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38 Medals Awarded In First Day Of Rio Olympics; Rebel Fighters In Aleppo Gain New Foothold. Aired 12-12:30a

Aired August 7, 2016 - 00:00   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, HOST: The quest for Olympic glory is on with 38 medals already awarded in the first day of competition and a new world record posted.

And one Olympic gymnast is proving that age is just a number as she competes in the games for her seventh time.

Plus rebel fighters in Aleppo get a morale boost after gaining a new foot hold against Syrian government forces laying siege to the city.

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ALLEN: It is all ahead here on "CNN Newsroom" thank you for joining us. We're live in Atlanta, I'm Natalie Allen.

The first full day of competition at the Rio Olympic games is in the books.

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ALLEN: In the last few hours, Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu broke the world record for the women's 400m individual medley to win gold. There were no major problems reported other than a controlled explosion of a suspicious package near the end of the men's cycling road race.

For more now on the first day, here's CNN's Christina Macfarlane in Rio.

CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It was a busy opening day in Rio, where the 31st Olympiad got under way with 12 Olympic gold medals across seven disciplines.

And the first of the day went to the United States, 19-year-old Jenny Thrasher in the 10m air rifle pulling off a surprise upset to beat the 2004 Athens gold medalist Du Li of China.

Just days after 273 Russian athletes were finally cleared to take part in the Rio Olympic games after allegations of state-sponsored doping, Russia's Beslan Mudranov cemented his country's place on the medal roster with gold in the 60 kilogram judo competition. A poignant moment after a turbulent few months in the Russia doping scandal.

Perhaps the most dramatic event of the day, however, was the men's road race after Italy's Vincenzo Nibali crashed out in the closing stages. A three-way sprint for the line saw Belgian's Greg Van Avermaet take gold on the closing stretch of the Copacaba.

Over at the Baha'I Olympic Village meanwhile, the opening day of the men's gymnastics saw a horrific accident befall French gymnast Samir Ait Said has suffered a horrific leg break while performing in the vault. The 26-year-old's left leg folded beneath him as he landed badly during the men's qualification event. He's currently undergoing treatment in hospital for a broken tibia.

Well it was a record-breaking night for women's swimming after Hungary's Katinka Hosszu shattered the 400m individual medley world record by just under five seconds claiming the Olympic gold that has long eluded her after missing out at London 2012.

And shortly after that, the Australian women streaked ahead to defend their Olympic title taking the 4 x 100 meters ahead of team USA and medal favorite Katie Ledecky making her first appearance in Rio to close out the night.

Plenty more to come, though, from Ledecky on Sunday when she takes to the pool as the clear favorite in the 400m freestyle. And we could see our first glimpse of 18 time gold medalist Michael Phelps in the men's 4 x 100m relay. 14 gold medals in store for Sunday. The Olympic games in Rio well and truly under way.

Christina Macfarlane, CNN, Rio.

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ALLEN: And here's a look at the medal standings after the first day of Olympic competition.

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ALLEN: Australia and Hungary are tied for first for the number of gold medals won with two each. United States, South Korea, Japan and Argentina each won one gold. But Japan and the U.S. lead in total medals. Both countries took home five medals Saturday.

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ALLEN: Well Christina just mentioned her U.S. swimming sensation Katie Ledecky could be one of the breakout starts of these Olympics. She won gold at the 2012 London games at age 15 and expectations are high for the swimmer in Brazil.

CNN's Coy Wire has a look at why Ledecky is one of the athletes to watch in Rio.

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COY WIRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What is fear? KATIE LEDECKY, OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST: I don't know. Never heard of it.

With swimming, it's never something that I've had to be fearful of.

WIRE: Before Katie Ledecky was ever smashing the status quo in world records, swimming was just something she started at the age of 6 to spend time her older brother, Michael.

LEDECKY: My brother's always been there for me. I couldn't be prouder of him. The person he is. The role model that he has always been for me. I've always looked up to him. We've always had a great relationship. You know, we love each other.

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WIRE: How much of your parents, your family, sacrificed for you to chase your dreams?

LEDECKY: I don't think they view it as a sacrifice which really means a lot to me. I think they enjoy it as much as I do. I always say that I'm almost happy that I haven't gotten my license yet because that time in the car that I have with them driving to and from practice, that's valuable time that I have talking to my parents.

WIRE: Growing up in the Washington, D.C., area, Ledecky met a lot of celebrities and developed an affinity for politics. Despite the 19- year-old's busy training schedule, she's closely following the U.S. Presidential election.

LEDECKY: This is my, the first year that I get to vote, so I know that I have to pay special attention and no matter what, I'll be going in and voting in November. So I better be paying attention.

