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Machado No Show at the Nobel Prize Awarding, Daughter to Accept Award on Her Behalf; World's First Social Media Ban Took Effect Today in Australia; Delta Airlines Celebrates 100 Years. Aired 3-3:45a ET
Aired December 10, 2025 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from all around the world. I'm Rosemary Church. Just ahead.
Ukraine's President is preparing a revised version of a U.S.-backed peace plan. What President Trump has to say about that?
Australia takes a bold leap with the world's first ban on kids under 16 using social media apps.
And we'll look back at the humble beginnings of one of the world's top airlines.
UNKNOWN (voice-over): Live from Atlanta, this is "CNN Newsroom" with Rosemary Church.
CHURCH: Good to have you with us.
And we begin with the Russia-Ukraine peace talks. Ukraine's president says his team is preparing an updated version of the Trump administration's peace plan and could be ready to send it to the U.S. later today.
President Zelenskyy is clear that his country will not surrender Russian-occupied territory. But U.S. President Donald Trump had this to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DASHA BURNS, HOST, POLITICO'S "THE CONVERSATION WITH DASHA BURNS": This deal, Zelenskyy rejects this deal. Is there a timeline? Is there a point at which you say?
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Well, he's going to have to get on the ball and start accepting things. You know, when you're losing, because you're losing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he is also working with European allies on documents about security guarantees and Ukraine's post-war recovery.
Well CNN's Ben Wedeman has more on Zelenskyy's diplomatic trip to Italy.
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BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We don't have the details from the Italian side about what was discussed. We understand that the meeting between Zelenskyy and Meloni lasted for 90 minutes. Now, Zelenskyy afterwards put out a very brief statement saying that the discussions with the Italian Prime Minister were excellent and very substantive.
But certainly it's interesting that, you know, yesterday he was at 10 Downing Street where he met with the leaders of the U.K., France, and Germany, who aren't necessarily President Trump's favorite European leaders. But Meloni is the one perhaps who can put that sort of gold star on Zelenskyy's so-called refined version of the American plan.
She is somebody who Trump, to the best of my knowledge, has never said anything negative. So that's certainly a positive point. So perhaps now that he's gone through sort of all the major leaders of Europe and will come up finally after meeting with Meloni, something that perhaps might be pleasing to a very touchy American President.
Earlier he met with Pope Leo, who the Pope expressed an urgent desire, in the words of the Vatican, for a just and lasting peace. And certainly what we know is that Ukrainians were not happy with the initial 28-point plan put out by the Trump administration. Then it was cut down to 20 points.
But the feeling among many Ukrainians and many European leaders as well was that this was a plan that certainly leaned in the direction of the Russians far more than Ukraine, particularly when it came to territorial concessions.
The plan envisioned Ukraine basically giving up the entirety of the Donbas region, a region I covered extensively when we used to travel to Ukraine, where we saw that the Ukrainians have sacrificed so much in terms of blood and material that for them it was a very difficult pill to swallow, to surrender the land they still control in the Donbas to the Russians.
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CHURCH: After much speculation, the Norwegian state broadcaster reports Venezuelan opposition leader and this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado will not be attending the Nobel ceremony.
Instead, Machado's daughter will accept the prize and deliver a speech on her behalf. Norwegian media reports Machado is in hiding due to security concerns. Venezuelan authorities have warned that traveling to Norway could make the opposition leader a fugitive.
The Nobel Institute announced Machado's prize in October, honoring, quote, "her tireless work in promoting democratic rights and her fight for a peaceful transition."
[03:05:02]
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met on Capitol Hill with congressional leaders amid growing bipartisan calls to release the full video of a controversial strike on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Hegseth would not commit to allowing lawmakers to see unedited footage of the deadly double-tap strike.
CNN's Arlette Saenz has details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Trump administration officials spent several hours briefing senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill as there is intensifying scrutiny of the administration's follow-up strike that killed survivors on alleged drug trafficking boat back in September.
It all comes as Republicans and Democratic lawmakers are pushing for the full release of the video showing that follow-up strike, something that the Trump administration so far has been hesitant to do.
