Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Israel Says It Will Open New Aid Routes Into Gaza; Rescue Efforts Continue In Wake Of Taiwan Earthquake; State Department Officials Shed Light On Chaotic Afghanistan Evacuation; Firefighter Learns His Dad Was Killed at Scene of Russian Attack; Israel Used AI To Identify Bombing Targets In Gaza; Israel Using A.I. to Help Pick Bombing Targets; Netanyahu: Israel Retaliating after Years of Acts by Iran; Trump Legal Woes; U.S. Treasury Secretary in China for Talks amid Trade Tensions; True Cost of Trash; Close Call Between Plane, Control Tower under Investigation; Countdown to Monday's Rare Total Solar Eclipse. Aired 1-2a ET
Aired April 05, 2024 - 01:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[01:00:25]
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Hello everyone, I'm Michael Holmes. Appreciate your company. Coming up here on CNN Newsroom, Israel's prime minister taking accountability for the deadly attack on foreign aid workers in Gaza. Now the Israel Defense Forces says it will release a preliminary report to show what went wrong or their version of it.
And two new aid crossings are opening as the hunger crisis continues to worsen in Gaza. Why some say the move is too little, too late.
Plus, evacuation still underway in Taiwan after that devastating earthquake. What we know about the search and rescue effort.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from Atlanta. This is CNN Newsroom with Michael Holmes.
HOLMES: Well, we are about to begin with new details about the phone call between U.S. President Joe Biden and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to a senior U.S. official, Mister Netanyahu admitted the strikes that killed those seven humanitarian aid workers on Monday were Israel's fault. The Israeli leader also pledging to announce measures to prevent such a mistake from happening again.
The White House says Mr. Biden demanded specific concrete and measurable steps to protect civilians and aid workers in Gaza or the U.S. would reconsider its own policies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KIRBY, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: Hopefully, you know, it won't come to that they'll be able to execute and implement on these things that we've asked for, these things that they've committed to doing. And we can make it safer for aid workers on the ground. And frankly, we can help start to make life better for innocent Gaza.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: Israel rather already seems to be responding with a promise to reopen the vital Erez border crossing between Israel and northern Gaza. CNN's Jeremy Diamond with those details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Israeli prime minister's office isn't commenting on the call directly, but instead what they appear to be doing is letting the actions that the Israeli government is taking speak in their place.
And this evening, the Israeli security cabinet, as you were just discussing, approving the opening of the Erez crossing for the first time since October 7. Also approving the use of the port of Ashdod, some 20 miles north of that very same crossing to be used to bring in additional humanitarian aid.
Now this is significant for a few reasons. First of all, this will allow more aid to be brought directly into northern Gaza where the looming famine is most acute. More than a million people in Gaza currently on the brink of that famine.
And even as we have watched the ramp up in air drops, for example, this new maritime corridor to bring in more humanitarian aid, it's very clear. And every humanitarian aid agency has said that it is land crossings that are necessary to bring in the scale of humanitarian aid that is necessary.
And beyond that, we know the U.S. has been pressuring Israel for months now to open up more land crossings, including specifically this Erez crossing. And yet, even as Israeli officials for months have said they are doing everything they can to get in enough humanitarian aid, tonight we are clearly learning that they could have done more sooner. But instead it took the deaths of these seven humanitarian aid workers and this massive international pressure, including from the U.S., to actually result in the opening of this crossing.
(END VIDETOPE)
HOLMES: Jeremy Diamond there for us. Well, at least four Palestinians, including one paramedic, are dead in northeastern Gaza after Israeli forces targeted an area near a school sheltering displaced civilians. That's according to paramedics at Kamal Adwan Hospital. A witness says they were in a field looking for food, trying to find something to eat when they were hit by Israeli artillery fire.
Now, the Gaza Strip, of course, has been facing dire shortages of food and water, with aid agencies criticizing the lack of access.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): There was a tank part. God is a witness that I got out to get food for my children. I don't have any flour nor do I have money to buy it. We don't have any money. We don't have anything left. We don't have anything to eat for suhoor. There is no food. It is a total destruction. Save us. Help us. God is the one who helps.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: Meanwhile, in central Gaza, just have a look at the level of destruction there. Palestinian health officials saying two people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a residential block in the Al Magazi refugee camp.
[01:05:04]
When CNN asked for comment, Israeli forces did not directly address any reason for the attack.
