(intense music)
- [Announcer] This is CBN NewsWatch.
- Thanks for joining us
for this special MemorialDay edition of CBN NewsWatch
on this Monday, May 27th, I'm Mark Martin.
Today, President Trump in Japan
discussing North Korea'slatest missile tests,
as Washington focuses on the threat
from the North's nuclear program.
The voters speak in theEuropean Union elections
over concerns about issues
like immigration and the environment.
They're called deep fakes,
fake videos that look so real
that you can't tell the difference.
We'll show you how one made the headlines.
And for Memorial Day,
we'll bring you the storyof one of the survivors
of one of the worstdisasters of World War II,
the sinking of the USS Indianapolis.
And we'll show you the history
of the real-life aircombat school Top Gun.
Those stories and more today on NewsWatch.
As Americans remember the sacrifices
of the men and womenof our armed services,
we begin with President Trump in Japan,
where he addressed therecent missile tests
of its neighbor North Korea.
Dale Hurd has that story.
- [Dale] The Japanese gave President Trump
a lavish State welcome
befitting the first world leader
to meet with Japan's new emperor.
Trump and Japan's prime ministerhad plenty to talk about.
- We are going to discussvarious challenges
of the international community,
including North Korea.
- [Dale] The Presidenttweeting that he's not bothered
by the rogue regime's recentsmall-range missile launches,
he's confident ChairmanKim will keep his promise
to get rid of the nation's nukes.
- I personally thinkthat lots of good things
will come with North Korea.
- [Dale] That seems in contrast
with National SecurityAdvisor John Bolton,
saying the test violated UNSecurity Council regulations.
The North Koreans respondedby calling Bolton a warmonger.
On NBC's Meet the Press,
Trump Press Secretary Sarah Sanders
said the president thinks
a good relationship with Kim is essential.
- The president's focus in this process
is the relationship he has
and making sure we continue on the path
towards denuclearization.
- [Dale] But on Fox News Sunday,
Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham
said Kim will only give uphis weapons when forced to.
- The only way Kim willgive up his nuclear weapons,
if he believes he'sbetter off without them,
and you gotta make thethreat of military force real
if he continues todevelop missiles and bombs
directed at America.
What we do in Venezuelaand what we do in Iran
will make a differenceas to how Kim reacts
to us in North Korea.
- [Dale] In Japan, Trumpalso talked about Iran,
and with Abe considering visiting
the Islamic regime next month,
Trump could be open totalks with Iranian leaders.
- And I do believe thatIran would like to talk,
and if they'd like to talk,we'd like to talk also,
we'll see what happens.
But I know for a factthat the prime minister
is very close with the leadership of Iran,
and we'll see what happens,that would be fine.
Nobody wants to see terriblethings happen, especially me.
- [Dale] The administrationis sending 1,500 more troops
to the Middle East as force protection
as tensions with Iran increase.
This after surveillance showing
Iranian militia movingmissiles onto boats,
resulting in a carrier group and B-52s
being sent to the region.
Dale Hurd, CBN News.
- Europe is living in anew political reality today
after more conservative nationalist
and environmentalist groups did well
in the European Union'sParliamentary elections,
shrinking the numbers
of the ruling Pro-EU political parties.
Turnout was the highest in25 years, at just under 51%,
as voters took theirconcerns about immigration,
security, and climate to the ballot box.
The results mean the EU parliament
will remain highly-fracturedfor the next five years.
The president of Israel says he's shocked
by a warning from Germany'sCommissioner on Antisemitism
that Jews should not wear skullcaps
at all times everywhere in Germany
out of fear for their safety.
Israeli President ReuvenRivlin said in a statement,
"We will never submit,will never lower our gaze,
"and will never react toantisemitism with defeatism,
"and expect and demand ourallies act in the same way."
German government statisticsthat came out this month
showed a rise in antisemiticand anti-foreigner incidents.
Here at home,
growing technology issue hasmade its way into politics.
You may have heard of deep fakes,
it's the growing threatwhere videos and pictures
are manipulated and disseminatedfor public consumption.
