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Syrian Army Withdraws From Suwayda Under Ceasefire Agreement With Druze Leaders; Zelenskyy Launches Cabinet Overhaul Amid War Pressures; Trump Says He Would Love For Fed Chair Powell To Resign; Samsung Boss Cleared Of Fraud By South Korea's Top Court; Obamas Speak Out about Rumors of a Divorce; Large Meteorite from Mars sold at Auction for $5.3M. Aired 1-1:45a ET
Aired July 17, 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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JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: A ceasefire in Suwayda. Ahead on CNN Newsroom, Syria's military pulling back from the south. The clash has left hundreds of members of the Druze militia dead, bringing Israeli airstrikes on government targets in response.
Will he or wait? On Wednesday, it was won't, as in probably won't fire the fed chair. But President Trump did ramp up his ongoing attacks on Jerome Powell.
Plus, tomorrow may never come for Belgium's famous Tomorrowland music festival. Just days before the curtain was set to go up, the main stage left badly damaged by fire.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from Atlanta, this is CNN Newsroom with John Vause.
VAUSE: Another ceasefire has been announced between government forces and Druze militias in southern Syria. Previous agreements to end days of deadly clashes have collapsed within hours, unable to prevent centuries old tensions and grievances from rising to the surface.
Late Wednesday, Syrian forces were seen pulling back from the area. But there is another major player in this conflict and that Israel. The Israelis have carried out a series of airstrikes on Syria this week, Wednesday, targeting the capital, Damascus, all in support, they say, for the minority Druze community.
The Syrian government says the attack is a dangerous escalation, saying at least three people were killed, dozens more were injured. And during a national address, Syria's new president, the former Islamic rebel fighter, accused Israel of trying to sow division and unrest.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AHMED AL-SHARAA, SYRIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Today, as we face this challenge, we find ourselves in the heart of a battle aimed at preserving the unity of our nation. The Israeli entity, known for its repeated attempts to destabilize us and sow division once again seeks to turn our land into a battlefield of chaos and to dismantle the fabric of our people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: The Druze are a minority Arab sect of almost a million people living mostly in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. They've come under attack from Arabic Bedouin groups and militias loyal to Syria's new Islamist government.
Hundreds of Israeli Druze have now crossed into southern Syria from the Israeli occupied Golan Heights into a security buffer zone enforced by the Israeli military. More details now from CNN's Jeremy Diamond reporting in from Jerusalem.
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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Israeli bombs rock the Syrian capital of Damascus, striking the Defense Ministry in an area near the presidential palace. At least three people were killed and 34 injured in the strikes, according to the country's health Ministry.
The defense headquarters suffering a serious blow. But the true cost of these strikes may not yet be known threatening to derail new U.S. brokered security talks between Israel and Syria.
MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We think we're on our way towards a real deescalation and then hopefully get back on track in helping Syria build a country and arriving at a situation there in the Middle east that's far more stable.
DIAMOND (voice-over): The attacks came after days of clashes in Syria's southern city of Suwayda between Bedouin tribes and the Druze community, a religious minority whose members also live in Israel and Lebanon. Dozens of people have been killed in the clashes in recent days.
Syrian troops soon entered Suwayda with the government saying it was looking to stop the violence. But some Druze leaders saw the approach of government forces as a threat. And so did Israel, which struck approaching Syrian tanks, rocket launchers and trucks carrying weapons, saying it was acting to prevent a massacre against the Druze.
But Israel isn't just striking to protect the Druze.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): We are committed to keeping southwestern Syria a demilitarized zone. Israeli troops captured this buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli occupied Golan Heights after the fall of the Assad regime last year. But Israel has also demanded Syrian troops remain out of southern Syria altogether.
In the Israeli held Golan Heights, the large Syrian Druze community here is deeply impacted by attacks on the Druze in Suwayda.
FAEZ SHKIER, ISRAELI DRUZE (through translator): My wife is in Syria, my uncles are from Syria and my family is in Syria in Suwayda. I don't like to see them being killed. They kicked them out of their homes, they robbed and burned their houses. But I can't do anything. It's very hard on me.
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DIAMOND (voice-over): That sense of helplessness driving hundreds of Druze to take matters into their own hands, pouring across an Israeli security fence and into the Syrian buffer zone on the road to Suwayda. Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Jerusalem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: A crowd crush at an aid distribution point in Gaza has left at least 20 people dead. A warning now some of the images you're about to see are disturbing.
