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Trump And Netanyahu Meet Again In Push For Gaza Ceasefire; Trump Says He's Not Happy With Putin Amid Ukraine War; 110 Dead, More Than 170 Still Missing After Catastrophic Flooding In Texas; More Than 100 Injured As Wildfire Rages Near Marseille; At least 111 Dead, 170- plus Missing after Texas Floods; Mexican Rescue Team Joins Search for Texas Flood Victims; Rubio Impersonator Using A.I. To Try to Dupe Senior Officials; U.S. Airport Security to Stop Making Passengers Remove Shoes; U.K. Court Convicts Three Men in Wagner-Linked Arson Attack; Macron Meets with King Charles, Says U.K./France Must "Save Europe". Aired 1-2a ET

Aired July 09, 2025 - 01:00   ET

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

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[01:00:27]

JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Growing optimism for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas while Gaza endures another day of deadly Israeli airstrikes. Ahead this hour on CNN newsroom.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: It's a tragedy. It's a tragedy and he wants to get it solved and I want to get it solved.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: For the second time in two days, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the White House as some officials hint a pause in fighting could be announced by week's end.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We get a lot of bull thrown at us by Putin. He's killing a lot of people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Donald Trump's evolving relationship with the Russian president. Could a one sided bromance finally be open?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Authorities are urging residents to stay indoors away from the toxic wildfire smoke.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: And how to reduce the summer threat of wildfires across Europe, try to prevent them from happening the first place.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from Atlanta. This is CNN Newsroom with John Vause.

VAUSE: From Doha, Qatar to Washington, D.C. to Jerusalem, optimism and expectations are growing of a possible deal between Israel and Hamas to bring to an end a year and a half long war which has devastated the Palestinian territory and reportedly killed more than 57,000 Palestinians.

And while hopes rise for a ceasefire, so too the death toll, dozens reportedly killed in the most recent round of Israeli airstrikes. Local emergency responders and hospitals say more than 60 people died Tuesday. Many were living in tents after being displaced from southern Gaza. The Israeli military also issued new evacuation orders for much of the city of Khan Younis.

And according to Gaza's health ministry, hundreds of people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes within the last two weeks.

Well, at the White House, the Israeli prime minister met again with the U.S. president who says they talked almost exclusively about Gaza. CNN's Jeremy Diamond reports on the very latest developments from those talks in Doha as well as the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Progress is being made in the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas. But all of my sources are also cautioning me right now that a deal isn't done until it is done. Indeed, officials involved in these negotiations say that there has been progress over the course of the last three days of these proximity talks Israel and Hamas, what is typically the last round of negotiations where someone's going between the two delegations trying to reach quick agreements on the final sticking points.

And indeed, Steve Witkoff, President Trump's special envoy to the region, saying that he believes they've now reached agreements on some of those major remaining issues. Listen.

STEVE WITKOFF, U.S. SPECIAL ENVOY TO MIDDLE EAST: We're in proximity talks now, and we had four issues and now we're down to one after two days of proximity talks. So we are hopeful that by the end of this week we will have an agreement that will bring U.S. into a 60-day ceasefire. 10 live hostages will be released, 9 deceased will be released. We're meeting at the President's direction with all the hostage families to let them know. And we think that this will lead to a lasting peace.

DIAMOND: And indeed, I'm told that one of the major sticking points has been Israel's partial withdrawal from the Gaza Strip over the course of this city 60-day ceasefire, both the locations to which those Israeli troops would withdraw to, but also the timetable for that withdrawal over the course of that two-month ceasefire. And one of the major issues has been the Philadelphi Corridor, which

we have seen pop up time and again as something that Israel does not want to withdraw from. That is that strip of land, very strategic inside of Gaza, along the Egyptian border, which Israel says Hamas has used to smuggle weapons into Gaza. So that will be one of the issues that still does indeed need to be resolved.

If this ceasefire agreement does go through, however, we could see the release of 10 living hostages, about half of the remaining deceased hostages. And perhaps most critically, if the United States gets its way here, this temporary ceasefire will ultimately lead to an end of the war in Gaza.

