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Israel's Security Cabinet to Vote on Gaza Truce; Israeli Strikes Kill 86 in Gaza After Ceasefire Announced; Surfers Battling Wildfires; Rep. Mike Turner Removed as Intelligence Chairman; Trump's Cabinet Picks Expects Confirmation; Giuliani Settles with Election Workers. Bodies Retrieved As S. Africa Cracks Down On Illegal Mining; Starship Spacecraft Disintegrates Minutes After Launch. Aired 2-2:45a ET

Aired January 17, 2025 - 02:00   ET

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

[02:00:00]

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KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN HOST: Welcome to all of you watching us around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM. Israel's security cabinet is set to vote on a ceasefire deal in the coming hours as families of hostages eagerly await the return of loved ones. And --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEEGAN GIBBS, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, COMMUNITY BRIGADE: It's absolutely tragic to see the scale of devastation on this, but this is the glimmer of hope.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Surfers in Los Angeles on the front lines, helping firefighters and their communities battle the flames.

And SpaceX's Starship explodes over the Atlantic Ocean just minutes into a test flight.

After a day of delays and accusations, Israel's prime minister now says for the first time that his government has agreed to a ceasefire deal with Hamas. Earlier, Benjamin Netanyahu said he wouldn't comment until all the details are finalized. Israel's security cabinet is soon expected to vote on this agreement that's been 15 months in the making.

Now, it would halt the fighting and lead to the phased release of dozens of hostages held in Gaza. It also calls for a surge of humanitarian aid into the territory and for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners to be freed. The deal is to be voted on by the full cabinet on Saturday. Now, demonstrators with loved ones held captive in Gaza are urging their leaders to sign the ceasefire, but it still faces some strong opposition inside Israel.

The National Security Minister is among the far-right leaders who have come out against the truce or tried to put conditions on it. Itamar Ben-Gvir is threatening to pull his party out of the ruling coalition if the deal is approved, which could cause the government to collapse. But the U.S. says it considers the agreement done and agreed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We expect implementation of the agreement to begin on Sunday.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Meanwhile, the IDF has been hammering Gaza. The enclave's civil defense says nearly 90 people have been killed, hundreds more wounded since the ceasefire was announced. Israel says it struck approximately 50 terror targets across the territory. CNN's Paula Hancocks is covering this live from Abu Dhabi. So, Paula, what's the latest?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kim, certainly people in Gaza are hoping desperately that this ceasefire does go into place as expected on Sunday. Of course, those internal Israeli ratification processes raising some questions as to the timing, but we are expecting at least that security cabinet meeting in just over an hour from now and then on Saturday evening is expected to be the full cabinet voting.

Now, the Israeli prime minister has a majority in both of those formats so there's not -- they expected to be any problems, but of course there is a concern that this could push the timing back although the U.S. at this point is still sticking to that deadline of Sunday for the ceasefire to take place. And people on the ground in Gaza are desperate that is the case as they are seeing an increase in Israeli airstrikes. Now, I must warn our viewers that some of the images in this upcoming report are disturbing.

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HANCOCKS (voice-over): Celebrations erupted in Gaza as word spread that a ceasefire had been agreed and that the guns would fall silent. They are not silent yet. Dozens have been killed in Israeli strikes since the announcement was made.

Wake up, this brother says. The war is over. Wake up, Hala (ph). But the war is ending too late for his sister. This intimate moment filmed just hours after leaders stood on stage announcing the deal. Also too late for many caught up in a barrage of Israeli air strikes.

This is truly a tragedy, a spokesperson of the Gaza Civil Defense says. The Israeli occupation does not want this blood waterfall to stop as bombing is continuing until this moment. When asked about an increase in airstrikes, the IDF says it is continuing to dismantle Hamas' military capabilities.

[02:04:58]

Bodies are offloaded at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital as well as the wounded. Children are once again among the victims, a recurring theme of this bloody war. We were sitting in our homes, this man says when F-16 jets struck us, bringing the house down on top of us. Around 15 people were killed. We're waiting for the truce, hoping those who are missing and displaced will return.

