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CNN International: Israel Using AI to Help Pick Bombing Targets; Federal Judge Declines to Dismiss Classified Documents Case; Close Call Between Plane, Control Tower Under Investigation; Countdown to Monday's Rare Total Solar Eclipse; Teams Prepare for Tonight's NCAA Final Four. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired April 05, 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. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister spoke on Thursday for the first time since Israeli airstrikes killed those seven aid workers in Gaza. The White House says Joe Biden demanded specific, concrete and measurable steps to protect civilians and aid workers in Gaza and to facilitate more aid getting in, or the U.S. would reconsider its policies.

Authorities in Taiwan say 25 people are missing, more than two days after the island was hit by its most powerful earthquake in decades. At least 10 people are dead, with more than 1,000 others injured.

And the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is holding high-level talks in China. The U.S. wants to improve relations between the world's two largest economies, whilst also tackling what it calls unfair trade practices.

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 has more on that story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): After Israel's attack on a World Central Kitchen aid convoy in Gaza, questions about the IDF's targeting process are front and center.

JOSE ANDRES, WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN FOUNDER: This was not just a bad luck situation where, oops, we dropped the bomb in the wrong place or no, this was over 1.5, 1.8 kilometers with a very defined humanitarian convoy that had signs in the top, in the roof.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): 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 JOURNALIST: So one source told me that he would spend roughly 20 seconds before authorizing each target. And the only supervision they needed to do is to check if the targets, the machine marked was a male or female.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): According to the reporting, the AI program called Lavender identifies and marks alleged militants in Gaza from low-level ones to senior commanders.

ABRAHAM: One source told me it's 90 percent of the people, so hundreds of thousands of people. And it gives -- 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 (voice-over): But Abraham says, his sources told them AI 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 (voice-over): The Israel defense forces have not denied the use of AI 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 EUROPE COMMANDER: Because 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 (voice-over): 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 noncombatant Gazans from increasing even further.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Berlin.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[04:35:02] FOSTER: Some legal setbacks with Donald Trump. A federal judge declined to dismiss the charges against him 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 attorneys did not meet the legal standard to dismiss the charges. Paula Reid has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Judge Aileen Cannon rejecting an effort by former President Trump to have the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case tossed out based on the argument that he had the right to take those papers home as he argues these were his personal records. Now he's making this argument under the Presidential Records Act.

That is a post-Watergate law that governs which materials created during an administration belong to the government or the president. Now this argument has been rejected by the special counsel. They have insisted that this should not be able to factor into a case.

It's creating actually a lot of tension between prosecutors and the judge. Prosecutors have signaled that if the judge allows this issue to come in at trial, they may seek an appeal, an appellate review.

Now this is just one of many motions to dismiss that Trump has filed. The judge currently has eight motions to dismiss, sitting on her desk, outstanding, in addition to several other issues. The most significant other issue is, of course, when will this case go to trial? It is lightly penciled in for late May, but that was expected to be a placeholder. And it's been over a month since she held a hearing, arguments from both sides about when this case should go forward.

And look, every motion, every hearing, every day that passes makes it less and less likely that this case will go before the November election.

Paula Reid, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: That wasn't Trump's only legal headache. A judge in Atlanta on Thursday upheld the criminal indictment against the former president in the Georgia election interference case. Judge Scott McAfee rejected the argument that Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election were protected by the First Amendment. He says Trump's language about the outcome and execution of the election threatened to deceive and harm the government.

McAfee's ruling pushes the state's racketeering case against Trump forwards, but it's still not clear when the trial will begin.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is doing damage control for his social media website, Truth Social. He's looking to hype it up after stock prices dropped this week. The plunge came after the company said it lost more than $58 million and generated very little revenue last year. On Thursday, Trump posted all of the competitors to Truth Social,

especially those in the radical left Democrats Party who are failing at every level, like to use their vaunted disinformation machine to try to convince people. And it's not easy to do, that truth is not such a big deal. I think truth is amazing.

Well, President Biden will meet today with families of the six construction workers who died in the Baltimore bridge collapse. The White House previously announced he'd be viewing the wreckage of the bridge, which collapsed last week after a 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 for the families.

Previously unreported audio is adding to the picture of what happened before last week's horrific bridge collapse. The walkie talkie radio transmissions reported for the first time by the Associated Press on Thursday appear to show someone asking why traffic on the bridge had been stopped in the moments before the massive cargo ship actually hit the bridge. It's unclear who is speaking in the recording and whether they were actually on the bridge. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you say?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trying to get a message out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you say?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trying to get a message out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I still don't understand you, buddy, slow down and speak.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Be clear, they're just holding traffic because a ship lost its steering. That's all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Well, another close call in the air in the U.S. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a Southwest flight that apparently flew too close to the air traffic control tower at New York's LaGuardia Airport during a landing attempt last month. Pete Muntean has the details on that.