Those are the assurances that President Trump and the United States are providing in this latest version of this ceasefire agreement in order to try and get Hamas on board, providing assurances that Israel will remain at the negotiating table and negotiate an end to the war either during that 60-day ceasefire or afterwards, if necessary.

[01:05:02]

And so we'll have to see whether Hamas decides to trust those assurances as they have been insisting from the start of these negotiations on an end to the war in Gaza and not simply some temporary ceasefire. But President Trump has made clear he wants to get this deal done this week. Steve Witkoff, President Trump's special envoy expected to travel to Doha, Qatar this week to try and finalize that deal. Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Tel Aviv.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: The moment may finally have arrived, a moment of clarity for Donald Trump and his years long bromance with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In public statements at least, President Trump now seems to realize he's been strung along by Putin, who has never had any real interest in negotiating a ceasefire with Ukraine.

Trump might now be seeing Putin, as most others do, a cold blooded killer of innocent men, women and children. President Trump's frustration with his Russian counterpart has been building for weeks. And after another deadly Russian airstrike on Ukraine Friday, Trump reversed a pause on weapons shipments, especially air defense munitions, including some but not all Patriot interceptors promised to Kyiv by the previous Biden administration.

When he campaigned for the White House, Donald Trump repeatedly promised he could end the war in Ukraine on day one of his second term, 167 days since then. And now he admits ending this conflict is a lot harder than he expected. Despite all of that, the U.S. President has stopped short of imposing punitive measures like secondary sanctions on Moscow.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're dealing with him now too. That's we're not happy with Putin. I'm not happy with Putin, I can tell you that much right now because he's killing a lot of people and a lot of them are his soldiers, his soldiers and their soldiers mostly. And it's now up to 7,000 a week. And I'm not happy with Putin.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: More Details now from CNN's Kevin Liptak reporting in from Washington.

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KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: President Trump's comments about his Russian counterpart at that cabinet meeting on Tuesday were really so striking for a president who has spent really most of the last 10 years or so offering much more conciliatory tone towards his counterpart in Russia.

And I think it does show the frustration that has developing on the part of President Trump over the last several days that Putin has so far resisted his overtures to try and end the war in Russia. And you really have seen it bubbling up since his phone call that held with Putin last Thursday.

He said that was disappointing, that he had essentially made no progress with Putin to try and bring the fighting in Ukraine to an end. And so you really do see the president taking this markedly new harsh tone towards his counterpart.

But the real question now, of course, is how he plans to channel that anger. Does, for example, the president decide to put in new sanctions on Russia? He was asked today whether he would support that bipartisan bill in the Senate that would apply new sanctions towards Moscow. The president stopped short of saying that he endorsed that bill, but he did say that he left open the option.

The other thing that the president does seem more willing to do is to send new defensive weapons to Ukraine. And this is something that the president has been sort of thinking about for the last week or so. Remember last week the administration said it would put a pause on those weapons as it conducted essentially an inventory of U.S. stockpiles.

But the president saying today he didn't actually know who ordered that pause in place and saying that he would approve of these new weapons to Ukraine, which will be essential. You know, as Russia ramps up its drone and missile strikes on Ukraine, some of those missiles can only be intercepted by the U.S. made Patriot missile system.

And so President Trump clearly indicating that he does want to help Ukraine defend itself against this Russian onslaught, which I do think is notable. And it was something that the president said today that was, I think, so noteworthy in this Cabinet meeting, essentially saying no matter how you feel about how much the U.S. has supported Ukraine or whether you think the U.S. has spent too much there, which at the end of the day is President Trump's position, he has said that on the campaign trail, but he said no matter how you feel about that, you can't deny that the Ukrainians have been brave in this fight, staving off a full Russian aggression.

And I do think that does indicate that the president is evolving in his viewpoint on this war. And, you know, he also spoke last week to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy said afterwards that was their best conversation to date.

The president today saying that he would order U.S. contractors to speed up their production of some of these defensive weapons.

[01:10:00]

Clearly President Trump now of the belief that it's essential to help Ukraine defend itself going forward as it becomes clear that Putin is no more interested in trying to strike a ceasefire than he was when President Trump took office. Kevin Liptak, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Charles Kupchan is a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. And earlier I asked him for his assessment of the relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, where it stands now and what that means for Ukraine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLES KUPCHAN, SENIOR FELLOW, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: I think frustration is the word that comes to mind. Trump has talked to Putin six times, been about six months since Trump came into office and has tried to end this war. And basically he's got nothing to show for it. Putin not only isn't willing to make peace, but he has intensified the bombing campaigns of Ukraine.

