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Inside the Pope's Mexican Trip; Assad Says He's Open to Peace Talks; Republicans Lash Out ahead of South Carolina Primary; Gravitational Waves Detected for the First Time; Northern White Rhino on Verge of Extinction. Aired 2-2:30a ET

Aired February 13, 2016 - 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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NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Pope Francis gets a rock star welcome in Mexico as he begins his six-day visit to the country.

Syria's president says he is open to peace talks one day after world powers agree to a pause in the fighting.

And later, researchers in California say they have a bold new plan to bring the Northern white rhino back from the brink of extinction.

It's all ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM. Thank you for joining us. We're live in Atlanta. I'm Natalie Allen.

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NATALIE ALLEN: And we begin in Mexico. Pope Francis is in Mexico City right now and of course he landed Friday night to a rock star greeting.

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ALLEN (voice-over): Hundreds of cheers and chants for the first Latin American pope, President Enrique Pena Nieto met Francis at his airplane. They will have an official visit at the national palace Saturday.

Earlier Friday, the pope met with Russian Patriarch Kirill in Havana, Cuba, a meeting a millennium in the making. This was the first time the pope met with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church since the two faiths split in 1054. They urged the world to stand up against ISIS.

Pope Francis is expected to deliver message of hope and solidarity to victims of drug violence while in Mexico and trafficking and discrimination. He also has a tough love directive for people causing those issues. Our Rosa Flores is traveling with the pope and has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Pope Francis is the pope of mercy and sometimes of tough love, calling the unfettered pursuit of money "the dung of the devil," blaming human activity for climate change.

POPE FRANCIS (through translator): Our house is going to ruin and that harms everyone.

FLORES (voice-over): And now that he's visiting Mexico, he's expected to arrive with a holy dose of some of that tough love.

One of his targets could be drug traffickers when the pope visits Morelia, a city in the heart of cartel territory. In Mexico, the drug-related death toll, more than 80,000 in the past nine years.

In a recent video message to a group of Mexicans, the pope encouraged them to fight against corruption, drug trafficking, against organized crime and human trafficking.

During the pope's visit to Brazil in 2013, he blasted narcos, calling them "dealers of death."

And some of the pope's tough love could also be pointed at the United States when he speaks about immigration.

FRANCIS: So many of you are also descendants from immigrants.

FLORES (voice-over): During his speech before the U.S. Congress, Francis said immigrants should be welcomed. But GOP front-runner, Donald Trump, vows to build a wall.

DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I will build a great, great wall.

FLORES (voice-over): And overlooking the existing wall dividing Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, is where Pope Francis plans to celebrate mass.

MICHAEL MURPHY, DIRECTOR OF CATHOLIC STUDIES, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY: What the pope would be saying is like, look, a wall is a symbolic message that people are not welcome. And that's not what our Constitution or our history says at all.

FLORES (voice-over): Francis is visiting Juarez and Ecatepec, a suburb of Mexico City, both areas where women are being brutally targeted.

HECTOR GARCIA, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY: I mean the number of women who have lost their lives, have been abused, disappeared, feels like a civil war.

FLORES (voice-over): And as the war rages on, the pope says he wants to be an instrument of peace in Mexico -- Rosa Flores, CNN, Rome.

(END VIDEOTAPE) NATALIE ALLEN: So the pope plans to take on the drug cartels and the violence in Mexico. Earlier, I spoke with CNN senior Vatican analyst, John Allen, about the pope's trip.

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JOHN ALLEN, CNN SR. VATICAN ANALYST: This is a pope who is absolutely not shy about wading into political waters and, in many ways, this trip shapes up as almost a sort of greatest hits collection of his key political and social themes.

I mean, since his election three years ago, he has talked nonstop about his passion for the poor, his concern with migrants and refugees, his concern for prisoners, his concern with the drug trade and the victims of violence, his concern with corruption.

