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Isaias Weakens to Post-Tropical Cyclone but Threats Remain; Isaias Continues to Lash Southeast U.S., Hitting Florida and Alabama; Russia Agrees to Supply Diesel to U.S. and Global Markets; Panama TV Hosts Flee on Air as Earthquake Hits; Indian Police Detain Youth Movement Leaders at New Delhi Airport; Probe Finds Alleged Flydubai Hijacker Was Inspired by 9/11 Attacks; Fired OpenAI Researchers Question Reasons for Dismissal. Aired 5-6a ET
Aired October 10, 2026 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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RENE MARSH, CNN ANCHOR AND U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello and welcome. I'm Rene Marsh in Washington, D.C.
Ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM, Isaias is no longer a hurricane but several other storms are threatening the U.S. this weekend. We'll break down the latest forecast.
Plus president Trump slams New York's leadership while campaigning in the state.
What's behind his attacks on state officials?
And a surprising new deal between the U.S. and Russia. Why Ukraine's president says it could put his country at risk.
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MARSH: Isaias has been downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone but the National Hurricane Center says it is still causing strong winds and the threat of flash floods. So just take a look at this video.
It is showing the moment that the roof of a Pensacola hotel was ripped off by those strong winds. And as this system moves farther north from the Gulf Coast, crews are already working to assess the damage and start repairs. President Donald Trump says that the government is watching Isaias very closely.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE).
TRUMP: They're watching it very closely, the hurricane. I think we have it under control. We're watching very, very closely Alabama. Thank you.
(END VIDEO CLIP) MARSH: Officials in parts of Florida are warning people to stay off the roads where downed trees, power lines and flooding are making travel dangerous. The National Weather Service says that central Alabama is facing strong wind gusts, some reaching 50 to 60 miles an hour.
And they say that the gusty winds will spread across Georgia in the coming hours. And this just coming into CNN, the number of customers left without power across the Southeast now tops 860,000. But a bit of good news. In Alabama, the electricity is being restored to thousands of people whose power went out during the storm.
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MARSH: And CNN has teams across the Southeast covering the effects of the storm system. Last hour, I spoke with Ivan Rodriguez out in the Gulf Shores of Alabama. Here's what he had to say about what he's seeing there.
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IVAN RODRIGUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We did around the late evening hours right before Hurricane Isaias made landfall further down in the Florida Panhandle.
We did feel some of that heavier wind and some of that heavier rain as well. But the first thing that dropped off was the rain for us. And then we continued with that wind for a couple more hours until it pretty much calmed down to what you have right now.
We were in this interesting position because when the sunlight was still here with us, we could see the clouds really shifting in the sky, almost turning. We had that turn effect right above us. So it was this interesting vantage point where you had a sense of those bands moving around just where we are here in Gulf Shores.
But in terms of the storm surge, thankfully that wasn't an impact that we had to deal with here in this part of the gulf coast. The ocean was about 100 yards behind me still now and it never really looked that threatening to be able to come out onto shore, on what is typically dry land.
Now I do want to add a little bit more, because we have heard from the governor of Alabama saying, just because these parts of Alabama are now more in the clear and we are all very thankful for that.
We're now looking to other areas, like in central Alabama, where we're looking at wind gusts now of 30 to 40 miles per hour, a few gusts reaching 50 to 60 miles per hour as well, according to the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama. So again, that is a whole other aspect there, Rene.
And we're also looking at power outages because of those damaging winds. Right now, were looking at more than 750,000 customers without power only between Alabama and Florida, more than 440,000 of those customers without power are just in Florida alone.
MARSH: And do you have a sense yet?
I mean, I see that it's still dark there but I mean, have you been able to see or have a sense, as far as damage left behind at this point?
RODRIGUEZ: You know, right now it's hard to get a sense just because of that darkness. We do have a highway on the other side here. We have the ocean to behind me and in front of me, there's a highway. But again, it is very dark right now.
But I will say that, you know, what we've heard from officials all along is they're asking residents to hunker down during Hurricane Isaias to stay indoors.