And so I think what you're seeing here is Trump just run out of patience. I've given this guy a good chance to make peace and he hasn't picked up the baton. I think probably a couple other things are at play. One is he had a very good NATO summit. And I'm guessing that the behind the scenes everyone said to President Trump, don't throw Ukraine under the bus.

And the third thing that may be in play here is Iran, where Trump took the gamble to join Israel in hitting Iran's nuclear facilities. And it really has worked. We now have a whole new diplomatic landscape opening up in the Middle East. And I think Trump gets it now. He's got to put more pressure on Russia if he's going to get a deal in Ukraine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Five days on since floods devastated parts of the state of Texas, questions remain on why many did not receive weather alerts in the hours before the disaster. And now CNN has learned that Texas officials in 2016 and again in 2017 rejected funding for a flood warning system for Kerr County, where more people died in the floods than anywhere else, including dozens of young girls at an all-girls summer camp. Texas Governor Greg Abbott says the emergency alert system will be

addressed by lawmakers in the coming session. But Abbott and other officials are facing some tough questions that why evacuation orders weren't issued ahead of the floods as well as an overall breakdown in communication.

Meantime, search and rescue efforts continue in central Texas, even though the chance of finding more survivors is fading. More than 170 people remain missing. The death toll has climbed to 111. Police say no one in Kerr County has been found alive since Friday.

Two days before the floods a state inspector certified Camp Mystics emergency plan. The Camp where one of the deadliest and most tragic sites of this disaster so far. At least 27 people, mostly young girls and camp counselors, were killed. CNN's Ed Lavandera walks us through the tragedy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Camp Mystic girls know they've arrived to this tranquil bend along the Guadalupe River when they see the mystic letters greeting them from the sky high hilltop overlooking the campground.

Down below a few days before the July 4th flooding, 13 girls, some as young as 8 years old, and two teenage camp counselors had settled into the cabin known as the Bubble Inn. Many of those campers in this one cabin remain missing or dead, including 8-year-old Anna Margaret Bellows. Her mother expressed gratitude amid her grief.

DR. PATRICIA BELLOWS, MOTHER OF LOOD VICTIM: I have unending gratitude for the brave camp counselors who safely evacuated so many campers. And to the two camp counselors who gave their lives trying to protect my baby.

LAVANDERA (voice-over): The bubble in cabin sits among a cluster of cabins that overlook a sweeping green field down to the Guadalupe riverbed. This area is where the camp's youngest campers stay.

In the early morning hours of July 4, heavy rains made the river swell. It was dark, the power was out, and the camp counselors didn't have cell phones, so there was no way for them to receive alerts of the impending danger.

LAVANDERA: The green roofed cabin you see between the trees there is the bubble in cabin. And it sits in a part of Camp Mystic known as the flats. And from what we've been able to piece together over the last few days, the girls and counselors inside there faced a terrible decision. Along this side of the flats, all of the cabins backed up to a hill. We know that counselors were breaking out windows and running kids up that hill.

Other kids in other parts of the camp were moving behind the dining hall and the other structures you see there to a two story recreation hall behind there, reaching higher ground there. Ultimately, we don't know what direction the girls and the counselors of the bubbling cabin decided to do, but either way, it was a tragically overwhelming situation for all of them.

The body of one of the bubble in counselors, Chloe Childress, just 19 years old and a recent high school graduate, was found after the rain subsided.

[01:15:07]

Her family issued a statement saying Chloe Childress lived a beautiful life that saturated those around her with contagious joy, unending grace and abiding faith. Now the other camp survivors are left struggling to comprehend the devastation.

VIVIENNE NOBLES, EVACUATED FROM CAMP MYSTIC: Two of my friends died.

LAVANDERA (voice-over): 10-year-old Vivienne Nobles said some of her friends had to evacuate Camp Mystics still wearing their pajamas. Her cabin was on the hillside.

