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Hezbollah: Military Targets Struck In Northern Israel; Israel On High Alert As Iran, Hezbollah Vow To Retaliate; Harris Looks To Make VP Choice Before Battleground Blitz; Worries About U.S. Economy Weigh On Global Markets; Rioters Attack Hotels As Tensions Escalate Over Knife Attack; At Least 91 People Killed Sunday In Anti-Government Protests; Debby Strengthens Into Category 1 Hurricane; Officials: Water Quality "Very Good" For Mixed Triathlon; Water Buffalo Race Marks Start Of Rice Cultivation Season. Aired 12-12:45a ET

Aired August 05, 2024 - 00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:00:30]

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome, everyone. I'm Michael Holmes. Appreciate your company.

Coming up here on "CNN Newsroom," looking to get out.

Many people headed to Beirut's airport, fearing Iran will retaliate soon against Israel.

Clashes turn deadly in Bangladesh, with growing calls for the prime minister to step down.

And two triathletes fall ill just days after swimming in the Seine. It's forcing Belgium to pull out entirely, as competition is set to resume just hours from now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from Atlanta, this is "CNN Newsroom with Michael Holmes."

HOLMES: Welcome, everyone.

Israel is facing growing threats of retaliation from its enemies days after the assassinations of two senior figures from Hezbollah and Hamas. Just hours ago, Hezbollah said a, quote, struck a military target in northern Israel, although Israel says many of them were intercepted and damage was minimal.

The escalation in fighting between Israel and the Lebanese militant group is raising fears of a wider war in the region. And as a result, Turkey has joined a growing list of countries urging their citizens to get out of Lebanon. Iran has vowed revenge against Israel, blaming it for the assassination of political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran last week.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is saying Israel will, in his words, stand against Iran on every front.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translation): The state of Israel is in a multi-arena war against Iran's axis of evil. We are striking hard at any of its arms. We're prepared for any scenario, both on the defense and the offence.

I tell our enemies again, we will react and exact a heavy price for any act of hostility towards us from any arena.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: U.S. President Joe Biden will convene his national security team in the coming hours after a call with the king of Jordan. The White House says the U.S. and Israel are preparing for every possibility and the Pentagon has sent additional military assets to the Middle East.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KIRBY, WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY COMMUNICATIONS ADVISER: Now, I don't know what they're going to do or when they're going to do it, but we've got to make darn sure that we're ready and that we have the capabilities in the region to be able to help Israel defend itself and, quite frankly, defend our own people, our own facilities, our own national security interests.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: On Sunday, Jordan's foreign minister made a rare visit to Iran where he called for peace, security and stability after meeting with Iran's president and other officials.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond is in Haifa, Israel with the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT (on-camera): The Israeli military is at a heightened state of alert as Iran threatens retaliation for the assassination of Hamas's political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in the Iranian capital. Iran has been threatening a direct attack against Israel and its proxies have been doing the same. Hezbollah, to Israel's north, is also threatening retaliation for the killing of its senior-most military commander in an Israeli military strike in the Lebanese capital.

And so, there's no question that this is a country that is bracing at this very moment for the potential -- of a potentially major attack on Israeli soil. The Israeli military has said that it is preparing to carry out air defense maneuvers in the event of an attack. It is also reviewing potential retaliatory actions should that Iranian strike actually come to pass.

That being said, though, there are still no changes in the Israeli military's home front command guidance to Israeli civilians. Those are the guidelines that tell civilians when there is the threat of potentially imminent attack, telling them to get their bomb shelters ready, to be at a heightened state of alert. But several cities, including Haifa, where we are now, as well as Jerusalem, have been issuing guidance to their residents, telling them to begin to make emergency preparations.

Meanwhile, there's a lot of rhetoric flying around. The Israeli prime minister threatening that Iran will pay a, quote, very heavy price should it carry out an attack on Israel, saying that Israel is prepared for any scenario. That's certainly rhetoric that is intended to try and make Iran question, make Iran recalculate what it is preparing to potentially carry out on Israeli soil, as there is a flurry of diplomatic activity in the region to try and avert the worst, which would be, of course, a regional war, one that would bring Israel and Iran into a direct state of confrontation.

