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CNN Headlines: President Trump In Beijing For High-Stakes Talks With Chinese Leader Xi Jinping; CDC: Passengers "Encouraged To Stay" For Monitoring In Omaha & Atlanta; Kouri Richins Gets Life Sentence In Husband's Murder; 11 People Rescued After Plane Crashes Off Florida. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired May 14, 2026 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:25]
BRAD SMITH, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump in China right now and we are minutes away from the big state banquet dinner. You're seeing brand new video from a short time ago. We'll break down what's been happening overnight on this high stakes trip.
And more than a thousand people are stuck on this cruise ship. And it's not because of the hantavirus this time. We'll get you the details.
Plus, a live stream are facing an attempted murder charge because of what happened outside this courthouse.
And the big rescue. Eleven people on board a plane that went down in the ocean. You'll see more of this dramatic save.
Good morning, everyone. It is Thursday, May 14th. I'm Brad Smith. Thank you for starting your day with CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS.
It is Thursday evening in Beijing at this hour.
President Trump is just moments away from arriving at a banquet dinner at China's Great Hall of the People.
That's also where talks were held earlier in the day
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We've had a fantastic relationship. We've gotten along. When there were difficulties, we worked it out. I would call you and you would call me. And whenever we had a problem -- people don't know -- whenever we had a problem, we worked it out very quickly. We're going to have a fantastic future together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: The day started with an elaborate welcome ceremony and a military band as Trump and Xi walked side by side. After talks wrapped for the day, both leaders visited China's Temple of Heaven. Let's turn now to CNN's Steven Jiang with more on what's next for the president's visit to China.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
STEVEN JIANG, CNN BEIJING BUREAU CHIEF: The main takeaway so far is the summit has -- seems to have gone according to plan, which must be such a big relief for Chinese officials, although, as you say, they still have the next 20 hours to watch everything. Clearly, there is a state dinner planned for the two leaders and they will have tea inside the very heavily guarded Chinese leadership compound, Zhongnanhai, tomorrow morning, before Trump leaves Beijing. But, you know, just heard the president say in his opening remarks, he sounded very diplomatic, very complimentary, even made a point of calling Xi Jinping a great leader in front of him.
And then, of course, quickly pivoting his favorite topic that is trade and economic issues, which obviously are his top priorities.
(VIDEO GAP)
JIANG: He did bring up Taiwan as the most important issue in this relationship, saying if not handled well, it could lead to not only clashes but even conflict and calling Taiwan independence the biggest threat to peace.
It seems, you know, behind or beneath all the pomp and pageantry, all the smiles and warmth lies a relatively cold reality of low expectations from the summit. And based on everything we have seen, the two leaders have cleared the spar and that is, they have injected certainty in this often contentious relationship. Or, as Xi Jinping put it, providing some constructive strategic stability in this relationship.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SMITH: CNN's Beijing bureau chief Steven Jiang, thank you.
And you can stick with CNN's coverage of President Trump in China throughout the day.
We take you now to some other news. Minnesota and Washington are joining several other states monitoring residents for hantavirus symptoms. Those impacted were either on the ship, hit by the virus, or had contact with someone who was. This morning, the CDC says that the exposed passengers at medical facilities in Atlanta and Omaha, Nebraska, are encouraged to stay there for 42 days of monitoring.
Among them, Jake Rosmarin, who is a travel influencer who has a long standing relationship with the cruise line. He was aboard and posting from the ship in collaboration with the company, and now he's at that Nebraska medical facility. He's on board and staying there.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JAKE ROSMARIN, TRAVEL INFLUENCER: I think I would, but I really don't foresee myself changing that decision. I think its something that I'm very strict upon, staying, standing by. I know it's the right decision. I know that I can make it through this. I have a lot of support on the outside and it's -- it's really helping. And I know that I'm going to be okay in the long run.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: Okay. So he's cool with staying there. And meanwhile, the doctor vacationing on the cruise ship who jumped in to help other sick passengers has tested negative.
[05:05:01]
Dr. Stephen Kornfeld has moved out of the biocontainment unit in Nebraska and is now being monitored in the quarantine unit.
We take you now to another cruise ship. Up to 1,700 passengers may have been exposed to a possible stomach bug, so theyre being held on board. Now, this is in France. Health officials say that the measure is precautionary as they investigate. Up to 50 people have shown symptoms in line with a stomach illness. One person has died, according to Ambassador Cruise Line. But no cause of death has been determined just yet.
The NAACP is suing the state of Tennessee. The civil rights organization says the states new congressional map intentionally breaks up Tennessee's only Black majority district. Under the plan, the ninth congressional district, which covers Memphis, will now be split into multiple districts. The new map was signed into law by Governor Bill Lee last week.
And in Georgia, Republican Governor Brian Kemp is calling a special session of the state legislature to redraw House maps there. Brian Kemp says changes would go into effect ahead of the 2028 elections, not this year's midterms. His proclamation cites the recent Supreme Court decision gutting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.