One of the latest examplesof it happened late last week
involving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
CBN National SecurityCorrespondent Eric Phillips
brings us this look atthis disturbing trend.
- Over the last couple of years,
the term fake news has becomealmost a household phrase,
used by those on both sidesof the political spectrum.
Now, so-called deep fakes,
like the ones you're about to see,
bring a whole new dimension to fake news.
- This president of the United States--
- [Eric] Look at this 17-second clip
of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
It was posted on the PoliticsWatchDog Facebook page
hours after a contentiousmeeting with President Trump.
- And then he had a pressconference in the Rose Garden
with all of this sort of visuals
that obviously wereplanned long before I said,
most currently, that hewas engaged in a cover-up.
- [Eric] Now, look atthis 12-second version
of the same clip.
- And then he had a pressconference in the Rose Garden,
with all this sort of visuals
that obviously wereplanned long before I said,
most currently, that hewas engaged in a cover-up.
- [Eric] The five-second difference
is because of editingthat slowed down the video
and simultaneously adjustedthe pitch of her voice
to make her seem sluggish.
It prompted comments like this one:
"Good lord, lady, how manydrinks did you have today?"
- When you look at animage or a video online,
can you tell if it'sbeen manipulated or not?
- [Eric] An organization called DARPA,
which stands for
the Defense AdvancedResearch Projects Agency,
is spearheading the detection
of this growing threatof engineered images.
Faking pictures is not a new trick,
a portrait painter in 1865
stuck Abraham Lincoln's head
on this Southern CivilWar politician's body.
But in recent times,
technology has harnessed the power
of artificial intelligence
to create and manipulatenew worlds and new faces.
(upbeat music)
The ability to synthesizedance patterns is one thing,
but the folks at DARPA say what's at stake
is something much more sinister.
- We need to be more vigilant
with what we trust from the internet.
- It's why DARPA is racing to keep pace
as the technology behind
artificial-intelligence-engineered video
accelerates at breakneck speeds.
Rhetoric and tricks areonly expected to ramp up
the closer we get to the 2020 election.
DARPA hopes to uncoversome of these deep fakes
so that voters won't go to thebooths and cast their ballots
based on this information.
In Washington, Eric Phillips, CBN News.
(intense music)
- [Mark] Coming up, a remarkablestory for Memorial Day,
a man who survived a terribledisaster of World War II,
the sinking of the USS Indianapolis
by the Japanese duringthe last days of the War.
It was the greatest loss of life
on a single ship in Navy history.
Only 316 out of nearly1,200 crewmen survived.
One of them was Edgar Harrell,
we're gonna have hisstory when we come back.
(uplifting music)- [Pat] People wanna know,
"Is there a plan, and how do you find it?"
- [Announcer] CBN presents The Plan:
Eight Keys for UnderstandingGod's Will for Your Life.
- We're going to talk aboutGod's plan for your life.
- Is there a plan for everyone's life?
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- [Announcer] In The Plan,
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and we did what he told us to do.
- [Announcer] Live the lifeGod has designed for you.
- I hope that God works out a plan in you
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- [Announcer] Get ThePlan, call 1-800-700-7000,
or visit CBN.com.
- [Announcer] Remember for a moment
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You believed every story you were told,
you saw a world a world fullof endless possibilities.
What stories will the world's orphaned
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They are looking for a story to believe.
We will tell them that story.
Will you join us?
- [Announcer] Get the top political news
and analysis fromWashington on Faith Nation,
tonight at six Eastern, onlyon the CBN News Channel.
- Welcome back.
Today is Memorial Day,
so we wanted to honor a man of courage
who served aboard the USS Indianapolis.
That naval cruiser suffered one of
the worst maritime disastersin American history,
sunk during World War IIby Japanese torpedoes.
Edgar Harrell was onboard that day,
and here is his amazing story.
On a small farm in Kentucky,
Edgar Harrell heard about
the war in the Pacific on the radio.
After listening to reports ofmarines losing their lives,
he wanted to help.
