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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Deadly Russian Plane Crash: New Clues; GOP Debate Revolt Crumbles; Obama: Give Ex-Cons a Second Chance; Panthers Survive Colts' Rally. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired November 03, 2015 - 05:00   ET

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

[05:00:00] MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN ANCHOR: EARLY START continues right now.

(MUSIC)

MARQUEZ: New clues in the deadly Russian jetliner crash. What caused the plane to go down as families mourn the 224 killed onboard? Live team coverage just ahead.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN ANCHOR: The GOP debate revolt falling apart, crumbling actually. Republicans running for president fail to agree on a new set of demands they -- with the demands that they want for future network debates. And now, President Obama, he is weighing in with a little humor.

Good morning and welcome to EARLY START. I'm Alison Kosik.

MARQUEZ: I'm Miguel Marquez. Good morning to you. It is Tuesday, November 3rd, 5:00 a.m. here in the East Coast.

Happening now, progress in the search for the cause of the crash of MetroJet Flight 9268. A U.S. satellite detecting a heat flash over the Sinai Peninsula. That infrared flash coming at the same time the Russian passenger jet on its way from Egyptian resort to St. Petersburg, Russia, plummeted to earth, killing all 224 people on board.

Experts say the flash is significant, but by itself does not prove or disproved claims this was a terror attack.

For the latest on the investigation, let's bring in CNN's Ian Lee. He is live in Cairo for us.

Ian, what is the shape of the investigation? So many players involved.

IAN LEE, CNN REPORTER: Oh, that's right. If we look at all of the different people involved, we have a team from France and Germany and Ireland here helping the Egyptians. You have the Russians involved. They are looking right now at those black boxes trying to determine what they can say about the final moments of this flight and really what can lead to this.

Right now, we are hearing from officials. They are still saying that this was a mechanical issue. They haven't ruled out terrorism, but they are downplaying it right now. This despite MetroJet saying that they believe a mechanical issue could have caused the plane to go down.

But we are looking at the heat signature that was detected over the Sinai Peninsula. That could have been a number of things. A number of theories are brought up now. Potential missile which is the most unlikely as ISIS is not known to possess the abilities to have that missile to hit a plane traveling over 30,000 feet. You also have a potential for a bomb exploding.

But again, officials on the ground investigating have not detected any residue that would lead to that. There is still a lot more wreckage to go through. There is an engine that could have exploded due to a mechanical issue or it could have been the plane hitting the ground which when you look at the video of the wreckage, you do see the scarred parts of the plane.

So, this does open a lot more theories, which investigators are going to go through. Bodies though of the -- many of the bodies of those who died in the crash have been returned to Russia. Talking to officials here in Egypt, they said they were also looking at the bodies for clues to the crash.

But right now, Russian officials and Egyptian officials urging people not to jump to conclusions about what caused this plane to go down.

MARQUEZ: Ian Lee for us in Cairo -- thank you very much.

KOSIK: And overnight, a second plane carrying human remains from the crash arrived in Russia. A medical source in the Sinai tells CNN that most of the bodies being retrieved from the wreckage are intact and show no signs of burns. Russian President Vladimir Putin appearing in public for the first time since the crash, describing it as an enormous tragedy and adding that his thoughts are with the families of the victims.

In St. Petersburg for us with the latest, international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson.

So many grieving for their loved ones who are killed in this plane crash. Are they reacting at all about the speculation of what may have brought the plane down?

MARQUEZ: Well, we are just had a reaction on that from president Putin's spokesperson. He said very clearly now that there is no link to terrorism. He says there is unwarranted and unneeded and inappropriate speculation drawing any connection between Russia's actions in Syria and downing of this flight.

And it seems coming from the very top now they are trying to put an end to the notion this could be an act of terrorism. What he does go on to say this needs to be fully and properly investigated and everyone should hold back on the speculation until the investigation is complete. That is the message here.

At the same time, though, the families are not far from the airport and visiting a morgue. 196 bodies now returned. Another 52 of those arrived on a flight early this morning. It is a slow and very, very difficult process for the families to go and view the remains and discover if their relatives are among them.

