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CNN Headlines: Hundreds Killed, 1,300+ Missing After Floods Devastate Nepal Border; Closing Arguments Today For Mom Accused Of Killing Her Children; How Meta Settlement Impacts Users; Bill Gates Issues Warning For Future Of Humanity With A.I. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired August 27, 2026 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:26]
BRAD SMITH, CNN ANCHOR: Catastrophic flash flooding hits the Nepal- China border. More than a thousand people are missing. And the death toll, it keeps rising as crews desperately search for signs of life.
Closing arguments set to begin today in Lindsey Clancy's triple murder trial. A look back at the expert testimony as the case enters its final stages.
Plus --
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SMITH: A man ignites a makeshift flamethrower and points it at deputies. We'll tell you what led up to this intense moment. That story, plus much more coming your way this morning.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Brad Smith. This is CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS. Glad that you're with us today.
Let's get this started. We begin with the Nepal-China border. Hundreds are killed. Thousands more reported missing after a catastrophic wall of water crashed through a valley Wednesday. We must warn you that the videos you're about to see are disturbing.
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SMITH: Just absolutely heart-wrenching as you hear the panic in everyone's voices there. Appeals are pouring in from around the world as people desperately search for news of missing loved ones. More than 700 may be tourists from other countries, including dozens from the U.S.
And take a look at this map of the area affected, the very mountainous terrain. Lots of narrow valleys, and you've also got forecasters now saying that the region will now see more rain and thunderstorms in the coming hours. That's going to make matters worse, for sure.
New drone video from the China side shows a new lake forming, making the downstream risk even worse. CNN's Will Ripley takes us through some of the incredible pictures
that are trickling out of the region.
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WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A bridge snaps before being swept away as flood water pours into Nepal's Trishuli River. Video shared on social media shows people running and riding away on motorbikes, realizing how little time they have to get to safety.
At this Himalayan border crossing, people could probably hear the danger coming before they could see it. A building blocked their view of the monster wall of water until it was too late. From this view, it's terrifying scale. In seconds, the flood almost everything in its path -- busses, a four-story building, a bridge gone, buried beneath a black wall of water.
From the air, a helicopter pilot watches the disaster raced through the valleys below
AMAN BUDATHOKI, HELICOPTER PILOT: The whole scenario, it was horrendous. It was uncanny anything like you've ever seen before.
RIPLEY (voice over): On this bus in Nepal, passengers spot the giant waves crashing into the bridge behind them.
The streets are full of people trying to get away. Panic fills the bus as passengers look out the windows at the horror unfolding.
The water whipping around, cars tearing down power lines. Scientists believe an avalanche of ice and rock may have blocked a river high in the Himalayas until the water broke through, sending water, mud and debris downstream, submerging buildings, tearing entire villages apart.
Many foreign tourists, including Americans, are among the missing. On the ground, people see what little the flood left behind, and amid the horror, hope, a helicopter makes a daring rooftop rescue.
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SMITH: Thank you, Will.
Now, more about those rescues that will end it on frantic search for survivors is underway on both sides of the border, and it's going to be a challenge to get rescuers in.
You can see some of the terrifying pictures of rescue workers in the immediate aftermath.
Earlier, CNN spoke with Ben Ayers about that region and what makes this situation so challenging.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BEN AYERS, CO-FOUNDER, EVEREST LIVE: This river basically splits Nepal in half, so all of the main roadways trade arteries, everything in this is destroyed. For rescue teams, the only real way to access the areas will be by helicopter. And that's just not an efficient way to get a lot of people there. We're looking at a very, very long road ahead.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: We'll hear an incredible story from a survivor who was rescued by helicopter later on this hour.
And another story that we're tracking this morning. Investigators are trying to determine what caused a small plane to crash near a remote coastal village in Alaska, killing everyone on board.
[05:05:07]
The plane was flying from Anchorage to the small town of Seldovia. This is according to Alaska's department of public safety. It crashed and ended up submerged in about 15 feet of water. Troopers had to wait for the tide to go out before recovering. The bodies of four adults. The NTSB is investigating.
We are watching developments in two major trials today. First up, the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. She is the Massachusetts mom accused in the death of her three young children. Closing arguments are set to begin today. On Wednesday, jurors heard from an FBI psychiatrist who testified that Clancy knew right from wrong when she killed her children. Take a listen.