Rescuers pulled bodies and survivors from under the rubble of a home, with their bare hands in one Gaza City neighborhood. The director of the Al-Ahli hospital accuses Israel of a quote, "desperate attempt" to cause as much harm as possible, warning the hours before the ceasefire take hold are, quote, "expected to be violent and painful" for the people of Gaza.

It would not be the first time we see an increase in violence in the hours and days before a ceasefire. For the residents of Gaza, joy is mixed with fear that Sunday's truce is still a long way away.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(On camera): The IDF said on Thursday that the previous 24 hours they had targeted 50 what they call terror targets saying that also they did kill one Hamas member who was involved in the Nova Music Festival attack on October 7th and that they will continue to target those Hamas members. What we are also seeing of course with this ceasefire coming in potentially on Sunday is the humanitarian aid situation slowly improving.

We are hearing in the first phase, there will be potentially up to 600 humanitarian aid trucks every day coming in, maybe not from day one, but humanitarian aid groups are saying that it is imperative for this ceasefire to go through to address the acute situation in Gaza, a situation which has been acute for many, many months now. But they also say that the security situation on the ground is still of a concern even if the bombs stop falling. Kim?

BRUNHUBER: Yeah, so much riding on this deal as you outlined in your piece there. Paula Hancocks, thank you so much.

One of the hostages expected to be released during phase one of the ceasefire is an American, Keith Siegel. His brother says he thinks he'll be in horrible condition based on how weak he appeared in a hostage video from a few months ago. Lee Siegel spoke to CNN's Bianna Golodryga.

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LEE SIEGEL, BROTHER OF HOSTAGE KEITH SIEGEL: Plus, genuinely until all 98 hostages are home, I have a part in me that there's a hole. Keith is going to fill a big, huge part of that hole for all of us, our entire family. But we all know that without 98 hostages coming home, something's missing. Israel is not able to get back into a routine of looking to the future where we're in recovery. They all need to be home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Now, I want to go live now to Tel Aviv and Alon Pinkas, former Israeli Consul General in New York. Thank you so much for joining us here again. So just to start, what do you make of these last-minute delays? Will this deal actually be finalized in the end?

ALON PINKAS, FORMER ISRAELI CONSUL GENERAL IN NEW YORK: Good morning, Kim. Well, okay, there's a combination of things that delayed this by one day. The first is there was a substantive claim by Israel that Hamas was trying to reinterpret the agreement and in terms of the identities of the Palestinian prisoners who will be released. That was a hiccup, more than a hurdle.

The second thing which is more important was Mr. Netanyahu, the prime minister, grandstanding to placate his right-wing coalition, extreme right-wing coalition members and to demonstrate how tough he was until the very last moment and how he stood resolute and firm in the face of last minute changes. Okay, that's all behind us. I expect, as you said in your introduction, the cabinet to agree to this morning, Friday morning Israel time.

But what it does do, and this goes to the second part of your question, Kim, what it does do is it portends a very tenuous process here. Because look, this entire deal, this entire agreement, the phased structure of it, really hinges on the durability and sustainability of the ceasefire. Now, in an area like this, this is not the end of World War I or the end of World War II or the end of any other war as we know it.

[02:10:00]

This is a very small, very dense area that has been devastated and decimated, with rubble all over the place, with Hamas gangs hiding in tunnels or beneath the rubble, with the Israeli army basically controlling two-thirds of the Gaza Strip. To assume, Kim, that a ceasefire could be upheld here is quite a stretch and a difficult and tenuous proposition. So, if there were disagreements even before it went into effect, which is what we saw in the last 24, 36 hours, it is very depressing to think what would come next.

BRUNHUBER: But this deal, I mean, it hinges not just on the sustainability of a ceasefire, as you say, but also what you were sort of talking about earlier, the real political threat of the right here. Of that political crisis that threatens to upend Netanyahu's government, I mean, what does it mean for the coalition government and the prime minister's future?