This site was run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a controversial Israeli and U.S. backed organization. They say 19 people were trampled and one person was stabbed in a surge driven by agitators in the crowd.
Notably, this is the first time GHF has acknowledged any fatalities at its aid distribution points. The Palestinian Health Ministry, though, puts the death toll at 21, saying 15 died from suffocation caused by tear gas, while six others were shot by Israeli forces. The entire frustration grown (ph).
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): You send aid but you are killing us or you want to starve us, or you want to insult us. Explain to us what exactly do you want so we can understand. Close it and that's it. But don't call it humanitarian under the name of U.S. and Israel while you kill us.
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VAUSE: The Israeli military referred CNN to GFS statement on the incident. Major stumbling block in a possible ceasefire between Israel and Hamas may soon be resolved, according to a regional security source. The sticking point has been positioning Israeli troops in Gaza during the proposed 60 days truce. The source says Israeli forces could potentially withdraw from the Mora Corridor in southern Gaza.
Israel established that corridor in April, hoping to divide the territory and place greater pressure on Hamas.
Ukraine's cabinet undergoing its largest shakeup since Russia's full scale invasion began. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is widely expected to name former Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal to be Ukraine's next defense minister. Shmyhal thanked lawmakers for voting to boost defense spending by more than $9 million on Wednesday. The vote and cabinet shakeup came after Russia launched a large scale
assault on several regions targeting energy infrastructure. Separately, at least two people were killed and 27 wounded in a Russian strike on a shopping center in the eastern Donetsk region. That's according to the governor there. More details now from Nick Paton Walsh.
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NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: 400 drones attacked Ukraine last night, said their officials. Not a record by any stretch of the imagination. But four cities hit particularly hard. The second largest, Kharkiv, hit with 16 drones in just 14 minutes, the officials there said two people killed in the regions around it and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenksyy's hometown of Kryvyi Rih hit with what officials there said was the largest attack since the start of the war.
The capital Kyiv, though Zelenskyy himself remarks spared a substantial attack in recent days. And he indeed suggested, possibly joking, that it was the presence of Trump's Ukraine envoy, General Keith Kellogg, there that potentially meant the capital had a few nights off. He is said to have departed of late after certainly a different tone in his conversation since the White House appears to have soured on the Kremlin.
But Zelenskyy joking that perhaps they should have kept Kellogg around, given him a Ukrainian passport, suggesting that the lack of Russian attacks during his stay there shows that the United States is causing Russia to be afraid, that they are essentially concerned about hitting senior U.S. officials.
But still overhanging that visit. The speed in which the Trump administration now thinks it can get vital Patriot interceptor missiles to the Ukrainians. Trump suggesting potentially that could be a matter of days. They might already be headed to Ukrainian hands. Germany perhaps a little more conservative and in its estimates saying that a decision to supply the batteries that fire the interceptors would be days away and it might take manufacturers potentially months to get them into Ukrainian hands.
But a new urgency, they're not quite as heavily reflected in the 50- day deadline for secondary sanctions that Trump proposed potentially against China or India. The main purchases of Russian energy. Will they use that period to pressure Russia into diplomacy while Moscow already brushing off the mere idea of that. Sergey Lavrov, their foreign minister, saying that they've had a 24-hour deadline, 100-day deadline, they're increasingly used to these deadlines essentially whizzing past them.
And a debate too, still now in the public about exactly what kind of weapons the Americans may end up permitting the Europeans to buy off them for Ukrainian use. Reports suggesting that perhaps Trump has discussed longer range missiles potentially being supplied to the Ukrainians. He dismissed that and even encouraged Ukraine not to hit Moscow. But certainly a change in his thinking, a change in the tone of the relationship with Kyiv.
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Zelenskyy commenting how the only way to change Russia's behavior was strong weapons and strong sanctions. Well, they might get some weapons, but strong sanctions are still 50 days off and 50 days in which potentially Russia can make significant changes if it launches a full scale offensive along the front lines in these summer months. Nick Payton Walsh, CNN, London.
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VAUSE: The U.S. president and the Fed chief have long been at odds over interest rates. That is not grounds for termination. But Donald Trump maybe looking for another way to fire Jerome Powell. Details in a moment.