And I do want to bring in another example here that we got recently about a deputy sheriff who was actually injured while responding to a vehicle crash tonight when a falling tree struck him and trapped the driver. That's also, according to CNN affiliate WALA.
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And the sheriff pointed out the fact again, you know, we do want people to hunker down and wait until the sun comes out and then we get a better sense of what is actually out there.
But in this overall vicinity, where I am, thankfully, it doesn't seem like were looking at a lot of damage.
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MARSH: U.S. President Donald Trump took to the campaign trail in New York this weekend, where he made several attacks against Democrats, including New York attorney general Letitia James.
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TRUMP: It was just revealed that Letitia James is being looked at for prosecutorial misconduct with respect to how she handled the case of your favorite president, me. She is prosecutorial misconduct.
On Election Day, New Yorkers should tell both Hochul and that disgusting Letitia dog -- is she a dog?
You're fired. Get the hell out of here. You're fired.
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MARSH: Well, as you just heard there, president Trump escalating attacks on James during Friday's rally in Syracuse, even calling her, you heard it, a dog at one point. The president was at the rally to support the Republican candidate for governor.
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TRUMP: The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize but didn't.
This is an indelible stain on the country of Norway and those people that made such a disgraceful and embarrassing decision.
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MARSH: President Trump also criticized the committee. He was passed over yet again for the Nobel Peace Prize this year.
The prize went to South African human rights pioneer Navi Pillay. The Norwegian Nobel Committee says that it chose Pillay for her efforts to promote peace and international law and highlighted her early work defending Nelson Mandela and others during the apartheid -- during apartheid in South Africa.
Well, there's much more to come here on CNN NEWSROOM, including a race against time in Ukraine to save lives in the rubble after the latest Russian strikes.
Plus new pushback against the Pentagon's plan to livestream a military execution. Why the U.N. believes the move may violate international law.
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MARSH: U.S. President Donald Trump is taking new steps to try to lower diesel prices ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. On Friday, he announced a new agreement with Moscow that allows Russia to export diesel to the global market.
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TRUMP: I think you heard about the oil deal with Russia. That is a big deal. That is massive amounts of oil being -- coming into our country. And I want to thank President Putin, to be honest with you.
QUESTION: Zelenskyy said you are weak because of it. He just criticized.
TRUMP: Who said that?
QUESTION: Zelenskyy, Ukrainian president, just said you're weak because of the deal.
TRUMP: OK.
Go ahead
(END VIDEO CLIP) MARSH: Trump also claims that the deal will release hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel to the market right away. But Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is not on board with that, saying that the agreement will only add more money to Russia's war chest.
But inside Ukraine, officials say rescue operations are underway after new Russian strikes in the Zaporizhzhya region. They say that at least eight people were killed overnight, while 16 others were injured. The fate of 12 more people is still unclear, as officials said more victims could be trapped under the rubble.
For more, we are joined this morning by Sebastian Shukla. He joins us live from Berlin.
What's the very latest there?
I mean, let's start with this diesel deal, because I think that caught a lot of people by surprise.
What more do we know about this deal?
SEBASTIAN SHUKLA, CNN PRODUCER: Well, we think the Ukrainians are obviously livid. And we heard some of the comments from president Zelenskyy about this deal.
And I think there is a degree of anger from the Ukrainian part because, as his negotiators were sat with president Trump's negotiators and European negotiators to try and come up with a deal, a proposal to end this war or, at the very least, result in a sanction, in a cessation of hostilities the president was on the phone to President Putin.
Negotiating this diesel deal, which is going to see the market now be flooded with Russian diesel that is able to be sold and, therefore, is able to replenish the coffers of the Kremlin.
The Ukrainians, for a very long time now, have been using the tactics of hitting Russia's oil refineries to try to stymie that flow of diesel and oil exports.
Because it is such a valuable and crucial lifeline for the Kremlin to be able to sustain the prolonged attacks both on the ground and more regularly and more consistently through these aerial attacks and bombardments that we see across Ukraine on a near daily and nightly basis.
