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CNN NEWSROOM
Massive Landslide Strikes Shenzhen, China; Donald Trump Targets Hillary Clinton; Will Trump's Bombastic Comments Catch Up with Him; Republicans Afraid of Changing America Obama Represents; 6 U.S. Troops Killed in Afghanistan; New Details on Driver Behind Vegas Strip Rampage; FIFA's Biggest 2 Names Banned from the Sport; Iranian Hackers Target U.S. Infrastructure; Kenyan Commuters Hailed Heroes After Attack on Bus; Future Online Shopping, Delivery by Robot; Trump's Remedy for Miss Universe Gaffe. Aired 2-3a ET
Aired December 22, 2015 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[02:00:31] ERROL BARNETT, CNN ANCHOR: A very warm welcome to our viewers in the states and those of you watching all around the world. I'm Errol Barnett, with you for the next two hours. This is CNN NEWSROOM.
We begin in Shenzhen, China, where the first victim of a landslide has been pulled from the rubble. A pile of construction waste collapsed under its own weight. Dozens of buildings were toppled by the debris. Thousands of emergency response workers are searching for survivors, but more than 80 people are still missing.
Our Matt Rivers is there in Shenzhen and joins us now live to talk about, I guess, how thing are progressing.
Matt, show us exactly where you are and update us on the rescue efforts. I understand you met some kids who have left their mother.
MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. They're not sure at this point where their mother or their father is, for that matter. They are among the people who are unaccounted for at this point.
Before we talk about them, though, let's show you a live picture of where we are right now. We're about a kilometer or so away from where this landslide came down the hill here and you can see how large this area is. Officials say it's some 380,000 square meters that they're now having to search through, to find any survivors that might still be buried some two and a half days after this happened. You can see the building on the left. That's a massive concrete building that looks like it was just toppled over like a toy house. It is now on its side. Officials say it's safe. It doesn't look like it's going to fall over, but still just seeing that building, you get an idea of how difficult, rescue operations are here. As you mentioned, Errol, there are thousands of people here, dozens of excavators, search and rescue dogs, we've seen drones in flight. But as time goes on, the odds of finding people alive inside this rubble obviously start to go down. That's a reality that is now being faced by many people that we saw over at an evacuation shelter not far from where we are now.
One little boy that we met really struck us. We met him and his 16- year-old older brother, both of them now being looked after by their aunt, because both of their parents were working, were making a delivery here. They don't actually work in any of these factories. They just happened to be making a delivery at the time this landslide occurred. They are among the people unaccounted for.
We spoke to the boys' aunt about what they went through when they actually came back to the scene here on Monday.
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LUI HUIZHEN, VICTIM'S FAMILY MEMBER (through translation): The rescue is simply too hard. There is too much mud. All we want is to find our relatives as soon as possible. The little one found a large pack of bread on the site, and he said that he wants to share it with his mom when she's back. These two boys will have no one to depend on in the future.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RIVERS: And as the rescue operations continue here in Shenzhen, that kind of story moving forward will likely not be unique as time goes on, and the odds of finding people alive in the rubble goes down -- Errol?
BARNETT: What's stunning, Matt, it wasn't a major weather event, rainfall, that triggered this. A huge amount of construction debris just collapsed and led to this landslide. You wonder if that could happen again in other construction locations in China. How common a thing are these waste mounds and are there regulations surrounding them?
RIVERS: Well, if you ask the Chinese government, they say there are regulations surrounding them, but as we've seen here, there are conflicting state media reports about just what happened, who is to blame for this particular incident. Locals, according to Chinese, state media complain about seeing dozens and dozens of construction trucks going into this site and dumping their waste, their debris into this pile, making it inherently unstable.
That said, the company that owns this waste site said they reached out to the government, this again being reported by state media here in China, they reached out to the government to say they had concerns about the safety of their own work site and the government didn't do anything. So exactly who is at fault here remains to be seen, but the repercussions of this investigation could reverberate throughout China because of economic development here has been unbelievably large over the past 20 or 30 years. When you're building things, when you're constructing, you need to put that waste somewhere. So there will likely be lots of other dump sites under closer scrutiny across China after the events here in Shenzhen.