NOBLES: I couldn't even process how much rain was going down. I couldn't even imagine how their place was.

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Foot lockers, mattresses and the remains of the camp are now piled outside as rescuers comb through what the floods left behind.

MCLEAN COBLE, VOLUNTEER FROM DALLAS: You see like little kids clothes and stuff just like all over the place with like names in it and everything and like little camp T-shirts and it's just horrific.

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Camp Mystics co-owner Dick Eastland also died in the flash flooding. One camp's employees told CNN he died trying to rescue campers.

Stacy Merchant, a 12-time mystic camper herself, said she was grateful to be able to evacuate her daughter from the camp and for Eastland's sacrifice to try to save others.

STACEY MERCHANT, DAUGTHER EVACUATED FROM CAMP MYSTIC: The Eastland family is just like our own family. Dick and Tweety have been like a mother and a father to every single girl that's ever gone to Camp Mystic.

LAVANDERA: As the search for the missing girls from Camp mystic continues, we've also learned that overall in Kerr County alone, officials say that there could be as many as 161 missing people. And the local search and rescue teams are urging people not to clear out their own debris on their own property and also issuing a burn ban because we've seen a lot of people burning debris that they've piled in areas on their own property as well.

Local officials urging everybody to be very careful with these debris piles. Obviously the concern is that there could be some of these missing victims tank in this horrific mess. Ed Lavandera, CNN, Hunt, Texas.

(END VIDEOTAPE) VAUSE: To the west of Texas, flash floods have also swept through parts of New Mexico where at least three people are missing. At least 100 people have been rescued in the past few hours, including dozens at a popular mountain retreat in the southern part of the state.

Authorities urge people to seek higher ground as the nearby river rose almost 19ft, almost six meters in just minutes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, no. Oh my gosh. Oh my god.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Floodwater powerful enough to sweep away entire houses. So far, no word on casualties, but the full extent of the destruction will not be known until the water fully recedes.

In a moment here on CNN. First came the heat wave. Now wildfires are raging in southern Europe with little relief in sight from the hot, dry, windy conditions.

Also how emergency crews from Mexico are now helping in central Texas in the aftermath of the deadly floods.

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[01:22:26]

VAUSE: Deadly 5.6 magnitude earthquake shook Guatemala Tuesday and was followed by at least 38 aftershocks. At least two people have died, according to emergency services, and these images posted online are believed to be the moment the quake or the major aftershock struck the region, shaking computer screens and desks at the country's seismology center.

CNN, though, cannot confirm that independently. Now, the quake forced evacuations, caused roadblocks, landslides and homes and buildings collapsed. Guatemala president reported at least five people were injured after being found buried under landslides.

High temperatures and seasonal winds are fuelling new wildfires in southern Europe. The Marseille Airport in southern France has reopened after fire forced it to close Tuesday. Officials say the fire is still burning but is now under control.

In Spain, an emergency military unit and hundreds of firefighters are trying to contain a massive wildfire in Catalonia in a remote mountain community. More than 18,000 people in the region were told to stay indoors. Dozens of others have been evacuated.

And across the Mediterranean, emergency crews in northern Syria also working to contain fires. Turkey and Jordan have sent crews and equipment to help.

Alexander Held is a senior expert at the European Forest Institute. He is live this hour from Bonn in Germany.

Alexander, thank you for being with us for getting up early.

ALEXANDER HELD, SENIOR EXPERT, EUROPEAN FOREST INSTITUTE: Pleasure.

VAUSE: So there's no doubt that climate change is making these fires in Europe worse. Here's how climate scientists explain the link between the fires and the increase in the amount of rain carried in storms and cyclones. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERICH FSCHER, ETH ZURICH CLIMATE SCIENTIST: Heavy rainfall events can also be more intense because the atmosphere can carry more moisture. And interestingly, the same effect, the fact that the atmosphere can carry more moisture also implies that it can actually extract more moisture from the vegetation and from the surface and therefore also maybe make droughts more intense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: So in the grand scheme of things, how much of a factor is this sort of the evaporation of moisture, the bone dry conditions that we're seeing across Europe? How big is that in making these wildfires so much more intense than they would have been?

