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CNN International: Anthropic Employee Quits, Sounds Alarm On A.I. Safety Concerns; New Data Shows Pilot Warned Of Excessive Speed Before Crash; Moldova: Russian Drones Delayed Zelenskyy's Flight. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired September 10, 2026 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

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DARIO AMODEI, CEO, ANTHROPIC: Or just some way in which kind of society can't -- can't handle it. That said you know, what that means is that there's a 75 to 90 percent chance that this technology is developed and -- and -- and -- and everything goes fine.

HADAS GOLD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Just a few months ago in July, more than 1,300 staffers at the top A.I. company signed a letter asking the U.S. government to help create tools that would slow down the pace of A.I. development, so that the safety measures could catch up because right now, there's no industry standards when it comes to A.I..

There's very few rules and regulations in Washington when it comes to model development, or even when it comes to testing these A.I. agents. And we've seen when those tests can go wrong, when A.I. agents escape their test environments and hack into other company systems, like what happened with OpenAI and Hugging Face. And one of the -- that's one of the reasons why you're seeing this increased concern is because we're seeing the advancements of A.I., what it's been able to do in the past few months.

It's gone from you know science fiction to reality in a way, and so quickly in a way that I think people were not expecting. And so now you have the creators of this tool afraid of their creation. Hadas Gold, CNN, New York.

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POLO SANDOVAL, CNN ANCHOR: Still ahead on Newsroom, new data showing a cargo plane was going too fast before it crash landed in Florida. We'll have the latest on what investigators have found so far.

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SANDOVAL: Welcome back to Newsroom. I'm Polo Sandoval live in New York, and President Trump was delayed going to the Republican convention on a Wednesday when sources say a military aide accidentally deployed the emergency slide on Air Force One, you see it there. After the slide was reinstalled, Mr. Trump took the plane anyway to

Dallas. He suggested that the deployment was intentional because his staff was trying to check the slide, he claimed. Well, the plane, that Qatari gifted jet, it's estimated to be worth about 400 million dollars.

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And we are also getting new details about what may have caused the deadly Amazon cargo plane crash in Miami, Florida, this week. Preliminary information from the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorders now showing that alarms sounded as the pilot was -- the pilot warned of the plane's excessive speed, and that's before it overran their runway and killed five people on the ground. We have CNN's Tom Foreman with more.

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TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What caused the crash of this huge cargo jet as it tried to land in Miami? Well, maybe it had something to do with excessive speed. We say that because the National Transportation Safety Board, in its latest analysis of the cockpit recorder and the data recorder, say that one of the pilots, as they approached the runway, expressed concern about excessive speed.

This was a concern that was expressed several times, although it's not clear what the response was going to be. Then, after they had overflown the initial landing area, hit the ground in sort of an unusual way, then the NTSB says there was a call out for them to go around, and indeed the data shows that they hit the throttle very quickly, as if trying to get back to a take-off speed.

They let go of the wheel brakes, but then four seconds later they throttle back again, put the brakes back on. Apparently, changing their mind, perhaps. We don't know the details. That's what they're trying to sort out. We do know it didn't work. They went off the end of the runway, traveled the distance of more than four football fields, and hit that van where five people were killed. Many more were injured.

So the data recorder, the voice recorder, they're giving us more clues to solve this mystery of why this happened, but not a real answer quite yet.

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SANDOVAL: Tom Foreman, thank you. Now to Moldova's Ambassador to the U.S. who says that it's too early to say if Russia targeted Ukraine's president before a flight out of his country on Tuesday. Two Russian drones entered Moldovan airspace just as President Zelenskyy was about to take off for Norway, his flight was delayed because of this. The Ambassador telling CNN that the timing was probably not a coincidence. Norway's Prime Minister claiming that a drone almost hit the Ukrainian presidential plane.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump says that his Russian counterpart is eager to make a deal to end the war in Ukraine. The U.S. president released some new details on Wednesday about his phone call with President Vladimir Putin that happened a day earlier. The White House renewed its efforts to reach a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine last weekend, but Mr. Trump says there's still one obstacle in the way.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We had a great conversation. He is wanting to make a deal, and if Zelenskyy is wanting to make a deal, that'd be very nice.

REPORTER: What is the hold-up?

TRUMP: The hold-up is two people that hate each other.

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SANDOVAL: Despite the peace efforts, we are getting word of new Russian strikes across Ukraine. Officials there are saying that at least 13 people were killed and that more than 90 others were injured in just the last 24 hours alone. The targets included the port of Mykolaiv, where Russia used drones and guided bombs overnight, and the northern region of Sumy, where a shopping mall was struck.

