Return to Transcripts main page

AROUND THE WORLD

Obama's Charm Offensive; New Pope's Changes, Not Affecting Church Doctrine; : U.S. Warriors Fight For Rhinos; Luggage Put to the Test

Aired March 14, 2013 - 12:30   ET

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


MICHAEL HOLMES, CO-ANCHOR, "CNN AROUND THE WORLD": For a third straight day, he's meeting lawmakers on their territory trying to find some common ground on the budget and the deficit.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CO-ANCHOR, "CNN AROUND THE WORLD": So, our Dana Bash, she's joining us from Capitol Hill. Dana, do we think this is making any difference at all? He's meeting with Senate Republicans today.

DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, let's just start with the Senate Republicans.

Remember, Suzanne, the president actually dined with many of them, a dozen of them, last week. That by all accounts was something that was positive and productive just when it comes to the basic idea of relationship building and them understanding each other a little bit better because they simply obviously don't.

And, you know, obviously, everybody has been speaking past each other because they do differ very sharply and deeply especially on economic issues.

So, when it comes to today, I think it will probably be a different tone than what we saw from his meeting yesterday with House Republicans where it was by all accounts pretty intense, particularly on the number one issue in front of this country and in front of these politicians here which is the economy.

Probably be a little bit different. The president has more of a relationship not just because of his dinner last week, but because he was a member of the Senate, as well, so likely a different tone.

HOLMES: Yeah, Dana, I know it's hard to say before the meetings actually take place, but I'm curious your take on this so-called "charm offensive" this past week or so.

Is it making a difference? These are pretty hard-nosed politicians set in their ways. What do you think?

BASH: They are hard-nosed politicians set in their ways. And as I said, a meeting or a dinner or a lunch is not going to change the fundamental, very real philosophical differences that divide them, particularly on economic issues. It's not going to change the fact that the president wants to deal with deficit reduction by raising taxes and cutting spending and the Republicans don't want to even talk about raising taxes.

However, you know, one of the things that has been kind of the hallmark of criticism of the president from Democrats and Republicans here on Capitol Hill for a long time is that he doesn't reach out. He doesn't have a relationship, and you can't do anything really fundamental without having a relationship.

So, when it comes to that, there's no question. It couldn't have hurt, and it had to have helped.

HOLMES: All right. Dana, good to see you. Dana Bash there.

BASH: You, too.

HOLMES: All right. New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan, he's had a lot to say about the new pope.

We're going to tell you what he thinks Pope Francis can change within the church. He's got a big job ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Check it out. You're looking at live pictures from the Sistine Chapel. Pope Francis is celebrating mass for the first time as head of the Catholic Church.

HOLMES: Yeah, and today we actually learned some really interesting details about the new pope.

He had the option of going in a chauffeur-driven papal vehicle, but he wanted to get on the bus with all the other cardinals. He actually did that.

And, also, it's tradition that the new pope would sit on a throne to accept oaths and loyalty from the cardinals after being elected, but he said no and stood on the same level as the cardinals.

So, getting into that St. Francis humble-thing again there, Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: Yeah, sure. He seems very much like a down-to-earth kind of guy.

In an interview he had with our Chris Cuomo, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York says that the changes that come with the pope probably are not going to include church doctrine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What do you think Pope Francis can do that will give a sense of renewal for the Catholic Church?

CARDINAL TIMOTHY DOLAN, NEW YORK: You got it, Chris. Because the Catholic Church is ever-ancient, ever-new. It's a beautiful blend. Sometimes, we look to our church as a grandmother. Sometimes, we look to her as a young bride.

So, there's got to be that combination of things immutable and things that are timely. He'll do it well.

All we can do is look at his track record, OK? An amazingly simple sincere transparent man, a man who deeply loves the poor, a man who is theologically well-grounded in the timeless doctrine of the church, OK? And a man who knows how to govern.

Now, we're going to begin to see those kind of things. I think there may be a touch of simplicity, sincerity, openness.

I think he's going to tend to the Roman Curia, which is the central government, the government of the church universal, which we all said, you've been reporting it well, probably needs some tending to, right? What government doesn't?

As we look to D.C., we Americans are saying there need to be some changes there. I think we'll see that stuff.

