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CNN International: Moscow Court Rejects Wall Street Journal Reporter's Appeal; U.S. Warns on Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Technology; U.S. Senate Details Nazi-Linked Accounts at Credit Suisse; At Least 29 People Killed in Beijing Blaze. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired April 19, 2023 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

BIANCA NOBILO, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Bianca Nobilo.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Max Foster. True fact.

NOBILO: I'm in a much more serious state than Max's ability to come out of a break.

Detained "Wall Street Journal" reporter Evan Gershkovich will have to stay behind bars after losing an appeal to change the terms of his detention while he awaits trial on espionage charges. More now from CNN's Matthew Chance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): It's the first glimpse of Evan Gershkovich for weeks. The U.S. reporter accused in Russia of espionage standing arms folded behind the glass courtroom cage even manages a smile for the cameras.

A few journalists call out their support holds strong, one shouts. Everyone sends you a big hello, the voice says. Before being hustled away. But the court rejected an appeal for bail or for Gershkovich to be kept under house arrest instead of in prison.

Outside his lawyers spoke of how he was holding up behind bars. Reading classic Russian novels, one said, and watching cooking shows on TV. But the U.S. ambassador was far more critical, expressing her concerns at his confinement.

LYNNE TRACY, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA: I can only say how troubling it was to see Evan, an innocent journalist held in these circumstances. The charges against Evan are baseless, and we call on the Russian Federation to immediately release him.

CHANCE (voice-over): Amid its brutal invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been stepping up its crackdown on free speech and dissent, using the war as cover to silence independent journalism. Or to jail long standing critics like Vladimir Kara-Murza, sentenced to 25 years for treason just this week, after speaking out on the conflict.

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA, RUSSIAN CRITIC: They're war crimes, these are war crimes.

CHANCE (voice-over): And the pressure is maintained behind bars. Last month, supporters of Alexey Navalny, the jailed Russian anti- corruption campaigner, accused the authorities of poisoning the Kremlin critic again, this time at the penal colony. Now his lawyers say he's been beaten up in his cell and faces new criminal charges.

That is against this backdrop Evan Gershkovich remains detained in a Moscow prison. Determined says lawyers to defend himself but utterly at the mercy of an increasingly authoritarian Russian state.

Matthew Chance, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: You heard our Matthew Chance there mention how Alexey Navalny has been beaten in his prison cell. His lawyer says Navalny refused to enter his cell after a prisoner with, quote, hygiene problems was moved there.

NOBILO: Navalny apparently dragged that prisoner out of his cell and a prison guard stepped in and struck Navalny. He's now accused of violating a criminal code against any disruptions in institutions such as prisons and could face an additional five years in prison if convicted of that.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is arriving in Sweden to coordinate fresh aid to Ukraine. Austin is meeting with Sweden's defense minister at a scenic naval base south of Stockholm.

[04:35:02]

In addition to discussing Ukraine, it's expected that they'll also touch on Sweden's trouble bid to join NATO.

FOSTER: Meanwhile, the U.S. is sending Russia a stern warning about sensitive American technology at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Russia now controls. The message is don't touch it. In a letter to the Russian agency overseeing the plant's operations, the U.S. says export controls forbid any Russian from handling that technology. No response so far from Moscow.

NOBILO: CNN's Nada Bashir joins us now live from London. I mean, Nada, even if Russia was going to pay attention to that letter. I mean, there's no way to actually enforce this. That would be a good faith gesture of trust of the Russians not to poke around this technology.

NADA BASHIR, CNN REPORTER: Yes, absolutely. I mean this nuclear power plant, it's the largest in Europe. It is still operated by Ukrainian staff, but crucially, it falls under the control of the Russian armed forces and Russia's state-owned energy firm Rosneft. So really, this isn't going to have a significant impact on the ground because it is under the control and under the territory that is now occupied by the Russian armed forces.

