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U.S., China Agree on Climate Change; Violence May Force Yemen Embassy Evacuation; Violence Flares Over Jerusalem Holy Site; Robin Williams Had Lewy Body Dementia

Aired November 12, 2014 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Republicans are already attacking the president's climate change plan. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called it unrealistic and a plan that he would be leaving to his successor.

Now the president heads to Burma where he'll be checking on democratic reform efforts there and then on to Australia for a G-20 summit, where he may have one more run-in with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin -- Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: A lot on the table there, Jim. We'll check back with you in a little bit -- Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. There's so much international news to cover this morning, Chris, because violence and chaos engulfing the streets of Yemen, forcing U.S. military officials to update plans to potentially evacuate the U.S. embassy personnel there. Officials say they are poised to act, but any military involvement would happen only if the U.S. ambassador asks for it

CNN's Barbara Starr is live at the Pentagon with more for us. What's the latest, Barbara?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. The U.S. ambassador has not asked for military help for an evacuation. Officially the State Department says they are not evacuating that embassy, that they will remain. There is a good deal of unrest on the streets of Yemen. And growing concern how long U.S. diplomats can safely stay there.

So the Pentagon updating plans. One of the big worries? There's been fighting around the airport. That means if diplomats had to go, they could not take the most reasonable option, which is simply driving to the airport and flying out commercially. That's why the Pentagon has Marines offshore, helicopters offshore on an amphibious warship. If they were called in, they've now updated the plans to be able to go in and get those diplomats out.

But that is not something the Pentagon wants to do. They like to say, Please get out before we can't get you out." They do not want to go in into a hostile gunfire situation, potentially. So there's a bit of give and take right now between the State Department and the Pentagon about how long and whether diplomats can safely stay. Yemen is very different than many other countries where this issue

comes up, because of the al Qaeda presence there. Al Qaeda in Yemen is very active. Plotting against the U.S. And the State Department and the CIA Worry, legitimately, that if they pull out, if U.S., the U.S. presence pulls out, they will not have a window and the best intelligence into what al Qaeda there may be up to -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Barbara. We also understand that there's a developing story out of Iraq. Iraqi forces have made progress against ISIS in a key oil city. What can you tell us?

STARR: Absolutely right. Iraqi television and the Iraqi government reporting now that Iraqi troops have retaken at least the center of the town of Baiji in northern Iraq. Baiji very important, because it is the site of Iraq's largest oil refinery. So that means of course, key revenue for the Iraqi government. That has been a contested area for many months after ISIS moved into there. And the Iraqis have really struggled to move north, get up there. Apparently, now they are in the process, if not already, having retaken the town -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Barbara Starr, thanks for all of those updates this morning. We'll check back with you.

CUOMO: Violence a common theme this morning. Also spiking in the Middle East. Separate attacks: one on a Palestinian mosque, the other at an Israeli synagogue. Access to a Jerusalem holy site seems to be the point of conflict.

Let's check in with senior international correspondent Nic Robertson. He is there. Nic, what do we know?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Chris, these attacks on the religious sites come hard on the heels of hot rhetoric yesterday from the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, who criticized the Israeli government, saying that they were essentially trying to start a religious war over access to these religious sites.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded in a public speech later in the day, saying that the Palestinian president doesn't make a good partner for peace right now. That he is lying about this issue. But Israel has no intentions of changing the status of these religious sites in Jerusalem.

That said, overnight an attack on an ancient synagogue, a fire attack there. And on a -- on a mosque in the West Bank as well. A firebomb attack there, destroying more or less the lower floor of that mosque. About 200 people normally pray there. But the real incendiary image, if you will, to emerge from that is a picture of burnt Korans on the floor. And at this time, when tensions are so high, it is a tinder box.

The concern is that the next contentious event like this, yesterday's shooting of a Palestinian young man -- the next contentious event could really spike violence into a direction that it's not quite reaching at the moment, Chris. CUOMO: And the question is, Nic, how do they control it? Where does

it lead? These questions have plagued that region longer than we've both been alive. We'll stay on it this time, as well. Nic, thank you very much -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Chris, there is clearly a lot of chaos overseas to dissect this morning, so let's bring in Philip Mudd. He's a CNN counterterrorism analyst and former deputy director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center.