PINKAS: Okay. For that, we need to look at the agreement itself, because here's how, I think, it's going to play out. The prime minister can get the support, well, the passive support of the extreme right wing. When I say passive, I mean they will vote against it but not necessarily leave the government in the first place. But the first phase is only 42 days long. Assuming it does work, the second phase is where he's going to confront major political headwinds because the second phase calls for his early withdrawal, and, as President Biden said, a permanent ceasefire.

That is something the warmongering right-wing in his coalition would not agree to. So if we look beyond the next 42 days, again, assuming that it works smoothly, relatively smoothly, which I sort of doubt, but let's hope that it does work smoothly, it does proceed smoothly. In 42 days, if there is a phase two, and according to Hamas and according to the mediators, the U.S. provided assurances that phase two will proceed, then he may not have a government anymore.

BRUNHUBER: Thanks for saying. So your read is that a second and third phase are essentially dead despite the fact that we'll have a new president here in the U.S. who will be pushing for presumably just the end to this war.

PINKAS: You've got an excellent point that you're raising because this is the problem that Netanyahu is going to face. It's a problem of his own making, let's not forget it or let's not -- let's remind our viewers that this agreement could have been done last night and again in July and again in August, but here we are in mid-January. So Netanyahu is (inaudible) in a bind here.

He needs to placate his extreme right-wing coalition members on the one hand, but on the other hand, he is extraordinarily scared and anxious about what reaction he's going to get from Trump because Trump may not be interested in the details and may not, you know, we all call him transactional because he is a transaction on his approach to politics. There's no transaction here other than the quiet he gets in the Middle East, the relative quiet, the end of the war.

And if Mr. Netanyahu and his government somehow resume the war, or if it is resumed because Hamas violated the ceasefire, then Trump is going to get extraordinarily angry with Mr. Netanyahu. And so he's right now caught -- he can't satisfy both Trump and his right-wing coalition. Something has to give. And this is basically the political position he's going to find himself in, he already finds himself in and he's going to find himself way deeper in the next few weeks.

BRUNHUBER: Listen, we'll have to leave it there, but as always, appreciate your analysis. Alon Pinkas in Tel Aviv. Thank you so much.

PINKAS: Thank you, Kim.

BRUNHUBER: The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner now reports 27 people have died as a result of the Palisades and Eaton fires. The sheriff says another 31 people are unaccounted for. Investigators say evidence regarding what started the fires is vast and finding the causes will take a long time. Authorities in San Bernardino County have arrested a man in connection with the Little Mountain Fire that broke out on Wednesday. The brush fire was contained at about 14 hectares with no reports of injuries or property damage.

Nearly 10,000 firefighters are on the scene in Los Angeles County doing heroic work for more than a week now. And working with them are members of what's known as the Community Brigade. Many of them are surfers who volunteered to be a kind of community watch for fires and fire prevention. CNN's Gary Tuckman reports.

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GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Their passion is surfing off the Southern California coast. But Keegan Gibbs and Tyler Hauptman also have a passion to save lives.

GIBBS: It's been this cultural challenge to get people to understand that it's the little things that you do that make a big difference.

TYLER HAUPTMAN, WILDFIRE MITIGATION SPECIALIST: This is the worst fire I've ever seen.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Keegan and Tyler are two of the founders of the Malibu-based L.A. County Fire Department Community Brigade, a group of dozens of volunteers, mostly surfers like Keegan and Tyler, who work in close conjunction with the fire department to rescue and evacuate victims during a fire and make houses safer before a fire.

GIBBS: The Community Brigade program was born out of Woolsey, Woolsey Fire in 2018, out of a recognition that us, homeowners, residents need to take more responsibility for our decision to live in a high-risk area like the Santa Monica Mountains.

