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New Audio Recording of Donald Trump Mentions Classified Documents That He Kept in His Post-Presidency; Debt Ceiling Bill Finally Passed in the U.S. Congress, Now Tackling in the Senate; Three Killed, 14 Injured in Latest Russian Strikes in Kyiv; Immigration Crisis Lingers in a Major Shift in U.S Border Policy; New Images from the NoKor's Failed Spy Satellite Launch was Released; NASA to Release a Report on UFO's in July. Aired 3-4a ET

Aired June 01, 2023 - 03:00   ET

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

[03:00:00]

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PAULA NEWTON, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and a very warm welcome to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. I'm Paula Newton.

Ahead right here on CNN Newsroom. Audio of Donald Trump that undermines what he said about classified documents he kept after leaving office will bring you a CNN exclusive. Plus --

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UNKNOWN: The bill is passed.

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NEWTON: Narrowly averting a default, the House passes the debt limit deal, sending the Biden-McCarthy plan to the Senate. We'll look at who was the winner in this deal. And --

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UNKNOWN: Right now we are at 95,000 people in our care.

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NEWTON: Thousands of asylum seekers arriving in New York, but the numbers, the border are in fact down. Can the Biden administration take this as a win weeks after Title 42 ends?

UNKNOWN(voice-over): Live from CNN center, this is "CNN Newsroom" with Paula Newton.

NEWTON: And so we begin this hour with exclusive CNN reporting. Federal prosecutors now have Donald Trump's own words as an important piece of evidence in a classified documents investigation. That word from multiple sources who say the former president can be heard on tape acknowledging he held onto a classified Pentagon document. That admission could undercut his defense, submit a probe of a Trump campaign spokesperson has now called meritless and shameful.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz has the details from Washington.

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KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SR. CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: We have exclusive reporting that federal prosecutors, so the special counsel's investigation around Donald Trump, his handling of classified documents, and possible obstruction of justice, they have an audio tape now of Donald Trump in a meeting in July 2021, where he talks about a classified proposal from the Pentagon on what it would look like to bomb Iran. And then he appears on this audio tape to be waving around the sound. You can hear the sound on the tape of him referring to a document, waving it around.

Now, CNN has not listened to this audio at this point, but multiple sources have described it to us and have told us that it is quite significant in this Justice Department investigation. We know that they have the audio, they've also been asking people about it, they've talked to witnesses, they've brought in people for the grand jury testimony related to it, all working towards the possible case, which they haven't brought yet against Donald Trump, but that they could.

And one of the things in this audio tape that makes it so significant is that Donald Trump on the tape not only is referring to a classified document that he says he has in his possession, but he also is making clear that he's unhappy, that he can't share it more widely, that he's realized that it is classified and that he didn't declassify it when it was president. All of the things that would stack up in a very important possible case that the Justice Department could be looking at bringing against the former president, really an unprecedented situation.

Now, the reason for this meeting, the reason that Donald Trump is talking about this plan to bomb Iran is because he was mad at the time, in July 2021, about public reporting, a story in "The New Yorker," in fact, that said that he had to be stopped by the Pentagon and other advisors, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, to execute a plan to bomb Iran.

And Trump is trying to show the people in the room that -- that is not the case, that he actually would be undermining what Milley is, had been saying to him at the time, or what is being reported in this story, such as in "The New Yorker."

And so the people he's talking about this classified plan to, and that he's waving around a document in front of those people are aides. And in our reporting, we've also learned they are people working on a book for his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, all people who would not have a security clearance to be able to access classified documents at that point in time.

So taken together, quite a big step in the investigation and something that the Justice Department will be very much looking closely at and already has in their grand jury pursuit.

Katelyn Polantz, CNN, Washington.

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NEWTON: Now earlier I spoke with CNN contributor and former Nixon White House counsel John Dean. I asked him about CNN's exclusive reporting on the Trump audio recording and what he believes the impact could be legally. Listen.

[03:04:55]

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JOHN DEAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: First of all, this is important evidence. It's very significant because it'll show his intent very clearly. He's aware of the fact he cannot handle or mishandle or show classified information and that's what he claims he is handling. So he's acknowledging he has classified information.