CUOMO: You think that's the prospect for him as a reformer more than on the social liberal agenda of what's he going to do about women, what will he do about celibacy, what will he do about gay marriage?

Do you think that he would move the church on any of those? Or do you think that's not going to be his path?

DOLAN: No, I don't think he'll do that. I think he can't -- as you know, he can't really tamper with what's called the dispositive faith which he gratefully inherits and which it's now his job to pass on faithfully to the next generation.

So, he can't change any of the substance, the givens, but, boy, can he ever change the way that's presented.

And I think he's shrewd enough because he's been a pastor in a huge diocese to say, you know what? I love the traditional teachings of the church. I'm as loyal to them as the day is long, but I'm also recognizing that a lot of them aren't going over.

Now, I can't change them. I don't want to change them because they come to us from the Lord as part of the revelation, but we better work on a more tantalizing, attractive, compelling way to present them. And I think he'll do that, brilliantly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: A fascinating chat.

Now, special forces, Suzanne, they've got a bit of a new mission, don't they?

MALVEAUX: Oh, that's right. Protecting rhinos, actually, from their worst enemy, we are talking about poachers. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ultra-prize rhino horns selling greater than the price of gold in the black market to feed the sensational demand from Asia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: Welcome back to AROUND THE WORLD. Some top stories for you now.

In Jerusalem, Israeli politicians have reached an agreement on a new government that excludes the ultra-religious.

Now, this is a big deal because the ultraorthodox have almost always been part of the ruling coalition in recent times. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government includes a party that does, however, support the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The plan, of course, President Obama has opposed and guess what? Mr. Obama's going to be visiting Israel for the first time since becoming president next week.

MALVEAUX: And the people of China now have a new leader. Xi Jinping was formally elected president by the country's parliament four months after he took over as head of China's communist party.

He succeeds Hu Jintao on the top job. Xi has promised to crackdown on corruption, push economic reform and take action on pollution.

Another top story we're about to show you, a very real war that is raging now. This is a war against criminals who can actually wipe out an entire species if they are not stopped. This war is being fought in South Africa.

HOLMES: It is indeed, and that used to be, of course, a safe haven for rhinos, but not anymore. Now, they're almost gone.

Listen carefully to this rather haunting sound.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the reality which we are faced with in South Africa.

The question is, how long before someone wakes up and decides to do something about this crisis which we face?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now, this is the reason a team of highly trained American special forces are fighting to keep the African rhino from going extinct. And when we say fighting, we don't mean with words either.

MALVEAUX: This is real here. Live with us now two of the guys from Animal Planet's "Battleground - Rhino Wars."

We have Rob Roy. He's a retired Navy SEAL in San Diego. And in Washington, we're going to call you "Oz," simply because you're active duty in U.S. special forces. Thanks to both of you for joining us here.

Yes, this is a very big deal. I want to start off with you, Rob, because you're in south Africa, and this is literally a battle, a war that you're having with individuals who have been trying to kill these rhinos and poach them.

How do you prepare? And how do you go after these guys?

ROB ROY, TRACKS RHINO POACHERS IN SOUTH AFRICA: Well, I'll tell you, that's a good question. Because, you know, with all of our backgrounds and situational awareness and how we plan missions, how we execute missions, taking the four of us over there and dropping them into a foreign country, we were faced with a lot of difficult problems.

And one of them being knowing the battle space, which is the poachers. The poachers actually work in these syndicates, these big crime syndicates, could be anywhere from five to 55 guys as they shoot the animal or kill the animal, dig out the horn and then move that off the game reserve and then move it out into Mozambique, where it was exported to China and the Asian areas. It was different. It was different for all of us. We all have a sense of service. We all have a sense of, we want to do what's best for the greater good. But we were dealing with a lot of people that didn't see it the same way we saw it.

HOLMES: Yes.

MALVEAUX: Tell us -- go ahead, Michael.

HOLMES: Yes, no, I was going to dive in there and say that, you know, you're hunting these poachers. And the thing that in other parts of Africa too that we've seen is that these guys aren't messing around. They're armed. You're armed. In other parts of the country, it is shoot to kill if these guys engage. What are your rules of engagement?

