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Storm Slams Vietnam, Major Damage To Homes, Trees, Power Lines; Door Opens For Elon Musk To Become World's First Trillionaire; White House: Certain Obesity Drugs Will Cost Only $149. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired November 07, 2025 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:30:00]
MIKE VALERIO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We talked to a 26-year-old shrimp farmer about just what he is facing now that the deadliest typhoon to hit Asia this year has come through his backyard. Here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NGUYEN DINH SA, VIETNAMESE SHRIMP FARMER (through translator): Even though the storms are more frequent right now I will still have to try and borrow money to build a stronger farm than what I lost. I don't know how else I could do it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VALERIO: Yeah. So, I mean, if I were him, unimaginable prospect, right?
Let's go into a couple of more details about Vietnam. We'll pivot into the Philippines. Isabel, half a million people in Vietnam were evacuated ahead of this storm. At this hour, according to our latest CNN reporting, there are three people who are missing, swept into the sea on the island of Ly Son, which is in Quang Ngai province.
If you have family in Vietnam or you go there for a beautiful once in a lifetime vacation, this is happening in the context of all of these beautiful cities like Hoi An, the former imperial capital of Hue, inundated with rain over the past week.
And when we move over to the Philippines there are more than 100 people who are still missing because of this first time, which came ashore on Tuesday. Cebu City, a tourist hotspot, is one of the epicenters -- waist-deep-high water. Roofs is where -- are where people are trying to beg for help looking for helicopters -- anybody from the Red Cross to come and rescue them.
Adding insult to injury with this storyline, there are so many people who are frustrated and furious because the Philippines has been marred -- has been filled with protesters over the past couple of months protesting lack of flood controls and corruption kickbacks instead of going to these flood-controlled projects going to politicians.
So a lot of anger as the Philippines waits for this second typhoon, which is going to hit Sunday night into Monday, Isabel. ISABEL ROSALES, CNN ANCHOR: Yeah. Those images are stunning, and 100 missing people -- wow, wow, wow.
Mike Valerio --
VALERIO: Yeah.
ROSALES: -- in Beijing. Thank you so much.
Well, Elon Musk is getting a raise that could dwarf what many countries make in an entire year. Still ahead, the staggering amount of money that could make the world's wealthiest man a whole lot richer.
Plus, we'll take a look at some of the day's top business stories ahead of the opening bell on Wall Street.
You're watching EARLY START on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL)
[05:36:50]
ROSALES: Welcome back to EARLY START. This is your business breakout.
Trading gets underway in just a couple of hours on Wall Street and investigators -- investors, excuse me, are hoping for a rebound from Thursday's losses. Here's a live look right now at U.S. futures where you can see it's in the red, down just a smidge.
Checking some of today's business headlines, Walmart says that this year's Thanksgiving basket will cost less than $40.00 compared to $55.00 last year. President Trump says that is a sign that grocery prices are "way down." But buyer beware. This year's basket contains 22 items, down from 29 last year, and most of them are Walmart's own Great Value brand.
Prices for U.S. airline tickets are likely going to go up, up, up as the airports cut back flights starting today. Fares were already forecast to be up seven to 10 percent. That's according to Going.com. But now fares could be even worse during the busy holiday season because of staffing shortages fueled by the ongoing government shutdown.
OpenAI is backtracking on comments from its CFO that it might need more than $1 trillion in U.S. government support. Executives now say that taxpayers should not be on the hook. OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, is a private company valued at $500 billion. The Trump administration says if one AI company fails others will take its place.
Elon Musk now has a shot at becoming the world's first trillionaire. Now, to put that into perspective, a trillion dollars is more than most countries' annual growth domestic product and it's the equivalent of making $275 million per day for the next 10 years -- wow.
As Clare Duffy reports, the payout will be tied to Musk's job performance.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER, PODCAST HOST, "TERMS OF SERVICE": Elon Musk, already the world's richest man with a net worth of around $470 billion, is now potentially on track to become the world's first trillionaire after around 75 percent of Tesla's shareholders voted in favor of this $1 trillion pay package. The Tesla board said this pay package was essential to keep Elon Musk focused on leading the carmaker despite his many other companies and his political involvement, and Musk could actually threaten to leave Tesla if this pay package did not get approved.
Now, this isn't just going to be a one-time $1 trillion payment. This is going to come in the form of 423 million Tesla shares handed out over a course of 10 years in tranches based on Elon Musk hitting certain really aggressive financial and operational targets, including raising the company's valuation to $8.5 trillion. Now it currently sits around $1.5 trillion, so this would mean raising Tesla's share price by 466 percent.
And this comes at a time when Tesla has been struggling with its sales with increased competition in the electric vehicle market. But both Elon Musk and Tesla have said that the company's investments in things like robotaxis and humanoid robots will help it to hit that aggressive goal.