[05:05:04] What we know so far is that nine people have been identified. Two of them are children. Both girls, a 10-year-old and 14-year-old. We have been told by authorities, that as early as today, the families may be able to take their loved ones home for burial once they are identified and once the relevant paper work is completed -- Alison.

KOSIK: Nic, you know, you start hearing the personal stories about who actually was on board and it's just really heartbreaking and these pictures are really moving.

Nic Robertson, thanks so much.

MARQUEZ: Now, this morning, Republican presidential candidates with a united front, demanding more control of future debates already falling apart. This as a pair of polls paint a confusing picture of the GOP race. Surprise, surprise.

CNN's Sara Murray has the latest from Washington, D.C.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Good morning, Alison and Miguel.

A new poll shows it's not Donald Trump that's leading nationwide anymore. Instead, Ben Carson is the frontrunner in the new NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" poll. He leads 29 percent to Donald Trump's 23 percent.

Now, Trump still has bragging rights for him. He leads in a new Monmouth University poll in New Hampshire. It's a wide lead. He is ahead of Ben Carson by about 10 points.

Now, if these polls sound a little bit chaotic to you, it is nothing compared to what's going on right now at the Republican debate process. After all those campaigns got together, huddled in the room, agreed to debate rules from requiring opening statements, to how cool it had to be in the debate arenas, now it seems the agreement is falling apart. It all began with Donald Trump, his campaign saying that he is going to negotiate directly with the networks. After that, things started to crumble.

John Kasich said he would not sign on to a joint letter with other candidates regarding the debates. Chris Christie followed suit, saying the same thing, and Carly Fiorina also jumped ship. So, you see there, it was a short lived truce between all the campaigns.

Alison and Miguel, back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: Well --

KOSIK: If there was a truce --

MARQUEZ: Shortly.

KOSIK: -- let's get more now from the presidential campaign with CNN politics Jeremy Diamond is with us.

Good morning to you.

You know, this was really short lived where you saw some camaraderie happening, and then it just crumbled when it comes to figuring out what the debates that the Republicans will look like.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN POLITICS DIGITAL REPORTER: Absolutely. These are Republican candidates. The idea they would somehow unionize and keep hold united front was far fetched.

But, for sure, we are seeing they did gather together on Sunday and have the effort to come together and do something about the debate process. Ultimately, they realized they could have gotten into something that could have potentially been really nasty and really messy by trying to wrestle control of the debates from the RNC and also from the TV networks.

MARQUEZ: Now, Jeremy, the polls are all over the place. National polls show Ben Carson on top. He is gaining in Iowa, if not ahead in Iowa of Mr. Trump. The Monmouth poll now shows that Trump is doing well in New Hampshire. Can we divine anything from these tea leaves? Or should we just sort of wait until voters start pulling the levers.

DIAMOND: Well, I think it's interesting. This NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll was actually conducted mostly -- was conducted entirely last week. It was conducted mostly before the last presidential debate. Only one day of the polling was done after the debate.

So, I think this is pretty similar to what we saw with "The New York Times"/CBS poll that came out last Monday. So, I think we are having a similar feeling there. But that's from last week. So, who knows how much of an impact the debate will have. It is hard to tell.

It is clear that last week before the debate, Ben Carson was surging ahead of Donald Trump. Now, whether Carson will maintain that lead in the post debate weeks to come, that still remains to be seen.

KOSIK: OK, Jeremy, we've got Donald Trump coming out with his new book today. Timing could not be better, right? You know, in it, I know you thumbed through it. I thumbed through it a bit.

And it looks like he's kind of focusing on the dissolution of the direction of where America is going and with these career politicians. I like in chapter two. He really had quips, saying, "You listen to the politicians and as if they're speaking from a script. How boring can I possibly be?" Some of this is entertaining. You look at the book as a whole, can we glean anything from it as to what kind of president Donald Trump could be?

DIAMOND: Well, you know, I have been covering Donald Trump's campaign for the last several months. I certainly did not learn very much new from this book which I did hold together last night. But, you know, there are certainly things that come across. Most of it is a regurgitation of the campaign speeches, of his policy platforms.

