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Israeli Strikes Hezbollah Targets Inside Beirut; Civilian Border Crossing to Syria From Lebanon Cut Off. Israel Continues to Bombard Gaza; Liz Cheney Joins Harris in Wisconsin; U.S. Port Workers Reach Deal to End Strike; Hurricane Helene's Aftermath; Climate Change and the Effects to Extreme Weather. Israel-Hezbollah War Comes Amid Economic Crisis In Lebanon; China Says Its Coast Guard Ship Ventured Into Arctic Ocean. Aired 2-2:45a ET
Aired October 04, 2024 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[02:00:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN HOST: Welcome to all you watching us around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is "CNN Newsroom." Israeli strikes shake Lebanon's capital, targeting Hezbollah, including another top leader.
Kamala Harris makes a pitch to voters with a show of bipartisan solidarity in the birthplace of the Republican Party.
And China extends its military arm with Russia's help. We'll have the latest on Beijing's first of its kind voyage.
It is 9:00 a.m. in Beirut where new evacuation orders are in effect in Lebanon's capital as Israel's military vows to keep hitting Hezbollah targets. Lebanese authorities report dozens of people were killed on Thursday, more than 1,400 in the past few weeks.
And we're following a brand new development. Lebanon says an Israeli strike on a key border crossing with Syria has cut off access to the international road. Tens of thousands of people fleeing the fighting in Lebanon have used the crossing over the past few weeks.
(VIDEO PLAYING)
So that video you're seeing there is from Beirut. A source tells CNN the IDF targeted Hashem Safieddine with a strike on the Lebanese capital. He is seen as a possible successor to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an airstrike last week. His fate is unclear.
Israel says it struck Hezbollah's intelligence headquarters in Beirut and killed several Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon. The IDF says its goal is to eliminate Hezbollah's threat to the residents of northern Israel.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HERZI HALEVI, IDF CHIEF OF THE GENERAL STAFF (through translation): We will not allow Hezbollah to settle itself in these places in the future. The severe blows against Hezbollah in all areas in Beirut, in the Beqaa Valley in south Lebanon will continue.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUNHUBER: Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes in Lebanon. The U.N. says about 160,000 have crossed into Syria. Humanitarian agencies say shelters are full and overflowing, and health workers say they're overwhelmed. CNN's Ivan Watson is standing by with more on the growing refugee crisis. But first, Paula Hancocks with the latest on Israel's military campaign. And Paula, on the targeting of Nasrallah's possible successor, what are we learning?
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kim, this was an Israeli airstrike which targeted Nasrallah's cousin. He was also considered to be a potential key successor to Nasrallah. Hashem Safieddine, he was the head of the executive council within Hezbollah as well. So a very key figure that many had assumed could well take over the reins of Hezbollah.
Now we know at this point that there was a significant airstrike against him. The Israelis saying that they were targeting him. We do not know at this point though whether or not he was killed in that strike itself. Hezbollah always does admit and acknowledge when its fighters and its members are killed, so we'll wait to hear about that. We do know that 37 Lebanese were killed in the past 24 hours and some 151 were injured.
There were more airstrikes overnight within the southern suburbs. There were some evacuation orders given by the Israeli military saying that they were going to target particular buildings and that people should move about 500 meters away from those buildings. But many of those evacuation orders came during the night when potentially many people were sleeping.
Now we've heard from the Israeli military that this will continue. You heard from the IDF chief there saying that they have to destroy Hezbollah's capabilities along the border to make sure that tens of thousands of Israelis can move back to their homes in northern Israel. Of course, this has moved far beyond the border. This is in Beirut, the capital, as well.
They are still claiming it is a localized and limited operation, but we do know that at least one other battalion has moved from the side to the northern border and that could potentially be about ten thousand more soldiers. So the skepticism of Israel saying it was limited, now appears to be realized, Kim.
[02:05:02]
BRUNHUBER: All right and Ivan, obviously, Israel's attacks are having a devastating effect on the civilians there. What more can you tell us? IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, Kim, the Lebanese Red Cross has just put out an urgent appeal for blood donations. This is as the number of casualties continues to grow. The World Health Organization says that, for example, in the last 24 hours alone, some 28 health care workers have been killed. They say that in Beirut, three hospitals have been forced to fully evacuate staff and patients, and two others were partially evacuated.
