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Israel and Hezbollah Exchange Heavy Fire; Still No Agreement in Gaza Ceasefire Talks; Harris and Trump Campaign on Battleground States; Trump to Ramp Up Campaign; Telegram CEO Arrested in France; U.K. Citizen Killed in Russian Missile Strike; German Police Arrested a Syrian Man Over Solingen Stabbing. Hamas Accuses Israel Of Setting New Conditions For Deal; Hurricane Hone Lashing Hawaii With Rain, High Winds; NASA: SpaceX Capsule To Bring Home Starliner Astronauts; Trump Team Welcomes Endorsement Of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Aired 2-3a ET
Aired August 26, 2024 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN HOST: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us here in the United States, around the world and streaming us on CNN Max. I'm Rosemary Church. Just ahead, pulling back from the brink after a flurry of attacks between Israel and Hezbollah, the threat of a wider war seems to have cooled for now.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is riding a wave of momentum coming out of the Democrats' convention as her campaign announces a record- breaking fundraising haul. And Donald Trump's team signals an aggressive new phase of the campaign, comparing it to Trump on steroids.
Good to have you with us. And we begin in the Middle East where there is a tense calm following a heavy exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel. It appears the two sides want to avoid escalating the situation into a wider war after launching a barrage of strikes on Sunday.
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The IDF says it destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels across dozens of launch sites in Lebanon. Hezbollah's chief says its latest attack on Israel in retaliation for the killing of a top military commander is done, but more strikes are possible in the future. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also vowing that this is not the end of the fighting.
Meantime, another round of hostage and ceasefire talks in Egypt ended with no agreement. But a U.S. official says talks will continue in the coming days and negotiating teams will remain in Cairo to hopefully iron out the remaining issues. And for more, let's go to CNN's Paula Hancocks, who joins us live from Abu Dhabi. Good to see you, Paula. So what is the latest on this exchange of heavy fire between Israel and Hezbollah? PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Rosemary, what we saw on
Sunday morning was really among the most significant strikes we've been seeing between Israel and Hezbollah since the increase in tensions last October. Now, what Israel has said it has done is it did prevent a more significant attack by Hezbollah.
They say that they had intelligence that Hezbollah was in the process of preparing for this attack, so they carried out a preemptive attack saying that they used 100 fighter jets at least to take out certain military targets in southern Lebanon. Let's listen first to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL (through translation): The Israeli army destroyed thousands of short-range rockets, all of which were intended to harm our civilians and forces in the Galilee. Additionally, the Israeli army intercepted all of the drones that Hezbollah launched at a strategic target in central Israel.
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CHURCH: Israel says that Hezbollah launched more than 200 rockets. Hezbollah says that it was 320 rockets and drones. Now what we've heard from the chief of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, on Sunday night was that they were trying to occupy, it appears, the Israeli defense systems and then they were targeting specifically 11 military sites.
Now we've heard from Nasrallah that he had told his fighters that this was not to be an attack against civilians, but they had to focus on military infrastructure. Let's listen to what he said.
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HASSAN NASRALLAH, HEZBOLLAH LEADER (through translation): We will assess the outcome of the enemy's concealment of today's events. If the result is satisfactory and it achieves the intended goal, we will consider the response process to the assassination of Fuad Shukr complete. If it falls short in our view, we will reserve the right to respond at a later time.
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HANCOCKS: So Nasrallah there saying that the first response to the assassination of that top Hezbollah military commander happened and of course does reserve the right, he says, to carry out further attacks if they believe that the damage was not sufficient.
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Now, we've heard from the Israeli side, the IDF, saying that there was no damage to IDF bases either in the north or the center of the country. Of course, these are military bases which we would not have the access to so potentially we will not see if there is any damage that has been done by Hezbollah. But Hezbollah is saying that they are going to assess whether that was a sufficient response at this point. Now, we heard also from the U.S. side saying that they did help Israel track these Hezbollah attacks and track the strikes as they do have significant military assets in the region at this point, but in no way did they aid when it came to pre-emptive strikes or to striking back.
We know that there are two destroyers in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea at this point, and also the U.S. has significant drones to help monitor the situation there. Rosemary?
CHURCH: All right, our thanks to Paul Hancocks for bringing us that live report. Appreciate it. Well, joining me now from Beirut in Lebanon is Maha Yahya, Director of the Carnegie Middle East Center. Thank you so much for being with us.