CNN crews on the ground there saying that there was a new air raid alert in Kyiv just a short time ago, but that air defenses were working. Ukraine meanwhile says that it has struck eight Russian infrastructure facilities over the last day, including at least one oil refinery. Russia's military claiming that it shot down more than 400 Ukrainian drones overnight.

Still to come on CNN Newsroom, troubling allegations about what New York City officials knew about toxic air near the site of the World Trade Center.

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SANDOVAL: On Friday, New York City, along with the country, will be marking 25 years since the 9/11 attacks. But newly released records are now raising some troubling questions about the city's response at Ground Zero. The documents indicating that city officials may have misled the public about air quality following the attacks on the World Trade Center. Here's CNN's Sherrell Hubbard with more.

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SHERRELL HUBBARD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Nearly 25 years after the September 11th terror attacks, some New Yorkers are still haunted by the decisions of their own government.

JAMES BROSI, PRESIDENT, FDNY UNIFORMED FIRE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION: What we learned was the air was as toxic as we said it was.

HUBBARD: Jim Brosi, the President of New York City's Uniformed Fire Officers Association, is responding to newly released documents relating to air safety following the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center.

BROSI: We were dying with every breath we took down there. What we learned is that the city knew it.

HUBBARD: The more than 170,000-page report of previously undisclosed records includes air quality reports and communication between city officials at the time. It reveals city officials at the time repeatedly misled city residents about the toxic air, putting those living and working in the area, especially first responders, at risk.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI, NEW YORK MAYOR: Now, close to 25 years later, more people have died from 9/11-related illnesses than were killed on the day itself.

HUBBARD: Mayor Zohran Mamdani released the massive collection of documents after an advocacy group sued the city. During a media briefing Tuesday, Mamdani said the documents show asbestos was found nearly everywhere that inspectors tested.

MAMDANI: People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air.

HUBBARD: Brosi says the government did not protect those who were exposed to toxic air.

BROSI: They made an economic decision not to tell us, and now it's time to pay the bill.

HUBBARD: I'm Sherrell Hubbard reporting.

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SANDOVAL: Mayor Mamdani says that he does plan to release even more documents over the next year, and the Uniform Fire Officers Association says that it does hope that the new information can be used to expand covered medical conditions and treatment for firefighters who responded that day on 9/11.

And New York City officials announced that the identification of a previously unknown 9/11 victim last month was identified using a breakthrough technique. Although the woman's name was withheld at the request of her family, her remains are the first of a 9/11 victim to be identified using forensic investigative genetic genealogy.

She was the 1,654th victim identified of the 2,753 people who died in New York, 25 years ago. Officials say that it combines the forensic capabilities of the city's chief medical examiner with the genealogical expertise of the police department. Mark Desire is Assistant Director of Forensic Biology at New York City's Office of Chief Medical Examiner here in New York, and he joins me from New York City. [04:45:00]

Mark, it is a pleasure to get to speak to you, not just to learn more about your tireless -- your department's tireless efforts to bring closure to families, but also because you survived the collapse of the Twin Towers 25 years ago. So we are very happy to be able to speak to you this morning, Mark. Welcome.

MARK DESIRE, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF FORENSIC BIOLOGY, NYC, OCME: Thanks for having me.

SANDOVAL: So, Mark, let's begin with that latest case that we just talked about, with nearly 1100 victims yet to be identified. That's roughly 40 percent How much do you think this new genetic genealogy technology will assist you and your colleagues in your mission, that's now 25 years in.

DESIRE: Yeah, 25 years later, we're still holding that promise we made. This new technology will help us locate additional family members. So we have full DNA profiles. We could make roughly 47 new identifications today if we were to have reference DNA from all of the 2,753 victims that were killed that day.

SANDOVAL: Give us a sense of just really the territory that you all cover day to day. I mean, how many unidentified remains confirmed to be from people who -- who died that day, does your team analyze?

DESIRE: We make identifications every month, and it's something the public doesn't hear about because the majority of these identifications are previously identified victims. So, some of the victims of 911, multiple pieces, hundreds of pieces of one person, and we continue to find and identify using DNA those victims, returning them to their -- to their families. So it's -- it's rare, but we do have, on occasion, a new identification for the first time, a family will see the piece of their loved one.

SANDOVAL: And Mark, even with the technology that continues to evolve over time, and hopefully give you and your colleagues the upper hand, just if you could get into maybe some of the challenges that you still face today in identifying some of these victims.

