North Korea Tensions; Japan Decides; Raqqa Liberation; Battle Against ISIS
VINCE CELLINI, CNN SPORT ANCHOR: I'm Vince Cellini with your CNN World Sport headlines. Lewis Hamilton may be well on his way to clinching a fourth Formula One world championship but it's not quite over yet. The bird (ph) did claim a ninth win of the season and fifth in his last sixth race at the U.S. Grand Prix. But his rival Ferrari Sebastian Vettel finished second meaning there is a mathematical chance of Hamilton being caught</s>HOWELL: The U.S. secretary of defense is in Asia, discussing the growing tensions with North Korea. James Mattis kicked off his week- long trip in the Philippines. That's where he is meeting with his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Speaking with reporters earlier, Mattis emphasized diplomacy as a way to deescalate the crisis. Listen.</s>JAMES MATTIS, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We will be talking about how we reinforce the diplomatic efforts to resolve this campaign to try to return a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, and also how we're going to maintain peace by keeping our military alert while our diplomats, Japanese, South Korea and U.S., work with all the nations to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.</s>HOWELL: Mattis's trip comes just a few weeks before his boss makes his first trip to Asia. As the U.S. president prepares for that trip, he discussed North Korea and its nuclear program in an interview with Fox News on Sunday. Mr. Trump praised China for stepping up, and boasted that the U.S. is prepared for anything.</s>TRUMP: They have been helping us. They're closing off their banking systems to North Korea. They have cut the oil way down. Look, 93 percent of the things going into North Korea comes through China. China is big stuff. I believe he's got -- he's got the power to do something very significant with respect to North Korea. We'll see what happens. Now, with that being said, we're prepared for anything. We are so prepared like you wouldn't believe.</s>HOWELL: Another nation keeping an eye on North Korea is Japan. That nation's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is declaring a resounding victory in Sunday's snap general election. On Sunday night, he spoke on the phone with the U.S. president. The two reaffirmed their commitment to put pressure on North Korea. Let's go live to Tokyo. Journalist Kaori Enjoji is on the story. Let's start with the prime minister's speech to the voters who reelected him. What were some of the key points of his message?</s>KAORI ENJOJI, JOURNALIST: George, the key points from the prime minister were that the Japanese electorate voted for continuity. This prime minister has been in office this time around since 2012, so that's nearly five years. And if he is voted in again as the head of the party, he could be in office. He could be prime minister until the year 2021, and that's nine years in total. And that hasn't happened in the post war period. And he was saying today at the news conference that that kind of continuity is what's needed in order to address some of the key issues that Japan faces, primarily North Korea, the aging population, the economy, the rising debt level. So, I think that is the message he wanted to bring home after this very, very big win in the elections on Sunday.</s>HOWELL: Continuity with the economy. Also continuity presumably with North Korea. As we mentioned, the prime minister spoke by phone with the U.S. president specifically on the issue of North Korea and the nuclear program. What more can you tell us about the nature of that call?</s>ENJOJI: Well, this was a 30-minute telephone call. And Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Donald Trump have had a number of telephone conversations in recent months, particularly because of the North Korean situation. And he said that they discussed the North Korean issue, and that they had agreed that they would take ample time at their meeting in November, on November 5th, when Donald Trump comes to Japan and the Asian region to discuss North Korea and to reaffirm their commitment in trying to deal with this rising threat as the country continues to launch missiles, some of them over Japan, and threatens the entire region. And I think that kind of a telephone call is also an effort by the prime minister to show that he has been able to engage the U.S. President Donald Trump and to be a sympathetic ear at a time when some of the other global leaders have had difficulty doing so since the start of this year.</s>HOWELL: Kaori, I've heard you describe this as a game changer in your reporting before for the prime minister. Explain exactly what that means politically. How does he come out of this effectively with more power to make changes?</s>ENJOJI: I think he is definitely emboldened by the two-third majority that he has with the coalition. This will be the last chance the prime minister has in trying to amend the constitution. This is a pacifist constitution that has been in place throughout the entire post war period. And he has made no secret that he wants to give a bigger role to the armed force, the military here, to give them a bigger role, not only in the region, but globally, and really legitimize their presence. And a two-third majority, that's what he needs in both houses of the diet (ph). He also needs to call a national referendum as well. So, that's a little bit of another story and a longer story. But I think he is definitely emboldened to try and push through with this dream that he has had and to make it the hallmark of his tenure.