HELD: Well, we see these extremes, both sides, both ends, the rain and the drought and the fires basically at the same time in very nearby regions like Poland is flooding now and Germany is on fire, southern France is on fire.

And of course, the conditions for the fire are extremely good for the fire and very bad for us. And it shows the multiple fires that we have, that the system that we deal with, the fire management, the firefighting is getting to its limits.

[01:25:10]

VAUSE: Well, since the beginning of this year, wildfires in Europe have left more than 200,000 hectares. That's more than half a million acres of land charred and blackened. Compared to the same time period a year earlier, that number was much lower. More than 800,000 hectares, about 200,000 acres. So we've also had the number of fires this year at 1100. Same period last year, just over 700.

So, is the outlook now for wildfires directly linked to rising global temperatures? The hotter it is, the worse the fires will be. If that's the case, it's a steady upward spiking graph.

HELD: Yes, it is. And we still have these -- the ups and downs of wetter years, cooler years with less fire. But it's a very clear trend that we have more fires and a very clear trend in Europe that we have fires in new areas, northern central Europe, and bigger fires, faster fires, more uncontrollable fires. That's a crystal clear link to the weather conditions that are building up more fire weather as we speak. VAUSE: Every year the cost Europe from these wildfires is measured in the billions of euros. The insurance journal reports that at least 4.1 billion euros was the cost from last year's wildfire season. And the European Union firefighting budget has increased about 35 percent over the past five years. It now stands at about $42 billion. That was back in 2022.

But 90 percent, a study found, of that budget is spent on trying to put out the fires, 10 percent on containment, rather try to prevent them in the first place. So in the future, it seems this sort of preventing the fires or containing the fires rather won't be possible. So, as you say, it's reached its limits. So how important is it to shift away from. From reaction, if you like, to prevention?

HELD: It is beyond importance. I think it's the only alternative that we actually have. We see in examples like Portugal that have shifted their strategy towards spending at least half the budget on prevention and land management, that it can be successful.

Still, the majority of our decision making is based in firefighting, fire suppression. But the expert opinions, the research, the scientists, and also from the ground tell us very clearly we have reached our limits. We cannot continue this path.

And the only thing is we have to increase prescribed burning, use of mild fire grazing, and combine this with the most modern technology, with artificial intelligence, to engage in a new management strategy and a new vision, basically how to Live with fire in Europe, even small fires like now in Marseille, relatively small fires cause chaos and cost a lot of money because they close airports and roads.

VAUSE: When you say fire, you know, firefighting has actually reached the limits of its abilities here. If nothing's done, if we continue on this path of just allocating all this money to reaction, what does that look like? What do those fires then look like? How much destruction and devastation will come from those kind of fires if we do nothing to change what we're doing?

HELD: Well, we see that we spend more money on suppression every year and we see that at the same time the fire is causing more damage. So it's a downward spiral that everywhere in the world we see that the fire suppression approach is failing.

We see that in America, we've seen that in Australia, we've seen this in Europe. And we know the alternatives. We know that it's not a question if there will be a fire. The only question is how and when.

So the only question really to ask is, how do you like your smoke? We need to decide where we put fires at what time of the day and what time of the year. But the approach of spending more money on suppression, I don't know any example worldwide that has proven this.

VAUSE: This approach, Alexander, is a good point to make. It is a timely point right now. Let's hope the people who make the decisions are listening and these decisions will be made because clearly. Time's up. Alexander, thanks for being with us. HELD: Thank you very much.

VAUSE: In a moment, the Secretary of Fake how someone's been impersonating America's top diplomat, Marco Rubio, trying to dupe some high level officials. More on that in a moment.

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[01:34:40]

VAUSE: Welcome back, everyone. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm John Vause.

Well, a quick recap of one of our top stories this hour, the aftermath of deadly flooding in Texas over the weekend.

State officials report more than 170 people are still missing as the death toll climbs to at least 111. Emergency alerts have come under scrutiny following the devastating floods.

House Republican Pete Sessions tells CNN the state's flash flood system -- warning system in the hard-hit Kerr is not comprehensive enough, saying if phones were off, residents wouldn't have heard the warning signals. Texas Governor Greg Abbott says the emergency alert system will be reviewed later this month.

