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Students Return to Georgia High School After Shooting; Biden to Address General Assembly; Israel Unleashes Airstrikes in Lebanon; New Instagram Settings. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired September 24, 2024 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:33:20]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, students at Apalachee High School in Georgia are back in class for the first time since two students and two teachers were killed there. It has to be an emotional morning.

CNN's Ryan Young is there, joins us now.

Ryan, how's it going so far?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, as you can imagine, John, there's pretty much no words for how kids go back to school after a shooting that happened here. We know the hallway where the shooting occurred, that's been closed down. Students who would have had to access that hallway have been moved to another building that's off campus.

But we were here around 8:30 when they did the pledge of allegiance. And they have a loudspeaker that we could hear an administrator talking to the students, addressing them, probably for the first time. Pretty emotional, saying, here are heroes amongst us. And you could understand that pain because we do know students and administrators stepped in to try to save folks when this shooting took place. Nine other people were injured.

Behind us, if you look at the building now, there is definitely a heavy police presence here. We can see it all over the place. There's state troopers here, as well as local police officers and sheriff deputies.

We'll show you the video as some of the students were rolling in. We can see "Chiefs strong" across the buses. We could hear kids screaming and yelling in terms of being excited about returning to school. And we did see that long walk where parents were dropping their kids off at the front door. They're keeping media back. And as you can understand that, they wanted to make sure that kids had that access to the school.

Now, what we are told here is this is a half-day, and that will continue for the next few days as they try to reintegrate these kids back to their educational process. So much has been put into this. The sheriff talked about some of the

regulations in terms of how they would move forward and how much support they wanted to give these students. Take a listen.

[09:35:01]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF JUD SMITH, BARROW COUNTY, GEORGIA: Obviously, a lot of emotions going today. The kids and the teachers have been communicating, but not face to face in most regards.

But they will today. So the overflow of emotions are not only tough for them, they're tough for us as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: John, something that we probably all don't talk enough about is mental health. And we saw a lot of therapy dogs on their way into the school. They also have counselors here. And they made a pledge on that loudspeaker to say, hey, if you need help, please step forward. We have people here for you to talk to.

A video that I want to show, because sometimes celebrities do things that sort of astound you in terms of making you smile. Look what "The Rock" did the other day in this community. He took the football team from this high school and brought them to his sound stage so they could have an interaction. You could tell the kids were super excited about getting a chance to meet "The Rock."

It is that outpouring of support from around the country. Apparently in the hallway there are things that you can see from around the country that have been sent in. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised as well. John, this will be a powerful day for those students inside.

Back to you.

BERMAN: Yes, it's nice to see the outpouring of support. They will all need each other so much there.

Ryan Young, thank you for being there and your reporting. Appreciate it.

Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thank you, John.

Any minute now President Biden heads the United Nations for his final address as president, with tensions and strikes escalating in the Middle East.

Teens all over the country are going private on Instagram, whether they like it or not. The new measures Meta is rolling out that all parents and teens should know about.

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[09:41:17]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, we are standing by to see President Biden about to arrive at the United Nations for his final speech as president to world leaders at the General Assembly. A huge focus at the gathering really must be right now the Middle East, as crisis there is deepening. Another round of airstrikes in what the Israeli military calling a targeted attack against Iran-backed Hezbollah this morning. We're showing you right here new video that's come in, in the aftermath from Lebanon showing it all.

CNN's Kayla Tausche is at the United Nations for us, awaiting President Biden's arrival and speech.

Kayla, what more are you learning about President Biden's focus today?

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, his focus is going to be twofold, Kate. When he first exited the race just a few weeks ago, making this address here at the United Nations General Assembly his last addressed on the biggest international stage. He wanted to make it more of a capstone address about his career at the forefront of foreign policy and the work that his administration has done to elevate democratic values and fortify alliances with like- minded nations and to combat long-term challenges like climate change and promote fairer competition between economies around the world. But increasingly, with the added volatility of the last year, some of these new conflicts are going to be casting a very long shadow over President Biden's address.

Senior administration officials note that President Biden will be talking quite a bit about the need to reach a ceasefire deal in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas. And, of course, with these new tensions escalating between Israel and Hezbollah, those are going to take center stage as well.

