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CNN International: Kyiv and Kharkiv: Two Cities in Separate States of Anxiety; Top U.S. and Russian Diplomats Attend Meeting in Brazil; Foreign Ministers Discuss Israel-Hamas War; AT&T: Outage Linked to Network Expansion, Not Cyberattack. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired February 23, 2024 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:30:00]
MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Max Foster. If you're just joining us, here are our top stories today.
The U.S. is set to announce what's described as the largest single tranche of sanctions against Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine nearly two years ago. They'll mark one week after the death of Putin critic Alexei Navalny and include more than 500 Russian targets.
Ukraine marks the second anniversary of that invasion on Saturday by playing defense on the front lines and hoping for more aid as well. Some allies are ready to deliver, with Denmark working to send F-16 fighter jets this summer. Britain is purging more anti-tank missiles, and France holds an international meeting on Monday focused on aid for Ukraine.
As that war rages on, ordinary Ukrainians carrying on with daily life amid a state of anxiety. Christiane Amanpour visited two cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, and found out how their residents are quietly resisting Russian propaganda by studying Ukrainian history and listening to Ukrainian radio stations.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR (voice-over): This bookstore is called Sens or "The Meaning" and opening in Kyiv just days before the Russian war enters a third year sends a clear message.
And Ukraine's greatest living novelist, Andrey Kurkov tells us there is much to say about Ukraine's culture, identity and resistance. He wrote the foreword for this tome full of 12th century artifacts.
AMANPOUR: So when Putin says this is all greater Russia, what's your answer?
ANDREY KURKOV, AUTHOR, "THE SILVER BONE": Well, he's silly. And he's not a historian. Kyiv is 1,540 years old. Moscow is only 870 years old.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): An army of workers is still getting the bookstore cafe ready. But it is open, and people come in hungry for nonfiction these days, for the history of their region.
Ukrainian identity helps them fight and resist, says Kurkov, reminding us that Russians have looted and destroyed libraries, theaters and museums in parts they now occupy.
AMANPOUR: And what would you be saying, if you were to say anything to the people of Russia?
[04:35:00]
KURKOV: It's a very good question. I would probably ask them to put mirrors all around them and to look themselves in the eyes and to ask themselves a question if they are living in 21st century or they are still living in Stalin's Gulag.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Kurkov, like most Ukrainians, see themselves, their land, as the front line between the authoritarian and the democratic world.
Kyiv is further away from the fighting, but over in the northeast, Kharkiv, the second largest city, the danger is real and ever present. Some 40 miles from the Russia border, their massive S-300 missiles reached the city in less than 40 seconds, no time to hide. Memorials to the recent dead spring up all over.
This is a place where material evidence of war crimes committed by the Russian Federation is stored, including multiple launch rocket systems, grads, cruise missiles, Shahed drones, artillery shells.
This Kharkiv radio station is called "Boiling Over". It started up 10 years ago after Russia's first invasion as an alternate voice.
"Just a month and a half ago, you could listen to dozens of Russian stations," says the founder, Yevhen. "All of these are Russian propaganda stations that tell us that Ukraine doesn't exist, that it's in Russia and that Ukrainian soldiers should surrender."
Natalia, the radio host, tells us it's also become a sounding board for the terrified and depressed Kharkiv listeners.
"Feedback can be varied," she tells us. "Sometimes they just thank me for the show, and for the fact that they got out of bed thanks to the program. And I consider this a victory, because it could be someone in a state of absolute despair.
Like Ukrainians everywhere, the novelist Kurkov tells me, he is hoping for America to step up now.
KURKOV: And remember that America was always a symbol of freedom for Ukraine, for many countries, and I wish America remains the symbol of freedom and the country which set up the standards of democracy in the world.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Kyiv and Kharkiv, a tale of two cities and separate states of anxiety.
Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Kyiv.
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FOSTER: G20 foreign ministers have wrapped up two days of meetings in Rio de Janeiro. Host nation Brazil says virtually everyone agrees that the two-state solution is the only way to resolve the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken downplayed differences with other countries over a ceasefire in Gaza. Many G20 countries want an immediate end to the fighting, but the U.S. has called for a temporary ceasefire. Stefano Pozzebon has more details on that.