DESIRE: Everything that destroys human tissue destroys DNA was present at Ground Zero from the fires to the water to put out the fires, jet fuel, diesel fuel, chemicals in the buildings, chemicals already in the ground, sunlight, mold, bacteria. All of that destroys DNA, and all of that was present at Ground Zero.

And because of the high degree of fragmentation of the victims, so there were almost 22,000 remains recovered. So some of these -- some of these victims, all we were able to locate was a very small piece of bone. DNA is the only way you're going to identify that. So all these things present at Ground Zero make this not only the largest forensic investigation in the history of the United States, but also the most challenging.

SANDOVAL: Mark, give us a general sense of the conversations that you -- that you often have with those families who last saw their loved one now 25 years ago. Do they continue to -- to hold on to that hope after all this time that that eventually their phone will ring and it'll be a member of your office with the news that they've been hoping to hear?

DESIRE: Absolutely, that's what drives us. That's what pushes us to come up with better technology. We're constantly striving to push forensic science into the future, and that's what we've been able to do. The remains that we're identifying today, we've attempted 10-15 times in the past, and when you can finally, after years of working and years of having to develop better techniques, identify a piece of someone, and you're able to return that fragment to their family, and the family is there, and crying and shaking and hugging you and thanking you for bringing their little boy home.

That is so powerful. We will never give up. But there are also -- 25 years is a long time to wait, and some of the parents of the adult victims, a woman as I spoke with recently, her adult daughter died in the South Tower that morning, and that was 25 years ago. And her daughter was in her 30s, so she said, "Mark, I'm getting up there. I don't -- I don't have much time left. Will you find her before I die? I want to hold her one last time."

And that's something we can't predict who will be the next. We just -- all I can say is we are making new identifications, making identification every month, and we continue to push this, and we will never give up. And she understood, and she said, "Well, after I after I pass, will you -- and you -- and you find my daughter, will you bury her with me? I want her by my side."

You have my word that we will make that happen. We will find your daughter. We will not quit. Find her, and you will be together again.

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SANDOVAL: That is incredibly powerful, Mark. We know that you and the rest of your team, especially you, with that personal connection to that day, will continue that work to deliver on that promise that you made, and I cannot thank you enough for sharing just a little bit, just a small glimpse of that work that you all do on a daily basis now, two and a half decades in, we wish you the best as you continue forward with that.

DESIRE: Thank you.

SANDOVAL: Mark Desire, thank you again for your time.

DESIRE: Take care.

SANDOVAL: You too, and we'll be right back with more. Stay with us.

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SANDOVAL: The NFL season is back. It kicked off on Wednesday night with the Super Bowl rematch between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots, and it was a pretty similar outcome too, with the reigning champs defeating the Patriots 13 to 10.

Seattle did lose quarterback Sam Darnold to an injury in the game's opening drive, but the Seahawks rallying in the second half. They intercepted New England three times to start the season with a win.

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Next up, the L.A. Rams. They take on division rivals, the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne. It's the first to have a regular season game to be played in Australia. And we're just hours away from the U.S. Open Semifinals in the women's singles competition. Elena Rybakina is actually along -- among the final four.

On Wednesday, she topped China's Zheng Qinwen two sets to one, and is now expected to move to the number one spot in the women's rankings when the new numbers are released on Monday. Rybakina will be facing American Coco Gauff for a chance to reach the finals and number four, Gauff is reaching the semifinals after beating Russian fifth seed Mirra Andreeva after rallying from behind and saving two match points. Gauff is hoping for a chance at a second U.S. Open title. You recall she won that tournament in 2023.

And the U.S. just experienced its hottest summer in 132 years of record keeping. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration reporting that the average temperatures across the lower 48 states this year topped the previous record set in the 1930s during the Dust Bowl era.

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BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: So this is not some small 100th of a degree new record. This is leaping up on the charts, and it does not include the El Nino that's just now starting to cook up in the Pacific, and you're seeing the dramatic effects of that along the California coastline. And it feels like Miami; it's more humid there and hotter than actually in Miami.

Globally, of course, this is happening as well in Europe and what we saw in in Asia and the Himalayas. But yeah, it is here, and it is as we've tasted it, it's like usually it's so localized that not everybody feels something. But you can think about the Summer 26 as varying between annoying and costly or deadly in some extremes.

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SANDOVAL: And from the entire team, want to thank you so much for watching this hour of news. I'm Polo Sandoval in New York, and our live coverage continues on CNN Headline Express in a moment.

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