[02:05:27] BARNETT: Certainly. In the meantime, we hold out hope for those kids to find their parents. Appreciate Matt Rivers' live report in Shenzhen. Just past 3:00 in
the afternoon there. Thank you.
So, Lindsey Graham has left the U.S. Republican presidential race, making the field of contenders smaller. Graham struggled in national polls and failed to make it to the main debate stage after announcing his bid in June.
Meanwhile, party front runner, Donald Trump, is targeting his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, for attacking him at her party's debate Saturday.
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DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & CEO, TRUMP ORGANIZATION: She's terrible. Donald Trump is on video and ISIS is using him on the video to recruit! And it turned out to be a lie. She's a liar.
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BARNETT: Ross Douthat joins now from Richfield, Connecticut. He's a CNN political commentator.
Ross, thank you for your time today.
Donald Trump's bombast by now is part of his appeal among disaffected Republicans, but what's good for TV may not be good for the big decisions of the Oval Office. Let me just show you this clip of Trump discussing his mutual and public admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Listen.
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TRUMP: It's Russia, after all. Somebody said, are you at all offended that he said nice things about you? I said no, no. And they said, oh, Trump should have been much nastier, that's terrible. Then they said he's killed reporters, and I don't like that, I'm totally against that. By the way, I hate some of these people, but I'd never kill them.
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TRUMP: I hate them. No, these people, I'll be honest.
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TRUMP: I'll be honest, I would never kill them.
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I would never do that.
Let's see. No, I wouldn't.
(LAUGHTER)
I would never kill them. But I do hate them. And some of them are such lying, disgusting people, it's true.
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BARNETT: OK, so even if we grant him that, OK, he's saying this in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way, what if all of these comments cumulatively catch up with Trump? The killing of journalists itself, that's a real and frightening thing.
ROSS DOUTHAT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: They'll catch up with him in the sense that he's not going to be president of the United States, yes, but his whole campaign to date is premised on the idea that you say whatever it is -- you say whatever the thing is that will get the most media attention, and so in the case of Vladimir Putin, if Trump had somehow disavowed Putin's praise for him and said, well, he's a terrible dictator and so on, the media would have shrugged and moved on. But instead by first embracing the praise and then going on that rift where he basically implied that you and I and most of the people in our profession belong in detention camps even if he isn't going to put him there, he guarantees that he'll be on television.
BARNETT: Some might say Trump is just the latest iteration in a trend in the Republican Party. President Obama spoke with NPR about why he has been so vilified by Republican leaders and their supporters over the years. More candid than we've heard him before. Listen to what he had to say about that.
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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Specific strains in the Republican party that suggest that somehow I'm different, I'm Muslim, I'm disloyal to the country, et cetera, which unfortunately is pretty far out there and gets some traction in some pockets of the Republican party and that have been articulated by some of their elected officials. What I'd say there is that that's probably pretty specific to me and who I am and my background and that in some ways I may represent change that worries them.
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BARNETT: Are Republicans in general fearful of this changing America, and has President Obama really represented that?
[02:10:06] DOUTHAT: I mean, to some extent, yes, the Republican Party is an older party. It's the party of older, white, middle-class Americans, the party of constituencies in the U.S. that are getting smaller as a percentage of the population -- white, married church- goers, obviously. So there's obviously anxiety about the future and some of that has been caught in the paranoid anxiety that President Obama is talking about. Although, there, I do think it's important to recognize that every American president gets a certain amount of paranoia swirling around him. With President Bush, before Obama, it wasn't that he's a secret Muslim or a Kenyan anti-colonialist, it's that he sent troops to Afghanistan because the oil companies told him too and Dick Cheney and planning to cancel the next election. So the paranoias are persistent. But what Trump is doing a little bit different from the kind of paranoia Obama is talking about. With Trump, you see more of an overlap with the kind of resurgence of nationalism that we see in the European context. Trump has a lot in common with a figure like Marie Le Pen in France, and Nigel Farage in Britain. It's people acting against the perceived and often very real failures of a kind of more globalized elite.