</s>HOWELL: Journalist Kaori Enjoji in Tokyo, thanks. Russia is slamming the U.S.-led bombing of Raqqa, Syria, saying it left the Syrian city erased. State media report a defense ministry spokeswoman compared Raqqa's fate to that of Dresden in World War II. That German city was the target of heavy allied bombing in the effort to defeat the Nazis. Raqqa was the de facto ISIS capital which U.S.- backed forces declared liberated just days ago. CNN's Arwa Damon reports its recovery could be long and it could be very difficult.</s>ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The destruction of Raqqa is so vast and devastating. It's heartbreaking. And it's going the take at least three to four months before civilians can even begin to go back and try to take stock of what it is that they have actually physically lost because that is how long it's going to take to clear the city of various explosives and mines. The civilian population now by and large languishing in overcrowded refugee camps. And among them, very little celebration at the liberation of their city because of the price they had to pay for it. Everybody who we spoke to knows someone who has died, whether it's a relative, a loved one or a friend. And when it comes to the actual physical reconstruction of Raqqa, where is the civilian counsel even going to begin? If we take Kobani, that saw a similar scale of destruction to Raqqa, well, only 50 percent of it has actually approximately been rebuilt. And the international donations that were pledged, they never materialized. People had to build their homes, if they could afford it, out of their savings. And additionally, just because ISIS has physically lost the territory of its caliphate, as we keep hearing time and time again, that does not mean that ISIS as an ideology, as an entity capable of carrying out attacks and drawing in even more recruits is necessarily over. What we heard from a man from Bahrain who has been detained by the Kurdish forces is that ISIS already has a plan in place. He says they have the finances. They have the means. They have the capability to morph and reemerge again. Arwa Damon, CNN, Kobani, Syria.</s>HOWELL: Arwa, thanks for the report. ISIS remains a threat. And both the U.S. and Russian-backed troops share the battlefield in Deir ez- Zor. For more, CNN's Nick Paton Walsh has this report.</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This may be where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is hiding but probably wishes he wasn't. Russian and Syrian regime has tried to pound ISIS's remnants in the city of Deir ez-Zor but they aren't alone in the skies or the ground here. Banking hard and keeping out of the Russians' way are U.S. jets, assisting these U.V.-backed Kurdish fighters to take the nearby countryside from ISIS just the day before. ISIS, collapsing and leaving in their wake an almost cold war standoff. (on camera): ISIS may be holding out in a pocket of a town of Deir ez- Zor, behind me, over there surrounded by the Syrian regime. But they've been kicked out too of this area by American-backed Kurdish SDF forces. Now they've advanced to to this river here which puts them literally meters away from the Syrian regime who are backed by Russian air power. We're told, in fact, these Kurdish-American-backed forces have held face-to-face meetings with Russian military officials to be sure they don't clash around here. Now in the end game against ISIS, Moscow and Washington's forces literally meters away from each other. (voice-over): The Kurds are so relaxed with their new neighbors that fishing is this afternoon's task, with hand grenades. Five years in, and Syria is ground to dust. And this is what they're still fighting over. It's unclear who is left inside Deir ez-Zor. But those who fled, estimated recently at 10,000 a day, dot the skyline. They try to filter them, but last week a suicide bomber struck. And yesterday, they found 30 ISIS fighters. They're followed around by the horror of what they fled, but also by suspicion. The simple question. Are the last to flee the most loyal to ISIS or just the least fortunate? We saw everything in my village, she says. Air strikes, children and elderly dying, my relative just last week. The children couldn't stop crying from fear. I could only stand there. What could I do? I don't know if our home is still standing or even who is bombing us. Yusuf (ph) is 10 and doesn't have any superhero powers here. Just dust and bad dreams. When I would hear the shelling, he says, I would hide in the ground. The hardest part about living in the desert is we're not at home. The stream is endless, like the bombing they flee and this war. Which keeps finding new chapters and adversaries around them. Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, near Deir ez-Zor, Syria.</s>HOWELL: Nick, thank you for the report. Still ahead, Spain is defending its plan to suspend Catalonia's semi autonomy. Next, why some Catalan residents say direct rule from Madrid could be good for their fur. "Newsroom" is live from Atlanta, Georgia this hour, simulcast on both CNN USA and CNN International this hour.