the second world war or new assessment of the worst pandemic since 1918 china is front and center tonight. on ukraine members of the administration spoke today and over the weekend warning beijing that arming russia would be a mistake. we are confident that the chinese leadership is considering the provision of lethal equipment that would be a very risky and unwise bet. bill burns, the cia director. on covid we learned yesterday that the department of energy has assessed in a newly updated intelligence report that it most likely originated from a laboratory leak. cnn has just learned the reason for that updated report. three sources telling cnn that the department of energy shift was based in part on information about the research that the chinese centers for disease control, the chinese cdc in wuhan, was doing around the time of the outbreak on a coronavirus variant. cnn has previously reported that the lab was studying coronaviruses m bats but it is unclear how closely
i m lindsey reiser, we ve got a jam-packed hour ahead. right now, 50 million americans are waking up to winter alerts, including heavy snow, ice, even some tornadoes. a fast moving storm system tearing across the great lakes into new england, dumping heavy snow and complicating the morning commute for many. new york city is seeing its first steady snowfall of the year. take a look at this, the normally bustling bridge in the daylight hours eerily empty covered in a soft bed of snow. illinois dealing with its own severe weather. two tornadoes touching down, setting off terrifying sirens. we re tracking all of it for you this morning. plus, growing frustration in east palestine ahead of the epa administrate s third trip to the town since that toxic train derailment. federal officials knocking on more than 500 doors in town checking on residents, some of whom have been diagnosed with health conditions like bronchitis. others are fearful of getting sick in the future. i m sca
they re trying to hold every inch of territory in that city. how has that changed the way they re fighting this side? reporter: it s made it on the russian side, dirtier. on the ukrainian, more desperate. the last few days as the offensive gains in intensity, as the conditions on the ground worsen, those images geolocated by cnn that showed the conditions around bakhmut pretty grim with mud, making the roads pretty much impassable. what ukrainian authorities and president sens has said tonight is things are getting more and more challengichallenging. what we re seeing are a series of intense attacks, but it is the battle for the town of bakhmut that gets worse and more intense by the day with ukrainian officials describing it as the epicenter. there have been today hundreds of artillery barrages and rocket strikes by the russians as they try and encircle the town, and specifically the areas of settlements to the west of it. desperate pleas on the part of the ukrainians once
today, before the jury entered the courtroom with the defense raising the issue with the judge that the prosecution said they plan to have about seven reply witnesses, simply to the pathologist, the defense had on the stand yesterday, the one that brought up for the very first time on the stand, the theory of two shooters. listen. do you have an opinion based upon more probably than not whether there was one or two shooters who murdered maggie and paul on the night of june 7th? i did have an opinion of that. what s your opinion? totality of the evidence is a suggestion of a two shooter scenario. you had a situation where you had a forensic pathologist for the defense arguing that some of what the prosecution s experts had said were exit wounds may have, in fact, been contact wounds and then raising questions of whether or not shot