And meanwhile, in the south of Lebanon, at least 37 health facilities have been closed. Take a listen to a nurse at a hospital in Beirut, what he has to say about the kind of injuries he's seeing coming into that hospital doors.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALI SALEH, NURSE (through translation): The cases coming to the hospital are sometimes beyond what we can handle. They are so terrifying and horrifying. Some with the hand blown off, others with the leg gone, some with their heads blown off. There are stories that are so heartbreaking that even a stone would cry.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATSON: Now, we also need to acknowledge that there are more than a million people in Lebanon who've been displaced by the Israeli onslaught, starting from the southern areas when the Israeli bombardment first began, and now people fleeing from places like the densely populated southern suburbs of Beirut as well.
Now, we've just heard from a Lebanese government minister that the main road leading up to the main border crossing, land border crossing between Lebanon and Syria has been hit and that road has been cut off. We don't know how long that is going to last for. Western governments are trying to evacuate their citizens. They're trying to arrange additional flights. For ordinary Lebanese who don't have the means or the visas to travel to other countries or can't squeeze themselves onto one of these sold out flights, the Syrian border is the only real land border that people can escape through.
More than 160,000 people have crossed through there in just the last about two weeks, and now that appears to be closed. And you know, in full transparency, Kim, my own in-laws, who are all displaced from their homes by the Israeli bombardment, were considering, we were discussing the possibility that they might try to escape the deadly Israeli bombardment, arial bombardment, to try to go through Syria to Jordan. And that now, that door appears to have closed and people are being stuck while fleeing their homes inside Lebanon.
A big difference between what has happened in Lebanon and in Gaza with the Israeli assault there for nearly a year that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, is Gaza is so much smaller. Lebanon is a much larger country. But civilian families are frightened and looking for places to hide from these deadly aerial bombardments.
BRUNHUBER: Yeah, interesting to hear about the effects that it has on so many families, yours among them. So, Paula, we heard there Ivan referenced Gaza. Of course, you know, the suffering in Gaza continues.
HANCOCKS: Yeah, Kim, many residents of Gaza could be forgiven for having believed that after the Israeli military said that the center of gravity was going to move north, that the focus of their military fight was going to move to that northern border with Lebanon, that things may get better in Gaza. That simply is not the case.
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HANCOCKS (voice-over): Three-month-old Hala (ph) is rushed into hospital. Her shrapnel-marked body shakes as doctors check to see if her injuries are also internal. Her grandmother says suddenly the rocket hit and everyone was gone. I took the little ones and ran. I don't know what happened to their mother.
Several schools turned into displaced shelters were hit by Israeli airstrikes this week. These patients, mostly children from an UNRWA school in Nusrat, central Gaza.
Places of learning turned into hoped-for sanctuaries, becoming a burial ground for some. Israel's military says Hamas were using these schools as command and control centers, using civilians as human shields, a tactic Hamas denies. But these body bags are too small to be fighters.
Some of the injured say they tried to return to homes in the north of Gaza as they saw Iranian rockets overhead on Tuesday. The IDF says dozens of suspects moved towards troops, posing an immediate threat, so they opened fire.
[02:10:04]
More than 50 people were killed in Khan Younis overnight Tuesday in what was described as an Israeli incursion. Residents searched for bodies under the rubble any way they could. Heavy machinery has become a luxury item in Gaza. The IDF told CNN it was targeting Hamas operatives in the area and blamed the group for embedding itself among the residents of Gaza.
A grandmother cradles the body of her 11-month-old granddaughter killed while sheltering in one of the schools. If not for the trickle of dried blood by her mouth, you would think she was just sleeping. She was born during war and martyred during war, her grandmother says. They killed her as if she were launching missiles at them.
Many Israeli troops may have been re-deployed from Gaza to the border with Lebanon, announcing the center of gravity has shifted. But that means little to civilians in Gaza, for whom every day is a struggle to survive.
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HANCOCKS (on camera): The Ministry of Health in Gaza does give a daily update on death toll, and just on Thursday for the 24 hours previously they said that almost 100 people had been killed. There is no definition between civilians and militants but many of these images that our team on the ground are sending to us do show a lot of women and children in these hospitals. Kim?
BRUNHUBER: Yeah, those images are really moving. Paul Hancocks in Abu Dhabi and Ivan Watson in Hong Kong, I want to thank you both. Meanwhile, Israel says it killed the local leader of Hamas' network and other operatives in a strike in the occupied West Bank. The airstrike late Thursday night was unusual in the West Bank. It killed at least 18 people, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Video show ambulances evacuating residents from the scene and people carrying victims to the hospital. Israeli military says the Hamas leader of the Tulkarm area of the West Bank planned and took part in numerous attacks against Israelis. Hamas condemned the attack but didn't confirm the killing of the local leader.
Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney joined Vice President Kamala Harris on the campaign trail for the first time on Thursday. Cheney told a crowd in the battleground state of Wisconsin that Donald Trump, quote, "can never be trusted with power again." CNN's Eva McKend is in Wisconsin with more.
EVA MCKEND, CNN U.S. NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: This was a very different campaign event for the vice president. She typically talks about reproductive rights, the economy, gun violence. This was not that. This was a conversation for the country about core values. The vice president joined by Liz Cheney. Cheney, seemingly recalling some of her work from the January 6 committee. She strenuously outlined for voters the many ways in her view the former president threatened the peaceful transition of power.
The vice president warning this audience that there is no guarantee that if former President Trump is reelected, that he would honor his oath to the Constitution. Take a listen.
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KAMALA HARRIS, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
(APPLAUSE)
And as you have heard and know, he refused to accept the will of the people and the results of an election that was free and fair. As you have heard, he sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers. He threatened the life of his own Vice President and refused to engage in the peaceful transfer of power.
And let us be clear about how he intends to use power if elected again. He has called for jailing journalists, political opponents, anyone he sees and deems as being an enemy. He has pledged to destroy the independence of the Department of Justice, and he called for deploying our active-duty military against our own citizens.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCKEND: This was a message for a very specific type of voter, conservatives and independents that have no appetite for the former president, but may otherwise sit this election out. The vice president, Liz Cheney, leaning on those voters, essentially arguing that this election is too urgent for them to skip.
[02:15:03]
Also leaning on their sense of patriotism in this hour. Eva McKend, CNN, Ripon, Wisconsin.
BRUNHUBER: Meanwhile, Donald Trump heads to Georgia today where we will meet with state Governor Brian Kemp and get a briefing on hurricane damage. A visit comes after Trump campaigned in Michigan on Thursday. He slammed the White House response to Hurricane Helene, falsely accusing Biden and Harris of stealing money from FEMA for undocumented immigrants. The former president also bashed Liz Cheney while speaking to Fox News earlier in the day. Here he is.
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DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, Liz Cheney lost for Congress. She was terrible. Liz Cheney is a stupid war hawk. All she wants to do is shoot missiles at people. I really think it hurts. I think, frankly, if Kamala -- I think they hurt each other. I think they're so bad, both of them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUNHUBER: Trump has been given more time to respond to special counsel Jack Smith's sweeping new immunity brief in his federal election subversion case. This week, prosecutors laid out their most extensive case to date against Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The judge has given Trump until November 7th to respond, two days after Election Day and three weeks after the original deadline. Trump's team is expected to ask for the entire case to be thrown out under the Supreme Court's recent immunity ruling.
Well, the U.S. economy may have dodged the bullet from the huge strike of port workers along its entire east and gulf coasts. On Thursday, their union reached a tentative deal with the employers offering gradual raises each year until 2030. Union members will be back at work on Friday, even though they're yet to ratify the agreement. The strike, which began this week, threatened to upend U.S. exports and imports ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season. Sources say President Joe Biden urged White House officials to turn up the pressure on employers to reopen the ports.
All the effects of Hurricane Helene are still being widely felt, and climate change will make future storms progressively worse. We'll have the findings of new research when we come back.
Plus, China's Coast Guard makes a stand on what the U.S. considers its home turf and sends a message to Washington. That's all coming up. Please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BRUNHUBER: Have a look at this. In Thailand, around 100 elephants have been evacuated from a popular elephant park to escape flash floods. The founder of the park told CNN this was the biggest evacuation they've ever done, but even so they were unable to evacuate 13 of the park's elephants who remain trapped in rising waters. The animals that park rangers were able to evacuate are now waiting out the rain on a nearby mountain.
Northern Thailand has suffered severe flooding and landslides in recent weeks, first because of torrential rains brought on by Typhoon Yagi, Asia's most powerful so far this year, and more downpours are expected today.
[02:20:00]
Now here in the U.S., the death toll from Hurricane Helene has risen to at least 213 people across six states. More than 200 people in North Carolina are still unaccounted for. In many areas like Chimney Rock, North Carolina, entire parts of towns including bridges, roads and buildings were wiped away.
Now, the area around Asheville was particularly hard hit. It's struggling to meet basic needs for residents as the search goes on for people still missing and residents continue to cope with the destruction. Here's North Carolina's governor.