ROY: Well, it's actually not -- we don't hunt the poachers. What we do is we try to deter the poachers from actually shooting the animals because they're not actually poachers for the animals until they shoot the animal. So you're dealing with as far as like a moral issue, if they come across the fence, then it's a -- you want to shoot to kill. It a lot -- Deli (ph) for Triangle (ph), capability, opportunity, intent. Can you shoot this person because he has a gun into the game reserve? Is he pointing the weapon at you? We went over the message of, if we start shooting people over here, then we would look like the bad guys. Our message had to be bigger and brighter than that because it's about the animals in the end.

MALVEAUX: Yes.

ROY: So, yes, hunting poachers, more so tracking them and trying to arrest them to figure out where the network was. If you could figure out the syndicates that are out there operating and what areas they're operating, it's easy for us to -- not attack them, but to send law enforcement to arrest them, to break that network down. And that was the biggest thing is that using intel to break down that network. And then the second part was the awareness for the population that's in that area to not hunt the rhinos.

MALVEAUX: Right. Hey, I want to bring in Oz into the conversation.

A couple things, Oz, here.

"OZ", U.S. SPECIAL FORCES MEDIC: Yes.

MALVEAUX: First of all, what do you see when you actually approach these rhinos? What kind of conditions are they in? What have you actually witnessed? And then secondly, how do you do this on top of being active duty in special forces?

OZ: Well, thank you for having us on the show.

To answer your second question first, I'm part of a group right now that's a National Guard group. So I'm active with their operation, but they allow me a lot of freedom to kind of do some private personal matters. And that's how I'm able to do this.

Well, I can tell you, walking up on the live ones is certainly -- it's an incredibly majestic feeling. You have a sense of excitement, but a sense of nervousness walking up on an animal that is 3,000 pounds of solid muscle and just -- it's a tremendously calming feeling that you manage to feel in that presence, which is kind of strange. But I can tell you that walking upon the animals that have been massacred, you have a sense of anger. You have a sense of sadness. And when you see the way that they butcher these young, young animals, the small ones, for just a couple grams of these horns, you get a sense for the brutality and the level of viciousness that these people have in terms of, you know, being motivated by their greed to commit these crimes.

MALVEAUX: Oz, do you actually see these rhinos suffering? I understand that sometimes they shoot them and they're still alive when they're actually carving them up and taking their horns and all these kinds of things.

OZ: I can tell you just hearing that question actually kind of makes my stomach sink. Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the beginning of our show, there's and animal that has survived a brutal attack. He's been massacred. The front of his face is chopped off. He's bleeding heavily internally and externally, going into shock, suffering, crying out for help, can barely even hold its head up. If it even survives the gunshot, it probably will die of massive infection afterward. You can hear these animals crying. I mean, you can't deny that they're feeling pain.

MALVEAUX: That is unbelievable.

OZ: Yes. MALVEAUX: Yes. I mean, Rob, Oz, thank you so much, both of you, for the incredible work that you're doing. Really appreciate it. Again, where can we see this?

OZ: "Battleground Rhino Wars" is being shown on Animal Planet. We are doing our best to get the word out. The goal objective of our show is really to create public awareness. So the more people that watch, the more encouraged, you know, everyone will be in terms of making a difference. And what we want to do is we want to get back into the fight and we need viewers to watch us and show that they support this cause. Because I think we can really make a difference.

MALVEAUX: All right. Rob, Oz, thank you very much.

HOLMES: Great work. And if you're a poacher, you wouldn't want these two coming up on you either. So, great work. Appreciate what you're doing there.

ROY: Teddy bears.

HOLMES: Yes, really. I've hung out with you guys before. Well, not you guys, but.

When you pick up your luggage at the airport, sometimes it can look a little bit rougher than when you began your trip, right? Well, up next, putting your bags to the ultimate traveler test.

MALVEAUX: And a reminder to watch CNN's new show "The Lead with Jake Tapper," starting Monday afternoon, 4:00 Eastern, for our U.S. viewers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: In Europe, the European Commission unveiled new rules for airline passenger rights. Now, among them, travelers will be put on a rival carrier if their flight is delayed more than 12 hours. And they'll clarify the definition of exceptional circumstances when it comes to compensation. Mechanical failures count. Natural disasters do not. And there's some protection for the industry too. Airlines won't have to pay for more than a three-night hotel stay.

