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CNN International: France To Evacuate European Citizens From Niger; Russia: Ukraine Launches New Drones Attack In Moscow; Torrential Rain Kills 11 People In Beijing, 27 Missing; Myanmar's Military Pardons Some Aung San Suu Kyi Charges; Drone Hits Moscow Building For Second Time In Three Days; China's New Generative A.I. Rules Take Effect August 15. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired August 01, 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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[08:01:08]

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

Just ahead, France and Italy are preparing to evacuate their citizens from the West African nation of Niger following a military coup. Russia's capital is hit by drones for the second time in just three days, and heavy rain pummels China causing major flooding. A new typhoon could cause even more damage.

We begin in Niger where a political crisis is deteriorating and rescue efforts are underway. Just hours ago, France announced it would evacuate its citizens from the West African Nation due to recent violence following last week's presidential coup by military leaders. The French Foreign Minister says the first flight is now airborne.

Italy is also announcing a special flight for nationals wanting to leave. It comes as neighboring countries warn against military intervention in Niger to restore the ousted president. We're covering this story from all angles.

Jim Bittermann is in Paris. But first, let's go to Larry Madowo, who joins us live from Nairobi. What are you hearing in terms of the situation on the ground, Larry?

LARRY MADOWO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The military junta that claims to have taken over power in Niger has gotten a huge amount of support from its two neighbors, Burkina Faso and Mali, who declared overnight that any military intervention would be an act of war against them, and they have asked the militaries to be on standby.

Burkina Faso and Mali both have had two coups in the last two, three, four years, but also an even extra bit of support from Guinea, which has also had another coup and is led by a military junta. They're also say they will not be enforcing the sanctions imposed by the Economic Community of West African States or ECOWAS, which promised or threatened that within a week, if President Mohamed Bazoum is not reinstated, then they will use all necessary measures including force. I want to play for you this statement that appears to be clearly coordinated from these three countries.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLONEL ABDOULAYE MAIGA, GUINEA MILITARY JUNTA SPOKESPERSON (through translation): Warned that any military intervention against Niger would amount to a declaration of war against Burkina Faso and Mali.

The transitional governments of Burkina Faso and Mali invite the living forces to be ready and mobilized to lend a hand to the people of Niger in these dark hours of Pan-Africanism.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translation): The brotherly peoples of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea, aspire to more recognition and respect for their sovereignty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADOWO: Sovereignty, that is the word all these countries get back and coming back to. And they're riding on this popular wave across the region of anti-French sentiment. People are tied to what is called Francafrique, the influence that the French have over their former colonies in the region.

And that is why the military junta will appreciate having people on the streets that appear to support them, but also this regional support. Then even if they're isolated by the rest of the West Africans, they're isolated by the international community. Those around them. Their immediate neighbors are giving them this boost and promising that if this were to devolve into a full-scale military confrontation, they would send troops across the border to defend them.

FOSTER: Thank you very much, Larry.

Let's go to Jim, because a lot of French, anti-French feeling really bubbling up in the country and the French are becoming targets there, which is presumably why they're being flown out.

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, absolutely. Next, one of the things that's important to remember is that, Nigeria only just became independent in 1960, after many years as a French colony, and the French exploiting some of the national resources. And so the tensions have always been there between the French and Niger.

[08:05:00]

But on the other hand, recently, especially with the Democratic elected government, things seem to be going better. Now the military is in charge, of course, and the French have decided that there was time to evacuate their citizens, especially after Sunday's demonstration, which the French foreign minister told us, just a few minutes ago that, in fact, it was planned and organized and very violent. And so she said it was the time to go ahead and -- with an evacuation. They've put a flight into the air already. There may be other flights. There's probably going to be a rotation. The foreign minister told us that she believes there are several hundred French who may want to leave. It's up to the citizens themselves, whether they want to do that.

The uranium company, for example, said that, they have less than 10 employees there, but they are going to give it -- leave it up to the employees whether or not they want to leave or not. And also, there will also be some -- they'll be evacuating some European citizens who want to go. She said there'd probably be several hundred of those.

So we'll see how this goes. She said they had been in touch with the military forces on the ground because airspace there has been closed. But they had been in touch with the military forces on the ground, and that that did not mean, however, that they recognized that putsch. Max?

FOSTER: OK, Jim, Larry, thank you both for joining us with that.