[00:05:05]

American and UK citizens and other foreign citizens in Lebanon at this hour are being told to leave immediately. In Israel, flights are being cancelled in and out of Tel Aviv, so an extraordinary moment of tension in this region.

But that is certainly not slowing down the Israeli military's actions in Gaza. Another deadly strike on a school sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians on Sunday, killing at least 30 people, injuring 50 others, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense. Two schools in the al-Nasr neighborhood of western Gaza City were hit.

The Israeli military says that Hamas was operating a command-and- control center inside of those schools. But for now, what we do know is that, even as they say that they sought to minimize civilian casualties, there clearly were civilian casualties. The images coming out of those two schools show civilians, including children, being pulled out of the rubble, dead and injured alike.

Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Haifa, Israel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: And joining me now from Tel Aviv is Alon Pinkas, the former Israeli consul general in New York.

Good to see you again, sir.

Let's talk about Benjamin Netanyahu. Some, even within Israel, have pondered whether he perhaps even wants to provoke war with Iran and drag the U.S. into fighting it. What's your read on that in the context of the killing of the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, on Iranian soil?

ALON PINKAS, FMR ISRAELI CONSUL GENERAL IN NEW YORK: Well, good morning, Michael. Look, he wants two things. The first was to prolong the war in Gaza, to maintain an atmosphere of war. Once the war expanded, even on a low-intensity level of war, into Lebanon, he developed this provocation of Iran as a means to expand the war, to escalate the war in a way that would drag the U.S. in now (ph), it's sort of counterintuitive to many of our viewers why would he do that?

Well, there's a simple explanation for that. The first is to distance himself from October 7th, and to portray this or to, you know, fabricate this new narrative according to which this is not just a terror attack by Hamas on October 7th, but this is a regional war, this is an existential war, and this is an inter-civilizational war. He's been preaching that for many days.

HOLMES: Yes, he has.

PINKAS: Right. The second -- the second reason is that you turn the calamity and debacle of October 7th into some strategic triumph. If the U.S. takes out Iran's nuclear facilities, this is what he's been flirting with. And he's been doing this, quite frankly, since November. This is not new, and this is not a result of the assassination on Haniyeh, which, for purposes of provocation, was done in Tehran.

HOLMES: The newspaper you write for, Haaretz, has reported about what it calls a growing chasm between Netanyahu and the country's defense chiefs and intelligence chiefs over his handling of ceasefire and hostage negotiations. How is that tension playing out as the entire region is now on edge? And what is your sense of Netanyahu's desire to lower tensions anywhere in the region?

PINKAS: Well, OK. You know, the chasm began not just with the hostage deal and a ceasefire. It began with the military and intelligence services questioning Netanyahu's judgment on, A, the prosecution of the war, and, B, perhaps more importantly, the absence, the lack, the refusal to come up with a political plan, a framework for so-called post-war Gaza.

By neglecting or flagrantly refusing to come up with a plan, the war has no objective. And we all know that a war in which military means are not aligned with political objectives is going nowhere.

HOLMES: Yes.

PINKAS: As for -- as for these tensions, they play out every day. That the only thing is, Michael, that needs to be emphasized is that they haven't made it public yet. It's all leaks. It's all senior source. It's all, you know, divulging minimal amount of information.

At one point, it's going to come out on what you just mentioned, on the hostage deal, that Netanyahu is increasingly seen as the one undermining and stalling.

HOLMES: Yes. So, you've got a situation, you've got Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, proxies in Syria and Iraq perhaps gearing up for this expected response, all while the Israeli military is still fully engaged in Gaza. Does that make Israel vulnerable militarily?