- And I thought, "Youknow, I'm 18 years old,"
and I had alreadyregistered for the draft,
and I thought, "Now I don'twant to wait and be drafted,
"I want to get in the Marine Corps."
- [Mark] The heavy cruiserthe USS Indianapolis
became his home.
- When I saw that big Indianapolis,
you know, you could imagine,
a country boy, what he thought of that.
- [Mark] Harrell sawfierce combat on the ship,
events that shook him to the core.
The 91-year-old vividlyrecalls one harrowing incident
when a Japanese kamikazeplane struck the Indianapolis
in the battle for Okinawa.
- I can remember seeing that plane,
thinking that life is over.
"This is the end of life,
"because he's diving for the fin tail."
- [Mark] Harrell survived that attack,
but nine of his shipmates did not.
The Indianapolis had to returnto the States for repairs.
Eventually it left San Francisco Bay
heading back to the South Pacific
on what would be its final mission.
On board, importantcomponents of the atomic bombs
that would be dropped onHiroshima and Nagasaki.
Crew members unloaded thewar-ending cargo at Tinian Island.
Harrell says their next assignment
was to head to the Philippines
to prepare for the main invasion of Japan.
- Captain McVay asked for an escort,
and they tell him, "Youdon't need an escort."
Well, may I say, they werenot telling the truth,
they could've said, "You need an escort."
Why?
Because four days before,we lost a destroyer,
the USS Underhill, we lost 129 boys,
and we were to go through that very area.
- [Mark] Why Navy leaders madethat decision, Harrell says,
remains a mystery.
And that brings us to July 30th, 1945.
A Japanese submarinespots the Indianapolis
in the Philippines Sea
and fires a spread of torpedoes.
Two hit their mark,
and in less than 15minutes, the ship goes down.
Around 900 of the nearly 1,200-man crew
who survived the initial attack
find themselves oil-soaked,many with injuries,
clinging to kapok life jacketsin the shark-infested waters.
- And I thought of Mom and Dad back home,
I thought of six younger brothers,
a older sister, a younger sister,
and I thought of this certain brunette
that said that she would wait for me.
And I tell the Lord, "I don'twanna die, I wanna live!"
- [Mark] Harrell, who was 20 at the time,
says he began to think of scriptures.
- "I'll never leave you nor forsake you."
Seemingly, that came tomind, no audible voice,
but I knew that theLord was speaking to me.
"Lord, you're speaking to myheart, I'm gonna make it."
Well, I didn't know I'm gonnabe out there 4 1/2 days.
- [Mark] Four and a halfdays of unbelievable horror.
No food, no water,
and yet surrounded bywater in all directions,
along with sharks.
He says shipmates not in their right mind,
some because they were injured,
others because they drank saltwater,
began to hallucinate.
- He leaves the group andhe gets out 50, 75 yards,
and you hear a blood-curdling scream,
and you see that kapok go under,
and then, like a fish cork,
then that kapok brings that body back up,
but by now, all of the blood,
and more, more sharks, more fins,
and they are kinda fightingover what was there.
- [Mark] Despite witnessingscenes like that,
Harrell refused to give up hope.
He believes God directed himand several of his buddies
to a crate of rotten potatoes.
The hearts of the potatoeswere still edible.
He also believes God senta small raincloud one day
to provide desperately-needed water.
- So what do you do?
"Thank you, Lord, thankyou, Lord, thank you."
And that little raincloud comes over
and you get a few drops,
maybe a few tablespoons full of water.
- [Mark] The brutalconditions took their toll.
The number of sailors and marines
dwindled down to a little more than 300.
Finally, a plane flew overthe area low to the water,
a miracle, because the pilot,Lieutenant Wilbur Gwinn,
wasn't looking for the survivors.
He did not even know they were missing.
No one did.
- Lieutenant Gwinn goes aft,he opens the bomb bay door,
and in just a flash, he looksdown at the ocean below,
and what he saw was an oil slick.
- Flying even lower, Gwinn,who they called Angel,
sees debris, sharks, andsharks attacking survivors.