Now we've heard in that letter, which has been reviewed by CNN, the U.S. Department of Energy, saying that this Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant contains, quote, U.S. origin nuclear technical data that is export controlled by the U.S. government. So that essentially means it would be unlawful for any Russian citizens or Russian entities to handle this technology. And this is, of course, a huge concern for the U.S. government.

We've seen since Russia's invasion of Ukrainian and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant coming under attack. We've seen the power plant disconnected from the Ukrainian national grid on multiple occasions as a result of Russian shelling. And that has really raised concerns over the potential for a nuclear accident in Europe.

NOBILO: And, of course, the last time we saw these public discussions about U.S. technology and Russia's temptation to explore it would be the downing of the reaper drone when there was a race against time to try and recover that drone in the Black Sea to find out more information about it. Nada Bashir, thank you so much.

FOSTER: One of Switzerland's oldest banks is accused of failing to disclose its relationship with high-ranking Nazi officials. Two reports from the U.S. Senate budget committee detail how Credit Suisse maintained accounts for Nazis beyond World War II. CNN's Tom Foreman has that story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This report out of the Senate committee is really a lightning bolt aimed at Credit Suisse which is already struggling with a lot of things right now. Essentially what it is saying is that they believe that Credit Suisse did have dealings with a lot of people with ties to the Nazi regime in South America, specifically Argentina.

Among things identified -- according to the key findings from the Senate committee --were 21 accounts from a list of notorious high level Nazis with Credit Suisse including one that belonged to a Nazi commander who was sentenced at Nuremberg, another belonging to an SS commander who was convicted maintained accounts belonging to a German executive who was tried and acquitted at Nuremberg and a Nazi scientist who was imprisoned, a senior SS officer and on and on it goes.

Basically, what the Senate is saying is look, we read a report of where this investigation was going, and this is what we see in that report. And gets complicated at this point because the report was being done by Credit Suisse based on leads given to them by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and they were moving forward with this.

And then they changed their direction on this. There were some limits involved. The ombudsman who was in charge of all of this, he gets pushed out. He wrote this report and the Senate subpoenaed that report.

Credit Suisse says look, there's a problem here. What you have gives an incomplete picture of where we stand in all of this. It says we are aware of the account of the former ombudsman's limited engagement containing numerous factual errors, misleading and gratuitous statements and unsupported allegations that are based on an incomplete understanding of the facts. The bank strongly rejects these misrepresentations.

Well, the ombudsman himself has come out and said that he has a statement where he essentially says, look, this decision for them to basically stop the review midstream at Credit Suisse leaves a lot of misunderstandings in place. It does not answer questions about the thoroughness of the review.

The result of all this, which may be the only part that really matters right now, is that Credit Suisse has agreed to continue looking at these accounts, continue looking at maybe if there were accounts to Nazis or Nazi sympathizers somehow that were tied up in their dealings there and whether anything can or should be done about that. That with the Senate's urging. Nonetheless, the Senate's urging did keep what looked like it might have simply been a dead issue. It kept it very much alive and moving into the future.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[04:40:00]

NOBILO: You're looking at live pictures right now of Sweden and the Defense Secretary of the U.S. Lloyd Austin, who was there to meet with European partners to discuss further aid to Ukraine, and this comes after president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed -- expressed some frustration about delays.

A deadly fire tears through a Beijing hospital but officials believe started the blaze and the dramatic attempts of those who want to escape.

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NOBILO: A parking garage collapsed in New York City on Tuesday, killing one person and injuring five others. It's still not clear what caused the collapse, but records of the city's Department of Buildings show the structure had six open violations, three of which were classified as hazardous.

FOSTER: Firefighters had to use robots and drones to search the building because it continued to crumble after they arrived. That is one worker had to be rescued after being trapped on an upper floor. Searches are still ongoing, though officials believe no one else is trapped inside.

Now, this is the aftermath of a hospital fire in Beijing. At least 29 people were killed on Tuesday, including 26 patients.