Phil, great to have you with us this morning.

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: OK. So it feels like there's all of these shifting landscapes and alliances happening internationally and particularly in the Middle East this morning.

Let's start in Egypt. And that's where this militant group known as ABM has released a statement explaining why they now want to form an alliance with ISIS. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): In obedience to God and his prophet, who warned against division among his people, we are announcing our allegiance to the caliphate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Phil, the fact that these two groups are joining forces, what does it mean?

MUDD: Look, in the post 911 era, there have been a lot of groups that have tried to take the baton from al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Yemeni troop tried; the Somali faction tried. They failed.

There's one group that's been able to take and hold geography over time, that's been able to capture energy on the airwaves. That's ISIS. And so these organizations that have been looking for some place to affiliate, because the core al Qaeda group failed, these organizations are now saying, "Finally, after 13 years, there's somebody we can ally with. And that somebody is in Iraq."

CAMEROTA: One of the confusing things about this alliance is that ABM, as far as we know, their mission statement has been basically to kill government officials, police officers. They want to overthrow the government. That is different than slaughtering civilians. So are they changing their M.O.?

MUDD: This is the core question that we face here. This is not just a union of people who might share resources, who might share recruits. If you will, from the al Qaeda trench, if you think about the world from the al Qaeda perspective, the success that they had 15, 10 years ago was to persuade people like this group, that the target they should focus on is not a local target. It's not a local police station. It's not the local government. It is what they would call the far enemy, or the head of the snake. It's the United States. It's New York; it's Washington.

My concern about affiliations between groups like this group and the Egyptian Sinai and ISIS is not the physical co-location. It's not sharing resources. It's what you said, Alisyn. This group in Egypt might now say, "Hey, our primary goal over time is not just killing Egyptian police officers. It's creating cells that might go after the head of the snake in American cities." We have not seen that before out of this group.

CAMEROTA: That does seem a real marked change and obviously very troubling.

Let's talk about Barbara Starr's report about the chaos in Yemen and whether or not it's time for the U.S. to pull some personnel out there have. Give us a status report.

MUDD: Sure. Anybody in Washington who sat in the seat that I once sat in has one word on their mind this morning, and that is Benghazi. If you have diplomats at risk -- and we've had diplomatic sites hit in Yemen before by al Qaeda -- you've got sit here and say we want a diplomatic presence because we have a huge American interest in helping the Yemenis in this fight against al Qaeda.

Remember, we had an operative sent over Detroit who tried to take out an airliner with an underwear bomb. That was out of Yemen a few years ago. This isn't just a diplomatic story. This is continuing to fight with the Yemeni government.

But as al Qaeda and the Yemeni government fight, you've got to sit and worry about American diplomats, because you do not want a replay, especially in this political environment in Washington, where a Democratic administration allows diplomats to sit in an embassy for too long.

CAMEROTA: Of course not. I mean Benghazi is a cautionary tale to everybody. Does that mean today it's time to pull out U.S. military personnel from Yemen or not?

MUDD: I would say no. The reason is we still have a core al Qaeda elements that's a threat to America. We've been degrading them for more than a decade. Part of that is drone operations, partly operations in concert with Yemeni forces who over the past couple of years with the new president have been taking fight more to al Qaeda than they did with the previous president.

I think there's a risk/reward calculation here. The risk if you pull out is you lose some of the momentum, the traction in the fight against al Qaeda, and that's a core American interest.

CAMEROTA: Phillip Mudd, thanks for the expertise, as always.

MUDD: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Great to see you.

Let's go over to Michaela for more news.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, guys. Here are your headlines at nine minutes past the hour.

Russian military equipment has been observed entering eastern Ukraine. NATO says tanks, artillery, air defense systems and combat troops have all entered the country. The cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia was already on the verge of collapsing after fighting increased between pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian army.

The Missouri government says he's prepared to call out the National Guard if protests turn unruly following the grand jury decision in the Michael Brown shooting. Jay Nixon is warning violence will not be tolerated. In the meantime, Michael Brown's parents were in Geneva Tuesday, addressing a U.N. human rights panel, saying what happened to their son cannot happen to anyone else.

