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CNN International: Students Around the World Speak Out Against Child Labor; Judge Dismisses Six Charges Against Trump, Co-Defendants; Presidential Candidate RFK Jr. to Announce VP this Month. Aired 4:30- 5a ET
Aired March 14, 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]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Bottom line, a lot of hate speech is protected by the First Amendment and Berkeley doesn't have enough police officers. There is some hope. There have been a number of events on campus this week and earlier that went off without a hitch. That march you just saw, that was also peaceful.
Now, the controversial speaker whose appearance kind of kicked all this off, he's been invited back to campus. That'll be next week.
Bears for Palestine right now tell me they are not planning to protest that. We'll keep an eye. Now, that college official said, listen, we are taking that event as a wake up call and perhaps the rest of the country should do the same.
Nick Watt, CNN, Los Angeles.
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PAULA NEWTON, CNN ANCHOR: Still to come for us, CNN is marking My Freedom Day where students are raising awareness about modern day slavery. Our Vedika Sud is live for us in India -- Vedika.
VEDIKA SUD, CNN REPORTER: Paula, we're going to be live from a school in Noida, near New Delhi, where we have a special treat lined up for our viewers.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NEWTON: Students all around the world are marking My Freedom Day right now.
For the past eight years, in fact, children and teens have been helping CNN shine a light on modern day slavery. This year, they're standing up against child labor. Here's what students in Japan have been learning about.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE CHILD (through translator): This poster is for My Freedom Day.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE CHILD (through translator): Every child should be free from child labor. They have rights to be free and they got their own life.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE CHILD (through translator): For me, freedom is to lend a hand to others in need to make a positive difference in the world. Thank you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NEWTON: And now it is time to go live to India, where we find CNN's Vedika Sud. And Vedika, you have been with students there who have some special presentations.
[04:35:00]
SUD: You know, it's been a beautiful day here at the Genesis Global School in Noida, near New Delhi, Paula. Because these children, they're so aware of what they're talking about, currently what they're singing about. It's a song called Together We Can Change the World. They've been practicing for weeks and they're sending out a message that this is one issue where everyone really needs to come together and work towards a safer environment for children.
They've been making posters. They've had a performance on stage around child labor. And this is the choir, more than about 50 children on stage, as you can see right now, singing, trying to put out a message.
I have with me Zian and Nivriti. Zian, tell us more about why the team chose this song.
ZIAN, STUDENT: So basically, as you know, the name of this song is Together We Can Change the World. And the theme of our project is I would say forced child labor. So basically, forced child labor really resonates with this song, since this song reminds us to work together to make this world a better place and unite so that we can make this world a better place.
SUD: And Nivriti, I want to understand from you. You know, you've been working so hard for over a week now, practicing this song along with your classmates. But has it impacted you personally in any way?
NIVRITI, STUDENT: Yes, so the journey from our teacher, Mr. Panday, telling us about the song and performing it today. It has really personally impacted me because I believe that when we have come together to sing this song, we are spreading a global message that we can come together, unite and change the world.
SUD: A beautiful message there, isn't it, Paula, from both these children here and those dozens of children on stage who are trying to put out a message there that communities need to come together, not just individuals to make this change.
In India in the year 2022, according to government data, eight children were trafficked every day. Staggering figures there really. But these children want to bring about that change, make this world a safer place for children because they believe there should be books in their hands and not tools at some workplace where they've been pushed into child trafficking. Back to you -- Paula.
NEWTON: Yes, Vedika, such a relevant topic for those young children and good to see them so involved with their messages and their singing. Thanks so much, Vedika, for bringing it to us. Really appreciate it.
And we want to encourage you to post your message to boost the fight against forced labor using the #MyFreedomDay on social media and go to cnn.com/MyFreedomDay for more information.
The Fulton County judge overseeing the election subversion case in Georgia has thrown out six of the dozens of charges against Donald Trump and some of his co-defendants.
Now, the judge says prosecutors failed to show how the defendants allegedly broke the law related to these six specific charges. CNN's Nick Valencia reports from outside the courthouse in Atlanta.