PINKAS: It has to. I mean, you know, it doesn't matter how strong militarily a country can be when it -- when it is stretched on a 360- degree diameter, it has to be weakened, number one. Number two, technically, Israel's air defenses, the Iron Dome, the Arrow 3, can only take so many incoming missiles, rockets, and drones. Number three, there is a distance thing. I mean, Lebanon, and your correspondent is in Haifa, which is a few dozen kilometers away from Lebanon. Lebanon is close, but Iran is 2,000 kilometers away.

[00:10:39]

So, all that presents a multitude of challenges. Yes, it's vulnerable. Israel is still stronger militarily, certainly than Hezbollah, certainly more than the Houthis in Yemen, in southwest Yemen, and even more than Iran.

HOLMES: Right.

PINKAS: But nonetheless, you know, the three-frontal war, what Netanyahu chooses to call seven fronts, in order to, you know, to exaggerate the scale and scope of all this, definitely makes Israel vulnerable.

HOLMES: We're almost out of time, but I wanted to ask you real quick, you know, we've got these alleged disagreements between Netanyahu and defense chiefs. You've got massive protests still on the streets by Israelis wanting a deal done, and Netanyahu gone. The U.S. president trying to pressure Netanyahu. What -- what is the level of support for Netanyahu right now? How is he able to weather the internal and external pressures on him and survive politically?

PINKAS: Well, to be honest, I was mistaken, Michael. I didn't think he would survive October 7th this far, and he did. His coalition, you know, is a bunch of opportunistic politicians who did not stand up and did not do the right thing.

And so, he weathered that storm, and his coalition of 64 out of 120, so it's a very narrow majority. And the Knesset, the parliament, is now out of session, so he can't be toppled. So, he has until October, September, October, to try and somehow maneuver his way or extricate himself from this.

HOLMES: Right.

PINKAS: I am willing to be, you know, to gamble and be wrong again. I don't think he's going to survive this in the longer run. All that said, these domestic pressures and external pressures are going to take a very heavy toll on him.

HOLMES: Always good to get your analysis, Alon Pinkas, in Tel Aviv. Thanks so much.

PINKAS: Thank you, Michael.

HOLMES: Well, it is perhaps the most consequential decision of her political career so far. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will soon decide who will join her on the Democratic ticket as her running mate. And the clock is ticking.

Harris expected to appear with her choice at a Philadelphia rally on Tuesday, when they will kick off a campaign blitz across multiple battleground states throughout the week.

Sources say Harris interviewed at least three top VP contenders on Sunday. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. There's been renewed interest in Walz, according to those close to the Harris campaign.

All of this happening as a fresh CBS News and YouGov poll shows that there is no clear leader between Harris and Donald Trump. The presumptive Democratic nominee has improved on Joe Biden's performance with 50 percent among likely voters, Trump at 49 percent.

Still to come on the program, protests escalate in the UK as right- wing rioters attack hotels, housing asylum seekers. We'll have the British prime minister's message to demonstrators as violence flares across the country.

We'll be right back.

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[00:15:59]

HOLMES: U.S. stock futures are dropping ahead of what could be another rocky week for Wall Street. Just have a look at all that red. The NASDAQ down nearly 3 percent ahead of trading opening.

Each of the three major indexes finished out the week in the red on Friday, heading in the same direction to start the week. That came after a disappointing U.S. jobs report had investors looking to sell.

And Asian markets stumbled out of the gate this morning as the global sell off continued.

Marc Stewart following developments from Beijing. Marc, a rough start in Asia. What does this tell us about the week to come?

MARC STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Michael, it is just past lunchtime and some of the declines that we have seen here in Asia, some of the drops are quite frankly extraordinary. If we look in Japan, the Nikkei, the Benchmark Index, there, it was down by as much as 7 percent. In South Korea, the cost be down by 5 percent at one point.

To give you some context, if we see drops of anywhere from 1 to 2 percent, that's significant to see these larger numbers, it is just breathtaking. So as far as what's happening in Japan, at least. The Japanese yen, which has been very weak over recent months, is starting to get a bit stronger. Yet, at the same time, Japan's central bank is talking about interest rate hikes. And that is not sitting so well with investors, who really got some good bargains to begin with.