(VIDEO PLAYING)

TUCHMAN (voice-over): This video was shot by the Community Brigade as members encountered flames from the Palisades Fire. The brigade leaders say they helped to evacuate hundreds of residents. On this road on a Malibu hillside, several houses were destroyed. But this home has no damage. The owner of this house had previously gotten together with the brigade, learning about home hardening.

HAUPTMAN: Home hardening is a methodology to protect your home and mitigate your home from wildfires.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Critically important, keeping flammable vegetation more than five feet from your house. The brigade founders went back with us to the house that did not burn.

GIBBS: Remember how this was a lot heavier. Remember it was like --

HAUPTMAN: Yeah.

GIBBS: -- it was up into the window almost before. And she, you know, the second time we visited, it was still high and we were like, hey, remember bring this down because if it ignites up against the window. She brought it all down. It ignited, burned, didn't even spread to the ones next to it.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Not leaving windows and doors open, putting one-eighth inch mesh screens over vents. Other crucial pieces of advice, the brigade preaches to residents all over Malibu. Regarding this house --

GIBBS: It's absolutely tragic to see the scale of devastation on this, but this is the glimmer of hope.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): But there is a sad irony to what Tyler Hauptman went through while he was helping so many others.

(On camera): Tell me about your home. HAUPTMAN: Well, it's like a thousand square foot home. My wife

designed the whole thing.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Tyler's home burned to the ground. When houses are close together in neighborhoods like this one, your home hardening efforts are much less effective if your neighbors aren't doing the same. Because if a neighbor's house catches fire, a flaming domino effect dramatically increases the chances yours will too.

HAUPTMAN: It's just really hard to process still.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): But both Tyler and Keegan continue on helping people, dealing with the aftermath of this fire. Many hours of work, which they combine with their day jobs and their surfing.

HAUPTMAN: Anytime there's Santa Ana winds is usually when the surf's great, but it's also the most harriest (ph) fire conditions. So we've missed a lot of good days for sure.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Gary Tuchman, CNN, Malibu, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: All right, when we come back, confirmation hearings for Trump's cabinet picks continue on Capitol Hill days before he takes office for the second time. More on the latest details next. Stay with us.

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[02:20:00]

BRUNHUBER: There's been a major shakeup in Congress days before Donald Trump's inauguration. U.S. House Speaker chose Republican Rick Crawford to be the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He's a Trump loyalist who has voted against additional aid for Ukraine. Congressman Mike Turner, a vocal supporter of Ukraine, was ousted from the role Wednesday. Here's what he told my colleague, Erin Burnett, back in 2023.

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ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Do you believe it is still worth it for the United States to send whatever needs to be sent to Ukraine?

REP. MIKE TURNER (R-OH): Absolutely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Meanwhile, Thursday's confirmation hearings for Trump's cabinet picks put the focus on his domestic and economic agendas. His nominees faced a third day of hard questions from lawmakers, but most are expected to be confirmed.

All right, joining us now is Thomas Gift, the director of the Center on U.S. Politics at University College London. Good to see you again. Thanks so much for being here with us. So just to start, going back to what I opened with there, the ouster of Mike Turner, what do you think it signals?

THOMAS GIFT, DIRECTOR, CENTRE ON U.S. POLITICS, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON: Well, it's great to be with you, Kim. Thanks so much for having me. I mean it, again signals exactly what we've seen time and time and time again since Trump has been elected that Trump is going to surround himself by individuals who express not just loyalty to him, but fealty to him. That's essentially been the main criteria for each of Trump's cabinet nominees and it's also been true of other government officials who are going to be around the office during his next administration.

So Trump really perceived the main mistake he made during his first term as not surrounding himself by people who had showing themselves as committed to him. He's not making that mistake again.

BRUNHUBER: All right, so you spoke of the cabinet nominees. Let's go to the confirmation hearings that were held this week. So looking at them sort of as a whole, what do you make of just how far the Republican Senate has fallen into line behind Trump's picks?