WIRE: Is it true that after a long day of training, studying for school, reading, you'll just kick back and watch CNN?

LEDECKY: It is. I am, like, addicted to CNN. Like, it's almost bad. Yes, I've got to catch up on my news, my breaking news.

WIRE: Over time, the distances and stakes have grown for Ledecky. She'll enter Rio with high expectations to bring home multiple gold medals but she doesn't feel added pressure when she dives into the pool.

LEDECKY: It's something I started for recreation, playing around in the water with my mom growing up. In some ways that's what it still is in my mind, just seeing how fast I can get up and down the pool a couple times.

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ALLEN: And just a couple of hours ago, Ledecky and her American teammates took home the silver in the women's 4 x 100m relay.

A New Zealand Olympic official managed a lucky escape in Rio on Saturday.

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ALLEN: The official was working in a tent at the equestrian event center when a bullet flew through the roof and landed only two meters from her. No one was hurt. Police say the bullet was not fired intentionally but they are still investigating the situation.

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ALLEN: You can keep up with all the news out of Rio on our website, it has the latest on the athletes, the venue, and the competition at CNN.com/Olympics.

We return now to other news we're following around the world. People in the Syrian city of Aleppo found a rare glimmer of hope on Saturday.

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ALLEN: They took to the streets to celebrate the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that rebel forces have punctured the government siege on the city. An alliance of Islamist factions has been trying to open supply lines back up after regime forces cut them last week. The U.N. has warned of a humanitarian crisis for the 250,000 civilians remaining in Aleppo. There is still no viable exit route from the city.

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ALLEN: Belgian police say a man wielding a machete wounded two female police officers Saturday in the city of Charleroi.

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ALLEN: A third officer shot and killed the attacker. Police say the assailant was heard shouting "allahu akbar" an Arabic phrase meaning god is greatest. The city - the city south of Brussels where suicide bombers killed dozens of people in March.

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ALLEN: Tech company, Foursquare, says Trump-branded businesses may be taking a hit.

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ALLEN: How the controversy surrounding Trump's presidential campaign could be behind the decline. We'll look into that as "CNN Newsroom" pushes on.

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ALLEN: Turning to the election now. Donald Trump is suggesting again, that Hillary Clinton is not mentally fit to be president. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: The Republican presidential candidate is using a term Clinton used to defend how she handled classified e-mails while Secretary of State. On Friday, Clinton said she, "short circuited" when implying that FBI Director James Comey said Clinton had been truthful in explaining her handling of the e-mails to the public. That claim was false. Comey had said her answers to FBI questions were truthful.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It was in front of some friendly reporters. They asked her a very easy question and she short circuited. She used the term, short circuited. She took a little short circuit in the brain. And she's got problems. I mean, if we had real people, this would be a real problem for her, but I think that the people of this country don't want somebody that's going to short circuit up here.

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ALLEN: And Trump has repeatedly said his business credentials guarantee he can boost the American economy. However, the many controversies surrounding the real estate mogul might hurt not just his political dreams, but perhaps the many businesses bearing his name. "CNN Money Correspondent Cristina Alesci has that.

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CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Trump branded businesses may be taking a hit according to data from Foursquare. Now the tech company says there's been a clear decline in foot traffic to Trump branded golf courses, hotels, casino and it has a pretty good sample size. It's based on the activity of 50 million monthly active users.

The data show a dramatic falloff in March down 17% in that month and in April from the same period a year earlier. Just as another point of comparison, traffic to those sites was steady year over year before Trump announced his bid for president. So what is happening?

Now, some of these businesses are located in blue states. New York, Trump's Soho, for example. Chicago's Trump International Hotel and Tower. Those two properties saw some of the steepest declines and Foursquare also points out that women are playing a role. It reports a double digit decrease in visits from women this year. Perhaps a sign that this idea of Trump being anti-women is resonating.

Now, it's important to note that this doesn't necessarily mean that profits are hurting at any of these properties. We don't know if these people would have been spending a tremendous amount of money at these properties. And remember that Trump makes money from licensing his name. So for the properties that he doesn't own outright, which there are many, it's unclear if he gets paid less on licensing deals just because foot traffic is down.

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ALLEN: CNN Money Correspondent, Cristina Alesci. And Trump once owned the Taj Mahal Casino and Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The current owner says the casino will close at the end of the summer due to an ongoing employee strike.

Wikileaks is walking back a claim that it is trying to get its hands on Donald Trump's tax returns. Trump has yet to release them despite many calls for him to so. The comments came from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at the end of an interview with Bill Maher on HBO.

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BILL MAHER, HBO: Why don't you hack into Donald Trump's tax returns?

JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER: Well, we're working on it.