Alex Murdaugh will get a new trial after the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned his murder convictions. The court says that they found that the court clerk, Becky Hill, had improper external influences on the jury. They say that they felt they had no choice but to grant a new trial, despite the time, money and effort expended for this lengthy trial. Now, Murdaugh was previously convicted of the murders of his wife and son in 2023 and is serving two life sentences for that conviction.
The court wrote that hill placed her fingers on the scales of justice. This case garnered massive media coverage, true crime documentaries, podcasts and books, and a Netflix documentary covering the once prominent attorney.
The lead prosecutor says that often impacts the outcome.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CREIGHTON WATERS, LEAD PROSECUTOR ON MURDAUGH TRIAL: As part of that new era that we're in, if it were to be otherwise, anytime you have a sensational case and there's always going to be one after the other, then you would say, well, the defendant cant get a fair trial because of the publicity. We have live in a society also where the jurors are more used to consuming media, and they understand the differences between what's in the media, what's in a podcast, and what's the truth of the evidence on the witness stand.
And we're going to depend on our citizens to do that, because there is no going back. The genie is out of the bottle, and we can't, on the other hand, have defendants just be able to get away with crimes because of the fact that what they allegedly did was sensational.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JIANG: And the South Carolina attorney general says his office plans to retry Murdaugh on the murder charges. Murdaugh will stay in jail for now, serving a four decade long sentence for a separate conviction for financial crimes.
A Utah mother convicted of murdering her husband and then writing a children's book about grief, will spend the rest of her life in prison.
CNN's Sherrell Hubbard has that story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SHERRELL HUBBARD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Before the judge sentenced Kouri Richins to life in prison without parole on Wednesday for fatally poisoning her husband, she was given a chance to read a statement.
KOURI RICHINS, GETS LIFE SENTENCE FOR KILLING HUSBAND: Murder? No. Absolutely not. I will not accept that. And I will not be blamed for something I did not do.
HUBBARD (voice-over): Although Richins maintains her innocence, prosecutors said motivated by her business debt and a years-long affair, the 36-year-old did kill her husband Eric, with a lethal dose of fentanyl in 2022.
In the wake of her husband's death, Richins published a children's book about coping with grief. The mother of three was found guilty of murder in March and spent some 40-odd minutes Wednesday addressing her own children, three sons she shared with her late husband.
RICHINS: God did not put me in this world to take a life. God put me in this world to give life, your lives.
HUBBARD (voice-over): A therapist speaking on behalf of one of Richins' sons told the court.
THERAPIST: I think Kouri should get a life sentence because what she did is very sick. I want the judge to know my dad was a good person and I miss my dad.
HUBBARD (voice-over): Wednesday would have been Eric Richins' 44th birthday.
AMY RICHINS, SISTER OF ERIC RICHINS: No sentence can undo the trauma this has caused. It has affected every part of our lives.
HUBBARD (voice-over): Richins was also found guilty of attempted aggravated murder for trying to kill her husband on Valentine's Day, weeks before his eventual death.
JUDGE RICHARD MRAZIK, UTAH DISTRICT COURT JUDGE: A person convicted of those things is simply too dangerous to ever be free.
HUBBARD (voice-over): I'm Sherrell Hubbard, reporting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SMITH: Thank you, Sherrell.
In addition to Richins being convicted of aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder, she was also found guilty of insurance fraud and forgery related to her husband's life insurance coverage. The judge ordered her to serve consecutive prison sentences for her convictions on the other charges.
[05:10:03]
Brand new video and images just released of a dramatic rescue at sea. It happened after a small plane crashed off of Florida's coast, and nearly a dozen people had to be rescued. All 11 survived, but they spent five hours in the water before help arrived. The Coast Guard and Air Force sent aircraft with life rafts and survival gear, and a military rescue team jumped in to help get everyone to safety.
Here's what an Air Force captain told our CNN affiliate WFTV when they reached those survivors.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAPT. RORY WHIPPLE, U.S. AIR FORCE PARARESCUE: You can tell just by looking at them that they were in distress physically, mentally, emotionally. But for us, we trained to a higher -- very high level to deal with this type of thing. So for us, it's just another day of work, another day of training. But this time instead of training, it was a real world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: The survivors were flown to a central Florida hospital for treatment. The Coast Guard says that the plane had taken off from the Bahamas. The survivors ended up in waters 80 miles off the coast of Melbourne, Florida. Investigators are looking into the cause of the crash.
We've got a lot more to come on CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS. Tornadoes touched down in Florida. Cars smashed, rooftops, ripped off, houses damaged. We've got the full story there in the scope of that damage.
And a smash, but no grab. A bizarre scene with masked men breaking their way into a jewelry store. Details coming up.
