Violent Storms in India; CNN Freedom Project; Data Scandal Fallout, World Headlines
LU STOUT: Let's take a look at this video. Look at the power of the wind in Northern India. Devastating and deadly storms have killed more than 100 people and injured hundreds more, that's according to state authorities. The Indian prime minister has expressed condolences for the victims and their families. Chad Myers joins me now live from CNN Weather Center. Chad, describe the condition and what made this dust storm still deadly there?</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST AND SCIENCE REPORTER: It was a complex of storms. In weather school, you call it mesoscale convective complex or mesoscale convective system. It is a batch of thunderstorms all feeding off of each other and rolling to the southeast, right over Agra. Here is that cell (ph) right there moving to the south and to the southeast. I am going to stop it for you and will show minute by minute how it happened. It began to develop just to the northwest of New Delhi. And then it expand in size and blew up over Agra. And all of a sudden, when you get one thunderstorm blowing out air, it blows up another thunderstorm here and you got them feeding on each other. Let me show you some night time video of the wind blowing sideways here. Now, this do happen quite often in North America. But we have structures that can withstand it. Much of this was power poles (ph), 8,000 power poles (ph), something like that, homes that just cannot withstand this type of wind. That was the issue here. So yes, there was dust in here, but the dust was the outfall from the thunderstorm complex itself. So let me get to an explainer (ph) here and I will show you how this happened. A thunderstorm those high up in the sky, thousands of meters, tens of thousands of meters sometimes, well, the storm itself was high and decided to collapse and make more thunderstorm. As the air pushes out, it pushes out dry air where it hasn't rained yet. And that's why we have the dust first and then we have the thunderstorm and the lightning. Last week, over a dozen people died because of lightning strikes alone. We got a very, very slow start to Monsoon season over the past couple of years. This may have something to do with the ground that is very dry. Kristie?</s>LU STOUT: Chad, thank you for that explainer (ph), walking us through on what made this wind so fierce and ultimately so deadly. Chad, thank you. It is feared that the death toll already so high, it will continue to rise. Many of the victims so far were killed when their homes collapsed. Nikhil Kumar is following the story from New Delhi. He joins us now live. Nikhil, to what degree was this a man-made disaster due to poor construction and unsafe buildings?</s>NIKHIL KUMAR, CNN NEW DELHI BUREAU CHIEF: Kristie, most of the fatalities are concentrated in rural areas. That is where (ph) the officials and the states particularly the state of</s>LU STOUT: Nikhil Kumar reporting live from New Delhi, thank you. There has been swift (ph) reaction to CNN's investigation into child labor in cobalt mines of Congo. Some manufacturers that use the mineral say that they are making big changes. Car maker Daimler has announced a major audit of its supply chains after CNN found that much of the cobalt used by electric car industry is being mined by children.</s>NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): We arrived at the Musonoie River Mine where the cobalt ore is washed to grind it down. Although we've been given permission to film here, as soon as they see us, officials begin to scare the children away. Not all of them though are fast enough. Some work on. One young boy staggers under his load, his friend sees the camera and he drops his sack. They clearly been warned. A mining ministry official spot this boy carrying cobalt has been captured by our cameras. His response is brutal. Later, we asked him why he struck the child, he refused to answer.</s>ELBAGIR (on camera): We now witnessed for ourselves that children are working here, that they are involved with the production of cobalt and we've seen the products of that child labor loaded on to a variety of different vehicles.</s>LU STOUT: That's Nima Elbagir reporting there. Daimler says it has explicitly forbidden child labor for years, but admits that it is difficult to verify the source of its cobalt. It says it will work with 1,500 suppliers worldwide to stop any violations. Nima Elbagir was part of the CNN team that investigated the story. She joins me again from London. Nima, incredible response here. A day after your report was released, Daimler has announced it will take action. Do you think it will enough?</s>ELBAGIR: That is the question. The reality is that this is an incredibly complicated process and that's one of the reasons why it has been so difficult. But they are commencing to 1,500 suppliers. The way that automobile supply chains work is that they are incredibly complex. And you go through different tiers (ph) of supplies. So generally the car maker will be dealing with perhaps just to tier one, the very top tier supplier. He will then go to other tiers. The issue with that is of course, if you could have done it, why didn't you do it sooner? If you could have orders (ph) of these 1,500, why didn't you this sooner? Daimler say that this is something that they have been looking into since 2013. Again, clearly an acknowledgment of their awareness of the problem. And Daimler actually, Kristie, among the companies that has been more forthcoming. When we spoke to them and showed them our findings initially, they immediately admitted that there were issues with their chain. With other companies, we actually had to dig through financial findings. The Tesla, for example, we had to go through their security commission planning (ph) to see that they themselves acknowledge that there was the possibility of child labor in their supplier chain. What Daimler has done is an extraordinary first step because what it does is set a template for other companies.</s>LU STOUT: To file this report, you and your team had to go through so many rims of data. You are also in the field subjected to intimidation. You also witnessed children being physically pushed and harassed because presumably they made their presence known in front of the cameras and that wasn't allowed. The mines are clearly trying to hide this stark secret and they are trying so hard to do it from reporters like you. Could they also hide it from the car makers and their auditors as well?</s>ELBAGIR: Yes is the simple answer. Yes, and that was one of the main focuses of this piece, was to show that we are dealing with this level of complicity at the official level. Car makers have been outsourcing that. There are more responsibilities to officials who are complicit and hiding child labor. Daimler has said that they are going to deal with it. They are going to directly audit at the mine. So they are going to send experts to the mine. And hopefully, those experts will go with an awareness that that is going to be a difficult task. And then it can't be about second or third party inspectors coming in sporadically.</s>LU STOUT: Nima Elbagir reporting live from CNN London for us, thank you once again and take care. British authorities, they are vowing to continue investigating Cambridge Analytica, even though the company says it is shutting down. The analytics firm has been under intense pressure after allegations that it misused personal Facebook data of tens of millions of people without their knowledge. But, it may not be entirely over for some of the executives of the company. They have set up a new data firm, something that The New York Times reports could be used as a front to rebrand Cambridge Analytica. CNN's Phil Black has been following the story. He joins us now live from London. Cambridge Analytica may have said, OK, we're shutting our operations, but will its top execs stay in the data mining business through this other entity?</s>PHIL BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kristie, company records here in the U.K. do show that investors and executives closely involved in the establishment and running of Cambridge Analytica have recently been moving to set up a new company called Emerdata. Its purpose, according to this official listing, have the nature of business as officially described as data processing, posting and other related activities. Cambridge Analytica itself announced this decision to wind up in a statement that was full of its usual defiance and denials, but also at times sounded a little angry and bitter. It blamed what it described as unfairly negative reporting. It said it had been vilified as a company for practices that are legal and widely accepted when it comes to online advertising both for politics and for business. Let's take a look at the direct quote now from the Cambridge Analytica statement. In it, it said this, despite Cambridge Analytica's unwavering confidence that its employees have acted ethically and lawfully, the siege of media coverage has driven away virtually all of the company's customers and suppliers. So essentially Cambridge Analytica has decided that its brand has been damaged beyond repair. Kristie?</s>LU STOUT: All right, Phil Black, reporting live from London, than you. You're watching "News Stream." Up next, risking it all to get the truth. The dangers facing journalists on World Press Freedom Day with special insight into Myanmar, coming up.