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Tensions High After Israel, Hezbollah Trade Fire; Australian Law Protecting Out of Office Time Takes Effect; "Invest Fest" Aims to Boost Black Entrepreneurship. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired August 26, 2024 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. Here are some of today's top stories.

The campaign trail is heating up in the U.S. presidential race. Former President Donald Trump will visit Michigan later today before hitting Wisconsin and Pennsylvania later this week. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to start a bus tour in Georgia on Wednesday. All of those are battleground states.

Kim Jong-un oversaw a drone performance test over the weekend with state media saying the drones destroyed all of their targets. North Korea's leader says -- was said to be satisfied with the results and stressed the importance of more tests so his country's army can be equipped with drones, quote, as early as possible.

And tensions remain high in the Middle East following this weekend's heavy exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Israel and Hamas held another round of hostage and ceasefire talks and a U.S. official says negotiations will continue in the coming days and describe the process as constructive.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now from Tel Aviv, Miri Eisin, Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Counterterrorism at Reichman University. She's also Colonel in the Reserves for the Israel Defense Forces. Thank you so much for joining us.

Obviously, tensions in your region are very high. How do you think they stand right now, considering the language we're getting from both sides?

MIRA EISIN, SENIOR FELLOW, INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR COUNTERTERRORISM, REICHMAN UNIVERSITY: At the tactical level, this event is almost over, if not completely over. That means Hezbollah wanted to do a very harsh attack against all of Israel, including the Tel Aviv area that I live in, and Israel preempted against that specific attack. But that's the tactical level.

As you said, in the rhetoric, the war goes on. And the first aspect of the rhetoric is that Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, last night gave a speech. And in it, he said, lie after lie after lie.

And yet we repeat those lies, and we amplify them. That's part of the rhetoric.

MACFARLANE: And we know, of course, amidst all of the messaging that we're hearing these lies, as you call it, in the last day, that still the solution to this or the suggested solution and the best way to defuse tensions is for a ceasefire negotiation to come to reach a conclusion. We heard just then that U.S. officials are describing the process as constructive still. Do you think yesterday's events will have had any impact on those talks?

EISIN: So you just presented this as being all about Hamas or the Gaza Strip or the Israeli hostages that have been held since October 7th. But this is Hezbollah in Lebanon. Why are they part of the same arena?

Why do they have this military? It's a terror military that you mentioned before, the North Korean suicide drones that were presented on Saturday, the same kind of equipment that North Korea sends out to the world. The Islamic regime of Iran supplies to Hezbollah.

So it isn't, they're certainly connected, but it isn't, finish the war against Hamas, another terror organization in the Gaza Strip, and everything is calm with Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a terror entity. It is attacking Israel every single day since October 7th.

And it can't just be held up to unaccountability as if what they're doing is to help the Palestinians. It's not. It is the terror entity trying to destroy Israel.

FOSTER: But would you accept that a peace deal with Hamas would ease wider tensions and calm other threats down, like from Hezbollah?

EISIN: So first of all, I absolutely do. And I'm just, I'm a person of words. And I find it difficult to call it a peace deal. And I am a peace person. But this is about stopping a horrific war. We're going to agree it's a horrific war. And what Hamas started on October 7th, there's nothing good to say about it. All of us want to calm the area.

I live in Israel. I live a thousand meters from the place that Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, stated yesterday that that's where they wanted to attack in the greater area of Tel Aviv. They put it into their own films. That's where I live.

Nothing happened here yesterday because the state of Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces, preempted and stopped that attack from happening. But the ones who are destabilizing are the Islamic regime of Iran, are Hezbollah. And I really don't think that they should get out of this with everybody saying, oh, it's about the Palestinians and the Gaza Strip.

I care about the Palestinians and the Gaza Strip. And helping out Hezbollah and Lebanon doesn't help them. We need to look at this a bit broader, not just on the focus on the Palestinians.

MACFARLANE: What did you make of Benjamin Netanyahu's comment yesterday that what happened today was not the end? And what was he referencing there? And how much in the back of his mind is he still or Israel still on very much on high alert to the threat of Iran and avenging the killing of Hassan -- of Ismail Haniyeh?

EISIN: Ismail Haniyeh, the Islamic regime of Iran, claimed whatever it claimed. Israel openly claimed that it attacked and killed Fuad Shukr after the killing by Hezbollah of 12 Israeli young people, Druze up on the Golan Heights with all of the challenges. We can talk about that there.

