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Eras Tour Breaks Sales Records and Boosts Tourism; Takeaways from Night Two of the DNC; Iran: Response to Israel Must Be Carefully Calibrated; Obamas Fire Up Democrats and Rally Around Harris; Search Crews Resume Hund for Six Missing People; Russia: 11 Drones Shot Down Over Moscow. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired August 21, 2024 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ANNA STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Lights, camera, fans smile. With August slipping away, Taylor Swift's European tour is coming to a close, leaving behind windfall profits. Swift has dazzled fans in Dublin, shaken it off in Warsaw and styled it out in Stockholm. All to the tune of millions of dollars in sales and a boost to retail, travel and hospitality businesses.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's got to be tired because if I am she's going to be tired too.
STEWART: How much Taylor Swift have you played in the last few days?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, hours. It's been my whole life.
STEWART (voice-over): In the U.K., the average fan is spending $1,100 all in, according to analysis from Barclays Bank. They estimate a $1.27 billion boost for the British economy. Gelsenkirchen, Germany, hosted almost as many Swifties as the city's population, giving the hotel sector a swift lift. Fans say it's all worth the hype.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've spent a lot of money.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's not good. We spent it last year, so it's like it's not real strain.
STEWART: You've forgotten all about it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).
STEWART: I love that.
STEWART (voice-over): Eras is the highest grossing tour of all time, according to Polestar, eclipsing $1 billion in sales before the 2024 concerts in South America, Asia and Europe even began. And it's had no shortage of viral moments in Europe, from celebrity appearances to fans without tickets clamoring to get a view. And the guy on the Chiefs. London had to bolster security after three Vienna shows were cancelled due to a terror threat. But even then, Swifties in the Austrian city rallied with fans singing her music in the streets.
After more than 40 sold-out shows across Europe, Miss Americana is heading back to North America. Swift gets a two-month break until she hits Florida, Louisiana and later Canada.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like the adrenaline probably keeps her going.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm sure when she finishes the tour she'll sleep for about two years.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, she must be knackered, like they say in the U.K.
STEWART (voice-over): But for now, it's so long, London.
Anna Stewart, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: We'll take a break. When we come back, a delegate roll call like no other on day two of the Democratic National Convention.
Also ahead, Iran's parliament voting for a new cabinet today. We are live in Tehran, live in the parliament, with the very latest.
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VAUSE: It's going on 4.35 a.m. here. Welcome back to our viewers all around the world. I'm John Vause. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM.
Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz will headline day three of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The Minnesota Governor will give his speech tonight after former President Bill Clinton.
Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz has fought off a primary challenge in Florida, setting him up for a chance at re-election this November. Gaetz was up against a candidate backed by his nemesis and former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
And Montana is now the eighth state to add abortion rights to the November ballot. Voters will consider an amendment to the state's constitution that would protect access to the medical procedure. Abortion rights have become a key election issue nationwide after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.
Iran now says its retaliation against Israel for the killing of Hamas leader in Tehran must be carefully calibrated. Iran's U.N. mission says it's to avoid adversely impacting a possible ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Well, for more, let's go to CNN's Fred Pleitgen live in Tehran, live
in the parliament there, where they're voting in a cabinet. We'll get to that in a moment. But just, it does seem that Iran is sort of walking back, if you like, the seriousness of the strike that could yet be coming against Israel. What's the feeling from there?
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, at the very least, the timing of all of this, because of course, one of the things that the Iranians had said initially is that all of this could be imminent and there would be a very strong strike against the Israelis upcoming.
One of the things, though, that we've heard from several sources, and this really started last night, John, is that, for instance, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, they said that there could be a prolonged waiting period, as they put it. They also said that there would be an adequate response, but not necessarily how hard they plan to hit the Israelis.
Now, overnight, we had that statement from Iran's U.N. mission in New York, where they also said that it would be at a time of their choosing. But they also, for the first time, said that they did not want all of this to have adverse effects on a possible ceasefire in Gaza. Of course, those talks are ongoing.
