Vladimir Putin Begins His Fourth Term; Sexual Violence in India; Lava Flow Shows No Signs of Slowing Down
VAUSE: To all the viewers joining us, you're watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause.</s>SESAY: And I'm Isha Sesay. The headlines this hour. Donald Trump will announce his decision on the future of the Iran nuclear deal in the coming hours. He's widely expected to pull the U.S. out of the agreement despite urging from Britain, France and Germany. Iran says it will not renegotiate the deal.</s>VAUSE: "The Wall Street Journal" is reporting that President Trump's legal team is hoping he will decide by May 17 of testifying in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. One of his attorneys, Rudy Giuliani says the President has felt, what does he have to lose by sitting down with Mueller? But Donald Trump has also promised to weigh his legal team's advice.</s>SESAY: Well, the Nigerian army says it's rescued more than 1,000 people held captive by Boko Haram in Borno State. Most are women and children and also some young men who were forced to fight for the terror group. The rescued hostages are receiving treatment at a military facility.</s>VAUSE: Well, there were dignitaries, a former German chancellor and a Hollywood action there all looking as Vladimir Putin began his fourth term as Russian president.</s>SESAY: In his inauguration speech, he laid out a plan for more restoration for his new term. Matthew Chance has all the details.</s>MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we witnessed an extravagant bit of political theater here in Russia with the inauguration ceremony of Vladimir Putin. He was pictured working in his office, then strolling on his own to the long corridors in the Kremlin before getting into a especially constructed presidential limousine which has been dubbed locally the Putin mobile to take him on a short drive to the Grand Kremlin Palace and St. Andrews Hall where there're these exorbitant rooms which are lavishly decorated were filled with 3,000 especially-invited guests including ministers in the Russian government and some foreign dignitaries as well including Gerhard Schroder, the former German chancellor and Steven Seagal, who is a Hollywood movie star and a close personal friend of Vladimir Putin. In a short address following his inauguration, Putin said that he would service Russia for the rest of his life, much to the alarm here, I expect of critics out there that want to see him gone. But he also said that his emphasis as head of state will be to make Russia prosperous again and glorious. And the tone of his speech was very much in this fourth term in office. Vladimir Putin wants to emphasize economic recovery as is main platform. Now whether or not that will happen or not remains very much to be seen; obviously Russia has massive economic obstacles. But as I mentioned there are lots of political protests -- there have been over the course of the past 48 hours or so as well, over the weekend before the inauguration ceremony. The people turning out in towns and cities across Russia to voice their opposition to Vladimir Putin who won a landslide election back in March. He now starts another six-year term as Russian president. He's already served four terms. And in fact he's ruled this country as either president or prime minister for the past 18 years and there's very little sign at this point that that is going to change. Matthew Chance, CNN -- Moscow.</s>SESAY: Wow.</s>VAUSE: Yes.</s>SESAY: That's a long time.</s>VAUSE: It is.</s>SESAY: Now, another teenage girl in India had been raped and set on fire. The 17-year-old is now in a hospital with burns to 70 percent of her body and the suspect has been arrested.</s>VAUSE: This all happened in the same region where another teen was burned to death after being gang-raped. We have details now from Anna Coren.</s>ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The haunting screams of family members begging for justice following the alleged gang-rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl. The attack which happened last week in Jharkhand, eastern India is the latest in a series of violent sexual crimes across the country. "There was a wedding at my brother's place", said the victim's uncle. "She went to fetch water and that's when the attacker grabbed and took her in a car. Then he raped her." When the family complained to the local village council, the accused men were fined $750 dollars and order to do 100 sit-ups. Enraged by the punishment, police said the men</s>DEEPA NARAYAN, AUTHOR AND SOCIAL SCIENTIST: The rape is a rape. And these rapes, including gang-rapes of young girls is increasing. It's not decreasing.</s>COREN: India has been reeling from a string of highly publicized attacks that have sparked protests. Earlier this year, an eight-year-old girl in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir was abducted, drugged and held captive in a temple where she was repeatedly raped by several men before being strangled to death. Despite the national outcry over this brutal attack, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was accused of being extremely slow to respond. His days of silence widely criticized until finally addressing the crime. "I want to assure the country that no culprit will be spared", he said. "Complete justice will be done. Those daughters who have become the victim of such crime will get justice for sure." But justice is sadly elusive for the surviving victims and families. Authorities claim more than 100 cases of rape are reported each day. That's roughly one every 15 minutes. There was a 12 percent rise in the number of reported cases from 2015 to 2016 but there are more than 15,000 rape cases awaiting trial.</s>NARAYAN: It's a huge social, cultural problem in India. And the other factors that the conviction rate was 3 percent.</s>COREN: India's deep-rooted problem with rape came to international attention in 2012 when a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in New Delhi was brutally gang-raped on a minibus. She died a few weeks later. The anger and protests that followed forced the government to change the laws and increase penalties for sexual violence. And just last month, the Indian cabinet approved the death penalty for rapists of girls under 12. But critics say those laws are yet to be enforced and attitudes still haven't changed.</s>NARAYAN: unless the way women are viewed changes culturally, we're not going to see any stoppage of violence against women.</s>COREN: Anna Coren, CNN -- Hong Kong.</s>SESAY: Honestly distressing.