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BARNETT: And we will have more of my interview with Ross Douthat next hour. Now to a double-mission accomplished for SpaceX, and we will start
here with the ending. Check it out.
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BARNETT: You'd think you were at a sporting event listening to the crowds cheer there. The rocket company successfully guided a rocket booster back to land after using it to deliver a payload into space Monday evening. There are the cheering crowds. The booster's safe return marks a major step to making space travel much cheaper, because the rocket can now be reused for a future launch.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three, two, one, zero. We have lift-off.
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BARNETT: Now the primary mission was to put 11 small communications satellites into orbit. All were successfully deployed.
Now, SpaceX, founded in 2002, really has revolutionized space travel. Among its big accomplishments, in 2009, it developed a liquid fuel rocket to send commercial satellites into earth's orbit, the first privately owned company to do so. In 2010, the Dragon space draft became the first craft to return from low-earth orbit. In 2012, the Dragon became the first spacecraft to deliver cargo to the international space station. In 2014, they locked in a $2.6 billion contract with NASA to fly American astronauts to the international space station. So now they have another milestone in their cap.
We have new details about the driver who ran over dozens of pedestrian and we'll have the latest from Las Vegas coming up.
Also ahead, two of FIFA's biggest names banned from the sport. We brought you this breaking news yesterday. We'll tell you how they're reacting to the ruling.
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[02:17:34] BARNETT: A suicide bomber on a motorbike killed six U.S. servicemembers in Afghanistan. This happened near the U.S. air base in the Bagram District and the Taliban have claimed responsibility. Only about 10,000 American troops are now in the country, down from a peak of 100,000 back in 2010.
For more on this latest attack on NATO troops, our Alexandra Fields joins us from Seoul, South Korea.
Alexandria, this attack took place while U.S. And Afghanistan forces were on patrol. What do we know about the attack itself and the victims?
ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We do know that it was carried out by a suicide bomber, riding a motorbike and he was targeting a joint patrol between Afghan security forces and coalition forces. Six Americans killed in those attacks. That was confirmed by U.S. Officials. Among them, a former New York City Police Detective Joseph Lem, along with being a veteran of the police force, he was a U.S. National Air Guardsmen, previously served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, another tour of duty in Iraq. We know with the six recent deaths, the number of NATO servicemembers killed this past year in Afghanistan now stands at 25.
BARNETT: And I think 15 of the 25 are U.S. forces. The Taliban continue a push to take more territory in Afghanistan. There's a major push by them in Helmand Province, but NATO's position is training and supporting Afghan forces and President Obama has made sure they're on their way out. I'm wondering with the new developments, they may need to change that.
FIELD: Well, the president did say just a couple of months ago that U.S. Troop levels would stay around 10,000 in Afghanistan until either the end of 2016, the beginning of 2017. He said Afghan security forces were responsible for the security in the country, but it's the right thing to do to keep those forces there in order to maintain the progress that had been made in that country.
But the situation that we're seeing right now, Errol, as you point out, is this increased violence, specifically in the Helmand Province, where local officials are saying they've been under heavy attack from the Taliban for days now. What's the next move here? The local officials are appealing to their national officials, the federal government, the president himself. You have one local official, the deputy governor of Helmand Province, who got on Facebook, writing an open letter, talking about the intensifying attacks that people there are facing and pleading for help, saying that was the only thing that he could really think to do. So clearly you have local officials at this point turning to federal officials asking them for help. It's unclear what kind of help the president could elicit or solicit in a case like this -- Errol? [02:20:28] BARNETT: We appreciate that update. Alexandra Field,
giving us the latest on the challenges that persist in tackling the Taliban in Afghanistan. Thank you.
