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CNN International: Ukraine: 10 Dead In Russian Strike On Kramatorsk; NATO: We're Ready To Defend Every Member Nation; Protests Erupt Near Paris After Teenage Boy Shot Dead By Police During Traffic Stop; Kevin Spacey's Sexual Assault Trial Underway In London; Body Of Acclaimed Actor Found In California Mountains; 80 Million Plus Under Air Quality Alerts In U.S., Canada; Trump Responds To 2021 Tape: "I Did Nothing Wrong"; South Koreans Become Younger Overnight; Vanilla The Chimp Sees Sky For First Time. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired June 28, 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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[08:01:02]

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, and welcome to CNN Newsroom. I'm Max Foster in London.

Just ahead, a deadly Russian missile strike hits a crowded restaurant in Ukraine's East. Children amongst the dead. More from the ground in just a moment.

French President Macron calls the fatal shooting of a teenager during a police traffic stop unjustified as the boy's death prompts unrest near Paris. We're live on this developing story.

And Kevin Spacey appears in a London court as his trial on sexual offense charges gets underway.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls the strike on an eastern city, quote, "a manifestation of terror". At least 10 people were killed when two Russian missiles slammed into Kramatorsk on Tuesday. One hitting a busy city center, the other a village nearby. Dozens of people are injured. A popular restaurant was hit. Among the victims, a baby and these teenage twin sisters who had just graduated from 8th grade.

CNN's Ben Wedeman joins us live from Eastern Ukraine with the very latest developments. And that is the restaurant, I believe, Ben?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's correct. That's the restaurant, the Ria behind me. They continue to search for perhaps survivors, more likely the dead. Now, in fact, our producer Costa did speak to some of the rescue workers. They said at this point their expectation is that there is nobody alive under the rubble. They're still trying to dig out.

Now, the latest numbers, according to the local authorities, are 10 dead. As you mentioned, those twin 14-year-old sisters, a 17-year-old girl, 61 wounded, among them an eight-month-old baby. Now, this is a -- was a very popular restaurant with soldiers, with civilians. In fact, we ate there day before yesterday, but this operation is continuing.

Now, according to President Zelenskyy, in his nightly address last night, he had said that it was hit by an S-300 surface to air missile. Now, the Ukrainians are saying it was an Iskander missile, which is a hypersonic ballistic missile, very difficult to detect by air defenses, even harder to bring down, and it's a much more precise weapon than the S-300.

And given the level of damage here, which is extensive, it's not just the restaurant itself, but the buildings around it and on the other side of the buildings on the main street as well. So it looks like, in fact, it was an Iskander missile which is capable of causing this level of destruction, death and damage. Max?

FOSTER: Ben outside that restaurant, thank you.

NATO sending a clear message to Russia and Belarus. It is ready to defend every member and every inch of its territory. That's the word from Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at a meeting in The Hague. He adds, NATO is fortifying its eastern front after Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and perhaps some of his troops were said to be in Belarus following this weekend's failed insurrection.

Stoltenberg says the cause of the internal strike in Russia is obvious.

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JENS STOLTENBERG, NATO SECRETARY GENERAL: These are internal Russian matters. But what is clear is that President Putin's illegal war against Ukraine has deepened divisions and created new tensions in Russia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Let's get some perspective on the situation. Nic Robertson is here, our International Diplomatic Editor. The language he's using is quite worrying to people in Europe because he's talking about fortifying that sort of border towards Belarus.

[08:05:00]

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: He is. It was very interesting. And he just held a press conference with the Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, who was saying that Ukraine must be allowed to join NATO. We must make a path forward for that. And that was one of the things Stoltenberg was saying, we will be at this coming NATO leader summit in two weeks in Vilnius, Lithuania.

We will be upgrading, he said, Ukraine's political ties to NATO, with a view on the path, obviously, to fully inclusive membership. This is what he's saying. But when he was talking about the threat from Russia and NATO being ready for it, you know, there's a bolstering of the forces along the border, along the eastern flank of NATO, a greater air readiness, a readiness to switch from air policing to air defense.