Joining me now from Athens, Greece, Dr. Konstantina Ilia Karydi is a member of the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestinians team. Thanks so much for being with us. I know you've been there. You have seen things. We know about the horrendous death toll in Gaza, more than 33,000. But often underreported is the toll of wounded Palestinians well over 70,000. What sorts of wounds did you see?
DR. KONSTANTINA ILIA KARYDI, IRC AND MAP EMERGENCY MEDICAL TEAM: Thank you for having me. And what sorts of wounds did I see? There were all trauma wounds, war related, a lot of blast injuries, a lot of fractures and really horrific open wounds from these blast injuries. Snarpner injuries from drone attacks, gunshots, eye injuries. And I'm talking about eye loss. Yes.
HOLMES: Just horrific things that in women, children, pretty much no Gaza hospitals are running effectively. Most of them are out of action altogether. How is that impacting level of care, the ability of doctors like you to treat the wounded?
KARYDI: Well, I think that it's very hard. I was working at the European Gaza Hospital who had the capacity before the war of 220 patients. And when I was there they had around 1,000 patients. So we're talking about four times the hospital's capacity.
And as more hospitals are getting destroyed, as we all hear these days, the few remaining hospitals will have obviously more patients. So it will be even harder than when I was there.
HOLMES: Yes. Rescue.org, they put out a statement and I just want to read part of it. They said this, surgeons had completed successful complex vascular and orthopedic surgeries on patients, but some of the patients later died due to infections in the hospital and the inability to provide post-operative care.
How heartbreaking is it to do successful surgeries in conditions like that in Gaza and then the patient dies from infection? KARYDI: I think it's very hard to describe the feeling, like the
futility that comes with feast as well, because it's not only about surgery. We would do our best in theaters, but this depends on the functioning of the whole healthcare system. And it's a tragedy.
HOLMES: It must be awful to do your best, you know, life-saving work and then people die because of things like infections. And I guess the other thing too, when it comes to the wounded, is long term care, amputees, other injuries that will need extensive ongoing treatment even when the bombs stop, what resources will be left in Gaza for that treatment, rehabilitation and so on.
KARYDI: Thank you for bringing this up because this is very important. First of all, they will have many more disabled people because, like this horrific open wounds will get infected. Like, we would try to save the limb, but if it gets infected, that means amputation and more disability.
I don't think they have physiotherapy right now. You were talking about rehabilitation. We are talking about a whole generation of new people that will be disabled. They were already depending on international aid before the war. Now there will be just more dependence.
HOLMES: Yes, I was raised --
KARYDI: It's a tragedy.
HOLMES: It's more than that. I was reading today Gaza Municipality were warning that diseases are spreading because of waste pile up, sewage overflow as a result of damage done by Israel's bombardment.
When you were there, how did you see those sorts of things impacting people? What feelings did you leave with?
KARYDI: So, first of all, the overcrowding in the hospital where were staying as well, they had 22,000 internally displaced people. So the overcrowding itself and the lack of infrastructure to support all these people can cause infectious diseases -- will cause.
[01:10:05]
Then at Rafah, for example, I didn't go to the north is a city that had 250,000 population and now it has 1,500, millions. It's impossible that they have the infrastructure support from a gene point of view. So you would see, for example, the rubs piling up when I was there, and that was, I came out four weeks ago.
HOLMES: Yes. Just horrific. And you know, thank you for the work that you and other doctors are doing when you do go in. This is going to be far reaching consequences. Dr. Konstantina Ilia Karydi, thanks so much.
KARYDI: Thank you for the time.
HOLMES: It has now been nearly six months since the Hamas terror attack, and the father of two hostages is speaking out about what his family is enduring as they wait and they hope to be reunited. He spoke to CNN's Melissa Bell.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For Yechiel Yehud time stopped on October 7. He shows us into his orange orchard, normally at this season, his joy
YECHIEL YEHUD, FATHER OF HOSTAGES: This time I can't enjoy the smell of the blossom from the trees. Like I can't enjoy nothing.
BELL: It's so strong, though.
YEHUD: Yes.
BELL (voice-over): But nothing this year has been normal for Yechiel. On October 7, two of his three children seen here at their home in kibbutz Nir Oz, were kidnapped by Hamas.
YEHUD: Six months I didn't touch them, I didn't smell them, I didn't talk with them. I didn't hug them. It's not six months. It's one long day.
BELL (voice-over): This, he says, is now his mission room, where he and his wife, Yael, work for their children's return and try to stay sane. Partly, he says, by not watching the news at all.
YEHUD: That's what keep us alive, that what keep us in our mission of life, to get birth for the second time for our children. Without this hope, we can do nothing.