[04:35:05]

When Prime Minister Netanyahu says what he says, and on this stage, I agree with him. I don't agree with him about a lot of other things. But when it comes to the challenge of what do you do up north? I'm sitting here right now. My kids are not at a school age. But what do you do if you're the mother of children who live up north?

And since October 7th, 2023, we're at the end of August 2024, because of Hezbollah, not Hamas, not the Palestinians, because of Hezbollah terror entity, you cannot go back to your home. That entire area up north has been under attack.

So when the Prime Minister says that it's not over, how do you get Israeli citizens who are inside their country back into their homes, their villages, their towns, there's an entire city that was evacuated.

And it's as if right now we're being blamed for that. I want to hear that blame, not just on the question of who's to blame, but of Hezbollah being held accountable. They're a terror entity.

And what happens is, yay, I'm a terror entity. Nobody holds me accountable. Hezbollah has changed that. The Islamic regime of Iran that supplies them the weapons and backs them changes that. And on this, I do agree with the Prime Minister of Israel.

FOSTER: What do you think about the role that America's playing here? Because we keep getting these very positive signs that a deal is reached, it's largely coming from Washington. And then we hear that, you know, there have been more delays or that Mr. Netanyahu isn't comfortable with something or that Hamas isn't comfortable with something and there is no deal, in fact.

EISIN: So as an Israeli, I can say that for us, until we get about the closure, it's closure, this isn't a happy moment of our 109 now hostages, hopefully many alive, certainly many of them dead, who are held by Hamas since October 7th. I mean that as an Israeli, I want the closure there. I want the Israeli Prime Minister and the government to do what can be done.

But I'm also somebody who looks at things through Hamas eyes and Hamas is a terror entity. And if I don't represent what Hamas thinks, then I'm not doing my job. And I think that Yahya Sinwar, the one who at the end holds the hostages, holds the Gaza Strip, has been the leader in the Gaza Strip, the terror leader, not the political leader, the terror leader in the Gaza Strip for the last four years, that he has no interest in arriving at a resolution. And when we put out the positive signs, I think that the United States and the Egyptians and the Qataris, I even think that perhaps the Hamas leaders who are also terror leaders who sit in Qatar would be willing to arrive at a resolution.

I don't think that Yahya Sinwar is in his centrality and the fact that he is the main mind -- sorry.

MACFARLANE: But I think the same claim can be made of Benjamin Netanyahu himself that he doesn't want to arrive to a resolution because he is politically motivated to keep the tension and to keep the conflict going. That is something we've heard time and time again. We've heard as well that he has been obfuscating and putting more conditions on the table. That is a claim that Hamas have been making consistently.

Is it not true that Benjamin Netanyahu is coming under pressure within his own country to seek a resolution to the ceasefire deal, but that it is not politically expedient for him to do so?

EISIN: And I'm going to push back again. Look at what you just did. You said that the Prime Minister of Israel that I did not vote for and I do not support and I will continue to protest against is the same as Hamas, Hamas leadership, Yahya Sinwar. Allow me to push back at that.

I absolutely think that Netanyahu has political ideas. I'll go out and protest every Saturday night, but I'm not willing for that comparison between the state of Israel, the government of Israel, the government that I don't support, and a terror entity that is declared as such by the U.K., by the EU, by the United States, by all of the world. We're putting them as if they're the same legitimate partners. They're not just like Hezbollah is not. And we need to do that differentiation.

So yes, I think that he has a political agenda. I am not happy with his decisions. And yet I don't think it's different from the polarization inside the United States between Republicans and Democrats, or even the polarization that I see in the U.K.

Terrible things happened in France. Look at the results of the elections. Let's compare us to those that we should be compared to, not the Hamas, not the Hezbollah.

FOSTER: OK, Miri Eisin, I really appreciate your time. And thank you for joining us today.

EISIN: Thank you, sir.

FOSTER: Now residents of Porticello, Sicily say flowers -- or they laid flowers in the sea. And they said prayers to honor the seven people who died when a luxury yacht sank last week during a powerful storm. The victims included British-Czech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah.

Italian authorities have opened a manslaughter investigation. Prosecutors say the superyacht sank because of human behavior, not as a result of the weather.

[04:40:00]

Now in Bangladesh, crews are rushing to save people stranded by floods that have already claimed at least 18 lives, hundreds of thousands of people are now living in relief camps.