I spoke to the former commanding general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps yesterday, and he did say that he believed that Iran needed to create deterrence. Here's what he said.
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MOHSEN REZAEE, FORMER COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, ISLAMIC REVOLUTIONARY GUARD CORPS (through translator): The occupying power of Jerusalem is a regime that will continue its evil acts if it does not receive a harsh response. Also, the United States and Europe have not been able to control this regime.
PLEITGEN: How does Iran find the right measure to prevent this from turning into a bigger war in the region?
REZAEE (through translator): We have investigated the possible repercussions, and we will not let Netanyahu, who is sinking in a swamp, save him himself. The Iranian actions will be very calculated ones.
PLEITGEN: The United States has threatened Iran, though, with what they call cataclysmic consequences if Iran strikes Israel. What's your reaction to that?
REZAEE (through translator): The U.S. is highly vulnerable to Iran. The commanders of the U.S. military are aware of Iran's capabilities. Therefore, they will avoid taking action against Iran.
On the other hand, the U.S. is facing problems regarding their own defense coasts. There has to be a ceasefire in Gaza soon. The United States and Israel should not repeat their mistakes. If, in the first weeks of the Gaza War, the United States had stopped Israel and Netanyahu, the war would not extend. So, the main element of the extension of the war are the U.S. and Israel. The more this war extends, the more the United States will be damaged.
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PLEITGEN (on camera): And that's something, John, that we've heard from several Iranian officials, that they do want a ceasefire to happen. Obviously, the Iranians are also very closely watching the talks that have been taking place, first in Doha and now a set move to Cairo. At the same time, the Iranians did change their tune to a certain degree in that, in the past, they had said that the issue of the ceasefire and the issue of their retaliation were completely separate.
Now, for the first time, they are saying that they don't want any sort of retaliation to have those adverse effects, as they put it, on a possible ceasefire -- John.
VAUSE: Fred, thank you. Fred Pleitgen, live for us from Tehran. Appreciate the update.
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Night two of the Democratic National Convention and former First Lady Michelle Obama delivered one of the most powerful speeches so far, warning Democrats to avoid a Goldilocks complex, being overly concerned about everything being just right. She urged them to work hard to elect Vice President Kamala Harris.
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MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER U.S. FIRST LADY: If they lie about her -- and they will -- we've got to do something. If we see a bad poll, then we will. We've got to put down that phone and do something. If we start feeling tired, if we start feeling that drag sweeping back in, we've got to pick ourselves up, throw water on our face and what?
CROWD: Do something!
M. OBAMA: We only have two and a half months, y'all, to get this done. Consider this to be your official ask. Michelle Obama is asking you, no, I'm telling y'all to do something.
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VAUSE: Michelle Obama was followed by former U.S. President Barack Obama, a double act which supercharged what was already a high-energy event in Chicago. Here's CNN's Julia Benbrook.
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JULIA BENBROOK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: On Tuesday, Democrats framed the election as a choice between two very different visions for America, former President Donald Trump's and Vice President Kamala Harris's. The theme for the evening, a bold vision for America's future. BENBROOK (voice-over): On the second day of the Republican National
Convention, a ceremonial roll call, starting with Delaware, President Joe Biden's home state.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Home of our beloved 46th president of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.
BENBROOK (voice-over): And ending with California, where Vice President Kamala Harris is from.
GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D) CALIFORNIA: We proudly cast our 482 votes for the next president, Kamala Harris.
BENBROOK (voice-over): With a few surprises in between.
Later in the night, high-profile speakers shared both professional and personal perspectives. Second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, calling his spouse a joyful warrior who rises to the occasion.
DOUG EMHOFF, SECOND GENTLEMAN: I'm so proud of how you're stepping up for all of us.
BENBROOK (voice-over): The Obamas headlined the night, with former First Lady Michelle Obama making a passionate plea to voters.
M. OBAMA: We have the power to turn our country away from the fear, division and smallness of the past.
BENBROOK (voice-over): Former President Barack Obama looked to affirm why the Harris-Walz ticket is what the country needs right now, and underscored the stakes of the election.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our job is to convince people that democracy can actually deliver. And in doing that, we can't just point to what we've already accomplished. We can't just rely on the ideas of the past. We need to chart a new way forward.