He radios for help,
and eventually 317 crew members
of the USS Indianapolisare pulled from the water.
Harrell spent months inhospitals recovering.
After everything Harrell went through,
it's easy to see whyhe's a decorated marine.
He was even awarded the Purple Heart.
Here is a letter dated August 13th, 1945.
"The Purple Heart is awarded
"by the Medical Officer in Command
"to Edgar Alvin Harrell
"for wounds received in action
"against an enemy of the UnitedStates on July 30th, 1945."
He went on to marry Ola, thebrunette who waited for him.
Harrell shares his storyof God's providence
at schools and churches.
He calls it a ministry.
He and his son David alsochronicled the unforgettable story
in a new book, Out of the Depths.
- And there's not a day that goes by,
many, many times a day,
I just look up and say, "Thank you, Lord."
(intense music)
- [Mark] An amazing story.
Well, still ahead,
the true story behind the school featured
in one of the most famousmilitary movies ever, Top Gun.
We'll tell you how it really came about
and why it was so importantwhen we come back.
(upbeat music)
- [Announcer] It's about the competition.
- I kinda put that pressure on myself,
and I think people have the expectation.
- [Announcer] It's about overcoming.
- We use this phrase all the time,
keep chopping, keep practicing hard.
- [Announcer] It's aboutGoing the Distance.
- I think, as a father,it's my job to lead,
just be the best husbandand father I can be.
- [Announcer] Watch Goingthe Distance with Shawn Brown
Saturday night at 7:30
on the CBN News Channel.
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Hi, SuperBook fans, here'ssomething else you'll love.
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It's the new SuperBook Bible App,
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(uplifting music)- How can you
find God's plan for your life?
- [Announcer] CBN presents The Plan:
Eight Keys to UnderstandingGod's Will for Your Life.
In Pat Robertson's latest teaching,
you'll discover the steps totake in following God's plan,
how to know for certainwhen God is leading you,
how to get rid of spiritual blindness,
and see God work.
- God said,
"I've got a plan to giveyou a future and a hope."
- [Announcer] Get ThePlan, call 1-800-700-7000,
or visit CBN.com.
- [Caitlin] Check out the CBNNews Daily Rundown Podcast
each weekday with me, Caitlin Burke.
Click on the Show tab at CBNNews.com,
where you can listen and subscribe.
- Thanks for staying with us.
50 years ago, during the Vietnam War,
the Navy desperately needed help.
Enemy pilots were shooting down our planes
at an unprecedented rate.
So they turned to a young US pilot
to start an advanced schoolfor air-to-air combat.
As Heather Sells shows us,it became known as Top Gun,
and that changed everything.
- [Heather] You may rememberthe 1986 movie Top Gun,
it brought national attention
to the Navy's elite fighter pilot school.
- I feel the need,(upbeat music)
the need for speed.- The need for speed.
- [Heather] But it didn'ttell the whole story.
The story begins in 1956,
when Dan Pedersen beganflying for the Navy.
Based off the West Coast,
he and other young pilots flew the skies,
ready to intercept Soviet bombers,
but then, the Vietnam War began,
and suddenly, the Navybegan losing its very best
in what it had long prideditself on, air-to-air combat.
- You'd go to dinner at night
and there's empty chairs at the table.
- Dan Pedersen foundedthe Navy's Top Gun school
to take on an incredible challenge.
The Navy was failing inthe skies over Vietnam
and losing its pilotsat an astonishing rate.
- The general thought wasthat all you had to do
was send aviators into action,
teach them how to use the equipment,
and if they would do that,they would win victories.
- [Heather] Military historian Timothy Orr
says the Navy went into theVietnam War supremely confident
after great success in theskies during the Korean War.
It quickly began losing pilots however,
and Orr says that's because
most had received littletraining in air combat.
- They would get surprisedby North Vietnamese MiGs,
and if they got into a tangle with them,
the MiGs, though theywere vastly outdated,
were very maneuverable,
and the pilots of them
knew how to push thelimits of the aircraft.