And he's going to hit all of those themes. He's going to be visiting a prison in Morelia just 48 hours after a prison riot in Monterrey in the north of Mexico left dozens dead and offered a grim reminder of the difficulties of --

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JOHN ALLEN: -- prison conditions in the country. As you indicated on the 17th, he's going to be going to the U.S.-Mexico border in Ciudad Juarez. He's going to walk right up to the barrier between the United States and Mexico.

On the other side, on the U.S. side, there are going to be about 600 recent immigrants in the United States from Mexico and Central America, who will be within shouting distance of the pope.

And clearly that is intended to make a statement in favor of immigrant rights, which is a somewhat explosive thing to do in the context of U.S. presidential politics.

As you said, Republican candidate, Donald Trump, has already said that he doesn't think Francis actually understands the situation in the United States. And I'm sure other candidates will be pressed to respond to the pope's pro-immigrant stance after he's there at the border.

So just on multiple levels, what we see is a pope who is just absolutely unabashed about continuing to press the humanitarian agenda that he's passionate about, regardless, in a way, Natalie, of what the political consequences of doing so may be.

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NATALIE ALLEN: So keep it here on CNN for coverage of the pope's trip. His first full day in Mexico will be capped with a mass at the Basilica of Guadalupe. And we'll have the highlights for you right here.

We turn now to the civil war in Syria that has claimed at least a quarter million lives in the past five years. World powers, including the U.S. and Russia, say they have agreed to a pause in hostilities in Syria. But that pause won't take effect for another week.

Meantime, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad says he is open to peace talks but he insists he would continue to fight enemies he believes are terrorists.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says the cessation of hostilities will allow for the deliver of much-needed aid to besieged areas. The United Nations reportedly says it hopes to have its convoy delivering supplies to cities, including Deir ez-Zor within the next 24 hours. CNN international diplomatic editor, Nic Robertson, has more on the desperately needed relief.

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NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Put very simply this is a humanitarian aid to be rolled out immediately. The U.N. has already activated requests to certain areas that they've been told to get the aid to very quickly. Several areas in the country, some delivery by air, some delivery by land, the requests are out.

The second major part of this is that there should be a cessation in hostilities beginning a week from now. This is -- and I think perhaps the best way to look at it as an incremental process that's designed to build confidence as it goes, the idea is that you get the humanitarian aid out.

Both sides, both pro-government side, both -- and opposition side can see that their people are getting help, getting support through this process. The cessation in hostilities, like a pause in the fighting, is ideally going to kick in. It will have limited effect in some areas. That's going to be very, very clear.

You're likely to still see continued fighting. But the idea is that gets the two main groups, if you will, the sort of large conglomeration of opposition groups in the high negotiating committee and the government, you get them together, you get the talking, the political talks up and running.

That's the idea. The thinking behind it is, look, doing nothing just allows the conflict to continue, the people to suffer and for there to be tens, hundreds of thousands of refugees spilling out of the country into the region, millions of people in need.

So that's the principal behind doing something rather than nothing. But the expectation is there are going to be problems. Both Sergey Lavrov, Secretary of State John Kerry, the U.N. special envoy, Staffan de Mistura said, look, problems will come back to the international Syria support group and they will have to work with their sort of partners on the ground for the Russians and the Iranians that will be with President Bashar al-Assad for the United States with the opposition that they're supporting, et cetera, et cetera.

So there is recourse to fix problems. No one expects the cease-fire to hold completely on the ground from the get-go. But I think this is the idea; it's an incremental idea. It's better-than-nothing idea. Everyone knows the reality and expects problems along the way. But by inch by inch, where they're at today, compared to two years ago, is generally a better place, other than that fact that so many people have been killed. But in terms of getting to a point of peace, they're further along the track. It's still going to take a long time and it's still far from clear if this method, this time, is going to work.

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NATALIE ALLEN: Nic Robertson there for us.

Just ahead here, Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are trading verbal shots again and now the billionaire threatens to sue the Canadian-born senator from Texas.