What appears to be happening here now is that the Trump administration has, once again, taken the side of the Kremlin over its allies in order to gain a political one-upmanship at home domestically, rather than thinking what the bigger picture here is for Europe and for the Ukrainians.
The state of the discussions and the cessation of hostilities appears to be no really near further coming to an end. The Russians have said now and maintained that they don't really feel that there is a option or scope for meaningful talks to take place. [05:20:07]
A senior Russian aide saying the same and European diplomats that I've been speaking to have echoed the same. There is just no willingness right now.
I think, Rene, what's very interesting here and something to look out for is, what do the Ukrainians do now?
The president has asked them previously to stop hitting the refineries.
Do they do that and give the Kremlin breathing space and keep the Russian -- the American president on side?
Or do they draw president Trump's ire and try to stymie the Russian flow of money into stopping the war in Ukraine?
MARSH: It feels like an impossible situation that's the position that they are in. Sebastian Shukla reporting from Berlin. Thank you very much.
The U.N. is pushing back against a plan, the life -- to live stream a U.S. military execution. The organization's human rights office says that the move would violate the prohibition on torture. President Trump has given conflicting answers on whether he approved the idea.
But as Haley Britzky reports, the plan is facing bipartisan backlash at home.
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HALEY BRITZKY, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The Pentagon announced this week that the execution of Nidal Hasan, the man convicted of killing 13 people in a mass shooting on Fort Hood in 2009, will be live streamed.
The confirmation comes after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that the execution would be public, saying, quote, "People need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things."
But many questions still remain about how the live stream will be carried out. This is the first firing squad execution for the U.S. since World War II. And Army regulations bar minors from watching a military execution, something that would not be able to be enforced if it were live streamed, though the military could waive that regulation.
But the idea of live streaming this execution has brought bipartisan backlash.
Democratic senator Chris Murphy told CNN that the move is, quote, "disgusting" and is mimicking ISIS executions.
Republicans have also criticized the announcement. Senator Thom Tillis, now an outspoken critic of Hegseth, likened it to what occurs in Iran and under the Taliban in Afghanistan.
And Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center under the Trump administration, said it was beneath the dignity and decency of our nation and, quote, "gives terrorists free propaganda."
And that is the primary concern that we've seen here, not that necessarily the death sentence is being applied to Hasan's case but how the imagery of his execution, particularly as Hasan is in a wheelchair, could be used by terror groups and enemies of the U.S. abroad.
Vice president JD Vance was asked about this on Friday and cast doubt on it, saying he didn't know if the live stream was actually going to happen. But if it did, he wouldn't be watching -- Haley Britzky, CNN, Washington.
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MARSH: President Trump has tapped conservative commentator Katie Zacharia as his next White House press secretary. She replaces Karoline Leavitt. Zacharia previously served a two-month stint at the Department of Homeland Security before working as a senior communications advisor for Trump's media company.
In a social media post on Friday, she thanked the president for the appointment.
She wrote, quote, "Serving president Trump and the American people at this critical 250-year mark is the honor of a lifetime."
Still to come here on CNN NEWSROOM, the storm Isaias is weakening as it moves further inland after slamming into the southeastern U.S. and Gulf Coast. But the dangerous conditions are still a threat to residents. We will hear from the mayor of Gulf Shores, Alabama, next.
Plus, a major earthquake hits Panama, sending thousands fleeing. The extent of the damage ahead, here on CNN.
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MARSH: Welcome back. I'm Rene Marsh in Washington, D.C. Let's take a look at today's top stories.
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MARSH (voice-over): On Thursday, an undocumented man was shot and wounded in his car while his 5-year old son sat in the back seat. That shooting has drawn criticism from New York City officials and ignited protests with demands for federal agents to leave the city. The mayor called ICE, quote, "rotten to its core."
U.S. President Donald Trump took his midterm message to the people of New York state. The president held a rally in Syracuse Friday night, where he went on attack against Democrats, including New York governor Kathy Hochul and the state's attorney general, Letitia James.
