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CNN International: Iran And Russia Discuss Regional And International Issues; Houthis Claim Strikes On Aramco Site, Other Key Targets; Italian Govt. To Deploy 500 Troops To Milan After Unrest. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired October 20, 2026 - 04:30   ET

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

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LYNDA KINKADE, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. I'm Lynda Kinkade. Iran says it will continue to cooperate with Russia on international issues. The Iranian and Russian foreign ministers held talks in Tehran, Monday. They vowed to counter quote aggressive U.S. unilateralism and maintain the two countries' growing financial ties.

Iranian media reports Pakistan's Army Chief is due to visit Tehran today. Islamabad has played a key mediating role in the war with Iran. The meeting comes as Iran's military commanders and officials have made it clear it's preparing for another round of war, but it's also warning Washington and its allies to think twice before resuming the conflict.

Yemen's internationally recognized government is urging the U.N. to designate the Iranian-backed Houthis as a terrorist organization. It comes as the Houthi rebels claim to have carried out strikes targeting Saudi state oil company Aramco, as well as airports and military sites. CNN's Nada Bashir is following all the developments and joins us now live from London. Good to see Nada.

So, the Houthis have claimed a wave of missile and drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities as well as airports and military sites. Yemen's government is urging the U.N. to designate the group as a terror organization. What difference will that make, and how likely is it that Saudi Arabia will intensify its military response?

NADA BASHIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, Lynda, we have already seen the U.N. Security Council issuing sanctions and designating individual leaders and members of the Houthi rebel organization as terror -- as receiving that terrorist designation. We've seen the U.N. Security Council make that move in the past, but they have not yet overall designated the Houthi rebels themselves as an organization, as a foreign terrorist organization.

Instead, what we have seen is the U.N. Security Council and other U.N. agencies trying to work with the Houthi rebels alongside the internationally recognized government to come to some sort of peaceful resolution to this years-long deadly conflict that has had a severe impact, humanitarian impact, on the civilian population of Yemen.

But this is the latest push by the internationally recognized government, calling now on the U.N. Security Council to issue that foreign terrorist designation for the group overall. And this would, of course, have imposed severe sanctions on the organization from legal to financial measures. They've called on further sanctions to be made for any backers of the group as well, and for it to have an impact on its ability to source arms and weapons as the war continues to drag on.

But whether or not we actually see this move being made by the U.N. Security Council, that remains to be seen. In a statement from the internationally recognized government, it is understood that the -- the government had outlined to the U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres the level and extent of the Houthis' attacks on civilian infrastructure across Yemen, particularly in the Taizz region as well.

And of course, they have said that they believe that these attacks carried out by the Houthis have had the largest impact, in the words of the International Recognized Government, on women and children. But this also comes, as you mentioned, Lynda, as we continue to see that exchange of attacks between the Saudi government and Houthi rebels.

In just the last few days, we have seen those attacks continuing across several regions in Saudi Arabia, targeting the state oil, Aramco oil facilities, was targeting the King Khalid International Airport as well as other military bases, and the concern is that these attacks will only continue to escalate, and the impact is already being felt in Saudi Arabia. Lynda.

KINKADE: All right, Nada Bashir, staying across the very latest for us from London. Thanks very much.

Well, the Italian government says it will deploy some 500 soldiers to Milan, Tuesday, following two days of violent unrest. The move is part of new security measures aimed at preventing further violence. The unrest began with peaceful protests over the cost of living, but turned violent as some demonstrators threw stones, looted stores, and set trash bins on fire. Authorities say nearly 300 people were detained, Sunday. I want to welcome Salvatore Marro, the Head of International Affairs at the Italian General Confederation of Labor. Thanks so much for your time.

SALVATORE MARRA, HEAD OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, GENERAL CONFEDERATION OF LABOUR: Thank you.

KINKADE: So, why take to the streets? Your union, of course, is one of 100 other organizations. Explain why you're protesting and what the key complaints are.

MARRA: Well, first of all, I want to say that we strongly condemn the violence. That's the violence that's been happening in the streets of Italy these days, and. I want to say that on Saturday, more than 100,000 Italians took the streets of Rome to protest peacefully against the lack of action of the government.

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I think the student put it very clearly before. We want action on the cost-of-living crisis. Our wages do not make ends meet anymore. There is increased poverty. Students cannot pay their -- their lodgement anymore, and I think there's a real problem with -- with pensions at the moment as well. So, there's a lack of confidence in the future, as a student said. I just want to highlight that there's 460,000, so almost half a million Italians who left the country in the last four years. Why does this happen?

And most of them are young people below 35 with high grades and university level education. This is happening because we have too poor wages. We are on precarious jobs and insecure jobs. I want to highlight that every day in Italy, three workers die at work. This is unacceptable. We want health and safety to be respected, and we want action also on the climate crisis. As you know, Italy and Europe have had a very difficult summer, this year.