MAHA YAHYA, DIRECTOR, CARNEGIE MIDDLE EAST CENTER: Thank you for having me, Rosemary. Good morning to you.
CHURCH: Good morning to you too. So with the tensions running high after Israel and Hezbollah exchanged this heavy fire, is the region more at risk of a wider conflict now or less? And what role did Israel's preemptive strikes on Hezbollah play in where this escalation in violence is going?
YAHYA: I think the region has been at the cusp of an all-out conflict for some time now. This was just the latest episode, what we saw yesterday was just the latest episode in an increasingly fragile and increasingly tense region. That's where you have different actors literally dancing at the edge of a precipice. The actions of Israel and Hezbollah on Sunday, the rhetoric (ph) we have right now is literally a battle of narratives.
Israel is claiming that they had reliable intel and they're talking about 1,000 -- they're two different stories -- one thousand. Others are saying 6,000 missiles that were going to attack Israel and attack civilian infrastructure. Ben Gurion Airport was mentioned. This seems quite far-fetched because everything we have seen from Hezbollah and Iran at this point is that they have avoided civilian infrastructure.
They do not want to escalate into an all-out war. They have no interest in that because an all-out war will only cause a lot of damage for them. On the Hezbollah side, also they've been perpetuating a narrative that their operation was a success and that they managed to hit a number of bases and that it was not a preemptive strike. They had struck first.
Honestly, I think time will tell what actually happened on Sunday morning. But what we do know is that the exchange of fire is over for now. Civilian infrastructure and civilian targets were avoided by both Hezbollah and Israel to a more limited extent. So this episode is over until the next escalation takes place. And we will continue seeing this escalation until a ceasefire takes place in Gaza and a more kind of region-wide de-escalation initiative is put in place.
CHURCH: So what impact do you think this escalating violence will have on efforts to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal?
YAHYA: I don't think very much. The hostage and ceasefire deal has its own momentum. The fact that the escalation was limited and ended there, Hassan Nasrallah spoke of it even in his speech and said, we did not want to escalate more than this. We needed to respond to Shukr's killing, for Shukr's killing, but did not want to escalate further because we do not want to jeopardize the ceasefire talks.
The ceasefire talks have their own momentum and they really are, from what we're hearing from Israeli analysts, but also hostage negotiators, those participating in the talks themselves. The biggest obstacle so far has been the changing targets of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
He has changed the goalpost so many times on his own negotiators that it's become very difficult and is making it impossible practically to put together a ceasefire deal, something that the U.S. has been pushing for and others have been pushing for back since May.
So from his perspective, he has no interest whatsoever in having a ceasefire deal, knowing that if there is a ceasefire deal, if there's any kind of cessation in hostilities over a period of a month or two months, it will make the resumption of fighting that much more difficult.
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Something that he needs to maintain his own popularity, his own political relevance, et cetera.
CHURCH: And, Maha, you are there in Lebanon, in Beirut. What is the mood there as this violence between Hezbollah and Israel escalates with this exchange of fire and who knows where this goes from here?
YAHYA: Again, a lot of anxiety, a lot of anger, a sigh of relief that this did not go further. I mean, it's 2006. Lebanon was in a war with Israel. Many of us who are here remember the horror of living under Israeli bombs. So it's a very anxious country, people are leaving, cutting short their summer vacations and leaving. There's a lot of worry, but at the same time they're going on with their daily lives.
So it's the sense that there is nothing that ordinary Lebanese are able to do about this and that the momentum and decision-making is happening elsewhere is also very frustrating for many, many Lebanese. But I can tell you, no one wants a war here. Everyone wants this to be over and done with. They want to see an end to the carnage in Gaza, but also an end to the conflict in Lebanon.
More than 150,000 civilians still live in the areas that were being bombarded yesterday and far more than that. There are 100,000 Lebanese who have been displaced from the border areas and whose homes are now rubble, you know. Numerous towns and villages have been completely destroyed over the past 10 months, in addition to agricultural crop, et cetera.
CHURCH: Maha Yahya, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your analysis and perspective on this issue. Appreciate it.
YAHYA: Thank you, Rosemary.
CHURCH: The race for the White House will kick into high gear this week, with both candidates hitting the campaign trail in battleground states and preparing for their upcoming debate. Former President Donald Trump will be in Michigan and Wisconsin attempting to reclaim the spotlight. Vice President Harris and her running mate Tim Walz will head south and kick off a bus tour in Georgia.