Hurricane Isaias has been downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone. It made landfall as a category two hurricane near Destin, Florida. The storm surge hit five feet from southern Louisiana to western Florida coast. Isaias is now moving across Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. It has knocked out power for more than 770,000 customers.
Well, I want to bring in Chris Gloninger. He is a meteorologist, a certified consulting meteorologist, that has been tracking this storm very closely.
Chris, thank you so much for joining us this morning. I mean, we just got through talking about Isaias and how it continues to be a threat as far as flood and wind.
But there -- but that's not it. There are two more storms that you are keeping your eye on. And at least one of them will potentially have an impact on the West Coast. Tell us about Hurricanes Simon and Rachel, where they are and what we're expecting with those two storms
CHRIS GLONINGER, CERTIFIED CONSULTING METEOROLOGIST: Rene, as it moves into Southern California, the second time only that San Diego has been under a tropical storm watch in its history. So this is how rare an event this is and a calling card of El Nino.
This is when we expect a very active stretch of weather during strong El Ninos in the central and eastern parts of the Pacific. So we have that.
And we saw what happened in Newport Beach yesterday with coastal flooding. So the tides are running really high because, as warm water expands, we're actually seeing this enhanced sea level rise by almost a foot.
So that coastal flooding is going to be a big threat with perhaps 60 to 70 mile per hour winds. And we may have a tropical storm still spinning over Las Vegas. So this storm is going to quickly move off to the north and east. Two to four inches of rain.
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Wind gusts to 70 miles per hour and coastal flooding. Again, these storms intensifying rapidly. The water warmth about 300 times more likely because of climate change, Rene, in that part of the Pacific.
So that is really what's kind of enhancing these storms. Simon, west coast of Mexico, Puerto Vallarta will likely see damaging winds up in over 120 miles per hour. Coastal flooding there. And the worst of those two storms coming in this weekend through about Monday.
MARSH: So let's get some situational awareness like, where is Rachel as it relates to potentially Southern California?
And you said Monday, is that when potentially people on the West Coast could start feeling the effects and what's the -- and I guess --
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MARSH: -- it's any guess as far as like what category storm it might be once it reaches there.
Do we know that yet?
GLONINGER: At this point, it appears it will be a tropical storm and conditions will deteriorate this evening. So it is -- it's going to be very short notice for Southern California and then ramp up as we go to the day on Sunday.
And then by Monday, early Monday, that's when we're expecting it to be up around Las Vegas. Puerto Vallarta, that part of Mexico will likely see worse conditions Sunday going into Monday. So a little bit later. So that is just off the coast of that part of Mexico.
Rachel, still just southwest of California at this point and not expected to become a hurricane again but it may be very close to a category one storm by the time it makes its final approach, right near the Baja and Southern California. That is the line where we're expecting that storm to make landfall.
MARSH: So everything was so quiet, hurricane season. And then, all of a sudden now, we're talking about Isaias and now Simon and then also Rachel. Thank you so much for joining us, Chris, and giving us that insight. I know you'll be tracking all of that for us.
GLONINGER: You bet, Rene.
MARSH: And the mayor of Gulf Shores, Alabama, spoke with CNN earlier about how his city is holding up during the storm. Take a listen
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MAYOR ROBERT CRAFT, GULF SHORES, ALABAMA: We dodged the worst of it as this thing drifted east. We got more of the backside of the storm than the front side. But we have a lot of issues with power lines down and people without power. But all in all, we've got a lot of shoreline erosion, obviously. But all in all, we fared pretty well.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, thank goodness to hear that many people we're really holding their breath as Isaias was approaching your area because of the concerns about the storm surge.
Did your city dodge a bullet?
CRAFT: We have. Yes. We got a lot of shoreline erosion but we didn't have any breaches. We've got a berm that we put up after multiple hurricanes to kind of protect our inland area. And it has held really well. It's eroded. But we didn't have any penetration beyond the BERMAN: , to have any
damage that I'm aware of yet. I haven't had any report of anything. The big issue is power out and flooded streets and a lot of power lines and trees down.