Congress begins its lame duck session today. Among the issues on the Senate's agenda, the Keystone oil pipeline, which may now have some Democratic support for a vote as the party tries to boost Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu's runoff hopes next month. Republicans have already vowed to push their own legislation for approval of the pipeline in early 2015.

And breaking this morning -- this is so very cool. In just three hours' time, a space probe is expected to land on a comet. A moving comet. A little robot called Philae has been released after ten years, locked aboard the Rosetta obiter. The probe, it is hoped, will secure itself following a seven-hour trip to the comet. The European Space Agency should be getting the very first images any moment now. This is really ground-breaking. Comet ground-breaking.

CUOMO: Cue the Billy Joel song "Pressure." Ten years this thing has been orbiting.

CAMEROTA: It's only moving at many dozens of thousands of miles an hour.

CUOMO: Thirty-four thousand miles per hour. But it's relative speed. As astronaut Mike Massimino says, like that makes it OK.

PEREIRA: Even landing on the comet is touch and go. It can't right itself. It sort of...

CUOMO: And really can't land. It has to reach down and grab and hold on, because there's no gravity field. Which I had never thought of.

CAMEROTA: You know what? What could go wrong? As we like to say in the TV business.

CUOMO: Get me close, I'll jump out.

CAMEROTA: Don't tempt us. All right. We will update you on all of that this morning. Also this interesting story, piecing together the puzzle of Robin

Williams' final moments. No evidence of alcohol or illegal drugs in his system. But there is something that may have contributed to his suicide. Chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta will help us break down Williams' final moments.

CUOMO: The Clintons are in the news. It's an interesting thing, though. They're known for being centrists in their politics, right? So why is Hillary reaching out to the far left side of the Democratic Party? Fighting off a potential 2016 challenger? John King will take you inside the answer, "Inside Politics."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: All right. We have breaking medical news as the coroner's report is released in Robin Williams' suicide. Here's what we know.

There was no alcohol or drugs in his system. But there was something else going on that's worth discussion. Williams was dealing with a disease called Lewy body dementia. Now, you may have heard of it, you may not have. But it affects an estimated 1.3 million people.

So we, of course, called in Dr. Sanjay Gupta, to understand this. Often misdiagnosed. I had never heard about it. But tell us about it.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, there are different types of dementia. Alzheimer's is the one that immediately springs to mind. This is less common, but similar to Alzheimer's in that you're basically getting these proteins that are sort of depositing themselves in the brain. And they're interfering with the way the brain communicates.

Let me just show you the picture. You're looking at two slices of brain. On the left is normal. On the right is Lewy body disease, or Lewy body dementia. They have both been stained with this brown stain. You see none of it, really, over here. That's the first point. The other point is really these are the Lewy bodies right here. It's this brown sort of clump of protein. Also, all these other threads, that sort of just get into the system of the brain, the sponge of the brain.

CUOMO: What does it do?

GUPTA: It prevents, you know, signals from really going back and forth as easily. What is interesting is sometimes it can initially go in the same area of the brain that is responsible for Parkinson's disease. So one of the first symptoms often for somebody with Lewy body disease would be Parkinson's type symptoms. Which as you know, Christ, was something that Robin was suffering from, as well. It can cause other types of symptoms, including depression, even hallucinations.

But this is tough. Because there's really no known cure and you can't conclusively diagnose it until someone has passed.

CUOMO: So other than the medical fascination about this and it affecting people, what does this help us understand?

GUPTA: There's a couple of things. If someone has depression, aside from Lewy body disease, there are known medications that can be used, and they can often be very effective.

With Lewy body disease, first of all, some of the same antidepressants may not work. So someone may take these medications and really get no benefit. They can even make things worse. Sometimes they have to be on different medications.

But I think the most -- the most important thing is, from what we know about this right now, it's a progressive disease. So despite the fact that you're taking medicines for Parkinson's, for depression, you can continue to get worse and worse.

CUOMO: Do we know whether or not Robin Williams knew that he had this and whether or not that was part of his health protocol?

GUPTA: It's a great question. The only way to know for sure is after someone has already passed. You have to actually look at the brain to be 100 percent sure. Doctors can have a reasonable guess. And the way that they guess that is because medications that were once effective no longer really doing the job. And that can be, obviously, very frustrating for the patient, for Robin Williams in this case, if he was taking medications and not getting better as a result of those.