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ROY COOPER, GOVERNOR OF NORTH CAROLINA: To wake up one morning and everything that you own be gone is a tragic situation. This is an unprecedented situation that is going to require an unprecedented response. We are working to turn on every avenue of resources that we can to help people.
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BRUNHUBER: FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, says it has enough funding for now, but the White House has warned that disaster funds for small businesses are depleting quickly. Hurricane Helene cut an 800-kilometer path of destruction across the U.S. southeast. The National Weather Service calls it a once in thousand year rainfall event.
President Joe Biden surveyed devastated areas in the southeast on Thursday, first in Florida, alongside Republican Senator Rick Scott. Then here in Georgia, where he stressed the need to put aside the rabid partisanship in U.S. politics. CNN's Carlos Suarez reports from Florida.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARIE ROWLEY, HOME DESTROYED BY HURRICANE HELENE: The shoes and the clothes and the roller blades --
CARLOS SUAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The items that once brought joy to Marie Rowley's life litter the front yard of her house again.
(On camera): And you've been flooded out twice.
ROWLEY: Twice, yeah. I got hit by Idalia last year, flooded my living room --
SUAREZ (voice-over): A walk inside the 29-year-old's home captures the damage left behind by the latest storm. Hurricane Helene's deadly flooding.
ROWLEY: Everything was underwater. The drawers, I mean in my closet, that -- almost the top drawers of my closet, just everything was shifted around floating at one point.
SUAREZ (voice-over): Her sanctuary, the place that she called home for just over a year, destroyed by floodwaters in one of the hardest hit areas of Pinellas County.
ROWLEY: The water was about to here. It was in some places over three feet. There's a lot of life that this place once housed and now it's, it's gutted. This home is gone. All of my things are gone and ruined, but I had people and I had love and I have my life.
SUAREZ (voice-over): Rowley's story is one we encountered throughout St. Petersburg days after Helene's close to seven foot storm surge left parts of the city underwater. Sarah Schaeffer's long embrace of a friend inside her muddied living room captured how such a simple act in such a trying time can mean the world.
SARA SCHAEFFER, HOME DESTROYED BY HURRICANE HELENE: Any drop of kindness is really appreciated. You know, just anything even if you don't know what to say just say something you know. We all have our stories. This is ours. I think we're all really thankful to be alive.
SUAREZ (voice-over): In neighboring Tampa, over three feet of water swept through Julie Curry's bakery Bake'n Babes. It's waterlogged entrance bright and pink gives way to a dark and soaked kitchen filled with tens of thousands of dollars in damaged commercial refrigerators, freezers, and ovens.
JULIE CURRY, OWNER, BAKE'N BABES: The water line was here.
SUAREZ (on camera): $60,000. Is that something that you can withstand?
CURRY: We're trying to get to see if some of the equipment can be repaired so it's not like a total, you know, loss. Water just came out, yeah.
SUAREZ (voice-over): Curry said the business, which was not damaged in previous hurricanes Ian and Idalia, recently scored a catering contract with the Tampa Bay Lightning. She's afraid her insurance policies won't cover much of the damage, leaving the fate of her business and the livelihood of more than a dozen employees uncertain.
CURRY: It's so hard, you know. And then, you know, just everything is gone.
SUAREZ (on camera): Julie and Marie tell us they have no plans on leaving the Tampa area. They recognize that the rebuilding effort is going to take months and it is not going to be easy. They're dealing with the uncertainty of having to come up with all of the paperwork and documentation just to file an insurance claim. There's also the fact that we still have two months left of hurricane season. Carlos Suarez, CNN, Tampa, Florida.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: I want to bring in Michael Wehner who's a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. He studies the effects of extreme weather events in a changing climate. Thank you so much for being here with us. So, considering what we're learning about the link between climate change and extreme weather events, it's maybe no surprise that climate change is being blamed for worsening the impact of Hurricane Helene. So, that's exactly what your team determined. Take us through your findings.
[02:25:02]
MICHAEL WEHNER, SENIOR SCIENTIST, LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LAB: Well, we wrote that climate change made the observed amounts of precipitation, the actual amount of precipitation, about 20 times more likely. Another way of phrasing that is we said that in parts of Georgia and North Carolina, the climate change increased precipitation by as much as 50 percent. And so instead of say 10 inches in one place, you might have had 15, or instead of 20, you might have 30 inches.