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MARSH: Well, torrential rain has triggered devastating flash floods and mudslides in Chile's capital, Santiago. At least six people have been injured and more than 1,000 people have been rescued or evacuated from the affected areas.
Chile's president has declared a state of emergency in one of the hardest hit districts, where rainfall reached nine times the October average. Meteorologists are linking the extreme rainfall to an El Nino event, now one of the most intense in decades.
Cleanup efforts are underway with residents and soldiers clearing mud and debris from flooded homes and streets.
And a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck southern Panama on Friday, causing minor injuries and damage to some buildings. The U.S. Geological Survey says that the quake's epicenter was in a thinly populated area about 200 kilometers or 124 miles from the capital of Panama City.
Now when the quake hit, thousands were forced into the streets as they tried to avoid shaking buildings. The country's president, Raul Mulino, visited the city where some of the buildings collapsed. Despite the quake's intensity and more than 40 aftershocks, much of the country escaped widespread damage.
A local television program was live on the air when the quake hit, forcing the hosts to run off of the set as the tremor intensified. You can see the television in the background and the overhead lights begin to shake violently.
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As you see there in that video.
The director of Panama's Geosciences Institute says that the shaking lasted for about 40 seconds, though other areas may have felt it longer. And CNN's Patrick Oppmann reviewed some of the dramatic video sent to our NEWSROOM and has more on the earthquake.
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PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: An incredibly powerful earthquake has shaken Panama. We are seeing images that keep coming in of buildings that have collapsed, of water coming out of pools and high rise. Thousands of people evacuating as this incredibly powerful earthquake hit in the Central American nation.
And some of the images were actually seeing, one of the bridges that crossed the Panama Canal rocking with the shaking of the earthquake. Officials say they continue to try and determine the number of
injuries if there are any deaths as a result of this earthquake. But it is the strongest earthquake, devastating earthquake to hit Panama in years, if not decades.
My family happened to be there when the earthquake shook immediately felt it. The pictures on the wall were moving and that people in the neighborhood immediately evacuate from high rises. There was photos of damage that we have seen, where buildings have collapsed and people, according to officials, had to be rescued.
At this point, though, they're still taking stock of the damage. Panama's international airport was closed. Several lines of the metro were closed. Panama Canal was not seriously affected. Their traffic continues to run through Panama Canal.
It seems that this country was spared the worst of the earthquake since it struck in an area where there was less of a population center. Panama City was farther away from the epicenter of this earthquake.
People still feel it, though. There, of course, we've already seen other strong earthquakes, shake and cause extreme loss of life in Venezuela and Colombia this year already.
So Panamanians are saying whatever the toll ends up being, this is certainly one of the worst earthquakes they have felt in years-- Patrick Oppmann, CNN, Havana.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MARSH: Well, coming up next on CNN NEWSROOM, new details are emerging about what inspired a copilot to allegedly hijack a flydubai plane. Just ahead, we'll have a report on a preliminary investigation into the attempted hijacking.
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MARSH: Police in India's capital have detained the founder and other leadership of the youth-led Cockroach political party ahead of planned protests on Saturday.
Officers boarded their plane upon arrival in New Delhi and reportedly requested that those protests be called off.
Despite authorities banning the demonstrations and shutting down mobile internet access in the area, Cockroach Party protesters took to the streets demanding the resignation of India's chief election commissioner. The youth movement accuses him of overseeing changes to voter lists that favor India's ruling party. That party and the election commissioner deny those accusations. For
more, I want to turn to CNN correspondent Gage Goulding. He is joining us live this morning from Seoul.
Good morning. Gage.
GAGE GOULDING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Hey. Good morning. I want to start there in New Delhi, where you can see there -- obviously there was a planned protest. The Cockroach Party, they're calling for and hoping for tens of thousands of young youth to pack into central New Delhi to protest these changes to the voter rules.
But you can see there, they were met with what we are understanding being thousands of police and paramilitary members, police actually boarding the plane, that the leader of the Cockroach Party, Abhijeet Dipke, was flying in on and detaining him as well as a number of other leaders of the Cockroach Party.