NOBILO: Officials say the blaze was sparked during construction work. It's one of the deadliest fires in the city in years.

FOSTER: CNN's Kristie Lu Stout live in Hong Kong. Really harrowing images of people hanging on to those air conditioning units. KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, harrowing images, Max and

Bianca, and also this is just such a devastating tragedy for so many families in China. At least 29 people are dead after this fire erupted in a hospital in Beijing on Tuesday. Among the dead, you have 26 patients, a nurse, a care provider, as well as a family member of a patient.

State media reports that this fire broke out again on Tuesday at about one p.m. local time. It was put out about half an hour later, 71 patients were evacuated.

[04:45:00]

And we also learned thanks to a precedent earlier today, a Beijing district official addressed the cause of the fire, saying it was caused by, quote, sparks generated during construction work, which ignited combustible paint that was on site. And 12 people we've also learned had been detained on suspicion of gross negligence.

Now I want to show you this harrowing video, dramatic video of people escaping this deadly fire. One person is seen exiting the hospital through a window using a tied-up bed sheet is a rope. You can see him dropping down to that blue color on this roof like structure below, and then he scrambles across to reach the rooftop of the building next door.

Now later in this clip -- and this clip has been circulating widely on social media in China and around the world -- and you'll see this once the amateur video pans to the left. You'll see others in this hospital while it was on fire attempting to escape. You'll see a number of people who are perched on those external air conditioning units, balancing themselves outside waiting for rescue. And we don't know what happened to them. CNN we were not able to verify whether they were able to make it to safety.

This hospital fire is one of the deadliest in Beijing in recent years. It surpasses the death toll from a fire that took place in 2017 in the Daxing District in Beijing. It happened in this cramped building where migrant workers were living and that fire that tragedy prompted Beijing officials there to demolish illegal apartment blocks.

According to state media, the Communist Party Secretary for Beijing, visited the site of the hospital fire there, and we also learned that Chinese official state media did not report on the fire until many hours after it was extinguished. And that prompted an angry reaction from social media users, including this -- let's bring it up for you.

One Weibo user said. This quote: The incident happened after 12 p.m., and not a single media outlet reported on the breaking news of the time. Nearly 10 hours later after nine p.m., they started to release standardized press releases. He goes on to say, the media has now basically become copy machines for standardized press releases.

So that Weibo user there just indicative of just the widespread concern, anger and frustration about why it took so long for this story to officially come out. It was released by Beijing News some nine hours after the fire was extinguished. Back to you.

FOSTER: Kristi, thank you so much. Horrible, horrible images really brings it to life, doesn't it -- when you see them.

NOBILO: Absolutely, especially because of that desperation.

Temperature records are being shattered as a sweltering heat wave hits part of Asia. Weather historians say cities in Thailand and Laos are reporting their hottest days ever on record. Parts of Myanmar and China broke April temperature records as well. This scorching weather is normal for south Asian countries ahead of monsoon season, and for most areas, there's little relief in sight.

FOSTER: One of the original features of Netflix is being phased out. Ahead, the longtime service that's ending and other changes for the streaming giant.

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FOSTER: It is the most exciting time of the year for pro basketball fans and the NBA playoffs are delivering the action. First to Phoenix, where Devin Booker scored 38 points to lead the Suns to victory over the Clippers. Kevin Durant tacked on 25. And the series is tied at one game apiece with game three on Thursday in Los Angeles.

NOBILO: Now to Cleveland, where the Cavaliers pulled even with the Knicks, thanks to a sparkling performance from Darius Garland. He led all scorers with 32 points. Game three is Friday night in New York.

FOSTER: And the Celtics are feeling lucky after two straight wins on their home court in Boston. Jason Tatum led the way with 29 points in the game to defeat the Hawks. Plus, the series moves to Atlanta for game three on Friday.

NOBILO: Draymond Green will not be in uniform when the Golden State Warriors take to the court on Thursday. The NBA has suspended him for one game without pay for stepping on an opponent's chest during Monday's loss to the Sacramento Kings. Ouch.

