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CNN International: Search Underway For Missing Titanic Tour Submersible; French Police Raid Organizing Committee Office; Blinken In London, Shifts Focus From China To Ukraine; Ukraine: Russia Focusing On The Eastern Front Lines; Joseph Tsai, Eddie Wu To Lead Chinese Tech Giant; Andrew Tate Indicted For Human Trafficking & Rape; What We Know About OceanGate Expeditions, The Company That Runs The Titanic Tour. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired June 20, 2023 - 08:00   ET

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

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MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to CNN Newsroom. I'm Max Foster in London. Just ahead, a race against time to find a missing crew on board a Submersible near the Titanic wreckage who've limited oxygen supplies left. The latest on this terrifying story.

Also ahead, Bureau Secretary of State is in London at this hour, fresh off the heels of his meeting with China's Xi Jinping. More details in just a moment. And police have raided the headquarters of the 2024 Paris Olympic Organizing Committee in a corruption investigation. We'll be live in Paris with details.

U.S. and Canada are both in the remote waters of the North Atlantic looking for a submersible with five people on board. It went missing on Sunday during a voyage to tour the wreckage of the Titanic. The 21 feet vessel operated by OceanGate Expeditions was carrying three tourists and two crew members. Time is running out to find them.

The sub has just three to four days of oxygen. It isn't an easy search either. The remote area is more than 1,400 kilometers from the U.S. coast and nearly 4 kilometers down.

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Paula Newton joins us live with more on the desperate search. A lot of people saying, from the commentary I've seen, that if the sub was on the surface, they would have found it now. So are we assuming it's somewhere below water and very difficult to reach?

PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, listen, Max, I wouldn't assume anything at this point. I've been out in those waters. It is an incredible difficult search to undertake. And that was the word from the U.S. Coast Guard, right? You have to think this thing is a little bit bigger than a transport van, floating, perhaps, we hope, to the surface in a very remote area. The U.S. Coast Guard admits that. Now, as you say, this is no easy search. I want to draw your attention, though, to two key pieces of equipment. One is the P-8 Poseidon, that is a Canadian aircraft that has been in the air now already, and it is designed to look for submarines. That is a good thing.

But crucial, in the next hours, the new U.S. Coast Guard says that they will bring on board a submersible of its own, something that can actually do some deep diving to begin to look for that submersible in the area where they first lost contact, I have to say, Max, just an hour and 45 minutes into this expedition.

I want you to listen now, though, to the U.S. Coast Guard talk about what comes next. Listen.

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REAR ADMIRAL JOHN MAUGER, U.S. COAST GUARD: We have to make sure that we're looking on both the surface using aerial and surface vessels, but then expanding into underwater search as well. Right now, our capability is limited to sonar buoys and listening for sounds, but, you know, we're working very hard to increase the capability.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NEWTON: You know, key here, Max, is that there is no GPS on this submersible, and that's a problem, which is why you hold out hope that they are floating, if not on the surface, then much closer to the surface than is the Titanic wreck. And a reminder that that is 13,000 feet, nearly 2.5 miles to the depth.

They would have been by terms of the schedule of the expedition, close to the Titanic wreck when they lost communication with that submersible. Again, so many resources going to the scene right now, and this is difficult, right? It's not like you can keep aircraft out in the North Atlantic hour upon hour.

Both the U.S. Coast Guard, the Canadian military, the Canadian Coast Guard needs to do these, you know, flights back and forth, going back to base and then sending other aircraft out. They are also trying to put the call out to commercial vessels that might be in the area. Anyone that can help on this point, on what the U.S. Coast Guard, you know, obviously says is a remote and challenging area to search.

FOSTER: I mean, it's a wonder there weren't more plans in place by this company, but as I understand, it's quite unregulated. But if it is on the bottom of the ocean. There is no way of sending another sub down and transferring them, is there? They have to literally get it back to the surface and you need particular equipment for that which they're not quite sure they've got yet.