MACFARLANE: The southern district of Feni, many are taking refuge in government buildings and schools. Authorities say millions of people are impacted and many won't be able to return to their homes anytime soon. There's an urgent need for food, clean water and medicine.

And in the southwestern U.S., a body of a hiker has been recovered three days after she went missing. 33-year-old Chenoa Nickerson was 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.

FOSTER: More than 100 people have been rescued after monsoon storms triggered those flash floods. The Arizona National Guard used a Blackhawk helicopter to lift stranded people to higher ground.

Now we are following a Category 1 hurricane that's moving away from Hawaii's Big Island. Hurricane Hone is dumping rain in parts of the Hawaiian Islands while creating life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.

MACFARLANE: The U.S. National Hurricane Center says the storm will pass well south of Hawaii's smaller islands in the coming hours as it begins to weaken. Hone is expected to become a tropical storm at some point today.

You can now ignore that after hours work call, at least in Australia. Ahead, the new law letting employees leave work at work.

FOSTER: Doesn't work for journalism.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACFARLANE: Now Australians can finally put their phones on silent after leaving the office and not worry about missing a work email or phone call. That's due to a new law that took effect today, protecting their, quote, right to disconnect.

[04:45:00]

FOSTER: It says employees can refuse to read or respond to any contact from their employers outside regular work hours, and they can't be punished for it. Our Kristie Lu Stout has the details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For all of Australia's beauty and relaxed reputation, it might be hard to imagine that many people here feel overworked. But according to some lawmakers, Australians are working an average of six weeks unpaid overtime every year. And so the government has stepped in to protect people's right to disconnect.

As of Monday, people won't have to answer out of hours calls, texts or emails.

RACHEL ABDELNOUR, ADVERTISING INDUSTRY WORKER: I think it's actually really important that we have laws like this. We spend so much of our time connected to our phones, connected to our emails all day. And I think that it's really hard to switch off as it is.

STOUT (voice-over): Around the world, ill-defined job expectations and constant connectivity has allowed our jobs to encroach on our private worlds. The gray areas remain. There may be times the boss still requires an answer, but workers can now defend their right to disconnect in court if they want to.

DAVID BRENNAN, FINANCE WORKER: We are professionals, we're well paid, we're expected to deliver and we feel we have to deliver 24 hours a day if we have to. So the phone's always on, the computer's always on and we're working.

STOUT (voice-over): Australians likely won't forget work entirely after they leave the office, but more people may feel like they don't have to be always on, meaning more time to enjoy what is already a fortunate place to be.

Kristie Lu Stout, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MACFARLANE: What do you think, Max?

FOSTER: I mean, there are definitely cultures aren't there in Europe. I'm kind of thinking Scandinavia, where you would never call after work. I kind of know it exists.

I just, I mean, for you and I, we're not the sort of people that want to switch off.

MACFARLANE: Also, journalism is not a field where you ever switch off. That's why we get into it, right?

FOSTER: Don't you get annoyed if you're not called when there's something big?

MACFARLANE: You do. But in principle, if you are working in an office, you're meant to have a nine to five. I think this is a valid and good thing.

FOSTER: I think it should be some sort of agreement that, you know, do you want to be called? You know, there must be some sort of grey area or some way you can fill. But it's definitely, I certainly hear stories about abusive bosses who are just sort of expressing themselves or expecting everyone to be on call from other friends who don't want to be on call.

MACFARLANE: I just hope that this is a steppingstone to us thinking about, you know, other working arrangements. Four-day week, for instance.

FOSTER: Yes.

MACFARLANE: Well up for that.

FOSTER: All for that. Longer hours, less days, right?

MACFARLANE: Less days. Perfect.

FOSTER: Today's uncertain economic climate, challenging for many people, but it can be especially difficult for those operating or thinking about starting a small business.

MACFARLANE: In Atlanta, an event is bringing Black investors and entrepreneurs together to boost their chances for success. Ivan Rodriguez reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IVAN RODRIGUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The founders of Invest Fest tell me that at the heart of it, their goal is to create a financial literacy movement. Something that they've really been able to build on the last couple of years with this specific event. Now, one of the best things about walking through Invest Fest is taking a look at all the different businesses, really any business you can think of, you'll probably find it here at Invest Fest.

We've had conversations with people in the AI industry, others who are small business owners looking to scale their businesses and even students looking to learn. One woman who you spoke with here told us that she traveled all the way from Virginia to take part in a pitch competition similar to something like what you might see on Shark Tank, for example.