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NATALIE ALLEN: We'll tell you what that's all about.

Plus a look at a last-ditch effort to save the Northern white rhino from extinction.

It's all ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM.

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NATALIE ALLEN: On the campaign trail now, U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton just picked up endorsements from big newspapers in Texas and Florida, "The Dallas Morning News," "Houston Chronicle" and "Tampa Bay Times" -- that's in Florida -- all published editorials praising her record and stances on issues.

But they had complaints about her, too. The Florida paper called Clinton "an imperfect candidate with political baggage that would sink most other politicians."

Well, meantime, Bernie Sanders is under fire for claiming race relations would be better if he's president than they are under President Barack Obama.

Atlanta's Democratic mayor called the comments "dismissive and disrespectful."

Well, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump threatens to sue fellow candidate Ted Cruz over his citizenship, all ahead of a crucial primary race. Here's CNN's Sunlen Serfaty, on the campaign trail in South Carolina.

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SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Donald Trump's pledge to stay above the fray in South Carolina: short-lived, Trump blasting rival Ted Cruz on Twitter, writing, quote, "If Ted Cruz doesn't clean up his act, stop cheating and doing negative ads, I have standing to sue him for not being a natural born citizen."

Just hours after posting this, quote, "How can Ted Cruz be an evangelical Christian when he lies so much and is so dishonest?"

Late today, Cruz returning fire:

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), TEXAS: There's more than a little irony in Donald accusing anyone of being nasty, given the amazing torrent of insults and obscenities and vulgarities that come out of his mouth.

SERFATY (voice-over): This new offensive comes a day after Trump showed up a lighter side in Louisiana, even autographing a baby and suggesting he was ready to go positive.

TRUMP: I won't use foul language. I'm just not going to do it. I'm not going to do it.

They're all saying, "do it, do it."

No, I'm not.

SERFATY (voice-over): But Trump couldn't stay out of the all-out fight breaking out in the South Carolina trenches.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): There's nothing conservative about giving money to the Clintons. There's nothing conservative about Donald Trump.

SERFATY (voice-over): The airwaves plastered with negative ads.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Ted Cruz voted to undermine our national defense and weaken our ability to track terrorists. Marco Rubio is different.

SERFATY (voice-over): The attacks between the candidates are flying back and forth with a dizzying pace.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Maybe you should vote for more than just a pretty face next time.

SERFATY (voice-over): That ad is backfiring on Cruz. His campaign is pulling it off the air after it was revealed that actress is also an adult film star.

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CRUZ: It was designed to be a fun, light, cute ad. It happened that one of the actresses who was there had a more colorful film history than we were aware.

SERFATY (voice-over): Cruz's team is focusing today with a new ad, directing fire instead at Hillary Clinton...

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SERFATY (voice-over): -- in a spoof of the movie, "Office Space."

Many of the candidates today are speaking at the conservative Christian Bob Jones University in South Carolina, making a big pitch to woo coveted evangelical voters.

JEB BUSH, FORMER GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I do not believe that you put your faith in a lockbox when you're in public life and say, well, that's only for my private matters. That's just not -- that is totally wrong.

SERFATY (voice-over): And jockeying over who has the most conservative credentials.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FLA., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You disagree with people, for example, on the definition of marriage, they call you a hater and a bigot.

And what's the next step?

SERFATY: And of course, all of this happening just one week before Republican voters head to the polls here in South Carolina -- Sunlen Serfaty, CNN, Greenville, South Carolina.

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NATALIE ALLEN: It is crazy here on Earth at the campaign trail. So let's take you far away from this planet.

Some scientists say this week's major breakthrough in astrophysics could be worth a Nobel Prize. That's gravitational waves, first theorized by Albert Einstein, one century ago, are real.

They are ripples in the fabric of space and time caused by two black holes that spiraled together about 1.3 billion years ago.