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VAUSE: Donald Trump continues to go back and forth on the future of Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, telling reporters he would love for Powell to resign, but unlike a day earlier, saying he probably won't fire him, that's because the Fed chair can't be fired for disagreeing with the president over interest rates.
Still, President Trump made a not so subtle hint that power could still be removed for fraud, even though absolutely no evidence exists of any wrongdoing. Nothing. Not a thing. Nada. Rana Foroohar is a CNN global economic analyst. She's also the associated editor with the Financial Times. She's with us this hour from New York. Good to see you.
RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: Good to see you.
VAUSE: OK, so the future of the Fed chair, Jerome Powell seems to be kind of one of these back and forth issues, if you like, for the U.S. President. Now, he's not so keen to fire the Fed chair unless, listen to this.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you completely ruling out the idea of firing Jerome Powell?
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I don't rule out anything, but I think it's highly unlike. Unless he has to leave for fraud. I mean, it's possible there's fraud involved with the 2.5, $2.7 billion renovation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Have you drafted a letter?
TRUMP: I haven't drafted a letter.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So you didn't show a letter to Republican lawmakers last night?
TRUMP: No. I talked about the concept of fire him. I said, what do you think? Almost every one of them said, I should, but I'm more conservative than they are.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: So the renovation and the fraud appears to be a $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed's headquarters overseen by Jerome Powell. So keep in mind, under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the chair can be ousted only for cause, which is typically interpreted to mean malfeasance or gross misconduct.
This is a bit like a slow moving hitch off. But at this point we get to that question once again. Do we take the president literally, not seriously, or seriously not literally? Where are we with this?
FOROOHAR: Well, you know, let's just start with these allegations or suggestions of fraud, which I think are very dangerous. I mean, these are very serious allegations. Listen, I've been in the Fed headquarters prior to the renovation. It's no big shakes. So, you know, it could probably have used a little bit of a brush up, I don't know about $2.57 billion.
But I think this is the president trying to sow doubt, trying to sow a sense of insecurity concern around a Fed chair that is not doing exactly what he wants. And I think it's really, really dangerous. You know, when I talk to global investors, they can put up with a lot. They've put up with tariff uncertainty.
They've put up with politics being incredibly volatile in the US. They've put up with, frankly, Trump's own corruption in the sense that the rule of law has been undermined by this president. But they are not going to put up with the sense that the Fed is no longer independent. That is where the buck will stop for international investors.
VAUSE: If he was to move in via the Fed chair, what would that do to the markets?
FOROOHAR: Well, I think that you've already seen the markets, even at the hint of such a thing falling, you see the dollar falling. That's just a small sampling of what would come if Powell was fired for something other than really egregious misconduct. And I just don't see that happening. I don't see evidence of that. I think he's done a pretty good job in a very difficult situation.
VAUSE: The president's problem with the Fed chair is all about official interest rates, which are set by the Federal Reserve. During an interview Wednesday, Trump said this. Listen to this.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
TRUMP: This guy is an incompetent guy, and he's also obviously a Trump hater. We should be at 1 percent. We shouldn't be it, you know, we're at 4.25 or something now. We should be at 1 percent, not that we should be the lowest of the group. And because without us, the whole world collapses.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
VAUSE: Right now, the U.S. economy is facing inflationary pressure from tariffs which have been imposed by Donald Trump. You know what would happen again if U.S. rates are suddenly slashed to 1 percent in this situation?
FOROOHAR: Well, it would just completely undermine the credibility of the central bank. I mean, the central bank has got to be seen to be looking at data, not politics, and certainly not pressure from the president. That said, just if you were to take Trump out of this equation and just look at should the Fed cut interest rates right now? I don't think there's a strong case for that.
I mean, look at the jobs numbers that came in just a few days ago. I mean, the U.S. is still having a pretty good economic picture, despite all things. If anything, it's getting harder for the Fed to argue that there's a recession coming or that there's a slowdown coming. Rather, instead, you've got all kinds of inflationary pressures from growth, from demographics, from tariff threats.
And so, you know, the president is creating a situation that makes it almost impossible to argue that we should be cutting rates.
VAUSE: The U.S. President is also upset with the person who pointed Jerome Powell to that position. Listen to this.
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TRUMP: He's a terrible fed chair.
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TRUMP: I was surprised he was appointed. I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him. But they did.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Yes, President Biden did renominate Powell for that job. But let's go back to 2017.
