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Early Start with Rahel Solomon

1st Aid Flotilla Reaches Cuba Amid Energy Crisis, U.S. Oil Blockade; U.S. Prepares To Deploy 1,000 Airborne Troops To Middle East; WTO Ministerial Conference Set To Begin Thursday; Democrat Projected To Flip Deep-Red Florida House District; Two Men Arrested Over Jewish Charity Ambulance Arson Attacks. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired March 25, 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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RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN ANCHOR: According to Ukraine's air force, the drones mainly targeted the country's central and western regions. One of the strikes damaged part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, a monastery complex in the western city of Lviv. The city's mayor says that at least 22 people were wounded in the attacks.

Meanwhile, in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, drones struck six apartment buildings and city infrastructure. The regional governor says that one person was killed and five were injured.

Desperately needed aid is slowly trickling into Cuba after the country was plunged into total darkness twice last week. A humanitarian aid ship carrying solar panels, toiletries, food and medicine docked in Havana on Tuesday.

A crew member for the eight flotilla says that they want to show solidarity and support for Cuba, the island grappling with a deepening economic crisis and a US blockade of critical oil supplies.

We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Welcome back. I'm Becky Anderson, live from our Middle East programming headquarters here in Abu Dhabi, where the time is just after half past midday.

About a thousand U.S. soldiers with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division are preparing to deploy to the Middle East in the coming days. That's according to sources who say the brigade will be the ready units which will be called upon if needed.

Now, the move will add to the growing military firepower in the region, even as the Trump administration says it is talking with Iran to end the conflict. Two Marine Expeditionary Units and amphibious ready groups have

already recently deployed to the region.

Well, the war's disruption to energy markets is clear. It is now being felt in more countries around the globe. We've seen protests break out, like this one in the Philippines, for example. The country's president has now declared a state a national energy emergency, warning of an imminent danger to the availability of energy supplies.

The government plans to help some taxi drivers and transport workers with rising fuel costs there. In Chile, people rush to fill up their gas tanks before a sharp increase in fuel prices goes into effect on Thursday.

The capital, Santiago is looking at a 30 percent hike for regular gas and 60 percent for diesel. In Kenya, hundreds of retailers say they are running short on fuel. Regulators recently rose prices, but consumers are expecting an increase next month.

Well, the World Trade Organization meets this week for its 14th ministerial conference amid the chaos in the Middle East. Let's get you live to Cameroon as diplomats wait for the conference there to begin. Joining me now is Chris Southworth, the Secretary General for the International Chamber of Commerce for the United Kingdom.

Sir, it's good to have you. I just wonder how worried the world should be about the oil price spike and the supply issues that we are seeing related to this choke point in the Strait of Hormuz.

Chris, I can hear you?

CHRIS SOUTHWORTH, SECRETARY GENERAL, INTERNATIONAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE , UNITED KINGDOM: Yes, I can hear you. Good evening. Yes.

ANDERSON: Yes, I can hear fine. Yes. How concerned should the world be about the oil price spike and the supply issues that we are seeing at this point?

SOUTHWORTH: Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is more disruption on top of years of disruption, actually. But obviously, given we're talking oil and gas, this is essential for a whole raft of economies, particularly in Asia, but also here in Africa and Europe and far beyond. So this is a critical crisis that needs to be resolved as quickly as possible.

ANDERSON: The WTO sounding the alarm over a fertilizer supply that would impact food prices, of course, around the world. The oil price rise will crimp an AI boom, potentially that demands massive amounts of energy.

Can we just discuss how this conflict is threatening to contract the economy at both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum at this point?

SOUTHWORTH: Yes. You know, the price of oil impacts all walks of life. It certainly impacts key sectors like fertilizers. But fertilizers are far from the only heavy users of energy. Heavy industries do too, as well as a host of others. But it also infects consumers. You know, this is going to drive up inflation if it isn't already. In

some countries, like especially in South Asia, there are already limits on fuel pumps. People have been asked to work from home. There's limited supplies in the stockpiles.

And so, you know, it's urgent, critical that we open up the Hormuz Strait and allow some of those tankers, because that will also take time to get those tankers in through the strait, fill them up and then back out to the countries to refill supplies. So there's no simple solution in the short term, but quicker is that, the quicker we can resolve it.

ANDERSON: Ahead of this meeting that you are in Cameroon, which you're attending, the London School of Economics posted this question. Can the WTO continue to support an open rules-based order and restrain the slide towards a geopolitical power based system?

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That's the question. So I put that to you. Can the WTO fend off this might makes right global economic system that some people see emerging in the wake of global conflicts that are choking supply routes and driving up costs?

SOUTHWORTH: Yes. The short answer is yes. The WTO, the World Trade Organization plays a critical role. It's the rules of the road for trade. Without that it's a free for all, an absolute chaos. It's like removing all the roundabouts and traffic lights on the roads. It's a car crash.