But your point on the Espionage Act is that it doesn't have to even be classified to be a crime. If it's national security information, which he seems very aware it is, and if this is as reported it is Iran war plans. There's not higher classified information. So this is very important evidence and Trump again in his own -- through his own words is hanging himself so to speak.

NEWTON: You know, many people have doubted whether or not there would be an indictment in this case. Given the evidence that you've just heard, do you think it's inevitable that an indictment would have to be handed down?

DEAN: I thought when they broke the attorney-client privilege some weeks ago that -- that was pretty clear evidence that they were going to indict come what may if they got that evidence from the attorneys. This is just further. As somebody who's familiar from the inside of past investigations during Watergate, the news tends to break weeks to months after the events. I was always kind of surprised how late the news was when catching up what was actually happening in the Nixon White House, for example.

Here, I think the same thing is happening. We're just catching up with what they already have developed, and they have a very powerful case. So, I think this is just another breadcrumb that has come out that we can see where they're going.

NEWTON: John, how do you encounter the opinion though, that, you know, Trump's legal defense team says that, look, this is just a persecution. He is president. He does have, he was the president. He does have that kind of leeway in terms of having these documents. Other presidents have had these kinds of documents in their possession.

DEAN: It's a pretty weak defense because other high officials and men who might be president, but for the fact they had misused national security information. David Petraeus, a general who many thought was presidential timber, and a very likely candidate to become president of the United States, he was prosecuted and agreed to plead guilty when he mishandled a diary where he had lots of national security information, classified information, that he had given to a biographer.

So this shouldn't be an exception for Trump. The president doesn't suddenly get bestowed some quality that places him beyond the rule of law.

To the contrary, there's nobody more important to hold to the rule of law. So I think his defense that, oh, I'm being persecuted and they're just out there leaking stuff is weak. And we don't know the source of this story. CNN isn't putting that out, but I doubt if it's the Department of Justice, that would be very unlike the department in modern times. Post-Watergate, they put down very strict rules. And neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice are leakers anymore.

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NEWTON: Our thanks to John Dean there.

Now the U.S. President is praising the House of Representatives for approving a bipartisan deal to suspend the debt ceiling. Joe Biden called it a critical step to prevent a first ever default and called on Senate to pass the bill quickly when they get together later today. Despite all the bluster, the House vote wasn't even close. Final tally, 314 to 117.

Some Republican hardliners vehemently opposed to the bill are threatening to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. But that didn't stop him from taking a victory lap. Listen.

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KEVIN MCCARTHY, U.S. HOUSE SPEAKER: I wanted to do something no other Congress has done. That we would literally turn the ship that for the first time in quite some time, we'd spend less than we spent the year before. Tonight we all made history because this is the biggest cut and savings this Congress has ever voted for. And it's not that we're just voting for it. This is going to be law.

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CNN's Melanie Zenona reports from Capitol Hill on how the vote played out and what happens now.

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MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Well, a big bipartisan victory in the House Tuesday night for both President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The House passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling and limit spending with a number of members in both parties voting in favor of the bill. In the end, 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats joined forces to get this bill over the finish line, where it now goes to the Senate.

But this was not an easy vote. It was not an easy road to get here. It took weeks of intense negotiations. There were a number of breakdowns in the talks along the way. And there was also a last minute revolt from some rank and file members, particularly among conservatives. Republicans were not happy that the debt limit is extended for two years now.

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They also wanted it to go further in cutting spending. And then some Democrats were worried about the new stricter work requirements for food stamp recipients. But in the end, leadership worked behind the scenes to whip this bill, to sell members on this deal, and they are confident that it is also going to pass in the Senate.

But there is a question of how quickly they can get it done, because over in the Senate it takes the cooperation of every single member in order to be able to move quickly.

But Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, is planning to take a first procedural step on Thursday to move this bill along. Then him and Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader over there, will have to work out a deal, likely offering some amendment votes to get all their members on board. But the bottom line, Congress is poised to avert a crisis, although barely.

Melanie Zanona, CNN, Capitol Hill.

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NEWTON: OK, so there it is, a bipartisan deal. And yet for many, this really doesn't feel like a win. I asked CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein about that earlier.

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RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: The process by which this happened was so excessive and disproportionate to the issues under debate. I mean, to risk global financial catastrophe for the set of policy issues that they were debating here was just a wild mismatch of ends and means.