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DR. GREGORY SAATHOFF, FORENSIC PYSCHIATRIST: The day was really one of significant control. The activities that she engaged in that day, spending time with her children with playdoh, taking them outside to, to build a snowman, sending photographs of the children to her mother, to her husband on Instagram
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SMITH: The 36-year-old former nurse has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors and her defense team will have up to an hour each for closing arguments before the case is handed over to the jury. Jurors will then consider charges of first degree murder and second-degree murder or manslaughter, and in Las Vegas, the defense will begin calling witnesses today in the Tupac Shakur murder trial. The prosecution rested its case on Wednesday, relying heavily on the recordings of defendant Duane "Keffe D" Davis, where he discusses his role in the 1996 shooting. Jurors heard nearly eight hours of recordings and read passages from Davis's memoir. In both, Davis repeatedly placed himself in the car that pulled up next to Tupac on the night of the shooting. The defense will argue those statements can't be trusted, that Keffe D was lying to build himself up.
Today, a federal judge in Washington will consider Congresswoman Joyce Beatty's emergency request to stop President Trump's name from being etched into the Kennedy center. Beatty accuses the center's board of threatening to demolish the building over the dispute, and her lawyers called the warning that the center could be taken down a thinly veiled threat and a breathtaking assault on the rule of law.
Big changes now coming to Meta platforms after the company agreed to an estimated $18 billion settlement yesterday.
CNN's Jenn Sullivan has the details.
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JENN SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Meta has agreed to pay around $18 billion to end a landmark lawsuit over claims the company designed its platforms to be addictive and harmful to young users' mental health. The lawsuit was brought jointly by 29 states in 2023.
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has long denied that its platforms harmed children and did not admit wrongdoing, as part of the settlement. The company saying in part, "Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta."
As part of the settlement, the tech giant agreed to implement sweeping new safety measures to protect users under 18, including things like a two-hour daily time limit, night mode that would block users under 18 from using the apps between midnight and 6:00 a.m. school mode, where notifications will be muted during school hours. Disabling cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters, and strengthening parental controls. Those changes are still pending judicial approval.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a groundbreaking step. This is historic to protect our kids.
SULLIVAN (voice-over): Meta said it will pay out 70 percent of the settlement fund to the states and annual installments over the next decade. The remaining 30 percent will be paid only if YouTube and TikTok agree to make payments to the states, and similar changes to their apps.
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SMITH: Dolly Parton may no longer be with us, but her creative projects and philanthropic efforts will live on. Parton's manager says new projects and exhibits celebrating the life of the late country music legend are in the works. Her Imagination Library will continue its literacy programing, mailing books to children free of charge, and a state senator in Tennessee is proposing legislation to designate September 25th as "9 to 5" day in honor of one of its biggest hits from Parton.
And Nashville's Grand Ole Opry will dedicate Saturday night's performance to Parton, country music royalty herself.
There is more sad news out of the entertainment world, as actor Tim Curry has passed away at the age of 80. His longtime manager says he died peacefully at his Los Angeles home on Tuesday
[05:10:00]
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TIM CURRY, ACTOR: So come up to the lab and see what's on the slab. I see you shiver with anticipation.
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SMITH: Curry is best known for his role as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", and he had a vast and wide ranging film and Broadway career that spanned decades. The British star had been wheelchair bound since a stroke in 2012, but continued work as a voice artist. No word on his cause of death.
We have lots more to come on CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS, including this, a cutting edge drug is giving patients with pancreatic cancer new hope. Details on what recent studies have revealed.
And later, why the Trump administration is putting a pause on visa appointments worldwide. That, and much more ahead.
You're watching CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS.
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[05:15:24]
SMITH: Today, crews are battling wildfires that are raging in multiple states as evacuations are being downgraded in some cases, but the devastation remains. This comes as a brutal heat wave is hitting parts of the west.
CNN's Reid Binion reports with more.
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UNIDENTIIFED MALE: Like we said, we predicted the wind shift last night and we were prepared for it. Obviously, the fire grew, but we, like we had those preemptive lines in place.
REID BINION, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Crews in north Texas are battling a fast-moving wildfire that has exploded in size since starting Monday. According to officials, the Ross Fire had burned at least 80,000 acres as of Wednesday night, with just 12 percent containment. The blaze has damaged structures and forced evacuations.
Meanwhile, to the West, officials in Nevada say firefighters have stopped the forward progress of a massive wildfire that scorched thousands of acres just northwest of Reno. The Hawk Fire has been burning since Saturday.