But emerging from this over hour-long briefing, Democrats said that they were unsatisfied with Hegseth's statements as they tried to push him to release the video at least for lawmakers to see. Take a listen.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), U.S. SENATE MINORITY LEADER: It was a very unsatisfying briefing. I asked Secretary Hegseth, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, would he let every member of Congress see the unedited videos of the September 2nd strike?
His answer, we have to study it. Well, in my view, they've studied it long enough.
SAENZ: There's been a lot of back and forth about whether this video will be released. President Donald Trump initially said he had no problem in making the video public, but then he backtracked. He said that he would leave this decision to Secretary Hegseth, who has said that he is reviewing the information to see whether or not the Pentagon would release the video if there might be any classified information in it that would keep them from making this public.
But there are a number of Republican senators who believe the administration should be transparent and make this video available to the public. Meanwhile, some Democrats have said that they want Secretary Hegseth to come and testify publicly on Capitol Hill to share the full accounting of how this strike played out. President Donald Trump said that that's a decision up to Hegseth, but he was not weighing in either way.
Arlette Saenz, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE) CHURCH: Australian kids are now adjusting to life without some of the most popular social media apps. Australia's first in the world sweeping ban on social media for those under 16 went into effect today. The new law comes after years of concerns about the potential negative impacts that social media platforms and their addictive algorithms can have on mental health.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, argues the new ban will actually make children less safe. Most of the 10 banned platforms say they'll comply with the law using age verification technology. Australia's Prime Minister says the ban allows families to take back power from big tech companies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTHONY ALBANESE, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: Make no mistake, this reform will change lives for Australian kids and allowing them to just have their childhood, for Australian parents enabling them to have greater peace of mind, but also for the global community who are looking at Australia and saying, well, if Australia can do it, why can't we?
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CHURCH: We go live now to Sydney, Australia and CNN's Angus Watson. Good to see you. So how is this ban being received in Australia?
ANGUS WATSON, CNN PRODUCER: Well, Rosemary, I was at that event with the Prime Minister this morning and he said his government had a duty to act to protect young Australians online. He said too many young people are being exposed to dangerous content, to dangerous people online and those addictive algorithms that keep us all logged on while we're on social media.
Now, that event was a celebratory affair. The government thinks that this is world-leading legislation that other jurisdictions will follow.
But it was also a somber affair. We heard from the parents of children who had lost their lives to suicide after being victimized by online predators. One father said to me that he thinks his son might still be here if checks and balances were in place back when he was, but before the tragedy that befell their family.
Now, Rosemary, the government here says that this will initially be rather messy, perhaps that it won't be able to get all under 16s off social media in one fell swoop. Instead, what it wants is cultural change. It wants young Australians to be outdoors, enjoying their childhood, pursuing their interests as opposed to being stuck on social media, Rosemary.
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CHURCH: And Angus, how likely is it that this ban will actually work, that there aren't ways that some kids might work around this? WATSON: Well, Rosemary, the government's saying that that might
happen, that kids will be able to potentially work around it, but it's saying that it already has started to work. The social media companies have already deactivated millions of accounts here in Australia.
And what's important to note here, Rosemary, is the government won't be punishing kids if they do get around this ban, if they do get past the facial verification software that will likely be used, or they perhaps use a VPN to get around these new rules, they won't be punished, nor will their parents.
What the government's saying instead is that it will require social media companies to take reasonable steps to be deleting these accounts belonging to young people from their platforms. If the Australian government thinks that it's not doing that, that it's not getting sufficient cooperation from these social media accounts, then it will hit them with fines in the tens of millions of dollars, Rosemary.
So the government acknowledges that it might not work. This catch-all ban might not work on day one, but that it will be improved as time goes on and that it might help input cultural change in here, into this society here in Australia, Rosemary.
CHURCH: And indeed, the whole world is watching this as a test case. Angus Watson, joining us live from Sydney. Many thanks, I appreciate it.