You know, at least in 2011, the last time we did this, the two parties were debating a true grand bargain that had everything on the table and would have any material long-term impact on the U.S. fiscal picture.

Here the Republicans ruled out the (inaudible), they ruled out Pentagon changes and they ruled out anything to do with our large entitlement programs which are the principal driver of increased spending. And so you were left arguing about a relatively small slice of the federal budget, the kinds of things you would argue about in a normal appropriations process and against that you had the guillotine of a unprecedented debt default. So I think everybody felt kind of soiled at the end.

NEWTON: You have put that so well, Ron, because we do all feel soiled at this point. It does have to go through the Senate. It likely will be fine there. If we take Speaker McCarthy, President Biden, political wins for both?

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, in the sense that the alternative was catastrophic. You know, it's not clear we really had to go through this, except that McCarthy had to show that he was standing up to Biden, as I said, to risk the global economy to get two years of a spending freeze on one- sixth of the federal budget and changes in work rules in some of the federal entitlement programs that would not even qualify as a rounding error in their impact on the budget, plus a few other things, was just so wildly disproportionate that it really was illogical, except, you know, on its own terms, the fight was the point of the fight.

In that sense, you know, it is a win because we are not going to tumble through the play class window, but it is just a reminder of how much mischief having this debt ceiling law in place invites in the first place and really makes you wonder why Democrats didn't try harder to either extend it past 2024 or eliminate it altogether when they had unified control of government through 2022.

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NEWTON: Our thanks to Ron Brownstein there.

Still ahead for us, Ukraine says it destroyed all 10 missiles launched at Kyiv today. But falling debris led to disastrous results in the capital.

Plus, Kosovo spends a day without major violence, but tensions are far from over, while the latest on the political upheaval there.

And later, North Korea is promising to try again after its latest attempt to launch a spy satellite fails. We'll have comments from the sister of Kim Jong-un. Just ahead.

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NEWTON: Kyiv's mayor reports three people have been killed and at least 14 injured in the latest Russian strikes on Ukraine's capital. The city's military administration says Moscow's forces launched ground-based tactical missiles, all of which were shot down. The casualties came as debris fell on a health clinic, two schools, and a police station.

Meantime, Russia is reporting new shelling across the border from Ukraine in the Belgorod region. The governor there says five people were injured this morning. The dissident group Freedom for Russia Legion, meantime, claims it's ready to advance into Russia soon and topple President Vladimir Putin. And Ukraine blames Russian forces for an explosion near the Three Sisters monument along the border with Belarus. A border guard spokesperson says Mr. Putin's army probably fears Ukraine would use the area to launch an offensive on Russian territory. For more on all of this, we're go live to London and CNN's Clare

Sebastian. You are following along today with a lot of new developments. I have to say the conflict has taken quite a different character in the last few days with Ukraine and Russia really trading missile strikes, which we haven't really seen at this pace before. And I'll start off with the fact that it wasn't a terrifying night again in Kyiv.

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Paula, another broken night in Kyiv after really just a day of respites. We've had a month of intensive aerial assaults targeting the capital itself and overnight the air force say they shot down 10 out of 10 cruise and ballistic Iskander missiles that were launched at the capital, the same type of missiles by the way, that were part of that daytime assault on the capital on Monday.

Having said that, even though they were able to avert them from hitting their targets, the real and present danger for the residents of the Ukrainian capital now is falling debris. You saw three deaths from the falling debris overnight, including a nine-year-old child.

[03:20:07]

So this is the impact of this aerial campaign. President Zelensky, though, will be renewing his pitch for more air defense weapons right off the back of another promise of more air defense missiles from the U.S. He is now in Moldova for a summit of the European political community, a newly formed grouping of EU and non-EU members.

And he says that he will be developing a coalition of fighter jets, offering a coalition of patriots as well, fighter jets, part of this sort of air defense system that Ukraine has now been pushing for. It has been promised training, but not yet the NATO standard jets themselves, Paula.