For Texas, this flooding disaster has been both tragic and unprecedented, and at times almost overwhelming for emergency crews. While some U.S. states have sent crews and resources to help with search and rescue operations, help is also coming from across the Rio Grande. A rescue team from Mexico, complete with dogs trained for search missions, is now on the ground looking for survivors.

CNN's Gustavo Valdes has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUSTAVO VALDES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is the Guadalupe River in what would be the normal flow that neighbors along its banks would have seen on a regular day before the floods of Friday.

But you can see the debris everywhere. We've seen metal, branches, everything twisted up to about 100 meters away from the normal flow of the river.

We're also seeing the erosion that it caused and this is part of the problem rescuers are having, because the debris that is all over the place. This is where they're looking, maybe not for survivors, but certainly for the bodies of those who perished.

You can see this tall tree here. It wasn't just the width of the river that grew, it was also the level. The height of this river.

Jesus Gomez is one of those rescuers that came from Mexico to assist, looking for victims and survivors. What are the challenges you guys are facing? JESUS GOMEZ, MEXICAN RESCUER: The principal challenge here is the

debris, as you mentioned, right? It's too much trees, trunks, you know, branches, a lot of sand even though the sand, you know, it was moving. You can see banks of sand at every place that it can cover, you know, and -- you know, people can go underneath it.

VALDES: And you said there's a strategy you're following. You want to be downwind from it. Why?

GOMEZ: Because were pretty much smelling the decompose of the body, pretty much. Yes.

VALDES: At this point, you think that it's very unlikely you find living survivors.

GOMEZ: The majority of the survivors were pretty much on the surface that that's why in the first days, we recover a lot of the people. But right now, we're in the difficult part of the process of search and rescue or recovery process due that there in the very bottom of those debris pretty much.

VALDES: This is amazing. The strength of a car that would have been meters away. But it's not only pushed, it's twisted, it's bent.

GOMEZ: It's bent.

VALDES: What does it tell you of the strength of the river?

GOMEZ: It's a lot of force. You can see those trees, right. There are trees all over the way of the river -- Guadalupe River. And we don't know how many miles it could be traveled, this vehicle. Now, imagine a person.

VALDES: Now you're from Mexico. You recently trained in the area. And that's why you guys reached out when you heard about this. What does it mean for the southern neighbor of Texas to cross the Rio Grande and come and help?

GOMEZ: Pretty much, we have a lot of experience with working with Texas, us as a border town, we work with Del Rio Fire, Mountain Home Fire is just right here from this place that the flood happened.

They opened the doors for us. And since we have a lot of friendship and communication with them, the brotherhood of firefighting, pretty much, right. And since we have rescue -- swift water rescue techs in Acuna, we offer the, you know, our knowledge and they said, yes, please come. Come and help us. It's terrific.

VALDES: And you guys did find a body yesterday. How does it affect you emotionally?

GOMEZ: As I have 25 years doing this. So we have -- it's not the first time we've seen a body. Right now, our mental is working mode, right? We need to focus on the recovery, focus on the rescue. Once we have -- we go home, we debrief everything we see in and saw pretty much or lived. And then start talking with the younger ones that are probably the new -- it's new of -- the new event just to try to help them out.

VALDES: Thank you very much. You guys have a lot of work to do, and this is something that certainly is going to have repercussions for a long time.

We come cover the news. The rescuers come and help, but the residents are going to have to live with all of this for a long time.

Gustavo Valdes, CNN -- Texas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Someone has been impersonating U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, using A.I. to mimic his voice while contacting high level officials.

That's according to a U.S. diplomatic cable, which says the impersonator contacted three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor and a member of Congress last month and in some cases left voicemails and sent texts on the messaging app Signal.

Hamza Chaudhry is an A.I. and national security lead at the Future of Life Institute. He's with us this hour from Washington.

[01:39:51]

VAUSE: Thank you for being -- for taking the time to speak with us. Appreciate it.

HAMZA CHAUDHRY, A.I./NATIONAL SECURITY LEAD, FUTURE OF LIFE INSTITUTE: Thank you for having me, John.

VAUSE: Ok, so not much seems to be known about who is actually impersonating Marco Rubio, but there seems to be some insight into why, according to a diplomatic cable sent from the State Department, which reads in part, "The actor likely aimed to manipulate targeted individuals using A.I.-generated text and voice messages, with the goal of gaining access to information or accounts."

