Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

ISIS Claims Responsibility for Two Suicide Bombings In Samala, Iraq; Hundreds Storm Parliament In Baghdad's Green Zone; John Kerry In Geneva To Discuss Fragile Syrian Ceasefire With Foreign Leaders; Man Killed By Machete In Bangladesh; New Polls Shows Trump Leading Cruz In Indiana By 15 Points. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired May 2, 2016 - 00:00   ET

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


[00:00:11] JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: This is "CNN Newsroom" live from Los Angeles. Ahead this hour: on notice. Iraq's prime minister given a week to form a new government or the protesters will return to Baghdad's Green Zone.

Three men in custody in Bangladesh after another fatal hacking attack. this one claimed by ISIS.

Also this it hour, packing up the pachyderms. The Ringling Brothers elephants taking their final bow.

Hello, and welcome to our viewers all around the world; I'm John Vause. Thanks for being with us. "Newsroom" L.A. starts right now.

We begin with the latest out of Iraq. ISIS is claiming responsibility for two suicide bombings in the southern city of Samala; at least 30 people were killed, dozens were wounded. The terror group says one attacker blew up his car at a gathering of Shi'ite special forces. The second car bomb detonated when security arrived. The attacks come after intense protests in the Iraqi capital.

Hundreds of demonstrators stormed the Parliament in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, demanding a vote on government reforms and that top Iraqi leaders be dismissed. The anger was fuel led by a fiery anti-corruption speech by the prominent Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al- Sadr. The protesters have since left the area, but they do plan to return on Friday.

For more on this our Military Analyst Rick Francona joins us now. Colonel, the protesters have withdrawn, but there's a little breathing room here for the Iraqi Prime Minister, but not a lot.

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: You know, it's interesting, John. The protesters are demanding the same thing that the Prime Minister is trying to deliver. Abadi and Muqtada al-Sadr want the same thing, they to eliminate the corruption and cronyism inside the cabinet. Abadi is trying to appoint ministers that are capable rather than those that belong to a particular religious group or political party. Muqtada al-Sadr is not happy with the pace of those changes. So he's giving them a week. This is a kind of interesting turn of events. Maybe this will give

Abadi the impetus to actually get this done. With the threat of the return of the protesters, maybe he'll get some traction inside of that cabinet. Right now there's so much resistance to what he's trying to do that it's very difficult for him.

VAUSE: Do you think that al-Sadr knows that really a week is an incredibly short period of time to try to get this done. It's a demand, which in many ways, seems almost impossible to be met.

FRANCONA: Well he's been doing this it for months now. There have been protests in the streets of Baghdad for months at the impetus of Muqtada al-Sadr. He's had a lot of people out there protesting and they are growing impatient, and he wants change done. I don't know if a week is actually going to be the real deadline; I'm sure that that might have been a lot of bluster, but the threat of bringing people back into the Green Zone might just get people off the dime inside of that cabinet.

VAUSE: Were you surprised how easily these protesters actually managed to get into the Green Zone, because to your point -

FRANCONA: Yes.

VAUSE: -- there does seem to be a theory out there that maybe the Iraqi Prime Minister was in collusion with the protesters to allow them in?

FRANCONA: It's not just Muqtada al-Sadr and his group that are angry. There's a lot of anger among the population. Of course, if you look at the security force that guards the Green Zone, most of them are Shi'a. Most of them have some sort of affinity to Muqtada al-Sadr. He's a very, very powerful, very charismatic leader, more of a community organizer and they may just have stepped aside. I don't think that they were really wanting to take on their own Shi'a countrymen in the streets of Baghdad to have a fight; so they may have stepped aside.

I have to say this: I'm not a big fan of Muqtada al-Sadr, I never have been but his people acted responsibly. They were protesting; they weren't rioting.

VAUSE: Yes; there was talk about he wants an evolution not a revolution; asking the protestors to leave quietly and not chanting any particular slogans.

