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U.K. Conservative Party To Announce Next Prime Minister; Pope Francis: Zero Tolerance For Abuse In Catholic Church; Breakthrough In Race To Save Threatened Caribbean Coral. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired September 05, 2022 - 05:30   ET

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


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[05:30:38]

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Two hours from now, Britain's Conservative Party is expected to announce the identity of the country's next prime minister. Either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak will take over for Boris Johnson tomorrow.

Nic Robertson live from London with the latest. OK -- so, Nic, how does this process work?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, 160,000 Conservative Party members got to vote over a 7-week and very divisive process trying to pick which one of them would be the better leader of the Conservative Party and by automatic right.

Therefore, the prime minister of the country now the 160,000 members of the Conservative Party -- about one percent of the population -- typically, more affluent, typically, more white than the general population in the U.K., so not typical of the U.K. population as a whole.

It is expected to be Liz Truss. She does seem to be the one that the bookies are picking and the expectations around Westminster here are that she'll get the job.

She's likely to take a different tact to Boris Johnson. He was planning to raise taxes. She believes that she can tackle some of the country's numerous problems by lowering taxes. That's the indications that she's given so far.

But the biggest issue facing her, of course, for many leaders across the world and the United States, as well as other European countries -- it's the rising cost of energy. And on that issue, she said she would very quickly, if she becomes prime minister, make an announcement about it. This is what she told the BBC over the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LIZ TRUSS, U.K. FOREIGN SECRETARY: If I'm elected a prime minister, within one week I will make sure there is an announcement on how we are going to deal with the issue of energy bills and of long-term supply to put this country on the right footing for winter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: Now, she was pressed on how, precisely, she was going to do that and she wouldn't say. But it does seem that she'll lower taxes, as I said, borrow the money, and therefore keep the cost of energy down for the general population. The question is will she do that for small businesses as well as households. That's the pressing question here.

But there are many pressing questions that she faces. The challenges of reuniting her party -- that was a divisive campaign to find out who will be the next prime minister. Tensions still with the European Union over the Northern Ireland protocols. The outfall of the Brexit agreement -- still tensions existing there -- as well as a war in Europe, and a very aggressive and assertive Russia at this time.

So, economic challenges at home, divisions within her own party, and huge international issues all piling up. She's going to have a very, very busy first week if it's here.

ROMANS: Yes, absolutely.

All right, Nic. Thank you so much for explaining all of that.

All right. Pope Francis declaring zero tolerance for sexual abuse in the Catholic church and says he is taking personal responsibility for ending it. The pontiff speaking to our partner CNN Portugal in a wide- ranging interview.

Let's bring in CNN Vatican correspondent Delia Gallagher live in Rome. Delia, what are we hearing from the pope in his interview?

DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Christine, the pope covered a number of topics, including sexual abuse, which he called diabolic. Let's take a listen to more of what he had to say on that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE FRANCIS, HEAD OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (through translator): If he is a priest, he is there to lead man to God and not to destroy man in the name of God. Zero tolerance, and we cannot stop on that. And every case of abuse that appears hurts me -- hurts me -- but we have to face it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GALLAGHER: And the pope said also that he didn't think that the Catholic Church's rule on celibacy had anything to do with sexual abuse, as some people have suggested. He said that sexual abuse occurs in other sectors of society, including the family where, obviously, celibacy is not an issue.

The pope also spoke about the war in Ukraine. He said a possible visit to Kyiv and Moscow was quote "up in the air." You know, Christine, the pope has been invited on several occasions to visit Kyiv. He has said he would like to do that but that he would also like to go to Moscow. However, there has been no invitation, for the moment, from Moscow for the pope to visit -- Christine.

ROMANS: Interesting. All right, Delia Gallagher for us in Rome. Thank you, Delia.

[05:35:00]

Still ahead, the back-to-office battle. Some workers aren't going in without a fight. And a scientific breakthrough that could protect against hurricanes.

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ROMANS: A man who jumped to his death from a high-rise apartment in Manhattan has been identified as the chief financial officer of Bed Bath & Beyond. Police say 52-year-old Gustavo Arnal died after falling from an 18th-floor balcony. A law enforcement source tells CNN that his wife witnessed his jump. No suicide note was found. No crime is suspected.

Arnal was right at the center of the turmoil at Bed Bath & Beyond. Last week, it said it would close 150 stores and lay off 20 percent of its corporate staff.

He was a defendant in a lawsuit accusing him and other large shareholders of engaging in a pump and dump scheme to inflate the company's stock price.