I have to stress, though, that these are preliminary results, and the actual numbers will change when we get the quality-controlled station data, which will take a while to get out of Asheville, of all places. But the channel of confusion that climate change significantly increased the rainfall from this storm I believe is quite robust and consistent with what we found in say Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Ian and other storms.
BRUNHUBER: Yeah, and you point to Asheville. It's actually as you say a massive center for studying climate change which itself has now been hit by this and you talk about your findings being preliminary of course but a separate European study seems to confirm your findings that climate change has made storms like lean 20 percent wetter than they were decades ago.
But it wasn't that long ago that after storms you know, I'd be doing this and I'd be speaking to experts like yourself and they say it's sort of, you know -- it was really hard to know what effect climate change had on one particular weather event or another. So, that seems to have changed. So, how are you now able to attribute these effects to climate change in and so quickly after they happen?
WEHNER: Well, that changed with Hurricane Harvey. We made a study that took about two months after Hurricane Harvey, as did a friend of mine, the late great Gerdawn von Oldenburg (ph), that actually came out the same day, a couple of, like, three months after the storm, and we learned a lot. And without why these techniques -- a variety of techniques in fact to a number of storm if I look at 30 or 40 different storms, major storms and the results are always pretty much the same, that there is between say 20, and in this case, as much as 50 percent increase in the rainfall because of climate change and that is quite a disturbing issue as is quite obvious.
BRUNHUBER: Yeah. Climate change is making extreme weather so much worse that you are actually advocating for a new category of hurricane. Now, currently the scale runs from one to five. You want to add category six. Why is that?
WEHNER: Well, when my colleague Jim Kassin (ph) and I looked at the historical record of -- the global historical record, we found that starting with typhoon Haiyan that devastated the Philippines, storms had -- some storms have become so strong, they were unprecedented. And so we suggested adding a category six at 192 miles an hour.
And five storms have reached that threshold. And the first one was in 2013 and the last one was about two or three years ago. And so it seems like every other year somewhere on the planet, there's one of these super intense storms that didn't exist prior to the 2013.
BRUNHUBER: That's so frightening and, you know, especially considering that Helene was only a Category Four and it's proved so deadly and new study suggests that storms kill long after they've left an area caused by things like you know, loss of income, exposure to pollutants and other health issues. So that just underscores how devastating the acute effects of climate change will be sort of short, medium, long term. So despite what we're seeing, it seems as though we're still sort of underestimating the risks here.
WEHNER: Well, the risks are intense. Most of the damages do indeed come from water. In this case, the Carolinas and Georgia were impacted by the rainfall, so that was freshwater flooding. But Florida, of course had this horrific storm surge, saltwater flooding, from the storm and as well as Hurricane Ian.
And you mentioned, you know, the massive health impacts and it's not just, you know, the physical health, it's also the mental health. I mean, these are incredibly stressful events for those who survive them.
BRUNHUBER: Yeah, absolutely. Listen, it's been great to get your expertise on this. Michael Wehner, thank you so much for joining us.
WEHNER: Thank you for having me.
BRUNHUBER: Evacuation orders, massive explosions and a key crossing point that was just cut off.
[02:29:58]
The hits keep coming for Lebanon. We'll have the details coming up. Please stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[02:32:20]
BRUNHUBER: Welcome back to all you watching us around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM.
Cross-border attacks between Israel and Hezbollah are intensifying. The Israeli military says 20 projectiles were filed, fired from Lebanon into northern Israel a few hours ago, and the most were intercepted or fell into open areas. Now this comes after the IDF hammered central Beirut and its southern suburbs on Thursday.
Meanwhile, according to a Lebanese official, an Israeli airstrike along Lebanon's border with Syria has cut off a highway leading to the main international checkpoint between the two countries.
Now have a look. This video from last month shows how congested the Masnaa crossing normally is. The U.N. Refugee Agency says 160,000 people have left Lebanon for a Syria since the clashes between Israel and Hezbollah ramped up last month. It marked the latest blow to Lebanon, which was already dealing with a major crisis.
CNN's Ben Wedeman explains.
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BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Israel's war against Hezbollah is causing massive disruption, destruction, and loss of life in the country already in the throes of a deep economic crisis. Lebanon's economy minister told CNN Thursday this war is already proving to be worse than the 2006 war with Israel.
AMIN SALAM, LEBANESE ECONOMY MINISTER: Lebanon was already in a very difficult place before this war started. Everybody knows the economy situation in Lebanon wasn't a very difficult place. Everybody knows that after the Beirut port explosion, after the economy clash, the country has been struggling for over four years.