Now the man accused of providing guns to the shooters in San Bernardino, California, will stay in jail. A federal magistrate denied bail money for 24-year-old Enrique Marquez. He is suspected of buying rifles used by Syed Farook and Farook's wife, Tashfeen Malik. He said they also planned terror attacks years ago but never carried one out. Farook and Malik attacked Farook's co-workers earlier this month, killing 14 people. The couple later died in a shoot-out with police.
There are new details about the driver behind the rampage in Las Vegas Sunday night.
Stephanie Elam has more on the woman who deliberately drove up onto the sidewalk and plowed into dozens of pedestrians.
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STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was 6:38 p.m., Sunday night on the Vegas Strip when all hell broke loose.
UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS: It looked like she wasn't even trying to stop the car. She had both of her hands on the wheel and was looking straightforward.
ELAM: A car speeding along the sidewalk outside the Paris Las Vegas Hotel. Behind the wheel, a 24-year-old woman.
JOE LOMBARDO, SHERIFF, LAS VEGAS METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT: The suspect, Lakeisha Holloway, repeatedly drove her car over pedestrians. One person was killed, 30 people were taken to area hospitals.
ELAM: Eyewitnesses describe a scene of utter chaos.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People were bouncing off the car. You could hear it. The windshield was smashed at this point. And she rode the sidewalk.
MICHAL JACKSON, EYEWITNESS: Then car continued to accelerate on the curb, on the sidewalk and hopped back off again. When it happened off that time, there was two guys on the windshield and they were banging, trying to get the car to stop.
ELAM: With men, women, and children sprawled across the sidewalk, some with their bloody clothes ripped apart, the driver still wasn't done. A truck pulling out of the hotel blocked her path.
JUSTIN COCHRANE, EYEWITNESS: The car proceeded to slow down, veer around it, and accelerate again into the people on the sidewalk.
ELAM: A witness described seeing one victim dragged down the sidewalk, dragged underneath the car.
Police say Holloway's 3-year-old daughter was in the car.
LOMBARDO: She left the scene, drove a few blocks to a casino, exited her vehicle, left her daughter in the vehicle, and contacted a valet parker and advised she had ran over some individuals on Las Vegas Boulevard.
ELAM: Holloway is charged with one count of murder with a deadly weapon and possibly potential multiple murder counts, as well as child abuse.
LOMBARDO: Her being what believe to be in Las Vegas approximately a week and homeless and residing within her vehicle.
ELAM: Police report Holloway said that she and her child had been trying to sleep in the car during the day, but she was chased away by security guards.
Authorities don't believe it was an act of terrorism. In fact, they've yet to announce any motive at all. But one man who saw it all happen was sure of one thing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was mayhem, and it was very intentional.
ELAM: Stephanie Elam, CNN, Las Vegas, Nevada.
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BARNETT: Now an update on another breaking story we brought you around this time yesterday. FIFA President Sepp Blatter and UEFA President Michel Platini say they will fight their recent bans. FIFA's Ethics Committee banned both men Monday for eight years from all football related activities. They deny any wrongdoing in connection with a $2 million payment made to Platini in 2011. Blatter says he's become FIFA's punching ball, and Platini called the verdict a cover-up and masquerade.
Blatter was defiant, saying he's not going anywhere. Watch.
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SEPP BLATTER, FIFA PRESIDENT: I tell you, this committee has no right to go against the president. The president of FIFA can only be revealed from his activities by the Congress. And in the next Congress, which is scheduled on the 27th of February, before going to the election of the Congress -- of the new president, the former president -- I'm still the president, even suspended, I am the president.
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BARNETT: Now one man, looking to become the next FIFA president, is using this opportunity to bolster his candidacy.