[05:40:00]
And at the company's shareholder meeting Elon Musk leaned into this plan even more. They had robots dancing for shareholders to see. He talked about how every consumer is going to want a C3PO-type robot at home with them.
And that is what the company is trying to do -- to reach, again, this very ambitious $8.5 trillion valuation goal within the next 10 years. And shareholders are clearly willing to pay up if Elon Musk can do it.
Back to you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROSALES: Still ahead, why certain expensive obesity drugs are about to become much more affordable for Americans.
(COMMERCIAL)
[05:45:00]
ROSALES: Welcome back. I'm Isabel Rosales. Here are some stories we're watching today.
The U.S. government is now asking major airlines to reduce the number of their flights by four percent in the coming hours. FlightAware is already reporting more than 800 cancellations so far today. The move is supposed to relieve pressure on air traffic controller facilities, which have seen an uptick in staffing shortages since the government shutdown began.
The Senate is expected to vote again today to fund the U.S. government and end that ongoing shutdown, but Democrats are still holding out for commitments from Republicans to deal with rising health care costs. Today's vote is expected to fail.
The U.S. carried out a new strike against an alleged drug vessel in the Caribbean. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the strike killed three people. He claimed that they're part of a "designated terrorist organization." So far, the U.S. has killed 70 people in 17 strikes there.
A titan of U.S. politics, Nancy Pelosi, is calling it quits after a 38-year career in Washington. She released a video on Thursday announcing that she will not seek reelection to Congress.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): For decades I have cherished the privilege of representing our magnificent city in the United States Congress. It seems prophetic now that the slogan of my very first campaign in 1987 was "A Voice That Will Be heard," and it was you who made those words come true.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROSALES: Pelosi was the first and only woman to serve as Speaker of the House. The 85-year-old Democrat representing San Francisco was first elected to Congress back in 1987. She presided over historic clashes with President Trump during his first term. And in recent months she worked closely with Governor Gavin Newsom to pass California's prop 50 redistricting plan.
She spoke with my colleague Alex Michaelson earlier this week about her keys to success.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PELOSI: Be yourself. Know the power of you. In the history of the world there's been no one like you. I also say to people -- this morning we were laughing about this -- treat everyone as your friend but know who your friends are.
ALEX MICHAELSON, CNN ANCHOR: Who your friends are.
(Laughter)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROSALES: Certain wildly popular and very expensive obesity drugs are about to become much more affordable for Americans. The Trump administration has hammered out a deal with two pharmaceutical giants to slash the cost of Wegovy and Zeppound -- Zepbound, excuse me. That's semaglutide and tirzepatide, GLP-1 agonists.
CNN's Kristen Holmes has the details. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The Trump administration announcing Thursday new deals with drug companies that will make certain obesity drugs as low as $149. Now, this was all part of the Most-Favored Nation initiative.
This is the Trump administration's efforts to try and lower drug costs for Americans. And we've seen a number of these around -- in the White House. We've seen them with Pfizer. We saw a deal with AstraZeneca and with in vitro fertilization (IVF). But this is probably the most high profile one of these deals that we've seen just because these drugs, like Ozempic and Wegovy, have become so widely used and so popular here in the United States.
But one of the big problems for people who do need these drugs either -- whether it's for obesity or for diabetes, is that they are often hard to obtain because of how high they are priced. Some of them are up to $1,000 or more than $1,000 for a month and a lot of Americans can't afford that. So this is going to be welcome news for people who really want to try these drugs or who have used them but can't afford them on a regular basis.
So here's what we know so far about this deal. They say that the starting doses of the oral -- so the pills for the GLPs -- that's these obesity drugs -- will cost just $149 a month. Now the injectables -- that's what most people use -- those are going to be starting at roughly $350 a month. And while that might still seem high, again, comparatively you're looking at more than $1,000 for this monthly supply from several other places. So this will certainly be a welcome relief -- $350 from $1,000.
And these companies have also agreed to work towards getting that price down to $250 a month over the next two years.
Now, in addition to all of this they also announced today that Medicare patients would only have to pay a $50 copay to get this prescription, which again seemed out of reach or unattainable for a lot of people on Medicare who couldn't afford it before this.
And these drugs will be available, according to the White House, on TrumpRx, which is essentially a platform that's going to link patients with drugs -- with pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies so they can buy these different medications directly. And again, like what we said, they've had these deals with Pfizer and with AstraZeneca.
[05:50:12]
The pricing for this is two-fold. One, the Medicare portion of this appears it will start in the middle of 2026 -- so in the middle of next year. However, the TrumpRx part of this -- the direct-to-consumer buying -- that will likely start in January or February as soon as that website is live.
