89 War-Torn Korean Families Bid Their Final Goodbyes; Police Arrest Undocumented Immigrant for Murder
VAUSE: Welcome back, everybody. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause with the headlines this hour. Donald Trump's former lawyer admits he broke campaign finance laws in 2016 and that then-candidate Trump directed him to do so. Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts including bank and tax fraud. He arranged payments to silence two women who claimed they had affairs with Trump. And the President's former campaign chairman has been found guilty of bank and tax fraud. A jury convicted Paul Manafort of 8 counts but could not reach a verdict on 10 others. Prosecutors have a week to decide if they want to retry him on those charges. The Trump administration will now let fate set their own carbon emission status to coal-fuelled power plants. The environmental and medical groups say the move will be bad for Americans' health and even the agency backing the plan admits the extra pollution could lead to as many as 1,400 more premature deaths a year, by 2030. Briefly reuniting in North Korea, 89 families separated by war, now have to hug and kiss their loved ones for what will probably be the last time. They spent 12 hours together over the past three days, not nearly long enough to make up for almost seven decades apart. Soon their South Korean relatives will return home, and thousands of others are still hoping to live long enough to see their relatives after a lifetime apart. Many around the world want to see these reunions offered to more families rather than just a select few. CNN's Paula Hancocks has our report from Seoul.</s>PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The final goodbyes and then boarding the buses to come back to South Korea after three days of this round of family reunions. Without a doubt, this is the most difficult and heart-wrenching part of these family reunions. Eighty-nine families from South Korea have been in North Korea for the past three days, 12 hours in all, a very choreographed 12 hours with their loved ones, trying to catch up on almost 70 years since they saw each other. Countless families were torn apart during the Korean War back in the 1950s and only a fraction of them have been able to reconnect. Now, these families, we're seeing, many very emotional images of them reconnecting. These families are considered the lucky ones. There are 57,000 more, here in South Korea, who would have been eligible for this first round of reunions. But only a tiny fraction are actually able to go. We have been hearing across the world, really, reaction pushing for more of these reunions. The U.N. secretary-general saying he wants to see this more often. The South Korean President, Moon Jae-in, himself, part of a separated family and part of one of these previous family reunions, saying, that for him, it is a top priority from a humanitarian point of view to make sure that there are more reunions. The head of the Red Cross here in South Korea saying he's talking to his North Korea counterpart, trying to push for more numbers to be involved because it is a race against time. The vast majority of these 89 families, the people who were chosen for this round, are 80 years and above, more than 20 percent are in their 90s. Thousands have died before they even knew if their families in the North were still alive. So it is a race against time and something that certainly the South Korean president says he is going to make a priority. Paula Hancocks, CNN, Seoul.</s>VAUSE: A tragic end to the search for a missing 20-year-old college student in Iowa with the discovery of what appears to be her body in a cornfield. Police have charged an undocumented immigrant with murder after he led them to a corpse covered in leaves. Just hours ago, at a campaign rally, President Trump seized on the death of Mollie Tibbetts.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You heard about today with the illegal alien coming in, very sadly, from Mexico, and you saw what happened to that incredible, beautiful young woman, should have never happened, illegally in our country. We've had a huge impact but the laws are so bad. The immigration laws are such a disgrace. We're getting them changed, but we have to get more Republicans. We have to get them.</s>VAUSE: For more now on the investigation, here's CNN'S Ryan Young, reporting in from Iowa.</s>RYAN YOUNG, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Mollie Tibbetts has been missing since July 18th and every time we go to one of these news conferences, you could see people, sort of, showing up in the background and maybe questioning what would happen next. Well, today, you heard people start crying as Mollie Tibbetts and the announcement was made because they were so upset about exactly what happened to this young lady. So many people were hoping for a better way for this to end. But unfortunately, their prayers were not answered. In fact, as you went through this community, you saw her face everywhere, as people were looking for her. They gave us the details about a man who apparently was in a car, was following along behind her, circled three or four times, and then finally got out of the car and started jogging alongside of her. When she said she was going to call 911, that man, tells investigators, apparently, he became enraged, blacked out, and did something to Mollie. Listen to investigators talking about some of the evidence that he provided them.</s>RICK RAHN, SPECIAL AGENT, IOWA DIVISION OF CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION: We have certainly had extensive searches throughout the county. We just didn't have success in locating her. In this particular case, she was found in a cornfield, and there were cornstalks placed over the top of her. And so, we just weren't able to locate her at this particular part of the investigation.</s>YOUNG: Police have charged Christian Rivera with first degree murder. We've also learned some new details about him. According to police and investigators, he's an illegal immigrant who has been in this area for about four to seven years and has kept a small footprint in this area. Of course, they'll be looking through his background to see if he had any connections with anybody else involved in this case. But right now, of course, a lot of people's hearts and prayers go to the family of Mollie Tibbetts, who was found dead in a cornfield. Ryan Young, CNN, Montezuma, Iowa.</s>VAUSE: Still to come in, it looks like they may be at it again. Just weeks before U.S. congressional elections, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft have identified and removed malicious content, and it seems the source goes all the way back to Russia.