Harris is hoping to build on her momentum coming out of the Democratic convention, including fundraising efforts. The campaign says it has raised $540 million since Harris launched her presidential bid last month. Jessica Levinson is a law professor at Loyola Law School and host of the "Passing Judgment" podcast and she joins me now from Los Angeles. Great to have you with us.
JESSICA LEVINSON, PROFESSOR OF LAW, LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL: Great to be here.
CHURCH: Seventy-one days to go in the race for the White House and Kamala Harris's speech Thursday at the DNC resulted in a massive surge in donations, according to her campaign. How might this huge enthusiasm bump translate into increased support when polls come out soon and how big a boost do you expect Harris will get from this?
LEVINSON: I think she will get a significant boost. And what we know, Rosemary, of course, is that any boost could be outcome determinative in the sense that this is going to be a close election. And so any boost that she gets, the key is if she can maintain that, that could make the difference. We've all been saying it so often, but it's true.
It's the swing voters in the swing states. Much of the map is already done. We already know how many of the states will vote. But when it comes to those kind of 11 key states, that's where we need to look, does the momentum translate into sustained support, not just donations, but also, are more people registering to vote? Will more people turn in early voting ballots, and then of course go to the polls?
CHURCH: And Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, launched their bus tour in the battleground state of Georgia this week. How likely is it, do you think, that they win Georgia?
LEVINSON: Well, I think Georgia is in play and we know, of course, that Georgia has elected Democratic senators before. So I think that Kamala Harris would be foolish to count Georgia out. And this is one of those really interesting situations where the swing states have changed maybe a little bit from when Joe Biden was running to Kamala Harris. I think with her at the top of the ticket, it is making Georgia more competitive than it would have been with Joe Biden.
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CHURCH: And Donald Trump is preparing to hit the campaign trail in key battleground states this week, with his camp signaling an aggressive campaign ahead, saying, think Trump on steroids. So how panicked are they by Harris's momentum, do you think? They seem to be having some problems how to deal with the situation.
LEVINSON: Well, I think this is going to be an all-out sprint for his campaign. He always knew it was going to be, but things change for him and frankly, for everyone a few weeks ago when he was no longer running against, you know, quote, "Sleepy Joe Biden," when all of a sudden, he's running against Kamala Harris. This is a different race.
As you alluded to, I think he did have trouble figuring out exactly how that would change his message and how that would change his campaign strategy. So at this point, look, it was always going to be a dead sprint, but I think even more so because the map looks different. Kamala Harris has changed this. She's tightened the race. She's made more states competitive. And there is some reporting that some polls are going to come out saying she actually has the edge in the electoral college. That has to be making him nervous. That was not true a month ago.
CHURCH: And Jessica, both parties are campaigning on reproductive rights, with Harris promising to restore reproductive freedoms, while Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance, now says Trump would veto a federal abortion ban. No guarantee of that, of course. Does this signal, though, that Republicans are perhaps stepping back from a harder line on abortion, or is this just a sign of more panic?
LEVINSON: Well, I think that we've seen in a lot of ways after the Dobbs decision, which of course overturned Roe v. Wade, Republicans largely acknowledging that this is a issue where they need to tread very carefully in the sense that we have seen state elections, state Supreme Court elections, special congressional elections.
We've seen a variety of elections where when the issue is reproductive choice or that's one of the big issues that the candidates are talking about, that tends to do -- bode well for Democrats. And that's part of why I think we see J.D. Vance saying, don't worry, there won't be a federal ban because talk of a federal ban is not going to motivate those swing voters to vote for Trump-Vance.
CHURCH: And just quickly, what impact will Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s endorsement of Trump and the suspension of his own presidential campaign likely have on the outcome of this? Very much, do you think?
LEVINSON: I don't think so. I think at this point, he did not have a ton of support and his support will splinter. If every single person who supported him came out for Donald Trump, that obviously is not good news for Kamala Harris, but I don't think that's likely to happen.
It's difficult because we kind of have to throw conventional wisdom out the window when it comes to this particular race, but I don't think everybody who was polling as a supporter of his will ultimately turn out for Donald Trump, which is really what you would need for this to make a big difference.
CHURCH: Jessica Levinson, many thanks for joining us. I appreciate getting at your analysis on this.
LEVINSON: Thank you.