NEWTON: Yeah, we want to go now to those strikes that are happening within Russian territory. Ukraine has not claimed responsibility, but a new front, Clare, here has certainly opened up. The reaction has been notable, not just from Russia, but of course also from Ukraine's allies.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, it's absolutely true, Paula. I think it feels like the scope of this war is expanding and doing so at a remarkable pace really in recent days, stepping up shelling this morning in Belgorod. And the reaction, as you say, the Kremlin says it's alarmed the Russian ambassador to Washington going even further in a statement overnight, slamming the latest USAID package, saying that this shows the U.S.'s indifference to what he called the crimes of Ukraine, referring to those drone attacks in Moscow earlier this week, and saying that the statements by the White House that they do not support attacks on Russian soil are, quote, "not worth a penny."

Similar fury in Moscow we've seen in regards to the comments by the U.K. foreign secretary earlier this week, James Cleverly, who essentially gave the green light to cross-border attacks, saying that Ukraine has the right to project force beyond its border. That, according to the former president, Dmitry Medvedev, shows that

the U.K. is in an undeclared war with Russia. So the Russian rhetoric around this has really stepped up.

And meanwhile, you know, this really sets up a big test for NATO. We've seen just this morning the foreign ministers arriving for a meeting in Oslo. They will face the test of how far they will go in showing solidarity and unity to Ukraine in the face of accusations from Russia that they are now party to a conflict, increasingly it seems playing out on Russian soil.

NEWTON: Yeah, absolutely. And Clare, you will stay with us as we continue to try and bring you developments there from Oslo. For now, I thank you for the update.

Now ethnic Serbs rallied in Kosovo on Wednesday. That's according to Serbia's state TV. But there were no reports of major violence with NATO peacekeepers deployed to guard town halls and other government buildings.

NATO is sending in hundreds more troops after the situation was right out of control two days earlier.

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Serbian protesters clashed with the police keepers, leading dozens of people injured. They were furious that ethnic Albanian mayors took office in the area following local elections that the Serbs boycotted.

Serbia's president spoke to CNN on Wednesday, saying he did not encourage the boycott, although he did say that Serbs in Kosovo live under occupation.

The Republican field of U.S. presidential candidates is getting mighty crowded. Coming up, two more prominent names are set to join the race, as Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump sharpen their attacks on one another.

Plus, we look at the situation on the U.S.-Mexican border after a major shift in the U.S. immigration policy.

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NEWTON: And welcome back to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. I'm Paula Newton and this is "CNN Newsroom."

Two more prominent Republicans are expected to announce next week that they are too running for president. Donald Trump's former vice president, Mike Pence, plans to kick off his campaign in Iowa June 7th. And former New Jersey governor Chris Christie plans to declare his candidacy next Tuesday in New Hampshire.

Meantime, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been stumping across Iowa trying to convince voters he can get elected while Donald Trump cannot.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny is traveling with Mr. DeSantis.

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GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL), U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We can't make excuses. We have to be able to get the job done.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF U.S. NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is trying to seize the reins of the Republican Party from the hands of Donald Trump, pitching himself as a fighter who can win.

DESANTIS: This bureaucracy has imposed its will on us for far too long. It's about time we impose our will on it and that it answers to we the people.

ZELENY (voice-over): On his first full day of campaigning across Iowa as a declared presidential candidate, DeSantis made clear he would draw distinctions with the former president on his terms.

DESANTIS: I am gonna counterpunch, I'm gonna fight back on it. I'm gonna focus my fire on Biden and I think he should do the same. He gives Biden a free pass. I'm focusing on Biden.

ZELENY (voice-over): But long before DeSantis can confront President Biden, he must first get through a Republican primary and a growing field of challengers, including former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who are poised to enter the race next week. But Trump still looms largest over the race. He arrives here to offer something of a rebuttal to DeSantis.

The latest sign the race is intensifying, with the Iowa caucuses early next year among the first tests for the strength of Trump's grip on the GOP.

Samona Yentes is among the Iowa Republicans weighing their options, and at this point she's utterly undecided.

[03:30:00]

SAMONA YENTES, IOWA REPUBLICAN: I have a tremendous amount of respect for many things President Trump did in office, so I have to keep that in mind. I also have a tremendous amount for what Governor DeSantis has done in Florida.

ZELENY (voice-over): DeSantis addressed those Republicans directly, bluntly saying Trump can't win a general election.