So the WTO is critical. The system is actually working. For most of the world, 70 to 80 percent of trade is operating at normal, despite all the disruptions. However, there's no question at all that the changing economic order is putting political pressure into the system. There's increasing unilateralism and all of this is fragmenting the system and making it much more complex and expensive for business.

What they call the spaghetti bowl of agreements and tariffs and regulatory rules. Businesses always thrive on simplicity. One common set of rules that's applied fairly for everybody, a level playing field. And that's what the WTO is here to do.

ANDERSON: Chris when asked about the length of time that British consumers might be impacted by this, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, hard to answer that question if I'm honest. How can leaders like Starmer insulate their own economies from the impacts of what we are seeing right now?

SOUTHWORTH: Sorry, I missed that question. The line dropped slightly there.

ANDERSON: How can leaders like Keir Starmer, who has said he doesn't know how long this is going to go on, to be honest, how can leaders insulate their own economies from the impacts that we are seeing right now? SOUTHWORTH: Well, you know, being here at the World Trade Organization

is one of those solutions. We have to engage multilaterally. We need multilateral solutions here. The U.K. government is highly engaged here in Cameroon. There's a big team down here. They've been very, very active.

What the system needs is reform. The rules that we're operating under are 20 to 30 years old. In the main, they're not really fit for purpose for the needs of 21st century commerce. The more stable the system is, the more it operates, the more we can trade and the more we can offset some of the disruptions that are going on. So we're asking for time bound commitments now to on a reform package.

That's what we want to see this week, preferably by the next, delivered by the next, within the next two years we will on the renewal of the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions, that's taxes on all digital content that will have no positive impact on the global trading system. So we want that moratorium renewed.

And we're asking now for the World Trade Organization community, to allow coalitions of the willingness to deals, lateral deals. We've got two of those on the table. They need to be implemented. But the system is not responding to the needs of today's commerce, particularly in areas of digital trade technology and services.

Can we do that? Yes, we can. Because there are large swathes of the world, including the likes of U.K., Australia, Japan, Canada, to name a few, that really rely on that global trading system. Without it, we can't grow our economies.

So our interest in this is huge. And it's all about now those countries that want to work together, let them work together. Let them get deals done and keep that trade flowing and try and minimize disruption around it as much as we possibly can as an international community.

ANDERSON: Yes, and I'm sure you would applaud the fact that these countries must be thinking about the Global south at this point and the fact that meeting that you are in today was or at today is in Cameroon is an important point here.

You know, the Global South cannot be left behind again as we look towards, you know, discussions about and some eventualities in these reforms for these systems. Chris, it's good to have you. Thank you very much indeed for joining us. Chris, Southwest with us today. We will be right back.

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SOLOMON: Welcome back. Democrats are celebrating another victory in a deep red Republican district. CNN projects said business owner and military spouse Emily Gregory will win the Florida State House race in Palm Beach. That is the district that includes President Trump's Mar- a-Lago estate, which he won by 11 points in the 2024 presidential election. Trump had given his complete and total endorsement to the Republican candidate, John Maples.

Markwayne Mullin has been sworn in as the next Secretary of U.S. Homeland Security. The former Oklahoma senator says that he wants to keep the embattled department out of the headlines and has suggested that he will not unfairly target so called blue or Democrat run states.

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However, he does remain a staunch supporter of President Trump's controversial immigration crackdown. Mullin will also inherit the partial government shutdown that has caused TSA personnel to go unpaid and has also created hours long waits at major airports. We'll be right back after this break.

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SOLOMON: With some breaking news just into CNN. British police have arrested two men in connection with an arson investigation. That's after several ambulances were set on fire outside a synagogue in North London on Monday. They belonged to a Jewish volunteer group. Authorities quickly labeled the incident antisemitic hate crime. Now the suspects have not yet been identified.

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JARED ISAACMAN, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: America will never again give up the moon. That brings us to the next step, building the moon base.

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SOLOMON: NASA's new administrator there, announcing ambitious new goals for the space agency. Those include revamped plans for a moon base and other projects. NASA plans to invest approximately $20 billion over the next seven years to build the base through dozens of missions.

The agency announced that it was pausing plans to develop a space station to orbit the moon and redirect some of those resources to the lunar base. Among the other projects, a brand new nuclear powered Mars vehicle that NASA hopes to launch by 2028. Mars mission would put nuclear electric propulsion technology to use in space for the first time.

And tech company OpenAI is shutting down its video generation app Sora just months after its release. It gained a lot of buzz online after its release in September of last year, but the app also drew criticism from copyright holders since it was widely using intellectual property and the likenesses of celebrities in the videos that it generated.

OpenAI says that it will instead focus on other priorities. A source tells CNN that a deal with the Walt Disney Company will not be moving forward due to the change. That deal would have cleared the use of Disney characters and Sora's AI generated videos.

OK, that's going to do it for this hour of Early Start. Thanks for joining us. Becky Anderson and I will both be back with another hour of Early Start after this break. Stay with us.

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