Now, the founders of Earn Your Leisure who run Invest Fest say access to capital is one factor that is critical to success.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You see here, we have a pitch competition that we're giving out $100,000 away this weekend, and there's 600 people here. And it's not because they just want to come, right? It's the lack of access to capital that they're getting from financial institutions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The burden of student loan debt is crippling for middle class and working class and poor people. Education reform, something that we're very big on.

RODRIGUEZ: One aspect of life that can't be ignored, especially for those in the business world, is the economy. So we asked Black entrepreneurs and business owners, what are some of the hardships that they're facing currently and what they'd like to see in the future? One topic that came up is inflation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have an acai bowl business, right? If I'm going to the grocery store and I just need regular strawberries and the gouging of prices are so high that I can't even get regular strawberries just to be able to feed my community better and healthier like food products, then where does that leave us?

RODRIGUEZ: Even though this isn't a political event, the upcoming election is on the minds of many people who are here and how they may be impacted when it comes to those potential upcoming policies. But going back full circle and what we're hearing from many people who are here, as well as those who run the event, the most important thing is building that foundation of knowledge.

[04:50:00]

And once you have that, you'll be better informed in the political decisions that you take.

In Atlanta, Ivan Rodriguez.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MACFARLANE: Now, the Michigan Wolverines are famous for their fight song and their big house football stadium. But now the reigning college football champions are accused of playing dirty. I look at the trouble they're in when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FOSTER: The reigning champions of U.S. college football could face discipline after being accused of stealing signs from plays called by opposing teams.

MACFARLANE: The NCAA has sent a notice of allegations to the University of Michigan, which it has to answer within 90 days. A former Michigan staff member was accused of sending spies to other teams' games to steal their signs. He later resigned.

A Netflix documentary about the controversy called "Sign Stealer" makes its debut on Tuesday.

FOSTER: Are they doing something that illegal though? Isn't that tactics?

MACFARLANE: I think it's a little more than that. You shouldn't really be sending signs.

FOSTER: It's a greed that you don't do that sort of thing.

MACFARLANE: Yes, exactly. But I mean, it's going to be on Netflix. So I don't know how they avoid it.

Now the jersey won by Babe Ruth when he hit a fabled home run has shattered a record.

[04:55:00]

The collectible went for a $24.12 million at auction, making it the most valuable sports collection ever. Ruth was wearing the number three jersey while playing against Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series. And it's known as the called shot play. Ruth appears to point at

center field before hitting a home run into the bleachers. Whether the sucker really called the shot is questioned, but his legendary career is not. He's third on the all-time home run list. Just in case --

(CROSSTALK)

FOSTER: And he wore it. I mean, how amazing.

MACFARLANE: Yes. And from one American legend to another, soccer icon Megan Rapinoe was honored on Sunday for her club Seattle Reign FC retiring her number 15 jersey ahead of their game against North Carolina Courage. The two-time World Cup winner and Olympic gold medalist received the jersey in a frame in front of a cheering crowd.

Rapinoe called it a very special day and thanked her club, friends and family. What an incredible moment for her.

FOSTER: And finally, more than 100 corgis were put to the test on Saturday. The third annual corgi races in Lithuania. I mean, I don't feel I should tell people because everyone's been watching it.

Thousands showed up to watch corgis take part in a costume contest that was judged by the public, followed by the races. The event organizer says --

MACFARLANE: You're not sounding very enthusiastic.

FOSTER: Well, I just don't get the dressing up bit.

MACFARLANE: When did the Royals like this kind of -- they're a corgi family, aren't they?

FOSTER: Well, Fergie's now got the Queen's corgis.

MACFARLANE: Oh, OK.

FOSTER: And also, it's always a bit of a falsity that because they were doggies. They are doggies.

MACFARLANE: I see. Well, as you can see, they can run quite fast despite their short legs, aren't they? Very cute.

You haven't got corgis, have you?

FOSTER: No, I've got a range of dogs.

MACFARLANE: OK, well, that being the case, that is it for us here at CNN NEWSROOM.

FOSTER: I'm Max Foster, CNN "THIS MORNING."

MACFARLANE: I'm Christina McNamara.

FOSTER: You are.

MACFARLANE: We'll see you tomorrow.

FOSTER: You must confirm that before we go for ourselves.

MACFARLANE: To set us up for the day.