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Trump Hints U.S.-Iran Talks Could Resume In Coming Days; CENTCOM: U.S. Forces "Completely Halted" Iran's Sea Trade; Students Raise Awareness On Price And Production Of Goods. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired April 15, 2026 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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BECKY ANDERSON, CNN ANCHOR: U.S. President Donald Trump has hinted that U.S.-Iran peace talks could resume this week. Tehran says it will continue to take part in talks despite believing Washington is -- and I quote Tehran here -- "not trustworthy."
CNN's Kristen Holmes now with more from the White House.
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KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Iranian officials say that they still haven't agreed to a second round of negotiations, but President Trump is leaning hard into the idea there's going to be some kind of a second round and in two days.
A brief interview with a New York Post reporter who is currently in Islamabad -- this is what he said. He said, "You should stay there really because something could be happening over the next two days. And we're more inclined to go there. It's more likely, and you know why, because the field marshal is doing a great job." Now, he was referring to the Pakistani field marshal who is helping with these negotiations.
And during that conversation President Trump wouldn't say who was going to be part of that delegation, at least on the U.S. side. However, we have since confirmed that it would still be the same group that was sent to Pakistan before. You would have the vice president JD Vance as well as special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
It still though remains unclear if there is actually going to be these talks. Right now it seems incredibly preliminary but, of course, President Trump upping the ante by saying something was going to happen in two days.
Now all of this is happening as we know that there are 10,000 U.S. service members involved in the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. CENTCOM saying that six Iranian ships left port and then turned back under their direction. There are at least 12 U.S. naval ships right now that are part of this blockade. But there are still a lot of questions as to how long this is going to last and which side is going to blink first, particularly when it comes to economic ramifications, which this closing of the Strait of Hormuz is going to impact both countries in an extremely negative way.
[05:35:06]
Kristen Holmes, CNN, the White House.
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ANDERSON: Well, CNN's Eleni Giokos is joining us now with the latest developments in the Strait of Hormuz.
The UAE has been very sort of noisy about this. They are calling what Iran is doing in the strait economic terrorism. Clearly, the U.S. looking at upping the sort of economic ante as it were and really putting a squeeze on the Iranian economy through this blockade at present. We just heard the latest there from Kristen with the U.S. perspective.
Eleni, what do we know about what is going on today, as we speak, in the strait?
ELENI GIOKOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. So the short answer is we don't know exactly what's going on. All we're doing is relying on marine traffic data. I just got off the phone with Kpler and when I asked then the question how is the U.S. Navy blockade being enforced and they said short answer, we don't actually know. But what we can do is monitor the traffic.
And what is interesting, and we spoke about this over the last few days, the sanctioned vessel, the Rich Starry, was able to make the transit through the Strait of Hormuz unchallenged, then stops in the Gulf of Oman. It is laden with methanol. It stops at a particular point. It then does a U-turn and then goes back to the Iranian checkpoints.
And now we know that shippers are looking at two checkpoints that they face -- the Iranian checkpoint and, of course, the U.S. naval blockade, and that being a checkpoint as well.
This is what U.S. CENTCOM put on X a short time ago. They say, "More than 10,000 U.S. sailors, marines, and airmen along with over a dozen warships and dozens of aircraft are executing the mission to blockade ships entering and departing Iranian ports. During the first 24 hours no ships made it past the U.S. blockade and six merchant vessels complied with direction from U.S. forces to turn around and re-enter Iranian ports in the other side."
So this is really important because it tells us a couple of things. That the U.S. naval blockade clearly might be in the Gulf of Oman. We know that they have 12 naval ships that are embarking on this very complex reconnaissance mission to stop vessels that are linked to Iran that are coming from Iranian ports -- Iranian territorial waters. And if you look at other marine traffic data Becky, you also see other
vessels that stop around the same point in the Gulf of Oman and then make that U-turn.
So now the question becomes are we going to start seeing vessels that are coming from non-Iranian ports, non-Iranian territorial waters? When I asked that question, still no answer. They just don't know. Because the reality is that shippers still have to pass the Iranian checkpoints which, of course, is creating, you know, a double dilemma for a lot of vessels that are just standing by and waiting to see how this plays out.
ANDERSON: Good to have you, Eleni. Thank you very much indeed.
You are up-to-date folks on what we understand has been going on there in what is that really important critical waterway.
Still ahead, not everyone taking GLP-1 medications is losing weight, but evidence suggests the drugs are helping anyway. More on that is after this.
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BRIAN ABEL, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to EARLY START. This is your business breakout with some of today's business headlines.
Today is April 15, which means tax day here in the U.S. Americans must get their returns to the IRS before midnight local time or file for an extension. This year experts are advising against using general use AI platforms for help, saying they're not engineered or tested for that, and your personal financial details may not be secure.
Shares of major U.S. airlines rallied Tuesday on merger speculation. Reports say the CEO of United pitched a potential merger with American Airlines to President Trump a few months ago. The deal would create the world's largest airline but many questions whether it can win regulatory approval.
And then let's check in on how global oil prices are responding to the possibility of renewed talks between the U.S. and Iran. You see them here. While futures remain high, they appear to have softened a bit in recent days following the fragile ceasefire announcement. U.S. crude and the global benchmark Brent crude are both trading back below $100 a barrel.
New research published this week shows GLP-1 medicines provide health benefits regardless of whether users actually lose weight. For many people losing weight is one of the main draws of starting the medication.