BENBROOK: Meanwhile, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, hit the campaign trail, holding a rally in Milwaukee. The convention did live stream part of their event here in the arena. Walz will speak to the crowd on Wednesday, and Harris will close the event on Thursday.
Reporting in Chicago, I'm Julia Benbrook.
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VAUSE: The search for a missing luxury yacht which sank off Sicily is now to day three. At least one is confirmed dead, the ship Chef, who was from Antigua. Six others remain missing, four Britons and two Americans.
This newly released images from Monday morning actually shows the final moments in the storm, which sank the yacht. CNN's Barbie Nadeau has the very latest now on the search. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARBIE LATZA NADEAU, CNN REPORTER (voice-over): A dream Mediterranean holiday turned deadly when a luxury yacht carrying VIPs was hit by a water spout early Monday morning off the coast of Sicily. Of the 22 passengers and crew on board, at least 15 people survived. Divers searched through the night to recover those trapped in the sunken vessel.
On board, tech titan Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, Morgan Stanley chairman Jonathan Bloomer, and prominent attorney Chris Morvillo and their wives, an official told CNN.
Lynch's wife, whose company owned the 56-meter yacht, survived. All the passengers were guests of Lynch, who was acquitted of fraud charges in the U.S. over the sale of his company.
A local fisherman who was waiting out the storm saw the ill-fated yacht.
FABIO CEFALU, FISHERMAN (through translator): We waited about 10 minutes to see the intensity of the tornado, and we went out to sea. We were first to give rescue, but we found no one at sea. We only found cushions and the remains of the boat.
NADEAU (voice-over): The luxury yacht's 72-meter, 236-foot aluminum mast snapped in the storm, sending 15 people into the sea, including a one-year-old girl whose mother carried her above her head in the waves, she told reporters.
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The survivors, including all 10 crew members, were rescued by a nearby sailboat who found them in a lifeboat.
KARSTEN BORNER, SAILOR: There was 15 people inside, four people injured, three heavy injured, and we brought them to our ship, and then we communicated with the Coast Guard, and after some time the Coast Guard came, and later they picked injured people, and when we went two hours later they picked up the other people.
NADEAU (voice-over): The local prosecutor has opened an investigation to determine whether the tragedy could have been averted or if circumstances were beyond anyone's control.
Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN, Rome.
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VAUSE: When we come back here on CNN, Russia insists Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region are being pushed back, but then there are reports and video which tell a completely different story.
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VAUSE: Moscow's mayor says one of the largest Ukrainian drone attacks on the city has been prevented with at least 11 drones intercepted and destroyed. Russia also insists that they will repel Ukrainian forces from the Kursk region. The Russian military is now building temporary bridges across a key river in that region.
CNN's Clare Sebastian live from London this hour. Good to see you. Now tell us more about this Ukrainian drone strike on Moscow overnight and the size of the attack seems to be quite relevant.
CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's been a pretty large one. These are, as you know, John, extremely regular. We see Ukraine quite often targeting across the border with drones, multiple regions, but hitting the Moscow region particularly hard this time, 11 drones.
The Russian Ministry of Defense say were shot down over the Moscow region out of a total of 45 targeting multiple regions. And the mayor of Moscow is calling it one of the biggest drone attacks on the city ever.
Now, we don't know what the targets were, but we do know that when you see these drone attacks from Ukraine, usually it's a mixture, right, of targeting something specific like a military base or installation, an energy facility of some sort over the weekend. For example, we saw a major fire break out in an oil depot in the Rostov region due to a drone strike.
And then on the flip side, there's also the sense of destabilization, right, of trying to cut through the propaganda facade and get the message across to the Russian people that they are in fact at war. And that propaganda machine is really in full swing at the moment now, more than two weeks into the Ukrainian incursion in Kursk, because the Russian media and taking their cue from the Russian authorities really attempt to prove to the people that this is an isolated incident and a terror attack.