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TRUMP: It is my pleasure and my honor to announce my nomination of Jerome Powell to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: It seems the president cannot remember appointing Powell back in 2017. But putting that to one side, I think you touched on this. Powell is seen as having done a pretty good job ever since then.
FOROOHAR: Yes, absolutely. And I mean, think about everything we've seen since then. We've had a pandemic, we've had wars, we've had politics that has never been more volatile. You know, we've had supply chain issues, natural disasters. I mean, this is something that has been navigated very well by this Fed chair. And I think if he was seen to be pulled for political reasons, it would be a disaster for the American economy and it would have ramifications around the world.
VAUSE: And he was a good choice, it seems, by President Trump at the time and he's been a set of hands ever since. Rana, as always, great to see you. Thanks for being with us.
A major legal win for the chairman of Samsung Electronics after almost a decade of litigation satisfaction. South Korea's Supreme Court upheld the rulings of two lower courts, meaning Jay Y. Lee has now been officially cleared of fraud and stock manipulation charges linked to an $8 billion merger in 2015. The ruling comes at a crucial time for Samsung competing in a growing market for AI chips.
Stay with South Korea now, where a new government investigation could soon begin into a deadly crowd crush which killed nearly 160 people on Halloween nearly three years ago.
According to the Reuters news agency, President Lee Jae-myung was fresh eyes on the case and is appointing a new team of police and prosecutors. The tragedy happened in a popular nightlife district of Seoul, sending shockwaves across the country and far beyond. Many of the victims were young. President Lee decision to begin this new investigation came after meeting with their surviving family members.
In a moment, Syrian president lashing out at Israel after a series of deadly Israeli airstrikes on government targets in the capital. Live to the Syrian capital right after the break.
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VAUSE: Welcome back, everyone. I'm John Vause. You're watching CNN Newsroom. Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, whole bunch of stuff, stepping up its efforts to become the leader in artificial intelligence technology by teaming up with Amazon Web Services to try and get more developers to use Meta's Llama AI platform. CNN's Clare Duffy explains how it all work.
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CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER: Yes, this is a quieter but still really interesting and important front in the AI race. The makers of the big AI models like Meta want to become the default platform for developers that build new chat bots, new agents, other AI applications. Sort of like the way that Apple and Google have been the default platforms for building mobile apps during the mobile web era. So that is really what this Meta partnership with us is targeted at.
The companies are going to be picking 30 U.S. startups that are interested in building applications on top of Meta's AI model, Llama. They'll be providing six months worth of hands on support from Meta engineers AWS engineers and also $200,000 each worth of cloud computing credits from AWS. That is really valuable because the computing power that it takes to
build these kinds of AI applications is really expensive, especially if you're a startup that isn't yet turning a profit. And of course, AWS stands to benefit if these startups continue using its cloud computing technology after the six months.
This of course all comes as Meta is shelling out significant resources to try to become the leader in the AI space. That also includes Mark Zuckerberg personally offering contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to some of the top AI researchers to lure them away from competitors.
The company has recently hired engineers away from places like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and it's also invested $14 billion in the AI startup scale that it also involved hiring its CEO and some of its top employees to help put together this new AI superintelligence team.
So Meta really going all out to try to become a leader in this space and this partnership with AWS, getting more startups onto its technology certainly is going help. Clare Duffy, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Thank you, Clare. We'll be right back after this.
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VAUSE: Welcome back everyone.
An earthquake triggered a small, brief and local tsunami in parts of Alaska on Wednesday. The 7.3 magnitude tremor hit about 80 kilometers south of Sandpoint in the Aleutian Islands.
The National Tsunami Warning Center said that generated a tsunami more than five centimeters high. Is that really a tsunami -- it's a mini tsunami? Tsunami warning for the area and other parts of Alaska has since been canceled.
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VAUSE: Fire has caused extensive damage to the main stage at the Tomorrowland Music Festival in Belgium. About a thousand staff members were there when the blaze broke out on Wednesday. Officials say no one was hurt.
The campsite near the venue will open Thursday as scheduled, but organizers are still looking for solutions for the festival set to begin Friday.