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STEFANO POZZEBON, JOURNALIST: The two chief diplomats from the United States and Russia took part in the same summit for two days but never interacted, a sign of how tensions over the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the situation in Gaza overshadowed the G20 foreign minister summit in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday and Thursday.
Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, said that many of the countries that took part in the meeting share the same goal of putting an end to Russia's aggression and called Russia -- and I quote -- the world's leading exporter of instability.
The summit was the first time that the Russian and the U.S. foreign ministers saw each other since the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. And Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said on Thursday that the West's reaction over Navalny's death was hysterical.
Rising tension in the Middle East instead was the other main topic discussed in the meeting, which was hosted by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva just days after he was called -- was declared a persona non grata in Israel after comments that he made comparing the situation in Gaza to the killing of Jews in Nazi Germany. And referring to those comments, Antony Blinken said this.
ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We can have these disagreements, even profound disagreements on one particular issue or I should say even an aspect of the issue and still continue all of the vital work that we're doing together.
And also, we're joined in having the shared objectives in this moment of getting hostages out, getting an extended humanitarian ceasefire in, along with more humanitarian assistance and ending the conflict.
POZZEBON: This week's summit was part of a series of meeting of G20 countries hosted by Brazil. There will also be a presidential summit in Rio de Janeiro in November.
[04:40:00]
And after the summit, Antony Blinken will continue his tour of Latin America by going to Argentina, meeting President Javier Milei. Well, just last night, Lavrov met with Lula da Silva at the completion of that meeting.
For CNN, this is Stefano Pozzebon, Bogota.
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FOSTER: The mayor of Valencia, Spain, has declared three days of official mourning following a fire that killed four people and injured 14 others. Flames erupted on Thursday morning, consuming an apartment building in Valencia. Valencia City Hall says up to 14 people remain missing. But they add it's not clear they were in the building at the time. Firefighters are still on the scene assessing the situation. The fire has been so hot and difficult that firefighters haven't been able to even enter the building.
Haiti's permanent representative to the Organization of American States has resigned after he was indicted in the former president's assassination. Leon Charles is accused of murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy against the internal security of the state. He was the chief of the Haitian National Police in July 2021, when more than two dozen armed men swarmed the president's compound, killing former president, Jovenel Moise.
Charles says he resigned from the OAS post so he can defend himself freely against the accusations, which he calls politically motivated.
Still ahead, Donald Trump bristling after a New York judge rejects his request to delay paying $355 million in his civil fraud case.
Plus, for almost half a day, AT&T phones were knocked out and customers in the U.S. couldn't make calls or send texts. What AT&T says pause that disruption -- after the break.
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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I've been very busy fighting and, you know, taking the bullets, taking the arrows. I'm taking them for you, and I'm so honored to take them. You have no idea. I'm being indicted for you, as I say. I'm being indicted over and over and over.
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FOSTER: Donald Trump campaigning in Tennessee after a judge rejected his request to delay finalizing the $335 million civil fraud order against him. Once the judgment is officially entered, Trump will have 30 days to file an appeal. But during that period, he'll have to put up enough cash to cover the $355 million plus another $100 million in interest.
Trump is also banned from doing business in the state of New York for three years. His sons, Don Jr. and Eric, were ordered to pay $4 million each.
Voters will cast their ballots in South Carolina's Republican primary on Saturday. Polls show Donald Trump with a significant lead over his last remaining challenger, the state's former governor, Nikki Haley. She's defending her decision to stay in the race despite Trump's lead. Haley told supporters in Georgetown, South Carolina, she had a better chance of beating President Biden in a general election than Donald Trump.
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[04:45:02]
NIKKI HALEY, U.S. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I am not going anywhere.
Well, I am going somewhere after South Carolina. The next day, I'm headed to Michigan. And then we're going to Super Tuesday states. We're going to be everywhere we need to be.
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FOSTER: Well, the road to the Republican nomination will get even tougher for Haley in early March, with more than a dozen states holding primaries or caucuses. That's Super Tuesday.