ALLEN: Saturday morning, Wikileaks sent out a tweet saying "Wikileaks isn't working on hacking trump's tax returns. The claim is a joke from a comedy show. We are working on encouraging whistleblowers."

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ALLEN: We recently found out the Democratic National Committee isn't immune to the rise of hacking and that has us asking another question. Is it possible to tinker with election results? "CNN Money Senior Technology correspondent Laurie Segall found out it's frighteningly easy.

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GEORGE KURTZ, CEO CROWDSTRIKE: I think a hacked U.S. election could tip the balance to one candidate or another.

LAURIE SEGALL, CNN SENIOR TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: Over the last few months hacking and politics have become a dangerous combination with the DNC and Clinton campaign getting hacked. We're here in Las Vegas for "black hats". It's a conference where the best hackers in the world get together to talk security.

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SEGALL: Now, while there's no indication that the voting process has ever been hacked, we decided to ask some of the hackers here if it were even possible. You guys were pulled in to help the DNC figure out whether or not they'd been hacked and you did figure out that they had, in fact, been hacked. And all signs point to Russia. What are the implications of this?

KURTZ: I think this is really a bit of a water shed event. I mean 40 years ago we had Watergate, right? And that's where you had you know a couple boxes of files that were stolen. Now we're talking about 20,000, 30,000 files that are being dumped on the internet.

SEGALL: Do you worry there are other state actors sitting in on some very internal, important conversations that pertain to the U.S. election?

KURTZ: That's 100% certainty. That's not even a doubt in my mind that there's other actors that are out there that have yet to be found. It's just too big of an opportunity for them. It's too easy to get in.

SEGALL: But it goes beyond the campaigns being vulnerable. What about the actual machines we use to vote? A security firm called Semantec actually purchased a couple of electronic machines on Ebay to see how secure they really are. Now you have to remember that there are tons of different types of voting machines out there. And each U.S. county uses what they feel works including electronic and optical scanning devices and about 75% of the country still makes their choice on plain old paper. Now in this particular case, these hackers said they found some major issues. Here's their perspective.

BRIAN VARNER, SYMANTEC SENIOR RESEARCHER: So what we're seeing is what a voter would be presented with when they go into a precinct. So when you get your voter identification card, which is a smartcard, and you would insert it into the machine. And then go ahead and start your voting process. With the smartcards running small little computer systems on there, devices as tiny as this could be used to manipulate the smartcard to allow you to vote multiple times.

SEGALL: So the idea behind this is anyone who's able to get their hands on the cards that are going to be used if they have the technical skills, they could essentially build what you just built which allows them to cast their vote as many times as possible.

VARNER: I could probably put 400 votes in, myself, in less than a couple minutes and the poll workers would be none the wiser.

SEGALL: Take us through what happens after you submit your vote. What are other ways this could be vulnerable?

VARNER: These devices have to communicate with some sort of database system. We don't know what the transport network looks like between this machine and the actual database server so anywhere along that path if the hacker were to have something installed, then the communications could be intercepted.

SEGALL: Given all this research what would you say is safer, electronic voting or voting on paper?

VARNER: Well I can tell you this year I will be voting via paper with the mail-in ballot.

SEGALL: As someone who is kind of knee deep in vulnerabilities, so you always see that the worst can happen. What keeps you up at night?

VARNER: A compromised election.

SEGALL: Now, Varner says he doesn't believe we're that close to a compromised election yet but does want to raise awareness of these types of vulnerabilities. What I did hear from these guys is even if one voting machine is perceived as compromised that has broad implications in how the American public trust the voting process. Back to you.

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ALLEN: All right, well, let's hope none of that happens.

All right, this happened in a subway station in Shanghai. Derek is here to tell us a collapse of ceiling tiles and it had to do with weather.

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DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It did. And you've got to see this video. Can you imagine just walking along minding your own business then having the ceiling collapse right in front of you? I mean, that is serious stuff.

Shanghai is an extremely humid city, right? And I think that, well, investigators determined that the humidity in the air actually corroded the ceiling tile so that they eventually imploded like that and also a sudden change of wind pressure within the underground subway system there. So just astounding video to see.

I want to show you a couple other things we're monitoring across the world. And this is just various tropical disturbances that are keeping our attention here in the weather department. This is tropical storm Omis and this formed north of Guam several days ago. And I want to show you just because this is a large system, if you look at the span of the entire satellite, it spans roughly about 1,000 nautical miles. That's a huge storm.

Fortunately, it is going to veer away from mainland Japan. But it is a close call. We actually will feel the impacts of this particular system in terms of high seas across the east-facing shoreline of mainland Japan. So right near the center of the storm, we're anticipating anywhere from 6 to 8 meter swells. So a major concern for some of the shipping industry.