BELL (voice-over): His 35 year old, Dolev (ph) was last seen leaving the shelter where his pregnant wife and their three children were cowering to see if the coast was clear. For six months now, he's been without his medication.
YEHUD: Need these pills, one pill. Without these pills, the body get weak from day to day until a life danger. If they didn't kill him while they took him or in the prison, I don't know how he will come back to us.
BELL (voice-over): But it is his fear for his 28-year-old daughter, Arbel, who was also taken from the kibbutz that day, along with her boyfriend, Ariel, that take an even darker turn.
YEHUD: When I'm thinking. about Arbel, my soul birth, what kind of sexual abuse she's passed, how fierce she's met every minute with men around her. From time to time, I heard her in my mind, Abba, father, come to release me. Where are you?
BELL (voice-over): Some of the accounts of former hostages like Amit Susana, who recently spoke publicly of the conditions and the sexual abuse endured, which Hamas has denied, have only added to Yechiel's fears. He records them in a journal at. YEHUD: Night because it's always on my mind. While I'm talking with
you now, I'm thinking about Arbel, if she could hear me talking with you like that. And now she's hugging me from behind and give me power to continue to talk with you, to stay calm.
BELL (voice-over): Calm that he says he also finds by the tree his son was named for, the plane tree, or dolev tree in Hebrew, in its shade, he's waited for six months at once, hopefully, and fearful of news. Melissa Bell, CNN, Rishon LeZion.
(END VIDETAPE)
HOLMES: Authorities in Taiwan say 25 people remain missing more than two days after the island was hit by its strongest earthquake in decades.
[01:15:05]
Dozens of people have been rescued from toppled buildings and remote areas cut off by landslides. You see that building there. This is a live image coming to us now from Taiwan. That building is going to be progressively demolished over the coming days.
Officials say four foreign nationals are among those thought to be missing in the mountains. The national fire agency raising the death toll to ten on Thursday. CNN's Ivan Watson with the latest for us from the quake zone.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A daring mountain rescue one day after Taiwan is pummeled by a powerful earthquake. Emergency workers struggle climbing over treacherous landslides, trying to bring victims home. Among those initially stranded, dozens of miners in two remote quarries.
On Thursday, authorities announced their successful rescue. Some choppered to safety. There were too many rocks falling like bullets from above, this miner says, we didn't know where to run. The aftermath of some landslides visible from a moving train. Many paved roads to the disaster zone are still blocked, but on Thursday, the railways resumed service.
WATSON: It has only been a day since this powerful, deadly earthquake rocked Taiwan. And already this train to the epicenter is running on time.
WATSON (voice-over): In the small city of Hualien, residents still coming to grips with the earthquakes damage. Though there are some scenes of real destruction, it also feels like this earthquake prone community is quickly bouncing back. The city government set up this temporary shelter in an elementary school.
WATSON: This is your home?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Living room. WATSON: There's a -- there's a hole in the wall.
WATSON (voice-over): Wang Meifen (ph) is camping out here with her husband and mother.
WATSON: Do you feel safe staying in Hualien?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not afraid. I was born here.
WATSON (voice-over): Among those here, the mayor of Hualien who was injured in the quake.
WATSON: What happened?
WATSON (voice-over): A cabinet fell on me, he says. He attributes the relatively low death toll in his city to advanced preparation.
WEI CHIA-YAN, MAYOR OF HUALIEN, TAIWAN (through translator): Here in Hualien, we grew up with earthquakes. Our teachers and relatives always taught us how to react when earthquakes strike. So we've known about this since were kids.
WATSON: This ruined building is a terrifying example of the power of Wednesday morning, 7.4 magnitude earthquake. But look down the road here and you see that most of Hualien is not damaged. It is lit up intact and very active.
WATSON (voice-over): Amid these scars, an impressive display of community resilience. Ivan Watson, CNN, Hualien, Taiwan.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: Chaos, violence, desperation and no plan on how to deal with all of that. Still ahead, new insights into the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan and the alleged failure to prepare for it.
Also, new challenges for Donald Trump as two judges reject the former president's efforts to have legal cases against him dropped. And a third questions the security of his $175 million bond. You're watching CNN Newsroom. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[01:20:36]
HOLMES: We're learning more about the chaotic us evacuation from Afghanistan in August of 2021. The U.S. scrambled to evacuate tens of thousands of civilians after the capital fell to the Taliban. Well, CNN has exclusively obtained congressional testimony that shows there was no clear path on the table, or no clear plan either. And many decisions had to be made on the fly as the situation sometimes changed minute to minute. CNN's Kylie Atwood with that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): New transcripts, exclusively obtained by CNN, show the chaos on the ground as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan mirrored the chaos behind the scenes at the state Department.