This turmoil which is currently ongoing within the Iraqi government, and all of these protests, how can ISIS now capitalize on that?

FRANCONA: Well they already are. We've seen, just in the last two days, suicide bombs going off on the eastern side of Baghdad and this went far south of Baghdad. I'm trying to remember the last time I saw any kind of activity down in Samala. This is 250 kilometers south of Baghdad. It's on the desert, in the Euphrates Valley. It is in a Shi'a area, so would be a good target for ISIS, but it's far afield for ISIS to be operating and just shows the capability that they have to mobilize forces that far out of their normal area of operations. I think ISIS is demonstrating they are not down and out. They may have suffered some defeats, but they are still a potent force.

[00:05:02] VAUSE: Just on a sort of related issue as well, we have U.S. forces already in Iraq, about a brigade size force, but there's some talk out there that really this could be a higher number because the troop rotations. How does that actually keep the official numbers down; where do you think the real number of American soldiers is likely to be?

FRANCONA: I think it's probably higher - it's north of 5,000; although the troop strength, the authorized troop strength is around 4,000. What they will do is, they will rotate units in for 90 days, 120 days and technically they don't count against the troop strength because they are not there in a permanent situation.

It's a game that the Department of Defense is pretty good at playing. They have done it over the years. Remember, in the past they have also hired a bunch of contractors. They don't count against the troop strength. So it's hard to say how many people are actually there. That number only addresses the people that are in Iraq, not to mention the thousands, the dozens of thousands of Air Force and Navy personnel supporting the air effort in other countries.

VAUSE: It does seem to be like a slow buildup of U.S. forces in there, which I think many people would be surprised at the real number of U.S. forces in the region dealing with Iraq right now.

Colonel, good to speak to you; thank you, sir.

FRANCONA: Always good to be with you, John.

VAUSE: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Geneva for talks to foreign leaders on the fragile ceasefire in Syria. He's already met with Jordan's foreign minister and says he's in contact with Russian officials as well. The so called "cessation of hostilities" started in February. It's been in danger of collapsing in recent weeks. There's more evidence of that on Wednesday when an airstrike hit a hospital in rebel held Aleppo. Rights groups say at least 50 people were killed. Secretary Kerry blamed the Syrian government, an allegation it denies.

Channel 4 News obtained exclusive surveillance footage of that strike from inside the hospital.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a silent film; but you begin to imagine the sounds. The CCTV cameras outside the hospital are in the rain, and inside are unflinching observers of what is about to unfold.

The clocks on the screen are an hour out. It is 9:38 on Wednesday evening and the al-Quds hospital is shaken by an explosion nearby. Some people head downstairs, expecting casualties to arrive. That turns out to be a deadly mistake. No one you can see here has any idea this hospital is seconds away from becoming a target itself. The choice of where to go, left or right, up or down, seals their fate.

The man in green is Doctor Mohammed Maaz leaving the intensive care unit. He is 36 years old and he's the last pediatrician in Aleppo. He's already done one day-shift at another hospital and is in the middle of the night shift in this one. He is single and his parents have fled to Turkey. He was looking forward to visiting them a few days later. We don't know exactly where he has now gone, but we do know his fate.

At 9:42:12 the hospital is hit; same explosion, different camera. Minutes after the dust clear, the survivors emerge. The ghostly image of a nurse carrying a child or a baby from the maternity ward. Civilians milling around in a daze, taking on the task of the nurses who is have been killed or injured.

Dr. Maaz is now dead, and so are 50 others: nurses, patients, visitors.

As the smoke clears, the road outside emerges as a field of rubble.

Since then two more hospitals have been hit; and yesterday, one of Aleppo's main medical storage facilities. In this case, four CCTV cameras bare silent witness.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: A report by Channel 4 News in Britain.