So, we are going to be watching Japan. We're going to be watching South Korea over the hours ahead. See how things close. But at this point, traders are looking for something to be excited about. And at this point, it is just very hard to find anything to be celebratory about at least looking into the near future. But these declines that we're seeing in Asia are also something that we're seeing in the U.S. In fact, as you mentioned, a very rough Friday as -- as -- as all three major indices in the U.S. closed downward. We had CNN have what's known as the fear and greed index. We look at all these different factors as to what motivates traders and people to invest their money. Is it agreed or is it fear?

And right now, based off of all these different factors that we look at, fear is what's dominating the index right now at 27 just hovering over to this index, we call extreme fear and there are a lot of reasons for traders to be concerned, especially in the United States and worldwide. We talked about the not so hot jobs report. The disappointing jobs report. We're also hearing from corporate America. We saw Intel announced layoffs, Amazon, which has been having some success. Looked into the future and said it will see growth, but it's just not going to be as fast as we have seen in the past. So those are all reasons that are giving investors pause.

And finally, Michael, I would be remiss if we didn't talk about the situation in the Middle East especially when it comes to oil prices, because we know they can be very volatile, especially when there is geopolitical tension.

But I heard from one trader overnight who is a little bit more muted in his concern. He feels that if there is war or if there's retaliation taking place on Iranian -- Iranian soil, that is when there is reason to be concerned. As far as across the broader Middle East, OPEC has lots of oil in reserve, and it is in a very strong place.

But Michael, as we look ahead to this week, not only do we have these geopolitical concerns to contend with, we also have bad weather, a potential hurricane in the United States. As this oil analyst told me, that is what could really have an impact on fuel prices, gas prices, in the week ahead, Michael.

HOLMES: Yes, yes. Not looking good at the moment.

Marc Stewart in Beijing. Appreciate it. Marc, thanks.

Rana Foroohar is a CNN global economic analyst. She's also a global business columnist and associate editor at the Financial Times. Good to see you, Rana.

Now in the U.S., you know, I'm the layman here. The unemployment rate is low. Job creation slowed, but jobs are still being created. Inflation's not perfect, but it's coming down close to the Fed's 2 percent goal. GDP is up. What's the problem?

[00:20:09]

RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: Good question, Michael. I mean, you know, you're -- you're basically making the case that the administration has been making and the Fed has been making, which is that, you know, the U.S. has been pretty good for some time now. We know that we've had really the strongest recovery post covid recovery of -- of any rich nation. We've outperformed peers in Europe and in Asia. It's been kind of a Goldilocks economy for some time. But we also know that there's always a recession on the other side of a recovery cycle.

And so, investors, policymakers, average people have been sort of waiting for the shoe to drop. The jobs numbers coming in as weak as they did, even though it's just one set of numbers. Coupled with the fact that earnings and some of the big tech companies disappointed the story about AI, which really void the markets over the last few months is -- is, you know, I won't say that there are holes being punched into it, but people are saying, you know, it's going to take a while for these gains to pay off.

You've got Kamala Harris in the race, which me and -- and -- and polling quite well, which means that all right now you're in a scenario where maybe you're not going to see a Donald Trump too, maybe you're not going to see more tax cuts. Corporations are concerned about tightening profit margins.

So, all of that together is creating a sense that hey, maybe we're in for slowdown at some point, unless the Fed is able to get out in front of the yield curve again.

HOLMES: So -- so how do you expect the markets to open in the U.S. on -- on Monday? Is this going to carry on, do you think? Or is it a blip?

FOROOHAR: I think we're going to see a lot of volatility this week. You know, as I say, it's very difficult to extrapolate the future from just one set of data points, right? You know, usually we say in -- in -- in this field that it takes three to make a trend. You want to see three a week jobs numbers before you start to say, OK, yes, there's a -- there's a real issue here.

That said, there's a sense that the Fed has waited perhaps too long to cut rates and has gotten behind the -- the -- the trend behind the economy, and that's always a risky point, because when the Fed is struggling to keep up and maybe having to make bigger rate cuts than usual, that makes investors very worried. And that's where we are right now.