Now, Russia says Ukraine launched another wave of drone strikes in Moscow. The mayor says, several of them were shot down earlier, but one of them crashed into a high rise tower, the same one that was hit in a previous attack on Sunday.

Overnight, Ukrainian officials reported three drone strikes in the city of Kharkiv, saying Russia targeted densely populated areas. Meanwhile, Russia's top general visited the front lines in Zaporizhzhia, according to the Ministry of Defense.

Nic Robertson is keeping across all of this. I mean, you know, attacks going both ways, but what's new here is this increasing frequency of attacks apparently from Ukraine on Russia.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes. On Saturday night, they managed to hit a building in the Smart Financial District of Moscow that has some sort of government workers working there. They're sort of working technical areas like weights and measures and technical departments.

One of those departments is a digital department, and there's a possibility that maybe some of the workers in one of the buildings in that district had some connection with Russia's drone program, but that really isn't clear. I think the headline here is that on Saturday night into Sunday, the Ukrainians hit one building in that district. Two nights later, they hit the same building again.

And not for the first time. Russia's narrative about what actually happened doesn't fit the reality because they say that they shot two of the drones down and there was a third drone incoming, and they disrupted it by electronic means, and then it crashed, they said.

But there's a new hole in the same building that was hit on Saturday night. So that doesn't add up. Look, the government is -- the Kremlin is trying to sort of play this down I think because they're saying, look, measures are being taken. We know that this is potentially an issue.

The Ukrainians adviser to the president there is saying, we're bringing the war to Russia. This is exactly what you should expect to happen. The citizens of Moscow will now experience what a war is like. But, you know, for the Russians, it now puts them in this position.

They have already moved out some of these government workers from that district, but it now puts them in the position where they're going to have to let their citizens know that on any given night in Moscow, there could be a drone strike, which they're not able to fully disrupt.

FOSTER: OK. Nic, thank you. We'll be talking a bit more about this later in the show.

Northeastern China, meanwhile, dealing with the remnants of Typhoon Doksuri, one of the strongest storms to hit the country in years. Torrential rain caused flooding across the country, killing at least 11 people in Beijing with nearly 30 still missing according to local media.

Rescue operations are ongoing, and in Hebei province, more than 300 people are reportedly stranded in a residential complex they can't get out of. Meanwhile, Japan has ordered the evacuation of more than 600,000 residents on its southern Okinawa prefecture as Typhoon Khanun approaches the island chain threatening torrential rains and high winds.

CNN's Marc Stewart joins us live from Tokyo. Just describe what's happening there, and particularly in China where these are pretty unprecedented conditions in the capital.

MARC STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Max, it is just relentless. Unfortunately, Beijing today saw even more rain as Beijing, in particular, a city of 22 million people deals with evacuations, recovery, and rescues.

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STEWART (voice-over): Violent flood waters race across China after record setting rain, destroying roads, flooding streets, and prompting rescues in the aftermath of Typhoon Doksuri.

[08:10:01]

QING QUAN, BEIJING RESIDENT (through translation): I say it's the first time in my life that I've seen such a scary flood. I haven't seen this before, and hence it's scary. I've lived so long and I've not seen this before.

STEWART (voice-over): Near the capital, Beijing, the force so fierce, the driver is trapped in their car amid the raging water. A rescue worker drops a line and the driver is hoisted to safety.

In Beijing, a giant hole sits in front of a newly open mall. One of the venues from the 2022 Winter Olympic Games is underwater. And a recently built hotel is damaged, according to a state-run media outlet.

In some cases, the water is so high, it nearly tops the power lines. River banks are hovering close to the street. And where the water has receded, a mess is left behind. The flooding is disrupting everyday life. At a Beijing airport, water is flooding the tarmac, flights are facing delays, and in some cases, trains are at a standstill.

Evacuation are underway in Beijing. Tourist attractions remain closed. As emergency workers do what they can to help, family members are looking for loved ones. A city brought to a standstill as another massive storm lingers in the horizon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STEWART: And according to Chinese state media to the news agency, Xinhua, Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered the mobilization of forces to try to bring things like infrastructure and transportation back to normal as this city strives to get back on track, Max.

FOSTER: OK, Marc, appreciate that from Tokyo. Thank you.

CNN's Derek Van Dam has more from the CNN Weather Center in Atlanta.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, absolutely frightening imagery coming out of Beijing with the flooding. This is from the remnants of Doksuri, which is still producing some rain showers across northeast China. But then we've got to figure out where this particular typhoon is going.