A volcano erupted in the southwestern Iceland region on Wednesday, the latest in a series of outbreaks near the nation's capital. Smoke and flows of glowing hot lava spewed out of the vents. Flights at Reykjavik Airport were not affected. Icelandic officials say this was likely a relatively small eruption,
the 12th in the area in four years. Experts say the outbursts could occur for decades or even centuries.
Looks kind of pretty.
For years, unfounded rumors of divorce have swirled around the Obamas. The former first couple have been married for almost 33 years. And on Wednesday, during Michelle Obama s podcast, they dismissed those rumors with good humor, a few jokes, and some advice for a happy life together.
CNN's Arlette Saenz has details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: This is my husband, you all.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: She took me back.
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Barack and Michelle Obama, one of the world's most famous power couples, are taking on the rumors about their marriage with humor.
CRAIG ROBINSON, MICHELLE OBAMA'S BROTHER: It was touch and go for a while.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's so nice to have you both in the same room together.
B. OBAMA: I know.
M. OBAMA: I know. Because when we aren't, folks think we're divorced.
SAENZ: For months, speculation about their marriage has run rampant, fueled in part by the former president's appearances without his wife by his side, including President Donald Trump's second inauguration.
M. OBAMA: People couldn't believe that I was saying no for any other reason, that they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.
SAENZ: Now, for the first time, the Obamas are speaking out together on the former first lady's podcast to shoot down those rumors of divorce.
B. OBAMA: These are the kinds of things that I dismiss, right? So I don't even know this stuffs going on.
ROBINSON: Right?
B. OBAMA: And then somebody will mention it to me and I'm all like, what are you talking about?
ROBINSON: Yes. Yes.
M. OBAMA: There hasn't been one moment in our marriage where I thought about quitting my man. And we've had some really hard times that we had to have, had a lot of fun times, a lot of adventures. And I have become a better person because of the man I'm married to.
B. OBAMA: Ok. Don't -- don't make me cry now, right at the beginning of the show.
SAENZ: The Obamas met in 1989, working at a law firm in Chicago. They married three years later and had two daughters.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love you, daddy.
SAENZ: Their marriage, thrust into the public spotlight as his political ambitions carried them to the White House.
B. OBAMA: I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years. The rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation's next first lady.
SAENZ: But between the dancing and the kiss cameras, the couple also has spoken about their struggles.
B. OBAMA: She wasn't the one who chose this life. We went through our rough patches.
M. OBAMA: I don't want people looking at me and Barack like hashtag couples goals --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
M. OBAMA: -- And not know that no, no, there is some broken things that happen even in the best of marriages.
SAENZ: And over the years, the Obamas have shared tips for making their nearly 33-year marriage work.
M. OBAMA: I was one of those wives who thought, I'm taking you to marriage counseling so you can be fixed, Barack Obama, because I was like, I'm perfect.
But marriage counseling was a turning point for me, understanding that it wasn't up to my husband to make me happy.
B. OBAMA: I was in a deep deficit with my wife, so I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things.
SAENZ: Arlette Saenz, CNN -- Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: President Donald Trump says Coca-Cola sold in the U.S. will be made with cane sugar, just like in Mexico, not corn syrup. Coke switched to the syrup decades ago to cut costs. No confirmation, actually, from Coke, but in a statement they said they appreciate President Trump's enthusiasm.
He has a well-known taste for diet Coke, which is made with artificial sweetener. Donald Trump even has a button on his desk in the Oval Office, presses it whenever he wants a new one.
High fashion was the attraction in Rome this week, as Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana held two catwalk shows amid the city's famous historical sites.
On Tuesday, models wore designs with a religious theme. On Monday, though, the show was held at the Roman Forum, paying tribute to the city's ancient history and landmarks while highlighting 1950s era fashion.
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VAUSE: And a rare meteorite from Mars sold at auction to an anonymous bidder for $5.3 million after taxes and fees. The unusually large piece of the Red Planet weighs in at 24 kilos, about 54 pounds.
Analysis revealed it was probably blasted into space by a powerful asteroid impact, which turned parts of it into glass. The rock was discovered in a remote region of Niger in November, 2023. A Martian rock with the planet's atmosphere and trapped in it sold for $200,000 back in 2021. That's quite the price inflation.
Thank you for watching. I'm John Vause.
Please stay with us, "MARKETPLACE ASIA" is up next.
And then my colleague Kim Brunhuber with the day's news in about 15 minutes.
Good to see you.
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("MARKETPLACE ASIA")