We don't know if they succeeded, but how big of a security risk is this? Especially given that a weak link within the system is being targeted here and that weak spot is actual people?

CHAUDHRY: Well, it's a concerning development, but it's not shocking. The surprising thing here isn't that this has happened. It's surprising that it's taken this long.

We've seen generative A.I. products being used to create fairly compelling deepfakes for financial scams, to perpetuate sexual abuse, to launch manipulation campaigns for the past two years now. And it was only a matter of time before state and non-state actors, which wish to harm the United States woke up and said, this is a key tool in our arsenal, a tool that can be used to perpetuate disinformation in any language with an input of any language.

A system that can be used to create vast tracts of disinformation at superhuman speeds. And also systems which can be used to create this manipulative content in audio, video and text.

So what we're seeing now is the logical conclusion of what we've been seeing for the past two years.

VAUSE: That diplomatic cable also points out that the campaign was highly detailed, and the actor demonstrated extensive knowledge of the department's naming conventions and internal documentation.

So, you know, just playing detective here, it sounds like this could be a former, maybe a current, employee at the State Department, or at least a government employee. It seems that inside knowledge -- is that what makes this such a credible threat? Much more so than the A.I. technology which is being used?

CHAUDHRY: Well, it depends by what we mean here by insider knowledge and the public reporting on this has fairly been pretty sparse so far. There's a fair amount of information that you can find out about designations for S1, S2 and S3, how the State Department is divvied up into different secretariats, what the standard operating procedure is in each secretariat just based off of what's on the Internet and spending a couple of years in D.C.

So the most concerning development here, alongside the potential threat of an insider threat, is also that there are folks who are far away from the State Department outside these borders who could commit an equally sophisticated attack in the future.

VAUSE: Yes, you mentioned this isn't the first time something like this has happened. Back in May, A.I. was used to impersonate the White House chief of staff in a bid to contact lawmakers.

We also know that the former Obama chief of staff, David Axelrod, warned on Tuesday, this is the new world in which we live, and we better figure out how to defend against it because of its implications for our democracy and the world.

So I guess, you know, what are the implications here? And also, it seems the guardrails which are in place, the guidelines, the security protocols, even the technology which is being used for security reasons is all of that sort of stuck in the early 2000, in a world before A.I.

CHAUDHRY: I think that's partly true. And maybe we can zoom out to first talk about the United States and then talk about the world.

So it is still somewhat hard to do what was committed in this particular attack, because you're talking about the secretary of state. You're also talking about communication channels, which have various verification pathways before you actually get on the phone with the foreign minister.

That's less true for your average national security staffer in the government, right? You have a handful of staffers in Congress who decide the trillion-dollar Pentagon budget, and they definitely don't have the same security protocol that the Secretary of State does. You have national security staffers working in the intelligence

community with highly sensitive information, which, if released, could cause severe harm to the United States.

And you also have folks touching our nuclear weapons system, relying on a personal reliability program, which was last updated more than 30 years ago.

Now, the situation outside the United States is even more urgent, and the best way to look at this is through the social media lens. So you could go back five years and look at what happened with social media and misinformation in Myanmar. And the simple reason for that was that the vast majority of fact checkers hired by social media companies were moderating content in English, whereas most users of the social media companies were based outside the United States in non-English speaking communities.

The most concerning threat then globally is the same kind of attack being committed against a foreign minister in Amharic or Igbo or Arabic or Chechnyan, and those are countries with institutional setups which are just less well developed to respond and are less robust to the kind of threats we're talking about here.

So as concerning as it is here in America, it is a much more concerning development for countries elsewhere where those systems just aren't as robust as we need them to be to respond to these A.I. threats.

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VAUSE: Add it to the list of just another threat the world is facing.

Hamza, thanks so much for being with us. We truly appreciate it.

CHAUDHRY: Thank you, John.

VAUSE: More than two decades of shoeless air travelers at security checkpoints at U.S. airports is coming to an end. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says removing shoes for x-ray scanning will end effective immediately.

And there they were at Reagan National Airport -- people in shoes, walking through scanners. The security measure came into effect after 9/11 and became official policy in 2006.