CHURCH: Telegram CEO is called the Mark Zuckerberg of Russia, and now he's been detained in France. Just ahead, what the company is saying about it.
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CHURCH: Welcome back everyone. The Telegram messaging app says its CEO has nothing to hide after he was detained in France. Pavel Durov was taken into custody at an airport outside Paris on Saturday. BFMTV reports the warrant alleges a lack of moderation has let Telegram become a platform for money laundering, drug trafficking, and sharing of pedophilic content.
Telegram posted a public statement saying it abides by E.U. laws, including the Digital Services Act, and that its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving. The statement added that it's absurd to claim that a platform or its owners are responsible for abuse of that platform.
Ukrainian officials confirmed that a British citizen was killed by a Russian attack in the Donetsk region. Ryan Evans was a former British soldier serving as a safety adviser for Reuters journalists in the city of Kramatorsk. Their hotel was hit by a missile on Saturday night. At least six other people were injured in the attack, including several journalists.
The Ukrainian regional military leader says the victims were citizens of Ukraine, the U.S., Latvia and Germany. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russian forces are continuing their intense assaults in eastern Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops are making progress and are taking more land in Russia's Kursk region. It's been 20 days since Ukraine's shock incursion. On Saturday, the governor of Belgorod says Ukrainian shelling killed at least five civilians and injured 12 more. Belgorod is in a state of emergency as Ukrainian forces move in neighboring Kursk. Ukraine's president gave an update earlier.
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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE (through translation): I just spoke with Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi. We have advances in the Kursk region ranging from one to three kilometers. We brought under our control two more settlements and active developments are ongoing concerning another settlement.
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CHURCH: We have not yet seen a massive Russian military response to Ukraine's incursion and many are asking and wondering why. Earlier, CNN Global Affairs analyst Kimberly Dozier explains what Ukraine's offensive is telling us about Moscow.
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KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: It's kind of remarkable that the Russian response has been so paltry that not only are they not pushing the Ukrainians out, but they can't seem to stop their advances.
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And that has me curious because generally, look, this is like a chess match or a game of Go where one opponent does something and then the other opponent responds. The Russians are often very slow to respond on the battlefield, but it has been wondering if Putin has looked at this situation and said, Kursk could be the thing to use to motivate the Russian population, in that when you talk to a number of Russian specialists in the U.S. government, they say Putin hasn't been serious about winning the Ukrainian war.
If he was serious, he would mobilize his entire population. He would draft more soldiers to make up for his losses on the battlefield. He hasn't done that. Well, He probably hasn't done that because popular opinion would rise up against him unless Russians felt endangered. And the Kursk attack is making him feel very threatened.
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CHURCH: And that was Kimberly Dozier speaking to CNN earlier. In the coming hours, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz plans to visit a community trying to recover from a deadly stabbing attack. Police in the western city of Solingen say a Syrian man is in custody after confessing to the attack that left three people dead at a music festival on Friday. Several others were wounded. Prosecutors accused the 26-year-old man of being a member of ISIS.
The terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack but offered no proof to back up its claim. The suspect turned himself in after a major manhunt following the attack at the Festival of Diversity. The assault is already prompting calls for a crackdown on knife crime and for tighter rules on immigration.
The Middle East is on edge after Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire the most since the start of the war in Gaza. We'll have the details after a short break. Stay with us.
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ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: More now on our top story this hour. Tensions are high in the Middle East after Israel's military launched, quote, pre-emptive strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon. And the militant group fired hundreds of rockets into Israel in response to the killing of a top commander. The IDF says they intercepted most of those rockets and drones, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is warning that it's not the end and the fighting may not be over. Well, meantime, Gaza ceasefire and hostage release talks have again paused without any breakthrough. Hamas and Israel are still disagreeing over the terms for a potential deal, but a U.S. official says, there'll be more discussions over the coming days.
CNN's Nada Bashir is in Cairo and has details on the negotiations.
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NADA BASHIR, CNN REPORTER: But following ceasefire talks here in Cairo, the Hamas delegation has now departed and issued a statement reiterating that call for the ceasefire proposal put forward and presented by U.S. President Joe Biden in late May to be upheld. This is a deal which Hamas officials have said they agreed to in early July, and accused Israeli officials of presenting new conditions to try to undermine the progress of ceasefire talks.