[05:10:00] But you also get a little bit of something different. He tries to show a little bit of a more personal side, I think. You see that coming across with some quips throughout the book, and he talks a little bit about his personality, he talks a little bit about his family, maybe trying to soften his image a bit.

And he also tries to blunt the past criticism that he's had to deal with, specifically on immigration for example. In one chapter, he talks about immigration, he talks about how he loves immigrants, and he even talks about how he believes the vast majority of illegal -- of undocumented immigrants who come into the country do so for good reasons, which is really interesting, because he's even criticized Jeb Bush for saying that undocumented immigrants come to this country out of an act of love. Whereas Trump appears to be agreeing with that almost, saying that, yes, indeed, the vast majority are not rapists and criminals, et cetera, like he first appeared to suggest. Instead, saying that most of them are here for the right reasons.

MARQUEZ: The other thing about the book, it appears to be a way for Donald Trump to position himself with conservative voters and explain himself for being a Democrat before and borrowing money from his father, for supporting single payer health care. All of these things that he realizes is a problem for him from the right.

DIAMOND: Absolutely. You see him explain there is a section where he goes "I'm a conservative." He explains he was once a registered Democrat. But he explains, "as I always have been a conservative Republican inside", in truth. I guess what he's trying to say is that he has conservative values. These are the values that he's always held and he does certainly try and explain away some of that criticism.

And he still says, you know, I don't think single-payer health care is right for this country, but he says, but in Scotland, for example, it works great.

(LAUGHTER)

MARQUEZ: That's hilarious.

KOSIK: We'll see how his book does. We'll see how many people get out and buy it and read it and feel closer to voting for him.

All right. Jeremy Diamond, thanks so much for your analysis.

MARQUEZ: That's name in TV, I think.

KOSIK: President Obama giving ex-cons a second chance. How he wants to help criminal offenders reenter society once their time is served. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOSIK: President Obama pushing for an overhaul of the nation's criminal justice system. He wants ex-cons to get a second chance. He is calling on local municipalities to work with colleges and employers on job training and placement for former inmates.

We get more now from CNN's senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPNDENT: Alison and Miguel, just as the Obama administration is speeding the release of federal prisoners who are serving harsh drug sentences, the president wants U.S. companies to start hiring many of these former inmates and not hold past crimes against them. President Obama delivered that message after visiting a halfway house in New Jersey yesterday, shining a light on a program that transitions former prisoners back into the society.

The president is calling on Congress to ban the boxes it described in federal hiring. That means eliminating the section on job applications that asks about criminal records, encouraging employers to seek that information later on.

OBAMA: Now, a lot of time that record disqualifies you from being a full participant in our society, even if you already paid your debt to society. It means millions of Americans have difficulty getting their foot in the door to try to get a job. Much less actually hang on to that job. That's bad for not only those individuals, it's bad for our economy.

ACOSTA: The president says that second chance is crucial to thousands of federal prisoners who are released just over the weekend after many had their drug sentences reduced -- Alison and Miguel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: Keystone XL oil pipeline is officially in limbo. The TransCanada, the company behind the project, asking the U.S. government to suspend its application for a permit beyond the 2016 election. The firm will now go through a state review in Nebraska, something it originally resisted. The move comes in the face of the rejection by the Obama administration as early as this week.

KOSIK: Time for an early start on your money. Seeing a lot of red arrows this morning. Asian and European stocks are mostly lower, so are U.S. stock futures.

Yesterday, stocks kicked off November with a nice rally. The Dow climbed 165 points. That gain puts the Dow in positive territory for the year. And the S&P 500 climbing 1.2 percent, it's getting close to its record high.

Residents in Ohio will vote on marijuana legalization today. This is the first time that voters will decide whether to approve recreational and medical marijuana at the same time. This is a controversial vote. For more reasons than you think.

One ballot measures allows commercial growth on only ten farms. Former 98 Degrees star Nick Lachey is one the investors who could potentially win big, becoming a top weed kingpin after today's vote, be he is a huge backer of this measure.

MARQUEZ: Well, I'm sure he is. They stand to make a lot of money. Fascinating if conservative Ohio passes this.