NEWTON: Absolutely. And that is the issue with this kind of deep water diving. It is a dangerous thing. I mean, this company on its own privately decided to do these excursions because they admitted themselves that no government or public body would take this on. Having said that, they were assured that from a technical standpoint, it was all possible. They have done these expeditions before. Quite a few have been successful. But I will also say that we do have reports in the past that that submersible did lose communication with the support trip -- ship, which is right now the Polar Prince, which is a former Canadian icebreaker that's in the water there.

A piece of good news, though, Max, is that according to our friends in the CNN Weather Center, there are no weather issues right now. And that is a very good thing as this search goes forward.

FOSTER: Paula Newton, thank you. And back with you with any updates.

Now, just over a year out from the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics, French financial police are raiding the headquarters of the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee. Prosecutors say the searches are tied to two investigations involving illegal conflicts of interest relating to contracts, embezzlement and other issues. It is the latest drama to rock French sports in the past year.

Melissa Bell joins us live from Paris. I mean, this is very worrying, isn't it, for everyone involved and anyone looking forward to the games?

MELISSA BELL, CNN PARIS CORRESPONDENT: That's right. In just a month, Max, will mark the one year until these games start in July of 2024. And this is not the news they were looking for. Those raids announced this morning in several different offices here in Paris.

Now, the offices both of the 2024 Organizing Committee itself, but also the offices of the public company that manages a lot of the infrastructure, the construction that's going into the preparation of the 2024 Summer Games.

Now, as you say, two different preliminary investigations had been launched. One, targeting the organizing committee that was launched back in 2017. And it looked at things like conflicts of interest, favoritism, and this is again about the awarding of contracts.

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Similarly, the one that targets the company that's building a lot of the infrastructure was opened in 2022 and it is focusing on conflicts of interest, favoritism and again the awarding of contracts. So those raids in several areas, we don't know yet what they've found or what the next step will be, but certainly an in auspicious start to the countdown to these games.

Bear in mind, Max, that Tony Estanguet, the three-time French Olympic champion who heads the organizing committee of the 2024 Paris Games had promised exemplary games. That is certainly off to a bad start with regard to that pledge, Max.

FOSTER: OK, Melissa Bell in Paris, thank you.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is shifting his focus from China to Ukraine. A day after concluding a trip to Beijing where he took steps to mend fences with China's leaders, he's here in London for talks on helping Ukraine. Blinken is meeting with the U.K. and Ukrainian foreign ministers and will also attend a conference focused on helping Ukraine recover from the impact of the conflict.

Nic Robertson following all of this. A very tough challenge considering, you know, the financial pressures on all of these governments. And we're effectively talking about a massive long-term financial commitment to Ukraine.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: And that's the point of this conference in it's almost in -- its entirety, it is to generate the space, generate the interest for the business community rather than governments putting their hands in their pockets to help with the recovery effort. A year ago, the Ukrainian said a recovery effort to rebuild the country, in essence get the businesses back up and running, repair all the damaged infrastructure would be $100 billion, a year ago, $100.

So we can imagine it's gone up considerably since then. But the aim of this conference will be to draw in business partners who can partner with governments, partner with the Ukrainian government. Find out what it will take for them to have an investment opportunity in the future in Ukraine to bring together some civil society as well.

So this is about governments managing the longer term cost. This is about spreading the cost of it. But as we know, hundreds of millions, hundreds of millions, billions have been spent on shoring up Ukraine's military for a war that really, as we're seeing this summer, is becoming very clearly, very, very expensive. So that's what this conference will all be about.

FOSTER: OK, we're respecting Blinken and cleverly to speak very soon, aren't we? So we'll bring that to you when we have it and Nic will join us for his analysis.

Turning out to Ukraine where officials say Russia launched a massive aerial bombardment on Kyiv overnight.

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FOSTER: Air sirens wailed through the capital for more than three hours. But Ukraine says its air defenses downed most of the Iranian- made drones. Meanwhile, local authorities say the southern Zaporizhzhia and western Lviv regions were also targeted.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen joins us now live in Kyiv. Fred?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL: Hi there, Max. And yes, it was indeed another sleepless night here in Kyiv for the residents here. We just heard that video of the air raid sirens going off for several hours tonight. And the Ukrainians did saying that the drones came in waves, those Iranian-made drones attacking the city and apparently even making it to within the city limits.