And look, this is what you're seeing from the Ukrainian military. They are also doing their own messaging, really trying to show that they have the initiative in the Kursk region and are hitting very hard back at Russia's resistance, which really, two weeks in, is only really starting to take shape -- John.
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VAUSE: It does seem that the Ukrainians have exposed a weak point, to say the least, in the Russian military and this top-down chain of command. But what has been the Russian response to these attacks? I mean, are they sending more troops in? Are they -- what's the latest from there?
SEBASTIAN: Yes, so in terms of the military response, initially we saw a sort of motley selection of different groupings. We've seen reports of, you know, elements of the Black Sea Fleet come in. The Ukrainians have talked of troops coming in from the likes of Kharkiv and Zaporizhia. Lithuania even suggested they were bringing troops in from the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.
I think the sense from talking to experts that I get is the resistance is now taking greater shape. We may start to see a more coordinated response.
But in terms of President Putin and how he's been dealing with this, we see this sort of haphazard crisis management playbook that we've seen play out in the past. I want to show you an interesting split screen because we've seen him in southern Russia in the last couple of days. And on Tuesday, you see on the left of your screen, in Vladikavkaz, in the Caucasus, meeting with the Russian people, greeting them.
And compare that to what's on the right in Dagestan just a few days after Prigozhin's aborted mutiny. These are relatively unusual scenes for the president, really an attempt to sort of reassert his popularity. And of course, he continues to claim and did so somewhat strangely on a visit to Beslan for the 20th anniversary of that terror attack.
He continues to claim that what's happening in Kursk is in fact a terror attack. Take a listen.
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VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): As for those opponents and enemies of ours that I mentioned, they continue this work of trying to destabilize our country. This is obvious. And since we fought terrorists, today we have to fight those who commit crimes in the Kursk region, in Donbass and Novorossiya.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SEBASTIAN: So it's pretty clear what he's trying to do there, trying to project the image as well of business as usual. Putin's set to meet with the Chinese premier in Moscow today, his third big international meeting since the incursion into Kursk, really trying to show that they have this under control.
VAUSE: Do they or don't they? We just don't know at this point, I guess. Clare Sebastian in London, thank you for getting up early. Appreciate it.
Well, for J.Lo, love doesn't cost a thing, except perhaps a divorce lawyer and maybe some heartache. The very latest in the "Bennifer" relationship saga in just a moment.
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Hold on to your potatoes!
HARRISON FORD, INDIANA JONES ACTOR: We've got company!
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VAUSE: Get the hat. The fedora worn by Harrison Ford from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dooms just sold for $630,000 at auction. The rabbit felt hat was made with a more tapered crown specifically for the second movie in the series.
It's in good condition, shows some sign of wear. It was used in a number of key scenes, including the memorable mine cart chase. Several fedoras were made for the film. This one actually came from the personal collection of Ford's late stuntman.
Sad, sad news. Bennifer is breaking up again. Jennifer Lopez filing for divorce from actor Ben Affleck. That's two years after their wedding ceremony. And months after reports first surfaced, the couple had a falling out and were living separately.
Lopez canceled a concert tour earlier this year to focus on her family. They met, you may recall, on the set of the movie Gigli in 2002. Wow.
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There was a brief engagement, and so after that, and then they rekindled this relationship, God knows why, in 2021.
Well, a limited edition Doritos Minis Cool Ranch Zero Gravity Tortilla Chip is getting ready for outer space. The chips have been especially made for eating in zero gravity and will travel on SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission later this month.
Doritos has partnered with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for the release, donating $500,000 to the hospital. And if you want a can, you'll need to make a $200 donation to the hospital through a special Dorito-branded page.
And finally, a pink river dolphin was rescued and returned to the wild after becoming stranded on a riverbank in central Bolivia. Villagers worked with local authorities to help get the dolphin to deeper and safer waters. Conservationists consider these dolphins a vulnerable species, susceptible to the impacts of climate change, deforestation and pollution. And he's pink.
Thank you for joining us here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm John Vause. CNN "THIS MORNING" is up next after a quick break.
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