Well, Derek Van Dam will get the Nobel prize from me for taking this on to explain it even more.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, you said ripples in the fabric of space and time.

So what does that mean?

To better understand it, Natalie, let me pose a question to the viewers and to you.

What if we could travel to faraway galaxies?

Something like 50,000 light years away from us here on Earth and only take 10 years to reach or achieve that distance?

NATALIE ALLEN: We would have a new Matt Damon movie. VAN DAM: There we go, right. That's right. And if we continue to prove these theories from physicists like Albert Einstein, we are headed in that direction.

NATALIE ALLEN: Amazing, isn't it?

VAN DAM: Starship Enterprise stuff right there.

Take a look at this, guys. And, Natalie, I've got to explain this for you because what you're looking at right now is on your screen, is actually the merger of a dwarf star. It's just like a black hole, similar in size. It's a very large mass.

But as they approach each other, over billions of years, they move more quickly. In that final fraction of a second, they collide and lose energy through that emission of gravitational waves. So that is what you're seeing. It's NASA's rendition of just that.

Coming to my graphics, not a dwarf star but it was two black holes that provided this ripple of gravitational waves that finally reached us here on Mother Earth. It only took 1.5 billion years to do so.

How in the world did they detect something like this?

Let me answer that questions for you. They have wave observatories across various parts of the world, including North America, one in the U.S. state of Washington and Louisiana. As we zoom in a little closer to this wave observatory, there's a 2.5-mile-long tube that has mirrors on either end and very precise lasers that detect any kind of movement with those mirrors.

And they're looking for the most small amounts of movement. I'm talking about infinitesimal fractions, fractions. In fact, 0.0025 of a diameter of a proton, believe it or not.

That is the wave and the detection that they actually monitored. And it was only 200 milliseconds that they actually detected this small movement in the mirrors. But it was enough to prove Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and gravitational waves. We needed that large mass like a -- like the sun or a black hole to collide and that's what we got.

Here's how they celebrate in the NASA world. They buy a cake.

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"Thanks for determining gravitational waves, proving Albert Einstein correct."

NATALIE ALLEN: Those astrophysicists, complete with black holes on the cake.

VAN DAM: -- chocolate cake --

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NATALIE ALLEN: All right, Derek, thanks very much.

Well, only three North African white rhinos remain on Earth. Coming up, the international plan to save these magnificent animals from extinction.

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NATALIE ALLEN: The Northern white rhino used to roam the grasslands of Eastern and Central Africa. But no more. The animal is now on the verge of extinction due to poaching. Researchers have a plan to save the species but it is complicated, requiring new science and a lot of patience. Still, there's a chance.

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NATALIE ALLEN (voice-over): Just three North African white rhinos remain on the planet. She is one of them.

RANDY RIECHES (PH), CURATOR, SAN DIEGO ZOO: This is Fatu, she is a female Northern white rhinoceros. She was born in the Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic.

ALLEN (voice-over): And she's the youngest Northern white rhino still alive. There were four until last year when Nola, seen here, a 41- year-old Northern white rhino, died in the San Diego Zoo.

Now there are these precious three, Fatu, another female, and a male, all live under 24-hour surveillance. Armed guards take shifts at this Kenyan conservatory to protect them from poachers, who can strike at any hour.

While Kenyan wildlife authorities guard the final three, there is an idea halfway around the world, a plan to save the species. A handful of their cousins, the Southern white rhino, have been flown to the San Diego Zoo in California from South Africa.

RIECHES: We now have imported six female Southern white rhinos for this project. It will be a lengthy project to actually bring Northern white rhinos back and have a sustainable population here in San Diego.

NATALIE ALLEN (voice-over): The young rhinos, between 4 and 7 years of age, were flown here in November from private reserves in South Africa. Now the six females are undergoing exams in the first steps of a worldwide plan to rescue the Northern white rhino.