I will also say, Michael, that just anecdotally, as I've been sort of traveling both in the U.S. and abroad this summer. I'm struck by two things. There is a feeling that there's a little bit of softening on Main Street. You can sort of feel it when you're in vacation spots. There's also, interestingly, the opposite. In Europe, you see a lot of Americans vacationing abroad, you know, pushing up inflation in some European and Asian countries at a time when those economies are weaker and all of it underscores the fact that while the global economy was moving in such a years since COVID, that's all changed.

So, there is just -- there are a lot of chinks now where volatility can kind of work its way into the system and -- and have surprising results. So, I think that that's -- that's something that's on investors' minds as well.

HOLMES: Yes, facts are facts. But of course, when it comes to the market, sentiment plays a huge role. Confidence, I guess, in -- in -- in terms of when people are selling.

For the average investor who's watching their retirement funds drop in some cases by a lot. What's your advice to that average person?

FOROOHAR: Well, so I would, I would say two things. First of all, you never want to panic when the market is correcting. Never, never panic. You know, if you haven't been preparing for a big market correction stocks, don't try and sell now. You know, you want to be balanced. You want to wait. You probably want to build up cash reserves if you can, because if there's a slowdown on Main Street as well, that could mean job losses. And, you know, you want to have cash on hand.

I've been arguing for some time that this is probably a good moment to start transitioning a little bit more away from stocks and into bonds. You can also look and say it's kind of a truism in investing that whatever does well in a certain decade, it's unlikely that that will be the story of the next decade.

So, if you look at what's done really well in the last decade, it's been U.S. stocks, big tech, and the American recovery. And so, you could look ahead and say it's probably going to be something else in the next decade that will do really well.

HOLMES: Rana Faroohar, always a pleasure. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it.

FOROOHAR: Thank you.

HOLMES: To the UK now where violent protests fueled by far-right groups intensified on Sunday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKERS (in unison): You all shit! You all shit! You all shit! You all shit!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Rioters in northern England vandalized and set fire to two Holiday Inn hotels being used to house asylum seekers. They also smashed windows and attacked police.

[00:25:03]

The violence erupting after three young girls were killed in a stabbing attack last week. The far right seized on that attack to spread disinformation and to mobilize anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant protests. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed the nation amid the unrest.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KEIR STARMER, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: I utterly condemn the far-right thuggery we've seen this weekend. Be in no doubt, those that have participated in this violence will face the full force of the law.

This is not protest. It is organized violent thuggery. And it has no place on our streets or online.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Journalist Elliott Gotkine has been following developments and has more for us now from London.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELLIOTT GOTKINE, JOURNALIST: Things do seem to have taken on a bit of a life of their own. We saw protests across cities in the UK on Saturday. And it was expected that there would be some more today on Sunday. But they really have degenerated into perhaps even more violence than we saw a day earlier.

This is in Tamworth in this evening. This is just outside Birmingham, the UK second city, where, as you say, the mob there tried to and succeeded in setting fire to a Holiday Inn Extra (ph), which has been housing asylum seekers, people that have come to this country to try to get refugee status. And I suppose it's the timing is Perhaps a little embarrassing for the local member of parliament, who's from the Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour Party, when just last week she said in parliament that the local people in Tamworth wanted their Holiday Inn back.

They didn't want it to continue housing asylum seekers and some of those people perhaps may have taken those words and taken matters into their own hands. And this just came a few hours after a mob also managed to set fire to a Holiday Inn Extra (ph) in Rotherham in the north of England, where also the fire was put out officers there with riot shield seemingly pinned against the wall of the hotel.

There is the rioters through projectiles at them. They smashed their way into the hotel. They took out furniture and started hurling that at the officers as well. At least 10 officers have been injured. There have been what -- there's something like 150 arrests after -- after yesterday's violence. No doubt there have been many more today.