[05:40;01]

All right, this Labor Day, many who labor in offices are facing an unwelcomed demand from their bosses -- please return to the office, and this time we mean it, probably. Employer efforts to lure or drag employees back to their office desks have stalled with office occupancy stuck in recent months at about 43 percent and the reason is clear. Workers don't want to come back and in this white-hot labor market, they have a lot of leverage.

Let's bring in Jessica Kriegel. She is a chief scientist of workplace culture for the think tank Culture Partners.

Boy, am I glad to have you on this morning because this is go week for major companies across the country asking their employees to return -- in many cases, at least three times -- days a week. We see situations, though, like Apple, where 1,000 employees signed a petition to keep working from home.

How is this going to play out here?

JESSICA KRIEGEL, CHIEF SCIENTIST OF WORKPLACE CULTURE, CULTURE PARTNERS: It's not going to go well for Apple, I'm sorry to say. I love Apple but I think that employees are going to take a stand. They're not going to want to go into the office and they're just going to stay home. We've seen this with other organizations -- companies who have tried to get their workers into the office in the last year. They've seen revolts, they've seen petitions, and they've seen people quit. I think quit rates at Apple are going to go up, unfortunately, and they're probably going to have to revisit the policy eventually.

ROMANS: Yes, and these are workers who are in really high demand in the -- in the economy -- in the tech economy.

These recent Gallup poll shows that six in 10 employees who work exclusively remote are extremely like to change their company if they're not offered remote flexibility. I'm really not surprised by that number. I know a lot of people feel that they are actually more efficient, productive, and effective in some kind of combination of home and work. And also, a lot of people have managed their life -- you know, their families and their school. Everything is managed around this ability to have flexibility.

KRIEGEL: What a gift to be able to stay home, to be able to have breakfast with your children and not be in commute traffic. To be able to hit the soccer game and also get work done.

Study after study shows that people are more productive when they're in the office. We've done research on culture and seen that it does not affect culture. Culture is what drives results and it's not water cooler talk. It's not whether or not you're playing ping pong at the office. It's really about the experiences that we co-create, which can absolutely happen on a Zoom call, on a telephone call. We don't need to be together in person.

Those experiences drive the beliefs we have about the work we do and whether we're contributing something valuable in our vocation. That leads to the actions we take and the results that we get to make an arbitrary rule that because it's Labor Day now we need everyone back in the office. It's sorely mistaken and I urge bosses to reconsider.

ROMANS: You know, it's interesting. I feel like there is this conflict between the human resources folks, the people folks, and the -- and the C-suite, right, where there are leaders who think that they want to be leading --

KRIEGEL: Yes.

ROMANS: -- people on the premises. They worry about culture, and trading, and collaboration. That's -- I hear those all the time.

But you talk to the people who are actually running the human resources department and they're like we have to have -- we have to have flexibility and a lot of other options.

KRIEGEL: Well, the human resources folks who are saying that are absolutely right.

Here is what I'm particularly worried about. The employees who are more likely to request a flexible work schedule and who want to work from home are women and non-white workers. So, if those are the people that end up staying home, then we have white male workers predominantly more in the office, what we're going to see is something called location bias. That's where bosses are going to perceive that the people who are contributing more and who are being more productive are those who happen to be there. The people who are on location.

That's not actually tied to results -- that's just tied to the general sense I get of who is contributing more. And that's going to lead to serious diversity, equity, and inclusion issues that we can prevent right now by not enforcing these arbitrary policies. That's what I think most of the H.R. leaders are worried about and they're right.

ROMANS: So, what is your advice to bosses? What is your advice to them on how they deal with their employees and craft some kind of middle ground here, maybe for a hybrid workplace for most companies?

KRIEGEL: Seventy-seven percent of companies are doing a hybrid work environment right now, so there are already companies who know how to work from home. We need to remain flexible in our thinking. This idea that we need to get back into the office because we've got a lot of real estate and that rent is very expensive -- that doesn't have anything to do with productivity. It doesn't have anything to do with results. So we need to remain flexible and allow people who are embracing the work-from-home lifestyle to do so.

The companies who have gone against that -- it hasn't worked. It's going to continue not working. We're in a new world post-COVID.

ROMANS: All right, Jessica Kriegel, Workplace Culture researcher. Nice to see you. Thank you so much. It's really a lot of food for thought and we'll see how it plays out this week with so many of these companies. Thanks.

[05:45:00]

All right, a Black Lives Matter executive being accused of siphoning more than $10 million in charitable contributions. In a new lawsuit, activists from 26 chapters of Black Lives Matter sued their sister non-profit Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation or GNF.

It specifically names Shalomyah Bowers, who was hired to -- in April, to lead the GNF. They allege that Bowers redirected millions in donation money to his own consulting firm. Bowers has denied the claims, calling the accusations harmful, divisive, and false.