And if you're sitting there, scratching your head, wondering, interesting name for a political party, it is because it's actually derived from a word that was used to describe unemployed youth, unemployed young people, by a leader in the Indian government earlier this year.
And it was actually Abhijeet Dipke who created this online meme in May that actually took off. And it sparked this youth movement, if you will. And in July, they actually kind of protested and lobbied against the education minister there in India.
And it's kind of a sequential building, right?
Because, in July, they really rallied these protests back then, actually turned quite violent. And in terms -- and they lobbied and protested and the educational minister actually stepped down. They were upset over these alleged leaks in sale of exam information.
And these are highly competitive exams. So this today, all culminating for what the leader was calling season two of the Cockroach Party. And they were upset with and they were taking issue with the allegations that millions of people have been struck from the voter rolls.
Now the government there saying that they were removing duplicates or ineligible voters or voters who have since passed.
But opposition parties saying that that's not the case and that they're removing voters that could potentially vote against the party that has been in power there for many years, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP party, that prime minister Modi is a member of.
And we've seen reaction from the party leaders there, saying that they're very much so against this uprising of a movement, if you will.
But the youth, while they didn't pour out in the tens of thousands that the Cockroach Party leaders were anticipating and hoping for, they did turn out. And we did see several people being detained. But the government there obviously showing a strong opposition to the
protest, even turning off mobile internet through about 10:00 tonight local time.
MARSH: Gage Goulding, tracking it all for us, thank you.
And a preliminary investigation into a co-pilot's alleged attempt to hijack a flydubai flight has found that he was inspired by the September 11th attacks. The probe also found that the suspect had planned to crash the plane into the Ben Gurion airport in Israel. CNN's Jeremy Diamond has more from Tel Aviv.
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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Yes, really extraordinary new details revealed by the United Arab Emirates' attorney general.
Revealing not only that this was a premeditated plot with a terrorist objective, carried out by the copilot of that flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv, but also that this copilot was apparently inspired by the 9/11 attacks.
Not only inspired by them but also that it pushed him into a career of aviation with the goal of ultimately trying to carry out some kind of an attack using an aircraft, very similar to what happened on September 11th, 2001.
And indeed, the UAE's attorney general says that the goal that this copilot had when he attacked the captain of that plane and tried to take control of that flight was to fly that plane into Israel's Ben Gurion international airport, flying it into the passenger terminal with the, quote, "intention of causing the greatest number of casualties."
What we've also learned in this statement from the UAE's public prosecutor is that this pilot, Hamam al-Hammami, whose identity we've previously revealed, he made two previous flights to Tel Aviv to familiarize himself with the flight route and with the airport.
Now that will raise new questions here in Israel as well, where there have already been questions about how this pilot, an Omani citizen, a country with whom Israel does not have any diplomatic relations, was able to get into a cockpit and fly into a country where he wouldn't even be granted entry at the border.
But now it's not only this one flight on September 30th but apparently two previous flights before that allowed him to kind of plan out his attack, plan out the attack on his captain, and how he would ultimately hijack this plane and fly it into Ben Gurion airport.
Now, of course, we know that he did not get that far, in large part, thanks to the heroic actions of several of the Israeli passengers on board that flight. There was also the fact that there were two other pilots, who were supposed to fly the plane back to Dubai, who were on board and were able to land this plane safely in Saudi Arabia.
Now the UAE's attorney general says that all of this information was largely gleaned from a detailed confession that Hamam al-Hammami gave in the presence of an attorney. So far, al-Hammami is saying that he acted alone.
But the UAE is making very clear that this investigation is ongoing to verify that claim and to also better understand how he was hired at flydubai as a pilot, given the fact that he had previously been dismissed from a position at Oman Air over his extremist views.
So a lot more to still be -- to be investigated by the Emirati authorities. And we know that the Emirati authorities have also been in close coordination with the Israeli authorities over the course of this investigation.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MARSH: A judge in Mexico found three men guilty of the 2024 murders of three foreign tourists. Three Mexican citizens were found responsible for killing Australian brothers Callum and Jake Robinson and American Carter Rhoad. The defendants were also convicted of armed carjacking and armed robbery.