JUAN DELGADO, U.S. FOREST SERVICE, GREAT BASIN BASE 6: Current acreage on our fire is 15,085 acres. We are at 85 percent containment. BINION (voice-over): Crews still have a lot of work to do,
extinguishing hot spots on the fires perimeter in hopes of letting evacuated residents return home.
DELGADO: We have 586 personnel on the incident.
BINION (voice-over): As of Tuesday afternoon, officials said roughly 5,000 people remained in the red evacuate now status.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Saturday night, me and pretty much everyone I knew, we couldn't get a hotel, so we slept in the car overnight.
BINION (voice-over): According to officials, more than 40 homes and one commercial structure had been destroyed as of Tuesday afternoon. In neighboring California, crews are battling a new wildfire in the Big Sur area. The Plaskett Fire is threatening structures and forcing residents from their homes that blaze burning as southern California swelters under a heat wave.
The Los Angeles Area has already seen temperatures in the upper 90s this week, and the oppressive heat is set to continue for days.
I'm Reid Binion, reporting.
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SMITH: The FDA has given the green light to a groundbreaking drug that offers new hope to patients battling pancreatic cancer. The drug, which will be called Racicot, is a pill that's taken once a day. It's been approved for patients whose pancreatic cancer has spread. Now, the drug was shown to double the survival rate in some patients in clinical trials, and one of those patients is former U.S. senator from Nebraska, Ben Sasse, who was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer last year.
He spoke about the disease with CNN's Jake Tapper.
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BEN SASSE, FORMER U.S. NEBRASKA SENATOR: I have a great hospice doc who told me early on, she goes, when you're dying of an abdominal disease, you've got an algorithm of four variables. You've got pain from tumors, you've got nausea from drugs and tumors. You got the constipation, the diarrhea continuum. And you've got an energy fatigue dimension.
And she said, any of those problems, if you tell your doc you have a problem, they'll say there's a drug for that. And there's definitely a drug for that and it might screw up the other three. So, you've got to manage the algorithm.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: So you're like an alchemist now?
SASSE: Yeah, I'm a druggie, but I definitely would prefer to have more energy and less fatigue. And I'm willing to endure more puking and more pain to be alive. So, I do less drugs than would be normal for the amount of cancer I have.
TAPPER: And you, in order just to do this interview, you have to modify your drug regimen, right?
SASSE: I toned down my morphine a lot. Otherwise, I'd be giggling all the time.
TAPPER: So you're in pain right now?
SASSE: A little, but not -- it's not terrible.
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SMITH: Without insurance, it will cost almost $40,000 for a 30-day supply. But insured patients could pay far less.
Still to come on CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS --
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SMITH: An absolutely wild scene erupts while deputies try to serve an eviction notice. But someone had a flamethrower.
And more details surrounding that. $18 billion settlement Meta agreed to with several states. How it will affect screen time for kids. That's coming your way.
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[05:23:58]
SMITH: Microsoft founder Bill Gates has a dire warning for artificial intelligence: the developing technology is more dangerous than tech CEOs are willing to admit.
He spoke with my colleague Anderson Cooper, with more
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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: One of the things you write, you said this is either going to be the greatest equalizer ever invented or the worst source of injustice. Which one do you think it is right now? If you had to guess, which one is it going to be?
BILL GATES, MICROSOFT CO-FOUNDER: I still believe that if we activate society broadly, both as users, as, you know, a lot of experts, you know, what I am saying is that for all of the challenges, there would be a serious review and a criteria under which a model had to meet things like being monitorable or creating bioterrorism tools. And so, I still think it's within our grasp to shape this in a net positive way.
You know, when I think about having a virtual doctor for someone in Africa who would never meet a doctor.
[05:25:05] Or already I'm seeing for the farming case that the Gates Foundation is thriving, we're getting really great advice about weather and seeds down to these individual farmers in their native language.
And so, you know, this is it -- you know, it's like when nuclear came along and said nuclear weapons or nuclear energy. This is a thousand times bigger and has both that the negative aspect and the positive coexisting in the same technology.
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SMITH: Fascinating.
Ahead on CNN HEADLINE EXPRESS, the trial of a Massachusetts mom accused of murdering her three children is coming to a close. What jurors can expect to hear today.
And the latest on those devastating floods in Nepal. More than a thousand people missing. Hundreds confirmed dead. We'll have an update next.
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