It's a major breakthrough in the fight to save coral reefs under threat due to the climate crisis. And not only that, scientists say it could also offer protection from hurricanes.

Here is CNN' Isabel Rosales.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They're deadly, violent, and unleash mass destruction. Year after year, we pay the price in dollars and lives when hurricane season strikes. But under the waters, those storms gain their strength from there's an

unexpected layer of protection -- coral reefs. They break up large waves and guard coastlines from storm surge acting as a buffer against property damage and erosion.

Spanning about 360 miles, Florida has the world's third largest barrier reef and right now, it's at risk from stressors like pollution, disease, and warming oceans --

KERI O'NEIL, SENIOR CORAL SCIENTIST, FLORIDA AQUARIUM: They're dying around the world.

ROSALES (voice-over): -- caused by the climate crisis.

O'NEIL: I would say that the problems facing coral reefs right now are human costs. You can't have the ocean running a fever every summer and not expect there to be impacts.

ROSALES (voice-over): But in this tank, a sign that hope is not lost for Florida's reefs. You're looking at a major scientific breakthrough -- elkhorn coral spawning. The Florida Aquarium says it is now the first in the world to reproduce this threatened coral using aquarium technology.

O'NEIL: When it finally happened, we were just -- the first sense is just sheer relief.

ROSALES: Keri O'Neil is a senior coral scientist. She's also been dubbed the coral whisperer, and she lives up to her name. This spawning produced a couple of thousand of baby elkhorn corals. O'Neil expects about 100 could survive into adulthood.

Her team has figured out how to spawn 13 other species, yet elkhorn takes the top spot.

O'NEIL: It's really the most important. This is a critical step to preventing elkhorn coral from going extinct in the state of Florida.

ROSALES (voice-over): Named for its resemblance to elk antlers, this coral lives right at the top of the reef crest, meaning it plays a big role in protecting Florida's coastline from devastating storm surge, which climate change is making even worse. The problem is --

O'NEIL: Now there are so few left that there's just a few scattered colonies.

ROSALES (voice-over): Only about 300 of them are left around Florida, she says.

O'NEIL: It makes me emotional because I've seen the destruction of this species in my career.

ROSALES (voice-over): Getting them to reproduce isn't as easy as you think.

O'NEIL: Terrestrial animals do this all the time. When you have an endangered pandas or chimpanzees, the first thing you do is start a breeding program. But coral reproduction is super weird.

ROSALES (voice-over): O'Neil tells me in the wild, they're not successfully reproducing. They're also notoriously difficult to keep alive in aquariums. Part of the reason why, she says, they face so much doubt from the scientific community that they can make this moment happen.

O'NEIL: We face a lot of criticism of people. You can't keep those in an aquarium, you know. That's impossible.

ROSALES (voice-over): In the race to restore the reefs there's more work to be done. This breakthrough, only a first step.

O'NEIL: We are really buying time. We're buying time for the reef. We're buying time for the corals.

ROSALES (voice-over): The goal is a breeding program where they could ultimately breed more resilient coral capable of withstanding threats like pollution, warming ocean waters, and disease.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three, two, one, dive.

ROSALES (voice-over): Nature can then pick up the rest.

O'NEIL: There is hope for coral reefs. Don't give up hope. All is not lost. However, we need to make serious changes in our behavior to save this planet.

ROSALES: I'm Isabel Rosales reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: Very cool -- all right.

Another big week ahead for U.S. economic news, folks. Fresh data on jobless claims and mortgage rates are due out this week. There's an OPEC meeting today, and a big Apple reveal on Wednesday. Key speeches from a Fed governor and the Fed chief could hint at how aggressive the Fed will be at its next meeting later this month.

We learned last week 315,000 jobs were added in August. Jobs creation is slowing from the red-hot pace earlier this year. And the hiring in August was broad-based, led by professional business services, health care, retail, and manufacturing. The jobless rate ticked up to 3.7 percent because people on the sidelines entered the labor force looking for work.

In stocks, all three indexes ended the week on a sour note. The Dow, the S&P, and the Nasdaq all falling Friday. The stock market in the U.S. is closed for the Labor Day holiday.

[05:50:00]

All right, next on "NEW DAY" an airport worker steals a plane and then threatens to crash it. And a man makes a Jurassic discovery in his own home. (COMMERCIAL)

ROMANS: Florida State held off a furious comeback bid by LSU and it all came down to the very last play.

Carolyn Manno is here this morning with us for the morning's Bleacher Report. Good morning.

CAROLYN MANNO, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I can't believe we're talking about football. I'm excited.

ROMANS: Right.

MANNO: I know we all go to bed very early around here but if you did go to bed early you missed one of the best endings to a college football game ever -- so, I've got you. Let's go through it.