I'm told by U.S. officials that President Biden and his top diplomat, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, in their formal engagements that have been on the calendar for weeks, that these Middle East tensions are now being added to the agenda toward the top, and that they expect to discuss it during the duration of their time here at the General Assembly.

But added to that, I'm told that there are also several top national security officials who will be flanking Biden and Blinken here in New York. That top officials with the Middle East portfolio, who have been engaging in shuttle diplomacy, are going to be prioritizing some sideline discussions with their counterparts from the region and around the world, talking about ways they can stabilize the situation in the Middle East. What exactly those options are with the ceasefire deal remaining elusive remains to be seen. But I'm told by officials that that is a priority.

But it all undercuts an argument that Biden had hoped to make, that the world has become a safer and gentler place during the four years that he was in office. But, of course, with just the events in the Middle East of the last year that have erupted that were not taking place during this time last year when President Biden said the world was at an inflection point, now officials acknowledging it's been a very difficult year and one that he will have to acknowledge.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

Kayla, great to have you there. Thank you so much. We're waiting to see President Biden arriving at the United Nations right now.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, joining me now is retired U.S. Army Major Mike Lyons to discuss some of this.

All right, this is the map. Obviously, you've got Lebanon and Israel, two very small countries, but, boy, lot of firepower in both of them. This is where we are seeing the strikes happen, mostly here where we know that there is a large amount of Hezbollah and its leadership. But we've just gotten this happen today, Beirut being hit.

Why do you think they went after Beirut? What is there? They said it was a targeted strike. And we can sort of extrapolate that as to what that means.

MAJOR MIKE LYONS, U.S. ARMY (RET.): You know, well, Sara, if this was the United States, 1,600 strikes like this, this would be called shock and awe.

SIDNER: Right.

LYONS: This would be the beginning of this ground campaign that they looked like they might launch or not. But I think the target up in Beirut is clearly Hezbollah leadership is what they've said - as what they did from last week, trying to take out the leaders there, trying to take out the rank and file.

[09:45:04]

So, I think that's what they're trying to do.

I think that the next step will be maybe power grids, maybe infrastructure. Anything to now help this - this cause of theirs is to keep Hezbollah from continuing to attack in the northern part of Israel. Whether or not it remains to be seen, whether it will (ph) work, we'll see.

SIDNER: What do you make of this idea - because you talked about shock and awe, and that's a heck of a lot of firepower there.

LYONS: Yes.

SIDNER: And we know now that more than 500 people have been killed, the most that we've seen since 2006 when there was an actual full- scale war between Hezbollah and Israel that I think lasted something like 34 days. So, when you look at what they're doing, it's trying to escalate in order to deescalate. What do you think of that strategy? LYONS: Well, the United States is not for it. I think it's actually a

good idea, given what the situation is on the ground right now. And here's why. I think Israel does have Hezbollah on the run, so to speak. I think that now's the time where they have this advantage, they have to take it - they have to then use from the military's perspective to do just that.

Their goal is to restore civilians back to this northern area here. They want to bring them and have them - 60,000, 80,000 people move back into northern Israel. In order to do that, they have to take away all the capability of Hezbollah for firing rockets, long range missiles. So, the targets are those strategic missile systems that they've seen here.

Now, you've seen videos of them having these cruise missiles inside of houses, and weapons depots blow up inside of civilian populations. Once again, they're going right after those. They know what those targets are. And they believe that's what it's going to take in order for them to stop shooting back at Israel.

SIDNER: The big fear, obviously, the United States saying this over and over and over again, that this will escalate into a regional war. And I just want to give people an idea of sort of the region because the fear is that Iran gets directly involved and you can see the region here. And now we're hearing from Iran official saying they think that other countries in the Middle East, other Arab countries, should get involved, if necessary. What do you make of this scenario?

LYONS: Yes, I heard that. I'm not sure where they would exactly come from. None of these militaries have any significant impact on the ground right now. Egypt, obviously, won't do anything inside of Syria. They have no capabilities. This -

SIDNER: Jordan as well likely not.

LYONS: Jordan as well.

Iran should think twice because both of their big proxy forces, both in Lebanon and then in Gaza, Hamas and Hezbollah are almost getting decimated now. And they're going to have to see - you know, they were existing just to take Israel on to itself. So, if they're going to go away, if there's going to be a problem with that, Iran has got to look long term and say, you know what, maybe we better back off. Maybe we should tell Hezbollah to back off and not to completely go wipe themselves out because they're about to lose two of their major proxies in the region.