Now they do say that of the 35 drones that the Russians sent here towards the Ukrainian capital and other areas in Ukraine, that they managed to down 32 of those. So that certainly speaks to the fact that the Ukrainian air defense is working very efficiently here in the Ukrainian capital and indeed in other places in Ukraine as well.

All this comes, Max, as the onslaught here in the war in Ukraine obviously continues. You were talking about the fact that the city of Zaporizhzhia was targeted by Russian missiles overnight. That, of course, is very close to that southern front line where the Ukrainians currently are trying to advance there.

The other things that we're hearing from that front line as well, Max, is that right now the battles there are extremely tough. The Ukrainian president, he came out overnight and said, look, at this point in time, there's no place where the Russians are taking positions from the Ukrainians, but there are places where the Ukrainians are taking positions from the Russians.

So clearly, for the Ukrainians, they say that they are the ones who have the initiative. But at the same time, moving forward is extremely difficult for them because the Russians have a lot of artillery that's blanketing Ukrainians as they try to move forward, especially when they take some of those smaller villages close to the front line, move into those. Their units are immediately met with artillery fire.

And the other thing they also say, Max, is that Russian air power is a big problem for those advancing Ukrainian units. The Russians obviously concentrating a lot of that, especially on the southern front line. Nevertheless, over the past couple of days that we had been near the front line area, the Ukrainian troops that we found there and saw there and met there, all of them said that they were confident that this counter offensive can be a success.

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But of course, none of them under the illusion that this is going to be something that is going to be easy or quick. In fact, they say it's a very difficult battle. And they also acknowledge, Max, that the Russians who are fighting on the frontlines are very tough to deal with. They are putting up a really tough fight.

So certainly, no one here in this country is under the impression that this is something that can be done quickly. Nevertheless, you do have a good degree of confidence among the Ukrainian troops that they can see this through, Max.

FOSTER: Fred in Kyiv, thank you.

Now, Greece has recovered more victims than that migrant boat tragedy, bringing the death toll to 81. Hundreds more, though, are feared dead. The boat, packed with migrants, sank last week in some of the deepest waters of the Mediterranean. Nine suspected smugglers are expected to face manslaughter charges this week. Pakistan, which says nearly 300 victims were its citizens, has begun to clamp down on human trafficking networks in the wake of the tragedy.

A searing heat wave has turned deadly in India's northern Bihar state. An official says 44 people have died due to high temperatures in recent days. The country's meteorological department says some districts are recording temperatures above 113 degrees Fahrenheit, or 45 degrees Celsius. Temperatures are expected to cool, though, in the coming days.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba is undergoing the biggest shake up in its history. The company has announced that Joseph Tsai will become its new chairman starting in September, and Eddie Wu will take over as chief executive officer. They are taking over for Daniel Zhang, who was named executive chairman after Alibaba's co-founder Jack Ma stepped away in 2019.

Alibaba is China's largest ecommerce company. It's also a leader in cloud computing and digital payments.

Just a short while ago, online influencer Andrew Tate was indicted in Romania, on charges of human trafficking and rape. Tate was charged alongside his brother and two other women. The four of them were arrested last year, accused of recruiting Romanian women and coercing them into appearing in pornographic videos. Tate is a former kickboxer who gained notoriety for making misogynistic and violent comments about women online.

A U.S. judge is barring former President Donald Trump and his codefendant from talking about information handed over to their attorneys in the classified documents case. Special Counsel Jack Smith asked for the ban. Trump went on Fox on Monday and offered his latest explanation for not handing over boxes of documents to government investigators.

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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I've had a lot of things in there. I will go through those boxes. I have to go through those boxes. I take out personal things. As far as the levels and all, everything was declassified because I had the right to declassify.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why not just hand them over then?

TRUMP: Because I had boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don't want to hand that over to NARA yet. And I was very busy, as you've sort of seen.