The former FBI informant who was indicted for lying about President Biden's family and alleged dealings with Ukraine was arrested again on Thursday. After Alexander Smirnov's initial arrest, the Nevada magistrate released him on Tuesday. But prosecutors got the federal judge in California, who will be overseeing the case, to sign a new arrest warrant.
They believed Smirnov could flee the country because he has access to millions of dollars and extensive contacts in Russia.
Smirnov's defense attorneys wrote in a court filing that despite the judge's prior ruling, denial of the state request and Mr. Smirnov's prior release from custody, on the morning of February 22, 2024, Mr. Smirnov was arrested for a second time on the same charges and based on the same indictment while he was meeting with his lawyers. House Republicans have based much of their impeachment case against President Biden on Smirnov's allegations.
The new trading day getting underway in the U.S. in little less than five hours now. Here's what the stock futures in the U.S. look like right now, a bit directionless but slightly down. Meanwhile, European markets are up, and they are in a more positive mood, which may give a push to the U.S. later.
Here's a look at how markets across Asia fare today, a pretty mixed bag. You can see the Nikkei was up there more than 2 percent. Much of it driven yesterday by a blockbuster earnings report from chipmaker Nvidia. That sent U.S. stocks soaring on Thursday, driving those global markets. Nvidia is already the third largest company on Wall Street, and it gained $277 billion in value in one day, fueled by the artificial intelligence boom.
The Dow gained more than 1 percent to close at 39,069. The Nasdaq was up nearly 3 percent and the S&P 500 added more than 2 percent.
The cost of buying a home in the U.S. is creeping higher. According to Freddie Mac, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.9 percent this week, up from 6.77 percent the week before. A year ago, it was 6.5 percent. Homebuyers were hoping rates would cool off if the Federal Reserve did cut interest rates at its next meeting, but that now seems pretty unlikely. Mortgage rates are down from last year's high, though, of nearly 7.8 percent.
The Federal Communications Commission is investigating a huge outage of AT&T's U.S. cellular network on Thursday. AT&T says service has now been restored, but for more than 12 hours, customers were unable to make calls, send texts, or access the internet on their devices.
The company says it wasn't a cyberattack, but it may have been related to network expansion. Brian Todd has more.
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BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A massive disruption, AT&T's network goes down for many customers across the U.S. People unable to place cell phone calls, send texts, or access the Internet on their phones.
LANCE ULANOFF, U.S. EDITOR IN CHIEF, TECHRADAR: We don't see a lot of, you know, outages like this. We've had spotty ones, but this was probably the biggest, certainly the biggest one this year. Maybe it is a wake-up call that this could happen.
TODD (voice-over): The spike in outages started around 4:00 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, according to downdetector.com and lasted until midday with tens of thousands affected. Houston, Dallas, and Chicago were hit especially hard. By mid-afternoon, AT&T said its network was completely back online and apologized.
But in the meantime, several local municipalities said the outage disrupted crucial services, like 911 calls.
GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): And they are focusing a lot on emergency services. It's a little bit -- a little bit jarring to think about the implications of something like that happen on a much grander scale.
TODD (voice-over): A bracing reminder, experts say, of the need for strong backup systems.
CHRIS KREBS, FORMER DIRECTOR, CYBERSECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY: What we're seeing is that we are increasingly dependent in every aspect of our life, whether its work, in our homes, in our communities, we are increasingly digitally connected.
And the things that we're connecting to the Internet do rely on a strong, consistent, reliable signal. And it is pretty unnerving when that signal is broken or severed.
[04:50:00]
TODD (voice-over): What can you do if your cell service is not working. First, try reconnecting.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turning airplane mode on, waiting a few seconds and then turning it off. And the idea there is that your phone will try to re-establish contact back with the cellular network.
TODD: Or if you have a Wi-Fi Internet connection, switch to using that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, to setup Wi-Fi calling, it's pretty easy. It's generally a setting that's in your device or phone settings. So, you go in there and there's a switch you can toggle or a setting you can enable that says Wi-Fi calling.
So, you could also use a service like Google voice or Skype that lets you place phone calls over the Internet instead of over a cellular connection.