The department had no working emergency evacuation plan. That is the stark testimony from three State Department officials to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. And those three officials were rushed into Kabul in the days surrounding the Taliban takeover with virtually no time to prepare.
MICHAEL MCCAUL, U.S. HOUSE REPUBLICAN: The Biden administration's failure to plan for their withdrawal threaten the safety and security of us personnel in country.
ATWOOD (voice-over): The interviews are part of an ongoing investigation led by the committee's Republican chairman, Mike McCaul, into the chaotic evacuation that resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers in a terrorist attack outside of the Kabul airport.
One official testifying, quote, we had to create from scratch tactical operations that would get our priority people into the airport. He added, we were roughly as effective as we could be under the circumstances.
Another saying he was never briefed on an established evacuation plan because, quote, were already in the midst of executing an evacuation that substantially exceeded the scope and scale of what had been contemplated. The top U.S. military generals suggested that the damage could have been mitigated if the State Department had called for an earlier non-combatant evacuation.
GEN. MARK MILLEY, FORMER UNITED STATES CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: It is my assessment that decision came too late.
GEN. KENNETH F. MCKENZIE, FORMER COMMANDER, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND (RET.): We struggled to gain access to that plan and work with them over the months of July until we finally got a decision to execute.
ATWOOD (voice-over): Those accusations have been disputed by the State Department.
VEDANT PATEL, DEPUTY SPOKESPERSON, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: The U.S. did not want to publicly announce planning for or the start of a EO, so as to not weaken the position of then-Afghan government, potentially signaling a potential lack of faith.
ATWOOD (voice-over): Another state official testified to the setbacks on the ground due to a bleak reality. The Taliban were largely in control, quote, it was what will the Taliban allow? Will they let people move through and how will they do it? And as someone who's worked in Afghanistan for 19 years, it's a little bit wild to tell people that you can trust the Taliban, hold up your American passport. But it did kind of work. Those descriptions a far cry from what the department said at the time.
NED PRICE, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON: My understanding is that things are moving quite efficiently at this hour at the airport. -- at the airport now.
ATWOOD: Now the committee investigators say that their goal is to get a report done on all of the interviews that they have conducted by the end of the year. And as important as the voices of these State Department officials are, Biden administration officials are highly cognizant of the fact that there is a political motive here.
This investigation, of course, is run by the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. And it's clear that Republicans want this to become an issue front and center around the time of the November elections so that when folks are heading to the polls, they remember what it was like, this catastrophic, chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that occurred during the Biden administration. Kylie Atwood, CNN, the State Department.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: We are getting word of a new Ukrainian drone attack in southwest Russia. The governor of Rostov says air defenses have shot down more than 40 targets, as they described it, over the region which borders Ukraine. His latest statement did not spell out what the targets were, but earlier he called it a massive drone attack.
The governor says an electrical substation was damaged and crews are working to fix it. A Russian strike on Ukraine's second largest city has turned into a heartbreaking family tragedy. Have a look at this video of a firefighter in Kharkiv after he found out his father was killed in the attack on Thursday.
[01:25:06]
Ukraine says both worked in the fire service and responded to the first wave of drone strikes. But then a second wave followed, hitting the area where the father was working. The son immediately rushed over, only to discover his dad was gone. Officials say five people were killed in Kharkiv, including three rescuers.
NATO countries will dig deeper into their stockpiles to try to find more air defenses that can be sent to Ukraine. The announcement was made after NATO and Ukrainian foreign ministers met in Brussels on Thursday. That's when Ukraine called for an urgent delivery of air defenses, including U.S. made patriot missiles.
Sources say Kyiv has been rationing its air defense munitions for about a month now because stocks are so low, a situation Russia is trying to exploit.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin now claims that NATO is directly involved in the war on Ukraine and that NATO's current relations with Russia have reached the level of direct confrontation. The alliance's chief reacting this way.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENS STOLTENBERG, NATO SECURITY GENERAL: NATO is not party to the conflict and NATO will not be party to the conflict. But NATO is providing support to Ukraine to help them defend themselves. We don't have any plans of having any NATO combat troops inside Ukraine. There have been no requests for that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: Still to come, Israel on guard for retaliation from Iran after the deadly bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Syria.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: And welcome back to our viewers all around the world. I'm Michael Holmes. You're watching CNN Newsroom. Let's bring you up to date now on the top story, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledging the deaths of seven aid workers killed Monday in Gaza were Israel's fault. He's also pledging to implement measures to make sure such a mistake never happens again. The comments came during a 30 minutes phone conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden.