RIECHES: We've brought experts in the field of reproductive physiology from all around the world. So we have people here from South Africa, from Japan, from Germany and several experts from around the United States. They all came here and we're all working to one end and that is actually to save the Northern white rhinoceros. NATALIE ALLEN (voice-over): Scientists harvested cells from the remaining three Northern white rhinos in Kenya. They'll study several options using these female surrogates in California, including possible artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization or an embryo transfer.

It may take a decade or more but it is the only chance, a last-ditch scientific effort to save the Northern white rhino.

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NATALIE ALLEN: Joining us now to talk about this story is Peter Knights (ph). He is the founder of WildAid, a nonprofit group that works to save endangered animals like the rhino, also sharks, elephants, to name a few others.

Peter, thank you for joining us.

PETER KNIGHTS (PH), WILDAID: Thank you.

NATALIE ALLEN: Let's start with how we got to this extreme measure that we're having to see people take to save this species.

KNIGHTS (PH): Well, it really is a tragedy. The Northern white rhino down to three individuals. And I've been to places in Kenya, where they tell me there used to be 5,000 rhino in this valley. I mean these have gone down, numbers have gone down precipitously. And for most animals, it's usually a loss of habitat that's the biggest problem.

But for rhinos, there's plenty of habitat left. It's just about poaching. It's just poaching for the horn.

NATALIE ALLEN: There's a belief that this horn has special medicinal qualities and this by people in Asia, China and Vietnam. But it's just not true.

Right?

KNIGHTS: Well, horn, the rhino horn, is keratin. It's like your hair, like your fingernails and in fact, it is, when you look at rhino horn very closely, it's matted hair, condensed hair. And there's plenty of keratin in the world. But people have found that in very large quantities, keratin or --

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KNIGHTS: -- the rhino horn can have a very mild fever-reducing property. So there is something, you know, it came from somewhere. There is actually an effect but of course you can get that effect from an aspirin or many other things these days.

So there's no need to use rhino horn and in fact, in many parts, particularly in Vietnam, buffalo horn is very widely used and many people can't tell the difference.

NATALIE ALLEN: Right.

And there are now companies that are manufacturing fake rhino horn.

Is that helping or hurting this situation?

KNIGHTS: Well, we're really concerned about this because one of the messages we've been putting out to people is there's nothing you can't get from rhino horn that you can't get from either Western medicine or something like buffalo horn, which is commonly available.

And the danger with this synthesized, fabricated rhino horn is it implies that rhino horn has some unique, magical properties that nothing else has.

And of course the reality is, people being what they are, they're going to want the real thing. So in a time when we've had an increased awareness of poaching in Vietnam, it's up by 50 percent in two years. The rhino poaching is just starting to go down. It's still a disaster but it's just -- we're seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

To bring on this product which could sort of reinvigorate that myth and re-perpetuate that the concept that this is some magical thing, which, you know, Some people believe it cures cancer, which clearly is crazy. But that's the kind of mystique that's around it. And we think trying to synthesize it is only going to perpetuate that myth.

NATALIE ALLEN: Right. And your group does these very in-your-face, powerful videos, Peter, that have had an impact to help save the elephants, to cut down on shark fin soup; millions of sharks die every year just for soup.

And it has made a difference in Asia, hasn't it?

KNIGHTS: We've seen a 50-70 percent decline in the use of shark fin in China, not just from our actions, but Yao Ming was the -- that led this campaign, the basketball players, the Chinese government backed the campaign. They've banned it from state banquets.

And even with rhinos, between 1993 and 2008, there was almost no rhino poaching going on. So we have seen scenarios where this demand has been suppressed, when the markets fall under pressure and education tells people not to buy the rhino horn.

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NATALIE ALLEN: We'll continue my interview with Peter Knights there of WildAid in about a half an hour. He will talk about how the rhino's horns are removed so viciously. We'll continue that at the top of the hour.

That is CNN NEWSROOM for now. "MAINSAIL" is next and our headlines right after this.