Now you can see the satellite loop across southern Mexico. This is the remnants of Earl. Excuse the blank banner at the top there. The National Hurricane Center just re-updated the information. But nonetheless, this is post-tropical system has produced a significant amount of rain over south-central Mexico. Look at those rainfall totals. And then you can see exactly why they're getting images or were receiving images just like this. Mudslides, landslides. A major concern as the system starts to now exit from southern Mexico and re- enter the abundant warm waters of the Pacific Ocean.

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DAM: So what was hurricane Earl is now going to change into the Pacific Ocean, actually the potential exists for it to be renamed into a new name. Can you believe that? And we're going to monitor this as it tracks towards the north and west. Cabo San Lucas, something they need to monitor later on this week. It will be renamed Javier. Can you believe that? I've never seen anything like that.

All right, check this out we've got a lot of eyes on Rio de Janeiro and yesterday at this time we were reporting a perfect forecast for the next five days and it will be nice today. But by Monday, maybe some rain showers. Not good news for the beach volleyball players. (END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: No.

DAM: They can handle it though.

ALLEN: They can handle it. They can handle anything.

DAM: They're pretty tough. I was watching some of the videos of those girls. They're amazing athletes.

ALLEN: I know. All right. Thanks, Derek.

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ALLEN: Well speaking of amazing athletes, an Egyptian fencer made history at the London Olympics. He hopes to do it again in Rio. Will he? We'll have his story ahead here on "CNN Newsroom."

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ALLEN: An Egyptian fencer hopes to make history yet again when he won silver at the London Olympics, it was a first for Africa. Now in Rio, he says he won't be happy with anything less than gold. Ian Lee has his story from Cairo.

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IAN LEE: Crossing swords with a world champion takes lightning reflexes. When Alaaeldin Abouelkassem, on the left won silver in men's foil at London's Olympics, history was made. The first African to win a medal in fencing.

ALAAELDIN ABOUELKASSEM, EGYPTIAN OLYMPIC FENCER: A lot of Egyptians tried for years and Africans tried for years to get medal in fencing. So for them, my medal was like their medal. So I felt that we were really one family.

LEE: But Ala, as his friends call him isn't satisfied.

ABOUELKASSEM: So I won't accept less than the gold medal in Rio.

LEE: Ala returned from the 2012 games determined. He moved to France to focus on fencing full time. Expectations are high for the Egyptian, and so is the stress.

ABOUELKASSEM: I worked very hard for four years now. I moved out. I'm living in a new city. With new friends, away from my family. So I'm just very motivated that my work will be paid in the next Olympics.

LEE: Working hard means training six days a week. The 25-year-old French coach helps with footwork, strength, technique and attacking.

ABOUELKASSEM: It's more the defense was always my strong point. Now I'm working with more because I cannot win with only one action.

LEE: What is foil? It's a style of fencing. Simply, hit the torso with the tip of the sword before the other guy. For someone who's never fenced, Ala shows me the basics. First, stand on guard. Second, a little footwork. Then you strike.

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LEE: Not often you get trained by an Olympic athlete. Training Egypt's national team, Adam Kaszubowski from Poland. He's preparing the country's eight fencing Olympians for Rio.

ADAM KASZUBOWSKI, COACH EGYPTIAN FENCING TEAM: For other coaches, this is the basic, you have to understand that (inaudible) of your player, his mentality, his mentality of defense. And after this, we create our strategy.

LEE: He hopes the strategy pays off in medals. Ala aims to make history again. This time to be the first African to win fencing gold.

Ian Lee, CNN, Cairo.

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ALLEN: We'll remember his name and we'll let you know if he wins gold.

Olympic gymnastics is a sport as you know dominated by youth, many medalists are teenagers if not all of them. But in Rio, a gymnast decades older is competing in her seventh Olympics. And with that, she's already made history. Here's her story.

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UNIDENTFIED MALE: She's 41 years old and has competed in every Olympic games since 1992. Uzbekistan's Oksana Chusovitina qualified for Rio in gymnastics at the age of 40.

OKSANA CHUSOVITINA: [Speaking foreign]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 2012 when she competed in London, the medal winners were all under 18 years old. Chusovitina won gold in Barcelona in '92 before most of her competitors were even born. And she won silver on vault in 2008 at the age of 33. She's competed under four different flags. But in Rio, she's with team Uzbekistan , her home.

OKSANA CHUSOVITINA: [Speaking foreign]

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ALLEN: How about that one? We wish her well. Will be watching. Thanks for watching "CNN Newsroom" I'm Natalie Allen. "Business Traveler" is next and our top stories.