good thursday morning to you i m jim sciutto. the people of ohio awaiting the report on what led up to the devastating the toxic train derailment earlier this month. pete buttigieg is on the ground this morning as residents voice their anger and frustration in the cnn town hall last night. if you do not feel safe living in east palestine raise your hand. i don t know what the future holds for my town. i m 65 years old, a diabetic, heart disease, everything. now did you shorten my life now? i want to retire and enjoy it. you burned me. well, other story we re following this morning, alex murdaugh on trial for murdering his wife and youngest son. now a source tells cnn he is expected to take the stand to testify in his own defense. we ll take you to that courtroom live in a moment. and hundreds of thousands of people are without power this morning as a massive cross country winter storm ripped across several states. ahead the warning for new england and the east coa
floating above the continental united states, and we don t know what data it s collecting. you can see it right there on your screen and it s visable to people on the ground in montana. at least it has been since wednesday. today beijing confirmed it is theirs, claiming it is a, quote, unquote, civilian research air ship that went off course, but minutes ago, the pentagon flatly rejected that claim, calling it a surveillance balloon. secretary of state antony blinken s upcoming trip to china has now been postponed. the pro vocative move is inflaming a u.s.-china relationship already on the brink with tensions over everything from taiwan to tiktok. cnn s natasha bertrand is here to break it all down for us. natasha, there is so much to talk about here. so let s start at the beginning. what do we know about this balloon? yeah. so here, just to get a sense for the scale of this thing, this is the balloon, and what we know about it is that it is the size of about three busses.
hovering over the northern u.s. plus, do you know what negative 60 degrees feels like? well, tens of millions from the northern plains to new england are under alerts for what could be some of the coldest windchills in a generation. and an nbc news exclusive, new reporting on why more than half a million migrants living in the u.s. are in legal limbo. migrants telling us quote, i couldn t believe what i was seeing. fresh outcry over another police killing. a double amputee missing both his legs trying to run from police. in just minutes, president biden expected to address those huge numbers in the latest jobs report released just this morning. what those numbers mean for our economy. we begin this hour with the pentagon on alert. nbc news was first to report that the u.s. is monitoring a suspected chinese surveillance balloon that has been hovering over the northern u.s. a witness in billings, montana, captured this footage on wednesday the same day the pentagon sa
good to be with you, i m katy tur. first it was the leaked memo from an air force general, warning his officers to prepare for a hot war with china in 2025. then it was news the u.s. is expanding its military presence in southeast asia, adding four more bases in the philippines on the doorstep of china. and now, the pentagon is faced with a chinese spy balloon first spotted over montana, which, by the way is home to one of the united states three nuclear silo fields. just a moment ago in a series of questions from reporters, brigadier general patrick ryder confirmed the balloon is not just drifting, that china is in control of it. the balloon is maneuverable. clearly it s violated u.s. airspace, and again, we ve communicated that fact to the prc. the fact is we know that it s a surveillance balloon. and i m not going to be able to be more specific than that. and we do know that the balloon has violated international airspace and international law which is unacceptable. we
cnn newsroom. i m jim acosta in washington. we begin with dramatic video. we re going to show it to you right here showing the moment a bomb explodes in a cafe in st petersburg, russia, killing a well known russian pro war blogger. may have been presented to the blogger hidden inside a figurine. the dead blogger had more than a half million followers on his pro military blog, where he aggressively supported the war in ukraine openly criticized the setbacks. russian troops face there. cnn s matthew chance is in moscow for us. well jim. this explosion killed one of russia s most prominent pro war military bloggers, posting under the name of vlad lent tartasky. he accumulated more than half a million followers on his pro war telegram channel in which he was notoriously hard line enthusiastically, for instance, declaring on ukraine we will kill everyone. we will rob everyone we will have our way. and, of course, like other prominent russian military bloggers criticizing aspects a