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FOSTER: Still to come, we'll have a look at the scenarios that may have caused that tourist submersible to lose contact whilst exploring the Titanic.

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FOSTER: What could have gone wrong on that Titan submersible? With no word yet from the vessel since it went missing an hour and 45 minutes into its dive on Sunday, time is running out on the subs air reserve. Possible theories are emerging about what could have happened from a power cut that would explain the loss of communication or a potential fire caused by short circuiting, which could have destroyed the vessel's systems and possibly created toxic fumes.

Another possibility, a flooding or immense pressure which would have caused the vessel to implode. And potential entanglement with debris from the titan. Titanic wreckage is also one consideration as well, the experts are telling us.

Let's join one of them. He is the Titanic historian, Craig Sopin. He joins us from Philadelphia. Thank you so much for joining us. First of all --

CRAIG SOPIN, TITANIC HISTORIAN: Thank you. It's an honor (ph) to be here.

FOSTER: Obviously, you know this site incredibly well. Just explain how difficult it is to work in.

SOPIN: Well, Titanic itself is located in a pretty caustic environment in the North Atlantic. And if we think about how long it took to find the Titanic, 73 years. And keep in mind that Titanic is about 900 feet long. This submersible is about 21 feet to 22 feet long. So it shows you how difficult it would be to find something of that size in the very large ocean.

Fortunately, our techniques for finding these kinds of things have increased and have expanded and have improved since 1912 and even since 1985, when Titanic itself was discovered. Nevertheless, it's still a very small object in a very large ocean which is known for swells and storms. So the Coast Guard and the Navy certainly have their work cut out for them.

FOSTER: We were talking earlier in the program about how difficult this rescue mission is going to be because you have to locate it. If it's at the bottom of the ocean, it's going to be very difficult to get the people out safely, isn't it? Because you have to have the right equipment to get it to the surface. Do you and your fellow historians --

SOPIN: Yes.

FOSTER: -- have an issue with the fact that this sort of tourism was taking place in the first place?

SOPIN: Well, there are very few vessels, first of all, that can possibly rescue this submersible if it's at the bottom of the ocean. Keeping in mind that the bottom of the ocean where they are is about 12,500 feet, so it's quite a large distance. And there is a navy vessel that could possibly help. It's called the CURV-21. I think that's capable of descending about 30,000 feet. So that's certainly a possibility.

Hopefully, though, if the ship is still intact, it is somewhere on the surface. I really never had a problem with the tourism aspect of this. A lot of people are hesitant to go down even if they could afford it. But it wasn't because of the safety issue. It was because of other issues, such as claustrophobia. And it's probably not the best way to find out that you're claustrophobic because you can't do anything about it until about 10 hours later when the vessel surfaces.

So I really didn't have a problem in that regard. And we really haven't had a problem like this since they started taking people down about 20 years ago.

FOSTER: So many people talking about what it must be like for the poor people on board. Of course, you wouldn't wish it on anyone. But do you think the company should have just had some sort of system in place to cope with this, because the reality is the sort of equipment you're talking about, sort of vessels you're talking about, weren't on standby to go in and save them?

SOPIN: No. And depending on where that CURV-21 vessel is located, it could take quite some time to get to the area, and they only have about two days of oxygen left. But I will say that the company, OceanGate, is very safety-oriented. They do tests of the equipment. The equipment itself is very secure and should be able to withstand all of the pressures that can come upon them.

The pilot on board, that vessel, is extremely experienced and has made many, many dives before to the Titanic rec site. So when you take all things into consideration, we can always, in hindsight think, well, something should have been done differently. It could have been better.

But certainly this Titan vessel is a lot better at the get-go than some of the other vessels have been. Again, this is a larger vessel than the others. The other submersibles that have visited Titanic were smaller, only capable of taking three people instead of five.

It is true some people are hesitant about going down because there's only one pilot and, you know, we would be far afield to go onto an airplane, a commercial airplane that only had one pilot on board.

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But on the other hand, when we have a flight controller, so the air traffic control has one person dealing with many different airplanes. In this case, OceanGate has many people dealing with only one vessel. So it has to be compared in a relative term. And I think that even though there is one pilot on board, because of all the other safety systems in place, that was considered sufficient for this type of tourism.