Not just planes, fighter jets patrol in that area, but air defense systems put in place along there. NATO is definitely on a footing that Stoltenberg says it will be ready for any threat from Russia. But here was the kicker today that I found interesting. We're so used to Stoltenberg talking about being ready for any threat from Moscow.

Today, he said Moscow and Minsk, the capital of Belarus. The message is very clear. There's an assessment that Belarus is a much more of a wild card player in this and perhaps potentially a greater threat to NATO at the moment than previously perceived.

FOSTER: OK, Nic, thank you.

Protesters clashed with riot police in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre after a 17-year-old boy was shot by police during a traffic stop early on Tuesday. An officer has been detained on suspicion of culpable homicide. A video of the incident has emerged showing two police officers beside the car before the driver pulls away. And a warning, some of the footage here you may find disturbing.

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FOSTER: Well protests continued until the early hours of Wednesday, around 2,000 police officers have been mobilized in anticipation of further unrest. The shooting caused widespread outrage in France. French football star Kylian Mbappe tweeted heartbreak emojis and wrote, quote, "I'm aching for my France. An unacceptable situation".

Let's bring in CNN's Melissa Bell in Paris. A huge challenge for the authorities to manage this.

MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Max. And they appear to be taking this very seriously. It was 350 policemen that were mobilized yesterday in that Nanterre part of Paris, just on the outskirts of the city, to the northwest of the French capital, to try and put down that anger that erupted really very suddenly.

The police stop that you just saw on that video and the shooting that followed within a few seconds of it happened yesterday morning, just after 08:00 a.m. Paris time. The young man was pronounced dead an hour later. It was as that video emerged that the anger really began to spread. By the evening, of course, people down the street calling for justice.

Now, it isn't the first time that here in France, French police have faced these sorts of allegations before. It's happened very often when it comes to either traffic stops or identity checks and often in some of the less well-off neighborhoods of Paris. It's something that we've been looking at for years here in the French capital and in other French cities as well.

And I think that has contributed further, as has the existence of this video, which appears to contradict what the police initially said about the incident in their defense. All of those factors have really helped whip up the anger and the controversy around this particular incident of yesterday morning.

Here's what the French president had to say just a short while ago.

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EMMANUEL MACRON, FRENCH PRESIDENT (through translator): I would like to express the emotion of the entire nation at the death of young Nael and give his family our solidarity and the affection of the nation. We need calm for justice to carry out its work and we need calm everywhere because the situation, we can't allow the situation to worsen.

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BELL: And yet calm is absolutely not what they're expecting tonight. Not just in Nanterre, the part of the outskirts of Paris I mentioned a moment ago where the incident took place, but in other neighborhoods around the French capital and in its suburbs. That deployment of some 2,000 policemen gives you an idea of the kind of trouble that they're expecting.

And there is, of course, the emotion from the family that's now been expressed. The mother of young Nael. Bear in mind, Max, that he was just 17 years old who's called for a march in the name of his -- her son and the justice he hopes he's going to get. That's to be held tomorrow. Max?

FOSTER: OK, Melissa in Paris, thank you.

Two time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey walked into a London courthouse earlier today to stand trial for sexual assault. The disgraced actor has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges connected to alleged encounters he had with four men from 2001 to 2013 when he lived in the U.K.

[08:10:06]

If convicted of all the charges, he could face a maximum penalty of life in prison. Our Salma Abdelaziz tracking the case here. Looks very confident, though, didn't he, going into court?

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Very confident, smiling, arriving nearly two hours early, Max. Kevin Spacey and his lawyers see this as their opportunity to vindicate him. He has long denied the charges against him, insisted that they are false, and insisted that he wants his day in court to prove his innocence. And that began today.

Important to note here that this is a four-week trial. The court has already adjourned for the day. It was only in session for about two hours. Only procedural things took place today. The jurors were sworn in, a dozen jurors and then the charges were read out.

But you have to remember, Max, these are very serious charges. Despite the very relaxed Kevin Spacey that you're seeing there, he has 12 charges of sexual assault filed against him, including indecent assault and causing a person -- a person rather, to engage in sexual activity without consent.

The incidences taking place allegedly between 2001 to 2013. The charges brought forward by four separate individuals, four men, all of them, most of them take place during the period in time when Kevin Spacey called London home, when he was the artistic director of the Old Vic Theater.