So we expect more of these announcements coming from the White House. They said that they have a lot of deals in the making. But again, this was a big one for a lot of Americans who have heard about the positive affects of these drugs or who have tried them or wanted to try them, but it was just too cost prohibitive.
Kristen Holmes, CNN, the White House.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROSALES: From $1,000 to $149. That is a big, big deal.
Well, a Virginia jury has awarded $10 million to a schoolteacher who was shot by her own student in her classroom. The 6-year-old student shot Abby Zwerner in the chest and hand back in 2023. The teacher sued the school's former assistant principal, accusing her of ignoring warnings about the gun. That assistant principal faces criminal charges of felony child neglect in a trial that's set to begin next month.
Transportation security investigators are on the scene of a plane crash in Louisville, Kentucky that has now killed at least 13 people. Authorities are sifting through the wreckage looking for any clues about what brought down the UPS cargo jet. So far, they've collected the so-called black boxes, an engine, and part of the engine fan blades. The fiery crash destroyed nearby businesses and created a massive debris field. A preliminary report is expected here in about a month.
A new AI video app is creating new concerns about deepfakes -- AI- created videos that appear to show real people. And this new app called Sora lets people make fake videos faster than ever.
CNN's Ivan Rodriguez explains the concerns and what to watch out for to spot those fakes.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
IVAN RODRIGUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Over the last few months Sora, a video generator app from ChatGPT's parent company OpenAI, has become more sophisticated by the day.
KATELYN CHEDRAOUL, CNET AI REPORTER: It's like if you're scrolling TikTok but all of the videos you see are AI-generated. Nothing you see in Sora is real.
RODRIGUEZ (voiceover): Katelyn Chedraoul, a CNET AI reporter, says these videos are easy to make and just take minutes. The trouble is once these videos are shared outside the Sora app, they can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between videos that are real and those that are fake.
CHEDRAOUL: It is harder than ever to tell if an image or video is AI- generated. And Sora is partially why, but I wouldn't give them all the blame. Google has a number of AI tools and there's been a number of creative AI companies that have been working in this field a long time.
RODRIGUEZ (voiceover): Adding to the confusion there isn't a foolproof method to spot AI-generated content, but Chedraoul says there are things to watch for.
CHEDRAOUL: The first thing I always recommend people look at are watermarks. This might seem kind of obvious, but that's for good reason. For example, the Sora videos have a little cloud icon that bounces around the edge of the screen.
RODRIGUEZ (voiceover): While watermarks are one of the most obvious tells, if you want to dig deeper you could also look at the content's metadata by using the content authenticity initiatives verification tool to check a video image or document's metadata.
CHEDRAOUL: The most honest and best piece of advice I can give people is to just stay vigilant.
RODRIGUEZ (voiceover): In Atlanta, I'm Ivan Rodriguez.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROSALES: The stars of "STRANGER THINGS" take to the red carpet as the show's highly anticipated final season edges closer. That story and more straight ahead.
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[05:58:15]
ROSALES: Welcome back.
Prince Harry is in Toronto this week for events ahead of Remembrance Day, which is observed in Canada on Tuesday. The Duke of Sussex attended a charity event honoring the military community. He also went to a veteran's center where he swapped stories with reserve force members and some of the country's oldest surviving war heroes. Prince Harry completed two tours in Afghanistan with the British Army.
And Meghan Markle, his wife, will soon be back on the big screen. Variety reports that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, will have a cameo role here in an upcoming film. It is called "Close Personal Friends" and stars Lily Collins, Brie Larson, and Jack Quaid. Before her royal marriage when she was known simply as Meghan -- Meghan Markle -- she starred in the TV show "SUITS." But, of course, she stepped away from acting when she married Prince Harry.
Well, fans are getting closer to the fifth and unfortunately, final season of the beloved Netflix show "STRANGER THINGS." The cast hit the red carpet in Los Angeles Thursday for the season premiere ahead of the release of the first four episodes later this month. Co-stars Millie Bobby Brown and David Harbour arrived together and shared a hug despite speculation about estrangement between them.
"STRANGER THINGS" season five begins November 26 with more episodes releasing on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. The creators say that they are excited for the world to finally see this final season.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ROSS DUFFER, CO-CREATOR, "STRANGER THINGS": I mean, we're anxious a little bit. I mean, we've been working on this final season for three years. And so, you know, bringing it out on the world is nerve-racking but we're ready to finally show it, you know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[06:00:00]
ROSALES: And take a look at this. It is the first-ever barbecue in space, though astronauts aboard China's space station did not use a wood-charcoal grill. They were able to bake food in orbit. A hot-air oven helped them cook up chicken and peppered steak. Ooh, that sounds nice. The ability to grill while in orbit was described as a significant upgrade to the space kitchen.
Well, thanks for joining us here on EARLY START. I'm Isabel Rosales. "CNN THIS MORNING" starts right now.