The victims traveled to Baja California in April of 2024 to go surfing but, shortly after arriving, they were reported missing. The Baja California state attorney general's office wants the men to all be sentenced to 210 years in prison.
Speaking after the judge's decision, the father of Callum and Jake Robinson said today's decision was a long time coming.
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MARTIN ROBINSON, FATHER OF CALLUM AND JAKE ROBINSON: Today's guilty verdict is a significant moment in our long and painful journey to seek justice for our beautiful sons, Callum and Jake, and their friend, Carter Rhoad, whose lives were so cruelly taken from them in 2024.
While no verdict can ever bring back our boys or ease the heartbreak of losing them, we hope this outcome represents an important step toward justice and accountability.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MARSH: Still to come this hour, three OpenAI safety researchers say that they were unceremoniously let go last week after playing a key part in a hacking investigation. That story is straight ahead.
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MARSH: Three OpenAI safety researchers say that they were fired from the company and they're openly questioning the reasons for their dismissals. CNN AI correspondent Hadas Gold has more.
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HADAS GOLD, CNN AI CORRESPONDENT: These three staffers all worked on safety and alignment within OpenAI and they say that they were given different reasons for specifically why each of them were let go.
But they all believe, at least, that it has something to do with how they were raising safety concerns within OpenAI and how they were interacting with outside safety groups that were brought on, on official capacity, to work with OpenAI to investigate recent safety incidents.
One of these groups is called Meter (ph) and they were brought on by OpenAI to help them look into the Hugging Face incident, where a swarm of OpenAI agents escaped a testing environment, hacked into an AI company called Hugging Face, all in trying to cheat on a cybersecurity exam the agents were supposed to be taking.
Now OpenAI disputes this. They say that they were not fired because of them raising safety concerns but instead they were fired because of how they handled sensitive company information.
Now this matters because it's not just about an employment debate and a he said/she said/they said. It's also because there is this fear that's developing in the AI industry, that the companies may be trying to tamp down on this talk of AI safety after this wave.
[05:55:00]
This sort of panic over the existential threat potentially posed by AI that we've seen over the last few weeks and months. And so these researchers specifically have pointed to that. Now they're all been posting very extensively on social media about this.
One of them says that they were fired, they were told, because of how they were talking to one of these outside groups, Meter (ph), that had been brought in to help OpenAI audit the Hugging Face hack.
But they say that was their actual job, that they were the actual technical point of contact for Meter (ph) within OpenAI.
The three fired employees said that they penned a letter to OpenAI leadership, that they posted publicly, where they talk about their concerns and also recommendations, what they hope that the company will continue doing in the name of trying to keep AI as safe as possible.
Now OpenAI once again is saying that the firing had nothing to do with safety concerns. They say that actually their leadership agrees with the recommendations that the three made in their letter. OpenAI saying in a statement, "Our investigation confirmed that these
individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work."
OpenAI also said that they are actually finalizing more contracts with other third-party safety assessors and that they continue to care about safety. The fired staffers, they say, though, that there is now a culture of fear within OpenAI about speaking out.
One of the fired staffers, Mikita Balesni, says, "My former colleagues are telling me they are confused about what to believe. They also are afraid to speak and worry their personal phones will be searched for messages to us and third parties.
"I worry the pervading fear to speak up and engage with third parties will mean OpenAI will cut corners on safety behind closed doors."
So obviously the concern about AI safety continues throughout the AI industry. These staffers are, of course, not alone. And they're concerned about AI safety.
But there is a concern that this kind of culture, being able to speak up openly, even within these companies and these companies being very tolerant to that (ph), may be potentially ending, even though OpenAI says that is not the case -- Hadas Gold, CNN, New York.
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MARSH: And thanks for watching. I'm Rene Marsh in Washington, D.C. "CNN THIS MORNING" with Sara Sidner is up next.
