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Early Start with Rahel Solomon
Pentagon Confirms Ongoing Review of Military Aid to Ukraine; North Korea to Send Up to 30,000 More Troops to Russia; China Showcasing Aircraft Carrier in Hong Kong; House Debating Trump's Megabill, Final Passage Expected Soon; Europe Battles Dangerous High Temperatures. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired July 03, 2025 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:30:00]
TAMMY BRUCE, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT PRESS SECRETARY: Spend cooperation with the IAEA at a time when it has a window of opportunity to reverse course and choose a path of peace and prosperity. Iran must cooperate fully without further delay.
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MJ LEE, CNN ANCHOR: And there's now concern Iran's move will obscure attempts to rebuild the country's damaged nuclear program. New satellite images appear to show repairs taking place at Iran's Fordow nuclear facility, which was hit last month by U.S. bunker buster bombs.
The Pentagon confirms that the U.S. is reviewing military aid to Ukraine in what could have significant consequences for Ukraine's ability to defend itself from Russian attacks. The Trump administration has paused some weapons shipments to Ukraine, including air defense missiles. The Defense Department says this is part of a review of military spending and U.S. support to other countries. A top Ukrainian presidential official says it would be, quote, inhumane for the U.S. to stop supplying missiles to Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his government is seeking answers from the U.S.
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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Technical level discussions between Ukraine and the U.S. are ongoing to clarify all details related to the delivery of defense aid, especially air defense components.
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LEE: Russia welcomed the Trump administration's decision to pause some weapons shipments to Ukraine. The Kremlin says the move will help bring the war to an end sooner.
Meanwhile, Russian artillery strikes on a hospital in Kherson wounded nine people, according to Ukrainian authorities. Ukrainian forces are already outgunned and outnumbered, and they could soon face even more pressure on the front lines. A Ukrainian intelligence assessment finds North Korea plans to send tens of thousands of more troops to fight for Russia. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh has this exclusive report.
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NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They brought near suicidal, ruthless tactics, the rumblings of a war going global. Eleven thousand North Korean troops helped Russia expel Kyiv soldiers from its border of Kursk. But that, it seems, is just the start.
CNN has learned up to 30,000 more may be headed to the front lines, according to Ukrainian intelligence, for use in a summer offensive. With Moscow hungry for manpower and Pyongyang keen to school its troops in brutal trench and drone warfare.
They were first seen here in October, but recently the routes used then could be active again. A troop carrying Laputa ship was seen here on May the 18th, the same type of vessel at the same Russian port used in transports last year, experts said. Ukraine also assesses Russia will refit transport planes like the ones seen on the tarmac here again in June at North Korea's Sunan airport to move so many North Koreans. Likely air or rail will take them across Siberia to the front line.
Ten kilometers east of Kursk, this camp has enlarged in recent months, further evidence of North Korean build-up. CNN has geolocated to here this six-minute video report from a part-Korean Russian correspondent. The report surfaced 48 hours after the Kremlin's first admission of the North Korean deployment.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through text translation): Such a good bunker. Warm.
WALSH (voice-over): They're not only training but appear to have new long-term bunker accommodation and equipment. The tastes of home, red Korean pepper and homemade propaganda. It says revenge for our fallen comrades.
This Russian instructor says his new trainees are aged 23 to 27.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through text translation): The guys arrive in good physical condition. Their fighters are as good as ours. The enemy runs away first. And the enemy does run, because it's afraid of a gun fight.
WALSH (voice-over): And there's a translation sheet to get over the language barrier, which meant the first units operated separately from the Russians. State media has shown videos of both countries now training together.
Here, in the same training ground, a Russian shows how to use a shotgun to take down a drone. Others practicing clearing buildings together.
More signs are open. Putin's top presidential advisor, Sergei Shoigu, visiting Kim Jong-un here for the second time in a fortnight, announcing 1,000 mine clearers and 5,000 military construction workers to rebuild Kursk region.
[04:35:00]
Perhaps a sign Moscow is indeed short of the manpower it has sent mercilessly into the fight, but also that it is not short on allies who share their ruthless commitment.
Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, London.
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LEE: The Chinese Navy is putting on a show of force in Hong Kong. Still ahead, we get a look at China's first domestically built aircraft carrier.
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LEE: Welcome back. I'm MJ Lee. Here are some stories we are watching today.