And last hour, I spoke with the official in charge of undertaking and implementing this new policy, Julie Inman Grant is Australia's e- Safety Commissioner. And I asked her what were some of the tragic stories that triggered this ban across Australia?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JULIE INMAN GRANT, AUSTRALIA E-SAFETY COMMISSIONER: Well, I take my hats off to so many parents from Emma Mason to Mia Bannister to Rob Evans, to Wayne Holdsworth, to Tick and Kate Edward. And they were all devastating stories that have the nexus in social media.
Some were about disordered eating, some were about cyberbullying that was so extreme that that was the way that Tilly thought the only way she had out. And another was sexual extortion targeting Matt Holdsworth.
So the stories are numerous and we actually run a cyberbullying scheme and an image-based abuse scheme where we help young people take down harmful content day in and day out with a 98 percent success rate. We know the more quickly we do that, the more we can relieve their emotional and mental distress. We don't need any more casualties.
CHURCH: Yeah, absolutely. And how will Australia enforce and police this ban and what are the next steps in the process?
INMAN GRANT: Right, well, so our powers started today and we've built a lot of allowances into the regulation. We know that some of the implementations are not going to be perfect, that some kids will fall through the cracks. So we've made sure that the platforms themselves have clear reporting cues for parents or educators if they didn't capture an under-16, appeals processes if they overblock.
But we're also putting the onus on the platforms to prevent what we call recidivism. So kids creating new or fake imposter accounts, but also age-based circumvention, like spoofing of the systems or location-based circumvention through things like VPN.
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CHURCH: One year after the fall of the Assad regime, many Syrians are still haunted by the brutality they had to endure for decades. CNN's Clarissa Ward brings us that story after a short break.
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CHURCH: UNICEF is underscoring the dire humanitarian crisis that still exists in Gaza two months after the ceasefire. The U.N. agency says a shockingly high number of children remain acutely malnourished, even though the truce was supposed to facilitate an increase in humanitarian aid. UNICEF says about 9300 children were treated for severe acute malnutrition in October as Gaza residents deal with an insufficient flow of aid and high prices.
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TESS INGRAM, UNICEF COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER: Mothers cannot afford to buy their children the nutritious food that's available in the markets. Fruits and vegetables, which are now here, remain very expensive and animal products like dairy and meat are even more so.
For example, a UNICEF market survey done in November found that meat is still on average costs about U.S. $20 a kilo. So most families can't access this. And that's why we're still seeing high rates of malnutrition.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Syrians took to the streets Monday to celebrate the one year anniversary of Bashar al-Assad's fall. But the country is still struggling to heal after more than half a century of brutality that became synonymous with the Assad dynasty.
CNN's Clarissa Ward speaks to a man who describes the atrocities of the Assad regime.
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CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This man says he transported the bodies of hundreds of Syrian prisoners every week back in 2014. Now he's revealing where he says they were buried. ABU ALI, FORMER SYRIAN ARMY DRIVER (translated): I was a truck driver,
it was a big fridge.
WARD: Like a freezer truck.
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ALI (translated): The bodies came without names, they only had the body number and the number of security branch.
WARD: His job was basically to drive the bodies from the military hospital and to bring them here to be buried in these mass graves.
WARD (voice-over): Abu Ali, as we're calling him, does not want to reveal his identity out of fear of retribution, haunted by the shame of his past role under the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
ALI (translated): We used to come here every week.
WARD (translated): Every week?
ALI (translated): Every week.
WARD: So for the period of the year, he was bringing bodies every week.
ALI (translated): Sometimes 80, 100, 150, 200, 250, up to 300 bodies, approximately.
WARD (TRANSLATED): 100, 200, every week?
ALI (translated): Yes.
WARD: Monitoring groups and investigators believe that there are dozens of mass graves around the country with tens of thousands of bodies in them. But the trouble they have right now is that there simply isn't the expertise, the equipment to do the excavation, the forensic investigation that would be needed to try to identify these people and give their families the closure that they're so desperately seeking.