Ten kidnapped soldiers are back home in Indonesia after months in captivity. They were held for ransom in the Philippines by a militant group Abu Sayyaf, after being abducted last March of the country's southern coast. Indonesia's president thanked those who helped secure their release and said he would continue to try to win the freedom of four other Indonesians still being held.

Islamic extremists have claimed another murder in Bangladesh. Police have identified the latest victim as a Hindu tailor what was hacked to death with machetes. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a counterterror monitoring group, NGO. Just last week al-Qaeda said it was behind the brutal murders of two gay rights activists.

For more on the string of killings in Bangladesh, we're joined by our Senior International Correspondent Ivan Watson. Ivan, there's this international pressure now on the Bangladeshi government, but within the country, is there [00:10:02] much outrage? Is there pressure for authorities there to try to stop these attacks?

IVAN WATSON, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORREESPONDENT, via satellite: Well there's certainly fear. There's certainly fear; people going underground right now after a professor, two gay rights activists, an atheist blogger and now a Hindu tailor were all hacked to death using similar modus operandi, that's these machete murders, usually carried out by attackers, often approaching their prey, their victims, on motorcycles.

You had had the U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh, speaking on CNN just last week, calling on the government to condemn these strings of what appear to be linked murders that are often then claimed either by ISIS affiliated groups or by al-Qaeda affiliated groups.

Now the Bangladeshi Prime Minister has come out several times over the course of the last week to condemn these attacks and in one of these statements she said, "There is no place for terrorism in the country and no terrorist would be allowed to use Bangladesh's soil. We want to establish Bangladesh as a peaceful nation in the world."

She went on to claim these were planned murders and she basically accused the political opposition, the two largest option parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamist party, of being behind these attacks, which she claimed were to destabilize the country and that has been backed up by the police now, who have gone out and accused, basically, the student wing of this Islamist opposition party, of being behind some of these murders.

However, these accusations didn't stop the latest killing, John, as the prime minister was speaking on Saturday you had this murder of a tailor on Saturday in a provincial town; a tailor who had been linked to a blasphemy case in 2012. He had been accused of insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad. John?

VAUSE: And is that the working theory now why Nikhil Joarder, the tailor, was targeted by this group, because of something that happened maybe four years ago?

WATSON: Well the Bangladeshi police in his hometown, in his home district have said that is one possibility. They have also told CNN that they detained three people for questioning and that two of those people were involved in bringing the blasphemy case against that Hindu tailor in the first place; but again, they are just detained for questioning right now.

But without any doubt right now, this has created a real climate of fear in the country. LGBT activists have gone underground. People who used to reach out to the media, to try to talk to them about their nascent gay rights movement in Bangladesh, a majority Muslim country, somewhat socially conservative as well. The atheist bloggers, those who haven't fled the country by the dozens, others who were in the country and were speaking out in recent weeks, now also very much going underground, some of them clearly frightened to even take phone calls right now. So this has really

created a climate of fear for anybody who feels that they could be next in this

pattern of really frightening machete murders. John?

VAUSE: I know a number of different groups, al-Qaeda and ISIS, have claimed responsibility for these attacks but is it possible to know if there's some coordination here or whether these are simply random attacks being carried out by likeminded people on a fairly broad, common target? WATSON: You know, we didn't get a sense of the scale of the violence until the U.S. Ambassador came out on CNN and said that the Embassy had counted some 35 similar attacks over a period of about 12 months and that 28 of them had been claimed by a terrorist group. We do have the Bangladesh government saying this is some kind of orchestrated campaign of violence.

What's particularly disturbing is to see that the targets, they seem to involve people who are in secular groups, people who are involved in liberal, so called "progressive causes" as well, but the targets have expanded. It went from atheist bloggers now to LGBT activists to now a Hindu tailor. So it's minority religious groups over the last year there were a couple of foreign targets, an Italian person who was killed in the Bangladesh capital, an aid worker; a Japanese businessman who had been in town.