(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. And the visibility only down to about three quarters of a mile according to air traffic control audio.

[04:40:00]

This flight went around once, aborted its landing there on Runway 4 at LaGuardia. The pilots said they had a bit of a tailwind and were 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.

CONTROLLER: Go around, go around! Fly runway heading 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 can see the track here from Flight Radar 24, the line there pretty close to the control tower. Flight Radar 24 tells us this plane was horizontally separated from the control tower by about 250 feet.

But that only factors into 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)

FOSTER: The report reveals some alarming predictions on cancer. Data from the American Cancer Society found that 20 million cancer cases were diagnosed in 2022. That number is predicted to increase 77 percent by 2050, meaning up to 35 million new cancer cases per year in the next 25 years.

The report says population growth and aging are key drivers of the increase, but different cancer types affect some more than others. One oncologists tell CNN that 50 percent of cancers are preventable. And you can reduce your cancer risk by maintaining a healthy diet, exercising regularly, limiting alcohol and, of course, avoiding smoking.

Now, the countdown is on where to get the best views of the total solar eclipse in the U.S. and why NASA plans to launch rockets into its path.

Plus, it's shaping up to a hurricane season for the record books. And researchers warn they have, quote, above normal confidence in their grim predictions. We'll give you those details next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FOSTER: The highly anticipated 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 spectacle. The path of totality will cut across the continent.

But within the U.S. it'll occur along a 160-kilometer-wide path passing over cities like Dallas, Indianapolis and Buffalo, New York. And we'll move off the main coast around a 360-kilometer-wide path passing over cities like Dallas, Indianapolis and Buffalo, New York. And will move off the main coast around 3:30 p.m. local time before making its way to Canada.

A possible wrench in the plans for those hoping to get a glimpse of Monday's eclipse. Severe storms are possible in parts of the southern plains and lower Mississippi Valley which threaten to obscure the view for some and pose some risks as well for post-eclipse travelers.

A silver lining for those in the northeast though where high pressure and a largely cloud-free sky could make for excellent viewing conditions.

The current cloud forecast isn't as forgiving for other locations along the path of totality but it's still too early to say exactly when and where clouds will actually develop on Monday.

CNN's chief climate correspondent Bill Weir schools us on all things eclipse-related and explains why NASA will be launching rockets during the historic event.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Here's a bit of fun eclipse trivia to throw around on Monday's 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.

These days the biggest scientific mystery really involves the ionosphere which is the charged particles 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 that solar maxim 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-57s 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 sunup 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)

FOSTER: Well the eclipse is even having effects on Major League Baseball. The New York Yankees announced on Thursday it's pushing back the start time of Monday's game against the Miami Marlins. The game was originally slated to start just after 2 p.m. local time just as the eclipse will be making its path of totality across New York State.

The game will now begin at 6:05 Eastern. If you have tickets to the game, don't wait until the last minute to get there. The first 15,000 fans will receive a Yankees solar eclipse t-shirt.

Join us on Monday for the total solar eclipse as it travels from Mexico through the eastern U.S. and into Canada. Experience the total eclipse from numerous locations with plenty of science and excitement along the way. Bill will be there of course. Our special coverage starts at 12 p.m. Eastern.

A pre-season 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.

The lead forecaster warns this is the most active April forecast they have ever issued. CNN metrologist Chad Myers breaks it down for you. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well indeed, our water temperatures here in the Atlantic are 3 to 5 degrees warmer than they should be at this time of year. Indicative of really late April, not early April. And so our hurricane season will likely start earlier than usual. A more active season changing to La Nina.

And I'll tell you what that means in a second. And obviously the warm ocean temperatures from the record-breaking year of 2023 globally. So Colorado State, 23, 11, and 5. Those are the numbers for storms with names, hurricanes, and majors.

Now last year they had 13, 6, and 2. And it turned out to be 20, 7, and 3. So they're not overestimating in April just in case.

[04:50:00]

What they see is what they get here in the warm temperatures with an early start and maybe a late end. That's how we get to these numbers here.

Landfall anywhere across the U.S. is never a certainty. And even this year with all of those storms in the water we're still only about 63 percent on average right now compared to what we should be in the 40s for any landfall hurricane for any given season. Of course across the Gulf Coast here too a 42 percent chance of something in the Gulf getting to major category.