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TOKYO SEXWALE, HOPES TO BE NEXT FIFA PRESIDENT (voice-over): Football is hard work. I think it would be taking it too far to say that FIFA should be liquidated certainly. And I can understand why people say that. Because more than 30 of the FIFA leaders are -- on the run, in hiding, others arrested. One can understand why some of the people can have those views. But certainly we can't talk about the liquidation of FIFA. I think FIFA requires leadership from men and women who can stand up to the strong image and to make sure good governance takes place in best practices in terms of good principles as found in different organizations around the world, as well as driven by democratic norms and transparency all the time.
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[02:25:50] BARNETT: The election for the next president of FIFA will be held in February.
All right, still to come this hour, cyber security experts are sounding the warning, Iranian hackers may have been on a trial run when they targeted a small dam in New York.
And Vladimir Putin's place in the international spotlight. Our correspondents offer their perspective on Russia's role on the world stage this year.
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[02:29:39] BARNETT: Welcome back to our viewers here in the states and those of you watching all over the world. I'm Errol Barnett.
Here are the big stories we're following right now.
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[02:30:58] ERROL BARNETT, CNN ANCHOR: There are increased concerns hackers are looking for ways to cause physical damage with computers. A new report reveals an incident two years ago that suggests Iranian hackers are targeting U.S. infrastructure.
Rene Marsh has more.
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RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION & GOVERNMENT REGULATION CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Iranian hackers infiltrated computer software that controls the floodgates of this Rye Brook New York dam, just 20 miles outside of New York City. A former U.S. official familiar with the investigation revealed the classified details from 2013 first reported by the "Wall Street Journal."
Paul Rosenberg is mayor of the village of Rye Brook.
PAUL ROSENBERG, RYE BROOK MAYOR: What it says to me, they're looking at everything. Was this a dress rehearsal for something larger? It also makes me concerned about the safety of our infrastructure that is significantly more significant than this dam.
MARSH: Investigators believe the intruders were just probing to see what they could get into, but no damage was done.
Hacking of dam controls have long been a Homeland Security concern. In 2013, hackers penetrated a sensitive database of U.S. dams, maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Asked about the breach involving the dam in Rye, New York, the Department of Homeland Security told CNN by e-mail it has no comment on the alleged incident.
MICHAEL DECESARE, CEO, FORESCOUT TECHNOLOGIES: Obviously, it's fairly scary to us as a nation that somebody sitting on the other side of the world could hit a key stroke and water could start flooding through a dam.
MARSH: Just last week, CNN broke news of a breach at Juniper Network. The company sells equipment and routers to the Defense Department, FBI and Treasury Department. U.S. officials worry that hackers working for a foreign government were able to spy on encrypted communications of the U.S. government and private companies for the past three years. Other critical infrastructure like the nation's power grid also constantly under siege.
ROSENBERG: It makes me wonder about what would be potentially next, and that makes me concerned.
MARSH: A modernized grid system using digital technology means more access points for intruders.
Rene Marsh, CNN, Washington.
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BARNETT: Some other big stories we're following --
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BARNETT: Russia says the flight data recorder from the war plane Turkey shot down last month is so damaged it's impossible to read. The state-run Sputnik News Agency said the damage may make it difficult to support Russia's claim that the jet was flying in Turkey's airspace. Turkey claims the jet was violating its air space and ignored repeated warnings. The incident has strained relations with Turkey refusing to apologize and Russia imposing economic sanctions.
Russia's intervention in Syria is one example of Moscow acting unilaterally in the international community.
Our CNN correspondents sat down and reviewed the role of Russia over the past year.
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ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Russia literally acts with impunity on a global stage and gets people wagging their fingers at them. There's nothing that's stopping any of it. Either the West, the U.S., actually needs to step it up, or say, you know what, we're getting out.
CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're done.
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[02:35:13] IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There are a lot of potential challenges that could come with not only Russia intervening in Syria right now and continuing to --
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NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Flex its muscle?
WATSON: Flex its muscle, but also repeat the Western anti-NATO, anti- American rhetoric.
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WATSON: The Ukraine conflict could flare up at any moment.