CNN's medical correspondent Meg Tirrell looks at other ways the drugs may improve people's overall health.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MEG TIRRELL CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: We know that millions of people are taking GLP-1 medicines like Wegovy and Zepbound in order to lose weight. But it turns out that for as many as five to 15 percent of people we've seen in clinical trials and in real world practice, they don't actually lose significant amounts of weight with these medicines. Doctors sometimes refer to these folks as weight non- responders.
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Now it's not entirely clear why this happens for some people. Some studies, especially recently, have suggested that genetics may be playing a role, but there are likely multiple things at play. But increasingly, research is suggesting that regardless of whether patients lose weight with GLP-1s they could still be benefitting their health.
We saw this, for example, with the drug Wegovy with a major study in cardiovascular outcomes. So it was looking at whether Wegovy could reduce the risk that somebody would have a heart attack or a stroke if they already home one before. It found that the drug reduced that risk by 20 percent.
And a lot of folks initially assumed this must be driven by the amount of weight that the drug helps people lose. But as researchers really dug into the data, they found that people had this benefit in protecting their heart regardless of how much weight they lost.
And so there is something else at play with these drugs. We've seen this affect in other conditions from heart failure to chronic kidney disease and liver disease.
And so the newest research just out this week is from a pioneer in GLP-1 research, Dr. Daniel Drucker, up at the University of Toronto. And his lab looked at liver disease in mice and assessed GLP-1 drugs effects regardless of weight loss and found that they seemed to tamp down on inflammation, really improving markers of this disease.
And so, of course, this needs to be borne out in more studies, but researchers say this could have implications for how to tailor these medicines to different patients. Perhaps you could use lower doses if somebody's goal is to improve liver health, for example, versus maximizing weight loss.
This could also have implications for insurance coverage. Doctors say that can still be tricky for many patients and rather than tying insurance coverage to whether somebody has success with weight loss on these drugs if their goals are some other health benefits maybe tie the coverage to that, for example.
So a lot of changes. A lot of things we're learning about these medicines, really almost by the day.
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ABEL: All right, Meg Tirrell. Thank you. Still to come, CNN marks 10 years of My Freedom Day shining a light on the fight to end modern day slavery. We'll take you to Hong Kong where a student project is showing the cost of freedom.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Being free means having choices.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Freedom means the right to live without fear or exploitation. On My Freedom Day I stand with the children who are still denied that basic right.
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ABEL: Students at the Kosova Finnish School sharing what freedom means to them as we continue to mark this year's My Freedom Day dedicated to raising awareness about modern day slavery.
In Hong Kong, students completed a project to highlight the cost and production of everyday objects found around their campus.
CNN's Ivan Watson spoke with them about what they hope to accomplish with this activity.
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IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What is the cost of your freedom? We're here marking the 10th anniversary of My Freedom Day, a CNN initiative to combat modern day slavery. It's a student-led action.
And I'm with kids -- students from the George -- King George V. School who are engaged in an activity right now with these price tags. Guys, can you explain to me a little bit what are these price tags and what's kind of the point of this activity?
MOMOKA, STUDENT: Basically, we were able to make tags for common objects around school -- so the school hoodie or laptops and tablets. And I know a lot of students -- they wouldn't really think about the origin of these products, but we really wanted to spread awareness for the workers and the cost of our freedom and just build empathy for them.
WATSON: And these are children -- these are teenagers your ages --
GABRIELLA, STUDENT: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah.
WATSON: -- who are stuck making perhaps some of the stuff that we use in day-to-day life, right? GABRIELLA: It definitely brings into perspective, like, the cost of, like, prices for us and for them. Because even though these are price tags instead of the normal prices we would see online or in the shop, they have prices like invisible hands or hard labor because it really makes us think that price of our items are their livelihoods.
WATSON: Do you guys have a sense of how big the problem is of modern day slavery, especially for children?
EMILY, STUDENT: Oh, I think this project really helped to, like, open my mind to more things because I didn't really realize. Like, you don't think of everyday items that you use. You really only think of, like, the main things that they raise (INAUDIBLE) of. So it was good to see smaller things that are affected.
WATSON: So there's a bit of a taste here. The 10th anniversary of CNN's My Freedom Day, which works with other partner organizations to try to spread awareness about this criminal activity and also it is student-led, so it is guys like you who are helping spread the word about this criminal activity. And there's an awful lot of work to be done because I think there are estimates of around 50 million people today stuck working in modern day slavery.
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ABEL: Ivan Watson, thank you.
We will be right back.
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[05:58:52]
ABEL: Tens of millions of people from the Texas-Mexico border up to the Great Lakes are at risk of severe storms. Tornadoes, strong wind gusts, and hail the size of baseballs could be possible in some places in the Central Plains and Upper Midwest.
Some of the supercell thunderstorms that develop could continue to produce tornadoes like we've seen across the region this week. There were over a dozen reports of tornadoes Monday in parts of Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Look at this. The governor of Kansas declaring a disaster to ensure resources are available for counties as they recover.
All right, now for some video you have to see to believe. A man fishing in North Carolina says he accidentally caught a shark during his time on the water. After it broke free, he went to take more videos in the area and came upon this instead.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh my gosh. Wait! Are those sharks? Whoa, oh, oh! Look at that.
(END VIDEO CLIP) ABEL: Yeah. Not one, but multiple. He thought he was near a small pod of sharks but realized he was in the middle of a pool of Spinner sharks feeding on fish bait.
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The man got worried when they started jumping out of the water and hit him. Yeah, I would be too. Ultimately, he hit the throttle on his Sea- Doo to get out of possible danger. Yikes. Quite the encounter and experience.
Thank you for joining us here on EARLY START. I'm Brian Abel in Washington. Erica Hill is up next. "CNN THIS MORNING" starts right now.