So the prey seems to be expanding and all that anybody can kind of come up with is that this appears to be the work of Islamist extremist groups as well, with multiple ISIS and al-Qaeda claims of responsibility as well. [00:15:02] Where there is confusion is that the Bangladesh government insists there's no ISIS or al-Qaeda activity in the country, that this is all the work of home grown extremists. John?

VAUSE: They all sound sort of like targets of opportunity, if you like. Ivan, thank you; Senior International Correspondent, Ivan Watson, live for us there with the very latest details.

A short break here on "Newsroom". When we come back, the U.S. presidential campaign heading to Indiana where Donald Trump is hoping to make the delegate count decisive.

Also to come, a court day on Monday over Prince's estate. Already emotions are running high. We'll also have the truth about a vault filled with unreleased music at Paisley Park.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VAUSE: U.S. politics now; this week the focus will be on the state of Indiana ahead of Tuesday's primary, which could be the last stand for the stopTrump movement. A new "Wall Street Journal"/NBC Marist poll shows Donald Trump leading Ted Cruz by 15 points. 57 delegates are at stake and they [00:20:01] could mean a lot. Trump is just 235 delegates shy of that magic number to clinch the nomination before the convention, and he's not letting up on Ted Cruz.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R) REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He has no road to victory. He can't win. He's the first person in the history of the United States who picked a running mate, Carly, who picked a running mate. She picked - he picked a running mate, even though he has no chance to win. So he picked as a presidential candidate a running mate, but he has no chance to win. So that's the first in the history of our country, folks. Ted, Lyin'; Ted, I want to congratulate you. (END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: So essentially Donald Trump there at his rally in Indiana is saying the contest is mostly over.

Jessica Schneider reports now Trump is looking ahead to the general election with a promise to try to unify the party.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: An hour-long rally here in Fort Wayne, where Donald Trump promised to bring back jobs, where he also used harsh words against China, saying it is raping the U.S. economy.

And Donald Trump also returning to his regular rhetoric against who he calls Lyin' Ted Cruz. He slammed the short lived alliance between John Kasich and Ted Cruz, calling it all just part of the rigged political system. Donald Trump also dug into Heidi Cruz's comments that her husband is, in fact, an immigrant, even though Donald Trump did concede that Heidi Cruz was likely just referring to the Senator's father's Cuban roots.

TRUMP: Heidi Cruz, nice woman, said my husband, -- you heard about this, right - said this morning, my husband's an immigrant. He's an immigrant; and that's what I've been saying, except a lot of people, -- I think she was trying to say -- she was trying to put a little Latin turn on it. He was born in Canada, folks. He was born in Canada. One thing I tell you, (1) he's go - he can't win; got no path to win. Even if he had a path to win, which he doesn't, he has very few votes and he has very few delegates, but I have been saying he wasn't born in this country. The first thing the Democrats would do, assuming he won, -- which he won't, so I'm not even playing that card -- is they will bring a lawsuit against him.

SCHNEIDER: But Donald Trump did pull back a bit on his harsh tone saying he wants to bring the party together, even pledging to raise money for the Republican National Committee, as well as congressional candidates if he makes it to the general election. At one point today, saying to the crowd please, let's focus on Hillary.

TRUMP: You know, the Republican Party has to come together, folks, and if it doesn't come together it's going to be hard; but I will tell you this. I will tell you this: they said to me, will if it doesn't come together, does that mean you can't win? No, I think I can win. Why? Do you think it helps Jeb Bush? What's that worth, like two votes? Jeb and his wife; seriously. I don't think it matters, but it would be nice to have the Republican Party come together. With that being said, I think I'll win any way. I think I will win New York State, I think I'll win Michigan; I think I'll win states that nobody ever won before, as a Republican, for many years.

SCHNEIDER: Donald Trump has all but declared this race over, saying Cruz and Kasich have no road to victory. Donald Trump, of course, touting that 15-point lead that he has, right now, in the polls just before voters here in Indiana head out to vote on Tuesday.