CUOMO: So the bottom line is we're still learning so much about this stuff. You're saying postmortem is where they usually get a confirmed diagnosis on this. So the point is they cannot know really what it is while you're still alive. And that obviously makes it difficult to treat.

GUPTA: It makes it difficult to treat. And what you find is patients who just are not responding to medications the way that you would expect. Parkinson's is a fairly -- it's an easy thing to treat in that you just replace something that is missing in the brain. Depression, you're restoring certain neurochemicals in the brain.

But you can imagine, Chris, if your brain looks like this, no matter what medications you sort of throw at it, what you're trying to give, if you have this much sort of congestion, if you will, in the system, it's hard for that to really work.

CUOMO: As -- again, as it relates to Robin Williams, it's hard to draw any conclusions, I would suspect. However, there were no drugs or alcohol in his system. So that level of speculation should stop, right? I mean, you know very well, many people were speculating about what this was. That's a basis not to speculate about abuse.

GUPTA: In this type of report, you can rule out certain things for sure. But I think to your point, which I think is very important one, many people with these types of dementias do not go on to do what he did. So one cannot speculate that there's a cause and effect here. But there's no question, this is a tough disease to treat. And it's a tough disease to, just it progresses. CUOMO: And that's the frustration. You know as we all grow older,

and we deal with our families and, you know, what takes loved ones from us, often the answer is, well you can't really do anything about it. Parkinson's, they have us taking this CoQ10. But we don't really know whether it does anything. All of these -- this family of brain disorders growing and growing, but what can we do about it?

GUPTA: It's a great point, and what works for some people doesn't. The larger question, I think, sometimes, Chris, is we may get to the point where we can diagnose things earlier than we can treat them. And then one has to ask the question, would you want to know? If I tell you, yes, you do have this Lewy body disease, but there's no known treatment; there's nothing we can do for it; we can't slow it down. Do you really want to know? And that's really what we're getting to in many cases of science. We can diagnose things before we can treat them.

CUOMO: Would you want to know?

GUPTA: I don't think so. I think the anxiety sort of with this. And you know, I think, you know, we human beings, we like the idea of hope. And I think if something like this basically strips that away from you, without any known treatment or any known action that you could take. I'm an action-oriented guy, I'd like to be able to do something about it. In this case, you really don't have many options.

CUOMO: You're not just action-oriented. You're a superhero.

GUPTA: I was trying to get that out of you. It took me a little while.

CUOMO: I saw you put the mind ray on me here. Thank you for helping us understand this. We care what happened to Robin Williams, so any little bit of information is important.

Thank you, Sanjay.

GUPTA: Thank you.

CUOMO: Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Chris, Congress is back, and they're ready to fight. Over virtually everything, from climate change to Obamacare. John King previews it all for us, when we go "Inside Politics."

And could you drop something the size of a dishwasher onto something moving away from you at 34,000 miles per hour? Don't answer that. Because this is happening right now in the void of space. This is exactly what's happening above our heads as we speak. We'll talk with Bill Nye, the Science Guy, about this big mission.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Nice to have you back with us on NEW DAY. Here's a look at your headlines. Russian military equipment has been observed entering Eastern Ukraine.

NATO says tanks, artillerary [SIC] -- artillery, pardon me; air defense systems and combat troops have all entered the country. The cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia was already on the verge of collapsing after fighting increased between pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian army.

The militant group in Egypt known as ABM now appears to be swearing allegiance to ISIS. A new audio tape calls ISIS, quote, "the emergence of a new dawn" and blames tyrants and their, quote, "Jewish agents" and their allies for decades of Muslim suffering. ABM's attacks in Egypt have grown more sophisticated over the last few years.

And breaking just minutes ago, CNN now projects Republican Dan Sullivan on the left defeating incumbent Democrat Mark Begich in the race for Alaska's Senate. This is the eighth seat to flip to the Republicans in this election. The GOP will now have at least 53 seats in the Senate next year. There is one final race to be decided in Louisiana. Mary Landrieu and Bill Cassidy face off in a December 6 runoff. Stay tuned for those results.