FOSTER: Green was ejected from the game. The Kings went on to win, giving them a 2-0 series lead. The NBA says Green's suspension is based partly on his history of unsportsmanlike acts.

And now to an amazing comeback. Damar Hamlin, the Buffalo Bills safety who had to be resuscitated are collapsing on the field in January, has been fully cleared to return to football.

NOBILO: Doctors diagnosed him as suffering a rare condition in which a traumatic blow to the heart at a certain time during the heartbeat can cause it to stop, but he is now looking to the future.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAMAR HAMLIN, BUFFALO BILLS SAFETY: I've been beating statistics my whole life, you know, and some people might say that coming back to play might not be the best option. But that's their opinion. And like I said, I've been being statistics my whole life, so I like my chances here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBILO: Hamlin's team says he's already been participating in voluntary offseason workouts.

YouTube is changing its policy on content dealing with eating disorders. The platform already removes any content that glorifies or promotes eating disorders. But it now also prohibit anything that shows purging after eating and extreme calorie counting.

FOSTER: And YouTube says it will allow videos about recovering from eating disorders to stay, but it will limit it to users who are logged into the site and over the age of 18. The changes come as social media platforms are faced increased scrutiny for their effects on the mental health of users, especially young people.

NOBILO: And trending this hour. It is the end of an era for Netflix. After 25 years, the streaming giant will bid farewell to its DVD rental service. No more red envelopes in the mail. The change will kick in in September. I didn't know that this was a service.

FOSTER: Well, here in the U.K. it went away years ago. I think in other parts of Europe as well, I was surprised to see it was still going. People just don't wanna let go of those DVD recorders.

NOBILO: No, they're not.

FOSTER: Netflix says it will finally move forward with the rollout of its paid account sharing options sometime in the second quarter. This is in response to the all the password sharing amongst its subscribers and how they're trying to stop that basically. Netflix shares fell about 6 percent on Tuesday.

[04:55:00]

Universal Music Group is making a push to have music generated using artificial intelligence banned from streaming platforms. The music publisher boasts some of the biggest names in music. Signed use labels and publishing houses, they're trying to recruit streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music to their cause, saying, AI poses a threat to the music industry.

NOBILO: Universal Music says it supports the use of technology but says that training artificial intelligence using their artist music will be a defining battle in the future. Currently, that's not regulated in the U.S. and stay tuned for more on this story during "CNN THIS MORNING" and just a few hours.

It's interesting because when we talk about automation and AI, I suppose is the assumption that the creative industries might be more protected from that then manual roles or jobs, but it's interesting because clearly there could be an encouragement on that too.

FOSTER: Well, Martha Lane Fox who's a big sort of issues appear, isn't she here, and she in the House of Lords and she's really involved in digital culture. And she says we're really missing a trick with AI because it's inevitable, she thinks, and we're all ignoring it. You know certain industries and governments are ignoring it because they don't want to start regulating it, but they need to start regulating it early on.

NOBILO: Absolutely but this is often the case with technology because of the nature of politicians and the slightly sclerotic way that governments can work. That when you have new trends, technological advances, it just isn't legislated on properly. And I think this is just overwhelming. There's a bit of an ostrich syndrome going on.

And finally, this hour, a tiny trespasser managed to infiltrate the White House grounds. A toddler crawled through the fence on Tuesday, setting off the security system.

FOSTER: That instantly triggered Secret Service agents into action. A spokesman for the agency said the curious young visitors and parents were quickly reunited after the breach, and he's going to be pretty famous kid at school.

NOBILO: Sure, and maybe has a future as a cat burglar.

FOSTER: Yes, or yes, any sort of security role is there waiting for him?

Thanks for joining us here on CNN NEWSROOM, I'm Max Foster.

FOSTER: I'm Bianca Nobilo. "EARLY START" is up next right here on CNN.

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