This war just came to devastate. It's devastating the country. It's creating more instability. I'm not just talking about the economy. I'm talking about 1,200,000 people displaced today. It's an unprecedented displacement, active good to that happened in any country in the world in less than five days.
We have hospitals filled with people. Schools filled with people. People sleeping on the street. And this war keeps going. You know, the way I see is that this war has no goal. It's just destroying the country and it just taking it to a place where it's very difficult to come from.
WEDEMAN: And it's only just beginning. Israel continues to bolster its forces along its northern border and is issued evacuation orders to more than 75 villages in south Lebanon, indicating that its intentions go well beyond what it claimed are limited, localized, and targeted raids. [02:35:14]
The fear here is that as Israeli officials have threatened in the past, it will put into practice in Lebanon, the same tactics you have reduced much of Gaza to a lunar landscape.
In the south, Hezbollah claimed Thursday, it repeatedly struck Israeli troop concentrations. On the other side of the border, the Iranian backed group has taken a severe beating from Israel in recent weeks, culminating last Friday in the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah.
But it has already inflicted heavy casualties on Israeli forces since they first entered Lebanese territory and it's still firing rockets into Israel.
Israeli airstrikes continue on Beirut destroying, among other things, according to Israel, Hezbollah intelligence targets since diplomatic efforts to halt the war have failed, the rush to the exits for foreign nationals is now in full swing. A variety of evacuation flights left Beirut Thursday with nationals from Greece, Colombia, Spain, France and Russia.
I'm Ben Wedeman, CNN, reporting from Beirut.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: China has been irritated by U.S. military activities close to its shores. Well, now, Beijing is responding in kind and Russia has its back. We'll have details after the break. Please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BRUNHUBER: Three former police officers have been found guilty on some of the federal charges in last year's deadly beating of a black man in Memphis, Tennessee, but acquitted on others.
On Thursday, the jury convicted them of witness tampering after the killing of Tyre Nichols. Now those charges can send them to prison for up to 20 years, but they were found not guilty on the most serious civil rights charges they faced. Nichols was brutally beaten as he was trying to run after a traffic stop. Two other former officers have already pleaded guilty in federal court, and all five are set to face state murder charges. And Nichols family attorney said the suspects got what they deserved.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTONIO ROMANUCCI, ATTORNEY FOR NICHOLS FAMILY: And now, we look forward to justice. We look forward to the state case. The civil case, because what we know is these officers conspired. They made an agreement -- they made an agreement to cause harm and now they are in jail.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRUNHUBER: China's coast guard is trying to extend its footprint in the region the U.S. mutually considers its own turf. It says one of its vessels conducted a joint patrol with Russian ships in the Arctic Ocean in recent days. The U.S. says Chinese ships have never been spotted so far north.
[02:40:03]
As Marc Stewart reports, the move is likely intended to be a message to Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARC STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: For years, the Arctic Ocean has been a point of interest for China amid its strong ties with Russia. While this patrol, if it did indeed enter the ocean, may have just been on the outskirts. The messaging and images from the Chinese government show the symbolism and importance of the region to China.
Let me show you some of the pictures we've received. We see a shot from above of the Chinese coast guard vessel. There's a helicopter taking off flying around. Officers are singing the national anthem on deck along with some ceremonial moments.
An officer from the Chinese coast guard said this voyage is about security.
HE FENG, OFFICER, CHINESE COAST GUARD (through translator): The arrival of China's coast guard vessel formation in the Arctic Ocean demonstrates the CCP has the ability to safeguard international maritime security. China actively fulfills international obligations, participates in global maritime governance, and shows an image of a responsible major country. Meanwhile, it's also showcasing its professional abilities in maritime law or enforcement.
STEWART: Analysts point out this is a broader pattern of collaboration and designed to send a message to Washington whose maritime activities in the South and East China Seas have annoyed Beijing. A retired U.S. Navy captain who has worked in intelligence feels this presence in the far north is significant because it implies China is extending its coast guard into areas the U.S. has traditionally considered to be its own domain.
The U.S. has raised concerns about Chinas presence in the region and its coordination with Russia, as we see, the two nations tightened their security and economic ties on broader level.
No official response from the Russian government, although state media did publish a report on the patrol.
Marc Stewart, CNN, Beijing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: I'm Kim Brunhuber.
"WORLD SPORT" is next, and I'll be back in 15 minutes with more CNN NEWSROOM. Please do stay with us.
(WORLD SPORT)