- [Heather] In 1967,
Pedersen was flying off the USS Enterprise
off the Vietnam coast.
In just four months, hisair group lost 13 men.
In what's known as the kill ratio,
the Navy was losing one planefor every two it shot down.
- You can't live with losingairplanes like we were.
So, we had to do something.
- [Heather] Pedersendocuments that something,
the founding of the Navy'sfighter weapon school,
in his new book.
We met aboard thedecommissioned USS Midway
to talk about one of the great turnarounds
in modern military history.
For Pedersen, it startedwith the Ault Report,
a 1968 brief that examined
all the Navy's problems in the air
and recommended hardcoretraining as a remedy.
- It was time to get wellin the middle of a war,
and the only way to get well in a hurry
is to do a graduate-level school.
In other words, trainthat nucleus of people,
and have them go out andtrain the guys in the fleet.
- The way the Navy lookedat it was, in general,
that they were relying toomuch on the technology,
that they needed to kind of get back
to teaching pilots how to dogfight,
teach them how to usethe tricks of the trade
to outmaneuver their opponents in the air.
- [Heather] A Navycaptain tapped Pedersen,
a flight instructor at theMiramar Air Station at the time,
to organize and found the school.
He offered him no money, no mechanics,
and no planes to call their own,
along with a tight deadline.
- I said, "How much time have I got?"
And he said, "Somewhereover 60 days to 90 days
"to have the first class convene."
And I said, "You gotta be kidding me?"
"No, we're gonna do it here."
No building, no classroom to teach in.
He said, "You can do it."
He said, "Improvise."
- [Heather] One of Pedersen's instructors
found an abandoned trailer
and paid a crane operator acase of scotch to move it.
Pedersen then picked eightof Miramar's finest pilots,
who would teach a new generation
how to dogfight all over again
and push their planes to their limits.
- You may train and youmay think you're the best,
but you're gonna find out for real,
and if you don't do itright, you don't go home.
- [Heather] The extremely-practical
and finely-tuned curriculum,
taught by specialistswho understood mechanics,
the tactics of the enemy,and the need for innovation,
would make all the difference.
Three years later,
in the next major aerialcampaign against Vietnam,
the kill ratio improved 600%.
The Navy was now losing one plane
for every 12 it shot down.
Looking back, Pedersen seesthe hand of God in it all,
and says the original bros do as well.
- There are no atheists
flying combat airplanes.
They may think they are for a while,
but over the course of time,
they'll have things happento them or their airplane
that will bring God right to the surface.
- [Heather] Today, TopGun continues to take
just the top 1% of the Navy's pilots
and train them to train others.
- The reason that US Navypilots are among the elite
is because of the education they receive.
- [Heather] Pedersensays he considers Top Gun
to be bigger and better than ever.
But he says he wrote thebook for high school kids
trying to figure out what they want to do.
He hopes they'll consider theNavy, and maybe even flying,
if they're up for achallenge like no other.
Reporting in San Diego,Heather Sells, CBN News.
- Fascinating history there of Top Gun.
We'll be right back, stay with us.
(dramatic music)- [Announcer] As the world
watches from the outside,
- It's a big diplomatic tug-of-warhere in the Middle East.
- [Announcer] go inside thestory with Jerusalem Dateline.
- Israeli archeologists aretalking about a discovery
that could change the thinkingabout the Temple Mount.
- [Announcer] Join CBN JerusalemBureau Chief Chris Mitchell
and get the biblical perspective
on the events shaping the world.
- What starts in Israel thenends up going to other places.
- [Announcer] Watch Jerusalem Dateline
Friday night at 9:30 onthe CBN News Channel.
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(bluegrass music)- [Announcer] Come home
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CBN Southern Gospel,available now at CBNRadio.com.
(upbeat music)
- [Man] Young people, millennials,
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- That's gonna do it forthis edition of NewsWatch,
(intense music)you can find more
on the issues you careabout most at CBNNews.com,
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on our CBN News Channel.
Thanks again for watchingon this Memorial Day,
have a great day.