GIFT: Well, this has really piqued (ph) Trump right now. He won the Electoral College and the popular vote. Virtually all of his legal problems are gone, and Republicans are definitely lining up behind Trump to voice their support for his cabinet nominees. I really think that Pete Hegseth was a very important case, precisely because I think there was some concern among Republicans that if he didn't get through, then there could potentially be a domino effect.

It would essentially create permission for other Republican senators to vote against other Trump cabinet picks. But when Joni Ernst said that she was coming out in favor of Hegseth, and Republicans generally seem like they're going to do so, I think that it was a sign of strength for Trump. Really, and I would be surprised if any of his cabinet nominees maybe don't get through now.

BRUNHUBER: Yeah, and then, you know, importantly, Trump stood by him unlike Matt Gaetz. So when we look at, then, yesterday's picks and the answers they gave, they were focused on the Trump administration's domestic priorities. Scott Bessent for Treasury for example the big themes there were the Trump tax cuts and how to pay for them. So just looking at what was said, what stood out to you?

GIFT: Absolutely. I think Scott Bessent is going to sail through. He's a relatively uncontroversial pick. But it does show some fractures I think within the MAGA base. There's this over simplification to assume that all MAGA Republicans share identical beliefs, but that's definitely not true. You know, Trump is much more transactional than ideological. He's not a fiscal conservative. I think that that's probably the most important point to note here.

And he even floated the idea of raising or eliminating the debt ceiling during the recent spending bill. In contrast, you have individuals like Scott Bessent, who I think are much more attuned to some of the economics, more of a fiscal moderate or fiscal conservative. So, it's going to be an interesting dynamic, I think, within the White House. That's also true on trade issues, where I think, Scott Bessent is going to try to ratchet back some of Trump's impulses to just apply tariffs on every single import coming into the United States.

BRUNHUBER: Yeah, exactly. I was going to mention that. Exactly. So let's look ahead here. Still a number of controversial picks to get through. We have Kash Patel for the FBI, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services, Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence. So who's at the most risk, do you think? Or will they all get through?

GIFT: I actually think that they're all going to get through, but my sense is that Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence will have the most uphill battle.

[02:24:58]

It was reported earlier this week that there was a paperwork issue regarding Gabbard with the Office of Government Ethics, but critics of Gabbard highlight her limited intelligence experience, her controversial relationships with adversaries of the United States, and her past favorable comments about leaders like Russia's Vladimir Putin. Her meeting with the post-Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad in 2017 has also drawn scrutiny.

So, you're absolutely right, Kim. There's no shortage of controversial Trump picks including RFK, Jr., Kash Patel and others, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are some Republican holdouts in the senate when it comes to Gabbard.

BRUNHUBER: All right. We shall see. If there's been a through line of our discussion here it's been sort of this idea of loyalty pique Trump as you say. So many people, from politicians to CEOs have been falling in line with Donald Trump. Do you expect to see any significant cracks in the MAGAverse to kind of show up in the coming weeks after inauguration?

GIFT: Well, I think that the main issue is going to be right from the outset this issue over tariffs. Of course, Trump has promised to impose tariffs of 10 to 20 percent on all imports into the United States and upwards of 60 percent tariffs on imports from China. The thing is, though, Trump doesn't really need any help to get that through. He can more or less do it unilaterally without Congress. So I think that that's one issue to watch.

And then again, the other issue as kind of we noted, was whether Trump, who is much more of a populist, sort of a big government conservative, doesn't subscribe to conservative economic principles, whether that's going to run into House Freedom Caucus that seems to have as their race on (inaudible) raining back spending. So I think that those are two cracks that could emerge early and potentially often during the Trump administration.

BRUNHUBER: All right, we'll have to leave it there. Always appreciate speaking with you. Thomas Gift in London. Thank you so much. GIFT: Thanks, Kim.

BRUNHUBER: Donald Trump's former attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has reached an agreement with two Georgia election workers that he defamed to settle the nearly $150 million judgment against him. Giuliani claims the deal doesn't involve an admission of wrongdoing. His lawyer refused to answer many questions about the deal and the details of the settlement, including if there was any money involved.