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL), U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think our voters are looking at this and they say, you know, yeah, we appreciate what he did, but we also recognize there are a lot of voters just aren't gonna ever vote for him. We just have to accept that.

ZELENY (voice-over): Even his questions about his own electability remained unanswered, DeSantis touts his deeply-conservative Florida record. As he introduces himself to Iowa voters, he stepped up his subtle contrast with Trump.

DESANTIS: At the end of the day, leadership is not about entertainment. It's not about building a brand. It's not about virtue signaling. It is about results.

ZELENY (voice-over): At his side was one of his closest political advisors, his wife Casey, who picked up the argument where he left off.

CASEY DESANTIS, WIFE OF RON DESANTIS: At the end of the day, I say that it matters in the moment. And you see how a leader conducts himself when the lights are on.

ZELENY (on-camera): As the Florida governor heads on to New Hampshire and South Carolina to campaign this week, former President Donald Trump arrives in Iowa and will be campaigning on Thursday, but no big rallies this time. Instead, he'll be meeting with small groups of conservative supporters, evangelical supporters, trying to make the case that he is fighting for this Republican nomination in a new way.

But there is no doubt, as this Republican field keeps growing and growing, this could still be advantage Trump, because that never Trump lane is fractured and divided by so many candidates.

Jeff Zeleny, CNN, Pella, Iowa.

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PAULA NEWTON, CNN ANCHOR: So close to 46,000 asylum seekers are currently in New York City's care. And that's according to city officials who say more than 2000 arrived only last week. They also say more than 72,000 have come through the city's intake centers since last spring.

Now, it's been nearly three weeks since the U.S. ended the so-called Title 42, which allowed authorities to swiftly turn away migrants at the border during the COVID emergency, which means an older policy is now back and forth. It's known as Title 8. It allows migrants to seek asylum, though that can be a lengthy progress -- process -- pardon me.

Mexicans still represent the largest group of immigrants living in the United States, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. But the total number of Mexican immigrants living in the United States has been on the decline now for more than a decade. An estimated 10.7 million Mexican immigrants lived in the United States in 2021, roughly 1 million fewer than a decade ago.

Joining me now is Jessica Riley. She's a staff attorney at Lawyers for Good Governments Project Corazon, a legal program to defend the rights of migrants in the face of inhumane immigration policies.

And I want to try and take the temperature of where we are right now. This is weeks after Title 42 ended. What effect are you seeing that it has had on migrants and those seeking asylum in the United States, whether within the U.S. borders or outside of at this point? JESSICA RILEY, STAFF ATTORNEY, PROJECT CORAZON: Sure. So, you know, as you've stated, you know, Title 42 ended about three weeks ago, and the government implemented a new rule, which makes most asylum seekers who arrive at the southern border ineligible for asylum in the U.S., unless they've already applied for asylum in a country they've passed through or unless they manage to secure an appointment via the CBP-1 scheduling app.

There are, of course, limited exceptions and ways to overcome this rule. However, there's a lot of confusion on the ground with these asylum seekers. The rule is not very clear, and each exception will be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis, often while the asylum seeker is detained with no access to legal counsel.

So what this means, and what we're seeing, is that even the most vulnerable asylum seekers who really can't afford to wait for an appointment are being forced to make an impossible decision. Either they wait anyway and suffer whatever the health or safety consequence may be in Mexico, or they can lawfully present at a port of entry and ask the U.S. government for help.

But this means that they're going to be presumed ineligible for asylum in the U.S. And if they cannot rebut the presumption, they're going to be summarily deported probably within weeks or even days. And this has permanent devastating immigration consequences. So what I'm seeing is people are confused. They don't understand what's happening. They are desperate, they're living in, you know, the worst situation or the worst conditions I frankly have ever seen in all my years down here.

NEWTON: And can you elaborate on that? Because that's certainly saying something in terms of you saying you've never seen it this bad.

[03:34:58]

RILEY: Yes, so as I said, this is the worst I've ever seen. It's worse now than it was under the Trump administration. Right now there are numerous campments right across the Rio Grande where people are living in absolutely abysmal conditions. You know, children and families are sleeping under tarps, trash bags, sheets of plastic, pieces of cardboard.