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: But it's still also at the expense of an extraordinarily weak, aging regime. It's sad because you are seeing a population whose demographics and economy is not doing well, who is reaching out to foreign military adventures to try to maintain a sense of relevance that --
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WARD: But it's worked. I mean, it's really worked. Putin has, for better or for worse, you can make that argument, but he's certainly commanded the world's attention. There's no question --
(CROSSTALK)
WARD: -- that he's kind of filled a void that America has pulled back from. And with a pretty negative impact, I think, from what we've seen in Ukraine and now in Syria and elsewhere.
PATON WALSH: Putin operates without transparency. He doesn't have Congress and the media asking him uncomfortable questions.
ELBAGIR: So no checks and balances.
PATON WALSH: He just does what he wants the next day, which is when you look at Obama with all the problems he faces. They can't operate in a similar way.
ELBAGIR: No.
(CROSSTALK)
ELBAGIR: There's no shared language.
PATON WALSH: I mean, one day, he will no longer be the president of Russia. WATSON: But for the time being, there's a guy with apparently
limitless power who likes to throw a spanner in the works for short- term political gain.
WARD: Right. But it's worked. They've made themselves relevant, again.
(CROSSTALK)
WATSON: -- unexpected consequences.
DAMON: There's nothing that's stopping any of it. Either the West, the U.S., actually needs to step it up, or say, you know what, we're getting out.
WARD: We're done, yeah.
DAMON: You can't do this in between thing anymore.
ELBAGIR: As someone from a former colony, I always find that kind of narrative very worrying, because the expectation that a superpower should be the police officer of the world comes with a lot of exploitation, a lot of expectations of what the return is going to be. I mean the reality --
(CROSSTALK)
DAMON: If America is not going to be the police of the world, then don't be the police of the world. Stop promising -- inadvertently promising people --
(CROSSTALK)
ELBAGIR: Obama's made very clear he doesn't want to be the police officer of the world. I don't think -- I don't think he's --
(CROSSTALK)
WARD: But then you can't set red lines. Then you have to sit back and watch what happens --
DAMON: Exactly.
WARD: -- and you can't wag your finger about it --
(CROSSTALK)
PATON WALSH: It's the Middle Eastern dream of non-American intervention in the region has finally happened, and everyone is not really particularly happy about it.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BARNETT: You can see more of our correspondents discussing the big stories of the year on CNN.com. It's very interesting.
A grand jury in Texas has decided not to indict anyone for the death of Sandra Bland. The 28 year old was found dead in her jail cell three days after she was arrested for a driving infraction back in July. Jail officials say she hanged herself with a plastic bag. Her family disputes that claim. The case comes amid tensions and wide discussion in the U.S. about race and excessive use of force by police.
In fact, U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, weighed in on Bland's death. He said, quote, "There's no doubt in my mind, that she, like so many African-Americans who die in police custody, would be alive today if she were a white woman."
Now an embattled comedian takes aim at one of his most famous accusers. Next, Bill Cosby's legal action.
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[02:41:48] BARNETT: SeaWorld is trying to figure out what caused this. A ride in Orlando to malfunction, stranding passengers for several hours. You hope and pray there were no screaming kids on board when this took place. CNN affiliate, WESH, reports that about 50 passengers were in the Sky Tower cabin when it got stuck 200 feet, or 60 meters, above the ground. The ride goes up twice that distance. Firefighters worked with SeaWorld staff to get all those passengers off the ride safely.
Now we want to get you to Kenya where commuters on a bus are being hailed as heroes. They were traveling north from Nairobi when militants from the Islamist group, al Shabaab, attacked early Monday morning. They shot up the bus, killing at least two people. Witnesses say they then demanded to split up the survivors. Listen.
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UNIDENTIFIED ATTACK VICTIM (through translation): They tell us to get those who are Muslims to come out, go back to bus.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARNETT: But the Muslim passengers say they refused to be separated from the Christians.