FOSTER: Craig Sopin, thank you so much for joining us with your analysis. Of course, we're keeping updated on this and wishing everyone the very best on board now.

SOPIN: Absolutely. My pleasure.

FOSTER: Coming up -- thank you.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A team of five will squeeze into Titan for each dive and view the wreckage on these monitors. To fly the vessel, the pilot uses a PlayStation controller.

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FOSTER: That's how tight it is. We'll get a firsthand report of what it's like inside a submersible like the one that's missing.

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FOSTER: Let's get more now on what it's like inside that missing submersible? The 21 foot vessel went missing on Sunday whilst exploring the wreckage of the Titanic. So what's it actually like being inside one of those vessels? A CBS News reporter found out last year.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Inside, the sub has about as much room as a minivan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So this is not your grandfather's submersible. We only have one button. That's it. It should be like an elevator, you know. It shouldn't take a lot of skill.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can use these off the shelf components.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got these from Camper World. We run the whole thing with this game controller.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (on-camera): Come on.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: CNN's Gabe Cohen has covered OceanGate before and he's actually been in one of them. Just first of all, on that point, I don't understand it. These are, you know, there aren't made like a military submarine. These are literally made from spare parts, you can literally buy off Amazon. Does that mean that they're not safe?

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Max, the company, OceanGate, would certainly argue that that's not the case. And while it does look somewhat simple and rudimentary, some of the technology on board, the company's CEO, Stockton Rush, has argued that they did not cut any costs or any corners when it talks to actual safety mechanisms, including the pressure vessel and the carbon fiber shell of Titan of that sub.

That they worked with NASA and worked with Boeing and there is no doubt, they say that it could handle such a dive, 13,000 feet deep into the ocean, 150 million pounds of pressure that it would feel on the ocean floor.

As you mentioned, you know, I've done stories on OceanGate in the past. I worked, did several pieces during my time reporting in Seattle. And in 2018, I actually did a story about Titan and about that submersible that is missing right now in the ocean.

And again, I spoke with CEO Stockton Rush as well as the crew who had helped build and would eventually man that sub on the expedition. And all of them talked about safety and about their confidence in the vessel and in the technology. Of course, since then, we have learned that Titan has had some communication issues in the past that last year on at least one expedition.

The vessel was lost for more than two hours, according into that CBS News report that you played a piece of. And that's because the vessel couldn't receive text messages, which they rely on from support crew on the ocean surface to tell them where to go, because they don't have any GPS on board that vessel.

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So, again, Max, the OceanGate team would say there was no doubt this vessel was safe enough for such an expedition, despite by what looks like very simple technology in that piece, which I also saw up close.

FOSTER: So many people talking about claustrophobia, what it must be like for them. I mean, can you imagine? I mean, you've been inside one of these and you know what the space is like. Can you imagine what it's like in there right now?

COHEN: Yes, it's remarkably cramped. That was what struck me first being on board Titan back in 2018. It can only fit five people on board the vessel, which is, as we understand, the number of people currently missing at sea. And, yes, it's tight quarters. It is hard to imagine even the eight to 12-hour expedition that was expected, let alone what's happening right now.

FOSTER: OK, Gabe, really appreciate your time today. Thank you for joining us.

Now, the rooftop of the world is getting a lot less white. A new report warns that the massive glaciers that cover the peaks of the Himalayan Mountains could soon lose up to 80 percent of their ice. Well, in the next 80 years or so.

The report points out that ice melting from the glaciers provides water to 2 billion people in 16 countries. And that ice -- and as that ice disappears, the water will obviously go, too.

A new study has found that taking a short nap during the day may protect your brain's health. That study in the journal Sleep Health suggests a 30 minutes nap could help to reduce brain shrinkage between two to six years. Neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia accelerate brain shrinkage, but a nap could be a positive thing for prevention.

Thanks for joining me here on CNN Newsroom. I'm Max Foster in London. World Sport with Amanda is up next.

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