Now when its latest statement, Hamas officials have reiterated that they want to see guarantees that there will be a transition to a full and a permanent ceasefire, that those guarantees as far as indications suggest, right now, have not been it upheld or committed to rather by Israeli officials. We've heard from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the past few weeks saying that while Israel might welcome a temporary pause in fighting, that first phase of the deal, of course, presenting a six-week pause in fighting.
Israel wants to see a continuation of the war in order to eradicate Hamas's military capabilities. This despite the fact that the current U.S. assessment is that Hamas's military capability have so far been downgraded.
Now, of course, there are also other key sticking points, namely surrounding the longer term presence of Israeli troops within the Gaza Strip. We know that Israel has presented a revised proposal which would see a reduced number of Israeli troops stationed along the Philadelphi corridor, a buffer zone separating Egypt from southern Gaza. But Hamas has in the past rejected any suggestion of a longer- term presence of Israeli troops in any sorts of post-war agreements.
And they have reiterated the fact that they want to see a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
Now, of course, these talks have been focused on the so-called bridging proposal put forward by the Biden administration in an attempt to narrow the gaps between Israel and Hamas, and while it appears as though there hasn't been a huge amount of progress in trying to narrow those gaps. So far, we know that working level conversations will continue over the coming days between mediators and representatives of both Israel and Hamas to try and hammer out those final details of the cease-fire agreement.
But at this stage, there have been no major breakthroughs. We'll be watching to see whether we see any further negotiation talks being held between Hamas and Israeli delegations.
Nada Bashir, CNN, in Cairo. (END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: We are following a category one hurricane that's now moving away from Hawaii's big island. Hurricane Hone is dumping rain on parts of the Hawaiian Islands while creating life-threatening surf and rip current conditions. The U.S. National Hurricane Center says the storm will pass south of Hawaii smaller islands in the coming hours as it begins to weaken. Hone is expected to become a tropical well storm at some point on Monday.
We are also tracking Typhoon Shanshan as it moves through the Pacific towards Japan. According to the joint typhoon warning center, the storm has sustained winds close to 150 kilometers per hour and is less than 800 kilometers from the Japanese coast.
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Shanshan is expected to grow even stronger before making landfall on Wednesday. Some parts of Japan could see up to 250 millimeters of rain, along with high winds and dangerous storm surge.
Well, a stunning turn of events. NASA has deemed the Boeing Starliner not safe enough to return two astronauts to Earth. We'll tell you how they'll get back home and when.
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CHURCH: NASA has decided the fate of two astronauts who have been stuck in space for nearly three months. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will abandon the Boeing Starliner that's been plagued with issues. Instead, they will return to earth on a SpaceX capsule early next year.
Michael Holmes has our report.
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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A village in India seeking some help from above, to bring U.S. astronauts Suni Williams back to Earth. Williams father was from the village, so locals feel a special kinship to her and praying for her safe return after an extended stay in space.
But NASA has finally given a more down to earth solution, just how and when Williams and fellow Boeing's Starliner astronauts, Butch Wilmore will return to earth, after spending nearly three months aboard the International Space Station on a mission that was only supposed to last a little more than a week.
BILL NELSON, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew-9 next February and that Starliner will return uncrewed.
HOLMES: It was Starliner's first time carrying astronauts to the ISS but technical issues with thrusters made NASA reconsider the ride home, opting instead to return the crew on a SpaceX spacecraft that's scheduled for an upcoming mission.
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It's a setback for Boeing, which has struggled to keep up with SpaceX in NASA's Commercial Crew Program. But Nelson says hard lessons from the past, including the losses of two space shuttles, weighed heavily on the decision.
NELSON: Our core value is safety, and it is our North Star.
HOLMES: NASA says it's reconfiguring the upcoming SpaceX Crew 9 mission to send only two crew members to the ISS instead of four. Williams and Wilmore are both veterans of two long duration stays on the space station, and NASA says they're not only prepared to fill out the Crew 9 team, but they're already hard at work.
DANA WEIGEL, NASA ISS PROGRAM MANAGER: Since they've been up there, they've been a welcome set of helping hands. They've already done about 100 hours of work on 42 different experiments, and they've helped us with some of the critical station maintenance that we've had on board.
HOLMES: Wilmore's family said that they were aware there could be a delay, which means more months of FaceTiming to keep in touch.
DARYN WILMORE, DAUGHTER: It is so cool. He gives us a lot of Earth views. I especially like seeing the sunset.