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NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The judge was clear in his decision. The Fulton County District Attorney's Office did not provide the necessary detail of the underlying crime these defendants were allegedly trying to solicit. Enough detail to get these charges to stick in this indictment. The charges have to do in part with a fake electors scheme.
That's the so-called fake electors team trying to subvert the electoral college and unlawfully elect a slate of presidential electors. But it also has to do with that infamous phone call on January 2nd, 2021, when the former president and his former chief of staff Mark Meadows called Georgia's Secretary of State and asked him to find them more votes. But the judge in this order saying DA's office simply just didn't include the detail needed to have these charges stand.
And this is what he's saying in part of his order.
Quote: These six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the underlying felony solicited. They do not give the defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently.
The order goes on to say: This does not mean the entire indictment is dismissed.
So let's pick up from there. This entire indictment is not dismissed. In fact, the judge left the door open for an appeal from the DA's office but that would mean they would have to fill in the detail that the judge is looking for and then try to get another indictment. That would require them to put this in front of another grand jury which was just inevitably lengthened this process. All of this, of course, happening as we're waiting for that monumental decision from the judge.
Will Fani Willis stay or will she go? The judge telling us earlier that he's on track to make a decision by the end of the week.
Nick Valencia, CNN, Atlanta.
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NEWTON: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is set to visit a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota later today and it's part of her fight for reproductive freedoms tour.
And she's not the only member of the Biden camp focusing on that key election issue.
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JILL BIDEN, U.S. FIRST LADY: Extremists are working harder than ever to drag us back to a past we thought was long over.
CHRISTINA AGUILERA, SINGER: But we say our reproductive healthcare decisions should be made by us and our doctors, not politicians.
J. BIDEN: We should have the freedom to make our decisions about our own bodies.
AGUILERA: I will not let my daughter live in a world where politicians make decisions about her body.
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NEWTON: First Lady Jill Biden there appearing with singer Christina Aguilera in a social media video to advocate for reproductive rights. First Lady says the issue is on the ballot this November and encouraged people to vote to, quote, stop a national abortion ban.
So long shot presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to announce his running mate this month. The independent candidate and conspiracy theorist confirmed to CNN that NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, as well as former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, are on his short list to be his VP. Kennedy's friendship with Rodgers is renewing scrutiny of the star football player's promotion of conspiracy theories.
CNN's Gary Tuchman explains.
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AARON RODGERS, PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYER: I know RFK Jr. personally.
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Aaron Rodgers, who won a Super Bowl during his 18 seasons with the Green Bay Packers and now plays for the New York Jets, has been friends with Robert Kennedy Jr. for years, hiking with him as recently as last month.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ...
TUCHMAN (voice-over): And showing his support for the candidate's rebuttal to President Joe Biden's State of the Union speech.
RODGERS: I realize I'm in the crosshairs of the woke mob right now.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): These days, though, Aaron Rodgers, like his friend RFK Jr., is as well known for his embrace of fringe theories as he is for his day job.
CNN has learned that in private conversations, including with CNN journalist Pamela Brown, Rodgers has shared wild and unfounded theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, calling the shooting where 20 children and six adults were murdered a government inside job. One source saying that several years ago, Rodgers claimed, quote, all those children never existed. They were all actors.
Rodgers, through his agent, has declined to comment to CNN. That's just one of the conspiracy theories Rodgers has promoted.
RODGERS: That's a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel (INAUDIBLE) --
TUCHMAN (voice-over): That's Rodgers falsely implying Jimmy Kimmel may somehow be linked to Jeffrey Epstein's illicit trafficking of underage girls.
After Kimmel threatened to sue, Rodgers backed down.
RODGERS: I'm not stupid enough to accuse you of that with absolutely zero evidence.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): Rodgers' stance on vaccines have also gained him national attention, views that he shares with RFK Jr. When asked his vaccination status at the height of the COVID pandemic, this was his response.
RODGERS: Yes, I'm immunized.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): A few months later, a different story.
RODGERS: I knew that this was coming down, that at some point I was going to talk about my status because I'd chosen to not get vaxxed.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): After testing positive for COVID, Rodgers detailed his unorthodox treatment plan.