That doesn't mean that storms aren't going to landfall. It just means those major storms making landfall there.

So what does La Nina do? Well kind of the opposite of what El Nino did last year. El Nino made a lot of disturbances here. A lot of what we call shear in the atmosphere. Well now the jet stream is going to be farther to the north. And that means that there's going to be less shear. Less shear down here means the storms aren't going to be torn apart. If you have storms that aren't torn apart you're going to get more storms to continue. And so therefore more storms forming and more storms moving up toward the west.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: It is not unusual for Montreal, Canada and it's a province of Quebec to have a big snowfall instead of April showers at this time of year. More than 126,000 homes and businesses in the region were still without power on Thursday after a surprise snowstorm.

Forecasters say the city got almost a third of a meter of snow. The wintry blasts downed trees, damaged cars and forced schools to close. The electric utility hopes to get the lights back on though for most people later today.

Still ahead, Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark takes the court tonight as the women's college basketball playoffs come down to the final four.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FOSTER: It's a huge weekend for college basketball fans in the U.S. The men's final four games are on Saturday and the women take the court tonight. North Carolina State and South Carolina will face off for the first game. And Caitlin Clark will be the center of attention, of course, as Iowa takes on University of Connecticut in the later game.

Here's what NBA living legend LeBron James had to say about the competition.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEBRON JAMES, LOS ANGELES LAKERS: I don't think there's, you know, much difference between the men and women game when it comes to college basketball. I think the popularity comes in is the icons that they have in the women's game.

You're able to build, you know, like a real like iconic legacy at a program and that's what we all love about it.

CAITLIN CLARK, IOWA HAWKEYES: He knows what he's talking about. He pays attention. You know, he supports the game. He doesn't just talk about it. Like he really shows up and supports and I think that's the coolest thing. One of the greatest players of all time really helping support and grow women's basketball. That's exactly what we need.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: We'll see just how many points Caitlin Clark can score tonight. Meanwhile, the 22-year-old senior has received a piece of hardware for her trophy case. The Iowa guard has been selected as the Associated Press Women's College Player of the Year. It comes just a day after she was named the 2024 Naismith Women's College Player of the Year.

South Carolina's Dawn Staley won her third consecutive AP Coach of the Year award.

Now for the stories in the spotlight. And the world's first recipient of a genetically edited pig kidney transplant is now recuperating at home two weeks after the operation. Doctors with Massachusetts General Hospital say 62-year-old Rick Slayman is recovering well.

They predict his new kidney could last years, though they acknowledge there are many unknowns in transplants from animals to humans.

[04:55:00]

Slayman, a manager with the State Transportation Department, says this moment is one of the happiest of his life.

I'm sure Holly Golightly would approve. A diamond-encrusted signed first edition of Breakfast at Tiffany's is for sale at an international book fair in New York. Worth around $1.5 million, the bejeweled Truman Capote classic is a one of a kind. The novella is bound in black goatskin and has more than 1,000 white diamonds in a platinum setting. The cover also features a design inspired by a 1950s New York street map where Tiffany's flagship store's location is marked with a single one-carat emerald-cut sapphire.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IAN KAHN, LUX MENTIS BOOKSELLER: It's a unicorn, and it was designed to be a unicorn. The principles behind its creation had every intention of creating a work of art with a capital A. And they succeeded. It's stunning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Now to a tiny Italian island with no hotels, no roads, but loads of goats.

Alicudi, which is near Sicily, is home to about 100 people, but has been overrun by some 600 goats. They invade homes. They try to climb walls and munch on whatever they can find.

The mayor has had enough, and he wants to fix the issue with an Adopt- a-Goat program. Anyone interested in taking up to 50 goats can apply. The catch? You have to be able to catch them. Applicants have 15 days to get their goats. To get them off the island as well.

Paul McCartney singing the praises for Beyonce's version of Blackbird, meanwhile.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEYONCE, SINGER, SONGWRITER: Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly

All your life ...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: The song is featured in Beyonce's newly released country album and in an Instagram post on Thursday, McCartney said he found her rendition of the 1968 Beatles hit quote magnificent. Saying it reinforces the civil rights message that inspired him to write it.

In his post, he said Beyonce thanked him for writing the song and letting her cover it, but McCartney added, I told her the pleasure was all mine.

Thanks for joining me here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Max Foster in London. CNN "THIS MORNING" is up next after a quick break.