The White House says Mr. Biden demanded an immediate temporary ceasefire and more aid to civilians in Gaza. Israel, it seems, is already responding by reopening the areas crossing and allowing more humanitarian shipments to come through the port of Ashdod.
[01:29:41]
A new report says Israel's military is using artificial intelligence to help identify bombing targets in Gaza. One official said humans often served as a rubber stamp for the machine's decisions.
CNN's senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen with the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: After Israels attack on a World Central Kitchen aid convoy in Gaza, questions about the IDFs targeting process are front and center.
CHEF JOSE ANDRES, WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN: This was not bad luck situation where oops, we dropped the bomb in the wrong place or not. It was over 1.5 -- 1.8 kilometers with a very defined humanitarian convoy that had signs in the top in the roof.
PLEITGEN: Israel calls the targeted strike quote "a tragic mistake". But there are general questions about how the IDF decides who to target after Israeli magazine "Plus 972" published an article claiming Israel's military widely uses artificial intelligence when going after alleged militants, sometimes with very little human oversight, says investigative reporter, Yuval Abraham after speaking to six Israeli intelligence officers.
YUVAL ABRAHAM, INVESTIGATIVE JORUNALIST: So one source told me that he would spend roughly 20 seconds before authorizing each target. And the only supervision that he needed to do is to check if the targets, the machine (INAUDIBLE) was a male or female.
PLEITGEN: According to the reporting, the A.I. program called Lavender identifies and marks alleged militants in Gaza from low level ones to senior commanders.
ABRAHAM: One source told me its 90 percent of the people, so hundreds of thousands of people.
And it gives each one a rating based on this long list of features. And the rating shows how probable the machine thinks that a particular individual is that belongs to the Hamas or Islamic jihad military wings.
PLEITGEN: But Abraham says, his sources told them, the A.I. program also makes mistakes with lethal consequences for civilians in Gaza.
ABRAHAM: It would mark people who have a loose connection to Hamas or no connection at all to Hamas as potential targets. And they knew that the supervision mechanism in place would not be able to find all of these mistakes.
PLEITGEN: The Israel Defense Forces have not denied the use of A.I. on the battlefield in Gaza, but in a statement say quote, "contrary to claims, the IDF does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist. Information systems are merely tools for analysts in the target identification process.
While, Israel says it has concluded the initial investigation into the bombing of the aid convoy, the former top U.S. general in Europe told "OUTFRONT" he's troubled by some of what he sees from Israel's military.
LT. GEN. BEN HODGES (RET), FORMER U.S. ARMY EUROPOE COMMANDER: I think that the IDF has become, I don't want to say callous towards civilian casualties, but their tolerance for collateral damage is much higher. For us, it's zero.
PLEITGEN: The IDF says, it takes care to prevent civilian casualties but the U.S. has warned more needs to be done to prevent the death toll among non-combatant Gazans from increasing even further.
Fred Pleitgen, CNN -- Berlin.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: Tensions between Israel and Iran continue to rise as Iran's president blames Israel for that deadly strike on Tehran's embassy compound in Syria on Monday. Now the Israeli prime minister says, Iran has a history of acting against Israel and they're just retaliating.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: For years, Iran has been acting against us both directly and by its proxies.
Therefore, Israel is acting against Iran and its proxies defensively and offensively. We will know how to defend ourselves and we will act according to the simple principles of whoever harms us with plans to Hamas, we will harm them. (END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: The U.S. Pentagon says Israel was responsible but Washington stresses it is innocent in the matter.
CNN's Ben Wedeman with more on an escalating crisis.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Israel has suspended leaves for all combat units and is recalled reservists in air defense forces as concerns grow Iran will soon retaliate for the Israeli strike Monday on its diplomatic complex in Damascus.
Israel conceded Thursday it has also disrupted GPS services in large parts of the country for fear Iran and its regional allies might fire GPS guided missiles and drones.
Before that was revealed however, drivers in Israel were reporting their navigational systems showed them cruising through the streets of Beirut and Cairo.
[01:34:50]
WEDEMAN: The growing unease in Israel prompted an Israeli military spokesman to urge the populace not to panic saying there's no need to rush out to buy food and generators or withdraw cash from ATMs.