WARD (voice-over): U.S.-based advocacy group, the Syrian Emergency Task Force, discovered this site earlier this year. The hope is that Abu Ali's account could help some Syrian families find their loved ones.
Clarissa Ward, CNN, Al-Tal, Syria.
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CHURCH: Celebrating a century in flight, we look back at the modest means of the original Delta Airlines, as well as its many mergers and why it maintains deep ties to Atlanta, Georgia.
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CHURCH: Welcome back to "CNN Newsroom," I'm Rosemary Church. I want to check today's top stories for you.
According to the Norwegian state broadcaster, Venezuelan opposition leader and this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Corina Machado, will not be attending the Nobel ceremony. Machado's daughter will accept the prize and deliver a speech on her behalf. Norwegian media reports Machado is in hiding due to security concerns.
Ukraine's President says he is working with European allies to update the Trump administration's peace proposal and may send the plan to the U.S. later today. Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with several European leaders this week for peace talks. He says Ukraine is ready to hold elections within 90 days if the U.S. and Europe can guarantee security during the vote.
Australia's new ban on social media for children under 16 is now in effect. The new law comes after years of concerns about the potential negative impacts on mental health. Most of the 10 banned platforms say they'll comply with the law using age verification technology.
Delta Airlines is marking a century in the skies with one of the largest fleets in the world, flying up to 5000 flights per day, which marks a sharp change from its founding. For years, the airline did not actually carry any passengers.
CNN's Richard Quest explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR-AT-LARGE (voice-over): The history of the original Delta Airlines is colorful.
It was born in Mason, Georgia, and called Huff Galland Dusters, a series of crop dusters that were created to provide an answer to a problem affecting local farmers, the boll weevil.
UNKNOWN (voice-over): In flights measured by the length of a furrow, Delta was the first company in the world to use airplanes for crop dusting. And as aviation grew, Delta grew.
QUEST (voice-over): Three years on and the name was changed to Delta Air Service after the Mississippi Delta region. Yes, that's where the word Delta comes from.
It wasn't long before those planes started ferrying passengers as well. The first route in 1929 carried people from Dallas, Texas, to Jackson, Mississippi, with stops in Shreveport and Monroe, Louisiana. From there, it was onwards and upwards, new routes, new planes, and in 1953, Delta went international to the Caribbean and Caracas.
QUEST: Deregulation in the 1970s allowed Delta to really turn Atlanta into this behemoth to the point where for years it's been the world's busiest airport for both passenger numbers and aircraft movements.
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For Delta, Atlanta is central to its success.
QUEST (voice-over): Along the way, there have been more than a few mergers. Chicago and Southern Airlines, Northeast Airlines, Western Airlines and one that changed aviation, the merger between Delta and Northwest.
Delta expanded to a global carrier and was a founding member of the Sky Team Alliance, launched with Aeromexico, Air France and Korean Air. It's gone further with a wide ranging joint venture with Air France, KLM and SAS.
Of course, there have been trying times as well.
In 1985, the crash that killed 134 passengers and crew and led to many safety lessons for the industry.
A bankruptcy in 2005 exited in less than two years.
And along the way, the Delta workforce ballooned to 100,000 people who served more than 200 million passengers last year.
In recent years, under the chief executive, Ed Bastian, the airlines repositioned itself as a premium carrier targeting affluent passengers who are willing to pay to turn left instead of right on the plane.
It is a strategy that's paying off. It is an enviable place with which to be and one that Ed Bastian is determined to hold on to.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: New video just into CNN shows the harrowing moment when a small plane made an emergency landing on a Florida highway. A driver's dash cam captured the incident and you can see the small twin engine plane come swooping down and crash on top of a car in central Florida on Tuesday.
Authorities say the driver only had minor injuries and was taken to a nearby hospital. The plane's pilot and passenger were not injured. Incredible.
Well, President Trump is claiming an economic success that most Americans just aren't feeling. What he told a raucous crowd in Pennsylvania about affordability and who's to blame? That's next.