Again, this is going to take several weeks, this trial, but today, or beginning today, really, this process starts. The Crown prosecution, of course, over the coming weeks, will present its reasoning for bringing these charges forward and Kevin Spacey's lawyers will have their work cut out for them defending him.

FOSTER: Salma, thank you.

The body of acclaimed British actor Julian Sands has been found in the California Mountains. Sands went missing in January whilst on a hike near Mount Baldy. Poor weather conditions hampered search efforts at that time and authorities only recently began looking for him again.

The actor's family says he was an avid hiker. He is survived by a wife and three children, as well as legions of fans from his more than 30- year career.

A start warning about safety of British classrooms. A school collapse that cause -- causes death or injury is very likely. That's according to a troubling new report by the National Audit Office, which is a public spending watchdog.

It finds about 700,000 children in England are attending schools that need major repairs and more than a third of school buildings across the country are beyond their estimated design lifespan. And the report also speculate says that specialists are carrying out urgent structural checks on about 600 schools identified as possibly at risk.

Still to come, aging backwards in South Korea, at least on paper, there's no magic cream or diet. It's all thanks to the government.

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[08:15:05]

FOSTER: Now more than 80 million people from the U.S. Midwest to the east coast are under air quality alerts as smoke from Canadian wildfires sweeps across the border. Chicago and Detroit had the worst air quality in the world throughout the day on Tuesday, according to IQAir. Officials in the U.S. are warning of reduced visibility and closing some public spaces.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wow, this is pretty insane, guys. This is not fog. This is smoke.

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FOSTER: Canadian authorities say more than 200 wildfires are burning out of control right now. This was the view from farms in Wisconsin on Tuesday. The smoke is expected to linger for the next few days. It's Canada's worst ever fire season and has led to the country's highest emissions on record.

Jennifer Gray joins me from the CNN Weather Center. And I know that some of the smoke has even reached Europe. This is a huge issue.

JENNIFER GRAY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Max, it's actually remarkable how far reaching the smoke is. It's definitely into the Midwest and portions of the Northeast. This is a live look at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and you can see just very, very thick smoke.

You remember very recently we had all the smoke in the Northeast. It even caused some airports to delay flights and cancel flights. And so it is a serious issue. You can see the smoke just settling in across the Midwest. As you mentioned, Chicago had some of the worst air quality in the world and still does. It still makes it on that list.

It still has very unhealthy air quality alerts out there for portions of Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, all across the Midwest, even into the Ohio Valley and portions of interior sections of the Northeast, all dealing with poor air quality. We have these air quality alerts and stretching as far South as North Carolina.

So the smoke is getting farther south than the Midwest in the Ohio Valley and so it is going to continue on that track down to the south at these northerly winds that are just pushing it down. However, today should be the last really bad day across the Midwest and then we're supposed to see improvement, especially by tomorrow.

You can see these shades of blue returning that indicates that the air quality will improve. But it is interesting, as you mentioned, some of these darker colors on the satellite imagery showing that smoke actually reaching Europe. And so it's going very far all across the Atlantic and even making it to the Europe coast and even interior sections of Europe.

So Max, it is interesting. It's something we're going to be dealing with throughout the summer, most likely because the Canadian fire season is still early on. It's only June. It should last several more months. And so far, we've already burned more land than ever before for any fire season on record. And it's just getting started, which is wild to think.

FOSTER: Unbelievable. Jennifer Gray, thank you so much for bringing us that insight on a global, truly global story. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) FOSTER: After CNN attained an audio recording of Donald Trump discussing confidential documents, the former U.S. president insists he's done nothing wrong. That recording is a key piece of evidence in the U.S. Justice Department's case against Trump in the classified documents case.

Here's what he told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.

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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I had a whole desk full of lots of papers and mostly newspaper articles, copies of magazines, copies of different plans, copies of stories, having to do with many, many subjects. And what was said was absolutely fine and very perfectly. We did nothing wrong.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're not concerned then with your own voice on those recordings?

TRUMP: My voice was fine. What did I say wrong on those recordings? I didn't even see the recording. All I know is I did nothing wrong. We had a lot of papers, a lot of papers stacked up. In fact, you could hear the rustle of the paper.