This is Khanun, this is our latest of this series of typhoons that is impacting the Western Pacific. But first, look at the rainfall totals from Doksuri. This was impressive Beijing, 261 millimeters, but places to the north, that topped over 700 millimeters of rain. That is why we saw the incredible footage of the flooding, coming out of that region. Very scary.

The additional rainfall really concentrated to the north and east of Beijing. This is an area that we could pick up another 150 millimeters of rain in and around Beijing, perhaps, up to 25 millimeters of rain.

Then we need to focus in on Khanun. This is the latest, storm. It is approaching the southern Ryukyu Islands. Here's Okinawa, the strongest part of the storm measuring winds of 220 kilometers per hour.

And this is the official track from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. And what you'll see is a trajectory that brings it to the north and west for the first three days, and then veers it away from mainland China for day four and day five. Also weakens the storm system significantly.

Will this exactly happen? Well, there's quite a spread in the various computer models that we look at. This is called a spaghetti plot, and it shows the various probabilities or, at least positionings of this storm system of -- depending on which computer model you're looking at. And quite a spread there for day four and day five. Will it actually impact the mainland of China? Time will tell, but a lot of our computer models, the general consensus, we'll call it a medium confidence, is that the storm veers away from the China coastline, but still bringing impacts to southern portions of Japan. Time will tell.

Max back to you.

FOSTER: Thank you to Derek.

The military rulers in Myanmar have pardoned detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi for five charges of which she was convicted, but that may have only reduces her sentence from 33 years in jail down to 21. The 78- year-old still faces sentences for 14 other alleged offenses as well.

Sources say the charges that were pardoned include offenses against defamation, natural disaster laws, import and export law and telecommunication law. This comes as Myanmar Supreme Court is set to hear appeals by Suu Kyi against her convictions over the next two weeks. She denies all of the charges that she's faced saying they're politically motivated.

Still to come, are we in a new phase of the Ukraine war? Ukraine seems to be taking the fight directly to Moscow. We'll take a closer look at the recent attacks on the Russian capital.

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[08:16:47]

FOSTER: As we mentioned earlier, according to officials in Russia, the very same building in a financial district in Moscow, struck by Ukrainian drone on Sunday was hit a game in the early hours of Tuesday. The Russia Ministry of Defense says that three drones were brought down in what it calls a terrorist attack.

The high rise building houses some government offices. An adviser to the Ukrainian presidency says that the Russian capital is becoming used to a full-fledged war. That echoes President Volodymyr Zelenskyy comments on Sunday after the first drone strike saying that the war was gradually returning to Russia.

For more on this, let's bring in CNN's Clare Sebastian, who's here in London. First, slight mystery about when there are so few drone attacks on Moscow, why one building was targeted twice. Is there any sense of why that might be?

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Max. This is an area where, obviously, it's a very glitzy, very smart business district, but we do know that some government departments are housed in this area, including the Ministry of Digital Development, where employees are said to be temporarily working remotely after this strike.

We don't know exactly the extent to which that department is involved in Russia's drone program, but there are hints of that. And of course, it's not even clear, whether these drones actually hit their planned targets. Certainly with the one on Sunday morning, Russia claimed to have averted it using electronic warfare.

But either way, this area of Moscow is really, I would say, the biggest change, the biggest visible shift in the Moscow skyline under Putin. It really does symbolize the way in which Russia under Putin started to experience prosperity, a sense of it being open for business. So I think Ukraine sort of cracking that facade and doing so bringing the war home to the Russian people is highly symbolic.

FOSTER: And in terms of the strategy here, I mean, for a long time, the idea, particularly in the West was that, you know, the war should be contained within Ukraine because as soon as Ukraine starts attacking Russia, it becomes the aggressor. When the argument was that it's just defending its land, how does this play out for both sides, this idea that Ukraine is now apparently targeting Russian territory?

SEBASTIAN: Yes. I mean, Ukraine hasn't, we should note, claimed responsibility for these latest drone attacks, although it did for the one last Monday that hit buildings near the Russian Defense Ministry. Look, I think it's useful to look at why they're using drones.

Ukraine has now got a very sort of burgeoning domestic drone industry. They've been recruiting domestic developers even recently holding a competition for those developers to sort of test the metal of their drones. So that gets around the idea of using Western provided long range missiles to do something like this.