TODD (voice-over): Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Tech giant Google says it's temporarily pulling the plug on Gemini, a feature on the company's artificial intelligence tool. The move comes after people on social media blasted the image generator issue. When Gemini is asked to produce an image, it often creates historically inaccurate images, which replace white people with people of color.
The controversy shines a spotlight on how AI struggles with the concept of race, but Google's attempt to make sure Gemini did not perpetuate harmful racial and ethnic stereotypes seems to have backfired. The company says it's working to address Gemini's image generating feature, which Google admits is, quote, missing the mark.
Still ahead, Caitlin Clark has broken so many records in college football, her home state of Iowa officially declared a Caitlin Clark Day. Is she heading for the WNBA? More on that next.
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FOSTER: Thursday's been officially declared Caitlin Clark Day in Iowa. But it wasn't any luck for the Iowa Hawkeyes and their star player, the Indiana Hoosiers, defeated them 86-69. They held Clark to 24 points, which would be great for most players, but it's 8 points below average for her.
Last week, she broke the Women's College career scoring record. Fans are now waiting to see if she decides to declare for the WNBA draft or play another year at Iowa.
The Hawkeyes have three regular season games left and Clark is 75 points away from breaking the all-time scoring record. A bit of a dilemma there.
The NBA's Nikola Jokic has achieved a feat that only two players have ever accomplished before him. He recorded a triple double. That was on Thursday night against the Washington Wizards. And he's now done that against every team that he's faced -- would you believe? If you don't know, a triple-double is when a player reaches double figures in three statistical categories like points, rebounds, and assists. The only other player to do it are LeBron James and Russell Westbrook.
Now, basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal is so generous that he gave one fan the shirt off his back and his super-sized shoes to boot. Just ask this 16-year-old from the Kansas City area who desperately needed a size 23 shoe.
Jor'el Bolden's family have been struggling to find him a pair that actually fits, saying companies don't make his size and he'd need a custom pair that costs $1,500. That's when his mom started a GoFundMe campaign to raise the money. When the retired NBA superstar heard about Jor'el, he sent the teen 20 pairs of his shoes, new clothes, and other items from his own closet. And Gerald's reaction was --
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[04:55:00]
JOR'EL BOLDEN, RECIPIENT OF SHAQ'S GIFT: Thank you for taking the time and the money that you have earned to give it to me when I needed it. So I would like to thank you for all the things that will come from it and will have.
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FOSTER: Check out this comparison. On the left is a shoe from Shaq. On the right, a woman's sneaker.
Stories in the spotlight.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from New York City ...
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FOSTER: Former talk show and radio host Wendy Williams has been diagnosed with progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia as well.
The news comes after years of circulation about Williams' health after her departure from her eponymous talk show. She's currently under a court-ordered guardianship and has the same progressive brain conditions affecting actor Bruce Willis. A TV documentary about her is set to release this weekend. CNN has reached out to Williams' family and care team for further comment.
An unexpected find in a local thrift store in the U.S., a rare 14- carat gold Lego piece turned up in a Goodwill store in Pennsylvania. The piece was originally released in 2001. The store says the mask was mixed in with a random box of donated jewelry. The store is auctioning off the Lego mask with the proceeds going to benefit the non-profit. The bidding is already up to $6,000 and Lego experts say it's a piece that certain Lego lovers would want to certainly add to their collections.
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SUSAN EARIS, 2021 LEGO MASTER CONTESTANT: I think you're going to have some diehards that were, you know, of that age as children, really into that line of Bionicle. And now that they're adults and they have plenty of money, then they're going to definitely want to finish a collection of something that they never could have achieved when they were kids.
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FOSTER: And before we go...
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(SOUNDS OF WHALES)
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FOSTER: The enduring songs of baleen whales, one of nature's best-kept secrets, has eluded scientists since its discovery more than 50 years ago. Until now, that is. A new study revealing baleen whales are able to sing underwater courtesy of their uniquely shaped larynx or voice box. The study's lead author told CNN that whales use sound to locate each other and mate, understanding how Earth's largest mammals vocalize could help scientists better understand how man-made noise pollution in oceans impacts those wonderful sea giants.
Well, thank you for joining me here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Max Foster in London. "EARLY START" is next here on CNN.