The bodies of the Iranian officials killed in Damascus including two senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps arrived back in Tehran Thursday and their funerals will be held Friday coinciding with Hoods Day or Jerusalem Day, marked across the Arab and Muslim worlds as a day of solidarity with the Palestinians and condemnation of Israel.
In Tehran preparations are afoot for a large rally and its expected Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei will speak here and while here in Lebanon rallies will also be held and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah hello will also give a speech.
Their words and possibly actions will determine if the skirmishes raging since the Gaza war began between Israel and Iran's constellation of regional allies will escalate into something much, much bigger.
I'm Ben Wedeman, CNN -- reporting from Beirut.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: New legal setbacks for Donald Trump. A federal judge in Florida declining to dismiss the charges in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. The former president is charged with illegally keeping classified documents at his Florida residence after leaving the White House.
The judge said Trump's attorneys did not meet the legal standard to dismiss the charges.
Also, the judge who oversaw Trump's civil fraud trial has set an April 22 hearing to discuss Trumps $175 million bond underwriter. This after the New York Attorney General's Office asked to have, quote, "Knight Specialty Insurance" -- that's the name of the firm -- "provide more information to show its financially capable of supporting the bond".
The judge in the case, Arthur Engoron, has faced frequent attacks from Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Judge Engoron is a disgrace to this country. And this should not be allowed to happen.
I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family.
That's a nasty man. He's a nasty judge. He's a Trump-hating guy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: All of this as the judge in the Georgia election interference case, yes the other one, against Trump is rejecting Trump's free speech defense.
Sara Murray with details on that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: A judge in Georgia is not buying the Trump team's arguments that Trump's activity trying to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State should be covered under the First Amendment.
Trump's team and his attorney Steve Sadow, had argued that Trump's activities in Georgia were core political speech that should be protected and that the indictment against him in Georgia should be dismissed.
Judge Scott McAfee not buying that argument. He said in a Thursday ruling, the defense has not presented nor is the court able to find any authority that the speech and conduct alleged is protected political speech.
They went on to say that Donald Trump's activities in the state are alleged to be in furtherance of criminal activity that Trump is alleged of having tried to deceive and harm the government in the state. And so Scott McAfee is allowing the case to proceed.
When it's actually going is an open question. The judge still has not set a trial date, even though Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis has said she hopes to see this case go to trial as soon its possible, perhaps as soon as August.
Again, a trial date still up to the judge.
Sara Murray, CNN -- Washington
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: President Biden will meet Friday with families of the six construction workers who died in the Baltimore bridge collapse. The White House previously announced he would be viewing the wreckage of the bridge which collapsed last week after that massive cargo ship hit one of its support pillars.
White House aide Tom Perez visited with some of the victims' families last week saying their deaths are a gut punch, both for the president and the families.
The U.S. Treasury secretary is set to hold talks with the Chinese vice premier in the coming hours. Janet Yellen, meeting with business leaders earlier in Guangzhou during her second visit to China with the Biden administration. The U.S. looking to press Beijing on what it calls unfair trade practices while working to improve relations between the world's two largest economies.
Our Kristie Lu Stout, following all of this from Hong Kong. Kristi, good to see you again. So she's back. She has an agenda exactly. What is she looking for?
KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CPR: Yes, Janet Yellen is back in China. She's there to further stabilize U.S.-China relationship but also to press Chinese leaders on the threat posed by overcapacity.
[01:39:50]
STOUT: She's been saying that China is over producing exports like solar panels and EVs, which distorts global markets and harms workers.
Now Yellen is making two stops -- Guangzhou and Beijing and today in Guangzhou, she's been meeting with members of the business community as well as Chinese leaders, including the Chinese vice premier, He Lifeng.
And this as it comes just days after that phone call. That was when U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Tuesday held their first direct talks since November when the APEC summit took place in San Francisco.
And during that call, she criticized Biden's moves to, in his words, suppress Chinas trade and tech development. Now, trade and tech development are indeed in focus today for Janet Yellen in Guangzhou.
I want you to listen to Yellen, part of her remarks that she gave ahead of a bilat she had this morning with the Governor Guangzhou (ph). Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JANET YELLEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF TREASURY: Building a healthy economic relationship requires a level playing field for American workers and firms. This includes the issue of China's industrial overcapacity which the United States and other countries are concerned can cause global spillovers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STOUT: Now, the Biden administration is concerned that Chinese subsidies, which have been introduced to revive its weak economy, that they're going to spark a glut of cheap Chinese goods, a flood of low- priced Chinese exports.