Strikes are expanding nationwide by nurses demanding tougher Ebola safety precautions. Nearly 20,000 nurses and union officials have walked out in 16 states, demanding tougher standards. In the meantime, Dr. Craig Spencer left a New York City hospital Tuesday after 19 days in an isolation unit. Spencer was diagnosed with Ebola last month after returning from working in Guinea.

The hip-hop world is mourning the loss of a pioneer. Big Bank Hank, Henry Jackson, one of the three members of the Sugarhill Gang, has died. He had been battling cancer. The group, of course, burst into the mainstream with their hit song "Rapper's Delight." You can hear it now. Think about it: It was 1979 when that song was released. It went on to be a playlist favorite. He had more rhymes than the serious bank. Big Bank Hank was 57 years old.

CUOMO: You know where they were from, the Sugarhill Gang? Queens.

CAMEROTA: Were they?

CUOMO: Grew up with them. They used to play it over the P.A. system in my school. Big Bank Hank, he couldn't go anywhere in Queens and pay for a meal. His money was no good there.

CAMEROTA: Oh, so good.

PEREIRA: On your playlist?

CAMEROTA: Of course!

PEREIRA: One thing we actually have in common.

CAMEROTA: We could all sing every word of it right now.

PEREIRA: I only got a few words of it. I love -- I love "Rapper's Delight."

CUOMO: And by the way, they really launched a genre. I mean, they were one of the first...

PEREIRA: They were the granddaddies.

CUOMO: ... who -- just huge.

PEREIRA: Fifty-seven years old, losing his battle with cancer. It's so sad to think.

CUOMO: But a really rich life and a guy who was really appreciated for what they did.

PEREIRA: Influential.

CAMEROTA: Let us know where you were when you first heard "Rapper's Delight." I remember, I was in my cousin's living room. And I was like, what is that? How do I learn that? It was great.

CUOMO: My reaction was nothing like that.

I tell you who's a fan of the hip-hop you may not know, old-school rap. John King. We go to him now, "Inside Politics." I heard him -- I heard him sing a little "House of Pain" once up there. He was doing jump around. He was bouncing around. Didn't know what it was. He's got some flavor in there. Don't kid yourself. Oh, John, you're there. I'm sorry.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": A good friend of mine was a deejay in high school. That part was...

CUOMO: Of course he was. I could see you. Wiki-pause. Wiki-wiki- pause.

KING: Yes. I was off to the side doing my thing. But you know -- you know, we were saying as we came here, does that make us feel old or forever young? But that's...

CAMEROTA: Forever young.

CUOMO: Different genre of music, but I like the reference.

KING: We'll see you guys in just a couple of minutes. Let's go "Inside Politics" this morning. What a busy day here in Washington. With me to share their reporting and their insights, Nia Malika Henderson of the "Washington Post" and Ron Fournier of "National Journal."

America is celebrating this morning because Congress is back. Right? Everybody woke up happy that Congress was back. This is the so-called lame duck session. And the question is post-election do you get cooperation or confrontation? Early indications are, confrontation.

Overnight, you may have seen this, the president struck a deal with the Chinese -- he's in Asia -- on the climate change agreement to reduce emissions. The Republicans on the one hand are saying it's not worth the paper it's printed on, because it doesn't require anybody to do anything for 11 years; reduce emissions by a certain date, 11 years down the road.

And yet, Ron and Nia Malika, on the other hand, then Mitch McConnell, the incoming Republican leader who will soon be majority leader, says it's going to hurt the economy. Listen to this: "Our economy can't take the president's ideological war on coal. It will increase the squeeze on middle-class families and struggling miners. This unrealistic plan that the president would dump on his successor would insure higher utility rates and far fewer jobs."

So on the one hand, it's useless; on the other hand, it's devastating.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, "THE WASHINGTON POST": This is something McConnell ran against, the EPA. He ran against any sort of regulations when it comes to the environment. I think the president struck this deal, which is sort of a big deal, I mean, getting China to agree to some of these limitations.

I think the question for Republicans is what do they want to do? You have a situation where now someone who is going to be in charge of the energy committee is a bit of a climate change denier so is that where the Republican Party goes in terms of dealing with anything?