There's not enough water. There's not enough food. We have seen -- we've seen children who have lost a third of their body weight. They're starving. There's also limited sanitation infrastructure in place. For example, you know, in one of the larger camps right across the river, there are over 1,000 people living there. And there are so few facilities that they've essentially been forced to use the land next to where they sleep as, you know, an open defecation site.

And there are concerns that, you know, there are runoff, that there is runoff from this land into the river and the people are bathing in this river, they're washing their kids, their clothes in this river. You know, this is truly a humanitarian emergency and it could quickly become a health crisis without, you know, without more resources and intervention. NEWTON: Yeah, there are alarming conditions that you described there. I have to ask you though, I mean, you had extensive experience in New York, the city, the state right now, buckling. They've been very blunt financially and resource-wise in terms of them trying to provide all they need to for migrants. There's no easy answer. What would you say to that?

RILEY: I would say that, you know, we as a country, we have an obligation to respect human dignity and human rights. And we have a responsibility to process people who are seeking asylum at our ports of entry.

You know, we have seen other countries around the world welcoming many more asylum seekers than we are right now. And we have seen them do it with dignity and successfully. I believe that, you know, living in a border city, I have seen my community welcome, you know, thousands and thousands of people. And I think that, you know, we can collectively, we can do this together, we can be a, you know, a place that welcomes immigrants as we have always been, and, you know, provide them with some due process, with some justice.

NEWTON: All right, Jessica, I will point out that the Biden administration, the numbers are down, and for now the Biden administration is actually getting credit for that. And I'm glad that you have pointed out exactly, just beyond the border, what the conditions are like at this hour in Mexico. Jessica Riley for us, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you.

Up next for us, North Korea is defending its failed attempt to launch a spy satellite as it vows to try again what might be behind their push. Just ahead.

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[03:40:00]

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NEWTON: North Korean state media has released these images, you see them there, of Wednesday's failed spy satellite launch. As the country is making clear, it remains determined to try again.

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un says the country will put a military spy satellite into orbit soon and defended its right to self-defense.

CNN's Will Ripley has those details.

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WILL RIPLEY, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For the first time in seven years, North Korea is trying to put a satellite into orbit. And this time, its military purpose is no secret.

Unlike these launches in 2012 and 2016, Pyongyang no longer promises peaceful civilian research. North Korea wants to deploy a spy satellite. Experts say it could improve the accuracy of nuclear weapons, raising the stakes in an escalating standoff with the U.S. and its allies.

North Korea undeterred by a failed first launch early Wednesday. A new rocket, Chollima-1, crashed into the Yellow Sea.

The nation's space agency blames a new engine system. With unstable fuel, state media says. The agency investigating serious flaws, vowing to carry out a second launch as soon as possible.

In South Korea and Japan, air raid sirens sounded within minutes of the satellite launch.

UNKNOWN: It was framed as a kind of wartime alert.

RIPLEY (voice-over): Millions of mobile phone users woke up to evacuation warnings, later canceled.

Missile and satellite tests have become part of our daily lives, this Seoul resident says, another saying. If North Korea attacks with missiles, then that is the end of them.

But this may be just the beginning, analysts say.

More missile and satellite launches all but certain.

MALCOM DAVIS, SR. ANALYST, THE AUSTRALIAN STRATEGIC POLICY INSTITUTE: It did cause concern in South Korea and Japan because you simply don't know what the North Koreans are planning on doing. It could have easily been a ballistic missile test.

RIPLEY (voice-over): The U.N. secretary-general strongly condemns the launch, the latest brazen violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, flaunting his growing arsenal alongside his young daughter, seen by some as a possible successor.

China and Russia blocking attempts at the U.N. to punish Kim's missile-testing binge with tougher sanctions.

Japan says North Korea's continued actions threaten the safety and security of our country, the region, and the international community.

South Korea racing to retrieve what it says is debris from the failed launch.

[03:45:09]

(on-camera): We're at North Korea's brand new satellite control center.

(voice-over): In 2015, I met with a director of North Korea's satellite program. He told me his team of 300 scientists was working nonstop to make North Korea a space superpower.

(on-camera): What can you say to the world to prove that this is not a ballistic missile program in disguise?

(voice-over): Why on earth would we have any intention of trying to drop nuclear bombs on the world, including the United States? The director of scientific research said at the time.