And there's even reports that the government is going to have to draft an extra lawyers and have courts working kind of overnight to process the large number of people that are going to have to go through the legal system now after being caught on camera and being found to be in breach of the law.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Ukraine is celebrating what it calls a new chapter two and a half years after Russia's full-scale invasion, and here's why.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Amazing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now those are the first of long-awaited F-16 fighter jets operating inside Ukraine. They've been donated by Ukraine's allies after months of negotiations and pleading from Ukraine's leaders and training for Ukrainian pilots who had to learn how to fly them.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked his Western partners for transferring the planes and for training the Ukrainian crews.

Russia has maintained air superiority throughout the course of the war, but these F-16s and the others still to follow will offer critical air cover for Ukrainian forces. They can attack ground targets, intercept missiles, and take on enemy planes from the sky.

North Korea claims to be moving 250 new tactical ballistic missile launches to military positions near the South Korean border.

State media published photographs purporting to show vehicle-based missile launches and dozens of large military trucks. They were revealed in this massive ceremony in Pyongyang on Sunday night. It's unclear if any of the vehicles are loaded with functioning missiles though. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave a statement saying his country quote, must be more thoroughly prepared for confrontation.

Still to come on the program, the deadliest day yet in the anti- government protests in Bangladesh, as calls for the prime minister's resignation have been met with new levels of violence.

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[00:31:53]

HOLMES: Sunday was the deadliest day yet in the ongoing protests in Bangladesh, with Reuters reporting at least 91 people killed in clashes between protesters and police. What started as a student demonstration against hiring quotas for civil service jobs has grown into a wider protest, with tens of thousands of people calling for the Prime Minister's resignation. The government has cut off internet service and imposed an indefinite nationwide curfew.

CNN's Hanako Montgomery joins me now live from Tokyo with the latest. And Hanako, tell us more about how the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has responded to these protests. She's been pretty defiant.

HANAKO MONTGOMERY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Michael, she has been very defiant. Previously, she entertained the idea of speaking to some of these students in an engaging conversation in a non-committed dialogue to really listen to these student protesters and listen to their demands. But we've heard in recent days her calling these students that she once said she would listen to terrorists.

And it's very clear here, as you described just then, that this -- these demonstrations have turned into a much wider anti-government movement. In fact, some of the student protest leaders are calling on the entire country to engage in civil disobedience. They're calling on citizens to stop paying their taxes, to stop paying utility bills, to stop taking public transportation.

And they're also urging Hasina to step down, to resign. And for her and her government to take responsibility, to be held accountable for the numerous deaths and injuries we've seen during these often fatal demonstrations.

Take a look at how some of these protests are flaring up once more in Bangladesh.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MONTGOMERY (voice-over): Dhaka is a battleground. That's how one witness described chaotic scenes in the Bangladeshi capital, as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets. Some wielding sticks and knives, demanding the resignation of the country's Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I want to step down Sheikh Hasina!

MONTGOMERY (voice-over): Dozens of people were killed on Sunday alone in a resurgence of protests that have spread nationwide, with violent clashes erupting between demonstrators, police, and ruling party supporters.

Rallies that began last month over quotas for civil service jobs have escalated into widespread fury with protesters demanding Hasina and her ministers be held accountable for the rising death toll.

NAHID ISLAM, COORDINATOR, STUDENTS AGAINST DISCRIMINATION (through translation): She must resign, and she must face trial, and not only Sheikh Hasina, her whole cabinet and the government must resign. This regime and the fascist rule must be abolished.

MONTGOMERY (voice-over): Protests began in July, led by students angry over hiring rules that would reserve more than half of civil servant positions which are highly prioritized for select applicants. Students said it's a discriminatory system that would cut down on job opportunities in a workforce where an estimated 18 million young people are unemployed.

[00:35:02]

In the clashes that followed, at least 150 people were killed, thousands injured, and about 10,000 arrested. A military enforced curfew and a mobile and internet blackout attempted to suppress protests. As well as a ruling by the country's Supreme Court to reduce the quotas.