Jessica Schneider, CNN, Fort Wayne, Indiana.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Democratic Frontrunner Hillary Clinton says she believes she's on a path to win her party's nomination and she's willing to work together with her last remaining challenger, Bernie Sanders. She spoke to CNN's Jake Tapper about the Sanders' campaign is and where it's headed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY) DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Bernie Sanders has been a passionate advocate for positions he cares deeply about. I think that's been helpful to the Democratic Primary process. He's brought millions of people into the process, which I think is also very good for the Democratic Party; but there comes a time when you have to look at the reality.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Hear the full two-hour interview - I'm sorry, the full interview, rather, two hours from now on CNN Newsroom. You'll also hear Clinton's response to Donald Trump's attack on her that she's playing the woman's card.

A court battle could be looming over Prince's multi-million-dollar fortune. It's believed the music icon did not leave a will and potential beneficiaries are expected in a Minnesota courtroom on Monday. Sara Sidner has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, we're hearing from a source who is familiar with discussions surrounding Prince's estate that things have gotten contentious between family members in the first meeting they had to try to hash out the details of the estate. We can also tell you that we do now know [00:25:02] that that rumored vault is indeed there, inside of the home. We were able to speak with Prince's half-brother, Alfred Jackson, about what he's seen and about the emotional time he had after he found out that Prince had had died.

FRANK WHEATON, ATTORNEY, PRINCE'S HALF BROTHER ALFRED JACKSON: Mr. Jackson and I we had a special supervised two-hour tour of Paisley Park and it allowed Mr. Jackson to personally grieve and personally feel the warmth of Prince's spirit, the doves and everything.

SIDNEY: What was it like taking a tour of Paisley Park after your Brothers died?

ALFRED JACKSON, HALF-BROTHER, PRINCE: We looked at the whole premises, inside Paisley Park. We seen the vault door, but we never entered.

SIDNER: What was the experience like?

JACKSON: He's just a genius the way he had that; he really is. SIDNER: When you looked around, it looked like the work of a genius?

JACKSON: Yes.

SIDNER: What were you feeling at the time, as you walked through?

JACKSON: It felt real good. I was hoping that he was still living. I wanted him to still be with me.

SIDNER: But, Jackson says, he and the family are trying to work things out and they are all trying to do this as emotions are running really, really high. We understand that many of the siblings will be in court with their attorneys on Monday, as the courts try to figure out how many beneficiaries there are, and who exactly will be looking into all of the assets of the estate. John?

VAUSE: Sara Sidner, thank you. A short break here, but when we come back May Day celebrated around the world on Sunday but it wasn't entirely peaceful. We'll tell you where the rallies turned violent, when we come back.

Also ahead, an immigration march in Los Angeles with a clear message for The Donald.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:30:14] JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, everybody; you're watching "CNN Newsroom" live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause with the headlines this hour.

At least 30 people have reportedly been killed and dozens wounded in twin suicide bombings in Southern Iraq. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack saying it targeted Shi'ite special forces with one car bomb and then detonated the second when security arrived.

Hundreds of demonstrators who stormed the parliament in Baghdad are now postponing their protests until Friday. They staged a sit-in Saturday inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, demanding a vote on government reforms. Iraq's prime minister met with other Iraqi leaders on Sunday about the crisis.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Geneva to try to reinforce a fragile ceasefire in Syria. He met with the Jordanian Foreign Minister on Sunday. Kerry says the Russians are also involved in it these talks. The original so called "Cessation of Hostilities Agreement" is in danger of collapse.

(Inaudible) City fans had hoped to -- might have to postpone their celebration for one day with - home or draw with Manchester United on Sunday. Still, the club will clinch an English Premier League title with (Inaudible) with a lose or draw on Monday. It would be the (Inaudible) first major championship in 132 years of play. Much more on this in "World Sport" in less than an hour.