A final House vote on President Trump's massive tax and spending bill is just a few hours away. Lawmakers are debating the measure right now. House Speaker Mike Johnson says Republicans do have the support for final approval after a handful of holdouts switched their votes.
A judge has denied bail to entertainment mogul Sean Diddy Combs after the rapper was convicted on two criminal counts on Wednesday. The jury found him guilty of the lesser charges of transportation to engage in prostitution but cleared him of the more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking.
30 people are still missing after a ferry sank overnight near Bali, Indonesia. According to the Associated Press, the vessel sank about half an hour after leaving East Java. Police say four bodies have been recovered and 31 people have been rescued so far.
China is showcasing its first domestically built aircraft carrier. The ship sailed into Hong Kong's harbor a little while ago alongside some escort vessels. China's Navy has been working for years to build a fleet of aircraft carriers, and experts say its carrier force is slowly closing the gap with the U.S.
CNN's Ivan Watson got close to that Chinese warship.
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IVAN WATSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a pretty rare sight. A Chinese aircraft carrier, the Shandong, now making a five-day visit to the port city of Hong Kong. This is one of the largest weapons in China's military arsenal.
It's the length of more than three football fields, and it can carry more than 40 aircraft. Many of them are J-15 fighter jets, and when it's conducting flight operations, they would launch off of that ski jump sloping bow over there.
Now, this is a very potent symbol of China's relatively new naval power. I'm going to give you a little context here. Around seven years ago, I was in a small boat in this same harbor looking at a very different aircraft carrier. It was the USS Ronald Reagan making its own visit to Hong Kong.
In the years since then, relations between Beijing and Washington have sharply deteriorated, and we haven't seen a U.S. Navy ship here in many years.
In the meantime, around 2020, the Chinese Navy is believed to have grown larger by number of ships than the U.S. Navy. Today, China boasts the world's largest navy.
This is one of two fully operational Chinese aircraft carriers built entirely this one in China. There is a third aircraft carrier currently undergoing sea trials, and reportedly a fourth larger and more advanced aircraft carrier is currently under construction in China.
This carrier, the Shandong, was recently operating off of the eastern coast of Taiwan. That is that self-governing island that Beijing claims for itself and has not ruled out the possibility of using force to take it under control one day. So there's a lot of tension and a lot of Chinese military and naval muscle flexing that's ongoing around Taiwan.
The Shandong recently was conducting exercises as a strike force, as well as the other Chinese aircraft carrier, out in the open Pacific Ocean. And that is considered to be a milestone, some naval experts say, for the ongoing development of the Chinese Navy.
Beijing clearly has ambitions to project its naval power further into the high seas. Bringing this carrier here is aimed at whipping up more patriotism among the residents of Hong Kong and also demonstrating to the world China's growing naval power.
Ivan Watson, CNN, Hong Kong.
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LEE: Many parts of Europe are still sweltering under an extreme heat wave. Still ahead, we'll go live to Madrid to see how people there are trying to stay safe in this dangerous heat.
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LEE: Just into us, reports are coming in that star football player Diogo Jota has been killed in a car crash. Spanish media is reporting that Jota was a star forward for Liverpool Football Club and the Portugal national team. He was part of the Liverpool team that won the English Premier League in May. Diogo Jota was 28 years old.
More on our breaking news from Washington. The U.S. House has cleared a procedural hurdle to advance Donald Trump's sweeping domestic policy bill. Lawmakers are now debating it on the House floor, and a final vote to pass the legislation is expected in the next few hours.
[04:50:00]
The measure had been stalled for hours after five Republican holdouts voted against advancing the bill, but House Speaker Mike Johnson said earlier that they were able to sway those no votes, ensuring the bill could move forward.
And the heat is unrelenting in Europe. An extreme heat wave is moving toward the central part of the continent, sending temperatures soaring in Germany. Spain has been dealing with dangerously high temperatures for almost a week now. On Wednesday, the temperature in Madrid neared 40 degrees Celsius. That's over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Al Goodman is enduring the blistering heat in Madrid and joins me live now. Al, people in that city must be resorting to all sorts of things just to stay cool.
AL GOODMAN, JOURNALIST: That's right, MJ, like staying in the shade like here right now. The temperatures are going to be a little bit lower in Madrid today than the ones you just mentioned. 35 degrees Celsius or 95 degrees Fahrenheit, which is some relief, but there is now more humidity here and also along the coast, the beaches of Spain.
But people, as you say, have come up with some creative coping techniques to deal with this. Here's what some of them said.