Stay with us. You're watching CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:15:59]
SMITH: A controversial live streamer facing several charges, including attempted murder. So here are the latest details in this developing story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SMITH (voice-over): A livestreamer known for posting racist videos is in custody after he said he shot a man after a confrontation in front of a Tennessee courthouse, authorities said.
The shooting happened as Dalton Eatherly, who goes by "Chud the Builder" online, and the man were outside the Montgomery County courthouse in Clarksville. The Tennessee district attorney general's office said. Both men were taken for medical treatment.
Eatherly live-streamed himself, speaking to first responders after the incident. During the live stream, Eatherly could be heard saying he shot the man in self defense after Eatherly claimed he was attacked.
DALTON EATHERLY, LIVESTREAMER: He hit me, started wailing on me even after I had to defend myself by shooting him, he was still wailing on me.
SMITH (voice-over): As he spoke with the first responders, he asked if he also shot himself when he opened fire. Eatherly was then taken away on a stretcher with a bandage on his arm. He reportedly was treated at a Clarksville Hospital.
Clarksville now reported the victim was taken by helicopter to a Nashville hospital and is in stable condition. Eatherly regularly posts videos of himself using racial slurs and getting into confrontations. He has gained over 200,000 followers on X.
EATHERLY: Be a good boy. You heard me.
SMITH (voice-over): In a separate incident a few days prior, Eatherly was kicked out of a restaurant and arrested in Nashville on charges of theft of services, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Eatherly was granted release for the incident on a $5,000 bond, according to a judge's order.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SMITH: Today's weather express starts in this neighborhood in Florida that was just smashed up by a tornado. It was rated an EF-0 by the National Weather Service and it was packing a punch. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just came and basically pushed the door shut on me, and I heard a loud -- and the roof was gone. Hit my son's truck, blew out his windshield.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: Wow.
In all, two tornadoes were recorded in the area about 40 miles north of Tampa.
Let's go now to CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam for today's forecast.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Today kicks off the start of a multi-day, severe weather stretch that's going to ramp up as we head into the weekend and the early parts of next week. But in the meantime, we still have this isolated chance of stronger storms right across the nation's midsection.
So heads up, be weather aware if you're located across portions of Kansas into Missouri, even in the panhandle of Texas and Oklahoma, there's also a system across the east coast, mainly throughout northern New England. It's going to wrap in some moisture, get some influence from the Atlantic ocean, and help bring in some heavier rain showers for coastal Maine and perhaps into Boston, northward into Vermont and New Hampshire. Burlington, you could have a wet next couple of days as that system wraps in.
There's also a big transition here as well. So we've been talking about a lot of heat and record breaking heat over the western U.S. but watch how that slides a little further to the east. That's kind of the impetus between the severe thunderstorms forming across the nations midsection over the next several days. We get that push and pull, the collision of air masses between kind of the warmth of the summer and then the cool weather pattern behind it coming from the north.
So here's a look at today's high temperatures, 79, Kansas City, all the way to 90 in Oklahoma City. So you can see the warmth building again that travels eastward as we head into the weekend.
Back to you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SMITH: All right. A lot to keep tabs on there. Thank you so much, Derek.
Still to come on CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS, masked men smashed their way into a jewelry store but run away with nothing. So what exactly happened here? We've got the details.
Plus, some classified documents found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residents can now remain at Mar-a-Lago, bucking the Presidential Records Act. We'll explain on the other side of the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:24:21]
SMITH: Three masked men crashed into a jewelry store with the intention of robbing it. But things took a surprising turn.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: These would be robbers rammed a car into a jewelry store and took absolutely nothing, according to police.
Video from the scene shows people fleeing from a jewelry store in the U.K. as three masked individuals made their way in.
One woman is seen running out with a baby in her arms. One person has been arrested for suspicion of attempted robbery but has since been bailed pending further inquiries. A statement from West Yorkshire police said.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: President Trump's Justice Department now says that some boxes of government documents found by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 are now his personal property and cannot be touched.
[05:25:09]
The documents were never returned to the National Archives. They were at the center of a hearing yesterday in D.C., and it provided a look at the changes of the Trump administration to the federal record keeping within the White House, saying the president's staff aren't required to follow the post-Watergate law requiring presidential records to be preserved.
Here's CNN's Katelyn Polantz explaining more.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: The issue with this, that presidential historians are bringing up good governance or transparent government groups are bringing up is that these documents now, if theyre Trump's and Trump's alone and not government records that have to be preserved, they can be deleted, destroyed, burned at any moment. And so, there is a judge now looking at this and said in court, this judge in the D.C. district court said today, this will matter, quote, "if he does something with them."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: The judge didn't make any rulings from the bench during that 3-1/2-hour hearing.
Now, returning to our top story this morning, Chinese Leader Xi Jinping is hailing a new era of stable relations on the first day of his summit with President Donald Trump. Already a packed day, and there's still plenty of pageantry to come.
We're moments away from President Trump returning to the Great Hall of the people for a banquet dinner.
I'm Brad Smith. The news continues next on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