[05:55:00]

LSU down 24-10 late in the fourth quarter. Remember, this is Brian Kelly's debut as head coach for the Tigers. No pressure, but they wouldn't go quietly into the night. Jayden Daniels hitting a wide-open Jaray Jenkins for a 22-yard score to cut the lead to seven.

With just over four minutes remaining, they get the ball back on their own 1-yard line with 1:20 to go -- and LSU needed every second. This was a really impressive 99-yard drive and it ended with who else? Daniels and Jenkins again this time on a 2-yard pass with no time left. And instead of going for two and the win, LSU lining up here to attempt the game-tying extra point and force overtime. But Florida State blocks the kick, so the Seminoles come away from New Orleans with a 24-23 win.

You saw head coach Mike Norvell there jumping for joy. He was beside himself on the sidelines as FSU is off to its first 2-0 start since 2016 -- remarkable.

In baseball, Yankees slugger Aaron Judge also remarkable, continuing to amaze us all. In the first at-bat of the game against the Rays crushes his 53rd home run of the season into the second deck in left field. So that is a career-high for the 30-year-old. If you're keeping track at home, Judge now on pace to hit 64 homers this season. He is eight shy of Roger Maris' American League record of 61 that was set back in 1961, and they've got 28 games left to play.

Meantime, the Cardinals' Albert Pujols is now just five away from joining Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, and Babe Ruth in the 700 home run club. The 42-year-old hit the 695th dinger of his career against the Cubs. Last at-bat for Pujols against the archrivals and it turned out to be the difference-maker in the game as well. A 2-0 win there.

Pujols now one behind tying Alex Rodriguez for the fourth-most all- time.

This was wild last night. I was at the U.S. Open for this. Daniil Medvedev's dreams of a title defense at the U.S. Open are over this morning. The world number one losing in four sets to the always entertaining Nick Kyrgios.

Look at this point. Look at this ridiculous rally. Medvedev hit the ball straight up and then it was going to land on his own side of the net. For some reason, Nick Kyrgios ran around the net and smashed the ball on Medvedev's side. I mean, this is not legal and exactly the kind of player that Kyrgios is.

And that's why everybody loves him. I mean, the crowd was for him last night. They were on his side.

And despite losing that point, which was absurd, the 27-year-old from Australia advancing to the quarterfinals for the first time at Flushing Meadows. I mean, standing ovations for him all night. He was spectacular.

And in the match-up between the youngest and oldest remaining women in the field on the singles side, women's 18-year-old Coco Gauff is through to the quarterfinals for the first time in her short career. American sensation. She is beating the 33-year-old Shuai Zhang from China here in dramatic fashion. So she was down 5-4 in the first set and 5-3 in the second.

But she really used the crowd, Christine. They were chanting for her. Again, the player that so many people come to see. They were saying "Go! Go! Coco" and she ended up powering back to win the match in straight sets.

So, a really gutsy performance from her there. And she's playing really well. I mean, on to the quarters and --

ROMANS: Yes.

MANNO: -- could we see her in the final against Iga Swiatek? I hope so. I mean, that would be a remarkable run for her at the U.S. Open.

ROMANS: On a scale of one to 10, you must be on a 12 for the great tennis you have seen over the past few days.

MANNO: I'm just on a 25. I mean, it was the best first week of the U.S. Open I've ever seen. And now, we've got Rafa in the mix, we've got --

ROMANS: Yes.

MANNO: -- Coco in the mix. You've got Nick Kyrgios who is just such an entertainer.

I mean, I knew I had to wake up early this morning but I also was like I have to go see the theater that is Nick Kyrgios. So I texted our producer, Amy, and I said this is just going to be a show. I've just got to go --

ROMANS: Yes.

MANNO: -- you know? And it's that -- it's that kind of stuff that makes it so fun. ROMANS: And you got up bright and early for us anyway. How wonderful.

MANNO: Yes.

ROMANS: Thank you.

MANNO: You're welcome.

ROMANS: Dedicated -- all right.

Finally, Barack Obama now halfway to an EGOT.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

Clip from Netflix, "OUR GREAT NATIONAL PARKS."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: That's the former president winning an Emmy award at this weekend's creative arts ceremony for his work narrating the Netflix documentary "OUR GREAT NATIONAL PARKS." The Obama's production company, Higher Ground, created the docuseries on national parks and wildlife.

Obama previously won two Grammys for audio versions of his memoirs. And in case you're wondering, he is the second U.S. president to win an Emmy. Dwight Eisenhower received an honorary governor's award from the T.V. Academy in 1956.

All right, have a great rest of your Labor Day, folks. Thanks for joining us. I'm Christine Romans. "NEW DAY" picks it up right now.

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