And this is something that has been dismissed by Chinese state-run media including Xinhua which slammed the concern is quote, "hype". But we have to keep in mind that just last month at the beginning of the National People's Congress, you heard from the Chinese premier Li Chong and he said, look over capacity is a problem for China.
Now, Yellen's current trip is a follow-up trip that she made to remember that visit that she did last July when she had those direct and productive talks, which on his economic leadership.
And in the speech that she gave in December, she talked about the need to responsibly manage this relationship. After all, this relationship is arguably Michael, the most important bilateral relationship in the world.
Back to you.
HOLMES: Yes, absolutely. Good to see you Kristie Lu Stout there in Hong Kong for us. Thanks.
Now, we know that oil and gas fossil fuels are big contributors to greenhouse gases. But what about landfills? The rubbish dump? A new study shows us the real cost of garbage and why it matters for the planet.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: Piles of garbage aren't just an eyesore. As it turns out, they're also a disaster for our climate. A new study in the "Journal Science" of methane pollution from 200 landfills and garbage dumps in 18 U.S. states shows emissions of that planet warming gas to be higher than previously thought, much higher.
[01:44:53]
HOLMES: Scientists say the study is the largest measurement-based survey of landfills in the U.S. These sites produce methane when things like food waste start decomposing without oxygen around it and releasing a bacteria that produces the gas.
The study shows that average methane emissions were almost 1.5 times higher than what is reported to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Earlier, I spoke with Daniel Cusworth, leading author of the study and director of science at Carbon Mapper, which is what the research teaches us about our dumpsites.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DANIEL CUSWORTH, DIRECTOR OF SCIENCE, CARBON MAAPPER: Solid waste emissions are thought to constitute about 20 percent of all human-made or anthropogenic methane emissions, both in the United States and globally. But the current methods to track that at the landfill level or at the national scale is really based on assumption and not based on empirical measurement.
So we conducted a survey of hundreds of landfills in the United States using direct measurement with NASA technology called imaging spectroscopy to understand the complex dynamics of landfill emissions and what we found was that over 50 percent of the landfills we surveyed had very large outsized emission sources that can be localized to certain areas on the face of the landfills.
So you might call these point sources and in some cases, these would constitute super-emitters. These are important because they're outsized in the total contribution that they make against that landfill sector.
And they're just very hard to understand and characterize in absence of direct measurements and they're really ripe for mitigation activity or progress because they can be local.
HOLMES: I saw you quoted in Scientific American and I'll just read it for people. You said, quote, you will sometimes see a massive billowing plume three kilometers long.
What's it like when that happens as a scientist is that a gut punch to see something like that.
CUSWORTH: You know, absolutely when our team sees this type of imagery, it's really a moment of discovery, I think for all of us. And that's what really drives us to try this, get this data out transparently and publicly so that the public can look at it and act on it and use it to inform mitigation technology.
It's also really important to have the right technology to do this, to make what's invisible, like methane, visible using this type of technology.
HOLMES: How -- just basically, for the rest of us here, how dangerous is methane, particularly in the climate context?
CUSWORTH: Yes, in the climate context, methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas in addition to carbon dioxide are the main greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
Methane is very different than carbon dioxide in that its more powerful, but shorter-lived in the atmosphere. So anytime methane is admitted, we live with that impulse for about 15 years compared to carbon dioxide, which can linger for centuries.
So that means that there's actually real short-term gains that we can realize if we go after methane emissions, because it gets removed from the atmosphere so much quicker. So it's a more powerful greenhouse gas but because it lives for less time in the atmosphere, if we prioritize and find the big sources of methane, we can really realize some great climate progress.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: Well, another close call in the air in the U.S. The Federal Aviation Administration investigating a Southwest Airlines flight that apparently flew too close to the air traffic control tower. Yes, the air traffic control tower at New York's LaGuardia airport during a landing attempt last month.
CNN's Pete Muntean with the details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: The bottom line here is this could have been so much worse. The Southwest Airlines flight 737 coming into land on March 23rd a Saturday at LaGuardia Airport.
The issue here was the weather was pretty poor, the visibility only down to about three-quarters of a mile according to air traffic control audio. This flight went around once, aborted its landing there on Runway 4 at LaGuardia.
The pilot said they had a bit of a tailwind number too fast and too high. They came back around for something called the ILS, the Instrument Landing System. That's a radio beam that beams out of the runway, gets the airplane on the glide path and lined up with the center of the runway.