KOSIK: Ohio would become the fifth state to have legalization.

MARQUEZ: Huge for the marijuana advocates.

The Indianapolis colts hoping to spoil Carolina's perfect record. A fourth quarter comeback pushed to an overtime thriller. Andy Scholes has the highlights in the bleacher report.

KOSIK: Entrepreneur Elon Musk has warned the dangers of artificial intelligence, but we're still a long way from computers taking over the world. First, machines must learn to learn.

Rachel Crane reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELON MUSK, CEO, TESLA AND SPACEX: Humanity's position on this planet depends on its intelligence. So, if our intelligence is exceeded, it's unlikely that we will remain in charge of the planet.

RACHEL CRANE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You heard this plot. Man invents robot. Robot smarter than man. Robot takes over the world. That's the nightmare scenario. But the reality to some is very different.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are trying to build a computer to take a fourth grade science test and do well.

[05:20:02] Right now, we are still behind the kid in science. We can do better than average in geometry.

Computers do not have that open-ended ability to learn anything. They can't learn from scratch.

CRANE: Learning from scratch. That's a heady concept. The Allen Institution is trying to do that by teaching computers by taking that information from the image.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Human visual system has this amazing capability of understanding the content of the images.

CRANE (on camera): The dog clearly likes it owner. It's being fed ice cream.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you understand a lot about this image by just a glance at the picture. But when a computer sees this picture, it looks like this actually, a matrix of numbers.

CRANE: Whoa! OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right? So, that's the way --

CRANE: Very different than how I see it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly. So, it's actually a very different phenomenon, when a computer sees a picture like that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Artificial intelligence at the level of Hollywood movie is hundreds of years away. In the future, I'm looking forward to medicine being more effective, having few errors in saving lives using artificial intelligence.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOSIK: The undefeated Carolina Panthers surviving a scare against the Colts on Monday night football.

MARQUEZ: Andy Scholes has more in this morning's bleacher report.

Hello there, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, guys.

The Panthers are the surprise team in the NFL this year. Last night, they were looking for the first 7-0 start in franchise history.

I want to show the odd moment late in the third quarter. Two protesters rappelled from the upper balcony to travel a banner to protest a local issue in Charlotte. They hung there for a while before being arrested.

As for the game, Andrew Luck led the Colts in a furious comeback in the fourth quarter.

[05:25:01] Colts scored 17 unanswered points to send this game into overtime. But in OT, the pass right here intercepted. That's Luck's third interception in the game. It led to a game winning field goal for the Panthers. Carolina stays undefeated, 29-26 win.

All right. Very positive news for Seahawks receiver Ricardo Lockette. The team announcing that Lockette had successful neck surgery yesterday to repair ligament damage he suffered during a scary collision on Sunday against the Cowboys. Lockette will be out for the season.

But most importantly, Seattle coach Pete Carroll says Lockette's injury shouldn't affect his quality of life. He is said to be up and moving around as early as today.

All right. To the NBA. LeBron James making history in Philadelphia. The 30-year-old becoming the youngest ever to reach 25,000 career points. He surpasses Kobe Bryant who previously held the mark at 31. The Cavs win this one by a final, 107-100. The Memphis Grizzlies also broke the record last night, losing to the

Warriors by 50 points. That's their worst lost in franchise history. Steph Curry was absolutely ridiculous once again. He now has 148 points through four games. That's the best start since Michael Jordan back in 1991. The final for this one was 119-69.

The world champion, Kansas City Royals, arriving back home yesterday. Today, the entire city will celebrate the team's first title in 30 years with the parade through downtown. It will start at 1:00 Eastern. So everyone can enjoy the parade, the schools in Kansas City is shutting down today. If you were not Royals fans before, I guarantee they are now.

KOSIK: And maybe New Yorkers, too. Ha, ha, ha.

MARQUEZ: Anything to get out of work and school. Absolutely, I'm there with them.

KOSIK: Thanks, Andy.

MARQUEZ: Thanks, Andy.

KOSIK: New clues into what may have caused the Russian jetliner to crash, 224 people killed. Live team coverage, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)