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ANDREA CASTANO, COLOMBIAN TOURIST (through translator): The heat is unbearable, but I'm having a good time. I have my hand fan and I keep myself cool and I drink water. You always need to drink water. It's very important.
SARA ANTON, MADRID RESIDENT (through translator): Lots of hydration, avoiding to go out during the central hours of the day and looking for shades in the city.
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GOODMAN: Now, a different story, unfortunately, in the northeastern part of Spain, inland from the city of Barcelona -- coastal city of Barcelona, a rural area where firefighters have finally put a perimeter around a huge fire that's been burning since Tuesday night. And on Tuesday night, they claimed the lives of a 32-year-old pig farmer who went out to try to save one of his workers, a 45-year-old man. They were in a vehicle trying to get away, not from the flames, according to authorities, but from the smoke. The vehicle hit a snag. They got out, tried to make a run for it. They didn't make it.
That part of Spain has declared a day of national mourning this day. They are among fatalities that we are seeing now as a result of this heat wave and the resulting fires, MJ. In Spain, in Italy, in France, many hundreds have gone to hospital. It's a serious matter, more than just staying in the shade -- MJ.
LEE: Al Goodman in Madrid, thank you so much.
Everyone from the military to retailers are using drones these days, and now a health care logistics company is partnering with England's National Health Service to pioneer a new way of delivering time- sensitive blood samples from hospitals to labs. CNN's Anna Stewart reports.
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ANNA STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: How long do you say? Eight minutes?
HAMMAD JEILANI, CO-FOUNDER, APIAN: Two minutes.
STEWART: Two minutes?
JEILANI: Two minutes.
STEWART (voice-over): On a rooftop, in the shadow of London's iconic Shard building, a delivery drone takes to the skies. It's carrying precious cargo, in this case, blood samples from patients here at Guy's Cancer Center to a lab at St. Thomas' Hospital, a trip that can take 30 minutes or longer on London's roads.
JEILANI: I am a doctor by background, but I left the NHS to focus on this full-time, basically to make the NHS better.
STEWART (voice-over): Hammad Jeilani is one of the medical brains behind the healthcare logistics company called Apian, which began five years ago.
STEWART: As a doctor, what were the biggest challenges that you saw in terms of supply chains and logistics?
JEILANI: Care is very much constrained by the logistics that underpin it. So if you work in a certain hospital, a district hospital, you have to get your samples into a central facility. You want that to be timely, especially for urgent samples. It's all about the variation in the population, the different kinds of medical problems are out there, but they can all fundamentally benefit from logistics.
We have done a business case and we found that drones can be 40 percent cheaper than ground logistics. They can be 85 percent faster. They are 95 percent more carbon efficient than even electric vehicles on the road. So, we found that there's lots of benefits and actually it's more than just about the speed.
And there you go, it's that one over there.
STEWART: There we go. Wow.
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LEE: The Princess of Wales is opening up about the difficulties of life after chemotherapy. Catherine's comments came during a visit to the Wellbeing Garden at England's Colchester Hospital on Wednesday.
She hasn't said much about her cancer treatment, but she spoke with patients at the hospital about the personal struggles she is facing.
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CATHERINE, PRINCESS OF WALES: You know, you put on a sort of brave face, stoicism through treatment. Treatment's done.
So I think I can't get back to normal again. But actually, the phase afterwards is really, you know, it's a really difficult time. You know, you're not necessarily in the clinical team any longer, but you're not able to function normally at home as you perhaps once used to.
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And actually, someone to help talk you through that, show you, guide you through that sort of phase that comes after treatment, I think is really valuable.
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LEE: This was Catherine's first public appearance since she unexpectedly withdrew from the Royal Ascot two weeks ago.
And for the first time, scientists have sequenced the entire genome of an ancient Egyptian who lived more than 4,500 years ago. It's providing unprecedented insight into the first -- into the time when the first pyramids were built.
The man's remains were found unusually well-preserved in a sealed clay pot inside a tomb cut into a rock in a village in south of Cairo. By extracting DNA from a tooth, researchers discovered most of his genetic material came from ancient people in North Africa. About 20 percent was traced back to West Asia and the Mesopotamia region.
The findings are the first genetic evidence of an ancient cultural connection between the various regions.
Thank you for joining me here on EARLY START. I'm MJ Lee in Washington, D.C. I'll be back with more news after a quick break.
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