And the flight got down to about 300 feet above the ground, according to data from Flight Radar 24. And this is the alarm that came across the radio from air traffic controllers.
Listen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go around. Go around. Fly runway heading maintain 2,000. Climb and maintain 2,000. Climb and maintain 2,000 -- 2,000.
Continue climbing, Southwest 147. And when able state a reason why you were like not on the approach.
MUNTEAN: The air traffic controllers went on to tell this flight Southwest Flight 147 that it was not lined up with the approach. That it was actually a little bit more east of the approach. And you could see the track here from Flight Radar 24, the line there pretty close to the control tower.
[01:49:53]
MUNTEAN: Flight Radar 24 tells us this plane was horizontally separated from the control tower by about 250 feet, but that only factors in the position of the antenna on the center of the airplane.
When you factor in the wingspan, the tip of the wing may have been only about 65 feet away from the control tower. The FAA says it's investigating, looking into whether or not this plane truly did come that close to the control tower. The National Transportation Safety Board says it is gathering information. Ultimately this flight that was inbound from Nashville diverted to BWI in Baltimore.
Pete Muntean, CNN -- Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: Well, the countdown is on where to get the best views of the total solar eclipse and why NASA plans to launch rockets into its path.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: Well, a warning for those living along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, the Gulf Coast, and Caribbean Islands, a preseason forecast predicts a record Atlantic hurricane season. This June through November could see 23 named storms, including 11 hurricanes and five category 3 or higher major hurricanes making this hurricane season more active, warmer ocean waters, and the weather phenomenon known as La Nina which suppresses upper-level winds and makes conditions ideal for hurricane formation and intensification.
Well, a rough ride on Wall Street this week, the Dow Jones Industrial average losing more than 500 points on Thursday, closing below 39,000 for the first time since mid-March. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 also lost more than one percentage point each.
The markets went south after the Minneapolis Federal Reserve president said interest rates might not be cut at all this year if inflation remains high, many investors were expecting the rate cuts to begin as early as June. The rising prices of oil and gold, also putting pressure on the markets.
Well, the highly-anticipated solar -- total solar eclipse in North America is just three days away. More than 20 million people across the U.S. are expected to travel for Monday's eclipse so they get the best view of it.
The path of totality as it's called, will cut right across the continent. But within the U.S. it will occur along a 160-kilometer- wide path from Texas to Maine, passing over cities like Dallas, Indianapolis, Buffalo, New York. But eclipse traces in some parts of the U.S. could face damaging thunderstorms that are threatening to spoil all the fun.
CNN's chief climate correspondent Bill Weir schools us on all things eclipse-related and explains why NASA will be launching rockets during the event.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Here's a bit of fun eclipse trivia to throw around on Mondays historic day. Did you know that Albert Einstein's theory of relativity was proven during an eclipse? He first floated the idea that the fabric of the universe can bend due to gravity, time, and space. And it took the 1919 eclipse for astronomers to prove it when they saw that stars weren't in the places they should have been -- distorted our perception here on earth.
[01:54:52]
WEIR: These days, the biggest scientific mystery really involves the ionosphere, which is the charge particles, a layer of the atmosphere between us and deep-space; and the corona, which is the atmosphere around the sun, millions of degrees hotter than the actual surface of the sun.
Don't know why it stays consistent while the sun goes through active and passive phases. This year, it is at solar maximum, which means it's going off.
And so when the eclipse happens, while most people on the ground will watch it for four minutes. Some very lucky pilots and scientists from NASA will fly special WB-57, 60,000 feet up into the sky and stay under the eclipse for six hours measuring the corona as it morphs around as the moon swallows the sun up there.
And then there are other experiments involving rockets. It's hard to study the ionosphere with planes or satellites, planes are too low. Satellites in the wrong spot. So they're going to shoot three rockets into the eclipse, which will release these sort of two liter-sized instruments to measure the ionosphere.
As the sun comes up wherever you are on the planet, those charged particles get really active and then they dim down as the sun sets, wherever you are.
This affects communication on earth between satellites, between terrestrial communication. There are even some amateur sort of citizen scientists who are participating on Monday, by using their ham radios to time transmissions and see how the ionosphere activity is changing over that four-minute period.
It's so easy to nerd out about this stuff, such a rare glimpse to share the sense of wonder, both as spectators, but just think about how excited they are at NASA headquarters.
Bill Weir, CNN -- New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: Thanks for watching, spending part of your day with me. I'm Michael Holmes.
Don't go anywhere though. CNN NEWSROOM continues with Anna Coren after this short break.
[01:56:48]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