One witness told Reuters the gunman threatened to shoot everyone if they didn't separate. But the passengers defied their demands. The gunmen eventually gave up and left.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOSEPH NKAISSERY, KENYAN INTERIOR CABINET SECRETARY: We are all Kenyan. We are not separated by religion. Everybody can profess. We are one country, we are one people. It was a very good message from our brothers and sisters from the Muslim community.
(END VIDEO CLIP) BARNETT: When al Shabaab attacked a university in April, survivors say the militants targeted Christians and spared Muslims. 147 people were killed, most of them were students.
Now, Comedian Bill Cosby is taking legal action against one of his most prominent accusers. Cosby filed suit against Beverly Johnson on Monday, accusing her of defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. The super model claims Cosby drugged her coffee when she went to his house for acting exercises in the 1980s. In response to that lawsuit, Johnson said, quote, "In cases of rape and abuse, abusers will do whatever they can to intimidate and weaken their victims to force them to stop fighting."
[11:44:15] Still to come this hour on CNN NEWSROOM, the future of cheaper grocery delivery may mean trading in a truck for this self- driving robot. We give it a test drive next.
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(WEATHER REPORT)
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BARNETT: Online grocery shopping and delivery is a service that's still looking for ways to drive costs down. One entrepreneur is experimenting with the possibility of ditching delivery trucks for robots.
Here's CNN business correspondent, Samuel Burke.
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SAMUEL BURKE, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: The last mile of delivery is the most expensive, so companies around the world are working to make that final stretch more efficient and faster. They're experimenting with drones, drivers, and now -- pardon me -- self- driving robots.
AHTI HEINTA, CEO, STARSHIP TECHNOLOGIES: It's the most expensive because there's this huge van that is starting and stopping and the driver is getting on and off and knocking on doors. And that takes time. And that's something that the driver needs to do for every parcel.
BURKE (voice-over): Home grocery delivery services, like Fresh Direct and Amazon Fresh, are convenient, but they're not always cheap. Amazon's membership costs $300 a year. Now, one of Skype's founders believes he can bring those costs down with self-driving robots.
(MUSIC)
BURKE (on camera): What does it have in it different that the cart I use to get my groceries?
HEINTA: The cart doesn't have nine cameras but our robot does. And it's six-wheel drive, so it has motors, electric motors and various other sensors. The robot is observing pedestrians. The robot is navigating on the sidewalk and needs to be aware of its surroundings.
BURKE: And how does it get from the warehouse to the person's house using Google Maps?
[02:50:01] HEINTA: We are doing our own mapping, actually, because the maps that our robots need are quite special. They are more sidewalk maps than the road maps.
BURKE: Because they're not for cars --
(CROSSTALK)
HEINTA: Exactly.
BURKE: -- on the sidewalk?
HEINTA: Exactly.
(MUSIC)
BURKE: Excuse me, sir, can you help me? I'm trying to steal a robot.
(voice-over): Theft deterrence includes on-board cameras and GPS tracking. And worse-case scenario, Heinta says each unit just isn't that valuable.
HEINTA: The most expensive part in the robot is about $40 and that's actually the whole point of it. It has to be a low-cost machine, otherwise the economics doesn't work.
BURKE: And he said your groceries are safe as well.
HEINTA: You get a notification when the robot arrives, you push a button on your Smartphone and then the lock opens.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(LAUGHTER)
BARNETT: My fellow electric car driver, Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri, joins us now.
What do we think about these robots driving along groceries to our stores? Do we want this? The streets may get too crowded?
PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I don't know if they're going to get to autobahn speeds.
(CROSSTALK)
BARNETT: Are they heavy or light?
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
BARNETT: All right, also, this is the week of Christmas. But here in the south anyway, it feels more like spring. Are we going to get a delivery of cold weather or is that just not in the cards?
JAVAHERI: It looks to be one of the more remarkable Christmas weeks in recorded history for a lot of the world, believe it or not, not just the eastern United States. These temperatures, if you were to take the anomaly of how far these temperatures are and put them in July, in December, in the mid 70s, it's incredible.