The beloved elephants of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus are bidding farewell. The last 11 hours touring with The Greatest Show on Earth took their final bow on Sunday, in Rhode Island, ending a 145-year tradition. Animal rights activists have protested these performances. The elephants will retire to the Ringling's Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida. A Ringling Brother's spokesman says retirement is best for the elephants, has nothing to do with the business side of the circus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEHEN PAYNE, VICE PRESIDENT OF CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS, FELD ENTERTAINMENT: Really it was a decision based on what we were hearing from our customers, but also looking around at the legislative landscape in the United States and realizing it was becoming more and more difficult for Ringling Brothers to tour all our cities, and we just didn't leave our elephants at the city limits. So we decided to move the elephants from the circus to the Ringling Brothers Center for Elephant Conservation and really make an even greater investment in their care and the conservation of an endangered species.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: CNN's Alina Machado went to the conservation center to find out what it's really like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALINA MACHADO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Tucked away in rural central Florida --

KENNETH FELD, OWNER, RINGLING BROTHERS CENTER FOR ELEPHANT CONSERVATION: It's so quiet.

MACHADO: On some 200 acres of land.

FELD: You can walk around; you don't hear anything.

MACHADO: There's a special place where some special stars go to retire. This is the Ringling Brothers Center for Elephant Conservation and it's here some of the elephants from Ringling's traveling circus get to kick back and enjoy a slower pace.

MACHADO: How many elephants did you start with here?

FELD: We started off with here, I want to say, somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe eight or nine elephants.

MACHADO: Today, 20 years after Kenneth Feld opened the Center's doors, some 29 elephants call this place home.

FELD: They are an endangered species, Asian elephants; and they were always the symbol of Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey and we knew if we didn't do something, maybe my grandchildren would never have the opportunity to see these incredible animals.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey has (inaudible) pachyderms. MACHADO: By 2018, 13 more will join the group after Ringling Brothers, owned by Feld's company, decided to phase out the elephants from their shows. The move comes after years of repeated criticism and lawsuits by animal rights groups; but Feld says the change is the result of the different laws regulating the use of elephants in each of the 115 cities the circus visits every year.

FELD: You can't operate any business, much less with animals, if you don't have consistency from city to city. It is a definite expense to be in litigation and to be fighting legislation. There is a saying, and it's been around for a long time, "you can't fight city hall." We found that to be the case in this situation.

MACHADO: At 69 years old, Mysor (ps) is the oldest elephant at the center.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Here you go, Mike.

MACHADO: The youngest is Mike. He was born here almost two years ago.

FELD: You're a little guy, but you're going to grow up to be a big guy I think.

MACHADO: Living proof, Feld says, of just how successful they have been at breeding the elephants.

FELD: This is Alana.

MACHADO: This is Alana?

FELD: Yes. You can tell its Alana; she's my daughter. She's so affectionate.

[00:35:01] MACHADO: These two girls, initially show elephants, became the breeding program's first moms.

FELD: Their first offspring are 22 years old.

MACHADO: Icky and Alana will probably live out their lives here?

FELD: Absolutely.

MACHADO: Trudy Williams and her husband help care for Alana and Icky and the rest of the group.

What's it like for you to be here every day?

TRUDY WILLIAMS, CARETAKER, RINGLING BROTHERS CENTER FOR ELEPHANT CONSERVATION Oh, it's awesome.

MACHADO: It's also a lot of hard work, that includes doing stretching exercises with the gentle giants.

WILLIAMS: That just stretches her legs out good. Gets her a good stretch. Move up. MACHADO: Walking them around the center --

WILLIAMS: We kind of have a path around those fields out there that we walk.

MACHADO: -- and, of course, giving them plenty to drink.

WILLIAMS: And they suck the water up into their trunk and then she will blow it into her mouth.

MACHADO: And when it's time to clean up, things can get messy.