But public anger has only intensified with protests returning in recent days.

ZUHAINA AMIN, PROTESTER (through translation): It wasn't possible to stay at home anymore. Everyone is on the street. Many people who are younger than me are no longer with us. They've been killed. They've been killed just because they came to the streets, just like us. So how is it possible for me not to come here?

MONTGOMERY (voice-over): A new indefinite curfew is in place, and internet access is once again cut off. Hasina blames her political rivals for the unrest, saying the main opposition party and other adversaries have infiltrated the student movement. The human rights groups have accused authorities of using excessive force to stifle dissent and curtail civil liberties in the past. And in a troubling sign, Hasina also warned anyone engaging in what she calls sabotage will be treated as a criminal in one of the biggest tests yet to her rule in 15 straight years in power.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MONTGOMERY: And Michael, we're also hearing reports that there could be a very large demonstration in Dhaka, the capital today, leading many to fear that there could be more bloodshed in the coming hours. Michael.

HOLMES: All right. Hanako, thanks for the report. Hanako Montgomery there in Tokyo for us.

Still to come here on the program, athletes withdraw from a triathlon event in Paris amid reports of illness after swimming in the River Seine and Olympic officials are pushing back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: Well, Debby has now strengthened into a category one hurricane as it moves towards Florida's Big Bend region. It's expected to further intensify before making landfall in the coming hours.

The National Hurricane Center says the storm already has sustained winds of 120 kilometers an hour. Debby expected to bring historic amounts of rainfall and storm surge to parts of the southeast. Georgia, Florida and South Carolina have all declared a state of emergency as the storm approaches.

Monday's mixed relay triathlon has been cleared to go ahead at the Paris Olympics amid continued concerns over water quality in the River Seine. Belgium's entire team has withdrawn from the event after one of their athletes became ill after competing in the Seine, even though it's not confirmed if the illness was actually linked to the river. Officials maintain the river has been declared safe now for athletes.

CNN's Melissa Bell reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (on-camera): Lots of questions ahead of Monday's triathlon relay event after two triathletes who were involved in the individual races last week have fallen sick. A Swiss triathlete who will now no longer be taking part in the Swiss team's relay race on Monday. The Belgian team withdrawing entirely after one of their triathletes fell ill.

[00:40:16] No word yet on a direct link between the illnesses of the two triathletes and the conditions in the River Seine last week. We've been pressing Paris 2024 for more answers on the question. For now, no response has come.

What Paris 2024 have announced is that they are giving green light to the event happening on Monday morning. In the past last week, they waited until the early hours the morning of the event itself to confirm that the water levels, the bacteria levels in the River Seine were sufficiently low. That the events could go ahead now after criticism (ph) they've announced this Sunday that that race will go ahead, even though the Swiss lineup will be different and the Belgians will now not be present.

So, a lot of questions going forward about exactly what caused them to fall ill, even as the world prepares to watch the relay race go ahead.

Melissa Bell, CNN, Paris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Well, the competition continues on day 10 of the Paris Games with more medals up for grabs. Among those are individual events in artistic gymnastics for both men and women. Team USA's Simone Biles has yet another chance to earn more Olympic hardware. Both women's track cycling and men's -- men's and women's surfing will also hold their finals.

Have a look at the current medal count in Paris. Team USA sitting tied with China for the most gold medals, with 19 each. The Americans have a comfortable lead in total medal count, 71 overall, to China's 45 in second place. Australia proudly there in fourth.

In snowy Alaska, they have dog sledding, but in the rice fields of Thailand, local farmers compete in traditional water buffalo racing, which helps kick off the rice cultivation season. It's hot, so even in the wet, muddy track, racers splash water on the buffaloes to keep them cool and race ready. The water buffaloes are, of course, working animals, and as traditional agricultural practices come under pressure, the focus is to maintain the health of the animals, and the race also aims to honor the buffaloes historic role in agriculture.

Thanks for spending part of your day with me. I'm Michael Holmes. You can follow me on X and Instagram @HolmesCNN.

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