HOLMES: And there'll be plenty more of those in space for Williams and Wilmore, which, at least in NASA's view, is a safer option.
Michael Holmes, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: And thanks so much for joining us. I'm Rosemary Church.
For our international viewers, "WORLD SPORT" is coming up next. And for those of you here in the United States and in Canada, I'll be back with more CNN NEWSROOM after short break. Stay with us.
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CHURCH: A warm welcome back to our viewers here in North America. I'm Rosemary Church.
Well, both U.S. presidential candidates are looking to ramp up their campaigns in the coming days as the November 5th election draws closer. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are each expected to focus this week on battleground states that could decide the outcome in November.
Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, will be crisscrossing Georgia in a tour bus and Donald Trump stops will include Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Former president has slipped in the polls since Harris became his opponent and now he's trying to regain the spotlight. One adviser told CNN to think of it as, quote, Trump on steroids.
Well, the Trump campaign is welcoming the endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after he dropped his own bid for the White House this week, despite the eyebrow raising comments Kennedy has made over the years.
Brian Todd looks back at some of those remarks and Kennedy's short- lived presidential campaign.
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ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. (I), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to electoral victory.
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who started his run as a Democrat, then switched to being an independent, bows out of the race and endorses Donald Trump. And with that, one of the most unique presidential bids in American history comes to a close.
DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: This isn't just your typical bizarre campaign. This is almost carnival-like.
TODD: In May of this year, Kennedy claimed that a parasitic worm had once entered his brain and died, which he said led to, quote, severe brain fog and trouble with his short-term memory. He actually joked about it.
KENNEDY: Maybe a brain worm ate that part of my memory.
TODD: A few weeks ago, in a rambling video posted on X, Kennedy admitted that about ten years ago, he was driving in Upstate New York when he found the carcass of a dead bear that had been hit by a vehicle.
KENNEDY: So, I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear.
TODD: Kennedy said he got sidetracked by several events that day, couldn't go home, didn't know what to do with the bear. So, he decided to leave the carcass in New York's Central Park and make it look like a bike accident.
KENNEDY: So, we went and did that and we thought it would be amusing for whoever found it or something.
PROF. LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: The whole thing story, the wild, weird story that RFK Jr. told about the bear cub and how it got into Central Park has really made an impact and not a positive one for him.
TODD: This summer, an article in "Vanity Fair" had a photo of Kennedy appearing to pantomime eating a dog carcass. Kennedy denied it was a dog.
KENNEDY: It's actually me eating a goat in Patagonia.
TODD: That same "Vanity Fair" article published allegations that Kennedy had sexually assaulted a former nanny for his family. Kennedy sidestepped the accusations.
KENNEDY: I am not a church boy.
TODD: All this following repeated episodes where Kennedy baselessly called the COVID-19 vaccines unsafe and espoused outlandish conspiracy theories about the vaccines.
KENNEDY: COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.
TODD: It's all led to a precipitous fall from grace for the son of an American political icon.
After he dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump, five of Kennedy's siblings issued a statement saying it's, quote, a sad ending to a sad story.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's lost siblings, he's lost cousins, aunts and uncles who have said, this is just the wrong way to go in the wrong person.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TODD (on camera): Donald Trump has said he'd be open to appointing Robert Kennedy Jr. to a position in his administration if Trump wins in November. The analysts we spoke to say if Trump does that, it could create real problems for him, starting with the fact that because of his past behavior, it would be very tough to get Kennedy confirmed in Congress.
Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
CHURCH: The body of the Grand Canyon hiker has been recovered three days after she went missing. Thirty-three-year-old Chenoa Nickerson was hiking in grand canyon national park when she was swept away by flash floods. A river trip group found her body on Sunday in the Colorado River.
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More than 100 people have been rescued after monsoon storms set loose, those floods. Arizona's governor called out the National Guard and they used a Blackhawk helicopter to airlift stranded people to higher ground.
Officials in a Massachusetts town are imposing a curfew at parks and fields due to a rare disease. One case of mosquito-borne eastern equine encephalitis was diagnosed in a human on August 16 in Plymouth, South East of Boston. The town's outdoor spaces have now been shut down to nighttime visitors. Officials also announced plans to spray the region for mosquitoes. The
disease has a mortality rate of between 33 and 70 percent. That's according to the state health department. On average, only 11 human cases ill reported in the U.S. each year.
