019 when the Pope hosted religious and political leaders from South Sudan and he kissed their feet, implored them to find a way to work together to peace. And in that time, the number of people dying has reduced but still they just haven't found a way to really stop the violence completely, Bianca.

NOBILO: Larry Madowo in Nairobi, thank you. And Italian mafia boss, who was on the run for more than 16 years, has been captured in France after hiding in plain sight as a pizza chef. Italian anti-mafia police caught 63-year-old Edgardo Greco in Saint Etienne on Thursday.

[08:10:00]

NOBILO: And he was part of one of the most powerful Italian criminal networks in the world. Greco was wanted for murdering two brothers from a rival gang back in the 1990s. Let's go live now to Barbie Nadeau, who's in Rome. Barbie, tell us more about how he was tracked down and also what's going to happen next?

BARBIE NADEAU, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: You know, I mean, he was basically tracked down because of his own ego. This is a man who was living under a false identity in France. Now so far from where he escaped here in Calabria in Italy in the 1990s, after he was convicted in absentia for the murder and the dissolving and acid two brothers.

Now he was a very good pizza chef, as we understand it, so well, in fact that the local newspaper, local magazine, profiled him. And he was very active on social media and then anti-mafia investigators here in Italy are constantly looking at this, looking at the people who are still most wanted, still looking for people who are on the run.

And they were able to track him down starting in 2019, when he became very active on social media. They finally were able to make some arrests around his circle of protection. And they swooped in and picked him up yesterday, Bianca.

NOBILO: Barbie Nadeau, thank you for that report. Sources tell CNN that home and office of Former Vice President Mike Pence will soon be searched by the FBI for more misplaced classified materials. No timeframe for the search has yet been announced. But representatives for Pence say that they intend to cooperate fully.

About a dozen classified documents were found at Pence's home last month. Those materials were said to be at the lower end of the classification spectrum. But as more and more sensitive materials are discovered where they shouldn't be. The National Archives has formally requested that Former Presidents and Vice Presidents check their personal records again for any errant documents that might be in their possession.

Still to come, can the top U.S. diplomat reset his country's rocky relationship with China? We'll look at what's at stake ahead of Antony Blinken's trip to Beijing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOBILO: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will soon head to Beijing for high stakes visit. It's happening in a particularly bad time just days after a suspected Chinese spy balloon floats across the U.S. that discovery risks adding further tensions to already strained U.S.-China relations.

Blinken is expected to sit down with several Chinese high officials and he'll be the first U.S. Secretary of State to do so since 2018. The trip comes after President Joe Biden met President Xi at the G 20 summit in Bali Indonesia back in November when the two leaders promised to try to find ways to stabilize their relations.

CNN's Marc Stewart joins me now live in Hong Kong. Marc, we just mentioned the context of this suppose a Chinese spy balloon floating across the airspace in the United States.

[08:15:00]

NOBILO: What else is there that is really adding to the tensions between these two nations right now? MARC STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi Bianca, talking to an analyst earlier in the week and he said that, in reference to this meeting, everything is on the table. So we certainly have this balloon episode. And it may or may not become a prominent point of discussion, there's a very good chance, it may not come at all, we just perhaps won't even know.

Keep in mind that it's not unusual for nations to always keep watch on each other. So this is attention getting, but it's not necessarily novel. But there are other things that could be discussed. Certainly, the military buildup in the Philippines an issue we talked about yesterday, it really shows the U.S. is beefing up its presence in the Asia Pacific region.

But there are other things that can be talked about things that may actually lead to some agreements such as climate change, such as global health. Those are areas where actually we could see some substantive discussion. But then there is what I will call stress points, points that may not be so easy to have a diplomatic discussion about.

And as I look at the list I've created we've got semiconductors, we've talked a lot about the import and export of semiconductors, the war in Ukraine, certainly a dominating headline, especially with China's relationship with Russia. We also have human rights and treatment of the Uyghurs.

That's something that the Secretary of State has talked about before. And then of course, we have the looming issues with Taiwan and with trade. So it's a full list, a full grocery store list, if you will be ongoing issues that could come up for conversation.

NOBILO: Plenty of issues for these two world powers to discuss. So what is the agenda that we're expecting Antony Blinken to partake in while he's there?

STEWART: So we have not received any kind of specific readout from neither the United States nor from the Chinese government. In a recent press briefing, though, the Chinese government said that they welcomed this meeting. And even in the discussion today about this balloon, a lot of diplomatic language was doing.

So there was clear that there is some symbolic weight and some significance to this. Talking to analysts, one said to me, this is a big deal the fact that these two diplomatic leaders are going to meet with each other. Now, we don't know if Secretary Blinken will meet with President Xi, but we know he will be meeting with someone who is equal counterpart, if you will, in the diplomatic stage.

NOBILO: And Marc, we were discussing yesterday that the U.S. has increased military presence by these new for military bases in the Philippines. So that gives them greater access to the South China Sea narrative Taiwan. Taiwan is such an important flashpoint for both of these countries.

It's a clash of values of sovereignty, and of ways of viewing the world and what's acceptable. Are they inevitably on a collision course when it comes to this issue? Or is there a possible way that Taiwan can be managed?