</s>VAUSE: Yes. It is an issue which just keeps coming back and obviously there needs to be something done.</s>SESAY: And they have laws but the question is not more laws, it's enforcement.</s>VAUSE: Yes. And education.</s>SESAY: And education.</s>VAUSE: Still to come on NEWSROOM L.A. rivers of lava on Hawaii's Big Island showing no signs of slowing down. We'll have an update on the volcano in just a moment.</s>SESAY: Well, the Kilauea Volcano in -- here we are.</s>VAUSE: Here we are.</s>SESAY: Here we are.</s>VAUSE: There it is behind us.</s>SESAY: They can't</s>VAUSE: That's incredible. Look at it.</s>SESAY: That volcano -- that one. That one is in Hawaii.</s>VAUSE: You're in big trouble.</s>SESAY: It shows no signs of quieting down. It's been spewing lava and toxic gas since Thursday. There are now at least 12 fissures which have been opened up. Thirty- five structures have been destroyed including more than two dozen homes. Stephanie Elam has the latest now from Hawaii's Big Island.</s>STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Rivers of smoldering lava threatening Hawaii's Big Island. The red-hot magma spewing up to fissures that have emerged since the eruption of the Kilauea Volcano has ravaged roads and destroyed dozens of structures. Watch this time lapse show the all-consuming flow of the lava as it slowly creeps across a road, engulfing a parked car leading a smoky black trail in its wake; more lava spilling through neighborhoods, turning lush, green island vegetation to walls of blackened rocks. At least 1,700 people in Leilani Estates and Lanipuna Gardens have had to evacuate. Tell me what it was like when you first saw lava coming out right by your house.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was, it went really orange, the highest splatter I saw first was about 60 feet tall which is pretty big.</s>ELAM: After that, potentially deadly volcanic gases. The eruptions have released high levels of sulfur dioxide into the air. And then there are the Big Island earthquakes more than 1,300 in the last week alone. From a helicopter, we can see where all of this began and the destruction is massive. To the south, the Puluoo (ph) vent of Kilauea collapsed.</s>SEAN REGAHR, HELICOPTER PILOT: -- craters up there, it almost collapsed into one big hole.</s>ELAM: Some residents in Leilani Estates have been allowed to return temporarily to check on their homes. But the threat and the uncertainty remain.</s>DEBBIE AGBAYANI, RESIDENT: Just watching everybody come out of there with all their things. It's so bad. It's just so bad.</s>ELAM: And it's worth point out that the people that lived in these communities are mainly working class folks that have taken their life savings and put them into this land to have a slice of paradise not far from the beach. But with lava insurance being so expensive many of these people don't have it and so if their homes are lost to the lava, they will have likely lost everything. Stephanie Elam, CNN -- near Leilani Estates, Hawaii.</s>VAUSE: Let's go to Pedram Javaheri. He's there at the CNN International Weather Center for more. So Pedram -- they don't really know how much longer this will continue or how bad it's going to get.</s>PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes. It's impossible but you know one way to look at and kind of guesstimate where we think this will end up, you're looking at historical sort of eruptions across this particular region. We know that typically several weeks to several months is a pretty good bet of how long such events last across this region. So you would expect earthquakes to continue. We're seeing on the order of 100 per day, upwards of a thousand have occurred in the last week or so. Additional fissures up to the 12 that we've seen, potentially more possible as we see additional quakes, and of course, poisonous gas is being released at the moment across this region as well. Here is the widespread coverage of the quake activity over the past week or so indicated in yellow the past 24 hours. You see that indicated in the orange coloration as well. So the activity is certainly not quieting down. And frankly this is what we have the Hawaiian Islands come from, right. We have volcanic activity, tectonic activity -- put this together go to the northwestern corner of the island, of the 132 islands that make up the archipelago. Kauai is your oldest island at 5.1 million years old and you can scoot on over towards the southeast, towards the Big Island. In fact, it's the youngest island -- the oldest spots of the Big Island come in at 700,000 years old. And in fact, in the eruption that occurred across this region back in 2012, we added an additional 200 hectares of land to the island so these sort of eruptions cause the island, of course, to grow and this what we're watching essentially, geology before our eyes. But the temperatures associated with this incredible, in fact, it is that eighth fissure right there that has been really problematic. That produced a tremendous amount of lava that's caused widespread damage. You've seen the remarkable footage associated with this as well. And just based on the coloration of the lava, we can actually see and guesstimate the temperatures associated with it. The white and yellow colors are indicative of some 1,200 degrees Celsius temperatures. And of course you get down a little cooler down towards the red coloration which is about 800 degrees Celsius. But see how it hardens and solidifies? That actually does a wonderful job to insulate the lava and that really makes it another dangerous element because these lava tubes can allow the lava to farther travel downstream. We've had previous eruptions where lava has been tracked some 10 kilometers away up to the coastal community right on the coast. And the tubes themselves have been able to maintain their temperatures. So even on the coast 10 kilometers away, John and Isha, the lava temperatures are 1,200 degrees Celsius and that of course, placed additional major, major disruptions and damages even far away from where the eruption occurred.</s>VAUSE: Yes. We're hearing from officials there in Hawaii saying this is not a tourist attraction.</s>SESAY: No.</s>VAUSE: Stay away.</s>SESAY: Yes, this is dangerous.</s>JAVAHERI: Yes. Not at all -- yes.</s>SESAY: Pedram -- thank you.</s>VAUSE: Thanks</s>P.J. JAVAHERI: Thank you.</s>SESAY: All right. Quick break here. Up next, "This is America", the multilayered new single and musipedia (ph) by Childish Gambino is being called a work of genius. We're going to try to analyze its many, many messages.