MALVEAUX: Michael, I know you've probably experienced this. You travel all the time. I know it happens to me. You check your luggage at the airport, not treated as well as you would treat it yourself, of course.

HOLMES: I've lost a couple of bags.

MALVEAUX: And when it comes back, it's kind of beaten up, you know. So these are tossed in the planes with hundreds of the other bags, as you know. Can sit in the weather. I've had wet luggage as well. So the manufacturers of luggage now, they're actually trying to make sure that it's tough enough for all this stuff. Rosie Tomkins takes us behind the scenes to Samsonite, the company, of course, putting the luggage to the test.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROSIE TOMKINS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Shake, rattle and roll. This is the suitcase torture chamber. Punishing every bag. Proving it can hack the rough and tumble of life on the road.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now what we simulate here is the real life of a suitcase.

TOMKINS: Fifty cycles here, 10,000 drops there. No mess (ph) in this test lab where they randomly test samples plucked from the factory floor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Each operator assembles a complete suitcase. On average, they assemble 80 pieces a day.

TOMKINS: That's around five minutes per case. And the pressure's on to be both efficient and precise.

TOMKINS (on camera): Each individual assembly operator has a number and that number goes inside the case. This is the key to Samsonite's quality control. Because if the case arrives at the shop with a fault in it, they can trace it all the way back to the person who made it.

TOMKINS (voice-over): After more than a century in the business, Samsonite is several times larger than any competitor. They face several challenges to maintain that lead. Durability is a given, as the chief executive himself makes sure.

TIM PARKER, CHAIRMAN & CEO, SAMSONITE: You can see that this product is none the worse for wear.

TOMKINS: But the key for luggage makers today is responding to the constant changes in the way we travel.

PARKER: People's requirements are changing all the time. And just to give you one example, the cases that we sell today are probably half the weight that they were five years ago. And people are much more concerned now about how much cases weigh because it's obviously easier to use a lighter case, but also it can cost you money.

There's an area here I can also fill up.

TOMKINS (on camera): And that's really what people are after these days, isn't it? They don't want to pay for the extra kilos.

PARKER: What they want is something they can stuff into an overhead locker.

TOMKINS (voice-over): Small enough to stuff into the locker or light enough to get the most bang for your buck at check-in.

The challenge lies in developing the latest and lightest technology.

TOMKINS (on camera): It only takes about a handful of these pellets to make an entire case. PARKER: This is my sort of case that I'll use for -- you can put into that any size of computer. One of the challenges for us is to meet the space limitation of airline, while at the same time offering the business person the opportunity to put everything they want to take away with them for a two or three-day trip.

TOMKINS (voice-over): The days of the steamer (ph) trunk are long gone. Today, bags have to be light, tidy and tough. Which means most of us only buy a new one once every five years.

TOMKINS (on camera): You pride yourselves on building luggage to last, but you want people to keep buying luggage as well.

PARKER: I would never worry, actually, about selling a product that lasted a long time. There's always new people who are traveling, there are always new products to invent. So even though people may have a few cases up there in the attic, that's not a worry for us.

TOMKINS (voice-over): And thanks to this lineup, whenever you do fish it out of the attic, it should bounce back however heavy the landing.

Rosie Tomkins, CNN, (INAUDIBLE), Belgium.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: I think my luggage has been through all that.

Check out this photo. It's an intimate moment and a formal greeting for heads of state. We're going to tell you where are photos around the world, after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: We have several photos for you that caught our attention today. Have a look at this one. It's a Russian guard. He's not kicking up the snow there. He's actually taking part in the ceremonious changing of the guard. This change happens every hour, rain or shine, at Russia's Tomb of the Unknown.

MALVEAUX: Pretty cool.

Let's check this out. Not a kiss. They are not bumping heads. It's actually traditional hello in New Zealand. On the left, the president of Myanmar being greeted as he arrives in New Zealand. It is called "honay" (ph) or "sharing of breath."