STEWART: Indeed, Bianca, and that was a very good assessment, because this Taiwan issue just touches so many different facets of life, if you will? Look, it's probably impossible that China and the U.S. will see eye to eye.

But talking to an expert on the region, he brought up a point to me that I thought was very well said, the goal of this meeting, especially on these thorny issues like Taiwan is to be able to establish a relationship where if things do get to a boiling point where things are escalated.

Secretary Blinken can pick up the phone and talk to his counterpart in China and at least have diplomatic discussion moving, because right now, that's just not happening. And so we're going to call it the phone analogy. That's the goal here. Can you pick up the phone and talk to someone on the other side of the world, even on these most heated issues? I think that's the big goal.

NOBILO: Right, so the main expectation that we're looking at is just to establish better channels of communication, basically, and normalizing that. Marc Stewart, thank you so much. We'll be in touch with you as we ramp up to those meetings.

China will fully reopen its borders with Hong Kong and Macao. Starting on Monday, people entering Mainland, China from either region will no longer need to show a negative COVID test unless they've traveled abroad in the past seven days. China's also lifting daily caps on the number of travelers from Hong Kong and Macao too.

Coming up more than a week after one of the deadliest Israeli West Bank race in years the City of Jenin is still on edge ahead will speak to one man who witness that violence.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:20:00]

NOBILO: Israel and Sudan have finalized the text of a peace agreement that's according to Israel's Foreign Minister. The agreement is expected to be signed later this year in Washington after the transfer of power in Sudan to a civilian government. Sudan was part of the original Abraham accords normalizing Israeli relations with the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco.

But the military coup in Sudan in 2021 stalled the final steps of the process with Khartoum. Recent outbreaks of deadly violence in Israel and the West Bank are shaking a region already on edge. CNN's Nic Robertson talked to one father whose family got caught in the middle of an Israeli Military raid in Jenin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR (on camera): So the soldiers came on to the roof of your house here.

ROBERTSON (voice over): From the roof of his Jenin apartment. Mohammed Abu al-Hija shows me where Israeli troops fought a three-hour battle with Palestinian gunmen just a few feet away.

MOHAMMED ABU AL-HIJA, JENIN APARTMENT RESIDENT: The whole house here was surrounded by Israeli troops.

ROBERTSON (voice over): It was Thursday last week. The Raid killed 10 people, 7 of them Palestinian gunmen. One of the deadliest such West Bank operations in years, Mohammed thought he and his family might die too, because Israeli troops took over his apartment to fight the gunman. He shows where he says two soldiers shot from his window.

ROBERTSON (on camera): --see all the bullet holes along the wall.

ROBERTSON (voice over): They've spent bullet casings he says testimony to the ferocity of the firefight. He says the soldiers tied his hands behind his back, ordered him and his wife to get on the floor cover their two daughters is.

ROBERTSON (on camera): This is one of the bullets that came into your room right here.

ROBERTSON (voice over): The gunman began firing back at the Israeli soldiers hitting the wall and the door while he, his wife and his two- year-old and one-year-old daughters lay terrified on the floor. He thinks at least one soldier was it.

AL-HIJA: So they cut this out here and there they're looking right over the house. This is the house they target.

ROBERTSON (voice over): In his bedroom and he shows where he says the soldiers cut the bars of his window.

ROBERTSON (on camera): And they fired the rocket from here on blast back here.

ROBERTSON (voice over): The whole place shook he says there were three rockets. It was so loud. We were terrified.

ROBERTSON (on camera): The Israeli Military say it was an urgent mission that when they arrived here their troops came under heavy fire those they returned fire. They say the suspects barricaded themselves in the house here so they fired a shoulder launch anti-tank missile at them.

ROBERTSON (voice over): The buildings so damaged local officials had it bulldozed using apartments like Mohammed's to give covering fire is standard operating procedure. And Israeli Military Spokesman told CNN so that the action can be more precise. U.N. officials say the incident breaches international law.

In the ground floor apartment beneath Mohammed, Ziad says he saw the firefight saw an Israeli soldier hide behind his car, shoot one of the gunmen. [08:25:00]

ROBERTSON (voice over): This is the worst I've seen it much worse than the 2002 rates he says. There are lots more gunmen on the streets now. It's a younger generation. They were born into it. Upstairs Mohammed is close to tears when I asked him how safe he feels.

We're not safe, not safe for a moment after what happened, he says. If they had killed me, no one would hold them accountable. You have to be very cautious. Despite the battle scars, it might look as if some kind of normality is returning. But in people's hearts here, there is fear. The worst is yet to come. Nic Robertson, CNN, Jenin camp, the West Bank.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NOBILO: First generation iPhone that still sealed in its little original iPhone box could dial in big numbers at auction. The device is pretty much an obsolete relic by today's standards, but to savvy investors. It's a valuable piece of technological history, originally costing about $600 when it came out in 2007, and it was this pioneering invention that everyone wanted to get their hands on.

And other like it just recently sold for about 40 grand. The owner of this device says that she's hopeful it might fetch as much as $50,000 at auction bidding opened on Thursday and will end on February the 19th so get your bids in. Thanks for joining me here on CNN "Newsroom". I'm Bianca Nobilo in London and "World Sport" with Amanda Davies is coming up next for you. Have a lovely weekend. See you next week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)