RODGERS: I've been taking monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, zinc, vitamin C and D, HCQ.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): HCQ is shorthand for hydroxychloroquine, a debunked therapy also embraced by his friend RFK Jr. Rodgers even challenged fellow Super Bowl-winning NFL player Travis Kelce, who appeared in a Pfizer vaccination ad campaign, to a vaccine debate using a Trump-esque nickname. RODGERS: You know, Mr. Pfizer said he didn't think he would be in a vax war with me. Didn't think he would be in a vax war with me. This ain't a war homy, this is just conversation. I'm going to take my man RFK Jr.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.
RODGERS: As an independent.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hell yes.
RODGERS: Right. And he can have, you know, Tony Fauci.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): His man RFK Jr., with designs on the White House.
RODGERS: I'm not a super political person, OK?
TUCHMAN (voice-over): Aaron Rodgers was injured last season but is expected to be playing when the Jets start their new NFL season in September, two months before Election Day.
Gary Tuchman, CNN, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NEWTON: European lawmakers gave final approval Wednesday to a landmark law governing the use of artificial intelligence. Now, the first of its kind law is poised to impact everything from health care and education to policing. It imposes blanket bans on some, quote, unacceptable uses for the technology, while putting in place stiff, pardon me, guardrails for other applications deemed too high risk.
It also requires all AI-generated, deepfake videos and images to be clearly labeled. The sweeping legislation doesn't take effect for another two years.
Fukuyama, Japan, is on high alert, and officials are on the lookout for a cat that fell into a tank of hazardous chemicals at a factory and then disappeared. Based on a trail of paw prints, they believe it fell into a vat of chromium, pardon me, chromium 6. The substance is perhaps best known as the cancer-causing chemical featured in the 2000 movie, "Erin Brockovich," starring Julia Roberts. Now, it is harmful to eye skin and the respiratory system. That's according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
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Officials are warning people not to approach the cat, but experts believe it has probably already died from chemical burns.
Actor Olivia Munn has gone public with her breast cancer diagnosis. The Newsroom star shared hospital photos along with the news, saying she was diagnosed after a routine mammogram, despite having taken genetic testing for the disease, which came back negative. Munn says she's had four surgeries in the past 10 months, including a double mastectomy.
She also hopes that by sharing her experience, others in similar situations will find comfort, inspiration, and support.
An American man who's spent most of the past 70 years in an iron lung has died. Paul Alexander, known as Polio Paul, contracted the disease in 1952 at age 6. He was paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe on his own.
Alexander learned breathing techniques that allowed him to leave the device for a few hours at a time. He became a lawyer and wrote an autobiography, and last year Guinness World Records declared him the longest surviving iron lung patient. Now, he spoke to CNN two years ago about his life.
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PAUL ALEXANDER, LONGEST SURVIVING IRON LUNG PATIENT: I'm not going to try to accept from anybody their limitations for my life. I'm not going to do it. My life is incredible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NEWTON: Paul Alexander was 78.
Still to come for us, more on CNN's 8th annual My Freedom Day. We're live in England with how students are making their voices heard against modern day slavery. Stay with us.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE CHILD: To me, freedom means being heard and understood.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE CHILD: Freedom to me means having the ability to show self-expression, not suppress my emotions and speak up.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE CHILD: Freedom is having an education and the potential to be super. Freedom is knowing I will eventually work for my pay and put on my work blazer. But freedom is not being cast aside and forced into labor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NEWTON: So what does freedom mean to you? It's an important question students are answering all around the world today as we continue to mark the eighth annual My Freedom Day.
And we want to go live now to England, where journalist Elliott Gotkine is standing by for us. And I understand you are at a school where they are learning about these very issues.
[04:50:00]
ELLIOTT GOTKINE, JOURNALIST: That's right, Paula. We are at Queen Anne School in Caversham, that's just west of London, where pupils have been raising awareness, boosting their understanding and hopefully trying to have an impact on the problem of modern day slavery, which still affects 50 million people around the world.
And as you can see behind me, we've got plenty of pupils and students who have been doing various things.
Here I'm joined by Tia and Anna. Now, Tia, you may remember, was with us last year. And Tia, you were talking a bit about the problem of modern day slavery in the chocolate industry. What's changed since last year? And what impact have you and your projects had?