We'll break down what's expected to transpire here, a massive area of high pressure. The jet stream north of that line, cooler temperatures, south of that line, warming temperatures. Look at how high north. The temperatures go up, again, 30 to 32 degrees above what is considered normal for this time of year, 72 Fahrenheit. Never even gotten close to these kinds of numbers. 41 or 5 Celsius is normal. The red numbers indicate how far above normal we're talking about D.C. getting to 32 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. Look at New York City's Christmas Eve temperatures, it's 72, warmer than in southern California. That does not happen very often across this region. And the month of December and the first 20 days, over 6,000 record temperatures on the warm size have been set. Many of them on the warm overnight temperatures, so you know it's not cooling off efficiently.
El Nino has a lot to do with this, as the weather patterns are disrupted globally speaking. Even across the U.K., parts of England working to the midlands, temperatures for the month of December, the first two weeks, top five warmest start ever, about 7 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. This is what it looks like in London, shorts and T-shirts. Temperatures there pushing 60 Fahrenheit. And Moscow has shot up to 9 Celsius, about 50 or so Fahrenheit, should be at minus 4 this time of year. The ice skating rinks that are so prominent in Moscow are starting to get slushy. The festive feeling is not there. Some people are enjoying the mild temperatures. It looks like it's going to continue into early next week as well.
BARNETT: Drink more eggnog perhaps.
(LAUGHTER)
JAVAHERI: Winter started about three hours ago in the northern hemisphere.
BARNETT: All right, happy winter, Pedram.
JAVAHERI: Yeah. See you, guys.
BARNETT: Thanks, very much. See you next time.
Organizers of the Miss Universe Pageant have apologized to Miss Colombia and Miss Philippine after what was an epic blunder at Sunday's event. It's been trending on social media. It even has Republican presidential contender, Donald Trump, talking.
Here's Brian Stelter.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
STEVE HARVEY, COMEDIAN & PAGEANT HOT: Miss Universe 2015 is -- Colombia!
(CHEERING)
BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT & CNN HOST, RELIABLE SOURCES (voice-over): Put yourself in Miss Colombia's high-heeled shoes. She was wearing the crown, thinking she was the new Miss Universe, smiling in front of a worldwide audience, when less than two minutes after being declared the winner, Host Steve Harvey walked back on stage and announced this.
HARVEY: I have to apologize. The first runner-up is Colombia. Miss Universe 2015 is Philippines.
STELTER: It is a moment that will live in TV infamy. The host of "Family Feud" mistakenly reading the first runner-up's name, then correcting himself with the whole world watching. You could just see his discomfort.
[02:55:00]HARVEY: This is exactly what's on the card. I will take responsibility for this. It was my mistake. It was on the card.
STELTER: The real winner, Miss Philippines, printed in small type on the card, showing the perils of live television. Harvey tweeted an apology saying, "I feel terrible." And suddenly, Miss Universe was trending like never before.
Donald Trump pounced on the opportunity, claiming that if he were still in charge, "this would have never happened," he tweeted. Trump sold his stake in Miss Universe to the talent agency WME/IMG just three months ago, after NBC and Univision wanted to get out of business with him. And that was during the protests against Trump's comments about Mexican immigrants. The networks even refused to televise Miss USA back in July.
But now Trump is turning Harvey's gaffe into a positive, even offering a solution.
DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & CEO, TRUMP ORGANIZATION (voice-over): I'll tell you what I think I'd do. I think I'd make them a co-winner. It would be very cool. I would recommend they go have a beautiful ceremony, which is good for the brand and good for Miss Universe, and do a co-winner.
STELTER: And just like that, Miss Universe became part of our presidential pageant.
Brian Stelter, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BARNETT: I'm Errol Barnett. Remember to keep in touch with me on social media, any time. Well, any time I'm not making mistakes.
(LAUGHTER)
We'll have more CNN NEWSROOM after the break.
(LAUGHTER)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