SIDNER: Yes, there's a lot going on and, obviously, the UNGA is going on right now. We're going to have you stick around as you see what is happening there. And President Biden expected to speak.

Major Mike Lyons, thank you so much.

Now to John.

BERMAN: Why is your teenager yelling at his phone this morning? Big changes in how on Instagram now going into effect.

And standing by for President Biden's speech before the United Nations.

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[09:52:27]

BERMAN: All right, starting today, major changes to Instagram. New sweeping security measures being put in place that the company says will protect young users, like Kate and Sara.

CNN tech writer Clare Duffy is with us now.

These are for teenagers, but how's it work?

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH WRITER: Right. So, starting today, there's going to be millions of teens who will be moved automatically into these new teen account settings for all users under the age of 18. What they're going to see is when they go into their settings tab, they're going to see this new teen accounts button where they'll see all the changes that are going to be made.

So, they're all be put into private accounts. There's going to be new restrictions on who they can message and who can tag them in photos. They will be automatically placed into overnight mode where they won't get messages from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. They won't get notifications. And there's going to be a new reminder once they've spent an hour on the app.

For teens who are 16 or 17, they can just go into this tab and change the settings back. But 13 to 15-year-olds will have to set up parental supervision, send a notification to their parents account to get approval for changing their settings. But if the parents don't want to, they can just keep their teens in those more restrictive settings.

SIDNER: So, there are teams that are influencers. I mean they actually make a business of this. I suspect that the parents can then also go in and remove it if they want to.

DUFFY: Exactly. Yes. This is just going to give parents a bit more agency if their teens are younger to decide what kinds of settings they want their teens to be in.

BOLDUAN: I know a lot of parents are going to be really happy about that. Like the - how can I help my kid control this situation. But what - how does Instagram like help enforce this stuff?

DUFFY: So, it's a really good question. I talked to a member of Meta's youth policy team to ask her this question. Here's what she told me.

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KIRA WONG O'CONNOR, YOUTH SAFETY POLICY MANAGER, META: While we don't verify who a parent is, we do have other safety technologies in place where we know if it's potentially a suspicious account. We don't allow teens to supervise themselves.

For a long time now we have required that when you sign up for Instagram, you have to input your age at that point. If you're under the age of 18, and we notice that you try to change your age above 18, we will put you through an ID check.

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DUFFY: So, as you hear there, if a teen with an existing account tries to change their birthday to look like an adult, Instagram is going to ask for their ID. But teens technically could still get around this by just signing up for a new account with an adult birthday.

BERMAN: Yes, they're crafty. It turns out - it turns out these teen -

BOLDUAN: Says a dad of teenagers.

BERMAN: These teenagers are crafty. No, like you said, 16 and 17-year- olds can change it if they want to. They changed it like in the time it took us to say that, they changed it.

BOLDUAN: I was going to ask you if you checked in with the boys.

DUFFY: They changed it back.

BERMAN: That would be they - sometimes they don't even let me follow them. Like, I get blocked and unblocked on Instagram repeatedly.

[09:55:03]

So, I try not to poke the bear when it comes to that kind of thing. You know, I want to see what's going on.

BOLDUAN: (INAUDIBLE).

DUFFY: Yes.

SIDNER: They're older, though. They can change it back, right?

BERMAN: Yes.

SIDNER: So, you're OK.

DUFFY: Not a silver bullet here, but I do think some parents will get some reassurance from this.

SIDNER: Yes.

BOLDUAN: For sure. And something needs to be - I mean something needed to be done and more needs to be done full stop.

DUFFY: Yes.

SIDNER: It's a long time coming. A lot of people have been asking for something to help teens because they're really being affected negatively by all of the social media that they're on. DUFFY: Yes. And we've heard calls for regulators to actually take some action, pass some laws. A lot of the same sorts of things parents have been asking for. This nighttime mode is huge. And so for Instagram to be voluntarily incorporating this, I think is they're both their effort to avoid regulation, but also to sort of respond to parents who have been really asking for this for years.

BERMAN: Clare Duffy, thank you very much.

SIDNER: Appreciate it.

Thank you for joining us. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL with John Berman, Kate Bolduan, and myself.

"CNN NEWSROOM," up next.

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