Heat waves have been hitting hard on us, and there's been very little that's been done by the government, and we're sorry to say, until the root causes and the real reasons of these protests won't be heard by the government, then the protests will go -- will go on, and the root causes are the lack of confidence in the future, for -- especially for the -- the younger generation who are protesting peacefully even today in front of universities and schools with their tents.

KINKADE: The protests that we're seeing in Italy, of course, have followed the protests in France, which began weeks ago. Are these separate national movements, or are we witnessing a broader European crisis over the cost of living, workers' rights, and the confidence in the government?

MARRA: As European movement of trade unions were, of course, talking to each other and understand what's the situation like, it's a very clear message we're sending. At the moment workers and the people who have to, you know, work to make ends meet, they're paying the price of the crisis, which is mainly caused by wars. This is the reason why we insist on diplomatic action to stop conflict.

Today, the Ukrainian ports are blocked, and this is leading to an increase of the wheat cost of 28 percent. In the south of the country, as your representative in Rome mentioned before, our supermarkets are empty because trucks are blocking the roads, and there is no food coming in, and the cost of fuel is just increasing every day, despite the action taken by the -- the government and even by the producers. This is causing big problems to our economy.

So, the -- the main message is, we need to stop war. The war in Iran is being paid by us, is being paid by workers and people, low earners and -- and pensioners. So yes, there is clearly a European connection to the situation where we're leading, and this is the reason why there's going to be strikes all over Europe in the few -- in the next coming weeks.

There's going to be a general strike in France on the fifth of November. There's going to be a general strike in Spain on the 11th of November, and we're calling for a general strike in Italy on the 20th of November for action against the cost-of-living crisis and the root causes that lead to these protests.

KINKADE: Yeah, it's interesting how all this angst, the cost-of-living crisis, certainly coming back to the wars you mentioned in Iran and Ukraine. Salvatore Marra, appreciate you joining us from Rome. Thanks very much for your time.

MARRA: Thank you.

KINKADE: The leader of a Christian cult in Kenya has been found guilty of the murder of 190 children and one adult. Paul Mackenzie was convicted along with about 30 other suspects Monday. Authorities started digging up bodies in a forest in eastern Kenya in April 2023. So far, they've recovered 429 bodies. So further charges could follow. Mackenzie and his co-accused will be handed their sentence on November 6th. CNN's Larry Madowo has more from Nairobi.

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LARRY MADOWO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This case is a horrific one. A former taxi driver who declared himself a preacher and launched a TV station that reached people across the country and on social media on YouTube as well, convincing hundreds of parents to starve the children to death, and the Kenyan court now deciding that it was in fact a cult, and that he had a hierarchy of death, children first, and then teens, and then women, and then finally men.

And he is charged with the murder of 191 people, all but one children. But in the end, they found more than 400 bodies in this vast forest in Shakahola, that's near the Kenyan coast. This is the moment after eight hours where the verdict came down.

DIANA KAVEDZA-MOCHACHE, KENYAN HIGH COURT JUDGE: Final verdict. I am satisfied that the prosecution has proved the case against all the 29 accused persons for the murder of 190 children and one adult, contrary to Section Two or Three of the Penal Code. I reject the defense by the accused persons that the victims, who were all below the age of 16 (inaudible) as voluntarily fasted to death. Paul Nthenge Makenzie convicted on all 191 counts of murder.

MADOWO: That is the leader of that starvation cult, but he, his other 29 co-accused, who are leaders of this cult, were also found guilty under Kenyan law. They can be sentenced to life in prison. They could be sentenced to death, though Kenya has not carried out an execution since 1987, or they could serve long prison sentences.

The judge recounted gruesome details of how these children were made to starve, and some siblings were forced to celebrate the killings of their siblings. And the judge went into great detail about why this has the hallmarks of crimes against humanity, talking about the scale of the deaths, the duration, the targeting of the civilian population, the organization of this cult, and some of these children, who were not starved to death, were suffocated. They were strangled. They were beaten with blunt objects. And some

witnesses in this long trial said that the pastor told them, Paul Mackenzie, that they would be going to heaven with kicks and blows if necessary. But they had to do that, and they were buried in shallow graves, which sped up the pace of decomposition, so that they could not be found.

And they had enforcers in the community within that cult who made sure that police, the media, that no one in the neighboring community knew what was happening. And that is why, in the end, more than 400 bodies found. There are families still missing loved ones, and one of the most heartbreaking, in one family, they lost six children, all under the age of 17.

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KINKADE: Still to come, a share giveaway by Elon Musk. What we know about the SpaceX's CEO and his plan after the break.

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KINKADE: Elon Musk says he will give a SpaceX share to every child in America. It's prompting a lot of questions, including how they would be distributed and whether all American children would even be eligible. CNN's Anna Cooban has the details.

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ANNA COOBAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, Elon Musk is promising every kid in America a stake in his $2 trillion rocket and A.I. company. He announced in a post on X on Monday that next year he would give one share of SpaceX to every child in America. Each share was valued at around $146 at market close on Friday, and so now crunching the numbers, if we take the U.S. Census Bureau's latest estimates, there were roughly 73 million people aged under 18 in America in 2024, and we multiply that figure by the SpaceX share price.