Eight years and a barrage of ballistic missile tests later, North Korean scientists learn more from every launch. Even failure brings Kim closer to success.

(on-camera): Perhaps a sign of just how confident Kim Jong-un is, North Korean state media releasing these images of the failed launch, showing that Kim Jong-un is pretty confident that eventually he will have a spy satellite orbiting the earth.

He's also stated he wants to develop a hypersonic missile, a nuclear submarine, advanced solid fuel ICBMs that could be launched without warning and even potentially nuclear capable missiles with multiple warheads.

Will Ripley, CNN, Taipei.

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NEWTON: Sudan's armed forces has suspended participation in the U.S.- Saudi brokered ceasefire talks in Jeddah. They're accusing rival paramilitary forces of violating the latest truce which was extended on Monday.

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Now in the month and a half since the civil war broke out, ceasefires have been constantly violated by both sides. On Wednesday at least 17 people were killed and more than 100 people wounded at a market in Khartoum that was hit by heavy shelling, and also hit. And Sudanese Doctors say more people are likely to die as a result of their injuries from that attack. Hospitals are pleading for more medical staff in the area to help treat the victims.

Coming up for us here on "CNN Newsroom." NASA scientists are working to stop the spread one of the sky's greatest mysteries by making it possible to get concrete answers about so-called UFOs. We'll learn how, straight ahead.

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[03:50:00]

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NEWTON: The NASA Task Force plans to publish its first report this summer on unidentified anomalous phenomena or what you and I call UFOs. The team of independent scientists is creating guidelines to turn creepy stories and grainy footage into hard science. And hopefully we'll get those answers.

CNN's Tom Foreman explains. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: For many years, the U.S. government just denied all of these reports of people seeing things in the sky, the idea that there even were unidentified objects up there.

But now, government agencies in the past few years have come around to saying, yeah, there's clearly something there because we have video of it and we have too many reports of it, but what exactly is it?

This is NASA's time to come on board with all of that, with this committee they put together that's going to have a report out this summer basically saying, here's what we think is going on up there.

Now, they're not going to answer a lot of things because they -- they will say some things can be explained as balloons or flights of birds or maybe aircraft that people didn't know were up there.

Some of it they'd say they can't explain but more importantly what they're saying is they're trying to put together a roadmap going forward. A way to combine actual scientific observation of these things with the anecdotal observation you have because the problem is they have too much of that right now. There are too many people with iPhones and saying I saw something and maybe it looked like this.

Did they come up with a general idea of what these things look like based upon what they have heard anecdotally? Yeah, they say generally the characteristics of these unidentified anomalous phenomenon as they call them now are they're round and small, white, silver or translucent, around 10,000 to 30,000 feet, stationary to Mach 2, twice the speed of sound, and there's no thermal exhaust.

But that is nothing but an average of a lot of people saying, well, I think I saw this. And what NASA is trying to say is, it's easy to say what you think you saw.

If we really want to get to the bottom of what's going on here, we need to quantify this. We need to be able to say exactly what was happening, where was it, how fast it was traveling? They think by doing that, they will get rid of a lot of the noise and get down to the few items that they really don't know. Are they advanced weapons systems? Are they surveillance systems from other countries or even the NASA people say, or are they from somewhere else, some other place out in the galaxy?

They don't think it's that. They don't think it's that. And even though many skeptics say even if they knew, they would never tell us, the NASA people at the end of all of this said, look, many of us spend our lives wondering if we can find life out there. If we can find it, we'd sure like to. We'll see what their report says later this summer.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: Our thanks to Tom Forman there.

And before we go, a long lost cast member from "Sex and the City" is returning to the show and just like that.

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One of those closest friends you see her there, Kim Cattrall, who played fan favorite Samantha Jones was famously not there for the first season of the reboot amid reports of bad blood.

[03:55:06]

Cattrall is bringing the sex positive publicist Samantha back for at least one scene in season two. It's all very hush-hush.

Like CNN, HBO is owned by parent company Warner Brothers-Discovery. I've got to say Samantha is back and the crowd goes wild.

Many people waiting for that comeback. I'm Paula Newton. Thanks for your company "CNN Newsroom" continues now with Max Foster and Bianca Nobilo.

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