The two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss, call the deal a major milestone that allows them to move forward with their lives. The agreement allows Giuliani to keep his condos in Florida with millions and his most valuable possessions. And it brings to an end a years-long saga over his false statements after the 2020 presidential election when he was working for Trump.

From South Africa, a tragic ending for many trying to scratch a living from an illegal mine. More of the story after the break.

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[02:30:42]

KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR: And welcome back to all of you watching us around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM.

South Africa is facing heavy criticism for its clampdown on an illegal mining operation after at least 78 bodies have been pulled from the mine. In November, the government allegedly cut off food and water to hundreds of miners underground. The bodies were retrieved in the course of a court ordered rescue operation searching for survivors. Police said at least 166 people had been rescued alive from the mine shaft in Stilfontein, but more than 100 others are believed to have died from starvation and dehydration.

A survivor spoke of what drove him to enter the hazardous mine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MOEKETSKI KHATI, MINER AT ILLEGAL OPERATION: I took a decision to take my -- my own risk, to risk about my life and go to the abandoned shafts to get some gold to earn a living. Our government doesn't provide us with -- with job. So we saw job opportunity for us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: All right. We go live now to David van Wyk in South Africa. He's a mining expert and lead researcher with the Bench Marks Foundation.

Thanks so much for joining us here. So it took a court order to force authorities to launch this rescue operation. You were part of that effort to get these men out. This began when the authorities cut off food and supplies to the miners, trying to, quote, smoke them out.

Now, police say these miners didn't have to die down there. They weren't stuck down there, that they could have come out on their own.

Is that true?

DAVID VAN WYK, LEAD RESEARCHER, BENCH MARKS FOUNDATION: No, it's unfortunately not true. There was one single rope that the community had put down, 2,000 meters to pull people up, and they could pull up one person every three hours or so. And there were hundreds of people underground. So that was not going to really work. And people would not willingly starve.

If we consider that in court, most of these guys were given six month sentences suspended for six years. Now, most small scale artisanal miners, informal sector miners know that the courts really don't have much of a case against them, so they would come up if they could come up.

You know, at that particular point, they couldn't come up because most of the shafts where they could come up were blocked. And it's extremely difficult when you've run out of batteries and you've got no light to traverse the tunnels underground, and you could get lost in the maze of tunnels where you could fall down other shafts and so on, and die in the process.

With the 78 dead bodies that have come up, we believe there's more than 109 people that died underground. Not all the bodies have been retrieved.

BRUNHUBER: Yeah, just absolutely tragic. There have been calls for an independent inquiry. What's the likelihood anyone will actually be held accountable for these deaths?

VAN WYK: Well, the minister of mining certainly should be held accountable. You know, he appeared at the scene of this tragedy. Tragedy on Monday. This is after this thing started in August last year. Already it escalated in November.

And for the minister of mining not to have shown any interest all this time. No interviews, no discussions, no -- you know, disclosures to the public or anything from him in particular. You know, we are in a country that is in transition from large scale industrial mining. The gold mines are largely no longer profitable for large scale industrial mining, but no one has planned for smaller and medium scale mining. And tens of thousands of workers have lost their jobs.

And mining towns are practically dying. When these towns could actually be better used and jobs could be created within these towns around renewable energy and a whole range of other activities using the very same infrastructure of the mines, which have been abandoned illegally. It's illegal to abandon a mine in South Africa, but corporations do that with impunity because the government does not hold them accountable.

BRUNHUBER: Yeah. So you're talking about these miners. I mean, the police were sort of painting them as criminals controlled by gangs. So give me a bit more detail about who exactly these miners are. VAN WYK: Well, most of these miners would be formally retrenched

mineworkers who no longer have any jobs in the mining industry is shrinking very, very rapidly.