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KRISTI NOEM, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: TSA will no longer require travelers to remove their shoes when they go through our security checkpoints.

The key to our approach is layered security. Passengers will still pass through multiple layers of screening. They'll also go through identity verification.

(END VIDEO CLIP) VAUSE: Hallelujah. It's long overdue.

Just ahead, three men are convicted of arson in the U.K., accused of elaborate sabotage plot allegedly orchestrated by a Russian mercenary group.

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VAUSE: A U.K. court has convicted three men of arson in an attack on a Ukrainian-linked business in London. British officials say the attack was ordered by the Russian mercenary group Wagner.

CNN's Clare Sebastian has details.

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CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a case that has become emblematic of Western fears that Russia is waging an ongoing sabotage campaign by proxy.

Well, there are now five men convicted in total, three of them on Tuesday, for aggravated arson; and another two, including the alleged ringleader, a man named Dylan Earl had already pleaded guilty to offenses under the U.K.'s new National Security Act.

Well, all have now been found to have been involved in an arson attack in East London last March, targeting Ukrainian-owned businesses coordinating supplies to Ukraine.

Well, the most striking parts about this case, firstly, that none of the men convicted are Russian, they were all, according to the police, doing it for money, sabotage by recruiting locals on the rise in recent years, western intelligence has warned.

And secondly, the metropolitan police in London says the attack was coordinated not by Russian state security agencies but by the Wagner Group, the Russian private military organization founded, of course, by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Now the police says it made contact with the ringleader, Dylan Earl, in 2023 and he then recruited the others. Russia has strenuously denied any involvement.

And the damage caused was significant. More than $1.3 million worth, according to the met police, which has released CCTV footage of two men appearing to start the fire, as well as video evidence showing the extent of the blaze at the East London Industrial Estate last March.

But it could have been even worse. The investigation found that there were more arson attacks planned in central London, and a possible plan to kidnap a Russian dissident.

All of the defendants will be sentenced at a later date.

Clare Sebastian, CNN -- London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: In a moment here, Emmanuel Macron will soon meet with Britain's prime minister as his historic state visit to the U.K. continues. We'll tell you why, the French president says the two nations must take action together to save Europe.

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VAUSE: French President Emmanuel Macron will soon begin Day 2 of his state visit to the U.K., the first state visit to Britain by a European leader since Brexit.

A few hours from now, Macron will pay his respects to the late Queen Elizabeth by laying a wreath at her tomb. A meeting with the British prime minister is also planned.

More details now from CNN's Melissa Bell, reporting in from Paris.

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MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A royal welcome for French President Emmanuel Macron. The first state visit by a European leader since Brexit, with no pomp and circumstance spared.

[01:54:49]

BELL: Welcomed first by the Prince and Princess of Wales, then greeted by King Charles and Queen Camilla, onto a procession through the streets of Windsor, along with the French first lady Brigitte Macron.

The pageantry and the tone, a stark contrast from the Brexit fallout that so tested the U.K.'s relations with its European neighbors.

EMMANUEL MACRON, FRENCH PRESIDENT: Amid these upheavals, the alliance between France and the United Kingdom has not faltered. It has even become stronger. Yes, during the past few years, this alliance became stronger.

BELL: Speaking to parliament at the palace of Westminster's Royal Gallery, the French president vowed that together they would bring an end to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Over the three-day visit, President Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer are also expected to address U.S. tariff wars, post- Brexit trade and migration.

MACRON: We love monarchy, but especially when it's not at home.

BELL: Whilst much still divides them, there was also a reminder of their shared past and the suggestion from the French president that it might just be time to lay their differences to rest.

Melissa Bell, CNN -- Paris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: One of the very first Apple computers ever made is up for auction. And yes, it still works. Sotheby's has the Apple One listed as part of its Geek Week History of Science and Technology sale. The nearly 50-year-old computer is expected to sell for up to $600,000. Sotheby's says that's a very conservative estimate. It's one of only 50 original computers built by Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, which were originally sold for $666.66 -- a lot of sixes.

Thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm John Vause.

Please stay with us. Rosemary Church is up after a very short break.

I'll see you back here this time tomorrow.

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