TIA, STUDENT, UPPER 4: Well, we've learned that it's really important to check the sources of our chocolates that we buy. So we know it's not, there's no child labor involved. And that way we can make it.
We've also managed to achieve the fair access --
NEWTON: And unfortunately, we lost Elliott Gotkine there, but we will go back to that school. And it is really good to see those students take something that they eat many times in a week, chocolate, and understand that in some cases, it has been tied to forced labor in children.
We will continue to bring you more of those snippets. But in the meantime, post your message to boost the fight against forced labor, using the #MyFreedomDay on social media and go to cnn.com/MyFreedomDay for more information.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NEWTON: All right, time to get out those drivers and those flat sticks. It's almost time for the tournament many call golf's fifth major. A slate of PGA Tour golfers are set to tee off later today at the Players' Championships.
That's in TPC Sawgrass in Florida. Tiger Woods won't be there, but plenty of other top names will be, including Rory McIlroy. He says the saga, in fact, between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, in his words, needs to end soon. Listen.
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RORY MCILROY, PROFESSIONAL GOLFER: Fans are fatigued of what's going on in the game. And I think we need to try to re-engage the fan and re-engage them in a way that the focus is on the play and not on talking about equity and all the rest of it.
If I were a fan, I would want to watch the best players compete against each other week in, week out. I think if you just unified the game and brought us all back together in some way, that would be great for the fans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NEWTON: The Kansas City Royals are set to honor Bo Jackson with a place in the team's Hall of Fame. Now described by some as the greatest athlete of his time, Jackson was selected MVP in the 1989 All-Star Game. He also won the Heisman Trophy and played pro football for the Los Angeles Raiders. Jackson will be inducted into the Royals Hall of Fame June 29th in Kansas City.
Certainly, someone I remember incredible to watch.
Now we are just hours away from a test launch of SpaceX gigantic Starship rocket. U.S. regulators gave the flight the green light on Wednesday.
Now the unmanned liftoff could happen during a 110 minute window. And that window in fact does open at 8 a.m. Eastern. Now you'll remember two previous attempts to get the enormous ship to orbital speeds ended unfortunately in explosions.
SpaceX avoids calling them failures, instead describing them as learning moments, which they have termed rapid unscheduled disassemblies.
[04:55:00]
The company has a lot riding on Starship. NASA has selected it for the mission to return astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Now Starship stands at 50 meters tall. Almost the height in fact of the leaning tower of Pisa. It's not leaning though as you can see there. It's nine meters wide. A third wider than the fuselage of a Boeing 777.
As for payload, Starship can carry up to a whopping 150 tons. And that's propelled into space with the booster's 33 Raptor engines and six more engines on the spacecraft itself. We'll be looking out to see what happens there.
Now to the stories in the spotlight this hour.
Remember that Willy Wonka themed event in Scotland that went viral for being an absolute complete disaster? Well families who had paid money to attend an immersive colorful experience ended up in a mostly bare warehouse with nothing to do. And worst of all hardly any candy.
Well now a record store in Glasgow is auctioning off some of the pieces from that event after recovering it from the garbage and plan to donate the money. And already, yes, the bids are quite high if you can imagine. So maybe something good did come out of this after all.
And in Japan, zoo workers are training to capture a runaway tiger in case a white tiger at the facility escapes. Now state media says no real animal was involved in this drill. Instead one of the zookeepers, I think you see him there or her, acted the part moving around dressed as a tiger.
Now it is a him. Apparently his colleagues surrounded him with sticks and a net eventually, quote, tranquilizing him and wrapping him up in the net and loading him onto the back of a truck. Now that's an actor who apparently is really dedicated to his craft. My gosh I hope that the vets and everyone else had a lot of input in this. Oh dear. OK and finally, do you want to fly your name to the moon? Yes, NASA is
asking people if they want to -- want their name to be sent to the moon with NASA's first ever robotic moon rover named Viper.
Viper will travel to the lunar south polar region to look for water, ice and other resources to be utilized in future missions. To submit your name and get a boarding pass go to nasa.gov/viper for more information.
All right I want to thank you for joining me here on CNN NEWSROOM. CNN "THIS MORNING" is up next after a quick break.
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