mission to serve. starting with the woman in charge of america s humanitarian response around the world. samantha power on helping ukrainians devastated by russia s war and why she thinks the u.s. needs to stay involved. the stakes for me as an american, mother, citizen are very, very high as they are for all of us. actor turned activest gary s role led him on a mission. was it fate you would play lieutenant dan in forest gump? can i have a hint? i find cooking hard and stressful. do you feel your life is in danger. what was the worst? there is a long list of really bad ones. i cannot tell you how difficult this is feeling. a humanitarian crisis unfolding right now. 8 million ukraine ians leaving their homeland since the war started. while russia destroyed much of the country, civilian infrastructure. samantha power heads the u.s. agency helping on the ground. i m here at the crossing point where ukrainians are entering poland. she knows war all too we
chinese spy balloon and when they realized they must tell the president about it. this comes as u.s. navy divers and other military personnel are scouring the ocean floor off the coast of myrtle beach, south carolina. and we re getting new video in to cnn. a resident in south carolina shot this and said he believes it could be debris from the balloon. to be clear, cnn cannot independently verify whether or not this is, in fact, debris from that chinese spy balloon. we re reaching out to the navy for comment. in the meantime, republicans are condemning president biden for failing to take action on the balloon sooner. cnn s alex marquardt joins us now with more. alex, you re learning more about this timing, when it came down to the decision-making that was taking place inside the biden administration. we heard the president stating to reporters emphatically yesterday that he made this call on wednesday that the balloon be shot down as soon as it was safe to do so. but there s m
developments this morning following the military s shootdown of the suspected chinese spy balloon off the south carolina coast. the fbi analyzing the pieces of the balloon as china sends a warning to the white house. our team is covering this story from multiple angels. plus, new details on that train derailment that sparked a massive fire in eastern ohio. officials now saying train cars contained hazardous materials. the latest on that cleanup effort. and the fbi offering a $25,000 reward for information about the attacks on two power substations. why officials say these stations are increasingly being targeted by extremist groups. and could artificial intelligence soon put us all out of work? you may want to polish your resumé. it s all ahead on cnn this morning. we are starting another week and we are grateful to have you. it is sunday, february 5th. thanks so much for waking up with us. amara, i don t think as much attention has been paid to a balloon since tha
administration acted indecisively and waited too long, letting the balloon float across the continental u.s. for days. president biden says the military advised him there would be less danger to the public in shooting down the balloon once it got over the ocean. lawmakers are reacting sharply and along party lines. i want to start by doing something that i don t do very often, which is commending joe biden for actually having the guts to shoot this down. that was the right thing to do. that is absolutely what the president should have done. unfortunately he didn t do that until a week after it entered u.s. airspace. they re saying we should have shot down the balloon the minute we saw it. i would use two words in answering these gop criticisms. they are premature, and they are political. presidents have the ability to go before a camera, go before the nation and basically explain these things early on, and his failure to do so, i don t understand that. i don t understan
now. welcome to the beat, our top story is new developments right now in what s shaping up to be the case of the decade for trying to hold liars accountable with real swift justice. fox news on defense, facing over a billion dollars for punishment and lies, it served up and fed the insurrection. as you see here, top fox hosts have clearly been on team trump in public for a long time. we know that. we know sean hannity broke all journalistic rules of pretense by endorsing and publicly campaigning for trump. there s no court punishment for breaking that kind of rule. there just isn t. but there can be penalties for malicious lying, for defamation if you can prove the defendant acting knowingly, maliciously, intentionally. that s hard to prove and that difficult standard is deliberate, which is why this case has to turn on hard evidence, not asking whether hannity is biassed for trump, he is. but asking whether hannity knowingly and maliciously pushed lies that caused immeas