And, of course, we see that the Americans are still very resistant to the idea of providing attackers for this very reason. They don't want to be seen to be complicit. Obviously, we know rhetorically this is something that Moscow would hit on.

So I think looking at the way they're doing this with drones, although of course, we can't directly attribute the last -- the latest attacks to Ukraine, is significant, Max.

FOSTER: In terms of the strategy, in terms of the narrative really for Putin, though, what does this mean? There's a greater need to be aggressive in the war because there's now that wars come to Russian soil or does it mean the -- you know, they have to pull back a bit? I mean, how do you think that's playing out in Moscow? I mean, how's it changed the dynamic for them?

[08:20:20]

SEBASTIAN: So they're not ignoring it. The Kremlin today saying, you know, this is clearly a threat. Now that we've seen the sort of the frequency of these drone attacks on the capital step up. But they are not going to be swayed from what they call the special military operation.

If anything, Max, we've seen promises to escalate as a response to this, the defense minister, saying on Monday that attacks on Ukrainian military targets would be stepped up many times over. Obviously, the attacks that we've seen from Russia in the last 24 to 36 hours, none of them seem to have been anywhere close to military targets. We've seen a large number of civilian deaths over the last day or so. And Russia, you know, has been fighting this war, ironically, when it's the aggressor itself in a very vengeful way. Look at the drone strikes on Ukraine's electricity grid over the winter. I think that is something that we may see continue.

FOSTER: OK. Clare Sebastian, thank you so much for that.

Coming up, China quickly becoming an AI powerhouse with a heavy dose of oversight. Are the Chinese government's new rules for artificial intelligence?

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FOSTER: China has become one of the first countries to build guardrails for that technology, or the technology that powers popular artificial intelligence services. The recently unveiled guidelines will take effect in about a two weeks time.

CNN's Kristie Lu Stout has that story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Meet Xi Jiajian (ph), a virtual idol powered by artificial intelligence to sell burgers in China. McDonald's hired Jiajia (ph) to interact with Chinese customers. The U.S. may be curbing AI chip exports to China, but the nation is fast becoming an AI powerhouse.

The country's home to top tech firms leading the AI charge like Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, and Baidu, creator of Xi Jiajia (ph) boasts that its chatbot Ernie has beaten OpenAI's ChatGPT on several metrics. At the state-backed World AI Conference in July, billionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk, praised China's AI prowess.

ELON MUSK, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF TESLA MOTORS: China have very strong AI capability as my prediction.

LU STOUT (voice-over): China has become one of the first countries in the world to regulate the technology that powers popular services like ChatGPT. In July, it unveiled interim rules to manage generative AI saying it needs to be aligned with the core values of socialism.

ANGELIA ZHANG, CHINESE LAW PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG: The Chinese government is trying to ensure that the use and application of AI will be aligned with its own set of moral principles, that underscores its political and social stability. The government not only placed the burden on the service providers, but also on the users of AI services.

In January, China's new rules against deep fake technologies came into effect. Chinese authorities have detained people for allegedly using generative AI to commit fraud and create fake news.

(on-camera): And while China is moving fast to regulate the industry, some critics warn that it may not be equipped to avoid an AI disaster. [08:25:04]

BILL DREXEL, ASSOC. FELLOW FOR TECHNOLOGY AND NATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM, CNAS: Most societies kind of learn from disasters, but the PRC has a kind of propaganda machine that makes it hard to do that, where there's a sort of disaster amnesia. There's a kind of a chronic culture of crisis mismanagement in authoritarian regimes generally and China's no exception.

LU STOUT (voice-over): Drexel cites China's zero COVID policy as a recent example of crisis mismanagement. But the danger posed by AI is not limited to one country. Top technologists the world over, including China, has signed this petition to warn of the risk of human extinction from AI.

SAM ALTMAN, CEO, OPENAI: As these systems get very, very powerful, that does require special concern and it has global impact to it, also requires global cooperation.

LU STOUT (voice-over): China's new AI rules have a provision to encourage participation in global standard setting.

ZHANG: They're very keen to take part in shaping global regulation of AI.

LU STOUT (voice-over): For now, Beijing is steering its own AI future with a heavy hand to encourage Chinese tech success and ensure that artificial intelligence will not undermine the state.

Kristie Lu Stout, CNN Hong Kong.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Thanks for joining us here on CNN. I am Max Foster in London. World Sport with Patrick is up next.

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