WILLIAMS: Now she's getting ready to have a bath. So now you just want to rinse up on top of her head.

Head down, Alana.

Alright, then you can just rinse the rest of her face.

Alana, come here. Come here. Alana, foot. Good girl. Foot. Good girl. Steady. Alana, trunk.

So you can spray right around her tusks. You want to spray in there and clean that out. She will get a lot of dirt up in there. then you can spray in her mouth and in her lip. Make sure you clean that out.

MACHADO: It turns out clean wasn't exactly on Alana's mind. Minutes after her bath this happened. And once she was done playing in the sand, she went to another favorite spot, where we caught her creatively scratching an itch. Trudy and Jim, meanwhile are always nearby.

WILLIAMS: They just become like a best friend. You're around them so much and you build that relationship and they have such a personality.

MACHADO: A relationship that allows them to get up close and personal, giving trainers and vets the opportunity to draw blood, do ultrasounds and feed the animals.

Each elephant eats about 150 pounds of food a day. They eat some fruits and veggie, but most of their diet consists of hay. This is 21 tons of it and it usually only lasts for about ten days. And none of this is cheap.

What's the average cost of caring for these elephants?

FELD: Each elephant costs over $65,000 a year, per year, for all the years of their life.

MACHADO: Building a legacy Feld hopes will keep the species alive for generations to come.

FELD: I always say it's sort of like "Jurassic Park" with a happy ending.

[Laughter] (END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Okay; a short break here. When we come back, May Day riots are rocking the U.S. city of Seattle. We'll have a live report from there in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:40:24] VAUSE: Another scene in the U.S. city of Seattle a short time ago. Clashes during May Day protests between what the "The Seattle Times" are calling anti-capitalist demonstrators as well as police. You can see the tear gas is being fire.

Joining us on the line is Evan Bush; he's a reporter with "The Seattle Times." So, Evan, what's the latest now in these clashes between the demonstrators and police?

EVAN BUSH, REPORTER, "THE SEATTLE TIMES," via telephone: Well it's petered down quite a bit. The police sort of marshalled the protestors through downtown Seattle and then down to Soto, which is an industrial district in Seattle, to a Costco parking lot. There were a couple of arrests at the parking lot and a couple of arrests on the way and then the protestors and demonstrators went back down to downtown and it's pretty much petered out at this point.

VAUSE: But earlier there were reports that the protesters were throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks bricks at the police?

BUSH: I haven't seen any of that personally. I saw an officer with a bandaged head. I didn't see Molotov cocktails. I did hear a lot of folks talking about bricks and I think we're reporting that through our other reporters and Seattle Police as well. But it's been -- it certainly hasn't been an entirely peaceful march by any stretch, that much is certain.

VAUSE: We understand at least two police officers have been hurt and a number of arrests have been made. What more do you know about that?

BUSH: Well I've seen at least, let's see, five or six arrests. Basically what the police have done is they had sort of lines of officers on bicycles on either side of the street, and then when they saw someone that they thought they needed to arrest, they would sort of pedal in fast, surround them and pull them back from the rest of the protesters and arrest them. I saw that several times, so that's been interesting to see.

The police were -- this is sort of a yearly thing in Seattle. For the past five years we have had protests on May Day. They are a peaceful protest generally in the afternoon and then the anti-capitalists march has happened in the evening. This one, I think, we saw a larger police presence than we have seen before and aggressive tactics on both sides.

VAUSE: Okay, Evan; thank you. Evan Bush there with the very latest from Seattle, where we understand seven people have been arrested. Two police have been hurt. Police officers have been firing back with tear gas, as well as pepper spray.

Okay, we'll bring you more on the riots in Seattle later this hour, or maybe next hour. Thank you for watching "CNN Newsroom", live from Los Angeles; I'm John Vause. "World Sport" is up next. You're watching CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) ("WORLD SPORT" AIRED)