That would make the potential giveaway by Musk worth around $10.7 billion. But the details around this are pretty scant. It's not clear exactly how those shares would be distributed to the tens of millions of potentially eligible American children, or whether all of them would indeed be eligible. There is some precedent however.

Earlier this month, the Treasury Department automatically signed up millions of under 18s to Trump accounts, a new federal savings and investment vehicle. And in July, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and her husband pledged to donate one SpaceX share to roughly 2 million children already signed up to one of these accounts.

Now Musk's offer came in response to an announcement by A.I. giant Anthropic on Sunday that it would commit at least 5 percent of its shares, worth about $48 billion, to a fund that would make donations for the public benefit. A.I. companies are facing mounting public backlash over the safety of their products.

Anthropic itself has recently said that A.I. poses existential risks to humanity, as well as the technology's impact on people's jobs and the environmental and social impact of data centers. So perhaps Musk's offer, if it does come, would go some way to softening the public perception. Anna Cooban, CNN, London.

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KINKADE: Four Salvadorian soldiers are missing near Haiti's capital after criminal gangs ambushed an armored vehicle with explosives on Sunday. The Salvadoran military says its troops let down of the burning vehicle. This is the first major attack since an international gang suppression force began operations in Haiti. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. has vowed to bring the troops home. The suppression force's special representative says attacks against the force are rising.

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JACK CHRISTOFIDES, SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE, GANG SUPPRESSION FORCE: In areas where we have established a sustained operational presence, including Delmas and Tabarre, we are beginning to observe early signs of reduced gang influence and control. We should recognize this progress without overstating it. Gangs are testing the GSF. We recorded an increase in hostile incidents against our force from two to 15 in a single month.

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KINKADE: There's much more ahead on CNN Newsroom, including the Trump administration's tense showdown with a federal judge over plans to renovate a public golf course in Washington.

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KINKADE: The Trump Administration is going to battle over plans to renovate a public golf course in Washington and turn it into, in the president's words, a world-class championship golf course. CNN's Sunlen Serfaty has the story.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're going to basically build a better golf course.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: In open defiance of a federal judge, President Trump is escalating the fight over this 300- acre D.C. golf course managed by the federal government.

TRUMP: You could call it a renovation. It should be very simple and it's something that the Department of Interior is allowed to do absolutely. All they want to do is fix up their property.

SERFATY: Abruptly announcing he is officially closing the public course, starting construction to turn it into a championship-style course instead, and going after the judge overseeing a court battle over his plan, calling the judge U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in the case a crazed lunatic.

All this as government lawyers filed a formal motion to disqualify her from the case, saying she cannot serve as an impartial arbiter of the issues, calling her behavior egregious. After the judge said she was furious that the administration may have defied her orders.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is not the White House. It is not behind locked doors, and we can fight for this land, and we are going to.

SERFATY: A federal lawsuit brought by the D.C. Preservation League and local golfers, is seeking to halt the renovations, arguing it would take away a public and affordable place to play golf in the nation's capital. The president has argued the course is dilapidated and unsafe.

TRUMP: It's been allowed to get run down, bad, dangerous, dirty, lousy and it's going to be one of the greatest courses.

SERFATY: The president's quest to take over the course is keeping with his efforts to remake D.C. in his style and liking.

TRUMP: Washington was one of the worst places in this country, and now it's one of the best.

SERFATY: However, Judge Reyes has been adamant that no work should go forward until the legal battle plays out. The government has continually assured the federal judge that any plans are still conceptual and nothing has been finalized, even while the president and his entourage visited the site in June and the interior secretary released preliminary plans for the course makeover.

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Then, with very little warning this month, the Trump Administration cut down nearly 500 trees at the site in a single weekend, saying it was part of a maintenance plan. Over the weekend, a picture on social media posted by Trump's outgoing Press Secretary showed a blurred-out map of the golf course on the president's desk, sparking speculation the plan was further along than they said. And on Sunday the president formally released the plan himself. The federal judge saying today she doesn't know who to believe.

And it was a marathon hearing on Monday lasting for over seven hours, and it really illuminated these two arguments coming from the Trump Administration. On one hand, you have the Department of Justice attorneys arguing that the tree work here was just essentially routine maintenance, had basically nothing to do with the broader renovation plans of this golf course, of which there is a court order blocking that work from going forward. And then on the other hand, you have President Trump himself saying

that this golf course will be closed next month, and the renovation will start, in his words, immediately. And we saw the judge on Monday really openly struggle, trying to essentially square that circle. She said at one point, there's no universe in which all of this coincidentally happened at the same time. Sunlen Serfaty, CNN, Washington.

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KINKADE: Thanks so much for joining us for this edition of CNN Newsroom. I'm Lynda Kinkade. Stay with us. CNN Headline Express is next.

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