
10 crises that demand answers at Biden's press conference
CNN
If President Joe Biden's only task in his solo press conference on Wednesday was restoring his battered political standing, it would be daunting enough. But the President will arrive in the East Room at a moment of national exhaustion and drained morale as the coronavirus pandemic heads into a third year, amid a sense that events at home and abroad are cascading out of control and that vicious ideological divides could tear America apart.
The country has not been as ideologically estranged for generations. Two big blocks of Americans believe everything that they think their nation stands for could be ripped away.
Biden was elected to slake the poison, bridge divides and solve problems. But in his first year in office, political bitterness has deepened, partly because of ex-President Donald Trump's corrosive and dangerous campaign to destroy American democracy. And Biden's interpretation of tiny Democratic mandates in Congress might have delighted liberals but it has prompted some who saw him as a moderate to wonder whether they misjudged him.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.

Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.

Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.

As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.