A new experimental drug could lessen the effects of menopause in women. Drugmaker Bayer is testing the new pill, which they claim can reduce hot flashes and help improve sleep, all without using hormones.
CNN's Jacqueline Howard has details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: It's a once-daily pill called Elinzanetant and this experimental drug has been developed by the company Bayer to reduce the number of hot flashes women experience when going through menopause. The results from two clinical trials were recently released, finding that after four weeks, women taking the medication were having about eight fewer hot flashes each day while women taking a placebo reported about four fewer a day and by 28 weeks, more than 80 percent of women taking the medication saw at least a 50 percent reduction in the frequency of their hot flashes, and women taken the drug reported that they're hot flashes were less intense and that they were sleeping better.
Now, currently, hormone replacement therapy is safe and it's a commonly used to treatment approach for women in menopause. But Elinzanetant is being studied as another option for relief from hot flashes, and it does not involve hormones. So that's a big deal for women who may not be able to take hormone replacement therapy.
Outside of medications though, other steps women can take to reduce their hot flashes symptoms are dressing and loose layers, avoiding alcohol, spicy foods, and caffeine, not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight and try meditation or other practices to help reduce your stress.
Back to you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: A Princeton, New Jersey community is celebrating the release of "Wall Street Journal" reporter Evan Gershkovich. She was released from a Russian prison earlier this month as part of an historic prisoner exchange.
CNN's Gloria Pazmino has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Well, it's Evan's former high school soccer coaches as some of his former teammates who gathered here and they're all breathing a sigh of relief to learn that Evan is finally home. You see, this is a community that saw Evan grow up. He went to Princeton high school where he played soccer, won the state
championship when he was a senior. So this is a community of people that have watched him grow up, followed his career. And when they found out that he had been taken going into custody and put into a Russian prison, they jumped right into action. They try to figure out what they could do as a community to support him.
They partnered with "The Wall Street Journal" and held a series of events to keep Evan's name and his story and people's minds. They worried that as time went on, that somehow people would forget about Evan's story. So they've been holding these types of events. In fact, the event that was held here was originally scheduled to be another one of these awareness type of events, but when they learned the good news on August 1st, that Evan was coming home, they quickly pivoted and change it is into a welcoming party.
They have gathered here the same place where they gathered as young students. This is where they gathered to celebrate their victories. They say they want to welcome him home and celebrate that he's finally free.
WAYNE SUTCLIFFE, FORMER VARSITY SOCCER COACH, PRINCETON HS: Thankfulness and relief and it couldn't come at a better time. No, not just for people that are going to be at this event and over the last 16 months who supported him, clearly and most importantly, all the management at "The Wall Street Journal", staff. But for him, his family, I can't -- I can't imagine.
So, it's really great. It's really kind of like the cherry on the ice.
SALVY BALDINO, FORMER VARSITY SOCCER ASSISTANT COACH, PRINCETON HS: We held our breath for about a day and then when we finally found out he had landed in Turkey is when really the excitement really started building and the happiness really started setting in.
[02:55:07]
PAZMINO: Now speaking to Evan's of former coaches, they all talked about as some of his skills has leaked, has leadership, the fact that he was able to stay cool under pressure.
And little by little, we've been learning about what it was like for Evan, those 491 days that he was held in captivity, that he kept his spirits up, that he somehow managed to keep his good humor up. And people here told me that it didn't surprise him, that it was just part of what Evan's character has always been and that they were not surprised to see him deal with such a difficult situation in that way.
So, again, if he is able to come and celebrate, they're ready for him to come home, and to celebrate that he's finally home, or whenever he is ready to do it, they hope that he can come back here to Princeton to celebrate at the same place where they gathered for so many years when they were in high school.
In Princeton, New Jersey, Gloria Pazmino, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Now to Major League Baseball, an umpire at Yankee Stadium was seriously hurt after being struck by a broken bat.
Nick Mahrley was at home plate when he got hit in the head. It happened in the fifth inning of the Yankees game on Sunday against the Colorado Rockies. John Carlo Stanton was at bat. Mahrley had to be taken off the field on a gurney, but appeared to remain conscious. We are told he was later diagnosed with a concussion and is undergoing medical tests.
I want to thank you so much for your company this hour. I'm Rosemary Church. I'll be back with more CNN NEWSROOM after a short break. Do stay with us.