[02:35:09]

And the migrant labor system that was there under apartheid has collapsed effectively. Now, many of these mineworkers and also the widows of those who have died will tell you that people come to Lesotho and other labor sending areas in neighboring countries to recruit them. They believe that they're coming to legal mining operations. When they get here, they find themselves in illegal operations. But there are many other people who simply go down because they are starving and hungry.

Yes, it is true that there are syndicates, but I'm a bit cynical about the government's account about the syndicates, because one of the big syndicate leaders met the minister of police two years ago at the major international airport in Johannesburg, and he was not arrested, even though the police had fingered him in a shooting two months previously.

BRUNHUBER: So what we're seeing there at that mine, as you've talked about, there is just a symptom of a huge problem in the country. We have on one hand the authorities, the government pursuing this operation called, they've called, closed the hole. You're advocating that they sort of regulate them and allow them a form of this mining for the -- to employ these, these miners.

Any -- any signs that they -- the government might be moving in that direction, might moderate their stance, perhaps.

VAN WYK: Well, we contributed to a government white paper on artisanal mining, and we worked on it for about three years, and we made submissions to it. It's implementation is being very slow. You know, it needs to be speeded up. The implementation of this thing needs to be speeded up.

But these mines can also be used for geothermal electricity generation. They're ultra deep. Many of them have got water in them. The water can be extracted and used for industrial purposes. The mine wasteland, which is toxic, can be used for solar farms.

There's so many applications that you can use these old mines for which they are not doing, and so the mines simply get plundered by scrap metal dealers and so on. And you know what you have there is a ruin. It looks like, you know, Gaza or Ukraine being bombed, the areas around these mines instead of the infrastructure that is there being utilized to actually create jobs and keep towns alive and keep people in work.

BRUNHUBER: Yeah, one can only hope the government will -- will learn from this tragedy.

David Van Wyk, thank you so much for speaking with us. Really appreciate it. VAM WYK: Thank you so much.

BRUNHUBER: A brilliant light show lit up the skies over the Turks and Caicos, but Elon Musk and SpaceX back on Earth -- well, they weren't exactly celebrating. We'll explain what they think went wrong, just ahead. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRUNHUBER: SpaceX chief Elon Musk says it looks like a propellant leak caused the Starship spacecraft to disintegrate just minutes after launch.

[02:40:08]

You see it there. Video shows burning fragments falling from the sky, briefly delaying commercial airline flights in Florida. No one was on board the spacecraft, which was set to deploy mock satellites as part of demonstration.

SpaceX managed to capture the reusable super heavy booster rocket between two extended arms in a tower off the Texas coast.

Meanwhile, in outer space, a pair of NASA astronauts ventured outside the International Space Station for a 6-1/2-hour spacewalk. Suni Williams and Nick Hague made some repairs and got a look at the SpaceX capsule floating nearby.

Williams and Butch Wilmore have been stranded in space since last June on what was supposed to be a week-long trip. This was the eighth spacewalk for Williams and the first for NASA astronauts since last summer.

All right. We have this story just into CNN. A court in Pakistan has sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan to 14 years in prison in a land corruption case. It's the largest case in terms of financial wrongdoing faced by the politician. The verdict was delivered by an anti-graft court in a prison in Rawalpindi, where khan has been jailed since august 2023. We'll have more details when they become available.

The film director David Lynch, a master of surreal and erotic images in the movies, has died at the age of 78. Lynch gained fame with his haunting TV melodrama "Twin Peaks", about the murder of a homecoming queen and the seedy conspiracy set against a college student's return home in his film "Blue Velvet".

Lynch also plunged an aspiring Hollywood actress into a cryptic underworld in "Mulholland Drive". His use of bizarre images often left filmgoers searching for meaning, but the film community called him a visionary who won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and received four Oscar nominations.

Lynch had emphysema, but his family gave no cause of death.

Kyle McLaughlin, star of "Twin Peaks" and "Blue Velvet", said lynch embodied a creative ocean, saying simply, I will miss him. All right. That wraps this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Kim Brunhuber.

I'll be back in 15 minutes with more news.

"WORLD SPORT" is next.

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