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[03:35:00]
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CHURCH: Welcome back to CNN, this is your Business Breakout. We are keeping an eye on financial markets in the Asia-Pacific region ahead of an expected interest rate cut here in the United States. A slide in the Japanese yen and a rise in the price of silver are both affecting the markets, the Hang Seng up there nearly 0.5 percent.
And these are the business headlines.
French lawmakers have narrowly approved a new social security budget facing a fragile minority government. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu included a pause on the pension reform in the bill, delaying it until 2027 to secure enough votes and keep his government in place. President Emmanuel Macron's unpopular plan introduced two years ago raises the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly is planning to make GLP-1 pills in the U.S. The weight loss drug, as well as other medicines, will be made in four manufacturing facilities the company plans to build around the nation, including a more than $6 billion plant in Huntsville, Alabama.
The U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to cut interest rates again when it wraps up its December meeting this week. Most analysts are predicting a quarter point cut. The central bank remains divided over whether it should prioritize support for the slowing job market or controlling inflation.
Well the U.S. President is trying to flip the narrative on the economy at a rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. He blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, for the country's economic woes and once again dismissed the affordability crisis as a democratic hoax.
CNN's Alayna Treene reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: President Donald Trump visited Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday for a speech that was meant to focus on the economy, especially this idea of affordability, the cost of living issue that's really been plaguing a lot of Americans this past year.
And look, what the President did was really slip back into his 2024 campaign style mode. He repeatedly blamed his predecessor, the former president, Joe Biden, for what he argued was essentially giving him a bad economy, that the President inherited a bad economy when he came in for his second term.
And a lot of the time he also tried to argue that prices were coming down and that the economy was going to do better than it ever had. Now, this is a little bit different from what I had been told in some of my conversations with White House advisers and Trump administration officials, which is essentially that they recognize that the Trump administration and the president and Republican parties overall have an issue when it comes to affordability, that essentially they need to improve on the economy.
[03:40:02] Now, the President, for his part, I'm told, believes that it's a perception issue, a communications issue. And you could really hear him kind of selling that during his speech on Tuesday, where some of his team has argued to try and acknowledge that Americans are feeling economic pain at this point. There were a couple moments when the President did seem to read the teleprompter and read things like that, at one moment, he said that he recognizes that perhaps there is still more work to do.
But then he immediately went back into this idea of saying that prices are falling at a faster rate than ever. Listen.
TRUMP: You're getting lower prices, bigger paychecks.
We're getting inflation. We're crushing it. And you're getting much higher wages.
I mean, the only thing that's really going up big, it's called the stock market and your 401Ks.
TREENE: Now, another striking moment during his remarks is when he referred to the word affordability as what he called a democratic hoax. I talked to many people in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. I went near a grocery store as we're coming in and going out.
And they essentially told me that they believe this idea that that word is a hoax is just not true. Every single one of them, whether they were Republicans or Democrats, told me that they believe strongly that prices are too high right now, that inflation is a problem.
Now, some of the Republicans said, you know, perhaps it just needs more that the president needs more time for his policies to sink in. Others said that they need to see something change very quickly. But all to say the President, while speaking about affordability, did not seem to relate to Americans and the pain that they are currently feeling.
Alayna Treene, CNN, Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: A new film about Jair Bolsonaro is coming to theaters, Dark Horse, will focus on the career of the former Brazilian president, who's now in prison for plotting a coup to stay in power after losing the 2022 election. The movie was filmed in English with a screenplay written by a former Bolsonaro aide.
And judging by social media posts, it appears to have the full backing of Bolsonaro's family and inner circle. The film will star American actor Jim Caviezel, who's also a supporter of Bolsonaro's ally, Donald Trump. It's due out next year.
Well, Christmas is still a couple of weeks away, but Santa Claus made an early stop at a children's cancer hospital in Athens, Greece, to deliver presents. Local firefighters joined him as they rappelled down the side of a building onto balconies where children waited to meet St. Nick. One of the firefighters said they wanted to spread joy among children battling cancer.
I want to thank you so much for your company, I'm Rosemary Church. Have yourselves a wonderful day. "Marketplace Middle East" is coming up next.
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