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FOSTER: When asked if there are any other recordings of him out there, he said he didn't know if of any that -- he should be concerned with, at least, and he blamed what he calls fake news. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the 37 criminal counts, including conspiracy to hide classified documents from the U.S. government.

This is far from the first time that we've heard Donald Trump saying things that have landed him in hot water. Randi Kaye now takes a look back at some of the lowest moments caught on tape.

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TRUMP: You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet.

RANDI KAYE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Donald Trump caught on tape saying crude things about women in 2005 during an interview with Access Hollywood, broadcast just weeks before Election Day in 2016.

TRUMP: Grab them by the (INAUDIBLE). You can do anything.

KAYE (voice-over): Days after the recording surfaced, Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee, apologized. Though the New York Times later reported Trump told a Republican senator that he wanted to investigate the recording because, quote, "We don't think that was my voice". Also, before the 2016 election, Trump was recorded in his office by his then lawyer, Michael Cohen. The two were discussing how they would buy the rights to former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal's story. She claims she and Trump had an affair which ended in 2007. Trump has denied the affair, but listened to him on tape.

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David. I've spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with --

TRUMP: So, what do we got to pay for this? 150?

COHEN: -- funding. Yes.

KAYE (voice-over): Before Election Day, Trump's friend David Pecker, whose company published the National Enquirer, paid McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story. Then buried it in what's known as a catch and kill scheme. Months before the 2020 election, President Trump was recorded on a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

According to a White House transcript, Trump pressured Zelenskyy by asking him to investigate trump's 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, as well as Biden's son, Hunter, who once had business in Ukraine. Later, Trump repeatedly referred to the call like this.

TRUMP: We had a perfect phone call with the President of Ukraine.

KAYE (voice-over): A whistleblower inside the White House shared details of the call with members of the intelligence community. Congress investigated. In the end, that recording led to Trump's first impeachment. Trump denied any wrongdoing.

In 2020, journalist Bob Woodward recorded interviews with Trump for his book. Those interviews, later made public, revealed that Trump knew for months how dangerous the coronavirus was and how it spread, but intentionally concealed that from the public.

TRUMP: I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down.

BOB WOODWARD, JOURNALIST: Yes, sir.

TRUMP: Because I don't want to create a panic. It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch.

KAYE (voice-over): After the 2020 election, Trump was recorded yet again.

TRUMP: It's just not possible to have lost Georgia. It's not possible. When I heard it was close, I said, there's no way.

KAYE (voice-over): That's Trump on the phone with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump called him following his loss in the 2020 election.

TRUMP: It's pretty clear that we won, we won very substantially Georgia.

KAYE (voice-over): That wasn't true. Trump lost Georgia by 11,779 votes. On the recording, he's heard, asking Raffensperger to find enough votes to give Trump a win.

TRUMP: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.

KAYE (voice-over): Raffensperger didn't play ball. Trump is now under investigation by Georgia's Fulton County district attorney for his actions on the phone call in question.

Randi Kaye, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Muslims all over the world are celebrating the start of Eid al-Adha today. Pilgrims at the Hajj in Saudi Arabia are braving the intense heat to perform the symbolic stoning of the devil ritual today. The annual pilgrimage, one of five Pillars of Islam, started in Mecca on Monday. Nearly 2 million worshippers expected to attend this year's pilgrimage, the first one without pandemic restrictions.

No, they're not stuck in a dream. More than 51 million South Koreans woke up a year or two younger on Wednesday, at least according to the law. The country scrapped its traditional Korean age, which considers babies a year old on the day that they're born, with a year added every January 1.

[08:25:07]

Instead, under new legislation, Seoul will adopt the international age system that starts at zero and is used by most of the world. President Yoon Suk Yeol made a campaign pledge last year to scrap the old age counting method which he said is not only confusing, but a drain on the economy.

And finally, a chimpanzee named Vanilla had quite the reaction when she saw blue skies for the very first time in her life.

That was her looking at the sky in amazement. The other chimps of this Florida chimpanzee sanctuary seemed to want to share her joy as well. Save the Chimps says Vanilla spent much of her life inside a small cage at a now defunct research lab in New York.

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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